have possessed the girl – that you don't have that kind of power? Of course you're not. If a demon can take a human host, it stands to reason an angel can, too. And here's the thing: Kate here told me that when she killed her family, she did it with a sense of calm, of peace, the likes of which she'd never felt before. She told me she did it with a song in her heart. Does that sound like any demonic possession you've ever heard of?'
The angel shook his head. 'Don't you see what she has done to you? She's blinded you to her true nature! She's convinced you of this impossible scheme to blind you to the fact that she's responsible for these horrible acts!'
As he spoke, the angel approached, his action lending urgency to his words. I backed away from So'enel, and trained the gun at his chest.
'That weapon will not harm me,' he said gently. 'You sure about that? You may wanna ask Beleth.' I found myself wondering if it's a bluff if you don't know for sure you're bluffing.
The angel raised his hands in acquiescence, a bemused smile settling across his beautiful face.
'What's so funny?' I asked.
'Nothing whatsoever, I assure you. It is just that I underestimated you, Collector – you're far more compassionate a creature than am I. After all, it must be difficult to defend the life of the girl who so brutally slaughtered your own granddaughter.'
The blood drained from my face. I felt suddenly dizzy and weak, and my gun hand dropped to my side, the Glock pointed uselessly toward the floor. 'What did you just say?'
So'enel replied, 'Don't tell me you didn't know! I mean, the resemblance to your Elizabeth is astonishing! In the mother, and the boy as well; why, he would have been your great-grandson, would he not?'
Though the summer of '44 had been sweltering, October brought with it a brutal cold front, blanketing the city in the kind of chill that settles in your bones and makes you think you'll never feel the kiss of warmth again.
'But… she couldn't be.' I said. 'That's impossible.'
It had been a month since that night, since Dumas, and I'd spent that time living on the streets. No, not living – trying desperately to drink myself to death, wishing every night as I lay down in the gutters and the alleyways that I would simply drift away with the next hard frost, never to wake again. The way I saw it, without Elizabeth beside me I was dead already. Sometimes, though, it takes a while for the meat to get the message.
'Is it?' the angel asked. 'But you'd been following her, those months after she bid you adieu. You must have seen.'
Liz had left the apartment in New Brighton, shacked up with a young doc from her program. I spent most nights camped out in a park across the street from his place, so desperate was I to be near her.
'No,' I said, not in answer, but out of sheer denial.
I wanted to tell her I'd been wrong. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. I must've tried a dozen times, but her eyes would pass right over me, in the way that people's do when confronted with those who have fallen through the cracks, and every time, my voice would fail.
'You must have seen your child growing within her.'
Every time but one. It was early evening, and Liz was walking briskly down the street, a bag of groceries in her hand. Her face was downcast, her brow furrowed in worry, and in that moment, I wondered if she was thinking of me. As she passed, I called to her – just her name, just once.
I said, 'You're lying.'
She turned around then, the bag falling forgotten to the sidewalk. I saw Liz peering into the crowd, searching for my face, but with my ratty hair and my twisted scraggle of a beard, she didn't see me looking back at her. But I saw. I saw too much. I saw the weight she carried in her cheeks – just a touch, rounding out her face and glowing pink in the chill fall air. I saw her swollen belly, protruding from beneath her woolen jacket.
'Did you tell yourself it wasn't yours?' said So'enel. 'I assure you that it was.'
And in that moment, I understood.
'Shut up.'
Why she had pushed me away. Why she'd been forced to let me go.
'And that child grew into a woman, who had a child of her own.'
She'd been protecting her child.
'I said shut up.'
Protecting our child.
But he didn't shut up. 'A child that grew up strong and sweet and brave and beautiful, so like your fair Elizabeth.'
She'd been protecting it from me.
'Shut up shut up shut up!'
It was then, as I stood staring at the woman that I loved and the daughter I'd never know, that Bishop struck.
'A child that this one killed, without mercy, and without remorse.'
The pain was excruciating as Bishop gouged my soul out of my chest, cackling gleefully all the while. In truth, I didn't mind. I knew then that I deserved it. For the person I'd become. For the choice I'd forced Elizabeth to make. And as the world around me disappeared, replaced by the swirling gray-black of my soul, I
