floods — ’
‘You’re still doing it! You’re still lying!’
‘I don’t need to lie about God to make Him sound like a cruel, selfish bastard!’ Stephomi snapped. ‘People suffer and die pointlessly every day, Gabriel, every day! I tell you it would be a relief to go to Hell after this; it would be a relief! What about Noah’s Ark? The whole world had been praying for salvation and how did God reward their prayers? By drowning them all. Apart from Noah, of course, but then he had to live with what he’d seen and done for the rest of his life, and he ended up wishing he’d died with the rest of them. It’s the same tired old story — you pray to God, you get kicked in the fucking teeth. Anyone who can pledge allegiance to a God like that disgusts me! You’re just a lot of fucking brainless sheep! You can’t even conceive of the possibility that God’s a sick, selfish bastard, can you?’
‘Shut up!’ I said angrily, finding my tongue at last. ‘Shut up, shut up! ’
To my surprise, Stephomi fell silent — breathing deeply, collecting himself, as if he’d said more than he’d meant to. I’d never seen his control waver like that before. It unsettled me. What kind of a person could talk about God in such a way anyway? Just hearing it made me feel like twisting his damn head off.
‘I’m… I’m sorry, Gabriel’ he said with an effort. ‘I didn’t mean to be disrespectful to your faith. I’ll go if you want. But I’m telling you the truth about yourself, however much you might have preferred the lies. Nicky and Luke were a beautiful dream, but that’s all they ever were.’
‘All right, all right,’ I said, waving my hand dismissively, just wanting to be rid of him. ‘Look, you were there for me when I needed you and I won’t forget that. So I’ll help you with this, okay? This lying disorder you have. We’ll go and see a psychiatrist or something. Together we can… we can…’ I faltered, my attention caught by the large mirror on the wall across from me. The burning man was there, staring out at me, his blue eyes blazing as fire rained down about him. And then, in another moment, he was gone and a name appeared written in fiery gold on the mirror’s surface: Stephomi. Unable to help myself, I glanced at my friend, who turned his own gaze sharply towards the mirror; but it seemed that Stephomi was not a party to this particular mirror vision for he turned back to me with an exasperated, ‘What is it now?’
I forced my gaze back to the mirror and, as I watched, the letters of my friend’s name rearranged themselves until at last there was an altogether different name burning like fire on the mirror before me: Mephisto.
I turned back to the man standing in front of me, horror written all over my face, determined to speak, to question, to demand an explanation as to why the letters of his surname were an anagram of the name of one of the most notorious demons of all time: one of the Seven Princes of Hell, and the Devil’s second in command himself. But the expression on my face must have given me away, for it was Mephistopheles who spoke first.
‘Oh dear. I believe Michael might have just taken matters into his own hands and exposed me. I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that, Gabriel, as if you hardly knew me at all.’
‘Why?’ I managed, staring at the demon with revulsion. ‘Why the pretence and the lies and the deceiving? Why pretend to be my friend like that?’
‘What deception?’ Mephistopheles asked pleasantly. ‘There has been no pretence or lies from me.’
‘Get away from me, you filthy… you disgusting creature!’ I spat, instinctively staggering back a few steps.
I saw the demon’s mouth tighten angrily. ‘Now, Gabriel, let’s not react too childishly about all this,’ Mephisto said coldly. ‘I’m the same person I was before. I like you, you know — even if you can be a self-righteous, pompous pain-in-the-fucking-arse at times — always whining about morality or Godly virtues or Lucifer or anything else you can fucking think of. But to my surprise, I have enjoyed keeping you company. I kept Captain Hosenfeld company too — you remember him, don’t you? Szpilman’s brave rescuer. Do you know how God rewarded his bravery, Gabriel? By sending Russians to capture him and torture him for years and years after the war ended, until at last he died in a cold, miserable little cell, broken, alone and unwept for. That’s hardly fair, is it? The only kind words he ever heard during those seven years were spoken by me.
‘As for this imminent apocalyptic problem we’ll soon have, I’m sure you’ll do the right thing when the time comes. I’ve never known a person so constantly inwardly preoccupied with morality. I will just remind you, though, that the disgust you feel for me now didn’t exist before you found out I was one of Lucifer’s angels. I had nurtured a faint hope that if you came to know me with no prejudices clouding your mind from the outset, you might come to feel a little differently about the angel/demon divide. After all, if my kind really were so vile, you would think you would have seen through me, whatever form I happened to be in.
‘You were forsaken by God and his army. When you were here in Budapest, friendless and alone, did any of God’s angels come to your aid? Did they make any effort to take the edge from the loneliness that was tearing at you from the inside? Like it or not, Gabriel, it was Lucifer, not God, who sent an angel to you to pull you back from the brink of madness. You owe the Devil your sanity, my friend. How does that feel?’
I stared at him, feeling like I was going to be sick. How had this happened? How had this happened? How had I let myself be tricked by him? The idea that I had eaten and drunk with a demon; that I had welcomed a demon into my home as a friend… The very idea sickened me and my stomach shrivelled nauseatingly at the horror of it.
‘Get out!’ I whispered — a mixture of shame and disgust making my whole body shake.
Mephisto narrowed his eyes at me and for a moment I could clearly see the demon there — the malice, the hatred and that dreadful cold nastiness… Then he flashed me a sudden smile and gave an easy shrug, striding towards me.
‘Oh, well, all friendships must have their final goodbyes. No hard feelings?’ he asked, holding out his hand.
I shrank back from him in instinctive revulsion. ‘I will never shake hands with a… with a-’ I began, but even as I spoke, Mephistopheles grabbed my arm with one hand and gripped my hand with the other, forcefully shaking it in a terrible charade of friendship. I flinched at the coldness of his touch but was too afraid to try and resist him as he stood there shaking my hand, gazing at me with an amused expression on his face, one eyebrow slightly raised as if in challenge.
‘Goodnight, Gabriel,’ he said suddenly, dropping my hand abruptly. ‘Merry Christmas.’
I remained where I was, rooted to the spot as Mephistopheles strode from my apartment, the door banging shut behind him. Silently, I held up my shaking hand and saw that the demon’s handshake had left glistening splinters of ice embedded in my palm, a raw frost burn outlining the shape where his long, slender fingers had touched my skin.
I should have known. I should have worked it out for myself long before this. Stephomi… Mephisto. It was right there before me, a flaunting arrogance and recklessness that was in itself astounding. And I had been too stupid to see it. Even his stolen first name, Zadkiel, was a taunting clue, for Mephistopheles is the dark twin of the archangel Zadkiel.
And the burning man… Mephistopheles had called him Michael. As in archangel Michael? Leader of the angelic armies and God’s most trusted servant? When I had prevented Mephistopheles from being beheaded by him, it had been at Michael’s church. The angel had been dispelling the demon from his own church. I’d thought that Stephomi’s wound had healed so quickly because the sword had been abnormal, not the man… Oh, God, why did I intervene? It had been the fire. That was what had thrown me. It’s surely understandable to associate fire with Hell and its devils. But now that I look more closely at the books and paintings I own, I see that angels are indeed often associated with the blazing brightness and warmth of fire, while demons are connected with cold, blistering ice. I recall too that in Dante’s Divina Commedia, the Ninth Circle of Hell — the one reserved for the most depraved and wicked of sinners — consists of a perfect sphere of ice in which these sinners are condemned to eternal, freezing agony, inwardly cowering at their hideous proximity to the Devil himself.
The Ninth Circle… I know that the Ninth Circle is responsible somehow for all my misery. After Mephistopheles left my apartment, I stood rooted to the spot for some moments until I looked up and glanced over at the mirror again to see more letters written on its surface in shining fire: CIRCLEIX. Circle. IX. Roman numerals for the number nine. Circle 9. I glared in mounting anger at the mirror and in a sudden outburst of rage, I picked up the kitchen chair and threw it into the glass, smashing it with a grim, deeply pleasing satisfaction — showers of glass exploding out towards me and skittering across the floorboards in sharp, sparkling pieces.
Right now I feel I hate all angels, whether God’s or Satan’s. They’re a bunch of bastards, the lot of them, and the terrible bitterness of it was that Mephistopheles was right. The one person to be a friend to me over these past months was one of Lucifer’s devils. No merciful angel of God had come to explain what was happening to me, to
