‘It stings, doesn’t it, Michael?’ he hissed. ‘That a woman who looks like that would come willingly to my bed but would scream and scream in disgust if you so much as touched her!’
And at that God’s angel and Satan’s went for each other with a savagery that I hadn’t seen before even in the fiercest wild beasts — as if they just couldn’t contain their hatred for each other a second longer. There were no weapons — instead, they were tearing at each other with their fingers, with their teeth, with their nails. Mephisto was much the smaller of the two, being far slimmer and shorter than Michael, and it was quite clear to me that he was physically outmatched even if he was supernaturally strong compared to me. He was doing everything he could to hurt the angel, grabbing fistfuls of feathers and pulling them out of Michael’s huge wings, clearly delighted by the bellows of pain he got in response. He tried hard to reach the angel’s eyes with his fingers, but he wasn’t strong enough to do anything more than scratch at Michael’s face.
And then — as I stared in horror — Michael managed to clamp the struggling demon hard around the shoulders… and then twisted his head hard in one vicious movement, breaking Mephistopheles’ neck with a loud, splintering crack, blood splattering on the snow around us. Casey screamed as Michael dropped the demon’s lifeless body onto the snow. I whipped around to look at where Lilith had been, thinking she would fly into a grief-stricken rage at the sight of what Michael had just done to her lover. But she was no longer on the dome, and when I stared around I realised that she was sitting on the roof of one of the towers opposite us, idly swinging her feet against the stone, looking out over the city and clearly quite oblivious to everything that was going on. I saw her wings for the first time then — not leathery but feathered, each one raven black.
I turned back to the sight of Mephistopheles sprawled on the snow, blood running from his broken neck where the bone had pierced the skin, his head twisted at a horrible angle and his staring eyes completely blank. An odd emotion coursed through me then. Was it sadness? Remorse? Christ, could this really be grief? I couldn’t see a dead demon at that moment — all I could see was Stephomi, who had been my friend. But I did not have long to dwell on it, for in the next second I almost screamed myself as Mephisto snapped his neck sharply back into place and stood up, swaying only for a moment before saying with a grin to Michael, ‘You know, if I had a penny for every time you’ve broken my neck over the years…’
And that was when he shook the wings out from his back — great, leathery batlike wings that stretched out, unfurling behind him as if they’d been stiff and confined before. Everything about him became darker: his hair and eyes became blacker; his hands suddenly looked like claws; and for wild moments I even thought I saw long, twisted horns on his head, and a black forked tongue in his mouth, with hooves at his feet — something truly monstrous… But my eyes screamed in protest at the awful change, refused to recognise it, and I can’t be sure what I really saw.
The fight began again but this time Mephistopheles spread out his wings, kicked off from the floor, and rose up to the top spire of the bell tower with an excited laugh as Michael chased after him. I only tore my gaze away when Casey spoke to me in a frightened, shaking, but somehow quiet, voice: ‘You’re going to have to help me, Gabriel.’
I stared at her, still kneeling at her side on the ground. The aura that had constantly alternated between gold and black now seemed to be both at the same time — sometimes more one than the other, but always a combination of the two with the blackness spreading into the gold, swirling and mixing with it like ink in water.
‘Help?’ I repeated stupidly.
‘Yes. Help me with the birth.’
‘But I don’t know how!’ I replied, aghast.
Casey started to laugh, but quickly smothered it before it could become hysterical. ‘Neither do I,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘But the baby is coming now so you have to help me.’
‘No, no, I can’t… I can’t…’
Childbirth would involve blood. Just the thought of it brought back the vivid image of the blood that had stained the sand when I’d sunk a knife into Anna Sovanak’s neck. Damp, bloody sand, crimson red
… I felt like, if I saw just one more drop of it from anyone for any reason, I would scream until I was sick… be taken away in a straitjacket as whatever last shred of sanity I had was torn to pieces by vicious memories… I didn’t know how to even begin to say this to Casey in a way that she would understand, but I knew I would not be able to help her.
‘Look, I’m… I’m not a writer. My memories, you know I got them back, and… I’m, I’m… I was a… an assassin. I’ve killed people… and I tried to repent, I really did try but the angels won’t forgive me. They just refuse to even consider forgiving me. And if I can’t get forgiveness then I’m still damned; I’m-’
I expected her to be looking at me with an expression of fear and horror at my revelation, but instead her expression was one of increasing anger, and the emotion seemed so out of place considering what I was telling her that I couldn’t help but falter.
‘Gabriel,’ she said, in a harsh, low voice, ‘I don’t care if you’re the devil himself — you are going to help me have my child!’
‘You don’t understand!’ I pleaded, dimly aware that I was sounding rather whiny and childish. ‘Seeing blood brings everything back to me, and I see the people I’ve murdered, and I don’t want to see them! I don’t want to see them ever again!’
Gritting her teeth against the onset of another contraction, Casey gripped my shirt and pulled me forwards so that I was dragged into a strange kind of kneeling bow over her as she hissed into my ear. ‘If you leave me again now, I will never forgive you, Gabriel, never!’
Agonising indecision wracked me. I couldn’t trust myself to make any kind of judgement on what was wrong or right. I was morally disabled — I didn’t think my brain could tell the two apart all the time. This was never meant to have happened — just four months ago Casey had been a stranger to me! How was it possible to love someone so much when just four months ago I hadn’t even so much as known her name? If only we had not been neighbours; if only I had kept to myself and not spoken to her… all this agony might have been avoided. I couldn’t bear to see her suffer — that was what I had always feared would be the consequence of loving someone.
I hesitated — for a moment I was tempted to leave the Basilica as fast as I could, go to the airport and catch my plane for Washington. Fly further and further away from Budapest and pretend that none of this had ever happened; that I’d never even met Casey let alone loved her. I think I could have managed it — I’m quite good at ignoring things I don’t want to think about.
Then with an involuntary cry of pain sharper than the others, Casey dropped my hand and turned her head away from me, tears streaming down her face, and I realised that she was going into the next stage of her labour — there was no more time to make up my mind. She had given up on me already — finally sensing the futility in asking an assassin for help. I don’t think Gilligan Connor would have minded, particularly. But as Gabriel Antaeus, the thought of her believing I didn’t care was unbearable, and I felt I’d rather kill myself now and have done with it than leave her here hating me.
‘I didn’t mean it!’ I blurted out, appalled at myself, wishing I could take the words back. ‘I didn’t mean anything I said before, Casey, really! Look, I don’t know anything about childbirth — ’ I made an open-handed gesture of hopelessness, ‘- but I’ll do everything I possibly can to help, I promise.’
She tried to smile at me but ended up giving a dry sob, sweat running down her face despite the viciousness of the cold. I leaned over, kissed her on the forehead, and then moved round to help her, immensely relieved to see that the baby was positioned head first, for if it had been breach I just don’t know what I’d have done.
Strangely enough, there was no time to feel any hint of awkwardness as Casey started to give birth. All my attention was focused on trying to prevent any part of the baby from touching the snowy ground. I instinctively knew enough to realise that such cold temperatures could be fatal to a newborn child. But as soon as I was touching the baby, there was blood on my hands, and I felt sick at the sight of it, even though it was not death this time that had put it there.
The image of Anna bleeding all over the beach exploded in my head, and I actually gagged with revulsion. For a long moment, the only thing I could see was Anna, eyes shining one moment with excitement and lust, and the next blank, staring, accusatory. Other people in other countries, various different weapons… And always ending the same way — with me scrubbing and scrubbing at my hands in the bathroom. That last time, with Anna, I washed my hands until they bled, going round and round in a vicious circle, unable to remove the blood from my hands because it was my own; and the harder I scrubbed, the more they would bleed.
The memories of all those murders were like an unmerciful barrage, and for a moment I longed to be anywhere but the Basilica. I wanted to wrap my arms round my head and tremble in a corner until it was over. The
