he said, nodding his head at me. ‘I believe it was William Congreve who said, “ The Devil watches all opportunities. ” And so he does, my friend. So he does, indeed.’
Mephisto inclined his head at Michael and myself, and then turned and leaped from the dome as Lilith had done, spreading his great batlike wings behind him and fading back into his own realm. Michael was, of course, disgusted with me. He raged at me, shouted and cursed at me so furiously it made me tremble, but still I refused to give him Casey’s daughter and eventually he left.
Once the angels and the demons had gone, the Basilica slowly returned to normal, the frozen half unfreezing and the fire on the other half smoking away into nothingness as the last of the frozen lightning crackled and melted away. And then it was just me, Casey and the baby. I stood there, wondering what to do, struggling against the great fatigue that was tugging at me. I felt I just wanted to crawl back inside the dome and curl up, to sleep there by the top of the stairs… wait until morning for the police to arrive. But that was no good at all — there would be investigations and questions, and how could I give the police answers they’d be able to understand? So I had to leave Casey there. We said goodbye to her first, the baby and I, although I could hardly bear to look at her glassy eyes or the sweat that had frozen to her cold skin. At last I turned away from her, head down, shoulders slumped, and crept away into the night with her daughter.
Now I am back in my apartment, with my baby lying sleeping on the couch beside me, delicate eyelashes resting on her cheeks as she dreams. At the moment she is wrapped up in one of my jumpers, but later I will have to break into Casey’s apartment and retrieve some clothes and other supplies for her. She’ll be hungry — I’ll have to feed her soon. Oh, God, I don’t know anything at all about looking after her; I don’t know how the hell I’m going to do this…
I don’t know what will happen about Casey. I suppose police will be called tomorrow morning when it’s discovered that the Basilica was broken into. They’ll find Casey’s body, which will probably have frozen completely by then. It will be obvious that she died from natural causes. The mystery will lie in how she got there and what happened to her child. But that is a mystery for the police to deal with, and I do not think there is anything to link the scene to me.
I feel wrong — the world feels wrong. Everything looks different now, even my familiar apartment. I will grieve for Casey. But I can’t do it yet and I’m grateful for the numbness. First I have to make plans. Where should I go now? Italy, perhaps? Or Holland? Oh, I know that what I flee from can’t be escaped by moving to a different country. But I can’t stay in Budapest now, after all that has happened, although I will always think fondly of the city that gave me the briefest taste of what life is like for normal people. I love Budapest like I’ll never love anywhere else. But I can’t stay here.
I have decided on a name for Casey’s daughter. I thought of naming her for an angel, but my experiences with Michael turned me from the idea. He is not at all what an angel should be. He refused to forgive me my sins and, worse, he had wanted me to kill a newborn baby — had even tried to trick me into doing so when I refused. That nightingale’s song — he deliberately put it in my head while I was holding Casey’s daughter. He wanted the two of us dead and it was only the actions of a devil that saved us both. If I owe Lucifer my sanity, I now owe Mephistopheles my life and, to be frank, the speed with which I am clocking up debts to demons appals me.
I considered naming Casey’s daughter for a saint or a leader or a hero. But finally, I decided to name her for a virtue: Grace. A man like me shouldn’t be anywhere near this baby, or any baby. But I have to stay with her to protect her from the angels and the devils who might wish her harm. I have no choice. I must do all in my power to protect her, to save her, as I was not able to save her mother or her sister.
And so the question comes back to haunt me… If you could go back in time to Adolf Hitler’s birth, would you kill him if you had the chance? Would you kill him there and then — an utterly defenceless child? Would you have a duty to the world to do it if you could? Would you really be able to do such a thing to a baby who has yet to commit even the most inoffensive wrong? We all say ‘ yes ’ but trust me, it doesn’t seem quite such an easy question once it ceases to be purely theoretical.
As I sit here watching Grace sleep, I can’t believe that anything bad could ever possibly come from her. In my dreams, Casey gave birth to both an angel and a demon. The angels themselves had believed that there was one baby, who would either be the Antichrist or the Second Coming of Jesus. But now the thought occurs to me that perhaps one of Casey’s daughters will be a saviour and the other will be a destroyer. And if that is true, then which one did the demoness Lilith steal away with her back to her own demonic realms and which one is lying, content and peaceful in an innocent sleep, here on the couch before me? When I look at Grace, I know in my soul that those dark prophetic words Nostradamus wrote hundreds of years ago couldn’t possibly apply to her.
I didn’t kill Grace, or hand her over to the demons or the angels, because I wanted her for myself. It was pure selfishness. I weakened — the temptation was too great… to have a baby who would grow up to love me automatically; to have some unbreakable bond between us because of my role in her life. A kind of bond that I would never otherwise know. I want to know how it feels… to be loved like that, even if I will spend the rest of eternity paying for it in the Ninth Circle itself. To be loved in spite of what I’ve done… I mean, that’s what family’s supposed to be, isn’t it? I want to keep Grace as I have never wanted anything in my life. I want her. She belongs to me now.
My name is Gabriel Antaeus. My daughter’s name is Grace Antaeus. I know she will not hurt anyone. I know she will bring me happiness such as I have never known. And I know I am not making a mistake.
