by Alex Bell
It was the final straw. I ran out into the streets like a madman. Celebrations were taking place all over the city to welcome in the New Year. As I ran, I saw many people dressed up for the night, and there were good-natured exclamations of dismay when the rain began to fall and thunder was heard in the distance.
I wasn’t looking where I was going. I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just had a vague idea of going to St Stephen’s Basilica to get my answers. To find out if God was there or not. But when I got to the edge of the square, I cannoned into someone also heading through the rain towards the cathedral. I staggered back and glanced up straight into the face of Mephistopheles.
‘Ah,’ I cried, grabbing the demon by the shoulder and raising my voice above the rain. ‘Tell me, Mephisto, my friend - are you real or am I dreaming you too?’
‘What are you talking about?’ Mephistopheles replied irritably, shaking my hand off and glancing over at the rising towers of the floodlit Basilica.
‘I must know,’ I said, clutching at his coat as I rambled hysterically at him. ‘If any of this is real . . . if I am real, or if this is all something made up in my head or—’
I was not prepared for the punch in the face, and landed flat on my back on the wet pavement when he hit me.
‘Sorry, Gabriel,’ Mephisto said as he dragged me back up to my feet. ‘But we don’t have time for hysterics.’ He turned slightly and pointed at the Basilica. ‘You see the dome up there? That’s where Casey is at this moment. She was attacked by Lilith on her way to the hospital.’
‘What? ’ I said, horrified, one hand still pressed to my aching jaw. ‘But you said demons and angels couldn’t intervene! You said that a human agent would be needed if—’
‘Lilith is different. She used to be human, remember? It’s easier for her to interfere in human affairs. Besides, Lucifer cares for her in a way. And her madness prevents her from fearing him as she should.’
‘What is she going to do?’
Mephisto raised an eyebrow. ‘She wants the child, of course. Are you going to help, or would you rather fling yourself from the tower to see if God catches you?’
And with that, Mephistopheles turned from me and ran through the rain across the square to the Basilica. Gilligan Connor retreated to the back of my mind and Gabriel Antaeus came back as I sprinted after Mephistopheles. The floodlit Basilica had been locked up for the night and was deserted. I got there in time to see Mephisto tear the huge wooden door from its hinges in a shower of splinters. It was strange to see Stephomi do that, when mere weeks ago I had thought I had the upper hand when he was pinned to the floor of my kitchen. I had never been in control, I realised. As a demon, his strength had always far outweighed my own.
The elevator was shut down at the top so there was no alternative but to take the hundreds of steps to the observation level. By the time we were halfway up, I knew I couldn’t go any further without my heart bursting from my body. But I kept running anyway, my lungs burning and head swimming, sure that I was going to throw up at any moment. I think I would have thrown up had it not been that, having spent most of the afternoon with my head down a toilet, there was simply nothing left inside my stomach. I tripped over several times, splinters from the wooden steps tearing at my hands, before scrambling to my feet in a desperate attempt to keep up with Mephistopheles.
At last we burst through the wooden doors out into the fresh air of the floodlit, snow covered observation dome. The loud rain had turned to hushed snow and was falling thickly, even as strange thunder rumbled in the distance. It was not far from midnight and celebratory fireworks banged and sparkled over the city below us. And there was Lilith, dressed in a velvet black ball gown, dancing dreamily on the low wall, just as beautiful and seductive as she had seemed in my dreams. Her long black hair was loose and blowing around about her as she danced, black silk scarves fluttering in her hands.
‘Lilith,’ Mephistopheles said quietly from the doorway.
He had spoken so softly that I didn’t think Lilith would have heard him, but she spun round at his voice, jumped off the wall and ran over to him, her hair and skirts flying out behind her. She threw her arms round the demon’s neck when she reached him, kissing him passionately, and I was unsettled to feel a stab of jealousy at the sight. There she was, the most stunning woman I’d ever seen . . . and she was kissing a devil as if he was the only lover she’d ever wanted, when she hadn’t so much as acknowledged my presence, and to my shame I couldn’t help but feel jilted.
‘I’m going to save them, Mephisto,’ Lilith said breathlessly, eyes shining with a kind of mad joy. ‘I won’t let the angels get them this time. Not this time. I’m going to love the children as if they were my own.’
‘Lilith,’ Mephistopheles said again, his voice soft with an uncharacteristic gentleness. ‘You must listen to me. Lucifer doesn’t want this. He’s angry with you already. The child could bring destruction on all of us.’
‘They want to kill them! I won’t let them! I won’t let them kill any more babies!’
As Mephistopheles took Lilith by the hand and continued in his attempts to reason with her, I kneeled down on the cold stone beside Casey. When she realised it was me, she gave a dry sob and clung to me as I put my arms around her, thanking me over and over again for not leaving her alone.
Mephistopheles tried to restrain Lilith; he tried to calm her, but she lashed out at him and soon the two demons were savagely fighting each other, and Lilith’s fine dress became dirtied and torn as she sought to escape Mephisto’s grip and reach us. They only stopped when Michael appeared on the tower in a blaze of white light that burned my eyes with its brightness. Mephisto placed himself protectively in front of Lilith, and the angel and the demon each stood motionless at the top of the tower, glaring at one another bitterly.
Michael looked much the same as when I’d previously seen him, but for one small difference - this time he had wings. And with that addition I could clearly see the angel instead of the fiery demon. The wings were folded behind his back with an air of barely restrained movement. Each feather was snow white, flawless, perfect, and I could tell just by looking that the huge wings were powerful. These were not the tiny, just-for-show wings you saw in paintings on the backs of cherubs. These were great, feathered, muscled things that were clearly more than strong enough to take Michael’s weight if he needed them to.
‘You always did have a flare for the melodramatic,’ Mephistopheles sneered, indicating the brightness of Michael’s light.
‘You are interfering in the forbidden!’ Michael replied angrily, radiating with righteous hate the way only an angel could.
‘Yes I know. It’s a bad habit of mine.’ Mephisto glanced over at me. ‘Gabriel, I think you know everyone here? I am the madman and these,’ he waved his arm to encompass everyone else, ‘are my fellow inmates in Bedlam.’
‘What is that foul whore doing here?’ Michael asked, pointing over Mephistopheles’ shoulder to Lilith.
Lilith didn’t seem to be offended by what Michael had said. In fact, she hardly seemed to have heard him. She was staring at Casey hungrily. Then her gaze lifted to mine, and I could have sworn she winked at me. But if Lilith didn’t care about the names Michael was calling her, Mephisto had more than enough anger for both of them. All traces of amusement had gone from his face, to be replaced with the most bitter loathing.
‘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 Sovànak’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 sight of blood alone was intolerable to me, but worse still were Casey’s involuntary cries of pain. I wanted to leave. But I just couldn’t bring myself to.
I looked up sharply when ice and fire started to rain down around us simultaneously, splashing and hissing on the ground but somehow not touching us. Then I realised that there was no sign of Michael or Mephistopheles, and for a moment I thought they had gone. The sounds of fireworks and celebrations drifted up from the city, thunder rumbled louder than before, and the falling ice cracked and splintered as it shattered against the Basilica. The shower of fire lit up the cathedral, spitting as the molten drops fell into the snow. I thought of the fire I had seen covering Michael’s church on Margaret’s Island, and wondered if all the partygoers below could see the battle that was raging above the Basilica, or whether it simply looked its usual quiet and dignified self to their eyes.
