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 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!’