I was relieved to see her start to try and smile as I spoke — looking at me through her tears for a moment like I was the most amazing person in the world. At last she nodded. ‘Okay, Gabriel.’
‘Good girl.’
I looked up sharply as the bell began to ring out loudly in its tower. Was this another phantom tolling that the celebrating Hungarians below would be unable to hear? Could all this really be invisible to their eyes? Could people really be so very ignorant of all that went on around them? The entire cathedral was being ravaged by the battle over our heads, and the bell continued to toll deafeningly. Half the building was on fire — including the tower nearest us. The other tower and the rest of the building was shining and glittering with a coat of ice three feet thick. Lightning, frozen from the sky by Mephistopheles, had fallen to the floor of the observation level, splintering into sharp, golden shards which crackled and fizzed with electrical energy as they slowly melted into the snow.
Although I didn’t want to put the baby down, I needed both my hands and I was afraid of dropping her if I tried to keep her cradled in my arm. So I wrapped the coat about her more securely and put her on the ground beside me before turning back to Casey. Although the second baby was also correctly positioned, I could tell that this time something was wrong. There was too much blood, much more than there’d been last time, and I realised Casey must have torn something inside. It was clearly hurting her more and blood was pouring out over my hands, making it difficult to keep hold of her second baby. I couldn’t think what to do, for there was no way to heal whatever had torn. All I could do was concentrate on the second child and try and get it delivered safely.
The bell ceased to ring the moment Casey’s second daughter was born, and a rain of fireworks burst into the sky as cheers were heard from below, and I realised that midnight had come and gone: we had all just passed from one year into the next.
‘Gabriel,’ Casey whispered. ‘I… I don’t feel so good.’
I didn’t know what to say to her. It was painfully clear that Casey was bleeding to death. I wouldn’t have thought she had that much blood in her to begin with. It was on my hands, my clothes, lying in glistening pools across the stone floor, freezing in the gaps between the flagstones. The aura had gone now. There was no black or gold, no beauty or repulsiveness around Casey or either of her daughters. I shifted her second baby so that she lay cradled in only one of my arms, and then took her hand with my free one, not wanting her to feel alone.
If I could only get her to a hospital for a blood transfusion.. But I would never get there in time. She would be dead before I’d even carried her down the Basilica’s stairs. I had never in my life felt so helpless, and the frustration of it tore at me agonisingly.
‘Can you see them?’ she asked, visibly struggling for breath now. ‘Those demons up there?’
The dying see demons… That was what Mephistopheles had told me, wasn’t it?
‘No!’ I cried with a sob. ‘Not demons, Casey. Please not demons! ’
I strained my eyes into the night and for moments I was sure I could see scores of them up there, vast armies both angel and demon, tearing and shredding at each other with their bare hands, fuelled by a truly limitless and ancient hatred.
‘Gabriel…’
I looked back down, Casey’s second daughter still cradled in my left arm as Casey held my right hand and spoke to me for the last time — words that meant more to me than expressions of love or friendship or thanks ever could. ‘I forgive you.’
She met my pathetic attempt at a smile for a brief, timeless moment before her grip went slack in my hand and she stopped breathing. I could see that she was dead even before I felt for a pulse. I know what dead bodies look like — after all, I’ve seen enough of them.
‘ No! ’ I screamed. ‘ No, no, no! ’
She still looked beautiful to me, despite the fact that her brown skin was streaked with sweat and her dark hair was disorderly, the lengths of coloured blue and pink hair shining brightly in the light of the fireworks and the fires that still clung to the cathedral.
The two angels above, realising that Casey’s children had been born, fell back down to the observation level of the dome, one on either side of us. They each retained shreds of their human appearance but their clothes were torn and stained with blood, and I could see the ethereal outline of the wings folded back behind each of them.
‘Is she dead yet?’ Michael asked coldly, indicating Casey.
‘ No, she fucking isn’t! ’ I screamed at him. ‘I’m here to save her! She’s not dead! She’s not!’
‘Of course she is!’ Michael said impatiently. ‘And the child must follow her.’
I covered my eyes with my trembling hand, trying to block everything out. But it didn’t work. There was this terrible ache… deep within me. Perhaps isolation, after all, was the better way in such a world… I actually felt the moment when something snapped.. then I alarmed even myself with the raw despair in my sobs… How very naive I’d been to think I could feel no more pain. This was what it felt like to lose someone you loved. This was what Anna’s children had felt because of me. This was what I had done to people every day. God was punishing me. Punishing Casey because He knew how much I’d loved her.
‘It’s because I don’t have a costume, isn’t it?’ I wept. ‘You can’t be a real superhero without the spandex suit and the mask and the fucking cape! I promised her, I promised her. Why did I do that? Why? ’
‘ Don’t make the promise lightly, Gabriel.’ That’s what she’d said to me. ‘ People can get hurt that way.’
And then there was a comforting hand on my shoulder. Someone kneeling beside me, talking consolingly in a soft voice. ‘You kept your promise, Gabriel,’ Mephisto said. ‘You said you’d be there and you were.’
‘I was supposed to… save her… at the last moment-’
‘You’re not still comparing yourself to a superhero, are you?’ Mephisto asked. ‘You mustn’t do that, you know. After all, superheroes only ever fought super-villains, not angels. If nothing else, at least you were there for your friend when she needed you.’
‘But what difference does it make when she’s dead?’
‘All the difference, Gabriel.’
‘I should have taken her to a hospital myself.’
‘It wouldn’t have mattered. She’d still have died.’
‘How can I believe you?’ I asked, turning to look at him at last. ‘When all you’ve ever done is lie to me?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. There was the odd bit of truth in there sometimes, wasn’t there?’ he asked with a smile.
He shouldn’t have been able to comfort me, he was a demon. But still, in that moment, I was grateful to him for trying.
‘You didn’t kill her, Gabriel,’ Mephisto said softly. ‘I know you quite enjoy blaming yourself. But not everything can be your fault all of the time. Sometimes God takes all the credit, I’m afraid. And maybe it’s for the best. Life is about pain. Death is about the end of pain.’
My hands were so cold, up there at the top of the cathedral, so high above the city… To think that I had come here before and felt safe, closer to God… and now tragedy shrouded the icy cathedral, the bell was silent in its frozen tower, and bleak misery settled on me softly like ash — ash from the remnants of something that had once been so precious to me…
‘You must kill the child,’ Michael said firmly.
‘Yes,’ Mephistopheles agreed, standing up. ‘Throw her from the tower, Gabriel, and finish this.’
‘Don’t you mean throw them?’ I snapped, looking round to where the second baby was… or should have been. I froze, staring at the empty bloodstained coat she’d been wrapped in only minutes before. ‘Where’s-?’ I began, and then froze in horror as I saw Lilith dancing around on the wall once more, her black wings spread slightly, gazing down dreamily at Casey’s first daughter wrapped in her arms.