The bird song stopped suddenly, leaving loud, melancholy echoes in its wake.
‘Dear, dear, Michael. How very hypocritical of you,’ I heard Mephistopheles say with a laugh.
I shook my head; confused, disoriented, feeling the mists of some strange trance evaporate from my mind. Then I made the mistake of looking down. ‘Jesus fucking Christ!’ I screamed, unable to stop myself from thrashing about instinctively as the city below me swung alarmingly. ‘Oh, fuck!’
‘Hold still, Gabriel, hold still!’ Mephisto snapped, gritting his teeth as my weight pulled on the wounds he’d received from Michael that evening.
I felt his grip slip slightly and that panicked me enough to force myself to go limp, although it took all the willpower I had. I looked down at the baby. What had I been thinking to jump over the wall like that while holding her? She was so fragile, for all I knew my stupidity had already broken her neck. But, no she was blinking up at me. Lower lip trembling, she started to cry — which probably had more to do with the cold than anything else, for she couldn’t understand that a demon’s tenuous grip was currently the only thing keeping her alive.
‘Pull us up!’ I pleaded, looking up at Mephisto and, to my dismay, seeing him hesitate. ‘For God’s sake, Stephomi, pull us up now!’
Instinctively, I wanted to reach up with my other hand to grab onto his arm, and use him to drag myself bodily over the wall, but I couldn’t do that without dropping Casey’s daughter.
‘This will go on, you know,’ Mephisto said softly in a strange tone, gazing at the baby girl tucked into my coat. ‘If you don’t drop her now, while you can, it’ll never end. It’ll just… we’ll all just keep going round and round in these circles… You can save us all from that. Do you really want this for yourself, Gabriel? Is it really something anyone would ever actually choose?’
I couldn’t help but look down again as I felt his grip slip a little further. Fear of death. Here it was. I wouldn’t have minded so much if I’d been atheist. If I could’ve believed that I would cease to exist once I fell. But I knew there was an afterlife, and I knew which Circle I would be going to, and I knew who was waiting to meet me there. It would happen eventually whatever I did. But not yet! Oh, Christ, not like this!
Without even realising it, I had started to mutter the Lord’s Prayer under my breath. ‘ Our father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name — ’
‘Now, now, none of that,’ Mephistopheles said angrily, shaking me — actually shaking me so that the city below swung madly as the horizons on either side of my vision went up and down. ‘Now isn’t the best time to offend me, Gabriel. Use your brain for once.’
I swore again, unable to stop myself from looking down, and feeling sick at the sight of Budapest so far below. The pressure of Mephistopheles’ hand on my arm was excruciatingly painful by now, and I couldn’t even feel my frozen hands any more.
‘You were always going to drop me, weren’t you?’ I asked, loathing burning inside of me. ‘You just wanted me to die unwillingly. You just wanted it to be as awful as possible, didn’t you, you bastard?’
‘Tut, tut, what a thing to say to the demon holding on to you for dear life,’ Mephisto said with a leer. ‘No, I really am saving your life, Gabriel. But I want to teach you something about the nature of prayer first.’
‘What… what do you mean?’ I asked, my teeth chattering together from the cold.
‘Prayers to God have no effect on me,’ Mephistopheles said coldly. ‘So before I save your life… I want to hear you pray to Lucifer.’
I stared at him. Surely he couldn’t be serious?
‘I’m quite serious, I assure you,’ Mephisto said with a grin. ‘I serve Lucifer. So if you swallow your pride and pray to him, then you will see how much more effective prayer to the devil can be.’
I started to tremble, hating Mephistopheles with all my soul for this. I could feel the cold, heavy weight of the onyx crucifix Casey had given me just last week pressing into my skin. I couldn’t hesitate for long — I was so cold by now that I was afraid Casey’s daughter might slip right out of my numb arm, falling the whole height of the terrible Basilica on her own. The image was too awful — I would just have to pray to the Devil and hate myself for it later.
‘Lucifer,’ I said between gritted teeth, ‘please… please.. help me-’ I bit my tongue to keep from crying out as a particularly savage gust of wind made me sway, the tips of my boots scraping against the old stone of the basilica, my coat flapping back from my body, tugging at my back. The baby wailed louder and I could feel her tears soaking through my shirt. ‘Oh, shit!’ I whimpered, trying in vain to tighten my numb fingers around Mephistopheles’ arm. ‘Lucifer, please, please don’t let me fall! I don’t want to die yet! Have mercy on us, I’m begging you!’
‘That was very nice, Gabriel,’ Mephisto said kindly. ‘But there’s no need to beg. You see what the Devil can do for you if you just ask him nicely. Trust me, he’s much more reliable than God.’ And with that, he hauled me up over the edge.
He tried to steady me as I landed shakily on the stone, but I pushed him away and stumbled over to the middle of the tower, desperately trying to erase that dreadful image of the city swinging crazily beneath my feet. Yet another memory to come back to haunt me in the middle of the night. I sank to my knees, closed my eyes and bent my head over Casey’s daughter, who was still crying into my shirt. I wanted to cry myself but my eyes were painfully dry. This — all this — must be a dream. It was the only sensible explanation.
But when I looked up, Michael and Mephistopheles remained stood at the edge of the tower, watching me. I realised with a sudden jolt of fear that the baby had stopped crying. But when I looked down at her, she didn’t seem to be hurt, except for a small scratch on her cheek where her face had grazed the Basilica wall. It wasn’t a bad cut but the sight of it shrivelled my insides with guilt, and I knew I had to get her out of this freezing cold quickly. Still covered in her mother’s blood, she was staring up at me with wide, brown eyes — as if she knew me, as if she trusted me, as if she really did love me already. Making up my mind in that moment, I looked up at the two angels and tightened my grip on the baby slightly. ‘I’m not giving her to either of you,’ I spat, glad to relieve some of the anger that was building up inside.
‘Then what, precisely, do you propose?’ Michael asked coldly.
I wrapped my arms more securely around my daughter and said nothing. Suddenly, Mephistopheles laughed, ‘You plan to keep her for yourself! Well, well. You are a glutton for punishment, aren’t you? But be very careful of little Adolf there, for she might come to haunt you in the years to come. At least the demons got one of them. A small victory for our side, Michael,’ he said, with a mocking smile at the glowering angel. ‘I’ll never be too far away,’ 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.