The Ninth circle

26th December (Boxing Day)

I’ve disgraced myself before God by letting Mephistopheles trick me in such a way. I hope that one day I will be forgiven. The CIRCLEIX message is still appearing around my apartment, but I am ignoring it. th December

Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles! All this time it has been Mephistopheles I was talking to! How did this happen to me? How did it happen? How did it? How? Mephistopheles — the one known as ‘He who destroys by lies’… Can I believe a word that demon said to me? Can I believe a word of it? Was he lying when he told me Nicky and Luke died in a car crash? Or was he lying when he said they never existed? They must have existed once! You can’t love a dream.

29th December

I have drawn pictures of them to stop myself from worrying. I’m carrying them around with me in the apartment. Casey has been banging on the door outside, but I’ve pretended to be out. I can’t see her right now. I can’t see anyone. I want to spend the time here with Nicky and Luke. They’re not much more than stick men, for of course I can’t remember precisely what they look like. But that doesn’t matter. When I talk to Nicky, it helps calm me down. Of course, I know that it’s not really her. I’m not losing my mind or anything distasteful like that. I know my wife is dead. I’m just talking to a crude drawing, that’s all.

It’s all right, though. Nicky herself has told me that she’s real, and she ought to know. Her death was an accident, like Stephomi said. There was nothing I could have done. I loved them. They were everything to me. I would never have hurt them. I wish this CIRCLEIX message would go away. It’s burning into the floorboards as well as the walls now.

31st December (New Year’s Eve)

My name is not Gabriel Antaeus. What a fucking surprise… At long last, I know the full disgusting truth about my past. I know why I took pains to punish myself, for if any man alive deserves punishment it is me.

I have committed the most wicked acts and they haunt me now as they did then. It is necessary that I isolate myself entirely from those around me. But now, of course, I have a problem, for Casey’s life is already quite hopelessly entangled with my own. Despite my promises I must cease all contact with her. I have made arrangements for her to have her baby in a nearby hospital in the city centre, with a private room and every comfort she might need. I have also deposited enough money in a bank account, set up under her name, to see her through for at least several years.

‘But why?’ she had asked, trying not to cry when I had told her. ‘Why aren’t you going to be there with me yourself?’

‘I can’t explain,’ I said stiffly. ‘That’s just the way it has to be.’

‘My Black Madonna’s gone,’ she said suddenly, giving me an accusing look. ‘Did you take it?’

I hesitated for a moment before replying, ‘Yes, I did.’

‘Well, can I have it back?’

‘No.’

‘But it belongs to me!’ she raged. ‘That man in the marketplace gave it to me! How dare you steal it from me like that? How dare you? It was a present! You know how much I love it! I feel like I don’t know you at all. You got your memories back, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘So you’re leaving Hungary?’

‘Yes.’

‘When are you coming back?’

‘I’m not.’

‘But you promised me, Gabriel. You promised! You said that no matter what you remembered, you and me would stay together. You said, if you had to leave then you’d take me with you, and if I couldn’t go then you wouldn’t either! You said it was as simple as that and I believed you!’

She started to cry then. I hated to see her so upset, but what could I do?

‘I don’t want to go,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry, Casey. I don’t want to go. I love you. I always will. But I can’t be around you.’

‘ Why not? ’ she sobbed.

‘I can’t tell you,’ I said, feeling helpless. ‘Look, Casey, do you trust me? I mean, do you really trust me?’

She nodded, tears running down her cheeks.

‘Then you’ve got to believe me when I say that you’ll be better off without me in your life rather than in it.’

‘That’s bullshit!’ She tried to shout at me through her tears.

‘What could possibly be worse than being on my own? How am I supposed to do this by myself, Gabriel?’

‘I’m afraid you’ll just have to find a way, Casey.’

And then she slammed the door in my face and I sighed and turned back to my apartment to pack for the flight. My plane leaves for Washington tonight. Arrangements will be made for my possessions at a later date. I don’t know how long I will stay in the United States. I simply purchased the first plane ticket I could. I have had some money changed into US dollars, and packed a small bag of essentials. The important thing is simply to be away from Hungary, the focal point of the mounting tension of this religious War. I know that God won’t let anything happen to Casey. Mephistopheles said himself that neither angels nor demons will be able to directly affect her or her child, and I believe him. If there were no need for a human agent, then why go to such lengths to pose as a friend and try to obtain my trust and loyalty in the first place?

I’m afraid that, as the only person of the In Between nearby, if I stay I might be compelled to act for the demons somehow. I fear that Stephomi… that Mephisto will find some way to trick me into doing something that could hurt Casey. And I will never hurt her. I’ve hurt so many other people, but I won’t ever be responsible for hurting Casey. I love her too much for that. So I’m removing myself. With no human agent available, Casey’s baby will simply be born tonight, grow up and turn into whatever it is destined to be. Nothing good will come of my interference — that I know for an absolute certainty.

I leave for the airport in two hours. Meanwhile, I must make some record of all that has occurred since Michael’s exposing of Mephistopheles. I must make some record of who I am. I want to ground myself. I don’t want to feel myself slipping away. There must be a record. This is essential, essential. I won’t go insane over this. People like me don’t deserve the luxury of madness, although, God, I wish I were mad.

It was the messages. The fiery six letters and two numbers: CIRCLEIX. For five days I continued to ignore them, even as they increased in frequency and location — appearing in mirrors, on tables, burning into the spines of my books and the linings of my curtains. By the sixth day — yesterday — the message was all over every spare bit of space in my apartment: the furniture, the walls, the floor, the ceiling — everything, until all my rooms blazed with it. And then one of them burst, quite literally, into flames. It was one of the messages on the window in the living room. The fiery letters and numbers exploded into molten shards, shattering the window instantly with the heat and sending a shower of sparks over the room, where they started to smoulder on the rugs and on the furniture. Hastily, I managed to put them out with the fire extinguisher. When the last of the glowing embers had been stamped out, I threw the extinguisher into the corner of the room in frustration and tore my hands through my hair.

‘What is it?’ I shouted angrily. ‘Circle 9! The Ninth Circle! I don’t know what it is, you fucking idiots! If you don’t realise that by now, then you really are the most fucking useless angels-’ I broke off suddenly, my hands clamped over my mouth in horror. Christ, what was I doing? What was I thinking, swearing at angels? What a vile, disgusting, unforgivable thing to do!

‘I’m… I’m sorry… I’m sorry. Forgive me, God,’ I stammered, head bowed, half fearing that I might be struck down by lightning where I stood.

And then I froze, finally realising in a flash of enlightenment what the angels were trying to tell me. Cold fear prickled on my skin. The computer disc that I had given to Toby, with

instructions for it to be handed back at a certain time… The disc that I had been unable to access because I did not have the eight-digit password… CIRCLEIX.

As soon as I came to this conclusion, the burning messages all disappeared from the walls and the furniture and the floor with a suddenness that made the ensuing quiet darkness seem strange and unnatural. I retrieved the disc from its hiding place in the cupboard, sat down at my computer and loaded up the programme.

And then I hesitated when the password box came up on the screen once again, tempted just to turn the computer off now and destroy the disc once and for all so that I might never know what was on it. But even as these thoughts filled my mind, the burning message appeared once again, with alarming ferocity, in the wood of the desk; and quite suddenly I found I was afraid of the angels and what they might do to me if I didn’t do what they wanted. I already knew that they were not above violence, and that they were not above killing people when they had to.

‘All right,’ I said aloud and at once the message disappeared, leaving identical burn marks in its place.

I typed in the password.

The box disappeared and a message came up to replace it: ‘Password Confirmed.’ Then the screen loaded up, and I forced myself to look as a list of filenames appeared on the screen. They were people’s names. Some of them were English, some French, some Chinese and Spanish, Korean and Australian… And then my eye fell on one name that I knew. Anna Sovanak. Automatically, I double clicked to open the file. It was a video file, no more than thirty minutes long. But it was enough. Enough to show me what had really happened to that woman, and what my connection to her had been. And I knew that the video spoke the truth. That it was not fabricated or doctored in any way. I knew because suddenly I could remember it all.

I remembered my real name: Gilligan Connor. I remembered renting that isolated villa on the Italian coast purposefully because it was quite near to the spot that Anna Sovanak and her family were vacationing. I remembered striking up a friendship with Anna on the beach — a meeting that had nothing whatsoever to do with chance, despite outward appearances. I remember sympathising with her as she confided in me about her problems with her husband. His rudeness, the way he took her for granted, the way he never did anything to help round the house, the way he didn’t romance her as he’d once done. And I listened patiently to her complaints about the problems she had with her children and her job and her friends.

I don’t think Anna was a woman naturally given to whining and complaining, but people like to talk about themselves and probably find something freeing in talking with a sympathetic stranger they are unlikely to see again after their holiday.

We met a couple of times down on the beach when she had stormed out after arguing with her husband. It did make it very easy for me, but I would have found another way if I’d had to. I always did.

I asked Anna to come back to my villa for a drink one day and she happily accepted, clearly hoping for an adulterous sexual relationship and finding the idea of a holiday fling appealing after the family problems she’d been having. And, of course, there was also the fact that I was younger than her husband, with none of his middle-aged fat since my body was well-toned from years and years of disciplined training. When we got back to my villa, I made her a drink and we sat down on the couch on the veranda.

The private white beach stretching out before us, the salty tang of the waves filling the air, and the muffled roar of the surf made it the perfect romantic spot. She’d only had a couple of drinks before she was kissing me. I laughed at her eagerness as her cocktail glass shattered on the floor and buttons were torn off my shirt. She sucked in her breath in pleased surprise as she ran her hands over the toned muscles of my chest and abdomen.

‘Aren’t you lean?’ she teased me. ‘You must work out all the time!’

‘Every day,’ I acknowledged with a smile, speaking softly in her ear.

She giggled as I drew her away from the cream couch, towards the beach… What are beaches there for anyway? She had asked me this bitterly one day while complaining of her husband’s inaction. I had never seen the attraction of beaches, myself. But this was for Anna, not for me. So we went down together in the sand, her eyes shining in excitement at the vile deliciousness of cheating on the person you’re supposed to love. I was aware of her hand caressing the back of my neck as, slowly, one by one, I teased the buttons of her shirt undone

… Then, while her hands were busy fumbling with my belt, I reached for the knife that was concealed at my ankle, and stabbed her in the neck with it.

We lay there, still for a moment, while she bled out under me. I knew where to do it so that her death would be relatively painless, almost instantaneous. The hidden video camera set up on the veranda caught everything. It was quite easy to wrap up her body in the plastic sheeting, put her in a crate, put the crate on board the little fishing boat I had rented, row out a little way and then drop the crate overboard into the Mediterranean.

I had planned for it all to take place on the beach because the ocean would wash away the bloodstained sand without my having to take any action to clean it up. The villa was filled with cream furniture and white sheets that would not have been so easy to clean — and it would never do to have mess. Mess was inefficient and led to too many questions.

I scrubbed and scrubbed at my hands in the bathroom afterwards so that not a drop of Anna’s blood remained, not even traces beneath my fingernails. Then I took all my clothes off and dropped them into a bath full of hot water to soak. As the water slowly turned red in the tub, I showered and removed all traces from my hair and skin. I do this every time. I can’t stand to be covered in someone else’s blood and, as I said before, it just doesn’t do to have mess.

Why did I kill Anna Sovanak? Why did I do it? Had she wronged me at some point in the past? Was she responsible for the death of someone I cared about? Was I in love with her? Was it jealousy? Envy? Spite? Was it a crime of passion? I believe I could have almost lived with myself if it had been a crime of passion. A crime of passion was still inexcusable, still inherently wicked… but at least it was understandable. There was some human element in the act. But the truth was, I felt nothing for Anna. No like or dislike. Nothing. I killed her because somebody paid me to.

The government, to be more precise — as they had paid me to commit countless other murders. We were not like James Bond. It was made quite clear to all assassins from the very beginning that if we ever got into trouble we’d be on our own. The government would not formally acknowledge us in any way. The Queen was never going to pin medals on any of our chests… We were the ones who got our hands dirty, and our superiors were grateful for that because it took the pressure off them, but at the same time — of course — it meant that they did not want to touch us.

I didn’t dare to open any more of the video files, but as my eyes ran down the names, I remembered each and every one of them… The poison, the guns, the knives, the strangulation, the blood… My employers insisted on video cameras where possible to make sure we didn’t back out as a consequence of becoming too attached to our marks. It had been known to happen, although never to me.

I couldn’t prevent the memories cascading in with a force that dazzled me, blinded me. I am an assassin. Life and death within the same body. Truly, a person of the In Between. I stared at the computer screen for a moment, wishing I could doubt it. Wishing I could deny what I knew to be true. But I remembered this. There was no Nicky. There was no Luke. They were just stories created to placate me, and then elaborated upon by a demon trying to manipulate me. I’ve only ever lived in grotty little flats or motels by myself. I am an orphan, as he said. I never got the chance to have a real family. After the incident at the orphanage, I had been almost overcome with the horror of what I had done, so far as my childish mind could truly grasp what had happened. It was not my fault he’d fallen. I was not to blame. But still it marked my life for ever.

And I had had no choice when the secret services had come to take me away from the orphanage. I had been six years old; I’d had to comply with the training I received as I grew up. But then, somewhere along the way, I realised I did have a choice. It was mine and I had made it. I would never be able to have a normal life now. Any friendships I might have would be built on lies, because any normal person would shrink away from me in horror if they knew what I had done — even though none of it was my fault. The government told us these people were dangerous, potential terrorists, threats to the safety of Britain. I think most of my co-workers clung to those reassurances.

Anna Sovanak, for example — I was told during my briefing that she had been designing a new kind of biological weapon, and there was fear that this might find its way into the hands of certain religious extremists with whom Anna supposedly had sympathies. I don’t know if this was true, although I suppose if she really had been working on developing new weapons, then that might explain why the story of her discovered body had been quietly consigned to page six. Who’s to say whether there were genuine reasons for my victims’ deaths, or whether they were simply political murders? You can’t think like that when you have a job to do. And it really doesn’t matter to me, for I believe that all human life is sacred: that life, in any form, even the smallest, tiniest insect, is absolutely and inherently sacred. And I loathed myself for what I’d done. There could be no greater sin than taking a life. And I had done it again and again and again. But there had hardly seemed any point in quitting.

I killed my first person when I was six years old, although I did not mean to and no one paid me for that crime. It was at the orphanage; I remembered it now. The other children there had taken a dislike to me right from the beginning, for whatever arbitrarily childish reason. But there was one in particular who really hated me. Aaron Thomas. He was older, about nine, and would bully me whenever he got the chance — and the nuns who ran the orphanage never troubled to do anything much about it, for it was all character building, wasn’t it?

Then, one day, while playing, Aaron fell through a third-storey window and was left gripping the window ledge, screaming for help. I ran to assist him. I didn’t hesitate for a moment, didn’t even think about all those horrible things he had done to me. But as I ran towards the window, I tripped on a child’s toy left in the middle of the floor, stumbled, and instinctively tried to right myself by grabbing on to whatever I could. It was unfortunate that my hands landed on the drawn up window, my weight bringing the pane of glass down hard on Aaron’s fingers. The boy let go at once with a scream of pain and fell to his death. One of the nuns had come in to the room in time to see me ‘leaping’ for the window to pull it down onto my former tormenter’s fingers, causing him to fall three storeys to the stone courtyard below. And that was what the other children there saw too. The nuns believed that, after quietly taking the pain and humiliation of being bullied for so long, I had finally lost my mind and committed murder with a coldness shocking in a child.

I never told anyone that I had been trying to help the boy. I never cried. I never showed any remorse, although I too was appalled by what had happened. Why didn’t I speak out? How different would my life have been if only I had acted as a normal child and not convinced the secret service, with my cold stoniness, that I was an ideal candidate for their children’s training programme? Aaron Thomas — that childhood bully — had not only made me miserable as a child… he had ruined my whole life! I felt glad in that moment that he was dead! I hated him! I was glad I’d killed him; I was so glad! He was responsible for all of this! Look what he’d done to me! Look what he’d done! If he hadn’t bullied me so badly, the nuns wouldn’t have been so ready to see me deliberately murdering him. Instead, they would have seen the truth of what had happened. If Aaron had been a good-natured boy without an enemy in the world, then the nuns would have wanted to believe that I had been running to help him. So that’s what they would have seen.

I started off gentle, that’s the irony of it. I used to sneak round the girls’ empty dormitories during the day, catching spiders and putting them outside because I couldn’t stand to hear the girlish squeals and the accompanying slap, slap of slippers flattening any spider that was discovered there later.

‘Why don’t you like spiders anyway?’ I’d asked them. ‘What harm have they ever done you? What harm have they ever done anyone?’

It had seemed incredibly arrogant to me for those stupid, twittering girls to find the mere existence of these creatures offensive. Unfortunately, Aaron overheard me talking to the girls one day, and thereafter took great delight in killing spiders in front of me whenever he could. I hated him for that. I understood the importance of being kind to animals… of being kind to insects.. of being kind to anything that was smaller than I was. I understood that all unnecessary deaths brought God pain. I didn’t wish suffering on anyone — not even on Aaron, who I hated. So I ran to help him when he was hanging from that window, and in doing so I condemned myself to a lifetime of violence and horror and bloodshed. I should have just stood back and done nothing — just watched him fall, for no one would have condemned me for that, even though it would have been just as blameworthy.

I could remember once, when I was little, wanting to grow up to be a fireman. It probably had something to do with the bright red fire engine toy I’d adored before Aaron took it from me… Assassin had certainly never been on my list…

What do you want to do when you grow up, Gabriel…?

Kill people…

But for the whole of my adult career, I was a merciful killer. Obsessively merciful. I went to great lengths to kill in the most painless way possible, and I would always pray for the victim’s soul afterwards. I discreetly attended their funeral every time, out of respect, and left flowers at the grave in acknowledgement of the life they’d led. I went to Anna’s funeral and watched her children — Max and Jessica, about whom I had heard so much — crying for their mother, and I wished that I could feel something for them… pity, sadness, shame… but there was nothing. It was as if my profession had burned out all emotions inside me so that I couldn’t feel anything at all. It was this kind of behaviour that led my co-workers to mockingly bestow the name of Gabriel on me. Angel of Mercy, they’d said. Angel of Death. The assassin who sat and prayed for his victims’ souls after coldly murdering them… Gabriel… what a logical choice…

But these people were marked for death anyway, and if they were not assigned to me then they would be assigned to some other assassin within the programme. If I left, the government would pick someone else to fill my place and, in that way, another man’s soul would be lost for ever. The way I saw it, I was doing the right thing by staying in the programme. There is logic in that, isn’t there?

But now the true horror of what I had been crashed through me dizzyingly, and pain twisted inside as I fully realised how terribly isolated I would always be from everyone around me, by the very nature of my past. I could never have friends or a family. My profession had lost me that right. I had seen parents, lovers, siblings, spouses and children weeping at the funerals of my victims. I could never have people in my life when I had spent so much of it taking loved ones away from their families. Besides, I didn’t know how to love people. Love was dangerous — it set you up for the worst kind of agony. I had seen it. So I was going to remain alone and I had always known that. Accepted it right from when I’d been six and the people at the orphanage had stared at me with unconcealed horror; loathed me for what I was… a killer… something you can’t take back…

But for the last four months, for the first time in my life, there had been hope that I might somehow manage to belong to other people. Because that’s what we all want, isn’t it? That’s what we are all constantly striving for. I know what love is now, because I love Casey — but I shouldn’t. Assassins can’t have loved ones — can’t have anyone at all — because you have to be able to kill anyone you might be assigned to. I’d learned that the hard way some years ago. How can you let yourself love someone when you know how easily they might be taken away from you? And now I’d found out that, not only were Nicky and Luke not real, but they never would be either.

To have all my illusions ripped away from me like that… I think I actually tasted madness for a second there. I am Wladyslaw Szpilman, hiding in my self-imposed attic, wishing, longing for human company but knowing that if anyone comes my way, I must distance myself from them, for their safety, for my safety, and for the sake of what is right. I’m so dirty now that anyone who gets too close to me will surely be tainted as well. I hurt people just by being near them. I couldn’t stop the images of all those people from going through my mind — laughing, happy, relaxed — as I had seen them all at some point or other before murdering them. Now they were all lying in graves because of me.

I staggered into the bathroom… threw up again and again until my vomit became tainted with blood, and it felt like I had torn something inside. When I at last got unsteadily to my feet and turned around, I could see him there behind my mirror. If anything, his image scared me even more now that I knew what he was. Michael’s face was turned towards me, though I could hardly make out his features for the light from his flames was so bright, blinding me, scorching my skin, suddenly choking the whole room with heat and smoke and the smell of burning flesh.

‘Am I… am I going to Hell?’ I asked, raising my voice above the noise of the spitting fire.

For a minute the angel didn’t answer, but when he did, it confirmed everything I had tried so hard not to believe:

‘One day.’

There was this horrible, helpless dry sob, which I suppose must have come from me for the angel had spoken without any emotion whatsoever.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said desperately, taking a step back, trying to find some relief from the immense heat. ‘I’m sorry for what I did.’

‘Too late.’

Too late… yes… it was too late, wasn’t it?… I might have started off gentle, but there must have been something wrong with me even then. Few men had it in them to kill again and again and again as I had done…

I couldn’t breathe any more. The flames were roaring now — pounding in my head, blistering my skin, stinging my eyes. I tried to look at Michael, but he blurred in the wavering heat haze. I staggered, clutched at the door handle, tried to get out… but the heat took the air right out of my burning lungs so that I sank to the floor, blinking sweat out of my eyes and choking on the smoke. And then — at last… at long, long last — my eyes rolled back in my head and I fell into this silent, cool, beautiful darkness.

I opened my eyes some time later, staring at the bathroom tiles, listening to the steady drip, drip from the leaky tap, wishing I could get my amnesia back. At last, I dragged myself upright, turned around and saw Michael standing in the doorway, watching me. There was a bright aura about him but he no longer dripped with flames. He was clearer, more sharply defined than I had ever seen him before. He had bright blue eyes, glossy blond hair, and was wearing plain, simply cut white clothes. Although physically he looked like a man, he still seemed incredibly bright… illuminated — as if he was close to something so blinding that it lit him up as well.

‘Can you see me now?’ he asked in a deep and resonant voice, looking straight at me.

‘Of… of course I can see you,’ I stammered.

‘We’re in need of your services,’ Michael said. He looked anything but happy about it.

‘Why didn’t you come to me sooner?’ I asked, and then flinched at the anger that flashed across the angel’s face.

‘Your ignorance and lack of desire for the truth distanced you from us, and placed you closer to demons. That’s why you were such pathetically easy prey for Mephistopheles and why you couldn’t see us. Do you remember the Ninth Circle now?’

I nodded. Oh, yes, I remembered it. I remembered it clearly. At some point, all assassins became too old and were required to retire. Or they cracked up and had to be quietly dealt with. When I told my handler that I had started seeing angels and devils, he decided that the work was getting to me; that I was one of the few who could not compartmentalise as we’d been trained to do, not dwelling on the crimes we’d committed. So he put me down for the Ninth Circle. It was an experimental programme designed to protect state secrets and help ex-assassins rehabilitate themselves back into civilian life. The process had not yet been fine-tuned enough to allow the removal of certain memories while leaving others intact. So the assassin’s entire memory had to be repressed by blanking out everything, right down to early childhood. I have no idea why the programme was called the Ninth Circle. I’m sure there never was any kind of theological connection but, back then, the name seemed utterly profound and significant to me — like a warning from God that I must find some way of circumventing the effects of the procedure.

Careful preparation was made beforehand — with the willing co-operation of the assassin. They were given a new home, a new identity — false records were made up and stored in the bank. I even remembered copying out the letter to my non-existent aunt as my handler dictated it to me, and the hours and hours I had spent signing my new name so that the false signature might become automatic.

After the procedure, a blow was carefully applied to the head, causing a nasty looking bruise and some bleeding but hardly enough to cause any permanent damage — we’d all taken much worse during the course of our careers. The assassin was then left in their new home amid a set-up that would lead them to believe that an accident had caused them to lose their memory. I had had my doubts about the programme, sceptical that any man would be content to simply accept such a strange scenario.

But it worked. It really did. I had been sure that it wouldn’t work on me, however. That, even with my memories temporarily gone, I would realise something was not right; and that I wouldn’t rest until I’d found the answers. But it did work. And it would have continued to work, had it not been for the failsafe I had installed — there was that to my credit, at least. It was just that I had so badly wanted to believe that all I saw was true and that there were no hidden horrors. The scientists at the Agency believed it was a subconscious thing. That, on some level, the brain prevented assassins from delving too deeply into the set-up and instead urged them to accept the superficial ‘truth’ that they themselves had helped create.

And as an extra precaution, there was always the money. The cash was always left in the assassin’s home as an added incentive not to go to the police. Human greed never failed. They didn’t want the money to be taken from them. This was also why I had so much cash in my bank account, for assassins were handsomely paid — as if anything could pay the price for what we do.

The memories were repressed, not deleted, and could be recalled again with the careful application of timely prompts. I thought back to the clues I had sent myself. They had had to be cryptic. A sudden revelation would have recalled my memories only for a moment before being rejected by my subconscious and then becoming even more deeply buried within my mind. Hence the ambiguous clues… to instil uneasiness, to instil suspicion, but to postpone the final revelation until some time had passed. The photos alone would have been sufficient for that. There had never been any need for the quotes, but I did it because I wanted to feel fear. It was a curiosity thing. I had never felt fear before and I wanted to know what it was like. I couldn’t have known that my plan would work so spectacularly. Fear of losing friends… fear of losing a normal life… And fear when I had read the accusatory notes written in Latin and entrusted to Toby

… Fear that I might have committed wicked, terrible sins, of which I had no memory. Now I knew what that emotion felt like at last. It was only fitting, for I had been the instrument of fear for so many, even though I tried to make it as quick and painless as I could.

I always took pains to make sure my victims were unsuspecting, but

… sometimes, it couldn’t be helped… they knew. Not for very long, of course. But for moments, they knew what was about to happen to them. You cannot avoid fear completely — you cannot always kill people without scaring them first. I detested strangulation and avoided it, even though many of my colleagues favoured it because of the lack of blood. But what about fear? What about the agonising fear a person has to go through first? It is too slow, too drawn out. That is why I like weapons, for they are quick. They’re merciful like I am.

Sex was an effective weapon and I’d used it before, in varying degrees, depending on the circumstances. It was useful for building up trust, and so on. But we were forbidden to have sex with a victim just before a kill because, of course, that would leave biological evidence that could connect us to them. I no longer had emotions by then, but lust is hardly an emotion, is it? Lust is nothing more than a base animal instinct, like hunger. It was only ever a job to me, and I never went further than I had to. That would have been wrong.

The Neville Chamberlain’s Weeping Willow reference on the back of Anna Sovanak’s photo makes sense to me now, for I had felt very strongly about appeasement. I’d felt that standing by and doing nothing while crimes were being committed was just as bad as committing the crime yourself. It was all to do with self-loathing — I had allowed myself to be pushed into becoming an assassin when I should have resisted it. I’d regarded the Weeping Willow memorial as belonging to Chamberlain and Churchill and Roosevelt just as much as it belonged to Hitler. I had been as much to blame for Anna’s death as the person who gave the order. I remembered writing out the sentence on the back of the photo with a malicious smile on my lips, delighted at the prospect of frightening my future self.

And the photo of Mephistopheles… We had never been friends, in spite of his lie. He had been no more than an acquaintance of whom I was suspicious. He had claimed to be from a rival agency. He had tried to tell me that I had nothing to be ashamed of because my job was a necessary evil that must be performed by someone. He had spoken to me of moral ambiguity. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. I had a role to play, that was all. I had been working on a case in Paris when he came to my hotel room to see me. He spoke of another kind of career, serving under a different boss. But he was vague about the nature of the work I would be expected to do, speaking only of my ‘special talents’ and their need for someone like me. I had turned him down, of course. The higher salary he offered was of no interest to me; I couldn’t spend the money I earned as it was. I had purposefully taken the secret photo to warn my future self of him should he approach me again, for he had known that I was booked for the Ninth Circle procedure when we last spoke and I was worried then that he might try to exploit my ignorance. The problem was that I had been so eager to latch on to any friend that I had not heeded the warning, and Mephisto himself must have been quite delighted with the change in my attitude.

I had not wanted the Ninth Circle procedure. But I knew I would ultimately have no choice and the safest thing to do was to pretend to go along with it. Most assassins were delighted to accept since it meant a fresh start for them. A life untainted with the guilt that all of us carried but none of us admitted. Like I said — it’s not like James Bond — you can’t really casually kill twenty men in a day and then not see each and every one of their faces that night, no matter how many beautiful women you might have writhing around in your bed to distract you. It just doesn’t work like that. James Bond is a fallacy — killing has never come so easily to anyone, and that holds true even if you do believe you’re doing it in pursuit of a just cause. It’s still killing. It’s still death. Someone who existed that morning no longer does because of you…

I’d felt that I deserved no fresh beginning or second chance. I wasn’t fit to live and circulate with other people. So I set about laying clues for myself, a trail of black and shrivelled breadcrumbs. I chose the name of Gabriel Antaeus because I knew I would try to find out more about the name and I knew the disturbing connotations I would find. I concealed clues in packages and paid Toby to hold on to the disc and deliver the notes, written in Latin so that he would be unable to understand them. I had to be careful, for I knew that the organisation would search the apartment and my belongings to ensure that there was nothing there that would trigger my memories to return. But they never expected to find anything really, because assassins were supposed to want the procedure. What kind of madman would reject the chance of a new life?

‘If your memory has now returned,’ Michael said, gazing at me coldly, ‘then you are aware that you have committed the most wicked series of crimes.’

I nodded silently. I knew now why I had acted with such distinctive horror at having to kill the butterfly that the boy in the park had mutilated. I knew why the sight of blood, even from a steak on a plate, was repugnant to me. I wanted no more to do with death and dying, suffering and bleeding. I wanted to shut those things out from my mind and life for ever. I’d had enough to last me several lifetimes already.

‘Do you know how Anna Sovanak’s body came to be in Budapest?’ I asked.

This was the one part I had been unable to figure out, for I clearly remembered rowing far into the Mediterranean before dropping the crate overboard.

‘Yes, I put it there,’ Michael said steadily.

‘ You? But I thought, Mephistopheles, or Lilith, or some other demon-’

I broke off in surprise at the sneer curling the angel’s lips.

‘ Mephistopheles! ’ He spat the word, as if its very presence in his mouth was distasteful to him. ‘Why do you think he never just came out and told you the truth when he had the chance? Why do you think he purposefully kept you ignorant about your past? Because ignorance itself brings you closer to demons, as truth moves you closer to angels. As your last victim, I had hoped that the sight of her photo in the papers might be enough to break through to your memories.’

Almost, almost, perhaps. But my subconscious mind had been working exceedingly hard to keep those memories buried for ever.

‘She was lost,’ Michael went on. ‘Luckily I found her before Mephistopheles did.’

I thought back to the smashed violin and black fur in Mephistopheles’ hotel room. An angry friend, the demon had said. I’ve lost something of his…

My shoulders slumped with the bitter weight of guilt. Then Michael spoke, for the first time in a voice that was almost kindly, ‘Redemption can only come in the service of God, Gabriel, not demons. It won’t be easy. By its very definition, redemption must involve hardship and sacrifice.’

‘I accept that,’ I replied eagerly. ‘I want to redeem myself. Please, just tell me what to do.’

‘You must take Casey March away somewhere. She can’t have her child in a hospital.’

I nodded, feeling a weight slipping from my shoulders as I gazed at God’s angel stood before me. At last, no more demons, no more lies. Here was Michael, who would guide me.

‘And as soon as the child is born, you must kill it.’

I stared at the angel, my mouth dropping open in horror. ‘We can’t risk the coming of the Antichrist at this time,’ Michael went on.

‘But it’s… it’s just a tiny baby, for Christ’s sake!’

‘Who may grow up to be responsible for mass genocide on a scale never seen before,’ Michael replied sharply. ‘You must take action to prevent this abomination from ever getting the chance.’

‘But… but, Stephomi — I mean, Mephistopheles — said that the baby could be the Saviour too… the Second Coming — ’

‘Yes, but it’s an acceptable compromise,’ Michael said. ‘We have agreed it with the demons.’

‘But I can’t do it,’ I said, desperately. Of all the things I’d done before, all the awful things I’d done, I had never come anywhere near the wickedness of harming a baby. Just think how tiny that coffin would have to be…‘I can’t kill Casey’s son. Oh, please, don’t ask me to hurt her like that!’

Michael narrowed his eyes at me and I shrank back from the anger in his gaze. ‘If the child turns out to be the Antichrist we’ve been waiting for, you will carry responsibility for his actions, because you have a duty to act now, while such action is still possible. ’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said helplessly. ‘I can’t, I can’t.’

‘Can’t or won’t?’ the angel snapped. ‘You’re an assassin. Killing and hurting people is what you do. This is just another job. I fail to see the problem.’

I stared at Michael for a minute. I had continued to work for the government because my soul was already consigned to Hell anyway, and I didn’t want to condemn another innocent person to such a life and such an afterlife. And we were serving our country, the government said. Now the angels wanted me to save the world by killing a baby. My mind went back to something Mephistopheles had once said to me — ‘ Wouldn’t it have been nice if Hitler’s father had killed his son? ’… ‘ Well, of course,’ I had replied tersely. If I had never lost my memory, the horror of killing a child would not have touched me in quite the same way. The justification would have come easier. And surely there were grounds for such justification here. But I could not bear to get any more blood on my already dripping hands.

‘Look, I’m through with killing, all right? I don’t want to do this any more! I’m trying to repent! For the last four months… I’ve had a taste of what it is to be normal. I just want a normal life,’ I said pleadingly.

‘You can’t have a normal life,’ Michael said coldly.

‘But if I… if I dedicated myself to the service of God,’ I said desperately, ‘for the rest of my life… He might forgive me eventually — ’

‘He would not.’

‘Then what the hell’s the point?’ I shouted angrily at the angel. ‘If that’s the way you feel, then I might as well go and join the demon ranks right now!’

‘You are flawed,’ Michael said stonily. ‘There’s something twisted in your soul. I’m not asking you to help so that you might redeem yourself. I am asking you so that countless lives might be saved. This is not about you, Gabriel.’

‘Oh, fuck off, if it’s not about me then it won’t matter if I sod off to America tonight, will it?’ I snapped. ‘I’ve had it with the lot of you, and I won’t stay to be a part of any… any…’

I faltered, for suddenly Michael was no longer there. He was simply gone — vanished like smoke, so that for a brief moment I even wondered if I had imagined him. Had an angel really come to me and asked me to murder a teenage girl’s baby? Or had I now become one of those people who heard the voices of angels or demons or aliens in their minds, believing they were being ordered to commit the vilest of atrocities? While I have been writing, Casey has left a message on my answer phone, saying that her contractions have begun and that she’s on the way to the hospital. ‘ Please come if you get this message’.. But I can’t. I can’t risk the chance of some madness coming over me so that I kill her baby without meaning to… I am not a stable person, perhaps I never have been…

Perhaps, after all, I am already mad. A wandering madman with no idea of who or what I am, seeing things that are not there, hearing voices in my head… It’s unbearable this sensation — as if the world has started to spin the wrong way round. Am I mad? Am I?

1st January (New Year)

It’s done. It’s done. I can’t change it… There’s no way of going back and fixing it. For now at least, it’s over. I’m still here in Budapest, for I didn’t make my plane last night. I’m still here. And I, at least, am still alive. I know that my mind is still numb from what happened last night, but at least now I know what I have to do. I’m not mad any more. Madness would be far, far too easy.

I got home in the early hours of this morning and I’m now at this journal, even though my clothes and hands are stained once again with blood — angel, demon and human. One might think that, really, it should not be so very hard to go through life without getting blood on your hands again and again and again. Why don’t I seem to be able to avoid it?

After finishing the entry I made last night, I walked back into the bathroom looking for Michael in the mirror, but he wasn’t there — just my own reflection staring back at me. For some while I gazed into the mirror, trying to convince myself that I wasn’t insane. Eventually, I sighed and raised my hand to massage my temple… and then froze, for although my own hand was halfway to my head, my reflection hadn’t moved an inch. He was still standing there motionless, both arms hanging at his sides. With a growing sense of dread, I lifted my gaze to meet that of my reflection’s. As soon as our eyes met, a slow, nasty grin spread across my reflection’s face.. More of a leer than a grin, really. I screamed at him and he stared back with that horrible grin fixed on his face, mocking me, scorning me, despising me. I stumbled backwards out of the bathroom, tripping over myself in my haste to get out of the apartment.

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 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!’

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.

And then I saw them — Michael and Mephistopheles — hovering just above the tower opposite us, biting, tearing, clawing at one another as if they would pull each other apart if they could. They were both almost unrecognisable to me. Their bodies flashed between the familiar human forms I was used to and something altogether different. Michael was once again lit up with a light so bright that I could hardly make out his features at all — as if he were simply too close to the sun or some other light-emitting force for me to look at him. But I could clearly see his powerful, feathered white wings spread out behind him as the two angels flew round, over and above the cathedral’s towers, striking out viciously at each other. Every now and then, a white feather would flutter down from the sky to be stained by the blood already on the ground around us.

Casey was sobbing now, and I dragged my attention away from the angels and back to her. I must not let them distract me. I must stay focused. When, at last, the baby was born, I took a penknife from my pocket, cut the umbilical cord and shrugged off my coat to wrap the infant up in an effort to protect it from the freezing night. I was filled with relief as I looked at the baby in my arms. For she was human. A tiny, perfect, human little girl… not angel or demon as I had seen in my dreams… not one of those creatures fighting so viciously above us. And there was no aura around Casey or her daughter now. The swirling clouds of shining gold and dripping black had gone.

‘She’s… amazing,’ Casey whispered, gazing at her daughter in my arms. ‘Isn’t she beautiful, Gabriel?’

I couldn’t believe how fragile she was, how vulnerable. I mean, she couldn’t even hold up her own head!

‘Do you want to hold her?’ I asked.

Casey started to nod and then froze, a confused expression on her face, one hand trailing down to her stomach.

‘There’s a second baby,’ she whispered.

‘Second baby?’ I repeated stupidly, gazing round as if expecting to see one lying on the ground somewhere.

‘Twins,’ she groaned. ‘I never went to any scans so…’ She trailed off and then, to my horror, started to cry. ‘Oh, Gabriel, I don’t want to do all that again! I’m so tired! It’s so unfair!’

‘You’re doing really well, Casey,’ I said, equally horrified by the revelation that she was carrying twins but trying not to show it. I realised now that the aura I’d thought for a moment had gone, was still clinging about her. It was fainter than before but still that strange, unnatural mixture of gold and black. ‘You’re halfway through it now; halfway through.’

‘But I didn’t ask for this! I don’t want to have children like this! I always thought there’d be a husband here with me or at least a boyfriend; someone who loved me, someone who was going to share this with me! Last… last week I saw this young guy holding his baby in a… in a restaurant, and when I got home I couldn’t… I just couldn’t stop crying! I know feminists would hate me for this, but all I ever wanted was the white picket fence. A house and a family that loved me unconditionally. My… my Mom and Dad… didn’t-’

‘I love you unconditionally,’ I said at once. ‘And you can still have the house and the fence and the family. But first you have to have this baby. You’ll love your children. And you’ll find the husband later. But until you do, I’ll look after you, because I really do love you unconditionally, Casey, and I promise I always will. You’ve got one beautiful daughter already and now you’re going to have another. Just a little bit longer and then you’ll be the mother of twins. Won’t that be wonderful?’

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.

Michael and Mephisto followed my gaze and I heard Michael’s sharp intake of breath. ‘There are two of them?’

Mephisto swore softly under his breath. ‘Lilith,’ he began, taking a half-step towards her. ‘Please don’t do anything stupid.’

I wanted to jump to my feet, run to Lilith and wrestle the baby back from her. But I forced myself to stay kneeling on the ground, somehow sensing that if I made any move towards her at all, she would leap from the wall, fly away, and I would never see that baby again. Michael, too, seemed to sense that the best chance of stopping Lilith was to let Mephisto talk to her, for he was still as a statue, the only movement coming from the steady dripping of blood from one of his wings.

‘Give her to me,’ Mephisto said softly. ‘She’s not one of yours.’

Lilith looked at him sharply. ‘They’re all mine,’ she hissed. ‘All of them.’

And then she stepped backwards off the edge of the wall. I was back on my feet with a cry of horror within moments, but in the seconds it took me to reach the wall, she and the baby had disappeared and I knew that Lilith had taken her back to her own realm. The guilt I already felt intensified so painfully that I was only dimly aware of Michael shouting at Mephisto behind me. My head was throbbing unbearably, like it was about to split open, and all I wanted was to crawl into some dark, silent place until this nightmare ended.

‘ Shut up! ’ I screamed, whirling back round to face Michael, who was still shouting unbearably loudly. ‘Shut up, shut up!’

‘Well said, Gabriel,’ Mephisto remarked mildly, looked quite unruffled by the angel’s anger.

‘How dare you speak to me like that!’ Michael snarled, looking very much like he wanted to hit me. I almost wished he would, for it would have given me an excuse to hit him back. But, of course, if he broke my neck, I wouldn’t be able to snap it back as Mephisto had done — and there was no way that I was going to let go of Casey’s second daughter, even for a moment.

I was pleased to see that Michael’s wings were covered with streaks of slick scarlet blood, staining his white feathers and sticking them together where the blood had dried there. I inwardly applauded Mephisto for managing to physically hurt Michael. I hated that angel and I could only feel glad at the sight of him bleeding.

‘You must throw that thing from the tower as you should have thrown its twin!’ Michael snapped.

‘I will never- ’ I began, pressing the baby closer to me.

‘Give her to me, then,’ Mephisto said. ‘I promise I’ll look after her, but not here. If I take her from this world, she won’t be able to destroy it. Trust me, Gabriel.’

‘No, you must give her to me,’ Michael insisted. ‘Demons already have one of them. It is only right that angels should have the other.’

For a few moments, I gazed at the two angels, paralysed by an awful uncertainty, as if I were a child again myself. When I gazed up at the night sky, I thought I saw those shadowy outlines of angelic and demonic armies, no longer fighting each other… but simply staring down at me in silence from their ranks. Staring, staring, waiting… All this over one tiny little baby…

I was taken aback by the savagery of the desire when it rose suddenly inside me, as I glanced down at the city so far below us, and felt the strong longing to follow Lilith. To fling myself from the top of God’s cathedral… He would not catch me, oh no, I knew that now …

… Darkling I listen…

But it hardly mattered when everything precious to me had been shattered, even my illusions…

… and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death…

How I envied Casey the ease of her death! Why did no such release come for me? I didn’t want to do this any more. All there ever seemed to be was pain… Hadn’t I earned the right to die by now? I don’t know where it came from, or indeed whether anyone else heard it, or if it was ever even really there… but I’m sure I heard the sweet song of the nightingale there at the top of St Stephen’s Basilica, even as further verses from Keats’ ode to the bird flew unbidden through my mind:

Now more than ever seems it rich to die…

What was there for me here now anyway? Nicky and Luke were gone, and their loss seemed no less painful for the fact that they’d never been real to begin with — they had been real enough to me. And now Casey was gone as well… I was so tired of it all. I had tried; God knows I had tried to do the right thing. Casey was dead. I hadn’t killed her. This one at least was not on my shoulders. But what difference did it make? What difference did it make to Casey? The dry sob alarmed me and brought my mind back to reality and the two angels watching me and waiting, waiting for my decision… I couldn’t make it. I wasn’t fit to decide what was best for anyone, much less the entire world. I mean, Christ, if I made the wrong decision, that could lead to global apocalypse and I didn’t want that kind of guilt. Wasn’t it bad enough that I had spent my life murdering people for a living? I glanced again at the low wall round the edge of the tower.

‘Gabriel!’ Mephisto said with sudden sharpness.

But I had already scrambled up onto it and jumped over the edge.. almost seeming to hang there for a moment, like a bird in the night sky suspended high above the cathedral, frozen stars sparkling coldly in space above me, and frozen air blowing past me to grace the bell tower in so many thick ribbons of twisted ice, like candy canes..

I began to fall and pure joy cut through me like blades — I’ve never known anything like it. This was it; soon it would all be over. At last I had taken steps to finish it. Cold air would dance around me, all the way to the last. The ground, the divinely hard, unyielding ground was waiting far below, and stone at least would fulfil its promise. To cease upon the midnight with no pain… But the air went rushing past without me as a hand gripped hard around my arm and my body slammed against the cold wall of the cathedral, knocking the breath out of me, the tips of my boots scraping against the stone.

For a moment I just gazed out over the light-speckled city beneath me, wondering why I wasn’t moving, thinking that I must have discovered some new superpower I hadn’t known about before. Then I looked up and saw Mephisto, balancing on a ledge below the wall, clinging to the edge of the tower with one hand, the other gripped about my arm.

‘What are you doing?’ I demanded, irritated that he was interfering.

Mephisto grinned down at me. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Just let me fall,’ I pleaded, even as he inched his way back up the wall of the tower and swung himself up onto the low wall. ‘I deserve it. I’ve earned it! You’ve got no right to interfere.’

Mephistopheles paused, gazing down at me from his perch as I hung from the side of the tower, as if considering what I’d said for a moment before he spoke. ‘The baby too, then, Gabriel?’

I glanced down. Casey’s second daughter was still clasped in my left arm, warmly tucked into the folds of my jacket. How strange that I should have forgotten she was there.

‘Well?’ Mephisto asked pleasantly, gazing down at me with traces of that all too familiar amusement on his face. The shreds of his ripped black clothing were flapping about him in the glacial wind; leathery wings spread slightly to keep his balance on the low wall. I had truly liked Zadkiel Stephomi. If only he had been an angel instead of a devil. The ground below called to me still. Death himself was singing to me in the sweet, golden voice of a nightingale, and I longed for it like I’d never longed for anything.

‘Let him go,’ I heard Michael order from above. ‘It is his wish. You must not interfere.’

‘Isn’t it rather unseasonable for nightingales?’ Mephisto remarked conversationally, turning his head slightly to look at the angel.

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.

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.