19.3

 

“The beginning of what?” The assistant stepped forward, trembling. “Roisin… why did you kill an angel? What did it want?”

“I already told you—” Roisin hesitated, took a breath, channelled some patience from the infinite other part of herself. “Sorry.” She shook her head. “It wanted to stop me from doing what i… what the other me… does.”

“And what is that, exactly?”

Roisin looked directly at her. There were no fragments in the assistant. No soul. No reason for her to continue existing in a state that merely leached the energy it needed to survive from the people around it. And yet… And yet it had thoughts and feelings. Independence. It had free will. She felt the other part of her want to end it immediately. It was a perversion of the eternal cycle of life and yet the Roisin part of her pitied it. Valued it. Wanted its friendship. She took another breath and forced a smile. “It wanted to stop me from releasing them.”

Paul’s breath caught. “Releasing who?”

Roisin pressed a hand to her chest. “All the demons of Hell.”

Steve’s expression darkened. “Is that what you’re doing?”

Roisin shook her head. “Not exactly.”

The assistant whispered, “But you’re tempted to.”

Roisin nodded. “Yes, but I think there’s a good reason for it.”

Paul looked between them, panic rising. “What does that mean? What happens when you release all the demons? Is that it? Is that the apocalypse? The end of the world?”

Roisin looked at him with a sorrow that felt older than the room. “Something like that.” She looked down again. The life inside the threadbare carpet on the floor of an upstairs flat in Wolverhampton was a microcosm of the whole world. What right had she to decide whether these microbes lived or died, let alone all the animals, the humans. She looked up again at the faces of the three people gathered around her. Steve’s expression could have been cut from granite it was so fixed, Paul’s expression showed the horror that was in his heart, his Catholic upbringing showing him reels of scripture-based horrors from the depraved imaginations of religious men. Only the assistant was animated. Horror, certainly; fear, definitely; curiosity, certainly. These were her friends. Did she want them to come to a swift and sudden end? She, the Roisin that had gestated from the union of a man and a woman, knew the answer.

Steve stepped closer. “What?”

Roisin met his eyes. And for the first time since she’d returned, her voice trembled. “I don’t know. There’s a game being played here, and me, you, Yabamiah, everyone… we’re all just tiny pieces on a board we have no comprehension of.”

The assistant whispered, “But the angel did.”

Roisin nodded. “I think so. Still only a portion of it, but more than I know.”

Paul’s voice cracked. “And he tried to stop you?”

Roisin swallowed. “He tried. And now he’s dead. She lifted up her hand and the assistant took a step back. Is that his?”

Paul looked at her, frowning. “His what? What can you see that I can’t?”

Steve’s jaw tightened and he put his glasses back on, though cautiously, like a child already burned by the fire he’s just started in the basement of an abandoned office block. “She dripping with fractals… fragments of life. Souls.”

“One soul.” Roisin pursed her lips. “Two, if you count the imp. Roisin looked toward the hallway where the shadows were shifting, moving, gathering. “Where did it come from, by the way?”

“I summoned it.” Steve’s admission brought him no joy. “I called in a favour I was owed from a long time ago.”

“Thank you. It gave me the strength to fight back.” She let some on the fragments spill from her hand onto the carpet, where they sank into the weave and vanished from sight. “I return his life to the world.”

“What does that mean?” Paul frowned again. “What’s an imp? And why is it alive?”

“It isn’t any more.” Steve grinned.

The assistant touched Paul’s arm, lightly. “An imp is a minor demon. Barely alive at all, really, but created just to do the tedious jobs the higher beings don’t want to do, like delivering messages and fetching extra nails to hammer into people’s feet. That sort of thing.”

Steve nodded. “Like a multi-function kitchen mixer with legs.”

Paul looked at him, horrified. “But alive?”

Steve shrugged. “Meh.”

“Demons have slaves?”

“Of course. But you’ve got an iPhone, so don’t preach to me about the ethics of slave labour.”