20.2

“Paul?” Steve turned his attention from Roisin to their flatmate. “You all right, mate?”

The stonemason didn’t stir.

“Ah, fuck, dude.” Steve knelt by his side. “Why did you have to get in the way? We could have handled it.”

“He’s not dead.” Roisin rose from her kneel and stepped forward. “I’d have seen his soul fly if he was.”

“Are you sure?” Steve looked at her and then back to Paul. “You’ve not been in the soul trade very long and he looks pretty dead.”

“She’s right.” The assistant stepped forward, standing just behind Roisin. She’d have got closer to Paul, but the room wasn’t big enough for full grown man to be tended by three mourners. “He still has fractals coming out, though they’ve changed. They were normal before. All the shades of a watercolour palette but now…”

“Now they’re dark.” Roisin placed a hand on her friend’s cheek. “He took what should have been mine, and now his soul fights to gain the right to stay.”

Steve turned his nose up. “What does that even mean? You’re making no sense. How can his soul be fighting? He’s either got one or he hasn’t.” He glanced at the assistant. “No offence.”

“None taken.” She shook her head. “I know what I am. Toni takes good care of me.”

Steve frowned. “Where is Toni? I haven’t seen her in weeks. I’d have thought she’d be around for all this.”

“I don’t know.” The assistant’s lips thinned for a moment. “I have been a bit worried about her.”

“He got in the way of my horse.” Roisin glanced at the assistant to silence her. “Now he has two parts fighting for control of his body.”

“That can’t be right.” Steve frowned. “He’s not… one of you. He’s just an ordinary bloke. He can’t have absorbed part of a blinkin’ horseman. Not unless he—”

“Loved her.” There was no warning of the return of the Artist. One moment the doorway was clear, the next it was filled with the ragged form of the First Horseman, albeit in his ragged guise of an impoverished painter.

“Loved her?” Steve shook his head. “He barely knows her. She’s only been here a week.”

“It doesn’t have to be the love of a man for a woman.” The Artist stepped forward, all but shoving Steve out of the way. “It could simply be the love of a parent.” He touched a hand to Paul’s forehead. “Or that of a brother for a younger sister.”

“We connected. He understood what I was struggling with, or thought he did, at least. He was trying to guide me along a path”

Steve looked askance. “To being a horseman? I mean, I know he was Catholic but how would he have that knowledge?”

Roisin looked at him with a sadness that felt older than the room. “To being an artist, obviously. I didn’t know I was a fucking angel until yesterday.”

The artist looked up from his study of the prone man. “You must take it from him. He will not survive the fight if you do not.”

“It’s not that simple, though, is it? If I take the horse inside myself, then the Angels will see me and the remaining seals will open.”

The assistant whispered, “And if you choose the Horse to save the life of your friend?”

Roisin swallowed. “The world survives.”

The room went silent. Steve stared at her. “Then choose the Horseman!”

Roisin shook her head. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

Roisin pressed a hand to her chest. “Because the horse is part of me. Once we are bound together, I will once more become Famine. Otherwise, I risk tearing myself apart.”

The assistant whispered, “And if you don’t the seals open?”

Steve’s voice cracked. “So either you die… or the world does?”

Roisin nodded. “Yes.”

The assistant touched her arm, lightly, trembling. “Roisin… the paintings. The Nephilim. What do they have to do with this?”

Roisin closed her eyes and the truth rose in her like a memory she had been avoiding.

The Artist spoke for her. “They’re waking.”

Steve swallowed. “Waking how?”

Roisin looked at him. “They’re calling to me.”

“Because you’re their Horseman?”

Roisin nodded. “Yes.”

The assistant whispered, “And the angels want to destroy them.”

Roisin nodded again. “Yes.”

Steve stared at her. “Why? Why destroy them now?”

The Artist’s voice was soft. “Because the Creator tried to destroy them before. Because they were hidden from Him. And He doesn’t tolerate what He can’t see.”

The assistant pressed a hand to her mouth. “The paintings are priest’s holes.”

Roisin nodded. “Kind of, yes.”

Steve stood slowly and looked at the Artist. “And you painted them.”

Roisin looked at him. “He hid them. He hid the Nephilim from Heaven. He hid himself. He hid me.”

Steve blinked. “He hid you?”

“When the Antichrist rose to power.” Roisin nodded. “He fractured me. Split me. Buried me inside a human life. To keep the rest of the seals closed.”


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