20.9

 

Roisin was about to grab his hands but stopped herself, remembering that to touch him was to invite the transfer of the mantle. “I know. I know you didn’t.” The hollow inside him pulsed again — a deep, aching thrum that made her ribs tighten. It was her hunger. Her mantle. Her horse. And it wanted to come home.

The Artist pressed his hands together, almost in a gesture of prayer. “Take it.” He took a step toward her.

Steve blocked him instantly. “Stay back.”

The Artist smiled. “I understand your need to help her, Chris, but you can’t protect her from herself.”

Roisin looked up at Steve, standing over both her and Paul in a display of gentlemanly honour.  She could imagine him in Elizabethan-era clothing, laying down a cloak over a puddle for a lady. He was that kind of person. “I thought your name was Steve?”

“It is. It’s a long time since I went by Chris.” He butted his head toward the Artist. “He’s an old man. He forgets I changed it.”

The Artist laughed. “You haven’t told her? You know she’ll remember when the gets her memory back.”

“Told me what?” Roisin looked from Steve to the Artist, becoming increasingly annoyed with them both. “Tell me now so we can concentrate of Paul.”

“I’ve been around a long time.” Steve scowled at the Artist. “Not as long as him but we go back a ways. I change my name every few years, at least since the War, so that I can blend into society without drawing attention to myself.”

“Since the war?” Roisin shook her head. “Which war?”

Steve was about to answer when Paul gave another wail of despair. Rosin turned to him again, wanting to offer him comfort but unable to touch him for fear of the consequence. “Hang on, Paul.

“I…I can’t” Paul’s voice was reedy, split into staccato syllables by the pain he was suffering. “I can see a huge space with nothing in it. I feel like I’m falling into it, but there’s no up or down to fall.”

She turned back to the Artist. “Why did you let him take it?”

“I didn’t,” the Artist said. “It chose him. You let it go.”

Roisin swallowed. “I didn’t let anything—”

“You hesitated,” the Artist said softly. “You doubted. And in that moment, your horse sought a vessel. It found the nearest shell it could inhabit.”

Paul shook his head violently. “I’m not a shell!”

“No,” the Artist said. “You’re a placeholder.”

Roisin felt her stomach twist. “Stop.”

The Artist’s expression softened. “Roisin… you were only meant to be hidden away temporarily. You were always meant to ride.”

Paul grabbed for her arm, but she pulled it away, out of his reach. “Roisin, please. Take it. I can’t— I can’t breathe.”

The hollow inside him pulsed again — harder, faster, desperate. Roisin felt it pulling at her, tugging at the edges of her identity, calling her back to what she had been.

Steve knelt beside Paul, looping his hand under Paul’s outstretched arm and holding it there. “Roisin, it’s killing him. You have to take it.”

“I will become Famine,” she whispered.

“And God will see her,” the assistant said.

“And the seals open,” Steve finished. “We know all that, but you’re putting Paul’s life on the line. It that really worth it? What point is there to be an angel if you’re not going to do the right thing?”

The Artist’s smile widened. “Exactly.”

Paul stared at her, terrified. “Roisin. Please.”

The assistant must have overcome her terror of the Artist, for she stood over Paul. “I’ll take it. Spare him. Let me take it.”

The Artist looked at her as though the answer were obvious. “You are nothing to the mantle. There is nothing within you upon which it can find a purchase. Only life can beget life. Roisin must take the mantle, because the angels are coming.”

Roisin snarled at him. “I’ve defeated one already. I can defeat more.”

“You defeated one because you were lucky, and you had a sacrifice from which to draw your power. How many sacrifices will it take to kill another, and who? Who will you send to the Abyss to stop the angels from taking them? You must take it now. They are coming.”

Roisin felt the room tilt. “How do you know?”

“Because they can smell the Nephilim waking,” the Artist said. “Because they can feel the seals trembling. Because they can sense a Horseman’s mantle stirring in a human body.”

Paul stared at him. “In me.”

The Artist nodded. “Yes. And they will come for you first. To destroy the mantle will be to weaken the Four. Perhaps irreparably.”

Paul went pale.

“The angels want to end the world,” the Artist said. “And we are the only ones who can stop them.”

The assistant shook her head. “But if the Horsemen rise—”

“The seals stay closed,” the Artist said. “The Nephilim remain hidden. Humanity survives.”

Steve stared at him. “You’re saying the Horsemen are the good guys?”

The Artist smiled faintly. “I’m saying the angels are not.”

Paul’s breath hitched. “Roisin… please.”

Roisin looked at him and saw the terror in his in his eyes, and behind the terror, his trust, his devotion, and the Hollow that was consuming him from within. She felt the pull again — deep, aching, inevitable: her horse calling to her, her mantle remembering her, her millennia of existence bound up in its mane.

Steve whispered, “Roisin… if you take it, there’s no going back.”

Roisin closed her eyes. The hollow pulsed and her heart answered. She opened her eyes. “I choose—”