21.2

 

The desire of the Nephilim is nothing like the horse’s hunger. The horse pulls like gravity — inevitable, ancient, cold; with a need to suck everything down to satiate its eternal hunger but the Nephilim pulls like breath — slow, steady, patient; the long wait of a fisherman at the edge on an almost-empty pond, knowing there will be an end to the waiting but as patient as the day is long. The Nephilim is a presence that has waited centuries and can wait centuries more.

But now it has found a quarry worth escaping its prison form and is reaching out not for Roisin but for the mantle. The Horse of Famine that was currently tearing Paul into pieces easier than paper into confetti.

She can feel the pull of a thread through the air, a soft, steady tug that bypasses her entirely and goes straight to the hollow inside Paul.

Paul gasps as it pierces his back, bucking and arching as if he had already accepted the burden Fate had dealt him. His fingers clawed at the floor as the horse’s moan crept past his lips once more, but Roisin sees something new in his torment — a shift, a change, a direction. The horse inside him is no longer straining to reach her, consuming part of Paul as it battles for control of their shared flesh.

It has taken a new direction, drawn toward the Nephilim like a fish caught securely on its line. Whether it agrees with this new direction doesn’t seem to be relevant. The Nephilim merely stands in the living room doorway, a vortex of energy around him – for it is most distinctly a male – pulling the horse out of Paul as easily as a child’s hook-a-duck at the local funfair.

Her knees almost buckle as a wave of relief hits her. Sharp, dizzying, almost painful. A metazoic bricked wrapped in a sliver of soft linen with a painting of the King on it, because for the first time since Paul absorbed the horse, she sees a way out that doesn’t end with her becoming Famine. A way out that neither kills him nor opens the Seals of Revelation.

Then, like the razor blade inside a sweet, red apple. the fear sweeps over her, because the Nephilim are not saviours. They are not allies who have joined a fight at the last minutes to claim the lion’s share of the glory. They were hidden from the Creator for a very good reason. They were condemned by Him for a reason. They were the giants of Biblical times. The offspring of angels and the daughters of Eve. They are the natural rulers of the earth, feared by all those who have ever been native to these lands.

And one of them is calling her horse.

Finally, a sliver of understanding shines a candela of light onto the maelstrom of her despair. The Nephilim can carry the horse without breaking, just as she could.  It can carry it without fracturing apart; without compressing its own soul like a condensing star absorbing light. Since they were a combination of angel and human; built to withstand the weight of Heaven and the fragility of Earth. They can take the horse from Paul and keep her hidden from the angels so that the seals remained closed and the world can continue. The angels can go back to filching whatever fragments they can keep hidden and everything can go on as before.

Roisin’s breath shakes. This is the third path she didn’t know existed.

Only then does the horror roll over her, because the Artist is smiling. He is neither horrified nor surprised but pleased. He knew this would be the outcome of all this. He wanted it. He engineered it. He never wanted Roisin to take the mantle of Famine, he never cared about Paul living or dying. He wanted the Nephilim, to rise, the Hidden Ones to awake, the Giants to walk upon the world once more, though remaining obscured from the sight of the Creator. She feels herself shiver as cold fear runs along her spine. “No…”

But the pull from the doorway strengthens, a fish on the line, being reeled toward the net as the Nephilim straightens, the flesh tearing and bone cracking as its chest opens to nestle the prize in it bosom.

Roisin reaches out instinctively, but the Artist’s hand closes gently around her wrist. “Let it choose,” he murmurs.

Roisin’s heart slams against her ribs.

Because it already has.