21.7

 

The Nephilim’s awareness touches her again — deeper this time as she gets closer to the doorway. The air around her vibrates softly, like a plucked string as the proffered hand gets closer to hers. She looks into its eyes and the Nephilim’s awareness expands, filling the room, brushing against her mind with a sensation that is neither familiar nor disturbing but something stranger — the feeling of being loved in a way she never felt in her life as a human. This is the true sense of love, the sense of complete belonging and the idea that she could abandon herself to its embrace. She feels the world shift around her, as though reality itself is holding its breath.

Roisin is almost at touching distance when Steve’s hand closes around her upper arm. He doesn’t grab her fiercely or yank at her arm, but his grip is firm, as if he’s stopping someone absorbed in their mobile phone from stepping out in front of a bus. “Roisin. Stop.”

His voice is low, urgent, too human for the moment she’s standing in.

She turns her head toward him — slowly, as though her body is moving through water — and the motion feels wrong, like she’s interrupting a conversation she wasn’t aware she was having. She brushes away the fleeting irritation she feels at his interruption as the Nephilim’s awareness brushes her mind again, curious, patient, ancient. As inviting as a warm bath.

Steve’s grip tightens. “Don’t go any closer.”

Roisin blinks at him. Not because she doesn’t understand the words but because they feel… irrelevant. The pull from the Nephilim is not forceful or seductive. She has no sense of danger from it. It just feels… familiar… like the smell of candy floss at the annual Mop or the lyrics to a song she’s been humming for months. It is the promise of spring when the sun comes out in February.

Steve’s hand is warm, but her awareness of the Nephilim is the cold of her mum’s bedroom when there’s ice on the window and it’s time to get up for school. Getting out of bed is inevitable, a fact of life, but Steve’s touch is the warmth of the bed when she is stiff and still; the layer of body-warn water surrounding you after you’ve fallen asleep in the bath.

Steve steps in front of her, pushing her arm down to make room for himself between her and the figure towering above them. He moves quickly, planting himself between them and blocking her view of the Nephilim behind. His face is pale, jaw tight, eyes wide with a fear he’s trying to hide. “Roisin, look at me.”

She turns her head enough to look him in the eyes. He’s taken off his spirit-lens and the blue eyes beneath are the colour of an Alaskan shoreline, but old, so much older than the flesh around them would attest. Those eyes have seen more than one lifetime of experience, but looking at him is like looking through the privacy window of a mid-century door, distorted by the twisted glass that was originally a fault and then exploited.

His gaze is steady, but she can feel his hand trembling against her sleeve. He is acting being as strong as she needs him to be, but the Nephilim behind him only has to lower his hand and he will feel its touch. And what then? Will the mantle of the horse transfer to him? Distantly, like the sound transmitted through two tins connected by wire, she hears his voice. “You don’t know what that thing is.”

Roisin’s lips part, a half-smile dashing across her lips like a startled stag. “I do.”

Steve shakes his head. “No. You think you do. But you’re not… you’re not yourself right now.”

She almost laughs. Not because he’s wrong but because he’s right in a way he doesn’t understand. She is so much more of herself than she could ever have imagined a week ago. She is only not herself if she was still human, but she’s surpassed that. She has memories that are thousands of years old. Fragmented and imperfect, perhaps, but the mantle of the horse has all the missing pieces. She just has to take them.

The Nephilim’s awareness presses closer, brushing against her thoughts like a fingertip tracing the outline of a forgotten shape. She can see herself reflected in Steve’s eyes. Human. Child-like. Filled with the wonder of all that can be hers if she just reaches out and takes it. She shifts her gaze away from him and tilts her head up to where the Nephilim towers over them both, but he leans forward, stumbling slightly as he grabs hold of her shoulders. “Roisin. Stay with me.”

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