26.2

 

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re slipping. You’re… you’re changing. I can see it. I can feel it. You’re not— you’re not you.”

She tilts her head, studying him carefully. She can see the years he’s been alive etched into the fragments of his soul. More than anyone she’d ever seen, at least in a human. He would be a prime target for an angel intent upon gaining personal power. “I am who I have always been. Who I have always been destined to be. I am still me, just more me than I ever was before.”

He shakes his head, tears blurring the edges of his eyes as they spill over and run down his cheeks. “No. No, Roisin, this—this mantle, this knowledge, this… whatever it is— it’s taking you away from me.” His fingers tighten around hers. “Don’t leave me. Not again.”

He’s intimated his belief she was a former love interest before, but even with the mantle she has neither memory nor knowledge of reincarnation. At least, not in this culture. “I’m still here,” she says.

“But you’re not with me,” he whispers.

That triggers something within her. A flicker of a memory; of a fragment of soul; small, fragile, human—passes through her consciousness. A crack in the clarity. A tremor in the stillness. A reminder that beneath the mantle, beneath the Fifth, beneath the cosmic architecture settling into her bones she is Roisin. The Horseman of Famine, the angel that defended her chosen family because he sacrificed…

…an imp.

She steps closer, lifting her free hand to touch his cheek, brushing away the tear at the corner of his eye with her thumb, then lifting it to her mouth to taste the salt. She can taste him on that single drop. His hopes, his fears, his despair at the loss of his love. He’s expected it to help in some way – and it had – but he has not expected her to remove its soul and take it for herself. “I can see everything,” she whispers. “But I can still choose what I look at.”

Steve’s breath catches. “Are you still him? Beneath all that? Can he come back to me?”

The Nephilim moves with her, shadowing her like a guardian spirit. Astaroth watches with the faintest smile, as though witnessing a predictable but fascinating phenomenon.

“I can release the fragments I borrowed… took… but I cannot bring his back.”

He closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. “Then what use is justice, if the whole of your existence is based upon injustice? I summoned him to help but you destroyed him.”

A tremor runs through her. Not fear. Not doubt. Conflict. The mantle inside her hums—quiet, vast, inevitable. The Nephilim’s awareness presses against her, protective and aligned.

Astaroth and the Artist share a glance, as if neither of them had foreseen this turn of events and were watching intently, waiting for the moment she realises the truth of Justice.

She opens her eyes. She can feel the grief, taste it, even, and the love he held for this minor creature of the lower planes is not some sordid little sexual perversion of a mortal and an angelic being, but the inevitability of two species learning ang growing together, just like the Grigori had with the original daughters of man. In other circumstances, they might have begat a Nephilim themselves.

“I can’t stay small,” she says softly. “Not anymore.” She lifts his hand to her cheek so he can feel the warmth of the human side of her. “I’m not leaving you,” she adds, as though she can feel his heart fracturing. “I’m not stepping away from you. I’m stepping into what I am.”

He shakes his head, tears slipping free. “I don’t know how to follow you there.”

Roisin’s voice trembles. “Even if you could, you shouldn’t.” She turns looking first at the Artist, and then at Astaroth. “The imp was of your domain. It should not have been consumed in a battle not of its making. Fashion me another.”

Astaroth’s smile fades, replaced by something like interest. “It will not be the same,” he says. “Every being is unique, even those made of Tartarian clay.”

“Do it.” There is an edge to her voice now, as sharp at the pale horseman’s scythe.

Astaroth shrugs, smiles as does as she asks, flamboyant as a pageant queen to cover up the fear she can sense pulsing through him. He rubs his hands together, like a children’s party magician stretching rubber to make balloon animals, his fingers kneading and shaping, and before six heartbeats have passed, he sets an imp upon the floor. It looks like the one she destroyed, but she doesn’t have the experience to tell one from another, and it could be as different from the first as chalk is from linseed oil.

Steve lets go of her hand as the imp opens its eyes. He stares at it for a moment, then looks back at her. “It’s not him.”

Roisin closes her eyes and for the first time since the mantle awakened, she feels the power of Justice. It anchors and steadies her, reminding she is not only the Fifth, but Roisin as well. And Roisin loves her flatmates.

She opens her eyes and sees the imp’s soul flying out of her and into the fresh clay.