26.3

 

The imp grunts and clutches its chest, its wings unfolding and vibrating like a honeybee fanning cooler air into the hive. It coughs once, twice…. Then spits out a gob of phlegm onto tatty carpet and wipes its mouth with the back of one hand. “Aroint thee, thou rump-fed scullion.” It looks at the assembled faces and startles when it sees Roisin, backing away from her swiftly until it bumps into Astaroth’s leg and stops. “Begone! Thou swollen bag of bursies!” Its voice is shriller than she expected, though how it pronounces words with a jaw so full of pointed denticles is another mystery best left to the Creator.

“Snedja!” Steve drops to one knee, his arms held out in welcome and his face beaming like a gibbous moon. “You’re alive.”

“’Course I’m alive, ye great snazzy gobchock.” It skirts Roisin with a wide margin, holding its tail off the floor and allows Steve to pick it up. “Nae thanks te’ that sapphic wee mingemeat.”

“It was… a necessity of the moment.” Roisin holds up her hands in a placatory gesture. “I needed to borrow your spirit for a few minutes.”

“Borra me’ spiit?” Its triangular mouth lifts in a snarl. “Ye should buy mae dinner afore ye rip me’ spiit oot. Is no polite at all ye ken?”

Roisin’s mouth moves as she repeat its words to herself, the better to get the gist of what it might be conveying. “I gave it back, didn’t I?”

“Not before time, ye minchin, snaggle-faced puttock. I was deed for a good forty-three minutes there. I’ll be submittin’ a J334 for compensation, see if I doesne.”

“And I’m sure it will be paid and backdated.” Roisin looks at Astaroth, who nods in reassurance. “In due course.”

“Oh, aye. ‘In due course,’ it says.” The imp shook its head. “When what it means is when the outer rings freeze and the hard centre boils.” It stabs one of its four gnarly finger at the Artist. “An’ I’ll hold Youse as witness.”

“Fine.” The Artist makes a dismissive gesture and several slime moulds grow and burst into fruiting bodies on the extended finger. The imp studies them for a moment and then carefully nibbles one down to the skin. It chews slowly before going limp again in Steve’s arms.

Steve looks up in alarm but the Artist forestalls his protestations with a “Merely sleeping off the toxicity.”

Roisin feels something shift inside her, a soft pressure behind her sternum, reminiscent of the feeling she used to get when her mother had left her alone in the house and she was able to examine the contents of the boxes she’d stored in the loft; part stomach ache, part stitch and part the urge to defecate. It brings with it a subtle, unmistakable tilt in the world, as though reality itself has leaned in a particular direction and is waiting for her to follow.

She inhales sharply, raising her head to make her throat as long as possible, like a sword-swallower performing for a audience of several well-endowed centaurs.

The mantle of Knowledge hums. Not with urgency, but with the feel of a distant pump in the cellar, emptying a wellspring of broken promises into the anus of a repentant politician. It has the patient insistence of a lover’s hand between her shoulder blades, encouraging her in the direction of the nearest hotel room.

Roisin’s fingers twitch at her sides. She feels the push not as a command, but as a question the world outside the room is asking her; a question she knows only she can answer.

She shudders as someone in the future walks over her grave.

“Roisin?” Steve says softly, the imp held over one shoulder like a sleeping toddler. “Are you okay?”

She doesn’t look at him. She can’t, because the moment she tries to focus on his face, the mantle gently shifts her attention toward something else. Something beyond him. Something larger.

The Nephilim senses it instantly, its awareness flaring like the pressure wave from the atomic bomb detonated over Warsaw in the third decade of the century. Its hand finds the centre of her back, steadying her as though she’s standing on the edge of a precipice.

Astaroth smiles. “There it is,” he murmurs. “The first pull.”

Steve stiffens, looking past Roisin to the angel behind her, all but forgotten in the waking of the imp. “What pull?”

Roisin swallows, and her voice emerges thin and reedy, as though she’s speaking from a long distance away. “The world,” she whispers. “It’s… asking.”

Steve steps closer, the imp clutched to his chest. “Asking what?”

Roisin closes her eyes and the mantle inside her opens like an aircraft broaching the zenith of its ascent and being rewarded with a view of the whole horizon of the earth. “For justice.”