32.4

 

The situation with her is more urgent than Roisin realised. The assistant’s hunger is starting to overwhelm her, which goes a good way toward explaining why she has been less voluble as the night went on and why she has been clinging to Paul. It also explains why Paul has sat in the chair and been on the verge of falling asleep for the last few minutes.

Hasmed can wait for a moment. She’ll deal with him soon enough, but Paul needs her help immediately. She can sense the change in dynamics. Paul has been protective of both herself and the assistant since they came in and only now has let his display of machismo slip. The assistant has slipped from playing an innocent victim of circumstance to being a predator, and Roisin can see the ghoul within her has slipped between the planes to latch onto her flatmate and feed. Would she just satiate her hunger, or would her voracious appetite take over and drain Paul’s soul past the point of natural regeneration? She can’t take the risk.

Roisin slips between the planes and steps between them, closing her hand around the ghoul’s proboscis and clamping down, preventing it from feeding. It splutters and pulls back, leaving a wound the size of a matchhead in Paul’s chest. It oozes white platelets, glistening in the fractal light from beneath. “Not him,” she says quietly.

The assistant freezes. Her voice here is a rusted chain dragged over a gravestone. “He is healthy and strong. Like the men of the time before. Ripe.”

“He belongs to me.” Roisin is protective rather than possessive, like naming a boundary in a map older than shadows. “And he’s under my protection.”

The ghoul’s proboscis slides in and out of its sheath like a parody of masturbation, and probably as wet. “You cannot claim everything, just because you wear Famine’s mantle. You are still human. You cannot command me.”

Roisin doesn’t flinch. She lowers her voice, steady as a hand on a skittish deer. “I have no desire to destroy you, but I will not hesitate to do so if you endanger those around me.”

That makes it hesitate.

She steps closer, letting the creature feel her; her power, her dedication, her stubbornness, and the reverberation of cosmic architecture clinging to her like diamonds on an aging royal. “You’re hungry,” she says. “But you’re not stupid. You know what happens if you eat someone tied to me.”

The ghoul’s head twitches. “One less ghoul to celebrate the world’s pain.”

“And I’ve had a trying day,” Roisin murmurs. “You don’t want to try my patience.”

A shudder ripples through the creature’s limbs. It glances at Paul again, longing and frustration warring in its posture. “I have eaten nothing since the Artist woke you.”

Roisin softens, just a fraction. “Come then. There are easier meals. There are people asleep all over. There should be plenty for you to take. A little here, a little there. Not enough for any one person to notice. Not too much that they feel tired afterward.

The ghoul blinks. “You would let me feed freely?”

“I’d rather feed you than destroy you, and I’d rather neither of us regret my leniency.”

For a long moment, the creature crouches, trembling with hunger and indecision. Then, slowly, its proboscis withdraws and the ghoul returns through the planes back into the assistant. Her spine straightens as she moves back, away from Paul, her eyes never leaving Roisin’s.

“You bargain like one with the might of Heaven behind her,” she whispers.

“Maybe I do.” Roisin nods, then glances at Astaroth, who is watching their exchange with a raised eyebrow. “Or perhaps the destruction of Hell.”

The ghoul slips back into the planes, its shape thinning, dissolving into the dimness. “Deal with the new angel,” it says, “and then we will see.”

Roisin glances at the still, silent form of the assistant. Behind her, Paul snores softly, blissfully unaware that he has just been saved from becoming a victim of supernatural homicide.

Astaroth claps silently. “Well played,” he says, giving her a slight bow. “The true exercise of power is not to use it at all.”

She nods, smiling at Steve, who is giving her a puzzled expression, not being privy to the goings on of any other plane that the tiny sliver that humans inhabit. “I’ve had enough of killing already, with the bloodshed to come. One more or less would make little difference in the overall resolution, but it makes a difference to me.”