Cover Him with Darkness (13 page)

I closed the door of my apartment, dropped the keys in their bowl and walked through to the kitchen, where Suzana sat cuddling Senka the cat.

“Hey,” I said. “How was your day? Bet it wasn't as bad as mine. A
three-hour
meeting called at five o'clock—can you believe it? I'm dead on my feet.”

“Your boyfriend's in the living room,” she said to my back, as I rooted around in the refrigerator for pepperoni and celery sticks.

“What?” Her words didn't make sense to me at all.

“Your
Turkish
boyfriend.” Her cold disapproval was audible even with my back to her. “He's waiting for you.”

“He's not Turkish,” I said as I turned, but now I knew exactly who she meant.

“He looks Turkish, and he says his name's Aziz.”

Senka chose this moment to dig her claws in and Suzana's attention abruptly transferred from me to the cat, who escaped at high speed through the door into the living room. “Ow!”

“Oh crap,” said I, following.

Azazel was sitting on the back of the sofa, his bare feet on the cushions, petting the cat—who was practically climbing on him in order to butt her head underneath his chin. He inclined his neck so that they could rub cheek to cheek and ran his hand down her spine. Senka dipped and arched and let out an ecstatic yowl.

“Senka likes you,” I observed. Just the sight of his inky lashes against his cheek made me clench inside.

He opened one eye. “I like cats,” he said. “Free spirits.”

Senka proved this by jumping down from the sofa-back and bouncing away across the floorboards to another chair where she could wash herself. Azazel straightened and consoled himself by looking me up and down with a smirk of undisguised appetite.

“Aziz, huh?” I said.

“Aziz el-Diren.
Warrior of the Resistance
. Like it?”

“Witty. You've picked up some modern languages then?”

“Some? All of them.”

I blinked, discomforted by such excessive ability.

“Languages fascinate me. There are so many of them, these days, and they carry such complex histories wrapped in tiny words.” He spread one hand. “I've been traveling about a lot.”

“Nice.”

“And surfing your Internet. A truly astonishing thing.”

“Eeeeek.” I pulled a face, my alarm genuine. “You know, you mustn't take everything you see on the web seriously. Really. Especially the porn.”

“The porn was very interesting,” he said, deadpan.

“Or
anything
in a comments section. People say stuff, but they don't act like that in real life.”

“A good thing too. Any species possessed of that much hatred would surely wipe itself out.” He glanced at Senka, amused. “Though you all seem to like cats.”

I bit my lip, gathering myself.

“How have you been, Milja?”

I took a deep breath. “My father's dead.”

His smile did not waver. “Should I offer condolences?”

“You killed him.”

“I did not. But he was an old man, and very ill. When I held him here”—he mimed a clutching hand—“I could feel his heart stumbling.”

“Don't.”

“Old men die, Milja. Even more easily than young ones.”

I wanted to hit him. “Say you're sorry,” I whispered.

“Why?”

“He was my father,”
you bastard
. “And he always felt sorry for you!”

But the second that was out of my mouth I knew what a stupid
stupid
thing it was to say, and I flushed.

Azazel, eyes narrowed behind silky lashes, waited until he saw my shame before he answered, very quietly: “And oh, that helped me so much.”

I put my hand over my face, hiding my eyes. Of course, nothing looked the same from his perspective. He had every right to hate his prison guards as much as he hated the Architect of his torment.

“Don't cry,” he said. For a moment I was surprised, until he ruined it by adding, “You are much less attractive when you cry.”

Rage spiked in my breast, petty though it was. “I
can't
cry,” I snarled, and then was surprised when he laughed.

“Oh, it has begun already!”

“What has?”

“You'll find out.” Stepping down from the sofa, he held his hand out to me. “Come outside.”

I briefly considered refusing the invitation, but then what would that achieve? Taking the very tips of his fingers in mine, I let him lead me out onto our apartment balcony.

Outside, it was a sunny day downtown. Skyscrapers of glittering tinted glass soared overhead. We were standing on a roof terrace, in a restaurant I didn't recognize, although—yeah, probably
because
—it looked very upmarket. Waiters in white dinner jackets flitted between tables where the well dressed drank wine and nibbled fiddly looking hors d'oeuvres.

Of course there wasn't really a restaurant on my balcony. Not in real life.

“Oh,” I said with relief, “it's just a
dream
.”

“Of course it is.”

“Luckily for you,” I pointed out snippily as he led me between the tables. “They usually insist on guests wearing shoes at places like this.”

I also took the opportunity to look down at myself. I was wearing a light figure-skimming sleeveless dress, very short—it barely covered the essentials—which I'd never seen before and was definitely not what I'd thought I'd worn to the office. And I was sure I was wearing no bra or panties beneath it.

That made me look to see if others had taken any notice of our arrival. There were a few people staring, certainly. The men looked curious. The faces of the women watching my companion expressed a less guarded interest—simultaneously disparaging and avid.

Azazel glanced at me over his shoulder and bestowed a dark smile. “Am I embarrassing you, Milja?” he asked, drawing me closer so that he could nip at my ear.

“That's not the word I'd pick.” Since it was only a dream, I figured, I didn't have to be so careful about provoking him. But he only laughed again and pushed me gently to the wall of the terrace, so that I could look over the parapet at the giddy perspective of the avenue many stories below, and the traffic crawling by.

“See this,” he said, slipping his arms around me. “I love this view. Look at it. All around. Only a few thousand years ago you learned to smelt copper. And now—all this. Incredible. You are wonderful!”

“Wonderful?” I was taken aback at his enthusiasm, and terribly distracted by the way he pressed up against my ass.

“Don't you see that? Great cities of glass and steel, and vehicles that cross continents and the space between worlds. Electrical power that makes day out of night and does the work of uncountable hands. Your science—your art and architecture, literature and music. Computers and the Internet. Wonderful, what you have made. Beyond words!”

This wasn't entirely what I'd expected. He'd been, well, so grim and cynical until now—though with good reason. At this moment, beholding all the kingdoms of the world like, I thought, Satan bestriding the High Places, he was positively ebullient.

“And pollution and war and climate change, and Big Brother and cyber-bullying,” I said, testing him.

He shrugged, looking out over my head. “You will overcome those things in time, I suppose, with enough thought and imagination.”

“Maybe. We've got technology at our fingertips but Stone Age emotions.”

“You take such a short-term view. I'm more optimistic, Milja.”

I turned, staring up into his face. “I thought you hated us all?”

“Hate? Me?”

“You're…” I looked around at the diners and dropped my voice, which
was ridiculous. I know. It was, after all, a dream. “You're a demon. The enemy of mankind.”

He shook his head, eyes narrowing. “An enemy? Is that what you think?”

“Well. Aren't you?”

He shook his head, as if in disbelief at my ignorance. “For tens of thousands of years we cared for you, right from the Ash Winter when your species was brought to the edge. That was our remit—our holy duty. We were the Watchers—shepherds of those last helpless, naked, toothless hominids with their lumpen rock tools and their wildfires. Your kind was
this
close to extinction…but we stood about you and guarded you from the beasts and the darkness and the cold; we led you to clean water and new sources of food. We made sure you survived. And as we watched over you, slowly we taught you and nurtured your potential. Art. Music. Tool-making. Fishing. Sewing. Pottery. Look it up, Milja: it was all our doing. No, our crime was never caring too little.”

“Then what was it?”

His eyes were like pools of moonlight. I could become trapped in there, I thought, and drown.

“We got too involved. We interfered.”

“With women?”

He chuckled. “In the Divine Plan.”

“And what is that?”

Azazel lifted an eyebrow, making no pretense of being inclined to answer. It was hard not to bristle under the insult. I remembered the quote about weapons from the
Book of Enoch
. “Metalworking…was that you then? Is that what you taught us?”

“And look what wonders you've wrought.”

“Look at how many people
died
.”

He put his lips to my ear for a moment. “Everybody dies,” he whispered, as if it were a secret. “
Everybody
.”

“But they died under the weapons you made.”

“I showed you the working of metal, that's all. What you did with it is your own affair.”

“The wars, the massacres…doesn't it bother you?”

“Why should it?”

“I thought you said we were wonderful?”

He shrugged. “As a species.”

I felt gooseflesh prickle me from head to toe. “And as individuals?”

“Some of you are wonderful. A very few, I'd say.” He put his finger on my breastbone and traced it down the inner curve of my breast, making me shiver. “You, for example.”

The cold thrill of fear he evoked in me focused down from the generalized to the very specific. I knew what he wanted. My voice quivered, as the sensation of his touch trickled all the way down through my belly, and lower still.

“I'm nothing special.” Was I reduced to begging to be overlooked?

“You are now. You're mine. You are my wife.”

That's what he said to Father.

“No. I'm not.” It was hard to contradict him, but I forced the words out. My nipples were so stiff from his teasing that they ached.

“What?”

I tried to push his hand away but it didn't work, so I just kept talking as he picked me up and sat me on the lip of the parapet, spreading my thighs so that he could stand between them, and I felt the canyon of the street yawn open behind me. “I'm not your wife. The human race has moved on a bit since you were last around. Marriage isn't just a question of grabbing any woman who takes your fancy anymore. Or buying her off her father for a couple of goats.”

That made him chuckle again. “What is it, then?”

“Partnership. Love. Commitment. Free consent. Given under law, which grants equal rights on both sides, without duress. I am
not
your wife.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “Would you prefer I used another term then? Lover? Paramour? Concubine?” He grinned, almost nose to nose with me. It was hard to see, but I suspected it wasn't a very pleasant grin. “
Pet
?”

I swallowed hard. “At least you're being honest now.”

“Madam, please.” A waiter had appeared at Azazel's elbow. “You mustn't sit there. It's not safe.”

“She sits there because I want her to sit there,” said my companion, not looking at him. “And she is as safe as I choose.” He hooked his hand around the back of my head and took a grip in my hair. Then he pushed me backward, almost to the horizontal, over twenty stories of empty air.

Fear was like a vise; it made me wrap my thighs tight about his hips.

“See?”

I was cradled at the end of his arm by his hard hand and nothing else. My stomach muscles ached. My throat hurt with the effort of my breathing.

It's all a dream. If I fall, I'll just wake up
.

“Do you trust me, Milja?” he whispered. Then he pulled me back to the upright position again. My heart was pounding like it wanted to break out of my rib cage.

“Sir, sir.” The waiter was wringing his hands. “Please, take a seat at your table. The sommelier is ready to take your order. Anything you require, sir, compliments of the house.”

“Go away,” Azazel growled, and kissed me. My blood was on fire with wild terror and gratitude, and a knowledge of my helplessness that was so dark and primal that it drowned my rage. When his fingers sneaked beneath the tiny skirt of my dress and slid between us, they found me wet with arousal.