Cover Him with Darkness (17 page)

“Ohhh,” I said, as the kitten dug all twenty claws into my thighs.

“It's a pleasure to meet you. Milja, isn't it?” He extended a hand for me to shake over the back of the pew. As the kitten rose up on four agonizing paws, arched its back and spat at him, he glanced briefly at it and withdrew his hand. “I'm Uriel,” he said urbanely, as if nothing had happened.

“Uriel?” I said through gritted teeth. “Like in ‘the Archangel Uriel'?”

“Yes.” He looked pleased. “That's right.
Exactly
like in the Archangel Uriel.”

chapter eight

GHOSTS

I
t would be nice to report that I said something wise or memorable. I didn't. I didn't get any farther than thinking,
Oh no. Oh no no no.

“How are you enjoying this church?” he asked cheerily. “There was a lot of fuss when they decided to put in the pews. The traditionalists don't like it at all, and I've got to say I think it makes the place a bit cluttered.”

“Um. It's nice to have a place to just sit. And think.”

“And pray, I trust?”

“Yes.”

“There's an icon of me up near the Bishop's Chair.” He winked. “I hope you'll go light a candle later.”

“Right.” It came out as a squeak.

“Don't be shy. You're a remarkable young woman, in your way,” he said. “The first person ever to release one of the Watchers from their prison—did you know that?”

“Really?” My voice was tiny.

He hooked up the side of his mouth. There was something about his eyes that was truly disquieting. “I somehow imagined you might be… prettier. And with bigger breasts. I mean, his last wife… You should have seen her. Wow.”

I clenched my jaw. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Oh, I'm used to disappointment. I wouldn't know where I was without it, to be honest. Sex, was it? Some kind of infatuation?” He rolled his eyes, addressing himself as much as me. “Of course it was. And I thought the bonobos were risible.”

I blushed. The kitten withdrew its claws from my skin, but remained fluffed up with outrage as it let out a grumbling yowl.

“Don't blame yourself, Milja. It was probably bound to happen sooner or later, given the setup.”

“The setup?”

“You think it was bread crusts and rainwater that kept your Azazel alive for three hundred generations? He's one of the Sons of God, girl—created and sustained by the Living Presence. Cut him off from that, bury him in a mountain and forget him, and he dies. Slowly. But surely.”

“I don't understand.”

“Of course you don't. To sustain the Egrigoroi, to eke out their torment for eons, they were given guardians. Human watchmen who would feel responsibility and pity and—who knows?—desire.
That's
what keeps them alive. It's a piss-poor substitute for the infinite love of the Almighty, but it suffices.”

“That's…” I struggled to express my feelings. “That's horrible.”

“The Lord of Hosts certainly has a sense of irony.” He shook his head. “Of course the weakness in the plan is that one of you might love…too much.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes
, heh?”

“What?”

“Who watches the watchers?”

“That's just disgusting,” I whispered. “To use compassion like that…”

Uriel lifted a finger and wagged it at me gently. “Careful, girl. Sin of Job. Don't go there.”

“Job?” I remembered my Bible stories reasonably well I thought, even if I hadn't read them in years. “Job was an upright man, without sin. That was the point.”

“But he questioned the justice of God. That was his sin, to be repented in dust and ashes.”

I stuck my lower lip out, feeling the heat rising in my chest. “Then it's already too late for me. And I don't repent it.”

Uriel's eyes widened. In the shadowy nave they looked like they had a pale bluish glow. “Really?”

I floundered through my hot thoughts. I regretted the consequences of what I'd done, of course: my whole world had been torn apart. But I did not, could not, repent or disown the feelings that had made me cut Azazel's bonds. “Yeah,” I answered, like a stubborn child glowering before a teacher. “Really.”

“You will,” he said.

Then he rose and walked out.

“Milja, we've got a place.”

I jumped as Egan's hand fell on my shoulder. The kitten sprang from my lap and ran away under the pews.

“You okay?” he asked.

I nodded. For a moment I considered telling him what had just happened, but the impulse passed. I'd somehow garnered a sort of qualified acceptance for my story from Egan, and I didn't want to blow that by talking of archangels paying a visit the moment he wasn't looking. “Where are we going?”

“For the moment, a safe place. Just someone's house, I think. But I'm trying to arrange a way across the border. I'll let you know as soon as I hear the details.”

“But what about your stuff? Your job? You're just going to walk out on them?”

He touched his pocket. “It's all covered. I've spoken to them, and I've got clearance.”

I bit my lip, humbled and a little horrified by his willingness to drop everything and throw his life into chaos.

For me.

He led me out into the sunshine and we walked down an avenue of sycamores to a corner opposite a bar, where a vehicle waited for us. Not a taxi, but a beat-up minivan with a back made of slats, the kind that takes agricultural workers to the fields and then heads to the market loaded with boxes of vegetables. There were even kale leaves scattered across the corrugated metal floor. Egan made me wait in a doorway as he approached the driver, had a brief chat and then signaled me to climb into the back.

“Who's the driver?” I asked as we set off, rattling over every pothole. I wasn't really expecting an open answer.

“Just a guy who works for some people I know.”

I pulled a face. “Why can't you tell me?”

“I will, later. It's just that now…well, we're not exactly in friendly territory here.”

I squinted between the planks. It looked like we were heading south, toward the outskirts of town.

“What's he like?” Egan asked.

“Who?”

“This escaped angel of yours. Did he tell you his name?”

“Azazel.”

Egan sucked in his lips.

“You can look him up online, if you like. The
Book of Enoch—
this really crazy apocryphal book that never made it into the proper Bible. It's all about the fall of the angels.”

“What's he like?” he repeated.

The answer to that was so huge I didn't know where to start. All my life I'd kept quiet about our family secret. I hadn't even mentioned it to Ben, in college, and reticence had become an ingrained habit. I made a face as I tasted the words. “Angry,” I said, slowly. “Resentful. Horny. Pretty much like you'd expect to be…if you'd been tied up for five thousand years.”

Egan's eyes were hooded. “Except I'd be dead after that long.”

“Yeah, well. He's not.”

“Horny, you say? So, have you two…?”

The van jolted on a cracked slab of road and I grabbed at the metal frame. I wished he weren't staring at me so intensely. It wasn't like I wanted to talk to Egan about my demonic lover. It made me feel really self-conscious. But I wasn't going to lie. Not anymore.

“Yeah.” Was it my fault it came out sounding defiant? “But I didn't know who he was, at the time.”

“So, that story you told me. About your man you had a thing with when you were eighteen. That was him?”

“Uh-huh.” Why was he looking at me like that? Why did I need to justify my love life?

“He forced you?”

“No.”

“Tricked you?”

Was this some sort of interrogation? “Not exactly. I don't think so, anyway.”

Egan bounced his knee in counterpoint to the bumps of the road. “He's handsome, then, I guess? No horns or bat-wings like in the pictures, I'm assuming?”

“Well he wouldn't stand out in a room full of international models. He's human looking. But yeah…compared to ordinary people, he's… noticeable.”

Egan's pale eyes held mine. “I suppose you're not to be blamed for falling for him, then.”

“No I'm not!” My hurt was audible.

Egan looked away briefly. It wasn't an apology, but it was a retreat. He took a deep breath. “Do you know where he's gone?”

“No.”

“Do you know what he's planning to do?”

I shook my head. “No. And I don't want to.”

It was a room full of international models. The women looked that way anyway, and I was sure that some of their faces were familiar from magazines. The men mostly just looked incredibly well-heeled and pleased with themselves. Both genders stood around holding cocktail glasses and laughing as they talked. Photographers prowled the crowd armed with oversized flashbulbs. Through open doors I could see an azure sea, but inside the room were full-sized palm trees and a colossal aquarium two stories high, in which sharks swam among brightly colored corals.

It looked like the champagne party of the year.

I walked through slowly, looking left and right. My own dress was bright scarlet and nearly floor-length, though it left my arms and a deep
V
of cleavage bare. The material was soft and clung to my thighs like silk kisses.

Azazel just didn't do underwear, I was forced to accept.

I found him sitting in a leather armchair, talking to a group of people around a small table. He hadn't bothered to get dressed up at all, but looked exactly as he had last time—which was enough to make my blood
race. He beckoned me over, but there was no space for me to sit so he patted his knee. I perched obediently, and he drew me into his lap.

“Where are we?” I asked. Sitting like this, our heads were just about on a level. He slipped one hand over the small of my back, caressing me, and my spine arched like a cat's.

“I've no idea. Some party. I thought you might like to try this very very expensive drink.”

It came in a fluted glass and looked like champagne with little flakes of gold in it. It tasted like sunlight and went straight to my head with the first sip.

“Nice?”

“Yes. Azazel…why me? Why do you want me?”

Just for a moment he took his attention off my body and looked me in the face. “What a strange thing to ask.”

“I mean, look at you. Look at you! You could have practically any woman here that you wanted, even without threatening to massacre her family or reduce her country to ash or whatever your usual chat-up line is. Really
beautiful,
clever women. Why me?”

“You think me devoid of all sentiment? You were there. You fed me. You freed me.”

I recalled only too well what Uriel had said about me feeding him. I wet my lips.

“What was your last girlfriend like?”

He watched my expression, smiling slightly. “A little shorter than you. Long red hair. Mismatched eyes—one brown, one green.”

“Big boobs?”

There was a glint of teeth beneath his lip. “Are you jealous of a woman dead five thousand years, Milja?”

“Hell no. I just…wondered.”

“She was an oracle, in a village on the edge of a great river. She would breathe the fumes of certain leaves and tell people what futures lay before them, and she would dance under the moon to call the wild ibex down from the steppe. I was…very fond of her.”

I wondered what the hesitation hid. He looked a lot calmer in this new dream, I thought, though his right hand was stroking my back and his left caressing my thigh in a way it was hard to ignore. I thought of his wild-dancing
Pythia and asked, “Did you have any children?”

The light went out of his eyes. “We had three.”

That shook me, for some reason. “What happened to them?”

“The boys were killed. The girl…I don't know. I hope her mother hid her.” He put his face to my hair and inhaled. “Talk about something else.”

“I'm sorry.”

His fingers slid into the valley of my breasts and he kissed my temple.

“I met Uriel.” It was the only conversation topic that I could bring to mind. Between neckline and navel my scarlet dress was held closed by loops of golden wire snagged over filigree toggles. Azazel was fiddling with the top one. For a moment he went still.

“Be careful of him.” His whisper was warm on my ear, but I couldn't see his face. “He's not your friend.”

“I worked that one out.”