Cover Him with Darkness

by Janine Ashbless

  “What did you mean, You’re not God?” I shouted, but he gave no sign that he had heard.

  I didn’t follow. It wasn’t my intention to stalk him, even in my dreams. I watched as he descended over a shoulder of the mountain slope and vanished. Then I looked at the body again and felt a pang of guilt. There was an embroidered patch on the sleeve that showed a picture of a mountaintop, and in faded threads the letters Everest and 1986.

  It hadn’t been entirely fair to blame Azazel for that, then.

  Leave him alone, I told myself. Just let him be.

  The next morning I rose early, drank a pint of coffee, showered (for the first time in what I shudderingly admitted was far too long), tied my hair up in a plait, packed a small rucksack with things I thought I might need, put out extra food for Senka and slipped from the apartment.

  Stopping by the neighbor’s opposite, I asked her to look after Senka if I was delayed coming back.

  I’d made up my mind.

  I went to the Serbian Orthodox church of St. Sava, which was where Vera used to take me, and I kissed the icon of the Archangel Uriel.

  There was one way to reach Egan. If Azazel was too obdurate to help, there was one other who might.

  “Uriel,” I said softly, crossing my breast. The painted angel, depicted with the traditional flame in his hand, looked at me with sad eyes. “Will you talk to me?”

  “And what exactly do you want to talk about?”

  chapter eleven

  THE BURNING MAN

  I turned to see Uriel standing behind me. Though nothing like his icon, he was very much as I remembered: grizzled silver and painfully handsome, dressed in an expensive-looking gray suit but with a tie hanging loose down the front of his open-necked shirt, as if I’d caught him heading home from a hard day at the office.

  He’s not your friend, I’d been warned. Well yeah, I knew that. Uriel thought I was on Azazel’s side in this age-old war. The side of the damned.

  “I need help,” I said in a ghost of a voice. He was an angel of the Lord God Almighty, and though somehow that didn’t make him less scary, it gave me some faith that he would follow the rules. I just needed a fair hearing.

  Maybe I’d have been better starting off by thanking him for turning up. His nose wrinkled with distaste. “Shouldn’t you be asking your boyfriend, then?”

  Ex-boyfriend, I thought, but didn’t say it out loud. “He won’t.”

  One perfectly arched eyebrow rose.

  “He—we—did something bad. I need to fix it.”

  “You certainly do.”

  “I thought that since you are on the opposite side from…him…you might help set it right.”

  “Really? That’s an interesting proposition. Did he send you to talk to me?”

  “No. He doesn’t know I’m here.”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t bet on that. If you want to talk we’d better go somewhere else.”

  I couldn’t help feeling a stab of suspicion. “Why?”

  “We can be overheard here.”

  I looked around. There were some older women scattered about the nave praying, but it was far too early for crowds. I didn’t want to go elsewhere; I felt safer here, for no reason I could justify on a logical level. “No one’s close enough.”

  “This is holy ground. It’s…public domain. Everything we do here can be heard. Do you want your boyfriend listening in?”

  I chewed my lip.

  “Come on, let’s find somewhere private.” He touched my arm, turning me toward the great church doors.

  “Where?”

  “Where would you like? Anywhere in the world. Your choice.”

  Nowhere outside the States, I thought. I wanted to be able to get back home under my own steam this time.

  “Come on,” said Uriel, slightly impatient, as we reached the door. “Pick somewhere you’d like to go.”

  My skull was stuffed with grubby laundry still, despite the coffee. I spoke the first idea that emerged from the jumble: “Burning Man. I’ve never been to Burning Man.” Suzana will be there, if he ditches me.

  “Fine.”

  I had sudden misgivings. “No, let’s just go to the—” I began, but ended in a squeak as Uriel put one hand between my shoulder blades and shoved me out of the church, out of the sleepy weekend morning, out of Massachusetts—and into another place.

  Desert air filled my throat, furry with dust and kerosene and incense. It was night—a late night—burning with neon, and I was somewhere high up and the floor was wobbling under my feet. No not a floor—a plank. I staggered against a scaffolding pole and caught at the metal, panicked. Far below me the ground winked with illumination, candles and lamps and glow-sticks moving like a slow sea, fireflies spinning in darkness. Ahead of me a tower burned. Pearly water fell in an endless cascade of light. Moons bobbed and waltzed with ponderous grace. I was fifty feet above ground level in the narrow spire of a building of scaffolding poles and stretched white cloth.

  I let out a long shriek and finished it with some choice swearwords, my hands springing sweat as they clutched at the struts. I could feel the poles vibrating, though I couldn’t tell if it was the breeze that was to blame or the pounding of the drums that rose up from below. For a moment I felt like Fay Wray, tied up high over the heads of the crazed villagers and presented in sacrifice to Kong. I looked round wildly for Uriel.

  He squatted on a level above me, on his haunches, the soles of his Italian shoes balanced on a horizontal pole, and only the tips of four fingers stretched to an overhead strut conceding any need for support. I’d meant to ask him what the heck it was his sort had about vertiginous heights, but the sight of him hunkered there like some Armani-suited bird of prey on its branch rendered the question pointless. He looked at the night landscape around with idle curiosity, and then his attention snapped back to rest on me.

  “Well?” he asked.

  “Well what?” I repeated in a near-hysterical wail, my brain still preoccupied with the question of whether I was going to fall to my death any second now.

  “What did you want to propose?”

  I shut my eyes. It didn’t help: the structure beneath me just felt more flimsy and ephemeral, and I opened them hurriedly. “Can we go down?”

  “Down there?”

  “Yes!”

  “Among them?”

  “What’s wrong with them? They look just fine!”

  “Apart from the drunkenness and the fornication and the pride and the drug-taking and the Godless inanity?”

  “You have a problem with people having fun?” I said faintly. It wasn’t so bad, I told myself, as long as I didn’t look down past my feet.

  “I have a problem with disobedience to the Divine Will.”

  I decided to focus on Uriel’s face. “And yet no problem,” I snipped, “with drowning every living thing on the planet, or killing all the firstborn children of Egypt?”

  He raised an eyebrow. “My, you’ve been spending too much time with Azazel. He’s been messing with your head.”

  “You think?”

  “You believe that this is what the human race was made for, do you?—to live in a chaos of self-indulgence and an endless hunt for the next thrill, the next bit of fun, the next high, the next fillip to an empty, insatiable ego?”

  “So what were we made for, then, in your opinion?” I couldn’t keep the bite out of my voice.

  “To love and obey God. And that’s not my opinion, that’s fact. I was there when it happened.”

  Angelic arrogance: it’s like the squeal of nails down a chalkboard. “Funny how it keeps going wrong, then,” I growled. “First the Watchers. The War in Heaven. Then us lot. You’d almost think there was a design flaw somewhere.”

  Uriel narrowed his eyes. “You came to ask my help.”

  The blustery wind went out of my sails. “Yes.”

  “I have to say you’re not doing such a great job of it so far.”

  I lowered my gaze. My knuckles were white aro
und the scaffolding pole. “Point taken,” I admitted.

  “So can we get back to the matter at hand? What did you want to talk about?”

  “Egan—the man who was with me in Podgorica. At the church.”

  “What about him?”

  “You know who I mean?—did you see him?”

  “I didn’t pay much attention, but for the sake of argument let’s assume so.”

  Not what I wanted to hear. I clenched my jaw.

  “When…when I was spirited away,” I said through gritted teeth, still cautious about speaking Azazel’s name now that I knew he could hear me; “when I was taken back to Boston, Egan was left behind. He shouldn’t have been.”

  “So?”

  “We left him, on his own. They were trying to grab me, but they took him—priests from the Orthodox church, I think—and I’ve no idea what they were going to do to him. Please…could you find out if he’s still alive?”

  “I might. Why are you asking me and not your surly sweetheart?”

  “He’s being…difficult.”

  Uriel grinned. “Really? You do surprise me.”

  “And you’re an angel.”

  “That doesn’t make it my function to play Facebook for you.”

  “But Egan’s a good man—he helped me, and tried to save me, and he’s decent and honorable and he doesn’t deserve what we did. Please! He’s one of the good ones!”

  “And good men suffer all the time. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  “So you won’t help him?”

  “It’s not my job.”

  I ground my teeth. “Aren’t you one of the four archangels who stood up and opposed the fallen Watchers? I’ve read the Book of Enoch. You complained about them to God, and He sent you guys to take them down and put them all in prison.”

  Uriel’s pale blue eyes seemed to catch the neon. They glowed as he looked down at me. “Raphael was the one who bound your master.”

  I let his description slide. “But your job is to oppose him.”

  “Yes. As the Almighty decrees.”

  “Well he did this to Egan. He rescued me, and he left Egan behind. That’s wrong. You should put it right.”

  Uriel didn’t blink any more often than Azazel did, I noted. “This earthly realm is mankind’s to act in,” he said softly. I lost my cool.

  “Then I will put it right! But I need to know if he’s alive! I can’t do anything without help—I don’t even know where to look for him!”

  Uriel seemed to consider this. He nodded, shortly. “I’ll take a look then,” he said. Standing up straight on his perch, he dropped down onto my plank. The piece of wood was balanced across the horizontals, not fastened: it bounced wildly and tilted and I screamed.

  Uriel’s hand shot out and grabbed me by the tail of my braid, yanking my head back, pinning me. If I’d been able to cry, tears would have leaped to my eyes. All I could do was to let out a string of hacking sobs.

  “Picture this Egan of yours, clearly,” he ordered, leaning in over me.

  I tried to comply. I tried to think of Egan, and not think about the way Uriel was pulling my hair, or about his pale luminous eyes staring into mine. I shut my own, picturing Egan’s square face and the heft of his solid shoulders and the warm quirk of his smile, and everything about him that was different from the callous domineering of angels.

  “That’ll do.” He released me.

  I opened my eyes in time to see the contemptuous curl of Uriel’s lip. “Don’t go too far,” he told me, as he stepped out sideways between two of the facing panels of cloth and fell. I saw his shadow flash downward—but there was no sound of impact, and when I craned my neck and stared down there was no sign that anything had struck the earth far below. The crowds milled and drummed and danced just as before.

  “Oh hell,” I whispered to myself. I was damp with perspiration, and it would have been nice to report that that was only due to fear. Nice, but inaccurate. I could feel my scalp tingling. Those poor Neolithic women, I thought. They never stood a chance, did they?

  But now I was alone, up a construction that was never meant to be climbed except by its makers. My next and overriding thought: I’m getting down off this.

  The climb wasn’t actually that difficult. There were offset planks laid at each level of the scaffolding, so all I had to do was swing down from one to the next. As long as I didn’t think about the drop below me, I was all right. Neon flickered, turning the night rainbow. A fragrant waft of marijuana rose to meet me as I neared the surface of the playa.

  “What the hell?” a shadowy guy asked, frowning over his tin of beer as I hung at the end of my arms and dropped the last couple of feet to the ground.

  “It’s okay, all done,” I mumbled vaguely, rubbing the dirt off my hands as I backed away. As soon as I was sure he wasn’t pursuing, I turned and strode off as steadily as my wobbling legs would allow. I looked back up to see the building from the outside though: it was a white pagoda, an easy landmark.

  Uriel, I figured, could find me if he wanted.

  Then I wandered out into the crowd, shaking with gratitude for the solid earth beneath my feet, grateful even for the fine dust and the heat I could feel radiating off the desert floor. Ahead of me stood the two illuminated towers I’d first spotted from on high, one of fire and one of water; to my right was a boat surrounded by scrap-metal sharks—a boat in the desert!—and to the left was a huge naked dancer, lit blue from within her translucent skin, but there seemed no reason to hurry toward any of the installations. All around me wandered people in fantastical costume, not heading in any particular direction, just lighting up the night with their glow and their glitter. Huge luminous puppets of mantises and moths wended their way over the heads of the crowd. A robot head the size of a small house rolled its eyes and licked its lips and danced on spider legs. A charabanc styled as a top-heavy gothic mansion eased its way down a track lined by steel roses. Fire-poi twirled and hoops spun. Drumbeats mixed with the sound of several competing electronic dance tracks.

  I remembered at some point to close my mouth.

  A clockwork Lincoln in a stovepipe hat pushed a handcart up to me and offered me a slushie. “Tea, young lady?”

  My mouth was parched from fear, and I delved into my pocket willingly. “How much?”

  He shook his head, laughing. “No charge.”

  I took a sip, nervously enchanted by the gesture: iced tea in the desert. A second later I realized it might not have been the wisest of moves, accepting a drink from a stranger, but he smiled and moved off as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  Azazel would love this, I thought with an unexpected pang. The staggering left-field technology, the crazy-ass art—those women wearing nothing but fluorescent body-paint, Yow!—the sense of stretching for something unpredictable and unnerving and new, grotesque or beautiful or both.

  He’d be so proud of what we’d done with ourselves.

  I wanted him here, I realized. He would fit right in. Egan…not so much. Egan was too cautious and reserved for an anarchy like this. He’d distrust it. Not, I told myself, that I knew anything about what he did in his downtime, when he wasn’t rescuing helpless maidens. But I imagined he’d like to be in control of the situation, whatever it was. He wouldn’t enjoy being swept up and carried away.

  He certainly wasn’t in control now. I shivered, the hollow in my breast growing cold and heavy again. He was in hostile hands.

  Be safe, Egan, I told him. Be strong. Be alive, please.

  Hurry up, Uriel.

  Holding my paper cup of mushy ice, I followed an eddy of the crowd into a space behind a row of silver camper vans. The rhythmic thunder was loud here; there was a circle of drummers, and in the center a black-clad man leaped and whirled in the firelight. My heart jumped: for a moment I thought—quite irrationally—that it was Azazel I was looking at. But his flapping black wings resolved into a cloak of feathers, his crowned head became a beaked mask, and his supernaturally
huge strides became the bounces of a man on those metal spring stilts.

  “Raven,” he called, over the sound of the drums. “Raven summons you to the circle. Raven is wisdom and legend, the bearer of stories.”

  New Age nonsense, I thought indulgently, wandering closer to watch.

  “Listen to the Raven. Look into the flames.” He was whirling a ball of flame on a chain as he danced. “See down the ages, to the first times.”

  A blue-haired woman seated with a drum in her lap looked up at me, and patted the blanket beside her. I nodded and sat down, a little self-consciously. The slushie was making my fingers cold. I took another sip.

  “Let go of the present,” the Raven-dancer admonished. “The flat everyday, the two-dimensional, the gray ordinary, the world of things. Come into the world of words. Come hear the stories.” The ball of flame whooshed past my face. “The sorrow and the love and the fear in the blood. Let the flames show you what is real. Let the Raven tell you truth.”

  Round and round went the flame, hypnotic.

  “Let Raven take you back.”

  And once more: whoosh—and suddenly I saw. Not the fire-lit campsite or the go-go fairyland of the playa, but a riverbank with tall reeds under a hot sun and a broad sky, and two boys playing there. One was perhaps ten, the other a couple of years younger, and both were plastered up to their knees and elbows in mud. Both were laughing, and both extraordinarily beautiful—long black curls, golden-dark skin, dressed in short white tunics. I didn’t doubt for a second that they were brothers. The eldest held up a handful of mud he had been shaping, and I saw that it bore the rough outline of a bird—a quail perhaps, or something about that size. A moment later that bird stretched out its wings and sprang into the air, wings whirring as it took off and flew away over the hissing reeds. The boy threw back his head and laughed with delight.

  “My turn, my turn!” the younger boy shouted, delving at his feet for more mud. His voice sounded as if it came from miles away. “I will make an eagle!”

  Then there was a noise—a silvery shimmering noise as if of some unknown musical instrument—and both boys looked up, staring past me as if I weren’t there, but as if something behind my left shoulder was. I saw the light on their faces turn gold. I saw a look of wonder in their widening eyes, and then a tentative smile dawn on the face of the smaller boy. Whatever it was they were looking at, it was wonderful.