Cover Him with Darkness

by Janine Ashbless

  Everyone gasped in horror. For a moment, all eyes were on the fallen man and the box.

  That was my moment. As if in a dream, I slipped away from Father Velimir and darted for the window to my left. Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. The crumbling sill was an easy leap and scramble. The late afternoon sun was in my eyes, blinding me.

  Whatever happens, Azazel will be free, I thought.

  I jumped out into the empty air, screwing my eyes shut.

  “Azazel!” I screamed, as I fell. It was pure terror.

  The fall went on and on and on.

  Then there was a tearing noise, a wind in my face, and suddenly hands caught me, bruisingly hard. All the air rushed out of my lungs. I fought for breath as the sun dazzled my eyes and I came to terms with the fact I wasn’t dead, wasn’t falling, wasn’t smashed across a rocky hillside. I was held safe in two strong arms, clasped against a hard male body.

  My borrowed dress was rucked up to my waist.

  “Azazel!” I gasped in relief, lifting my head from his chest as he set my feet down upon solid ground. I didn’t care about my bare ass.

  But it wasn’t Azazel.

  It was Uriel.

  chapter fourteen

  WE HAVE SEEN

  I pushed against his chest, getting to arm’s length but no farther: one hand was hard on my shoulder.

  My skirt slid down to hide my legs again. I think we were both grateful for that trivial mercy.

  “Uh-uh-uh,” the archangel admonished, wagging a finger in front of my nose. “You don’t get out of this that easily.”

  My mouth hung open. For a moment I had no idea what to say. I looked desperately around me, and then up. The monastery wall towered overhead. We were standing on a tiny lip of ground where cut stone joined to the earth of the cliff face, and a narrow goat path ran along the boundary. To my left, so close that I was practically leaning against it, loomed the ancient ecclesiastical stonework. To my right the ravine fell away in a jumble of savage rocks down to the river. One step separated the two—one step, and Uriel’s hand grasping tight my upper arm. My legs folded under me and I staggered—but he held me upright, sighing in exasperation.

  “Get a grip on yourself, girl.”

  I hung my head and dry-retched. It was the shock—the leap, the survival, the dashing of hope—but Uriel grimaced and spun me to face away from him. “What does the Scapegoat see in you?” he complained.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked weakly. He was dressed as a priest, and the somber garb suited his refined face very well.

  “Making sure that everything goes according to plan.”

  “What plan?”

  “The only Plan that matters.”

  Shouted words tumbled down the wall onto our heads. The priests of my entourage were leaning out of the passage window, staring down at us. I could see Father Velimir’s white hair blowing around his head, far overhead.

  “She’s all right!” Uriel called up. “I caught her!” He shook me slightly to demonstrate that I was still in one piece.

  How the hell anyone could believe I’d fallen forty or fifty feet through clear air and been snatched to safety by a random passerby was beyond me, but I guess they accepted the evidence of their own eyes.

  More shouting. Arms were waved.

  I shut my eyes.

  “Walk,” Uriel instructed, with a push that woke me from my stupor. He set me going before him along the goat path, the fingers of one hand resting on my shoulder as we walked, to remind me that there was no escape. The path, hardly wider than our feet, sloped upward. We were heading upriver and up the valley, I realized, toward the back of the monastery and away from the gate and the road. Where the wall kinked there was a tiny sally-port, and I guessed we were aiming for that.

  “You want them to recapture Azazel?” I asked.

  “Of course. The Divine Order must be restored.”

  “It’s not going to work.”

  “Really?”

  “Their plan…whatever it is.”

  “Hmph. Don’t be too confident. A bunch of pathetic amateurs, relatively speaking, but they somehow seem to be getting their act together now.”

  Egan, I thought, bitterly. He’s instructed them. For a while I bit the inside of my lip and kept silent. Then I tried again. “Azazel”—I spoke the name clearly and deliberately now, for this might be the last few moments it would do me any good—“won’t come when I call. He’ll see it’s a trap—he’s not stupid.”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re wrong, Milja. He was the Serpent’s right arm—the muscle: never the brains of the bunch. That first time, when Raphael was sent to take him down, he could have run. He could have warned Samyaza and all the others. They could have regrouped and stood against us. They were outnumbered two to one, certainly, but oh, it would have been a real battle. Instead…your idiot boyfriend went looking for his bastard children all on his own, and Raphael was waiting for him.”

  “That’s not idiocy. That’s what a father would do.”

  “Sentiment, then. Call it what you like, it’s a weakness. Without their general the Egrigoroi were doomed. We trussed them like sheep.”

  “We?” I sniped. “According to the Book of Enoch, the only thing you were entrusted with was warning Noah to build a big boat. Not exactly heroic.”

  Uriel grabbed the plait of hair at the nape of my neck and jerked me to a halt, slamming me back against his torso and pulling my head back. “Don’t be rude, monkey-girl,” he said softly in my ear. “I am the Light of God. I am the power that stands before the throne of fire and crystal, my feet upon the paths of lightning, the stars at my right hand and my left.”

  Despite the painful stretch of my throat a harsh wild laugh burst from me.

  “What?” he demanded. “What’s funny?”

  Archangel or not, didn’t he see how sexual this looked, the way he was holding me? “They’re all watching you from up there, Light of God, and your hard-on’s jabbing my ass.”

  Uriel thrust me away like I was poison—so recklessly in fact, that I stumbled and nearly slid sideways off the precarious little path. He caught the back of my dress to stop me falling, and the seam under my arm split. I had to push myself upright with my hands on the walls.

  I risked a look at his face. His eyes were narrowed and he was pale with anger.

  “You’ve got a real problem with the human form, haven’t you?” I muttered through the dust coating my tongue.

  “Not for much longer. Believe me, by nightfall this will all be over.”

  “And God will pat you on the head and tell you what a good boy you’ve been?”

  He lifted his head. “Get walking.”

  “Azazel said you were a kiss-ass,” I muttered.

  “Azazel is nothing but a penis on legs. Azazel can say what he likes with his mouth full of sand and blood and a thousand tons of rock sat on his head for the rest of eternity.”

  His urbane gentility had slipped somewhat, I thought. “Blessed are the merciful,” I quoted sourly, “for they will obtain mercy.”

  Uriel smiled a thin smile, and pointed up the track. “Blessed are they that mourn. Remember that tomorrow, Milja, and count those blessings. Now walk.”

  When we reached the little postern gate it was already open for us, held by a breathless priest. I stepped through into the tiny courtyard beyond and Uriel gave me a hard shove between my shoulders, sending me to my knees on the flagstones. From the scrum of black-clad figures filling the space, someone pushed forward and grabbed me.

  “Are you okay, Milja? Are you hurt?”

  It was Egan. He looked sick and angry. Well, at least they hadn’t shot him for my disobedience.

  “I’m all right,” I said dizzily, as he pulled me to my feet, his arms around me, and glared at Uriel.

  “Get off her!” The guard with the gun was right at his shoulder, and reaching for him.

  “Leave them, Ratko,” said Father Velimir grimly. “Let his b
lood be on her, and hers upon him, if either should fail us again.” He looked at Uriel, frowning. “Father…? What happened?”

  Uriel bowed, addressed him as “Holy Father,” and the two men began to talk. Part of me was really curious about how Uriel was going to explain his presence away, but Egan wasn’t going to give me peace to listen.

  “For feck’s sake,” he demanded of me, “what did you go and do that for!”

  “I know, it was stupid,” I said with a curl of my lip. “Suicide being a sin, and all.” I straightened my dress and looked arch. “And I was doing so well otherwise.”

  He blinked like I’d slapped him, but he didn’t let go. “That’s not the way out of this!” he insisted.

  “It was looking like a top option.”

  “You have to stay safe!”

  “Yeah well, you would say that—all you care about is recapturing Azazel.”

  His mouth twisted. “That’s just not true, Milja.”

  I wished I believed him. But it was far too late for that. I shook my head. “Well, it doesn’t really matter what you want, does it? You’re not in charge. You’re not even their expert demon-catcher anymore.” I jerked my head at Uriel. “He is.”

  “Who’s he?”

  Uriel heard us, looked round and lifted an eyebrow. “Just a mendicant,” he said, in English. “One who has seen…more than you have.”

  Egan stared, his mouth compressing to a thin line.

  “We will proceed,” announced Father Velimir, looking annoyed that he was no longer the focus of attention. He waved his hand and the procession rearranged itself, Egan and I getting shoved toward the front. My would-be protector held onto my arm as we climbed a flight of steps.

  “Your man there—who is he?” he asked in a low voice.

  “He’s an angel of the Lord.” I didn’t care if he believed me anymore.

  “Say again?”

  “An angel. He caught me in midair.”

  Egan gave me a wide-eyed look, but only moistened his dry lips.

  “Swap you. What’s in the silver boxes that’s so important?”

  “Relics.” He twisted to look back at Uriel, like a man in a nightclub who’d been told there was someone famous by the bar. Doubtless all the priests would have reacted the same way, if it wasn’t for the fact we were conversing in English. “Nails from the True Cross. Gathered by St. Helena in Constantinople. Scattered across the churches of the Eastern Patriarchy.”

  I felt a wash of relief as the information sank in. “They won’t work,” I said, actually blushing with heat, too thrilled to consider whether I should keep the information to myself. “I’ve seen him, Egan. I’ve seen Azazel walk happily on consecrated ground. He’s not scared of the Church. He lived thousands of years before the Incarnation.”

  “They’ll work.”

  “They won’t! He told me, Christ is nothing to him one way or another!”

  “They will work.” The emotion in his voice was not stubbornness, nor even ironclad certainty. It sounded, if anything, like despair. I felt the hairs rise on my neck. As the head of our procession reached the shadowed cloister at the top of the stairs and we stopped to await Father Velimir, I turned to look Egan in the face, bristling.

  The expression there…

  My skin crawled.

  I saw despair. I saw knowing. I saw receding depths of horror, as if his eyes were pits down into places of darkness and loneliness that I could not imagine.

  If I were a painter, I thought, Egan’s face would be how I depicted Judas.

  “You’ve seen them in action, have you?” I meant to sound biting and sarcastic, but my voice shook.

  “Yes,” he said softly. “We have seen.”

  “Take your places, everyone,” Father Velimir commanded, puffing a little at the top of the stairs. He was, after all, an elderly man. The group fanned out, and I obeyed as my guard Ratko directed me, jerking the muzzle of his gun for emphasis.

  We were in an enclosed courtyard or cloister, not terribly large, and rather old by the looks of things. It was stonework not brick that towered on all four sides, cutting out all but a square of the evening sky overhead, and the pillars around the portico on every side were carved of single pieces of stone. They put me out in the middle of the open space, and I watched the priests arranging themselves around the perimeter. There were several cats scooting about underfoot here too, but everyone ignored them. Father Ilija of the red beard had one of the boxes, I noticed, and so did familiar Badger-Beard, as well as another bulky, strong-looking priest. They laid them down at their feet and opened the caskets. Then Father Velimir went round from box to box, praying and swinging an incense holder over what lay within. The sound of bells and chanting was like a summons from my childhood.

  “This is the oldest part of the complex,” Uriel said, appearing at my left shoulder and making me jump slightly. “Thirteenth Century, some of the lower chambers.”

  Egan, still holding my right arm, gave him a hard stare and then looked away abashed.

  “They’ve emptied all the rooms now,” Uriel continued serenely, “and walled up all the exterior windows. When this is done today they’ll back-fill the whole thing with crushed gravel and sand, and slab over the roof. No one will come near your master ever again.”

  I imagined Azazel pressed under the tons and tons of stone, unable to twitch even a finger, blind and breathless, sand scouring his eyeballs, his bones and teeth splintered by the pressure. He will die, I thought, feeling nauseated. Eventually. If he has no one to sustain him. But maybe that’s better than the alternative.

  A dirty ginger tom trotted up and began to twine round my ankles, staring like I was going to feed it caviar.

  “Explain to me again,” I said through gritted teeth: “You’re the good guys?”

  “Of course,” answered Uriel. “Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.”

  “Ecclesiastes 11,” said Egan, with a sideways glance. Clearly he didn’t like being left out of the conversation. Maybe, I thought, he’d like me to introduce him. Uriel, this is Egan Kansky, Vatican spy. Egan, this is the Archangel Uriel.

  “Why are you lot always quoting the Old Testament?” I asked bitterly. “Did you never read past that part? Why is it never Love your enemies?”

  “Me, I’m strictly old-school,” said Uriel. He put a hand on my shoulder. “But you want something from the New Testament? How about—For He hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of His servants at her hand.”

  My mouth sagged.

  “The Book of Revelation,” he added helpfully, before letting drop the afterthought; “Although, to be fair, that scrawny ape John was out of his head on fly agaric when he had his vision.”

  “And you’re quoting somewhat out of context,” Egan said in an icy voice.

  Uriel switched his full attention to the Irishman for the first time, and smiled benignly at him over my head. “You like her, I can tell.” His eyes shone with disingenuous warmth. “Take my advice: don’t waste your time. You’re never going to live up to a Son of God in the sack.”

  Egan’s whole frame stiffened, and I heard the intake of his breath.

  I was almost relieved that Father Velimir chose that moment to turn round, raise his arms and announce, “Let us begin.”

  Father Badger-Beard started to sing, and one by one the men around us joined in. If there’s one thing Orthodox priests can do, it’s sing, and the stone walls threw back the intertwined tones of their slow, magisterial chant. Those deep sweet notes took me back instantly to my father’s church, to the hymns of the Divine Liturgy, and I felt the hair stir on my neck.

  Spinning from heel to heel, Uriel backed off toward the perimeter cloister. “God bless,” he mouthed to us in a stage whisper, and I swear he dropped a wink.

  I’d really like to see Azazel punch him one, I realized.

  My armed guard was right behind me. “Y
ou,” said Ratko to Egan. “Hands behind your head.”

  Scowling, Egan complied. His raised elbows made points like the tips of folded wings. “Milja, just get this over with quick,” he told me in a low voice.

  You think it’s going to be quick, burying him alive? I wanted to ask. But I turned my gaze away.

  The cat fawning at my feet yowled. With an irritated grunt, Ratko booted it clear across the courtyard. I watched, sickened, as it hit the flagstones and lay spasming, its ribs staved in.

  “You bastard,” Egan said softly.

  I’m not sure that Ratko understood the English phrase, but he certainly recognized the tone of voice. “I’ll do it to you if you don’t shut up,” he said in Montenegrin.

  “Egan, be quiet,” I whispered, shaking.

  “Milja,” called Father Velimir. “This is your chance. Take a step away from the darkness, toward the light. In the name of the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit—call the Fallen One here to face his just punishment.”

  I wiped my sweating hands against my thighs. “No,” I said. Not with any hope of truly defying him, but simply because it had to be said, at least once.

  Father Velimir nodded, very slightly. I thought it was at me. But it was at Ratko. Without any fuss he caught up my left hand in his, lifting it. The movement was so casual, so gentle, that at first I wondered what he was doing. I actually saw him bend my little finger back before the strain registered.

  “No!” I squeaked. He twisted my wrist and the pain shot from my finger-joint up my forearm all the way to my elbow, like molten metal running through my bones. My mouth fell open.

  “For God’s sake!” Egan protested—but Ratko’s gun-hand shot out. Without letting go of me, he clubbed Egan casually across the side of the head with the barrel, sending him staggering.

  I cried out.

  Egan fell to one knee. Ratko pulled me round, twisting my hand up behind my back, to face the man I’d given myself up for. He snuggled into me from behind, his breath noisy in my ear, his gun-arm hooked over my right shoulder so he could accidentally press his pistol against my breasts.

  The pain in my arm was excruciating.