Cover Him with Darkness

by Janine Ashbless

  “Milja,” said Father Velimir sadly. “Call him.”

  I screamed.

  I felt my finger-bone snap. The pain filled my world.

  “Azazel!” I shrieked, when I could shape my cry into words. “Azazel!”

  For a while I was so blinded by agony that I didn’t know what was happening. When the world stopped flashing red and white enough long enough for me to make out figures through the haze, I saw Father Velimir looking from side to side. Ratko had let go of my hand and transferred his grip to the scruff of my neck, holding me at arm’s length so that his could point the gun left and right in turn. Everyone was looking round.

  There was no sign of Azazel.

  I knew then that he’d given up on me. My demon lover had abandoned me. Just like I’d told him to.

  A part of me was relieved, despite everything.

  In the middle of my dry sobs, I looked at Egan, who knelt with one hand to his temple where he’d been struck, looking like he was trying not to keel over.

  “I can’t,” I rasped. “I told you, didn’t I? He won’t come.”

  “Milja?” Father Velimir sounded hurt, like I had disappointed him deeply.

  “He’s not coming!”

  “That’s not good enough, Milja.”

  “He’s not coming. I can’t make him. He doesn’t want me anymore.”

  “Try again.”

  Ratko pulled me back into his embrace, his crotch pressed against me from behind, his arm over my shoulder again. My broken hand wasn’t involved this time round, allowing me to clutch it to my abdomen. But the muzzle of his gun was pointed straight at Egan’s head.

  “Try harder,” he suggested.

  “I can’t make him come!” I panted. I could feel his disgusting hard-on digging into me. I was looking right down the length of his arm into Egan’s face. At point blank range my Judas had no chance of survival.

  He’d betrayed me, and now he was on his knees at my feet. He was looking up at me with eyes swimming with pain, but there was no fear there. His face was oddly calm.

  “Milja,” he whispered. His mouth moved in a sad smile.

  Ratko’s finger curled around the trigger, slowly.

  “Azazel, please help me,” I moaned, and I meant it with all my heart.

  The sun went behind the mountain then, and shadows deepened. There was a moment in which the whole courtyard held its breath. Ratko spun me, scanning the perimeter.

  No. He’s gone for good.

  “You are wasting our time,” Father Velimir announced. “Ratko, finish him.”

  The gun will not fire, I told myself as the black metal pointed back at Egan. The gun will not fire. The gun will not fire.

  Ratko pulled the trigger.

  The gun went click.

  Sweat was running off me under my dress. The gun will not fire.

  Click. Click.

  “Shit,” Ratko said, in consternation. He dropped me, turned away, worked the mechanism to eject the magazine and slapped it back into place.

  The weapon went off with a roar. I saw the puff of sand as the bullet ricocheted off the stone floor and then it spanged off the stonework somewhere behind my head. Even Ratko flinched. Then he turned back, eyes blazing.

  But by that time I had my arms wrapped around Egan’s neck.

  I don’t even remember making that decision.

  Snorting, Ratko started to circle us, trying to get a clear line on Egan—but I twisted too, keeping myself in the way. You can’t shoot me, you bastard: you need me. And as Ratko hesitated, one of the priests cried out in terror.

  We all turned.

  It was the dying cat. Dying, or more likely dead—in fact I really hope it was dead, though it was still moving. It had split in half down its belly: a line like a razor slash from which red light was pouring out in a fan shape. And through that tiny, impossible slit, the whole of Azazel’s towering frame heaved forth like a rumple-winged butterfly shouldering its way from a chrysalis.

  “Azazel!” I howled. “It’s a trap!”

  Azazel lifted his head, looked at me and smiled. It was an expression that made my bowels cramp with fear.

  He looked terrible. Worse than the day I’d freed him from beneath the mountain, by some margin; his hair was grizzled, his face gaunt, his eyes sunken in orbits blue as bruises. As he straightened up he held himself awkwardly as if everything ached, and even his clothes looked ragged. It hurt me just to look at him. Some strange part of me, through the fog of pain and terror, was wailing Why didn’t he listen to what I told him?

  But dishevelment and exhaustion didn’t make him look any less threatening. The light in his sunken eyes was red. Darkness lurked in each crease and shadow of his form. And as we stared, from the empty air he unsheathed a sword of fire—a blade of living, flickering flame that made the air around it ripple with heat.

  The men with guns—there was at least one other apart from Ratko, though in that confused space the most I was aware of was the bang of the shots—opened fire. It achieved precisely nothing, as far as I could tell. Azazel didn’t bother catching the bullets this time; he just ignored them. His glance moved contemptuously over the men all around, and then he started toward me.

  Shadows streamed from him with every step, smoking the air.

  He looked like the Angel of Death.

  Ratko, only a couple of paces from me, reacted remarkably calmly, considering—in his position I’d surely have been wetting myself. Firing carefully and methodically, he stooped and grabbed me up, his hand biting into my arm hard enough to quell any question of resistance. He jerked me in front of him as if I were a shield.

  Azazel didn’t even slow.

  Not until Ratko put the gun to my head, anyway.

  Azazel stopped, sword half-lifted. Overhead, thunder rumbled from a clear sky. Behind his looming angular form men were milling about for position, as irrelevant as mice so far as he was concerned. I glimpsed red-bearded Father Ilija scooting forward from the cloister shadows, his hand raised.

  Something in it.

  “Bet you’re not faster than a bullet,” Ratko warned, backing us both away.

  “Behind you!” I cried.

  Azazel ignored me. “Put her down,” he told Ratko, “and I will not make your loved ones pick your balls out from between your broken teeth.”

  I’d somehow imagined a nail from the True Cross as a shiny six-inch thing like you’d buy from a hardware store. Instead it was a good foot long, thick as a man’s thumb, dark, with a T-head.

  “Azazel!” I screamed. “Behind you!”

  “Fuck you,” said Ratko. The muzzle of the gun was hot against my temple. “Fuck you, fuck her.”

  Egan hit him.

  I only worked that out in retrospect. Egan, discounted and ignored, came in from the side and knocked Ratko’s gun-hand up. I felt the muzzle rake my skin and then the shot went off over my head, loud enough to make my ears ring. I was flung aside and fell, looking up just in time to glimpse Egan twist Ratko’s arm taut in a double-handed lock and then, with a savage economy that left me stunned, break the elbow.

  Ratko screamed.

  Azazel roared with rage, and the building shook.

  I twisted to look that way. I saw Azazel standing with his head back, his throat stretched taut. He took one staggering step forward. Then he pitched onto his knees.

  Behind him stood Father Ilija, his eyes as round as coins, a hammer raised in his fist.

  Standing up between Azazel’s shoulders, black against the dirty white of his sweater, was the brutal iron spike of the Holy Nail.

  As I watched, Father Ilija smashed the hammer down on the nail-head one more time, driving the iron through Azazel’s spine.

  Chapter fifteen

  THE ADVERSARY

  Azazel!” I screamed.

  My angel did not fall easily, or quietly. Howling, he twisted in his agony, striking backhanded behind him. The burning sword was a tear in the fabric of the world: it cut through Fath
er Ilija as easily as it cut the air, and the priest burst into flame.

  He didn’t have time to run. He barely had time to shriek. He was a column of black ash and glowing cinders in less than a second. Then he was nothing—dust crumbling to the floor, and a plume of greasy black smoke.

  Even the singers shut up at that point, the antiphony choked in their throats. I heard Father Ilija’s hammer strike the flagstones. I heard Father Velimir scream, “Now! Now! Take him!”

  Azazel, crumpled upon the ground, writhed in torment, trying to reach behind him for the iron staked through his back. Even so, it took some courage for the next priest—the bulky badger-bearded one—to run in and hammer the point of a Holy Nail through his splayed ankle. The metal went through flesh and bone and into a crack between two stones, the note of the hammer changing as it struck resistance.

  The ground shook, and did not stop shaking. Overhead, the clear sky went red, dousing us with bloody light. A huge swathe of plaster fell from the portico roof, knocking two priests flat.

  Azazel lashed out at Father Badger-Beard, who stumbled back barely in time to escape the tip of the sword. His priestly beard smouldered, crisping up.

  “One more!” Father Velimir shrieked. “Keep singing!”

  But the choir in the shadows were worried about more than keeping their places in the chorus. Plaster and chunks of stone were falling from the ancient building. Men scattered as the earth bucked beneath us. I rolled onto my knees, trying to regain my feet, just as Ratko hit the ground flat.

  He and Egan had been fighting, I realized dimly. There was blood leaking out of Ratko’s mouth and his wide eyes were unfocused.

  Good, some part of me thought: serves him right.

  Then Egan stepped up and pinned him with a foot on the chest. Egan had got hold of a gun—the one Ratko had held to my head, presumably—and he held it in his unbandaged hand and pointed it straight down at the fallen man.

  He shot Ratko in the head, twice, with utter deliberation and perfect accuracy.

  It’s not like they depict it in the movies. There’s a lot of blood in a human body.

  If I’d been in my right mind I would have screamed, I guess. I would have probably thrown up. I would have felt something—something more than shock. But all I could think about was crawling away, crawling toward Azazel.

  He’d stopped fighting. The sword of fire had vanished. And there was a third nail in him now—through the back of his right hand, through the stone beneath. He was pinned hand and foot, slumped on one hip, head drooping.

  “Azazel!”

  “Stand your ground!” Father Velimir was shouting. “We’ve done it! He is defeated! Stand your ground!” But pillars were splitting and great chunks of coping stone were crashing into the courtyard, and the priests were running this way and that. We knew about earthquakes in my country. We knew we should never get caught indoors during a quake. And it sure didn’t look like victory for the forces of good: black flakes of ash were falling from a sky the color of coagulating blood, and the earth was groaning. Dirty smoke coiled up from the fallen angel’s body like he was about to burst into flames.

  Nobody stopped me crawling over to Azazel. Nobody wanted to be anywhere near him. He was motionless but for the heave of his chest.

  “Azazel!”

  He lifted his head. His eyes were red as burning coals, but it just made him look blind. The noise that came out of his throat was an animal groan.

  It was all wrong, I thought. It was just so wrong. They should not be able to take something so beautiful, so powerful, and cripple it like that. I put my good hand to his cheek—and then snatched it back; his skin was hot enough to hurt. The world shook around us.

  “Milja?” His voice was not human.

  “Don’t give up,” I sobbed, as I pushed myself to my feet on the shaking ground and cast about me. My unbroken hand was stinging from Azazel’s touch. I saw the claw hammer that Father Ilija had dropped when he died; the wooden handle was scorched but intact. Grabbing it up, I lurched into position at Azazel’s back. His knitted jumper was melting onto his skin in crispy black holes. The head of the nail stood out between his shoulder blades.

  “Milja!”

  It was Egan’s voice, wild and despairing. I looked across the courtyard, through the rain of ash and dust. Blood was pooling about his feet, unnoticed; his hands were at his sides—but he still had the gun in one of them. He looked as pale as a corpse.

  He shot Ratko. Dear God, he just killed a man and now he will shoot me, to save the world.

  “Milja, don’t do it! Walk away from him! It’s finished!”

  My face was all twisted up with hurt. I shook my head. And I waited for him to lift the weapon and point it at me.

  Egan stood motionless in the midst of chaos, his eyes imploring. Then, with a sag of his shoulders, he hefted the gun, and my heart caught in my throat.

  He snapped the safety on and cast the weapon away. The expression on his face as he looked away from me was all but unbearable.

  My eyes burned. But I could waste no more time. I hooked the claw of the hammer under the roughly beaten T-bar of the Roman nail, and I stomped a foot down on Azazel’s back, and using my broken hand and my burnt hand and all the strength of my body, I hauled as hard as I could.

  It was agony. It seemed to go on forever, but maybe it was swift and smooth as far as anyone watching was concerned: time seemed to be stretching around me. Every heartbeat was a distinct thud in my breast. Heat flared up through the sole of my foot. I felt the square-shafted nail grate against bone as it slid free, inch by resentful inch: a length of forged iron as long as my forearm, crimson with the blood of angels.

  Azazel screamed.

  The nail swung loose and fell to the floor. I sat down hard as my legs gave way, and slumped forward, trying to see his face.

  He twisted round, his hellfire eyes seeking mine.

  “Azazel,” I told him, “I love you. I’ve loved you all my life. Get up and fight.” Scrabbling forward gracelessly, I pressed my lips to his.

  They burned.

  They burned my breath away.

  I felt the air being sucked from my lungs. I felt the strength being sucked from my bones and the light from my eyes. I fell backward on the stone as the shouting and the growl of the earthquake grew faint and muffled in my ears. I saw ash hanging in midair and men standing open-mouthed, caught motionless in time just like the people in the hospital corridor, a lifetime ago. It made them look like they were singing. Maybe some of them were.

  The back of my head bounced off the floor. I hardly felt it.

  With his free hand, Azazel got a grip on the Holy Nail through the other palm. He pulled. I saw the sinews cord in his forearm. I saw the nail, which had somehow been driven right into the stonework itself, resist.

  But Azazel was strong now. Azazel was burning. He let go of the iron and hooked one set of fingers around the other, and he pulled. If the metal would not yield, then flesh and bone would. Raging, he pulled his trapped hand upward, and pulled the broad T-head right through it.

  I saw the bloodied head of the nail reappear beneath his torn palm. It must have made a hole as big as a dollar.

  I smiled.

  Darkness was closing in on me. I’m passing out, I thought, immensely relieved.

  ***

  The next thing I knew there were arms around me, pulling me up into a close embrace.

  “Milja?”

  Azazel?

  I opened my eyes—but it was Egan who cradled me to his chest. I was glad to see him unhurt. The ground was no longer shaking, but the world was red and dark and the stench of burning meat was horrible. I coughed, but there was no air to draw into my lungs, just smoke.

  “Jesus Christ,” said Egan in a hoarse voice, looking over my head. “He’s killing them all.”

  I managed a turn of my head, a half glimpse. Egan wasn’t lying. I didn’t want to see more, so I shut my eyes. In my private darkness it took me a momen
t to work out what was going on, as Egan scooped me up with one arm beneath my knees and lurched to his feet.

  “No,” I said, but I didn’t even know if it was loud enough for him to hear over my coughing. He carried me though the smoke and the screams. “No,” I repeated as we reached a door in the cloister wall, and he put my feet down so he could wrestle the latch one handed. I started to struggle, pulling out of his arm. “I want to stay with him.”

  “Not right now you don’t,” he said, pushing me against the stone. “He’s going crazy, Milja. Sure, let’s get at least one door between us and the carnage?”

  I didn’t argue with that. The stinking smoke seemed to close my throat. I let Egan bundle me through the doorway into the staircase beyond. He hooked an arm round my ribs and supported me as we staggered down the flight. Now we were out of the melee, I could hear that my ears were still ringing from the gunshots. Broken stonework littered the steps. When we reached the first door—it looked vaguely familiar and I guessed we were retracing our route up to the courtyard—the collapsed lintel stone had wedged the oak shut.

  “We should get outside,” I said. “This building isn’t safe.” Talking hurt: my throat felt raw and when I put my fingertips to my mouth I could feel my lips were puffy with blisters. The hand with the broken pinkie finger felt like a balloon full of hot water.

  He burnt me. He burnt me but he got free and now he’s taking his revenge. He could have run. He could have taken me and run, but he’d rather kill.

  My stomach roiled.

  “Not that way, though.”

  We plunged on down the stairs, took the next door and found ourselves in the high corridor of many windows.

  This was where I tried to kill myself.

  Egan pressed onward, pulling me.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, as my brain caught up with the situation.

  “Anywhere safer than this. Your man’s got a bit of a temper, you notice.”

  “Says you?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Ratko?” I was still in shock. I mean, you’d expect stuff from a fallen angel, but…not from an ordinary guy. This couldn’t be normal, could it? I mean, there’ve been plenty of unsavory stories about the Catholic Church over the last few years, but since when have they been employing stone cold hit men?