The Prison of the Angels (The Book of the Watchers 3) Read online

  The Prison of the Angels

  Janine Ashbless

  First published in 2017 by Sinful Press.

  www.sinfulpress.co.uk

  Copyright © 2017 Janine Ashbless

  Cover design by Deranged Doctor Design

  The right of Janine Ashbless to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  ISBN-13: 978-1-910908-16-7

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  NB: All Bible quotes are from the King James Version. All quotes from The Book of Enoch are from the R. H. Charles translation (1917).

  Contents

  Title Page

  Prologue

  1. OUR LADY OF MERCY

  2. ICE BREAKS

  3. THE WAY OF A MAN WITH A MAID

  4. WHEN IN ROME

  5. DEVOTIONS OF ECSTASY

  6. TROLL TONGUE

  7. JÖTUNHEIMR

  8. THEIR WINE IS THE POISON OF DRAGONS

  9. HEATHEN WAYS

  10. STRICTLY OLD SCHOOL

  11. ACHILL

  12. DOLINE

  13. SO GREAT A CLOUD OF WITNESSES

  14. TO HIM ASCRIBE ALL SIN

  15. SIREN SONG

  16. THE PILLAR OF THE SOUTH

  17. THE LAST TRUMP

  18. ALL THE COMPANY OF HEAVEN

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Sinful Press Titles

  BOOK OF THE WATCHERS:

  PART THREE

  Praise for Janine Ashbless

  “No one weaves together sizzling erotica and ace storytelling better than Janine Ashbless. Her books are always a pleasure to read.”

  —

  K D Grace, author of The Tutor & The Initiation of Ms Holly

  "Janine Ashbless creates pure magic with words—her stories are darkly erotic and enticing, powerful and wickedly strange, yet at their very core, romantic. Poetry for dark angels and a tale that will literally hold readers enthralled...hold them, and not lightly set them free.”

  —

  Kate Douglas, best selling author of Wolf Tales, Spirit Wild, and Intimate Relations

  “I adore Janine Ashbless' Watchers series, and The Prison of the Angels is no exception. Like the previous two books, not only is it extraordinarily well researched, but beautifully written. The pacing, dialogue and characters all combine to create a modern classic that's impossible to put down.”

  —

  Anna Sky, Sexy Little Pages

  Then Uriel answered me, one of the holy angels who was with me, and said unto me: “Enoch, why hast thou such fear and affright?” And I answered: “Because of this fearful place, and because of the spectacle of the pain.” And he said unto me: “This place is the prison of the angels, and here they will be imprisoned for ever.”

  – Book of Enoch XXI

  Dedicated to Jo

  For cookies, and friendship, and Egan.

  And with thanks to Lea

  For help with the Norwegian!

  Prologue

  If there’s a special Hell for the world’s worst girlfriend, I am condemned to it.

  I killed Azazel’s daughter. His only living child. The one he’d held as a helpless baby and played with when she was a little, laughing girl.

  Yes, it was in self-defense. Yes, Roshana was bleeding her father slowly to death—or something close to it—to enhance her own five-thousand-year lifespan. Yes, she was just about to kill Egan for trying to protect me. I don’t think that makes much difference. The fact is, I put a foot-long iron blade through her skull. That makes me a murderer. And she was Azazel’s daughter. No matter what the circumstances, no father is going to be able to forgive that. Not even a fallen angel.

  I thought I was a good girl. I thought that no matter what happened around me, no matter the company I kept, and no matter what others did for my sake, that I could stay innocent. I thought that, as long as I acted out of love, I’d be blameless.

  I was wrong, wasn’t I?

  I betrayed Azazel twice over. Not despite love, but for it. Even before I killed Roshana, I betrayed him. With Egan.

  For love. For lust. For a need I don’t even understand.

  I had everything with Azazel. The most beautiful and powerful man imaginable, if man is the right word for something far beyond human. His unquenchable passion and wicked appetite. The fierce protectiveness that went hand-in-hand with his dominance. And sometimes—just sometimes—a privileged glimpse of his secret vulnerability. Oh, I just did not pay enough attention to how easily I could hurt him. He’s a hurricane made flesh, but in the still center of that terrible destructive power he has his fears and his loneliness just like the rest of us. He responds with instant visceral panic if I grab his wrists. He’s afraid of confinement, and control, and underground places. He’s desperately afraid that I will stop loving him. Well, he was.

  He trusted me, and I broke that trust.

  I wanted him to desire only me—I told him I needed him to stay away from other women—and at the same time I went and fell in love with someone else. A mere man. An emotionally-messed-up mortal whose one aim, moreover, was to lock Azazel back in his eternal prison. What is wrong with me? What is wrong with me?

  I am a jealous, hypocritical whore.

  I am a murderer.

  I always thought I was a good girl, but it’s just not true. And it isn’t even Azazel who brings out the worst in me, as you might expect of a demon. There’s a darkness in my soul that surfaces in Egan’s presence, though the poor guy has done nothing to deserve it.

  And now I have nothing. Not Azazel; he repudiated me and went off with Penemuel, fleeing the wrath of the pursuing Archangel Michael.

  Not Egan. Egan does love me, but he’s a goddamn celibate Catholic priest and his first loyalty is to God. Roshana smashed his legs to pulp and I surrendered him back into the hands of his creepy, secret Vatican conspiracy, Vidimus, because there was no one else who could save him.

  I haven’t seen Egan in weeks.

  If this is Hell, it’s exactly what I deserve.

  1

  OUR LADY OF MERCY

  They’d put Egan into a hospice for the dying.

  I suppose it must be pretty rare for anyone to try to break in to a place like that, unless they’re looking for painkillers. There was only minimal security here at Our Lady of Mercy and patients’ relatives came and went at all times of the day. Nevertheless, I was scrupulous in my reconnaissance. And I made sure to turn up during the dinner shift, when most staff would be busy shuttling trays to the rooms. I even dressed like one of the nuns to get past the elderly security guy on reception—a frumpy gray tunic dress from a thrift store underneath the coat I wore against the November wind, and a black wimple I’d sewn myself in my rented room. It covered my long, dark, plaited hair.

  They’d moved Egan out of St. Joseph’s Hospital in the center of the city once his legs were pinned and splinted. Why here, to this hospice full of the elderly and dying, I couldn’t imagine, except that even the Catholic h
ospital in downtown Saint Paul was overwhelmingly secular these days, crucifixes notwithstanding, and presumably they wanted him to convalesce somewhere directly under Church control. Which meant they’d shifted him to this slightly dilapidated building full of efficient nuns and teary relatives, its tiled corridors squeaky with the sound of shoes and wheelchairs and ticklish with the mumble of lowered voices.

  It wasn’t a bad place, as far as I could tell, for those with nowhere further to go. The staff seemed kind enough.

  My luck’s unnaturally good when it comes down to the small specifics. I don’t think anyone looked at me twice as I ascended to the second floor. Unfortunately, I knew where my luck would run out; they kept a 24/7 watch on his corridor.

  Sister Carmel was on duty that evening. That was an essential part of my plan too. There was nothing wrong with her memory; she recognized me immediately from my earlier attempt to see her patient and her round face creased along its pincushion folds.

  “Oh no!” she said. “You’re not permitted to see him, you know that.” She reached across her desk to the phone but I pressed my hand down firmly on hers, pinning it to the cradle.

  “Do you want the roaches?” I said. “Every night, for the rest of your life?”

  The lines almost fell out of her skin as her eyes widened. “What?”

  “You know. Cockroaches. Coming out of the sink. Between the sheets. In your food.”

  “Holy Mary—”

  “Let me go see him.”

  Her face had gone the yellow of dried peas. “What are you?”

  “One who has seen.” And I can play their game too.

  With a convulsive movement, she pulled her hand out from beneath mine and stood. Turning on her heel, she snapped her way up the hall like she was hammering the tiles into submission. When we reached the heavy, varnished door at the end of the row she glared at me and knocked upon the wood. “Father Kansky!”

  “So help me, if you open that door, Sister, you are getting the bedpan at your head,” Egan’s voice called back.

  Sister Carmel pursed her mouth into a grimace. Maybe she’d already weathered that experience. I was a bit shocked; Egan was not in my experience a man who issued coarse threats.

  “Egan, it’s me!” I shouted, leaning into the door. “I’ve come to see you.”

  There was no crash of flying bedpan, just an ominous silence. I pressed down on the handle, but the door did not give.

  Wordlessly, Sister Carmel produced a ring of keys.

  “You locked him in?” I hissed through my teeth as she turned the key.

  She pulled another face, and then gestured me to try the handle once more.

  The first thing I noticed when the door opened was an overpowering reek of bourbon whiskey and masculine sweat. The second was Egan sitting up on the raised bed, wearing only a T-shirt and briefs, both legs in plaster to mid-thigh.

  My heart jumped painfully.

  “Milja?” he said hoarsely, and without the joy I might have hoped for.

  “Right,” I said, snatching the keys off Sister Carmel as I stepped inside the room. The curtains were half-drawn, dowsing the place in a sepia light, and the heat made the smell worse. “You’re going to let us talk in private for a while. And if you call security you know what the consequences will be. So just go sit at your desk and do a rosary or whatever.” My eye fell on the Jim Beam bottle in Egan’s hand. It wasn’t even half-full. “Egan, where the hell did that come from?”

  “Wouldn’t we all like to know that?” sniffed the nun.

  “Out,” I ordered. As she retreated I let the door fall shut behind her. Then I turned back to the patient. “Egan… You shouldn’t be mixing that with painkillers, should you?”

  He put the bottle on the bedside locker, looking a little shamefaced. “I’m fine,” he muttered.

  There seems to be some sort of cosmic law that whenever he says that, he is flat-out wrong. I took a deep breath, tugged off my fake wimple, and walked to the side of the bed. “Really?”

  This wasn’t the reunion I’d pictured. I’d imagined him weak, but grateful to be alive, and more than grateful to see me. Smiling wanly from where he lay back on white pillows, not sitting up, avoiding my gaze like this. He didn’t even look like I remembered; his hair was an uncombed thatch and he was more than half-way to a blond beard. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, I reached out to touch his arm, only for him to flinch away.

  “Are you okay?” he countered. “They wouldn’t tell me where you were.”

  I nodded, knotting my fingers together and trying to keep my voice calm. “They kept me for a few days while you were in post-op. They asked me a load of questions about Azazel. Then they just let me go. Dropped me on the street, actually. I’ve been in a rental ever since.”

  “Why on earth did you call them, Milja?”

  “Come on. I didn’t have much choice!” I thought of the broken hillside, and his gray unconscious face. I felt again the emptiness of abandonment—not just Azazel turning his back, but even Michael and Raphael leaving us to our fate. “I had to get you into hospital. You wouldn’t have lived otherwise.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “No.” After all I’d been through, that particular interrogation had been laughably restrained and civilized. Threats, shouting, hours of solitary confinement without food or toilet facilities—and more hours of theological barracking. But no actual violence. And I’d revealed nothing they didn’t already know.

  “Good. I told them that you were no longer the Fallen’s mistress.” Egan’s gaze kept sliding off my face. “I explained that you weren’t of use to them anymore. So there’s nothing to fear now.”

  That hurt. It shouldn’t have—I should have been relieved to be of no more interest to the Vatican, given its previous horrific plans for me. But the reason they didn’t care about me now was because Azazel didn’t. I was nothing but trash in anyone’s eyes these days.

  I bit the inside of my lip. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here,” I said softly. “I tried, but they wouldn’t let me in here to see you.”

  “How’d you persuade the sister this time?”

  “She’s got a real horror of cockroaches.” I wet my lips and confessed, “I’ve been torturing her with nightmares for weeks.”

  Egan screwed his eyes shut for a moment, then just looked bleakly past my head. I wanted so badly to reach out and touch him. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and kiss his face.

  “I tried to talk to you in my dreams,” I said, feeling shy. “But you wouldn’t come to me, and I couldn’t get close enough to see you. I could go all over the hospice here, but when I got to your door, you always pushed it shut in my face.”

  “You keep the feck out of my dreams!” he snapped. Then as I jerked to my feet he slumped back hard against his stacked pillows, panting with distress. “I’m sorry!” he rasped. “Ah shite, Milja, that was brutal—I am sorry. Please.” His eyes met mine properly for the first time. “Forgive me, please.”

  My heart was pounding so hard I felt sick. “Of course,” I said, my voice shaking. “Remember when I got all pissy with you because you wouldn’t put out? We’re even now, aren’t we?”

  He laughed once, in shock. “Oh Christ.”

  I couldn’t bear it—to see him sitting there, drunk and sweating with fear. “Egan, what on earth’s wrong?”

  He just rubbed his hands over his face as if trying to wake up. “I need to get out of here.”

  “Well…”

  “You have to get me out of this place now. I have talked and talked to the ones that Vidimus sent, but they’re not listening to me. I have been compromised by my actions—” The word sounded so ugly on his tongue “—and it seems I’m no longer considered loyal to the organization. I need to speak to Father Giuseppe in person. They’ve taken my bloody phone. They’ve locked me in and I can’t walk. I need you to help me into that wheelchair there and get me the hell out of here. Now.”

  “Wher
e to?”

  “Rome.”

  “What?”

  “Okay, back to Minot anyway. I can catch a plane from there. If we’re going to do this we need Vidimus onside. It’s not a solo job.”

  “Do what?”

  “Negotiate. That’s what you wanted, isn’t it?”

  Negotiate peace with the Fallen Angels. I had given up on that idea so profoundly that I’d all but forgotten it. I was no longer privy to Azazel’s plans, after all. I was no longer part of his life. How could I be involved in negotiations with someone who despised me—someone whom I’d already betrayed?

  My heart felt like it was withering inside my chest.

  “Egan, you can’t travel like this. You’ve got to heal first.”

  “Sure, I’ll be fine.”

  “They can’t even let you on a plane, can they? I mean, we can’t risk your knees getting twisted out of true. All the pins and plates…”

  He clenched his fists. “My legs are okay.”

  “You need bedrest! Unless you want me to…you know.” To heal you. Which would mean sex.

  “No!” he growled, and before I could think how hurtful that was, he rushed on; “They’re fecking okay.” His lips writhed back from his teeth. “If I wasn’t covered in plaster I could walk out of here. I just need a saw to cut myself out.” His eyes were blue, bloodshot points of desperation. “She fixed me.”

  She? Penemuel? “No, she didn’t, I saw…”

  “She came back.”