In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2) Read online

  And he is my god.

  Then he is fire in my mouth, in my throat, in my core, and he howls above me and lets go and falls away, flat on his back in the glorious clean sweep of the snow, staring up wide-eyed into the brilliant blue sky.

  The light bursts around us, tearing the breath from my lungs.

  When the hillside blew apart, we were at the epicenter.

  I came back to my waking body coughing and gasping out grit, clinging to Azazel for support. The last aftershocks of my orgasm racked me as my eyes found focus. He stretched slowly and groaned in pain. Standing upright seemed to be the limit of his ability.

  A pall of dust hung over the valley, blanking out the sun. Small chunks of rock—nothing bigger than a fist—were still thunking back to earth. The cave was gone, completely. Pulverized. We were exposed in the open. But when I looked for the trees I saw none standing, not within a hundred yards. We stood on the flat circle that had once been the tomb floor, and though that was untouched, beyond it a huge raw gouge had been taken out of the hillside. There were still roots and stones clinging precariously up there in the distance, or clattering down as they lost the fight with gravity.

  Azazel lifted his head to the glow of the invisible sun and blinked hard. Color was running back into his skin.

  “You okay?” I coughed. My hair was so thick with dirt that it felt like I’d been flour-bombed.

  He nodded, flexing his fingers, every movement clearly costing him. Slowly he groped at the entry wound in his stomach, wincing a little. His attention drifted from his hands to my face and back again like a ghost, not latching on to anything. His eyes were mirror-silver again, deflecting my gaze. But he was alive, and that was half of what we’d come here for.

  Egan. Oh God.

  I looked around our feet. Egan lay further away than I’d been expecting, curled like a leftover bit of cookie dough on a floured board. I nearly fell over in my hurry to reach him.

  “Egan?” The thump of falling stones had ceased, but a susurrus of lighter grit still encompassed us.

  He smiled weakly up at me through the dirt. Blood had made a black crust around his lips. “Don’t worry. She took the hurt away. I’m fine.”

  I looked at his mashed and ruined legs. They were so not fine, and they should still have been hurting. A whole lot. “Where’s Penemuel?” I asked, wanting to demand her aid. “What happened?”

  “She just got up and walked outside. Before…”

  Okay, that sort of made sense—the first thing on Azazel’s mind too, when I freed him from centuries underground, had been to get out into the light. She must be desperate with claustrophobia. Given the explosion, I hoped she’d got a long way off. I grabbed Egan’s hand and he curled his ice-cold fingers in mine.

  “It’s all right,” I muttered. “Just hold on.” I was starting to shake. Can I get Azazel to fix him? Will he—

  “Avansha.” Azazel’s voice wasn’t loud, but it made my blood run cold. My fingers tightened on Egan’s.

  Roshana. I killed her. His little girl.

  “Oh God,” I whispered. I didn’t dare look. I fixed on Egan’s face, stroking his filthy hair back from his forehead.

  Azazel’s voice was stone and darkness. “What happened to her? Did he do this?”

  That made me turn, because he meant Egan. Azazel was kneeling over Roshana’s body.

  “No,” I said, my heart so cold that it could barely squeeze out a beat. I left Egan and stood. Every footfall I took across the waste ground between us rasped loudly in the still air. “Not him.” I watched his shoulders tense as I stood at his side. “Oh shit, I’m so sorry, Azazel.”

  “Who then?” The dust hissed and slithered in circles across the rock.

  There was no way out. He knew already. I could feel the air around me turning cold.

  “It was me.”

  Azazel’s arm shot up and his hand closed around my throat. Tight. “My daughter,” he said through bared teeth. “My only child.”

  I. Can’t. Breathe.

  “Let her go!” came Egan’s weak shout.

  My jaw was held so fiercely and at such an angle that I couldn’t see Azazel’s face, just the hillside above and the trunks of fallen, blasted trees through the thinning pall of dust. I blinked and pawed at his wrist.

  “She was the last I had left—”

  “Veisi was killing you,” Egan yelled. “She was going to drink all your blood and make herself immortal, you stupid fecking gobshite! Put her DOWN!”

  Azazel heard him that time. He sprang to his feet, dragging me closer, staring into my face.

  I saw it. I saw him…understand. A scent, a stain, an imprint on my soul—I don’t know how his vision works or what it is he sees, but he saw then, and I watched the realization dawn in his eyes like ink pouring into water. He looked from me to Egan and back again.

  “You hypocrite,” he breathed incredulously.

  Please, I mouthed, my heart breaking.

  He dropped me like I was a turd. In three strides he was standing over Egan and had hauled him off his feet, both fists bunched in his jacket. He might have been wounded and weakened, but he made Egan look like a broken toy as he shook him. “I’ve had enough of you now,” he said simply.

  “Azazel!”

  “NO!” The command was like the crack of a whip.

  The two of us who were capable of turning our heads did so, and stared.

  Through the haze, from the ramparts of broken trees, Penemuel came striding, an autumnal goddess. She still looked frail, but she had rallied; she had drawn around her a cloak woven of myriad fall leaves, red and ochre and orange; a robe of fire. She was beautiful beyond words and her eyes blazed gold.

  “Do not hurt him, Azazel!” she ordered. “He is mine!”

  Azazel gaped.

  “And we must leave now,” she added urgently, as gilding touched her lashes and her skin. “Michael is coming.”

  “Michael is already here,” said the warrior-saint, stepping out of the air with his rigger boots and his shining crystal sword. At his side appeared the Archangel Raphael; I recognized him from my vision at Burning Man even though he wore his hair a lot shorter these days, only down to his jawline.

  Raphael carried a sword of sapphire ice.

  “Are you ready to fight this time, Azazel?” Michael demanded. “Or is Penemuel to be your champion?”

  I think that, in that first moment, Azazel just went blank in the face of all these conflicting demands. The shock was all just too much for him. Penemuel, thinking faster, took a swift sidestep that put her a little behind the other Watcher. And I don’t blame her; she’d only just tasted freedom. The look of terror and loathing she fixed on Michael and Raphael would have melted glass.

  “We must go,” she muttered, laying a hand on Azazel’s arm.

  “Come on, Scapegoat!” said Michael. “Have you forgotten all your courage?”

  Azazel, to my profound surprise, ignored them both. He swung his attention to Egan, suspended in his fist. “Do you love her?”

  “Yes,” he croaked. No hesitation.

  Oh Egan, you poor sweet fool. The little unclenching of my heart only made the blow that came next worse.

  “Well I cannot, so take her.” Azazel bared his teeth in a snarl more animal than human. “Do what you like with her—I give her to you.”

  No. No…

  He lobbed Egan in my direction, overarm. I even tried to catch him, but only just managed to break his fall before he crashed onto the stone, and I went down too under his weight, cracking my elbow on the hard ground. Egan’s head thudded bruisingly on my breast.

  “Azazel!” I shrieked, but the sound that came from my dry throat was an empty whistle. And they were gone by then anyway, blinking out of the world in a flurry of dead leaves. “Azazel! Please!”

  You can’t, you can’t, please no—don’t leave me!

  Only the two loyal angels remained.

  “Hnh,” Michael said, disappointed. He sho
t me a long dark glance, then bent and picked up Roshana’s limp body in one hand, before tucking her under his arm and turning away.

  “Wait,” I gasped hoarsely. I didn’t have time to worry about Roshana. I gestured down at Egan, who looked gray as slush and really wasn’t moving now. I couldn’t even be sure he was breathing. “He’s one of your warriors. For God’s sake, save him!”

  Michael snorted. “I’ve given up saving your kind.”

  “You came to help him before!” I rasped at his back. “Years back—and he dedicated his life to you!”

  “Michael,” said Raphael reprovingly, the smallest of frowns tucking his brows.

  His brother stopped midstride, then swung around and glared at us all. “Alright.” Stomping across to where he sprawled, he put his heavy boot on Egan’s chest. “For the Nephilim you’ve killed.”

  Egan coughed and took a sudden wheezing breath.

  “Is that it?” I asked. Egan’s legs were still at impossible angles.

  “I stopped the bleeding,” Michael said flatly, and vanished with his prize in a clap of gritty air. Raphael shook his head once and followed his example.

  But that’s not enough, I wanted to wail—only it was already too late.

  I pulled Egan up into my lap, checking his pulse at his throat. When I was sure that it was working, if weak—and that, incidentally, the little puncture wound had healed over—I took some deep breaths and tried to get a grip on my fractured mind.

  There was a lot to think about. Too much. A mountain’s weight of guilt. A tsunami of panic and hurt. My battered body clamored for care as well. But I could perform miracles too; I could hold all those things off while I focused on what had to be done right now.

  “Please, Egan, hold on in there.”

  His eyes stayed shut. If he was conscious of my voice, he didn’t show it.

  I kissed his bloody lips and looked up the slope. It was possible—in fact likely—that there was a vehicle up there, one or more belonging to Roshana and her men. But there was no way I could drag Egan up that far. And he couldn’t walk. Even if he woke up, he couldn’t walk on those legs.

  Maybe he’ll never walk again.

  I could, in theory, try to heal him. What was the point of being a witch if you couldn’t heal the ones you loved? But even if I was prepared to ride roughshod over his consent, I doubted very much that I was capable of getting any response out of him in this condition.

  I could ring the emergency services, but it wasn’t likely that Roshana’s people would co-operate with intruders. In fact I was expecting more of them to turn up sometime. I’d need to find the gun and the spare ammo. We needed to hide.

  I fumbled in his breast pocket and extracted his phone. Thankfully, the device was secured with his thumbprint and not a passcode. I pressed his limp hand into service.

  Good. Bars. Frantically I scrolled down through his contacts list. Please, please.

  He hadn’t listed anything blatantly indiscreet and I didn’t know the names of any of his military friends. But, stifling my despair, I found a Mr. Glassmaker. A long time ago, Azazel had told me that vidimus was a technical term used by the makers of stained glass.

  I hit the green phone icon and listened to the dial tone.

  “Hello, brother,” said a man’s voice. Not an American accent.

  “Hello, Vidimus.” I cleared my throat. “I have Father Egan Kansky here. He’s really badly hurt, and we’re on Nephilim territory.” I looked down into his face, cradled in my lap. “You had better come and get us, straight away.”

  END

  To be continued in

  The Prison of the Angels

  About the Author

  Janine Ashbless has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000. She's also had numerous short stories published by Black Lace, Nexus, Cleis Press, Ravenous Romance, Harlequin Spice, Storm Moon, Xcite, Mischief Books, and Ellora's Cave among others. She is co-editor of the nerd erotica anthology 'Geek Love'.

  Born in Wales, Janine now lives in the North of England with her husband and two rescued greyhounds. She has worked as a cleaner, library assistant, computer programmer, local government tree officer, and - for five years of muddy feet and shouting - as a full-time costumed Viking. Janine loves goatee beards, ancient ruins, minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake and eating it, and holidaying in countries with really bad public sewerage.

  Her work has been described as:

  "Hardcore and literate" (Madeline Moore) and "Vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love." (Portia Da Costa)

  Contact Janine at:

  Janine-Ashbless-author-page-140154696078980

  www.janineashbless.com/

  [email protected]

  Other Sinful Press titles

  PEEPER by SJ Smith

  BY MY CHOICE by Christine Blackthorn

  SHOW ME, SIR by Sonni de Soto

  THE HOUSE OF FOX by SJ Smith

  A VARIETY OF CHAINS by Christine Blackthorn

  For more information about Sinful Press

  please visit

  www.sinfulpress.co.uk