The Prison of the Angels Read online

  Then Azazel took Raphael’s free hand and drew it to my right breast. He laid Gabriel’s on my left, and I shut my eyes. I couldn’t bear to watch, and the archangels were too bright.

  They didn’t even feel like hands. They felt like cold, liquid light running into my nipples and filling me up—Gabriel old and ruddy gold, Raphael a pale and icy blue, like glaciers and sapphires—until it met the red of Michael above and the bronze of Penemuel billowing at the base of my spine. I felt like I was on fire from head to toe. In fact, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath my toes anymore; between them they were lifting me clear of the earth. Even with my eyes shut I could see them towering over me, glowing through my eyelids, and I knew that if I dared open them it would burn out my sight. Only Azazel was dark—so dark that he was outlined against all that light like a demon of night.

  He kissed my lips and then shredded the poor tight ski-pants and whatever I wore beneath them with a brush of his fingers.

  A hard human hand grabbed my right ankle.

  “Uriel,” said Azazel, and I moaned ineffectively through my constricted throat.

  Uriel shone a deep midnight blue when he touched me. Blue of the sea, and of summer evenings, blue of lapis lazuli, blue of Heaven. His palm slid over my stomach, reaching down beneath my navel to finger the exact line where, on him, I’d effected the impromptu C-section. I wanted to cry out in terror, but there was not enough breath, or terror, left in me. I was stretched, racked and crucified. I was overwhelmed with a helplessness indistinguishable from bliss.

  I could feel their light filling me up—red, gold, bronze, aquamarine, blue, black. The colors mingled in swirling coils, tangling about the emerald-green ache at the base of my belly. They made my skin fizz and tingle, they flooded my muscles and stretched my spine. I knew I was about to fly apart in a haze of light, cell sundered from cell, DNA unraveling like ribbons, transfigured beyond mere flesh. The only thing still anchoring me to matter was that tight grip around my dangling ankle.

  “Open your legs,” Azazel commanded, and I obeyed. I felt his hand snake into my hot wet ache, and I felt the grateful need kick through me. He was darkness and light, obsidian and mercury. He was stars in a universe of emptiness. “We have you,” he said, hot in my ear. “I have you. Surrender to me,” he told me as his fingers found my weakness. “Open up, my love.”

  And I couldn’t resist any more. I opened, gave him everything he wanted, everything I had, crying out as the fire and the light rushed through me, mingling, creating a blinding white dazzle. And as I surrendered, and opened, and came, Samyaza slithered out of me in a great wet rush.

  I assume they caught him. I didn’t know at the time; I was blind and ecstatic—and suddenly falling out of the sky.

  I landed on Egan, crashing into his embrace. He caught me tight and staggered as the ground shook beneath his feet. Stones roared and cried out as they fell around us. The walls were falling. The floor beneath us was falling. I wrapped my thighs about Egan’s waist and clung with all my strength, burying my face in his neck, cradling the back of his head in my hands because that was the only protection I could give. But I felt him go down on his ass and back, the shock jarring through us both, and then we were sliding down the pitched boards and there was a hot pain in my knees and I think we both cried out in terror.

  Then suddenly it was quiet again, except for the rattle and crack of the last lumps of falling mortar. Egan was lying supine, though not horizontal, and I was on top of him, still clinging like a child. I could feel his ribs heaving for breath beneath me.

  I could feel my skinned knees stinging, and bruises down my back where I’d been struck by small stones.

  Slowly I lifted my head and blinked my eyes open.

  We’d fallen into the Colosseum’s sub-basement, down among the weeds of the gladiator cells. The modern flooring had collapsed, and now he was lying against a tilted board, half-propped on a low foundation wall. I pushed myself up on my arms to sweep a swift look around; I saw no angels, no stars, just the walls of the vast amphitheater looking a lot lower and more collapsed than they had done when we arrived. And through the haze of dust a pale blue winter sky above, devoid of any clouds.

  We were alone.

  “That’s it,” said Egan, still panting. “I quit. I’ve done my bit saving the world.”

  I looked down into his face. It was all filthy with dust, but slowly relaxing. His eyes looked very blue, here in the outdoors light.

  “You alright?” he asked.

  I nodded. “What happened? Where did they go?”

  “Sure, I’ve no idea. I had my eyes shut at the end there. I like my eyes.”

  I liked his eyes too, I thought, and I brushed fingers across his face, gently flicking away the crumbs of dirt. “I love you, Egan Kansky.”

  He tried to smile at me, lop-sidedly. “They crowded in around you and lifted you up,” he added. “I got scared they were going to carry you away so I grabbed your foot. That’s the last thing I’m clear on.”

  I could hear noises beyond the walls. Traffic hum. “Are you hurt?” I asked, though from the way his hands had settled on my waist and his gaze was drifting down to my bare breasts I didn’t think there could be anything too serious. It dawned on me that I was straddling him, naked, on that tilted slab…just as I’d once climbed up beside a bound Azazel years ago, under the mountain. My body reacted to that recognition with a great Oh…

  “Just sore.”

  “Where?” There was still that gash on his scalp, but it had clotted under the dust.

  “Everywhere.”

  “Hmph.” I lifted my hips so that I could delve down to his crotch, tugging at his zipper, sliding my fingers in. “Even here?”

  Egan’s eyes widened. “Aaah!”

  “What?”

  “Seriously?”

  Yeah, seriously. I was still burning from what the angels had done to me, slippery with need, and he was lying there all hurt and handsome beneath me, between my open thighs—and oh God I wanted him. My fingers sprang buttons. “What?” I grunted, finding what I was seeking. “This doesn’t look too hurt to me. Bit swollen, maybe.”

  He grinned, incredulous and maybe a touch nervous. “Milja,” he said, dust rasping in his throat.

  “Shush,” I admonished, and felt him surge and thicken in my hand. I bent forward and kissed his dry lips. “Quiet now.”

  “Oh,” he groaned, and as I wriggled down to sheathe him in my hot, wet grip his eyes rolled back and he thrust his hips, pushing up and pulling me down. “Mn. Oh feck.”

  It was primal and instinctive; we’d come so close to death and now, like soldiers reprieved from the front line, we grasped wildly at life. I could feel him inside me. I could feel the rising plume of his lust as clearly as I could feel my own, and the thrill of his pleasure too as I gripped him tight. His hands slid up to grope my breasts, but I didn’t want that, not this time. I caught his wrists instead and pushed them back, pinning them next to his shoulders with my body weight. He could have freed himself in a second if he’d wanted—I’m really not that heavy and he’s a strong guy—but he made a strange noise deep in his chest and I felt the heat run through him from shoulders to balls.

  This was something I could never do with Azazel. I’d tried once and it had been disastrous. But Egan took it. If he hadn’t looked so shocked and conflicted you might almost think that he welcomed it.

  I stooped to bite his lips and he groaned into my mouth.

  You, I thought, moving on top of him; I want you like this. I want you helpless. I want you my prisoner, trapped by your ferocious need and your hard cock and how terrifyingly close you are to spilling inside me. I want to make you come. I want to see it in your eyes, Egan. That fear. That loss of control. That surrender.

  “Milja,” he gasped, his legs stiff, thrusting up to meet me with every stroke, deep and deeper. “I’m…going…to…”

  Oh he’s so hard, so good—

  “I know.” Because this is h
onesty, Egan. I want to break you; that is the truth. When you break there are no lies, no walls, no holding back between us.

  Just my desire and his, burning as a single flame. The irreducible reality of his lust. Half animal, half fallen angel; all human.

  And his need to find relief now, here, in me.

  I felt it, the clench and the spasm and the shift at his very root. His last thrusts as he unloaded felt like they would spear me through the heart—and then the fire of Heaven ignited and engulfed me, and we burned together.

  I think I was a bit loud, but who was there to hear?

  I fell on to him as the strength left my arms. He caught me just as he had caught me when I slipped from Azazel’s grasp, and held me in his embrace. His heart beat with thunderous appreciation in my ear. After a while I slipped from on top and slid down into the clasp of his right arm so that we could both catch our breath. He stared wide-eyed at the sky, and I watched his face, thinking I’d never tire of his wrecked smile.

  His cuts had healed up, though his hair was still a mess of blood. Still a witch, Milja, I thought. Good.

  “Do you think the world’s still about to end?” he wondered hoarsely.

  “I dunno.” I tried to moisten my parched throat. “But I think I can die happy right now.”

  “Huh,” he laughed.

  “No, hold on,” I amended. “I really need a drink first. One of those ones with the mint and ice in. Can’t remember what they’re called. My brain’s fried.”

  “A mojito?”

  “That’s the one. What about you?”

  I meant, What drink would you choose?

  “Oh, not until I’ve taught our kids to ski.”

  It took me a moment to catch up.

  Epilogue

  AND THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

  I stood in the long grass above the beach on Achill, and watched Egan and Azazel walking along the sand. They had been talking for over an hour now, pacing up and down the shore; I could see several lines of their footprints just above the lip of the water. I’d got too anxious waiting for them and come out to see if there’d been a fight, but it looked reassuringly calm down there. Even the sea was flat, almost glassy, though I suspected that was not natural. Up here among the long grasses it was a bright March day. Someone optimistic had planted clumps of daffodils along the roadside, and their yellow heads were swinging low in the breeze.

  I still didn’t feel the chill, but I’d put on a jacket and boots along with my woolen dress, in deference to the season and any of the village neighbors who might spot me.

  It was easy to tell the two apart, even at this distance; Egan wore blue jeans and walked with his shoulders squared defensively, his hands jammed into the pockets of his jacket. Azazel, back in black pants and white shirt and clearly the taller figure, gestured expansively as he strolled.

  We’d spent three months freeing the Watchers, one by one. One hundred and ninety-seven prison cells, from Kilauea on Hawaii to Wayland’s Smithy in England, from Timbuktu in Mali to Mount Tsurugi in Japan—and eighty-one had still held living Watchers. Raphael had dealt with the human guardians, employing various degrees of diplomacy; Uriel opened the seals; Egan and I descended to cut the prisoners free; Azazel and Penemuel took them away…well, somewhere else. It had been grim work. Some of the Watchers had been cogent and grateful, but some were raving and many catatonic. The worst, as far as I was concerned, had been those who shrank in terror from the light and tried, weeping, to crawl back into the safe darkness of their tombs.

  For those three months, Azazel had seemed preoccupied and somber. He’d made no attempt to get into my pants, which had left me teetering with uncertainty even though I knew it was a condition of the new Covenant that the angelic powers had forged. Instead Egan had taken me to his bed every night and we’d made mundane, wonderful, human love, the type with false starts and ‘Ow!’s and giggling. And some nights we’d just curled up together and he’d held me as I shook, which was the nearest I could get to crying over all we’d seen and done, and I mourned the mother I’d rejected and the fathers—both earthly and Heavenly—that I’d lost.

  I’d discovered the ordinary yet world-shaking grace of waking up next to one I loved. Of feeling him next to me; that unconscious, instinctive reach of his hand under the sheet and the caress of his deep, sleeping breaths on my shoulder. Azazel had never slept with me, after all. Thinking about it, I doubted that he could sleep.

  Despite all our frenetic activity, it had felt for those three months as if we were waiting; balanced on the cusp between regimes. But it was over now. We’d freed them all, as Azazel had sworn. And the world… Well, it was not back to normal. It couldn’t be, after the international crisis and all those deaths. But it was carrying on. We humans are adaptable.

  The official explanation had settled on ‘an unprecedented cosmological phenomenon’.

  I pushed the hair back from my face, reaching a decision to go down to the beach and join the guys. I couldn’t remain on tenterhooks any longer.

  “You have to say goodbye to the Scapegoat today.”

  I turned. Penemuel and Uriel stood behind me on the grass, looking as inhumanly glamorous as ever. Uriel wore a cool half-smile and an embroidered gray silk coat that would not have shamed a French aristocrat at the court of the Sun King. It was Penemuel who had spoken.

  “Tell him I will come to him at sunset,” she continued. “We will leave together.”

  I didn’t know how I felt about Penemuel. No—scratch that. I felt grateful for all she had done, and grateful that she was going away.

  “Okay,” I said, the air emptying out of my lungs. Though of course it was not okay. I didn’t know what would happen when Azazel went into exile—except that I would not see him again. Not in the flesh. Not with these waking eyes. “Have you found somewhere he’ll like?”

  “I think he’ll love it,” she said with a wicked smile. “And if he doesn’t, there are always others.”

  I looked at Uriel. “What about you?” I wondered.

  He shrugged elegantly. “Where she goes, I go.”

  Wow. I had to take a moment to clear my throat. “Won’t… I mean, you’re quitting? I thought you were Loyal.”

  “I’m strongly inclined to obedience, by nature.” He spoke with consummate dignity. “I like a clear set of rules to live by. A chain of command. When such is no longer afforded in Heaven…” His glance flicked to Penemuel. “I must look elsewhere.”

  “But The Adversary can’t just disappear, can he? Won’t the Host ask questions?”

  “They were not created to ask questions, nor to think for themselves.” A smile lurked around Penemuel’s lovely lips. “That seems to be a tendency we pick up from your species, on the whole.”

  I folded my arms across my chest, because I wanted to slap them both. After all the grief Uriel had given me… “I just can’t believe you,” I told him ruefully. “Really? You’re happy with how it’s all worked out?”

  He grimaced, somehow managing to make even that look gracious. “I think the Cockroach Option had a lot going for it,” he said, “but I was outvoted.”

  The daffodils danced around the hem of his coat. I struggled to keep my face straight.

  “I’m going to miss you, Uriel,” I said, and despite my sarcasm it was weirdly, uncomfortably true. “You’re such a ray of sunshine.”

  He actually blushed. “I will miss you too, Milja Petak,” he said stiffly. “You were not as pathetically predictable as I first thought.” With a nod, he stepped backward into the spring air and vanished.

  I caught myself smiling, but too late to hide it from Penemuel, who smirked and said, “He’s sweet, isn’t he?”

  “If you say so.”

  “What about your two?” She looked down at the beach. “Did you ever decide?”

  “No.” Part of me wanted to curl up somewhere dark.

  Her expression turned serious.

  “I can’t decide.” I spread my hands. �
�I don’t have the right to decide anything anymore. It was my decision to free him that led to…all of this.”

  She frowned. “Didn’t it work out? You saved him. You saved us.”

  “Have you been watching the death-toll on the news?”

  “Humans die, Milja. All of them, sooner or later.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Listen.” She cupped her beautiful hands as if shaping chalices from the air. “Do you think I’ve never had to struggle with a hard choice? I decided to Fall, remember. Three things you must weigh every time you choose. You can obey the laws and commandments. You can try to discern the consequences for the future.” She pointed between my breasts. “Or you can follow your inner voice.”

  Faith; Hope; Love, I thought.

  “Yet all three are so heavy that it takes both hands to hold any one—so no matter how often you weigh them you can never be sure which is greatest. No one can. You listened to your heart, Milja. Maybe you now think it the wrong choice. But it is done, and it is too late to change anything now.”

  My stomach clenched. “But you see,” I said hoarsely, “I have thought about it. And if you could somehow take me back now, to the cave where he was imprisoned—if you gave me the choice all over again, knowing what I know now, everything that would happen—”

  “I can’t.”

  “I would still do it.” My voice was rusty with the words I’d sealed away. “I would. All those people…” I took a deep breath. “Including my own father.”

  She bit her lip.

  I spread my hands, longing for her to drive nails through them, longing for cleansing heavenly wrath. “I would. You know I can’t tell Egan that. It’s indefensible. There’s no possible moral scale on which that works. I’m not good, Penemuel. I’m not a good person.” I swallowed hard, tasting blood.