Cover Him with Darkness (26 page)

We drove on, into the mountains. I couldn't see much past my minders and through the tinted glass, but I think we were heading north and then east, toward the Kosovo border—I glimpsed the minarets of more than one mosque before sunset caught us. At different points we drove through lush valleys and past a small lake, but the terrain eventually grew too steep and rocky for anything but shallow, swift-running rivers. The road turned to a track, and by the time we drove over a small bridge at the confluence of two stony streams and stopped, it was all but dark. As I emerged from the minibus I saw tall walls painted white and topped by towers. Mountains loomed around us, blocking out swathes of stars. Picked out by the bus headlamps, over the arched gate, was a painted relief of St. Michael casting down a hairy blue Satan.

A monastery, by the looks of it.

I was feeling quite sick with nervousness now, but I did my best not to show it.

Father Ilija unlocked the studded oak door and pushed it wide, before beckoning me forward. A man at either shoulder kept me on the straight and narrow, and they prodded me to the threshold.

“Go in,” he said—and as I took that final step forward, everyone else took a step back. I paused and looked round at them, catching their dubious stares.

“What? Were you expecting me to burst into flames on holy ground, or something?” The pleasure I took in the situation was entirely out of proportion to the strength of my position. It was clear from their expressions that that was, more or less, what they had been wondering.

Father Ilija scowled. “Stay out of our heads,” he growled, and shoved me hard.

Two tortoiseshell cats ran ahead of us, mewing, as the priests steered me across a dimly lit courtyard and up a flight of stairs. The impression I got of the building, as I was hurried through it, was of bare white walls, plain wood and austerity. And size—the narrow staircases up seemed to go on and on. It was almost a relief to be brought up short in front of a door, and to see Father Ilija knock upon it.

“Enter!”

Finally, I was pushed into the room within. Shelved from floor to ceiling, this was a room of books—but too cluttered and disordered to be a library. A private study, then. Sitting behind a desk that dwarfed him was Father Velimir, with his mild scholarly face and his long white hair. He stood up, pressing his back as if it ached.

I swallowed hard, fighting down the knot in my throat. This small, elderly man had killed my father. Inadvertently, perhaps.

Or perhaps not.

“Milja Petak,” he said gravely. I wondered if they felt that saying my name gave them some sort of power over me. Not that they needed any—the cards were all in their hands.

All but one card, anyway. And I wasn't in any position to rely on Azazel.

But I wasn't going to tell them that.

“Where's Egan?” I repeated. I'm no action hero: I was sweating with fear. It was all I could do to keep my voice steady.

“Your friend is safe, and you will see him soon.”

“You promised me!”

“And I will keep my word. He will be released, all in good time.” He looked me up and down as he emerged from behind his desk, and I returned the favor with perhaps a bit more circumspection. After meeting Azazel and Uriel, there was nothing imposing about Father Velimir. He looked frail and somewhat spindly, except where the round of his belly pushed against his cassock. I used that thought to grab at my courage.

“Then,” I said, “I want proof. I want to see that Egan's still alive and okay. And here. Show me. I want to see him.”

He sighed, his watery eyes fixing on mine. “Very well then. This
way.” He led the way back into the corridor, and a cluster of lesser priests followed on behind me, prodding me between the shoulder blades to make me keep up. We set off again—going down this time, into the bowels of the building.

“Why are you treating me like this?” I asked, lifting my bound wrists as Father Velimir glanced back. “I offered myself in fair exchange. I won't fight.”

“And we should believe the promise of a witch?” he answered. His voice was mild, almost sympathetic, despite the words.

“You people keep calling me that. I don't know what you mean.”

“
And all the others together with them
,” he said, the lift of his chin warning me that he was quoting, “
took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go unto them and defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments
. I have been doing my research, Milja.”

I was pretty sure I recognized the tone of the
Book of Enoch
. “Defiled themselves?” I muttered. “Nice. Really nice. I'm not a witch, Father. I'm just a girl who…” But I ran out of words at that point.

“You are the mistress of the demon Azazel.”

“He's not like you think he is,” I said, but my voice shook and it sounded weak.

“Really?
And the whole Earth had been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin
. The words of God the Father Himself.”

I was beginning to understand the ‘scapegoat' epithet. “The
Book of Enoch
's not even canonical scripture,” I tried. “You can't take it literally, Father.”

“And yet it describes our situation perfectly. Who knew? Who
could
possibly know, Milja, that your family was hiding this terrible thing for centuries? That you were keeping it secret even from the Holy Church itself? Such deception—such hubris. The kind of pride ascribed to Satan himself.”

“That's not fair! My father was doing his duty!”

“His duty by whom? By what authority did he lie and steal and dissemble and stoop to simony? Your family do not even know who set the task upon them! It was not just sin piled upon sin, but a terrible risk.
And now look:
look what you've done
, Milja. Your lust and your weakness have released a scourge upon the world. A supernatural evil such as has not been seen since the days of the Flood.” He shook his head, heavy with sorrow. “One we must fight to contain once more, by any means necessary.”

“I didn't mean to…” I mumbled.

“And yet you must take responsibility. Or else the entire world will pay for your crime. Already your friend Egan has suffered terribly on your behalf.”

He stopped abruptly. We were in a long narrow corridor, illuminated by fluorescent strip lights, that I suspected was underground. There were rows of heavy, ancient doors on either side, suggesting small rooms, and in fact most of them had open panels near the top. Monks' cells, I guessed. Outside one of them a man in civilian clothes sat on a folding chair, reading a newspaper. He shot to his feet as we approached, looking like he was glad to be relieved of his boredom.

“Here he is,” said Father Velimir, signaling to the guard to slide back the viewing panel in the door. By standing on my tiptoes, I could look into the room beyond. I glimpsed a piece of large, static machinery—a boiler or a generator or something—and a single mattress on the floor next to it. Egan sat on the mattress, his head nested against one raised shoulder and eyes closed. It was hard to see the detail, but from the crook and the angle of his arm it looked like he was cuffed to one of the machine's pipes.

Egan
, I moaned silently, my heart pounding. I turned to my captors. “Is he all right? Have you hurt him? Let me in there! I want to see him.”

“And you can. But bear this in mind: we have rigged the metalwork to which he is bound,” Father Velimir said, taking something out of a pocket in his cassock: a small black remote, like a TV controller. He didn't sound like he was issuing a threat; he sounded sad and gentle. “Be very clear about this, Milja. If you should try anything, and in particular if you should call your master, we will run several thousand volts through that pipe and it will kill your friend stone dead.”

“More like crispy fried,” muttered the guard, with a grin. Father Velimir ignored both my appalled look and the man's crassness.

“Do you still want to go in?”

I nodded, wordless with fear and outrage.

“Open it.”

The cell door had a shiny new padlock on the ancient latch. The hinges yielded with a creak. The prisoner's eyes were open by the time I stepped in, and he was rising slowly to his feet. A steel handcuff scraped up a length of pipe. His right wrist was tethered.

“Egan?” I lurched across the room.

“Milja? Why are you here?” His voice was hoarse, his eyes wide. I closed enough to step onto the mattress and lift my bound hands to his face—bruised, haggard, unshaven—and he swept his free arm about me, crushing me to him, pressing his face to my hair. I could hear him panting and I could feel the bang of his heart against his ribs. “Milja, Milja,” he groaned.

“Are you hurt?” I choked. “Are you okay?” He smelled sweaty and sour but I didn't care: just to be in his embrace was a staggering relief. I pushed away enough to look up into his face. “Oh God,” I moaned.

His nose had been broken, and I remembered the blood all over his face, on the boat. The red split mark across the bridge hardly stood out against the rest of the darkening bruises, but I felt cold run into the pit of my stomach.

“What have they done to you?”

“What are you doing here?” he countered, looking beyond me to the doorway. “They caught you too? How?”

“Oh Egan.” My hands slid over his chest, pushing at the edges of his misbuttoned shirt. I could see raw red patches on the upper part of his chest. A glance at the hand cuffed to the pipe showed me that his fingers were roughly bandaged and that he was missing at least two nails: the raw nail beds were bright and glistening. Impulsively, I caught his face as well as I could between my hands and kissed his cracked lips. The arm around me tightened. I could feel his body, hard and urgent and aching for release, against mine.

He groaned, shaking.

And then I realized:
this was what I had dreamed
.

The shock of recognition was enough to push me backward out of his arms. We stared at each other wildly. I could feel the race of my blood, the ache of inextricable pity and lust in me that responded to his duress and his captivity. And I could see him trying to master himself.

“Milja,” he repeated, clearing his throat.

It wasn't precisely the same as my dream, of course. Egan was handcuffed, not chained, and his arms were not spread. He was wearing more clothes. But it was close enough for me—for both of us—to
know
. I saw the shame and the fear stark in his eyes. It nearly wrecked me.

“What have you done to him?” I shouted, turning my back because I could not bear to see the way Egan looked at me, and could not cope with wanting him right now, and did not dare face up to my horrible prescience.

Father Velimir stood in the arch, hands folded.

“What have you done to him, you bastards?” I rasped.

“You seem fond of your accomplice.” He spoke in English for the first time, and I followed his lead.

“He's not my accomplice! He doesn't know anything!”

“So he tells us.”

“None of what I did had anything to do with him—he came along later—he was just trying to be nice to me!”

“How often do men fall into that trap?” Father Velimir said, sighing, but it was definitely not a question. “Your demon master has taught you the arts of seduction. That was his specialty from the beginning, after all.”

I wanted to laugh in his face—me, seductive?—but it just wasn't funny. I held to the important point: “It's not Egan's fault. You have me, like you wanted, so let him go.”

“Or else?”

“Or
else
?” I was starting to panic. “For God's sake! Are you going back on our agreement now? That's not right!”

“A minor sin, some would say, in order to prevent a greater evil. And offhand, I cannot think of a greater evil than Azazel.”

“Then you'd better not screw us about!” I spat.

“Enlightening.” Father Velimir smiled thinly. “I'm not going back on our agreement. I just wanted to see how long it would take you to resort to threats, that's all.”

I opened my mouth—and then shut it again. He had me.

“Look at it from our point of view, Milja,” he said gently, opening his hands. “You're not a stupid young woman. I'm sure you see the logic. If
I let your friend go now, there is nothing to stop you calling your master to take you away again, just like you did on that boat. Or killing us all, at your whim.”

I shook my head, dizzy. “I don't kill people!”

“The boat sank, Milja. Five men drowned. Besides the one with his throat torn open.”

“Oh,” I said, sickened.

“So you see: as long as we need you, we need your ‘friend' Egan. When we have done what we need to do, then he will go free, and no further harm will come to him. Or to you.”

The fear-sweat was gathering in my pores like acid. “How long?”