Cover Him with Darkness (30 page)

Egan blinked, and swallowed, and did not answer.

“I thought you were my friend,” I said. It was the cruelest reproach I could think of. “I really liked you.”

I had the satisfaction of seeing him wince, no more than a tic around the eyes.

“Milja,” he croaked, “we have to get him, the Fallen, recaptured. The priests here are right about that. You've no idea how dangerous he—”

“No!” I rasped. If he'd been within reach I would have hit him. “Don't you dare say that! I know him better than any of you—don't you tell me what he is!”

“He's a creature of darkness,” Egan soldiered on grimly. “Great evil, and immeasurable power. Don't be fooled by the way he looks. He has to be taken down. We are not meant to share the Earth with that kind.”

“Can you hear yourself, Egan?” I was in despair. “Can you hear what you sound like?”

“I know this is hard for you—”

“No. You know squat. You're just so afraid of what you don't control that you'll do anything to crush it, even if means working with Velimir and these bastards. Did you hear what they were planning to do to me?”

“I heard.” He moved in closer, to the edge of the mattress, fists clenched.

“And you're still working with them?”

“Milja, what I am doing right now is keeping us both alive,” he rasped. “You shouldn't have come back for me—”

“You think?”

“It didn't matter that they had me. Now they have you.” He blinked hard. “What choice do I have? I had to give them what I knew. So they're going to do it now. They're going to call him, and bind him. That's what we all want.” His voice became stern. “And you're going to do what they tell you, Milja, because that is the only way they are letting you out of here in one piece. You
have
to cooperate. Do you hear me?”

I shook my head, my face crumpling. “This is wrong!”

“Remember, he is not a human being—not a real one. That's just the way he's chosen to look.”

Oh—that's what my father said, when I was seven, that very first time.

“I don't care!”

“You don't have any choice. Neither of us does. If we don't go along with this then you'll never be allowed to leave this place. Is that what you want?”

Openmouthed, I shook my head.

Egan opened one fist and showed me the familiar handcuff key. “I'm going to let you out now, and take you upstairs. Please, don't do anything rash. They're watching us every step of the way. They're ready for the fight. You have to let this play out, Milja, and give them a chance to fix things the way they were.”

He reached for my bound wrist, and I didn't try to stop him. My own despair was as great as his, and for a moment I even found myself wondering if he was right. Egan's hand slid over mine, wrapping my fingers up in his warm grasp, squeezing tight. The touch of his skin made me want to cry out. He was so close I could feel the heat of his body and smell the laundry powder on his borrowed shirt.

Gently, he fitted the key into the little lock. I swayed, my footing uncertain on the sprung mattress. With a click the steel slid open and fell away. Suddenly he abandoned the handcuff key and reached to touch my hair instead, clasping the back of my head, bending his own so that our foreheads met.

I should have been relieved that I was no longer chained, that they couldn't fry me with the flick of a switch. But the only thing in my mind was Egan, the smell and the feel of him and the promise of his touch. In the middle of all my rage and pain, some part of me wanted him to fix it all—to say the magic words, or to do some unimaginable thing that would change and justify everything. I wanted it all to be revealed as a terrible misunderstanding.

I wanted him to be right.

“Milja, please, don't think about him,” he whispered; “just concentrate on staying safe.” He took my freed hand and pressed it to his breastbone. Under the shirt I could feel the swift hard pounding of his heart. “If you're hurt then it's all for nothing. You should not have come back.”

I couldn't answer. I couldn't think. The scent and the heat and the solidity of him made my head swim. My heart ached, its rhythm matching his.

“I've messed this up so badly. I shouldn't have let…” He cut himself off.

“Let what?” I whispered. His blond scruff was almost a beard now, scratchy against my skin as he pressed his lips to my temple. The hand not occupied holding mine to his chest was tracing the fall of my hair, and his thumb sought the curve of my cheek.

“I'm so sorry, Milja. None of this is fair—and none of it is your fault, I know that. I just wish things could have been different.”

You cannot do this to me,
I thought faintly.
You cannot betray me and ask forgiveness. You can't use me to entrap my lover. You can't be my enemy and my only hope.

But the priests had made a good choice sending Egan in to free me. When he murmured, “Come on,” and he put an arm round my shoulders and drew me toward the cell door, I went docilely. It was a strange thing, maybe, that I would argue and argue with Azazel, but I couldn't bring myself to fight Egan. Or maybe I was just too worn out by that stage.

Outside in the corridor they were waiting for us—many men: priests and monks and laymen in rough clothes. It was hard to imagine why such an entourage was necessary—there were too many for me, I thought, and not enough for Azazel. Three of the burliest priests carried filigreed silver caskets before them with an air of solemnity. The boxes didn't match, though they were roughly of a size—a little over a foot long.

Ratko trained his gun on us the moment I opened the door.

“Ah, Milja,” said Father Velimir, who had reverted to his usual mild, implacable gravity. He even gestured me politely to walk beside him, as if I were some visiting European royal come to look round his monastery. “This way.”

But they put Egan to the front of us in the procession, an armed man at his shoulder. The threat was still there, just unspoken.

Should it still work?
I wondered, as we walked in silence through the halls and passages of the complex. Should I care what happened to Egan now? I'd come back to save him, but he had turned out to be not worth saving. At least, that was how I ought to see it, if only I could be hard-headed and not confused by leftover feelings that refused to go away.

What options were left for me? I'd told Azazel to go away and forget me. That was the only way to be sure of his safety. If I let them use me
in whatever ceremony it was they had planned, would it work? I wasn't cocky enough to think they couldn't make me cooperate—they'd shown every willingness to hurt me. But would Azazel even bother to answer my summons?

And if he did, was there anything the priests could really do to bind him? Egan had promised, but Egan wasn't to be trusted. He'd demonstrated that clearly enough. He had his own masters, his own agenda. Was he lying to the priests now? Was he just playing for time?

Yet despite everything, I couldn't bring myself to want them to hurt Egan, any more than I wanted them to recapture Azazel.

My thoughts went round and round in circles as we climbed stairs and came out, eventually, into a long passageway with shutterless windows to either side. This was a very old bit of the monastery, I realized, glancing at the unplastered stonework and the rough and broken tiles beneath our feet. We were walking the length of a wall. The windows to the right seemed to overlook the main courtyard of the building complex, several stories below. The ones to the left looked out into sunshine and at a rough hillside across a great gap. The ravine was on that side. The ravine and the shallow stony river I could hear very faintly.

Unconsecrated ground.

I thought of the ghost-girl flinging herself from the tower window to escape the unseen soldiers. An act of utter desperation, and yet of courage.

A piebald cat slunk in the angle between floor and wall, beneath the windows, staring up at the procession of priests. It looked at me with green eyes and mewed.

Maybe, I thought, the priests were right. Maybe I was turning into a witch or a siren or whatever it was they called me. Maybe that accounted for the besotted cats and the terrified dogs, for my inability to cry real tears, for the ghosts and the campsite visions and the prophetic dreams—and even the traffic lights changing when we needed them to. Maybe I could do something after all.

Something will happen,
I willed, clenching my jaw.
Something will happen to distract them all. Something, something, yes, it will.

One of the priests at the front of the group stumbled. I didn't see what tripped him—a monastery cat perhaps, or just a broken floor tile catching
his sandal-toe. But he fell, and the heavy silver casket he carried slipped out of his hands and crashed to the ground.

Everyone gasped in horror. For a moment, all eyes were on the fallen man and the box.

That was my moment. As if in a dream, I slipped away from Father Velimir and darted for the window to my left. Everyone else seemed to be moving in slow motion. The crumbling sill was an easy leap and scramble. The late afternoon sun was in my eyes, blinding me.

Whatever happens, Azazel will be free
, I thought.

I jumped out into the empty air, screwing my eyes shut.

“Azazel!” I screamed, as I fell. It was pure terror.

The fall went on and on and on.

Then there was a tearing noise, a wind in my face, and suddenly hands caught me, bruisingly hard. All the air rushed out of my lungs. I fought for breath as the sun dazzled my eyes and I came to terms with the fact I wasn't dead, wasn't falling, wasn't smashed across a rocky hillside. I was held safe in two strong arms, clasped against a hard male body.

My borrowed dress was rucked up to my waist.

“Azazel!” I gasped in relief, lifting my head from his chest as he set my feet down upon solid ground. I didn't care about my bare ass.

But it wasn't Azazel.

It was Uriel.

chapter fourteen

WE HAVE SEEN

I
pushed against his chest, getting to arm's length but no farther: one hand was hard on my shoulder.

My skirt slid down to hide my legs again. I think we were both grateful for that trivial mercy.

“Uh-uh-uh,” the archangel admonished, wagging a finger in front of my nose. “You don't get out of this that easily.”

My mouth hung open. For a moment I had no idea what to say. I looked desperately around me, and then up. The monastery wall towered overhead. We were standing on a tiny lip of ground where cut stone joined to the earth of the cliff face, and a narrow goat path ran along the boundary. To my left, so close that I was practically leaning against it, loomed the ancient ecclesiastical stonework. To my right the ravine fell away in a jumble of savage rocks down to the river. One step separated the two—one step, and Uriel's hand grasping tight my upper arm. My legs folded under me and I staggered—but he held me upright, sighing in exasperation.

“Get a grip on yourself, girl.”

I hung my head and dry-retched. It was the shock—the leap, the survival, the dashing of hope—but Uriel grimaced and spun me to face away from him. “What does the Scapegoat see in you?” he complained.

“What are
you
doing here?” I asked weakly. He was dressed as a priest, and the somber garb suited his refined face very well.

“Making sure that everything goes according to plan.”

“What plan?”

“The only Plan that matters.”

Shouted words tumbled down the wall onto our heads. The priests of my entourage were leaning out of the passage window, staring down at us. I could see Father Velimir's white hair blowing around his head, far overhead.

“She's all right!” Uriel called up. “I caught her!” He shook me slightly to demonstrate that I was still in one piece.

How the hell anyone could believe I'd fallen forty or fifty feet through clear air and been snatched to safety by a random passerby was beyond me, but I guess they accepted the evidence of their own eyes.

More shouting. Arms were waved.

I shut my eyes.

“Walk,” Uriel instructed, with a push that woke me from my stupor. He set me going before him along the goat path, the fingers of one hand resting on my shoulder as we walked, to remind me that there was no escape. The path, hardly wider than our feet, sloped upward. We were heading upriver and up the valley, I realized, toward the back of the monastery and away from the gate and the road. Where the wall kinked there was a tiny sally-port, and I guessed we were aiming for that.

“You want them to recapture Azazel?” I asked.

“Of course. The Divine Order must be restored.”

“It's not going to work.”

“Really?”

“Their plan…whatever it is.”

“Hmph. Don't be too confident. A bunch of pathetic amateurs, relatively speaking, but they somehow seem to be getting their act together now.”