Cover Him with Darkness (33 page)

“Milja?” His voice was not human.

“Don't give up,” I sobbed, as I pushed myself to my feet on the shaking ground and cast about me. My unbroken hand was stinging from Azazel's touch. I saw the claw hammer that Father Ilija had dropped when he died; the wooden handle was scorched but intact. Grabbing it up, I lurched into position at Azazel's back. His knitted jumper was melting onto his skin in crispy black holes. The head of the nail stood out between his shoulder blades.

“Milja!”

It was Egan's voice, wild and despairing. I looked across the courtyard, through the rain of ash and dust. Blood was pooling about his feet, unnoticed; his hands were at his sides—but he still had the gun in one of them. He looked as pale as a corpse.

He shot Ratko. Dear God, he just killed a man and now he will shoot me, to save the world.

“Milja, don't do it! Walk away from him! It's finished!”

My face was all twisted up with hurt. I shook my head. And I waited for him to lift the weapon and point it at me.

Egan stood motionless in the midst of chaos, his eyes imploring. Then, with a sag of his shoulders, he hefted the gun, and my heart caught in my throat.

He snapped the safety on and cast the weapon away. The expression on his face as he looked away from me was all but unbearable.

My eyes burned. But I could waste no more time. I hooked the claw of the hammer under the roughly beaten T-bar of the Roman nail, and I stomped a foot down on Azazel's back, and using my broken hand and my
burnt hand and all the strength of my body, I hauled as hard as I could.

It was agony. It seemed to go on forever, but maybe it was swift and smooth as far as anyone watching was concerned: time seemed to be stretching around me. Every heartbeat was a distinct thud in my breast. Heat flared up through the sole of my foot. I felt the square-shafted nail grate against bone as it slid free, inch by resentful inch: a length of forged iron as long as my forearm, crimson with the blood of angels.

Azazel screamed.

The nail swung loose and fell to the floor. I sat down hard as my legs gave way, and slumped forward, trying to see his face.

He twisted round, his hellfire eyes seeking mine.

“Azazel,” I told him, “I love you. I've loved you all my life. Get up and fight.” Scrabbling forward gracelessly, I pressed my lips to his.

They burned.

They burned my breath away.

I felt the air being sucked from my lungs. I felt the strength being sucked from my bones and the light from my eyes. I fell backward on the stone as the shouting and the growl of the earthquake grew faint and muffled in my ears. I saw ash hanging in midair and men standing open-mouthed, caught motionless in time just like the people in the hospital corridor, a lifetime ago. It made them look like they were singing. Maybe some of them were.

The back of my head bounced off the floor. I hardly felt it.

With his free hand, Azazel got a grip on the Holy Nail through the other palm. He pulled. I saw the sinews cord in his forearm. I saw the nail, which had somehow been driven right into the stonework itself, resist.

But Azazel was strong now. Azazel was burning. He let go of the iron and hooked one set of fingers around the other, and he pulled. If the metal would not yield, then flesh and bone would. Raging, he pulled his trapped hand upward, and pulled the broad T-head right through it.

I saw the bloodied head of the nail reappear beneath his torn palm. It must have made a hole as big as a dollar.

I smiled.

Darkness was closing in on me.
I'm passing out
, I thought, immensely relieved.

***

The next thing I knew there were arms around me, pulling me up into a close embrace.

“Milja?”

Azazel?

I opened my eyes—but it was Egan who cradled me to his chest. I was glad to see him unhurt. The ground was no longer shaking, but the world was red and dark and the stench of burning meat was horrible. I coughed, but there was no air to draw into my lungs, just smoke.

“Jesus Christ,” said Egan in a hoarse voice, looking over my head. “He's killing them all.”

I managed a turn of my head, a half glimpse. Egan wasn't lying. I didn't want to see more, so I shut my eyes. In my private darkness it took me a moment to work out what was going on, as Egan scooped me up with one arm beneath my knees and lurched to his feet.

“No,” I said, but I didn't even know if it was loud enough for him to hear over my coughing. He carried me though the smoke and the screams. “No,” I repeated as we reached a door in the cloister wall, and he put my feet down so he could wrestle the latch one handed. I started to struggle, pulling out of his arm. “I want to stay with him.”

“Not right now you don't,” he said, pushing me against the stone. “He's going crazy, Milja. Sure, let's get at least one door between us and the carnage?”

I didn't argue with that. The stinking smoke seemed to close my throat. I let Egan bundle me through the doorway into the staircase beyond. He hooked an arm round my ribs and supported me as we staggered down the flight. Now we were out of the melee, I could hear that my ears were still ringing from the gunshots. Broken stonework littered the steps. When we reached the first door—it looked vaguely familiar and I guessed we were retracing our route up to the courtyard—the collapsed lintel stone had wedged the oak shut.

“We should get outside,” I said. “This building isn't safe.” Talking hurt: my throat felt raw and when I put my fingertips to my mouth I could feel my lips were puffy with blisters. The hand with the broken pinkie finger felt like a balloon full of hot water.

He burnt me. He burnt me but he got free and now he's taking his
revenge. He could have run. He could have taken me and run, but he'd rather kill.

My stomach roiled.

“Not that way, though.”

We plunged on down the stairs, took the next door and found ourselves in the high corridor of many windows.

This was where I tried to kill myself.

Egan pressed onward, pulling me.

“Where are we going?” I asked, as my brain caught up with the situation.

“Anywhere safer than this. Your man's got a bit of a temper, you notice.”

“Says
you
?”

“What does that mean?”

“
Ratko?
” I was still in shock. I mean, you'd expect stuff from a fallen angel, but…not from an ordinary guy. This couldn't be normal, could it? I mean, there've been plenty of unsavory stories about the Catholic Church over the last few years, but since when have they been employing stone cold hit men?

“He put a gun to you,” Egan said grimly. “Not acceptable.”

I stumbled and he pulled me closer, not slackening his pace.

“Stop.” I dug my heels in, bringing us to a halt. “I'm not leaving with you. I'm not going anywhere you want to take me.”

Egan turned to face me, running one hand across his head. His hair was stiff with sweat and plaster dust. “I'm not…taking you,” he said, hoarse with exhaustion. “Forget that. Forget Rome. I just want to see you safe.”

“Please,” said another voice querulously. “Please don't leave.”

We looked back down the corridor to the door we'd just come through. Father Velimir stood there. He was holding a gun—
the
gun maybe; I'd seen Egan cast it aside. The old priest didn't look comfortable with it: his hands shook as he raised the muzzle and pointed it straight at me.

And then Egan rammed into me, knocking me against the wall. The gun barked. Egan fell.

Father Velimir had the grace to look shocked at what he'd done. He even paused to cross himself. And when Azazel's hands appeared from the
darkness behind him, descending upon his shoulders to lift him from his feet, Father Velimir's expression remained appropriate.

Even as he burned.

The gun broke from his ashy fingers and smacked to the ground. Black cinders kissed the stones, smoking.

Azazel stepped into the corridor, dusting off his hands, and smiled with dark satisfaction.

I couldn't look at him. I looked down instead. Egan sprawled across the floor at my feet, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling. There was a red hole in his chest, just right of his breastbone.

“Egan?” I dropped to my knees.

Blood was bubbling out of his mouth. He was trying to breathe, and not succeeding. The hole in his chest was making a wet sucking noise instead.

“Egan!” I didn't know what to do. I grabbed his face between my hands, babbling in my panic. His pupils had contracted to pinpoints. “Egan! Don't! Stop it! Stop it!” Like it was his fault. “You can't do that!”

Can't die.

Can't step in front of the bullet meant for me.

It makes no sense. We are on different sides here.

“Milja.” Azazel stood over us, stinking of smoke, looming like a pillar of fire and shadow. “Is this the one you wanted me to save?”

He doesn't know. He doesn't know what Egan meant to do to me. He doesn't know Egan was working to entrap him. That the Holy Nails were his plan. Azazel doesn't know.

I nodded.

With a flick of his fingers, Azazel motioned me aside and hunkered down over Egan's supine form. I crawled backward, out of his way, shaking. Egan looked up into Azazel's face. There was no expression on either one of them that I could read. Azazel put his hand on Egan's chest.

“Be healed,” he said.

There was a smell of frankincense.

I flinched as Egan convulsed and began to cough—great racking coughs that spat a spray of blood. His back arched, and then he rolled onto his side, and then with one final gory eructation a metallic blob shot out of his mouth.

A hand slipped around my throat, gentle as feathers.

Azazel nodded, seeming pleased with his work, as Egan, gasping, groped for the tiny object he'd just coughed up, and held it before his streaming eyes.

The bullet.

“You are whole again,” Azazel said. “Everyone else here, all your enemies, they are dead now. You are safe.”

Egan blinked hard, trying to focus on the angel squatting over him. I've no idea what he was feeling. Relief? Gratitude? Resentment? I'm pretty sure fear was in the mix. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he nodded without speaking.

“So,” said Azazel, standing. “I leave you to sort out the fine detail. We are going.”

“No,” said Uriel. “You're not.”

Azazel looked up to see me staring at him mutely, clasped from behind in Uriel's arms, the archangel's hand round my throat. I saw the satisfaction melt from Azazel's face, leaving a cold darkness behind.

“Let her go,” he whispered.

Egan grasped the new situation and began to shuffle backward across the floor, out of the firing line.

“An interesting standoff, isn't it?” said Uriel. He was holding me with my back to his chest and my carotid artery under his hand, without any roughness or cruelty, but with absolute control.

Azazel clenched and unclenched his hands, slowly. I expected him to blaze up—but he'd gone dark and still instead. “No,” he said. “You have already lost this battle, Uriel. And you know it.”

“I have your lover.”

“What good does that do you?”

“You want her. You need her. You will do just as I command, to keep her safe.”

Azazel shook his head. I could feel the hair stirring all over my scalp as an electric charge swept the room.

“Take her from me, and I will hunt you down. I swear this, Light-bringer. I will hunt you down, if I have to burn Heaven to ashes to do it.”

“I'd like to see you try.”

“I will find you and tear you into pieces—and I will
eat
each bloody shred. I will devour you, Uriel. No one will recall your beauty or your grace: you will be only a noisome thing lodged in my bowels, forever. But you will keep me fed, so that I won't even need her. Is that how you want to spend eternity?”

“Big words, from the last rebel left standing against the Heavenly Host,” Uriel said, but I was close enough to him to feel the quiver of his breath as he spoke.

Azazel snorted. “You have no host. If you were able to call upon backup, you'd have done it long before now—and not had to rely on some mob of witless humans.” He shook his head, a sneer twisting his lips. “You've finally dicked them all off, haven't you, Satan? Not one of them's prepared to help you out, are they? Not Raphael. Not even Gabriel.”

“Satan?” I squeaked through my constricted throat. I was so shocked I forgot to keep quiet. “Uriel—Satan?”

Azazel frowned, distracted. “I already told you,” he growled. “The Archangel Uriel—the
Adversary
. Satan.”