“And look what wonders you’ve wrought.”
“Look at how many people died.”
He put his lips to my ear for a moment. “Everybody dies,” he whispered, as if it were a secret. “Everybody.”
“But they died under the weapons you made.”
“I showed you the working of metal, that’s all. What you did with it is your own affair.”
“The wars, the massacres…doesn’t it bother you?”
“Why should it?”
“I thought you said we were wonderful?”
He shrugged. “As a species.”
I felt gooseflesh prickle me from head to toe. “And as individuals?”
“Some of you are wonderful. A very few, I’d say.” He put his finger on my breastbone and traced it down the inner curve of my breast, making me shiver. “You, for example.”
The cold thrill of fear he evoked in me focused down from the generalized to the very specific. I knew what he wanted. My voice quivered, as the sensation of his touch trickled all the way down through my belly, and lower still.
“I’m nothing special.” Was I reduced to begging to be overlooked?
“You are now. You’re mine. You are my wife.”
That’s what he said to Father.
“No. I’m not.” It was hard to contradict him, but I forced the words out. My nipples were so stiff from his teasing that they ached.
“What?”
I tried to push his hand away but it didn’t work, so I just kept talking as he picked me up and sat me on the lip of the parapet, spreading my thighs so that he could stand between them, and I felt the canyon of the street yawn open behind me. “I’m not your wife. The human race has moved on a bit since you were last around. Marriage isn’t just a question of grabbing any woman who takes your fancy anymore. Or buying her off her father for a couple of goats.”
That made him chuckle again. “What is it, then?”
“Partnership. Love. Commitment. Free consent. Given under law, which grants equal rights on both sides, without duress. I am not your wife.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “Would you prefer I used another term then? Lover? Paramour? Concubine?” He grinned, almost nose to nose with me. It was hard to see, but I suspected it wasn’t a very pleasant grin. “Pet?”
I swallowed hard. “At least you’re being honest now.”
“Madam, please.” A waiter had appeared at Azazel’s elbow. “You mustn’t sit there. It’s not safe.”
“She sits there because I want her to sit there,” said my companion, not looking at him. “And she is as safe as I choose.” He hooked his hand around the back of my head and took a grip in my hair. Then he pushed me backward, almost to the horizontal, over twenty stories of empty air.
Fear was like a vise; it made me wrap my thighs tight about his hips.
“See?”
I was cradled at the end of his arm by his hard hand and nothing else. My stomach muscles ached. My throat hurt with the effort of my breathing.
It’s all a dream. If I fall, I’ll just wake up.
“Do you trust me, Milja?” he whispered. Then he pulled me back to the upright position again. My heart was pounding like it wanted to break out of my rib cage.
“Sir, sir.” The waiter was wringing his hands. “Please, take a seat at your table. The sommelier is ready to take your order. Anything you require, sir, compliments of the house.”
“Go away,” Azazel growled, and kissed me. My blood was on fire with wild terror and gratitude, and a knowledge of my helplessness that was so dark and primal that it drowned my rage. When his fingers sneaked beneath the tiny skirt of my dress and slid between us, they found me wet with arousal.
I moaned breathily.
“What, Milja?” Azazel whispered, as I wrapped my arms about his neck to stop him flinging me from the heights. “In front of all these people? That’s hardly proper.” His fingertips danced and it felt like it was my soul he was touching.
It’s a dream, I told myself, blocking out the turned heads and round eyes of the diners. Just a dream.
There were no clothes between us, not where it mattered—I guess that was part of the dream too—just the great hot hardness of him pushing against me. I lifted my legs like I was raising a portcullis and he made his entry: all bulk, all slick, all pent breath and biting kisses and shuddering fire.
When he leaned into me it tilted me back over the void. I felt his hands tight on my hips as he uttered a groaning laugh into my mouth. I felt it all—the terror and the vertigo and the surrender and my burning burning need of him. He was slow and then he was strong and then he was moving like a man who could no longer help himself, his muscles locked in a rhythm of intent. All my weight was on his neck, but my arms no longer felt strong enough to hold myself.
If I fall he will not let go, I told myself. He wants me. He won’t let go.
So I let my hands slip, and I fell back, and the whole world swung upside down as my back arched; the skyscrapers plunging like silver spears from heaven and the screams of the diners a pandemonium beneath my feet, and the blare of the gridlocked traffic like the sound of trumpets above.
He did not let go.
He held me in place on the parapet, filling me as my upper body hung upside down over the drop and the blood rushed to my head and the heat broke between my open legs.
He did not let me go, but fell with me, and in falling we burned like lightning.
Orgasm shocked me awake, and for a while I just lay there, washed in the after-quakes and recalling my surroundings.
Egan’s place.
The erotic dream had been so vivid that it was almost a disappointment to find myself back in the strange house in the suburbs. True, the dream had been dirty and upsetting…but it wasn’t the fear that lingered. My body hummed with pleasure and it wanted more.
But though I shut my eyes I was no longer able to fall back into sleep. My mind was too alert now, and the blankets felt too warm. If I didn’t get up soon I’d need to touch myself in order to recapture the escape into sexual bliss.
It was just a dream.
Of course I’d been having nightmares about our prisoner for years. This one was different though: this one I remembered in every detail.
I got up. It was still daylight, and the drinks I’d consumed had completed their journey and were nagging my bladder. I grabbed the toiletries bag from the nightstand. There was a folded bath towel placed on the foot of my bed that hadn’t been there before, and I wondered if it was Dejana who’d come in and left it for me while I slept, or Egan. The latter possibility did not creep me out as much as it should have.
Only then did I notice my discarded clothing, now laundered and pressed and stacked neatly on a chair. I gathered the pile into the crook of my arm, frowning. It was nice to have clean clothes for a change—it was wonderful—but the implications were disconcerting.
I padded out barefoot into the living area, heading for the bathroom. Egan was sitting in an armchair, sipping from a coffee cup and reading the screen of his phone. His mouth fell open as he saw me, then he sprang to his feet and moved to stare out of the window, his turned back like a shield.
I was surprised, and then embarrassed, and then amused. I was so used to wandering around my own apartment in my night-clothes that I hadn’t thought twice. And—I looked down to check—honestly, all I had on display were my legs. The oversized pajama jacket hid everything else. Egan must see as much on any high street in summer, and a whole lot more on any bathing beach.
“Morning,” he said, looking obstinately into the little courtyard.
“Heya,” I answered, warmed by his chivalry. And, if I was honest with myself, still tingling from the effects of my dream. Part of me wouldn’t have minded him turning to look.
Then his choice of word registered.
“Morning?”
“Sure. You slept right through the night.”
“Oh God, no.” Was it the after-effects of the pills th
ey’d plied me with, or just exhaustion?
“It’s all right. It’s Saturday now. I’ll ask Dejana to bring you breakfast.”
He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, not a work jacket, I registered. Saturday, right. I’d lost track of days. “I’d…better go get dressed.”
I hurried into the bathroom—austere and masculine just like the rest of the place—and in less than twenty minutes I was showered and dressed and so grateful for my clean clothes and hair and teeth that I could have kissed someone. I would have lingered, enjoying the hot water…but its touch brought back the sensuality of my dream only too clearly and I could sense the slippery slope beckoning. I turned the dream over in my head as I toweled my damp hair, a little appalled at my exhibitionist sexual submission but trying to be clear-eyed. So, I’d had a dirty dream. Didn’t that happen to everyone, some time or other? It had been Azazel’s dominance that had turned me on—in fact dominance did not begin to describe it. His possession of me, as a man owns an object—and his flagrant demonstration of that ownership. No more furtive sneaking about in shadows; no more secrecy. Public claiming of what he wanted, without shame.
It was just a dream. But I am so worn out by keeping secrets.
Egan was still by the window, but now talking on his cell phone. “I’ll ring you back later,” he said when he saw me. “Coffee, Milja?”
He poured as I nibbled at scrambled eggs and piles of toast. My body still felt like it glowed from within.
“Do you feel like talking?” he asked, sitting down opposite me.
I didn’t know where to start, but I owed him an explanation. So I told him…some of the truth. I told him my father had suffered a cardiac arrest. I told him that Father had for years been selling off the forgotten antiquities stashed in his church—“Not for money, not for himself, he never used a penny—I swear it. He used it to get me to America and pay for a good college. He was just trying to look after me. I was his only child and he was afraid of what would happen if I stayed in the village”—and then I told him about the incident in the park. “I screwed that up. I just needed the money to pay the hospital fees, but the Church…the Church had noticed this stuff turning up on the black market and the dealer betrayed us. And they followed me back to the hospital. They must have, somehow. They found Father.”
“You’re saying they killed him?”
“No.” I sank my head in my hands. “But it wouldn’t have taken much, just the shock of seeing them there, of being accused. Father was so frail. They wouldn’t harm him deliberately, no, of course not.”
And I hope to God that’s true.
“That’s awful, Milja. I am sorry.”
“Vera and Josif blame me. And they’re right, but it wasn’t deliberate. I wouldn’t hurt my father!”
No, but I disobeyed him and betrayed his trust and he died thinking me a demon’s slut. No: not just thinking—knowing.
“Of course not.” Egan squeezed my hand. “They will realize that, when they get over the first shock of their loss. They won’t blame you.”
“That’s not true. You don’t understand.” I bit my lip, unable to say more, and finished weakly: “You don’t understand this country. This isn’t America. They won’t forgive me.”
“Can’t you talk to your cousin?”
I shook my head. “I just want to go back home to Boston.”
“To be sure. Well, how about I go see Vera for you, and maybe pass on the money for the hospital fees, and ask her for your passport back?”
“No.” My response was swift and vehement. “You mustn’t go near her! If she sees you she’ll remember you from the plane, and she knows your name and she’ll be able to find us.”
Egan frowned. “Are they Mafia or something?”
“No.” The word was out a split second before I thought Damn, that would have made a good excuse, why didn’t I say yes? I looked down at the table between us, groping for explanations that weren’t actually lies. I didn’t want to lie to Egan. “The Church wants their stuff back,” I mumbled. “But it’s too late.”
“Ah now, you’re saying you think the Church is after you?” There was an odd tone in Egan’s voice. I was examining the breakfast crumbs intently, so I couldn’t read his expression, but I could imagine how it sounded to an outsider and how he must be thinking I was a paranoid wacko.
“They’re very important here. And powerful. I’m in bad trouble. They’d lock me up for a long time.”
Not thousands of years, perhaps, but long enough.
I couldn’t tell Egan about Azazel—how on earth could I? It wasn’t something any normal person would believe if he hadn’t seen for himself. So I’d mentioned not one word about our prisoner or my awful guilty part in the events. But it made me jumpy and angry with myself. “I shouldn’t be dumping this on you, it’s not like it’s anything to do with you. I mean… why are you helping me? Why are you being so nice?”
It came out sounding a lot more accusatory than I’d intended. Egan blinked and looked away, embarrassed. He even flushed a little.
“I don’t know…I just thought you looked like you needed someone.”
And I’m a girl. I’m a girl on my own, in trouble, and you can’t resist. Chivalry is only the desire to save the damsel from everyone but yourself. It suddenly felt like my head had cleared, and I was looking at him from a cold distance. Would you have still come to my rescue if I’d told you I wasn’t single, Egan? Oh no, hold on, Milja—you’re thinking like a village girl now. A big nasty boyfriend would just be fuel to the fire for his type.
And then another voice in my head, a gentler one that could almost have been my father’s, said, And you know that he likes you; you saw it from the start, and you’ve been taking advantage of that, Milja. If anything, you’ve been using him.
All of a sudden I felt ashamed. Ashamed of judging him so cynically, and of my own dishonesty. I wasn’t going to—I couldn’t—tell him about my demon lover. But I’d thrown myself on his mercy, and now he was all I had. It felt like I needed him. Did I even have the strength to go it alone?
“You’re a nice guy,” I said apologetically.
He pulled a face. “That’s usually an insult.”
“No, I mean it. I’m grateful. You’ve been really good to me, Egan, and I don’t deserve it.”
“Don’t you?” His eyes told me he didn’t believe my words.
“No, I don’t.” I felt my resolve harden. I pushed back my chair and rose. I was frightened, but I tried not to let it show. “I’m not getting you any deeper into this mess. It’s my problem, not yours. Thank you for all your help.”
He sat back. “Sit down,” he said softly.
I hesitated.
“Sit down and don’t be an eejit.” His accent grew stronger for a second. “I’m not kicking you out on your own, Milja. I’m not going to abandon you. Just…no. We can sort this thing out. Somehow or other. You’re not on your own.”
I sat. I was so relieved that I gave a sort of hiccup and then went crimson with embarrassment. Egan grinned and patted my hand.
“So, now…let’s think. If you want to fly back you need your passport. Do you know where it is right now?”
“Last time I saw it, it was in Vera’s room-safe at the Hotel Mimosa.”
“So if that’s beyond reach, I suppose you could report it stolen and apply for a new one?”
“I suppose.” I’d need more than a bare passport to get back into the States, I suspected. What about my visas and stuff? “It’ll take weeks.”
“Do you know how to make the application?”
“No—Father did all that last time.”
“Well, we can look it up online. You’ll need to submit photos for a start, won’t you?”
“Yes.”
“We can begin there. There’s a chemist’s about a mile away that has a photo booth, I think.”
“A chemist’s?”
“Drugstore. You Yankee.”
I smiled. “Apoteka,�
� I told him. “You foreigner.”
We drove out to the mini-mall. Egan, it turned out, had had the foresight to hire a car the day before, and I was glad to see that he drove with assurance.
I didn’t like the fact that a big silver SUV slid out into the main road behind us and followed all the way to the store, but it passed when we parked and I didn’t say anything to Egan.
You’re being paranoid, Milja.
The mall was fairly upmarket, in keeping with the genteel neighborhood, and there weren’t crowds of people around. A small dog was tied up outside the door to the drugstore—something beige colored and fluffy—and it wagged its tail in greeting whenever anyone came in or out. But when I approached it took one look and flattened itself to the ground, beating the tip of its tail in appeasement whilst whimpering. A thin stream of urine ran out from beneath its belly across the concrete.
I stared at the dog, feeling sick. Could it tell what I’d done?
Egan wasn’t looking, luckily.
It was a big store, and it did have an automated photo booth at the back. I took two sets of passport snaps, just to be sure, and then wandered up and down the aisles, filling a basket with deodorant and moisturizer and all the useful things I didn’t have anymore.
When I looked up from a packet of dental floss, there were three men watching me from the top end of the aisle. They were informally dressed, fairly rough looking, and they weren’t carrying baskets.
I dropped the floss into my stash and walked casually in the other direction, toward the back of the store. Rounding the end of the aisle, I spotted Egan in the parallel row staring at the shelves with the pained frown of someone trying to work out which product was what purely from the packaging pictures.
“I think we might have to go,” I told him as I hurried up.
“What’s wrong?”
He followed the line of my gaze back down the aisle, just as three men rounded the corner. Two were a couple of those nondescript guys I’d already spotted. The third, leading them, was my Uncle Josif.
“That’s her,” said he, pointing.
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