Cover Him with Darkness

by Janine Ashbless

  “Who are you?” asked the eldest boy.

  The scene changed, without warning. It was suddenly sunset, and I was standing with others on a raised platform among great carven stones. We were facing a woman, and she was dancing. The dress she wore was pinned at her throat but left her breasts bare to either side, and her long red hair was unbound and fell in luxuriant curls, whipping about as she tossed her head and wove her spine.

  Suddenly the wind rose, whirling about us. Dust obscured the setting sun and pattered at our clothes. Everyone but me fell to their knees and pressed their faces to the floor. The dancer paused, confused, her chest heaving as if she had been at it for hours. Then she too knelt down and hid her face.

  Azazel stepped from a fold of light into the bare space of the dance floor. He didn’t look at me; he only looked at the dancer. Like all the other men in the crowd, he wore a long linen kilt and nothing else, but broken shards of sunset glinted around him like polished copper. I guess he was more showy, back in those days.

  The sight of him made my insides cramp with need.

  “Leave.” With a wave of his hand he dismissed the audience, and they fled down the hill. Only the woman remained. She stood slowly, still panting from her dance. I was surprised to see how old she looked: her face was beautifully planed but weathered into wrinkles, and the sag of her big, dark-nippled breasts would have put her in her late forties if she’d been a twenty-first-century woman. I couldn’t tell from this distance if her eyes were mismatched colors, but the lids were heavy and dramatic with kohl. For a moment she looked up into Azazel’s face, and then she ran forward into his embrace. He kissed her with sweet, savage kisses.

  A green pang shot through me, like I’d been stabbed.

  Why show me this?

  But Azazel, if this was his doing, didn’t choose to spare me a glance. He cupped the woman’s face in his hands and asked her something—the drums were too loud for me to hear what, but I could sense the urgency in the movements of his shoulders and jaw. She pointed away down the hill, her eyes widening with fear. Quickly he spoke again, and kissed her forehead, then pushed her from him.

  I heard his voice this time: “Hurry!”

  The scene changed again. We were back at the river, but it was a gloaming dusk now, and the moon was rising over shredded clouds. Azazel pushed down the reed-hemmed path, looking left and right.

  And then he found what he was looking for.

  I couldn’t see it. My vantage point was low down, as if I were a rat hiding in the grasses. I only saw him stop and stoop and reach out to touch something on the ground. But I saw the change that came over his expression, and I have never seen anything so awful. And however long I live, I hope never again to hear a sound like the one he made then.

  Then another noise washed over me—a metallic shimmer, like sunshine made music—along with a golden light. This time I could turn and look. It was a man in a white robe. No, not a man—an angel: I knew enough by now to recognize one when I saw it. He looked like some medieval warrior-hero from a Chinese movie, with black hair a silken fall as far as his waist, and high cheekbones you could cut yourself upon. There was a rope belted about his narrow hips: a dark and glistening rope that had made unpleasant stains on his pristine robe. Something about the sight of that…it made my heart curl up in my breast like it wanted to die.

  Azazel took one look and threw himself forward, roaring. He burned as he ran, and black smoke flowed from him. In three strides he wasn’t a man anymore; he was a huge black bull with eyes of fire and skin like a cracked lava flow, and the air shook with his heat and the thunder of his hooves. The other angel met him head-on: a bull of matching size, blinding white like sun on snow. The crash of their impact, directly over my head, shook the world.

  I saw that fight, and yet I did not see it. I was too close, and my vision filled up with a thrashing confusion of limbs that changed and morphed. Hooves of bulls, paws of lions, claws and wings of eagles—and glistening scaled talons that might have been dragons or might have been something else. They fought in human form too, so fast I could not follow the flickering movements. The reeds around parched and burst into flame: the river steamed and boiled away, the earth cracked and heaved, groaning its protest. Blood flew as a red rain. Stars came out overhead and then fell hissing from the sky, striking the ground like mortar shells. By the time dawn broke, the country for miles around was a smoldering wasteland of soot and ash and upthrust rock.

  Then Azazel struck the earth, facedown, crimson with blood from head to toe, flames still dancing on his flesh. A moment later I saw a bare foot, equally bloody, descend upon his neck and pin him.

  “No!” I shrieked, lurching to my feet—and all around me the drums faltered and people stared. The Raven dancer, swaying on his stilts, stopped mid-declamation and looked at me reproachfully.

  “Hey. Not cool. Don’t interrupt.”

  As reality rushed back in to fill the void vacated by vision, I stuttered and blushed and stared.

  “Milja, you’re upsetting the nice people.” Uriel’s silken sarcasm was a cool hand reaching to me through the flames. I whipped round and stared into his sardonic face. It was actually a relief to see him.

  “Bad trip,” someone muttered nearby.

  “Come on then,” Uriel ordered, crooking a finger, and I wobbled toward him.

  “The tea was spiked,” I stammered, thrusting the cup at him. “I saw…”

  “Watch the shoes!” he sniffed, dodging the drips.

  “Uh…sorry.”

  Uriel looked down, curling his lip, and stuck a fastidious finger in the melted slush before licking the tip. “Bottled water, green tea, sugar, lemon juice,” he pronounced. “It’s clean.”

  “But I saw—”

  “Your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.”

  “What does that mean!”

  “You can’t blame the tea. It’s all you.” He narrowed his eyes. “Why are all those people staring at me, Milja?”

  The sudden change in conversational tack threw me into even deeper confusion for a moment. I turned a circle, slack-jawed, only to find Uriel wasn’t wrong. The drums had fallen silent and everyone in the area was watching us, their faces distinctly unfriendly.

  “Um… It’s your suit,” I muttered, as my brain finally caught up with my surroundings.

  “My suit?”

  “You see anyone else wearing one? You look like you’re here on a drug bust.”

  Uriel decided to help matters by snorting derisively at this and rolling his eyes. Then he shrugged, and with the motion changed—just like that—his old appearance falling away from him like ash swept by a careless hand. Suddenly he was biker-booted and black-leathered from the waist down, gauntleted to the elbow—and that was all. The rest of him was bare, his hard chest sporting neither clothes nor hair, but he made up for that with a pair of huge folded wings whose feathers were such a pure white that even in firelight they made my eyes water. He flexed and shook them, fluffing the pinions for a moment before settling them into place.

  “Do I blend in now?” he asked dryly.

  I looked away.

  The reaction from the people around us was a collective intake of breath so loud that I heard it—and then, uncertainly at first, a scattering of shocked laughter and applause that rose to a storm of appreciation. They didn’t know how he’d done it, but in this place they expected wonders of art and technology. They believed in miracles.

  What’s more, they liked the results. Who wouldn’t? His body wasn’t middle-aged at all.

  “Let’s talk then,” Uriel said, touching my arm to steer me away.

  I didn’t dare look at him. A dozen conflicting emotions were fighting it out inside me. I wanted to shriek.

  “Now,” he said. “This Egan.”

  Egan. Yes, Egan. Think about him—and not about how you’re going batshit crazy seeing things that aren’t there or how there’s this bloody great gorgeous angel at
your side who is there and how much easier it would be if he put some goddamn clothes back on…

  “Did you find him?”

  “Surprisingly easily.”

  “Is he alive?”

  “He is. Not looking terribly happy, admittedly, but in reasonable shape.”

  My heart leaped. Oh thank God. Or thank heaven. Or whatever. “You really saw him?”

  “He happens to be on holy ground.”

  “Is he being held prisoner?”

  “I’d say that’s what it looks like. A priest was asking him questions, and I’d guess, from his condition, that your friend has been reluctant to answer them.”

  My stomach lurched. “But where?” Turning to look at Uriel was a mistake, I realized. I tried to focus past his shoulder, on the wings.

  He shrugged in irritation. “I don’t know the name you lot give the place. Some monastery. What’s your problem, girl?”

  I blushed furiously. “Nothing, just…!”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake…” He rolled his eyes. “Can’t you even manage to keep one of us in focus at a time? Brains between your legs, the lot of you.”

  I gritted my teeth. “Has it occurred to any of you to turn up looking, you know, ordinary? A bit ugly maybe? Perhaps we could have avoided the whole Flood and all, if you lot had just had moobs or bad teeth or beer bellies or whatever.”

  Uriel looked down his nose at me. “I am not ordinary,” he said with hauteur.

  “No,” I said, defeated. “You’re not. Hooray for you. Now help me get to Egan.”

  “Your logic confounds me. Explain. And do get on with it, please: I dislike being in material form. It…itches.”

  “Two minutes,” I said with a ghastly grin that I couldn’t stop. “Two minutes and you’re complaining. You try a lifetime in a human body.”

  He glowered. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I can’t phone him: they took his phone away. I can’t leave this country: I’ve got no documentation. You guys could save him, but you won’t. So what else can I do? Take me back to Montenegro.”

  “What are you planning?”

  I told him.

  Two minutes later I was standing in the Trg Republike square in Podgorica city, in the hot afternoon sun.

  I fished my European SIM out of my knapsack and dialed Egan’s cell phone. If this didn’t work, I told myself, I would go through Vera and Josef.

  But the phone picked up.

  “Hello?” said a man’s voice. It wasn’t Egan.

  My heart was pounding. “This is Milja Petak,” I said. “I want to talk to Father Velimir.”

  chapter twelve

  MENTAL RESERVATION

  They came for me a couple of hours later, in a black minibus. I stood up as the passenger door opened to disgorge one of Father Velimir’s sidekicks—the one with the red beard that I recognized from our meeting in the park with Branko—along with a couple of other priests. They looked agitated but pleased with themselves, and there was no mistaking the way they looked down at me. I squinted into the interior of the bus but the tinted glass wouldn’t let me see if there were other occupants.

  “Milja Petak,” said the one with the rufous beard.

  “Where’s Egan?” I demanded. “You said you would bring him!”

  “How were we to know this wasn’t a trap? You might have been waiting to kill us all.”

  The injustice made me gape. Me kill them—wasn’t it the other way round? I’d never threatened anyone!

  Okay, so Azazel…in the boat…

  Maybe they had a point.

  “Father Velimir gave his word,” I said harshly.

  “And he’ll keep it. Your friend is safe and we’re taking you to him.” He indicated the vehicle. “Get in.”

  The moment I was inside someone grabbed my wrists and bound them together with a cable-tie.

  “That’s not necessary,” I said, my heart in my mouth.

  “Shut up, witch.”

  They drove me through the city. There was one odd incident: we pulled up outside a drugstore and Red Beard—the others addressed him as Ilija—had a muttered argument with the driver, who was an older guy dressed in street clothes. I couldn’t hear what it was about, from my place in the back wedged between two sweating overweight men in cassocks, but I did hear Father Ilija snap, “Well I can’t do it!” After that the driver got out, went into the pharmacy, and returned a short while later with something in a white paper bag—and a face the purple of stewed beet-root.

  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.”