The skin prickled up my spine. I knew what I was hearing. I’d heard it in my dreams all my childhood, when Azazel lay bound in darkness beneath our mountain home.
And the great stone pillars of the temple did not fade from my mind’s eye. Behind my lids I saw them, sunset gold flipped to a blue-black negative. The vast bars seemed to descend into the earth forever.
“It’s a cage,” I whispered, opening my eyes. My heightened senses shrank back to normal.
“Oh yes,” said Azazel softly, his lips to my ear. “Oh, that is good.”
“What do you mean?”
Without answering, he stepped backward off the stone, taking me with him. It was a good thing I trusted his arms, or I might have screamed as we plummeted.
His feet thumped into the sandy earth and I jolted against his chest, the breath momentarily knocked from my lungs. The world spun around me.
“Azazel,” I gasped, leaning against his breastbone. I was never sure in those moments whether I wanted to slap him or kiss him. “I can’t get used to you doing that.”
He grinned down at me, looking more triumphant than he ought. “You are amazing.”
“What?” Misgiving seized me. “What’s going on? What did you just show me?”
“I showed you nothing. I can’t see the cage. That was you—your insight. Could you make out anyone inside?”
I felt cold all of a sudden. “I heard…someone. Someone in pain. What’s happening?”
“Come on.” He took my hand like any ordinary boyfriend who hadn’t just teleported us thousands of miles and then jumped forty-five feet down from the crown of one of the most iconic buildings in the world. He led me toward a cluster of lower buildings at what turned out to be the site exit. And I followed tamely, just like a tourist finished with the day’s visit, not an escapee from an office who’d left her panties on the other side of the Atlantic after a torrid quickie on the stairs. My body was still thrumming with the pulse of our tryst, and the evidence of it was leaking onto my inner thighs.
I looked back once at the great ruined building on the hilltop. It was beautiful. But now all I could see was cage bars, not columns.
“Who was that?” I asked as we walked down the zig-zag path beneath pine and cypress trees. The pavement slabs were warm and smooth under my soles. “Who’s under there?”
“My brother Batraal.” He sounded grim. “The Hellenes remembered him as the Titan Pallas.”
“You found one then? Another Watcher?” That was what he had promised outside my family chapel weeks ago—to free all his Fallen comrades and rise up against Heaven.
“I’ve not found anyone. All I can tell is the interior of the ruin is still consecrated after all these millennia—which seems wildly unlikely unless there’s a reason, and an active guardian. I can’t see any cage. I can’t hear my brother cry out. But you can.”
“Is that why you brought me here?” I swallowed hard. “Am I like your sniffer-dog?”
He didn’t answer. His stride was long and I had to hurry to keep up, which hurt in bare feet. He seemed to know where he was going, even when we left the main path and cut downhill.
“Will you free Batraal now?”
“I can’t, yet.”
“Why not?”
Again, no answer.
“You could at least tell me what you’re planning to do now, you know,” I mumbled.
“Why? Are you aiming to help?”
I sucked in my cheeks. That was the big question, wasn’t it? Was I really going to offer to go to war against the Heavenly Host? I’d been brought up in the Church, my father had been a priest, and until this year I’d had no quarrel with it. Until it all went pear-shaped, that is, thanks to my freeing Azazel, and I’d spent days chained in a monastery cellar, been staked out as bait, and finally suffered Father Velimir’s attempt to murder me. That hostility felt pretty personal, even if I’d only been a pawn in the bigger game.
Whether I was ready to declare war on God Almighty was another matter entirely.
“What you’re up to—it’s really dangerous,” I said, swallowing my tangle of fears and doubt. “What am I supposed to do if you just don’t come back to me one day? What if they catch you again?”
That gave him pause. We came to a halt where the path emerged onto a small road lined with shops. He studied my face. “I’ve no desire to endanger you,” he said at last.
“Too late for that!”
He nodded, abashed. Sometimes he could be almost human. “Yes. But would you help me save Batraal, if you could?”
My shoulders drooped. How could I say no? I’d lived my entire twenty-three years with the horror and the guilt of Azazel’s incarceration. Did the others deserve my sympathy less?
“I guess,” I admitted.
He smiled, brushing his fingertips to my cheek. “I have one ally then.”
“For what that’s worth,” I muttered.
“More than the Hosts of Heaven.” He stooped to kiss me, sweet and dark and hot as burning sugar, and as we broke for breath I could tell from the glow in his eyes that desire was on the verge of distracting him again. His hand on my waist could so easily pull me against him if he chose, and then… “This way,” he murmured, regretfully.
I was so surprised that I let him tow me across the road without even looking at the traffic.
We stopped outside a bank. “Here.”
“What?”
He waved a hand at the ATM in the wall. “This is where you get money from, yes?”
“Yeah, but…”
He put one hand on the screen, one on my shoulder. “Tell it how much you want.”
“I haven’t got my bank cards with me!” After all I’d been through I’d vowed never to leave the house without plastic and a toothbrush—but Azazel’s visit had taken me by surprise.
“We’re going for supper. Just tell it.”
I shook my head and tapped 100 onto the keypad, having no idea how much food cost in Greece. The machine whirred and spat out multicolored euro notes, while Azazel took advantage of the moment and pressed up against my ass.
“Okay,” I said doubtfully, taking the small wad and wriggling out of his embrace. “Whose account did this come out of?”
“Account? No one’s. I told it you are a friend. It will tell the others.”
“But the cash comes from somewhere.”
“Yes. Inside this wall.”
Yeah, but…? “Uh…that’s theft, Azazel,” I said, before belatedly reminding myself that this was someone who didn’t balk at murder.
“You don’t need your job now, do you? Take as much as you want, whenever you like.”
My mouth fell open. I had no idea how to answer that. I should have gone with: My job was more than a paycheck, Azazel. It was my career. Validation. Human interaction. My place in society. And I was so insanely lucky to get it after my screw-up in Boston! What do you think I should do with your free money—lie around all day in my perfumed boudoir, eating chocolate and waiting for you to come and pork me?
Except that his answer to that would almost certainly be an unselfconscious Yes.
“Thank you,” I mumbled, my numb lips fumbling the words. Because money. Free money. Not losing my apartment. Not starving.
He smiled, wholly satisfied.
Oh God. How do I…? It’s like being in a relationship with a genius level caveman.
“Now you want to eat?”
“I…uh…yeah.” My stomach was still doing flips, but I’d unwisely missed breakfast that morning and I did need lunch. Even if it looked like supper, thanks to the time difference. “Coffee would also be good.”
We set off down a side road lined with small shops selling I ♥ Greece T-shirts and plaster statues of satyrs with improbable phalluses. The lane opened out into a square lined with cafes, their menu placards carefully illustrated with photographs for us illiterate foreigners. Most of them looked far from full and I guessed that local people ate late, or elsewhere. In the
open space vendors had set up ad-hoc stalls on plastic tarpaulins, selling bric-a-brac and fake designer handbags, and a quartet of musicians were playing folk instruments, a sound eerily reminiscent of the music of my own homeland. A man was amusing passers-by by blowing huge soap-bubbles and catching them in plastic frames to make intricate mathematical shapes; cubes within cubes and spheres within spheres. We headed at random for a restaurant under a trellis draped with grape-vines, where Azazel carefully pulled out a plastic chair for me. He’d clearly been studying up on manners.
Well, that was what I thought until he parked himself in a chair facing me and, leaning forward, slid a hand up the inside of my thigh, all the way to my damp sex.
I stiffened, arching my spine. “Azazel!” I gasped as his touch sent thrills cascading through my nerve-endings all over again.
“Hm?” It had suddenly gone so quiet that I could hear even that quietest of speculative murmurs as he pushed probing fingertips into the wet split of my sex and sought entry to my body. Blessedly, thankfully quiet. No voices, no music, and even the omnipresent hum of traffic was silenced; the world had stopped. I glanced around us and saw that the figures in the square were frozen in mid-motion, their eyes glazed. A dead leaf, just fallen from the vine, hovered motionless over his shoulder. Across the flagstones an iridescent soap bubble hung just beyond the tip of its plastic wand, defying the elements of air and gravity and fate. I wondered distractedly if it would burst if I touched it, or whether it would feel hard like crystal.
“We shouldn’t do this!”
Azazel’s fingers plunged into me, slick with our mingled juices, stretching me, making me buck in my seat. Wicked delight boiled in his eyes. “But you enjoy it so much, my sweet.”
“Oh!” Blood rushed to my face. We might be the only actors in our secret play, but the audience were all around us, unblinking. I was being pumped in full public view, my skirt pushed up my thighs, my whimpers suddenly alarming in loudness.
“Do you deny it?”
I grabbed the arms of my chair. “No,” I admitted, stammering.
“You like the idea of being watched. That handsome waiter there. Those nice old gentlemen playing chess. It makes you wet when I touch you in public. You want everyone to see.”
“Please, no.”
“They should see.” He slid to his knees in front of my open thighs so that he could get a closer look at his hand working my wet sex. “You are so beautiful like this.”
“Unh.”
“Open your blouse,” he ordered. “Show me your breasts.”
I shook my head mutely, eyes widening.
He grinned, then pushed his fingers deeper, scissoring them, curling them to caress me within. I heaved, unable to control my own reaction. Heat roared from my sex to my flushed face and seemed to set a fire in my breasts. I could feel dampness springing out on my skin beneath my too-constricting clothes.
“Show. Me.” His thumb slithered over my clit, implacable.
I couldn’t bear the heat in my flesh any longer. I fumbled the buttons of my blouse, pulled down the camisole top and the bra cups beneath. My nipples prickled in the unnaturally still air, my breasts quivering.
Jeez. Now I really was at his mercy. If he released his grip on the frozen moment I would be exposed for everyone to see—tits out, thighs squirming open, hips jerking, his hand buried in the molten heat of my pussy. Everyone would see me being finger-fucked.
Everyone would see me coming, like this.
Right now.
I nearly kicked him in my spasms, nearly bit my mouth trying not to squeal out loud. Not too loud, anyway. I couldn’t actually keep silent.
Azazel watched hungrily, oh so hungrily, like he was gorging himself on the sight of my shame and lust. He ate me through his eyes and his hand, cupping the thud of my racing pulse in his palm, until I stopped twitching and managed to swallow and moisten my lips.
He withdrew gently; so gently that I wanted to beg him to put his hand back. Then he lounged back in his chair, the flimsy plastic bending alarmingly under his torso.
“Five,” he said, his eyes glittering.
Five what? I was still breathless and half-witted with the shock of my climax.
“Four.”
Oh crap! I scrabble desperately for my buttons, trying to restore my disarranged clothes. And I managed to pull my skirt desperately down to my knees just as he reached “One,” and the day suddenly roared into surround-sound and motion again, like he’d pressed Play at last.
The young waiter swept up to take our order as I brushed my skirt down and tucked my hair back behind my ears. Maybe he wondered why I was blushing furiously and shimmering with perspiration.
Azazel sucked the tips of his fingers, savoring my surrender. Draping himself over the chair at an angle, he watched indulgently as I ordered a Greek salad, coffee and a small plate of baklava. He acquiesced only to a glass of ouzo and a bowl of mixed olives. He rarely ate much now, as I reminded myself, though I’d fed him stolen bread and goat’s milk when he was a prisoner. I’d seen him drink alcohol though.
I’d seen him drunk. Not a memory I cherished.
I looked out across the square, trying to calm the thunder of my heart. I wondered how it was that people were carrying on with their ordinary lives instead of staring at us. If I’d been one of those people I’d have stared. To me, Azazel’s long-limbed frame looked like a dark and ragged hole cut into the fabric of reality.
A calico restaurant cat limped out from under the table and wound itself ecstatically around Azazel’s feet. Cats, of course, loved him—just as much as dogs found him terrifying. He picked it up into his lap and commenced stroking it, oblivious to its gummy eyes and ragged ears. The cat collapsed into his caress, purring.
I relaxed a little, at last.
“You’re being watched,” said Azazel casually.
“What?” I just about managed not to commit the movie-error of looking around me. “Who?”
“Not now. Back where you live. I’ve seen cars following you as you walk home.”
I took a sip from my water glass and licked my lips nervously. “Is it my family? The Church?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t you…investigate?” Though if so I’d probably have seen the police tape and the bloodstains, I reasoned.
He snorted. “If you are ever in trouble, you only need call for me.”
I blinked, remembering how well that had gone the last few times. “Father Velimir is dead,” I said quietly. “It might be Adzo Josif.” I didn’t want to meet with my cousin or her husband, no—never again. They’d sworn vengeance on me for dishonoring the family by whoring about with a demon and—in their eyes—killing my father. It wasn’t the sort of reunion I looked forward to, and I’d hoped I’d escaped it all by leaving Boston for Chicago.
“Shall I kill them for you?”
My eyes widened involuntarily. “No! They’re family!”
Azazel shrugged, as casual as a hawk with a captured mouse. “Does that matter?”
“Yes it does!” I poured more water into my glass, clumsily. “To me it does, anyway. To most people.”
“Fine.” He wasn’t much interested, I could see. The cat was getting most of his attention as his dark hand poured across its fur.
“Excuse me.” The good-looking waiter reappeared at my elbow with a tray. My smile was unfeigned as I accepted the big bowl of cucumber, onion slices, beef tomatoes and feta. The salt cheese was delicious. Azazel flipped a green olive into his mouth as if it were a bar peanut. But as I ate, thoughts of my estranged family and my late father, and all the sailors and monks Azazel had slaughtered, intruded again.
“What happens when we die?” I asked quietly. “Am I going to Hell, Azazel?”
Azazel’s smile was like a wall. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“Maybe if you answered some…”
“Why should I?”
“Because you know what’s going on! Isn’t that i
mportant? You’ve got the answers—you’ve seen God, you’ve seen Heaven. You know who’s going to be saved. You know the truth about all the things we’ve been asking, for thousands of years.”
His quicksilver eyes flicked over me, unreadable. “And you’d like to let everyone know the truth too, would you? You’d pass it on?”
“Yes!”
“Oh, that is exactly what your species needs—another prophet. Some new dogma to put your faith in.” His mouth twisted. “Work it out for yourselves. You have all the tools you need.”
I stared into my salad.
Then it all went unnaturally quiet once more.
Really, again? I looked up, alarmed, from my meal, but Azazel was frowning this time. He didn’t appear lascivious, he appeared troubled.
“What?” I asked.
“When we made the great leap into this realm,” he said, gesturing around us, “I was one who led the rebels. But not alone, you understand.”
I froze momentarily, locking my gaze to his. Was he actually volunteering information? This was almost unheard of. And it was clear he was trying to make sure we were not overheard.
“You asked me what I’m planning. You’ve read the Book of Enoch?”
“Mmm.” I had read it repeatedly, online, though I’d found the centuries-old tome a dizzying mixture of contradiction, poetic vanity and psychedelic religious hallucination. It just happened to be the nearest thing out there to a first-hand account of the fall of the Watchers, that was all.
“You know then.” He seemed hesitant, awkward. If there ever was a boyfriend who didn’t like opening up about his past, it was Azazel. “Two hundred of us, fully one third of the Host. I was the greatest warrior amongst them. But it was not my idea.” He smiled, a little ruefully. “All I wanted to do was lie with the human women.”
In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2) Page 3
