In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2)

by Janine Ashbless

  “Time we were gone,” he growled.

  “Is this some place you know?” asked Azazel from behind my shoulder.

  I looked around my dreamspace. “Not really,” I said, conscious of the light press of his fingers at the small of my back in a way that threatened my concentration and thus possibly our entire endeavor. “It’s just a library. I thought that if we were trying to summon Penemuel, it’d help to have books.”

  “I don’t like that word,” he said, “but you are right. Summoning is what we’re doing. So can you find me a knife?”

  I twisted to look up at him, wanting some explanation.

  “A knife,” he repeated innocently.

  “Okay.” I glanced around us again. My subconscious had actually outdone itself in creating this cathedral of books which, though reminiscent of the Bapst Library back in Boston with its soaring collegiate-gothic arches and its stained glass windows, was a riot of architectural complication unlikely to be found in any real place. Stairs of polished wood crisscrossed the vertiginous spaces overhead with their many balcony levels, and I could see through the gargoyle-carved arches there into nooks crowded with bookshelves. The long hall in which we stood was flanked with reading desks sporting lamps with green glass shades. Presiding over them was a more magnificent desk like a pulpit—so high that you’d have to stand at it, not sit—built of onyx and green copper.

  Concentrating on my intention, I ascended the spiraling marble steps, took a deep breath and slid open the drawer in the lectern. Inside lay a knife with a long two-edged blade.

  I picked it up gingerly, between fingertips of both hands. “Will this do?”

  Azazel nodded, his eyes lambent. “You realize that if this works, I will be able to use you to find all my brothers? Even Samyaza himself!”

  “And I don’t like that word. Use.”

  For a moment he lowered his eyelids in acknowledgement. “Now,” he said, laying his fingers on his ribs just to the left of his sternum. They looked dark against the bright white of his shirt. “Stab me here. Deep.”

  “No way,” I whispered.

  “For a summoning there must be a blood sacrifice,” he said. “Blood is life. Blood conducts intent between the spheres. And it is only a dream, remember.”

  “You think I want to hurt you, even in a dream?” My voice shook a little.

  “Trust me, Milja.”

  Egan had urged me to trust him—and look how that had turned out. I drew my upper lip through my teeth and considered refusing. But I am terrible at defying Azazel.

  He took hold of the point of the dagger and drew it to his chest, dimpling the fabric. “Concentrate on his name.” Azazel swept his other hand around to grasp my nape. He stared deep into my eyes. “Penemuel.”

  “Penemuel.”

  Gripping my hand tight on the hilt, he pushed the blade home.

  I felt surprisingly little resistance; the dream-blade must have been sharp. It was no more difficult slicing between his ribs than piercing the skin of an orange. Azazel gasped. I looked down and saw a thick crimson seep around the buried steel.

  “Penemuel!” he cried, yanking the knife out of the wound and staggering back from me.

  I flung my hands over my face, staring through the bars of my fingers. Oh god oh god please be okay—

  Blood spurted from the stab-wound, hanging in mid-air. Except that it wasn’t blood. The drops looked more like flakes of burning ash. They blew outward on an unfelt breeze, spinning in lazy curlicues as if in the updraft from a bonfire, forming a long tenuous ribbon of scarlet that stretched away down the hall and floated through one of the many gothic archways.

  “Follow,” Azazel gasped under his breath, one hand pressed beneath the crimson fountain. “Find him.”

  I dithered helplessly, all my instincts telling me to stay, to hold him, to help him. But he waved me away with frantic motions.

  “Hurry! Don’t lose him!”

  Stifling a dry sob of protest, I set off after the shimmering aerial clue that wound under doorways and about corners, leading me through room after room of bookcases in a labyrinthine dance. The droplets looked less fiery now, more like crimson petals, and they flew more sparsely. By the time I tracked them up a winding spiral staircase and across an arched bridge and under a low lintel into the footings of a great hollow tower, there were only a few velvet flakes left in suspension, and these last few fell softly around the shoulders of a figure in white who crouched in the center of the tiled floor.

  I stopped and caught my breath. He knelt with his head bowed. I could see one bare dark shoulder contrasting with the loose drape of the bleached cotton robe; the familiar garb of an Ethiopian priest. I saw hair close-cropped around a delicate skull and fine-boned cheek. I could make out, as I approached, the open books spread out all around him, their pages flecked with blood-red petals.

  Of course it’s hard to read in dreams, but I doubt that I could have deciphered these tomes in the waking world. I recognized elegant Arabic calligraphy and thick Germanic black letter and boxy Hebraic; scripts in a dozen unknown languages.

  The man’s long elegant hand swept out to brush the pages near his knee, sweeping aside a single drop of crimson.

  “Hello,” I said softly. “Penemuel?”

  He glanced up, strain written across his handsome face. But it was not until he rose and I caught sight of one bare breast that my brain shook itself and I realized that the lithe frame in front of me was female.

  Penemuel, if this was she, was most definitely a woman.

  I tried not to stare.

  “What are all these?” she asked, her voice husky. “All these…” She lifted her face and indicated the interior of the tower over our heads—a hundred receding tiers of leather-bound folios and quartos and octavos in balconies threaded together by a web of slender wooden ladders. “Are they all books?”

  “Uhuh.” I remembered Azazel’s fascination with my father’s small private library when I first freed him. Such a thing was undreamed of all those millennia back when they were thrown into captivity. “All your fault. You taught us.”

  She spun slowly on her bare heel, neck craned.

  “Of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh,” said Azazel from behind me. He was quoting one of the sourer verses from Ecclesiastes. “Hello, Penemuel.”

  He’d caught up then. I felt a rush of relief to see him on his feet and smiling.

  It was as nothing to Penemuel’s reaction. She lurched past me to face him, her golden-brown eyes wide with recognition. Thrusting one palm flat toward him, she met his hand as if pressing against a mismatched reflection in a mirror. She was as tall as he was. I’m not used to women taller than me.

  “Azazel,” she breathed in wonder. “You’re alive.”

  “World without end.”

  I noticed that the red stain across his shirt was no longer weeping new blood, and that he seemed to have recovered from his ordeal. I found myself hovering awkwardly, an unnecessary adjunct to their conversation.

  “We didn’t know that you were still with us. We thought you might have been unmade.”

  “That would have been a kindness, wouldn’t it? Never trust a God who keeps telling you how merciful He is.”

  “Azazel.” Her face fell. “Don’t.”

  “It’s a bit late in the day to start being nervous, I’d say.”

  She laughed sadly. “You haven’t changed.”

  “Well, I haven’t.” He looked her pointedly up and down, his silver gaze lingering on her breasts. “This is…new.” Judging from his expression he was appreciative if somewhat perplexed.

  She stared down at herself as if reading a book of revelations. Where their hands touched, a golden light leaked from between them. “This? It pleases me better.”

  “You had a mortal wife last time I saw you.”

  “And a husband. They both stood and tried to defend me when Gabriel attacked.” Her smile looked broken. “Can
you imagine?”

  His own expression struggled not to shatter as he shook his head sorrowfully.

  “You were the first to be taken, Azazel. You missed the slaughter. The years of war and devastation.”

  “I did not miss it all.”

  Pain flicked across her face to match his, as if she was reading his memories. Quite possibly she was; they stood pressed palm to palm as if about to hurl themselves into an embrace. “We looked for you, Azazel. We thought if we could find and free you then we stood a chance. But you were nowhere to be found. Zaqel said you’d been taken toward the Black Mountain and we sought there, but we found no way in, and then the Host were upon us.”

  “I cried out. No one answered.” His face hovered over hers, almost touching. “Where was Samyaza taken to?”

  “I don’t know. We were separated.”

  “Ah. A pity. We will find him, though.”

  “How did you find me? This is a dream, isn’t it? Hers?” She didn’t look at me. “That’s cunning.”

  “For the moment it is a dream. But I am free, Penemuel.”

  Her eyes widened. “Free? How?”

  “My Milja cut me loose.” He indicated me with a glance, and for a moment she actually stared at me before her attention swung back to him like their faces were magnets. “I walk the earth just as in the old days. Soon you will too. We will find you and we will free you.”

  “But the Host?”

  “Not what they used to be. They’ve grown slack, sister.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “They haven’t dared come to battle,” he assured her—not entirely honestly in my opinion, as it certainly looked like Michael was spoiling for a full-on fight.

  I think Penemuel had enough sense to doubt him. One eyebrow arched. “What are you planning?”

  “We will free you, first of all. Then Samyaza and all of our brothers. Tell me where you are—Are you in Lalibela?”

  She looked uncertain at the name. “I am still in the Land of Punt,” she hazarded. “Beneath the earth. The rock is red. The sun and moon stand over my head.”

  “What do you know about your prison?”

  She shut her eyes as if listening intently. “I hear singing,” she whispered. “And prayer. Prayer day and night. Men with bare feet. I hear the hooves of donkeys, but beyond them a rumble I do not recognize. It is a place of many voices.” The golden light between them was growing.

  “What do they say when they pray?” I asked, feeling gauche for interrupting. But there were at least eleven rock-cut ancient churches in the Lalibela cluster according to my research, each with its own patron. “I mean, anything specific to the place?”

  “They call upon Maryam and Gebriel and Giyorgis to protect them from the evil beneath their feet.”

  Mary and Gabriel and George. “Well,” I said, pulling a that-information-is-a-bit-too-vague-to-help-us face, “the church of Saint George is where the book came from. We could start with him.”

  “Your wife is clever,” she told Azazel. “Her head is full of books.” I couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a compliment or a joke, given our surroundings. “I am glad our work was not in vain,” she added. Her bare breast was almost brushing his chest.

  “You cannot imagine what we have wrought,” Azazel said. “But I promise, you will see it.”

  “I am glad you are free.”

  The light was almost too bright to look into, now. It streamed from between them, blurring their bodies, almost as if they were losing physical coherence. I could feel myself trembling in every limb. I knew with a piercing certainty that I should not be watching—that this was not for my eyes.

  “Don’t lose hope, Penemuel.”

  “I never held on to hope. I have longed for death. I only wish I had been forgotten millennia ago.”

  “It will all be worth it. You will walk in the sunlight again.” They were both taller now, stretching into shapes less than human. I shaded my eyes with my hand, ashamed as a child is ashamed when he sees his parents embrace. This was a mystery not meant for me.

  “How can we fight God, Azazel?”

  “I don’t know, but I will not stop trying. I will never give in.”

  I couldn’t make out his face anymore. Their forms seemed to be fluid and curved within the nimbus of shuddering golden light. Flickering vanes suggested the vibration of great wings. They were huge—twenty, thirty, fifty feet tall and still growing, etiolated. I couldn’t even tell Azazel from Penemuel; they seemed to be coiling around each other in a spiral. It dawned on me that the Bible verse, in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in Heaven, did not mean what I’d always been told it meant. Angels were not sexless even in their ethereal state. The library throbbed with the ache of their power and their desire—but it was a passion divorced from flesh, nothing to do with cocks or vulvas, male or female, pleasure or kink. It was the rush of great powers in primal motion, so alike in nature that they couldn’t help but pour together and co-mingle; more nuclear force than lust. It was holy as a vast waterfall is holy, and as inexorable.

  Stretching up into the great vertical space of the tower, they had become a living helix of light—a caduceus coiled about the pillar of the world. Flinching beneath their effulgence, entirely forgotten, I thought of the legends from all across the world. I thought of the Garden of Eden and the Great Dragon of Saint John’s Revelation, stories bookending the whole of human history.

  Oh dear God—is this what they looked like before they took human shape? Giant golden serpents? Winged snakes? Is this what angels are?

  There are fairy stories in my homeland about the zmaj, dragonish creatures of incredible magical powers and ancient wisdom, with a marked yearning for human women. They are said to have fathered many of our mythical heroes. I’d never made the connection. It seemed obvious now.

  The bookshelves were catching fire.

  Tighter and tighter they twined, writhing. I could not bear it. I could not bear to see him joining with her. It hurt my tiny selfish human heart.

  I stretched every muscle in my head and forced myself awake.

  I came to on my bed in my apartment. A split second later Azazel blinked into existence and crashed down onto the mattress next to me, nearly wrecking the bed frame. He was stark naked and wide-eyed.

  Also he had the most epic erection, even by his generous standards.

  “Milja?” he gasped. “What—?”

  I reached out and grabbed his length, squeezing brutally hard. I wanted that hot, engorged cock. I wanted his full, velvet-skinned balls. I wanted his beautiful muscular body.

  “Why did you stop the dream?” he groaned.

  But most of all I wanted him to be hard and hungry and elementally undeniable for me. Not goddamn Penemuel.

  I jumped up, straddling his hips. I was still plumped and slippery from what he had done to me before I fell asleep, and I impaled myself upon him with ease, feeling every inch. His girth stretched me deliciously, and he grunted.

  “You made me wake up,” I lied, running my hands across his chest. There was no sign of any wound between his ribs. “I was so hurt I couldn’t help it.”

  “Hurt?” Spread-eagled beneath me, he looked baffled. “When did I hurt you?”

  “Fuckssake, Azazel!” I moved my hips, starting to grind him, and was rewarded by the look of almost panicked need that shot into his eyes. “Do you think I want to watch you screwing someone else?”

  “You’re jealous?” he gasped.

  I rose and sank upon his beautiful thick length, ruthless with him but crueler to myself. “Yes I’m jealous!”

  “Why?”

  “I’m human! That’s how we are! That’s what we do!” I dug my nails into the skin of his chest, scoring red lines. “I don’t want you to be with other people!”

  He clenched one hand in the bedding and pushed back up into me, meeting my thrusts with his own. “You’re afraid I won’t want you?”
he growled, catching both of my nipples in the splayed fingers of his other hand and pinching possessively. Sparks flared along my spine, cold-hot flashes, but I was too aroused to flinch.

  “Your gigantic fucking cock wants me,” I answered, my hips pumping and my teeth bared. “But it’s not picky. You’re stiff 24/7. You’re ready to spurt at the first sniff of pussy.”

  “Your. Pussy. Sends. Me. Crazy.”

  “Anybody’s does. You’re just a dirty horndog, Azazel.”

  His eyes were rolling backward under his lids. His spine arched, heels digging into the mattress.

  “Slutty little angel,” I hissed, knowing I was dancing very close to the edge of disaster. But there were fears roiling in my belly that could be expressed no other way. I’d always thought it was possible he was banging his way around the globe when he wasn’t with me, but I’d tried not to think about it. I’d pushed the picture into a cupboard in my head and bolted the door, just because there wasn’t anything I could do about it. “Wasn’t that the whole point of becoming flesh?”

  “Yes,” he grunted, face slackening as his crisis built.

  “All those bouncing tits and those fine round asses and lovely wet little pussies—you just couldn’t resist dipping your wick, could you?”

  He was past the point of speech.

  “Come on—shoot your load, you can’t fucking help yourself. Your balls are bursting. You need to fill cunt. You want to drown every woman in the world in your jizz. Come on and fuck me like you mean it—Ah!”

  He roared as he came, and I held on for dear life as he bucked and erupted into me. He took me with him. My nipples were on fire in his broad, hard hand. My toes tore at the bedding. I could hardly breathe for the flames in my head.

  Then he released me, sinking back into the pillows. As I came back down from the fiery heights I steadied myself, hands braced on his heaving chest.

  I love you so much. Do you understand that? How I feel? There had to be some way to make him see it—of making it real, something as objective and indisputable as a rock held in the hand. Saying it wasn’t enough; words could lie, or could be taken back. I ached to find some way of conveying meaning beyond mere words, some way that was solid and irrevocable. When I was an adolescent I thought that sex would do that—younger still, and I’d imagined that it was a kiss that made all the difference. But it eluded me still, and frustration prickled my fingers. He looked so desirable that, God help me, my base impulse was to slap him over and over. I wanted to shake him and to eat him up whole—and I didn’t understand any of these instincts.