Is this because of Egan? Is this my punishment?
“Where are you?” I scream. “Azazel, talk to me!”
There is a noise though—a deep thrumming, that grows louder with my shouts. It comes from behind me. In despair I turned and look—and then I see that the tiled outer walls and the curved roof over my head is covered in bees. Crusted curtains of wax honeycomb hang over my head. Transparent wings glint as they catch the light. Honey oozes and drips, spattering my upturned face. I feel its stickiness as I wipe at my skin.
And there is Roshana, wearing that tight yellow T-shirt. She holds a huge piece of broken comb in her hands, still crawling with bees, and as I watch she bites into it, chewing and swallowing in great greedy gulps, wax and all. She sees me staring at her and she laughs out loud, her teeth and chin smeared with honey and broken bees.
I shot awake in my flight seat. The thrumming of bees resolved itself into the throb of the plane engines. Egan, seated at a safe distance across the aisle from me, frowned.
“You okay?”
I nodded, ignoring him as I tried to recall every detail of my vision. Dreams with Azazel in them were not random, not to be discounted. I’d seen something significant, I was sure, if only I could work it out. Azazel was with Penemuel. Absolutely absorbed in Penemuel, it seemed.
But…Roshana? Was she still alive? Why was she part of my dream?
Because she’s another signpost. I know where they are. I know.
The lobby Egan led me through to in Dakota looked like an austere version of any provincial arrivals lounge. There was a scant row of uncomfortable chairs to wait on, a selection of vending machines and an ATM, and some booths for people who needed to book onward travel or accommodation, now mostly deserted. Egan left me with a twenty-dollar bill to buy snacks and drinks while he went and sorted out a hire car.
“I’ll drive you home,” he said wearily.
I selected a few bags of chips and a couple of sodas, then paced about the room with the change clenched in my hand. My attention kept sliding to the row of old-style payphones on one wall.
Eventually I couldn’t hold back. This was my only chance at even semi-privacy until I bought myself a new cellphone. I fed coins in and pecked out the private number Roshana Veisi had given me when she recruited me to her plan for a family reunion. I remembered it because I’d happened to note that the letters on the pad spelled out her name.
Up herself, much? I’d thought at the time.
The dial tone thrummed in my ear like the sound of agitated wings and I held my breath.
“Hello. Who is this?”
That’s her voice. It really is.
“Roshana—It’s me! You’re alive? Where’s Azazel?”
There was a long pause, and then she said warmly, “Milja—We thought we’d lost you! Where are you, honey? Still in Ethiopia? I’ll come and get you.”
My lips parted, and I almost replied, but then instinct clawed at my belly. I stared into space, thinking of the burnt body in Uriel’s arms. How had she survived that? How?
I clunked the phone back into its cradle, my stomach churning. When Egan rolled up outside the door twenty minutes later in a big black Toyota Hilux with tinted windows I was so preoccupied with my plans I hardly looked at him.
We went, at my suggestion, to a mall where a friendly ATM gave me a wodge of notes and I bought spare clothes and a nice comfortable pair of hiking boots and a prepaid cellphone. “I’ll drive,” I said when we returned to the parking lot. “You look all-in.”
He nodded. “Long flight. I didn’t get much sleep.”
I drove him precisely five miles and stopped at a gas station near the interstate. “I want you to get out,” I said.
“What?”
“You’re not coming with me.”
He looked shocked—I don’t know why. Did he imagine we were still friends? “Where are you going?”
“None of your business. But I don’t want you there. Thank you for getting me back, Egan. I’m grateful. Really. But we’re through. I’ll drop the hire off for you.”
He didn’t argue. He descended silently from the big SUV and stood watching as I pulled away. The sight of his pale face diminishing in the rearview mirror was, for a moment, like a stab in my heart. I wanted to stop and let him jump back and just talk, and maybe we could get back to the point where his every glance didn’t hurt me. I wanted to have him at my back as I fought my way through hell. I wanted to see him smile again, warm and unfeigned.
But the fact was, no matter what our relationship, Egan was not on Azazel’s side. He could not witness what I was going in search of.
I couldn’t cry, so I bit the inside of my lip until the blood oozed into my mouth. Then I drove up onto the interstate and pointed the car at Minnesota.
The main gate to Roshana’s ranch wasn’t shut. I paused the car on the road outside, gathering my resolve. Through the autumnal rain, lines of red oaks were visible marching over the hills like a procession of burning torches. Mist patches rose like smoke.
Azazel was up there, I was sure. He had, of course, taken Penemuel back to the only place he was sure that they couldn’t be overlooked or found by angels of the Host; that skep-shaped Watcher’s tomb in the overgrown valley. If only I hadn’t dynamited the cave behind my father’s chapel, he might have gone there instead.
My hands felt sweaty against the steering wheel. I was strung out by driving and cheap motel rooms and solitude. I had no grand and devious plan.
I only knew one way in.
Easing the Hilux forward, I left the metaled road and sent the tires crunching and hissing over the private drive. I kept the pace slow and steady, trying to look like I had every right to be paying a visit. I’d wasted days trying to get out of Africa, but there was a good chance that Roshana hadn’t made it back yet either. Maybe she was in Chicago, catching up on business matters. Or in some fancy hotel in Dubai, awaiting her transfer flight. Maybe there was no one home here except the housekeeper and the stable-hands.
My wishes were in vain this time. I’d been concentrating too hard on the road, I guess, to tip the scales of Chance. As I passed the house I saw a battered 4WD move out in my rear-view mirror to follow me. My heart jumped and I gave up on bluff and hit the gas, gripping the steering wheel as if I could pull it off its mount as I retraced our route through the fields of horses and up out of the valley. My pursuer sped up too, narrowing the gap between us. I slewed left around the corner onto the wooded track so hard that I nearly rolled into the roadside ditch, all in the hope that they would overshoot the junction, but that turned out to be wishful thinking too. As the track rose steeper and I ground down through the gears, I nearly bounced clear of my seat, but they were still there behind me. Yellow birch leaves plastered themselves to the windshield, defying the drizzle.
I nearly missed the dead tree with the bracket-fungi, in my desperation.
Dragging on the brake, I flung myself out of the open door. This time around I was wearing suitable boots and pants at least, but I still skidded on the leaf mulch and nearly went down in the mud as I made my dash for the slope.
An engine roared behind me. Then a single gunshot.
“Stop!”
I didn’t. I couldn’t. The slope was too steep. I slithered down on my heels, catching at the saplings to control my descent, and trying to fend off the branches aimed at my face. Someone was crashing in my wake.
“Azazel!” I shrieked, as the gradient flattened out at the bottom of the valley.
Someone slammed into me from behind and I went over, face-down, a solid mass on top of me. By the time I’d spat the leaves out of my mouth and blinked my eyes back into focus, there was a hot steel muzzle pressed to my temple.
“Stay down, bitch!” a man barked. “What the fuck?”
“Roshana,” I coughed. “Roshana Veisi! She’s my boss!”
A hand grabbed my shirt and hauled me to my feet. I looked into the ugly, panting face of a sinewy guy with an
expression like thunder. Two more men were coming down between the trees.
“She invited me up here,” I said. They all wore black, an understated uniform of some sort. I didn’t recognize any of them, so I could only hope they were loyal employees. “Ask her. Roshana. Go on! My name is Milja Petak; I work for her at Ansha Engineering.”
“That right?”
There was a growling conversation between them as they patted me down for weapons, more roughly than I’d have liked. I cast anxious glances about me, but there was no sign of an avenging Azazel burning toward us through the woods, and the guy holding me gave me a good shake to make sure I was still paying attention. The gun was eventually holstered though, much to my relief. “Get your ass back up there,” they ordered.
So near to my goal, yet so far.
Why isn’t Azazel answering me?
Weak with disappointment, I trudged and slipped and pulled my way back up the slope. Every so often one of my captors would put a hand on my ass to assist me with a shove. At the top, two of them took me into their SUV, while the third stayed to take care of my abandoned vehicle.
Slumped on the seat, I started to shake. I was all out of ideas for the moment.
Slowly we reversed down the slope to the main track, and then returned to the ranch house. I wondered if they were going to call the police, but it turned out they had different plans. They marched me around the back of the building and in through the kitchen—where several staff were bustling about—and down a long tiled corridor. The walls here were hung with, of all things, framed photographs of children, dozens and dozens of them, dating back to stiff Edwardian portraits. But I didn’t have time to look, or to wonder. They hustled me through to a big conservatory covering a long swimming pool. The turquoise water was still and sterile under a glass roof that thrummed with rain.
For a moment, just as we passed through the door, I thought I saw a silvery shimmer over the water.
“Get up there,” they told me. They steered me to the far end of the pool, where a young woman was working behind what looked like a mini-bar. She wore a white uniform like a spa attendant, and she glanced at me without interest. “Wait,” the guy with the gun ordered, stomping off and leaving his companion to stand over both of us.
I looked cautiously around. There were two sun-lounger chairs nearby, though I was not invited to lounge and I suspected that they saw little sun up here this far north. The warm air smelled of chlorine from the pool. There was a mosaic tiled onto the house-side wall, which looked a lot older than the rest of the room, maybe antique. It depicted two classically-dressed men facing each other over a small pillar. One was holding out a bowl to the other, and the contents of that bowl seemed to be flaming.
Prometheus? I wondered. My brain had nothing else to work on.
The woman was blitzing ice and wheatgrass and fruit in a food blender. When she’d done that she poured the green, foul-looking concoction into a tall glass and left, all without saying a word.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked quietly. “Are you contacting Ms. Veisi?”
“Shut up.”
I couldn’t think what else to do, so I filled in the silent minutes by picking wet leaves out of my hair. I didn’t have the nerve to drop them on the polished tiles though.
A side-door banged shut. “Milja,” said a familiar voice, and there was Roshana strolling up the poolside toward me. She wore spandex workout clothes, dampened across the breastbone by perspiration, and had a towel slung over one shoulder. “Fancy seeing you here.”
I stared, too stupefied to answer. She looked fit and trim and absolutely unhurt, no mark of a burn upon her skin, her blue-blonde hair as long and glossy as ever. As if she’d never been through the fire. As if I’d never seen her broken, scorched body carried away in an archangel’s arms.
My guard took a few steps back, standing against the wall.
“Well, honey,” she said, reaching for the smoothie glass. “You made it back. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
15
SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
I thought you were dead,” I said slowly, my thoughts trying to sift this new information. “In the fire.”
She smiled tightly, easing herself back into one of the loungers. “I’m not as fragile as I look.”
“How?”
“I woke up in a monk’s cell. They tried to stop me getting away, but you can imagine how that went for them.”
No. Liar. I saw Uriel take you. The words crowded into my mouth, but a deep foreboding stopped me blurting them out. If she was lying, then she wouldn’t be pleased to be called out. If she was deliberately keeping quiet about Uriel…then maybe I shouldn’t reveal what I knew.
“What about you, honey?” she asked, over the rim of her glass. She didn’t care though, and she wasn’t trying to hide it. She’d never shown much sense of curiosity about us lesser mortals, now that I came to think about it. With one exception.
“Yeah, similar,” I muttered. I’m not bringing Egan into this. Not if she’s tried to kill him off already. “They let me go eventually.”
“All’s well that ends well, then.” She hadn’t invited me to sit down, or offered me a drink. I still stood before her like a naughty schoolgirl.
“I want to see Azazel. He’s here, I know.”
“The question is, why are you here? Can’t you just call him?”
“He’s…gone quiet.”
“Well then, it doesn’t sound like he wants to see you, does it?” She crossed her ankles elegantly as she set her smoothie aside. “Azazel has been ever so busy with Penny in the honeymoon suite since the moment they got back. Occasionally I pop over to find out if they want to come up for air, but they’re engrossed in…well.” She made, very delicately, an obscene gesture with thumb and fingers. “Non-stop. Oh, love’s sweet enchantment… You know how it is. Well, you did.”
Penny?
She was trying to upset me, but I was too wired to snap at her crude bait. Every nerve in my body was screaming at me that there was something wrong—that everything was wrong; every word that came out of her mouth, every inch of her smooth toned skin. She didn’t just look like she’d recovered from all her exploits and injuries in Ethiopia, she looked like she’d lost ten years. I wasn’t prepared to put that all down to Pilates and wheatgrass smoothies.
“Let me see him, Roshana.” It was all I dared say.
“Now honey, don’t be one of those sad, crazy exes. Men are just fickle bastards and it’s up to us to keep our dignity. It’s a bit of a shame you can’t take him for alimony but hey, you knew it would end this way.”
“End? It’s not ended.”
“I don’t think that’s your decision, sweetie. It’s finished. He doesn’t want to see you. And as his hostess I’m bound to respect his wish for privacy.”
I would have melted her nasty plastic smile with my glare if I could have. “What are you getting out of this?”
“I’m getting my father back in my life.” She tilted her head, flicking a glance at the waiting heavy. “You’re getting to go home a little older and wiser. Isn’t that how it always is in these stories?” Her next words were addressed to him, not me. “See her out.”
A masculine hand closed firmly about my bicep.
“Don’t bother going in to the office on Monday, Milja,” she added as an afterthought. That was sprinkles on her cupcake, no doubt.
“I’ll believe he’s finished with me when I hear it from him!” I said as I was towed away.
“Sweetie, he’s got better things to do than waste his breath on you. You were only ever his fuck-toy, remember. A convenient penis-shaped hole.”
“Go to hell!”
She snorted. “Don’t shoot the messenger, honey.”
That was the last I saw of my erstwhile employer. Her payroll muscle marched me back to the front of the ranch house, where my hire car was waiting for me.
I got in and I drove away. What choice did I have? Should
I have sat down and screamed and drummed my heels like a little kid who’d had a toy snatched from her grasp?
I drove out into the drizzling fall, my teeth clenched so hard that my jaw ached, my knuckles white on the steering wheel. I didn’t believe a word she’d said. I couldn’t believe Azazel had thrown me over for Penemuel. Not just like that, surely? He would have said something. Ghosting was just not his style; he was too unsophisticated.
And I’d had that dream. I’d seen him. Yes, he’d been rapt in Penemuel’s gaze, but…
But something had been wrong. I was sure of it. If they’d just been rutting happily away my subconscious would have been able to picture that quite clearly. In fact, I was having a hard time not picturing it right here and now, after Roshana’s poisonous words.
That wasn’t what I’d seen.
Ferocious passion, yes. Concentration, yes. Not sex. Not as I knew it with Azazel.
Maybe it’s different between angels?
No. No, that wasn’t sex.
There was no joy in it.
Yes, that was what had felt wrong to me about my vision. Whatever the two of them were up to, there was nothing remotely joyous about it. And I knew what Azazel was like between the sheets—or on the rooftops, or on the back stairs. He loved sex with a wholehearted, simple, fierce delight. At his most tender or his most desperate, he still burned with joy in the act.
In my dream, the only delight had been in Roshana’s hungry eyes. The atmosphere had been taut with something else entirely.
Despair.
Two hours down the road, as I skirted yet another of those interminable Minnesotan lakes, headlights flashed in my rearview mirror. I looked up and recognized the ox-blood and chrome of Roshana’s Nissan flatbed, the one she’d taken Azazel and me out for a spin in. It seemed a long time ago now.
What does she want now? Changed her mind, has she?
I pulled in obediently at the side of the road. The light was dim here under the canopy of the lake’s wooded flanks. Roshana’s headlamps stayed on as she drew onto the verge a few lengths behind me.
In Bonds of the Earth (Book of the Watchers 2) Page 22
