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

by Janine Ashbless

  A fusillade of shots peppered the silence out there and I felt my own blood run cold.

  Oh no, Egan. I dropped the tubing—probably on to Penemuel, I frankly didn’t care—and seized Azazel’s unyielding face between my palms. “Help me, please! I’m here, Azazel! Help me!” Then I kissed his lips. “Azazel! I love you!”

  It had worked in the monastery in Montenegro. It had given him the strength he needed. It didn’t work this time.

  Now he might as well have been a mummified corpse. For all I could tell, he was.

  Milja, do what you came here for, I told myself. I flopped to my knees and for the first time laid hands on Penemuel—on her belly, and her shoulder. For all her feminine beauty she was no softer to the touch than he was, and with the open doorway at my back my skin was crawling, but I tried to compose myself.

  “Penemuel, I’m here for you.” I muttered the words out loud just to save myself from hearing what was happening outside. “We came hundreds of miles and walked three days to be here for you. We went thousands of miles to Lalibela to bring you up out of the darkness, we fought, we bled, we suffered through captivity—all for you. You are precious to us, to Azazel, to the world. You are the key to peace. We need you. Come back to us.”

  I meant it all. Maybe not for the right reasons, maybe not unselfishly, but I meant every word. Penemuel could save Azazel and Egan. That was enough for me.

  Beneath my hands I felt the kick of a pulse, like a single knock against the wood of her hide.

  I kept repeating, “We need you. Come back to us.”

  “Honey,” said Roshana bitterly behind me, “I should have known.”

  I turned on my knee.

  Roshana stood with the seep of the outdoor light framing her, setting her hair alight in a cold blond halo. She was accompanied by Egan—in as much as she was holding his prone body up by the scruff of his jacket, without any apparent effort. His head hung limply toward the floor. As she took a step into the chamber, dragging him, I could make out the cluster of round red bruises on her otherwise beautiful face.

  Well damn, at least Egan had the chutzpah to shoot her in the head, I thought bleakly. What a shame she had her father’s immunity to weapons, now that she’d drunk his blood.

  “You just had to interfere didn’t you?” Roshana complained, though God knows that given our relative positions her resentment didn’t seem justifiable, not from where I crouched. “You couldn’t leave us alone? He’s my father, but oh no, you couldn’t let me just have him and be happy. You selfish bitch.”

  “But you’re killing him,” I squeaked.

  Roshana let Egan fall, and to my relief he grunted and twitched as his face smacked the rock. At least he wasn’t dead yet.

  “He left me,” she snarled. “He burnt me and then he left me for dead—Again. He left my mother to die. I wait all these centuries for him to find me and then he dumps me for some cunt he just wants to fuck.” Her voice shook a little. “He’s supposed to be my father.”

  Oh God, Roshana.

  She thrust her hand at the gory diorama. “He deserves this. He fucking deserves it all. Anyone can see that. Even you, surely?”

  My jaw sagged. I couldn’t argue with the six-year-old child trapped in this woman’s immortal body. I wasn’t even sure she was wrong. All I could say was, “They don’t.”

  “What?”

  “They don’t deserve this. Penemuel doesn’t. Egan doesn’t. Let them go.”

  She glanced down at him. He’d managed to roll groggily onto one side. “He shot me.”

  “He was just trying to protect me.”

  “Like you matter.” Her mouth twisted, like the butterfly’s wing beating at the heart of a hurricane. I saw the impulse surge through her limbs; she seized and lifted his ankle high in one hand and shoved down on the side of his knee with the other. The pressure exerted was precise, almost neat. I heard the bone snap a split second before I heard Egan scream, and then my voice joined the cacophony too.

  Well, that brought him back to consciousness. He flailed around, trying to grab her perhaps, so she took a half-step away and simply stamped on his other leg. I felt the blow through the rock beneath me, as if she’d struck him with a sledgehammer. I screamed and covered my ears, screwing my eyes shut.

  When I opened them Egan had collapsed into retching, his open mouth pressed to the rock and his lower legs at insane angles. His fingers clawed at the stone beneath him.

  “You fucking psycho,” I gasped.

  She laughed.

  “If you were my kid I’d have cut your throat, never mind disowned you.” I was grasping for words that would hurt, and those at least wiped the smile off her face. She strode across the chamber, grabbed the front of my camo clothing in one hand and hefted me to my feet.

  “Going to put your eyes out,” she told me flatly as she raised her other hand, middle finger pointed. “Going to smash your teeth in and pull out your hamstrings and keep you alive so you can feed him for years and years and years. You could have fucked off and lived happily ever after, but that wasn’t enough, was it? You couldn’t stay out of my hair. Well—”

  Something dark sheered along her temple and bounced off into the shadows, only just missing my face. Bright blood spurted from the cut.

  She forgot me for the moment, throwing me down as she whirled. I saw Egan—thank God for him, my white knight. He was up on one elbow, the slingshot in one shaking hand as he groped about him on the floor for another stone.

  I knew she was going to kill him then. I saw each pace she took as if in slow motion.

  I grabbed for the only weapon within reach, the spear of Saint George, heaving it out of Penemuel’s chest; and I ran at her back as she loomed over Egan and kicked the slingshot from his hand. She broke a few more of his bones then, but who was counting?

  At the last moment she heard me, or felt me, or knew from the look in Egan’s eyes that I was behind her. Maybe it was just her father’s warrior instincts in her. She turned, contemptuously, which is why I got to see her expression as the spear-point bit under her chin and punched clean out of the top of her skull.

  Blood counts.

  The holy relic was covered tip to toe in Azazel’s blood, and what will hurt an angel will hurt their child. She died, I think, almost instantly.

  I let go as the spear became too heavy for me to hold up. I staggered back and kept going, all the way to the wall of the chamber.

  Then I threw up everything I’d eaten that day.

  When I lifted my head it was because Egan gasped my name. I looked across, my heart thudding so hard in my breast that I could hear it in my ears. He was alive, and I was so grateful that for a moment I mistook it for joy.

  He was alive. He was pushing off Roshana’s limp corpse, which had collapsed upon him, and the shakes had really taken hold of his frame. As I staggered in his direction he looked up at me again and groaned, “You angel,” then let out a horrid barking gasp. I think it was supposed to be a laugh.

  “Egan!”

  He grabbed the spear shaft in one hand and the crook of his elbow, and hauled it sideways. It wrenched free from her as he roared with pain and fell flat.

  The ghosts at the other side of the chamber hissed and rose up.

  Out of Roshana’s body flowed something black, lying like an oil slick on the prickling air, gathering form. It was so dark, so utterly devoid of light, that in this shadowy place it looked more solid than rock or flesh or angel. It pulled itself up and I recognized its outline. Her outline. All curves, and delicacy, and wild tendrils of hair.

  “Roshana, no!” I said as her demonic spirit turned and poured itself down onto Egan’s face.

  I screamed.

  It bounced. There’s no other word for the way it recoiled from him, and then hung for a moment as if stunned. I could actually see it shake its head.

  Oh, I thought, panting. He’s consecrated ground. A priest, even a dirty sinning priest, belongs to Someone Else.

&
nbsp; “What?” Confusion tinted Egan’s barely-contained agony.

  I pointed, though it was obvious that he couldn’t see it. Only I could do that.

  Ghosts and demons. Some gift.

  Roshana turned toward me just as I realized that, unlike Egan, I wasn’t under the aegis of the Church in any way.

  I ran. I ran for the passageway, and I felt her at my back like a blast of cold foul air. I had some confused idea that maybe she couldn’t survive in sunlight, but as I staggered out onto the carpet of leaves I felt chilly hands claw at my back, numbing where they touched. Ghosts turned and stared. I tripped on a rock and somersaulted down the slight slope, and as I tried to climb to hands and knees again she was on my back, her long throttling fingers around my neck, more in my hair, pulling my throat taut, her voice a poisonous hiss in my head.

  Jealousjealousbitchyouwerealwaysjealousofmeeee

  My wide eyes saw her impossible black silhouette above me against the bare branches and the sky, like a gateway into some infinite night beyond reality.

  Mineheismineminemineforever

  Around us the gray figures of the long-dead clustered closer, distracted from their ancient suffering.

  NowIwillhaveyouandhavehimboth

  “Help me,” I begged through gritted teeth. My throat was so numb with the cold of her touch that I could hardly breathe. “She’s the one that moved your bones.”

  Openwidewhorebitchcunt

  One of the gray figures fell upon her from behind and embraced her, and where they met they melded into one. From my twisted angle below it looked like Roshana was absorbing the ghost—except that it left her dark silhouette a little grayer and a little ragged at the edges. She hissed, jerking her head from side to side as if trying to look behind her. More ghosts closed in, arms outstretched. I tried to prize her hand from my throat but my fingers couldn’t even find her, and the cold chokehold seemed to be inside my flesh. The light was fading at the corners of my vision—was it lack of oxygen to my brain, or the massing figures of the dead pressing around us?

  I will not let you in, was my only coherent thought. I carried it like a stone as the world around me shrank.

  Suddenly, Roshana let me go. I pitched forward onto the thick mulch of damp leaves, sucked a breath full of woodland detritus, and then rolled to the side. The demon was writhing and flailing, trying to push the ghosts away, but they homed in on her like moths to a black flame, and every time one of them burnt up in her nimbus it ate away a little at her outline. She looked ragged now, and no longer as dark as the void but just dirty, like vapor.

  Finally, she launched herself into the air, trying to break away by rising above them. They clawed at her from below, shredding her, and as the sun dazzled my eyes I wasn’t sure whether that last tire-fire wisp of smoke escaped or simply dispersed.

  I’m not sure how long I was out of it. Not so very long, because the light hadn’t changed much by the time I swam back to consciousness, but long enough for the sweat to have cooled beneath my clothes to a horrible clamminess.

  I was dog-tired. All I wanted to do was sleep. Every muscle ached and the inside of my throat felt raw. But I couldn’t just lie here. I forced myself to my knees and then my feet.

  There were no ghosts in sight. Just the bare trees, and the split in the rock. No sound from within. A stranger’s body lay a little way off, face down and dressed like one of Roshana’s men, but I didn’t go over and look. I assumed he’d been shot.

  Egan—are you okay?

  My head filled with the memory of him, broken and bleeding, reaching out in his agony and wrestling the spear from Roshana’s corpse. Oh God—the spear. Egan—No!

  That short distance to the tomb half-convinced me that I was drunk, as the world dipped and spun about me. The rock felt solid under my outstretched hand, but the cave-mouth dilated and then shrank. I forced my eyes to adapt to the shadows.

  Nothing had changed. The two angels were still locked in their closed-circuit pieta. Roshana’s corpse sprawled by itself in a wide and sticky pool of blood.

  No, I was wrong—something had changed. Egan had moved over to the Watchers. He had crawled there, I realized as my breath caught in my chest; crawled there dragging his broken legs. I couldn’t see the spear though, not anywhere. If he had intended to use it on Azazel, something had changed; something had stopped him. He lay now with his head pillowed on Penemuel’s stomach. His boot-knife lay next to him, discarded, alongside a nasty twist of leather that I took to be her gag. As I got close enough I could hear his slow, labored breathing, each exhalation an ugly whistle as if there was something terrible going on in his lungs. His eyes were half-open, white slits of sclera.

  He’d found the transfusion tube, I worked out. My brain seemed to be struggling to parse the scene before it. He’d stuck the cannula needle into his neck. And fed the open end into the spear-hole in Penemuel’s chest. The plastic tube was a thin red line from him to her.

  No, Egan, I thought, stooping to touch his face. Oh no, that’s far too dangerous!

  But that was the point, wasn’t it? He’d done exactly what I’d asked of him in giving her love, and of course he understood sacrificial devotion way better than I did.

  Penemuel was breathing. I could trace the rise and fall of her breasts.

  I thought my heart might stop. This was too much to bear, that the world required such things.

  I didn’t touch Egan. I was scared he might die under my hand. Instead I went around and embraced Azazel. “You can stop now,” I whispered, closing my eyes and pressing my face to his shoulder. I felt like I was dreaming even as I stood there. “Egan’s got her. You can let go.”

  My mind, heavy with exhaustion, was unable to resist the gravity of his.

  I am standing on an open hillside, in a blizzard. The snow howls around me, all but obscuring the mountain peaks. I can feel the cold, but it is faint and untroubling. They are his memories, not mine.

  There’s an elk. It is vast, prehistoric; sable-black and shaggy, the spread of its antlers like dead branches. It’s pacing a circle, bellowing with rage, and the mist of its hot breath is pink with exhaled droplets of blood. It has been wounded just behind the ribs, but the wound has frozen.

  There, in the center of the circle; another elk. But this one crownless and fallen, a doe, snow heaped up against her bronze flanks, her neck arched to brace her twisted head against the earth.

  He is not angry at her, as I first thought. He is raging against the storm. Where he paces, the wind and the snow withdraw for a moment; ice melts, thin green grass shivers from the earth and flowers bloom. She is sheltered within a tiny pocket of spring. But he cannot keep the circle intact, no matter how fast he marches, and as soon as he passes the storm presses in again at his heels, scouring at the collapsed doe.

  His sides are heaving with exhaustion, and icicles are hanging from the frozen foam on his pelt. His nostrils are crimson.

  “Azazel!” I step up to the circle he’s tracing, and he doesn’t see me because his eyes are crusted shut with blown ice. “Azazel, stop! Stop now!”

  The wind blows my words away.

  I have to block his path to get him to notice me. He’s huge and stinking and primal, and his hooves shake the earth with every step. He will trample me down and never even know, I think as I lift my arms. His sweeping antlers are like the spread of an oak tree falling around me, wide enough that they miss, wide enough that I can step inside and grab his broad head.

  He knocks the breath out of me. The shock of our collision runs through the mountain, launching avalanches. I cling to the greasy, shaggy pelt, digging my fingers under the elk’s great jaw, searching out the body-warmth hidden beneath the hardened rime.

  “Azazel!” I shout, and suddenly he has stopped bugling, the wind is silent, there is a vast and awful silence. “Stop! You have to stop! It’s over! You’ve done as much as you can!”

  He starts to shake.

  “Let her go, my love! Let her go! It’s
finished!”

  Now it isn’t the deer’s head, but Azazel’s chest that I am embracing. He stands against me, trembling and taut. I can feel the hardness of his ribs, his spine, his long muscles. I can feel his skin slick with perspiration.

  I look down at the doe, and she is nothing but a mound of snow.

  Then the mound blows away into nothing.

  Azazel roars in despair. I feel his hands knot in my hair, and as he drags my head back I look up into a face raw with fury and pain, tracked with tears, filthy and wild and savage. He can barely see me.

  “Azazel—I love you.”

  His hands are biting and suddenly heavy. He’s pushing me to my knees. He has defied the storm and lost, and he is dying, and this is the last bit of him left alive—this tangled knot of hurt and rage and passion—and I understand this even as he forces himself on me.

  I understand, so I open my mouth and take him willingly even though he’s desperate and unrestrained and his cock is too big and too hard, even though he’s so forceful it hurts. But it’s only pain, and I’m used to that. I like that, truth be told. I like that he is too much for me, too strong, on the very edge of unbearable. I have always liked this. His overwhelming need excites me, and his panic is so strong it catches me up with it and spins me into his hurricane. Roshana called me nothing but a convenient-shaped hole and there is a bit of my secret soul—as well as my body—that blossoms hot and wet at that thought, that wants nothing more than to be fucked, to be used, to be his.

  My pain flashes like diamonds, infinitely precious. Just as he promised.

  His thighs are stone hard under my hands. I’m choking. His ball-sack is a clenched fist. His cock is a spear thrusting for the back of my skull.

  But this is my dream as well as his, and in that dream I can take it all the way. No matter how big he is, no matter how he batters my throat, no matter how hard his hands or cruel his urgency. His heat is my heat, his thrusts my pulse. I open to him without reservation, holding nothing back. If he tore me apart right now I wouldn’t resist, nor feel any fear. There is some part of all of us that wants to surrender to God, I think.