The Prison of the Angels (The Book of the Watchers 3)

by Janine Ashbless

  “Here?”

  “Just once,” he said with emphasis, then pointed at the bare toes he wriggled in demonstration. “She fixed me. She was that grateful for being released.”

  “Right. I see.” I wasn’t sure I believed him; something felt wrong. No, something was wrong—but I didn’t know what. Egan wasn’t the sort to tell flat-out lies, but he didn’t have a great track record for being candid with the whole truth. On the other hand, Penemuel did have every cause to be grateful to us. “Well, if you’re sure?”

  “Please, Milja. Trust me.” He held out his hand for the first time, and I clasped it in both of mine. His fingers felt cold, but they knotted tightly with my own. “Get me out of here.”

  “Okay, I’ll help you,” I said when I could find a voice again. “Let’s get your stuff.” I pointed at the whiskey bottle and added, “But you are not bringing that.”

  “That’s grand.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, then watched as I hurried around emptying out the plastic trash bag and then filling it with the clothes and bits of things they had left him with.

  “What’s this lot?” I asked, uncovering a loose stash of pills at the bottom of the drawer that held his wallet and credit cards.

  “That’s the pain meds that I’ve not been taking.” He was tense, but seemed to have perked up a bit. Hope had bloomed at last. “Sister Carmel tried to force me. There was a bit of a fight.”

  I shook my head. “Okay, let’s get you into a coat. It’s cold out there.” The camouflage jacket I recalled from the Minnesota woods was hanging on the back of the door and I tossed it to him before wheeling the chair closer. It was a clunky thing with a red frame, not at all modern or streamlined. “How do you want to manage this?”

  “Hold it steady.” He swung himself off the bed and into the chair using mostly the strength of his arms, just pivoting a little on his plaster-encased heels. He couldn’t bend his knees of course, but there was a sort of platform sticking out the front of the chair to support his legs.

  I dumped the bag of clothes into his lap and we headed out of the door. Sister Carmel was standing in the corridor, hands clasped, waiting for us. “He’s checking out,” I announced, tossing her keys back to her.

  “You mustn’t go,” she said in a tight voice, scurrying to keep up with us. “You haven’t been cleared by the doctors. Or the fathers.”

  “Sister, I will explain everything to them in person,” Egan said over his shoulder. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

  “You will cause irreparable damage to your legs!”

  “I’ve got private insurance.”

  “Father Kansky!”

  “Pray for me, Sister.”

  I punched the elevator button and backed the wheelchair in, thankful as the metal doors slid shut to separate us from the world. “They don’t know that you’re better?” I asked, looking down at the back of Egan’s head.

  “What do you think I could have told them? That there’s been a miracle?”

  “I guess Vidimus wouldn’t approve?”

  “No, they sure as hell would not.”

  We drove to the house where I’d rented a room, with Egan stretched out across the back seat of my second-hand Ford. From that position, he demanded that I talk him through exactly what had happened in upstate Minnesota, since he’d spent parts of it passed out. He did remember me killing Roshana, though he hadn’t seen her incorporeal counter-attack afterward.

  “What should I have done?” I asked. “How do your lot deal with disembodied Nephilim?”

  “Exorcism,” he said grimly. “I’m sorry; maybe if I’d left the spear in place…”

  “What did you do with the relic?”

  “There was a pile of bones and stuff. I just sort of shoved it under there.”

  Well damn. “Is it still out there? In the woods?”

  “No.”

  I adjusted the rear-view mirror so I could look at his face. “So you were planning to stab Azazel?”

  He looked dog-weary. “I thought about it.”

  You bastard.

  “Then I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt. Stuck to Plan A.”

  I swallowed hard. “Have you told your people what you did?”

  “I had to. I was rather hoping someone would listen.” He shook his head.

  I shifted my eyes back to the traffic for a while. My next question was much meeker. “Do you think Roshana was right? Do you think I was just jealous of her all along?”

  “I think your lack of hesitation saved my life,” he answered, dry as toast. “Thank you.”

  I stayed silent.

  “Milja,” he said after a while, “we have to make the best of the situation. The deck’s been reshuffled, but we have to play on.”

  “I’m playing without the Ace of Spades in my hand though, now,” I said sourly. “And to be honest, I’m not sure what I’d be playing for anymore. I was trying to help Azazel. What do I do now he doesn’t want me?” My voice betrayed me with a rough little catch.

  Egan put his hand up on my shoulder. Not quite a caress. “You can still play to save him. And I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I get that it hurts.”

  “Really?” I shot him a hard look in the mirror. “I thought you’d be delighted.”

  “What sort of a bastard d’you think I am?” He frowned. “And you did what you had to, to save us all. Don’t blame yourself for that. He’s the one that’s wrong.”

  “I killed his little girl, Egan.”

  He squeezed my shoulder again, gently, as I let out a dry sob. “It’s hard, Milja, I know. If it wasn’t hard then there’d be something wrong with you.”

  “I don’t want to be a killer.”

  “I know.”

  “You made it look easy.”

  “Did I ever say there was nothing wrong with me?” He sighed. “You build walls, Milja, in time.”

  We said nothing more until we reached the low-rise street where I parked up in front of a shabby clapboard house.

  “This is it,” I said, unbuckling.

  “Not the Hilton then?”

  “The Hilton wants a credit card on file. This guy takes cash.”

  We hadn’t stolen the wheelchair from Our Lady of Mercy, so Egan scooted right to the edge of the car seat and then pulled himself up onto my shoulder, deluging me in the scent of hospitals and bourbon. His plaster-clad legs did take most of his weight, to my relief, or at least enough of it to allow us to stagger like drunks across the dead grass to the door. Once he could get his hands on the porch balustrade he made a lot better use of his upper body strength.

  “I should get you crutches,” I said.

  “Just get me a saw.”

  Letting him into my room, I helped him over to the single bed. He lay back on the comforter, gasping as he straightened his spine. “Nice place,” he said.

  It wasn’t. It was barren and colorless and the drafts came in around the rattling window, and I had none of my own belongings to make it homely. All my household possessions were probably in a skip in Chicago now, it occurred to me. Photos, certificates, college projects, mementoes of my childhood and my late father. But I’d lost so much, so often, that I’d stopped caring. The only things in the world that mattered to me were my ex-lover—who might not be in the world at all—and this messed-up man on my bed, who seemed to be dozing off already. His face had relaxed, smoothing away the lines, and his eyes had drifted closed. I paused to look.

  Black T-shirt, soft grey cotton briefs that were a bit too clingy for his own good, and those white plaster thigh-high stockings. There was something oddly perverse about the sight.

  His eyes opened, and tried to focus.

  “Coffee?” I asked quickly.

  “Yes. Have you got any caffeine tablets?”

  “Why?” I looked around from the cupboard. “Do you need to stay awake or do you just hate your heart?”

  He shook his head, lips compressed.

  I made coffee, blac
k and strong, the way we both like it. Egan sat up to take his mug from my hand. He smiled at me then, for the first time—a battered little smile that seemed unsure if it was safe to come out of hiding. “This is not going the way we hoped, is it?”

  I don’t even know what I hope for anymore. “I’ll go ask my landlord if he has any tools,” I said.

  When I got back a quarter-hour later, my arms full of tools and extension cords, Egan was still sitting up at the edge of the bed, and as I entered I saw him do a sort of reverse-blink; his head jerked up suddenly, his eyes flashing open, before it sank back down again on his chest.

  I kicked the door shut behind me and the bang made him start awake enough to look over at me.

  “The landlord wasn’t in, but his girlfriend let me borrow his Dremel.” I brandished the drill with its tiny rotary blade.

  “I drank your coffee,” he mumbled. “Sorry.”

  “How long since you had a proper night’s sleep, Egan?”

  “Me?” He shook his head. “Weeks. Bad dreams.”

  I knelt on the floor next to the bed, staring up at his face as I reconsidered my assessment. He wasn’t drunk—or at least, he wasn’t just drunk; he was tripping his ass off on exhaustion. And I wasn’t surprised at the bad dreams, given all we’d been through. “For God’s sake, that’s not good for you. Maybe we should leave this until you’ve slept?”

  He straightened his neck. “Ah, no. I need out of these things now, Milja.” He grimaced. “I want to be able to walk to the john.”

  “I just don’t think this is a good idea.” I looked down at the drill. “I could really injure you with this!”

  “I trust you. You’ve got a steady hand. C’mon, it’s not rocket science.”

  “Can’t I take you to a hospital? They’ve got the proper equipment there.”

  He touched my hair, gingerly, as if he thought I might bite his fingers. “If we get blood on the duvet, I’ll pay the laundry bills.”

  I breathed out hard. “Right, fine. Open your legs.”

  He wisely chose not to mock me for that. He pulled himself further onto the bed and settled his back against the wall, his feet spread enough to allow me access between them. I tried not to look anywhere in the vicinity of the button-up underpants curtained by his loose hands.

  Once I’d pinned my hair up safely out of the way, I took a magic marker and drew lines on the plaster of both legs—one right up the outside of each thigh and one up the inside. “This is where I’m going to cut,” I said. “Don’t you dare move once I’ve started.”

  “Go for it.”

  His faith was almost alarming, I thought; there couldn’t be many men who’d let a woman work a rotary saw that close to their crotch. I took a deep breath. At least my engineering background meant I had no nervousness of tools. Bending over the plaster cast, I started on the inside of his right leg at the big toe, and took a sharp angle around the ankle-bone. The tiny circular saw-head bit into the plaster easily, spitting out white dust. I was very careful not to let it slice too far into the padding beneath the stiff crust.

  It’s working, I told myself.

  Egan didn’t obey the stricture about not moving, though. When I reached the level of his knee, he reached out very carefully, picked up one of my pillows and pressed it down over his groin. At first I thought, naively, that this was some sort of gallows-humor attempt to shield himself in case of a really bad slip of the wrist. A glance up at his glassy-eyed expression taught me better, though, and I blushed redder than him.

  But that was the only move he made, and the only interruption to my concentration. He watched me work carefully up the length of his inner thigh, my head bowed over my hands, without comment. Then I switched to the outside of the leg. When I’d created splits on both sides, I took scissors to the wadding in the cut, snipping delicately at the layers of cotton wool and stockinet. Only then could we slowly lift the lid of the cast.

  I still didn’t entirely believe him, I think. My heart was in my mouth as his leg was revealed, and the first glimpse wasn’t encouraging—it was smeared yellow and red with some hospital gunk that looked horribly gory and smelled vile.

  Egan bent his knee and wriggled it out of the bottom half of the cast. Then he gasped in pain.

  “What?” I yelped.

  “Pins-and-needles!”

  “Godssake, Egan, you nearly gave me a heart attack!” I complained, while he completely ignored me and clutched at his thigh, hissing with discomfort. I took a break from the job then, flounced off, and returned with a basin full of soapy water and a face-cloth to wash him down with.

  The pins-and-needles seemed to have settled down by then; he only winced a little as I cleaned his foot and calf and knee, wiping the stain away and probing gently at the meat of his muscle as I sought for any injuries. I found scars, yes—all around the knee area there were silver curlicues and puckered indentations like the imprint of kisses. But they all looked old, and completely healed. He hadn’t been lying. This was a full-on angelic miracle.

  Well, thank you Penemuel. I’d been scared he’d never walk again. I’d been scared he’d lose both legs.

  My fingers drifted across the little cicatrices, fascinated, tracing their secret sigils.

  “You like scars, do you?” he asked, his voice a rumble in his chest.

  I blushed again, and withdrew my fingers quickly. “Sorry.”

  “Your man Azazel has a particularly big one, I couldn’t help noticing.”

  I was a little startled, but there was a twisted, self-deprecating smile on his face so I answered, “That’s where the eagle ripped his liver out. If you’re actually talking about scars.”

  He snorted.

  “I didn’t ever dare touch it much,” I confessed. It was easier to look at Egan’s bare leg than his bloodshot eyes. “He gets weird if I…like things that remind him of his imprisonment.”

  “He’s an arse.”

  “You jealous?” I said, a little cruelly, as I went back to washing his thigh.

  “Me? Of him?” His tones were looping, incautious, like drunken outflung gestures. “Of course I’m jealous. He had everything I wanted, and then he threw it all away.”

  “You mean Heaven?”

  “That too.”

  My ears thrummed with blood and I felt light-headed. I kept my head bowed and my eyes down.

  “You said ‘gets’, not ‘got’,” he pointed out softly. “Are you still seeing him?”

  I shook my head, my eyes blurring. “Azazel gave me to you,” I whispered. He had, in just so many words: ‘I cannot love her. I give her to you.’ Like I was a pet cat that had turned around and scratched him once too often.

  “That’s absolutely not his call, Milja.”

  There didn’t seem to be enough air in the room. “The thing is, I don’t think I’m fit to be with you, Egan. Or any other man.”

  “Because of him?”

  I nodded because in a way, yes, it was Azazel who had engendered my corruption. I didn’t think I could ever escape that mental image of him tied out upon the rock slab under the mountain. It was a part of me from childhood, and it had found a dark and carnal expression.

  Egan didn’t answer.

  I set the bowl of water aside. “I should do the other leg.”

  The left cast seemed to take longer, but in the end we were able to tug and wriggle and prize Egan’s leg out into the free air. I sat back as I waited for him to recover from the rush of blood to long disused muscles. Then he heaved himself to the edge of the bed and bent his knees to let his feet rest on a floor for the first time in weeks.

  “Want to try standing?”

  He tried, but fell back immediately, pulling a face. A second attempt made him groan.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked, anxious.

  “No, my muscles are just weak as dishrags. Arse. Give me a hand up, will you, Milja?”

  I held an arm to steady him, and he lurched to his feet, but he couldn’t take his own weight pr
operly.

  “For feckssake,” he muttered.

  “Give it time. You just need to practice.”

  “What I need is a shower… And to get this stuff off me. Help me into the bathroom, will you?”

  I let him lean on my shoulder as we crossed the room to my tiny ensuite. I had a wet-room—by virtue of the landlord having not installed a shower cubicle, only a flimsy curtain—and I helped Egan brace himself against the tile walls and then slide himself down into a sitting position on the floor.

  He wouldn’t let go of me. His hands stayed locked on my upper arms. I was crouched over him, and I bent my face so close to his that I could feel the heat of his cheek against my own. His scruffy beard tickled my jaw. The midnight-dark scents of coffee and bourbon filled my head, and I shut my eyes, breathing in as I let my mouth trace the unfamiliar path to his.

  For a long moment our lips touched, feather-soft, while my heart pounded so slow and hard that it hurt.

  I could feel it, like some black slick of oil oozing to the surface of the earth. That sick arousal, that cruel desire to take advantage of his physical helplessness. He couldn’t stand, he couldn’t resist. I pictured myself straddling his hips and pushing his hands up over his head against the tiles, and biting his soft warm lips until he whimpered and flinched beneath me. And the thought made me run wet.

  I pulled away, breaking his grip—and what I saw in his face was a confirmation of my guilt. Shame, yes, but more than that; fear. He gulped air, twisting from side to side.

  “Shite,” he whispered, “oh shite. Don’t touch me.”

  I lurched back the one pace it took to the far wall and flinched as he slammed his fist into the floor tiles hard enough to skin his knuckles. “Bitch!” he cried.

  I panicked. “I’m sorry!”

  “Not you!” His bloodshot eyes struggled to find my face. “Her.”

  Red streaked the white tiles under his clenched fist.

  Her? “What’s wrong, Egan, please? Talk to me!”

  “The succubus.” He thudded the heel of his hand against his temple. “In my dreams. Do you get it?” His words were bullets, fired with merciless precision. “She comes to see me. Repeatedly.”

  I understood at last. I put my hand over my mouth so that he couldn’t see my twisted, silent shriek.