The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

  When you persuaded them to start interbreeding with human beings.

  When you started your eugenics program.

  No…that goes further back still, doesn’t it? Back to Lucy in Africa or whatever. The australopithecines. Back to the Garden of Eden. The snake in the goddamn yellow-fruit tree. ‘Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.’

  “Yes,” he says sorrowfully.

  “Screw you, grandfather.” I clench my grip, and Samyaza shrinks a little beneath my hands, glowing brighter. His rippling length throbs between my thighs, pressing against me and inside me.

  “I did it all for you.”

  “And now you’re cutting us loose?”

  “I give you freedom.”

  “You’re going to regret that.”

  “You must be free, or everything we’ve done is wasted.”

  “Well, this is me being free.”

  He is a living ribbon of fire now, not even recognizable as a serpent, just a thrashing light in the darkness, a heat against my sex. I push him down, away from my face, inward; he’s getting smaller and smaller; brighter and brighter.

  “Let me die!” His voice is weaker. “Kill me!”

  “You don’t deserve that!” I snarl. “Not while a single one of your brothers is kept alive and suffering! This is your fault!”

  I can’t bear to look at him now, he’s so bright, so hot.

  I stretch my throat, eyes closed, light blinding me even through my lids. Light pouring through every cell in my body, every nerve, every surge in my veins.

  Until I am nothing but light.

  I floated in gold, each pulse within me a ripple in the molten pool. I opened dry eyes, gasping, my hands at my groin finding short, tufted hair. Hair, not scales. And not mine.

  A weight pressed my thighs down and apart. It felt deliciously comforting.

  I was in a bed, flat on my back, propped by pillows. I pulled my gaze down from a ceiling that seemed blinding white after the interior darkness of my dreams; down at my bare, open legs. I was naked below the hips, and melting with a pleasure I wanted never to stop.

  Egan lifted his face from between my thighs. His eyes met mine, and widened. His breath stirred my fleece, tickling me.

  Oh, Egan…

  Then he shot backward off the bed and fumbled at his Norwegian fleece jacket where it lay on top of a chest of drawers. Pulling the bloodstained wooden dart out of a pocket, he brandished it at me like a switchblade. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  I whimpered a little under my breath, too stunned and confused to feel anything but the throb of my loss. “Egan? Were you…?”

  “I command you, unclean spirit, whoever you are,” he barked; “by the mysteries of the incarnation and passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, that you tell me by some sign your name!”

  “What’s going on? Were you eating me out?”

  He flushed. “In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,” he said, “and by the authority of Holy Mother Church, I command you to name yourself!”

  “Milja!” I rasped, shaking my head. All the good feelings were draining away, and now I struggled weakly half-upright. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  He let out a long breath and lowered the dagger slowly. “Your eyes were green,” he said. “Bright green, like Go-lights.”

  “Oh.” Samyaza. What was I supposed to say—‘Don’t worry, it’s okay, I’ve done this before, it’s just a bit of demonic possession’?

  “They’re back to normal now,” he said, his own narrowed and untrusting. He still had the dart clenched in his fist. “Your hand’s just fine too.”

  I lifted my right hand, the one which had been broken. No twisted fingers, no swelling, no gashed skin. Just some dried blood-streaks. I opened and closed my fist smoothly.

  No pain.

  “What happened?” The last thing I remembered of the real world was the mountainside in Norway.

  “What’s with the eyes, Milja?” he countered.

  I sat up, twisting my legs to the side, self-conscious of my partial nakedness now. “I took Samyaza inside me. It’s okay. I’ve sort of…scrunched him up.” I mimed balling a wad of paper.

  “Oh for feckssake. No. No. Why would you do that?”

  I glared at him from under my brows and he suddenly became abashed. He dropped the dart on the bed and actually started to sidle toward the door. “I’ll let you get your clothes on, then. You’ll need a cup of tea, I guess?”

  “Water. Coffee.” My throat was parched.

  “Right so. I’ll, uh…” He gestured at the bedroom door. “I’ll be out there. The heating’s still cranking up, but the shower’s electric so there’s hot water, if you want one. No hurry.”

  “Where are we?”

  He was halfway out of the room already. “Ireland.”

  Ireland?

  But the door was shut, and I was alone.

  By the time—washed and dressed back in my Norwegian clothes—I found Egan again, I’d worked out that we were in a small cottage out in the countryside. It had low ceilings and was built into a cut in some hill; through the small windows set into thick whitewashed walls I could see grass at eye-level, flattened nearly horizontal by driving rain. A plaintive bleat of sheep mixed with the wuthering of the wind.

  I felt…really strange. Disconnected. There was no panic, no rage. I think I’d taken all that and shoved it down with Samyaza where it couldn’t touch me. Colors felt washed-out and the light a little too bright. I longed to curl up somewhere dark, and stay there forever.

  When I’d been possessed by Azazel, I’d felt superhuman and full of life. He’d overwhelmed me with excitement. This was the opposite.

  I made myself walk out into the main room, and found Egan sitting on a stool beside a wood-burning stove, feeding the flames. The rest of the room was crowded with comfortable but shabby furniture; a big dresser heaped with plates, a red sofa with sagging cushions and stained arms, a scarred dining table with mismatched chairs.

  “Hey. There’s tea here for you.” He nodded at a mug on a low table, avoiding my eyes. “Sorry; the coffee’d gone moldy. And the milk’s UHT, I’m afraid.”

  “What is this place?” I asked, looking out through the front window as I collected my mug. I could see what looked like a vista of a small beach lashed by waves, and a mountain headland. Shreds of mist were climbing up the mountain from the seaward side. It was by most standards spectacular, but I felt no awe.

  “It’s, uh, my house. We’re on Achill Island, off the west coast.”

  “Your house?”

  I must have looked mildly disbelieving, because he frowned. “What? It was in my family for years. I ended up with it. Sure, I don’t spend much time here.”

  “I just thought you’d be a chrome-and-gadgets kind of guy.”

  He glanced around at the four-children-and-no-money décor and nodded wryly. “I helped my mother move house a few years back, and ended up with the old furniture. How are you feeling?”

  “Bleached out. Like I’ve been through the wash too many times.” I looked down at my tea dubiously; it was so strongly brewed and heavy on the milk that it was near orange in hue. Not tea as I knew it. Was this some Irish thing, I wondered?

  “Sit down. Drink. Let’s start at the beginning—what do you remember?”

  “Uh. Finding Samyaza. What happened? How did we get here?”

  “What happened? I saw you kiss him, and then—his body just faded out into light. And you collapsed.”

  I sat down on the sofa, which received me in a saggy, comfortable embrace. I could feel Samyaza within my belly, like a small hard stone. “I took possession.”

  “What does that mean? He’s inside you now?”

  “Don’t be scared. He’s so small now…he doesn’t even want to come out.”

  Egan stared at me grimly.

  “How did we get here?” I prompted.

  “Hh.” He sn
apped a piece of kindling between his hands. “When you passed out I started getting really cold, really fast. So, well… I called Penemuel back.” He looked ashamed, though I wasn’t sure why he should be. “I honestly had no other idea what to do.”

  “She brought us here?” The tea tasted so, so wrong, but each sip was warm and thick and oddly comforting.

  “She was in a helluva hurry, but she told me to picture somewhere safe and…” He shrugged. “Here we are. It’s just the first place I thought of.”

  Thank goodness for that. “Where is she now?”

  “I don’t know. She wouldn’t stop to talk. Not even to…” He was looking at my hand holding my mug. “I’m sorry.”

  “About what?”

  “I couldn’t wake you up, and we’re miles from a hospital, with no car. I couldn’t get any response from you at all. But I know you can…you can heal yourself in the right circumstances. So I… I know I should have asked but I couldn’t, that was the whole point—”

  He’d kept talking as I slid off the sofa and knelt in front of him, but he stopped abruptly as I put a hand on his knee.

  “Egan, it’s alright.”

  He looked into my eyes as I stretched up. Maybe he was checking for a green glow in there. But he didn’t pull away as I kissed him gently on the lips.

  Then we both jumped out of our skins when Penemuel crashed into existence in the center of the room, the wumph of displaced air knocking over small items and rattling the mugs on the dresser hooks.

  “I can’t find him!” she shouted. She took one step, had to duck her head to avoid the central light fitting, then reached up to tear it off the ceiling and hurled it across the room. The lights went out of course, pitching us into a wintery gloom in which her eyes glowed like coals. Brass and glass hit the white wall and stuck there in a great melted splash, sizzling.

  “Ah,” said Egan, rising slowly to his feet and backing off, like a man who’d just found himself in a hut with a tiger.

  “That’s enough, Penemuel,” I snapped. “Calm down.”

  She closed the space between us in two strides, picked me up and slapped me against the chimney breast. I could hardly breathe under the clutch of her hands, and for a moment all I could see were the glowing embers in her eye sockets. My feet kicked the hot stove. “Calm?” she snarled. “Why? I’ve lost him! What do I do? What do I do?”

  “Penemuel.” Egan’s hands appeared on her shoulders. His voice was soft. “That’s not your Adversary. We’re going to help you. Put her down now.”

  Yeah, his voice was soft—but his eyes were hard and flat. She couldn’t see that though.

  After a moment’s hesitation Penemuel let me drop. “What do I do?” she muttered again.

  “Sit down,” I suggested breathlessly, and then because it seemed to be Egan’s first instinct, “Have a cup of tea. Tell us what’s happening.”

  She crashed down on the sofa, though she didn’t reach for the tea. She sat like an angry teenaged boy, I noticed; legs open, elbows on knees, shoulders hunched. She glared at me. “Your Master is gone,” she growled. “Why are you calm?”

  Good question. “Is he dead? Or can we get him back?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. I followed the Adversary but he kept on running—and then I lost him when I had to come back for you.” She jerked her chin at Egan.

  Ow, I thought.

  “But I know where Azazel is at all times, just like I know where you are. I picked up the trail again. I followed.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “Then it went dead. He’s nowhere I can see. I looked and looked. I even went back to the mountain—but Samyaza has gone too. They’ve taken him away! I don’t know what to do. Am I the last one left? How do I free my brothers if it’s just me?”

  Egan looked at me sharply.

  “I have some bad news about Samyaza,” I admitted.

  She sat back as if trying to pull away from me. “Explain,” she said softly, her eyes turning black.

  It was hard to tell her the cold truth. “Samyaza’s not on your side. He was never on your side. I’m sorry, Penemuel. I talked to him. Oh God. This is going to be rough. Remember how he thought it would be a great idea for you all to take human wives? Yeah? It was never just about you getting your rocks off. He was playing a really long game.”

  “He wanted to advance your species. I know that.”

  “And all this?” I waved my hands to indicate the sorry state of the world. “He foresaw it. It was part of the plan too. He used you all, your blood and your seed and your talents, to elevate humanity. To make us more than animals. To give us civilization. And then he intended you all to just…disappear and let us get on with it. He wanted you out of the way. The War? The prisons? He saw that coming. He thought it was a, um, a necessary sacrifice. So that we’d be free of you.”

  I expected her to explode. She didn’t. She pulled her knees up to her chin and pressed her knuckles against her mouth and just stared at me over the top of them. Slowly her black eyes filled up with iridescent tears that slid out to run down onto her clenched fists.

  “I’m sorry,” I mumbled.

  “Where is he?” she asked, her voice thick and croaky. “I will make him pay.”

  “He’s gone,” I said flatly. You can’t see him inside me, can you?

  “Where?” she asked, her eyes flicking to Egan—who shrugged and prevaricated like a goddamn Catholic priest.

  “I honestly couldn’t tell you.”

  Not without betraying me, you couldn’t.

  “He just sort of faded away,” I added, remembering how Egan had described it. “Into light.” It wasn’t that I wanted to lie to Penemuel, it was just that I didn’t dare trust her with something that big. Not yet. She’d probably stop short of harming Egan, but she obviously wasn’t quite as fond of me.

  Her shoulders quivered. She lifted one hand enough to flick her fingers at us, the gesture unambiguous: get out.

  I led a retreat to the kitchen, and Egan shut the door behind us as I leaned my butt against the sink.

  “Is that all true?” he mouthed. “About Samyaza?”

  I nodded.

  “Shite.” He rubbed his face. “Well that certainly puts a different spin on things.” Then he brushed his hands over my shoulders and touched my face gently. “Are you okay?”

  Maybe he was searching my eyes for a hint of emerald light. I didn’t care; it was enough that he was looking at me with warmth and concern. And maybe it was a shameful advantage that I took of his closeness, but I pressed my face to his chest and he put his arms slowly around me. The warm scent of his body wrapped me like a return to the golden light of my dream; the stroke of his fingers on the nape of my neck sent shivers of delight down my spine. He felt strong and solid and I loved that.

  Part of me—the weakest, most cowardly part—wished that time could freeze here, now, while we were like this. That we could simply stay in this embrace, and that the striving would be over, and that I’d feel safe forever.

  “No help from Samyaza then,” he sighed. “We’re on our own.”

  My temptation to treachery was too much for me to bear. “Not as alone as Azazel is.”

  He tipped my chin up so that he could look into my face. “Right,” he said, then turned and walked back into the living room. I followed, alarmed at his disobedience, in time to see him pick up the little stool from the hearth.

  The air was thick with a smell of burning and hazy with a smoke that hung perfectly still over Penemuel’s hunched form to make shadowy wings. She looked up at him and growled, “I do not desire company,” through teeth that were more jaguar than human.

  Egan put the stool down before her feet and sat on it, putting himself below her. “We are going to help,” he said firmly. “Now tell us about the Adversary.”

  Penemuel inhaled a long smoky breath, and then seemed to think better of murder. The atmosphere became a little more breathable. “What about him?” she asked.

  “H
ow did you two get on, before you Fell?”

  She studied his face as if wondering what he was up to, then shrugged. “We got on…well.” As the words stumbled out they gradually became more fluid, and her voice softened to something more human. “I know most didn’t like him, but I did. They were afraid he was examining them for flaws—that was his function. But we talked. He liked to talk. He was clever.” She smiled a little. “And funny. He had ideas that I never heard from anyone else.”

  “And after the Watchers came down to Earth?”

  An expression that might almost have been guilt flitted across her face. “He still came to talk to me. He tried to persuade me to come back. To repent. He said…that I wasn’t like the others. He said I would be admitted home. Because he’d speak for me.”

  “But you didn’t buy that line?”

  “It made no sense to me. I had transgressed, knowingly—Why should I be allowed to return into the Presence?”

  “And why does he want to talk to you now? We all heard him. What does he want from you?”

  She shook her head helplessly.

  Egan glanced over at me.

  Poor Uriel, I thought coldly. He’d spent as little time in human form as he could, but our fleshly propensities had still crept up on him. Our desires and instincts leaked through a hundred cracks in any dam he built. I’d had direct experience of that myself.

  “Milja thinks he’s in love with you,” said Egan.

  Penemuel’s eyes flickered gold and black, but her shocked expression was all too human. “No. He would not stoop like that—he would fear to Fall.”

  “Chances are he doesn’t realize it himself,” I said grimly. “If there’s a Patron Saint of Being in Denial he’d be a shoo-in for the job.”

  “But he bound me in my prison,” she whispered.

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s one of the things he wants to talk about.” I knotted my fingers together. “He also bent or broke every single rule of Heaven to get you out again. He pointed us at Lalibela. He found out about Roshana but he let her live. Either he has the hots for you, or he’s got some convoluted plan that we can’t guess yet.” But I saw his face when he thought he’d killed you.