The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

  For a long moment he didn’t answer, though his eyes flared to blue fire. “You’re quite right,” he snarled at last. “I don’t. That error is a thing of the fallen flesh.”

  “It would be unthinkable, wouldn’t it? For an archangel?”

  “We are pure. It is our purpose. Without blemish. Without discoloration. We are mirrors that receive the dazzling glory and beauty of our Almighty Father, and reflect it all back upon Him in worship. We are the flawless glass panes through which His Wrath or His Love shines upon the shadowed realms of His Creation. We do not distort the Light. We do not question His Justice. We do not play favorites. We do not have relationships, not with any created being.”

  I felt, of all things, a stab of sympathy for him. Uriel had tried so hard, for so long, to be perfect as he was intended to be. To be pellucidly clear and flawless and, well, basically nothing. Without character. But he’d succeeded no better than the Fallen who’d whole-heartedly embraced the joys and instincts of the flesh; those Watchers he despised so much.

  He just hadn’t noticed.

  “You have a relationship with me,” I said quietly, because I could not simply punch my way through his adamantine sense of superiority. “You keep trying to sort me out. I’ve got a completely skewed view of the world and it drives you crazy. Six billion of us on the planet, all getting it messed up, but I’m the one monkey that rubs you up the wrong way.”

  He gaped at me. I don’t know how he might have been planning to respond, because at that moment Penemuel walked up into view, and I think Uriel forgot that I had spoken at all. He lurched to his feet, grabbing onto the wet rock overhead with one hand to support himself, and shook his sodden hair out into a spikey platinum halo.

  It was almost pitiful how nakedly trepidation and joy chased each other across his face.

  I wondered briefly if Penemuel had the wits to notice what was painfully obvious to me, but it turned out that she had her act together better than I had anticipated. And ‘act’ was definitely the word. She was still holding herself tensely, but she kept her shoulders back and her face perfectly serene. She strutted her stuff with aplomb, and as she stalked across the moss toward us her beautiful satin coat fluffed up like a million tiny feathers and then flew away as a cloud of white moths, leaving her cleavage a dramatic vision of dark skin and tight cream lace.

  “Penemuel,” said Uriel. His throat sounded dry. “Are we to fight again?”

  “I came to talk,” she said, stopping with feet astride and fists loose at her hips. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it?” Her gaze swept him up and down.

  “Always. I’m glad that you’ve calmed do—” Uriel nearly doubled up as light flared under the ripped muscles of his abdomen. He clutched at his belly and hissed.

  “Are you in pain?” Penemuel asked, her mask of serene disdain not slipping.

  “I, uh…” He grinned, but he was sweating, and even paler than usual. “I ate something that disagreed with me.”

  Bastard. My jaw clenched. “And he’s trying to claw his way out from the inside,” I observed coldly, wondering if Azazel had been merely bluffing when he threatened to devour Uriel, or whether the Scapegoat was simply too tough a morsel for even Satan himself to digest.

  Oh, Azazel! Fight him!

  “It must be the first time you’ve experienced physical pain,” Penemuel said, “or so I’m guessing.”

  He eased himself out from under the overhang, standing face-to-face with her. In this dim green light he looked ageless and perfect. His pale and hairless skin gleamed with moisture. “It is a novelty,” he admitted, then winced. “I find it grows swiftly tedious, though.”

  “I was in pain for five thousand years.” Her face was hard as crystal, but everything was controlled. Nothing except the yellow gleam of her eyes hinted at the raging fury I’d seen in Norway. She was way better than he was at keeping her emotions hidden. “I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t see; my skin was cut by the bonds about me—bonds cut from the hide of my own murdered offspring. I knew no hope and no comfort for fifty long centuries. And you were the one who put me there. Forgive me if I take a little pleasure in your agony.”

  I was astonished at her self-control, to be honest. Azazel couldn’t have said those things without incandescing.

  Uriel turned his sapphire eyes away. “I took none in yours,” he mumbled. “I did only as I was commanded.”

  “Always, Uriel.”

  “And you know I tried to bring you back to the fold before it came to that. I begged you to repent and seek forgiveness of the Throne.”

  “Forgiveness?” She flared out her hands. “I didn’t even understand what you meant by the word. ‘Woe to the clay that quarrels with the Potter ’—isn’t that right? Samyaza fucked one little ape, once, and you tore off his wings and made him crawl upon the dust of the Earth, forever an exile.”

  “That was different. Samyaza disobeyed out of pride; you were persuaded by others. You acted in error, not malice or lust.”

  “Error is still a flaw, so how might I be forgiven for being less than perfect? It was not my place to think.”

  “You did it for the sake of the humans, as you thought. Do you regret your failure?”

  “Our failure?”

  “Oh, come on. They destroy everything in Creation that they come into contact with, even unto their own ruin. They’re not nearly as smart as you were hoping.”

  “They are wonderful,” she said grimly. “And also terrible. Like us.”

  “We are perfect.”

  She shook her head, sinuous and bitter. “Oh, what does it matter? These arguments are ancient history.”

  “You might still find mercy.”

  “After the sentence has been passed?” She wrinkled her perfect lip in a sneer. “Is it not a little late, Adversary?”

  “No!” Briefly he put out his hand as if to touch her arm, but she quelled his reckless move with a glance like yellow lightning. “It’s not too late,” he said, looking chastened. “I can save you from the Divine Wrath. I can commute your sentence.”

  She looked at him as if he was insane. “How?”

  “You must repent your rebellion. You must abjure your old ways and your old companions, and I will vouch for you. I am listened to, you know.”

  “That will not be enough.”

  “Things change, Penemuel, even in Heaven. There are new revelations. New covenants are created. We will be part of the new covenant.”

  She narrowed her eyes and there was something about the shift of her head that made me feel that—impossibly—she was about to strike out at him and bite like a coiled snake. “What has changed?” she growled.

  Uriel seemed to remember my existence; he snuck me a fleeting sideways glance. “Surrender to me and I will tell you. Not here.”

  I widened my eyes, impatiently. If they were finally about to get to grips with New Testament grace and salvation then Uriel seemed to be making a hell of a song and dance of it. “We know your big secret,” I said, needled at being excluded. “If that’s what you’re being all weird about.”

  “You do?”

  “About Our Lord being Nephilim.”

  He stared at me, his eyes wide in a face as blank and beautiful as a Michelangelo marble. Then he turned away, deliberately, showing me the muscle of his shoulder and back. “Give yourself up to me,” he muttered to Penemuel. “Let us be alone.”

  A tiny paranoid voice inside me said, like an echo of a phrase never spoken out loud, That is not the secret.

  “And Azazel?” she asked.

  “There can be no redemption for him.”

  No sooner were the words out of his mouth than he arched in pain, his head flung back, his torso twisting. He hissed like a snake. The light that flared in his guts was bright enough to paint the rocks nearby ruddy.

  “Ahhh,” he said softly, as he got his breath back.

  “Such pain,” Penemuel mused, wrapping a hand around his jaw and drawing him toward her so t
hat for a moment their faces nearly touched. “You poor thing.”

  Uriel shivered. He was studded with sweat now, not water.

  “Sit down.” It was the softest and gentlest of orders, but it was unmistakably an order, and he obeyed. He slumped onto a mossy pile of boulders, and she cradled his head against her wonderful breasts. “You can’t go on like this.”

  “I can bear any burden,” he said, his voice thick, “for the sake of righteousness.”

  “I’m impressed. How does it feel, this pain of the flesh?”

  “It is…overwhelming.” He sounded confused, as if he hadn’t ever contemplated such a thing before. “It makes me burn cold and hot. It floods my senses, so I can’t see or hear. But when it fades there is such relief, such joy…”

  She ran her right hand down across his bare chest, almost tenderly, and I saw his eyes flare in gratitude. “Oh, Uriel,” she murmured. Then she stepped away.

  I saw him lean toward her in yearning.

  “Let him go,” she said.

  “Never. I have won this battle.”

  “Let him go, and he will stop hurting you.”

  He attempted a laugh. “I doubt that very much.”

  “Let him go,” she said, “and I will abjure the War. I will take no further part in freeing our brothers. I will never speak to the Scapegoat again.”

  Oh, Penemuel. You can’t mean it? This is a trick, right?

  Uriel wet his lips. “That’s not enough. You must surrender to me. You must come under my protection, otherwise they will still seek to recapture you.”

  “You are asking me to change sides.”

  He ground his teeth as the fever-glow burned through his flesh again. “Yes.”

  Azazel was listening in, I thought. But Penemuel was listening too, and not just to the words spoken. She ran her fingers up Uriel’s throat, making him whimper and lift his chin. “Why?” she asked softly. “Why do you care?”

  Uriel trembled, turning his mouth to her hand. But she denied him that comfort.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  Uriel’s lips parted, but no words came out. I think he struggled to even frame the thought. But tight, wet leather pants hid practically nothing.

  “You are precious,” he managed at last, rasping the words as her hands sifted his silver hair.

  “To you?”

  I knew he was skirting the edge of an abyss. To admit to any personal passion—never mind the erotic arousal that would put him on a level with the humans he despised so much—was unthinkable. It would be to admit he was not perfectly obedient to the Divine Plan. “You are precious to me as you are to Our Father,” he whispered, his hand straying upward but never quite touching her.

  “I like you too,” she said, with a cool, cruel smile. “Better than any of the Host. I have always liked you.” He shivered, and she ran her hand over his face, smearing his lips, tilting his head so that she could stoop and whisper in his ear, her lips wet and breathy, as if she were telling a terrible secret. But I heard every word. “I desired you more than I did Samyaza. I desired you more than I did Azazel.”

  Azazel didn’t like that at all, it seemed. Uriel’s eyes opened wide, and he made as if to speak, but flame ignited in his abdomen and he spasmed wildly, crying out. The walls rang. It was the first time I’d heard him give full voice to his pain and I jumped, sweat flashing from my pores, but Penemuel didn’t seem even slightly phased. She caught his shoulders in her left arm and pulled him to face her, kissing him full on the lips. As Uriel froze she slid her right hand down into his crotch.

  Suddenly all was quiet except for the sound of him panting. “Please,” he whimpered. “I can’t… Please make it stop.”

  “Shush. Don’t be scared; I will keep the pain away.” She had her hand on the bulge under the leather, and she kissed him again, slow and luxurious, tugging at his bottom lip. “Oh, you’re hard,” she whispered.

  He made a strangled noise. “I can’t stop it.”

  I was astonished by his tumescence under such agony, to be honest, but I guess I don’t know much about how men react to such things. It was impossible just looking at his expression to tell whether his passion was one of suffering or ecstasy, and the sight was affecting me too in awful, shameful ways. I was glad no one was paying any attention to me.

  Penemuel laughed; a low chuckle that would have made a nun gush. “I don’t want you to, my sweet. I like your hard, hard cock. It makes me want to do things with it. It makes me want you to put it in my mouth, and my cunt, and my ass. As deep as you can.” She pretended to pout. “I know you don’t approve.”

  “No.” It was the weakest of repudiations, and she countered it by rubbing her face softly against his.

  “I’m so sorry, Uriel. But I gave in to temptation long ago, and now I can’t help it either. Touching it… Even the thought of that length thrusting inside me makes me…burn.”

  “Oh.”

  “We need to come to an agreement,” murmured Penemuel, arching over him so that her breasts rubbed his face. “A covenant between the two of us.”

  “Uhh,” said Uriel, for once lost for words. Besieged by lust and pain, neither of which he knew how to handle, I think he was so far out of his depth that he couldn’t think at all.

  “Let the Scapegoat go into the wilderness,” she said, writhing like a cat. “Let his iniquities be upon his own head, and I will come with you. We will do anything you want, and more.” Straddling his thigh, she raked her nails down his chest as she kissed him, and he groaned out loud. “There are ecstasies Heaven cannot imagine, my love, my sweet.”

  “Oh,” he moaned, plunging his head between her breasts.

  Then she stepped away to arm’s length, drawing herself up to an imposing height. The lace on her torso dissolved into sand and fell into the still air, revealing breasts that could bring down empires. He stared, transfixed. “Or I can leave you, if you prefer,” she said, “to your pain, and whatever remains of your purity.”

  He couldn’t even lift his gaze to her face. She had to tip his chin up for him.

  Poor Uriel. All those cravings. I was rather aghast at the brutality of Penemuel’s negotiation tactics.

  “It hurts,” he whimpered.

  “Oh my love, it doesn’t have to hurt. Not if you come with me. We don’t need this War. I know there are places we can hide, from everyone,” she said. “For as long as you like.”

  “I… I am the Pillar of the North,” he said. “I have my duty.”

  “Well, if you prefer pain…” She slapped his face. There was no great force behind the stinging impact, but the groan wrenched from Uriel’s throat betrayed agonies, and she laughed, softly. “I can give you as much of that as you can cope with. I will enjoy it, Star of the Morning. You have so much to learn about both pain and pleasure, and I do enjoy teaching. It’s my specialty.”

  “We were made to obey.” His voice was little more than a ragged whisper.

  “And I will expect your submission.” Fluid as a dancer, she mounted onto the rock behind him, grabbed his silver hair and pulled his head back, tightening his throat. “I will,” she said, twisting over him from above to kiss and bite his lips, “demand…your…absolute…devotion.”

  He could only gasp.

  “Where will I let you kiss me first, Lightbringer? My mouth? My breasts? Between my legs? I want you everywhere. I want your worship. I want you inside me. I want to eat you up and taste your ecstasy like a thousand suns in my throat. And if you pleasure me well enough, I will let you do it again and again and again. Yes?”

  “Yes.” A single sobbed syllable.

  No one is beyond temptation, Uriel. No one is perfect, not even you.

  “Now. Open your legs.”

  He did it. Slowly, his muscles twitching.

  “Milja,” she said, flicking me a golden glance.

  I was taken by surprise. “Uh. Me?”

  “Come and take your Master back from him.”

  What? How?
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  “No!” Uriel’s spine went rigid; if she hadn’t had her arm around him from behind he would have tried to sit up straight. “I will not Fall! I will not sully myself!”

  My stomach flipped over.

  But she held him tight and kissed his neck and licked his ear. “You’ll do just as I tell you, my sweet, and you will love it. I can’t take the Scapegoat myself, can I? And he has to be contained, if only for a moment, if we want to get away. Get it out for her, Uriel, my love. Get out your big hard cock.”

  “Ahhhh.”

  She ran the tip of her tongue up his neck. “It’s not like you don’t want her. I know.”

  “Not true,” he said, sounding strangled.

  “You’re not even fooling yourself, my beautiful, dirty little angel. The Scapegoat has made full use of those pretty lips and those breasts and that body. You can picture what he’s done to her, can’t you? I’ll bet you’ve pictured it many times. He’s opened up every single hole and oh, she needs filling. Do it.”

  His hands moved clumsily, all finesse lost. The leather. The zipper.

  The—Oh my God. My pulse thundered. He’s actually doing it.

  And—Wow.

  It sprang out of confinement, achingly proud and beautiful, just like Satan himself.

  “Very nice.” Penemuel granted him another lingering kiss and then shot me a yellow look. “And you, girl: get your lips around that. We know there’s nothing you like better than a taste of Heaven.”

  Dear God, I thought, heat and cold washing through me in waves. Every time I forget what colossal high-handed shits angels are…

  ‘You belong to Azazel.’

  ‘…Whatever is necessary to save your Master.’

  The waves were converging in my sex. I found my feet moving forward across the moss. Uriel’s long, elegant legs were spread in an ungainly fashion; his eyes were fixed on me in horror. Well, horror and something else. We’d always had a twisted relationship, part antagonism and part fascination. I’d known his furtive but unmistakable arousal, more than once. I’d felt my own.

  Now I crouched to put my hand on his thigh.

  “No!” he moaned, twisting—but Penemuel’s arms were clamped around him and pinning his own arms now. He couldn’t pull away from me without fighting her, and there was no fight left in him. She nipped his neck, chuckling. His body was knotted with strain, his face a battlefield of conflicting impulses and emotions. He was beautiful and helpless and tormented.