The Prison of the Angels

by Janine Ashbless

  Straight into the guns of the men readying to rush the room.

  If they were surprised I’d withstood the stun grenade, they still managed to grab me and throw me to the ground. I got a confused glimpse of lots of guys in black—at least a half-dozen of them, all armed, black boots everywhere. But I was already speaking. My mouth opened and the words spilled out, sweet as honey, caustic as saccharine. I spoke in no language I’d ever heard; it was more than half music, a lilting rising river of words, green as grass, and the voice was not my own. It was an angel’s words and an angel’s voice. It flowed with an inhuman strength, filling the gallery like poison, pouring into their ears. Over my own words I heard them groan and cry out—at first with what sounded like delight, and then mounting distress. One of the men crouched over me fell back, dropping his gun and clutching wildly with both hands at his crotch. His face was flushed beet-red. He arched and twisted and lost his footing altogether, crashing suddenly to the floor, clawing at his own groin.

  I pushed myself up onto hands and knees and no one stopped me. Still the music poured out of my throat in a demonic glossolalia. I looked at the men staggering and falling around me and felt no pity, no remorse. Not even for the one clearly fitting, his heels drumming the parquet floor and foam slopping from between his parted lips.

  The pagan marbles seemed to writhe at the corners of my chartreuse vision, marble hands sliding over marble thighs. Pan pushed Selene down and rutted her white ass, Laocoön thrashed in the grip of the sea serpent, Maenads gang-banged Orpheus.

  They were crying now, the men with any breath left in their lungs. They were clawing at their own flesh. Ecstasy had tumbled over the edge into agony, unbearable. I stalked up the gallery, moving from one to the next, watching men convulse and pass into unconsciousness, plucking the pistols from their hands and tossing them away across the floor. Right at the back of the group I found Father Giuseppe, his hands clamped over his ears, crouched beyond the humping figures of Hercules and Iolaus. He was the only one, I realized, that hadn’t had his hands occupied by weaponry. Now he glared at me with rage and terror from between the upraised points of his elbows.

  I let my voice drop to silence. The writhing marble figures fell still—if they had ever truly moved, if I hadn’t just been imagining it—and a quiet fell that was only broken by the faintest whimpers and groans. What have I done? I asked myself, but it was the smallest of interior voices. The seething, righteous satisfaction of the angel within me all but drowned it out.

  “I guess you count me as your foe now, Father.” There was no way he could hear me.

  “Puttana del diavolo!” he mouthed.

  “Now that’s quite rude,” I admonished. I reached out and caught his face between my two hands. He couldn’t ward me off without uncovering his ears, so there was nothing he could do to stop me pulling his face and mine together. I kissed him with my poisonous lips and Father Giuseppe slid bonelessly to the floor, spasming like his men.

  Let him take that to the confessional, I said to myself.

  Then I looked back down the length of the gallery, through the carnage, just in time to see the office door swing open and Egan stagger out, blinking wildly. He was holding his gun but he clutched at the door jamb, clearly struggling to regain his balance.

  “Egan?” I called, my throat suddenly as raw as if I’d been drinking acid. He looked around, not answering or seeming to hear, rubbing at his face instead, and he glanced up with a start as I got closer. His eyes were horribly bloodshot, and he couldn’t stop blinking. He pointed at his left ear and shook his head, grimacing.

  It was a good thing the flashbang had deafened him, I thought. God knows what he’d have heard through the half-open door otherwise; I’d been so intent on retribution that I hadn’t given a thought to his safety. Now that realization made me feel queasy.

  Catching his face in my hands, I kissed his lips and his eyelids and then both his ears. Be healed, my love.

  “Milja?” His voice was husky. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.”

  “What the hell did you do to them?” His embrace was tight.

  Malificium, I said to myself. Uriel would understand. “I sang to them,” I said, my voice shaking.

  “Mother of God,” he whispered, his gaze flicking over the scene of devastation. “These are men I know, Milja. Will they be alright?”

  “I don't know.” I should have felt far more guilty than I actually did, I’m sure. There was a time not so long back when I’d have been consumed by guilt—but not now. Blame Samyaza. Maybe.

  “Ah shite.” He shook his head. “We should probably go now.”

  “Have you got the key?”

  “Yes.”

  He retrieved his little bag of tricks and we picked our way one last time up the gallery. I wanted to get out fast, before anyone regained consciousness. Egan was more inclined to examine the fallen men—a face here or there caught his attention, and he stooped once and picked up what looked like a bronze knife that was strapped to the chest of someone’s body-armor.

  “Is that a relic?” I asked, uneasily. It looked clean, but it stank of blood. I could smell it. I wondered how Egan could bear to touch it, but he didn’t seem bothered.

  “Yeah.” He stooped again and came up with a long pole. “Recognize this?”

  It was the spear of Saint George, from Lalibela. The one that had pierced both Azazel and Penemuel. The one I’d used to kill Roshana. I shrank back, my gorge rising. “Put it down!”

  “Why d’you say that?”

  “I…” I had no words for the sense of threat that rose off that slender weapon like a black smoke. My skin crawled at its proximity. “I don’t…”

  A voice came roaring up the marble stairwell at the end of the gallery, shattering our conversation: “SAMYAZA!”

  Oh crap. I was noticed, then.

  I turned on my heel and walked to the top of the stairs. If it had been just me, ordinary me, I would have run away. I would have tried to hide. I would have been afraid. But with that green light filling up my soul, I was not entirely myself. And the challenge made the hairs on my spine rise like the hackles of a dog.

  The Archangel Raphael bounded into view on the landing below, looking—well, just impossibly handsome and romantic. He was rocking a long black leather coat, and appeared disheveled and flustered. Clearly we’d interrupted something important—the end of the world, presumably. He stopped when he saw me on the flight above him. “Samyaza?” he called again, but he didn’t sound as certain.

  “No, it’s still me,” I said. “Hello, Raphael.”

  He stared, frowning. “Milja? Is that you? I heard…” Then his frown fell away as his eyes widened. “You possessed her?”

  “No, he did not.” I knew my eyes were blazing green fires. “I took him.”

  In a dash too fast for even my vision to follow he was up at the top of the stairs with me, within arm’s length, staring. “How is that possible?” he demanded, pacing a circle around me. “How did you do that?”

  “You don’t know everything, then?” I smiled, though the expression felt twisted as though someone else was trying to work my muscles. “Good. Now keep out of the way—I have things to be getting on with, Raphael.”

  “No.” His silver eyes shimmered like pools of mercury. “Milja, he is eating you up from the inside. Your mind and then your body. I cannot permit this.”

  “You can’t stop me. You are not allowed.”

  “I’m afraid I can.” His hand was suddenly around my throat, tightening. “I’m sorry.”

  No!

  That was when Egan rammed Saint George’s spear through the Pillar of the East’s ribcage from back to front.

  “So am I,” he said, as Raphael staggered, slipped, vomited blood and crashed to his knees, releasing me. He lowered the angel to the floor, bending over him. “Forgive me,” he said, and he meant it.

  16

  THE PILLAR OF THE SOUTH

  We left the
Vatican Museum through the official exit, without being waylaid further. We’d had to abandon the spear still embedded in Raphael’s torso, hoping that he wouldn’t be able to pull the weapon out without mortal help.

  The three guards at the door only glanced up briefly. They were not interested in stopping people leaving, especially when one was in clerical garb, and besides, they were clustered about a monitor showing newsfeed, and deep in voluble discussion amongst themselves. Egan cast a swift look at the transmission as we passed.

  “La Paz,” he said grimly.

  Once out on the street we broke into a jog. The Forum was a good thirty minutes south on foot, and the route was crowded. Overhead the sky was now a deep, ugly red, and the drizzling rain felt unpleasantly warm. It took me a few moments to realize that it was staining my gray fleece jacket, and I grimaced when I saw that the spots were red too.

  We were passing a bar when we heard the people inside start to shriek and wail. “Milano!” the cries reached us.

  “Damn it,” Egan growled. “Let’s hope they’re not heading this way.” He grabbed my arm and pulled me into the entrance to an alley. “Milja,” he said, hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes, “you have to get a grip on that thing inside you. Put it away, now.”

  Green fire flared inside me. “It saved your life.”

  “And I’d rather go down in a firefight than see it turn you into a monster.”

  Yeah, you would, wouldn’t you? Going down heroically in a hail of bullets would be so much easier than letting me love you. “It’s not in control. I am.”

  His mouth tightened to a hard line. “We need to cross consecrated ground. Hide it.”

  I wanted to argue, but I realized he was right. I was probably glowing like a beacon as far as angels were concerned. I swallowed hard and concentrated on Samyaza within me, pushing him back down, untangling the tendrils of emerald fire that had wound their way to the very tips of my fingers.

  “Good,” he breathed, watching my eyes.

  It didn’t feel good, packing all that power away, but I did it. All the way down from the back of my skull to the knotted snake twisting in my lower belly. So much power, so much heat—and concentrating it down there hit me with a sudden wash of arousal. Burning, hip-twisting, touch-me-now-oh-please horniness. I caught Egan’s face between my hands and kissed him, pressing my aching body up against his.

  His response was immediate and primal. It was a good thing that it was dark, and people had other stuff on their minds, because I suspect that a robed priest locked in a passionate kiss with some woman in the street might not have gone down well otherwise.

  Egan pushed me away at last. “Later,” he groaned.

  It hurt, pulling away from him. Bits of my body were screaming in protest—a faint, karmic echo of the agonies I’d inflicted on the operatives of Vidimus.

  By the time we reached the Via dei Fori Imperiali on the border of the ancient Forum, the traffic had come to a gridlocked standstill and the blaring of car horns was a cacophony. We scurried across the broad road and headed, not for the tourist gate as I’d been expecting, but for the only Christian church visible in that area of ancient ruins, its Baroque white facade a beacon amidst the cheek-by-jowl ruins in darker brick and stone. A small sign by a path I could easily have overlooked proclaimed the way to S. Francesa Romana, and we yomped up a ramp past some portable toilets.

  “I thought we were going to the Temple of the Vestals?” I asked, looking back in the direction of the archaeological park. The ruins in question were only a few hundred yards away, but on the other side of the fence.

  “There’s a tunnel.”

  “Of course there is.”

  Egan used the first of the twinned keys at the blackened wooden door and led the way through the interior porch into the main body of the church. It wasn’t a terribly large building by Rome’s standards, and to my untrained eye looked much like the interior of Santa Maria della Vittoria where I’d seen the ecstatic sculpture of Saint Teresa, except that here the brightly painted roof was flat. Most of the artwork that I could see on a cursory glance about me starred the Virgin Theotokos, and the painting over the high altar even resembled what I’d call a proper, decent icon, of the type I was used to back home in Montenegro. The lights up there were the only lit bulbs in the place.

  Egan, of all things, crossed himself hurriedly. Maybe it was just automatic.

  “You just stabbed up an archangel,” I couldn’t help pointing out. “I think you lost several billion Catholic Points right there.”

  He winced. Then he turned to a tiny door in a niche that might have been a minor chapel, easy to overlook amongst all the florid decorations. The door was of dark bronze though, and looked immensely strong. There he drew out the second, modern key. “This lock is always sticky,” he grumbled under his breath.

  I threw off my ruined jacket and dumped the bathrobe on top of it as I tried to catch my breath. “Egan, are you scared we’re going to go to Hell for this?”

  He looked over his shoulder at me, and narrowed his eyes. “No.”

  I was stung by what I took for his Catholic arrogance. “We’re not on God’s side here, you know.”

  The tumblers on the lock rolled over with a clunk that seemed too loud. “You’re not going to Hell, Milja. Trust me.”

  “But Jesus talked about Hell all the time.”

  He pushed the handle and the door swung open to reveal a steeply descending stair. Then he walked back to me and put his hands on my shoulders. “You remember the last time you asked a question with too big an answer, in Norway, and I told you that it really ought to wait until later?”

  “Uhuh.” I bit my lip. I still didn’t know what I was supposed to do with that confidence he’d entrusted me with. Except maybe cut him a lot more slack. Shame poured cool water on my burning frustration.

  “Please trust me on this one: we haven’t got time…and I am not the person you should be hearing it from.”

  “Then who?”

  His eyes pointedly indicated the floor beneath us.

  “Uh. Okay.”

  “Come on.”

  He led the way down into the earth, after locking the door behind us. The stone walls of the spiral stairwell were painted white, and it opened out into a narrow corridor that set off in a straight line—beneath the Forum and presumably in the direction of the Temple of the Vestal Virgins.

  Egan flicked on a light switch. The whitewashed passage was low and narrow, and it sloped downward.

  There must be hundreds of miles of tunnels and catacombs under Rome. So many secrets.

  Secrets buried under secrets.

  Like Egan. Always more revelations, more confessions. One just covers the next.

  “There’s something I don’t get,” I said to his back as I followed him.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Gabriel Fell, okay, and was imprisoned. Like the Watchers before him. Does that mean that God was like, ‘I might as well take advantage of this opportunity’? Wasn’t Gabriel acting on orders?”

  Egan didn’t answer.

  “And if he was, how was it fair to imprison him?”

  He walked on as if he hadn’t heard me.

  “He told me he’d promise to keep the secret if we’d let him go,” I said. “Is it such a big deal that it wasn’t really a virgin birth? I mean, if Jesus really was the Incarnation, like you said, what difference does it make? Everything still stands as it did.”

  Egan reached the end of the corridor; another small door, this one of heavy wood. He leaned against the wall, and I thought he looked tired and drawn all of a sudden. “That’s…”

  That’s not the secret.

  “…not the secret.”

  My heart plunged.

  “Then what is?” I whispered, my mouth so dry that I could barely form the words.

  “Ask him,” he said, pushing open the door.

  The chamber inside was round, much like the subterranean chapel that Penemuel’s
tomb had been concealed beneath. But this one was brightly lit by electric lights, and painted all over with a white so harsh that it made me blink. Opposite our door, and to either side at the quarter points, were niches that might also have once been doorways, now bricked up and occupied by tall crucifixes and wreathes of plastic flowers. I think I’d expected something Ancient Roman, but this chamber felt disconcertingly modern and bland.

  Except for its focal point.

  In the center of the floor, starkly contrasting with all that white, was a man, crouched and naked. His hands were flat on the stone before him, and his head bowed so low that his thick locks masked his face. My first impression was that he was bulkier than Azazel, with heavier muscles.

  The Archangel Gabriel, in the flesh.

  My mouth was dry as I approached him. The room was so quiet that I could hear his breathing.

  “Gabriel?”

  He did not stir.

  I went down on my knees beside him. The whitewash on the floor went all the way to where he knelt, and had even been daubed up over his bare toes and the back of his hands in places. For some reason that irrelevant detail woke a rage in me; the thought of someone indifferently redecorating this room and taking no more care or notice of the prisoner than if he’d been an inanimate object.

  “Gabriel, wake up. I need to speak to you.”

  No reaction. His wrists and ankles were bound tight by thick twists of leather that were sunk into stones mortared flush with the floor. They too had been daubed with paint.

  “What’s holding him down?” I asked Egan over my shoulder.

  His answer was dry and without mercy; “The body rather famously went missing from the tomb, if you recall.”

  I cringed inwardly, my inculcated reverence flaring in helpless protest. There was a pointed and deliberate cruelty, I suddenly recognized, in surrounding Gabriel with crucifixes bearing the tortured figure of Our Lord—pious reminders of the brutal consequences of his Fall.