Cover Him with Darkness (35 page)

White-hot delight shivered through me from the tugged points of my nipples, from the juncture of my thighs, from deep inside. I felt dizzy: tiny beneath him, huge as the world, all perspective gone. The candles hung around us like constellations. And as I looked up at his face above me, haloed with his unkempt hair, intent with concentration, golden and
dark, light and shadow…I fell instead, blazing like a star wrenched from the firmament.

Rapt with my pleasure, Azazel watched as I twisted and gasped and shuddered beneath him. His lips moved in silent echo of my cries.

But when the last tremors rippled through me and died away, he forgot mercy. He didn't give me time to recover. He ran his hands over my slick and shuddering body and lodged one on my hip for a good grip. Then his weight came down over me like the slow press of a mountain on the spaces beneath the earth.

I lifted my knees and wrapped my legs tight about him as he began to thrust. Every stroke was an earthquake. He beat the breath from my lungs. His hair hung in my eyes, and the surge of his breath was a growl in my ear. I couldn't see his face anymore, but my blurred gaze took in the faces above me and over his shoulders: the sad eyes and the glimmering halos and the hands raised in blessing.

And I knew them. I knew this place, those frescoes painted upon the arched and plastered ceiling. I knew Michael and the hidden key he guarded. I knew the smoke-darkened Pantocrator in bearded majesty. They were as familiar to me as family photos.

He'd brought me home.

We were in the tiny church my father had tended all my life. And Azazel was fucking me upon the church altar.

“Oh!” I cried, my eyes widening. Even now, even with him, the blasphemy was a shock that struck me to the core.

Darkness and lust and a need for dominion.

To him ascribe all sin.

Public domain.

And I knew. This wasn't just pointed and deliberate sacrilege; it was giving the finger to Uriel and anyone who might be watching. All the Hosts of Heaven. The fallen angel pounding the sex of his witch on the altar of the Most High, for all the universe to see.

All of them, watching.

I came again then, screaming, and Azazel cried out with me and held back no longer, pouring out his lust to mingle with mine.

He lay over me for some time afterward, kissing me as I sobbed with shock. Then he scooped me up and turned so that it was his butt propped
on the altar slab, my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck, and he cradled me there as if he would never let me go, his arms tight about me, his face buried in my hair, his fingers soothing my quivering skin.

Tender as a guardian angel. Gentle as the eye of a hurricane.

“I'm going to have to find some clothes. You…sort of finished this dress off.”

Azazel nodded. His eye was half on the nightscape beyond the open church door.

“You won't leave me, this time?” I asked in a tiny voice.

“Not this time.”

My breath caught. I couldn't read his face or his voice. Was it a promise, or an apology, or some sort of dark joke? But I didn't dare ask. I bit my lip and turned away, plucking one of the lit church candles from its sconce.

It would be the last time, I suspected, that candles were lit in this mountain chapel. The last time I came back here. I ducked through the inner door into my old house, moving through the darkened familiar passages as if through a dream.

Father's study. The hall. Down to the bedroom. My old bedroom, tiny and snug and simple as a child's picture.

I set the candle upon the dresser and rummaged through the mothball-scented drawers. I'd left some clothes behind when I went to America, I knew. Things just a little too small for my eighteen-year-old body, or too worn, or so old-fashioned that I did not dare show my sophisticated cousin Vera. Hand-me-downs from my mother.

I found a dress of hers in the wardrobe. It was prim and respectable, the dress of a priest's wife. I didn't think I'd ever worn it, to be honest. But I slipped it on now, settling its soft cotton fabric over my bare shoulders.

It smelled of lavender and mothballs. I could imagine it was the smell of my motherland.

Somewhere in another room, a male voice began to sing.

I thought it was Azazel at first. I'd never heard him sing, but I assumed he could; he was an angel, after all. I hunted out a sweater to go over the dress.

It was only when I stepped out of my bedroom that I realized the song was a hymn. And I recognized the voice as that of my father.

The light danced as the candle shook in my hand. My heart raced so swiftly that it left my thoughts standing.

Back, back, to the study. He had tried to confine his books there, though they'd spread out and taken territory in every other room in the house. The walls were lined with shelves.

I stood in the doorway. My father sat in his favorite armchair, and he was cleaning off some small piece of machinery—a distributor cap, in fact—with a rag. And singing. Just like he used to when I lived here.

When he was alive.

“Come, my Light, and illumine my darkness.

Come, my Life, and revive me from death.

Come, my Physician, and heal my wounds.

Come, Flame of divine love.”

He had a wonderful voice. Most Orthodox priests do: singing the Divine Liturgy is a vital part of their duties.

“Papa?” My throat was swollen and the word had to squeeze out, thin and shaking.

He glanced up at me and smiled. “Little chick.”

He looked just as real as anyone does by candlelight.

I walked into the room, step by wobbling step, and knelt beside his chair, just like I used to when I was small. He watched me, his smile a little troubled.

“Papa,” I said, resting my head against the upholstered chair arm. “I've missed you.”

“Milja,” he chided gently, and put his hand on the top of my head.

I could
feel
him. His touch was light, but it was there. I shut my eyes, feeling dizzy. I'd have been in floods of tears, if that were still possible for me.

“Papa, I have done terrible things. Please don't hate me.”

He stroked my hair, very softly. “Milja, you are my daughter. Whatever you do, I will not hate you.”

I made a noise in my throat that defied description.

“Shush, little chick. Nothing in the universe could stop me loving you. You know that.”

I bit my lip and nodded. My shoulders shook. I kept my eyes closed. He stroked my hair as I took breath after breath, and slowly the tension
ebbed from me, and slowly the world stopped spinning. His touch was so light that after a while I couldn't be sure it was there at all.

I opened my eyes. The candle had burned down two inches in the draft from the church door. My father had gone.

They were right about me
, I thought.
I am a witch.

I went back out onto the rock ledge at the front of the house. It was night now, though not quite full dark. The sky overhead was clear, a magnificent royal blue except toward the silver west. The brightest of the stars were out already, along with a narrow sliver of moon. Venus, the Evening Star, shone like a distant lantern, even brighter than the moon.

Azazel stood there on the edge, looking up at the stars. He'd buttoned up his pants but had given up on the rags of his sweater and was shirtless, his shoulders broad, his longish hair black as midnight against the skin of his nape.

He'd waited. I let my fists unknot.

He had waited without, apparently, any sign of impatience. Any ordinary guy would have wondered what on earth was taking me so long—but maybe time looked different to him. For a moment I wanted to blurt out what had happened, but the words gathered in a choke in my throat. Seeing my father again meant everything to me, but less than nothing to him.

He'd hear my news with amused indifference, was my guess. And I didn't want that. My heart was brimming over.

He looked so handsome. And for once, so calm. As for me, I felt… light-headed, as if a great weight had been lifted from my whole body. My fingers tingled like blood was running back into cramped joints.

I walked up and put my hand on the small of his back, feeling the firm smooth muscle and the strong pillar of his spine. I brushed my hot forehead against his bare shoulder—and I said nothing.

“They were my brothers once,” he said, still looking up, but slipping his arm around me. “We walked together across the lapis floor of Heaven.”

I sucked my lower lip. “Do you miss it?”

He didn't answer.

“Where will we go?” I asked. “You're free now. What will you do?”

Azazel looked down into my face then, and brushed his lips to mine.
It was a long, considered kiss—not hungry, not joyous, but full of deliberation. It caused appetite to stir again within me, but also a sense of trepidation. I could feel his thoughts, moving like great oceanic predators beneath the dark pelagic surface.

I put my hand on his cheek. He turned to kiss the palm.

Then he took a deep, slow breath, and let it out. When he spoke his voice was quiet, but there was iron in it too.

“I'm going to release my brothers. The ones enslaved in darkness, beneath the earth. All of them.”

My heart jumped. “Azazel?”

“I will set them free—and then we will rise up and defy Heaven.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

“It's always the quiet ones…”
JANINE ASHBLESS
(
janineashbless.blogspot.com
) may be the living incarnation of this universal principle. On the outside she is shy and respectable, living quietly in Yorkshire, England, with her husband, where she enjoys walking her dogs and gardening.

Look closer and you might find her running around the woods at night, slaying orcs with her trusty LARP sword. You will certainly find her thinking about sex—because she is living her dream by being a writer of fantasy erotica and steamy romantic adventure—and that's “fantasy” in the sense of swords 'n' sandals, contemporary paranormal, fairy tale, and stories based on mythology and folklore. She likes to write about magic and mystery, dangerous power dynamics, borderline terror, and the not-quite-human.

Janine has been seeing her books in print ever since 2000. Her three short story collections are
Cruel Enchantment, Dark Enchantment
and
Fierce Enchantments
. Her more outrageous novels include
Wildwood, Red Grow the Roses
and
Named and Shamed
. If you prefer passion mixed with tormented romance, try
The King's Viper
or
Heart of Flame
. She's also coeditor of the nerd erotica anthology
Geek Love
.

Janine loves goatee beards, ancient ruins, Minotaurs, trees, mummies, having her cake
and
eating it, holidaying in countries with really bad
public sewerage, and any movie or TV series featuring men in very few clothes beating the hell out of each other.

Her work has been described as “Hardcore and literate,” (Madeline Moore) and “Vivid and tempestuous and dangerous, and bursting with sacrifice, death and love” (Portia Da Costa).