Uriel screamed, and the air crisped with heat.

Skin, I found out, was hard to slice, even with a holy relic, and it took all my effort to cut that caesarian gash just above Uriel’s root. I was grateful that Penemuel was pinning him, because if he’d been able to lash out he would have killed me for sure. As it was, when he convulsed it threw me off sideways against the rocks, and only the moss saved my head from being cracked open.

Stunned and bruised, I still tried to see. Fire spilled from the archangel’s guts; a thick ribbon of twisting magma writhed across the floor, bundling up on itself, as much in agony as the one who had birthed it. An inchoate mess of raven feathers and serpent coils and human limbs sought desperately for form, and as it did so, just for a moment—hunched; winged, tailed, clawed and beaked: red and steaming as fresh blood—Azazel looked more like a medieval demon than I’d ever seen before.

Then he pulled himself into his human guise and staggered to his feet, launching himself at Uriel.

Penemuel intercepted. She moved in a blur of speed, hands outstretched, and hit his shoulders hard enough to knock him backward. “No!” she roared. “NO!”

Azazel, weak with rebirth, slipped to one knee. Shock cleared the rage from his face. “Why?” he croaked.

I wanted to know too. Her move had taken me by surprise. I’d expected… Well to be honest, part of me had expected her to praise me for my quick thinking and team-work. Hadn’t we just defeated Satan?

“We never had any chance of winning this war,” she cried, hands still out as if to ward him off. “None. Not without Samyaza! You’ve lost, Azazel!”

“Samyaza?”

“Gone. Fled. Allied with the Host. Ask her.” She shook her head in my direction.

Uriel laughed, choking on his pain.

Azazel didn’t ask me. He seemed stunned. His shoulders sagged and he swayed, the sugar-rush of vengeance no longer sustaining his frame.

Confused, I looked over at Uriel, who was curled around the bloody wound in his abdomen and shaking. His gaze met mine and I saw his silver brows knot as he calmed his gasping breath. I’d never been under any illusion that I could kill him, or even harm him permanently, but it was clear that I had most definitely hurt his feelings.

“You little bitch,” he said incredulously. “What did you do that for?”

You deserved it. “Golden rule about pain, Uriel,” I said, trying to push myself upright and maybe not entirely cogent. “Everyone hates it, so don’t fucking do it to others.”

For a moment he just stared. “Huh. Congratulations to Azazel,” he said, eyes narrowed, grinning at me through bloody, chattering teeth. “He chose better than I thought. If I ever stooped to taking a human wife, you’d be near-perfect. Quick; obedient; an eager little bitch. And oh, nearly as pretty as your mother. How exactly did she die—remind me?”

My mother?

Penemuel stepped into view and crouched over Uriel, slipping her arms about him. “We have to go.”

I think that was the moment it hit home that she hadn’t been lying, that it hadn’t all been a ruse. She really was bailing on us. My guts twisted.

“Coward,” I whispered.

She heard and shot me a biting glance. “Easy to say when you have so little to lose.”

The last thing I saw as they vanished from sight was Uriel’s smirk.

Oh. Oh crap. We’re so screwed.

I had to ignore the bruises and the stabs of deeper pain as I pulled myself to my feet and sought Azazel. He hadn’t moved; he crouched with his fists buried in the moss, head sunk.

“It’s just us,” I said softly, as I fell to my knees with him. I wrapped my arms around his bare shoulders and kissed his cheek, my heart—with no thought for the bigger picture—leaping at the scent of his skin and reveling in the hard solidity of his flesh, though he felt cold to the touch. “I thought you were gone. I thought I’d lost you.”

“Not yet.”

“Please. Never.” I caught his cheek in the cup of my palm and he lifted his face. His eyes were like black holes and he looked utterly exhausted and bereft. “Azazel, I love you. I need you.” I kissed his lips and felt him move against me, sweet and stinging. I tasted blood and ashes on his breath.

“Milja…”

Warmth surged in his skin. His hands sought me and we knelt up, face-to-face, pressed against each other for support as we kissed. His embrace was gentle, like a man holding something he knows is already broken.

“I told you not to come for me if I were captured again.”

“Yeah… I’m not good at listening.”

He made a noise in his throat. “I will never understand you.”

“You’ve got as much time as you need to work it out,” I said, hoping that it was true. I felt him pulling the strength out of me, and I opened up to give him more.

“I would need an eternity,” he said, but his voice was fading and darkness was closing in around the margins of my vision. I couldn’t see the fireflies anymore. Had Uriel burnt them up? I felt Azazel stand, pulling me up against him.

“We should go,” I mumbled.

“Where? Where is left?” He sounded bitter. “Where are we safe?”

“Achill,” I slurred, trying to picture the little white cottage with its jumble of furniture and its terrible, terrible mugs of tea. “Egan.”

* * *

My mental picture must have been good enough—though I suspect the warm thread of longing stretched across the miles had more to do with it—because we appeared just outside the house. Night was falling so the beach wasn’t visible, and I’d never seen the building from the outside, but I recognized the lit living room through the uncurtained window—just before the wind filled my eyes with blown rain.

“Here?” Azazel demanded.

“Yes.”

A door crashed open at the side of the house and Egan came dashing around the corner, just as Azazel let me unspool down onto the wet grass at his feet.

“Is she okay?” he demanded. “Are you alright?” He lunged to scoop me up from the grass into his arms, right off my feet, and I smiled because he was acting like I was a little kid too weak to stand. But it was nice to be held there against his chest.

“I’m okay,” I whispered, touching his face. I don’t think he believed me, because he kissed me with reckless impetuosity.

Azazel took a step back and the rain stopped suddenly. There was a distinct smell of burning dust.

“What happened?” Egan looked around. “Where’s Penemuel?”

“She betrayed us,” said Azazel. “Just like my own daughter. Just like my brother, Samyaza. She has joined the Adversary.”

“What?”

“I have been betrayed by everyone who ever swore they loved me.” His voice was like gravel. “Everyone. No one in this new age can be trusted, it seems.”

“You mean Milja?” Egan’s own voice was flat and fearless. “She’s just risked her life for you, you tool.”

This was a very strange conversation to be going on over my head, I thought. “I want to go to sleep,” I said into Egan’s chest. Yes, the light died early this time of year, but it felt like it had been an incredibly long day, and I couldn’t remember eating anything since breakfast in Norway.

There was silence from the two men for a moment. Then, “Take her indoors,” growled Azazel.

Egan’s arms tightened around me. “I don’t need your permission.”

“You should lie with her and make her well,” he answered, as if Egan hadn’t spoken. “I will spare this island. If I can.”

“What does that mean?”

But it was too late; Azazel had already stepped backward into the gloaming evening and vanished into the murk.

* * *

I am back in the high-ceilinged hall of the Sistine Chapel, and it is still full of people. But this time I am alone in the crowd, without Egan. And the crowd is different too, in this dream. No tourists today. There are many men in suits and in clerical robes—sober black ones, and red ones topped with ridiculous white lace. Only men. Women are not welcome or respected here; when I cast my eyes up to the ceiling even Michelangelo’s women, his prophetesses and his saints, have brawny masculine torsos with fake-looking breasts like halved apples.

I am alone, and I cannot hide my difference because I am all but naked. A single brief sheath of red silk is my only wrap, and it is so sheer as to be transparent. Scarlet silk, and over that my extravagant jewelry; a necklace of netted black diamonds and white pearls that shimmers over my shoulders and breasts, and a matching belt whose looped gems weigh against the curves of my behind in a not-there skirt that hides nothing. The cloth of my inadequate garment is knotted to a ring on a stiffly beaded collar about my throat, which I can feel but not see. My ankles and the tops of my feet glitter with gold chains and pearls, but my soles are bare upon the marble.

Scarlet and gems for a whore.

Babylon, I hear them whisper. They are all staring at me. The Great Whore herself. They surge in around me, their expressions damning.

“Come hither,” calls a man’s voice from the other end of the hall. “I will shew unto thee the judgment of the Great Whore that sitteth upon many waters: with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

I recognize the quote, I think, from the Book of Revelation. Uriel has already used that text against me.

My face is flaming. My hands knot together before my breasts. I can see they are looking at those, at my nipples rubbing against the silk. I can feel their judgment and their avidity. Their faces are stiff with it, their eyes bright. They are crowding in, behind me in particular, so that I’m walled by men bigger and bulkier than me. I am too slight, too soft, my curves a weakness and my vulnerability only too obvious. They are close enough to touch me and I can feel my heart pound.

The only way out through the crowd is up toward the unseen speaker; the press is thinner there and as I take a step forward they step aside, parting for me. I’m being herded.

“I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet colored beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in scarlet color, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication.”

I have nothing in my clenched hands, but that doesn’t count in my favor. They already know me. They have already decided my fate. Every step I take is an effort, and my bare legs feel as if they are about to fold beneath me.

Harlot, they whisper. Filthy harlot.

I can see him at last, my accuser. He stands upon a dais, gray-bearded and austere, and he beckons me peremptorily toward him. It is Father Velimir, pillar of my own Orthodox faith. His eyes are cold behind his spectacles. Azazel killed him months ago, but he is here in my dream to condemn me.

“And upon her forehead,” Father Velimir declaims, “was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.”

They close in, forcing me up onto the dais just to escape the brush of their suits and their robes and their eager, creeping hands. At least there is only one man up here. And I can see over their heads now. I look around in desperation.

Father Velimir smirks. “For she said, I will go after my lovers, that give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax, mine oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will hedge up thy way with thorns, and make a wall, that she shall not find her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not overtake them; and she shall seek them, but shall not find them.”

Their hands are reaching out now, trying to catch at my scarlet veil. I shrink back from them, my skin aflame with shame and alive with the anticipation of that first touch. My breasts and my sex feel heavy, like weights that will drag me down beneath the surface and drown me.

“These shall hate the Whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will.”

They will tear my silk from me, I think. They will pull me from my pathetic refuge and pass me amongst them to punish me in terrible ways for my unfaithfulness and my harlotry and my needful sluttishness. For wanting more than one man. For my dark lusts. For my soft curves and my juicy sex. They will punish me for being female, in the worst ways.

And I’ll deserve it all.

“For thus saith the Lord God; Behold, I will deliver thee into the hand of them whom thou hatest: And they shall deal with thee hatefully, and shall take away all thy labour, and shall leave thee naked and bare: and the nakedness of thy whoredoms shall be discovered, both thy lewdness and thy whoredoms. I will do these things unto thee, because thou hast gone a whoring after the heathen, and because thou art polluted.”

“Azazel!” I cry in desperation.

“And the whole Earth had been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.” That one I recognize: it’s from the Book of Enoch and Father Velimir rebuked me with it back when he was alive.

And right then—there’s Azazel, striding through the crowd that shrivels back from around him like skin seared by a red-hot blade. His expression is calm and his pace is unhurried; this is no fierce rescue mission. Nevertheless I’m so relieved to see him that I nearly fold at the knees.

“For she doted upon her paramours,” says Father Velimir darkly, switching back to the Bible, “whose genitals are as the genitals of asses, and whose emission is like the emission of horses.”

Azazel is wearing that ink-black sarong again, belted with several turns of a plaited leather rope. The platform I’m standing on has put us nearly eye-to-eye. I reach out a trembling hand to touch his bare chest, but he intercepts my fingers with his palm and folds them up, pushing my hand firmly away.

“Please.” I search his face for any trace of compassion, but I see only a dark amusement.

“She doted upon the Assyrians her neighbors,” Father Velimir snarls; “captains and rulers clothed most gorgeously, horsemen riding upon horses, all of them desirable young men. Then I saw that she was defiled, and that she increased her whoredoms.”

My paramour holds up a hand to silence him. Then he takes a pinch of the red silk between his fingers and pulls it away. The knots at my throat slip free and the fabric is so smooth that it draws out easily from beneath all that fabulous jewelry, leaving me bare; just skin and gems. I look down to see the hard points of my nipples poking out among the strung diamonds, and I know that he can see too, that everyone can see. The intricate net of gems is cold and hard against my ass-cheeks. I cover my groin with my hands, automatically, and discover that here in this dream I have not even a pubic fleece to shield me from prurient eyes; my sex is bare and soft, every petal exposed in its coral-pink puffiness.

“Put your hands behind your neck, Milja,” he tells me, letting the scarlet robe float aside from his hand, and I obey, trembling. I have no right to conceal my most intimate parts. The stance lifts my breasts even more pertly. Everyone in the crowd has gone quiet now, every breath held.

Everyone can see, I think. I’m no longer blushing; all the heat has run down from my face to the juncture of my thighs.

“Turn,” he orders lazily.

I turn three-sixty, slowly, so that he can glut his gaze on my ass as well as my breasts. I’m no longer in possession of my body; I am public property unless he chooses to claim me. I feel the brush of his palm as he assesses the goods. When I face him again he runs his fingertips over my breasts and tests the swollen points of my nipples, making the hanging strings of gems quiver.

“Open your legs.” His eyes are black with lechery, but you wouldn’t be able to tell it from his faintly mocking smile. When I set my thighs a few inches apart he dips a hand between them. My depilated skin is so sensitive that I whimper at the gentlest of caresses.

He finds it; the secret well of my wetness, already overflowing as he parts the tender folds. He slicks a fingertip and circles it over my clit, looking straight into my eyes to savor my involuntary response—the darkening of my eyes, the intake of breath between my parted lips, the mute plea he can read in my face.

I’m so turned on that I could melt into a puddle, like the wicked witch I am.

Again with his finger. My hips quiver.

Oh God, he could make me come here. If he keeps doing that. Here. In front of all these men. Touching me. Like. This.

“Please,” I breathe, but the very act of begging ensures that it is already too late and I’m tumbling over into my shameful, shuddering climax. And everyone is watching.

I nearly fall against him, my legs are so weak.

“I will buy her,” Azazel announces. He withdraws his hand and holds his fingers up briefly to demonstrate the glisten of my juices to everyone watching. His other hand tosses out a pouch which smacks onto the dais, scattering silver coins which Father Velimir crouches to pick up. I don’t need to count them to know that there are thirty pieces.

From around his waist Azazel unfurls the leather leash, and the three thongs at the end wrap themselves about the ring of my collar to secure my compliance. I cannot run now, even if I had the strength. He owns me.

“Hands down.” Then he adds with a shark grin, “I have something I want to show you.” He tugs the leash to make it clear he wants me down from the dais, and I obey, shrinking into his shadow and pressing up close to him, seeking shelter from the men around us.

“Walk ahead,” he orders, indicating the direction with a tilt of his head. That’s sadistic. As I lead the way through the throng, that long leather rope hangs down between my jeweled breasts and disappears between my bare thighs back toward his hand. It rubs against my sex with every tentative step. And they’re all watching, angry and disappointed. Watching me walk naked between them, my head bowed meekly but my clit thrilling to every brush of the leather.

“Therefore thus sayeth the Lord God,” is Father Velimir’s parting shot; “Because thou hast forgotten Me, and cast Me behind thy back, therefore bear thou also thy lewdness and thy whoredoms!”

They don’t follow us, though—that is a mercy. The crowd thins as we approach the chapel wall and the doorway there. There’s a wide spiral staircase leading upward that I’m sure doesn’t exist at all in the real Sistine Chapel.

“Hands and knees,” says Azazel, cruel enjoyment audible in his voice. “All the way to the top.”

It’s another layer of humiliation. I drop to hands and knees on the bare stone steps, and begin the ascent. It’s not uncomfortable, but it feels horribly vulnerable, as my shaved sex is now only too visible between my legs. Azazel stalks behind me, a few steps down—he is admiring the view, I assume. I can’t help but be provocative at that angle, and every so often he flicks a loop of the leash across one of my ass-cheeks with a snap—not particularly harshly, just to see my flesh bounce. Or he uses the stiff, knotted end of the leather to tap and nudge my unprotected split. That doesn’t make me climb faster, despite the implied threat. I want to push back against his intrusion.

The spiral stair loops and loops, until it’s obvious we’re climbing a turret. I smell fresh air—and suddenly we’re at the top.

It’s sunset, and we’re not in Rome anymore. We’re on a tower high up in the mountains, so high that there is only air around us. There’s no roof and barely any walls, only some ruined arches that might have been windows once. In the middle of the floor is a high bed with a heavy wooden footboard and a red cover. All around overhead are suspended mirrors, hanging from nothing at all—big Vatican-style mirrors with nasty, gilt Rococo frames.

“There,” says Azazel.

Egan is sitting at the end of the bed, his head tilted back as he stares into a mirror. But when we appear at the top of the stairs he turns his face to us, aghast.

He’s naked and his hands are tied behind his back.