by A. J. Rand
“I bet I can.” I snorted. “Old Lou was already working on his own prototype––Abaddon. If he could make the only creations of his rival out to be lesser beings, then he could complete his bid for leadership over all the angelic host.”
“Pretty much.” Ke admitted. “That was the point he was trying to use until Abaddon started tearing apart everything. Up to that point, there were quite a few of the angelic hosts willing to agree with him.”
“But here’s the other part that is puzzling to me. Adam and Eve weren’t the only creations, were they? I mean the whole concept of humanity being descended from two people––what about the folks Cain ran into later on?”
“Adam and Eve weren’t the only ones. They were the prototypes. And actually––”
“What?”
“Eve wasn’t the first woman, either. Lilith was.”
I frowned. “I think I read that somewhere. But wasn’t there something about her not being able to reproduce––?”
“Yes. Humans were meant to be self-replicating. Lilith could not reproduce human children.”
“Human children––? So she could reproduce, but only Nephilim?”
“Lilith was the first consort to Lucifer, when she was replaced with Eve.”
“So is she still around?”
“Eve?”
“No, Lilith.”
Ke frowned. “Yes. She is one of the immortals. Her presence appears throughout the religious texts of human history. I think the most accurate portrayal of her was through the Sumerian mythos.”
I let that one run through my mind until it snagged on the thought. “Tiamat.”
Ke nodded. “In the myths, she was destroyed. But she is supposed to come again, just like the biblical Revelations.”
“The whore of Babylon?” When Ke confirmed the concept, another thought came to mind. “Wait––Tiamat. Wasn’t she taken down by Marduk?”
Ke’s look became very guarded. “He had the help of another who was not named in the stories.”
“Ithane.” I knew the answer without his response. So that was what Marduk was hinting at. He had known me in my past form. Which meant Ithane had not only hung out with the humans, she may have taught them some of the same things that brought them to immortality.
“Marduk and Ithane locked Lilith away in much the same way as we did with Abaddon. She actually put Abaddon into the same pit with Lilith. It was how Ithane could work the weave so fast to open the space to lock Abaddon away. She had done it once before.”
“Does that mean Marduk is also capable of unlocking the pit?”
Ke shook his head, his voice bitter. “No, that was an honor reserved only for me. Ithane didn’t lose herself to the web when she worked with Marduk against Tiamat. She gave herself to the web when she worked with me. I wasn’t strong enough to carry my weight, and we lost her because of it.”
I shrugged. “It all works the way it’s supposed to, I guess. Maybe Ithane knew that and it wasn’t your fault. It was just what needed to be done.”
“She chose that way to do it so she could take human form. She would not go against the restrictions against combing angelic essence with human energy.”
I laughed out loud. “You’re telling me Ithane gave herself up so she could come back and have sex with Marduk?” I thought about the strong attraction that was there when I was with the immortal. Maybe there was something to it.
Ke looked angry, and he wouldn’t respond. Realization struck. Okay, maybe I was a little slow.
“You’re jealous.”
Ke pointed to a spot in front of him, ignoring my statement. I looked to see an apple tree, with full, bushy branches laden with succulent red fruit––apples. I looked back at him with skepticism.
“This is it? The Tree of Knowledge?”
Ke nodded. It didn’t look like much to me. That must have been some con job Lucifer had pulled on Eve. I had seen better looking trees on our way here. This one didn’t strike me as anything out of the ordinary.
I shrugged. “You never answered my question.”
Ke was testy. “You did not ask one.”
“Fine. I’m asking. Are you jealous of Ithane’s relationship with Marduk?”
I could almost feel his teeth grinding to avoid giving me an answer. I thought back to my earlier conversation with Sarge.
“That’s why you shut him down, isn’t it? Sarge was about to tell me that you were in love with Ithane.”
His shoulders slumped. “Yes.” He whispered.
Wow. How about just a little more confusion thrown into the mix for me? This couldn’t be happening. The look of misery on his face told me it was. The angel was in love with me. No, wait. He wasn’t in love with me. He was in love with her.
“I am not Ithane.” I told him softly.
“You are.” Ke said, finally looking at me. “You are very much like she was. The only difference is that you have free will now. But you are just like her.”
“But I’m not her. I am a different person with a part of her inside me. That doesn’t make me Ithane. It makes me who I am.”
Ke said nothing, but he took a step closer. There was such a hunger in his eyes that my breath caught in my throat.
“Even if I were Ithane,” I searched his face for answers. “You’ve had your chance. I offered myself to you and you turned me down. But if I were to be honest, I probably wouldn’t turn you away if you tried again.”
I watched the emotions play across his face, from hunger and desire to frustration and sorrow. It was frustration that finally won out.
“I cannot,” he groaned. “You are still in human form. Our joining is forbidden.”
“You are in human form now, too.” I pointed out, reaching up a hand to touch him.
He backed away as though my touch would burn his skin. Maybe it would have, I was feeling pretty heated right now. I should have let go of the celibacy thing a while back. It was causing me some big trouble right now. What had I been thinking?
Ke shook his head and stepped further back. I dropped my hand. Hey, I’m not going to offer again. The ego can only take being turned down so many times. Without another word, he turned and walked away, leaving me alone in the middle of the Garden of Eden. It was as I thought. Paradise seemed to be a pretty boring and lonely place.
Chapter 22
Now, I have a pretty good imagination. But there are times when you wonder whether or not your imagination has crossed over into stages of delirium. This was one of those times. Here I am, standing in the middle of the Garden of Eden, staring at the Tree of Knowledge. My thoughts are focused on the guy walking away from me. And what do I see? A huge snake is slithering a slow, winding pace down through the apples from the upper branches of the Tree. This couldn’t really be happening, could it?
The real question I should’ve been asking my self at this point was that if there were any chance at all this was not a hallucination, then why didn’t I turn and run? Silly me. By the time that thought came to the forefront of my mind, the head of the snake was on a level even with mine. While the rest of the body followed behind it, the head turned to face me. The voice that rasped its lispy words was reminiscent of a pervert tracking down its next target.
“Want some apples, little girl?”
It wasn’t until the slitted eye winked my way that the ridiculousness of the situation struck me. I laughed, the sound full, rich and genuine. With all I had experienced up to this point, it felt good to laugh.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
The snake’s chuckle was rolling, almost musical. While I watched, it dropped from the lowest branch to the ground, its body winding into a thick pile of coils. Those melted together, and then pushed upward into another shape. When all was said and done, one of the most gorgeous men I had ever laid eyes on stood before me, in blond, masculine glory. His eyes were deep, piercing blue, yet filled with warmth and amusement. But it wasn’t a man. It was another angel, one with wings the blue-b
lack color of a raven, the tips of the feathers seeped in blood red.
“Lucifer, I presume?”
“At your service, beautiful lady.” His sweeping bow was regal and flowed with the natural movements of his body. “Although I do go by the name Lucien these days. So much less harsh sounding without holding the negative connotations of the other, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “You could call yourself Princess Sweet Pea for all that it mattered to me.”
“Cheeky.” He tilted his head in amused deference. “I will take that under advisement.”
I looked around curiously, to see if any alarms had been raised, any angels were running to deal with one of the Fallen Ones, correction, the original Fallen One. Nothing. Sarge was right. They should have been watching their perimeters.
“They are not aware of my presence.” Lucien held his arms out openly. “This is the one place within the Crystal City where I am allowed to return. I come back from time to time when I’m feeling a little––nostalgic.”
My head was shaking back and forth in bemused wonderment. It dawned on me that I should probably be afraid of this guy, but oddly enough, I wasn’t. That was pretty stupid of me. Come on. This was the epitome of evil, the ultimate father of everything I had fought against all my life. Some of those things had seriously kicked my ass. They were pansy-wipes compared to this guy.
Lucien leaned in close to whisper in my ear. “You have nothing to fear from me, beautiful lady. Not at this time, anyway.”
His voice wrapped silken threads around my senses. Wow. No wonder they claimed he was the most beautiful, the most seductive among the entire angelic host in his time. He certainly hadn’t lost his touch. I’m betting he’d picked up a few tricks of the last couple millennia.
I stepped back from him, suddenly unsure of myself. “What do you want, Lucien?”
His smile was the picture of innocence, his movements fluid as he tipped his head and shrugged his shoulders. “What does any man want? Power, control, the love of a good woman.”
Okay, that helped me snap out of it a bit. He was mocking me now. “First of all, you aren’t a man. Second, you already have a woman at your back––Lilith.”
“But you have locked my consort away from me.” He sounded almost petulant. I noticed he didn’t deny the first charge.
“I am not Ithane.”
He tilted his head to study me curiously. “You are, but yet not. What a strange dichotomy your life is. The duality of power and the endless ages of time wrapped up in a powerless human shell that dies a little every second that you take a breath. How sad you must be.”
I grinned. “Oh, I don’t know. Being human has its perks, too. Take the whole free will thing, for example.”
Lucien actually hissed at me, his composure broken for a brief second before it slipped back behind his mask of charm. “How perfectly human of you to bring up such a distasteful subject in the midst of our pleasantries.”
“Pleasantries?” My laugh was bitter. “Is that why you dropped by, Lucien, to exchange pleasantries? Or was it to check out the enemy?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps I do not consider you to be an enemy.”
“Let’s see, I lock up your girlfriend, I lock up your wasteful son. There are those around here that hope that I will be the savior to humanity. How does that not qualify as your enemy? I stand for everything you fight against.”
“Ah, so you are willing to admit that you and Ithane are one and the same.”
That stopped me cold. I had admitted exactly that, hadn’t I? Maybe my mind was starting to go. These angels had a way of rattling your senses.
I sighed. “Why don’t you cut to the chase, Lucien? What do you want from me?”
He reached up above his head and plucked an apple from the Tree. With deliberate care, he held it in his hand, moving it this way and that to catch the light of the Garden. Separated from the Tree, it now seemed enticing, beautiful, a luscious fruit made to be eaten. Maybe it was an illusion cast by the dark angel holding the apple, but it was a mouth-watering illusion.
“It is not so much what I want from you, Yeshua, as what it is I am prepared to offer.”
I looked from the apple into the calculated sincerity in his eyes. Damn, this guy was good. No wonder Eve had fallen prey to his enticements. My mouth had gone dry and I licked my lips, trying to swallow at the same time. Neither helped.
“And what are you offering?”
He held out the apple, his hand flat, like a platter of flesh holding forth a delectable offering. “Answers. That is what you are looking for, isn’t it? Answers to the many questions running through your mind? Answers to help you make the decision that is coming up?”
Okay, now that didn’t raise my suspicion level. My eyes narrowed. “And what makes you so certain that if I had those answers I would jump the way you wanted me to?”
He laughed, and the sound was genuine. “Oh, you will do exactly what it is that I want. I have no doubt of that in the slightest. Humans always have a way of doing the wrong thing in the name of what they feel to be right. I am only offering you a chance to go into this whole upcoming struggle with your eyes wide open. You don’t honestly believe the angelic host will give you any more information than they want in order to make you see things their way?”
“So why don’t you just tell me what you think I should know? Why offer me this opportunity?”
The amusement danced in his eyes. “So you would believe anything that I had to tell you from my own lips?”
He had a point there.
He shrugged, tossing the apple up and catching it in his hand. He held it out as though examining its perfection. “Besides, the pattern repeats. Who am I to break the pattern? I only offer to you what was once offered to another. I would not want to blow your perfect image of me, now would I?”
“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” I looked at him quizzically. “You are all about feelings of perfection. You feel that humans do not measure up to what your ideal image of perfection is.”
“Does it matter to you so much what I think?”
I laughed. “Hell, no. Pardon the expression. But it does make me very curious as to why this is so important to you.”
He held out the apple. “Why do you not take the opportunity to find out?”
I took the apple from his hand, rolling it between my fingers to catch the light as he had. Talk about temptation. If the legends held true, everything I wanted to know and then some was only a bite away. What had Ke said? That it was a direct connection into the web. Then another thought struck me.
Hadn’t he also said the apple had shown Eve the potential of humankind? If that was the case, wouldn’t that mean she had been shown endless possibilities, both good and bad? But they were all just possibilities. The pattern hadn’t been woven yet. No wonder the woman freaked out. Not all of those bad things had happened. She just saw all of the limitless potentials of what could happen. Talk about sensory overload. And in a mind that couldn’t comprehend the concept of evil before taking that fateful bite, what horror she must have experienced.
Sometimes too much knowledge was a bad thing. How would you know which decision to make? You didn’t know how every single person would react in any given situation. You couldn’t predict human reaction. To even suppose you would––
I handed the apple back to him. “Thanks, but no thanks. Talk about having your hands tied, second-guessing every move you make. Uh-uh. I have enough confusion going on in my head without throwing everyone else’s confusion into the mix.”
Lucien laughed, holding his hands up, refusing to accept the deadly fruit. “You are a lot smarter than the first one. But the fruit is yours now. You may choose to use it later on.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I may want answers, but those are not the answers I am seeking. That fruit is deadly poison to the human mind.”
I looked down at the apple and shrugged. Holding it in hand, I turned and started to
walk away. The cynical laughter in his voice stopped me.
“You will give into temptation sooner or later, Yeshua. It is a human trait. You cannot deny it.”
There was only one thing I was tempted to do at the moment. I turned and saw the smug look on his face, took in his arrogant stance. All pretenses were stripped away. He was no better than the rest of him. He was right. I am human. Giving into temptation is second nature. I tossed the apple in the air a couple of times, getting the feel of it. Then I threw it at him, letting it bounce off the side of his head.
His eyes glittered dangerously, but he didn’t say a word. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I had ever done in my life, basically spitting in the face of the devil, daring him to come after me. But it sure felt good.
Chapter 23
“I can’t believe you pegged Lucifer in the head with an apple, Yesh.”
Chaz was staring at me, shaking his head in disbelief. Now that I had time to think about it, I couldn’t believe I had done it either. What had I been thinking?
I shrugged, trying not to let any of my discomfort show. “What’s done is done, kid. That’s what I get for being impulsive.”
“I wonder if Father David is going to turn white, or if he’s going to laugh?”
I laughed. “The church should pin a medal on me for that one.”
The kid giggled. “I can see it now––Saint Yeshua of the Apple.”
I shook my head. “Nope. Not yet. There’s the little thing of having three miracles under my belt before they’ll even start to consider a sainthood package.”
Chaz nodded sagely. “Don’t forget the part about having to be dead first.”
I laughed. “I don’t know, kid. From everything that’s unfolding, I don’t see it as being too far off.”
“Don’t, Yesh.” He sobered up. “Don’t think like that.”
I took in the serious look on his face, and found myself saddened by his support. “Come on, kid. We both have a clue as to what we’re up against. Don’t go all stupid on me now. I’m a realist. I know what could happen and probably will. And that’s whether I fall in line with what the Grigori want, or the angelic host. Either way, there’s a pretty grim outlook for a limited future.”
