by Nana Malone
'Because the first thing you did after not seeing him for 5,500 years was to turn your back on him,' Elisabeth thought to herself. 'That’s why…'
For the past few weeks, Lucifer had taken her under his broad, white wings and prepared her to assume her role as … whatever. Whatever plans he and the Regent had cooked up for her, not only was she in the dark, but so was Azrael. They didn't seem to be bad plans. In fact, everybody seemed quite happy Lucifer would no longer be running the show. Not that anybody had asked her if that was what she wanted to do.
Personally, she'd rather let somebody else be in charge. But after having witnessed Haven and this whole, gangly group of super-ego's, she could see why Earth-folk needed to get their act together and start exerting a little more control over their own fate instead of pleading to God or Allah or She-who-is or whoever to come and save them. Heaven … or Haven as they called it … was a mess! The gods needed all the help they could get!
Ironically, Hades seemed to be much better-run…
Elisabeth realized she had company. She turned to gaze into the brilliantly-lit golden eyes of She-who-is.
“Do you like the decorations I created for your wedding?” She-who-is asked.
Elisabeth bit her tongue. Why hadn't She-who-is gone barreling after Lucifer if SHE was the one holding him here? SHE seemed oddly dispassionate about the whole thing. Lucifer claimed he had no memories of any lifetimes prior to this one, but if what Azrael believed was true, not only had Azrael circumvented HER protections, but her new husband may have just killed She-who-is's actual brother.
"Um … yes?"
"I engineered them from scratch," She-who-is gestured towards the ivy which grew up the inside walls of the cavern carved out of the dwarf planet, thick with white, pleasant smelling flowers that looked like roses. "They feed off the exhaust cast off by the afterburners of the shuttlecraft so they can survive here with minimal artificial light."
"Um … that's nice," Elisabeth said, not sure what else to say.
"Without a void creature to feed me constant sub-atomic particles," She-who-is said. "I've had to get creative about recycling matter. But with a void-creature for a husband, you shouldn't have that problem. Perhaps I could give you pointers?"
Elisabeth stared into She-who-is's brilliant golden eyes. This was the strangest conversation she'd ever had!
"Um, yeah, that would be great," Elisabeth stammered.
"I thought perhaps you might try transplanting some of them into the caves of Gehenna?" She-who-is gestured to the roses. "The fumes cast off by the pit should provide ample fertilizer for them to adapt to the caves." Her gossamer wings gave a crisp snap. "Personally, I could never stand being underground. No wonder Lucifer's always depressed."
She-who-is took her hands and squeezed them. Her lips curved up in a genuine smile as SHE bent in and gave her a peck on the cheek. It struck Elisabeth how much She-who-is looked like Lucifer, except for the fact her wings were gossamer instead of feathered and she had pointy ears.
"I'm glad you're back," She-who-is said. "Maybe with a void creature to protect you this time, you won't get eaten?"
Elisabeth had no idea what SHE was talking about. Wailing from the direction of Lucifer's body pulled her out of the surreal chat with She-who-is, back to the drama unfolding between the Emperor and his Fallen, now-dead son.
“Please!” the Emperor implored She-who-is. “Bring him back.”
She-who-is gave the Emperor a patronizing, insincere grimace.
“Come, old friend,” Shay’tan lowered his considerable dragon-like girth to kneel and placed a clawed hand on the Emperor’s shoulder. “He’s in the arms of the one he loves now. Let him go.”
Elisabeth didn’t miss the way She-who-is blanched. Hmmm…
The Emperor jolted his adopted son with lightning again. Just as happened when she shocked a body with a defibrillator, Lucifer's body jerked upwards, but with no consciousness to inhabit it, it was all for naught.
The hair stood up on the back of her neck. Azrael was back. A feather-light tendril of consciousness touched her forehead.
‘Lucifer's mate wasn’t in the Dreamtime. He’s been reborn into mortal form. We’ve got to help Lucifer settle back into his body so he can find him.’
A second consciousness touched her mind.
“So how do I do this?” Lucifer asked. “The last ten billion times I got forcibly shoved back into my body, it was She-who-is doing it. Not me.”
“I have no idea,” Azrael replied. “I’ve never been able to un-kill somebody I’ve killed.”
The Regent's head shot up. She gave Elisabeth a black-eyed look that pierced straight to her soul. There was no hiding anything from those too-perceptive eyes. She nodded approval.
‘How do you keep your patients alive, mo ghra?’ Azrael asked.
‘Beats me,’ Elisabeth spoke low enough that those currently wearing mortal shells would not overhear her. ‘I just do it.’
‘Think!’ Azrael pleaded. ‘You two are of the same bloodline. If –you- can do it, chances are –he- can do it.’
‘I just talk to them,’ Elisabeth said. ‘Convince them to stay. They do the rest. I just loan them a little extra energy.’
It was strange, having a conversation with two invisible people while simultaneously pretending to be listening to actual real-life gods jockey for position now that a major player had just been removed from the picture.
‘Lucifer,’ Azrael said. ‘Try to settle back into your body. Elisabeth believes it’s the patient's will to live which keeps them here.’
‘I don’t get it,’ Lucifer groused. ‘He’s a god. Why can’t my adoptive Father see me?’
“Lucifer,” the Emperor cradled Lucifer's limp body. “I’m so sorry!”
‘A gift?’ Azrael suggested. ‘From She-who-is? Or maybe Ki? To teach him a lesson for being such a hypocrite?’
Lucifer tried to make his body move. It wasn’t working. Not even after the Emperor zapped him again.
She-who-is stood over the Emperor, her hand on Shay'tan's enormous scaled shoulder, tapping her exquisite designer high-heel on the floor as though impatient. There was not a hint of sorrow in those golden eyes. In fact, SHE wore the same look a mother bird might when shoving its fledgling out of the nest, waiting for it to fly. Elisabeth was certain SHE knew Lucifer hovered above his body, trying to figure out how to get back into it.
‘Elisabeth,’ Azrael whispered. ‘It isn’t working. Please. Help him.’
She thought of all the times she’d been forced to kiss Major ‘Doc’ Deven's ass to get him to step aside and let her work on a patient when the Doc was ready to let the poor bastard die. At least the Emperor was, belatedly, realizing he didn't want the son he'd spurned to be dead.
The Emperor zapped Lucifer again.
Elisabeth winced. What was it Doctor Abdullah had said? It's not like jump-starting a car. It would take more than a syringe full of atropine to fix this mess.
“Your Majesty … um … Sir?” Elisabeth asked. “If you don’t mind … there’s something I’d like to try?”
‘I’m sick of watching them treat Lucifer like crap,’ Azrael whispered into her mind. ‘All this talk of welcoming home the prodigal son, but after 5,500 years the Emperor still makes his -own- son crawl. Make him earn it.’
Shay’tan jerked his long, serpentine neck in Azrael’s direction, and then looked at Lucifer’s body. The old dragon gave it a sniff. A toothy smirk appeared on his face. He looked towards the invisible Azrael and winked.
“Perhaps if you tell the boy how you really feel about him?” Shay’tan rumbled. “I mean … you did just spend the last 5,500 years telling everyone your son was the devil. Another devil. Actually, you do that a lot. Call everybody who disagrees with you the devil.”
Elisabeth placed her hands over Lucifer's heart and tried using the white light Rahmiel had unsuccessfully tried to teach her to use. It didn’t work any better now than it had then, though the fact the
goddess whose energy she purportedly tried to channel stood over her, tapping her foot with bored impatience didn't help her concentration. The Emperor looked up and met her gaze, tears in his eyes.
“He chose that boy over me,” the Emperor whispered. “He chose your world over me. He could have ruled my empire, and he threw it all away.”
‘Knock knock!’ Lucifer whispered into her mind. ‘Who’s there? Homer. Homer who? Homophobia…’
“Well that explains everything,” Elisabeth said. “He’s dead, and you still can’t forgive him. No wonder he doesn’t want to come back.”
‘But I –do- want to come back,’ Lucifer protested.
She-who-is gave Elisabeth the same enigmatic smile Oma used to give whenever she whined and made excuses that she couldn't do some task because it was too hard. Ooh, boy. Was this some sort of test?
“Then get your ass back into your body and stop making excuses!” Elisabeth snapped at Lucifer. She felt the disembodied wraith flailing helplessly beneath her fingers strengthen at the compulsion in her voice.
“That’s it!” the Regent said. “The power of persuasion. You’re the same bloodline. Lucifer's primary mode of transmission is sound.”
‘You need to swear at him like a longshoreman, mo ghra,’ Azrael whispered into her mind. ‘The same as you do for your patients.’
A light bulb went off in her head. She’d just spent the last eight months talking to Azrael to coax him back into physical form.
“Stop picturing your consciousness as a complete body,” Elisabeth said. “It’s energy. Your nervous system makes your body move by sending electrical signals to your muscles. You’ve got to think on a much smaller scale. Start with your heart. Your body needs oxygen. Attach a single tendril of consciousness to tell it how to beat.”
His pulse came to life beneath the fingertips she had pressed to his neck.
The Emperor gave a cry of relief.
She-who-is gave her a bemused look that communicated, 'and you two are just figuring this out now?'
“Now send each command into your lungs to order them to contract and exhale,” Elisabeth said.
With a gasp, Lucifer began to breathe. His entire body shimmered and, just for a moment, felt every bit as incorporeal as Azrael's before solidifying beneath her fingertips. Lucifer's silver eyes shot open.
"Arise, Luciferi,” Elisabeth touched his forehead as though dispensing absolution, “and choose this time to herald the dawn.”
The Emperor buried his face in Lucifer’s neck, sobbing, oblivious he kneeled on snowy white wings or tore out some of his long lost son's feathers. Shay’tan gave Azrael the ‘all clear’ to finish materializing back into the room. Lucifer trembled and, with an expression as though he could not believe what was happening, cautiously slid his arms around his father's neck and embraced him, the prodigal son returned.
"Why I do believe this means Lucifer's life sentence is up?" Shay'tan slapped his opposing emperor/god on the shoulder as though he'd just won a wager. "Doesn't it, old friend? He did, after all, just die."
She-who-is edged towards the bar and poured herself a stiff drink. It struck Elisabeth how much She-who-is's manner of moving reminded her of Lucifer's. Her perfectly painted lips grimaced as the alcohol braced her, and then moved into a thin smile.
Lucifer disentangled himself from his sobbing adoptive father. The Regent elbowed her husband. The General hesitated, and then reached down to help Lucifer up.
“Thank you,” Lucifer said, his expression wary.
"C’mon, c’mon, c’mon … don’t blow it…" Azrael murmured from her side, corporeal once more.
The General did not speak; just stared at Lucifer with those deep, blue eyes. His expression was, as always, unreadable. The Regent elbowed her husband in the ribs a second time, hard enough to make him grunt in pain.
“You’re welcome,” the General said.
Azrael breathed a sigh of relief.
Elisabeth turned to her brand-new husband.
“I do believe you owe me one wing-whacking good time.” Elisabeth lowered her voice to a sultry tone. “Can we please get out of here now?”
Azrael took her hands. She gasped as he teleported her between the dimensions to the cozy little honeymoon bower he’d dropped hints about, but refused to discuss.
“Oh … Az!” Elisabeth stared up at the three-moon moonrise over a pristine purple ocean. “It’s beautiful!”
The houseboat rocked gently on an endless sea. Nearby, other houseboats were tethered to moorings. Beneath them, nearly transparent pods floated like enormous pearls as far down as she could see, their twinkling lights making the ocean appear to be a snow globe Christmas scene. Off in the distance, a magnificent city floated across the horizon, spacecraft flitting from the spaceport to satellites clearly visible in the sky.
A high-pitched squeal not unlike that of a dolphin came from the water. Azrael answered. A dolphin-like creature with a human-looking face and fingers at the end of each flipper peeked out of the water and asked another question in a high-pitched language. The dolphin wore clothing.
“The Mer-Levi are a sister-race of humans,” Azrael explained. “Their ancestors came from the same homeworld your ancestors originally came from. The Merfolk Navy intermarried with the Leviathans the same as the Fallen intermarried with your people. They’re now part of the Alliance.”
The dolphin-creature made another inquiry and then disappeared. Moments later, he reappeared with a tray of fresh fruit and sushi on a bed of kelp. A maître'd? Azrael replied to the dolphin-man. The maître'd reared up on his tail and disappeared back into the water.
"I thought you’d like to see where Earth might be in a few hundred years if given the right example,” Azrael said. He led her towards the tiny hut in the center of the floating platform. All of a sudden, his wings fluttered as though he was bashful.
“This is the part where you’re supposed to pick me up and carry me over the threshold,” Elisabeth teased.
Azrael reached out to tuck an errant strand of hair which had escaped her French braid.
“I see you,” he said, his eyes black with desire. He bent down to give her a perfect kiss before scooping her up and carrying her into the cabana.
* * * * *
Chapter 58
Life is eternal and love is immortal;
And death is only a horizon,
And a horizon is nothing
Save the limit of our sight.
Rossiter W. Raymond
December 25, 2003
Leviathan Homeworld
Azrael released his bride, the brush of her flesh against his nearly-corporeal nothingness the most precious gift imaginable. He was still … insubstantial. Little more than a wraith comprised of silt-fine void matter that could pass through her flesh as though it wasn’t even there the moment he began to experience great emotion … or arousal. Elisabeth insisted she didn’t care, but Azrael was worried. Would he disappoint her?
“You’re doing that thing again,” Elisabeth's hand slipped reassuringly into his. “Stop analyzing everything and feel it for a change.”
Azrael gave her a shy smile. “What if I lose control of my power? I only just relearned to shape my wings.”
“Ours is a spiritual bond that has transcended two lifetimes,” Elisabeth splayed her fingers across the heart. Warmth spread beneath her touch, taking the edge off that ever-present hunger.
“I’ve never done this before," Azrael pressed her hand against his chest. "I'm not even sure what to do.”
Elisabeth raised one eyebrow in amusement, merry skepticism dancing in her silver eyes.
“You’ve been tracking human behavior for how long?” Elisabeth laughed. “And you mean to tell me you’ve never walked in on two mortals doing the down and dirty?”
Azrael gulped. What was it pretty girls like Elisabeth called boys like him? Nerds? Yes. He was a nerd. Tracking data on something and experiencing it were two different things. Would he be adequat
e to satisfy her needs?
“Az.” Elisabeth caressed his cheek, passing a finger beneath his eyes to capture a black, void-filled tear that would have destroyed anyone else. "Are you okay?"
Azrael's lip twitched with a wistful longing. “My mother would have loved you. I wish she was still here to meet you.”
“She is here,” Elisabeth reminded him. “Somewhere. Remember? She-who-is told the Emperor she released Janiel to Earth thirty-seven years ago.”
“You know what I mean,” Azrael said. He gave her a wan smile. Somehow, his moodiness didn’t seem very … romantic. 2,300 years old and he didn’t have a clue how to romance his beautiful bride. Any moment now, he’d blurt out the fact he was as terrified of her as most mortals were of him.
“Undress me?” Elisabeth led him towards the bed. The waterbed rocked beneath her weight as she crawled onto the center, her breasts bobbing enticingly beneath her simple white gown. He’d seen them once before, that night when she had given herself to a boy who was not worthy of her love. He’d dreamed of them many times since then, her small, pert breasts shining white against the darkness. He wished to see them again.
“I … um,” Azrael stuttered.
She’d been gentle until now, teasing him as they’d curled up together each night, teaching him how to solidify his body against hers. The broken fragments of DNA she’d carried across time were proliferating throughout his consciousness, repairing their strands and replicating new strands of matter amongst the fertile soil of void matter of which he was comprised. The Regent felt, given enough time, he would one day become as solid as she was, capable of shifting between forms at will.
Would Elisabeth be satisfied with him until then?
“You’re ruminating again,” Elisabeth chided him. “Stop thinking and get out of your own head. You’re worse than the Emperor!”
Her touch jolted Azrael out of his melancholy. Or would it more aptly be named terror? He let go of the illusion of cloth sliding over his upper body to show the illusion of muscles rippling beneath his skin, as though he really did have a physical form. These days, he had some form, but most of what people thought of as his body was still an illusion, silt-fine void matter held together by an act of will to form a sand castle which would dissolve back into the beach with the incoming tide.
