'You -do- want me, don't you?'
“Ninsianna." His voice was husky as he captured her hand and placed over his heart, pressing it flat against his chest. He hesitated, and then tilted his head towards hers.
Her eyes fluttered shut, waiting for his kiss.
“Hey … Ninsianna!" A crude, crass voice stabbed into the moment. Two visiting shamans strode into her parent's home, oblivious to what they'd just interrupted.
Oooh! Damn!
“Which piece of floor is mine?” one of the shamans asked.
“The part with the fewest lumps,” the other answered.
Her heart fell as Mikhail stepped back and donned that maddeningly impassive mask he used to hide his emotions, his wings so stiff she thought they might crack and break.
“I'll sleep in the room downstairs with the shamans,” he released her hand. “We'll figure out a more permanent solution once they leave. Tell your father it's not our custom for a son usurp his father.”
“I will." She backed into her tiny bedroom, one hand on the animal hide that served as a door as he began to descend the steps. He paused.
“Ninsianna?”
His blue eyes were no longer unreadable, but filled with regret.
“Good night."
Chapter 39
And it's no wonder; for even [Lucifer] himself
Is able to take the form of an angel of light
2 Corinthians 11:14
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.04 AE
Alpha Sector: Command Carrier ‘Eternal Light’
Supreme Commander-General Jophiel
Jophiel
"Supreme Commander-General?" Major Klik'rr, her Mantoid assistant and, quite honestly, her right-hand man, called down into her quarters. "You have an alpha-priority-one message from the Prime Minister's office. He needs to speak to you right away."
Irritation flashed in Jophiel's gut, though perhaps it was simply a post-partum fluctuation? Her milk had come in and, unlike all the other children she'd birthed, refused to dry up, leaving her breasts constantly swollen, leaking fluid, and exacerbating her already irritable mood.
"Tell him I'm indisposed," Jophiel snapped. She cut off the communication far more brusquely than was warranted. She buried her nose back into her pile of reports needing processing and was irritated when her comms pin beeped a few seconds later.
"Sir?" Klik'rr asked. "He insists it's urgent."
The signature she'd been scrawling across the electronic tablet sprawled darker, the 'L' in 'Jophiel' looking more like a stab-wound than the end of Alliance cuneiform.
"Very well," Jophiel groused. "Put him through."
She didn't even bother to primp her hair or straighten out her everyday uniform as a tow-headed visage materialized on her video monitor.
“What do you want, Prime Minister Lucifer?" Jophiel schooled her face and voice to be devoid of emotion. Her fists clenched out of sight beneath the table so it wouldn't show up on the two-way video monitor.
Lucifer sat poised in his stereotypical ‘politician pose,’ artfully arranged before the monitor to convey sincerity and authority. Raised from birth to speak on behalf of the Emperor, every mannerism had been trained to get him whatever he desired. Especially his voice! Lucifer dripped pleasantness, reasonableness, unrealized hopes and desires.
It was all a gods-damned act!
“I've been getting complaints about your goon squad.” Lucifer's eerie silver eyes glittered as he spoke with practiced smoothness. “You must order them to stop harassing honest traders.”
“Sata’an traders,” she retorted, resisting the urge to simply believe their highest-ranking civilian authority and adopted son of their emperor/god.
“Under the treaty signed by the Eternal Emperor himself between the Alliance and the Sata’an Empire in 152,299,” Lucifer rattled off with a practiced tongue. “Those portions of the uncharted territories are considered neutral. The traders have as much of a right to be there as anybody else.”
“Not when they smuggle counterfeit goods,” Jophiel said. “And unload it on unwary settlers for their entire year's harvest!”
“Caveat emptor, Jophie." Lucifer dropped the act just for a moment to show the seething hatred she knew lay within. “You know how much the Emperor respects the right of free will. If the settlers wish to purchase those goods, who are we to contradict them?”
“-I- will,” she snapped. “When the money they get from selling those goods funds expansion of Shay'tan's war fleet!”
“You know the terms of the free trade agreements the Alliance signed with the Sata'an Empire.” Lucifer dripped reasonableness once more. “All honest traders, no matter what their species, have the right to sell any good to any other colony and neither the Alliance nor the Empire will interfere. If we intertwine their economy with ours, they'll be too dependent upon us to go to war.”
“A treaty you negotiated while the Emperor was away," Jophiel said. "I don't see Shay'tan buying a whole lot of goods from Alliance planets, only our hard-earned Alliance money flowing into Sata’anic coffers.”
“You don't need to like it, Jophie." Lucifer gave her a lascivious grin he knew drove her ballistic. “You only need to enforce it. I'll take this matter up with the Emperor.”
“You do that,” she hissed. “Until then, if my men think they are carrying contraband, we're going to stop them, Alliance or Sata’anic.”
Lucifer's handsome features hardened into a habitual sneer, and then softened in an expression of exaggerated false pleasantness.
“Oh … Jophie. Have I passed along my congratulations on your latest little bundle of joy?" Insincerity dripped from his voice as he needled her with the veiled insult. “My, you're a prolific one, aren’t you? Perpetuating your genome with all those lower-ranking men.”
“Only with a worthy mate!" She returned his jab with a verbal right hook. “I only had one mating attempt that ever failed!" She cut off the transmission before he had a chance to retort.
Her hands hurt. Looking down, she realized she'd dug her nails into her own palm and drawn blood. Lucifer might be an asshole, but he was the most exciting asshole she'd ever fucked.
She was better than him! She didn't lead her children's fathers on with promises she could never keep. She didn't pluck them fresh out of the academy, too young and naive to understand the law of their people was written in stone, and insinuate their liaison was special. She didn't promise them she wished to continue their relationship after the heat-cycle had passed, and then 'sic her Chief of Staff on them to tell them the man you had fallen hopelessly in love with kept a dozen mares in the stable at all times and had no interest in an infertile female!
Damn him! Damn him and the only mating attempt which had ever failed! But she'd had the last laugh, because she had gone on to birth twelve babies, while She-who-is had given Lucifer none!
She bent down to her bottom drawer and pulled out the scrapbook she hid filled with photographs of her twelve children and the twelve fathers who had helped her sire them. All happy and smiling. All except for Uriel, whose little face was red from crying.
She hadn't contacted Raphael directly since the day she'd gone into labor, unable to bear his sorrowful expression as she'd cut out his heart and handed it back to him. She'd warned him! She'd warned him that she only formed relations to fill the ranks of the Emperor's armies. She'd made him sign the waiver. She'd done her best to remain impartial. To not get attached. It was the law!
Her fingers traced the sad little dimple on Uriel's cheek, so much like his father's that it made her heart ache. Mikhail had filled her head with foolish, romantic notions. It had been him she'd first requested to sire this child, not Raphael. The Emperor wanted Mikhail to produce offspring and she knew the brooding Seraphim harbored feelings for her, but it had not been enough to make him budge. Seraphim only took one mate for life, he'd quietly told her, and she was incapable of giving him what he needed. With a kiss upon her forehead, he'd told her th
at she would always have a special place within his heart, and then he had asked to be reassigned.
Damn! She was no better than Lucifer! She'd only asked Raphael to sire this child because she'd found herself smarting from Mikhail's rejection and wanted to hurt him by forming relations, instead, with his best friend. The joke had turned out to be on her. The affable Raphael, so very different from the dark, brooding Seraphim, had caught her unawares. In five meager days, he'd wiped all thoughts of Mikhail, her cadet mating experience with Lucifer, and the eleven men she'd mated with since then, right out of her mind!
Poor little Uriel. He looked as unhappy as she felt.
Chapter 40
April – 3,390 BC
Earth: Village of Assur
Ninsianna
“Mother, hear my prayer."
Ninsianna lit some dried herbs and placed them in a small ceramic bowl on the alter she'd set up in her room. Like all Ubaid sleeping quarters, her bedroom was little more than a loft tucked beneath the flat roof, just big enough for her to stand up in and move from her bed to the door. A raised wooden platform made of lashed sticks served as her bed, with a thin woven pad filled with straw that had to be replenished each season for a mattress. Her parents had always regretted never giving her a brother or sister, but Ninsianna was glad to be an only child. The lack of privacy at the great sky canoe had deprived her of one of her favorite pastimes.
“I'm sorry I couldn't pray more formally to you at Mikhail’s sky canoe," Ninsianna prayed, "but I brought back many interesting things to share with you.”
She lay pebbles, twigs, and other items upon the tiny alter fastened to the eastern wall above her bed, telling the goddess funny little stories about each item as though she were a child relating how her day had gone. She constantly spoke to She-who-is, but she was also mindful to observe the more formal prayer rituals. The goddess had always been generous about granting her prayers, but she knew better than to take her favored status for granted. Tonight, she had a new prayer to ask.
“Thank you for sending me your winged champion instead of forcing me to marry Jamin," she said. "I healed him as you asked. But Mother, might I beg another indulgence?”
She reached into her satchel and fished out a huge, brown feather molted feather from Mikhail’s wings. Rubbing it against her lips, she lay it upon the altar right in front of the small, rounded clay figurine seated upon a throne of two lions.
“I have feelings for him,” Ninsianna said. “I think perhaps he has feelings for me as well? But he is so … controlled … that it's hard to tell."
She pictured how good it felt whenever she gave him a hug, and how close he'd come to kissing her tonight. She formed the image of what she wanted and pictured placing that wish upon her alter along with her other gifts. She sensed by the sturdy thread of energy which connected her to She-who-is that the goddess was listening tonight, and gave voice to her heart's desire.
"If we are meant to be together, could you please give us both a sign?”
She snuffed out the flickering tallow lamp, slipped out of her shawl, and slid beneath the covers. Her lumpy mattress didn't feel as good as the comfortable bunk she'd enjoyed mere feet from the man who had grown to occupy such an important place in her heart. As she drifted off to sleep, She-who-is sent her another vision.
Drifting out of her bed, her spirit flew up into a spinning vortex of stars spinning peacefully on its axis. She could hear the steady thrum of the stars vibrating and realized their combined voices united into the voice of the goddess singing the Song of the Sword.
The dream changed. Darkness spread across the stars. As it encroached upon the center, she saw once again the vision the goddess had shown the day she'd sent Mikhail. A sword of darkness smote his ship. The goddess steered it towards Ninsianna’s home, the blue stone circling the sun. She saw herself encrusted in yellow ochre by the stream and then go heal his wounds.
She saw Mikhail planting crops, fighting alongside the Ubaid warriors, and sitting around the campfire with her people, his expression unguarded and happy. She saw him embrace her and her belly grow heavy with child.
Out of the center a second ray of light shot out and headed towards her planet. As the darkness reached this ship, it didn't smite it, but embraced it. The ship turned blacker than the darkness which had created it. As it hit the fertile earth, it split open. Lizard-like monsters and other strange, misshapen creatures spewed forth. Sweeping across the desert from the west, the demons devoured her village and her people.
Ninsianna heard wings and turned to embrace her husband, but it was not him. A white-winged Angelic, ethereally beautiful and bright on the outside, but hideous inside from the darkness which consumed his soul, sought to lure her from this world. His countenance was beautiful, but he couldn't hide the malevolent darkness from her goddess-touched eyes.
Mikhail! She called his name again and again, but he didn't come.
The Evil One used his sword to cut her child from her womb. Ninsianna thrashed and screamed, but she couldn't get away.
“Ninsianna, dúisigh! Wake up!”
Mikhail? Why didn’t he come to save her?
“It's a vision from the goddess. She is stuck between this world and the dream time. It happened often when she was very young.”
Mama?
“This is why women are forbidden to learn magic! They travel too easily between worlds.”
Papa!
Why couldn't she wake up? She tried to fight her way back to their voices, but the darkness in the dream still had her in its grip. She could feel her father slip into her mind. Suddenly he was there, standing beside her.
“Papa … what is happening?”
“You're stuck in your vision. You need to focus your mind on something outside of the vision.”
“What do you focus on, Papa?”
“I focus on your Mama. She can pull me out of the worst vision.”
“Ninsianna!" She could feel Mikhail's hand upon her cheek in the same gesture she always used to comfort him. She could hear the emotion tremble in his voice. Mikhail was afraid.
“I understand, Papa,” she said. “I think I'll be okay now."
Focusing on the sound of Mikhail’s voice, the feel of his hand, she willed herself out of the vision and back into the waking realm.
“Mikhail,” she opened her eyes, “Chuala mé leat [I heard you].”
He hugged her to his chest so tightly she couldn't move. His heart raced beneath his tunic.
“When I heard you scream…" His voice broke with emotion.
“Ninsianna, you must tell us of this vision,” Papa said.
Mikhail released her.
“Nani ga warui kite iru [something bad is coming],” She stopped when they gave her a curious look. Mikhail answered in the strange, clicking language he'd used during his battle fury and amongst the shamans. She understood every word.
“Anata wa Cherubim no gengo o hanashite iru [you speak the language of the Cherubim],” he said.
“Your eyes…” Mama's face was filled with fear.
“How is this possible?” Mikhail asked in Ubaid.
“She has been touched by the hand of the goddess,” Papa said. “I can say with great certainty now, winged one, that Ninsianna is the Chosen One sung about in the ancient song. Whether or not you can remember your purpose here, the Evil One approaches.”
“Papa?”
“Look in the reflecting bowl, child." Mama poured water into a shallow bowl and held it steady until the water stilled.
It was not necessary for Mama to hold the tallow lantern closer for her to see what they were all looking at. Staring back from her reflection was not the tawny eyed girl she remembered, but someone whose eyes shone with an internal illumination of pure, unburnished gold.
Chapter 41
Galactic Standard Date: 152,323.04
51-Pegasi-4 – Genocide Memorial
Prime Minister Lucifer
Lucifer
Lucifer stared at the wasteland which stretched before him, his heart as empty as the empty field where only a handful of people had shown up to commemorate the passing of an entire species. Most were descendants, such as himself, whose ancestors had been cast off of this world because they had not met the Seraphim’s high moral standards. A few reporters from obscure local networks had shown up, but no big players from the Alliance itself. Nobody cared about the Seraphim whose murders had taken all hope of evolution for the hybrids along with them.
“Today is the 25th anniversary of the 51-Pegasi-4 genocide.”
Lucifer's wings drooped as he stood in front of the wall listing the names of the dead, the stark black granite a sharp contrast against his snowy white wings. It would have made a magnificent publicity shot … if anyone had cared. A lone reporter snapped a photograph.
'This speech serves no political purpose. You're wasting your precious time…'
'Oh … shut up!' he told that small, nasty voice that lived inside of his head. Zepar had scheduled him to be someplace else today, but he'd given him the slip. His conversation with Hashem had made him realize that his adopted father was not going to step in and rescue his species any more than anyone had saved the people of this world.
“Eleven million people called this world their home," Lucifer said. "This was a peaceful colony where many races lived in harmony. Including refugees from the Sata’an Empire. Races people thought of as enemies raised their families here … together."
He glanced at the names on the black granite wall. Alongside the tell-tale Angelic names ending with ‘il or ‘el were names bearing the mark of almost every other species in the galaxy. Two out-of-uniform Sata'anic males kneeled before one of the black granite slabs that listed the names of the dead, one holding the other up as they solemnly ran their claws along a list of family names that were not Angelic in origin, but Sata'anic.
"They were spiritual beings united in a single purpose," he said. "They'd evolved beyond their baser impulses, but they forgot that the rest of the galaxy had not.”
Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 21
