Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (7 page)

“What was it you said the Seraphim bastard would to do to me?” the Evil One snarled. His hands thrust the blade downwards, straight into her womb.

Ninsianna screamed.

"Mikhail!"

~ * ~ * ~

Watch out for false prophets.

They come to you in sheep’s clothing,

But inwardly they are ferocious wolves.

M
atthew 7:15

November 3,390 BC 
(about an hour ago)

Earth:  Mesopotamian Plain

Jamin

The Sata’anic lizard-soldiers piled wood upon the bonfire and built it to a height he’d only ever seen during the winter Narduğan celebration. The thin, green needles of tamarix shrubs sizzled, fat with moisture from the recent rains which had finally begun to fall after months of desiccation in the hot Mesopotamian heat. Unable to withstand the conflagration, they burst into flames, shooting sparks into the sky along with a tsunami of impenetrable, grey smoke. To the west, the horizon loomed blood-red like the ground after a gazelle hunt. The last rays of the dying sun faded beneath the sands of the desert horizon.

"Are you ready, my son?" Lucifer placed his hand upon Jamin's shoulder, a fatherly gesture.

A feeling akin to standing on the top of a mountain during a thunderstorm rippled through Jamin's nerve endings. He hadn't decided yet if that was a good or bad thing. His whole life he had dreamed of possessing enough prowess to conquer the non-allied tribes, and yet the mere
sight
of Lucifer made him want to drop down to his knees and beg for allegiance.

"Let's get this over with," Jamin said.

He forced himself to stand haughtily the way a chief's son should. He surveyed their preparations with a practiced eye. In just a few minutes the sky would be so black that no one would see beyond the bonfire to the three sky canoes waiting in ambush ... or the near-fourscore mercenaries the lizard-people had recruited from his father's enemies. From the air, it would appear as though a small raiding party had grabbed Ninsianna. He pointed to where Shahla whirled happily around the bonfire, dancing so the red cape flared out like a dervish.

"She won't be hurt?" Jamin asked.

"She is my
wife,
" Lucifer crooned into Jamin's ear, so close the breathiness gave him chills. "Just one nick, to prove I can trust her when I fall asleep with her in my bed. Do you think I would otherwise put her at risk?"

"It is rumored you have
many
wives," Jamin said. He glanced over at Lieutenant Kasib, who’d been reticent ever since he’d decided
not
to stab the enemy Príomh-Aire with the knife the lizard had deliberately overlooked. "What use to you is one who is mind-broken?"

Lucifer's eerie silver eyes reflected the flames and made it appear as though
he
was filled with fire.

"It is not her
mind
which interests me,” Lucifer smirked. “All I care is that I can fill their wombs with sons and daughters. The emptier the mind, the better."

"And what of Ninsianna’s child?"

Lucifer gave Jamin the hungry look a man might give who was about to sit down for a decadent feast.

“Why,” Lucifer’s mouth curved up in a smile which showed off his perfect, white teeth, “I shall treat it as though it was my own child.”

Jamin shivered. Much as he had fantasized about teaching his unfaithful former fiancé a lesson, now that he had Ninsianna where he wanted her, he didn't like the way Lucifer savored her as though she was the evening meal.

"Ninsianna will hate me forever," Jamin said.

"There are ways to make a woman forget any man but
you
," Lucifer whispered conspiratorially. "I will teach you, young chieftain." Lucifer brushed Jamin's cheek with the back of his fingertips, just a little too familiar. "
After
you have given me a demonstration of your loyalty."

Lucifer's scent wafted around him, sweetness paired with brimstone and a muskiness so male it screamed of power. More power, even, than the entire tent full of Ubaid chiefs he'd just betrayed to get back at his father for banishing him. Oh, gods! His whole life he had dreamed of power, and now Lucifer kept hinting he would
give
it to him … as soon as he completed this little mission.

Images of Ninsianna danced into Jamin's mind. Eyes shut, she cried out his name again and again as he brought her up to ecstasy. The strange, foreign 'pants' grew uncomfortably tight around his crotch. A small groan escaped his lips. He could almost
feel
Ninsianna's wet feminine mysteries sliding against his manhood. Oh! Gods! Power? No …
this
was what he'd sold his soul to get!

"Ninsianna," Jamin whispered as though he uttered a prayer.

Lucifer pulled away his hand. A sickening revulsion, silent taunts of why would he want to take to bride a woman so well used when Lucifer could give him any woman he wanted, echoed through Jamin's mind and settled into his belly like rancid meat. Laughter, unspoken, burned in Lucifer’s eyes, mocking him for his constancy to a woman who had done nothing but betray him.

"Get out of my head," Jamin said.

'She carries the abomination of your enemy,' Lucifer taunted inside his head.

'I don't care,' Jamin thought to himself. 'If Ninsianna would love me, I would give it all away just to have her look at me the way she looks at Mikhail.'

Lucifer frowned. It felt like … loss. Loss of empathy. Loss of trust. He, like Shahla, had yet to prove he was worthy of Lucifer's beneficence. New images danced into his mind. Anger.
His
anger. He could almost
taste
how good it would feel to finally watch his adversary die. That ever-present rage ignited in Jamin's gut, grew hotter, more ferocious, as though Lucifer stoked the flames the same way the lizard people now piled wood upon the bonfire. Rage shuddered into his nerve endings and reddened his flesh like a desert fire. Lucifer had promised to give back to him what was
his.

Lucifer's tongue darted out to lick his own lips as though he savored a drop of honey.

"Come, my son." Lucifer's voice sounded as warm and luscious as the sensation of floating on the Hiddekel River in summer. "Your hatred pleases me. Let us give form to this fantasy you have named as your price for selling to me your service, and then you will be mine. Forever."

"Yes." Jamin's mouth formed the words even though a small voice in his heart shouted
no!

Lucifer curled one snowy white wing around Jamin's back as though he wished to shield him from the wind and led him towards his sky canoe. At Lucifer's heel, the fat lizard-king named Ba'al Zebub waddled like an over-eager mutt, his fangs protruding from his corpulent maw in a pleased grin. Jamin still hadn't figured out the dynamics of
who
was in charge. Lucifer? The fat lizard king? Or this dragon-god Kasib kept genuflecting to, the one on the coin called Emperor Shay'tan?

A large, green shadow moved to stand in front of them, blocking their egress into Lucifer's shiny, dart-like sky canoe. General Hudhafah hissed something in the Sata’anic language. He was a large lizard, almost as tall as Lucifer, but far broader with a muscular body filled with many scars that could have only been earned in battle and a deep burgundy dewlap. His razor-sharp dorsal ridge reared up, giving him the illusion of being even taller.

“What?” Jamin looked from one to the other.

Lucifer’s grip tightened on his shoulder. Pain shot deep into his bones as Lucifer hissed something back at the Sata’anic general.

Jamin glanced at Lieutenant Kasib, a slender lizard, far lower in rank than the general he trailed behind. In his hand he held the flat, magical talisman he called a
flatscreen.
His long, forked tongue flitted frantically into the air as he pointed something on that screen out to General Hudhafah.

Lucifer flared his wings and pulled Jamin closer, the way one lion might do to another that was sniffing around its supper.

General Hudhafah growled and bared his fangs. That same musky scent Jamin had noted earlier filled the air. Lucifer wasn't the
only
one who exuded an air of authority.

A throb of anticipation pulsed through Jamin's body. Lucifer’s features hardened into a mask of hatred. Jamin stared, fascinated as Lucifer transformed from suave trader into a visage which reminded him of the auroch which had once gored and almost killed him. Allies? The two factions didn’t
act
like allies.

Hudhafah uttered something that sounded like a dog’s bark. Six lesser lizard demons stepped up behind him, fingering the holsters where the lizards kept their firesticks. The two cold-eyed Angelics which Kasib disparagingly referred to as
goons
stepped up to flank Lucifer and fingered
their
firesticks as well.

Jamin glanced at the two squat, grey lizard-ships which sat on either side of Lucifer's slender sky canoe as though they were hounds guarding a jackal. The implication was clear. Lucifer carried enough authority that the lizard people were forced to deal with him, but he was
not
in charge of this lizard general whose job it was to subdue Jamin's people.

Lucifer bared his teeth into a false smile and rumbled something to the fat lizard king who fawned all over him despite Kasib's assurances the two were social equals. Jamin leaned forward, straining to translate the few words of Sata'anic language he had learned thus far and realized Kasib and Hudhafah were doing the same. Whatever the language they spoke, Jamin's nerve endings shuddered with every word. Ba'al Zebub trembled and waddled forward to argue with his upstart general.

Jamin had seen enough coup d'états to comprehend that Ba'al Zebub only ruled with the support of this lizard general. Ba'al Zebub first hissed pleasantries, then growled, and then shoved his clawed hand into General Hudhafah's snout. The lizard general stood firm, secure in the forces he could bring to bear, either for, or against Ba'al Zebub's intrigues. Although Jamin couldn't understand the words, he'd accompanied his father to enough parlays to recognize when one tribe's chief could not ratify a treaty because he lacked the support of the warriors who kept him in power. Kasib stood behind his commanding officer and wrung his claws, his long, forked tongue darting nervously as he looked anxiously from Hudhafah to Lucifer to Jamin.

Jamin realized the lizards fought over
him
. He was a prize?

Lucifer's eyes met his. Glittering. Silver. Ferocious. The Angelic tilted his head and sniffed, nostrils flared as he listened to the two lizards argue. If the Príomh-Aire wanted to make the lizards dance like puppets, Jamin knew Lucifer could make them do it, but for some reason it pleased him to get people to do his bidding voluntarily. When Jamin had asked him about it. Lucifer had given him a fatherly smile and caressed his cheek as though he were a delicious little boy.

'My son,'
he had said
, 'isn’t it better if people serve you because you give them their most heartfelt desire?'

Yes. Jamin had learned a thing or two watching Lucifer manipulate others to do his bidding, but Hudhafah, it seemed, was immune to that manipulation, as was Lieutenant Kasib. Should he warn Lucifer that Kasib had let pass the knife Jamin had almost used to stab him? That small voice which whispered to him to keep Ninsianna close whispered now that the lizard-man was somebody he could trust
.

And for some reason, Lucifer had not yet picked up that tidbit of betrayal out of Jamin’s mind…

Jamin locked it away in the tiny little treasure box his mother had taught him to imagine hiding his wishes in to keep them secret. He'd kept those treasures to himself until the day Ninsianna had healed him.
She
had opened that reservoir and made him share it with her. Jamin frowned. Ninsianna … perhaps turning the unfaithful witch over to her husband’s enemies hadn’t been the wisest thing he’d ever done?