Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (15 page)

Only Lucifer knew it
was the
real
reason for the law against fraternization for any purpose
other than to fill the ranks.  Despite the Emperor's best efforts, Hashem had
only been able to
weaken
the instinct to bond, not eliminate it.  A
bonded hybrid was reluctant to take any action which would result in not only its
own death, but the death of its mate, rendering Hashem's armies useless the
moment they got married.  By the time hybrids served their mandatory 500 years
and were honorably discharged, freeing them to settle down, they were too old
to bear offspring.  He glanced down the hallway towards the disappearing back
of his Ramidreju colleague and sighed. 

“Remember what
happened to your mother,” Zepar said.  “It didn't matter that she was only
one-half Seraphim, or that she had not seen your biological father in more than
fifteen years.  She bonded with him when she conceived you, and when he died,
it killed her.”

'Asherah abandoned
-you- that day as well…'

“This isn't fun
anymore," Lucifer sighed.  "Maybe it's time I admitted it just wasn't
meant to be and adopted a child?  Like the Emperor did when he adopted
me?
" 

What had at first been
an exciting perquisite of the job had turned into a never-ending chore.  Zepar
scheduled appointment after appointment with Angelic females who were only too
willing to throw away one of their precious biennial heat cycles on a futile
mating attempt to bear the Eternal Emperor's adopted son an heir.

“The stability of the
Alliance depends upon your producing an heir,” Zepar gave him an unsympathetic
look.  “Do you want the Emperor to revoke Parliament's charter upon your
death?"

"No,"
Lucifer sighed.

"Our species is
dying," Zepar said, "and your genetic profile is too unique to simply
throw away.  The Emperor himself has decreed that you
must
keep trying.”

'And you –do- so
enjoy the conquest.  You know you do…'

A sultry image of an
Angelic female, her back arched in ecstasy as she cried out his name, danced
through his mind.  Lucifer squirmed as blood rushed to a certain part of his
anatomy.  As much as sexual conquest had long ago lost its luster, he had a
reputation to uphold.  Males of every species aspired to be like him, while
females swooned at his feet
.
  He was duty-bound to set a good example.

“Lucifer, we have had
this talk before."  Zepar put a fatherly hand upon his shoulder and gave
it a squeeze.  "Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice a little personal
happiness to obtain the greater good.  Especially
you. 
Like it or not,
you're a symbol of the vitality of our great Alliance."  Zepar's voice was
warm and hypnotically reasonable.

'Are you so selfish
that you would abandon your species to die out?'

“Of course.” 
Lucifer's wings trembled as Zepar gave him the one thing his adopted father
never had.  “You're right.  You're
always
right
. 
I
must
ensure
the survival of my species before I start thinking of myself."  He curled
his wing around his crotch so Zepar wouldn't see him 'adjust' himself. 
"What was her name again?”

“Hemaniel,” Zepar
said.  “And you've just wasted ten minutes of your hour.  You don't have time
to break her in naturally.”

“Knock five minutes
before I need to be out of here for the post-sex niceties.”  He resumed the
fake persona he assumed for the rest of the world, the charismatic leader who
could give everybody their heart's desire.  Zepar gave him an approving nod. 

It had been the
Emperor who had taught him to always show his 'good side' to the world, not
Zepar, but the habit was so deeply ingrained that he automatically projected
whatever his audience expected to see without even thinking about it.  As soon
as his wings cleared the door, he flared them like a raptor swooping in for the
kill, a pose female Angelics found irresistible.

“Prime Minister
Lucifer,” Hemaniel stammered.  “It's an honor.”  The pretty blonde Angelic's
hands clutched at her chest, her eyes wide with awe at the privilege of being
this close to the Eternal Emperor's adopted son.  She realized she'd forgotten
to salute, as all enlisted military were supposed to do with the Alliance's
highest-ranking civilian authority, and did so belatedly, nearly poking out her
own eye with her thumb.  Everything about the young woman broadcast
inexperience.

“Have you ever
attempted a mating before?”  Lucifer inhaled the subtle pheromones of an
Angelic coming into heat.  His olfactory nerves relished the scent of lutropin,
a heady drug to a species bordering on extinction.  He reached out to tuck an
errant strand of golden hair behind her ear, a level of familiarity few
Angelics ever exchanged.

“N-n-no.”  Hemaniel
looked out of place in the lushly furnished temporary sleeping quarters, the
rich burgundy and black décor clashing with her sandy blonde wings.

Lucifer cleared his
mind so that he could use his ‘gift’ to receive images of the subconscious
longings all sentient creatures projected beneath their words.  Telepathy
gifted not from his adopted father, who had inadvertently bred the ability out
of his armies in an effort to eradicate the pesky bonding gene, but from his
Seraphim mother.  He pushed gently into Hemaniel's mind to find out what she
secretly desired.  Images of a Mantoid soap opera, a certain actor she had a
crush on, came into his mind.  Lucifer adjusted his posture, his voice, his
demeanor to mimic the archetype of her ideal lover.

“It can be quite
pleasurable.”  Lucifer drew close, moderating his voice to the husky pitch her
archetype possessed.  “If you allow me to make it so.”  He didn't touch her,
but formed an image of himself kissing her neck in his mind and projected it
into
her
mind as he spoke. 

“I’ve only been told…”
she stammered.  “I don't….”  She shuddered as he followed through on the
projection by exhaling upon her neck, just below her ear.  He didn't touch her,
but goose bumps of anticipation appeared upon her flesh.

“What have you been
told?” he whispered into her ear, his body inches from hers as he encircled her
in his wings.  He projected an image of taking her into his arms without
actually making physical contact.  Over the years, he'd discovered that
anticipation
of being touched was often more erotic to the females he fucked than the
reality of it.  “What do you fantasize about when you touch yourself?”

“I have always wanted
…” she said, embarrassed.

“Then do it.”  His
voice was a leonine purr as projected an image into her mind of unbuttoning his
shirt and admiring the taut muscles that rippled beneath.  “I'm here to make
your wildest fantasies come true.” 

Her hand trembled as
she fumbled each button out of its buttonhole, helped along with the images he
imprinted into her subconscious.  Two hundred and twenty-five years of non-stop
practice had honed his ability to seduce others down to an art form, the ‘power
of persuasion’ he jokingly called his gift. 

"Touch me,"
he whispered.  "I like to be touched." 

Closing his eyes, he
soaked up the feel of her touch, tentative and filled with awe.  Touch … the
gift hybrids were forbidden to give one another for any purpose other than to
create offspring.  It was
he
who trembled now, his need to be touched
far greater than others of his species because he'd been raised in a home, by a
half-Seraphim mother who had cuddled him every chance she got.  Asherah had
refused to farm him out to one of the Emperor's youth training academies as was
done to every other hybrid child to condition the instinct to be touched right
out of them. 

He reached tentatively
into her mind, hoping that
this
one would see him.  Not that he made it
easy to get to know him!  The Emperor's abandonment after his mother had died
had taught him to be wary.  If you let people inside, they would thank you by
tearing out your heart.  The one time he'd foolishly let down his guard, the
female had spurned him after the test had come back negative, refusing to
answer his three beautifully hand-written missives!

He saw Hemaniel's
thoughts as clearly as though he were inside a movie.  His cheek twitched with
disappointment as he picked up the image which caused her to become aroused. 
It was not
him
she saw, but the archetype of the movie star she'd spent
half her adolescence worshipping.  They didn't
ever
see
him,
or
if they did, it wasn't the
real
him, but one of the bullshit publicity
shots Zepar filmed depicting him doing something 'manly' such as riding a
land-dragon shirtless through the tundra with a miniature pterodactyl on his
wrist to hunt.

"Is this …
okay?"  Hemaniel's hands slid down to touch his slacks.  In her fantasy,
she
was the aggressor.  Words from the movie which was her entire basis of what
it meant to have sex came into his mind.  Words he sensed that if spoken, would
transform her into a bold temptress.

"Your touch is
like the rain upon my flesh."  He whispered the poetic words she longed to
hear.  He touched the underside of her chin to look into her eyes before
kissing her.  It was not
him
Hemaniel saw as he slid his hand up to cup
her breast, but the actor of her dreams.  He gave her what she wanted. 
"Touch me, Hemaniel.  I want to feel what it's like to bathe in your
touch."

She trembled as he
expertly slid the pretty dress she'd worn for today's appointment down from her
shoulder, bending to nip the base of her throat and leaving his mark. 
Lutropin.  The scent of fertility, so strong it made him dizzy with the urge to
mate.  He could
taste
it.  But not for the brainwashing instilled from
birth, unattached hybrids would become aggressive and fight one another for the
privilege of mating with an unattached fertile female.  His wings flapped
involuntarily, slapping against hers as that small, aggressive voice which
forever lurked in his subconscious egged him on, whispering promises that this
time the union would bear fruit. 

"Touch me,"
he pleaded.  "I need to be touched." 

That small, vicious
voice taunted him, teasing him for the hunger no amount of conditioning had
been able to eradicate from his psyche after his mother's death, the need to
have somebody touch him not because they needed something from him, but because
they loved him.  The images his gift enabled him to see within her mind was not
Hemaniel touching
him,
but the actor. 

'See!  It's not
-you- she wants!  But prestige you can bring to her if she bears your child. 
She is only after your position of power...'

His touch grew rougher
as he sensed this was what she wanted, their wings knocking the pictures off
the wall as he allowed her to get the better of him and shove him down upon the
bed.  Yes!  This one desired to be the aggressor, a different flavor than the
endless stream of females Zepar lined up for him to fuck. 

Feathers flew as he
used his gift to egg her on and urged her to take him forcibly.  For all the
propaganda about Angelics being icy and unemotional, the fact was, if not for
the conditioning they received from birth to subdue the animal half the Emperor
had endowed them with when he'd spliced together their genome, hybrids would be
rutting in the streets like beasts every time a female came into heat.

Projecting image after
image into her mind, when she finally pinned his shoulders to the bed and
impaled herself upon his cock, she was so aroused that she barely felt the pain
of her hymen tearing.   He withheld his seed until he heard her cry out with
pleasure, helped along by his projections into her mind as he taught her how to
satisfy her own desire, before giving her what she'd come here for. 

Release caused his
eyes to roll back into his head, giving him just for a moment that feeling of
oneness with the universe he'd yearned to feel again ever since his mother had
used her Song to heal him as a little boy.  The Song reached into emptiness,
finding nothing to attach to, for how could you bond with someone who didn't
feel
you?  No sooner had Hemaniel collapsed, panting, on top of him, when the
knock came upon the door.  They were out of time.

"Thank you,"
he murmured as he gathered his clothing and gave her a kiss goodbye.  "You
will let me know if things were successful?"

The female nodded, her
hand moving to touch the womb they both prayed he'd been able to fill.  He gave
her a wistful smile, knowing in his heart the answer would be the same.  But
these trysts were not without
some
benefit beyond the momentary release
he felt each time he spilled his seed.  So deeply had he imprinted the
subconscious connection between her deepest fantasy and
him
that she
would fantasize about their union for the rest of her life.  Every male who came
after him would fall short.  With the mere whisper of another tryst, if he ever
needed anything, she would deliver.

Lucifer had long ago
learned the secret to getting what he wanted.  Figure out people’s darkest,
most secret desire.  Encourage them to fantasize about it.  Convince them it
was their own idea.  And then give it to them.