Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (41 page)

He towered over her, a
good hands-breadth taller than the top of her head.  He would have been
beautiful but for the sneer which marred his handsome features.  Brown skin. 
Black hair.  A straight nose, unusual in a people whose facial features tended
to be more like a hawk than a lion.  And eyes so dark it was hard to tell where
his irises ended and his pupils began.  Physical attraction had never been the
problem between her and the son of the village chief, but temperament.  Every
time he tried to boss her around, it roused her temper.

“Lose your pet
rooster?”

Anger caused
Ninsianna's eyes to flash fiery gold like the sun.  Mikhail was at his ship, a
journey he made once a week to try to get the engine oars working.  Recovered
except for his wing, he no longer needed her to protect him, but she wouldn't
tell Jamin where he was.

“Mikhail is his own
person.”  She tossed her hair and attempted to continue on her way.  “What he
does is none of your business.”

“You're making a big
mistake,” Jamin blocked her escape.  “He has no family.  No money.  No
position.  Gods!  He's not even human.”

“You just don't get
it,” she sighed.  “None of that matters.  It never did.  If it’s not him, and
I'm not saying it
is
him, then it would be somebody else.  Why can’t you
just accept the fact I don't love you and go find somebody who does?”

“Why, dammit?!!” Jamin
cried out.  “I'm the best warrior in the village.  Why am I not good enough for
you?” 

She opened her mouth
to cut him down into the dirt.  More than a few of the females he'd bedded over
the years had congratulated her for finally giving him a taste of his own
medicine.  After all the grief he'd caused her, she wanted nothing more than to
watch him bleed!

'Ninsianna … be
kind!  There is no benefit to being cruel…' 

Ninsianna's eyes were
drawn to the spirit light streaming off of Jamin's body, the hole in his heart
that
she
had made.  It was not anger or arrogance the chief’s son spoke
with now, but hurt.  A twinge of guilt twisted in her gut.  She'd
led
him to believe her depth of feeling was greater than it really was, thinking it
was the goddess' will.  Although, in her defense, she'd
intended to
marry him at the time.

“Jamin …”  She put her
hand on his cheek.  “Sometimes people just are not right for one another. 
You're handsome, strong, and smart.  There are plenty of women who would love
you if you would just gave them a chance.”

“But it's
you
that
I love.”  His voice warbled like a teenaged boys.  “You told me that you loved
me, and then all of a sudden you just
didn’t
anymore.  I don't
understand what I did wrong!  I can't eat.  I can't sleep.  You're all I that I
can think about!”

Why could he not just
go away and find somebody else?  Jamin was not the first male she'd spurned,
but he was definitely the most persistent.  Until Mikhail fixed his sky canoe
and carried her off into the stars, it didn't behoove her to antagonize the son
of the village chief.  Like it or not, until she could leave, she'd to be nice
to him.

“It’s not you,” she
said.  “It's me.  I love you, but I'm just not
in
love with you.  You
deserve somebody who will love you more than life itself.  Like in the
legends.  I'm just not that person.”

Turning to where Yalda
waved for her attention, she excused herself and moved towards her elderly
neighbors.

“You looked like you
needed to be rescued.”  Yalda pretended to look into Ninsianna’s basket, her
ancient skin crinkled into a smile.

“Ohmigods, yes!”
Ninsianna said.  “Thank you.”

* * * * *

Nobody noticed Mikhail
standing in the distance.  The last thing he expected was to see her standing
in the family field, speaking to her former betrothed.  She'd placed her hand
on Jamin’s cheek in the intimate gesture he'd come to regard as reserved only
for
him
.  The contact had been brief, but he'd seen it.  An emotion he
couldn't even
begin
to name stabbed through his heart and made it
difficult to breath.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.05

Orbit - Haven-3

Prime Minister Lucifer

Lucifer

“Master … can you hear
me?”

“Mmmmmffff,” Lucifer
groaned.  His head hurt.  Another migraine?  He vaguely recalled taking a
transport to the royal palace to be refused an audience by his father, but not
what he'd done afterward.  “Where am I?”

“On Lucifer’s
diplomatic carrier, Master,” Zepar said in a reassuring voice.  “Don't worry. 
I'll dispose of the evidence.”

He felt as though he
were buried alive, the heavy black dirt pressing down upon his body.  He fought
the sensation, trying to make his body
move. 
The dirt pressed harder,
trying to suffocate him. 

It felt as though a
small, bright light had just been extinguished in his heart, a tiny echo of a
feeling he hadn't felt since the day his mother had died.  A name came into his
mind and was buried forever by the dirt.  Loss.  He fought the heaviness,
struggling towards Zepar's voice, trying to reassemble the jumbled, nightmarish
fragments that danced through his brain and didn't make any sense. 

Someone called to him,
whispered regret.  Forgiveness.  Goodbye.  He tried to follow, but the dirt
held him there.  Trapping him.  Buried him alive.  All of a sudden, he found a
slender pathway, leaving him weak and nauseous.  Voice?  What voice?  The voice
he'd struggled so hard to follow was gone, leaving nothing but emptiness in his
heart. 

Was he hung over?

Zepar's words began to
register in his mind.  Evidence?  What evidence?

The stab of pain that
greeted him the moment he tried to move his eyelids made him shut them again. 
His hand registered the squishiness of a comforter and a body lying next to
his.  He was in his bed with a female.  Had he blacked out during one of his
mating appointments?

“She was unimportant,”
Zepar said.  “Ki's watchmen usually are.  Nobody will come looking for her.”

It felt as though he were
fighting his way through a painful green fog.  Try as he might, he just
couldn't get his brain to work.  A coppery scent assailed his nostrils.  He
couldn't get his wings to move in unison with the rest of his body, as though
all of a sudden he'd forgotten how to use them.  He grabbed at the female lying
next to him.  She didn't protest his awkward grasping or move to get out of his
way.  Her skin felt … cold.

“Zepar?  What are you
talking about?” 

“Oh.  It's you.”

“Zepar?”

“Don't worry, Sire.” 
Zepar's tone of voice changed.  “You've had another migraine.  I'll give you
something for the pain.  Go back to sleep and when you wake up, everything will
be back to normal.”

Lucifer felt the prick
of a needle in his neck as Zepar gave him whatever concoction it was he always
used to alleviate these horrific migraines. 

'Trust Zepar.  He
is your most trusted advisor…'

Yes.  He trusted
Zepar.  Zepar had picked up the broken pieces after his mother had died and
Hashem had abandoned him … and the Alliance … to fend for themselves. 
 

Lucifer slid back into
unconsciousness.

~ * ~ * ~
* ~ * ~

And it came
to pass

When the
children of men had multiplied

That in
those days were born unto them

Beautiful
and comely daughters.

And the
angels, the children of heaven,

Saw and
lusted after them,

And said
to one another: '

Come, let
us choose us wives

From among
the children of men

And beget
us children.'

Book of
Enoch, Book 1 – Watchers

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.06 AE

Neutral Zone:  Sata’an/Alliance Border

S.R.N. Tsalmaveth

Prime Minister Lucifer

Lucifer

His two Angelic guards
glowered at the 'honor' guard of a half-dozen Sata'anic soldiers who met them
in the launch bay of the S.R.N. Tsalmaveth, royal flagship of Sata'an Royal
Navy.  Shay'tan, of course, would never lower himself to travel in such mortal
squalor.  Why twiddle your claws for days on end traveling from one end of the
Empire to another when you could break down the molecules in your physical form
into pure energy, teleport the whole shebang to your destination with a mere
thought, and then reassemble yourself any way you liked, right down to what
color scales you wished to manifest that day?  Shay'tan had long ago relegated
the ostentatious flagship to his number two henchman, Ba'al Zebub.

Any other escort would
have oogled the gold-tiled hallways, inlaid with rubies and other precious
stones, but not Furcas and Pruflas.  The two goons Zepar saddled him with
glowered at the Sata'anic lizard soldiers with sullen expressions.  Their icy
stares turned to disgust as they entered the bejeweled royal conference room
where Ba'al Zebub sat waiting on an ornate chair that had been permanently
placed next to an even larger one.  The six lizard soldiers genuflected to the
empty throne and murmured whispers of 'Shay'tan be praised' even though the old
dragon wasn't even on the ship.  Lucifer wondered if Shay'tan had ever even
sat
on the empty chair, or if it had merely been built for show?  The latter,
he suspected.

“Prime Minister
Lucifer,” Ba'al Zebub exhaled with a hissing voice, the best approximation of
the Angelic language the Sata’anic races could mimic.  “It's a pleasure to meet
with you again.” 

Sata'anic lizard
people tended towards portliness, especially the ones in the upper echelons of
their society.  An unconscious desire to emulate their emperor and god, Lucifer
suspected.  Shay'tan, of course, could assume any shape he wanted, but he
preferred to manifest his form to mortals as large as could possibly sit in
whatever room he graced without sitting down upon one of his subjects.  If
portliness was a sign of godliness in the Sata'anic Empire, than Ba'al Zebub
was a titan even amongst demi-gods, for Shay'tan's mouthpiece was so obese that
his scales had long ago worn off the soft, pale underside of his chins and the
rolls of fat which overhung his bejeweled, pointy-toed slippers.

“This had better be
worth the trip.”  Lucifer's wings twitched with annoyance.  He was fending off
another migraine and not in the best of moods.  “Do you have any idea the risk
I take travelling into the neutral zone?  That bitch Jophiel has been climbing
up my ass with a microscope!”