"We fight together," Pareesa said. "And we die together as a team."
With an ululating war cry, she hurled her spear at the first enemy to come through the barricade and then, drawing her sword, rushed headlong into the battle.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 103
Galactic Standard Date: 152,324.02
Earth: Just outside Assur
Special Agent Eligor
Eligor
Eligor shoved his screwdriver into the melted carburetor, searching for something, anything he could jury-rig to make the engine work again. Fuck! They needed to fly back to the Prince of Tyre to make repairs! Not play toy soldiers using Shay'tan's armies as chess pieces!
Zepar came up behind him, all facsimile of his usual bland expression cast aside. His unremarkable blue eyes had turned icy with anger, and his wings flared ominously like a raptor diving for the kill.
"When will the starboard engine be back in commission, Eligor?" Zepar snarled. "The Master wants to participate in the taking of this village."
Eligor gave the dirty-winged Angelic a deliberately bland look, the kind he knew only made him madder. The way Lucifer's obsequious Chief of Staff looked right now, going back into the village was the last thing Zepar wanted to do.
"There will be no repairs until we get back to the Prince of Tyre," Eligor stated flatly. He filled his mind with an image of the ship dropping out of the sky and the splatter that would ensue as he spoke to accentuate the message. "We'll be lucky if we can get this ship to break the planet's gravitational field."
"I shall tell the Master that you have been unable to fix his war chariot," Zepar said sarcastically. "He is most insistent we fly into the village and provide cover fire for his … friend." The last word was spoken as though he spit.
Zepar stormed back into the ship, flanked by the two cold-eyed goons. A moment later, Lucifer himself came out, his white wings flared softly behind him like a regnant's cape, his expression anxious, the way he had appeared the day the Cherubim had shown up to arrest him for the death of General Kunopegos' wife.
Eligor focused on piecing together what he could. It was a convenient cover for his real impression at the fucked-up mess that service to the Prime Minister had become.
"Eligor?" Lucifer asked.
"Yes, Sir?" Eligor said, not glancing up from his repairs.
"Isn't there something you can do?"
His voice had a peculiar edge to it, not his usual anger or arrogance. Eligor paused. There was a hint of the good twin in that voice, the version Eligor kept hoping would regain control. For some reason Lucifer kept holding his stomach as though he was in pain.
"Sir," Eligor said. "Perhaps if I show you, you will understand?"
He pointed to the spot where someone, and he suspected he knew who that someone was, had taken a shot dead-aim at the place where the hydrogen and helium were mixed to power the engine.
"Look at it, Sir," Eligor said. "It's been melted. Without the proper part, there's just no way to get the fuel into the engine. Once we get back to the Prince of Tyre, I can fabricate a replacement so we can maneuver, but until then…" Eligor pointed once more to the melted engine. "If you have a way to heal that damage, Sir, please do so and I will fly this ship right into the war zone for you. But without it? We'll be an easy target, even for a human throwing a spear."
He felt Lucifer probe his mind. This time he did not block the thought.
'Call out your lover, Sir, if that's what has you worried. Let the lizards retake that village for him. If he cares for you, he won't think any less of you if it's the lizards who rout out the troublemakers instead of you.'
Just for a moment, he thought he saw the fire that hid perpetually behind those eerie silver eyes lapse, and then it was back again, twice as strong as it had been before. The good twin wanted his lover to be safe, but the evil twin wanted the black-eyed man to be beholden to him. The little chieftain had somehow created a rallying point to pull the good twin out of his lethargy.
And then there was the matter of his only having given Lucifer 40cc of medicine this morning…
Eligor pushed the thought right out of his mind. Best not let either twin know he'd been fucking around with their dosage.
Lucifer's eyes hardened as the evil twin reasserted full control.
"This man is just a pet," Lucifer said. He waved his hand at the cooked carburetor, signaling him to close it up. "What do I care if he goes and gets himself killed? Bring us back to the ship. And if he lives, I shall go and retrieve him later."
"Yes, Sir," Eligor said.
He watched Lucifer's snow-white wings retreat back into the shuttle. Zepar would be ecstatically happy they were leaving. Him, on the other hand? What would he say to the good twin tomorrow morning when he went to give him his daily dose of poison, and when he asked about the black-eyed man, Eligor would have to tell him he'd been killed?
He screwed back on the panel, gathered his tools and went back into the ship to prepare for liftoff.
"Buckle up, Sir," Eligor said. "I anticipate a rough ride back up into the troposphere."
He flipped the switches and nobs to fire up the one, remaining engine. His radio crackled, not the usual channel which was perpetually tuned into the Prince of Tyre, but the other one which contained the chatter of the Sata'anic lizards who used that radio frequency to coordinate their attack upon Assur.
"Lucifer…"
The voice was not Sata'anic, but spoke in broken Galactic Standard. Eligor turned the volume up all the way and signaled the men in the back to shush. The black-eyed man spoke to them a second time.
“Lucifer … I’ve been hit. I don’t think I'm going to make it."
Eligor had seen his comrades die enough times to know when one of his men had bought it. He watched carefully the expression on Lucifer's face. Once before he'd seen that expression of puzzlement, anguish and frantic energy, the day the missing cadet's intern had come up to him and claimed his sister was missing.
“He doesn’t sound so good, Sir,” Eligor said.
Lucifer's wings rustled with agitation.
Zepar jabbed a finger at Eligor.
"Get this ship out of here immediately, Special Agent Eligor! Can't you see your incompetence has ruined the Prime Minister's plans?"
"I'm working on it, Sir," Eligor said.
Zepar hovered over Lucifer, attempting to distract him.
"We have to go get him," Lucifer said. His voice had the edginess of the evil twin's voice, but even that version of him had an edge.
"He is nothing, Master," Zepar tried to reason with him. "He is nothing but a primitive. A pet. A useless nothing. He is too unimportant to risk damaging your vessel any further."
His vessel? Zepar was talking about the shuttle, right? Well a shuttle could be replaced, but not a person.
"Sir?" Eligor said. "Perhaps you could send one of your men into to get him?" He pointed to the two useless goons sitting steely-eyed in their seats, already buckled in for takeoff. "With their pulse rifles, they could get right in and carry him out."
"Nobody is flying into a war zone!" Zepar shrieked at him. "You are paid to fly, Eligor. Not to think!"
"He has a good idea," Lucifer said. He grimaced as he grabbed his belly and pinched between his eyes with his other hand. "Zepar," he said softly. "Help me. I am losing control of my vessel."
Zepar raced back and began fumbling through his briefcase. Lucifer doubled over, as if he had just been stabbed, and moaned.
"Send them in, Sir," Eligor spoke low so only Lucifer could hear. "Send in your guards to carry him out so Doctor Halpas can fix him. What use are bodyguards if you can't trust them to protect the people you love?"
Lucifer's wings trembled like a bird which had just splattered into the windshield of an air-car. The angry young chieftain's voice came over the radio one last time.
"Lucifer," Jamin said. There was a long pause with little more than static, but the channel remained open, and they
could hear the angry young chieftain fight to breathe. At last he spoke again. "Lucifer, my love. I will wait for you, just but on the other side."
For so long as he existed, Eligor would be able to pinpoint the exact moment the evil twin faded from Lucifer's eyes and the good twin reasserted control. With a cry of anguish, Lucifer unstrapped his seatbelt and knocked Zepar aside as he came at him with the needle.
"Lucifer!" Zepar said. "You are a sick man. Let me help you. Let me take away your pain."
"He is dying!!!" Lucifer's voice sounded strangled and frantic. He stumbled for the hatchway like a blind man, more feeling than seeing as he hit the button and threw himself into the air.
"Lucifer!" Zepar screamed after him. "Lucifer! Come back here this instant! What in Hades do you think you are doing?"
He turned on Eligor, and it was then that Eligor saw that it was not unremarkable blue eyes the Chief of Staff possessed, but fiery red eyes that glowed with hatred.
"See what you have done!" Zepar's voice bellowed like the thunder.
Eligor's nostrils flared. He remembered what Shemijaza had told him, the reason he had taken him aside and trained him to deflect others from reading his inner thoughts. He did so now, understanding, at last, the true nature of his enemy.
"Me, Sir?" Eligor stated blandly. He filled his mind with obsequious thoughts and pointed at the two goons still seated at the back. "I told you to send them in to get him, but no! You dragged your feet and tried to convince the Master he did not want what he wanted. That man may only be a pet, but we both know the Master likes his pets, and he will not allow them to be exterminated by some lesser enemy."
"Bah!" Zepar shouted. He pointed at the console. "Lucifer is lost to us. Bring us back to the Prince of Tyre!"
Eligor piloted the ship up off of the ground, and then ignored what Zepar had just said and steered in the direction that Lucifer had just flown.
~ * ~ * ~
Chapter 104
Galactic Standard Date: 152,324.02
Earth: Just outside Assur
Prime Minister Lucifer
Lucifer
He wasn't sure where he was. He didn't know where he was flying, exactly. And most of all, he wasn't even certain he was even headed in the right direction. Something clawed at his subconscious and crushed his head so badly it felt as though his brain might explode, but he rammed the migraine aside and fought his way through it as though he were a man drowning in a vat full of wet concrete. All he knew was that the man in the dream was dying, and if he didn't get to him, he would never find his spirit again.
The last words his mother had spoken to him echoed in his brain.
'Lucifer, my love. I will wait for you, just but on the other side…'
How had he known? How had the lover who had come to him in the dream known about his mother, and the last words she had ever spoken to him?
His heart beat faster as he flew. This was a strange planet. With a strange lizard ship squatted off in the distance and a human village that was in the process of being invaded. None of this mattered to him. All that mattered was when he spied a lone, dark shape sprawled upon the ground and his heart rose into his throat.
He descended, trembling from the sky, and prayed he was not too late as he bent down next to his lover.
“Jamin?” Lucifer cried, for although his memory was fuzzy, he remembered the man in his dream's name.
Never could he recall having seen this much blood. It poured forth from his abdomen like a fountain at a waterpark, and through his clothing he could see the hint of exposed intestine. It was a horrible wound, a gruesome wound, the kind of injury even the best trauma surgeon would be hard pressed to stitch back together and heal. He pulled Jamin into his arms, for he was too late and he knew his lover was dead.
Sobs wracked his body as he pressed his face into his lover's neck and inhaled his scent, the scent he would know for as long as he existed.
"Jamin!" Lucifer wept, for while their union had been brief, it had been intense. In his mind he sang the song he remembered from the dream, a song of sorrow, a song of everlasting love.
Jamin stirred.
Lucifer hiccoughed and wiped his cheek on his shoulder as his lover's hand trembled and then moved to touch his cheek. His obsidian-black eyes opened, exactly as he remembered them; fathomless eyes which could see straight into his soul.
“Lucifer,” Jamin whispered. His eyes looked beyond him as though he were but a dream.
Lucifer ran his fingers through his black hair, his high cheekbones, his olive skin, and the faint scratchiness of sandpaper on his chin, the beginnings of a beard just like the Emperor had, all living proof that what he had shared with this man had been real. In that dream, this man had made a choice, a choice not to kill him, a choice to spare his life. Now it was his turn to make a choice, but he was not certain what that choice entailed.
"Don't talk, okay?" Lucifer pleaded with him. "Just hang on, and I'll bring you back to my ship.
Even though Jamin was a shorter man than him, he was heavy with muscle. Lucifer staggered to lift him and could not carry his lover into the air. While he was descended from the same genetic stock as Mikhail, because of the Emperor's shipboard breeding program, his wings were too weak to carry anything except his own body weight. They were the wings of a caged bird, kept upon ships for so many generations that the gift of flight had become little more than a pretty convenience. The only thing that hadn’t become diluted was his mother’s compulsion to follow her mate into the grave.
Lucifer felt his own spirit stretching now alongside Jamin’s as the young man's spirit tried to escape the pain of his injured body. For the first time in his 240 years, Lucifer had found love, and now he was about to lose it.
"Innana!" he screamed at the deity who had dumped him off at the Eternal Emperor's, daring to blaspheme her by using her given name. "Please! Tell me what to do?"
No god answered his prayers, for he had forsaken them all, and they would have no pity on him, not for his life, and certainly not the life of his same-sex lover. He, and who his spirit had bonded to, were an abomination under Alliance law. Even if he hadn't rebelled against his father, the mere fact he had chosen to love another man would have been reason enough to turn the Emperor against him. His lover grew paler, until his breaths were so faint that he feared each breath would be his last.
“Don’t go, mo ghrá,” Lucifer pleaded with Jamin, kissing his lips and caressing his hair. “Please. Stay with me? I need you to stay with me. Okay?”
The street was too narrow for Eligor to land the shuttle, and he was too weak to fly Jamin over the walls. If he couldn’t fly his dying lover to safety, then he would carry him. Wrapping his wings around his body to protect him, Jamin’s lifeblood seeped down his clothes and covered his white wings in blood.
"I thought I saw a second gate over here," Lucifer said as he staggered under the weight. "It wasn't far."
A high-pitched, feminine voice screamed, “Look!!! It’s the Evil One!”
“Shoot him!!!” a second voice shouted.
A barrage first of rocks, then darts and arrows, hit him in the backs of his wings, making him grunt in pain. Had he carried anyone else, he simply would have dropped the man and flown out of there, but the angry little chieftain, he realized, was more than a lover. Somehow, during their brief lovemaking, they had bonded, and while his DNA had become diluted enough that he could survive without his lifemate, he did not wish to, and for the first time in his life, he understood the compulsion which had driven his mother to abandon him for a father he had never met. So he kept his wings wrapped around his dying lover to protect him from the volley of arrows, and continued to carry him, taking arrows, and more arrows, in his retreating wings which, thankfully, protected his back from a fatal shot.
It was with enormous relief he heard the devil cruiser coast in on one engine to retrieve him. With a roar, it hovered between him and the crowd of retreating villagers armed atlatls, bows and r
ocks, and rotated the pulse cannon to aim at the wooden gate which blocked his exit down the alley.
Eligor gave the human guards enough time to run before he blasted open the gate in a fiery inferno. Lucifer tried to run, but the best he could do was hurry as his devil cruiser landed and opened up the hatch. Bits and snippets of memory warned him that while he could trust Eligor, the last person he could trust was Zepar.
All his life he had played at politics, so he understood the nature of sharks devouring a wounded ally. It was not a weeping Lucifer his adversaries must see now, nor even the jaded politician, but the leader who'd stood up in front of a rebellious Parliament and declared his adoptive father a mere ceremonial god.
He staggered in and sat down, his lover cradled on his lap.
"Back to the ship, now!”
“But, Sire,” Zepar protested. In his hand, he carried a syringe.
“I said NOW!!!” Lucifer shouted. “And if you come near me with that thing, I swear I shall make you eat it."
He turned to Eligor.
"Eligor … call ahead to Doctor Halpas. Tell him we’ve got incoming wounded.”
Eligor had always been a man who played his emotions close to his vest, but he could swear he saw the man smirk.
"Right away, Sir," Eligor said. He jerked forward the throttle, getting them airborne again and knocking Zepar into his seat because the idiot had been so busy trying to jab him with the needle that he'd been standing instead of buckling himself in.
“Doctor Halpas will fix your wings in no time, Sire,” Zepar crooned in a soothing voice. "And then we shall calm you down."
“The doctor is not for me, idiot,” Lucifer went on the attack. “It's for him. He goes first.”
The ship shuddered as it breached the atmosphere. Thankfully the inertial dampeners were still operational despite the loss of one of their engines. He clutched Jamin closer to his chest.
"Stay with me," he pleaded. "Stay with me, lover, and I shall lay this world at your feet as my gift."
Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) Page 100