by Nana Malone
Azrael’s wings twitched in panic, inadvertently dissolving the draperies behind him. The lights were so dim they didn’t notice his heightened emotional state caused them to flicker and go out, the entire building and the prom still going on floors below suddenly cast into the dark. He hoped Elisabeth would sense he was close so it would distract her from what Tommy tried to do, but she did not. She didn’t notice him at all!
“Yes,” Elisabeth whispered, pulling back to look into Tommy’s eyes as she touched his lips. “I’ve never … um … I’m a … I mean … I want you to teach me.”
‘No!!!’ Azrael wanted to scream as Tommy groaned, his erection straining at the fancy black tuxedo pants as he lost all semblance of the gentle tempter and turned into a hot-blooded Latin panther moving in for the kill.
I’m not supposed to interfere
I’m not supposed to interfere
I’m not supposed to interfere
I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO INTERFERE!!!
Azrael screamed silently into his own mind as Elisabeth passively allowed Tommy to undress her and lay her down upon the bed like a sacrificial offering on one of Moloch’s alters, her small, pale breasts shining like an offering to the gods as Tommy bent his head to first suckle one nipple, and then the other. His wings dissolved a hole into the plaster behind him.
He wanted to kill him.
He wanted to kill him.
He wanted to KILL him!!!
“Touch me, Tommy,” Elisabeth pleaded as she trembled beneath his touch. “I need you to touch me so the emptiness will go away.”
Touch. The one thing Azrael could never give his beautiful Elisabeth. The one thing Azrael, himself, craved more than anything in the world. She needed to be touched, and he could never, ever touch her because his first touch would also be his last.
He was in love with her. He’d been in love with her for a very long time. He wasn’t sure when his feelings had transformed from curiosity to caring to something more profound, but he was losing her because he could never give her what she needed. It cut through his heart like a knife.
Tommy growled. He tore down his pants before moving into position to impale his sweet virgin and make her his.
‘I’m not supposed to watch this,’ Azrael choked, his heart breaking at her betrayal even though she had absolutely no idea he felt betrayed. ‘She has chosen her mate and I am not supposed to interfere.’
Angelics descended from the Seraphim bloodline took one mate, for life. Once they had chosen their mate and consummated their relationship, not even death would keep them apart. He was in love with her. He wanted her to be his mate…
…And he had dropped the ball by being too chicken to speak to her…
With a whimper, he teleported his sorry ass to the darkest, most remote corner of the universe to prevent himself from killing the man she had chosen over him.
For the first time since Ki had coaxed him back to the material realms, Azrael recognized the hunger the Regent had warned him about. The hunger to be loved. Without Elisabeth to fill the void, the emptiness threatened to consume him. Azrael screamed, unleashing the destructive power he kept so carefully under control. The Song of Destruction. His primal howl was so anguished he swallowed three nascent galaxies and a few dozen stars from parallel universes in harmonic resonance with the galaxies here.
And then he wept.
How could he have been so blind to his own emotion? How could he have been so blind to her need? Touch. The one thing he could never, ever give her. Humans needed to be touched or they withered and died. The same way everything he touched died.
Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!
Elisabeth was not his to love.
* * * * *
Part IV
And next … Moloch, Scepter'd King
Stood up …
And these words thereafter spake.
My sentence is for open Warr:
Of Wiles
For while they sit contriving,
Shall the rest,
Millions that stand in Arms,
And longing wait
The Signal to ascend,
Sit lingering here
Heav'ns fugitives …
Let us rather choose
Arm'd with Hell flames
And fury all at once
O're Heav'ns high Towrs
To force resistless way,
Turning our Tortures into horrid Arms
Against the Torturer …
Which if not Victory is yet Revenge.
John Milton – Paradise Lost
* * * * *
Chapter 26
First MOLOCH, horrid King
Besmear'd with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents tears,
Though, for the noyse of Drums
And Timbrels loud,
Their children's cries unheard
That passed through fire
To his grim Idol.
John Milton – Paradise Lost
Earth: September 11, 2001
New York City
“Thanks, Khalid,” Susan said, an administrative assistant at one of the financial services companies in the World Trade Center. “You’re a peach, bailing us out like this at the last moment.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” Khalid Ja’far Al-Nasiriyah politely averted his eyes as he handed her the cream cheese to go with the continental breakfast he’d just delivered to the 104th floor of the World Trade Center. “That is why we here. You need food for meeting. I make food for meeting. It’s all good.” He handed her the acceptance sheet signifying the meal had been delivered and was satisfactory.
“How much longer before they’ll let you bring the rest of your family over?” Susan asked.
Khalid glanced up to see her genuinely interested expression and then averted his eyes, not wishing to insult her. Such forwardness was unusual amongst women of his own culture, but two years spent working for his uncle, manager for the cafeteria, had taught him to accept the ways of his new country. Susan … cared. In a building where cafeteria workers were expected to be invisible, it was an honor.
“Immigration say long wait list to bring,” Khalid said. “My wife, my mother, seven children. I work many hours, send home money. Wait for government to say okay to bring.”
“It’s ridiculous how long they make you wait,” Susan said. “My great-grandparents came over during the great potato famine. My great-grandfather had a job lined up at a factory, the staff at Ellis Island waived the entire family through. Now … it’s ridiculous.”
“They no like Muslim people,” Khalid said. “Make us wait long time. But Omar say you keep trying, they let you come. Four, sometimes five years. If no let come one way, under green card, let come other way, spouse of U.S. citizen. Two years, seven months from now, I apply. Become citizen. Separation only temporary.”
Omar was Khalid’s uncle, the cafeteria manager who’d convinced the corporation he worked for to sponsor him for a work visa. Susan gave him a sympathetic smile.
“Let me know if there’s anything we can do to speed the process,” Susan offered. “We need more people like you. Hardworking. Reliable. It’s what America was all about. Back before the fat cats and the politicians ruined it for everyone.”
Susan gestured towards the enormous wall of plate glass that overlooked New York Harbor. Towards the Statue of Liberty. The statue Khalid spent many a lunch hour sitting with his uncle contemplating the barriers his children would smash once he brought them here from Iraq. Dreams. Khalid was resigned to the fact he would never be more than a cafeteria worker. But his children? In America, a parent could work hard and make his children's' dreams come true. Even Muslim children.
Khalid's revelries froze in horror as he realized the plane he’d assumed was circling in for a landing at La Guardia was headed right for them. Raised in a country with constant sectarian violence, Khalid reacted instinctively. He yanked Susan under the enormous, sixty-foot long conference table just as the plane c
rashed into the floors below. The building rocked as though it were about to fall over. A sound like a freight train roared through the building.
Susan screamed.
An enormous fireball licked up the outside glass wall. Khalid prayed to Allah. Just barely audible over the noise, he could hear Susan make similar prayers to the Christian god.
“Come,” Khalid helped her up. “We must get out. Fast. Take stairs. Elevator not safe.”
Her teeth chattering in terror, Susan took his hand and allowed him to lead her towards the stairwell. Others in the company had the same idea, pushing against the door.
“Wait!” one of the general managers shouted at a broker ramming his shoulder against the door. “You should check first to make sure it’s not…”
The man never got to finish his sentence. Just as the door opened, a backdraft sucked a wall of flame shooting up the stairwell into the room, incinerating everyone within fifteen feet of the stairwell. Susan screamed as the stench of burnt flesh assailed their nostrils. Khalid shoved her out of the way, shielding her with his body. She was only a friend. Not even that … an acquaintance. But it was ingrained into his culture that a man’s job was to protect a woman.
“Wh-wh-what’s that,” Susan pointed at the raging inferno shooting through the open door.
Khalid frowned. The fire burnt a sickly green color, not red. The color of infection. He’d witnessed RPG attacks and suicide bombs during the First Gulf War, but never a fire that burned … green?
Enormous fiery arms reached out before Khalid could react and yanked them both into the putrid green portal. He shouted as fire surrounded his flesh, but did not consume it. Cold fire? The prayer he’d been about to utter giving thanks to Allah for his unusual deliverance died upon his lips as he realized he’d fallen at the feet of an enormous bull-headed beast.
“Cena servierunt, Magister,” a smaller creature pointed to Susan with what Khalid could only construe to be a grin.
The bull-god picked Susan up by the legs and shoved her into its gigantic maw before Khalid could even react.
“Ego potest gustabunt Lucifers sanguine cerrit per venas,” the bull-like demon said, chunks of what had once been Susan’s arms and legs falling out of its enormous mouth as though they were chunks of spaghetti. “Forsitan posset a militia inter hoc coetus?”
Even though Susan's body had been chewed to pieces, Khalid could still hear her scream. No … not hear. Feel. He could feel the sound her spirit made as the enormous bull-god devoured her soul. As more of Susan’s co-workers got sucked into the portal, the bull-god picked them up and chewed on several more, holding an investment broker in each enormous hand as though they were French fries.
The smaller god turned suddenly towards Khalid and sniffed.
“Allah protect me,” Khalid prayed as he backed towards the wall of fire. The closer he got, the hotter it burned. He stopped. Only death lay in that direction.
“Quid iam quaeris quid ego credo,” the smaller god grinned at Khalid as though he were an appetizer. It strode towards Khalid backed against the wall of fire.
“Don’t be afraid,” it spoke in Arabic now as it stalked towards him, cornering him like a farmer pursuing a chicken it was about to behead for supper. “I’ve been waiting a very long time to find a suitable host-body.”
Khalid screamed as the creature grabbed him, its enormous hand so large his body was little more than another finger. He shut his eyes and prayed for a quick and merciful end and the safety of the family he would never see again.
“There, there,” the smaller-god crooned, its voice hypnotically reasonable. “I’m not going to kill you. But I can’t very well have you interfering with my use of your body, now. Can I?”
Small, slender tentacles shot out of its hand. Khalid screamed as the lesser god pinned him to the ground and shot the tentacles towards his eyes.
“Our Lord…” Khalid screamed. “Condemn us not…”
The prayer for deliverance died upon his lips as the tentacles shot up through the corners of his eye sockets, into his brain, and severed the frontal lobes. Although he was still alive and conscious, Khalid no longer had any control over what his body did other than to breathe. He couldn’t even cringe in revulsion as the strange, angular god rammed its enormous body into his own as though he was a jumpsuit.
But he could understand now what the evil bastard was thinking. Oh! Allah! Not even the most fanatical imam preaching against the Great Satan possessed a clue about what evil was truly like.
Khalid tugged at his mortal form, trying to get away. To die. To cast himself into the fires he instinctively knew would consume his soul and destroy it. Anything other than serve the evil purpose he could sense the malevolent god wished to use his body to commit.
“Master,” Khalid's body spoke of its own volition, a puppet now for the master that was Chemosh. “Would you mind giving me a lift towards the portal so I might begin engineering your escape?”
“Utique,” the bull-god said, dropping body parts as it stuffed more victims from the bombing into its gigantic maw and consumed their souls. With a laugh, its enormous fiery arms closed around Khalid's body without burning it and lifted it back up towards the inferno it had just escaped from.
“Allah, protect me,” Khalid prayed, unable to sever his consciousness that was forced to ride along with his former body and escape into Paradise.
He could feel the evil lesser-god feeding upon his spirit like a child sipping soda through a straw…
~ * ~ * ~
“We found one alive!!!” a fireman shouted. Emergency responders crowded around the survivor.
“Sir?” the fireman pulled pieces of rubble off of the swarthy-skinned man wearing a filthy, white cafeteria worker uniform. “Are you okay?”
Chemosh compelled his host-body to open its eyes.
“Why, yes,” Chemosh said, his voice reassuring and pleasant as he projected soothing images into the first responders minds. “I am okay.”
“It’s a miracle!!!” the firemen shouted triumphantly.
‘You have no idea…’ Chemosh thought to himself.
* * * * *
Chapter 27
If thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities
O Lord, who shall stand?
Psalm 130
Galactic Standard Date: 157,841.10 AE
Zulu Sector - Gliese 581g
‘The research subject appears to prefer polyamorous reproduction,’ Azrael wrote in his notebook, ‘to monogamy. Just like the failed breeding policies of the Eternal Emperor with his hybrid armies at the time of the Fracture. Perhaps that’s why this species birth rate has dropped precipitously low?’
Azrael stared at the mouse-sized primates and sighed. He’d chosen this planet because it was far enough away from Earth that he wasn’t tempted to ‘accidentally fly by’ Elisabeth’s house. He’d wanted to stay at the other end of the universe, but with He-who’s-not still off to points unknown and an increase in activity by Moloch’s agents, the General had asked he stay close.
He stared down at the notebook and realized his pencil had, of its own volition, sketched a drawing of Elisabeth, the lines of her face soft and ethereal as she stared back at him from the page. Every single one of Azrael’s notebooks was filled with such images, scribbled amongst the data. He caressed the cheek of the drawing. The downward lines he’d drawn in the corner of her mouth gave her a wistful appearance, as though she missed him, too.
“I hope you’re happy,” Azrael said softly to the drawing. “What a silly little science nerd I am! I was so busy observing signs your mate was falling in love with you that I failed to notice –I- was exhibiting the same symptoms.”
The girl on the page did not answer him. How could she? Even when he had been in her presence, he’d taken great pains to remain invisible. But every day he was forced to live without her made him sadder and sadder until, sometimes, he wished he could just touch himself and cast his own spirit into the void to uncreate
it!
“In retrospect, of course I fell in love with you,” Azrael told the drawing. “You’re the closest thing I’ve had to a friend since Elissar died.”
A soft cough sounded behind him.
“Sir!” Azrael snapped shut his notebook. He fumbled for the piece of paper with the tally marks on it and pretended to be interested in the mating habits of the tiny primates. They weren’t even sentient, but it was what he’d been trained to do in the science academy. It gave him something besides chasing down murderous evil gods and mourning Elisabeth’s choice of a mate to occupy his mental energy.
“The Regent asked me to speak to you,” the General's unearthly blue eyes were filled with concern. “It’s been more than a year since you took up residence on this planet. She’s worried.”
“I’m fine,” Azrael said with a sigh that communicated he was not fine. “I’ve gotten my emotions back under control. I won’t destroy any more galaxies. I promise.”
Azrael glanced at the promiscuous mouse-sized mammals and checked off another tally mark when the female twitched her tail inviting another male to mount her. At least Elisabeth had chosen carefully from the available males and selected just one.
“May I?” The General carefully took the notebook, a risky venture as one brush of his hand would result in a ‘vacation’ in the upper realms patching his physical form back together.
Azrael averted his eyes to the ground, his guilt staring out from the pages of his scientific journal as his commanding officer flipped through sketch after sketch of her until he got to the final one.
“I was once in love with someone who didn’t love me,” the General said softly. “I know how you feel.”
A companionable silence stretched between them, Azrael not being an especially gregarious Angelic and the General famous for being outright taciturn. The General traced the penciled rendition of the scar he’d deliberately left on the real Elisabeth with one finger.