Sword of the Gods: The Chosen One (42 page)

Lucifer regarded the
Sata’an Empire's highest-ranking emissary with distrust. They'd done much
business together over the years, but Ba'al Zebub would sell him out in a
heartbeat.  Excepting Ba'al Zebub, most Sata'anic lizards were remarkably
similar to the hybrids in how they moved and fought.  Their retractable claws
and fangs were built-in weapons, while their tails provided an extra fighting
limb.  Good at seeing in the dark, their main disadvantage was they were no
faster than any of the other naturally evolved species which occupied the
galaxy. 

Lucifer tossed a pen
into the air, caught it, spun it through his fingers, flipped it into the air a
second time and caught the point of it with one finger so that the writing
implement balanced perfectly upon the sharp point.  It was a simple feat of
agility even an Angelic infant could accomplish.  A reminder to Ba'al Zebub
that even though their political positions were similar, Lucifer was a superior
being.  Ba'al Zebub's gold-green eyes narrowed at the little demonstration, but
the lizard-man grinned rather than take the bait.

“I think you will
agree it was worth the trip once you see what I have to offer.”  Ba'al Zebub's
forked tongue tasted the air for the pheromones which allowed the Sata’an to
pick up on other people's emotions.  “Our benevolent Emperor has sent you a
little … gift.”

Ba'al Zebub signaled
one of the guards.  The guard disappeared out of the posh meeting room, painted
royal blue to denote his rank with gold leaf stenciling as was Sata'anic
custom.  Moments later, he came back with two other guards, dragging a humanoid
between them.  An ebony-skinned female?

“What is this?”
Lucifer's wings perked up with curiosity.

“You tell me?”  Ba'al
Zebub’s fangs bared in a pleased grin as he invited Lucifer to examine the
merchandise.

Lucifer walked around
the frightened young woman and touched the back of her ornately jeweled dress
where wings
should
have erupted from her back, but didn't.  His grip on
reality had been a bit tenuous lately.  His eyes saw, but his brain refused to
process the reality of what stood right in front of his eyes.  He pinched the
bridge of his nose, doing his best to appear disinterested, and tried to signal
Zepar that he was having another one of his episodes and needed him to take up
the slack.

“Sire,” Zepar's wings
shook with excitement.  “This is the root stock the Eternal Emperor used to
create his hybrid armies!”

Okay … the migraine
now included his Chief of Staff.  Perhaps it
was
time he resigned so he
could go get his head examined?

“The root stock has
been extinct for 74,000 years.”  Lucifer feigned contempt as he battled that
strange feeling he often got before a blackout that everything was far away. 
“An asteroid hit their planet and wiped out all life.” 

To be certain he
wasn’t
hallucinating, he pinched himself.  The pain came.  The pain went.  White
flesh refilled with pink where he'd squeezed it together.  A dark-skinned,
wingless Angelic still stood before him.  He glanced at Zepar, relying on
him
to make sure he didn't tip off Shay’tan’s number two henchman that he was going
bonkers.

“Their new homeworld
lies within the bounds of the Sata’an Empire,” Ba'al Zebub gestured to the
dark-skinned female.  “Hashem ceded that territory during the war with the
Nephilim.  At the time, he'd twelve other seed colonies to experiment on.”

Hashem had always
blamed the loss of the human homeworld on Shay'tan and the fact the old dragon
had lost control of the species who
used
to make up his armies.  Moloch
had riled the Nephilim into rebelling and attempting to seize control of the
Sata'anic Empire for
themselves.
  The two emperors had been forced to
unite and wipe them out, every last Nephilim man, woman and child, but during that
time Hashem had been too busy fighting to save his Alliance to put any
real
effort into helping what few humans had survived the destruction of their
homeworld to settle into their new colonies.  By the time the dust had settled,
humanity had gone extinct while Shay'tan had pulled a
new
species out of
his bag of tricks to act as his minions, the Sata'anic lizards.

“All attempts at
reseeding the human source race failed.”  Centuries of practice as a politician
enabled Lucifer to convincingly say one thing while something entirely
different screamed through his brain.  He was hallucinating.  He
must
be
hallucinating!  He was seeing unicorns.  Pink elephants. 
Humans…

 “This colony was
Shay’tan’s doing,” Ba'al Zebub grinned.  “Murderers, thieves and prostitutes. 
Shay’tan bet the rejects Hashem left behind to die would kick his genetically
pure breeding stocks tail feathers, and he was right!”

“So why hasn’t
Shay’tan revealed this tidbit before now?”  This time, the twitch of contempt
from Lucifer's wings was not aimed at Ba'al Zebub, but his own father.

“The human rejects
were
so
violent,” Ba'al Zebub said, “that Shay’tan lost interest in them
and left them to fend for themselves.  Like he did with the Tokoloshe.  He
offered to
sell
Hashem a few at a tidy profit once it became obvious
your people were dying out, but the Eternal Emperor is too high and mighty to
swallow his pride.”

Lucifer knew the
propaganda by heart.  It did, however, have the ring of truth.  His father
would
cut off his nose to spite his face when it came to admitting Shay’tan was
right about something.

“You can expose your
father for the hypocrite he really is!”  Zepar rubbed his hands together.  “If
his subjects lose trust in him, it will force the old fool back into the
ascended realms where he belongs and
you
can regain control of the
Alliance.”

“I enjoy tweaking my
father's nose as much as Shay’tan does,” Lucifer said.  “But I'll not betray
him.”

“But
he
has
betrayed
you,
” Ba'al Zebub gave a laughing bark.  “Your species is going
extinct and what has he done to help you survive?  Nothing!  He has replaced
your people with bugs!” 

Lucifer was unable to
refute Ba'al Zebub’s argument, although with the migraine he'd been fending off
all morning, it was hard to tell if it was because the slithery henchman was
right, or Lucifer's brain was simply too jumbled to think straight.  Everything
had that eerie penumbra that he always got just before he began to see double.

“How do I know this
human is even genetically compatible with our species?”  Lucifer redirected the
conversation out of treasonous territory.  “It has been 74,000 years since
their species was lost and 150,000 years since Hashem first created the
hybrids.  That's a lot of time for genetic drift to occur.”

“Ahhhh….” Ba'al Zebub
laughed.  “You have unearthed Shay’tan’s motivation for gifting
you
with
this female. 
You
know better than anyone that the old dragon never
gives gifts without strings attached.”

“What’s the catch?”
Lucifer asked.

“Why … we want
you
to test her out for us, of course,” Ba'al Zebub poked Lucifer in the chest. 
“Shay’tan heard about your little … problem.  If she conceives, he will know
your species is still genetically compatible.  The old dragon likes knowing
exactly how valuable his chess pieces are before he plays them against your
father.”

“My problem is none of
your godsdamned business!”  Lucifer got touchy whenever anyone rubbed his
inability to sire offspring into his face.  “How sentient is she?”

“Meh … so-so.”  Ba'al
Zebub waved his hand to indicate 'not so much.'  “In the 74,000 years since
their homeworld was lost, Leviathans gained space travel.  Meanwhile, humans
regressed backwards into a stone-aged culture.”

“Great!  You want me
to bugger an animal and produce defective offspring.”  It wouldn't be the
first
time Zepar had advised him to seduce a non-Angelic to achieve some purpose, but
even
he
drew the line at fucking a non-sentient creature.

Zepar pulled him aside
and tried to reason with him.  “Sire … the hybrid races were never designed to
be free-standing.  Hashem used to periodically reintroduce fresh blood from the
root stock to prevent inbreeding. 
That's
why we are having so many
problems
now
.”

'Sometimes you must
make sacrifices for the greater good…'

“She is anatomically
identical to an Angelic female,” Ba'al Zebub pointed to the terrified female's
curves.  “Our tests indicate no signs of the genetic flaws which prevent your
species from reproducing.”

“What matters, Sire,”
Zepar said, “is that your esteemed colleague has prevailed upon his Emperor to
gift
you
with the first sample of this merchandise.”

Whether or not it's
fully sentient is irrelevant.  All that matters is that you can beget sentient
offspring upon it…

Now that he'd adjusted
to her unusual coloring, he had to admit she was striking.  He reached out to
touch her high cheekbones, her skin so dark she reminded him of the rare
painting his father had of He-who's-not, the Guardian of the universe.  The
woman cringed, tears streaming from her large brown eyes. 

“What’s with the dress?” 
Lucifer touched the heavily jeweled Sata’an wedding dress. 

“Shay’tan doesn't
approve of your hybrid female's loose morals,” Ba'al Zebub grinned. 
“Hatchlings fare better when they are the product of a
proper
marriage,
not the peculiar mating arrangements your father has engineered in a pathetic
attempt to make your people loyal to
him
instead of each other.  Our
benevolent Emperor is formally gifting her to be your wife in the
same
manner in which he gifted me all thirty-two of
my
wives.”

“You didn’t say
anything about marriage!”  Zepar's dirty white wings shook with anger.  “Hashem
forbids it!  The Prime Minister’s unique genetic profile is too precious to
waste on a marriage which may or may not result in offspring!”

“Ahhh,” Ba'al Zebub
hissed so pleasantly it was almost a purr.  “But that's the condition Shay’tan
has put upon receiving her.  The human homeworld is in Sata’an territory.  If
you want access to them, you must respect our traditions.”

“My father will have
an apoplectic fit if I marry.”  Lucifer's joyful scheming beat back his
headache.  “Especially one of his precious root stock.  It might be worth it
just to see the look on his face when I show up at a press conference and
announce I have found the solution to our problem." 

As the Emperor's
adopted son and a member of the political class, it had always been
questionable whether or not the hybrid anti-fraternization laws applied to
him.  Once before, in the Emperor's absence, he'd considered rolling the
political dice and carving out an exception for himself.  The Bitch!  His plans
had died on the vine along with her rejection, but his mind began to race about
new
ideas to gut out the anti-fraternization laws for
all
hybrids. 
If the Emperor was abandoning his species to go extinct, then it was up to
him
to help them survive.

“No marriage!” Zepar
insisted.  “The Prime Minister has to set an example for the other hybrids.”

“Nothing in Sata’anic
culture prohibits the taking of more than one wife,” Ba'al Zebub said.  “Why …
Shay’tan has nearly four dozen wives in his harem.  If she doesn't produce
fruit, he will even let you return her.”

'She is the
solution to all of your problems…'

“We timed this visit
for the female’s peak fertility cycle,” Ba'al Zebub added.  “You can have your
answer within three days.”

For once in his life,
the kind little spirit that whispered in his right ear was in agreement with
that small, nasty voice which whispered in his left.  He would do
whatever
it
took to ensure the survival of his species.

“Please convey to your
emperor my gratitude for this gift,” Lucifer moderated every aspect of his
physiology to convey the proper respect and gratitude.  “If she is what you say
she is, perhaps we can come to a more … lucrative … accommodation?”

“Let us know how it
goes.”  Ba'al Zebub exposed his fangs in a pleased grin as he rubbed his claws
together and schemed about all the ways he could extract 'commissions' from
such an arrangement.  “If she sets fruit, we can discuss terms for the next
shipment of mail order brides.”

Lucifer walked over to
the terrified woman and held out his hand.  “It appears we are to be married.” 

He knew the female had
no choice.  Sata’an females never
did
have a say about who they married,
but he hoped she would choose marriage to
him
over going back to
whatever stone-aged planet humans had been abandoned to die out on.  She
couldn't understand his words, but he hoped his appearance was similar enough
to her own, compared to the reptilian Sata’an, that she would come willingly. 
He would explain the rest to her later, after he'd a chance to teach her his
language.

“I'll take good care
of you.” Butterflies flew in Lucifer's stomach at this small act of rebellion
against not only his father, but also Zepar.  “I promise.  You'll like the modern
world.”