Chapter 2-3
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His nostrils flared.
He sniffed her neck.
An image danced into her mind.
Even as one part of her mind shouted no, that Mikhail was her husband; an older, more primal part of her responded to the Evil One’s seduction, causing her lips to part as the mere thought of being made love to by such magnificent creature caused warmth to gush from between her thighs. A small, guttural cry of pleasure escaped her lips. Shame flooded her cheeks as she realized what the Evil One had just made her do. His eerie silver eyes glittered with satisfaction as he switched languages to speak to her in the language of the Angelics.
"Does your husband know you have not returned his bond of eternal love, flawed mortal?" The Evil One laughed. "She-who-is should have known better than to tempt HIS mortal vessel with a creation as flawed as SHE is."
He gestured towards Jamin whose hand had tightened so firmly she feared her wrist might break. "You would have done better to have stuck with that one. Had you not spurned him, he would have defended you unto his dying breath and still left you with a champion who was not weakened by his bond."
"Mikhail will smite you," Ninsianna hissed in the Evil One's language. “He will run you though with his sword.”
The Evil One’s lips curved up in a cruel smile. He gestured to the two cold-eyed goons who had accompanied him here and barked orders at them in a language which seemed familiar, but she could not understand. Her gift of tongues no longer worked? No. The language they spoke was even older than the languages created by the goddess. The two goons held her arms outwards like a sacrificial offering.
"Jamin!" Ninsianna projected images into Jamin’s mind of the time she had healed him. "Don't do this! You have to know this is wrong!"
Jamin's eyes grew black with fury.
"Don't try your mind manipulations on me, sorceress," Jamin hissed. "Did you even love me a little? Or was it all just a game?"
Ninsianna remembered the times she had grit her teeth and pretended to listen to Jamin's ramblings about his dreams to transform Assur into the center of an Ubaid nation. She had cared for him because he was beautiful and all the other women had wanted him, but never had she loved him. No, she hadn't, even though he had fallen deeply in love with her. The only reason she'd agreed to marry him was because, at the time, she'd honestly believed that marrying the Chief's son was the will of She-who-is.
Jamin sensed her hesitation.
"That's what I thought." Jamin clenched his fist. He yanked the red cape off of her and approached the Evil One with the garment held before him as though he presented a raiment for a king, blood-red in the dying sun.
"You covet this cape? Don't you, chol beag?" the Evil One asked Shahla. He set the magnificent red cape around her shoulders as though he were a lover preparing her for their bridal bed. He murmured something into her ear, loosening her hair and arranging so that she wore it the way that Ninsianna usually did. "You do want to be together? Don't you?"
"Yes!" Shahla's spirit light was pink and happy. She wanted to go with him more than anything in the world.
"Just one small token of your affection," the Evil One pinched her chin. "And then you will be mine forever."
"He's not your husband!" Ninsianna shouted.
"Oh, but she is my wife," the Evil One laughed. "We even had a wedding ceremony, didn't we?” He gestured towards the fat lizard king. “Lord Zebub was kind enough to read the nuptials. And of course we consummated the marriage." He pulled Shahla into his crotch. "Didn't we, love?"
Shahla giggled. Ninsianna looked into her wide-open mind and saw the Evil One had mimicked her wedding to Mikhail, right down to a replica of her embroidered white linen shawl.
"I bore witness to it myself," Jamin glowered at her. He pulled a knife out of his belt, one Ninsianna recognized as a poorer version of the one carried by Mikhail, but far more effective than her own clunky stone blade. She struggled against the two brutally strong Angelic goons. Jamin stepped before her and stuck the point of the knife into the underside of her chin. Did he intend to kill her?
"Every single day since you spurned me and ran into that winged demon's arms," Jamin's nostrils flared, "I have dreamed of carving out his heart the same way that you carved out mine."
Ninsianna saw the place in Jamin’s spirit light where his heart still bled for her, the place where she had manipulated him to love her, and then she had hurt him when she had suddenly broken off their engagement. She-who-is's admonition, that it did not behoove her to be cruel, came back to haunt her.
"I am sorry that I hurt you," Ninsianna said. Tears welled into her eyes and she saw he was not unmoved. "I broke things off because we were not right for one another. Mikhail had nothing to do with it."
Jamin's hand trembled, causing the knife to cut her. Ninsianna winced. Jamin stared at the trickle of blood which seeped down his blade as though, just for a moment, he could not believe what he was doing. His eyes met hers, so black it looked as though she stared into the terrible dark path where only hours before she had refused to journey to transmute a little boy's sickness. It was not anger or hatred she saw in Jamin’s eyes, but a vortex of anguish so deep she thought it might swallow her alive.
She retreated from those hungry black eyes, the same way she had retreated from healing Namhu's illness. Jamin’s lip twitched with disappointment. His spirit-light shifted from deep fuchsia to an angry red.
"It's not your heart I want any longer," Jamin's voice hardened with hatred. "But his."
He whirled to stride over to the Evil One and handed him the knife.
"We had a bargain," Jamin said. "You rid my village of the demon and I would deliver to you his wife."
With a solemn nod, the Evil One took the knife and held it towards the lizard king. Ba'al Zebub held out a small vial and dripped a putrid green liquid out of it onto both sides of the blade. The Evil One tilted the knife this way and that until the entire surface glistened with a thin, oily sheen. With her goddess enhanced eyes, Ninsianna could see a putrid, green darkness emanate from whatever he'd used to coat it, as though the thing itself were comprised of puss.
With a start, she realized what they were about to do.
“No!” Ninsianna fought the grip of the two tainted Angelics with all of her strength. The Evil One’s purpose in capturing her had become terrifyingly clear.
Pains cramped in her abdomen, reminding her that too much exertion would put her baby at risk. She was overpowered. She must focus on the weakest link. She called Shahla’s name and was rewarded when the mind-damaged young woman looked at her with a puzzled expression.
“Shahla!” Ninsianna pleaded. “Don’t do this. Mikhail tried to help you! We are your people!!!”
“Come, my love…” the Evil One enclosed Shahla in one of his magnificent white wings. “We have work to do before we can be together. You do want to be together, don't you?”
“When I am done, you will carry me into the heavens to be your queen?” Shahla asked.
“Of course, my love,” the Evil One crooned. He caressed her cheek and pressed his lips to hers until Shahla’s knees buckled with desire. "But first we must make sure the Emperor's watchdog does not steal any more of your babies."
"You will give me another baby to love?"
A pang of guilt resounded deep in Ninsianna’s gut. She had refused to plead intervention on Shahla's behalf when the woman had gone into premature labor and been happy when the baby had died, taking all insinuations that Mikhail was the father with it. Ninsianna could see the putrid green tentacles the Evil One had sent into the weak spots in Shahla’s spirit light to manipulate her, the wound she had helped inflict by refusing to use her gift to console the broken-minded woman.
The Evil One’s eerie silver eyes met Ninsianna’s as though he knew what was going through her mind, taunting her. The thought intruded into her mind even though she fought to keep him out.
'See, Chosen of my daughter … you are no different than me…'
Shahla quivered beneath the Evil One's touch like a virgin about to go to her bridal bed.
"This baby really shall have wings," the Evil One whispered just loud enough for Ninsianna to hear.
With her goddess enhanced vision, Ninsianna could see the lies take root in the fertile soil of Shahla's delusions as he preyed upon her unrequited love for Mikhail. Piss-puke-putrid green claws of seduction slithered past his lips to wrap their viperous tentacles around the mind-damaged young woman's spirit-light. He pressed the knife gently into Shahla's hands and closed her fingers around it.
“Don’t listen to him, Shahla,” Ninsianna shouted. “He is the Evil One sung about in the ancient song!”
Shahla hesitated a second time.
“Bring her to Zepar,” the Evil One snapped at the two goons in the Angelic language which only Ninsianna could understand. “I cannot have her reasoning with my instrument?”
“Yes, Master,” the two tainted Angelics said.
"Jamin!" Ninsianna called to the Chief's son. "Please!"
Jamin gave her a smug smile as he moved to stand beside a slender lizard-man who regarded her with curious gold-green eyes. There was no help there, and she was pregnant and outnumbered. To win this fight, she would need to use her wits. She stopped struggling and pretended to follow the two goons docilely inside the sky canoe, waiting for her chance to get at the blade tucked into her loincloth.
A fourth Angelic approached her, ordinary in appearance with dirty-white wings, but this one was just as dark and rancid as the Evil One. The Evil One trailed into the sky canoe behind the other two, this time without Shahla … or Jamin.
"And now it is time to summons the last living Seraphim." The Evil One gave her a predatory grin.
"She is not mated to him, Master," the dirty-winged Angelic said. "I can see no sign of the Bond of Ki."
The Evil One closed his eyes and leaned closer, sniffing her scent as he had before. Ninsianna could feel him pluck the image of her most terrifying fear right out of her mind.
"There is a thread," the Evil One said, "but it’s a baser connection, unreturned and incomplete." He laughed. "This one is a powerful little sorceress to fool a full-blooded Seraphim into thinking he found his one true mate! We just need to give her the proper emotion to call him."
"Go to hell!" Ninsianna spat in his face.
She instantly realized her mistake. The Evil One dropped his veneer of slick taunting. His eyes turned scarlet. The seething hatred which roiled beneath the surface licked towards her like a conflagration, a horrific power, barely contained within the puppet of a shell he wore. He grabbed her by the throat and shoved her back onto a strange, raised table. The two goons pressed her onto her back and held her helpless.
"Let's see what a half-Seraphim bastard looks like, shall we?" the Evil One's voice reverberated through her like a sandstorm. He tore aside her shawl, exposing the swell of her belly where Mikhail's child grew. His lips curved up in a cruel smile as he spotted the blade tucked into her loincloth. He grabbed it and held it high above her abdomen with both hands.
“What was it you said the Seraphim bastard would to do to me?” the Evil One snarled. His hands thrust the blade downwards, straight into her womb.
Ninsianna screamed.
"Mikhail!"
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