Sword of the Gods: Agents of Ki (Sword of the Gods Saga) (10 page)

Pareesa dropped to her knees between Mikhail and her wounded team-mate. Ebad gave her a weak smile.

"We did it, didn't we?" Ebad said. "We saved him."

Tears dripped down Pareesa's cheeks a fresh spurt of blood gushed forth from Ebad's shoulder. She stared at Ebad as though she were seeing him for the very first time. No longer soft. No longer weak. No longer incompetent. Using Mikhail's training, Ebad had transformed himself into everything Pareesa had ever wanted in a man.

"We did," Pareesa squeezed his hand. "We did it together."

The Ubaid warriors poked fearfully at the wall of lizard demons, not certain what to do now that they witnessed creatures of nightmare materialized into the flesh. It was, ironically, Ipquidad, the portly son of a flaxseed oil dealer, who was the first to climb over the wall of bodies. He stared down at Mikhail with dismay.

"Tell us what to do?" Ipquidad's voice warbled with emotion.

"Go. Go tend to Mikhail." Ebad gave her a weak smile.

Pareesa let go of his hand and stood, anger surging through her veins at the sight of the red cape peeking from between Mikhail's black-brown wings.

"Get her out of here!" She jabbed her index finger at the red-caped dead woman. "That is not Ninsianna!"

Ipquidad grabbed the red-caped traitor by the feet and dragged her out of Mikhail's arms, dumping her body face-down in the dirt, two of Pareesa's arrows sticking out of her back.

Pareesa glanced down at the Angelic she had risked everything to save; an unearthly creature, not of this world, but a man who had fought with the armies of a god. He did not look so god-like now.

“Mikhail!” Pareesa sobbed.

She crawled to him, praying for him to be okay.

Oh gods! Oh gods! He was so pale and limp!

"Please please please please!"

She fumbled at his neck, searching for a pulse. She felt nothing. A sob wracked her chest as she pressed trembling fingers deeper into his jugular.

"Please!" She shook his shoulder as if that, alone, might wake him up from this terrible nightmare.

The weak kiss of a pulse throbbed against her fingertips. Emotion tore through her chest as a sob of joy.

"He's alive!"

The warriors cheered.

Pareesa rolled Mikhail onto his back to assess his injuries, careful not to crush his feathers. Her lip twitched with a gasp of horror, capturing a single tear. There was a knife. Sticking out of his chest. How was he even still alive?

She grabbed his hand and gave it a squeeze.

“You must hang on!" Tears blurred the sight of his slack jaw. "Needa will tend your wounds. She can fix it. I know she can.”

She turned back towards the warriors who had grown silent, the reflection of the bonfire making a garish mockery of their expressions of grief, and looked beyond them to the conflagration the lizard-demon sky canoes had left billowing black smoke into the darkness of the horizon, the place where they had left behind the regional gathering of chiefs … including Ninsianna's father.

"Immanu!" Pareesa cried out. "Oh! Gods! Somebody go fetch Immanu!"

~ * ~ * ~

Galactic Standard Date:  152,323.11 AE

Alpha Sector: Haven-1

Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa

Raphael

It was time to go meet his maker…

The light grew brighter with each step he took towards the beautiful, white-winged Angelic who beckoned to him from the far end of the hallway which reminded him of a tunnel. They'd agreed she would wait for him at the entrance to the Pearl Gate, to guide him past the challenges all seekers faced who wished to gain an audience with their Emperor and god. White crepuscular rays streamed down through the atrium and gave her the appearance of wearing a sunlit crown. His heart beat faster, though whether it was because he was happy to be running towards her
,
or fear that he was about to answer to his creator, he couldn't say. An electrifying sense of
feeling
sparked between them as he stepped into the light and slipped his hand into hers.

"Are you sure he'll be okay with us?"

Brigadier-General Raphael Israfa carefully relieved his lover, Jophiel, of the red-winged toddler who'd fallen asleep in her arms and tucked their son into the shelter of his golden wings. By
'he'
he meant the Emperor, and by
'okay,'
he asked,
'will the Emperor really be okay with the fact that while the Alliance is falling down around our ears, you and I just broke every law he has prohibiting fraternization between active members of the Alliance military?'

Jophiel's unearthly blue eyes waxed almost as pale as her white-blonde hair and snowy white wings. Raphael caught his breath. Whenever she met his gaze, it felt as though he stared at a mirror into his own soul.

"He gave me leave to follow my heart," Jophiel said. She tucked her wings against her back and schooled her features into the mask of their Supreme Commander-General. "Besides, the Emperor would not have wanted me to miss a heat cycle. Given the intrigues Lucifer forced upon us, I had few options other than to draw upon my previous partners."

That sensation of
feeling
whatever she did ever since they'd cast all caution to the wind and declared their love let Raphael know she rehearsed a lie. After Lucifer's breathtaking rebellion, she'd been forced to take refuge in the palace, stripped of rank and ordered to submit to an interrogation by Lucifer's Parliament, an order the Emperor had politely declined. Abaddon
really
searched for
him …
and the 97 ships the Emperor had placed under his command.

Uriel's pet gorock trotted at Jophiel's heel as they moved towards the inner sanctum. Raphael could
feel
something troubled her, but he doubted she feared the Emperor would punish them for consummating the marriage which was now real in every aspect except for name. There was no undoing a sacred union once the Bond of Ki had been forged. They had declared their love before a higher god and their spirits were now so intertwined the thoughts of one echoed within the heart of the other.

Raphael could see now why the Emperor had forbidden hybrids to marry. If left to their own inclinations, Angelics really
did
mate for life. What good was an army where, if
one
died, the Emperor lost
two
soldiers instead of one?

"How went your test?" Raphael asked.

Jophiel's hand slipped down to rest upon her lower abdomen. Sadness. Disappointment. Apprehension. Raphael sensed her emotions as though they were his own. Jophiel was stoic, but she could not hide the sob of disappointment which echoed in his gut.

"It was so soon after we created Uriel," Raphael soothed her. He cuddled the toddler who nestled, asleep, against his chest, a result of their
first
union which had been contrived as all hybrid mating appointments were to prevent them from consummating a lifemate bond. "Perhaps we were mistaken about it being your heat cycle?"

"The test came back inconclusive!" Jophiel sniffed. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "Twelve babies I have born this Alliance, and the first time I try to conceive one out of love instead of duty, She-who-is rejects us by refusing to bless our union!"

"We still have Uriel." Raphael slipped his fingers into her silky white feathers. "No other hybrid has ever borne as many children as
you
have to fill the ranks of our Emperor's armies. Perhaps She-who-is feels your body deserves a rest?"

Jophiel paused under a fresco of a round, many-winged species which stared down at them from the palace walls, its dozen eyes painted so realistically they appeared to follow them as they walked the hallway beneath it. They were Wheles, a species which had gone extinct within their lifetime. Jophiel glanced at Uriel's small red wings rising and falling against his back as he breathed in the worry-free sleep of the very young, and then back at the scarlet-winged species which no longer graced the material realms.

Extinct. As
they
soon would be if Raphael let anything deter him from his mission…

"I never even got to hold the other eleven!" Jophiel's voice warbled. "If Abaddon hadn't sent them
here
to make me
personally
tell them I was no longer their commanding officer, instead of bashing down the Emperor's front door like Parliament
wanted
him to do, I still might
not know what it was like to embrace my own offspring."

"You were never given any choice," Raphael said softly. "Not until Uriel almost died."

"I think," Jophiel's wings fluttered with frustration, 'that
that
was Abaddon's point!" She resumed her solemn pace, glancing back only once at the painted testament of a species that had ceased to exist. "It is said that even as Abaddon moves his armada to the Sata'an-Alliance border, that his human wife goes with him. That even in battle,
The Destroyer
cannot bear to be parted from his mate."

"He flaunts his newfound power," Raphael said. "According to Mikhail's partial vectors, Abaddon searches in the wrong location. Parliament has plunged us into a war we cannot win!"

Their footsteps echoed on the marble like the drumroll of a military firing squad.

"Abaddon is a good man," Jophiel sighed, "if a bit of a war hawk. Maybe the Emperor
should
have elevated him to Supreme Commander-General when he returned from the Ascended Realms instead of me?"

Raphael pulled her closer with his free arm, ignoring her squirms of protest until she melted into his golden wings.

"The Emperor must have had his reasons." Raphael kissed the top of her head. "Perhaps he sensed Abaddon had grown too supportive of Lucifer in his absence?"

"Lucifer is
dead,"
Jophiel hissed. "Parliament's authority to exist became null and void the moment Lucifer died without an heir."

"We don't know that for sure," Raphael said. "They found no wreckage, nor were they able to recover any bodies."

"Shay'tan destroyed the
Prince of Tyre
while it was orbiting the borderlands," Jophiel snapped. "The old dragon won't let us into his territory to gather evidence of his crime! He refuses to budge even with the
Jehoshaphat
moving into position to engage!"

"Lucifer's crimes?" Raphael asked. "Or Shay'tan's?"

"So you side with
them
now?" Jophiel tried to pull away.

Raphael curled one large, golden wing around her and used his free hand to tilt her chin up so that she had to look him in the eye.

"I'm an intelligence officer," Raphael gave her an apologetic grin. "Remember? I'm only pointing out what the news outlets are saying."

"What does
that
matter?" Jophiel pushed against his chest to break his hold. "Hashem is their Emperor and god!"

The withdrawal of her affection
hurt
him. Physically. As though she had cut off the supply of his own life's blood. Mated pairs. Being this close to somebody emotionally would take a period of adjustment, coping skills the Emperor had deprived his species of learning when he'd forced his armies to pretend a soldier had no need to understand any love except for a love of
him
.

"The Emperor has lost the people's trust," Raphael sighed. "Whether or not we find Lucifer's body, until the Emperor acknowledges he needs to win back his subjects' hearts and minds, he shall make no headway getting back control of his empire."

Jophiel burst into tears. Uriel chose that moment to awaken and entangle his fingers in his mother's long, white-blonde hair, delighted she no longer kept it coiffed in a regulation bun. Jophiel forced a smile as she carefully untangled their baby's fingers from her tresses.