Broken Wings: Genesis (24 page)

I laughed out loud. “You’re
telling me Ithane gave herself up so she could come back and have sex with
Marduk?” I thought about the strong attraction that was there when I was with
the immortal. Maybe there was something to it.

Ke looked angry, and he wouldn’t
respond. Realization struck. Okay, maybe I was a little slow.

“You’re jealous.”

Ke pointed to a spot in front of
him, ignoring my statement. I looked to see an apple tree, with full, bushy
branches laden with succulent red fruit––apples. I looked back at him with
skepticism.

“This is it? The Tree of
Knowledge?”

Ke nodded. It didn’t look like
much to me. That must have been some con job Lucifer had pulled on Eve. I had
seen better looking trees on our way here. This one didn’t strike me as
anything out of the ordinary.

I shrugged. “You never answered my
question.”

Ke was testy. “You did not ask
one.”

“Fine. I’m asking. Are you jealous
of Ithane’s relationship with Marduk?”

I could almost feel his teeth
grinding to avoid giving me an answer. I thought back to my earlier
conversation with Sarge.

“That’s why you shut him down,
isn’t it? Sarge was about to tell me that you were in love with Ithane.”

His shoulders slumped. “Yes.” He
whispered.

Wow. How about just a little more
confusion thrown into the mix for me? This couldn’t be happening. The look of
misery on his face told me it was. The angel was in love with me. No, wait. He
wasn’t in love with
me
. He was in love with
her
.

“I am not Ithane.” I told him
softly.

“You are.” Ke said, finally
looking at me. “You are very much like she was. The only difference is that you
have free will now. But you are just like her.”

“But I’m
not
her. I am a
different person with a part of her inside me. That doesn’t make me Ithane. It
makes me who I am.”

Ke said nothing, but he took a
step closer. There was such a hunger in his eyes that my breath caught in my
throat.

“Even if I were Ithane,” I
searched his face for answers. “You’ve had your chance. I offered myself to you
and you turned me down. But if I were to be honest, I probably wouldn’t turn
you away if you tried again.”

I watched the emotions play across
his face, from hunger and desire to frustration and sorrow. It was frustration
that finally won out.

“I cannot,” he groaned. “You are
still in human form. Our joining is forbidden.”

“You are in human form now, too.”
I pointed out, reaching up a hand to touch him.

He backed away as though my touch
would burn his skin. Maybe it would have, I was feeling pretty heated right
now. I should have let go of the celibacy thing a while back. It was causing me
some big trouble right now. What had I been thinking?

Ke shook his head and stepped
further back. I dropped my hand. Hey, I’m not going to offer again. The ego can
only take being turned down so many times. Without another word, he turned and
walked away, leaving me alone in the middle of the Garden of Eden. It was as I
thought. Paradise seemed to be a pretty boring
and lonely place.

Now, I have a pretty good
imagination. But there are times when you wonder whether or not your
imagination has crossed over into stages of delirium. This was one of those
times. Here I am, standing in the middle of the Garden of Eden, staring at the
Tree of Knowledge. My thoughts are focused on the guy walking away from me. And
what do I see? A huge snake is slithering a slow, winding pace down through the
apples from the upper branches of the Tree. This couldn’t really be happening,
could it?

The real question I should’ve been
asking my self at this point was that if there were any chance at all this was
not a hallucination, then why didn’t I turn and run? Silly me. By the time that
thought came to the forefront of my mind, the head of the snake was on a level
even with mine. While the rest of the body followed behind it, the head turned
to face me. The voice that rasped its lispy words was reminiscent of a pervert
tracking down its next target.

“Want some apples, little girl?”

It wasn’t until the slitted eye
winked my way that the ridiculousness of the situation struck me. I laughed,
the sound full, rich and genuine. With all I had experienced up to this point,
it felt good to laugh.

“You have
got
to be kidding
me.”

The snake’s chuckle was rolling,
almost musical. While I watched, it dropped from the lowest branch to the
ground, its body winding into a thick pile of coils. Those melted together, and
then pushed upward into another shape. When all was said and done, one of the
most gorgeous men I had ever laid eyes on stood before me, in blond, masculine
glory. His eyes were deep, piercing blue, yet filled with warmth and amusement.
But it wasn’t a man. It was another angel, one with wings the blue-black color
of a raven, the tips of the feathers seeped in blood red.

“Lucifer, I presume?”

“At your service, beautiful lady.”
His sweeping bow was regal and flowed with the natural movements of his body.
“Although I do go by the name Lucien these days. So much less harsh sounding
without holding the negative connotations of the other, don’t you think?”

I shrugged. “You could call
yourself Princess Sweet Pea for all that it mattered to me.”

“Cheeky.” He tilted his head in amused
deference. “I will take that under advisement.”

I looked around curiously, to see
if any alarms had been raised, any angels were running to deal with one of the
Fallen Ones, correction, the
original
Fallen One. Nothing. Sarge was
right. They should have been watching their perimeters.

“They are not aware of my
presence.” Lucien held his arms out openly. “This is the one place within the Crystal City where I am allowed to return. I
come back from time to time when I’m feeling a little––nostalgic.”

My head was shaking back and forth
in bemused wonderment. It dawned on me that I should probably be afraid of this
guy, but oddly enough, I wasn’t. That was pretty stupid of me. Come on. This
was the epitome of evil, the ultimate father of everything I had fought against
all my life. Some of those things had seriously kicked my ass. They were
pansy-wipes compared to this guy.

Lucien leaned in close to whisper
in my ear. “You have nothing to fear from me, beautiful lady. Not at this time,
anyway.”

His voice wrapped silken threads
around my senses. Wow. No wonder they claimed he was the most beautiful, the
most seductive among the entire angelic host in his time. He certainly hadn’t
lost his touch. I’m betting he’d picked up a few tricks of the last couple
millennia.

I stepped back from him, suddenly
unsure of myself. “What do you want, Lucien?”

His smile was the picture of
innocence, his movements fluid as he tipped his head and shrugged his
shoulders. “What does any man want? Power, control, the love of a good woman.”

Okay, that helped me snap out of
it a bit. He was mocking me now. “First of all, you aren’t a man. Second, you
already have a woman at your back––Lilith.”

“But you have locked my consort
away from me.” He sounded almost petulant. I noticed he didn’t deny the first
charge.

“I am not Ithane.”

He tilted his head to study me
curiously. “You are, but yet not. What a strange dichotomy your life is. The
duality of power and the endless ages of time wrapped up in a powerless human
shell that dies a little every second that you take a breath. How sad you must
be.”

I grinned. “Oh, I don’t know.
Being human has its perks, too. Take the whole free will thing, for example.”

Lucien actually hissed at me, his
composure broken for a brief second before it slipped back behind his mask of
charm. “How perfectly
human
of you to bring up such a distasteful
subject in the midst of our pleasantries.”

“Pleasantries?” My laugh was
bitter. “Is that why you dropped by, Lucien, to exchange pleasantries? Or was
it to check out the enemy?”

He shrugged. “Perhaps I do not
consider you to be an enemy.”

“Let’s see, I lock up your
girlfriend, I lock up your wasteful son. There are those around here that hope
that I will be the savior to humanity. How does that not qualify as your enemy?
I stand for everything you fight against.”

“Ah, so you are willing to admit
that you and Ithane are one and the same.”

That stopped me cold. I had
admitted exactly that, hadn’t I? Maybe my mind was starting to go. These angels
had a way of rattling your senses.

I sighed. “Why don’t you cut to
the chase, Lucien? What do you want from me?”

He reached up above his head and
plucked an apple from the Tree. With deliberate care, he held it in his hand,
moving it this way and that to catch the light of the Garden. Separated from
the Tree, it now seemed enticing, beautiful, a luscious fruit made to be eaten.
Maybe it was an illusion cast by the dark angel holding the apple, but it was a
mouth-watering illusion.

“It is not so much what I want
from you, Yeshua, as what it is I am prepared to offer.”

I looked from the apple into the
calculated sincerity in his eyes. Damn, this guy was good. No wonder Eve had
fallen prey to his enticements. My mouth had gone dry and I licked my lips,
trying to swallow at the same time. Neither helped.

“And what are you offering?”

He held out the apple, his hand
flat, like a platter of flesh holding forth a delectable offering. “Answers.
That is what you are looking for, isn’t it? Answers to the many questions
running through your mind? Answers to help you make the decision that is coming
up?”

Okay, now
that
didn’t raise
my suspicion level. My eyes narrowed. “And what makes you so certain that if I
had those answers I would jump the way you wanted me to?”

He laughed, and the sound was
genuine. “Oh, you will do exactly what it is that I want. I have no doubt of
that
in the slightest. Humans always
have a way of doing the wrong thing in the name of what they feel to be right.
I am only offering you a chance to go into this whole upcoming struggle with
your eyes wide open. You don’t honestly believe the angelic host will give you
any more information than they want in order to make you see things their way?”

“So why don’t you just tell me
what you think I should know? Why offer me this opportunity?”

The amusement danced in his eyes.
“So you would believe anything that I had to tell you from my own lips?”

He had a point there.

He shrugged, tossing the apple up
and catching it in his hand. He held it out as though examining its perfection.
“Besides, the pattern repeats. Who am I to break the pattern? I only offer to
you what was once offered to another. I would not want to blow your perfect
image of me, now would I?”

“But that’s just it, isn’t it?” I
looked at him quizzically. “You are all about feelings of perfection. You feel
that humans do not measure up to what your ideal image of perfection is.”

“Does it matter to you so much
what I think?”

I laughed. “Hell, no. Pardon the
expression. But it does make me very curious as to why this is so important to
you.”

He held out the apple. “Why do you
not take the opportunity to find out?”

I took the apple from his hand,
rolling it between my fingers to catch the light as he had. Talk about
temptation. If the legends held true, everything I wanted to know and then some
was only a bite away. What had Ke said? That it was a direct connection into
the web. Then another thought struck me.

Hadn’t he also said the apple had
shown Eve the potential of humankind? If that was the case, wouldn’t that mean
she had been shown endless possibilities, both good and bad? But they were all
just possibilities. The pattern hadn’t been woven yet. No wonder the woman
freaked out. Not all of those bad things had happened. She just saw all of the
limitless potentials of what could happen. Talk about sensory overload. And in
a mind that couldn’t comprehend the concept of evil before taking that fateful
bite, what horror she must have experienced.

Sometimes too much knowledge was a
bad thing. How would you know which decision to make? You didn’t know how every
single person would react in any given situation. You couldn’t predict human
reaction. To even suppose you would––

I handed the apple back to him.
“Thanks, but no thanks. Talk about having your hands tied, second-guessing
every move you make. Uh-uh. I have enough confusion going on in my head without
throwing everyone else’s confusion into the mix.”

Lucien laughed, holding his hands
up, refusing to accept the deadly fruit. “You are a lot smarter than the first
one. But the fruit is yours now. You may choose to use it later on.”

I shook my head. “I don’t think
so. I may want answers, but those are not the answers I am seeking. That fruit
is deadly poison to the human mind.”

I looked down at the apple and
shrugged. Holding it in hand, I turned and started to walk away. The cynical
laughter in his voice stopped me.

“You will give into temptation
sooner or later, Yeshua. It is a human trait. You cannot deny it.”

There was only one thing I was
tempted to do at the moment. I turned and saw the smug look on his face, took
in his arrogant stance. All pretenses were stripped away. He was no better than
the rest of him. He was right. I am human. Giving into temptation is second
nature. I tossed the apple in the air a couple of times, getting the feel of
it. Then I threw it at him, letting it bounce off the side of his head.

His eyes glittered dangerously,
but he didn’t say a word. It probably wasn’t the smartest thing I had ever done
in my life, basically spitting in the face of the devil, daring him to come
after me. But it sure felt good.