I Love Luci Ch. 16

Chapter Sixteen: Split Infinity

He held her in his arms, his shoulders aching a bit with the weight of his wings. He seldom felt them. He seldom felt enough of who he had been when he wore them, when he was merely a rebel angel angry with his dad.

He just didn't step into that body often any longer. He had forgotten the weight of that body, both physically and in his soul. Yes, he had one. Demons did not. But he was not really one of them.

Gwendolyn's eyes were closed, her pale brown lashes long since wiped clean of mascara, making her look younger with her lips softly parted and her flame colored hair spread across the pillow on the feather bed in the stable. As if feeling his eyes upon her, those soft lashes lifted, framing eyes that were both blue and green.

"Are you hurt?" He asked softly. He couldn't remember the last time he had truly heard his own voice. To her human ears, it would be low and clear, almost entrancingly melodic. An angel of music, also, was the King of Hell.

She gave a soft, heavy lidded smile and shook her head. He could see the bloody scratches he had left were already totally healed. Her pendulous breasts looked full and were dripping a thin milky ribbon across her belly, some settling in her navel as she breathed in softly. He leaned over her and kissed each thin red line that was all that remained of the wounds, the merest shadow of a scar. Her hand wrapped in his pale curls as she lazily stroked his head and he lay against her body in blissful, hedonistic rapture.

"You are so beautiful," she said softly, for the first time, genuine awe made her voice raw. He saw the shimmer of tears on her lower lashes and it tore at his heart as she whispered: "What the hell do you want with someone like me, Lucifer?" Her voice sounded small and genuinely confused. "Every woman wants to be hear she is special, but I'm not. Not really."

"That is where you are wrong," said a voice from the open door of the small stable-room. Gwen looked up, her eyes growing even more concerned when they went from the barefooted yet Birkenstock-clad foot, to skinny jeans, to a button down crimson shirt that was only tucked in the front of his pants but loose in the back. The sleeves were rolled halfway up his forearms and he was wearing a Star of David necklace below the well manicured beard , elegantly curled mustache and wore a chic pair of simple wire framed glasses over thoughtful eyes. His shaggy chestnut hair was capped by a knitted beanie.

"Who're you...?" Gwen began, but his image shifted before her to the typical red and white robe, long brown mane and well manicured facial hair. He winked one blue eye at her gave her a thumbs up with one hand and a pistol-finger with the other.

She burst out laughing and quickly recovered, holding her hands over her mouth, but her eyes were still glittering with mirth.

"You call me 'Buddy' when we talk." Jesus said, and made the effort of will to return to his preferred image. Lucifer remembered him commenting it was a gift from a writer, this face, who had made this image of him well known enough he could take it with a minimal effort of will.

He was both one and all forms of how the world saw him, from the white Jesus of the Europeans, to a more robust and swarthy Jesus as envisioned by many believers of color, to the actual babe in a manger. But this look, he said, blended best in the world this era. "But you never thought I could hear you," Jesus added almost chidingly.

Gwen blushed gracefully and seemed to be pawing around for something to cover her nudity with. "I um... my clothes—"

"Gwen," Jesus chided with a small smile and knelt before her, completely without any hint of self-consciousness. She raised her eyes guiltlessly to his, and her hands stopped frantically searching for something to cover herself as Jesus shook his head in amusement and looked directly into her startled green and blue gaze. "Do you *truly* imagine I never loved a woman?"

"No, actually, I have never thought that. I know we weren't supposed to ponder things like that when I was a kid..." she began in a slightly annoyed and yet bashful tone of voice, both incensed and apologetic at the same time.

"But... I know the bible is *far* from complete and is absolutely devoid of any information pertaining to your young life."

"And do you truly believe then, that I have never seen a nude woman?" She didn't answer, but her flush deepened to prettily color her neck and chest as well. "So then, please, my dear, relax."

He smiled again but it faltered a bit as he looked on the angelic form of his elder brother still reclined behind the petite witch. "You need to know," Jesus said quietly. "Someone betrayed you to the Olympians, bro. I don't know who yet, but someone put the idea into Hades' head to steal her. He didn't come up with this himself. It isn't like him to interfere with the living and other celestials. I know it was not Hermes. I already spoke with him and he was really wrecked by having to listen to Hades. Someone told him of your plans that night and how to abscond with Gwen."

"There are not many that knew those details," Lucifer said softly, and almost involuntarily, he pulled Gwen a little more tightly to him, as if he could protect her by his mere presence. Perhaps he could at that... he had not felt this powerful in a millennia. And he felt certain the petite redhead was the reason.

"She is the reason," Jesus said Lucifer made a silently snarling face and glared at Jesus warningly.

"Do not invade my thoughts, little brother," Lucifer said softly. "You will not like what you find."

But Jesus just smiled. "I will take that wager." He straddled a chair on the opposite side of the room and regarded Lucifer with amusement. Lucifer debated thinking of the cells in Hell where he and his faithful executed God's divine wrath with the expert precision of a finely honed scalpel... but his gaze was drawn to Gwen, who made a small whimpering noise. He was instantly overwhelmed by her look of discomfort, her eyes wide and watery, her teeth clamped down on her lower lip. "Gwen, what's wr—"

"Maybe... we can go home soon?" She panted, a smile of rough chagrin making her grimace. She gestured to her overly inflated mammiaries which were steadily leaking down her body. He wanted to lick her clean. As if she knew what he thought, her lips parted and she leaned into him a touch, as if mesmerized by him, by the thoughts in his head. She was ripe in all ways, overcome with lust and a physical need to expel all kinds of bodily fluids in sweet, passionate release. He could almost smell her arousal and it affected him as keenly as a wolf might respond to smelling the pheromones that assured him that his bitch was in heat.

What no one expected was the reaction Jesus had to seeing it all, an odd metaphysical voyeur well out of place in both the room and the minds which he was now attuned. As if helpless, he stood as a statue for a moment, then he crossed the room to Gwen's side, and knelt before her. He met Gwen's eyes once more to find them glazed in lust and need. She was so uncomfortable. It almost pained him to see it. And he could help ease the pain... He reached out, but his fingers stopped an inch away from her large, swollen breasts and he asked her softly, kindly: "May I?" She nodded and looked at Lucifer who was frankly stunned at the younger deity's behavior. Too stunned to object. Maybe he should have spent more time with the kid! With all the Apostles, Lucifer had honestly wondered if he wasn't just gay.

Jesus gently ran his fingers over her swollen breasts, and slid them achingly slow down to the darker than usual areola to squeeze the small rosebud of a nipple between his fingers. A low moan came from her as her eyes drifted close in unison with the stream of fluid that released from her aching breasts and Lucifer was hard once more for her. She was affecting them both like an aphrodisiac and he found that both he and Jesus Christ were helpless to resist.

Jesus tried to focus but he couldn't stop his hands from moving over her flesh, listening to her moans of pleasure, as he struggled to regain some semblance of control. "You are special, Gwen." He leaned forward and whispered against her lips as he kissed her, "You're one of us."

That was enough to make Lucifer shake himself and gain some control once more over himself. "Come again?"

"That's what she said," Eros said as he entered the room with Thoth at his heels. Hathor strode in at a clip but came to a halt when she saw none other than Jesus Christ milking a naked woman who was lying nude beside the Devil himself.

"Isn't this how your Apocalypse starts, New Gods?" Thoth quipped with a chuckle, his bird-like gaze unblinking, making it unclear if he meant it as a joke or a legitimate curiosity.

He nodded in greeting to the room and he then he looked at Gwen, who looked too fascinated to be insatiable... for the moment, Lucifer thought with an inward, fond smile and devilish pride at his lover's power and fortitude. Men should worship her.

"And they have," Jesus said, still very imbedded in their minds.

"Who have what?" Gwen asked, looking confused and like she was one inch from impatience and longing to return to the pleasure he had been giving her and the sheer blasphemy those feelings surely were.

"You have been through the Cycle many times," Thoth said simply. "Surely you know that."

Gwen nodded. "My husband is a shaman. He has done past life regression with me more than once." She smiled cutely. "Pretty sure I was a harp seal, once. Definitely a cat."

"I cannot speak to that, but what I can tell you is that you have been humans who have been worshipped by other humans as if you were a Goddess. And always in your life there has been a certain... balance of the types of people you were. Because you were some... and Evangeline was the other. You have always known one another. For some reason this lifetime you shared a single body."

"Wait, who the fuck were we?" Ev's voice sounded more scared than ever Lucifer had heard it and he saw the grey clouds overtake the green in her eyes.

"You, Evangelina," Thoth said patiently. "Have been many... most notibly Betty Paige, Mary Kelly, Elizabeth of Bathory, Joan of Arc, Scheherazade, Boadicea, Hypolita of the Amazons... Lillith. We think you may originally have been an ancient goddess from Sumeria or even further back and long forgotten. Lack of worship made you mortal yet you still have God's power... and appetites. You drain supplicants of their strength, energy, chi... and in one lifetime, you feasted on of their blood and youth."

The shock was enough that he immediately saw her eyes soften as Evangeline fled from the news and Thoth, ever aware and observant, continued: "You, Gwendolyn, were... well, Most recently, Mae West. Marie Antionette, Anne Boleyn, Nefertiti (and more the fools we; Anubis, Hathor and I that we had not recognized that singular spark.) It existed in three others."

"I can cast no blame on you for not seeing a woman who once worshipped you," Eros said sadly, quietly. "When I did not, until this moment... recognize my own wife." He is eyes were moist with unshed tears. Gwen's eyes widened and her thoughts continued, strobe like, at being married off to a man she never saw until, against all warnings he had given her about not attempting to see his face, she accidentally burned his shoulder one night with candle wax trying to do just that.

"I thought Psyche became immortal," Gwen whispered, as if afraid to speak too loudly.

"That part... that was the myth," Eros said softly and looked at her longingly. "She was mortal until the day she died. And I have loved her every day since."

Lucifer first felt a sudden stab of resentment and jealousy. He had tolerated, even encouraged, Gwen's devotion to Eros. But to have that kind of bond linking them so intimately... it worried him and made him fearful. But as he looked at her, just her, and tried to separate Gwen's gentle but potent energy from Evangeline's dark, seductive soul, he began to see a form... a face.

"Eve?" Lucifer looked down at the woman in his arms and saw another, small and voluptuous, green eyes wide and innocent. So curious. So... Easily led. So willing to let him seduce her.

Still linked with her as he was, he saw the flickering of ancient memories but also felt the rising terror in her core. "I don't—I c-can't be—" She was scrambling to think through the 19th century-era black and white silent film memories that flickered through her mind as she watched her own past lives play before her in rapid succession. He had no doubt Ev was hiding from them... of the two she was more prone to denial when something terrified her.

Lucifer tried to stamp out the rampant rage of jealousy that tore through him as he thought of Eros's love for his mortal wife. Of how he had loathed Adam. Her face raised and when her eyes turned to him, they were green. True green. Green as the mandrake leaves she had used to hide her naked from from their disapproving Father. And he remembered debating killing her as she lays sleep in the verdant fields of Eden. Instead he had assumed a disguise, one of the many species of fauna in the garden. But then she smiled in her sleep and he was undone. He wanted her. He wanted to show her all the things her innocent new mind couldn't yet fathom. Wanted to slither into her channel and both tease and terrify her until it was clear whom she belong to. Not that inspidid man-child Adam. No... his. Like Lilith was his. His father had treated Lilith like a failed experiment and tossed her aside when she would not kneel to Adam. And he had redeemed her. Proven that she could be brought to heel. And he had seduced Eve... damaged her innocence and condemned her and all those that would follow her. But he had loved them both. Just as he loved them both now.

"How have we all failed to see this?" Jesus asked. "Because as you say it, I see the soul of the last woman and I know it well. How did I not see it before?" He looked almost ragged and emotionally overwhelmed. "How did I miss that the heart of my Maggie resides somewhere on this earth and never..." he lowered his head in shame.

"This is..." Gwen's voice shook and she looked between them all. "I don't — what am I? What are WE?!"

"An anomaly, to be sure," Thoth responded, ever calm. "Humans create Gods in different ways... imagination, a way to explain chaos and nature, or by simply raising one's self to a position where you are worshipped in your own lifetime and beyond. It is possible for you to achieve a state of grace by sheer adoration of millions." He ran a hand through his feathered hair and looked perplexed. "But the latter, those we have often found to be... demigods. Not in the Greek hero sort of way. In the literal sense: 'part-celestial'. Most legendary humans have in their past lives another legend they once were, giving them a certain level of power if not true divinity. But most, as in your case, when we analyze the cycles all the way back to the beginning, it is most often that we find celestial roots that have simply withered as their True Names were lost to time and their worshippers died out. We become human when that happens... mortal and fallible. Some of us still command some worship, even as human beings."

"No one worships *me*," Gwen denied weakly.

Eros came to her and enfolded her hands in his as he knelt beside her. She looked at him and her lower lashes finally released the tears that had been held back by will alone. "I have always worshipped you," he said softly, and drew her close for a kiss.

Lucifer had to look away. It wasn't that he begrudged Eros her love. He had always known her capable of loving more than one person as utterly and completely as she did another, betraying neither. He knew, for example, that she was utterly devoted to Sean—.

Lucifer blinked as a certain realization sank into him and he looked at Thoth, who was regarding him with the wisdom of the ages. "Her husband—Sean. He's..."

"Just a mortal shaman," Thoth said placatingly. "I spoke to Cernunnos about him."

"He is her true love... Gwen's." Lucifer said simply, not buying Thoth's tone. "He is Adam." He looked up at Jesus, who seemed to be watching Gwen with a certain calm fascination. "Did you know?"

"No," Jesus said simply.

"But what we cannot explain is why both souls ended up entwined like this, in one body," Thoth said. "But both of you are powerful in your own right, Gwen. Together.... you are a threat."

Hathor regarded them all, hands on her curvy hips. "So like a bunch of men to fear a woman's power!" She waved everyone away from Gwen and plopped down beside her on the feather bed. "You are safe here and you are welcome to return whenever you like. I swear to you sanctuary, if you need it."

Gwen's face betrayed little save the shock she was feeling but she thanked Hathor wordlessly with a squeeze of a gentle hand on the Goddess's arm.

"Gwen," Eros said gently. "You are you. You have also been others, yes. But this lifetime, *this* is who you are. And now you know that you and Evvy have never been mad... there is a reason you two are like this. You didn't split from some unknown trauma... you have always been two separate souls sharing the same form. How you two have managed *not* to go mad is a wonder." He caressed her cheek and didn't fail to notice how Lucifer looked away from the intimate gesture. "You aren't my woman any longer," he added, more for Lucifer's edification than hers. "But I never stopped loving you."

"No one could help but love you," she said softly, wiping her tears from her cheeks.

"Who else knows all of this?" Lucifer asked Thoth. The tall, slender man sighed. "Anubis; he helped us track down her previous incarnations... and Bast. Who will do with the information whatever she feels best benefits her." He shrugged and his hair visibly ruffled a bit like feathers. "What can you do? She is what she is."

"Anyone else?"

"Just the people in this room."

Lucifer turned Gwen's head to him with a gentle touch of his hand against her cheek. He looked deeply info her eyes and said softly: "We need to speak to Ev."

Gwen closed her eyes for a moment and when they opened, they were a stormy blue-grey like dusk on the water. "I'm scared." It was almost the whisper of a child and so unlike her.

"I know." Lucifer looked over at Jesus and Hathor. "Hattie, speak Herne. He needs to know, and Brigid. No secret ever lasts long when shared beyond two. Brother... tell Michael I need a favor."

At that, Jesus did a double take. "Say again?"

"Don't make me say it twice. I don't trust anyone in Hell with her. I at least know that Michael isn't going to harm her even if he detests me."

Jesus gathered himself but did pause to glance once more at the petite redhead with some form of wistful longing before vanishing from the realm.

"Hermes and Dionysus are still some where around here," Hathor said before gathering herself up. "I have no idea what they may know." With that, she too vanished from sight.

"Can the Gods of Theives and Madness be trusted?" Thoth inquired of Eros.

"Now that he cannot be commanded and his loyalty cannot be bought," Eros responded, "my father will ensure never to endanger her again. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he takes keeping her safe quite personally. For all the experience he has in dealing with mortals, he is woefully unused to caring for one." Eros shrugged gracefully, his wings making a soft rustling sound as he moved. "Dionysus? I cannot say. Like Bast, he will serve his own ends. But I think he is too intrigued by our girl to let slip anything that could be used to harm her."

"Do stop speaking about us as if we aren't here." It was always startling to Lucifer the complete change and yet none at all that overtook the woman at his side when she shifted between personas... but no, he reminded himself. They weren't personalities... they were two distinct, different women, despite having much in common... like a face and body.