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.
