I Am Not Junco Omnibus: Books Four - Six (69 page)

“Rikan.” He ignores my question. “You are mine now. I’m not sure what culture your father taught you during his punishment cycle, but the culture you come from believes in an eye for an eye. He took this planet from me, and now I can take something from him. I choose to take you.”

Rikan lets out a long sigh. “Thank the fuck for that.” He smiles at my father, then leers at me as he shakes his head and turns back to Aesin. “Do you have any idea what’s it’s like being his true son, yet not? Did you hear about my brothers? The illegal ones?”

Aesin raises an eyebrow and a wing at this. “I’ll want to hear all about them, grandson. Soon.” He takes his attention back to the three of us. “But right now I’m very interested in learning more about how your father managed to overcome the genetic defects of the Fallen.”

Gib scoffs. “I’m sure you are.”

Aesin’s expression hardens and I cringe internally at Gib’s flippant remark. “Your brothers are mouthy, Lucan.”

“It’s proprietary information. His remark was justified.”

He looks at me but he speaks to Rikan. “Your father will not live through this child. I am your master now.”

“Are you sure?” Rikan asks, his disbelief not the least bit hidden.

Aesin looks at him and shakes his head. “Do you even know who I
am
?”

A shake of the head from Rikan.

An incredulous look from Aesin to me.

I shrug again. I love Junco for giving me that carefree I-don’t-give-a-shit gesture.

Aesin plucks that thought right out of my mind because I let him, but he doesn’t catch the answer, so I verbalize it instead. “She’s pretty in a psychotic small child kind of way. I’m going to keep her when all this is over. She reminds me of someone I once loved dearly.”

I only have a fraction to digest the look on his face before the guards appear next to me and have a gamma wave inhibitor ring around my head. It immediately begins to restrict my brain wave activity and the vertigo begins. But that look was worth the binding. I fight it of course. Surely they knew I’m not so easily subdued, so I fight against it. But they have sufficient strength in the mechanism to inhibit me enough to clamp an energy restrictor onto my spine, neck, and cranium. The claws dig in, access my backbone, my brain stem and then the ring is engaged and slices a line through my skull at the eyebrow level.

Once in place, they all squeeze simultaneously.

I admit—this is painful.

I breathe through it as best I can, but it’s of no use.

The world goes black.

I wake in a cell. My brothers unconscious next to me, my son missing.

I adjust myself and I’m rewarded with an intense wave of nausea that starts in my stomach and exits my mouth in a pool of vomit. It makes me feel oddly human for some reason. When was the last time I was ill? Too long ago to remember.

I chance the pain and put up with the vomit so I can see Rache and Gib. They are not faring so well and I’ll hazard a guess and say the vomiting does not make them feel manly.

Where’s Rikan?
I ask internally.

Just gone
, Rache manages. Gib doesn’t even move.

Guards appear outside the cell line. There are no bars in an Angel prison cell. It’s all controlled via the gamma ray inhibitors attached to our nervous systems. The uniform of the guards has not changed since I’ve seen them last. Massive golden wings, tucked flat against their backs. No shirts, wrist communication device, and the armored skirt.

And why should they look any different? It’s been four months, he said.
Four
.
Fucking
.
Months
.

Of all the things that have come to light over this act of defiance, this revelation stuns me. Even though I knew this way back when I decided to defy Aesin and follow Crage’s directive, it somehow slipped my mind that they would not be waiting long.

Time is relative. The Angels have known this for billions of years. Humans, a couple hundred. It’s not new. But I forgot, because for me it’s been seven thousand fucking years.

Time is dependent on gravity, which for all intents and purposes is dependent on the sun you orbit and the time it takes to circle your sun once. That orbit length is the measuring stick of how fast or slow time passes.

Thus, time on Earth passes very fast. Time on our Origin passes very, very slow in comparison.

It almost makes me laugh, but the guards are pulling me to my feet and even after all my training—thousands of years in my world, months for these winged men—I cannot completely shut off the pain and the laugh abandons me. I can barely focus as they shuffle me down the hallway and then push me through a door to an open arena.

Much like Deliverance, there is a stone podium in the middle which is flanked on all sides by spectators.

My jury.

Officiating is Aesin, of course. He is the oldest Angel present, so the duty falls to him by default.

I’m not his only son. I’m but one of thousands. But I am the only High Order son he has. Even so, I am no one, just offspring. And yet I command them all in this moment because I have their undivided attention. I try to straighten up so as not to look so weak. It bothers me to look so weak, even if it’s necessary. My straight spine lasts only a few seconds before I slouch from the pain.

“Lucifer,” someone calls my ancient name. “Son of the Sun, Lord of the Land. You stand before us on trial. Your charges are thus: treason.”

I look up when silence follows the first charge.

“What say you, Lucifer?”

“That’s it?” I croak through the pain. “Treason? Inanna steals gifts relentlessly. She begs favors of Angels and Men alike, she trespasses in realms that are not her own and then cheats the penance required of her, she stole my Seven and amputated her wings without cause”—they gasp at that and I enjoy it for a second before continuing on—“she commits treason every day and you charge
me
with treason?”

“Inanna is none of your concern, Lucifer,” the officiator replies calmly. “She has her own free will and her own commitments.”

“She’s the traitor! And him,” I say, nodding to Aesin even though the pain of it is almost enough to make me retch. If I were to try to point, I’d probably pass out. “Aesin killed all my workers. Inanna mutilated my Seven without a virtual to subdue her! She tortured her continuously through a two-year Archer morph! Where’s
my
justice? Where’s my Seven’s justice? I demand to be released from my cycle and I demand that I be allowed to punish those who have wronged me and the ones I claim!”

The officiator’s wings perch up high on his shoulders and he gives me a dirty look. When he speaks his voice is impassive. “You do realize you’re on trial? We’re not here to listen to your grievances. You tried to extinguish the avian race.”

“He tried to extinguish the
human
race!” I laugh and then choke on the shooting pain up my spine from the effort. “And you are not avian. I attempted to extinguish an Angel.
One
,” I emphasize, “one solitary, filthy fucking Angel. The one who above all else needs to be ended. And even though my actions only bought me time, I will never stop until I end him.”

My head is knocked back from the force of the blow and I go careening across the smooth stone slab. Pain from all that movement makes me roar in agony. I am on fire, the heat travels up and down my spine in a wave, and then more blows make sure it doesn’t stop. My great black wings are unfurled from my back and pressed against the cross.

They pin me there, like an offering.

They crucify me in the name of Aesin.

I am writhing in my own pain when the whispers travel across my cheek, a temporary reprieve from the waves traveling into my ear and shutting off the affected parts of my nervous system.

“Lucifer,” my father says softly. “Lucifer, you are in no position to finish anything right now. I
saved
you from Inanna’s wrath. She asked Ea for you specifically. He denied her, because you are mine to deal with. But I left her on Earth to watch you, my son. I left her to spy. She told me all about your little love affair with Junco Coot. I already know this girl. Very well.
Your
Seven? I don’t believe so, Lucifer. I have seen this girl already, I have been to Earth, I gave Inanna permission to amputate her wings and force her change. I command this girl. She is mine. Inanna is mine. Inanna outlives you, Lucifer, and she will rule the Earth Depot when you are gone.”

I pull every bit of strength together in that moment. Everything I’m made of, everything I’ve ever learned about their torture methods, and I push the pain into a dark trunk to keep it at bay just long enough to say, “I am Lucan. And I will end you—I promise.”

The pain ratchets through my limbs this time, every nerve cell synapsing in a pattern that only makes sense to my captors. My back buckles against the beam as I writhe. They pin my feet and then my hands, but I surprise myself and push it away one more time.

“I will end you,” I repeat, but this time it’s a scream of desperation that echoes off the walls of the justice theater and bounces back to me.

And then my world goes black as my own sound waves attack my body.

Chapter Fourteen—LUCAN

Tigris-Euphrates River Delta

5000 BC

Women.

It’s always,
always
the women.

They drive him crazy.

I stare out from the overseer’s terrace, the hot wind whipping my skin and drying my wings. I hate the desert and I can’t wait to leave this place. Earth is… I try to find words. Earth is heavy with gravity that pulls me apart and shortens my life. Earth is a hell I want to put behind me as quickly as I possibly can.

Nothing has gone right. The workers are unhappy, the slaves are unhappy, Aesin is back from his punishment angrier and meaner than ever. I stay away when I can, but the native women in my fields draw his attention. He’s back to torturing them, raping them and killing the offspring he creates.

He’s insane.

“It’s over,” my uncle says from behind me. “It’s over, Lucifer. Admit it. This is a disaster. He is unreachable.”

“He’s in charge,” I say simply. “What am I supposed to do? I’m no one. I am just one son among so many. I have no authority.”

“I will give you the authority.”

I sigh and then turn to see he’s reaching out, thrusting a vial at me. “Take it to the geneticist. Tell him what to do.”

I do not take the vial. I ignore that vial. “You’re insane too, Crage.” And I mean that. These elders are all touched. They’ve lived too long, they’ve survived too much. They value nothing. “I’m not doing it. I’m following his orders, I’m completing my mission, and I’m going home. You’ll not find a partner in me. There is nothing about this planet I enjoy.”

Screaming from down below jerks my attention back to the desert floor where the farming takes place to feed the massive workforce necessary for the mining. These operations have gone on since we came to this planet thousands of years ago.

How much longer? How much longer do I have to stay here?

“You will stand for this? You will allow him to kill them?”

I have to hold in my laugh. “You’re standing here as well.”

“I’m under orders, you’re not. I cannot touch him, you can.”

“You just want that portal to yourself, Uncle. You’re fooling no one with this talk of liberating and enlightening slaves.”

“I will take that portal regardless. This is about who will command this planet, who will command this system. Who will keep safe what we need to keep safe. I’m fine with the mining, I don’t care if we take these resources. But you are one of the few who understand what this planet really is. We cannot risk him deciding to stay here. This place needs a Guardian.”

“He appointed Inanna, Crage. Talk to her. She’s your wife. Surely she will conspire with you. Just leave me out of it.”

“She’s already with me, but her farsight tells her we need you, Lucan.”

“Lucifer,” I say. “You know I loathe nicknames.”