“He said—love, and faith, and sacrifice were costs, but that they were why, up to now, we’d always won. He said that someone who kept love in their heart and faith in God and man would find any sacrifice a mere trifle. He said that I was saved by faith and sacrifice, and that I had now to carry on the love against which Hell itself could not stand, and that if I looked within myself there was no problem I could not overcome.”
He kissed her, and that, at least, was the same, and he even felt a tingling sensation in the right area of the groin. She removed his clothing slowly, and then her own, and they embraced again, and hands felt each other’s strangely identical parts. The room was dark, except for the light from the moon and a few street lamps below.
And, suddenly, Angelique knew exactly what to do and how to do it.
She closed her eyes and whispered, not to him, “Unab sequabab ciemi!”
There was a sudden rush of warm air all about them, although the balcony door was mostly closed and the room was air conditioned. He felt the sudden presence of others in the air of the room and all around, but there was nothing he could see or sense, and he stiffened, not knowing quite what to expect.
“Father of all, angel of nature, spirits of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, harken, for the Mother has found her perfect lover,” she continued in the strange languare of the Hapharsi. “Let that lover be filled with the soul of the he-lion and the bull, that I may be serviced and have release.'” It wasn’t real, it couldn’t be real, but it sure felt real, and if anything, even bigger and better than it was. He felt a sudden surge of pure animal energy, and he made love to her in the way he wanted to through half the night.
And yet, when they awoke, late in the afternoon, they both were as they had been. There was no mistaking the reason for the radiance of her expression and the softness of her manner, and he, too, felt satisfied, and remembered it all clearly. He was sure that, somehow, he’d made love to her, as a whole man, over and over, for a longer and more satisfying period than he ever had before with a woman, and that all had been—well, normal.
She kissed him playfully. “Do you still worry, my love?”
“Yeah. Am I going nuts—or what?”
“Magic isn’t good, or evil, it just is,” she told him. “Like everything else in this world, it can be good or evil depending on who uses it and for what purpose. That goes for spells, and—computers.”
“Yeah, but—”
“Don’t start with the ‘buts,’ my love. The magic doesn’t work as well with ‘buts.’ And don’t be so afraid. There’s nothing to fear. They made me a Hapharsi Mu’uhquah for their own evil ends, but make me one they did. It doesn’t matter what I look like or who I am—it’s there, particularly in the dark. The ancient priestesses, to preserve their virginity and thus their power, took female lovers, but most of them still craved, at least occasionally, what they could not have. Sometimes as the male, sometimes as the female, they had it better and more often than the tribe. That’s why they never succumbed to temptations of the bisexual flesh.”
“Then—it was an illusion?” He’d known it, but it had been so good, so real.
She shook her head in disgust. “After all we have been through, you and I, you can worry about what is real and what is illusion? The world is a magic place, my darling, if you wish it to be, if you believe that it is. Who is to say where reality ends and illusion begins? Who cares?”
Who cares indeed? “You know, I can still get that changeover. Go all the way. I think that’s what St. Cyr meant. It doesn’t matter to me any more what I look like, but I’d be perceived as normal by others. Me like that and you with a wig and we could go places and do things without a whole army of security people.”
“Oh, no. I will not give you a chance to be a voyeur in the ladies’ rooms of the world. I think you are perfect just the way you are, and I would be content right now if this, right here, went on forever. We have earned it. What I see in your eyes in more than enough of the world for me.”
He grabbed her, and held her close, and kissed her, and they were at it again without benefit of spells or special augmentation. She broke for air and laughed. “We forgot the dildo.”
“Who cares?” he retorted, and kissed her again.