FYI – there's a new footnote on the previous chapter regarding the "immortality ritual."
The act of making Cassie immortal had taken a lot of out of Azazeal, so they decided to take off for a while to be on their own for a couple of weeks. They wouldn't tell anyone exactly where they were going or how long exactly they planned to be away.
"Well, what am I supposed to do while you two are gone?" Lucifer asked, annoyed. It was Lucifer's first and only question when Cassie told him they were leaving.
"I suppose you'll have to ask Elizabeth, won't you?" Cassie said with a smirk.
"She only uses me for one thing, my dear," he responded suggestively, "but I have to admit it is more exhausting than playing with humans."
"Oh, I seriously doubt that," she said, meaning that she thought that Elizabeth would keep him busy with other things too, after all she'd been dreaming up things for Lucifer to do for longer than Cassie had been.
"Cassie, if you're not utterly spent afterwards you're not doing it right," he said in a low rumble and walked off before Cassie could respond with something sufficently scathing and she lost yet another word battle with him.
Cassie and Azazeal initially retired to a lonely castle in Ireland, but soon both of them became restless and wanted some activity. Cassie suggested Las Vegas, they hadn't been there yet, and Malachi and Ella had said it was fun. Uncharacteristically but not unnaturally, they drank, gambled, and went to strip clubs, spending a considerable amount of money, that really amounted to nothing when you knew how much money Azazeal had, and that made it all so much more fun. The two of them laughed and enjoyed themselves much more than they ever had before and had the pleasant opportunity to be seen by others around them as a normal, if wild couple.
A few days after Cassie and Azazeal left, Lucifer disappeared. Elizabeth let him go, knowing that he needed some exciting activity after having gone so quickly from being extremely busy with Cassie and Azazeal to a quieter life. She knew he was also stressed about the question of making her immortal. She could have come up with something to keep him occupied but she thought it was important the he come to his own way of dealing with this kind of thing. She expected that Cassie, Azazeal, Lucifer, and herself would spend many, many years gallivanting about as they had recently but there would still be times when their activity would slow.
She enjoyed her time with her ranch staff and her beloved horses that she hadn't spent much time with in a while, but with Cassie and Azazeal also gone, she quickly became lonely. She and Lucifer hadn't spent this much time apart since he'd disappeared to learn self-control. She then realized that it wouldn't have mattered who was around, she simply missed Lucifer and nothing was going to make that feeling go away but him. She actually liked that notion, and she sadly but patiently waited for him to come back, as she knew that he eventually would.
When Cassie and Azazeal were done with Vegas, Cassie got it into her head to do things she never would have considered as a mere mortal.
"Now why would you want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane?" Azazeal asked seriously. At this well-known question, Cassie burst out in laughter.
"Particularly when I can fly. Stop laughing!" Azazeal said with a smile.
"I don't know. There're just things I like to try. Come on!"
After having 'convinced' the instructor to let her jump without a partner since it was her first time, Azazeal watched from the ground as she jumped out of an airplane and only felt a tiny bit of anxiety until the parachute opened. She was all aglow when she got back to him and he was please that she had fun, but still pretended to think it was ridiculous.
Lucifer appeared abruptly in Luke's room in the late evening.
"Let's get you packed and where's our lovely Sara?"
"Um, what?" Luke responded from his bed where he'd just settled down to sleep.
"The three of us are going to have a little…well a lot, of fun, so hurry up. I'll get Sara," and he quickly disappeared, accosted Sara and returned with her confused but with a small bag packed.
Luke had decided after a brief reflection that there was little he could do to stop this and it would no doubt be fun, so he'd put some things together and was also ready to go.
Grabbing both of their hands Lucifer whisked them away to Thailand where the first order of business, after squaring away their lodging, was to get massages. There were, of course, a myriad of other activities that Thailand was known for and he indulged Luke and Sara's fascinated desires, but kept his behavior fairly innocent.
"When are you two going to get together?" He asked abruptly after they left some kind of 'show.'
"Aren't either of you even a bit curious?" He continued.
"What do you mean, dad?"
"Oh, come on, you've both tried everything else. Leave nothing unconquered!" he said and then was distracted by a shop on the other side of the street they were walking on and they followed him in trying not to look at each other.
The next day…afternoon, after waking up in a hot hotel room, they removed to Amsterdam to sample the delights of that fine city.
Cassie's next idea was for Azazeal and he actually liked it more that even she expected. They bought an expensive sports car, a black Lotus Elise, and tore up the Autobahn. You wouldn't think angels could drive, and actually Azazeal couldn't at first, never having bothered with it, but after a quick, too quick, lesson from Cassie he was as good as an Indy car driver. She screamed in terror and delight as they careened around corners and made the other drivers look like pedestrians.
This, of course, lead to the idea of playing a bit of James Bond and his girl in Monte Carlo. Cassie was amused by the fact that Azazeal had actually seen several of the movies and remembered far more of the details then he probably should have admitted to but Cassie thought it was great.
Obviously, Azazeal in a tuxedo and Cassie in a slinky dress made in nearly impossible for them to concentrate on the high, high stakes poker that Cassie tried to get him not to cheat at but he was just too natural at reading the players. It didn't take long for them to end up back in their room, where Cassie showed him that she knew a thing or two about playing it rough.
After a couple of nights in Amsterdam, Paris was the next stop for Lucifer and the kids. In the morning following a wild night in Paris, as they sat at a café eating breakfast, Luke and Sara watched as Lucifer sipped at his coffee but mangled rather than ate the croissant in front of him. Luke and Sara glanced at each other and finally Luke said, "What's wrong with you this morning?"
Lucifer thought about it for longer than they would have expected. This excursion had been started, as they always were, by a feeling of restlessness but he just wasn't finding the peace that he generally did and it wasn't because he was being relatively good rather than bad. Finally he looked up and said almost pitifully, "I miss your mother."
Luke smiled knowingly at this and said, "Then why are you here?"
"I don't know," he replied with a shake of his head and a smile of his own. "I trust you two can take care of yourselves and get yourselves back to school," he said and they nodded like school children to tease him. He rolled his eyes and disappeared.
Luke smiled wistfully after him and Sara said, "That was strange."
"Not really, he's always loved her more than he loves me."
After a pause, Sara said, "I'm sorry."
"Oh, I didn't mean it that way. He loves me as much as a father can…but my mother? He adores her and he needs her. He is lost without her." Luke was looking inward as he said this and his smiling face had a touch of longing in it that Sara caught but had not expected.
She wasn't exactly surprised but seeing this side of Luke and his father reminded her how much she had liked Luke as a child and made her think that maybe he wasn't just superficial after all.
"Hey, let's walk around Paris a bit before we get back to school," she suggested, "I don't think one more day is going to get us into too much more trouble."
"Alright," he said.
In an attempted to do something a bit more relaxing, Cassie and Azazeal went to Maui again, but ended up back in Africa where they set up a camp of sorts in a remote area. Azazeal was pleased at this acknowledgment of their first trip here and they spent a few days there with some very silly animals who seemed to enjoy the fact that they weren't scared of or filled with the desire to eat Cassie and Azazeal.
"Azazeal, that elephant won't stop following me," Cassie mildly complained after a short walk around their camp the day before they were going to leave for home.
"He likes you."
"Well, I'm taken," she said.
"Yes, you are," he said, "What's on the agenda for today.
"Well, as a service to these fine animals, I think we should put a good scare into the local poachers, what to you think?"
"Inciting terror is very fun, especially in the wicked, I know just the thing." he replied.
Lucifer arrived in the entryway of their ranch house and the place was very quiet. For a second he worried that she wasn't here and he'd have to wait for her, but then he heard some comforting clanging from the kitchen and walked towards it. When Elizabeth turned and saw him her face brightened and she went quickly over to him, nearly knocking him over as she hugged him.
"I'm not in trouble?" he asked amused at her reaction.
"Luke's been reporting on you," she said, her head still pressed against his chest.
"What a dutiful son," he laughed.
"But I have been shamefully neglected," she said, looking up at him with a pout, "I only had Erumel to keep me company and I had to sleep all alone," she said and let her mind openly run over suggestive thoughts.
"Careful, woman, there is only a small shred of decency keeping me from taking you right here on the kitchen floor."
She looked around them at their location and said, "It's a good choice of location actually. I believe this particular spot is yet un-christened."
He smiled, kissing her deeply and taking her up in his strong arms. This started a few days of sweet lovemaking that stemmed not only from passion but also from an irresistible desire to remain as close together as possible.
At one point during their period of blissful intimacy, Lucifer looked at her quietly for several minutes and finally said, "If you want, I will do it."
Elizabeth smiled happily and gave him a peck on the lips. She had been hoping he would eventually agree to do what Azazeal had done for Cassie.
"I'm only doing it because I'm weak and selfish and I'd probably break down in a few years anyway," he said a sad smile.
"No, you're doing it because you trust me," she said kindly.
"I should be willing to give you up to make sure that I don't damn you but I can't. If I let you die...It would only be a few days before I would be throwing myself against the gates of heaven trying to get back to you."
"I don't want to be given up, silly," she said trying to cheer him up, "I just want to be with you and I don't want to be anywhere where you're not."
He smiled but then he pleaded, "Don't let me mess this up."
"I won't."
He looked at her for another minute and then put his hands on either side of her face. Closing his eyes, she could feel his power rising until suddenly it washed over her like a shock of cold water and just like that it was over. She gave him a 'That's it?' look.
"It's not as difficult as some people make it out to be," he said in prideful yet playful tone.
"It didn't make you weak?"
"Of course not!" he declared.
Elizabeth caught his currently egotistical attention and gave him a sulty look before saundering off to the bedroom where he, of course, followed. Breaking their recent pattern of tenderness, they devoured each other until they were both defenseless. In the end, Lucifer lost himself to the quivering adoration and uncontrollable ecstasy that she triggered in him when she created this level of pleasure and he ended up expending all of the restless energy he had left without her even needing to push him.
When the two couples met again after two weeks, they both whispered to each other about the changes in other. Cassie and Azazeal were playful and conspiratorial and couldn't wait to engage in more amusing activity. Elizabeth and Lucifer were uncharacteristically calm, quiet, and cute…exhausted was more like it, and were deemed by Cassie and Azazeal to be no fun. Not that Elizabeth or Lucifer cared. Both couples eventually readjusted back to their more usual states but kept a more than hint of what they'd learned during those two weeks.