Free 2 The Judas Kiss by Angella Graff Page B

turn it off I would; I don’t like it.”
                  “Why not?” she asked with a wry grin.
                  Jude looked at her and mimicked her smile.  “Because they have nothing good to say.  It’s all selfish dribble, begging God to pay their mortgage, stop their addictions, make their children behave, bring them someone to love at night.  They’re never willing to help themselves, and it’s pathetic.”
                  She looked mildly surprised by the answer, and after a moment, she threw back her head and laughed.  “Well, I think I might like you after all, which is good, because your buddy over there is a serious drag.”
                  “He means well,” Jude said, finally turning his head far to the left to catch a glimpse of his companion who lay on a small cot, his pants seared, skin bright red with burns.  He looked back up at the god and lifted an eyebrow.  “You blew up our apartment.”
                  “I did,” she said, spreading her hands out.  “You’ll have to forgive me for the dramatics, but the pair of you have proven fairly difficult to capture.”
                  “Mark is clever,” Jude said with a shrug.  He struggled against the bonds a little, finding them itchy and pointless.  He wasn’t going to run, but he knew there was no way he could make her understand that.  “He’s also protective of my life, for some reason.”
                  “And you’re not?”
                  “Why protect something that doesn’t need protecting?” Jude asked quietly.  “I’m not going to die, and if by some miracle I did, it would be a sweet, blessed relief from this hell.”
                  “And they said you’re the crazy one,” she said with a laugh.
                  Jude shrugged and looked to his right where a small desk sat, a large stack of paper sitting in the center.  “So, Nike, is it?”
                  “Very good,” she said. 
                  “You want Mark to write out his story.  Our story.”
                  Nike’s grin widened, the smile threatening to split Abby’s face in two.  She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back against the brick wall with one foot propped up near her thigh.  “Yes I do.”
                  “He won’t,” Jude said.  “You realize that pain doesn’t really affect us in the same way as it affects humans.  He won’t die, and he won’t get tired.  Eventually the human body you’re borrowing will exhaust itself, forcing your god consciousness to exit.  Mark will kill your vessel and you and I both know you don’t want that.  You wouldn’t have gone through such trouble to save her if she didn’t matter to you.”  Jude eyed the burn scars still marring the arm of the human body Nike possessed.
                  Nike covered the scars with one hand, her eyes narrow.  “You see, that’s what I thought.  I thought, well there’s nothing I can do to hurt him enough to make him talk… or… write, as it were.  I thought, what can I possibly do?”  She approached Jude, kneeling down in front of him and put her hands high up on his thighs.  “Then I realized that the key was you.  I mean granted, I need you and your amazing gifts once I get your little friend there to create a new religious movement for me, but more importantly, I need him to sit at that desk over there and write his little black heart out.”
                  Jude looked down at her hands resting on his thighs, and then back up at her face.  Her eyes were low lidded and mouth hung slightly open.  She was trying to seduce him, he realized with some amusement.  “The key is me,” he repeated.
                  “The key is you,” she said, squeezing his legs gently with the tips of her fingers.  She crept her hands