Alaskan Fury (14 page)

Now, feeling the nakedness of her
bare neck, more than anything else in her life, she wanted to make that wish. 
Slowly, she took a shuddering breath.  Touched by a man’s…filth…and losing her
pendant to the Inquisition, in one day.  She’d never felt so thoroughly
despoiled in her life.  She avoided looking at the deeper blackness of the
djinni’s groin, which he had still refused to cover, and fought tears as she
painstakingly studied the ragged root system twisting into the walls of
whatever hole the djinni had tucked them into, trying to regain control of her
inner turmoil.

“Where are we?” she finally
managed, her eyes burning with loss.

“Your guess is as good as mine,
mon Dhi’b,” the djinni said.  “I took us north and east.  More east than north,
in places, because I was avoiding the creeks.  I couldn’t cross them with you
slung over my back.  Water drains my strength, and with the Third Lander in
your veins, you are…heavy.”

She took a breath meant to
stabilize her, but it came out as a sob.  The djinni had saved her.  Slung her,
a Fury, over his back and carried her around like a sack of grain pilfered from
an enemy storehouse.  It was yet another humiliation to shatter her this
wretched day, and she felt as if she were desperately grabbing at dissolving
wisps of herself, carried away by the horrors of the past two days. 

She’d lost her Lord’s symbol. 
The last thing that she had of being a Fury.  Her entire being, everything she
had once been, was now just a memory.  She hunched inward as her shoulders
began to quiver, trying to protect what was left.

She didn’t realize the djinni had
slid toward her until his hot arm slipped tentatively around her shoulders and
he pulled her tenderly to his chest.  “We’ll get it back, mon Dhi’b.”

And, so grateful was she to hear
those words, to have another barrier between herself and the world that had
stripped her bare, Kaashifah simply nodded and let him hold her.

Imelda shut off the television in
disgust.  Weather forecasters were backtracking, scrambling to make sense of
the sudden appearance of one of the most violent Chinooks in Alaskan history,
which was even then ripping pieces of the roof off of the local high school. 
The power had gone out six times in the last three hours, and the radio told
her that the winds, while sudden, looked to be there to stay, at least for the
foreseeable future.

“Those winds,” Jacquot said,
having paused in the common room long enough to catch the last of the
broadcast, “they seem to have originated around Skwentna?”

Imelda looked over her shoulder,
giving her scout a guarded glance.  The last thing she wanted was to give the
highly-pious man another reason to look at her as a Chosen.  She had enough
trouble as it was organizing and operating the most multi-national conglomeration
of customs, languages, and nationalities in the North American section of the
Order. 

A conglomeration that, she was
sure, Inquisidora Zenaida had painstakingly pieced together for her from every
spare loner, hothead, and misfit she could find.  No, Imelda decided, she did
not need an overly-excitable Jacquot babbling to every member of her team of
angels and Signs of God.  As Inquisidora, she already had enough trouble
gaining their trust.  The last thing she needed was for Zenaida to catch wind
of it and start whispers of false signs and grasps for power.

“They started in the ocean,
Jacquot,” she said, carefully laying the remote beside the television.  “All
Chinooks begin there.”

“I heard the forecaster say that
they were rare at this time of the year,” Jacquot insisted, watching her
closely.

Imelda gave her scout a long
look.  He was still dressed in his black combat gear, ever-ready to jump in a
truck or onto a plane at a moment’s notice.  “It’s more of a winter
occurrence,” she admitted.  “It is rare to hit in the fall, and with such
force.”

Jacquot held her gaze a moment
longer, then nodded.  “Herr Drescher suggested you would need a driver to Eagle
River, as he still cannot fly.”

Imelda winced, her eyes catching
upon his all-black garb, knowing that it would not carry the inconspicuousness
she needed.  “Is Giuseppe unavailable?”

“Monsieur Rizzo joins Herr
Drescher in confession and penance, Inquisidora.  He felt he shared Herr
Drescher’s…ardor…and seeks forgiveness for the act.”

Imelda sighed.  Such was typical
of her Italian copilot and bodyguard.  Pious to the point of disability, he not
only repented for his
own
sins, but for those of the people
around
him.  “Very well,” she told the Frenchman.  “Find something less striking to
wear.  I will meet you at the car in half an hour.”

Jacquot bowed low.  “As you
command, Inquisitrice.”  Spinning, he strode off to his bedroom in the same
long, loping stride that carried him silently through the forest when hunting
the creatures invading their realm.

Four more pockets of them had
been found to the north and west, before the winds had forced them to give up
the search.  Even now, over thirty bodies warmed the racks in the basement, so
many that Zenaida had made an emergency call for another storage area to be
built, while they were sorted and interrogated.

That the Segunda Inquisidora
insisted on keeping them alive when it would be so much easier—and
safer
,
considering the capabilities of some of their charges—to kill them now and
complete their sacred mission to God rankled Imelda.  She did not sign on with
the Order so that she could watch sentient creatures writhe upon the rack as
they were bled for their powers, beasts and demons though they were.  Her
mission was to
cleanse
the Realm, not to sully it with the spread of
their magics.  Even if they were used by the proper hands of the Church, it
felt
wrong
.

And, if her Padre’s assertions
were correct, that was exactly what Imelda was destined to do. 
Purify
the Order.  Remove the last of the creatures’ taint from its ranks.  After all,
while it may have been necessary to fight the demons’ magic with their own
powers, back when their corruption reigned and the world was a horrifying place
of death and darkness, the Church had been well on its way to finally winning
the battle for centuries.  That this final pocket in Alaska was proving to be
so thickly-populated—unlike the claims of her fellow Inquisitors that the
beasts’ influence was spreading—only suggested to Imelda that they had gotten
more desperate, and were congregating en masse in the final lands still left
available to them. 

They are running out of places
to hide,
Imelda thought, with a mixture of satisfaction and regret.  Soon,
the Realm would belong to God’s true agents once more, and the monsters she
fought, generations from now, would be a distant memory.  When that happened,
Imelda and her Order would become obsolete. 
That
was why she fought. 
She wanted that peace of God to reign, that surrender to truth to ease the
hearts and minds of the people.  She wanted the fear of demons and dragons and
vamp-kin to fade with the last vestiges of her Order, once the final beasts had
been hunted and dispatched.

She hated that Zenaida made it a
production.  Each Inquisition…  She took great pride in it, carving their
profanation from their flesh.  It was an art, to her.  One she had been developing
for several decades.

Sometimes, Imelda wondered if
that was why the Order suffered a magus in their midst.  While cruel and
unnecessarily brutal, Zenaida was unparalleled at her ability to get even the
most repugnant entities to repent, and in doing so, wrenched more of their
magics from their bodies than any other Inquisitor before they were put to
rest.

Still ruminating on that, Imelda
met Jacquot in the garage early and, while he still wore a black T-Shirt, she was
satisfied to see he at least wore a baseball cap and dirtied blue-jeans.  “You
know where we’re going?” she asked, climbing into the back seat.

Looking at her through the
rearview mirror, Jacquot said, “Herr Drescher said you wish to consult your
Padre, ma mie.”

Imelda nodded.  “And you know
where he lives?”

“Les montagnes,” Jacquot replied,
making an impatient gesture.  “Highland Road.  At the edge of Eagle River.”

She motioned for him to start the
car.  Usually, she landed at the large mountain meadow outside Padre Vega’s
retirement home up in the winding South Fork area off of Highland Road, but
with the winds being as they were, she would have to settle with a drive.

As soon as they backed out of the
garage, Imelda understood why Herr Drescher had refused to fly.  Rain whipped
sideways across their windshield, buffeting the car in bursts as they pulled up
the long driveway to the winding, narrow road leading back to the highway.  On
other days, Imelda would have had Jacquot take a right, rather than a left, and
would have spent a few hours praying by the serene, glacial blue waters of
Eklutna Lake.

Today, however, she needed an
answer to the words that had hounded her ever since she’d seen one of God’s
messengers in all of her glory. 
Our sister of vengeance.
  What did it
mean?  Surely a symbol that she was on the right path.  But vengeance…against
whom?  Against the Lord’s enemies?  Were there others the angel wanted her to
vanquish?

The trip down the Glenn Highway
had the tinted-windowed SUV weaving with every gust of the wind, and several
times, Imelda saw Jacquot’s face harden with concentration as he fought to keep
the vehicle on the road.  Small dead leaves blew across the highway in sodden
gusts, all the same bland orange and yellow color, for this wretchedly cold
land could support none of the maple or oak that gave the rest of the United
States its fiery glow in the last months of fall.

The drive up Highland Road and to
the home of Padre Vega was even more frightening.  In the mountains, the winds
were stronger and more violent, and more than once, the car was buffeted at a
steep dropoff, where nothing stood between the car and the hillside below but
air.  When Jacquot finally brought the SUV to a halt in the unassuming driveway
of the small, one-story, tin-roofed home—more a cabin than a house—Imelda was
happy to get out of the car.  As soon as she opened the door, however, she
almost lost it to the wind.  She had to hold her breath and duck out into the
rain unprotected, for an umbrella, at that point, was simply useless.

Padre Vega stood on the wooden
porch of his small home, shielded by the eaves and the wall of his house,
giving her a sympathetic look as she held an old magazine over her head and
raced to the door, fighting the strange impulse to stop breathing as the wind
sucked her breath away.

“You look tired, Sister,” her
Padre said, ushering her inside and hastily shutting the door against the gale
behind them.

“Long night,” Imelda admitted,
reverting to Spanish.  “How has retirement treated you, Father?”

Father Vega gave that humble grin
she so loved and said, “Well, up until the frost killed them, I was enjoying my
pea garden.  Alaska can grow some wonderful peas.”

Imelda allowed herself to share
his smile.  Somehow, her Padre was the only person she’d ever known who could
make her relax just by his very presence.  “Gardening has treated you well,
then?”

“Oh, very much so,” Father Vega
said, smiling.  “As has fishing, and golf.”

Imelda frowned.  “Alaska has a
golf course?”  Somehow, she had never considered this land of wilderness,
grizzly bears, and demons to maintain a decent green.

“Several of them,” he agreed.  “I
use the one up near Arctic Valley.  Less hassle than driving to Wasilla.”  He
gestured to the two couches occupying the front room as he moved to the
kitchen.  “Sit, sit.  What will you have?  Tea?  Coffee?  Soda?”

She sighed and slumped into her
favorite chair.  “Coffee, Father.  I’m running on three hours of sleep and my
head is killing me.”

Father Vega hesitated at the
counter, giving her an anxious look.  “They work you too hard,” he ventured. 
“Has your new medicine helped?”  As he spoke, he retrieved one of his Thomas
Jefferson mugs from a cabinet and poured her a cup. 

Imelda scoffed, even then seeing
the fuzzy shards of glass at the edges of her vision, almost like a trillion
tiny wormy strings, forever eating at the corners of her mind.  “No more than
the last.  This doctor insisted I change my diet.  Says they’re probably being caused
by a reaction to something I’m eating, hence why no one has caught it yet.  I
have an appointment next week to test for food allergies.”

Her Padre gave her a hopeful
look.  “That sounds promising.”

Imelda snorted.  “I’ve heard
enough doctors assure me of so many ‘cures’ now that I’m not about to get my
hopes up.  Whatever their diagnosis, I must keep moving on with my life, or it
would cripple me.” 

Her father gave her a sympathetic
look.  Gently, he offered, “I pray you unravel the cause of your pain, Sister. 
No one should be made to suffer so.”

Imelda waved his statement off dismissively
and took the mug of coffee he offered her.  “After three decades, I’ve grown
used to it.  Nowadays, with the medicine, it’s an inconvenience, nothing more.” 
She twisted the mug in her hand to peer at the writing on its back.  Her Padre
was famous for his Jefferson mugs.  He’d collected them since he’d taken his
robes.  Imelda examined the quote, out of habit. 

“
…a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as
necessary in the political world as storms in the physical,”
she
repeated, turning the cup to read the words.

Father Vega, a stalwart lover of
Jefferson, smiled.  “Quite the rabble-rouser, that one.”

Imelda grunted and glanced at his
cup.  Father Vega held it out for her.  “The tree of liberty must be refreshed
from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” she read, when he twisted
it so she could see.  Meeting his soft brown eyes, she said, “You know, Father,
there are those of the Order who might frown upon your fascination with the
man, genius that he was.”

Father Vega chuckled.  “Then it’s
good you’re not one of them.”

The fact that her Padre collected
the sayings of Jefferson was a quirk of Father Vega’s that left her inwardly
anxious it might be taken as idolation by those who didn’t know him, but Imelda
held her tongue.  They’d had this argument too many times, and she was too
tired to press matters today.

Finishing her coffee with a sigh,
she slumped into her chair and looked up at the spackled ceiling.  Father Vega,
having known her since she was a child, having
moved
to
Alaska
to
continue to act as her priest and confidant when he had no duty to do so,
waited in silence, allowing her to collect her thoughts.  Imelda listened to
the wail of the wind outside, then finally, just shook her head.  “Perhaps it’s
simply the lack of sleep, but I’m at a loss, Father.”