Alaskan Fury (17 page)

The djinni’s amusement was
unmistakable.  He gave a slight nod of his head.  “That would be appreciated,
mon Dhi’b.”

Grunting, she worked her way
forward through the snow-dusted brush until she came into contact with a likely
ley line and followed it through the forest until she came to a nexus, sixty
feet below the fallen leaves and frozen mosses.  “She glanced over her
shoulder.  “Will this work?” she asked, gesturing at the place beneath her
feet.

The djinni glanced at the
repetitive Northlander forest and brought his hand to his chin in consideration. 
“No, I want it three fingers to the left.”  He gestured.

She raised a brow at that.  “You
are
in a good mood, djinni.”

‘Aqrab grinned, his teeth almost
blinding in his face.  “A good bargain has that effect on me, mon Dhi’b.”  Then
he crossed his arms over his bare chest and waited, towering in the forest
behind her like an obsidian statue in blue silk.

Closing her eyes, Kaashifah
returned to her task.  Without the heat of battle to quicken her thoughts, it
took several moments to reach the crystalline core of her center.  Once she was
there, she slipped into her power-well, a tornado of searing white energy
trapped within, most of which was hidden from her by an opaque black screen of
the Pact of the Realms.  Taking a wisp of the outer edges with her, she sank
her consciousness downward, sinking a tendril of awareness through the earth,
into the nexus at her feet.  Instantly, her body began to hum with the extra
energy, powering her for the task she attempted next.

Visualizing the forest around
her, Kaashifah envisioned a bubble rising from the earth, pushing upward, a
hill-shaped cavern of dirt.  Once she had a firm picture in her mind, she sent
her energy into it.  Almost immediately, the ground beneath her began to rumble
and move.  In a distant corner of her mind, she felt the djinni back up.

Several spruce and birch trees
groaned and leaned to the side as the bubble took their roots with them,
tugging them upward as it expanded.  She kept going well after she would have
stopped in the past, expending the extra effort and making it larger than
usual, to give the djinni
plenty
of room to avoid her inside, now that
she could no longer keep him in the Fourth Lands with the threat of shadow.

Then, once Kaashifah was
satisfied with the size of the hill, she released the image, and the bubble
stopped growing.  Taking a moment to catch her breath, she turned and picked
her way down the hill’s northern slope to stop in front of the djinni, who was
eying her as if she’d grown the twisted horns of an addax.  “Did you need to
make it so
big
, mon Dhi’b?”

She grunted.  “It all looks the
same from the sky.”

“It looks like a meteor hit,” he
muttered, indicating the leaning trees.

“They are looking for a djinni,
not a meteor,” Kaashifah said, stepping to the base of the bubble and
harnessing the Third Lander just long enough to dig out an entrance through
which she could crawl through, intentionally leaving it small, in the
off-chance the djinni would take the hint.

Unfortunately, he did not.  He
merely slipped realms and appeared on the inside, a flame dancing in his palm,
as she was still crawling on her hands and knees through the opening.

“Spacious,” he commented, looking
up at the cavernous ceiling.  Even standing, it soared a good three feet over
his head.

It was a trick that Kaashifah had
learned from the fey, and one that had served her well over three thousand
years of hiding.  “I was giving you plenty of space,” she muttered, throwing
some moss over the entrance to cover it.  “When shall you begin profaning my
hand?”

The djinni stiffened, his eyes
gaining luminescence, and in the otherworldly echo of the Fourth Lands, he
boomed, “You have reset your seven days.”

Kaashifah felt her face heating. 
“That wasn’t an insult.”

“The Fourthlander Law is utterly
unbiased,” ‘Aqrab said, once the light faded from his eyes.  Smirking, he
continued, “and it seems to think it was.”

“It was a
statement
of
fact
,”
she cried.  “My body is pure, while yours is not.  By touching me, you—”

“You have reset your seven days,”
the djinni boomed.  Then, relaxing, he leaned back against the wall of their
abode and peered at her over the flame in his palm.

“It’s
fact
!” she cried. 
“A Fury is pure, by her very nature.  The touch of…men…profanes us.”

“You have reset your seven
days.”  Once the magic passed, the djinni just grinned at her.  “If that is so,
perhaps we should avoid fulfilling our last bargain.  I wouldn’t want to do
anything that would ‘profane’ you, little wolf.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. 
“You’ve done it daily, for three thousand years.”

“You have reset your seven days,”
the djinni boomed.  Then, once he had regained control of himself, he brought
his other hand up and peered at the backs of his fingernails in the light of
his flame.  “Seven days,” he commented, “is going to take centuries, at this
pace.”

She glared.  “You intentionally
make it take fact for insults.”

‘Aqrab laughed as if he
considered that ridiculous.  “Like I said, mon Dhi’b.  I have no control over
Fourthlander Law.  It is a power unto itself, and it is completely unbiased. 
If it thinks you are insulting me, than you most assuredly are.”

Kaashifah glared at him in the
dim darkness a long moment, then said, “I will make a light.  Kneel so I may
stand on your back.”

The djinni, still wrapped in his
own smug satisfaction, said, “I think, today, I will
lift
you up.  By
your own hand, you made it much too high for my back to suffice.  Besides, I’ve
always found it slightly…demeaning…to have you tread on me.”  He crushed the
flame in his palm and took a step towards her.

Eyes widening, Kaashifah stumbled
backwards and said, “You will do no such thi—”

The djinni grabbed her and easily
hefted her upwards, so that her head was only inches beneath the ceiling.  She
froze, utterly horrified by the places he was touching her, too distracted to
concentrate.

“The longer it takes you to affix
our light,” the djinni noted against her hip, “the longer I get to hold you,
mon Dhi’b.”

Swallowing hard, Kaashifah
somehow found the willpower to press her palm to the ceiling, though returning
to her center was a hundred times more difficult with the djinni’s hot body
wrapped around her legs and thighs.  Once she did, she had to try several times
to sink a sphere of energy into the ceiling and set it aglow, losing her
control over the orb several times in her distraction.

Eventually, taking much longer
than she would have liked, she succeeded in casting the dome-shaped cavern in a
searing white light.  “Now put me down!” she cried, doing her best not to
squirm.

‘Aqrab did as he was told, gently
alighting her upon the soft dirt beside him.  A bit discomfited, Kaashifah went
to the wall furthest from him and sat down to collect herself.  She’d rarely
been this rattled in her life, and their journey had just
begun
.  When
she looked up, she found that the djinni had crossed his arms once more and was
surveying her from his mountainous height.  “Whenever you’re ready, little
wolf.”

She grimaced at the idea of
letting him touch her again, but really, what could he do to her hand?

Probably lots of things,
the cautious part of her brain warned her.  She cursed herself for not putting
more limits on the djinni’s ‘to my satisfaction.’  Still, she could always tug
her hand away if the defilement became too much, and aside from her pride,
there would be nothing lost that a few hours of prayer would not cure. 

Prayer which, she had decided,
after losing both her pendant and finding herself sprawled naked upon the
djinni’s disgusting body in the same night, she would have to delay for later,
for without her shadows to guard her, she did not see a sustained period of
purity in her near future.

“Do your worst, djinni,” she
muttered.  “But keep in mind,” she said, meeting his eyes with deadly warning,
“I am aware of the delicate nature of the male anatomy, and if my hand happens
to venture too close, I might not be able to control my impulse to dismantle
certain…appendages.”

The djinni eyed her like a
caracal eying a fox.  “Do you think I’m a fool?”

“I’m simply stating my own
proclivities,” she said with a shrug, then extended her hand.

The djinni stared at her arm as
if it were the sinuous form of a cobra.  Almost reluctantly, he moved forward
and lowered himself to a seated position beside her.  Still, he gave her a wary
look.  “I offer you no harm, mon Dhi’b.”

She snorted.  “Just find your
satisfaction and be done with it.”  She turned away to watch the wall, deciding
she’d rather not watch the djinni besmirch her.

Thus, she was somewhat surprised
with the gentleness with which the djinni took her hand and began tracing its
lines with his hot fingers.  She flinched, but said nothing as he began running
the pad of his thumb across her the back of her hand, circling every joint,
following the lines of the tendons with the same tenderness she had seen him
give his would-be lovers.  Gritting her teeth, she continued to stare at the
wall.

She felt his big body move, then,
and felt his lips brush against her knuckles.  Biting down something unkind,
Kaashifah ignored him.  Let him
suckle
her fingers, for all she cared. 
There was nothing he could do to her hand that could compare to the disgrace of
holding her naked body against him, flesh-to-flesh.

‘Aqrab continued to trace the
back of her hand, seemingly learning every curve.  Then, ever-so-tenderly, he
flipped her hand over, so that her palm was exposed to him.  Kaashifah
grimaced, preferring that the djinni keep his ministrations to the less
delicate flesh atop her hand, but not about to rob him of his ‘satisfaction.’ 
She was hungry, and the djinni’s mention of meals had left the gnawing in her
gut almost unbearable.

“You have pretty hands, mon
Dhi’b,” the djinni told her softly.  Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she
heard him wince and add, “When they’re not covered in blood.”

“They’re hands,” Kaashifah
muttered at the wall.  A Fury did
not
have pretty hands.

“I never noticed how small they
were, before this,” the djinni seemed to breathe.  “Look.”  She felt him hold
her own hand out for her perusal.

“I’d rather not,” Kaashifah
gritted, staring at the wall.  “Just finish, damn you.”

‘Aqrab heaved a huge sigh behind
her, then she felt him move again as he drew her arm back. 

With delicate care, the djinni
used one enormous thumb to hold her fingers stretched open in his cupped hand, tightening
the skin of her palm.  Then he began tracing a firelands-warmed finger lightly across
the sensitive ridges and whorls he had exposed there.

Electric, tingling waves shot up
her arm with his touch, racing through her chest and down her spine, staggering
her heart.  Kaashifah gasped and jerked to face him in surprise, thinking he
had cast some spell on her.

The djinni met her stare and
blinked, a hint of shock in his violet eyes.  A moment later, his hand
tightened upon hers and his body stiffened as Fourthlander Law boomed through
him, “I have touched your hand to my satisfaction, fulfilling your side of the
bargain.”

And, true to his word, the djinni
summoned his power and provided her with a bloody sack.  As he lowered it to
the ground before her, Kaashifah shook out her hand, opening and closing her
fingers against the strange leftover tingling sensation.  Had he used some form
of Fourthlander magic on her?  She hadn’t
felt
a Fourthlander weave. 
Where had the sensations come from?  She caught the djinni watching her, a
mixture of curiosity and contemplation in his eyes, and she stopped flexing her
fingers.  “What did you do to me?” she demanded.

“I touched you,” the djinni said.

“What
magic
?” Kaashifah
snapped.

“No magic,” he said, still eying
her thoughtfully. 

She did not like the look he was
giving her.  Wrinkling her nose at him, she took the sack and unwound the thong
holding it shut, then peered inside to get a look at its contents.  It
looked
like to be filled with the succulent meat of a cow, in the cuts she had
requested.

“Is it poisoned?” she finally
asked.

“That would negate my opportunity
to bargain with you again, mon Dhi’b,” the djinni commented, still looking at
her with contemplation.  “Are you
ticklish
, mon Dhi’b?”

Kaashifah snorted.  “Of course
not.”

Yet the infernal beast was not
satisfied.  “And how many times has someone tried, for you to be so certain?”

None, of course.  But Kaashifah
wasn’t about to tell him that.  Let him think what he would.  A Fury was
not
ticklish.  The mere idea was preposterous.  Instead of responding, she busied
herself with removing the slabs of beef from the sack he’d given her and
evaluating how best to cook them.

‘Aqrab sat back and watched her
as she retrieved enough wood to build a small fire in the center of the cavern
and climbed atop the roof to poke a hole in the ceiling for smoke to escape. 
The entire time he watched her, ‘Aqrab said nothing, looking preoccupied.

By the time she’d lit a fire, the
Third Lander was pacing wildly at the back of her mind, the smells of raw meat
giving him strength.  She spitted the hunks of flesh to roast over the fire and
hesitated to watch the smoke drifting upward through the falling snow.  Night
had fallen, so she wasn’t worried about the smoke being seen from a distance. 
Still, the whispers she had heard from the helicopter bothered her.  What was
infrared, and how had it located the djinni in the half-realm?