Alaskan Fury (34 page)

Her lungs emptied in a scream. 
Whether it was pleasure or shock, she wasn’t sure, but it only made the djinni
chuckle around her nipple.  “Gods, I’ve been wanting to do that for a long
time,” he said, his breath hot on the sudden coolness his mouth left behind. 
He’s
blowing
on it,
she thought, in growing dread.  She felt him take her
nipple again, and froze as a hot tingle shot down her belly to her core.  In a
rising panic, she started to struggle to retrieve herself from her sweater’s
grasp.

The djinni, heedless of her
struggles, started working his mouth down her stomach, in hot kisses that
dipped to her pants, leaving an exquisite, building warmth in their wake.  Then
suddenly the waistband of her jeans was loosening and they were sliding down
her legs, followed by her panties…

“Wait, you can’t—”  Kaashifah had
just managed to wriggle out of the tangle of sweater and bra when she saw the
djinni’s hot mouth drop to her mound and the inexplicable, tingly heat that had
been building suddenly exploded.  Kaashifah’s spine arced as she cried out as
wave after wave of pleasure left her convulsing under him like a dying animal.

At the same time, the djinni’s
eyes were widening and he was staring at her, mouth agape.  Suddenly, his body
went stiff between her legs.  Into her core, he rumbled, “I have pleasured you
to my satisfaction, fulfilling your side of the bargain.”

…Which sent her completely over
the edge again, so long had that place between her legs been untouched.  When
Kaashifah stopped twitching enough to once again become aware of her
surroundings, the djinni was peering down at her in outright shock.  Food and
other items were scattered around the room, but the djinni was kneeling beside
her again.  Before she realized his goal, he lifted a big, hot hand to her
mound and tentatively touched her core with a thumb…

Kaashifah moaned and tried to
flee—but not before he had her body thrashing again, utterly beyond her control. 
And he kept her there, with just a single finger, and, as she rolled and flexed
and moaned beneath him, Kaashifah finally understood what her sisters meant by
losing their power to a man’s touch.  “Stooooop,” she cried, panting, her body
a sweaty mass on the blankets beneath him.  “Bargain…made…food.”  By now, she
was too weak and trembling to push him off of her, and it was all she could do
to regain her breath.

He was still staring at her. 
Sometime during her last set of seizures, the djinni’s expression had changed
from surprise to interest.  She did not, she realized, like the change.  Now he
was watching her reaction like an all-too-curious caracal.  Almost
experimentally, he flicked her core with a thumb, and Kaashifah devolved once
again into uncontrollable spasms on the blankets.

“Djinni…” she gritted, after her
body had finished arcing and moaning.  Trembling, she reached for her sweater.

She only got halfway before he
pressed his thumb to her core and
petted
her, more slowly.

“‘Aqrab!” she gasped, straining,
her hands fisting in the blankets as wave after wave of sensual fire raced up
her spine.  “Ohhh.  Please…”  Her brain was simply shutting down, her body
becoming a feral thing, straining beneath his touch.

“Please what, mon Dhi’b?” he
asked, switching rhythms again, now using a slight tapping that again threw her
over the edge.  “Please continue to pleasure you?”

“Can’t….breathe…” she gasped, as
her body contorted again. 

The djinni was grinning—
grinning
—at
her.  He released her core and drew a finger down her belly…

…and the waves of pleasure hit
her again, wrenching her brain into another Realm.

“Oh my,” the djinni said, as his
fingers began to trace across her breasts, driving her once more over the edge
and keeping her there, “this has
so
many possibilities, mon Dhi’b.”  It
was just his finger across her skin, now, but she couldn’t stop the exquisite
tides racing through her at his touch.  It didn’t matter
where
he
touched her, she found, to her horror.  Every single brush of his skin to hers
made her body shudder and convulse with excruciating pleasure, her muscles and
mind knotting completely beyond her control.

“
So
many…” he whispered,
when a trace down the nape of her neck to her shoulder left her writhing and
moaning, begging him to let her rest.  But he didn’t.  He kept tracing her,
exploring
…

“
Release
me, you miserable
creature!” she finally managed to gasp, when he paused to let her breathe.

“You have reset your seven
days.”  Sometime throughout her ordeal, the djinni had leaned across her body,
holding himself up with one hand as he traced her idly with the other.  Now he
met her eyes, and there was tenderness there.  After a long moment, he said
softly, “You really had no idea, did you?”

“That a man could pleasure a
woman?” she panted, too relieved by the respite to complain.

“That you were so sensitive.”  To
prove his point, he gently took her hand and traced a finger across her palm… 
And Kaashifah immediately moaned at the sensations that flooded her body,
racing along her spine, pooling between her thighs.  She flexed against him,
straining against his body, grateful for the resistance. 

He gently brushed his lips
against her hand and released her.  Then, seemingly finished with his torments,
he waited as she panted for breath, his violet eyes much too rapt as he watched
her sweaty chest rise and fall…

“You,” Kaashifah panted, “had
better forget this ever happened, djinni.”  Groaning, she tried to peel herself
from the sweaty blanket, but only succeeded in making it halfway to a seated
position before she flopped back down beneath him.  She settled for dragging
half of the cover over her, to protect her modesty.

“Forget?” he asked innocently. 
“Me?”  He reached over, snagged a cluster of grapes from a pile of fruit, and
idly popped one into his mouth as he stretched out beside her, propped up on an
elbow, violet eyes watching her thoughtfully.

“I
know
that look,”
Kaashifah gasped.  “You’re
plotting
something.”  She pushed a
sweat-soggy strand of hair out of her face.  As dangerously as she could
manage, she growled, “You will
not
use this to your advantage.”

He grinned slowly around his
grape.  Then, glancing down at the cluster in his hand and plucked a few from
the mass.  “A grape, mon Dhi’b?” he offered, holding one out.

“Djinni,” she warned, ignoring
his offering.

“They’re delicious.  A nice
Shirazi tang to them.  Not like the bland, skinless mockeries they grow today.”

“‘Aqrab,” she growled.

Popping a grape into his mouth,
he said in a woeful tone, “Once something has been learned, mon Dhi’b, as much
as a man tries, it cannot be unlearned.”  His mournful tone would have been
more convincing if he hadn’t also had a devilish grin plastered across his
face.  “Especially if that man is a djinni.”  His words—more or less a
threat—released another thrill, and she felt heat once again pool between her
legs. 

I am so screwed
, she
thought.

Imelda slept only two hours that
night.  The rest of the time, she spent lying in bed, staring at the ceiling,
trying to tell herself that she wasn’t hearing voices in the basement. 

There is a foot of insulated,
soundproofed floorspace between me and them
, she told herself, for the
thousandth time. 
I do
not
hear voices.

Yet every time she started to
drift off, the result was the same.  The whimpers, the pleas, the moans and
grunts of anguish seemed to drift into her awareness, until it was all she
could hear, blotting out even the sounds of her own dreams.  She heard the
wereverine’s brazen taunts between screams of agony, the phoenix’s confused voice,
rising in fear and pain, the bastet calling for his children, the various fey,
their tremulous voices alternating between flinging insults and offering
bribes.  Hundreds of voices.  More voices than they held in the prison below,
Imelda knew.

It’s in my head
, Imelda
thought. 

There was one voice in
particular, though, that made her blood feel like acid in her veins when she
heard it.  When it first came, Imelda started awake, heart thundering in her
chest, and laid there in the dark hum of silence, wondering if this was what it
felt like to lose one’s mind.

He’s not in the basement
,
Imelda thought. 
He’s not.

After she heard the voice of her
Padre cracking with tears for the third time that night, however, Imelda
climbed out of bed and threw on her clothes.  She barely took the time to knot the
laces of her boots before she was out the door and rushing down the hall to the
keycode-locked basement.

The basement itself was cool and
quiet.  As she rumbled down the metal staircase, Imelda saw multiple heads lift
in mixed states of disgust and fear.  Mostly fear.  The wereverine was one of
the few who still seemed to be able to manage disgust.  The rest were
too…tired.

…and had been sleeping.

Though Zenaida never turned the
light off in the basement, a tactic that Inquisitors used to disorient their
victims and disrupt their sleep cycles, her fellow Segunda Inquisidora was not
in attendance.

No one had been screaming.  No
one had been whimpering or begging.  And her Padre, after a thorough search of
the premises, was not bound to a rack, slowly bleeding to death for Zenaida’s
magics.

Imelda paused in the hallway
after doing a circuit of the prison.  The phoenix was still unconscious in her
cage, though her naked body showed plenty of signs of…purification.  The
wereverine was still strung up on the rack beside her, his body likewise
covered in welts and cuts—healing slowly, doubtlessly, because Zenaida had been
draining the Third Lander from his veins.

“What the fuck do you want?”

The tremble in the wereverine’s
voice caught Imelda off-guard, and, startled, she met the wereverine’s glare.

There were tears in his eyes.

In that moment, the very
foundation of Imelda’s world took a blow.  This was not the look of a monster
with a soul destined for Satan’s horde.  This was not a demon lusting to
corrupt the souls of innocents.  This was a
man
, and his spirit was
dying.  Slowly.  Her eyes dropped to the bowl beneath his feet.  The crimson
fluid had been emptied recently, for the collection in the basin was much less
than what she had seen the last time she had been here.

Suddenly, a question that she had
always been too afraid to ask finally tumbled from her lips.  “What does she do
with the blood?”

The wereverine’s face, pale with
blood loss, nonetheless tightened in a sneer.  “She drinks it.”

At any other time, Imelda would
have laughed and left the demon to his demise.  But now, a tiny shard of ice
wriggled through her soul and Imelda hesitated.  She glanced again at the bowl
of blood. 
Vampires
and other despicable, cold-dwelling Third Landers
utilized the powers of seiðr in such loathesome ways as consuming a victim’s blood,
not servants of the Lord.  “You said she was a hypocrite,” she said softly.  “What
is she?  What do you smell?”

The wereverine narrowed his eyes
and showed his teeth.  “She ain’t the only hypocrite here, bitch.”

Imelda almost slapped him. 
Almost.  Very slowly, her voice tightly under control, she said, “What is
Zenaida?  Is she human?”

The wereverine snorted and looked
away.  “So the wolf find the dragons yet?”

“Answer me!” Imelda snapped. 
“What do you smell on Zenaida?”

Very slowly, the wereverine
turned back.  “Lady,” he said, “My instincts are good—” then he hesitated and
gave her a bitter smile, “—unless it comes to pretty girls, like you figured
when you caught me, but seein’ how you ain’t that pretty, I’m guessing it’s
just my instincts are good.  You’re the brains of this operation, ain’t ya?” 

Imelda narrowed her eyes at him.

In response, the wereverine bared
his teeth at her.  “So here’s what I’m gonna do.  I’m gonna tell you what I
know.  You do whatever you want with it.  I’m fucked anyway.  Don’t really see
a point to keepin’ my yap shut, considerin.”  He gestured at the phoenix with
his chin, and his face was suddenly torn with grief before he twisted away to
hide it from Imelda.

Imelda waited.

“That sadistic whore of a
blonde,” the wereverine managed, after a moment.  His voice cracked when he
turned to her and said, “Since you two don’t seem to be on the same page,
here…  She’s top tier.  Something big.  I’m surprised you don’t see it.”

A trickle of red against his
thigh caught her eye, and Imelda glanced down.  He was missing, Imelda
realized, a piece of his scrotum.  And, upon further inspection, she realized
the sack was empty.

A deep, roiling sickness started
bubbling up from within, and Imelda quickly turned away, lest the wereverine
see her revulsion.  She was, after all, an Inquisitor.  He must have confessed
to something horrible, to receive such a punishment as penance.  Surely Zenaida
had a reason.

Seeing her gaze, the wereverine
made a miserable sound.  “I never did get around to makin’ myself some
littles.  Too late now, huh?”  The strained chuckle wrenched at Imelda’s soul.

Steel yourself
, she
thought, disgusted with her lack of poise. 
These are monsters and demons. 
They have no right to your pity.
  Yet, even as she had the thought, she
remembered the wereverine’s bared soul, his tears.

Clearing her throat, she said,
“Zenaida is top tier?  You have smelled such before?”

“Never really spent much time
around them ‘cause I’m the kind of critter they tended to stomp on, but yeah. 
The bitch’s got wings.  I’d bet my balls she—”  Then he hesitated, his voice
cracking.  He looked away.  Softly, he said, “A fucked-up Fury, would be my
guess,” the wereverine said.  “One of the survivors.  They were really screwed
up to begin with, but with all her sisters dead…  She probably took a dive off
the deep end.”

“She’s an
angel
,” Imelda
reiterated, not liking to be reminded that there were older cultures with older
myths with older names.  “You are telling me she works as a messenger of God?”

The wereverine snorted.  “
Her
?” 
He made a bitter laugh.  “She’s about as fallen as they fucking come.  She cut
off my fucking
balls
.”  He flopped his limp member forward with a
disgusted thrust of his hips.  “Yeah, she ain’t working for fucking God.”  He
made a disgusted jerk against the rack that held him, then looked away again. 
She saw more tears brimming his eyes.

Imelda’s heart began to pound as
she considered.

“You want my opinion?” the
wereverine offered, still looking off to the side.  “Get the fuck outta town. 
The shit’s about to hit the fan, girlie, and lots of folks are gonna die.”

Softly, she said, “I am not in
the habit of heeding the advice of rapists.”

The wereverine jerked back to
face her, making the metal rack rattle.  “What?”

Imelda scowled at him.  “Whatever
it is you confessed to.  I am sure Zenaida was just in issuing you penance for
it.”

The wereverine’s green eyes
peered at her for what seemed like forever.  “Lady,” he said softly, “you ain’t
got a fuckin’ clue, do ya?”

Faced with his honest disdain,
Imelda again felt that nagging stab of uncertainty before she stuffed it away. 
With all the carriage of her station, she said, “A clue about what, Third
Lander?”

He glared at her.  “That thing
ain’t in control of me, and never has been.  You know that, just by lookin’ at
me.”

She narrowed her eyes.  “I know
that Third Landers are cunning by nature, and that your entire speech tonight could
easily have been an act.”

He flipped his broken testes at
her as he snarled, “
Is this a fucking act?
”  His eyes glowed an unholy
green as he stared her down, spittle wetting his lips.

Imelda averted her eyes, fighting
a wash of shame.  She knew that she should have left, that too many good
Inquisitors were corrupted by the very monsters they hunted.  Yet her Padre’s
voice, rising in agony amongst the prisoners around her, gave her pause. 
Softly, she said, “A clue about what?”

For a long moment, the wereverine
simply scowled at her.  Then, in a low, inhuman rattle, he growled, “No.  I
think you do.  I think you got a damn good clue.  And you ain’t doin’ nothin’
‘bout it.  That puts you solidly on my shitlist, bitch.”

Imelda jerked back to meet his
angry gaze.  “Listen to me,” she said softly.  “I have a…dilemma.  I had  a
dream.  I saw…angels.  Fighting.”

He narrowed his eyes.  “So?”  It
sounded like a startled animal grunt.

“So,” Imelda said, “They were
fighting
each other
.”

“I’m failing to see why I should
care.”

Imelda took a deep breath and
glanced over her shoulder, at the empty stairs.  “You should care,” she
managed, “because I’m beginning to think there are
two
of them, and I’m
not sure which one is following God.”

For a long moment, the wereverine
simply stared at her.  Then, softly, he said, “I think the answer’s pretty
fucking evident, but if you really need a Sign, you should probably go ask
‘em.”  He gave her a carnivorous smile.  “I’m sure if you pick the right one,
she’ll be happy to tell you which side she’s on.”

…and if she picked the wrong one,
she was dead.

Imelda looked at him long and
hard.  Then, glancing at the phoenix, she considered the IV bag, the fluids
dripping into the abnormally tall woman’s arm.  Softly, she said, “I offered to
put you both out of your misery, once.  The offer is still open.”

Flinching on the rack, the
wereverine licked his lips and sniffed the air like a nervous weasel.  Watching
her warily, he said, “You said you saw angels fighting?”

Imelda stiffened.  “I did.”

Hesitating a moment, scanning her
face, the wereverine said, “Which one won?”

Imelda snorted.  “They both did. 
Many times.  I saw it
hundreds
of times, in
hundreds
of different
ways, and
everything
I’ve done or said since I woke up has had a
bone-chilling
wrench
of déjà-vu, as if everything I say and do will—” 
She stopped, frowning.  Here she was, talking about her
dreams
to a
demon
. 

Before she could say anything
else, however, the demon said softly, “…affect the outcome.”  He cocked his
head at her.  “Which one do you
want
to win?”

Imelda felt her heart beginning
to hammer.  “The right one.”

The demon snorted at her.  “Guess
you better figure out which one that is then, and fast, shouldn’t ya, tootz?”

“All right, demon,” Imelda
growled.  “I gave you my word.  I will end you both, for the sake of mercy.” 
When the wereverine simply sniffed and gave her a nervous look, she unholstered
her pistol and began loading color-coded rounds into the chamber.

“I met one of your Sisters
before,” the creature said, watching her.  “Long time ago.  Egypt.”

“That’s nice.”  Imelda snapped
the gun shut and put the muzzle to his forehead.

Looking at the gun between his
eyes, the wereverine said, “Served her for a couple decades.”

Now
that
was interesting. 
A demon serving a Sister of the Order?  Imelda’s finger hesitated on the
trigger.

Eyes still on the brushed black
steel, he said, “Was right about the same time they burned Alexandria.”

“Decide,” Imelda growled.

“The
first
time they
burned Alexandria.”

She frowned at him.  “What are
you trying to say?”  The burning of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina had been in the
first century B.C.  So the beast was older than they thought.  It happened. 
Usually not to Third-Lander possessees, as they were often killed in their
first couple centuries of mindless rampages, but if they survived long enough
to learn to control their inner demons, it did happen.  Then it dawned on her. 
B.C. 
Before Christ.
  The Order had not even been established until the
12
^th
century A.D.