Alaskan Fury (4 page)

Then the thing dropped him and
vanished, as if it had never been.  In the dead silence that followed, ‘Aqrab
picked himself up off of the ground, his heart pounding waves of glowing white
outward through his feet.

What,
he thought, sheer
horror leaving his every hair on end,
was that?

But then he saw the cases that
the women were opening, saw the vials and potions, saw the arcane contraptions
meant to imprison and bind.  To bleed…

‘Aqrab ran.  Up the crystalline
stairs, through the gathered women at the head of the stairs, making them
start, and then twisting into the First Realm once he was clear.  He brought
with him a raging inferno of the Fourth Lands, making the fools scrabble away
from him in terror, straining to reach their weapons.  He bent down to his
little magus, whispered a prayer that she would forgive him, and, just as the
woman in jeans flicked something small and tiny in his direction, twisted them
both to the Fourth Lands.

Chapter 2: The
Fury of the Fourth Realm

When Kaashifah woke, she couldn’t
breathe.  The air seared her very lungs, and her skin felt as if it were on
fire.  She sucked in a breath, then choked, gagging, as her life-wind came back
stained with smoke.  The world around her was a searing blast of heat, pain,
and brightness.  She saw dunes.  Endless dunes, but no shadows.  Above, the sun
beat down on them, perfectly centered in the cerulean sky.

The Fourth Lands,
Kaashifah realized, in horror. 
He used my weakness and took me to the
Fourth Lands.

The beast was under her, touching
her, his big
cool
body moving fast and easy as he jogged across the
sands.

Kaashifah sucked in another
breath, felt it burn her lungs, saw wisps of smoke curl outward when she
exhaled.  She choked again, gagging on her words as her internal organs dried
and tightened.  Her skin
was
on fire, she realized.  It bubbled and
hissed from the furnace of the Fourth Lands, eating away at her corpse.

“‘Aqrab, please!” Kaashifah
gagged, trying to form the words, yet unable to force more than an airy moan
through her desiccated lips.

But the monster seemed to
understand, because he seemed almost apologetic as he said, “Not yet, mon
Dhi’b.  They are too close.  Hunting me.”

He was killing her.  Taking her
life-winds so she could no longer command him while she died, burning, on his
shoulder.  He was tired of the games.  She’d taken too long, so he’d resigned
himself to a talisman of bones the rest of his life.

“Please,” Kaashifah whimpered, a
smoky whisper against her lips.

“No, mon
Dhi’b
,” he
panted.  “I can’t.”

Kaashifah reached for the
shadows, then, but realized, in growing horror, that this world
had
no
shadows.  Nothing to shove down the cord at him, to force him back to her own Realm. 
In growing dread, she simply held on, too weak to fight him.  She felt herself
burning alive.  The pain was so intense that Kaashifah stopped breathing.  She
clung to his moving body simply for the coolness it radiated, soaking up what
little blessed protection his skin provided from the burning sun.

Please,
she thought. 
Gods
please, don’t let it end like this…
  To die and have her soul bound to him,
forever, was a fate that Kaashifah could not endure.

Just when she felt herself
fading, losing her grasp on life itself, the djinni wrenched them back to the
First Lands.

Kaashifah sucked in a single
breath of ice, coating her insides with searing coolness, and choked out
another gasp of smoke.  She vaguely saw trees, though the surface of her eyes
were scorched and dried until only dim shapes and colors remained.

“I’m sorry, mon Dhi’b,” the
Fourth Lander said, setting her to the ground and kneeling beside her.  He was
biting his lip, his head down, his huge body a black mass hovering over her,
covering her, too close.  Every inch of her hurt, every nerve screamed.  She
couldn’t speak, couldn’t force him to back away from her, to stop touching
her.  He put his hand to her face, sending pounding waves of torture throbbing
through her being.  “Please, I’m sorr—”

Kaashifah wrenched the shadows
from nearby and drove them into him, powered by every ounce of her terror,
every throbbing agony of her blistered skin.

The monster fell to the ground
beside her and started to writhe, then, his big lungs emptying in a bellow as
he screamed.  Kaashifah, too weak to move, felt him thrash beside her, his big arms
or legs sometimes hitting her in reverberating, pounding
hurt
, peeling
away roasted skin
as she was unable to protect herself from his
flailing.

When the ogre finally stilled,
the moon had come up.  She heard his ragged breathing from the forest floor
beside her, matching her own.

As the minutes stretched into
hours, she heard him start to sob.

When he could cry no longer,
‘Aqrab sat up, slowly, so poisoned by shadow that he was still weak and
trembling, completely unable to flee to the firelands.  He crawled a few feet
away from her through the cold, filthy brush, then collapsed, his back to the
magus.  Misery ached through his body with every horrible breath.  He wanted to
die.  More than he had in his entire life, he wanted to simply die.

Yet, by his own desperate hand,
the only one capable of ending him was unable to kill.

Shaking in the aftermath of her
cruelty, ‘Aqrab stared at the mosses inches from his face.  Why had he saved
her?  Eventually, they would have drained her of her magics, killed her, and
disposed of the body.  How hard would it have been to simply take her
body
with him to the Fourth Lands?  A sack of bones would surely be more merciful
than this.

Some hours later, he heard a
rustling.  He remained where he was, back to her, still too corrupted to return
to his homeland.  A moment later, the movement ended in a whimper and he heard
a soft thud.  Still trembling, ‘Aqrab lifted his head to look.

The First Lander was had flipped
onto her stomach, the only part of her that had been shielded by the heat of
his homeland.  Bits of moss and forest sediment rested in her blistered, oozing
skin. 

Seeing that, ‘Aqrab almost felt
sorry for her.  Almost.  Then he remembered the shadows she’d shoved into him,
staining his being, leaving his very
soul
writhing in agony, and had the
sudden urge to take her back to the Fourth Lands, permanently.  And he would
have, at that point, had he not been too weak and tainted to even feel his
homeland.

The magus’s breaths were slow and
unsteady, the rise and fall of her naked, blistered back coming once every few
minutes.  She was obviously in too much pain to work her magus tricks, and, unlike
a full wolf or an untouched Handmaiden, she healed slowly.  Much faster and
much more completely than a human, of course, but slowly, no longer powered by
the demonic entity from the Third Realm that she had conquered, for in
conquering it, she had freed herself of its crazed cycle, and thus its healing. 

But she still carried the wolf’s
magic in her veins, violating the Pact of Realms—however unwillingly—and thus his
magus had therefore forfeited the healing power of her true nature, as well. 
Forever, because
he
certainly wasn’t going to remove the Third Lander’s curse. 
‘Aqrab might have done it two millennia ago, had she done something other than
lift her perfect chin in cold imperiousness and try to
demand
it, but
now, after she had
poisoned
him for
helping
her, ‘Aqrab would
rather hack off his legs at the knee than give her that satisfaction.  After
this, carting around a bag of bones for eternity was looking a more and more
likely compromise.

At least the gods’ laughter fell
on both of them.  Him, a djinni bound to an ice-queen who could never know
passion, and her, a Fury trapped for centuries as a lowly wolf, unable to kill
the one who sullied her at every opportunity.  And he
did
sully her at
every opportunity.  Bound to her as he was, cursed with a djinni’s passion and
penchant for risk, it was a temptation ‘Aqrab could not resist.  And every time
he’d kissed her hand or gently traced her graceful curves, she’d drowned him in
shadow for the effort.  He supposed that, over the course of the last three
millennia, he had harbored the hope that the great Fury would come to realize
that the touch of a man was not unclean, that someday her icy façade would
crack and allow him to show her the true pleasures of life.  Yet it was a hope
that, over three thousand years of haughtiness and disdain, had gradually begun
to fade.

Now, after saving her life only
to be rewarded with shadow, it had finally flickered out.  She would not
change.  The Furies were just that.  Angels of vengeance, devoid of love or
emotion, unable to see anything beyond cold, impassionate logic.  And he was
trapped with her, forced to do her bidding until one of them finally folded.

Yes, this definitely reeked of
the gods.  ‘Aqrab had long ago learned to recognize that particular stench,
though he hadn’t the slightest clue what the great ones would want with a
simple djinni.  That he was being punished for Ji’fah seemed so utterly
ridiculous to him that he was close to swearing a blood-oath against the Lord
of War himself.  He had saved
millions
, yet he was tethered to a woman
who tortured him for touching her.  It was a cruelty beyond comprehension.

A few feet away, he heard the
magus shift again, then whimper.

That she had the
audacity
to
whimper, after what she had just done to him, left ‘Aqrab’s age-old rage
bubbling up from within.  Carefully, ‘Aqrab rolled onto his other side, until
he was facing her, fury powering him, now.  The magus stiffened at his
movement, her tiny body going stark still in the moonlight, the beauty of her
icy flesh now marred by horrendous boils and skin that had sloughed off to the
muscle beneath.  He felt a wave of satisfaction, seeing that.  Her perfect
body, that she had used to taunt him for three thousand years, was no more a
weapon to her now than was the moss and melted clothing clinging to her
wounds. 

‘Aqrab pushed his senses outwards
as he sat up.  Over the hours he’d lain there, helpless, his tendrils to the
firelands had slowly regained their feeling, and now he was ready to twist
back, forever.  He would take the arrogant little monster with him, and he
would never have to feel her scorn or her poison again.  Finally, he had
reached his limit.  Finally, after so many years of undeserved contempt and
spite, he had felt something break under the strain.  He was a poet, never
having taken a soul in his life, but she had finally pushed him too far.  He
would endeavor to make it fast, bring her to a quick end, but it was finally
time for him to find a way to reclaim the life that had been wrenched away from
him three millennia ago.

He inched closer to her, knowing
he would have to make it fast, before she realized what he was doing… 

The magus turned her head just
far enough to look up at him, wrinkling the crisped skin along her neck.  And,
in that moment, ‘Aqrab saw something he’d never seen before in the magus’s
liquid brown eyes.

Fear.

Fear, and hopelessness.  And a
longing for death.

It so mirrored his own internal
agonies that he stayed his hand for a moment, shock pulsing like icy waves
through him as he met her eyes.

She knows
, ‘Aqrab
realized, horrified. 
She knows what I’m about to do, and she welcomes it.
 
He stared at her, so utterly shocked he forgot to breathe.  For so long, he had
seen nothing but coldness and disdain in the Sword Maiden’s eyes.  He had come
to think that fear, like its counterpart of trust and passion, were emotions
that a Fury simply could not feel, a physical impossibility built into her very
nature, like a sightless vole trying to picture the sun. 

Yet here he was seeing fear.  He
was sure of it.  Something within her icy façade had cracked.  She lay exposed
before him, naked in more ways than one.

For long heartbeats, neither of
them moved.  On her belly, the wolf trembled, shuddering with every breath as
she looked up at him.  “Do it,” she whispered, her voice a rasp against dried,
withered lips.  “End it, ‘Aqrab.  I tire.”

It was her words that made his
decision for him.  So haughty before, now they were bare and pitiful, barely
alive.  Pleading.

“Make your wish,” ‘Aqrab
reluctantly muttered.  “I can heal your wounds.”

She let out a low, wretched moan
and looked away, but not before ‘Aqrab saw tears.  Again, he was taken aback. 
Never before had he seen the Fury brought so low.  Even cursed, even without
her wings and her ability to kill, she had always acted as if he were
perpetually kneeling before her at that oasis, her sword about to sever his
spine.  She had spent three thousand years refusing to so much as let him catch
her if she stumbled, shunning him outright, doing her best to pretend he didn’t
exist.  He had always assumed it was because she thought of him as she did all
men—a lesser being, unclean by virtue of the flesh that hung at his groin.  Yet
seeing her façade stripped bare, he wondered if it was because she resented
their condition as much as he did.  He wondered if all she really wanted was
for it to end.

“Mon Dhi’b,” ‘Aqrab said softly,
“I swear to you.  The oath of a djinni.  I will not monkeypaw.  I will not
twist your words.  Speak your third wish, and it shall be granted, and we can
end this.”

Her face buried in the mosses,
the magus’s body shook with a sob and she let out a sound that stung his heart.