Alaskan Fury (49 page)

“I have a friend,” she said. 
“The Fury has him held hostage beside his helicopter, waiting for me.  I want
him to survive.”

The Third Lander licked saliva
from its teeth and continued to smile at her with his insane green eyes glowing
like embers in his skull.  “I don’t have to ask.”

Imelda considered him a long
moment.  “For what you want it for, you do.”

The magus licked its lips again,
continuing to grin at her.  “Like I said, I can get myself out just fine.”

And it was true.  Imelda had
given over her fate to a
demon
.  A demon who was
fully possessing
the body of a man, who had somehow transcended the animal infection.  A demon
magus
. 
A seiðmaðr.  Some jötunn or vampire in the Third Realm who had become a master
in the arts of blood-bindings.  The very thought made Imelda’s skin crawl, for
she knew all-too-well what would happen to her if she willingly gave up her
blood and the creature decided to use it.

Then she thought of Herr Drescher,
falling to the tarmac, half of his head blown apart.  Imelda yanked her knife from
her belt, drew it across her palm, and held it out under the Third Lander’s
jaw.  “Will that suffice?”

A slow smile spreading across its
carnivorous lips, the creature cocked its head down at the ruby droplets
forming upon her cut and smiled.  “Oh yes.  Are you giving it to me?”

“Are you getting the
three
of us out
alive
?”

The creature grinned at her.  “I
will endeavor to do my best.”

“Then yes.”

Immediately, the Third Lander
grabbed her hand and ran a long pink tongue across her palm and his eyes rolled
into his head, obviously savoring it.  Imelda watched dispassionately.  Once he
had licked it clean, she said, “Are you finished?”

“Well,” the creature panted,
still holding her hand to his mouth, “the brainless fool was right.”  He cocked
his head at Imelda.  “This Padre you sought.  He was a Seer?”

Imelda
refused
to show how
much those few simple words drove stakes through her soul.  “Just work your
magic.  If we survive, we can banter.  If not, I will see you in Hell.”

The Third Lander cocked its head
at her and gave a low chuckle.  “As my Inquisitor commands.”  He strode past
her and squatted in the open hall, then spread the bloody napkin out on the
floor.  He began chanting in an eerie, unearthly sound that almost reminded her
of a baying dog as he stood and sauntered across the room to a naga whose long,
serpentine body was pinioned to the wall.  Without prelude, he reached up and
snapped off one of the naga’s long fangs, making the creature scream.

Then, as Imelda jumped back in
horror, the Third Lander placed his hand on the top of the naga’s skull, his
fingers digging into the monster’s eye-sockets, and ripped the cobra-like head from
its shoulders and tossed it to the ground.  Then he stood and watched the blood
pump from the flopping neck for long minutes, seemingly enraptured by the
crimson spreading down the dead creature’s scaly hide and spattering to the
floor.

Upstairs, she heard the sounds of
someone opening the door.

“Someone is coming,” Imelda
growled.

The Third Lander ignored her,
insane green eyes still fixed on the blood dribbling from the naga’s body.

Hearing footsteps on the metal
staircase, Imelda tried to duck out of sight before she heard, “Freeze, ma
mie.”

Jacquot’s words were like razors
against her spine.  Imelda knew he had a gun trained on the back of her skull. 
She also knew he wouldn’t miss.  Very slowly, she turned to face him.

“What are you doing down here?”
Jacquot demanded, glancing from the wide-eyed technician, to the bleeding
naga.  The Third Lander was nowhere to be seen.

“I am an Inquisidora,” she said,
the little hairs on her neck tingling at the demon’s disappearance.  “I can
come down here as I please.”

Jacquot gave her a sad look.  “We
both know the truth, ma mie.  You are to be excommunicated.”

Imelda’s chest tightened in
shock.  “Why?” she demanded.  “For what crimes?”

“For aiding Satan, Inquisitrice,”
Jacquot said.  “For protecting a demon.  For
lying
.”

“And what of Zenaida?” Imelda
snapped.  “What of her lies?”

Jacquot obviously didn’t
understand.  “What she tells the Holy Patron is necessary.  She is doing God’s
work.”  Then he frowned.  “Zenaida wants to put you on the rack, Inquisitrice. 
She’s waiting for you on the helo pad, and I have orders to bring you to her, but
for everything you’ve done for me, I think I owe you a quick death.”  Then, as
if that decided things in his mind, Jacquot’s finger tightened on the trigger.

“Wait,” Imelda cried, suddenly
dizzy with the number of Imeldas that began falling to the floor around her. 
“Zenaida has been poisoning you against me, Jacquot.  She spews lies in the
form of an angel’s wings.”

Jacquot’s eyes widened slightly,
but he said, “She has
shown
me, ma mie.  You have never
beheld
such beauty as the wings of God’s messenger.”

“She’s not a messenger of God,”
Imelda snapped.  “She’s a mass murderer, Jacquot.”

The Frenchman snorted, lowering
the barrel of his gun a fraction of an inch.  “If only you were to
see
,”
he lifted his eyes heavenward, “if only she were to
show
you, you could
never say such things.”

Imelda lifted her head to watch
the stairs.  Ahead of her, Jacquot was turning, gesturing up the stairs at the
first floor—and he was also standing on the steps, his gun still leveled firmly
upon her forehead.  Taking her cue from the way Imeldas continued to fall at
her feet, a hole in her forehead, while a few had stepped forward, following
the gesturing Jacquots up the stairs, she said, “Perhaps she will show me. 
Perhaps I just don’t understand.”

And, in that moment, she knew she
had him.  As devout as Jacquot was, he fell prey to one of the many pitfalls of
the Faith.  He, in his zeal, was willing to err on the side of caution rather
than let a lamb that could be saved wander from the fold.

For a long moment, Jacquot
hesitated on the stairway.  Then, very carefully, he looked up the staircase,
then gestured with the gun.  “I will take you to her.  Climb the stairs.  She’s
outside.”

Imelda watched several versions
of him turn, start up the stairs…

And then get ripped apart by the
Third-Lander monster that suddenly appeared hunched on the staircase above him.

“Wait, no!” Imelda cried, holding
up a hand and lurching forward.

Startled, the Jacquot still
standing on the stairs pulled the trigger.

The bullet felt like a
sledgehammer to her chest, like someone had punched her with enough concussive
force to shatter ribs.  As her mouth fell open and she looked down at herself,
eyes finding the hole in her shirt, she heard a heavy weight land on the
staircase, heard Jacquot scream, heard the rending of flesh.

Imelda slumped to her knees, her
heart hammering like acid in her ears.  She started digging through her
pockets, looking for some emergency kit, some clotting agent…  In a panic, she
realized all of those things were in her coat, which was even then hanging in
the front of the foyer, useless to her, because why would she ever have need of
it
inside
the Order’s sanctuary?

Chuckling, the Third Lander slid
down the stairs and went back to the dead naga, drenched in Jacquot’s blood. 
Swiping a taloned hand through the naga’s congealing lifeblood as he went by,
the Third Lander squatted beside the stained napkin and the naga tooth.

Dead blood
, Imelda
realized, even as the edges of her world were beginning to dim. 
He needed
dead blood…

A couple moments later, the Third
Lander was resuming his incantations, drawing glyphs on the napkin with the
blood-dipped naga tooth.  The glyphs were heating up with an unearthly silver
glow before they disappeared back into the paper.

It took only a couple moments,
but the sudden, inhuman, ear-piercing
shriek
that Imelda heard echo down
the hallway above was enough to tell her it had worked.  It continued, on and
on, like a siren, loud enough to drown out all else.

Carefully folding the napkin and
tucking it into a fist, the Third Lander stood and came to stand over her,
calculation in his insane green eyes.

He’s going to heal me
,
Imelda thought, relief coursing through her. 
He has my blood.  He can heal
me.
  A simple weave of seiðr…

For a long moment, the monster
just peered down at her.  Then, sounding thoughtful, he said, “I suppose I
could save you.”  Crimson saliva dribbled from his fangs to the floor beside
her knee as he smiled.  “But then, it was you who trapped me in this dungeon in
the first place, and I think you deserve a taste of it, as you die.”  He
stepped over her and started up the gore-encrusted staircase, ignoring the
technician that whimpered and crab-crawled away from him as he passed.

Then he was out of the basement
and Imelda was lying on the floor, bleeding to death.  All around her,
completely impassive faces watched her demise, hating her,
enjoying
her
death.

Desperately, she crawled toward
the discarded beer-bottle that the Third Lander had left there, praying there
was some of the elixir left.

It took all of her strength to
reach out and grasp the bottle, and it was like moving mountains to lift it to
her lips.  Nothing came.  Not a drop.  The Third Lander had drained it
all
. 
Defeated, Imelda simply slumped forward, staring at the concrete under her face
in despair.

God help me
, she willed. 
I
can’t die here.  I
won’t
.  There must be
something
.
  She
still had important work to do.  She still had to stop Zenaida.

Yet, with her vision fading with
each wretched slamming of her heart, Imelda knew that she wasn’t going to stop
Zenaida.  She was going to Hell, and everything she had done this night had
been a failure.  She felt herself relax against the floor and watched the
concrete under her face darken with her own blood.

“Over here.”  The words sounded
awkward, as if they came from the lips of one unused to the intricacies of
language.  With a monumental effort, Imelda lifted her head to look.

A slender man sat balled in one
of the temporary cages, his platinum-blond tresses dirty and ragged.  He was
watching her over his knees, his cerulean eyes so deep that they looked like
the ocean.

Imelda remembered the ocean.  As
a child, she had slipped to the docks to play in the pristine white sands under
a Barcelonan wharf, before her Padre had found her and taken her to the Order.

Fate is with you, child,
he had said to her, as they sat in the sunny window of an oceanfront restaurant
as Imelda ate the first real meal she’d ever experienced.  Clam chowder, served
in a bowl of bread, with little octagonal crackers to sprinkle in the soup and
French fries on the side.  She remembered it to this day, twenty-eight  years
later, the waves of the Mediterranean still as blue-green as if she were
standing there, looking out over them today.

“Dammit, over here.”

Imelda hadn’t realized she’d fallen
asleep.  She jerked, but it took all the willpower she had to open her eyes. 
When she looked, the blond man in the cage had moved closer, reaching his hand
through the bars.  He was about three feet away.

To Imelda, those three feet
seemed like three miles.  She strained to move closer, but her limbs felt so
weak.  And
cold
.  She was shivering.

The creature’s cerulean eyes
shifted to watch something move behind her, and Imelda heard the technician’s
footsteps hurry up the steel staircase.  Then the prisoner was again looking at
her.  “Listen,” he growled, with that odd, stiltedness of one who was unused to
the human tongue, “I can help you, but not if you just lie down and die.”

Imelda heard the words seemingly
at a distance, and they almost felt like a lullaby.  She lowered her head back
to the floor, the drowsiness coming back.  Somewhere over the inhuman shrieking
upstairs, she heard a helicopter taking off.  It reminded her of her first
experience with a helicopter.  Small and tiny, but clean and in new clothes for
the first time in her life, seated between two big men garbed in black.  Two
more had sat on the seat across from her, facing her, giving her flat, dubious
stares, and she had felt so tiny and insecure…  She had clung to Padre Vega’s
hand for the next two hours, and had screamed herself hoarse when he had
dropped her off at the convent, telling her he would return when he could.

You will change the Order,
her Padre had said.  All this time, she had
believed
him.  Had he been
lying to her?  Had he been
wrong
?

The creature made a disgusted
sound and retracted his hand.

That gave her pause. 
I have
to help these people
, Imelda thought, swimming back to consciousness.  She
had to fulfill her Padre’s prophecy.

Groaning, Imelda somehow lifted
her head and forced her numb arms to move.

She saw the creature turn back to
look at her, cerulean eyes curious. 

Like the ocean,
she
thought again, using them as an anchor to stabilize her swimming world, a light
within the dim sea of her vision.  She dragged herself forward an inch, two,
focusing on the man’s face.  She felt her own blood wetting the cloth covering
her chest and abdomen, cold against the stone.

“You can do it,” the creature
urged softly, when she paused to regain her strength.  “Come on.”

Imelda continued forward at a
crawl, the dark edges of her vision encroaching until all she saw was the
creature’s face.  She made a few more inches, a foot, two…