Alaskan Fury (5 page)

Kaashifah lay facedown in the
mosses, waiting for the djinni to wrench her back into the Fourth Lands.  She
had seen it in his face and had known her time had come.

But then he’d hesitated.  And
he’d said
that
.  Just make her wish.  As if she could trust him to make
that final wish, after he had twisted the words of her first two into
incomprehensible tatters of her original request.  If she gave him that last
wish, it would free him.  It would sever that cord between them and she would
no longer be able to defend herself with shadow.  She couldn’t free him.  Not
when he had every reason to stay behind and take that which made her a Fury.

  Kaashifah sucked in a breath,
enduring the burning in her lungs, and let it out in long, hopeless sound, the
sound of an animal too long in a trap.

He touched her, then, his big,
unclean hand on her shoulder, evoking within her both a disgust at the contact
and wracking waves of pain from her ruined skin.  Closing her eyes against the
shame, Kaashifah waited for him to take her home with him, welcoming her death.

But beneath his hot palm came a
wash of cold, a balm against the pain.  As Kaashifah was trying to comprehend
that, he rumbled, “Someday, little wolf, you will allow me to free us from
this.”  And then, like a mirage, he slipped away, leaving her skin feeling cool
and blessedly whole in his passage.

Kaashifah drew a hesitant
breath.  Her lungs still ached, but the searing fire was gone.  He’d healed
her, as much as the Fourthlander Law allowed without use of a wish.  She sat up
slowly, marveling at that.  “‘Aqrab?” she asked softly.  Her words were still a
tight rasp in her throat, but at least her breath no longer tasted like ashes. 
“Are you there?”

The djinni did not show himself.

Kaashifah felt an old rush of
panic, not knowing whether the djinni was simply back in his homeland and
therefore out of ear-shot, or spying on her from the half-realm, ignoring her
summons completely.  “‘Aqrab!” she cried.

She received no response.  Of
course not.  Why would he, when it set her off-balance to wonder?

Gingerly, Kaashifah got to her
feet.  Her body still throbbed where her skin had been crisp and smoking
before, but at least it was no longer weeping like a broiled roast.  She
reached up and touched her Lord’s talisman—the silver pendant of a winged
sword, the symbol of her Lord’s Chosen—and closed her eyes as she worked her
magics.

Healing the body was much like
controlling a moon-kissed’s shift.  It required concentration and focus,
neither of which a magus had in ready supply when she was laying in a puddle of
her own body-juices, her skin bubbled and peeling like a spitted haunch of
goat.  Tapping into the massive lines of energy moving through the earth
beneath her feet with a tendril of her mind, she began drawing the necessary
energy for her healing.  The rearranging and repairing of her body’s cells only
took a moment to complete.  The djinni, strange as his gesture had been, had
done most of the work.

Since when did ‘Aqrab give her
anything
without a catch?

Kaashifah was still worrying over
that when an icy September breeze raised goosebumps along her chest and legs. 
She was, she noticed for the first time, naked.  Aside from her Lord’s pendant,
the entire backside of her clothes had disintegrated under the heat of the
Fourth Lander sun.

Again, Kaashifah felt that
ancient humiliation, the knowledge that she had lost her power the same day
she’d allowed a man to touch her.  A sword-maiden.  Married to war.  Angel of
vengeance.  Fury of Greek and Roman lore.  And a man had taken it away in an
instant, with a single touch.  It had not been a coincidence, she was sure. 

May you never kill.

In that one, horrible moment of
failure, her god had forsaken her.  Perhaps it was the djinni curse, spoken in
a panicked babble.  Perhaps it was his touch, light and fast and desperate. 
Either way, she would never be whole again, because both of them knew he would
never rescind his deathbed wish.

And the bastard
loved
to
remind her of it.  He
relished
touching her with his eyes, corrupting
her further whenever he got the opportunity.  He was probably there now,
watching from the half-realm, enjoying her body while he caressed himself,
taking pleasure in knowing he had spoiled one of his enemies’ greatest warriors
forever.

Yet naked was the least of her
problems. 

“‘Aqrab!” she snapped, glancing
out at the looming forest around her.  “Our friends need help.  Where did you
leave me?”

The djinni did not respond.

Kaashifah caught herself on the
peeling white trunk of a birch tree and tried to get her bearings.  The moon
had come and gone, leaving the light of dawn on the horizon.  Frost crisped the
ground under her toes.  Kaashifah shivered, goosebumps prickling her
still-sensitive skin.  She tentatively sniffed the air, but after locking the
wolf into a cage in the back of her mind, she did not have the adeptness at it
that one in the full throes of the Third-Lander possession had.  All she could
tell, from the scents of the air, was that she was in the forest. 
Deep
in the forest.  “‘Aqrab, please!”

The djinni wasn’t going to
appear, she realized, unless she summoned him.  And, at this point, she would
rather pretend he was back in his homerealm, not have him
there
, looming
over her, that hardness at his groin, that hateful sneer on his face, that
knowledge that he had been one of the
only
men to ever spoil a Priestess
of Horus.  Out of millions,
he
had done it.  And all it had taken was
his touch.  Such power, whisked away by the touch of a man.  He reveled in that
fact, and now he
knew
.  He knew how much it scared her.  Gods be
merciful, he’d finally
seen
. 

And then, instead of doing her
the favor of letting her die, he’d touched her
again
and renewed the
torture.  Damn him.  Touched by a man.  Not once, but countless times, over
three millennia.

She knew of the djinni passions. 
Their kind were famous for it.  It was part of their very natures, the very
creative fires that fueled their magics flowed through their bodies like water
through a river.  Over the years, the djinni had found excuses, here and there,
to touch her.  She’d punished him each time, but it hadn’t stopped him.  He had
continued corrupting her, trying to wear her down, to leave her too tainted to
regain her wings, should both her Third Lander curse and his deathbed wish ever
be lifted.

That fact left her trembling, and
she closed her eyes against the unbidden tears.  Filthy and unclean were only
two of the feelings rushing through her, as she stood with her body exposed to
him, naked as a slave on the block, with no way to cover herself.

Kaashifah reached up again and
grasped the silver pendant at her throat.  It had been so worn by her fingers
over the years that its original form of a winged sword was now hard to
decipher through the polish of many years of use.

Lord of war,
she thought,
trembling,
please release me from this.  I fought, I failed.  Please let me
die, or let him fall, or free us both.  But please.  I can’t go on like this
any longer.

She felt a brush of wind that
rattled the treetops above, but if her master heard her, he remained a ringing
silence in her ears.

Tears burning her eyes, Kaashifah
lowered her hand from her throat, releasing the lump of metal and dropping her
forehead to the trunk of the northlander tree.  Sometimes, just sometimes, she
almost thought she could hear her master after a prayer.  This time, however,
she got nothing but the wind sliding through the branches overhead.

How could her Lord have allowed
this to happen?  Three thousand years of bondage to a
beast
.  It was
beyond her ability to understand.  Had she somehow mistaken a command?  Had she
shamed him somehow?  What
reason
did he have to leave her trussed thus?

She knew she must have done something
wrong, to be punished so.  And now that the djinni knew her secret…  He had
seen her fear.  Her final card had been played, and he had retreated to his
homeland to plan his next move.

A move, she knew, that would be
so humiliating for her that it would be a blessing to die now, rather than to
face it.  Kaashifah didn’t think she could stand to see that leering mockery in
his eyes.  That pity.  That smirk.  She knew, deep in her soul, that he was
going to touch her again.  Whether it came in the next minute or the next year,
the djinni had found her weakness.  Her terror.  And, now that he could wield
that last weapon against her, she wasn’t sure she would be able to stop it. 
Fear, when uncaged, was a magus’s unmaking.

And he’d seen what she’d
successfully kept hidden for three millennia.  Damn him to Anubis’s filthy
blade, the djinni had finally won their duel.  What had started three thousand
years before had ended tonight, when her pain had scraped away the protective
layer of her façade, leaving the insides of her soul exposed for his pleasure. 
Now it was merely a game for him, a means to pass the time until she finally
folded, too exhausted to fight him any longer.

She knew what he would take from
her, too.  The last thing she had left.  The only thing that remained of the
once-great Maiden of the Sword.

Once she’d regained a semblance
of control over herself, Kaashifah lifted her head from the tree and considered
her surroundings through the hazy glint of tears.  She had all the time in the
world to agonize over the djinni and his torments.  Right now, she needed to
get back to the Sleeping Lady before it was too late.

Chapter
3: A Djinni’s Dangerous Game

‘Aqrab watched the magus from the
relative safety of the half-realm, analyzing what he was seeing in this new
light.

Fear.  It had only been for a
moment, only a brief flash in her eyes, but it had shattered everything he’d
thought he’d known about the nature of a Fury.  He now knew, without a doubt,
that they
could
feel emotion.  And, irritatingly, it had renewed his
hope all over again.  Even the wisest djinni could not resist taking a risk,
and this had given him a whole new game upon which to throw his dice.  Even
now, his heart ached at the idea of melting a hole in that icy façade, digging
back down to the humanity beneath and teaching this merchant of death the joys
of life. 

Again, that rational part of him
gave warning, told him that he would have better luck taking a viper to bed
with him than a Fury, but he was beyond curious, now.  He
needed
to gain
her trust.  That single flicker of emotion had left him awash in possibilities,
risks, and wagers that he could not ignore.

She called for him, but eventually
gave up when he stayed out of sight, hoping she’d take it to mean he had
returned to his home.  As he watched, his little mistress once again reached up
to that pendant she so loved and closed her eyes in prayer.  He saw her
luscious lips move, saw her delicate brow knot with concentration.

Then, after a long minute, she
dropped her hand and lowered her head to the tree, obviously fighting the very
same despair that ‘Aqrab himself felt, no longer bothering to hide it from him.

A Fury could feel emotion.  With
this new piece to the puzzle, so many things were unlocking for him, all the
ages of hardship suddenly taking on a new meaning.  His first impulse was to
use it, to harness her despair and force her to make that last wish, then twist
it back on her and disappear.

But ‘Aqrab’s second impulse was
much more interesting.  The djinni were a passionate clan.  The power of creation
flowed through their veins, and carnal desires were woven deep within their
souls, a part of their very being.  The idea of
taming
this little vixen
suddenly made him so hard he throbbed.  After all, Fury law clearly stated that
an angel of vengeance must remain pure in order to keep her sword, and he was
certain she’d rather cut off his head than allow his own sword to pierce her. 
But while the Handmaidens of Ares were figures made of myth and legend, so was
a djinni, and he had myths and legends of his own.  And in those myths, there
spoke of a way to conquer a particularly fiery soul in such a way that they
could be brought to the Fourth Lands unharmed.

To take her
back
with
him…  Now
that
was an interesting prospect.  To have that luscious body
for his own, as long as he wanted, a slave to
his
demands…

He was being uncharitable, he
knew, but the woman had long since earned it.  Her stubbornness, her hatred,
her
own
lack of charity.  He was sure he could show her a thing or two
about servitude, once he was free.

But how?  In order for a djinni
to unleash the fire within, he had to make her surrender to him.  And not in
despair.  In total, complete trust.  She had to spread her legs to him,
willingly, and allow him to plant his seed.

‘Aqrab’s groin was afire, now,
his manhood a throbbing ache against his abdomen.  Yes, he decided, as her
tiny, slender body tentatively moved deeper into the forest, he could find
great enjoyment introducing her to three thousand years of her own medicine. 
Magus of the First Lands she may be, but her powers would have less sway in the
Fourth Realm.  If he managed to kindle her fire and spirit her off, she would
be as utterly helpless to him as he was to her now.

And the thought of that was, for
a hundred different reasons, utterly delicious.

Yet it would be a dangerous game
he played, for in a djinni’s seed was his own path to surrender.  And then,
bound to this world a
lifetime
, three thousand years would suddenly look
to be merely a mortal’s toss of the dice, as he gambled his night away in one
of the dens.

You play a dangerous game, Yad
al-‘Aqrab,
a part of him warned.  The same part, he noted, that had warned
him against picking up an unattended bauble in the middle of the lonely desert,
or dueling a pretty girl wearing a tiny steel sword.

A sword that, once he had laughed
and accepted her challenge, burst into a thousand rays of light, and a pretty
girl who, as his eyes widened in horror, grew wings of eye-searing radiance and
gained a foot in height…

 It had been one of the many
moments, looking back, that he wished he’d given that rational part of him a
second thought.  But yet, what game was really worth playing, unless the stakes
were high?  A djinni
thrived
on that kind of risk.  His very soul sang
at the thought of getting his ice-queen to accept his touch, to moan beneath
his fingers, to spread her virgin body beneath him.  To tame a Sword Maiden… 
Few men could boast of such a feat, and fewer still had survived the final act,
for a Maiden’s first time was…interesting.

You play a dangerous game,
his rational side warned him again.

As he watched her willowy form
work its way through the woods, her feminine curves exposed for him to see,
‘Aqrab knew that it was a game long, long in the making.