Alaskan Fury (55 page)

“Then the bargain is sealed and
we are oathbound,” Imelda said, with as much solemnity and ceremony as she
could manage.

The unicorn was staring at her
again.  Then he jerked.  “Oh, uh, do you want food?  I can find food.  Or
drink?  There’s snow…”  He frowned at the white stuff by his foot.  “I can find
something to cook it in, I think…”  He got up and walked over to a birch tree
and cocked his head at it, like he was trying to figure out how to get the bark
off.

Suppressing her smile, Imelda
said, “If I am to serve as your prisoner, I would also have you serve your end
of the agreement and take me to the dragons.”

The unicorn flinched.  “Oh…uh…” 
He swallowed, hard.  “Um.”

“We are oathbound,” Imelda reminded
him.

“Okay,” he squeaked.  “But can I
at least pretend to be a horse?”

“Will a dragon see through it?”
Imelda asked.

“Uhhh,” he managed.  “I don’t
know…”

“Then no.  You will go as
yourself, and I will protect you from the dragons.  As your prisoner.”

The man dropped his hand from
where he was peeling away a hunk of birch bark and bit his lip, then glanced at
the fire, then at the tiny shelter he had built, then reluctantly looked up at
her.  “You can do that?”

“I can,” Imelda said, with as
much strength as she could manage.  God knew she was going to burn in Hell if
she was wrong.

The unicorn gave her a long,
nervous look, then said, “Oathbound means I have to?”

She shrugged.  “You wanted a
prisoner.”

“Um.”  He was obviously terrified
of the idea of dragons.  But after a long moment of consideration, fidgeting
with a twig, he eventually looked up and said, “Okay, but you have to talk to
me along the way.”

Imelda allowed herself to smile. 
“I can do that.”

Chapter
20: Irrational Fears

They were flying south, with the
djinni riding the back of the dragon, when they ran into Thunderbird a second
time.

“Who do you see?” Kaashifah
demanded, putting herself between her friends and the enormous black bird that
was fast approaching.

“Thunderbird,” the djinni said.

“A peacock,” the dragon growled.

Which meant, most likely, it
wasn’t a Second Lander’s mind-magics, but the actual Thunderbird.  Kaashifah
almost wished it were the previous.

“To the
ground
,” the
demigod snarled, as he came within hearing distance and flared around her so
that he could see the lizard.  “I will duel the lizard.  To the
death
.”

Realizing that he was utterly
serious—and that Kaashifah was about to lose a third of her battle plan—she got
between them again.  “We are busy with the Inquisition.”

“You are about to be busy with
lightning
,
Fury—” then Thunderbird blinked.  “
Cockroach
?”  The Thunderbird, to
Kaashifah’s disgust, had picked up the dragon’s moniker for her rather
quickly.  Then he simply shook himself, making static roll from his feathers in
electric ripples over his feathers.  “To the ground.  Now.  Or I will put you
there.”

Realizing that being driven to
the ground by bolts from the sky would probably impede her performance in her
next fight, Imelda reluctantly followed her friends to the snowy landscape. 
Thunderbird, once he had hovered long enough to be sure they landed, dropped to
the ground and snapped into human form with a sizzling flash of electricity. 
He had, Kaashifah realized, no pony tail, and his clothes were tattered.

“You,” Thunderbird snarled at the
dragon, “are to blame for this.”  Already, the buzz in the air was increasing,
and Kaashifah’s hair was beginning to stand on end.  “I will take it from your
hide
,
lizard.  Djinni, get off the serpent.  I would not kill my entertainment.”

“Ah, Great One, I could grant you
a wish if it would assuage the pain,” the djinni said quickly.

Great One,
Kaashifah
thought, gagging on her laughter. 
Nice touch.

Immediately, the Thunderbird
straightened in an imperial scowl at the silvery dragon, who had bunched up, mirror-like
wings spread in a snarl, then regally turned to the djinni.  “State your
terms.”

“Let us pass, help us defeat the
invaders, and I will return your hair and your robes to you, unscathed.”

 Oooh,
Kaashifah thought,
Very
nice touch.

“No,” Thunderbird said.  “I want
a wish.  Right now.  Or the lizard dies.”  The tingling feel of a
lightning-strike continued to grow.

Grimacing, the djinni said, “One
wish.  It is agreed.”

“I wish the dragon was
claustrophobic,” Thunderbird said.

Even as the lizard screeched his
indignance, the djinni began to swirl with violet energy and suddenly the
dragon stiffened.  Narrowing his eyes at the demigod, Savaxian growled, “I hate
you.”

Thunderbird sniffed with complete
disdain and turned back to Kaashifah.  “You.  Cockroach.  Do you want help
scouring out the rest of the vermin?”

Kaashifah frowned at the way he
said ‘rest’ of the vermin, but she wasn’t about to give up his assistance. 
“Your help would be appreciated,” she said.

“Of course it would be.  Djinni,
I will take payment in song.” 

“What shall I sing of this time,
my liege?” the djinni asked.

Oh my God he is laying it on
thick,
Kaashifah thought, disgusted.

“Unicorns, what the hell else?”
the serpent snarled.  “The simpleton is obsessed with them.”

Thunderbird considered, then
turned his head to the side, listening to something in the distance. 

“It’s always ‘unicorns this’ or
‘unicorns that,’” the dragon went on.  “As if a
unicorn
would ever deign
to fuck him.  He’s such a puffed-up, vain,
vindictive
little peaco—”

A helicopter came humming over
the treeline, low and fast, a black shadow hugging the landscape like a wasp. 
As soon as it crested the trees, it opened up fire, spraying the ground in a
line directly towards them…

A bolt of lightning roughly the
width of the helicopter hit it with the ear-popping detonation of thunder, and
the concussive blast knocked Kaashifah flat on her back.  When her eyes cleared
enough to sit up, blinking, the wreckage of the helicopter sat in a groove in
the ground a few arm’s-lengths away, a smoking husk of burned and twisted
metal.

Thunderbird turned back to the
dragon, who was likewise getting to his feet.  Distractedly, he said, “You were
saying?”

“Um,” Savaxian said, eying the
wreckage, “Nevermind.”

“A song for every hour I help
you,” Thunderbird said, brushing flecks of ash from his tattered robes.  Then,
frowning, he yanked a shard of metal out of his leg and flicked it to the
ground.  He pried at the robes, found the hole the shard had made, and made a
disgusted sound and dropped them again.

Staring at the helicopter, mouth
ajar, the djinni said, “Done.”

“Beginning…”  Thunderbird shoved
his robes up his arm and glanced at his wrist, which, Kaashifah noticed,
carried a very expensive gold watch.  “Now.  It is eleven-twenty-two.”

“Say eleven thirty?” ‘Aqrab
suggested.

Thunderbird lowered his hand with
a scowl.  “Say eleven-twenty.”

“Eleven-twenty it is.  Shall we
bargain for it?”

Thunderbird waved him off.  “It’s
not like I can’t find you again, should you try to cheat me.”  He turned to
Kaashifah.  “What is your plan of attack, cockroach?”

Kaashifah scowled at him, vividly
imagining cutting off the rest of his hair with one of the two blades at her
hip.  “I will find my sister and deal with her.  The djinni and the dragon were
going to slip into the Inquisition compound and check for survivors.”

Thunderbird grunted.  “I will
protect them.”

“I don’t
need
your
protection, peahen,” the dragon growled.  “I’d rather stick my dick in your
effeminate pustule of a—”

The djinni, who had gotten to his
feet in front of the dragon, nonchalantly rammed an elbow into his snout,
cutting off the rest of the dragon’s sentence with a pained snort.  “We’d be
happy for your protection, my liege,” ‘Aqrab said smoothly, over the dragon’s
curses.

Inwardly rolling her eyes,
Kaashifah spread her wings and said, “Take them and go.  I’m going to go get my
sister’s attention.”

Thunderbird cocked his head at
her.  “How do you plan to do that?”

Kaashifah grinned.  “In the most
visible way possible.”

Thunderbird sniffed.  “Fine. 
Djinni, tell your steed to follow me closely.  The land is utterly crawling
with these things.”  He made a disgusted gesture at the wreckage of the
Inquisition helicopter.  At that, he began expanding, with ebony feathers
sprouting from his skin and pushing outwards, rippling with electricity.  Once
he stopped growing, he stood about nine feet tall, and his sheer presence made
the little hairs on Kaashifah’s body stand on end.  Then, as he spread his
wings, Kaashifah had just enough time to grab onto a tree before he slammed
them down in a crack of thunder and soared skyward.

The dragon remained on the ground
for long seconds after the sizzling black bird disappeared over the horizon.

“What are you
doing
?”
Kaashifah demanded, gesturing.  “Go!”

“I’m not doing it,” the silvery
dragon muttered, sitting stubbornly on his haunches.  “I won’t work with that
peacock.”

Nearby, they heard the whine of
another helicopter, the light
whomph whomph whomph
as it whistled
towards them, then the rattle of machine gun fire.

“There’s treasure in that place
somewhere,” Kaashifah said hurriedly.  “A vault.  Where do you think they pay
their Bounties from?  They have Bounties of a hundred
bars of gold
.”

Savaxian wrinkled his nose, then
twisted his long neck around until he face-to-face with the djinni.  At
absolute eye-level, only an inch from the djinni’s nose, the dragon said, “I’m
not your steed.”  As he spoke, smoke curled from his mirror-like nostrils.

“Agreed,” ‘Aqrab said.

“Fine.  Get on.”

‘Aqrab was just climbing atop the
serpent’s back when a blaze of eye-searing white light lit up the low-lying
cloud-cover on the horizon, and Kaashifah heard Thunderbird shriek.  Gripping
her sword, she launched herself from the ground on a tide of energy and air,
and, lifting above the treetops, had just enough time to see Thunderbird crash
into the trees ahead, followed closely by the radiant wings of a Fury.

A second later, the treetops
beneath her began to explode in a wash of shredded woodchips and plant fibers,
and she felt a hail of bullets slam into her shielding.

As long as they’re not using
faespar, we’re good,
Kaashifah thought, climbing to altitude.  Ahead, the
world was beginning to pop and flash with lightning-strikes, and the cloudcover
was taking on the low, ominous black swirl of a building tornado.  Rain was
wetting her wings by the time she reached the place where Thunderbird had
fallen.

Seeing her sister standing above
his dazed form, sword in hand, foot planted in his back, lifting her arms for a
downward swipe, Kaashifah tucked her wings and dove, head-on, as fast as
gravity and her magics could push her, flaring at the last possible minute, and
slammed into her sister with a shoulder, tearing her off of the demigod,
hurling them both into the trees in a roar of cracking branches and falling
birch.

“
You!
” her sister screamed
at her, pulling herself out from under a pulverized spruce tree.  Her shirt and
pants had been more or less shredded by her impact with the brush, but her
gemmed golden belt had miraculously stayed intact.  For her own part, Kaashifah
had landed relatively upright, and was already in the air again, trying to draw
her sister away from her friends.

On the ground, her sister swung
her blade, flattening a stand of willow between them, then stepped calmly over
it and launched herself into the sky.  “The first taste wasn’t enough?” she
sneered, coming to a level with Kaashifah.  “You want me to finish the job?”

While Zenaida kept her wings
flared, her arms thrown out in challenge, Kaashifah kept her wings close to her
body, balancing on her pillar of energy.  Less of a target, that way.  She
smiled sadly at her sister’s disdain.  “Sister, what is your name?”

“I abandoned that abomination to
the whores that gave it to me,” the woman snapped, flapping her wings wildly to
stay aloft and at an even height with her.  “You can call me Zenaida before you
die.”

“Zenaida,” Kaashifah said,
lowering her head in a respectful nod as they circled each other.  “What you
don’t realize is that, the other night, I wasn’t trying to kill you.”

Zenaida threw back her head and
laughed.  “Oh, of course not!  That’s why I had you at my mercy, my foot on
your throat, my sword about to pierce your brain.”

Kaashifah shrugged under the
mockery.  While her sister had tricked the djinni into touching her, Kaashifah
had been doing the same, and just another few short seconds with Zenaida’s foot
on her chest would have given her the time she needed to block her sister from
her Fury.  “I understand what happened to you.  I would have us be kinswomen
again.  Start a new Sisterhood.  Serve our Lord as his Justicars once more.”

Zenaida’s eyes narrowed at her
through the rain.  “I would rather copulate with a diseased boar than serve
your Lord again.”

Kaashifah’s eyes widened at
‘your’ Lord.  She lowered the tip of her sword slightly, in shock.

Zenaida took the moment to dive
beneath her and slam her fist into the pillar Kaashifah had formed to the
ground, leaving Kaashifah suddenly unsupported as the flow of energy vanished. 
A moment later, Zenaida was surging up towards her, to meet her on her fall.

Out of reflex, Kaashifah wrapped
herself in a bubble-shield and pushed it outwards, having just enough time to
get it out beyond her wings before Zenaida slammed into it, hurling her across
the sky like a football.

Kaashifah used the extra speed
from Zenaida’s attack to gain a lead on her sister, then turned, keeping the
distance, and was about to try and reason with her when a helicopter opened
fire, not fifty feet away.  At the barrage of squashed metal pellets that
slammed into her shield before peeling off and falling to the ground, Kaashifah
glanced at the black machine, wet from the rain, then up at the clouds, which
were even then beginning to spit hail down at them, to be pulverized by the
rotors. 

Somewhere down in the churned
mass of forest, Thunderbird was either unconscious or dead.  Her other two
friends were dropping low into the devastation, much too visible for
Kaashifah’s liking.  She saw the djinni, a nervous mountain of ebony clinging
to the quicksilver of the dragon’s back, and Kaashifah had a horrible spasm of
guilt.  He was a
poet
.  And she was enlisting him to
war
?