Alaskan Fury (61 page)

“Let me
through
!”  She
shouted, shoving her wings back out on a tide of Fury.  “Get out of my
way
,
mortals!”

People screamed and scattered,
but at least they cleared a path.  Kaashifah yanked her wings back into herself
and ran again, lunging down an embankment, sliding to the parking-lot, leaping
over the cars and towards the collapsed department store where a piece of her
sister’s radiant wing was showing through the rubble.

Already, people were packing
around the collapsed building, crawling over the rubble to get a better look at
the fallen angel.

“Get away from here!”  Kaashifah
pushed her energy down her sword again and it flared into a blinding radiance
as she landed in the rubble of the department store.  She twisted on the
onlookers, who were stumbling away from her, eyes on her sword.  “
Run
!”
she shouted, waving it at them.  They turned and ran.

Behind her, she heard something
shift just before a concrete support pillar caught her in the back.  Kaashifah
grunted and hit the ground hard as the pillar bounced, then rolled off of her,
crushing several cars in the parking lot.

“You…
bitch
!” Zenaida
hissed, getting to her feet.  She was wiping blood from the corner of her
mouth.  She’d lost, Kaashifah noted, her sword.  Insanity in the woman’s eyes, Zenaida
reached down and yanked another support pillar from the debris.  Then she was
twisting, hurling it at Kaashifah’s body as it began to shine in a column of
white.

“Zenaida, no!” Kaashifah cried,
but the Fury had already released the column.  Kaashifah ducked and it went
sailing over her head, hitting the parking-lot and eating through a dozen cars
as it began sliding into the earth.

One nice thing about being so
small,
Kaashifah thought, watching the concrete pillar sink out of sight
out of the corner of her eye. 
It’s easy to disappear.

But Zenaida was already wrenching
another piece of debris from the rubble, infusing it with her energy.  “You
want to fight that way, sister?” she screamed, her eyes alive with rage. 
“Fine.  We can fight that way.”  She hurled the object at Kaashifah, who easily
deflected it with her sword. 

“I told you I don’t
want
to fight,” Kaashifah snapped.  “I want you to
listen
, you addle-brained
child
.”

Zenaida’s head cocked at the
last, and for an insane moment, merely stared at her with the uncomprehending
emptiness of a lunatic.  Then the Fury lunged, wings and magics buoying her at
impossible speeds, and she slammed into Kaashifah and they went barreling
across the parking-lot in a tangle of limbs and wings.  Somewhere along the
way, Kaashifah dropped her claymore.

“You are
dead
,” Zenaida
screamed, using her wings to stop the roll, dragging them to a halt, her on
top.  One knee in Kaashifah’s chest, she cocked back an arm to punch her, her
fist lighting up in a searing white.

As Kaashifah twisted to the side
of the blow, her fingers found the tire of a car and she locked her digits into
the steel and yanked.  The rim came off the frame in a spray of broken bolts,
and Kaashifah used the momentum to slam into the side of her sister’s head,
knocking the Fury off of her.

“Please, sister,” Kaashifah
cried, scrabbling up and backing away.  “Just listen.  We can
change
things.”

Zenaida picked up the dragon’s
Damascus longsword, still left where Kaashifah’s numb fingers had dropped it in
an attempt to get out of the way of Zenaida’s fist.  “The only talking,
sister
,”
she said, shoving her energy down it in a beam of radiance, “will be done with
our blades.”

Kaashifah hurriedly backed away
and retrieved her claymore, cursing herself for losing her preferred weapon. 
While she appreciated the dragon’s gesture, the claymore was two feet longer
than she was tall, and about as maneuverable as an oil tanker.  In close
combat, the longsword was easily the better weapon.

And she’d
lost
it.  She
cursed again.

“Nice sword,” Zenaida said,
admiring the smaller Damascus.  She slowly got to her feet, smiling at the master’s
weapon she now carried in her hands, “Where did you get it?”  A few
parking-lots over, helicopters were coming in low and fast, and black-clad soldiers
on ropes were dropping into streets nearby.

Kaashifah cursed again and backed
away.  Her arm was still tingling, but at least it was regaining some of the
feeling.  It would be long hours, however, before she would be able to take
back to the air.  Hydra venom was instantly lethal to most immortals, and she
would probably still have sluggishness in that side of her body for ten years
to come.  What was worse, with the soldiers dropping in behind her, she had
nowhere to run without endangering more innocents.  “Zenaida,” she said
carefully, “we don’t have to do this.  I
forgive
you, you understand? 
What was done to you was
wrong
.”

Zenaida’s face twisted.  “Do you
really think I care about your
forgiveness
, sister?”  She swished the
blade back and forth, testing its heft.  “After all these years, you think I
wanted to be
forgiven
?”  She laughed.  “You’re as bad as the damn
priests.”

Desperate for more time,
Kaashifah began to circle warily, keeping the shining blade of the claymore
between them.  “You could start a new family,” she suggested.  “You could
protect the new ways.”

But Zenaida’s eyes darkened.  “I
told you,” she snarled.  “There
are
no new ways.  I’m going to
kill
you, then, once I’m the last of our kind, I can do whatever the fuck I please.” 
And she lunged, swinging in earnest, and suddenly Kaashifah was in a fight for
her life.

Imelda paced the back of the
dragon’s cathedral-like cave as they waited for it to return, trying to
rehearse what she would say in her mind.  She was dealing with dragons.  She
needed to be forceful, yet still retain her humility.  She needed to be
confident, yet not arrogant.  She needed to be witty, but not cunning.  She
needed to lay out her concerns for their welfare and outline the strategies of
the Order, while at the same time maintaining an emotional distance, calling
upon their logic.  She had to clearly delineate her appeal, but had to keep it
from sounding like she was begging.  She had to make them
see…

She was sure they would test her
in some way, some trial to judge her character, some surprise ordeal to
determine her merit, and she had to keep her head throughout.  She couldn’t
show emotion or weakness, fear or temper.

In short, she had to be perfect.

She continued pacing, planning it
all out in her head, fighting the ever-present glassy shards of a migraine. 
Calm
and collected,
she told herself. 
Appeal to their honor.  Show why the
Order must be stopped.  Speak of the damage they’re doing.  Of the souls that
need their help.

It took much too long for the dragon
to return.  When it did, Wyst was alone.

“Where are the others?” Imelda
demanded, her heart spasming as she considered whether or not she had been
tricked.  She hadn’t
thought
so, because the texts were rife with
examples of a dragon’s prickly honor.  Once they gave their word, they would
die for it.  Often, that had been how the Church would make a capture.

“They refused to come,” the
dragon said.  “The Council declines to hear your argument.  You are hereby
asked to leave, at the request of the Forger.”

For a long moment, Imelda forgot
to breathe.  The Forger, by legend, was a dragon so old that it was a god, a
forger of new souls.  And he was telling her to
leave
.  All of her
mental preparations shattered, she blurted, “But people are going to
die
.”

The dragon looked tired as he
shuffled past her, deeper into the cave, making the very floor vibrate beneath
her boots.  “The only reason
you
are not dead right now, Inquisidora, is
I gave my oath of protection.  There is something about you that the older
dragons do not like, a tug that unnerves even the eldest, and it stinks of
anguish and ashes.”

“She’s a Fate,” the unicorn said.

The dragon froze, slowly twisting
to face her, his amber eyes suddenly wary.  “Get out.”

“But…” Imelda began.

“Now!” the creature roared, flaring
its wings.  “Leave my cave and
never
come back.”

“I’m not a Fate!” Imelda cried,
but already she was being pushed backwards by an invisible barrier, out of the
warmth of the cave, into the snow.  Whatever it was shoved her, then, hard, and
she started rolling down the slopes in a cold, windy ball of ice and snow.  Her
world became a spinning rush as she barreled down the hillside, unable to
regain control, the buttons on her trenchcoat snapping and the garment tearing
open under the force of her descent. 

A few hundred yards later, she
came to a sudden, rib-breaking halt against the legs of the unicorn.

“I told you nobody likes a Fate,”
he said, as she sank into the snow beside his cloven hooves.  Imelda saw him
leaning down, taking his human shape, before she blacked out.

Chapter
22: Angel of Vengeance

‘Aqrab clung to the dragon’s back
as it spun towards the earth, evading the helicopter that was somehow following
them despite the dragon’s magics.

“It’s coming…turn,
turn
!”
‘Aqrab cried, glancing over its shoulder as the machine started spraying
bullets at them once more.  This machine was using tiny shards of faespar, not
lead or gold, and they got hit with another strafe of projectiles, which
pounded through their shields and peppered their bodies like tiny fire-ants. 
‘Aqrab hissed as he felt them hit his lower leg.

“Ow, fuck!” the dragon screamed. 
Already, his once-luxurious scales had the same general look as a teenager’s
pocked, pimply face.  “Much more of that and they’re going to break my shielding
for good!”

Up ahead, Thunderbird took a
shell from behind—some sort of poison-soaked shrapnel, by the way the demigod
suddenly stiffened and lost what little altitude he had maintained, once more
plowing into the treetops, snapping off branches as he tumbled back to the
ground.  Up above, the clouds were boiling blackness, and lightning began
retaliating against the craft that had hit him, bolt after bolt, driving into
it with blinding force well after the machine had crashed to the ground.  Another
helicopter, unseen until then, fired another missile at their fallen friend,
making the air reverberate in an avian scream.

“How many of them are there?” the
dragon demanded, through the lashing rain.  “This is insane!”

“I don’t know,” ‘Aqrab cried,
still clinging to the serpent’s wet back with a death-grip around his neck. 
“We have to get out of sight!”

“We’re in the middle of a
thunderstorm
,”
the dragon shouted back.  “You can’t get a much better place to hide!”

Indeed, it was difficult to make
out the black helicopter that tailed them, its silhouette only appearing when
lit up by lightning flashes from behind.  The Inquisition, it seemed, had
better means to cope with the weather than
they
did.

“All right,” ‘Aqrab said, “I have
an idea.  Thunderbird’s not going to like it, but the two of you are magi, so
you should survive.”

The dragon twisted to catch him
with an icy blue eye.  “Not a chance, djinni.”

But ‘Aqrab was already wrenching
the veil open.  “Guard against the heat!” he cried, shoving the dragon
through.  Then, suddenly steedless, he tumbled through the trees to the ground,
snapping branches off as he made his own small furrow in the snowy forest
floor.

“Owwww,” ‘Aqrab groaned, lying on
his back, staring up at the rain-blackened sky.  He wondered again how the
others could take such beatings, when it
hurt
so much.

A second scream from the
Thunderbird made him jerk and stumble back to his feet.  Jogging, now, dodging
fallen trees, the rain sizzling on his body from the stress, he found
Thunderbird in human form, curled in a small ball on the ground, whimpering.

At first, ‘Aqrab had the
horrified thought that the great beast had been injured again, but closer
inspection made him realize that the Thunderbird was just rocking back and
forth, crying.

Cursing, ‘Aqrab fell to his knees
beside the demigod.  “Are you going to be all right?” he cried, reaching for
the great beast’s shoulder.

“I’m scared,” Thunderbird
babbled, his electric eyes wide and filled with soul-deep terror.  “It hit me
in the back…I was going down…I lost control…my wings…”

Damn
the dragon.  “You’re
on the ground now,” ‘Aqrab said.  “I need you to put up a barrier.  I’m taking
you to the Fourth Realm.”

Thunderbird ignored him,
continuing to rock and whimper.  The helicopter that had fired upon him was
settling overhead, and opened up with both cannons upon them.  ‘Aqrab grabbed
Thunderbird and dove out of the way.  Behind him, the ground became a churning
fluff of snow and twigs and moss as the helicopter’s guns twisted to follow
them.

“I’m taking you to the
firelands!” ‘Aqrab cried.  “Shield yourself!”  Then, as the second helicopter
with its load of faespar settled into place in front of them, he said a prayer
that Thunderbird had been listening and twisted to his homeland.

The dragon was stalking the sands
back and forth, pacing like an angry cat.  When he saw ‘Aqrab, he leapt at him.

“Shield Thunderbird,” ‘Aqrab
snapped, throwing the now-screaming demigod between them.  Wisps of the
demigod’s hair and clothing were catching on fire.

Reluctantly, the dragon did, and
Thunderbird went back to rocking, his arms clinging to his chest, eyes wide and
staring.

“What’s wrong with him?” the
dragon asked warily.

“
You
are what’s wrong with
him,” ‘Aqrab snapped.  “He fell from the sky, you fool.”

“Oh shit.”  The dragon at least
had the decency to look ashamed.  Licking his lips, he glanced down at the
whimpering creature at his feet.  “You could give me another wish…”

“I’ll swim across the Dead Sea and
suck the filth from feet of pigs before I give you another wish,” Aqrab
snarled, yanking the limp Thunderbird off of the ground and throwing him bodily
over his shoulder.  “Let’s go.  We’re heading south.”  He started over the
dunes, at that point not really caring if the moronic serpent followed or stayed. 
As he walked, the great dunes of his homeland, flashing under the heat of the
sun, had been pushed into pale, sinuous curves, reminding him of a Fury’s
wings.

Mon Dhi’b
, he prayed, a
pang of worry tugging at his heart,
please be well when I see you again…