Alaskan Fury (62 page)

Kaashifah launched herself out of
the way of another swing, using her root to the earth to buoy her on a pillar
of energy towards a distant rooftop, temporarily lifting her out of range of
her sister’s sword, but Zenaida laughed and hacked through it, sending her
tumbling back to the ground before she could reach her goal.

Above her, luminous wings spread,
Zenaida alighted on the rooftop she had been aiming for and grinned down at her
where Kaashifah now stood between two walls, given the option of either fleeing
to the east or to the west.  To the east, she saw men in military camouflage
rounding the closest building, and immediately they opened up fire at the angel
on the ridgeline.

Zenaida yanked a satellite dish
from the roof, infused it with her Fury, and hurled it at them.

“They’re innocents, damn it!”
Kaashifah screamed, as the dish sliced through the wall shielding them, cutting
several men cleanly in half.  The survivors, as their comrades before them,
retreated, screaming into their mics as they dragged their companions’ bodies
out of sight.

Zenaida snorted and glanced back
down at her, that dark insanity back in her eyes.  “No one is innocent,
sister.  Those who claim to be are always the worst offenders.”  Another spat
of machine-gun fire punctuated the last of her sentence, and Zenaida broke off
an antenna, her eyes on something out of sight.

“
Stop killing them!
”
Kaashifah screamed, slamming her claymore through the building where Zenaida
was perched, knocking its walls in.  Above her, Zenaida stumbled, then dropped
the antenna.  It sank into the ground like a hot nail through butter. 
Kaashifah used the moment to lunge up onto the roof, pressing her advantage. 
Zenaida’s eyes widened and she stumbled backwards, just evading the tip of Kaashifah’s
sword as it tore through the building’s tin roof, aimed at her legs.

“I
don’t
,” Kaashifah
screamed, bringing the sword back around for another swing, “
want
,” she
panted, swinging again, driving her sister further away from the soldiers, “to
fight
!” 
She swung again as her sister fell flat on the ridgeline of the roof, stopping
the too-big sword at her neck.  “You’re the first Fury I’ve seen in almost two
thousand years!” Kaashifah cried.  “I don’t
care
what crimes you
committed.  You had your reasons. 
Please
.  We can fix this.”

Zenaida snorted and glanced
sideways, obviously trying to calculate whether or not she could get up before
Kaashifah could gut her.

“Don’t force my hand, sister,” Kaashifah
warned.  “You will
not
like what you find.”

Zenaida, realizing that Kaashifah
wasn’t going to finish the job, chuckled and started getting to her feet. 
“You’re just a coward.”

“I’m the
Blade of Morning
!”
Kaashifah screamed back at her.  “There is a
reason
for that, you stupid
fool!”  She’d lost her patience with her sister, and the destruction around
them made it look as if the center of Wasilla had been hit by a bombing run. 
Dozens of men in combat gear were dead or dying from where they had been unable
to dodge Zenaida’s missiles in time, and Kaashifa could hear the crying of lost
children and the sobbing of women, saw the forlorn, ambling masses as they
searching through the rubble for loved ones, shocked into silence, and it
reminded her of countless battlefields of the past.

“I’m only going to say this once
more,” Kaashifah said, the scene bringing tears to her eyes.   “Put down your
sword, sister, and let’s talk.  If you decline, I am going to kill you, and our
Lord’s Hounds will come to reap your soul.”

 Zenaida laughed at her.  “A
myth
,”
she screamed.  “The Lord of War does not
exist
!  There’s no afterlife,
there’s
nothing
.  Innocents are killed—murdered—every day, and they just
disappear
!  They never come back.  They never
live again
!  And
they sure as
fuck
don’t go strolling through the
pearly fucking gates
.” 
As she spoke, she flared her wings and thrust her sword heavenward, spittle
flying from her lips in a froth of madness.

“Sister,” Kaashifah said softly. 
“Don’t do this.”

Zenaida’s lip twitched in a
sneer.  “You’re wounded and are still struggling to remember how to wield a
sword.  Don’t try to pretend you’re
sparing
me, sister.  I’ve been
toying
with you.”

Kaashifah felt a pang of sadness
at the hatred in her sister’s voice.  It was in that moment, with an entire
city of devastation around them, the moans of hundreds of grieving souls
echoing from the ruins, that she realized that there was no saving her sister.

I have to kill her,
she
realized, horrified. 
I have to end this. 
A second later, Zenaida
lunged at her, and Kaashifah instinctively raised her sword, finding that cold
calculation that she had been avoiding smoothly sliding into place, readying
her for the kill…

Suddenly, the building exploded
under them, with more white trails of smoke leading in from three other
directions before other missiles hit, utterly devastating the warehouse,
throwing them both into the air.  While Zenaida spread her wings and caught
herself in a long, easy soar, brightening the buildings and roadways beneath
her as she passed, Kaashifah flipped head over heels about two hundred feet,
landing on her stomach in the parking lot, still in her human form.  She pried
herself from the concrete, wincing.

Above her, her sister was
scowling at the fighter jets, which had launched their missiles well out of
sight.  “That,” her sister growled, “is not honorable.”  She followed the
little dots with her eyes as the jets swung around the horizon.  “Did you see
that?  They must be at least seven miles off, and the assholes tried to shoot
us in the
backs
.”

“Leave them alone,” Kaashifah
muttered, climbing onto the cab of a pickup truck.  “They’re just doing their
jobs.”

But her sister was gaining
altitude, turning away from her, towards Anchorage.

“Zenaida!” Kaashifah snapped.

Her sister twisted back to look
at her and called, “I’m off to destroy the bees’ nest, sister.  Perhaps the
good little soldiers will stop pestering us if they have no queen to give them
orders.”

“No, dammit!” Kaashifah yelled
back at her.  “Leave them out of it, you qybah!”

But her sister was already heading
for the inlet.

Damn it
, Kaashifah
thought, watching her sister’s brilliant wings soar towards Anchorage.  One
city was bad enough.  Did her sister plan to wreck another one, too?  What was
her game? 

Then, with a horrible pang,
Kaashifah realized that Zenaida
had
no game.  Her thousands of years of
carefully-collected potions and charms were gone, swept away into the Void. 
She no longer
cared
who saw, no longer
cared
about the Pact.  She
had gone completely rogue.

Kaashifah summoned her Fury and
pushed her wings outward, into her half-form.  Immediately, her broken
surroundings lit up with a radiant glow, cast off from her feathers’ heavenly
luminescence.  She gave her wounded wing an experimental flap.  It was weak and
slow, and it was readily apparent it would be impossible to fly, let alone catch
up with her sister.

Damn!
  She watched Zenaida
disappear over the line of gnarled cottonwood trees on the horizon, then tried
to figure out how she was going to get to the two military bases outside
Anchorage before her sister could destroy them.  She considered walking the
Void, but without ever having been
inside
Anchorage, she had no
bearings, no way to know she wouldn’t pick the wrong string and end up in the
ocean, or thousands of miles away…or three hours after the fact.

From the ground, a machinegun
opened fire, tearing holes through the metal cab beneath her feet, popping out
the safety glass in a tinkle of tiny crystalline cubes.  Kaashifah caught sight
of the soldier hunkered in the dirty snow beside a green dumpster, peering at
her over the barrel of his gun.  His companions had all either fled or died,
leaving him the only one still firing.

Kaashifah launched herself from
the truck to awkwardly glide down to him.  Alighting clumsily on the packed snow
of the driveway, she moved closer, ignoring the hail of bullets that spattered
across her shield as the man got up and stumbled away from her, awe and terror
on his face.

“Listen!” Kaashifah said, yanking
her energy back out of the claymore as the soldier paused to reload.  “I’m not
going to hurt you, damn it.  My sister is about to destroy your base.  I need
you to radio those who are in command.  Tell them an angel of War wishes to
speak with them.”

The man’s eyes went wide and he
shook his head back and forth, holding the gun between them like a shield as he
slapped at the magazines packed into the deep leg pockets of his cargo pants.

“
Now
!” Kaashifah shouted,
flaring her wings.  “Tell them to look at Wasilla and know that the same is
about to be wrought upon their Elmendorf and Fort Rich if they do not help me.”

“I’m just a grunt,” the wide-eyed
young man managed.  He looked like he’d wet himself.  Then he turned and
pointed at the side of a collapsed building, where a guy was hunched over a
little black box, speaking into a receiver.  “That’s the guy you want to talk
to.”

A courier of some sort.  A
messenger.  Good.  Kaashifah walked up to the man and dropped to her knees
beside him.  The luminescence of her wings made his head turn and his eyes
widened as he stared up at her.

“Listen to me very carefully,”
Kaashifah said.  “I’m all that is standing between you and the end of your
world, do you understand?”

His mouth dropped open and the
receiver fell from his hand.

“Good,” Kaashifah said.  “Deliver
a message your base.  Tell them to send their jets…”

Chapter
23: A Dance with Fate

‘Aqrab watched the dunes fly by
beneath him in silence, having never been so angry in his life.  As of yet, he
had not seen another living soul in the Fourth Lands, despite having been aloft
for several hours.  Strange, but there were certainly vast areas of his
homeworld that were uninhabited.  After all, even in the Fourth Realm,
civilization tended to congregate around water and the sustenance that it could
provide to lesser forms of life.

“I’m really sorry,” the dragon
repeated, for the hundredth time.  Savaxian had offered himself as a steed
earlier that afternoon—probably out of self-preservation, knowing the serpent
was now on
‘Aqrab’s
home territory—but ‘Aqrab was still not talking to
him.  Thunderbird, ripped from his homeland, without his powers of rain and
lightning, had nonetheless spent two of those hours screaming and fighting in
blind panic as ‘Aqrab held him in place on the dragon’s back, until ‘Aqrab
simply punched him hard enough to make him devolve into a whimpering huddle
around the dragon’s neck.

“You
will
right this,”
‘Aqrab growled back.  Then, gently touching Thunderbird’s shoulder, he said,
“Are we close?”

Thunderbird nodded, whining, his
eyes squeezed shut around tears. 

“He’s going to kill us when we go
home, isn’t he?” the dragon asked, wincing back at the sobbing demigod.

“Well,” ‘Aqrab said, “I suppose
you’re about to find out.”  Even as the dragon was stiffening beneath him,
‘Aqrab twisted them back to the First Realm.

Immediately, the skies above them
darkened with swirling black thunderstorms, pulled unnaturally from all
directions.

“Put me
down
!” Thunderbird
screamed, as the air around them began to sizzle with electricity.  “Now!  Or I
swear I will strike you both until not even your
bones
survive!”

“Peace!” ‘Aqrab cried, knowing
that the demigod meant just that.  “The dragon’s taking us down.”

“
Now
!” Thunderbird
shrieked.  His eyes were still closed, his hands fisted against the dragon’s
neck and the sky was roiling in a twisting black mass above them.

“We’re going down,” ‘Aqrab
assured him, as the dragon flared and landed them on a winding mountain road. 
“There,” he said, as soon as Savaxian’s taloned feet had touched the asphalt. 
“We’re down.  Now before you do anything in haste—”

Thunderbird rolled off of the
dragon’s back and fell to the ground hard, panting, hyperventilating,
rage
in his face.  The skies began to crackle with electricity above, and the hairs
on ‘Aqrab’s arms began to stand on end.  “You
struck
me!” he snarled at
‘Aqrab.

Goddess preserve me, he’s
going to kill us both,
‘Aqrab thought, realizing that the Thunderbird was
beyond all reason.  “Dragon!” he cried, as the expectant tension in the air
began to tingle at his arms, “Remember what I said about never giving you
another chance?  I lied!  I grant you a wish.  Use it
now
!”

“I wish Thunderbird was no longer
afraid of heights!” Savaxian babbled immediately, obviously having that same
thought.

Immediately, the Law rushed into
him with the question of,
How would you fulfill this wish?

Remove the fear of heights
placed upon Thunderbird by the dragon’s last wish
, ‘Aqrab thought hastily.

Immediately, the magic rushed
through him and ‘Aqrab surrendered to the ecstasy of the full power of the
Fourth Realm.

He was still breathing hard,
curled on his side in the middle of the road, having slid from the dragon’s
back in his bliss, when ‘Arab looked up to see the Thunderbird staring at the
dragon in shock.

“Not once,” Thunderbird whispered,
his voice low and awed, “but
twice
you surprise me this day, dragon.” 
Straightening, his voice taking on a pitch of formality, he said, “You are a
much nobler creature than I had once thought.  My deepest apologies for my
prior slights to you.  They came from a vain and selfish fool, and it will not
happen again.”

The dragon’s mouth fell open, and
again ‘Aqrab had the urge to inform Thunderbird that, in truth, the dragon was
just righting a previous wrong, but then he realized that if he did so, the dragon
would not survive the next three minutes.

“Uh, I…”  The dragon seemed to
understand that, too, because he squeaked, “Thank you.”

“No,” Thunderbird said slowly,
shaking his head.  “Thank
you
.  You are a true friend, and of noble
soul.”

“Uh, I just saw you were in need,”
Savaxian babbled, “and I, uh, couldn’t let you suffer like that.”

The demigod bowed again.  “You
are welcome to hunt on my lands, whenever you see fit.”

Unable to stand the dragon’s
hypocrisy any longer, ‘Aqrab narrowed his eyes and said, “We
really
need
to free whatever’s alive in the compound.”

Immediately, Thunderbird’s
electric eyes widened and he turned to the road.  Ahead of them, a family of
sight-seers had stopped their Subaru on the icy hill and through the
windshield, ‘Aqrab could see four open mouths staring back at them.  ‘Aqrab saw
the blue flash of a camera from the passenger side, lighting up the rain. 

“This way,” Thunderbird said,
starting up the road.  As he jogged past the vehicle, the man driving the
Subaru followed his progress, jaw still hanging wide.  Grunting, the dragon
tucked his wings and padded after him, assumedly so that the Thunderbird
couldn’t claim anything interesting in the basement before he got a chance at
it, leaving ‘Aqrab standing in the empty road in front of the Subaru, giving
those inside a nervous grin.  He backed off to the side of the road and
motioned for the man to pass.

The man obligingly drove forwards
a few feet, then stopped to stare at him through the window.  Behind him, the
backseat window rolled down and, after a quiet moment, a childlike voice called
from the darkened interior, “Are you Bigfoot?”

“Ah, well, little one,” ‘Aqrab
started to reply, but the man stepped on the gas, spinning the Subaru’s wheels
as it started down the slope.  Before it was out of range, ‘Aqrab heard a
childlike squeal of, “Bigfoot rides a
dragon
, mama!”

Wincing, he hurried to catch up
with the other two.

Thunderbird led them to a small,
gravel road that wound out from behind a huge stand of cottonwood trees, behind
which it was completely shrouded in a wall of alders.  The demigod hesitated,
peered at the side of the mailbox and its little green duck, then started down
the drive.

“Get ready,” ‘Aqrab muttered, as
they eased down the gravel road and the buildings beyond began coming into
sight, hidden in a thick forest of birch, spruce, and alders.

Expecting a full-on assault the
moment they stepped onto the compound, ‘Aqrab was somewhat surprised when they
were able to walk right up to the front door without incident.

They’re all off looking for
us,
he thought, stunned.  Either that, or out trying to pacify the Fury. 
Not wanting to think about that, ‘Aqrab let Thunderbird lead the way inside the
compound.  Like he stepped into mortals’ dwellings on a daily basis, Thunderbird
scraped his moccasins on the rug, swung the door wide, and strode inside.

“We’re looking for a staircase,”
Thunderbird said, as he led them down the hallway.  “They’ll keep their
prisoners underground.  Less chance of—is that the
Seahawks
?”  He
hesitated as they passed an open door to what looked like a cafeteria.  A huge
television was hanging from one wall, a football game in full force.  “They
made the
playoffs
?!”  Thunderbird came to a halt, his jaw falling open
slightly, peering at the television. 

“Hey!” ‘Aqrab cried, grabbing the
demigod by an arm.  “I’m not paying you songs to watch TV.”

“I’ve heard your songs already,”
Thunderbird replied.  “Oh wow.  I think that’s a sixty-one-inch plasma screen.”

“
First
we find the
dungeon,
then
you can steal their television,” ‘Aqrab said.  “Come on. 
Where do you think that staircase is?”

But Thunderbird ignored him and
stepped into the room, plucking a tidbit from the table of food-bins inside the
door.  Popping it into his mouth, he chewed the morsel for a moment before he
made a sound of approval.  “And they’ve got a good buffet.  Barbecue ribs!” 
The demigod proceeded to pick up a plate and start filling it with items from
the steaming trenches of food.

‘Aqrab felt something in his neck
twitch.  “Dragon?” he asked.

“Yes, I’m seeing it,” the dragon
muttered.  “He just filled a plate up with their food and sat down in front of
their TV.”

‘Aqrab watched the scene for
another moment, just to prove to himself that he was actually seeing it, then
twisted and started back down the hall, with the dragon following closely
behind, once more in his tall, fully clothed, rakishly handsome human form—that
was one inch taller than the rain god. 

“Okay,” ‘Aqrab said, as they
started wandering through the maze of linoleum-floored hallways, “there has to
be someone in here who knows where it is.”

The halls, as it turned out,
weren’t entirely deserted.  A black-robed priest came around one corner, saw
the two of them, and halted, frowning.

“Are you
lost
?” the man
demanded in a very un-Fatherly tone.

“Yes,” the dragon said, turning
to face him smoothly, “we were invited to conduct an interview in your basement
by one of your comrades.  Could you show us where it is?”

The priest looked ‘Aqrab up and
down with obvious disapproval.  “You’re reporters?”

‘Aqrab winced.  “Ah, well, I do
work with words for a living.”

The priest sniffed.  “Are you
aware it’s
winter
outside, my son?”

‘Aqrab glanced down at his bare
feet, like jet against the white linoleum.  “Ah, yes, I’ve been painfully aware
of that fact for the last few months, actually.”

“We have an
appointment
in
the
basement
,” the dragon reminded him. 

“I’m sorry,” the man said, “this
building has no basement, and I’ll have to ask you to leave.  The cardinal
isn’t here right now, and even if he were, you do not meet the dress code.”  He
gave ‘Aqrab’s naked chest a disdainful sniff.

“Oh, ah,” ‘Aqrab started, trying
to decide how he was going to politely ask the man to lead them to the basement
anyway, when the dragon walked up, grabbed the priest by the neck, and threw
him against the wall.  As the Father choked, he allowed some of his form to wax
draconic. 

His scaly silver lips stretching
in a smile, Savaxian rumbled, “I don’t think you
understand
, Father. 
You
will
tell us what you know about this place, or you
will
become a bloody pile of entrails on the floor.  Your choice.”

“Don’t frighten the poor fool,”
‘Aqrab said, crossing his arms over his chest.  “If you’re going to eat him,
it’s best not to get the adrenaline flowing.  Makes the meat sour.”

The dribble of urine on the floor
heralded a steady babble of affirmations that no, the compound did not have a
basement, and yes, the man was a priest—a
theologist
working on his
masters degree in Bible Studies, and he had had premarital sex in college with
a woman in the bathroom of a bar and he was
so
sorry for that, and he’d
been trying not to look at those nudie magazines that Herr Drescher had left in
the café, but they helped him get his rocks off and he promised he’d never hide
those pictures in his Bible ever again because that was
evil
and totally
wrong
and he had regretted it ever since.

Half in human form, the dragon
lifted a scaly silver eyebrow at the man.  “What do you think, djinni?”

‘Aqrab grunted.  “Go send him in
to watch TV with Thunderbird.  He doesn’t know anything.”

Making a disgusted sound, the
dragon grabbed the priest by the back of his robes and started dragging him
down the hallway towards the cafeteria.  When he came back, Savaxian had
shifted back to his human form.  “So what?” he demanded.  “The priests in this
place have no idea what the rest of them are doing?”

“They must not,” ‘Aqrab muttered,
frustrated.  “Let’s start cleaning out rooms. 
Someone
here will know.”

In all, they emptied the compound
of a little over a dozen people, most of whom had been congregated around a
mass of computer screens, radios, and other electronics, and all of whom now
shared uneasy seating with Thunderbird in the cafeteria.

“All right, we’ve tried every main
door except the three that won’t open,” the dragon said, coming to stand in the
crossway where two of them were easily visible, the third such door being
tucked around the corner.