Alaskan Fury (53 page)

He was making snow-angels—poor
ones, because they kept melting—when his mistress—no
not
his mistress,
he realized, giggling all the more—showed up in his vision, peering down at him
like he’d dropped into a latrine and begun smearing himself with shit.

“Are you feeling all right,
djinni?” she asked, nudging him with her toe.

He responded with another giggle,
then lunged up, grabbed her full-on by the back of the head and the small of
her back, dragged her bodily to his chest, and kissed her, long and deep, then,
while she was gasping and flailed at him, heaved her up—with the Third Lander
gone, she weighed only a hundred pounds, if that—and spun her around above him,
laughing.

Then, still giddy, he brought her
back down and crushed her to his chest.  “Thank you,” he said, for the third
time that day.  He kissed the top of her head.  “Thank you so much.”

“You’re leaving, then?” she asked
against his chest.

‘Aqrab heard the fragility in her
voice and hesitated.  Slowly, he pulled the Fury back so he could look down into
her soft brown eyes.  “Do you want me to?” he asked.   For three thousand
years, she’d told him how much she wanted him to just disappear, and he hadn’t
allowed himself the hope that she would actually
wish
his presence.

The Fury bit her lip and reluctantly
looked up at him.  “I want you to stay.”

It was the happiest words he had
ever heard.  ‘Aqrab felt his face stretch in another grin and he bent down to
kiss her again.  “Your wish,” he said, pulling her tight against him in another
embrace, “is my command.”  Then he resumed kissing her, deeper and more
passionate this time.  She tentatively grew wings—and a foot of height—and
returned his kiss, wrapping him again in her downy feathers.

Something tapped his shoulder and
‘Aqrab ignored it, pulling Kaashifah closer to him instinctively, reveling in
her touch, her feel, her presence—

“Hey,” the dragon said, tapping
his shoulder again.  “Don’t asphyxiate her, okay?”  Reluctantly, ‘Aqrab
released his Fury and turned, more than a little irritated at the
interruption.  He was pleasantly surprised, however, to see that the dragon was
proffering a sword to Kaashifah.  “Next time, use this.”

It was a huge claymore, longer
than the Fury was tall, and looked heavy and barbaric enough that ‘Aqrab wasn’t
going to embarrass himself trying to lift it.  He stepped back, allowing
Kaashifah to see the weapon.  His magus extracted herself from his grip and
reached out to take it, hefting it easily one-handed as she considered. 

“It’s bigger than what I’m used
to,” she said, “but I think I can make it work.”

“And here’s this,” the dragon muttered,
offering her another, smaller sword, this one obviously of good manufacture. 
“My uncle Trellyn gave it to me to start my hoard.”

His magus had the good sense to
take it with great respect.  “Thank you, dragon.”

“It’s Savaxian,” he muttered. 
“And I want to help.”

“There might be treasure in the
compound,” Kaashifah agreed.

“I don’t care about treasure,” Savaxian
growled.  “I want to help you break her ribs.”

Imelda passed in and out of
consciousness, flopped around on the back of a horse, until dawn came, and it
dumped her off.

One thing she had to give the
horse, was that its back was warm, and almost silky-smooth.  Like rabbit fur. 
The snow, on the other hand, was not warm and silky-smooth, but rather cold and
painfully studded with hidden sticks and fallen logs, and she had never found
the time to button up her stolen trenchcoat.

“Miserable horses!” she shrieked,
trying to extract her chest and torso from the snow before it sucked away her
body heat, but found she was too dizzy and uncoordinated to do anything more
than flail. 

She’d always hated horses.  The
Order had tried to put her through lessons, in her teens, under the excuse that
Inquisitors needed to be able to hunt down their prey in any territory, using
any means available to them, but Imelda had been bucked off by every animal
they had.  Even the tiniest, oldest, and most docile draft-ponies would launch
her across the yard the moment her ass touched its back, then proceed to do
their best to tapdance on her skull.  All dogs had hated her on sight, and not
even a cat would tolerate her presence.  It was why she had fish.  Fish were
stupid, and didn’t have the capacity to rip hands apart as a gesture of their
displeasure.

The horse whuffed at her, an
unmistakable sound of irritation, and twisted to glare at her.

It was then that Imelda saw the
four-foot rod of twisted opal sticking from the forehead of the ‘horse’ as it
scowled at her from behind it with cerulean blue eyes.

“Oh.”  She sat, dumbstruck, as
the snow melted to her body, dribbling down her naked chest.

Then she noticed the other
differences…  The shaggy silver mane that wrapped around its entire neck, the
cloven golden hooves, the flowing hair around the fetlocks, the long, lionlike
tail
…

“Oh,” she said again, as the cold
air against her wet skin began giving her goosebumps.

For a long moment, the beast
simply scowled at her.  Then, slowly, it began to condense, its outline
blurring as it shrank and stood up, returning to the size of a man.  He had his
arms crossed over his chest and was peering at her expectantly, an eyebrow
lifted.

Imelda winced.  “Sorry.”

He eyed her a few minutes, like
he was pondering whether or not to stomp a pretty golden hoof through her
cranium, then sniffed.  Turning, he started studying the trees around him, glancing
up at the spruce.  Then, saying nothing, he wandered off and started snapping dead
branches from the trunks.  As Imelda watched, confused, he collected a nice
armful, then dropped them in a pile in front of her.

“No fire!” Imelda said quickly,
tugging the wet, icy trenchcoat around her.  “They’ll see it.”

The man hesitated, glancing over
his shoulder at her as he denuded another spruce.  Then he went back to
breaking off branches.

Imelda frowned, trying to
remember if she had heard him speak.  He had communicated with her, when he’d
been getting her to crawl to his cage, but had it been physical words, or just
in her mind?  She’d been too near-death to differentiate.

Then the beast was dropping
another pile of twigs in front of her and squatting down in front of it.  He
rubbed his fingers together until she saw a bright, blue-white spark beginning
to crackle between them.

“No!” she cried, hurriedly slapping
a hand over his arm.

The man lunged away from her,
startled. 

“No fire,” she said, shaking her
head and pointing to the sticks.

The beast glanced from her to the
sticks and back, his blue eyes confused.

“
Fiiiiire
,” Imelda said,
making motions of heat and billowing flames.  She shook her head.  “No fire. 
They will
find us
.”

Giving her a sideways glance, he eased
back up to the bundle of twigs and squatted before it, then once more started
rubbing his fingers together.

Instinctively, Imelda reached for
his hand.

The beast yanked his hand away
and scowled at her, and memory of that four-foot horn made Imelda quickly back
away to watch from afar.  Eying her like a wary cat, the man started rubbing
his fingers together again and stuck them inside the tinder.  Imelda saw the
first signs of smoke snaking upwards in bluish tendrils and she felt her chest
constrict.  “You
can’t
,” she cried.  “They’re going to
see
it.”

But then the fire was burning,
and he was backing away, gesturing for her to use it.

Imelda crawled forward and
hastily knocked the fire apart, patting snow over it, putting it out.  “You
don’t understand,” she said quickly, as he started to bristle, “we have
technology in our helicopters that can see this. 
Satellites.
  It’s how
we found you in the first place.”

For a long moment, the man
watched her, then glanced off thoughtfully, and Imelda’s breath caught when she
realized he was considering whether or not to leave her there.  Then, slowly,
he turned back and gave her a long look.

“You’ve already saved my life
once,” Imelda said, realizing he was probably trying to, in his mind, repay a
debt.  “You don’t owe me anything.  I can find my way to a road from here.”

To her surprise, the creature
chuckled and glanced at his feet, looking almost shy.  “Uh, hmm.”  He coughed
and cleared his throat as he dug in the snow with his toes.  Then, lifting his
perfect blue eyes back to her, he said, “I
think
we’re in Yukon, but we
might’ve crossed into the Northwest Territories by now.”

Imelda stared at the man a very
long time, wondering if he was pulling some sort of hoax.  Then, when his lean,
expressive face remained sincere, she glanced at the forest around them.  It
had
seemed to be moving past them at a phenomenal rate, though she had attributed
it to her own disorientation and dizziness.

“So,” the man said, cocking his
head at her curiously, “will you let me build you a fire, then?”

Numbly, Imelda backed away from
the pile of sticks.

Without another word, he crept
forward and knocked as much snow from the sticks as possible, then returned
them to their former pile.  Sticking his hand into the tangle of tinder, he
soon had a weak flame licking at the tinder.  Adding more fuel, he built the
fire to a nice roar, then backed away and again gestured for her to warm
herself.

Hesitantly, Imelda crawled
forward and opened her trenchcoat to the flames.

Seemingly unaffected by the cold,
he continued to stand well out of reach, watching her.  His behavior reminded
her of a very reclusive—but curious—feline, like a snow leopard.  And, much
like a snow leopard, Imelda strongly suspected that one false move on her part
and he would probably bound away through the snow in the same manner, leaving
her alone with her tiny fire, trying to figure out which part of the Canadian wilderness
she was trapped in.

“I need to get back to Eklutna,”
Imelda said, when he offered no explanation as to why he’d helped her. 

The lanky, silver-haired man
hesitated a moment, but said nothing, merely began breaking spruce boughs and
pilling them across a fallen log in a lean-to, then piling snow around the
outside, insulating it.  When it was obvious that the shelter was meant for
her
,
Imelda just stared at it. 

“Um,” Imelda said gingerly, not
wanting to offend, “I really need to get back.”

Done with his construction, the
man crouched beside a tree, watching her, saying nothing. 

Imelda sighed and hunched over
the fire, peering into the flames.  A fallen angel was torturing and killing
people in the name of God, duping her kinsmen into following along with her
corruption, and Imelda was stuck in Canada, without food or supplies, huddled
over a fire in a stolen trenchcoat. 

“So why’d you save me?” the man
finally asked.

Imelda looked up at him
cautiously, actually surprised he was still with her.  “I could ask you the
same question.”

He glanced all-too-quickly at the
snow between his knees and returned her question with a shrug.  “You got a
family?”

Imelda froze.  Too often, that
question came before something horrible, like,
“You ever want to see them
again?”
  She cleared her throat nervously, “Um, no.”

“Me neither.”  The man took a
deep breath, glanced up at the sun barely cresting the horizon, then back down
at her.  For a long moment, neither of them spoke.  Then, softly, “You get
headaches, right?”

Imelda jerked to look up at him,
answering with a wary silence.

“So you do.”

Very carefully, Imelda said, “Yes.”

“Thought so.”  He dug idly in the
snow with his slender fingers.  “Why you need to go back to Eklutna?”  The way
he asked, he made it
sound
as if it were a casual curiosity on his part,
but Imelda could feel his intense interest. 
Like
, she realized,
a
child that has not quite yet learned how to lie.

“I need to kill someone,” Imelda
said. 

“You can’t kill a Fury,” he said,
looking up at her timidly through his veil of silky-silver hair.

Imelda laughed.  “Something you
learn, when you’ve worked my job as long as you have, is that, whatever the
demon, there’s always a way to kill it.”

Too late, Imelda realized what
she had said.  The man stopped dragging his hand through the snow and shook his
hair out of his face in order to scowl at her, reminding her greatly of the
action of an annoyed horse.  “
Not
a demon.”

And, with the near
ringing
purity that she felt flowing off of the creature, like a crystalline bell that
seemed to be making the very ground he squatted on hallowed land, how
could
a unicorn be considered a demon?  Even by Order standards, that was a stretch…

“Sorry,” she cleared her throat,
quickly dropping her head.  “You’re right.  A lot of my…ideas…have been—”  She
swallowed hard, unable to finish.  She felt the unicorn’s scowl like a brand
against her skin.  Trying again, she managed, “In the last couple months, my
whole world turned upside down.  I’m beginning to think the Order is…mistaken…about
a lot of things…”  For some time, she could only stare at the coals in shame. 
Then she lifted her head, and meeting his accusing blue eyes was the hardest
thing she’d ever had to do.  “I don’t think you’re evil.  What we’re doing is
wrong.”

Instead of raging at her, instead
of yelling and condemning her, cursing her soul to the bowels of Hell, the
creature simply grunted and resumed picking at the snow with his slender
fingers.  “You know of any other unicorns around?”  He said it nonchalantly,
but Imelda heard the pain in his voice.

Reluctantly, she said, “As far as
I know, they’re all in Rome.”

He jerked to look up at her, his
face torn with anguish.  “How many?” he breathed.

“Fourteen, at last count.”

His eyes widened and, as she
watched, his legs just seemed to weaken to the point where he simply dropped,
kneeling, into the snow.  “
Fourteen
,” he whispered, staring at her with
a brutal mixture of awe and sorrow.  Like she had told him there was a
thousand.

Something about the way he said it
gave Imelda pause.  Softly, she said, “You thought you were the last.”

He swallowed and looked away. 
For a long time, he didn’t speak, merely stared at the peeling bark of a birch
tree.  Then, with agony in his words, “They…took…their horns.”  It wasn’t a
question.

Imelda winced.  That was the
first thing they took.  A unicorn couldn’t work its magics without its horn. 
“I believe so,” she agreed.

This time, when he looked at her,
there were tears in his eyes.  “Why?”

Because we thought they were
evil.  Because we thought we were at war.  Because we thought we’d been given
orders by God.  Because…

“Because we were blind,” Imelda
whispered.

The man shuddered in on himself,
wrapping his arms around his chest, hunching over, staring at the snow between
his knees.  Seeing his abject misery so clear on his face, Imelda’s heart went
out to him.  She crawled forward and gingerly put her hand on his knee.

Very slowly, the man lifted his
eyes to hers, tears wetting his pale cheeks.

In the face of such sorrow, Imelda
found she had nothing to say.  She started to pull back and turn back to the
fire, ashamed.

A warm palm caught her wrist. 
“Stay?”  It was a combination of a plea and a whimper, and it had untold ages
of loneliness ringing hollowly at its core.  Again, Imelda thought of how odd
his speech sounded, how stilted.  Almost like someone who had learned from
afar…

“Have you been avoiding people
all this time?” she whispered.  Then, when he merely looked away, she insisted,
“Why didn’t you go back to your home Realm?”