The Immortal Queen Tsubame: Ascension (6 page)

“No matter. All people who are close to each other have fallouts. But you work through them, set those differences aside for the greater cause,” Tsubame explained.

Devdan started to ask Tsubame what the greater cause was, because if he had learned anything about Tsubame it was that she was very deliberate in her word choices. So seamlessly deliberate that she probably could and probably had made people agree to things and do things they wouldn’t have if they had caught on to her wordings. Tsubame continued without his prompting though.

“I’ve asked MaLeila to assist me in conquering this world. She hasn’t given me an answer yet, which is why despite the fact that she could have left here whenever she wanted she remained. Naturally, with three people who have as close a bond as she, you, and Bastet, I would never want to drive you apart so of course, so the offer extends to you as well.”

Tsubame stood from the bench and turned to face Devdan, brown eyes boring into his grey ones as though trying to compel him to her whims with just a look.

“I’m done serving masters,” he finally replied.

So focused Devdan was on keeping his gaze locked on hers that he didn’t notice that she had closed the distance between them and was leaning up towards him until he felt her breath on his lips as she said, “Silly man. I plan on making you one of the masters.”

Tsubame giggled and turned to make her way to a tall grass plant with red flowers on them and then continued, “You’d like that chance wouldn’t you. After being the slave, the servant, the subordinate for so many years, you get the chance to subjugate others.”

It was tempting. He couldn’t deny that back when he was a slave being tied to a tree and whipped for some infraction or another that he couldn’t remember that he hadn’t imagined being the one with the whip; the one who gave the order to be followed less there be dire consequences; the one who could pass on his servants to his chosen heir who wasn’t even born yet. After he was released from the seal he had tried to reverse the roles by killing MaLeila, swearing he’d never serve another master until she proved more powerful than him and he was forced to back down. Eventually he figured out that she wasn’t a master like his previous ones, but she still had unknowing control over him so long as he had been bound to her and he’d wished that he could switch the roles. At least he’d thought so anyway. Now he knew that she was as much as slave to him as he was to her with the bind. Still he had managed to quell the desire, hadn’t even thought about it again until Tsubame’s proposition.

“You do want that chance,” Tsubame stated after Devdan’s long silence.

Devdan decided to ignore her, unwilling to let the woman get into his head. “MaLeila, let’s go. The Russian Clan has funded the rebels and they’re invading the city. They’ll be here soon too and we probably don’t want to be around when they get their hands on Tsubame.”

“So that’s where Marcel ran off to,” MaLeila said.

“Marcel?” Devdan asked.

“Tsubame sent him somewhere last night, told him to be ready for today.”

Devdan turned back to Tsubame and said, “You knew about the invasion.”

“Of course I did. I know everything.”

“Yet you relieved your soldiers from protecting you?”

“I sent them to surround as much of the perimeter of the city as they could, to hold them off until the real cavalry arrived,” Tsubame replied eyes sparkling with unrestrained excitement and anticipation.

“What did you do?” Devdan asked, narrowing his eyes as the ominous feeling he’d pushed aside earlier returned. He looked at MaLeila. “What is she planning to do?”

“She asked for the Thorne’s help to defend her against the rebels,” MaLeila began and then stopped to glance at Tsubame.

“Why…?” Devdan trailed off. Tsubame didn’t need anyone to defend her. All she had to do was bring another sandstorm through or if she though it was too suspicious to do that again without alerting the greater population about magic, she could have cast a spell to confound the rebels’ army.

Tsubame, whom MaLeila was still looking at in uncertainty, gave MaLeila a small smile and said, “Go ahead. Nothing they do at this point will stop the events I’ve set into motion.”

MaLeila then turned back to Devdan, her hesitancy gone now that she had her alternate self’s approval as she said, “She wants to start a war between the U.S. and Russia.”

Devdan pushed aside the fact that as far as he saw, MaLeila had already made up her mind about whether to take Tsubame’s deal or not and turned the girl’s words over in his head. He wasn’t a diplomatic nor did he believe in political correctness, always preferring to let his honesty, magic, and gun speak for him. Diplomacy and politics was Bastet’s forte. But he didn’t need his sister to know what an all-out war between the U.S. and Russia would mean for world.

“Are you trying to start World War III?” Devdan asked.

“Yes. And I’m not really starting anything so much as pushing things along a little faster than usual to suit my ambitions. The U.S. and Russia have been at war covertly for decades. It was an inevitability,” Tsubame explained still absently inspecting the tall plant with red flowers. Then she suddenly stopped and looked out past the garden, into the city and said, “And now my help arrives.”

6

MaLeila only felt this kind of magical stillness three times in her life, each time when something significant was about to happen. The first time was right before she was attacked by a witch who had long outlived the time her magic could physically sustain her and was taking the life source of those with any affinity to magic. Bastet, who had been tracking the witch, intervened to save her and it was during the conflict that she discovered magic. The second time she felt it was right before she had to dodge a bullet from Devdan’s gun when they first met. And the third time was right before Tsubame fell out of a portal from an alternate timeline. All three events served as a catalyst or point of no return, so whatever was about to happen MaLeila knew she wouldn’t be able to turn away from it.

“And now my help arrives,” Tsubame said.

No sooner did the words leave Tsubame’s mouth did the distant cries and steady gunshots escalate into cries of full-fledged terror and sporadic panicked shots. Whatever Tsubame’s help was, it certainly wasn’t the average army.

Devdan looked toward the direction of the conflict and then noticed the shadow of a rock near him. He began to step towards it, but Tsubame said, “It’s not going to work. There was a reason it was so easy for you to get here. I couldn’t have you interfering with the conflict and potentially forcing me to deal with you myself and forgo the feisty but helpless damsel female leader who cares for her people persona I’ve been careful to project to the world thus far.”

“A magical loop,” MaLeila said. She shouldn’t have been shocked. It was her favorite trick to keep her opponents trapped whether it was so they couldn’t get away or so that she could. Most sorcerers and sorceresses couldn’t create a magical loop though because it involved having the ability to warp space and distance, particular the tears in it and in the last nearly seven years MaLeila hadn’t come across any sorcerers who could create a magical loop. It was one of the many magical theories that Claude had left to her, a technique that Bastet and Devdan weren’t even sure that he could use. The only reason it hadn’t crossed her mind that Tsubame could was that the woman never had used it, and MaLeila continued to forget that the woman was only an alternate version of herself because despite the fact that she wasn’t hiding it anymore Tsubame continued to favor her disguise.

“But just because you can’t interfere doesn’t mean you aren’t free to see for yourself what the Thornes have decided to send to aid me,” Tsubame said as she started back into the compound. “There’s a great view from the roof. Come on. I’ll show you.”

Boxed in and with no way to escape, Devdan gave MaLeila one last glance and followed Tsubame into the compound. MaLeila hesitated before heading to the roof herself. There wasn’t much to see at first—until she got to the edge. The battle was now taking place in the heart of the city, closer and closer to the compound.

“What are those?” Devdan asked Tsubame, eyes narrowed as he watched the bloody fight below.

At first glance, MaLeila didn’t see what Devdan was talking about. They all looked like regular soldiers to her. Then she took a second glance, this time with not just her physical eye but her magical one. Their soldier outfits and their guns made then look like run of the mill soldiers, but there was something just something just off about the color of their skin and the nimbleness of their movements that made MaLeila take a closer look at them with her magical senses. She didn’t fully switch her vision over to see the ethereal world, but rather a double view that made everyone look like they were puppets with strings.  Ethereally they looked like demons, but the demons possessing the human bodies didn’t have full control of the body, nor were they slowly rotting the body they possessed from the inside because of the body’s incompatibility with the energies that demons exuded. In fact, the bodies weren’t even fully possessed by the demons they hosted. If MaLeila had to describe the phenomenon, it was as though the original human souls had fused with the demonic energies.

“What are those?” MaLeila asked.

Tsubame didn’t answer, too engrossed with watching the conflict like it was a movie.  She continued to do so even when the door behind them burst open and Bastet clambered onto the roof.

MaLeila began to call the woman’s name, but before she could there was a sharp rise in the temperature and from Bastet’s right hand bursts a flamethrower aimed directly at Tsubame. MaLeila had only begun to step back when she was pulled out the way and forced to the ground as the flamethrower widened across the roof before dispersing.

“I didn’t think you were interested in protecting me anymore,” MaLeila said dryly to Devdan.

“Old habits die hard,” the man grumbled as he turned to look at Bastet who was slowly turning about the roof looking for Tsubame who had disappeared. “What the fuck was that?”

“Sorry. I figured you’d both have enough sense to get out the way,” Bastet said.

Devdan rolled his eyes and asked, “What are you doing?”

“Change of plans,” Bastet replied. “We can’t leave without Tsubame. She may have just started World War III, but we’ll finish it a hell of a lot quicker if we capture her and deliver her to the Russians.”

“And on whose behalf are you working on by doing that? To be honest it sounds like something the Magic Council would order,” Tsubame said reappearing in the same spot she had vanished from as though she hadn’t vanished in the first place. “Tsk, tsk. It seems like all of you suffer from trying so hard to live up to someone else’s expectations of you that all of you are a slave to something or someone in your own way. Why try to stop this war when what I’m actually doing is liberating you?”

It was the way Bastet rolled her left shoulder back that gave away to MaLeila that Tsubame had struck a nerve with the woman. Tsubame seemed to know it too because she continued, “It’s because despite the fact that you left the service of the Magic Council a long time ago you’re still their bitch.”

Bastet sent the flamethrower again and this time Tsubame took out her fan and brought it down in an arch to create a strong dust of wind that fanned the flames away from her and back at Bastet, whom the flames did little damage against.

“I didn’t think you were as stubborn as Nika, but I guess you are which means I’m going to have to rough you up a bit before you come to your senses and listen to me,” Tsubame said.

The woman flew through the air at Bastet while bringing out her second fan. Bastet ran to meet the woman’s charge, charging up another flamethrower. Just as Tsubame brought her arms down in a crisscrossing motion, Bastet slid under Tsubame’s feet, got back to her feet, and sent the flamethrower at the woman’s back.

Tsubame simultaneously turned to face the flames, tossed one of fans in the air, catching it in the same hand as the other, and held her hand out to gather the flames in her hand into a tight ball. She glanced between it and Bastet twice before humming and tossing the ball into the air. Only when it began to fall to ground and the woman didn’t make a move to catch it did MaLeila figure out what the woman was doing.

“Fuck. She’s setting the mood,” MaLeila said, bringing up a shield just as the ball crashed into the roof.

The shield did little good besides protecting her and Devdan from the initial flames before the roof exploded and caved in. Even before the dust settled, MaLeila pushed a large piece of concrete off her back as she coughed up debris and waved smoke from the fire that was beginning to overtake the compound out her face. Instinctively, she began to call for her staff and only when she didn’t feel the cool metal in her hands did she remember that Tsubame destroyed it. She stood up looking around the debris for Tsubame, Bastet, and Devdan. Devdan burst forth from some rubble not too far away from her rubbing the right side of his chest. MaLeila narrowed her eyes in concern, but said nothing as she continued to look for Tsubame and Bastet. Another explosion rocked the compound and MaLeila began to climb over the rubble in the direction where she was sure she’d find Tsubame and Bastet.

She followed the noise to a collapsed wall and witnessed Tsubame and Bastet outside in the garden, Tsubame looking pristine as ever, as though she hadn’t been near the explosion, while Bastet was missing the heavy black jacket and tunic she had been wearing and was now only wearing a sports bra, her body covered in dust and smoke. In addition to all the flames and the smoke in the air, an electrical storm was cackling in the air above them.

MaLeila jumped out the window, manipulating the matter in the air so that it was closer together and slowed her descent to the ground and lessened her impact. A bolt of lightning shot down from the sky above Tsubame, while Bastet collected energy from the electrical storm and directed it to the ground to form a fissure. It travelled to where Tsubame was standing and collapsed the ground beneath her just as the bolt struck. The fissure and the bolt caused the ground beneath Tsubame to explode and for a moment, Tsubame was shielded from view. Everyone waited in tense anticipation of the woman reappearing. Then her silhouette flashed, like a trick of the light on a sunny day and then a red blue streak across the grass, striking both Bastet down.

“You said you didn’t want to hurt them,” MaLeila yelled when the woman stopped not too far away from her.

“And that’s still true,” Tsubame replied.

“Then why are you fighting them?”

“I said I don’t want to. Not that I wouldn’t if I needed to. But Miss Samara I think the real question is why aren’t you fighting at all?”

The question struck something in MaLeila, something that she had been putting off under the pretense of continuing to watch things unfold. She tried to continue putting it off, by responding that Tsubame had destroyed her staff so how was she supposed to fight her.

As though reading her mind, Tsubame said first, “And don’t try putting this on your lack of a staff. If you really wanted to stop me, if you really wanted to fight against me, you would have. You want me to stop. Stop me. What’s holding you back?”

MaLeila knew the answer the instant Tsubame asked the question, but couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. But now she understood why Tsubame was fighting; why she was still here when she had already accomplished what she needed and it would be so easy for her to escape; seemingly wasting her time holding back in a fight she could easily win. Back at the airport, Tsubame had been waiting for MaLeila, Bastet, and Devdan to shatter before sweeping her away so that she could privately tempt MaLeila with the world. And now, Tsubame was bidding her time for the answer to that proposal. An answer MaLeila already had but was afraid to give.

“You can stop this whenever you want.” Tsubame held MaLeila’s gaze as she tossed her fan in the air and opened it back up again before tossing it in the air like a boomerang to intersect the ring of golden magic daggers headed in her direction courtesy of a once again standing, albeit bleeding, Bastet.

Her fan missed one though and the golden dagger headed straight toward her. In the second between it connecting with her, Tsubame only looked at as though she had time to contemplate what she might do with it. As the dagger was about to hit her, a shadow rose in front of her and absorbed the dagger.

“Do you have to be so fucking reckless?” Marcel said appearing next to the woman. MaLeila felt like she should have known. Tsubame probably had known.

“I would have been fine. I was just going to make things a little more interesting for myself,” Tsubame said with a shrug and then turned to MaLeila. “Alas, now I’m bored. And I wouldn’t want to hurt someone too badly in my boredom. So are you ready now?”

“If you’re going to leave, she’s certainly not going with you,” Bastet said from where she was standing.

“Is that the belief you’re clinging to because you want so much for her to stay with you, that you don’t want to believe that this time Miss Samara doesn’t need your saving and never really has?” Tsubame said to Bastet. She turned her attention back to MaLeila and said, “Don’t be afraid to give into the desire that whispers into your heart every night to be the most supreme, to have everyone answer to you because they couldn’t stop you if they tried. Don’t be afraid to give into your birthright because you’re trying so hard to prove that you aren’t anything like Claude Thorne. Admittedly, he had the same drive, tried so hard to be a good upstanding human being just like you try so hard to be. Knew what he was capable of and yet resisted it. And because of that it twisted him and the perversion of the slave trade only made that corruption so much worse. Isn’t that right Devdan?”

So mesmerized by Tsubame’s words MaLeila had been that she hadn’t seen Devdan had make his way to where they were finally. He was still holding his chest and MaLeila guessed that was the reason for his delay.

“You’ve said enough,” Devdan replied.

“No. I want to know what she’s talking about. I want to know the big secret,” MaLeila said turning her gaze to meet Devdan’s.

She thought with the bind broken their relationship would be different, but she was still as acutely aware of him as she had always been, the energy and tension in the room rising as their natural link, unconfined by Claude’s forced binding flared as if trying to bring them together even though they were again facing off against each other. He felt it too. MaLeila could tell by the way he tried to magically withdraw himself from her, but he didn’t want to acknowledge it. And like always when he didn’t want to acknowledge their connection, he diverted attention away from it.