Alaskan Fury (44 page)

“He’s in the basement, isn’t he?”
Imelda whispered.

The German hesitated.  “I heard
that Zenaida brought in a Seer a couple days ago, as you slept.  But I didn’t
know it was—”

But Imelda was already rushing
for the helicopter, her heart a thundering hammer in her veins.  Behind her,
Herr Drescher jogged to catch up.  He cleared his throat tentatively. 
“Inquisitorin, seeing as the two of you were so close—”

“Don’t say ‘were,’” Imelda
snapped.  “Take me back to Eklutna.”  She would put a bullet in Zenaida’s brain
for this.

Herr Drescher followed her back
into the cockpit, but hesitated in starting the engine.  “I am sensing,
Inquisitorin, that you are about to do something stupid.”

“I’m going to free my Padre, and
if Zenaida tries to stop me, she’s going to die.”

Herr Drescher stared at the
consoles for a long moment before he said, “When fighting a magus, one best
aims for the head.”  Then he fired the engine up and the thrum of the rotors
began to lift them from the earth.

Swimming up from the warmest,
most comfortable sleep she’d had since she’d left her bed and blankets behind,
Kaashifah yawned and rolled over.

A huge, mirror-silver
serpent lay curled in a corner, watching her, the air between them awash in a
dozen spells, wards, and shields, some so strong that they made the air hum.

Kaashifah’s yawn caught in a
choking gasp.  So
that
was why it had been so damn warm.  They had spent
the night in a
dragon’s
den—she’d just been too exhausted to notice the
subtle fluxes of power.  Kaashifah carefully looked
past
the creature,
sat up, yawned again, stretched, and glanced over at the piles of food, the
hairs of her back prickling as the beast continued to observe them.

Heart pounding, she pretended to
crawl over to the food and feed herself in an attempt to buy time.  They had
slept
in a dragon’s
den
.  Uninvited.  It looked like a young dragon, but
still…  This was not going to go well. 

Right on cue, the dragon said,
I
know you saw me, cockroach.
 
You call that subterfuge?  That was a piss-poor
attempt.

Kaashifah flinched.  She knew the
djinni hadn’t heard.  Dragons were notorious for their command of telepathy,
and it had been addressed specifically to her.

What, are you trying to
pretend I’m just a fly on the wall while you continue to violate my cave with
your simian secretions? 

Tightening her shoulders
unhappily, Kaashifah said, “‘Aqrab, we have attracted the attention of a
dragon.”

“Oh?” the djinni said, nervously
glancing out the door.  “Where is it?”

“Right here, Fourthlander,” the
dragon snarled, dropping his invisibility and snapping out his wings in an
awesome unfurling, taking up the entire cavern in a gesture that made the
djinni scream and shift realms. 

Kaashifah sighed and turned to
watch the dragon unfold.  It was young, probably only three to four hundred
years old, most likely about thirty feet from nose to tail, with massive silver
wings that, when stretched out, would easily envelop those of a small Bush
plane.  Its horns, talons, and teeth were all a darker color of quicksilver,
almost black, and it had bright, frost-blue eyes that glittered like gemstones
around a diamond-shaped iris.

Its scales, however, were its
most beautiful asset.  Each scale, from the tiny ones around his eyes and
snout, to the huge plates upon his chest, looked like liquid silver, reflecting
her own image back at her.

“All right, cockroach,” the
dragon rumbled down at her, lowering his head ominously until they were but
inches apart.  “What are you, and why are you in my cave?”

“I suffer from the bite of a
wolf,” Kaashifah said.  She was pretty sure that the dragon wasn’t old enough
to remember her debt.  “I am owed blood-debt by your kinsmen, and I come to get
the Third Lander removed.”

The dragon laughed.  “
You
? 
A cockroach?  Blood-debt?!”  He snorted and chuckled some more, as if he found
the idea particularly funny.  “What could a
mudborn
do for a
dragon
?”

Kaashifah narrowed her eyes. 
“Who said I was a mudborn?”

The dragon’s laughs choked off in
a scowl.  After a long silence, the dragon licked its jaws with a red-black
tongue and sniffed.  “What are you?”

Kaashifah lifted her head in
challenge.  “Remove the wolf and find out.”

The dragon flared its scales
along its neck in aggravation.  “How about I
kill
you and ask the
djinni
,
instead?”  He glanced to a spot of empty air near the cave entrance.  “And
don’t try to leave.  I’m not done with you.  We have bargains to be made,
djinni.”  He turned back to Kaashifah.  “Now, where were we?  Ah, that’s
right…”  He peeled his lips from his gleaming black-silver teeth and bunched
his neck to lunge at her.

Kaashifah sighed.  “I am owed
blood-debt,” she insisted.  “Close your fool mouth, child.”

The dragon’s ice-blue eyes
narrowed, but he closed his mouth.  “Blood-debt by who?”

Kaashifah thought for a moment.

“Ha!” the dragon snapped.  “I
knew
you were lyin—”

She held up a hand and started
counting fingers.  “Kassynian, Ostoria, Essylss, Rothorak, Trellyn,” she held
up another hand, “Wyst, Storrinas, Klavellinath, Toriga, Dorssaanthi,” she
reset her first hand, “Pernigyn—”

“Enough,” the dragon muttered.  His
wings drooped and he looked somewhat deflated.

Kaashifah dropped her hands and
gave the serpent a flat look.  “Basically every dragon who was clutching in the
canyons of the
Büyük Selçuklu Devleti
—I’m sorry, the Great
Seljuq Empire—when the wolves crossed into present-day Turkey to flee the
exterminations in Europe.”  She gave him a patronizing smile.  “I apologize.  I
forget that you probably never had the fortune of
being
there.”  She had
found, long ago, that the best way to deal with young dragons was to let them
know you were older, wilier, and had a thousand times more experience, and let
them draw their own conclusions from there.

Dragons’
somewhat…wild…imaginations, Kaashifah had noted, often did the rest of her work
for her.

The dragon’s upper lip twitched
in a snarl, but he reluctantly folded his wings back to his body and glared at
her.  “What are you?”

“Remove my curse,” Kaashifah
challenged, “and find out.”

The second weapon, when dealing
with dragons, was to use their curiosity against them.

“Unless,” she offered, when the
dragon merely peered at her, “you’re…scared?”

The third weapon, when dealing
with dragons, was to invoke their pride.

The dragon cocked his head at her
like she were a bug that had just grown a small horn from between its eyes and
used it to stab him in the foot, looking a cross between irritated, angry, and
anxious.  She watched him debate, then fidget, then lick his lips, and her
heart began to pound as she watched the contortions play out through his head
before he finally growled, “Fine, wench.  I shall remove your curse and spare
my uncle the waste of his time.”  He reached out and Kaashifah’s ribs became a
thousand anvils in Hephaestus’s forge as her blood thundered through her ears. 
Oh gods,
she thought, holding her breath. 
He’s going to—

“She’s a Fury,” the djinni
blurted, popping back into the First Realm between them like an ebony
mountain.  “No need to remove her curse,” he said.  “She’s a Fury.”

“You
backstabber
!”
Kaashifah cried, rounding to face him.  “He was about to
do
it!”

But the djinni ignored her and,
to the dragon, said, “If you remove her curse, she is going to kill me.  You
can’t bargain with me if she kills me.”

Kaashifah froze, open-mouthed in
horror.  She, it seemed, wasn’t the
only
one who had learned how to
manipulate dragons.  Utterly disgusted, she snapped, “We just spent
months
trekking through the
snow
, and you never planned on letting them work
their magics on me, did you?”

“Of course not,” ‘Aqrab said,
still watching the dragon. 

The dragon gave ‘Aqrab a long
look, then peered around him at Kaashifah with a mixture of trepidation and
suspicion.  “The Furies are dead.”

The words, so calm and final,
settled in her gut like a cold rot.  Her confidence leaving her in a wave,
Kaashifah stammered, “They are?”  She’d had her suspicions, but the dragons, of
any race, were the chronologists, the historians, the record keepers.  If
anyone would know of other survivors, it would be them.

‘Aqrab turned to look at her,
commiseration in his face.

“They got slaughtered before the
fall of Rome,” the dragon said dismissively.  He watched her a moment longer,
then his eyes flickered to the djinni.  “They gave you a
Fury
as a mate? 
Whose daughter did
you
bugger, djin—”

The sudden blast of sizzling
light and thunder knocked them all from their feet, and a tall Athabascan man
strode into the cave, daintily stepping around plates of food.  “I thought I’d
given you enough time to bargain with the wench and I was getting bored, so I—”
Thunderbird’s sentence cut off suddenly as he passed a plate of strawberries. 
He paused, stooped, daintily plucked one from the top, examined it from all
sides, discarded it, then picked up another.  Seemingly finding it to his
satisfaction, he bit into the fruit, considered it thoughtfully, then lifted
his electric eyes to the dragon and immediately his face darkened.  “Ugh.”  He
tossed the half-eaten strawberry aside.  “Very well, lizard.  Shall we take
this outside?”

The dragon puffed up like an
angry bird.  “
You
are on
my
land
.  We
discussed
this.”

“You are detaining my
entertainment,” Thunderbird said, gesturing vaguely at the djinni.

The dragon looked like he was
about to explode.  “
Detaining
?  They were
copulating
on my
floor
.”

Thunderbird hesitated, then
turned to face ‘Aqrab completely.  “I’m
impressed
.” 

“Get
out
!” the dragon
roared, barreling past them, shoving the Thunderbird backwards with a taloned
foot.  “
Now
!”

Thunderbird, who landed sprawled
amidst a congealed roast and a platter of grapes, picked himself up slowly, a
deadly look in his eye.  “Try that again, lizard.”

“You are in my cave,” the dragon
snarled.  But he did not try it again. 

“Your cave is on my land,”
Thunderbird replied, picking grapes from his robes.

“…
your
…land?” the dragon
sputtered.  “Since when was this
your
land?”

“Since before your impudent
family moved onto my continent,” Thunderbird replied.  He flicked a bit of gristle
to the floor, then cracked his knuckles, his electric eyes locking onto the
dragon.  “So.  Runt.  Shall we retire outside, or shall I hollow out the
mountain with your remains?”

The dragon lowered its head and
hunched its back like an angry cat as it backed away, flaring its wings.

Once it was out of range, the
Thunderbird calmly found a clean blanket, inspected it for dirt, and regally
sat down.  Gesturing at the djinni, he said, “You may begin.  If the lizard
interrupts you, I will deal with him.”  He reached over and picked up a
pomegranate.  “Pomegranates again.”  He sighed, deeply.  “You know, I greatly
prefer blueberries.  They don’t have those miserable
seeds
.”  As he
spoke, he began peeling the red rind back, exposing the ruby gems inside.  Then
he raised a brow at ‘Aqrab, obviously waiting.

The djinni cleared his throat,
giving the dragon a wary glance.  “Ah, well, there’s the
Ballad of the
Dragon King
, where the great serpents—”

“I don’t want to hear about a
lizard.”  Thunderbird took a handful of the ruby gems into his mouth, chewed,
and spat a cluster of pomegranate seeds on the floor.  “Tell me about
unicorns.  I find them fascinating.”

“Ah, well,” ‘Aqrab said, “I’ve
already sung you twenty-three songs about unicorns.”

“You said you knew over thirty of
them.”  Thunderbird tossed a chunk of pinkish-red rind deeper into the cave,
where it rolled to a halt near the dragon’s feet.  The dragon speared the rind
with a talon and hurled it out the front of his cave with a snarl. 
Unconcerned, the Thunderbird said, “How about
The Ballad of the Unicorn’s
Horn
?  I find that one amusing.”

The djinni looked torn.  Glancing
between Thunderbird and the dragon, he said, “I’ve already sung that one
sixteen times.”

“Yes, and?” Thunderbird said.

Remembering the
disgusting
song that seemingly had become the Thunderbird’s favorite, Kaashifah growled,
“We do
not
have time to listen to an
ibin himaar
sing a filthy
song
.”

“You have reset your seven days,”
the djinni boomed, making the stone of the cave reverberate around them as the
Fourthlander magic spread outward and washed down the mountainside in a rush. 
The dragon twisted upon himself like a cornered snake, staring at the djinni,
but Thunderbird continued to nonchalantly pluck at his pomegranate. 

“Seven days of what?” the dragon
muttered, uncurling from where he had fled against the wall.  He sounded as if
he were sulking.

“It’s none of your business,”
Kaashifah growled at the same time Thunderbird said, “The wench cannot stop
insulting him.  He will bring her back her pendant if she stops insulting him,
but the brain-dead simpleton cannot do it.”  At ‘Aqrab, he said, “Continue. 
Ignore the wench.”

“We are not here to
entertain
you,” Kaashifah shrieked.  “Dragon.  Remove the wolf, and I will remove the
bird.”