by Sara King
Imelda narrowed her eyes and replied, “There is no sign of the wolf, Inquisidora.”
“Then you are not looking hard enough. Search to the south. That’s the direction the djinni was headed before it disappeared. They were likely headed towards Anchorage.”
Imelda fought a surge of anger at Zenaida’s command. As if she is the Holy Matron herself, she thought, irritated. Restraining herself from saying something she would regret, she replied with a curt, “There is nothing to suggest they went south.”
“There’s a city to the south. What better way to lose our Hunters than to mingle their scent with those of thousands? Go to Anchorage. You’ll find them there.”
“There is no trail, Inquisidora,” Imelda said, fighting frustration. “The blood simply vanishes.”
“Then scrye the blood, you fool.”
Imelda’s fingers tightened on the phone. The last thing she wanted to do was enact a scrying spell. If the beast was what she suspected, that spell would work both ways. She said as much.
“A magus?” Inquisidora Zenaida snorted as if she’d suggested the Pope was possessed of a Third Lander. “It’s not. I would have sensed as much.” She could hear the woman’s sneer as she added, “Besides. All of my kind died over a thousand years ago.”
“Regardless, I have evidence of a blood-rite, Inquisidora,” Imelda growled. “They had exchanged some sort of pact before we got into position.”
“Then you have the beast’s blood,” Zenaida said, undaunted. “Use it and find it. That djinni could change everything.”
Imelda made a face and threw the bloody rock she held back to the ground, though she was careful to keep from transmitting her frustration. She took several moments to collect herself before biting out, “If you are wrong, Inquisidora, and we are dealing with a magus and not a wolf, then we might be doing more damage than good.”
Inquisidora Zenaida had the audacity to laugh over the link. “Just because you do not understand the magics and see their weaves, Imelda, does not mean that others share your weakness. I looked upon the wolf and I saw nothing out of the ordinary.”
“Yes, but—” Imelda started.
Zenaida, as was her habit, didn’t allow her to finish. In a patronizing sneer, she said, “I shook her hand, Imelda. It’s just a wolf. Confirmed by the scent of moon-magics and the shift we caught on camera. Scrye her out, kill her, and bring back the talisman. You shall be given no other mission until this one is complete.” With that, the line went dead.
“Arrogant Coño!” Imelda snarled, lunging from her squat beside the bloodied sands. She angrily snapped the phone shut and shoved it back to the pocket in her chest. She saw a few decades of demon-hunting and she believes she’s God’s gift to the Order. Angrily, Imelda paced downriver, following the djinni’s light stride—at easily seven feet tall, the flamekin only weighed a fraction of the tiny Third Lander wolf, and by the light impressions in the soil, she guessed that his gross total was probably somewhere around a hundred pounds, perhaps less. The weights added up—a much-too-heavy Third Lander wolf, and a much-too-light Fourth Lander flamekin—but still her gut was telling her something was off, that it wasn’t as simple as it appeared.
Still irritated at her superior’s conceit, Imelda followed the oddly-juxtaposed tracks, considering her predicament. As of that conversation, she had been effectively assigned to the djinni. The djinni, however, had disappeared, and if Imelda wanted to take part in the historic, momentous cleansing of the rest of this contaminated land, she had to find him.
She shook her head. Inquisidora Zenaida had been a Segunda Inquisidora for at least a couple decades, yet still hadn’t moved up to the next rung in the Order, a Grande Inquisidora. Imelda, only thirty-three, had gained all but the last two ranks within her short lifetime, without the aid of magic or ancient bloodlines. For this, she was sure, Zenaida despised her.
Imelda stopped, once again peering down at the spatters of blood upon the stones at her feet. She knew how to scrye, and carried the proper instrument to form a link, but aside from the obvious potential for problems if she linked to the wrong victim, it was distasteful to her. She reviled the thought of drinking blood tainted with wolf, not only because she had the nagging fear that their possession was contagious, but because the last thing she wanted to do was enter the mind of a monster, however temporary. She had been forced to do so in the past, while hunting vampire clans in Poland, and the mental sickness that had carried over the link had left Imelda reeling for weeks.
Which was, of course, probably exactly why Zenaida wanted her to cement such a bond. They were on the verge of clearing out the last major pocket of corruption on the face of the planet, a festering pustule of rot, the massive extent of which they were only now beginning to fully understand, and she was doing everything in her power to put Imelda out of the center of operations, to handicap her as they made history.
And, while Imelda and Zenaida did technically wear the same rank, the rash, arrogant magus carried the seniority, and a djinni was certainly considered a great enough prize to devote the full attentions of a Segunda Inquisidora to his capture. Thus, Zenaida did have the power to keep Imelda from the forefront of the battle, if she could not complete this mission. And both Imelda and Zenaida knew it would be all but impossible to pin down a Fourth Lander who could slip Realms as easily as breathing. The djinni was a wild goose-chase, Zenaida’s attempt to keep Imelda out of the action, and it infuriated her.
But then again, Imelda thought, as she looked down at the blood-spatters, perhaps Zenaida’s plan was not as foolproof as it seemed. After all, if Imelda were to bring in a djinni, she could hardly be ignored when the time came for the Order to name a new Grande Inquisidor. As far as she knew, the Djinn were all dead, and not one had ever been taken into custody.
Reluctantly, she squatted and trained her flashlight on the old blood once more. The wolf had wounded itself—what else could that be other than a blood-rite? Gingerly, she selected a small stone that was relatively clean except for its brown crust. Cradling it in her palm, she peered down at it, debating.
Imelda had a nagging suspicion that Zenaida was wrong about the wolf. What kind of moon-cursed dealt in blood-pacts? That was a magus’s stock and trade, and the magi were dead. Over a thousand years dead. Or so Zenaida claimed.
God, but her head hurt. While migraines had bothered Imelda for as long as she could remember, in the last few weeks, in preparation for taking the phoenix, the pressure had increased almost exponentially. It was now a glassy fuzz at the edges of her vision, one that did not appreciate the too-bright light of her flashlight. Powered by the glow of a fey stardancer, it had no LED or bulb to break, had no batteries to change, could cast a light for miles, if desired, and weighed no more than a pencil.
Imelda closed her eyes, took a deep breath, then let it out between her teeth. Daughter of the ghetto, raised to become a Sister of the Order, now a slayer of demons. Zenaida’s station as a Segunda Inquisidora—one of the very evil-doers they were attempting to eradicate—had not been the least of her surprises upon taking that coveted black uniform. Before taking her vows, she had never even suspected that the Church would deal in the very powers and poisons and possessions it fought to destroy. That literally every mechanism of the Order was powered by the beasts they captured had left her in tears for weeks. It had been a shock, but, as her Padre had assured her with an unhappy shake of his head, she had finally come to understand that to fight fire, one must sometimes use matches.
Still, she found it distasteful. That Zenaida flagrantly flaunted her magics, in public, and condemned those who did not have them, made her gut twist all the more. A magus. Working within the Order as if she had every right to be there. At least, she thought her Padre had the right of things when he had confessed to her that Zenaida, with all of her seniority and decades of experience, would never make Grande Inquisidora on that single fact alone. Zenaida was, after all, one of the very things the Order hunted.
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Often, Imelda wondered which, and how Zenaida had gained her powers, so long after the magi were supposedly extinct. Zenaida’s record was sealed in the archives, and while Father Vega confessed to her that he had known about Zenaida, during his time in the Order, fifty years ago, no one seemed to be able to remember when she had joined.
At least the Order recognized a limit. If Zenaida hadn’t taken the title in five decades, she would never make Grande Inquisidora. On the other hand, Imelda, as mud-born and as human as the Pope himself, only had a few short years before she took that coveted title and moved to Rome, leaving Zenaida with her precious decades of seniority over some other misfortunate Segunda. From there, if she worked hard and stayed devout to the cause, she would eventually take Holy Matron of the Order. Her Padre, a man quietly gifted with the Sight, had Seen it.
He had Seen it, and he had entrusted her with knowledge of his gift, knowing that, should the others of her Order ever discover it, he would join the beasts on the rack. Follow your heart, little one, and not even the seat of the Holy Matron will hold dominion over you. Every one of his predictions had come true thus far, even the seemingly-ridiculous one of gaining Segunda Inquisidora at the age of twenty-six. She still marveled at that, and made the trek for his counsel every chance she got.
She had also sworn on her mother’s blood to keep his secret. For, while it was a thousand times more common than, say, a phoenix, the life-liquids of a Seer had dozens of different applications for the betterment of the Order. Looking-glasses, headpieces, meditation bowls…
…or the tiny crystal scrying-goblet she carried sheathed in a padded slip of silk in her backpack.
Closing her fist around the bloodied stone, Imelda considered. Sometimes, her Padre’s words returned to her, one must fight fire with matches. And, in this case, the matches came in the form of a wolf’s blood, their only real lead in all of this. Reluctantly, she bent to her pack and slipped the faceted faestone goblet from its pouch—its vibrant violet surfaces catching the glare of her flashlight in unspeakable, heart-searing brilliance. All right, wolf, she thought, time to show me your djinni. She dropped the bloodied pebble into the goblet’s bowl and went to the river for water to complete the scrying spell.
As she bent to fill the bowl, she casually glanced up the river in the direction the wolf and djinni had been traveling before their sniper had missed his target. Missed, she fumed, an expert marksman, almost as if the damned wolf had a spell of diversion wrapped around—
Imelda froze.
She glanced down at the bloodied stone, even then sitting in the dry bowl of the goblet, then at the gray, silty water that slid by only inches beneath the violet faestone artifact. Slowly, she lifted her hand away from the river.
Too many things were not adding up.
First the djinni, then the blood-pact, then the disappearance… And to top it all off, one of her Hunters, a born sniper, a man who could pit a cherry at a mile, had missed. From across the river. Six hundred feet, tops. No breeze.
Very carefully, she plucked the bloodied stone back out of the crystal goblet and considered it. Her instincts were unusually good. So good, in fact, that she had become the youngest Sister to make Segunda Inquisidora in the history of the Order. After another moment’s debate, she slipped the faestone goblet back into its silken case and returned it to her backpack.
Zenaida had given her an order, true, but Imelda wasn’t going to make it to the seat of the Holy Matron by being a fool. Besides, on paper, she and the magus were of the same rank. If Zenaida wanted to try and argue seniority, let her do so before a tribunal in Rome, where a hundred of Zenaida’s kind had died in the very basement beneath their enclave.
As an afterthought, Imelda dropped the blood-caked stone into a collection tube and, twisting on the plastic cap, tucked it into a vest pocket. Then, turning, she picked up her radio and called in the helicopter to come get her. The two fugitives had been going north along the river. Zenaida be damned. Imelda’s gut told her they were headed towards the mountains, not back to Anchorage.
And, since this had officially become Imelda’s operation as of ten minutes ago, she would run the mission how she saw fit and, if it came to that, deal with a tribunal later. She knew who would meet her end in the basement, should Zenaida challenge her.
‘Aqrab lifted the wolf—easily three or four times his weight, despite her tiny size—into his arms and ducked into the frigid forest to find cover. While all other-Realmers felt cool to ‘Aqrab’s Fourth-Lander heat, his magus’s body was cold, much colder than a normal First-Lander body should have been.
“Void-walking, in your condition, was not the wisest thing you’ve ever done, mon Dhi’b,” he muttered, setting her down beside a fallen log and looking for enough wood to light a fire.
They follow you by air, the winds breathed, as he gathered tinder.
‘Aqrab froze. Their pursuers had followed them riding their iron beasts of the sky. Biting his lip, he looked up at the breeze as it played amongst the darkened treetops, then back down at his sleeping magus. If he lit a fire, would they see the smoke at night? And, more importantly, would they see the flame?
“Little wolf,” he growled, crouching beside her crumpled, pallid form, “Wake up and warm yourself, or I will be forced to do it for you.” He knew she had a dozen different spells she used to keep her body warm, and also knew that whatever had happened, they were no longer working. He also knew what her reaction would be if she woke to find herself snuggled naked against his hot Fourthlander body, her frozen clothes hung to steam from a branch above him.
The magus did not respond.
“You told me not to touch you,” ‘Aqrab cursed, glaring at her. “Wake up.” He was not a magus, at least not by First Lander standards. He channeled the creative power of the Fourth Lands, flirted with Law whenever he got the chance, but he could not cast lasting, time-based spells without use of a wish. He could not, therefore, cast the shields, barriers, and wards that his magus wove so effortlessly around herself, as easily as breathing.
He also knew the magus was perfectly capable of sealing her own wounds, as evidenced by the smooth skin beneath the mangled, bloody holes in her garb, but he could not tell without touching her whether or not she had removed the bullets from her body, or what their makeup had been, or whether she was still being poisoned by some unknown substance. “Mon Dhi’b,” he growled at her pale, limp form. “You’re not leaving me much choice.” The last thing he wanted was to be caught groping the Fury in her sleep. That could get…unpleasant.
Off in the distance, he heard gunshots.
‘Aqrab glanced to the west, where the sound had come from. A group of stone-working fey had taken up residence in the hill where the ursine couple had died—a crusty old feylord who’d gotten himself expelled from the Second Lands and the six descendents that had chosen to go with him. ‘Aqrab knew they would die to the last before being taken by Inquisitors. “Mon Dhi’b,” he muttered, eyes blindly seeking out the shadows of the creek through the trees, “this is a very inopportune time to take a nap.”
If she heard him, his slender waif of a magus showed no sign. In fact, her breathing had dropped to barely a whisper in her chest. He peered at her, trying to determine the extent of the damage, but his eyes could not adjust to the unnatural blackness of a First Lander night. Aside from the greater darkness of her bloodied clothes, he had no idea what was wrong with her. It could be Inquisitor poisons, could be a loss of blood, could be the cold. “Mon Dhi’b. Kaashifah.” He put his hand to her shoulder and shook it.
Still no response. Her head lolled softly to one side, exposing her slender neck to him. Had she sealed all of her wounds? Had she forgotten the bullets? Were they even then seeping their poisons into her veins? He hated the darkness of the First Lands. He could not see. Reluctantly watching the west, he produced a small flame in his palm and held it over her.
What he saw made his heart shudder to a stop. Her skin was too pale, he
r lips too blue. Her fingernails, too, shared that odd, too-dark hue. Her blood was soaked into the fabric covering one hip and had slicked down an entire leg, freezing into hard, rumpled folds of crimson cloth. And, now that he looked carefully, there was ice forming in her hair, on her lashes, in her clothes, at the corners of her fingertips…
The breezes were flitting in the branches above, almost as if invisible spirits were clinging to the trees, watching. Biting his lip, he closed his hand over the flame, putting it out. Looking up at the rustling treetops, he ventured, “These ones who are looking for us… They are coming?”
Soon, soon, the winds seemed to whisper. Even then, he could hear the telltale whine of a boat engine out on the river. While innocuous before, since it was a sound often heard in the fishing community of Skwentna, the sound now filled him with dread, for no one traveled the river at nightfall, at the onset of winter, with hazardously low water and chunks of ice to capsize the unwary.
‘Aqrab glanced down at his magus, her body much too cold, and then at the forest around him. He considered taking her back to the firelands, but instinctively knew she wouldn’t survive another trip so soon after her last. He thought about yanking her to the half-realm, but knew that, with as much blood as she’d lost, the shock might be too much for her.
The whine of the boat engine was growing louder, echoing against the trees. Hastily, he began piling frozen moss, dead leaves, branches, grass, and debris over his magus. Once he was satisfied she had been concealed, he twisted to the half-realm and waited.
The crystalline white dunes spread out in all directions, overlaid by the glittering black trunks of spruce trees and birch. All around him, the winds whistled through the sparkling structures, impossibly swaying their crystalline forms back and forth as they fretted and danced above, so thick they could almost be seen as glittering wisps of color. Focusing, yet again, on his magus.