by Sara King
“Do your worst, djinni,” she muttered. “But keep in mind,” she said, meeting his eyes with deadly warning, “I am aware of the delicate nature of the male anatomy, and if my hand happens to venture too close, I might not be able to control my impulse to dismantle certain…appendages.”
The djinni eyed her like a caracal eying a fox. “Do you think I’m a fool?”
“I’m simply stating my own proclivities,” she said with a shrug, then extended her hand.
The djinni stared at her arm as if it were the sinuous form of a cobra. Almost reluctantly, he moved forward and lowered himself to a seated position beside her. Still, he gave her a wary look. “I offer you no harm, mon Dhi’b.”
She snorted. “Just find your satisfaction and be done with it.” She turned away to watch the wall, deciding she’d rather not watch the djinni besmirch her.
Thus, she was somewhat surprised with the gentleness with which the djinni took her hand and began tracing its lines with his hot fingers. She flinched, but said nothing as he began running the pad of his thumb across her the back of her hand, circling every joint, following the lines of the tendons with the same tenderness she had seen him give his would-be lovers. Gritting her teeth, she continued to stare at the wall.
She felt his big body move, then, and felt his lips brush against her knuckles. Biting down something unkind, Kaashifah ignored him. Let him suckle her fingers, for all she cared. There was nothing he could do to her hand that could compare to the disgrace of holding her naked body against him, flesh-to-flesh.
‘Aqrab continued to trace the back of her hand, seemingly learning every curve. Then, ever-so-tenderly, he flipped her hand over, so that her palm was exposed to him. Kaashifah grimaced, preferring that the djinni keep his ministrations to the less delicate flesh atop her hand, but not about to rob him of his ‘satisfaction.’ She was hungry, and the djinni’s mention of meals had left the gnawing in her gut almost unbearable.
“You have pretty hands, mon Dhi’b,” the djinni told her softly. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, she heard him wince and add, “When they’re not covered in blood.”
“They’re hands,” Kaashifah muttered at the wall. A Fury did not have pretty hands.
“I never noticed how small they were, before this,” the djinni seemed to breathe. “Look.” She felt him hold her own hand out for her perusal.
“I’d rather not,” Kaashifah gritted, staring at the wall. “Just finish, damn you.”
‘Aqrab heaved a huge sigh behind her, then she felt him move again as he drew her arm back.
With delicate care, the djinni used one enormous thumb to hold her fingers stretched open in his cupped hand, tightening the skin of her palm. Then he began tracing a firelands-warmed finger lightly across the sensitive ridges and whorls he had exposed there.
Electric, tingling waves shot up her arm with his touch, racing through her chest and down her spine, staggering her heart. Kaashifah gasped and jerked to face him in surprise, thinking he had cast some spell on her.
The djinni met her stare and blinked, a hint of shock in his violet eyes. A moment later, his hand tightened upon hers and his body stiffened as Fourthlander Law boomed through him, “I have touched your hand to my satisfaction, fulfilling your side of the bargain.”
And, true to his word, the djinni summoned his power and provided her with a bloody sack. As he lowered it to the ground before her, Kaashifah shook out her hand, opening and closing her fingers against the strange leftover tingling sensation. Had he used some form of Fourthlander magic on her? She hadn’t felt a Fourthlander weave. Where had the sensations come from? She caught the djinni watching her, a mixture of curiosity and contemplation in his eyes, and she stopped flexing her fingers. “What did you do to me?” she demanded.
“I touched you,” the djinni said.
“What magic?” Kaashifah snapped.
“No magic,” he said, still eying her thoughtfully.
She did not like the look he was giving her. Wrinkling her nose at him, she took the sack and unwound the thong holding it shut, then peered inside to get a look at its contents. It looked like to be filled with the succulent meat of a cow, in the cuts she had requested.
“Is it poisoned?” she finally asked.
“That would negate my opportunity to bargain with you again, mon Dhi’b,” the djinni commented, still looking at her with contemplation. “Are you ticklish, mon Dhi’b?”
Kaashifah snorted. “Of course not.”
Yet the infernal beast was not satisfied. “And how many times has someone tried, for you to be so certain?”
None, of course. But Kaashifah wasn’t about to tell him that. Let him think what he would. A Fury was not ticklish. The mere idea was preposterous. Instead of responding, she busied herself with removing the slabs of beef from the sack he’d given her and evaluating how best to cook them.
‘Aqrab sat back and watched her as she retrieved enough wood to build a small fire in the center of the cavern and climbed atop the roof to poke a hole in the ceiling for smoke to escape. The entire time he watched her, ‘Aqrab said nothing, looking preoccupied.
By the time she’d lit a fire, the Third Lander was pacing wildly at the back of her mind, the smells of raw meat giving him strength. She spitted the hunks of flesh to roast over the fire and hesitated to watch the smoke drifting upward through the falling snow. Night had fallen, so she wasn’t worried about the smoke being seen from a distance. Still, the whispers she had heard from the helicopter bothered her. What was infrared, and how had it located the djinni in the half-realm?
When the first of her meal came off of the fire, Kaashifah ripped into it with a ravenousness that she normally tried to hide from the djinni. Unfortunately, this time, the infernal beast seemed perfectly content to sit and watch her from the wall of the cavern, and she no longer had the ability to force him to leave, so she steeled herself and ate in front of him.
At her first taste, the Third Lander went into a frenzy, and she almost lost control. It took all of her concentration just to chew. By the time she’d finished, the djinni was still watching her thoughtfully from where he leaned against the wall, requesting none of her meal, and having none offered.
“You should eat more often, mon Dhi’b,” ‘Aqrab said, when she wiped the last of the juices from her face. “It strengthens the Third Lander’s hold when your body hungers.”
She stopped, mid-wipe, and scowled at him. “If this is an attempt to trick me into making another bargain with you, ‘Aqrab, you may milk your camel’s—” She caught herself with a strangled tightening of her throat, then glared at him.
“‘Trick’ you, mon Dhi’b?” the djinni asked, amusement flashing in his violet eyes. “It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. I got that which I’ve craved for centuries, and you got a meal. In fact, I would be happy to make it again, tomorrow night.”
He…would? Her heart gave a hopeful thump before her suspicions squashed it. She peered at him warily for some time, trying to deduce his game. “What kind of ‘benefit’ do you glean from touching my hand, ‘Aqrab?” she asked finally.
The djinni smiled at her. “The comfort of companionship.”
For a long time, Kaashifah thought he was joking. Then, realizing he was serious, she was once again stunned by the radically different culture of the Djinn, in comparison to her own people. A Fury had her sisters, but they didn’t need to touch each other. They each had their own apartments, their own swords. They saw each other at meals, if the temple they were staying at provided them at a regular time. Otherwise, they came and went, alone and unmolested.
The Djinn, on the other hand, seemed absolutely obsessed with the need to touch each other. The very well-being of their psyches seemed to depend on it. The vile, pitifully carnal, pathetically vulnerable little beasts.
Yet, if letting the djinni fondle her hand once a night would in turn provide her with the sustenance she needed to make it to the dragons’ territory as somet
hing other than a starving, emaciated skeleton, Kaashifah wasn’t about to argue with his weakness.
“We might be able to work a deal, djinni,” she muttered.
Immediately, his eyes brightened and he sat up straighter, opening his mouth.
“Later,” she snapped. “For now, I intend to rip some bullets from my skin, and I would appreciate it if you would avert your—” she choked on the word ‘filthy’ and hastily scrambled to find another word, recovering with, “—pretty eyes. I would remove my clothes, and like hells am I going to have you watching me as…” She trailed off, however, as her mouth fell open, realizing what she had said.
The djinni, too, seemed likewise affected. He had cocked his head at her like he was having trouble comprehending. Stumbling, uncertain, he said, “Did you just say my eyes were pretty, mon Dhi’b?”
Staring at him, seeing the multi-hued purple striations of his irises that she had always secretly thought to be beautiful, she blurted the only thing she could. “No.”
A slow grin twitched the djinni’s mouth. “How long have you thought they were pretty?”
Since I caught you on your ass, stuffing yourself with dates at Tafilat. She felt her face flush hot. Instead of responding, however, she feigned interest in picking a piece of meat from between her teeth. “I really have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Which only made the infuriating whoreson’s grin widen. “A long time, then.” He tisked, his beautiful eyes dancing. “Dare I say, since a certain oasis?”
She found the offending chunk of muscle and flicked it into the fire.
But the djinni was not finished. Grinning, he cocked his head at her and said, “You had me completely convinced for three thousand years you found the color ‘repulsive’ and ‘unnatural.’ Which leads me to wonder… What other parts of me do you find beautiful, mon Dhi’b?”
Kaashifah choked in her horror. “Furies do not find men beautiful.”
But he was watching her much too closely, having that all-too-sharp look of a serval watching a hare. With heart-stopping accuracy, he noted, “But you do.”
Yes, the dragons would definitely get their chance at his services. Hackles raised, face burning, she got up and moved to the opposite side of the dwelling, putting the fire between her and the djinni. Without another word, she began ripping bullets from her flesh, focusing on the pain to distract herself from the horror of his thoughtful perusal. Then she rolled to face the wall and went to sleep, ignoring all of ‘Aqrab’s further attempts at conversation.
Imelda had Herr Drescher and the rest of her air-team in the chopper and lifting off ten minutes after the winds had died. Her ground team had already set out from the lodge they’d been renting near Skwentna and would meet them on the river.
“What makes you still think the djinni’s in the area, Inquisitrice?” Jacquot asked, very careful to keep his gloved fingers fisted on his weapon, and not on the helicopter’s built-in safety rungs.
Imelda wasn’t sure. With the wolf dead, there really wasn’t any reason for the djinni to stay in the First Realm. Yet her gut had always served her well in the past, and it was telling her that the djinni was still within range. She leaned forward and tapped her Italian bodyguard on the shoulder. “We need to stop at the wolf’s corpse before we go upriver,” she told Giuseppe. Something about what her Padre had told her about angels was bothering her, and her instincts were telling her she needed to revisit the scene of the vision.
The even-faced copilot gave a slight nod and spoke into his headset. Herr Drescher grunted and rattled off a loud and lengthy bit of German, after which, Giuseppe turned back to her and said, “Herr Drescher says he’ll do it, but you must stay near the helicopter, in case the winds come again.”
It irked Imelda that the pilot had the audacity to decide whether or not to follow her orders, but she held her tongue. Inquisidora Zenaida had put this crew together with the intention of seeing her fail, and already, Imelda had not only succeeded, but excelled. Her group—all twenty-two of them, including herself—had come to be known as Los Pesces Nieves in the North American Order. The Snow Fish, in part due to Jacquot’s love of ambushing their prey from the water, and in part due to the meaning of Imelda’s surname.
Her biggest success, so far, had been the phoenix. Her predecessor’s team had been completely annihilated to a man, their bodies still unrecovered. Probably why, of course, Zenaida had given Imelda the task, after only three hours upon landing at the Anchorage International Airport. Imelda, unlike her predecessor, had spent six months compiling data, collecting information, forming strategy.
Women, it had quickly become clear, had been their weak point. The wereverine, fool that he was, had a soft spot for the female form. And, after all of her planning, the strike had gone down without a hitch—except for the fact that there had been an extra werewolf and a djinni that had not been in her reports. Survivors, it seemed, of some kind of massacre that had taken place on the phoenix’s property that spring.
Imelda was still trying to figure that out. Some sort of struggle over territory, she was sure. The wolves had been on a rampage, killing everything within a twenty-mile radius, but all of it had ended on the phoenix’s doorstep…
…with silver bullets.
So much had troubled her about the forty dead werewolves that, the day before she was scheduled to finally take her team in to make the strike, she did not sleep at all. She spent the night staring at the ceiling, wondering how many of her team’s faces would be there to greet her at breakfast the morning after the attack.
And yet it had gone down completely without a flaw. The djinni couldn’t even be counted as a flaw, not really. It was an unexpected boon, something she had been completely not expecting. She was still racking her brain trying to figure out what the djinni was bound to. It had to be an object of some sort. Something of metal or stone, that a magus could tie a binding spell to. Wood would work, to a degree, but it wouldn’t hold a djinni’s soul-cord for very long, and after a few days, would simply disintegrate.
She wondered again if it had somehow been the winged symbol that had held the djinni in the First Lands. She’d had it tested, but the technician had assured her that, while it seemed to have been used for magic, many times in the past, it was currently free of spells or ties.
The whole situation bothered her. Why would a djinni even be in the First Realm anymore, in the first place? After the Order’s historic Incursions into the Fourth Realm in the early 1300s, very few Djinn survived, even in their homeland. They now spent their time as far from humanity as they could get, some even moving into a rumored Sixth Realm in order to escape the Order. It was a sign of their rarity that Imelda hadn’t heard of the capture of a djinni since the final years of the Incursion.
And yet one appeared now, in Alaska? Bound, in all appearances, to a wolf? There had to be something she was missing.
She sat in thought as the helicopter sped northward, all but silent on its fae-powered rotors. Upon crossing over the mountain and into Willow, the craft set out cross-country, towards the Yentna River. One of the niceties of the fey-powered machine was that it never ran out of fuel. The two beings powering the rotors rode on their backs in a box above the cargo bay of the craft, locked in perpetual drain. A fact that Imelda had quietly failed to pass on to Jacquot, once she had learned of it. She was pretty sure that the Frenchman would never have gotten inside the helicopter, were he to know that it carried a feylord and her mate.
The big gray river eventually came into view, even in the snow. Eventually, the helicopter slowed, followed by an argument in the cockpit. The German began gesticulating, pointing at the ground, while Giuseppe used icy tones in reply.
Frowning, she leaned forward. “What’s going on?” she asked of Giuseppe.
The quiet, deadly Italian was giving the German a dangerous look. “Herr Drescher says this is the place where you killed the wolf.”
She frowned and looked down. It looked like t
he creek where she’d found the corpse, as much as she had seen from the darkness that night. “It looks about right,” she said. “Do you disagree?”
Tearing his eyes from the German, Giuseppe said softly, “It is not the location I was disagreeing with, Inquisidora, but rather, Herr Drescher’s use of invectives. I will have to spend a few more hours in penance, to make up for his…extra…sins.”
Imelda raised a brow, then decided she didn’t want to know. To Drescher, she said, “Mind your language and take us down.”
Herr Drescher laughed. “As you command, Inquisitorin.” And a moment later, the helicopter was settling its skids on an open stretch of snow-spackled beach, precisely inside the divots they’d left the last time they’d visited.
As soon as the skids touched land, Patricia O’Malley and Seamus Brennan jumped to either side of the craft, guns at ready while Ian Lanport and Angus Ross alighted beside them, scanning the area with infrared goggles. Once they were in place, Imelda stepped from the interior, followed by Jacquot and three of his crew, all of whom were wearing drysuits and breathing apparatuses.
Though an inch of snow had fallen and the scene had looked utterly different by flashlight, Imelda instinctively strode through the forest to the place where she’d received the vision. More trees had fallen, the winds looking as if they had gotten increasingly violent after their departure, leaving almost a sort of clearing where they had left the body. She froze when she saw the corpse missing, the bits of bloody moss tossed aside, half-buried in snow.
“That,” Jacquot said softly, coming up to stand beside her, “is not what I expected to see, Inquisitre.”
Since when did djinni carry around corpses? Imelda stood there a long moment, considering. Then, suddenly, everything locked into place for her, and their recent jaunt through the woods suddenly made perfect sense. “She was its lover.”
“Les démons de flamme are known for their ardeur,” the Frenchman muttered.