by Sara King
The exertion was too much for her, however, and the edges of her vision clamped down around her and Imelda collapsed forward, hitting the ground hard with her cheek and chest, heart struggling to keep up.
She felt a hand around her wrist, felt him pull her arm over his shoulder. Stumbling under her weight, he started up the stairs.
“No,” Imelda managed, struggling weakly to get him to release her and run. “You’ll never make it.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” he said, his body like soft, silky fire against her skin. “And stop struggling,” he said firmly, but gently. “You’re slowing us down.”
Grudgingly, Imelda relented.
The man toddered up the stairs with her in tow, obviously straining against her weight. Then, at the head of the stairs, he hesitated, looking out the open door into the hallway, and the maze beyond.
“Go left,” Imelda whispered, barely able to see through the dizziness of blood-loss. “There’s a back door. Leads to the cemetery.”
He took it, unquestioning. A few paces later, they were at a door, which he opened. Immediately, the unholy shrieking intensified through the open portal, and she could hear it bouncing upon the cold, leafless birch trees outside.
Don’t let anyone be out here, Imelda prayed, knowing that it was a popular place for her brethren to come and smoke on the back porch before going to bed. She knew she didn’t have the strength to draw her gun, if someone were to step in front of them. They could simply grab her, as this fey man had done, and haul her off wherever they pleased. Which made her wonder… What was he doing? Not once, but twice in one night, she had entrusted her life to a demon. The first had tasted her blood and left her to die. This one was…what?
Then the door was open and they were stepping through it, cold air hitting her naked skin in a sudden blast. “Wait,” Imelda whimpered, as her own blood tried to freeze over her in a wave of goosebumps. “I need a coat.”
The man, who was still as naked as his birthday, his bare feet seemingly impervious to the frozen porch, hesitated, then glanced up at the rack beside the door and yanked down a huge black longcoat that was much too big for her, then settled it around her shoulders.
God, Imelda thought, as she heard the pitch of the Fury’s screaming suddenly increase as they passed through the open door, please don’t let Zenaida see us.
Then they were crossing a snowy yard, headed toward the trees. All around them, the eerie scream continued to echo, and just as they were entering the birch forest, they cleared the edge of the building and Imelda saw the heart-stopping glow of an angel’s wings lighting the surrounding snow, setting the trees aglow. They were sheets of radiance curled around Zenaida on the ground, as she screamed in a fetal position on the tarmac. The Fury was surrounded by a milling ring of every soul in the Order.
“Go,” Imelda growled, stumbling to a halt and pulling herself from the demon’s arms. “I can make it from here. Just go.” She slumped to the ground, gesturing for him to run.
She couldn’t make it, she knew, but at least the man would be able to escape without her to slow him down.
The demon hesitated, looking down at her with uncertain cerulean eyes. Then he was bending, heaving Imelda over his back, and suddenly he was standing again, raising her well off of the ground and bouncing to settle her in place. The sudden motion made Imelda’s vision narrow again, and she must have blacked out, because when she came to, she was slung across the back of a horse.
Since when, she thought, dizzy and confused, did the Order have a stables?
By the time Zenaida was finally able to pull her wings from the filthy snow, she had gathered a group of awestruck onlookers. Fighting tears of humiliation, she ignored them, trembling as she got to her feet. Somehow, the Spaniard, who had no more magic in her blood than a stone, had used the bloodied napkin against her in a rite of seiðr that would bring a grandmaster to her knees. A blood rite, the likes of which Zenaida had thought no First Lander other than herself had the capability of doing.
And, if Imelda had done it once, she could do it again. The Spaniard had her blood.
Ashamed at her own lapse, Zenaida snarled at the gathering, “Did you see where she went?”
Of course they hadn’t. They had been watching the angel, writhing on the ground as if she had just been cast from Heaven. The fucking bitch.
Turning, Zenaida pulled her wings back within her body and stalked back towards the compound, the technicians, soldiers, and priests all parting in a silent path in front of her.
Zenaida ignored them. Half had already seen her true form, and the other half were taking cue from the rest and falling into a respectful silence, probably thinking she had just fought some great battle for their Lord, and lost. Zenaida let them believe what they would. It was the Spaniard that concerned her, now.
This was the last straw. The bitch would die, and it would hurt.
Zenaida yanked open the foyer door and stepped inside, slamming it behind her. How dare the woman call her an impostor? She had no idea what Zenaida had gone through. Imelda had somehow made the connection between Zenaida and the Furies and had come to the wrongful conclusion that she was a murderer. Evil.
She had no idea.
Unwilling, she remembered Aimon’s gentle smile, his freckles as they dimpled on his cheeks. She remembered his timid laugh as she stepped through the front door of his blacksmith’s shop, wings unfurled, sword in hand. She remembered his blood on her face, mingled with her tears, as her sisters forced piece after piece of his heart down her throat.
Zenaida paused against a doorway, fighting a sob. Even after almost two millennia, the wounds remained just as deep.
She’d been sent to kill him. At least, that was what her attending priestess had told her, when Zenaida, deep in confusion, had whispered of her Lord’s command. Seek out the feyborn blacksmith, in a creek-bound gully along the road of Tirol. As two flames unite into one, draw his blood into your body, spread your light within his walls, and extend your warmth upon the souls of his children.
The priestess had asked a day to meditate on the matter, then had returned and told her that her Lord had clarified for her: He wanted her to go kill the blacksmith and his children.
Zenaida, relieved, had gone to do as she had been bid. She had found the blacksmith bent over his anvil on a lonely road in the mountains of Old Germania, covered in sweat and soot, hammering out a horseshoe. She’d drawn her sword, demanding he and his children surrender to the justice of War.
Except the blacksmith had given that timid laugh, backed to the far end of his shop, and told her, while he must have done something horrible to warrant a visit by a Fury, unless they were by divine conception, he had no children.
Zenaida had bound him and searched his property, but found he had been telling the truth. No wife, no children, just a handful of chickens, a couple goats, and a lonely bed in the back of his shop, where he slept beside his forge.
Confused, Zenaida had gone back to demand where he had left his spawn. And Aimon, shy and gentle Aimon, had told her he’d never worked up the courage to kiss a girl, much less get in her pants. Then, much like in One Thousand And One Nights, he had launched into a story about how he had actually thought he’d kissed a girl, once, but it had just been a cow that his brothers had brought to him in the dark. Amused, Zenaida had stayed up all night listening to him tell stories of his misspent youth, intending to kill him in the morning.
But, somewhere between the time he’d launched into his tale of his misadventures with a heifer and the rising of dawn, something had shifted within her. Aimon was not evil. He had never committed a crime against the Realms. Even a lackwitted fool could see that. Zenaida had thought back to her original command, before it had been translated for her. She reviewed it in her mind, and realized, in horror, that her Lord had ordered her to bed the blacksmith.
She had fled, then, spending several months wandering the mountains, considering what she had done to be so curs
ed by her liege. A breeder. Such was the depth of her disgrace. She had always followed the scriptures. She had memorized the stones. Deep down, she knew she couldn’t have been so cursed. It was this desperation that had driven her back down to that little gully and the blacksmith’s forge, that burning desire to regain her wings in her Lord’s eyes. Certainly she had made a mistake, after all. Certainly, her Lord had been asking for his death.
The second time she walked into his shop, sword drawn, Aimon had given her that same timid smile and offered her a chair, asking her to let him live long enough to finish pounding out an iron hinge for his neighbor’s upcoming wedding. As she reluctantly sheathed her sword and sat down, he had told her stories of his dreams, of his life, of his goals. He told her of his past, of his brothers’ adventures in the mountains, of his mother’s really good bread. He’d told her how his brothers had died in the war, how his mother had passed to a coughing disease, of how his father had been killed by the kick of a horse, of how he someday wanted a family.
It had taken him three days to pound out that hinge. And, somewhere in that time, Zenaida had fallen in love.
She’d given up her sword, then. She had spirited her blacksmith off to someplace hidden, a valley in Tibet where she hoped her sisters would never find her, and gave him the family he had been hoping for.
The first, a little boy, had been born with wings.
He’d been as shy and timid as his father, and he had belonged to Aimon, heart and soul. As a toddler, he would flutter up to a ledge Aimon had made especially for him, clutching his latest bug or frog or handful of flowers, to watch his father work the forge. ‘My little cherub,’ Aimon had called him. My good luck charm.
Remembering little Lanzo, his wings broken and shattered because he had tried to run, his breast skewered by a sword of white fire, Zenaida felt her throat tighten in a sob. She concentrated on the wood grain of the doorframe and bit her lip until it bled, forcing the memory from her mind.
The Spaniard could rot in Hell. She had no idea.
A man tentatively cleared his throat in the hallway behind her. Zenaida stiffened and looked up to meet a young man’s eyes, and her first impulse, upon being caught weeping for the past, was to shove his skull through the wall.
“What do you want?” she bit out, wiping her eyes.
He reddened and bit his lip. “Uh, I uh…” He glanced at the wide-open door to the basement, then hesitated.
“What?!” Zenaida roared.
“I think we found the angel,” he blurted, backing away from her. “In the mountains. We have satellite images of her flying. Wings like…yours… The magic…”
But Zenaida didn’t hear the rest, her rage suddenly tinting her vision red. So her sister had regained her wings. It was time to cut them off.
Chapter 19: Return of Thunderbird
After a few tension-filled hours, ‘Aqrab had come to accept the fact that his magus probably wasn’t going to kill him—at least not anytime soon—but he had also quickly come to realize that, while she no longer wished him dead, she also still didn’t trust him. He had seen her think about finally making that last wish, even going so far as to ask him what he would do if she made a wish, before she choked down her words and went on to re-enter the cave and begin negotiations with the dragon if she’d never spoken, leaving ‘Aqrab standing, crestfallen, in the snow.
It was much later before he could bring himself to follow the Fury into the dragon’s lair, and when he did, he found a quiet corner beside the entrance to sit down, considering his predicament. One wish. She had everything she wanted, yet she still kept him bound to her. She hadn’t killed him, true, but she had stabbed his heart in other ways.
The dragon, it seemed, was bargaining for access to his hoard. Some sort of sword. ‘Aqrab barely heard them. He was sinking into a pit of his own despair, looking at his hands, wondering how he could have been so stupid. He had, finally and completely, given up his last bargaining chip. Now there was nothing standing between her sword and his neck, should she ever be able to work out the details of her trade with the dragon.
“…I would have one of your feathers and the sword back, when you’re done with it,” the dragon countered.
“My feathers?” she snorted. “How would you like that sword up your ass, dragon…”
‘Aqrab paid no attention to them. His role in all of this had been played, his deeds done, his opinion moot. He was now a pawn, waiting on the final bidding of a Fury.
Dawn came and went, and well into noon, they were still arguing over the particulars of how big of a sword she could have from the dragon’s hoard, on the condition of not embedding it through his cranium, when ‘Aqrab saw a huge black bird on the horizon, shimmering with electric fire.
“Neekni,” he said under his breath, reflexively getting to his feet. “Neekni sahrawi.”
Still deep in their negotiations, the two First Landers ignored him.
‘Aqrab watched as Thunderbird landed on the mountainside a few hundred yards down from the cave, and looked around, like he was still a bit lost. Disoriented, probably. How far had he flown, in less than eight hours?
“I’m sorry about the wish!” ‘Aqrab called down to him, to break the ice. “But in all honesty, it was your own pride at fault. You were goading him.”
The Thunderbird swiveled and looked up at him, his head cocking. He stood in the frozen crust of plant-life that had been exposed from ‘Aqrab’s jaunt with the Fury the night before, and when his eyes found the cave, he started stalking towards it, the frosted mountain plants crunching under his moccasined footsteps as he progressed.
Seeing the deadly intent in Thunderbird’s eyes, ‘Aqrab stumbled backwards into the cave. “Ah, mon Dhi’b, Thunderbird is outside, and he looks displeased.” While he could jaunt to the half-realm, his magus might be a bit more pressed into a fight, and, by the look on Thunderbird’s face, it looked like a fight was exactly what the demigod had come to get.
His magus ignored him. “Look, you petulant lizard,” she growled, “I am not a hoarder. I do not have mounds of gold to give you for a sword.”
“Then perhaps you could wish me some, care of your djinni,” the serpent replied. It was the thirtieth or so time he’d mentioned using her final wish to boost his hoard.
“Mon Dhi’b!” ‘Aqrab snapped, as Thunderbird stepped into the room.
“Oh, by all means, let them talk,” Thunderbird said, casually seating himself in a corner. He began picking at the leftover food. “I can kill them once they’re finished.”
The way the demigod said it made ‘Aqrab’s hair stand on end. The weave of the words almost sounded…psychotic. Had the dragon’s wish pushed Thunderbird over the edge? Was the prison of ice, however brief, too much for the man’s sensitive ego to endure? ‘Aqrab heard a nervous sound from his own throat, which he followed with, “I would be happy to tell you another story about unicorns while you wait, my liege.” Thunderbird was, after all, easily distracted.
Thunderbird hesitated in plucking at an old congealed duck to frown at him. “Why the fuck do you think I care about unicorns?” He sounded honestly curious.
“Ah,” ‘Aqrab babbled nervously, struck by the disdain and violence in the demigod’s words. He once again glanced at his magus and the serpent, both of whom remained oblivious, locked in an argument about exact sword values based on age and location of manufacture and the current Gold Standard. ‘Aqrab laughed nervously and returned his attention to Thunderbird. “Perhaps a recounting of the Ballad of the Unicorn’s Horn? Or would you rather a new song? I have at least five others that I can think of with unicorns in them.”
Thunderbird gave him a slow, blood-curdling smile. “I think I’ll take my time in cutting out your heart. Djinn do have hearts, don’t they?”
“Mon Dhi’b!” ‘Aqrab shouted, utterly unnerved by the sheer malevolence in Thunderbird’s electric eyes. “We have a guest.”
Kaashifah made a disgusted sound and turned from the dra
gon to glare at ‘Aqrab. “What, djinni?” As if he were an irritating slave.
Biting down his retort—and his urge to simply twist realms and leave his mistress and the serpent to deal with the rain-god by themselves—‘Aqrab gestured at Thunderbird.
Immediately, Kaashifah’s eyes darkened. “How did you find us here?”
Something off about the imperiousness of her words set ‘Aqrab’s instincts afire. Even a Fury could not take a demigod lightly. Yet it had almost sounded as if his magus were talking to a sylph or some other minor annoyance.
But the dragon was already brushing past her, saying, “It’s okay. He’s probably up visiting from Kentucky. How are you doing, Trellyn?”
…Trellyn?
And Thunderbird must have seen ‘Aqrab’s confusion, because the sly smile that spread across the demigod’s face before he turned to face the dragon left ‘Aqrab’s heart hammering liquid fire through his veins. “I’m well.” Very casually, Thunderbird took a plum from the floor and bit into it, not even inspecting it for dust. Around a mouthful of fruit—something that shocked ‘Aqrab in itself, because for all his rude quips, the demigod seemed to take great pride in decorum—Thunderbird said, “So, what were you two discussing in my absence?”
“The Fury is bargaining with me on which weapon I will allow her to use to destroy the Christian cult,” the dragon said. “I favor the claymore, but she wants the Damascus you gave me.”
“Of course.” Thunderbird smiled and took another bite of the plum. “Tell me, Fury.” Again, he spoke around a mouthful of fruit. “How do you think to destroy the Order all by yourself?”
Something is wrong, here, ‘Aqrab thought, the little hairs raising along the back of his neck. Someone was obviously being affected with mind-magics, but who? Did Thunderbird even possess mind-magics? That was a fey ability.
“She will have the help of her sister,” the dragon said, oblivious.