by Sara King
And, with the gut-twisting proof still bleeding in front of her, Imelda had a very good theory on which one it was.
Slowly lowering the gun, Imelda realized she had to know. She considered walking up to Zenaida and confronting her about it.
“Be sure you pick the right one, Sister,” the wereverine said softly. “The other one’s gonna make you disappear.”
Imelda considered him a moment longer, then spun on heel, climbing the basement steps two at a time. She took an immediate right into the information-command center, where a lone technician was monitoring their tech-only drones. “Any developments?” she asked, startling the young man out of a book he’d been reading.
“Uh,” the young American said, scrambling to look like he’d been working, “well, not really, but yeah, I mean, we’ve had a couple oddities. I was gonna wake you, but Jacquot said to let you sleep.”
Imelda frowned. What was Jacquot doing awake at this hour? She’d told him to be ready for a mission in the morning. Instead of asking, she said, “What kind of oddities?”
“Uh.” The young man coughed and scratched the back of his neck nervously. “Well, uh. A flying caribou, for one.”
Imelda’s heart skipped a beat. “They’re there. I want both my teams mobilized and—”
The young man coughed, looking acutely uncomfortable. “Uh, sorry, Inquisitor. Jacquot already took them off somewhere.”
Imelda stared at the young man. She had specifically told Jacquot not to go hunting dragons until she could call in backup. “He went to the Brooks Range?”
The freckled young man winced and looked as if she were demanding to know the genetic source of his lethargy. “I guess. I don’t really know—”
“Radio him. Call him back.”
The young man’s face reddened. “Uh, yes Ma’am.” He turned to the communications equipment and began radioing for the Frenchman.
Jacquot did not answer.
Beginning to state the obvious, the young man put the headset down and said, “He’s not answeri—”
Scowling, Imelda spun on heel, yanking her phone from her pocket. She dialed Jacquot’s private number, but immediately got sent to voicemail. Losing her temper, Imelda snarled into the message-system, “Dammit, Jacquot, I told you not to risk any more lives on this mission until I figured out what we were dealing with. Come back to base. Immediately.” She slapped the phone off and dropped it back into her vest and began pacing the hall, waiting for his reply.
The rash, testosterone-fueled fool. Two teams against a dragon? She didn’t have time for this. The wolf was about to make her rendezvous with those she sought, and if she did that, the fate of the Order was in jeopardy. Rubbing her forehead, Imelda began to pace the hallway, thinking. She wondered if this was how Padre Vega felt, with his visions. Already, that strange dual-reality was dizzying her again, making her feel as if she were in two places at once.
She waited twenty minutes, leaving two more messages, before Jacquot deigned to call her back.
“I am busy helping Zenaida, Inquisitrice,” the Frenchman snapped into the phone before Imelda could pepper him with questions. “I will call you again later.” Then, just as Imelda was regaining enough composure to bark an order at him, the line went dead. She stood there in the hall for several minutes, staring at the dead phone in her hand, before her legs started moving of their own accord.
She found Herr Drescher in his room, asleep. She knocked until he opened the door in his underwear, his silvered hair awry, his blond beard squished sideways from sleep. “Yes, Inquisitorin?” he mumbled in a yawn of confusion.
“Be on the pad at four,” Imelda said. “You’re taking me north.”
Herr Drescher blinked at her, “But Zenaida—”
Imelda was so tired of hearing the woman’s name that she snapped, “I do not care about whatever Zenaida told you to do. You are on my team, and you work for me. Be prepared to leave in…” she checked her watch, calculating how long it would take her to prepare. “Twenty-six minutes.”
Herr Drescher stared at her a moment, then leaned back into his room to peer at the clock above the door. Returning his head through the open jamb, he said, “You want me to grab Jacquot, Inquisitorin?”
“Jacquot is lost to us,” Imelda said, before she realized she’d spoken. Then, once said, her gut refused to recant her words. At Herr Drescher’s frown, she growled, “Just get the helicopter ready. I am going to go have a chat with the wolf.”
Herr Drescher’s eyes widened, but he didn’t argue.
Imelda left him to prepare. Already, her head was beginning to hurt, the edges of her vision encased in the sharp white shards of glass that heralded another migraine. She went to her room to grab her wallet and her medicine.
Inside, after acquiring her billfold from her dresser, she went to her bathroom cabinet-mirror, pulled out her bottle of migraine tablets, and hesitated at the smell of cologne. Frowning, she glanced around the room and, seeing no one, opened the bottle and took a small sniff.
She smelled nothing except that bitter medicinal tang, which immediately brought with it a pang of desire. She’d gone much too long without her medicine. She dumped a palmful into her hand and was about to pop them into her mouth when that sudden dual-reality she’d been experiencing since the dream vanished, leaving her fully immersed in the present.
Imelda froze, her hand inches from her face, the cluster of little white pills nagging her to swallow them. She counted at least sixteen.
…sixteen?
With the odd feeling of past-future-present gone, the outlines of the pills were crystal-clear in her mind. Never before had her headache vanished so quickly. Had she become so dependent upon the medicine that now it was merely the placebo effect? And when had the desire been that strong, that she was willing to take eight times her normal dose just to ease the pain? Had she become addicted to the thought of medicine?
Irritated at her own weakness, Imelda lowered the pills to the edge of the sink. Almost immediately, the headache started again, but now, tight-lipped, she forced herself to ignore it. , her eyes settled on the medicine, and she felt another pang of desire.
Since when had medicine helped her, more than to dull the ache? And when had she wanted it that bad? People died from doses like that. She cocked her head at the tiny pills, then at her medicine cabinet. She again caught the lingering scent of cologne.
Very carefully, Imelda opened the cabinet, retrieved a pair of tweezers, and carefully plucked one of the pills from the sink.
She carried it out into the living-room, where she set it upon a receipt on her dresser and frowned at it. The dual-reality was back, a sort of disconcerting past-present-future mix that left the white static in her head building to a crescendo. Feeling both stupid and paranoid, she took the receipt over to her fishtank and let the pill slide into the water, then watched the fish.
Nothing happened.
For several minutes, she watched her two koi move back and forth behind the glass, utterly unaffected by the medicine.
Grunting, Imelda rolled up her sleeve, deciding to fish it out before the chemical had a chance to seep into the water, her fingers hovering above the surface, then hesitated when the feel of multiplicity once again disappeared, leaving her completely centered, painless, in the moment. She pulled her hand away and looked at the fish again. The static fuzz returned. The koi continued to swim along the front of the glass, looking for treats.
I must be losing my mind, Imelda thought. She reached out, opened her bottle of fish-food, and threw a few pellets in for them, then spent a few minutes watching them swim. Her migraine continued to build. She was about to reach into the water again when her head stopped hurting. Again.
Imelda yanked her hand from the fish tank, frowned at it a long moment, then went back into the bathroom. Ignoring the sound of the helicopter spinning up outside, she picked a second pill up with tweezers and carried it back to her dresser, dropping it on another receipt.
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br /> Then, going to her backpack, she retrieved the faestone goblet from its case. As soon as she lifted the glittering violet goblet from its silken slip, the tiny collection vial she sought slid out, dropping to the floor at her feet, the river-stone rattling inside.
Imelda grimaced. The last thing they needed, at this point, was the Fury’s blood in their compound. She uncapped the vial and dropped the stone into the trash, then replaced it with the pill, to get testing done by the lab. If Zenaida had been poisoning her, and she could get proof, it would be an excellent weapon to use before a tribunal.
Her headache was a massive throbbing pulse of white, now, and it was all Imelda could do not to pluck the pill from the vial and pop it into her mouth to relieve the pain. Placebo or no, at least it would bring relief. Yet the way that even thinking about picking up the pill and putting it in her mouth was terminating the odd duality entirely was leaving Imelda discomfited. Almost as if the futures she had seen were simply…vanishing.
Which made her wonder… Why would futures vanish? In the strange dreams that God had given her slipping in and out of death, everything had followed the Butterfly Effect. A single choice spawned thousands of others. The only reason a particular path would end was if she was no longer there to witn—
With a frown, already halfway finished returning the faestone goblet to its silken bag, Imelda hesitated. Very carefully, she retrieved the artifact and set it on the dresser beside the pill. Then she emptied the vial into its glittering purple bowl.
Upon contacting the medicine, the goblet became streaked with veins of black.
Not poison. Magic. Seiðr. The cord-magic of the Third Realm.
The bitch was trying to kill her.
For a long moment, Imelda stood there, looking at the black spiderweb working its way through the beautiful violet faestone. Like all faestone, the goblet experienced an allergic reaction when allowed to contact seiðr, the abominable blood-magics performed in the frigid Third Realm. It was why they were so popular as feylords’ drinking utensils.
Zenaida was using seiðr. The stock-in-trade of vampires and jötunn, who worked with compulsions and cravings and geases…
…And blood. The siphoning of power from one entity to another.
Why had she never seen this before? Draining the blood, using it to power Order artifacts… Imelda realized that she, like everyone else within the Church, had simply assumed that perhaps there was a divine method for such requisitioning of the condemned’s power. The Purification. The Confession… The idea that it was being harvested using the same filthy tricks as vampires and blood-magi left her guts churning.
Seiðr. Zenaida was using seiðr.
Imelda’s hands were shaking as she took the cup, emptied its contents into the sink, turned on the water, flushed the rest of her medication down the toilet, and began scrubbing her hands with soap. While she would have been able to keep poisoned pills as evidence, such blood-magics were a thousand times more dangerous. They were tied to a single person, specifically, so they were harmless to all others, but with that one victim, they worked as an ever-present drive brewing in their subconscious. A simple sleepwalk would then end in Imelda swallowing the entire bottle, wherever she decided to stash them.
Somehow, the concha had gotten hold of her blood. Somehow, she had knotted a weave of seiðr around her, compelling her to…
Imelda froze, remembering Jacquot, lurking outside her door. She remembered the IV she had haphazardly tugged from her hand, leaving blood to drip on the carpet in passing.
Outside, she heard the helicopter continuing to power up. Listening to the rotors’ increasing thumping whine, Imelda cleaned out the inside of the cup until the black veins disappeared, dried it, and hastily returned it to its case. She could deal with Zenaida later, once she found out exactly what it is she was dealing with.
Jogging outside, she was already halfway out into the hallway before she realized she’d left the light on in the bathroom. She hesitated a heartbeat, listening to the helicopter roar on the tarmac outside, knowing that, at four in the morning, someone was surely going to object. Not wanting to take the extra time to run back to the bathroom to shut off the light, Imelda decided the Order could afford a few extra watts on the next electricity bill and shut the door to her room anyway.
Chapter 14: An Inquisitor’s Wager
‘Aqrab rounded the next hilly rise of the cluster of peaks between the two great mountain ranges, shielding his eyes against the glare of the snow, carving a path into the already-hip-deep drifts for his magus to follow as he considered what their bargain would be that night. He had to be careful not to take things too quickly, but never in his life had he thought the Fury could open up to him so fast. It had worked beyond his wildest dreams.
He had been stunned at how truly easy it was to drive her over the edge. A simple trace of his hand here, a hot wisp of breath there… Even now, she walked at the very edge of their five hundred cubits because, earlier that morning, he had brushed his fingers across the sensitive spot he had found at the nape of her neck, feather-light, to see what would happen, and she’d collapsed into his arms, gasping, shuddering with orgasm, and calling him a ‘mindless ape’.
He’d been grinning inwardly ever since. So many possibilities…
His mind already entertaining itself with the exquisite ways her tawny body would contort beneath his touch in tonight’s bargain, he didn’t notice the dark shapes squatting upon the mountain’s crest ahead of him until one of them moved.
“Peace, djinni,” a woman in black fatigues said, standing slowly. She was not looking directly at him, he noticed, but somewhere near his chest. Her eyes were as blue as glacial ice, but they bore dark rings around them; the gaunt, pale look of a skeleton. Though she carried no guns he could see, she wore an all-black, military garb in the same style as those who hunted them. Further, there was no disguising the Inquisition helicopter, looming on the next peak behind her like an ugly black insect. Beside it, a Nordic-looking man casually leaned against the open door of the cockpit, a pistol in his hand, watching them. Well out of range for the weapon to be effective, but a warning nonetheless.
“Mon Dhi’b,” ‘Aqrab called carefully behind them, coming to a wary halt. “Are you back there?”
Behind him, his magus sulked, “It’s not like I can go far, djinni. What, did you think you lost me in a snowbank?” She scoffed and offered him several different options for a good self-dicking, all of which required a distinct lack of lube.
“Peace, djinni,” the black-clad woman repeated softly, her eyes warily watching the wolf. Her accent sounded like that of a Spaniard. If she understood the Old Tongue, she made no indication. Now that ‘Aqrab got a good look at her, he realized she was covered in a vest studded in what looked like clear plastic compartments filled with various shards of multi-colored metals…that stank of solidified fire. The same strange heat-energy-smell as TNT, but stronger, more concentrated, more dangerous. In one gloved hand, she clutched what looked like a high-tech flashlight…or maybe a sword pommel.
“Mon Dhi’b,” ‘Aqrab said slowly, as his magus continued to detail out her complaints to the gods behind him. “Please come here.”
“Neek hallak, djinni!”
“If I could fuck myself, I would,” ‘Aqrab snapped back. “But until someone wishes that for me, I’d really appreciate your attention on this nice young lady who smells of explosives.”
His magus made a startled grunt. Then, suddenly, Kaashifah was pushing past him, all fur and fang.
“Peace!” the woman snapped, holding up both hands, making the rolls of explosives jostle upon her chest, showing the object she grasped tightly in her left. “I carry a deadman’s switch. You bite me, wolf, and all three of us will die.” Without taking her eyes from the air in the general area of the magus, she said to ‘Aqrab, “Inform her that she will show herself and speak to me civilly or she will die. I’ve had much less sleep than I should have, I’ve developed ulcers f
rom not eating enough, my head is throbbing like it’s being split with an axe, and I’m not feeling charitable.”
His magus stalked toward the woman anyway, obviously fully intent on ripping her to pieces. ‘Aqrab watched that realization strike the woman’s haggard face, watched her eyes narrow in resolution, and got an odd tickling sensation in the back of his mind, like someone was playing with the strings of Fate. He watched her fingers loosen on the sword-pommel.
‘Aqrab darted forward and grabbed the back of his magus’s shirt and dragged her bodily backwards. “May you die by the fleas of a thousand camels, mon Dhi’b!” he cried. “Look at her vest! I smell fire-clay.”
His magus shook herself out of his grip and glared up at him for an instant before turning to the woman and looking her up and down with disgust. Then she glanced around them, but except for the helicopter on the next peak in the distance, they appeared to be the only souls in the area. Just the two of them and—judging by the rank on her shoulder—an Inquisitor.
Eventually, his magus returned her attention to the woman, “What do you want, qybah?”
Slowly, the Inquisitor’s hand tightened back on the object she carried. She divided her attention between an area just above Kaashifah’s head and an area just below ‘Aqrab’s left nipple. “Show yourselves.”
“Like Hell!” his magus snapped. “You think explosives scare me, qybah? I’m going to rip off your bigoted head and fling it down the mountainside, like I did with your craven, child-killing compatriots.”
‘Aqrab could feel their fates twisting with every harsh word, and watched the woman’s fingers twitch again on the device. Realizing he had a problem on his hands that required a poet, not a bloodthirsty, limb-flinging maniac, ‘Aqrab tore a hole into the veil to the half-realm and bodily shoved his magus into it. Even as she was letting out a warning shout, he wove the tear shut behind her.
The Inquisitor jerked at the blast of heat, her face wary. “Did you jump realms, then?”
