by Sara King
Ignoring Jacquot’s look of disappointment, she went to the cafeteria, filled a plate, then sat in a corner and pretended to read a newspaper while she picked at her food.
Zenaida came to find her five minutes later, her fellow Sister wearing a tight set of black jeans and a short, dark green tanktop that showed her flat, muscular stomach. At her hips, her turquoise belt glittered gold in the cafeteria light. At her neck, the winged sword brazenly shared space upon her neck with the cross. Her thick blonde hair had been braided in a heavy rope that had been clipped and bound at the back of her knees. Hair that was, now that Imelda thought about it, much too thick to be human.
“So,” Zenaida said, settling into the seat across from her, her stone-gray eyes looking amused, “I hear you have made some progress on the fallen angel.” The woman picked up a pepper-shaker in too-perfect hands and started fiddling with it.
Immortal’s hands, Imelda thought, watching the light dance off of the glass between her elegant fingers. In fact, every line of Zenaida’s face, every curve of her body held that same agelessness as a vampire, the same timelessness as a fey. Why had she never seen this before?
“All right,” Imelda said, carefully closing her newspaper and setting it aside. “You and I can agree that we don’t like each other, correct?”
Zenaida snorted as if she found that amusing. “I suppose.”
“I think it’s time we start working together. I have some breakthroughs, and I know you probably have a few you could share, as well. It’s time we stopped squabbling and pooled our resources to bring down a common enemy. This angel with the djinni. I went to meet her.”
Zenaida’s fingers stopped moving on the glass. Very slowly, the woman looked up, and the coldness in her stone gray eyes left Imelda with chills. “If you’re going to waste my time with lies, I have better things I could be doing.”
“I went and spoke with them,” Imelda insisted. “Reconnaissance, if you will.”
Disbelief shone in Zenaida’s eyes. “How did you find her?”
Imelda wasn’t about to tell the woman that only an idiot wouldn’t have been able to find the two, given the conditions, but from what Herr Drescher had told her, that’s exactly what Zenaida had been trying to do, with all of their teams, and failing miserably.
Probably, Imelda thought, looking into the bubbling anger in Zenaida’s eyes, because the woman had been relying entirely on magic, instead of common sense. “It wasn’t difficult,” she said. “I went in backed by Drescher. Asked her a few questions, then left. She is, indeed, a fallen angel. Spoke of being tossed from heaven by her fellow angels, and keeping the company of serpents.”
Zenaida’s lips curled slightly in a smile and she seemed to relax. “And she was bitten by a wolf. She lost her power.”
“So it seems,” Imelda said.
“You said she told you her name?” Zenaida asked, much too casually.
Imelda gave her a long look. “What do you know of her?”
Zenaida gave her a sly smile, and her fingers started working the pepper shaker again. “Just how much would you like to know?”
“You’re like her,” Imelda said. “It doesn’t take much to figure that out.”
If Zenaida was surprised, she gave no sign. Instead, her cunning smile spread. “That’s where you’re wrong. They never cast me out.”
Imelda felt something click into place for her, amidst the glass shards in her brain. When asked the same question, the djinni’s angel had become infuriated and defensive and told her a story of being cast down by her sisters—but not of losing her lord’s favor. Zenaida, completely on her own, had offered up the fact that she had never been thrown from the temples—but said nothing of her lord’s favor. Imelda glanced again at the pendant around Zenaida’s neck. It didn’t seem to have the age of the other one. The lines were sharper. And, now that she was looking, there was a minor detail missing, at the pommel of the sword, a flange that went upwards, instead of down…
“You wear a symbol of God’s favor,” Imelda commented.
“I do,” Zenaida said, pride rippling through her words.
“How did you come by it?” Imelda said.
Zenaida smiled. “I killed a dragon-ancient that had lost its mind and was eating its way through the towns along the Mediterranean. I fought that battle for six days, and still have the scars from its breath.” She peeled a bit of shirt from her perfect stomach to show a nasty pink-white scar that took up one half of her upper torso, then dropped it again, obviously proud of her accomplishment. “I was the first of my kind to receive that honor in eleven thousand years, and I earned it before my eighteenth birthday.”
You lying snake. Only a Fury’s blade will scar another Fury. Imelda nonetheless returned her smile. “So what did you do to lose it?”
The pepper-shaker dropped from Zenaida’s hands. After staring at the shaker for a moment, Zenaida lifted her head to face her slowly, and there was Death in her eyes. “I never lost it.”
“Oh?” Imelda brought out the wolf’s pendant from her pocket. Instantly, Zenaida froze, watching the pendant like one would watch a poisonous serpent. Pointing to the sword flanges, Imelda said, “This is upside down, and there’s too many feathers on the wings. Did you have to re-create it from memory?” She tisked. “That much detail…must’ve been difficult.” She tucked the pendant back into her shirt. “How long did you wait after they were all dead to make yourself one? A year? Two?”
Zenaida cocked her head at Imelda in that odd manner of a cat analyzing an ant. “Do you have any idea who I am?”
“Impostor, comes to mind,” Imelda said, crossing her fingers over one knee. She leaned back and said, “Or were you thinking of something else?”
Zenaida’s fingers tightened on the pepper shaker and it cracked in her palm, driving glass into her hand. “You think you know everything,” she sneered. “You think you have it all figured out. You have no clue.” She hurled the two halves of the shaker across the room, where they exploded to fine dust against the bricks of the cafeteria fireplace. When she turned back to Imelda, her hands were shaking, and there was fury in her stone-gray eyes. “You have no idea what they did to me. They deserved what they got. The whole system was corrupt.”
“So you fixed that,” Imelda said conversationally, “by killing them all.”
For a long time, Zenaida simply stared at her. Then, slowly, she said, “You’re not going to live through the night.”
“Oh?” Imelda said, though her heart was already pounding, knowing that, should the woman decide to kill her here, in the cafeteria, there was absolutely nothing she could do to stop it.
A slow smile spread over Zenaida’s lips and she leaned forward. Before Imelda could react, Zenaida’s hand shot forward like a viper and caught her by the collar of her shirt. With all the easy power of a Third Lander, Zenaida dragged Imelda forward across the table, so that they were eye-to-eye. Imelda, unable to resist the woman’s demonic strength, went stiff and pulled her head as far away as she was able, her heart sending jolts of adrenaline through her shaking limbs with every frantic beat. As Zenaida effortlessly held her in place, she casually reached into Imelda’s pocket and retrieved the wolf’s pendant. Pulling it free and fisting her hand around it, Zenaida smiled at her and said, “Just like your Padre didn’t live through the night, last night.”
Imelda felt her entire body go still and cold. Her voice barely a whisper, she said, “You wouldn’t touch my Padre.”
Zenaida laughed and released her. Yanking a napkin from the dispenser, she wrapped it around her wounded hand and stood, tucking the wolf’s pendant into the narrow pocket of her skin-tight jeans. “Go check his cabin,” Zenaida said. “Then come back and tell me that.”
Imelda forced herself to steel her responses, not to give anything away. “I will,” she growled. “And if you’ve so much as touched him…”
Zenaida laughed harder and turned to go.
“So you’re turning down my o
ffer?” Imelda demanded. “Threatening those I love, trying to poison me… Those are offenses that will get you executed before a tribunal, Fury. Especially when they find out you’re not really an angel, and that you grow a fucking beak when you fully change form.”
Zenaida’s back tensed. Very slowly, she turned back to look at Imelda with her cold gray stare. The dual-reality sensation was stronger, now, the sense of déjà vu almost making her nauseous.
“You’re just a sad, stupid mortal who thinks she’s smarter than God,” Zenaida said. She laughed. “It doesn’t matter how smart you are. I’m still going to be alive ten thousand years after you’re dead.” Looking Imelda up and down in a sneer, she said, “And about your bargain. I don’t need her name. I recognize the pendant. She was one of the worst. I’m going to enjoy killing her mate slowly, before I make her eat his heart.” Dropping the bloody napkin back on the table, disdainfully showing Imelda her now-healed hand, she turned to go.
At her back, Imelda said, “It’s not the wolf that fell. It’s you.”
The patronizing half-smile that Zenaida gave her over her shoulder made Imelda’s blood run cold. “The monkey gets a cookie.” Then she strode off, leaving Imelda alone with the wad of crimson that the Segunda Inquisidora had left on her table.
Looking at the napkin, Imelda smiled. Folding it neatly, she put it into her pocket. Then she retrieved her newspaper from the seat beside her and resumed reading.
Herr Drescher arrived a few minutes later, lurching back and forth as he stumbled through the cafeteria, a brown paper bottle-bag in his hand. Imelda slapped the newspaper down and frowned. “For the love of—Drescher, I told you you were done for the day! You drunken imbecile. Give me that!” She stood up and yanked the paper bag out of Drescher’s hands. “Sit down. Eat something.” She gestured to her plate of food.
“So sorry, Inquisitorin,” Drescher slurred, slumping against her table. “All I wanted was one more—”
“Just sit down.” Imelda grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him into a chair across from her, then pushed her plate at him. “Eat that. How long’s it been since you had a meal?”
“I can’t remember, Inquisitorin,” the German slurred, picking up a fork. Around a mouthful of mashed potatoes, he said, “He’s not in the basement.”
Imelda’s heart suddenly stuttered. “You’re sure?”
“Looked three times,” Herr Drescher said. “Even asked the fucking wereverine. In between telling me to go fuck myself, he gave me the general idea that your Padre never saw a rack in the basement.”
Imelda remembered the new addition that Zenaida had commissioned, a temporary structure outside that could be used to hold lesser-priority captives until room was cleared downstairs. Had she been using it to conduct inquisitions?
“Go check the temporary storage shed,” she whispered. “I will meet you on the tarmac in twenty minutes.”
Herr Drescher’s blue eyes widened, but he nodded. After a few more bites of mashed potatoes, he got up and lurched from the table, crashed into a potted plant, then stumbled and caught himself before he fell.
“Just go to bed!” Imelda shouted after him.
She waited another two minutes after the German had barreled through the double-doors leading back to the barracks before she picked up the brown paper bag and followed him. She took the fastest route to her room, unlocked the door, and eased her way inside. The first thing she smelled was Jacquot’s cologne, but, upon flipping on the light, discovered Jacquot was not in attendance. Instead, as she skirted far around the living-room to give her a good distance between herself and the bathroom, she noticed a plastic bucket in the bathtub.
Her heart beginning to hammer, seeing nothing else amiss in her room, Imelda reluctantly started into the bathroom.
The bucket was lidded, with a note taped to the top. Imelda shut the bathroom door and locked it, then determined that no one was hiding behind the shower curtain before she gave the package her full attention. Written in a delicate, flowing script, it said, “A gift from your Padre.”
Imelda considered the bucket for several moments. The dual-reality static fuzz was like a thousand shards of glass behind her eyes, and it was difficult to see more than a small patch in front of her.
She knew she didn’t want to open the bucket. The last thing in the world that she wanted to do was open the bucket. Yet she also knew she had to. She had to know. Shakily, she reached out, pried up the lid.
The lower third of the bucket was filled with crimson. Half-immersed inside, she saw a bloody heart.
Imelda dropped the lid back onto the bucket and fell to her knees, a wash of revulsion rising from her gut. A moment later, she retched onto the tiles of her bathroom floor. She’s just trying to scare me, she thought frantically. That could have been anyone’s heart, anyone’s blood. It wasn’t necessarily Padre Vega’s.
But, deep down, she knew it was.
For the first time in her life, Imelda’s intellect fell entirely to the wayside at the sudden, insane rush of fury that surged within her at Zenaida’s abomination. Eyes fixed on the bucket, she carefully got back to her feet. Trembling, she stumbled back into the living room, then dropped to her knees beside the trash bin.
The static buzz in her head had become a throbbing, light-bending roar, but Imelda felt none of the usual pain, so deep was her rage. She could barely see the teabags, snack wrappers, and toiletries as her fingers dug through three months’ worth of the discarded remnants of a hasty, frantic, on-the-move life. Her migraine was an agonizing roar when her fingers found the stone and plucked it out.
She took the tiny gray river-rock over to her faestone goblet, dropped it in, and carried it, shaking, to the sink. The gleaming violet stone shifted to a deep and luxurious crimson upon contact with the water she flushed over the pebble.
Try this one on for size, concha. Imelda brought the goblet to her lips, reveled in the glass-shattering pounding in her head, and drank.
Immediately, the crystalline shards in her head dulled as she found herself in two places at once. The wolf was sitting in a cave, watching the djinni regale two strange men of some bardic tale…
Track it, she willed the magus. You’ll only get this one chance.
Then the spell was fading, and Imelda would have had to consume more blood to strengthen the link.
When it was over, Imelda waited for long minutes, wondering if the magus had caught her invasion.
Kaashifah was doing her best to ignore the third disgusting ballad that the two First-Landers had coaxed from the djinni that night, when suddenly her world shifted. Like someone had grabbed her by the heart, blood, and veins, and tugged, she felt something arc out of her, into the night, and froze.
Immediately, she grasped that thread of energy with her mind and started to follow it back to its source.
“—our lord laid his lyre upon her lips—” the djinni sang.
“Quiet,” she snapped, concentrating. The magic was like a silken cord from her heart, traveling south. A very weak thread of seiðr. She could have cut it, easily, but knew that only someone possessing her blood could make such a connection, and none of her friends had ever seen her bleed.
“—o’er the gentle thrusting of her hips—”
“Shut up!” Kaashifah shouted, the djinni’s moronic ramblings dangerously close to breaking her concentration.
“Would you stop interrupting him, cockroach?”
The thread, slender as it was, threaded its way back over the Alaska Range, through Willow, then Wasilla, and into a mountain-locked valley…
“—to which she tittered and said, “Why sir—
She could almost see it. Something nestled in the valley. The image was so blurry… Already, the magic was fading. If she couldn’t establish a link…
“—I’ve never seen such silver fur—”
“Would you shut up, you stupid. Pig-humping. Djinni!”
‘Aqrab went stiff and the cave began thundering with,
“You have reset your—”
“Manuke khara. Beast. Slave. Shakl il nahaan. Ogre. Wald il dhuroot. Goat buggerer. Girly-man. Bastard. Toe-sucking son of incest. I don’t have time for this!”
“You have—you have—you have reset—you—you have reset—you have—you—you have reset—you have—you have reset your seven days—please let me breathe mon Dhi’b!”
“Open your mouth again and I will sing you a song,” Kaashifah snapped. “I’m busy. Shut up. Just shut up. Someone is scrying on me.”
The djinni, who had fallen to his hands and knees, gasping, nonetheless lifted his head to pant at her with a frown. The dragon, likewise, looked interested. Thunderbird continued to pick at the roast beef.
“I can almost see it,” Kaashifah said, straining to make the link. “It’s a…” She followed the tiny thread to a large, many-building structure with a helicopter sitting out front. “It’s got a helicopter…” She frowned. The land was so hard to see. Almost as if the whole area was covered with some sort of anti-scrying spells.
Deciding not to waste any more time trying to identify the land, she dropped through the roof and followed the thread into a living-room, where a woman was standing before a sink, a faestone goblet in her hand.
“Who is it?” the dragon asked.
She scowled, remembering the woman all-too-well. She had to be stupid to give her this kind of opportunity. Wrenching her own cord across the space, using the woman’s feeble spell of seiðr—ingested blood, from the looks of it—as an anchor, she bound it tight around the woman’s skull, weaving it through her senses like a spiderweb. The woman gasped and fell to the tiled floor, the goblet shattering upon the sink.
Satisfied, Kaashifah backed out. Now, with a more solid cord between them, her surroundings came into view. “It’s a group of buildings. There are big cottonwood trees, and a road…” She squinted, trying to see the road signs, but finding nothing. She picked a direction and started following it.
Daintily inserting a piece of roast beef into his mouth, Thunderbird said, “It’s three miles from the highway, up Eklutna road, on the right hand side. It’s shielded from the road by a stand of cottonwood trees and is at the end of a long, winding gravel driveway. There’s a little green duck painted on the mailbox, left from the previous owner, but otherwise it’s completely unmarked. Rather slippery driving in winter. They’ve got a great big satellite dish out on the garage roof that gets good cable.”
