Alaskan Fire (67 page)

And Here’s a Sneak Peek
of…

 
GUARDIANS

of the

FIRST REALM:

ALASKAN

FURY

KAASHIFAH

“The winds breathe foul today,
mon Dhi’b.”  ‘Aqrab’s words were like a warm breath against the back of her
neck, rousing Kaashifah from a dead sleep in an instant of total panic.

Though Kaashifah couldn’t see the
djinni, she knew he was nearby from the way the drapes seemed to waver above
the bed.  Over the long years of bondage to the Fourth Lander, she had trained
herself to almost
see
the odd flicker of the light where he danced, half
in his own land, half in hers.  Some days, she was better at seeing it than
others.  Often, it came and went with her mood.  Anger made it easier.  Fear…

Well, fear made it impossible.

And there was so much to fear.

Swallowing, Kaashifah sat up and
threw back on the façade that had kept her sane these last three millennia of
torment.  “I told you not to enter my room as I slept, ‘Aqrab.”

“You have told me not to enter
other rooms,” the djinni said, manifesting out of thin air, a seven-foot
mountain of ebony flesh glaring down at her.  “But not this one.”  He gave her
a vicious smile and gestured at the small cabin that the wereverine had built
for them. 

“I told you not to enter my
bedroom
as I slept,” Kaashifah snapped, hating the way the djinni could manage to
intentionally misinterpret even the most simple commands.  “What is there to
mistake about that?”

‘Aqrab’s violet eyes narrowed on
her.  “Since this is to be my place of residence, and as I am
bound
to
this land, and our hosts built only one dwelling for the both of us, and that
dwelling only has
one
bedroom, this room is technically not
your
room, but
my
room, too, making it
our
room.  You never told me to
stay out of
our
bedroom, mon Dhi’b.”

Oh, she
hated
the convolutions
he could come up with in order to reason out his own actions.  It was the very
reason she had hunted him down in the first place and inadvertently begun this
nightmare, three thousand years ago.  His twisted, monkey-pawing,
oath-breaking, selfish
rationalizing
that had destroyed the city of
Ji’fah.  Wiped it completely off of the map with a single wish.  He had
monkey-pawed a kingdom into ruin, and reveled in it.  So much so that her Lord
had told her to destroy him.

…and the bastard of a whoreson
had bound himself to her to save his worthless hide.  Soul-to-soul.  Beginning
a nightmare that would never end.

“‘Aqrab,” Kaashifah said,
“Leave.”

While most days, the djinni would
have given her a snide look and asked her to ‘leave what?’ now he simply narrowed
his eyes and vanished.

Too many meanings to words.  Too
many interpretations.  Too many loopholes.  Kaashifah had learned this long
ago, and had been living in torment ever since.

Reluctantly, unsure if the djinni
was truly gone due to her own inner turmoil—‘Aqrab kept her as off-balance as
possible, as often as possible, because it gave him the power to come and go at
will—Kaashifah nonetheless threw the covers off and slipped, naked, off of the
bed.

Her suspicions were confirmed
when a voice above and behind her said, “I left, mon Dhi’b.  And I returned. 
Perhaps now you will listen to what I had to say?”

Kaashifah fought a surge of
terror, knowing the beast was directly behind her, knowing that her naked form
was completely exposed to him, but she fought it down and straightened her
spine, hiding it well.  She could, after all, use her last wish to kill the
monster, and they both knew it.  And, having begun the duel of souls so long
ago at the oasis of Tafilat, to take his head now was to bind his soul to hers
in perpetual servitude, from which only her word could grant his release.  It
was probably the only reason the creature hadn’t already used her body to his
delights, repeatedly.  After all, as he so loved to claim, he was ‘bored enough
to drown’ being imprisoned here.  And she
knew
he craved her body.  She
could see it, whenever he looked at her.

“Another instruction I gave you,
‘Aqrab,” Kaashifah said evenly, “is never to spy upon me while I am disrobed.”

“I am not spying on you,” ‘Aqrab
said.  “I am standing within arm’s-reach, fully within the darkness of your
lands.”  The sneer was back, his hatred firing every word.

Kaashifah fought another spasm of
terror and turned, slowly, to look up at him.

True to his word, ‘Aqrab stood
less than an arm’s-length away, peering down at her over his huge, muscular
forearms, crossed over his enormous chest.  He stood like a mountain before
her, his black body like a deeper shadow in the half-light.  He wore a thin,
gauzy sirwal to cover his waist and legs, but not much else.  And, through the
film of silk, she could see the hardness there, the longing.  Three thousand
years of longing, for he made it very plain that he held his imprisonment
against her, despite the fact that
he
was the one to do it.

And three thousand years ago, the
longing had been just as strong.  Back then, she was pretty sure he would have
done it out of violence, out of fury for what she had done to him.  Now, she
was sure he would
relish
in it, make it last until she screamed for
death.  He would despoil her in a heartbeat, if she didn’t have the
Fourthlander Law binding him by his own making.

The djinni, of course, made no
effort to hide his desire.  He knew it upset her, threw her off balance, left
her terrified of what he might decide to do as a final hurrah, a last goodbye,
one glorious revelry before he vanished like a lick of flame to the wind. 

It was all Kaashifah could do not
to simply break down right there.  She’d fought him for so long, endured his
torments for so many eons…  It had worn at her soul, left her dreading each new
day, each new ordeal he painstakingly crafted for her.

“‘Aqrab,” she whispered. 
“Please.”

He gave her a malicious smile. 
“Please what, mon Dhi’b?  Please take your tiny virgin body upon my shaft and
pierce you until you scream?  Please break your neck?  Or please fetch you a
shirt?  You must be more specific.”

Kaashifah closed her eyes and
fought the despair that had been building for three thousand years.  It now
weighed on her like a mountain, making it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard
to face each heartbeat.  “Please leave me alone,” Kaashifah said.  “Just go.”

“Make your wish,” the djinni
growled, “and I will happily do just that.”

By Fourthlander Law, he was bound
to her for three wishes.  She had made two.  The third was going to be her
last, and both of them knew it.

Kaashifah looked away.  “Get out
of this room and let me dress.”

For a long moment, it looked like
the djinni would disobey her.  Which, due to the way he had bound himself to
her—and her background in the arcane—could mean great pain for him, when she
took the shadows of the First Lands and shoved them down the cord at him.  It
was like throwing water onto a bonfire, and he usually screamed for hours. 

She hated to do it, though.  She
was not, by nature, like him.  She did not delight in tormenting others.  It
was simply something she had discovered, over the time she’d been tied to him. 
Which made it all the more horrible when she had to discipline him for stepping
over the line.

…and all the more certain that he
would make her regret every breath she had taken for the last three millennia,
if he ever got free.

The djinni vanished.  This time,
he waited until she had slipped a shirt over her head before he returned. 
“Something horrible is on the winds, mon Dhi’b.”

Kaashifah would have snapped at
him, then, if there wasn’t obvious concern in his eyes.  Kaashifah hesitated,
chancing a look at his groin.  The hardness was still there, but muted, only
half-straining against the silk.  She looked away, disgusted.

“Someday, little virgin,” the
djinni growled.  “You will moan for hours upon my shaft.”

“Don’t call me ‘virgin,’”
Kaashifah snapped.

His smiled in disdain.  “You
prefer ‘whore’, then?”

Kaashifah hurt him, then.  She
grabbed the nearby shadow and shoved it down the life-cord that the djinni had
bound to her.  Just a taste, but it was enough to throw him to his knees,
gasping, big hands splayed out on the floor, head down, a low whine building in
his chest.  For long moments, he just stayed there on his hands and knees
before her.  When he looked up, his violet eyes were full of tears.

And hate.

“
You
did this,” Kaashifah
reminded him, though her heart was already pounding in frenzied terror under
the loathing in his gaze.  “You put me in this position, ‘Aqrab.  It wasn’t
me.  It was your own hand that did this.”

“Perhaps I missed something,” the
mountainous djinni whispered, “but it was
you
who just poisoned me with
shadow, when all I wanted to do was tell you about the whispers on the winds.”

“Because you
force my hand
!”
Kaashifah screamed at him.  “You threaten to break my spine.  You threaten to
force
me.  Every day, you make my life a living
hell
because you were too much
of a
coward
to face your own death when it came!”

He slowly worked himself to one
knee and wiped the tears from his face with a massive black forearm.  “Little
wolf,” he said softly, “you obviously misunderstand my words.”

Kaashifah snorted in derision. 
“Your words are fluid, the meanings changing with the winds, as flexible as
your honor.”

She watched his beautiful eyes
harden.  “That may be, mon Dhi’b,” he said finally.  “But, considering that I
will be bound to a bag of
bones
if you die before you make your wish, we
both know I will do what I can to keep you alive.  And the winds are telling me
that you’re in danger.”  He said it with a sneer, like he was relaying
information that he would rather see buried in the bottom of a latrine.

Kaashifah bit her lip, her heart
skipping a beat.  While he delighted in tormenting her, the djinni was also
always accurate in his readings of the winds.  “In danger how?” she asked
softly.

But the djinni’s face hardened. 
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”  And then he disappeared.  For good, this time.

Damn him.

Kaashifah finished dressing,
taking long minutes to comb out her hair, trying to calm the trembling in her
hands.  As always, the djinni scared her.  He scared her so much she wanted to
scream for help from the nearest passerby.  But there was no one who
could
help her.  A djinni’s magic was one of the strongest in existence.  As
convoluted and twisted as their minds, it was almost impossible to unravel. 
Only a dragon could free her of his curse, and not even a
dragon
could
remove the tether he’d knotted to her soul.  That would take her final wish.

Kaashifah pulled on her gloves—in
North America, she had learned, men often tried to shake hands with women out
of courtesy, and rather than having to choose between defiling her body or
insulting the phoenix’s guests, Kaashifah had begun wearing skin-tight
gardening gloves under a long-sleeved turtleneck shirt.  Thus, once she pulled
on her baseball cap, tucked her ebony hair carefully around her ears, and laced
up her boots, all that was visible of her skin was a small portion of her face.

Refusing to let ‘Aqrab see her
fear, she straightened her spine and walked out the front door, took the extra
time to latch it and sweep a few bits of mud from the porch with a flick of her
mind, then stepped down to cross the lush grounds to the Sleeping Lady Lodge. 
A new wave of thrill-seekers was arriving this afternoon, and the wereverine
was certain to have concocted some last-minute change of plans, as he had done
every time since that first highly-successful scare-fest, that spring.

The Fourth Lander already had
breakfast cooking on the stove, and she smiled when Kaashifah crested the
steps.  “Morning, Kimber,” Blaze said.  The tall woman’s fiery red hair was
braided and wrapped around the back of her head in a Greek-style headdress.  A
wig, of course.  Her real hair was cropped short and tucked underneath, a
necessity of dealing with the public.  Phoenixes, once awakened, carried
sunfire in their hair and eyes.  With a wig and contacts, however, none had
been the wiser. 

Tapping her spatula on the
griddle, the phoenix looked over her shoulder with a small frown.  “Where is
‘Aqrab?”

They act as if he’s my mate
,
Kaashifah thought, in agony.  She hadn’t yet managed to bring herself to tell
them the truth, though she had the feeling the wereverine suspected.  Indeed,
Jack was sitting at the bar, watching her with narrowed eyes, his nose to the
wind.  Ares damn her body for its betrayals, but her glands gave her fears away
easier than if she had written them in a book and handed it to the man.

Avoiding the wereverine’s gaze,
Kaashifah said, “‘Aqrab is indisposed.”  She sat down on a stool at the
kitchen’s island counter, pointedly ignoring Jack.  “Are there any last
amendments to our plans?”

“Playing ‘capture the babe’ seems
to be workin’ pretty damn good so far,” Jack said, grinning to show his fangs. 
“I say we just stick to that.  Hell, they already got the tabloids cookin’ up
all sorts of stories about the ‘lonely beast on the Yentna.’  Why disappoint?”

The wereverine, as always, seemed
to be rather short-sighted about the whole affair, but Kaashifah was being fed
from the phoenix’s own grounds, and the abundance of food, after starving for
so many years due to ‘Aqrab’s handicraft, was a blessing she was not willing to
give up over a ‘difference of opinions,’ as the wereverine so politely put it. 
Out of sheer desperation, she had given him her word to obey his rule whilst on
his domain, and she knew the score.  To break that oath was to be sent away.