Alaskan Fire (68 page)

…Away to starve; weak, hungry,
and alone to face the djinni’s torments.  She had done it before, and only
barely survived.  To do it again, she knew, would finally shatter that
tentative hold she had on sanity.

A hold that, with his every
breath, the djinni was weakening.

“Very well,” Kaashifah said.  “Am
I to take up the usual position with Blaze?”

“I’ll come to grab the girl when
you two are just finishing up dinner,” Jack said.  “Lead them on a merry
goose-chase around the lodge, then boogie off into the woods to drop her in the
hole.”

“The last group had GPS,” Blaze
warned, serving Kaashifah two pie-plates full of eggs and fruit.  “Remember to
check her for a beacon.”

“What if there are no females?”
Kaashifah asked.  “What is our plan in that case?”

Jack chuckled.  “Oh, honey, you
ain’t heard?”

Kaashifah glanced at Jack, then
up at Blaze.  The tall woman sighed and rolled her eyes, then went back to
making breakfast.

At the bar, Jack said, “They’re
all
girls this time, baby.  I got the whole damn
world
wantin’ ta crawl up
my chimney.”

The djinni’s daily abuse left
Kaashifah loathing the crass wereverine’s casual references to the physical act
of union, but she managed to keep her face from twisting.  After all, countless
people found it an amusing enough pastime.  Jack and Blaze were two of them. 
The scent of their pheromones was particularly strong this morning, which only
made her gut clench.  The djinn, as beings of the Fourth Lands, were
notoriously crippled by the carnal needs of procreation.  And sure enough,
‘Aqrab reeked of desire, whenever he got close to her, and had spent much the
last three thousand years stinking much like the little wereverine whenever he
so much as looked at his mate.

Except, with the djinni, there
were three thousand years of hatred behind his carnal desires.  He wanted to make
her suffer, wanted to desecrate her body once and for all, wanted to condemn
her in the eyes of her Lord and seal her from her Fury, wanted to take her
wings forever in that ruinous and sinful act that a man could do to a woman. 
He wanted these things, and he spent every waking moment making sure she was
aware of that fact.

“You’re not eating, Kimber,”
Blaze said, looking at Kaashifah’s plate worriedly.  “Are you all right?”

Kaashifah swallowed and lowered
her hand, realizing she had unconsciously lifted it to her Lord’s tiny winged
sword upon her neck.

“She had another spat with her
slave,” Jack said, wrinkling his nose.

Damn
him.  Kaashifah felt
her fists clench with shame as she fell under the phoenix’s pitying stare.  “I
would appreciate it, Shadowkiller,” she said softly to Jack, “If you would keep
your…observations…to yourself.”

Jack shrugged and went back to
devouring his mixing-bowl of eggs.  For Kaashifah, the phoenix had served up a
similar portion, size-wise, though she had made a certain effort at
presentation, for which Kaashifah was deeply grateful.  The curse of the wolf
may force her to eat like a monster, but she tried in all ways to maintain her
decorum and civility.  It was one of the only things she had left of her true
nature.  The djinni had taken everything else.

“The kids are arriving around
noon,” Jack said a few minutes later, already having downed the full bowl of
eggs and wiping his egg-stained fingers on the wet rag that the phoenix handed
him.  “We’ll get them settled in, feed ‘em dinner, then let the festivities
start.”

“No blood, no pictures,” Blaze
reiterated.  “And no chasing them into the river.”  She’d had to add that one
after a young man from one of the last groups had fallen into the glacial
waters of the Yentna River and Jack had had to go in and rescue him, once it
was clear that the boy had gone into shock.  Only, of course, adding to his
legend.

The Yentna River Werewolf. 
Kaashifah didn’t know who were the bigger fools—the idiots that paid thousands
of dollars to spend a week running screaming through the woods, or the
wereverine and his mate, who blithely took their money and let his reputation
build.  As ‘Aqrab had noted to her many times before, the extra attention did
not seem wise, in the phoenix’s case.  But then, they had slaughtered the last
Inquisition recovery group to come for her and had buried them—helicopter and
all—in an enormous pit in the woods, so Kaashifah had grudgingly gone along
with the plan.

Besides, the phoenix was the key
to her next meal, and chronic hunger did something strange to one’s thinking,
when one thought they were about to be dumped on their ear, for raising a voice
of dissent.

Afraid to open her mouth for
the pain in her stomach,
Kaashifah thought. 
When did the Handmaiden of
Ares become such a coward?

The answer was simple:  When the
djinni bound himself to her, while kneeling under her blade.  Surrender.  The
word was still bitter on her lips, an acrid taste on her tongue.  The djinni
had not surrendered.  He had merely prolonged his life in exchange for three
thousand years of torment.  And a curse.

She had accepted his surrender,
fool that she was.  She had allowed him to get to his knees before her, present
his sweaty black neck for her sword.  She had lifted her blade, prepared to cut
his lying head from his massive body.

And his big hand had reached out,
like a snake, and he had cursed her.  A blood-curse, the curse of a doomed man,
the last wish of a djinni on his death bed. 
May you never kill.
  A
Maiden of Death, follower of Ares, and she dropped her sword as if it had been
afire, the very steel burning like coals in her hands, searing her fingers to
the bone.  And the look of victory in the djinni’s violet eyes, the
triumph
…

He’d won their duel of souls. 
They both had known it, right then, him kneeling before her in the sands of the
oasis, her standing, swordless, sun beating down on her blistered hands from
above.  By surrendering to her blade, he would ultimately win.  Eventually, the
strain would be too much.  Eventually, she would crumble.  Eventually, with
time, he would get that third wish, and when he did, he would be free to spend
his last hours in the First Realm showing her
real
torment before he
killed her and returned to his homeland, her soul in tow.  All it would take
was time.

And, as immortals of their
respective realms, both of them had all the time in the world.

After Kaashifah forced down her
eggs on a queasy stomach, she spent the rest of the morning washing dishes and
making beds.  ‘Aqrab still hadn’t made an appearance, though she knew he was
close.  Either in his own realm, in the half-realm, or in the First Realm, he
had to remain within five hundred cubits of her body.  The tether only
stretched thus far, one of the many Laws of the Fourth Lands.  It had started
as fifteen hundred cubits, but with each of Kaashifah’s wishes, it had
shortened by five hundred.  Reminding her, of course, that if she made that
last wish, there was nothing standing between the two of them, no bindings of
djinni law to keep her safe.

Around eleven-thirty, while
vacuuming the upstairs floors of the lodge in preparation for the guests’
arrival, Kaashifah heard Jack and Blaze start up two of the 4-wheelers out back
and head down the dirt path to Lake Ebony.  She shut off the vacuum cleaner and
tucked it away in a closet, biting her lip.  ‘Aqrab still had not shown
himself, and, as his only ‘entertainment’ within five hundred cubits, the
djinni usually could not resist taunting her with his presence.  That he
refused to appear now left the little hairs along Kaashifah’s spine tingling
with unease.

Forty-five minutes later, the
group of girls—eight in all—arrived on the back of the 4-wheeler cart out back,
giggling, asking Blaze questions about the Yentna River Werewolf.  Kaashifah reluctantly
went down the stairs to meet them.

When Kaashifah got down to the
second story, Jack was grinning like an idiot as he carried the girls’ luggage
up the stairs to the guest bedrooms.  The guests themselves were dressed in
various states of casual attire, from a brunette in jeans and a half-buttoned
flannel shirt reeking of mosquito repellant, to a blonde Nordic-looking woman
in tight black leather, showing a good portion of her smooth, trim stomach.  A
pretty gemmed belt, its golden plates studded with large pieces of what looked
like turquoise, topped the ensemble.  Blaze sat them at the bar and served them
iced tea while they chatted, obviously excited out of their tiny minds.

Seeing that there were no men in
the group, Kaashifah stepped up and offered her hand to the blonde delicately. 
“My name is Kimber,” she said softly.  “Welcome to the Sleeping Lady.”  She had
learned long ago that it was better to just give people a name they were
familiar with than try to get them to pronounce the name of her homeland.

The blonde gave Kaashifah a
dubious look down her long nose, and Kaashifah found herself caught a bit
off-guard by the agelessness of her face, where she could not say, with
certainty, which decade of life the woman was in.  Her black leather outfit
reminded Kaashifah of something she had seen on TV, a show about hunting
vampires, so she guessed the woman was rather young.  Possibly just out of her
teens.

Yet there was something almost
familiar about her steely gray eyes when the blonde woman sniffed and said,
“You’ve got an accent.  Where are you from?”

Of course.  So many in this
country looked at her with distrust, simply for her appearance.  Like Kaashifah
was going to randomly poison their tea and louse their beds because her skin
was darker than theirs.

“Arabia,” Kaashifah said, giving
another courteous nod.  “Though it’s been many years.”

She thought she saw the blonde’s
eyes sharpen, but the woman sniffed and flung her impressive, knee-length braid
over a shoulder.  As thick as it was, Kaashifah wondered if the woman had used
hair extensions.  “And what’s your job here, Kimber?” 

“I cook and I clean,” Kaashifah
said softly.  It was an answer that they could hardly argue with.  After all,
in America, the darker the skin, the easier it was to be ignored as a servant.

Blaze, bless her, seemed at least
a bit taken aback by the woman’s abruptness.  “Kimber got here as an exchange
student,” the phoenix said, smiling.  “Decided to stay once she had her
degree.”

“Degree in what?” the blonde asked. 
“Bedmaking?”  It was almost a sneer.  Faced with such outright disdain,
Kaashifah bit her lip and stepped back, deciding to let the lady of the house
do the talking.  After all, she was as much a guest in this place as the rest
of them.

“Public relations,” Blaze said. 
The phoenix’s smile had cracked.  “Would you like more lemon in your tea?”

“I’m good,” the blonde said,
oblivious.  “So where can we find this werewolf?”

The conversation went on from
there, Kaashifah thankfully forgotten.  She slipped to the side, listening as
they discussed potential ‘lairs’ and recent ‘sightings’ as Jack made his last
trip in from outside, carrying the last set of luggage over his shoulder. 

“You have an amazing place,
here,” the quiet brunette in the back of the group said to the phoenix, once
Jack had returned from depositing their luggage in their rooms and plunked down
on a seat at the bar, “Fishing lodge, yes?  What made you turn to cryptid
tourism?”  Which launched Blaze into a pre-packaged spiel about how the Sleeping
Lady Lodge was everything she’d ever wanted, come true, and how one nightmarish
winter, she and Jack had been forced to defend it against forty mutant wolves.

“And you used
silver bullets.
” 
The brunette sounded enthralled.  “Werewolves, then.”

The ageless blonde in leather
rolled her eyes and walked over to the bay window, glancing out at the pens of
livestock out back.  Oddly, it didn’t seem as if the woman were rolling her
eyes at the idea of
werewolves
, but rather, at the brunette herself. 
Some corporate power-struggle?  Kaashifah idly wondered where Blaze had gotten
her latest batch of clients.

“Well,” Blaze said, “not
according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.”  Which launched the whole
group into another long discussion about werewolves, the government, cryptids
in general, and the Yentna River Werewolf, who was a ‘lonely survivor’ of the
massacre on the Sleeping Lady’s back steps.

Throughout it all, Kaashifah kept
her attention on the brunette, finding something strangely off about her
seemingly polite nature in the face of the blonde’s unabashed arrogance.  The
woman had an accent of the southern states, though it was tinged with something
else.  Mexico, perhaps?  And, while her voice had the commanding tone of a
businesswoman, someone used to getting her way, neither her looks nor her
attire set her apart.  She had a professional short-cropped haircut, as was
common with the lodge’s career-oriented clientele, tight blue jeans, hiking
boots, and a button-up flannel shirt, the sleeves casually rolled up her arms. 
She had been holding her temples off and on during the conversation, as if she
had a headache, and she had a gaunt look, like someone who wasn’t getting
enough food or sleep.  And sure enough, halfway through the conversation, she
popped two small white pills from a tiny prescription bottle and swallowed them
down as the phoenix had regaled them of stories of heritage livestock and her
ridiculously green thumb. 

Eventually, after listening at
length to the phoenix’s ramblings about near-extinct livestock breeds and the
rapidly dwindling genetic diversity of humanity’s food supply, the brunette
woman put her pill-bottle away and glanced up at Kaashifah with curious,
glacial-blue eyes.  “I heard you guys had a staff of four.  Are we missing
somebody?  My friend said he was a real big guy.  Pro wrestler or something.”