Alaskan Fury Read Online Free Page A

body hitting the hardwood beneath his stool with a thump that shook the lodge, not even sprouting fangs. 
    Oh no, Kaashifah thought,
stumbling backwards, trying to slam up a shield. 
    “Jack?” the phoenix asked, moving
forward, frowning.  She obviously hadn’t seen the brunette’s gesture.
    Kaashifah, who had seen it, was
nonetheless unable to stop it.  Her shield, having gone unused and unpracticed
for so long, fizzled in the face of her fear, leaving her staring at the
Inquisitors in horror.  Whereas she could have ended it all with a single
thought before the djinni’s curse, now all she could do was turn and run.
    She felt a sharp pain in her
spine, then her legs collapsed out from underneath her.
    “Got the bitch,” the blonde woman
chuckled.
    Kaashifah’s vision dimmed, her
entire body going numb within a couple of heartbeats.
    A steel-toed boot stepped within
sight, and the blonde woman in black leather squatted down in front of
Kaashifah, a sneer on her face.  She grabbed Kaashifah by the hair and yanked
back, so that Kaashifah was staring up into the woman’s pretty Nordic face. 
“Guess what, beastie?”  She yanked something out of Kaashifah’s back and held
it out where she could see.  A tiny hypodermic needle, connected to a silver
vial.  “Basilisk venom’ll put even a wereverine’s lights out.”
    “I don’t think that one’s a
wereverine,” the unassuming brunette in jeans said.  “My guess is a wolf, but
something is off…”  Spanish , Kaashifah realized, ridiculously placing
the accent as her body failed around her.  The woman was a Spaniard.
    “Save your guesses ,
Imelda.  Once I get her on the rack, I will tell you what she is.”
    Even as she heard the words, Kaashifah
found herself losing the battle with her eyelids, her world blackening,
swallowing her from the outside. 
    Suddenly, like the fires of
heaven suddenly raining down upon her, the world came alive with heat and flame
and people screamed.  The last thing she saw, before she lost consciousness,
was the leather-clad Nordic woman above her stand up with a startled cry, eyes
wide, scrabbling for something on her gold-and-turquoise belt.

 
    Damn the magus.  He’d just
wanted to tell her his fears, to warn her, and she had called the
shadows down upon him.  It was taking less and less provocation to set her off,
nowadays, and his life had become a bitter waiting game.  Eventually, she was
going to call him for her final wish.  Whatever she decided that wish would be
would decide her fate.
    Until then, she used him like the
damn slave the wereverine taunted him to be.  ‘Aqrab was so angry he was
shaking.  How dare she.  It was vile .  And wrong .  And
totally unprovoked.  She was the one who was being unreasonable.
    He stalked from one end of the
tether to the other, his bare feet leaving a tread in the sands beneath him,
feeling the scorching winds of the Fourth Lands like a pleasant caress against
his skin.  Damn her.  All he wanted was to go home .  Couldn’t she
see that?
    ‘Aqrab looked to the east,
wondering what had happened to his village.  His family.  He’d had to leave it
all behind with his surrender, bound in servitude to an immortal who was
just smart enough not to make that final wish, but too stubborn to see that he
wanted, more than anything, to simply be free.  Time had worn him down, the
ages drying out his soul like the hot breeze of his homeland.  He no longer
cared about vengeance or retribution.  All he wanted was to be able to walk a
little further, to tread across the dunes and go home .
    Damn her.  Damn her stubborn
soul.
    He knew she wasn’t going to make
the final wish.  Regardless of what he said, no matter how much he
insisted he only wanted to be free, she would take that to mean whatever she wanted. 
And she accused him of twisting his words.  The obstinate wretch!  She
had sealed them both into a never-ending hell, from which there was only