Angels and Djinn, Book 3: Zariel's Doom by Joseph Robert Lewis Page A

she said. “A spirit of the land.”
    “Did we offend it?”
    “It’s not that kind of spirit. It’s hungry.”
    The mountain beast screamed and lashed out with a huge claw, swiping a dozen thorny blades across Azrael’s face and chest, but the angel barely moved, and her skin remained unbroken.
    “What do we do?” he asked.
    “Run. Now.”
    Iyasu hesitated, and then he ran. He dashed around the bend in the ravine and waved violently at the waiting couple. “Go, go!”
    They did not move. “Why?” asked Rahm.
    “Big animal! Very dangerous!” Iyasu reached them and bolted on by, but then skittered to a stop so he could turn back. “Come on! Now! We have to go. Azrael can’t hold it back there forever.”
    “She can’t kill it?” Rahm raised an eyebrow.
    “She won’t kill it. She won’t kill anything,” Iyasu explained, more than a little exasperated that they were still talking and not running. “That’s why we have to go!”
    “Won’t kill anything?” Hadara frowned.
    “No matter. I’ll do it.” Rahm pulled his great curved sword from the sheathe on his saddle and began striding up the streambed.
    “No! Stop!” Iyasu charged back up the trail, past the nervous Raska and eerily calm Hadara, stretching out his hand toward the warrior. But Rahm’s stride was too long and too quick, and he soon turned the corner of the ravine.
    A fresh chorus of roars and screams erupted from the ravine, and when Iyasu turned the corner for the second time, he saw Rahm slashing at the taneen’s wooden hide. Already there were long red gashes on the man’s arms and his blood was running in rivers down his skin and pattering on the dusty ground. But still he fought on, swinging his sword at the monster’s legs and snout, driving it back one small step at a time.
    “Rael!” Iyasu ran to her side. “I couldn’t stop him.”
    “I know.”
    “Can you help him?”
    Slowly, the woman in the dark Daraji silks lowered her arms and stepped back from the violent battle before them. “And do what? Maul and cripple the taneen for the crime of trying to feed itself? Or drag Rahm away and leave the creature free to kill you?”
    “No, I…” Iyasu shook his head, his thoughts flying in a hundred directions at once. The huge beast was only a stone’s throw away, bellowing and shaking its horned head, scraping its long claws down the sides of the ravine and across the bright steel of Rahm’s sword. Dusty and bloody thorns flew through the air, and every time the taneen roared, the sharp scent of burnt cedar stung the young seer’s nostrils. “I’ll run. You save him.”
    “I’ll save him!” Hadara strode past them with her knife in one hand and a small rock in the other. She burst into a sprint and just as Rahm smashed one of the taneen’s claws down against the streambed, she planted her foot on that same claw and leapt straight up toward the monster’s roaring maw. Her body spun like a flower in the wind, and she struck the taneen’s jaw with her stone just as she drove her dagger into the beast’s left eye.
    The taneen reared back and shrieked like ten thousand bats all crying out with one voice. It shook its mossy, grassy mane and clawed frantically at the walls of the ravine as though desperate to climb away from the pain searing into its head.
    “Rahm, now!” Hadara dropped to the ground and tumbled away from the flailing wooden beast.
    The warrior charged forward, straight up to the exposed breast of the taneen, and with his heavy scimitar he struck the creature’s throat. He struck again and again, swinging his huge sword so fast that Iyasu marveled at his strength. Chunks of bark and wood exploded from the taneen’s throat with every swing, and with each strike the beast shook and gasped for breath, its long thin claws swatting weakly through the air near Rahm’s head but never quite able to reach him.
    On the seventh strike, Rahm cleaved clear through the taneen’s throat and the beast’s