Alaskan Fire (35 page)

“So what you’re telling me,”
Blaze growled, “Is that I’m supposed to just stand around while some adolescent
critter snoops out my treasures and takes what he wants?”

Jack scratched at his scalp, then
examined the results.  “Fey have a really good case of A.D.D..  I’ve been
hoping he would get bored.”  Then he frowned.  “It’s actually strange he’s
still sticking around.  That was like, what, three weeks ago?”  He peered at
her quizzically.  “You didn’t tell him what we’ve got, did you?”

Blaze winced.  “I told him you
said it would make stuff grow.”

Sighing, Jack said, “Probably not
the smartest thing you ever did.  The fey thrive on that sort of stuff.”

“I thought he was
you
,”
Blaze growled.

“So you just randomly told
me
something that I told
you
because apparently I have these gaping holes
in my memory that needed refreshing?”  Jack raised his eyebrows, waiting.

Muttering, shotgun in hand, Blaze
pushed past him.

“Where are you going?” Jack
demanded.

“To start a war.”  Blaze yanked
the door open, stepped out onto the porch, and slammed the portal shut behind
her.  She crossed the yard, let herself into the barn, climbed the stairs, and
sat in the open window, watching the yard, shotgun resting in the crook of her
elbow.

Around midnight, Jack came out on
the porch and called up to her, “You plannin’ on sleepin’ tonight?”

Blaze waved him off.

Heaving a huge sigh audible even
to her perch in the barn, Jack went back inside the house.  Sometime after
that, Blaze dozed off.

She woke to the sound of a scream
and wood splintering.

Blaze jerked awake, frowning at
the lodge.  Had she imagined it?  Seconds ticked by, and all she heard were
strange, low thumps, seemingly coming from the basement.  In the yard below
her, the animals were huddled together against the barn, almost climbing over
each other in their attempt to get closer to the middle of the pile.

Then something huge and furry
came hurtling through the back door of the lodge, Jack fully transformed, sword
in hand, only an instant behind it. 

Oh my God,
Blaze thought,
her body suddenly electrified with adrenaline,
That was a werewolf.

Five more followed the wereverine,
rushing through the door in a flood from behind.  Jack, almost half their mass
when fully transformed, nonetheless kept them at bay, his ebony blade flashing
like the Void in the hazy Alaskan half-light of early morning.  He gutted the
one on the ground, gruesomely slicing the main body in half and kicking it,
still twitching, apart before whirling on the next.  His movements were almost
too fast to see, and Blaze found herself quailing unconsciously into the barn
at the feral, beastly screams that were ripping across the yard from both wolf
and wereverine alike.

He cut down three others, his
blade sliding through heads, torsos, and hips as easy as if he’d been cutting
through water.  Where the three died, however, their bodies still fighting well
past the point where a human should have bled out, there were six more to take
their place.

The lodge was
crawling
with them, Blaze realized, horrified.  She saw them on the roof, circling
around from the front, coming out of the shop…

I’ve got to help him,
Blaze thought, watching Jack slip and take a werewolf’s claws across his chest,
before cutting off the offending limb.  He was completely encircled, the only
thing keeping the much bigger creatures off of him being the light-eating flash
of his sword.

Heart thundering, Blaze took aim
with the shotgun and pulled the trigger.

A couple of the werewolves
nearest her roared and swung around to face her.

Jack’s sword took them in the
backs, cutting cleanly through the first, but getting stuck halfway through the
second.

That was his mistake.  As Blaze
watched, a dozen werewolves rushed him, throwing him away from his weapon,
pinning him to the ground.  As Jack struggled to reach something on his belt, a
big silvery-white wolf stepped on his hand and drew it herself.

Oh no,
Blaze thought,
seeing the liquid blackness swirling from the blade’s tip.  It was bringing
back a strange memory, something about a hole in the ground…

“So, Jack,” Amber’s voice
sneered.  The woman stood up, and Blaze saw that one half of her face was
showing nothing but bone and sinew.  “I thought maybe you’d appreciate dying by
your own weapon.”  As she examined the twisted black blade, Jack struggled and
snarled amidst the werewolves holding him.

That’s his dagger,
Blaze
realized, her heart lodging in her throat. 
The one that raises the dead.

Hands trembling, she cocked the
shotgun again, aimed for the pile of werewolves, and pulled the trigger.

The werewolves broke in confusion
as the buckshot peppered them, and it gave Jack just enough freedom to slip
free.  His eyes glowing like green embers, now, he ripped the head off of the
nearest wolf and threw it across the yard.  Blaze re-cocked the gun and aimed
it at another cluster of werewolves, then fired.  In the chaos that followed,
werewolves attacked werewolves and Jack was able to down another two of the
brutes with his bare hands, ripping one’s jaws completely open and exposing the
skull inside, and stepping on the neck of another while yanking the legs
upward, tearing the head free before throwing the body into the woodpile. 
Blaze picked another likely cluster, cocked the gun, and pulled the trigger.

Amber’s head came up, pinpointing
her in the barn window.  “Go kill the bitch!” she snarled, wiping specks of
blood from her chest and forearms where the buckshot had penetrated.

Two gray wolves immediately
turned and headed for the barn, inhumanly-fast.

Jack saw the two headed for
Blaze’s hiding-place and was turning to intercept when Amber stabbed him in the
gut.

“Enjoy
that
, you bastard,”
the werewolf said, looking into Jack’s startled eyes before she pulled the
black dagger free.  “Spent a long time thinking about where I’d stick you
before I decided on the gut.”  Amber smiled, baring her long white fangs as
Jack started to thrash and scream, holding his abdomen.  “Should take you a
good
long time to die.”  Where the blade had punctured, an eerie blackness was
spreading outward, exposing his organs within. 

Seeing that, Blaze’s heart gave a
painful shudder.  Fear and adrenaline and made a fiery mixture in her veins,
and suddenly it was all she could do to breathe, her very lungs feeling as if
they were filled with searing gas, not air.

Amber kicked Jack off of his
feet, then turned and started walking back towards the lodge.  “We’ll make this
the new den,” she heard Amber say to the cluster of wolves following her. 
“Enough food here for a couple weeks.” 

She’s going to take my farm,
Blaze thought, rage beginning to add its own caustic fire to her limbs. 
She
just killed Jack and she’s taking my farm.

Her heart began a concussive
explosive rhythm in her chest, and Blaze thought she smelled the acrid scent of
wood smoke.

What were they burning?  Her
lodge?  Her shop?  Her barn?  A dozen different possibilities raged through her
mind, and it was the last straw.  It left a rising, indignant fury boiling up
from within, and Blaze fired another couple shots at the werewolves in the
yard, pumping and pulling the trigger until she ran out of rounds.

Then two werewolves were throwing
open the doors of the barn and seeking a way into the loft.  Powered by
adrenaline and fury, Blaze jumped down through the window and started running,
fire burning through her veins in searing, painful arcs.

She heard the werewolves thunder
into the loft, heard their snarls of rage when they saw her running across the
yard, toward the gas shed, felt the
thumps
as their great bodies hit the
ground behind her—much too close—and started after her.

Blaze was running as fast as she
could, but feeling them gain distance at inhuman speed, instinctive, terrified
panic flipped some sort of switch in her brain.  Her fear dissolved, suddenly, and
she slowed to a stop.  She felt the adrenaline within her body sizzle her blood
and bones, and smelled the scent of smoke, all around her.  A moment later, the
werewolves were on her, and Blaze’s world exploded into a wash of pain and
searing, throbbing agony.

Blaze woke up cold, trembling
from head to toe, her body wracked with shivers.  She groaned and tried to pull
a blanket over her, but then felt the oddly warm, fluffy texture under her skin
shift, her hand sliding against stones and pebbles.  Frowning, she opened her
eyes. 

She was naked, lying in a
circular bed of ash in the middle of the back yard.

Blaze started up quickly, heart
hammering over the low whine of mosquitoes.  The light was starting to lighten
the sky again, probably around three or four in the morning.  She racked her
brain, trying to remember what had happened the night before.  The werewolves
had set something on fire, and the fire had spread…

Even as she thought of it, her
eyes caught on two charred humanoid shapes, a few yards away.  She saw bones
through the blackened gristle.  Immediately, she looked to the gas shed,
expecting to see the roof blown off, the forest on fire.

The shed was intact.

It was then that Blaze noticed
the small, childlike shape crouched on one knee a few feet away, his arm to his
chest, his head pointing at the ground, his body facing her.  Laid out on the
ground in front of him was Jack’s sword.  Blaze blinked, wondering if she was
imagining things.

A low moan from across the yard
caught her attention and she turned.

Jack was laying in the driveway,
clutching his gut, whimpering. 
He’s still alive,
she thought,
horrified.  Blaze got up and ran to him.  The fey man stayed where he was,
motionless, as she hurried past him and knelt beside the wereverine.

“Jack?” Blaze asked, shaking him.

Jack whimpered, his face deathly
pale.  His eyes were shut, his face sweating.

“Jack!” Blaze snapped.

“He’s unconscious, Lady,” the fey
man said softly.  “The dread horn is killing him.”

“Get the
fuck
off my
land!” Blaze snarled, twisting on him.

The fey man’s eyes widened and,
biting his lip, he got up and flickered out of existence, leaving the sword
where it was.

“Jack,” Blaze growled, lifting
his head off of the ground, peering into his face.  After a moment of watching
the wereverine’s eyes twitch behind the lids, she realized that the fey man was
right.  He was whining in his sleep.  She lowered his head gently and reached
for the wereverine’s hand.  With some effort, she managed to pry it from his
stomach.

Underneath, she could see the
white gleam of ribcage and spine.

“Oh my God,” Blaze gasped,
scooting backwards, staring at the grotesque wound.  By every medical fact she
knew, he
should
have been dead.  “Jack?” she whispered.

The wereverine didn’t answer
her.  His upper body was trembling, but his legs were absolutely still.

It’s severed the spine,
Blaze thought, horrified.  At the same time, the stench of the wound hit her,
the smell of rancid meat.  Seeing the slow pulsing of his discolored organs
inside his chest, Blaze’s stomach clamped.  She rolled to the side and retched
into the gravelly yard, though her stomach could bring up nothing but bile.

Once she’d regained control of
her guts, Blaze backed out of reach of the smell and frantically tried to
remember the concoction that Jack had made for her. 

Grow up,
a part of her
sneered. 
Root beer and whiskey and some woodland herbs aren’t going to heal
something like that.  He’s dead, tootz.
 

But then, she thought stubbornly,
it had healed a sprained ankle and possibly a cracked hip. 

But twigs and berries?
a
part of her demanded. 
Come on.

She bit her lip as tears of shame
and anguish threatened to boil up from within. 
He can’t be dead,
a
selfish part of her whimpered, desperate. 
I just found him.
  She had
spent her whole life searching for someone who could look up into her eyes and
not feel insecure, and now that she had, he was dying in front of her,
obviously in horrible pain, all due to her own stupidity.  Granted, while not
insecure, he was crass, abrasive, and rude, and it took a hell of a lot of
patience to put up with him, but she was still more than willing to see where
they could go from here.  She felt more tears stinging her eyes, biting like
acid, as well as the first tug of exhaustion that always followed. 
No,
she gritted,
this is
not
the time to start crying. 
She blinked
and wiped her face on her forearm, trying desperately to collect herself before
she could wind up helpless again.

She knew Jack was dead.  No one
could survive a wound like that.  Yet, even as she watched him moan in agony,
miserable, unable to ease his suffering, something was telling her she had to
help him.  Some subconscious voice was telling her she needed to act fast…

…but to do what? 

Thinking back on Jack’s draught,
she tried to imagine what could have been so powerful about the random woodland
herbs he had deposited in the drink.  The more she thought about it, the more
she realized the wereverine
had
to have put something else in it.  It
had tasted so watered down…

Blaze’s breath caught. 
He
used the feather.
  The way he had been so vehement about not putting it in
her animals’ water…  A new hope searing up from deep within her, Blaze scooted
forward to touch the wereverine’s face.  His forehead was ice cold, yet doused
with sweat.

She got up quickly and rushed to
find a shovel, pausing just long enough to take in the fluffy bowl of ash she
had woken in before continuing to the shop. 
Ash,
she thought, something
twingeing in her brain.  Her father had said he’d found her in a bed of ash.  She
had a brief moment where she felt two synapses trying to connect, then,
No
way.  No fucking way.
  The werewolves had been playing with fire, that was
all.

Inside the shop, leaning against
the wall, she grabbed two shovels.  When she came out, she slammed one into the
dirt outside the shop and shouted, “I’ve got a deal for you, you thieving
little shit!”  Nothing happened.  Jack continued to groan on the ground. 
Desperation raising the pitch of her voice, Blaze shouted, “I know you’re out
there!  I have a deal for you!  Can’t resist a good deal, can you?”

For a moment, it seemed as if the
fey man would not answer.  Then, almost reluctantly, he seemed to walk out of
her woodpile, only a few feet away. 

Seeing him, Blaze held out a
shovel.  “What’s your name?”

The fey flinched, eyes on the
spade.  For a long moment, it looked like he wouldn’t speak.  Then, softly, he
said, “Runt, Milady.”

“Help me dig something up, Runt, and
it’s yours after I’m done with it.”

The man’s liquid brown eyes
widened and he licked his lips, looking in both directions.  “You would
give
it to me?”  He said it in an awed whisper.

That damn thing is just as
valuable as Jack said it was,
Blaze thought bitterly.  She saw her dreams
of having a farm in the Bush go up in smoke, but she knew she didn’t have a
choice.  “My friend is dying.  His life for the feather.”

The little fey man glanced at the
dying wereverine, then licked his lips again.  “I already took one thing that
didn’t belong to me.  The elders made me return it.  If I show up with an
artifact like
that
…”

Frustrated that they weren’t
digging,
Blaze threw a shovel at the ground in front of him.  “I don’t have
time
for this shit.  You help me, or don’t, but I need to go get that feather.” 
Without waiting to see what he would do, she stalked off towards the
greenhouse.

Behind her, she heard a shovel
gingerly slide off the ground, and soft footsteps, following.

Blaze yanked the greenhouse door
open and found the spot where she and Jack had ‘planted’ the feather.  It was
in the new addition, a second, connected structure that Jack had insisted on
adding after her lesson on Manual Labor 101.  Tomato seedlings—only a couple
days old—had already sprouted and were working on their third set of leaves. 
Blaze tilled them aside, her bare foot aching on the shovel as she rammed it
home.

I’m naked,
she thought,
ridiculously. 
I’m naked and I’m digging in the dirt for a feather while
somebody’s
dying
on my doorstep and I’m not even going to go get pants
on and call the cops.  I’m gonna dig in the damn dirt until my feet bleed.

Oh, man, the lawyers were gonna
have a field day with this one.

If she lived that long.

The fey came up beside her and
tentatively stuck the shovel into the dirt beside hers.  He set his soft-booted
foot on the spade, and, though he grimaced at the steel head, started to dig.

It took about an hour of fast
digging.  Blaze eventually broke down had to go inside and get boots and
clothes after the first ten minutes of wearing her soles bloody.  When the
first tinges of the feather showed in the bottom of the pit, however, the
little fey didn’t dart it and grab it, as Blaze had half-expected.  Instead,
his eyes went slightly wide, but he quickly looked away. 

Blaze jumped in, pulled the
feather free, and ran inside to get a glass of water.  When she came back
outside, the fey was nowhere to be seen.

“How do I make this work?!” Blaze
shouted at the empty yard, holding the glowing, flaming length in one hand, the
glass of water in the other.  She held it up, waiting for some sort of
guidance.  The last thing she wanted to do was to put the feather out.

The woods remained silent, and it
was obvious she was not going to get further help from the fey.  Furious, Blaze
dipped the feather into the glass.

The fiery glow continued to
writhe and swirl around the feathery tendrils even underwater.  Like it was
made of pure sunlight.

Not knowing what else to do, Blaze
held the feather there for over a minute, determined to get a stronger brew. 
Then she pulled it out and tossed it to the ground.  “There you go, you little
prick.  Take it and get the hell out of here.”  She didn’t wait to see the fey
man blink in and snatch the feather, just knelt beside the wereverine and
lifted his head.

“Okay, asshole,” Blaze said,
prying his mouth open, “Drink this.”  She poured a dribble into Jack’s open
mouth.  The wereverine coughed, sputtered, and swallowed.

Blaze thought she saw the color
of his organs flash orange, followed by a more healthy wave of natural
flesh-toned shades before the wound faded to black once more.

“Try dribbling some on the wound,”
the fey suggested.  He was standing behind her, holding the feather in both
hands like a sacred treasure.

“Aren’t you gone yet?” Blaze
growled, but she did as he suggested.  She got the same result.  A golden
flash—like liquid sunshine—that overpowered the black before the magic of the
dagger once more overcame it.

Blaze used up her first cup of
water and went back for a milk jug.  Yanking the feather back out of the fey’s
hand, she dunked it inside and for several minutes watched its fiery tendrils
twist and curl in the liquid, completely unaffected by the water in the jug. 
The fey made no objections, and Blaze thought that if he had argued at that
point, she would have gone for his throat with her bare hands.

At the sound of a long, agonized
moan from Jack, Blaze pulled the feather out and began sloshing water from the
jug into his wound.

It bubbled and hissed and
steamed, but the blackness refused to fade.

Blaze tried two more jugs,
force-feeding Jack one of them, pouring the rest into the cavity of his
abdomen, before she realized it wasn’t going to do any good.  Whatever the horn
was, it was stronger than the feather’s magic, and the size of his wound was growing.

“Lady,” the fey man said softly.

“Go away,” Blaze whimpered,
bringing her knees to her chin, watching Jack in silence.

She wasn’t going to be able to
help him.  There was no miracle cure, no way to bring him back from the
depths.  She was going to watch him die, and there was nothing she could do
about it.

The more she sat there, brooding
over it, the more Jack began to moan with the agony, and the more Blaze
realized that there was really only one thing left that she
could
do—she
needed to put him out of his misery.

Another low groan, this time part
whimper, escaped his pasty-white lips.

Steeling herself, Blaze got up
and back at the yard, looking for the shotgun.  She found it, melted into a
rock-studded puddle, in the ash.

Blaze stared at the ruined weapon
for some time before slowly setting it down in the gray powder and peering at
it from a distance.  Then, feeling as if she were in a dream, she went into the
lodge for a rifle.

When she came back, Jack’s breath
was coming in tiny pants.  Blaze tucked a cartridge into the chamber, then
slammed the bolt home, her eyes burning.

“Sorry,” she whimpered, aiming
the gun at him.  She was crying, now, tears dripping down her cheeks, hitting
the ground by his body.  She tried to squeeze the trigger, but found that all
she could think about, looking into his too-pale face, was the way he had
thought she was sexy, when no other man would.

This is all my fault.

He had tried to protect her—he had
saved her
life
—and it had gotten him killed.

Gasping, Blaze dropped to her
knees beside Jack, her finger leaving the trigger. 

Her whole world was crumbling
around her.  As the guilt started to twist at her innards, wrenching more tears
from within, she realized she should have listened to all the people that
snickered behind their hands when she dove into excited conversations about
sustainable farming in the Alaskan Bush.  What did she know about running a
business in the woods?  She was a rich city brat, not a Bushrat.