Alaskan Fire (37 page)

While the wereverine’s home was
fashioned solely of logs, it was much bigger than a cabin, with many extra
rooms and additions that made it both fanciful and unique.  Its entire makeup
screamed of craftsmanship, from the river-stone chimney to the little cobbles
leading up to the front porch.  It was a beautiful work of art.

…It was also completely
destroyed. 

Blaze switched off the engine,
her heart pounding.  Through the smashed-in door, she could see that the cabin
had been utterly wrecked, with pillow stuffing and food packaging littering the
porch and surrounding yard.  Slowly, warily, she got off the machine and
started toward the front porch.

Claw-marks raked the logs and
furniture, and just about every usable material in the building had been
dismantled, spread across the living room and yard in tiny pieces.  The hides
and wall-hangings were shredded.  There was a huge, gaping hole in the floor,
almost like something had fallen through.  The entire place smelled strongly of
urine.

Grimacing, Blaze briefly took
another look at the hole in the floor.  A bit startled, she realized that the
edges of the hole were precisely cut, and that there were still the remnants of
hinges on what had used to be a door.  Some sort of root-cellar, then?

She went to the generator house,
first.  The fuel canisters were missing, the batteries cracked and leaking acid
onto the wooden planks.  The generator had been ripped asunder, its pieces
spread in metal fragments across the shed.  She avoided them gingerly as she
stepped into the shed.

Though she wasn’t a mechanic, she
was pretty sure that what was left of Jack’s generator and battery system wasn’t
useable.

Cursing, Blaze stepped back
outside, aiming for the house.  Inside, the phone was in several pieces against
the far wall, shards of white plastic from its impact still embedded in the
logs.  When she stepped up to the gaping hole in the floor, however, Blaze
began to get a tingle of dread.

She found a pack of matches amidst
a pile of piss-smelling glass and ruined cookware that had been thrown into a
pile in the corner.  Matchbook in hand, she started down the steps into to the
hole in the living-room and struck a flame.

The tiny light was just enough
for her to see that the interior of the hole was rather spacious; maybe sixteen
feet in any direction.   Racks and hooks and display cases covered every spare
inch of surface space—all empty, smashed or overturned.  The whole room was
utterly cleaned out.

Remembering the black void-titan
sword, his scaly black armor, and the darkness-dribbling black dagger, comparing
them to the dozens upon dozens of vacant weapons’ racks scattered around the
room, Blaze suddenly felt like throwing up.  She stepped back up out of the
darkness feeling as if she’d been hit by a freight train.

We are in so much trouble.
 
Blaze once again considered chartering a flight back to Anchorage, and then
after that, somewhere in the Bahamas.  Maybe she could wait on tables for
tourists and completely forget that there were werewolves and Thunderbirds and
other nasty critters that liked to tear each other apart up in the Land of the
Midnight Sun.

But if she left, then Jack really
was
going to die.  And she was at least partially to blame for this. 
Hell,
mostly
to blame.

Who are you kidding, Blaze? 
He was talking about
enchanted
weapons and armor
.  You don’t need
to be a D&D nerd to know that’s gonna screw with your world.  Hell, he had
a dagger that could create
necrosis
.  Oh, and did we mention
raise
the dead
?

Then, remembering the wolves’
conversations about her animals, Blaze realized,
They’re probably going to
sell them for food.
 

And if they sold Jack’s swords,
Blaze didn’t have enough money to get them back. 

But that is exactly what she knew
was going to happen.  She was a Business major.  It was basic numbers.  Amber
had to keep her little ‘den’ stocked with food somehow or her precious ‘family’
was going to revolt, which means she needed to find the cash to buy herself the
equivalent of a cow every day or two.  Blaze’s lips twisted as she remembered
the squatter atmosphere of the werewolf den, the drunken brawls and drugs.  If
what she had seen was any indication, the werewolves weren’t really working for
a living.

That’s why she needed to get
those weapons back
now
, before the wolves had the chance to pawn them
off to tourists on the streets of Anchorage.  Throwing her rifle over her
shoulder, she went back to the 4-wheeler and started it up.

It was time she visited the
neighbors.

* * *

“So whatcha need silver ingots
for out in the woods?” Jennie Mae asked, once Blaze put down the phone.  If she
felt at all awkward that she had been shamelessly listening to Blaze’s phone
call, she didn’t mention it.

“Haven’t you been listening to
the news?” Blaze asked, swinging her rifle back over her shoulder.  “The
economy’s on the verge of collapse.  Silver and gold are about the only things
that are still stable.”

Jennie Mae grimaced.  “Ain’t that
the truth.”  The woman peered up at her.  “You really gonna eat yaks?”

“When the government comes
crashing down around us?” Blaze said.  “Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’ll eat yak.”

Which launched Jennie Mae into a
dissertation on the current dismal state of the U.S. government, and how nobody
in Washington seemed willing to make any changes, and how the economy was being
run by a bunch of crooks.  “They’re just lining their pockets with
our
money,” Jennie Mae growled, and nobody’s got the balls to stop ‘em.  “All those
earmarks and pork…  You listen to Limbaugh?  He’s got the whole nation in an
uproar about that predator control stuff.  Federal government’s trying to step
in, when what we
really
need to do is kick all them wildlife cops out
and start managing it ourselves.  Leave it to the men and women who
live
here, not some office worker in Anchorage.  Mother Nature’s got cycles, and
those dumb bureaucrats back in Washington don’t have the first clue about how
to ‘manage’ our resources.  Can you believe it?  The
federal government
trying to take over Fish and Game?  Like we don’t even own our own damn state
anymore…”

Blaze listened as long as she
could, making polite nods here and there, but eventually she began to itch to
get back home to check on the wereverine.  The Ebony Creek Lodge was a
beautiful place with plenty of exposed wood and a nice homey feel, but Blaze
kept seeing the wrecked insides of Jack’s cabin, knowing that if she didn’t do
something soon, sooner or later, the wolves would do the same here.

“I hate to do this to you,” Blaze
interrupted after a pause in Jennie Mae’s tirade, “But I’ve really gotta go get
back to the lodge.  I left Jack to watch the lodge, and he’s got about as much
interest in it as a caterpillar’s got earholes.” 

At mention of Jack, Jennie Mae’s
face darkened.  “Don’t know why you had to go hire that man.  He’s a rude,
ornery jerk.  No offense, but most of the neighbors are hoping some hydraulics
fail and he guts himself on a tractor blade.”

Blaze grimaced at that idea. 
“I’m the one running the bulldozer.” 

“Well, you get the idea,” Jennie
Mae said, stepping to the door, but not opening it.  “He’s a bastard.  Nobody
likes him.”

“He gets the job done,” Blaze
said, trying to fight the bristling impulse to tell the woman to get out of her
way.  “Anyhow, I gotta get going.”  She gestured meaningfully at the door.

Jennie Mae didn’t take the hint. 
“You know, Blaze, he may be good at swinging a hammer, but my boy Ralphie could
do the same thing.  You need a mechanic, well, Ralphie’s been learning
everything his dad knows.  Works for cheap, too.”

Because it was obvious the woman
wasn’t going to let her out of the lodge without either continuing the
conversation or Blaze shoving her over, Blaze said, “How old is he?”

“Thirteen,” Jennie Mae beamed. 
“And he already rebuilt his own four-wheeler.  It’s that one, out there,” she
said, pointing through one of the many enormous windows of the lodge.

The 4-wheeler in question had a
lift-kit that put it approximately four feet off of the ground, with a set of
steps to climb into the driver’s seat.  The front was completely covered in a
truck-sized cow-catcher—just in case it slammed into a moose, of course—and the
whole vehicle was painted a nice, shiny black.  It also looked ready to tip
over the moment it went around a sharp corner.

“Wooow,” Blaze said, biting down
her wince.  “That’s really…big!”

“Did it himself,” Jennie Mae
beamed.  “My boy can do anything he puts his mind to.”

“I can see that,” Blaze said. 
“Well, I’ll have to keep that in mind.”

That seemed to satisfy Jennie
Mae, because, smiling and nodding, she yanked the door open, saying, “You do
that, you do that.  We’ll see you again soon, Miss Blaze.”

She said her goodbyes quickly and
made a hasty departure, stepping out onto the porch where Jennie Mae’s two big
Great Danes were curled on either side of the door.  They lunged to their feet
and growled, hackles bristling, as she tried to pass.  Blaze came up short,
eying the feral look in their faces nervously.

“Must be the smell of Jack on
you,” Jennie Mae offered, pulling the dogs inside.  “He’s gay, you know.” 

Blaze almost tripped over
herself, choking.  “
Gay?
”  She had a brief stab of fear, remembering the
way the wereverine had brandished the wine between them like a shield, and
wondered if
that
was why Jack had tripped all over himself the next
morning, offering marriage vows.

“Sure is,” the portly woman
insisted.  “I arranged for twelve different girls to go have dinner with him
over the years—
nice
girls, too, ones who were working at the lodge for
the summer—and he just sat there and insulted them until they left in tears.”  The
big dogs, still growling, only reluctantly allowed the loud, round woman to
drag them inside the lodge.  “Said the last one had buckteeth and a Ben
Franklin forehead, and asked her where the
donkey
was in her family
tree.  Can you believe that?”

“Oh,” Blaze said, letting her
breath out between her teeth in relief, “That explains it.”

“Uh huh,” Jennie Mae said,
nodding.  Shutting the door behind her, Jennie Mae said, “Besides, that Jack Thornton
gives Duke and Daisy fits, and dogs
know
.  That man ain’t no good, I’m
telling you.”  She gestured at the mutant 4-wheeler.  “You just give my Ralphie
a call.  He’ll help you out.”

“I’ll do that,” Blaze said,
finally realizing why Jack, out of all the people on the river, didn’t have a
dog—and why he had stalwartly refused to let her have one to guard her stock.

She took the 4-wheeler back on
the dirt path down the riverbank from the Ebony Creek Lodge and back through
the woods to the Sleeping Lady at speeds she normally wouldn’t have felt
comfortable with, except now, with the idea of a werewolf running along behind
her, wasn’t fast enough. 
Could
werewolves flit in and out of view, or
was that just the fey?  Blaze kept checking over her shoulder, keeping the
machine at a breakneck speed, paranoid they could do just that.

She slid to a stop in the gravel
driveway behind the Sleeping Lady and jumped off the 4-wheeler, her back
prickling with that anxious feeling of being watched, though Blaze couldn’t
tell if that was just her nerves or an
actual
feeling of being watched. 
She had about as much ESP sensitivity as a kiln-fired brick.

Rifle in her hands, Blaze began
walking around her property, assessing the damage to her lodge.  Overall, she
was relieved.  The werewolves hadn’t ripped the place up as badly as Jack’s
cabin, and she had an irritated feeling that it was because they had planned to
use it as their home base.  A few walls in the basement floor were busted, and
the woodstove was slightly crooked on the spark-catcher where something big had
slammed into it, leaving burnt fur on the iron.  Her animals, for the most
part, were alive, though she would have to buy more yaks.

Later.  Once she got the wolf
problem under control.

Oh yeah?
a part of her
demanded. 
And just what are you gonna
do
there, girlie?  You’re
dealing with
werewolves
, or had you forgotten?

Blaze’s fingers tightened on the
rifle.  So what if they had a dagger that could make a person’s flesh rot? 
They were
not
taking her dream from her.

And yet, all the woodsy
experience Blaze had ever had had come from hunting trips with her father.  What
was she going to do…go to their camp and start picking them off until they
figured out where she was hiding and gutted her?  Hell, in all her father’s
hunting trips, Blaze didn’t even have the stomach for gutting her own kill.  A
fault in the extreme, to most serious hunters, who considered it a lack of
respect for the animal.  So, to avoid having to see the requisite blood and
gore—and withstand the disapproval afterwards—Blaze had simply started to make
excuses whenever her father scheduled his yearly hunting trips, explaining how
busy
her Econ class had gotten, or gee, that’s sad…her Government Club had already
planned a trip to Juneau that week to meet with the state reps on important
student issues, and she just
couldn’t
afford to miss the talks about
technology funding and teen pregnancy.  Sorry, Dad.

It was one of the many things she
had begun to regret in her life.  Not only had she given up perfectly good life
experience, but she’d seen that much less of her old man before he finally
kicked the bucket.

Sounds like you blew that one,
tootz,
Jack’s irritating drawl said in the back of her mind. 
So whatcha
gonna do ‘bout it?

Shoot them, for one.  While Blaze
didn’t really have the stomach for gore, she had spent enough time with her dad
packing ammunition and sighting-in rifles that she had a pretty damn good idea
how to put a good-sized dent in the werewolf numbers.  If, of course, the
legends—and Jack’s irrational fear of silver—were to be believed.

The question was, of course,
whether or not they would catch her before she thinned out the herd.

…and whether the Alaska State
Troopers would come investigate all the shooting.

Have to make myself a
silencer,
she noted.  It was easy enough.  A milk jug packed with
insulation would do the trick.

What Blaze
really
wondered, though, is whether or not she could go through with it.  She could
melt silver and load ammunition from now until the End of Days, but the first
time she pulled the trigger and saw someone fall, was she going to lose her
nerve?

The full consequences of her plan
hit her, then, and she just about dropped her rifle in the dirt, right then. 
And what the hell was she
thinking
?  She had trouble killing
moose
,
and here she thought she could just traipse around killing
people?

She just didn’t have the stomach
for gore.  Hell, the one time her dad had forced her to clean her own fish, she
had puked all over herself and gone into something akin to shock.  It had been
one of the times her parents had shipped her to the Emergency Room, too,
earning her a place on the not-so-hallowed list of patients whose symptoms were
‘self-induced.’ 

As in, she was a rich brat who
did it for attention.

Yet she had to do something.  The
wereverine was down for the count, and she had absolutely no idea when Amber’s
pack would be back, looking to finish the job.

She realized the elf was watching
her from behind her barn.  Upon seeing her, he reluctantly stepped into view. 
“You should go back to where you came from,” he said in his stiff, stilted
English.  “The moon-kin will be back.  Maybe not tonight, but soon.  This is
their territory, now.  They laid claim when they defeated the wolverine.”

For the first time, Blaze felt a
rush of viciousness surge up in a rising fury.  “This is
my
land,” she
growled.  “They step on
my
land, I’m gonna show ‘em a few things about
modern warfare.”

Runt gave her a dubious look up
and down.  “How?” he finally asked.  What he left unsaid was, “You may be twelve
feet tall and have boots big enough to crush a hippopotamus, but you don’t even
know how to use a compass.”

Blaze smiled, gaining some nerve
in the fact that the little fey man obviously thought she was insane.  After
all, she had twenty-five years of practice in having people look at her like
she was some sort of alien.  “Silver bullets, silver buckshot, silver nitrate
hollow point, a colloidal silver sprinkler system…  Stuff like that.  They step
on my land again, they’re gonna be wishing they hadn’t.”

“Oh,” Runt said.  He glanced at
the Sleeping Lady Lodge, then back at her and shrugged.  “Well, it’s your grave
you be digging.”  Then he turned and did his annoying little fey thing,
vanishing into thin air, leaving Blaze with a whole new wave of goosebumps trickling
down her back.