Alaskan Fire (49 page)

Jack gave her a look like she had
just hacked up a loogie and spat it on the blanket before painstakingly rubbing
it into a little green smiley-face with her thumb, giving Blaze the distinct
idea that he’d probably never watched a horror movie in his life.  Or, for that
matter,
any
movie.  She certainly didn’t remember seeing a TV in the
wreckage of his house.

“For one,” Jack said, as if she
hadn’t spoken, “Amber’s a bone-white little beastie, and the only white one we
got was a male.”

Staring at him, Blaze managed,
“You know, we really need to work on catching you up to the twenty-first
century.”  Drawing a rectangle in the air with a finger, Blaze said, “Nowadays,
there’s this wondrous thing called tel-e-vi-sion.”  She pronounced every
syllable slowly, so that he could understand.  “It is a ‘
magic box
’”
—airquotes—“…that allows you to watch mo-tion pic-tures and D-V-Ds. 
Also
magic.”

“For two,” Jack said, “I couldn’t
find my dagger anywhere.  Found the swords, found the armor, found
other
people’s swords and armor, found
everything
but the dagger, and Amber
would’ve kept that on her at all times.”  Indeed, there was a stack of weapons,
armor, and other valuables near her head.

Blaze peered at the tidy pile of
valuables, then reached for something that looked like a crown.

“Wouldn’t do that if I were you,”
Jack said.  “Pretty sure that one’s cursed.”

Blaze laughed, despite herself.  “Sure,
and it’ll decrease my intelligence to three and give me halitosis of twelve
until I go to a high-enough-level cleric who can remove it.”  She was about to grab
it anyway, then she remembered that she had just fought a battle with silver
bullets, was growing mangoes in her backyard, and that the stale odor of
wet-dog seeping into the walls was the lingering smell of werewolves.  She
pulled her hand back and frowned at the jeweled circlet.  “You’re serious,
aren’t you?”

“About Amber or about the curse?”

Somehow, Blaze found the idea of
a cursed object more disturbing than a megalomaniac werewolf.  She said as
much.

“Oh,” Jack said, looking down at
it, “Yeah, you live long enough, you start to gain a smell for those sorts of
things.”  He wrinkled his nose.  “I’m pretty sure that little trinket spent some
time in an old Norse king’s grave.  Has the smell of Odin on it.”  He
chuckled.  “Hell, it’ll probably make you go blind in one eye.”

“That is so not funny,” Blaze
said, vigorously wiping her palm on her pants.  “What are we gonna do about
Amber?”

“
Do
?”  Jack snorted.  “In
case you hadn’t noticed, girlie, I’m a bit home-bound, at the moment.”  He
slapped his thigh and gestured disgustedly at his legs.  “I won’t be
doing
much of anything.”

“So what can
I
do?” Blaze
demanded.  “She’s going to come back.”

Jack snorted.  “We just took out
her entire pack.  She’s smarter than that.” 

“Wait,” Blaze said, yanking her shirt
over her head.  “Doesn’t that give her all the more
reason
to want to
stab us?”

“No,” Jack growled, “That gives
her all the more reason to tuck her tail between her legs and run.”

“…or sneak up in the dark and stab
us both,” Blaze said.

“She’s not coming back,” Jack
growled.  “Discussion over.”

Blaze peered at him, then at the
gun in his lap.  “If she’s not coming back, why are you sitting up, awake, in
the middle of the night, holding onto that Desert Eagle like you’re afraid it’s
gonna run away?”

“I’ll protect you,” Jack
snarled.  “Go back to sleep.”

“So you
do
think she’s
coming back!” Blaze cried.  She looked at the devastation around her, panic
beginning to set in.  “Tonight?” she demanded.

“I don’t know when,” Jack
muttered.  “Just go back to sleep.  I’m sorry I woke you.”

“Oh, we are
definitely
going to work on your communication skills!” Blaze cried, scrabbling for the
rest of her clothes.  “Is she out there right now?”

“I said I don’t
know
,”
Jack snarled.  “If she’s smart, she won’t be back.”

Blaze stared at him.  “Somehow,
that is not encouraging.”

“I’m gonna be up awhile, anyway,”
Jack growled.  “The moon-touched need less sleep, so you might as well catch
some Z’s.”  He gestured impatiently at the bed he was leaning against.  “Go
sleep.  I’ll keep an eye on things tonight.”

“You tell me something like
that
and then expect me to
sleep
?” Blaze cried.  “You might as well tell me
the earth was about to get hit by a gigantic asteroid!”

“Could you do anything about it,
if it was?” Jack demanded.

Blaze blinked at him.

…And then the mountain of shame
hit her when she realized Jack was absolutely right.  Even when she had a
werewolf at point-blank, with its
back
to her, she hadn’t been able to
bring herself to pull the trigger.  What was she gonna do when Amber showed up,
all fur and fang and talons?

Pee herself, most like.

Muttering, Blaze dragged a
blanket up onto the bed behind Jack and sat there, contemplating the dark,
boarded-up window in silence.  With most of the windows in the place busted and
the outdoor temperatures already reaching into the low twenties at night, the
Sleeping Lady was having trouble retaining heat.  She pulled the blanket
tighter against the cold and dragged her own Desert Eagle closer.

“You know,” she said wistfully,
into the long silence that followed, “We’re gonna have to abandon this place.”

“Like hell,” Jack snorted.  “Pipes’ll
freeze, and you let the pipes in an infloor heating system bust, and you might
as well throw gasoline over the whole deal and light a match.  Replacing the
floor like that…  Place won’t be worth
anything
if we let it freeze.”

Blaze snorted.  “It gets
forty
below
out here in winter, Jack.  It’s still
fall
and it’s
freezing
in here.”

“So we throw blankets and
Visqueen over the holes until we can get some new windows freighted in,” Jack
said.  “We got all winter.”

Blaze squinted at him.  “Okay, I
know numbers might be a problem for you, so let me put this in terms you can
understand.  As your boss, I feel it is my obligation to inform you that I am
out
of money
.  That’s it.  No more.  Zip.  I have like seven hundred and
sixty-two bucks left in my bank account and a couple grand in cash that I withdrew
when I was in town.  Hell, I don’t even have the money to pay you your wages
for the last three months—though I guess you did spend about two months of that
asleep, bedridden, or making me do your work for you.”  She sighed, glancing
out at the wreckage of the inside of the lodge.  “I figured I could pawn off
some of the machinery to the neighbors to pay you, then go back to town and see
if I can sell the lodge to some handy-type as a ‘fixer-upper’, ‘cause I’m
pretty sure the werewolves wrecking my place didn’t fall under ‘Acts of God’ in
the insurance policy.”

“Don’t need to pay me,” Jack
muttered, still looking out at the door like he expected a pretty white
werewolf to tear it off its hinges at any moment.

Blaze sighed.  “Jack, I know you
got that whole manly pride thing goin’ on and all, but I feel I owe you just a
teensy bit for saving my life, even if you were a jackass every step of the
way.”

“Don’t want your money, Yeti,”
Jack growled.  “Don’t need it.”

“Oh-ho!” Blaze laughed.  “So let
me see here.  You, jobless, and certainly without the social skills to be a
guide or run a lodge, basically
begged
me to let you work for me out of
the goodness of your own heart?”

“Pretty much,” Jack muttered.  “I
caught a whiff of something on that first check you wrote.  Wanted to get a
better look at what I was dealing with.”

“Come
on
,” Blaze laughed. 
“Stow the poor man’s pride, already.  I’m gonna give you your salary.”

“Woman,” Jack growled, “I was a
Viking
. 
Before that, I worked as a personal blacksmith to a
sheik
.  You know
that wolf that raised Romulus and Remus?  Lemme tell ya, tootz, it wasn’t a
damn she-wolf.  Hell, I trapped and traded my way across America in the days of
Lewis and Clark because I got bored making swords for the Japanese shogunate. 
I came to Alaska during the
gold rush.
”  He gestured dismissively at the
cursed circlet.  “That little trinket’s
nothing
compared to the
treasures I’ve got buried out in the woods.  Not just old stuff, either. 
Bought stock in Microsoft, GM, and Ford, just to name a few.  Oh, and Sony. 
You know?  Those ‘tel-e-vi-sions’ you were talking about?  Got those
certificates buried out there somewhere, too.”

For a long moment, Blaze could
only stare at him in stunned shock. 
He’s been patronizing me since the
beginning,
she realized, horrified.  She felt tears beginning to burn her
eyes, along with the first wave of exhaustion.

Jack twisted back up at her to
give her a superior grin.  “I said I was illiterate, sweetheart.  Not stupid.”

Blaze lowered her eyes to the claw-marks
in the bed beneath her.  Compared to the other rooms, this one had been the
least devastated, yet it, too, had been badly ransacked.  She had the sudden
urge to ask Jack for a loan, fresh hope giving her the illusion that maybe she
could still hold onto her dream.  But, with as many times as he had told her
this was ‘his territory’ and how he had treated
her
as the interloper,
Blaze knew he’d been waiting for the helpless woman to fail since all the way
back in May, when he had first told her she looked like a Clydesdale.

“What?” Jack asked, snorting. 
“Not going to ask me for a loan?”

Blaze blinked away tears, and
turned away from him.  “I’m getting very tired,” she whispered.

“It’s ‘cause you’re crying, you
dumb ox,” Jack growled softly, his eyes on the stains on the blankets.  “Stop
it.”

Dumb ox.
  Add
that
to his repertoire of name-calling, and suddenly his choice in words all this
time seemed to make sense.  Draft animals, Yetis, hippopotami…  None of them
were known for their rocket-science.  Blaze sniffled, but the burning inside
kept surging forth, stinging like fire in her eyes until she swiped them away.

“Horus’s balls!” Jack cried,
jerking away from her.  “Watch where you throw those things!”

Startled by the vehemence in his
words, it took Blaze a moment to realize he was talking about her tears.  She
sniffled again, then dragged her hand across her face and stared down at the
liquid in her hand.

“Uh,” Jack said beside her,
“We’re probably gonna need to burn those blankets.”

For a moment, the tears on her
fingertips
seemed
to glow with an inner fire, but she knew that had to
be a trick of the flashlight.  She wiped her hand on the mattress.

“Oh, uh,” Jack said, wincing as
his eyes caught on the bed.  “Uh.”  He glanced back up at her, looking almost
timid.  “You mind sparing a couple of those for a cranky old wereverine?”  He
was biting his lip.  “Please?” 

He’s asking nicely,
Blaze
thought, absurdly.  She lowered her head and shook it in despair.  “Whatever,
Jack.”

“Okay, honey.”  He inched closer,
like he was a rabbit approaching a sleeping fox.  Then he frowned at her.  “Why
are
you crying, anyway?”

Suddenly, Blaze couldn’t hold
back the superheated pressure overflowing from within.  “
Because you’re an
asshole!
” she screamed, so angry she was trembling.  She closed her eyes,
whimpering as the exhaustion increased its tug at her soul.  “If you didn’t
want me on your land, you should’ve just let me go home that first day,” Blaze
said.  “Like I’d
wanted
to.”

“Hey now,” Jack said his massive
shoulders bunching as he awkwardly dragged himself onto the bed beside her, “I
don’t know where you got the idea that I didn’t want you here, tootz.”

“Oh, gee,” Blaze snapped.  “You
tell me I’ve got Clydesdale in my ancestry, you belittle me by telling me I’m a
big, stupid Yeti, you let me feed you endangered livestock on my dime, making
it out like you’ve been starving out here, you call me an
ox
…”

“Never said I was starving,
sweetie.”  Jack reached up and wiped the tears from her face.  Blaze actually
thought he was making the gesture in tenderness until he swiped his thumb
across his thighs.  She thought she saw a brief glint of gold where his thumb
touched his leg before it was gone.

Almost instantly, the wereverine
balled his fists and gritted his teeth.  “Gods, that hurts worse than getting
poked by a dread horn.”  He proceeded to pound the bed a few times with a fist,
his breath coming out in a low groan between his teeth.

Suddenly, in her growing
exhaustion, Blaze understood.  “Tears,” she said.  “You’re using them to
heal
.”

“Fuck.  It
burns
,” Jack
growled.  He was sweating, and Blaze could feel a sudden heat radiating off of
him, like something that had been left out in the sun too long.  He gave Blaze
a wary look.  “This
is
what you did to fix me the first time, isn’t it? 
Tell me I didn’t just mix moon and sun magics in a way that’s gonna get my ass
burned off.”

Runt used the tears,
Blaze
thought, remembering the absurd way the little fey had caught each individual
tear as it fell from her eyes.  Interested, now, she sniffled, then rubbed her
eyes again, taking what was in them and dropping them on Jack’s legs when he
was preoccupied with pounding on the bed.

“Oh
shit
,” Jack howled,
jerking away from her suddenly.  “I didn’t ask you to—Ow, ow, ow,
fuck
!” 
Hissing, he fell onto his side, grabbing his thighs in both hands.  The heat
pouring off of him again made Blaze think of a stone that had been left in the
desert heat.  He started panting and whining, which developed into low,
anguished moans.  Throughout it all, however, he didn’t even grow the slightest
bit of fur.