Alaskan Fire (5 page)

The slitted green eyes went wide,
then the creature kind of crumpled sideways, releasing her.

Blaze got up and ran.

She didn’t slow down for the gun,
didn’t stop for her coat or gear, and, once she realized she didn’t know how to
start the 4-wheeler, kept right on running, making a panicked bee-line for the
trees.

Behind her, she heard a crash
within the lodge, then she was hurtling through the woods, diving over fallen
trees, running as fast as her freakishly long legs could go.

“Wait!” she heard, behind her. 
Too close.  Blaze screamed and ran faster, trying to make the lake.  She could
see the water in the distance.  Just a little further…

A rotten birch caught her ankle,
sending Blaze tumbling face-first into the brush.  Behind her, she heard the
sound of footsteps crashing through the undergrowth, catching up.  She let out
a panicked cry and struggled to get to her feet.

“Now just hold on!” a very
human-sounding voice cried, within kicking-range.  Something grabbed her
shoulder and held it.  In an instinctive panic, now, Blaze rolled onto her back
and started slamming her boots into anything that moved.

“Jesus!” Jack cried, stumbling backwards,
hands up.  “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?”  He peered at her as if she were
some sort of dangerous insect, keeping his distance.  His clothes were
tattered.  “I just want you to calm down so we can talk.”  His green eyes were
anxious.  But not, her mind babbled, glowing anymore.  “Let’s just talk,
okay?”  He started easing towards her, one hand out.

Blaze got up and bolted.  She had
gone maybe thirty feet before Jack tackled her, bringing her solidly to the
ground with all the authority of a ton of bricks.  She screamed into the
undergrowth as he crawled up her body and sat down on top of her, then flipped
her over.  At five-nine, Jack had to weigh something like four hundred pounds. 
She was finding it hard to breathe from the weight on her stomach. 

“Listen, Blaze,” he panted,
leaning over her and holding down her arms against the mossy forest floor, “I
think we got off to a bad start.”  Brilliant green eyes that had been slitted like
a goddamn snake’s not a moment before were now filled with concern.

She saw his tattered plaid shirt,
remembered the huge beast that had assaulted her, and sucked in a huge lungful
of air.

Jack clapped a hand over her
face, glancing nervously at the lake.  “Okay, sweetie,” he said, over her
muffled screams, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way.  The easy way is
you stop screaming, follow me back to the lodge, and we have a nice long chat. 
The hard way is I use this shirt, here, to gag you, tie your hands behind your
back, throw you over my shoulder, and take you back anyway.”

Blaze bit his hand.  Then, as he
cursed and yanked his palm away to examine it, she bucked and kicked underneath
him, trying to dislodge his body.  He remained as solidly in place as the Great
Pyramids of Egypt.  She screamed again, this time making full use of her lungs.

Jack had a piece of his shirt
stuffed in her mouth and secured before she could repeat the performance. 
Making nervous glances at the lake, he flipped her over, easily dragging her
hands behind her back as she thrashed.  Blaze heard the sound of cloth ripping
and cursed into the gag as she felt him wrap strips of fabric around her
wrists, securing them in place.

Oh God,
Blaze thought, her
gut twisting in horror. 
He’s tying me up… 
She knew what happened to
women who got tied up in the woods, a hundred miles from the nearest road.

Jack released her wrists,
fully-bound, and started on her ankles.  Blaze twisted and strained against the
cloth strips, but whatever else he was, he’d probably been a Boy Scout—he tied
a damn good knot.

“You are going to
jail
,
asshole!” Blaze cried into the shirt, in desperation, as she felt him finish
with her ankles. 

Jack flipped her over again, his
face strained with anxiousness.  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said again,
almost a babble.  “Just wanna talk, okay?  Iron some things out.  Nothin more
than that.”  Then, as if her six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound frame weighed no
more than a carryon backpack, he flipped her over a muscular shoulder and
started carrying her back to the lodge.  Blaze flailed and kicked as best as
she could, but she might as well have been batting at a bear with a feather for
all the affect it had on him.

Jack took her up the porch steps,
stepped inside the threshold, and, after scanning the woods beyond the yard
nervously, yanked the door shut behind them.  As soon as they were alone in the
gloomy basement, Blaze felt a lump of dread forming in her gut.  She stopped
kicking, knowing she was probably going to need her strength.

He walked over to the wall beside
the woodstove—across the room, she noticed, from a roughly beastie-sized hole
in the drywall—and set her down on the floor with surprising gentleness.  Then
he stood up and scratched at the back of his neck, swallowing hard.  “Jesus,”
he muttered, “but that gives me the willies.”  He seemed to shake himself, then
peered out the window nervously.

This is where he rapes me,
takes my valuables, and buries me in the hill,
Blaze thought, realizing for
the first time where Bill and Susan Olson had most likely disappeared off to. 
The elderly couple who had owned the Sleeping Lady before her were probably
even then buried out in the woods somewhere, rotting in their nice, neat little
graves.

Instead of ripping off her
clothes, however, Jack squatted in front of her almost carefully, his green
eyes cautious.  He cleared his throat.  “You…uh…really didn’t have any idea
what I was talking about, did you?”

She glared at him over the gag.

“I’m gonna pull the shirt out of
your mouth,” Jack said, “But don’t scream, all right?  You’re all right. 
Nobody’s hurt.  I haven’t assaulted you and buried you in a hill.  Let’s just
talk about this like reasonable adults, all right?” 

Blaze’s heart thundered at his
last comment and she felt her nostrils flare as she tried to get enough air.

For a moment, Jack looked to have
second thoughts.  Then, reluctantly, he leaned forward and freed the gag from
her mouth.

“You are
so
dead,” Blaze blurted.

Jack froze, looking somewhat
unnerved.  “Oh?  Why’s that?”

“When the police find out about
this,” Blaze began, “you’re going to go to prison for the next thirty years. 
Kidnapping, assault—”

“The police.”  Jack scoffed, and
the complete
disdain
with which he did so shut her up.  Blaze hesitated,
the wind thoroughly swept from her sails with the realization that he
absolutely
did not care
what the Alaska State Troopers had to say about
his little misdeeds…probably because he planned on going down in a blazing
shotgun-battle on his back porch. 

Jack leaned closer and tilted his
head to the side as he peered at her, like a wild animal giving her a closer inspection. 
He made a couple gentle sniffs of the air between them, then frowned.  “You’ve
got no one else coming for you, do you?”

The certainty with which he said
it made Blaze go utterly stiff.  “Bruce Rogers and his wife know exactly where
I am.  My
realtor
knows I bought this place, and if I turn up missing—”

He waved a dismissive hand. 
“No.  I mean friends.  Family. 
Kin
.”  He was watching her again, giving
her the feel she was blessed with the full attention of a wary predator.  Yep. 
Definitely
a serial killer.

“I have tons of friends and
family,” Blaze lied, “And they’re all scheduled to show up next week.”

He eyed her a moment.  “You’re alone.”

Stated like that, so blatantly,
Blaze felt her prepared lies shrivel up and die.  She turned her head and
scrutinized the wood stove, trying to hold back tears.  Crying, she had learned
long
ago, only made things worse.

Jack sat down, just out of
kicking range, and drew his knees up.  Throwing his bulky arms across his
knees, he leaned his chin on his forearms and studied her.  For long moments,
neither of them spoke. 

Blaze eventually began to get
creeped out by the stalker-like stare he was giving her, and to hide her
bone-crunching terror, snarled, “What are you looking at?”

Jack flinched.  Then, softly, he
said, “You ain’t got
no
family?  Nobody who knows you’re up here?”

“Just kill me already,” Blaze
muttered to the stove.

Just at the edge of her vision,
Jack seemed to flinch.  “Now hold on a second, love.  Nobody’s gonna go killin’
nobody.  I’m just trying to figure out…”  He hesitated.  “Well, I’m just trying
to figure out what’s going on, is all.”

Blaze’s jaw dropped open and she
turned to frown at him.  “
You’re
trying to figure out what’s going on?” 

“Uh, yeah,” Jack said.  “What
are
you doing out here, anyway?”

She stared at him until he
started to fidget with a hole in his jeans.  Finally, she found the ability to
say, “I’m trying to start a fishing lodge.  Something you obviously took
offense to.”  She looked him up and down, trying to decide if she could
convince him to let her call Lance and fly back to town.  She decided probably
not.  He may look rugged and dirt-poor, but his eyes didn’t hold that dullness
of an idiot.

“Look,” she managed, “I really
think we can work this out.  I won’t press charges, I swear.  Just let me go,
please
.”

Jack blinked at her, his green
eyes startled.  “You really have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”

“You’re on some pretty wicked
drugs,” Blaze said.

Jack raised an eyebrow at her. 
He winced, then swallowed, glancing again at the floor.  Then, clearing his
throat, he looked back up at her and said, “Okay, how about we try this another
way.  You saw what happened a few minutes ago.”  He gestured at the shattered
door, the gaping hole in the drywall.  “Just what do you think you’re dealing
with, here?”  He sounded, for all the world, like a friend engaging in a
pleasant debate with her.

“Cocaine, most like,” Blaze
said.  “Though I never heard of it making your eyes go funky, so I’m thinking
probably a combo drug.”

Jack scratched the back of his
neck again, sweat breaking out on his forehead.  “Shit.”

Blaze laughed.  “What, I pegged
you?”

“No,” he muttered, “I just made a
total ass out of myself.”

“Was it the crack or the LSD?”
Blaze asked sweetly.

“Honey,” Jack growled, “I’m a
wereverine.”

Blaze’s confusion must have
shown, because he quickly added, “A wereverine that’s managed to keep his head
low for a century and a half, and then
this
happens.”  He gave her a
worried frown.  “I dunno why, but you just set off about every alarm trigger
I’ve got, and my instincts are pretty damn good.” 

“Alarm trigger?” Blaze asked.  “I
didn’t think this place had an alarm system.”

He slapped his forehead into a
hand, dragged his fingers down his face.  Then, peering at her through his
fingers, he said, “I’m not human.  Do you need another demonstration?”

Blaze remembered the wet fangs as
his tongue had slid across her throat and she laughed nervously.  “No thanks.” 
Whatever he thought he was, she wasn’t surprised.  She’d heard of plenty of
guys who thought they were
birds
when they jumped out the windows of
skyscrapers, high on some new wonder-drug.

He raised a brow.  “You sure? 
‘Cause I’m getting the general idea you don’t believe me.”

Blaze glanced at the shattered
door and the hole in the drywall, then thought of how fast he would have had to
run to catch up with her long legs.  She swallowed and shook her head.

“Okay,” Jack said, watching her. 
“I’m not human.  You okay with that part so far?”

She nodded quickly, wondering
what kind of drug could make
teeth
grow.  Or maybe that was just some
residual hallucinogenic smoke that she had picked up off of him…  Hell, maybe
the prior residents had been some sort of diehard druggies that had
thoughtfully left the smell of twenty years of narcotics embedded in the very
walls of the place.

“All right,” Jack said, taking a
deep breath.  Then he swore, seeming to deflate.  “I never thought…”  He
groaned and slapped his forehead back into his hand.  “Shit.”

Blaze waited, not quite sure what
to make of the crazy woodsman on crack.  He didn’t really sound mentally
impaired, and, if anything, sounded
anxious
about his latest blunder. 
Maybe there was hope for him.  She was pretty sure that most of his swan-diving
buddies were still convinced of their own avian ancestry a split-second before
impact.

“I’ve never told somebody that
wasn’t one of the People,” Jack said.  “You’re, uh, the first mortal I’ve
entrusted—” he chuckled nervously, “—well, been stupid enough to tell—in about
four hundred years.”

“You know,” Blaze said softly, “I
can get you some help.”

Jack narrowed his green eyes at
her. 

“They have centers for this sort
of thing,” Blaze insisted.  “Really, there’s one downtown.”

“Okay,” Jack said, seemingly
coming up with a new line of attack, “We both agree I’m not human, and that I
can prove it to you again, if you need another look?”

Blaze snorted.  “No, I’m fine.”

He peered at her, seemingly
coming to a decision.  “Actually, I don’t think so.  I’m gonna get right up
close, give you another good look.  Don’t get scared or scream—it’ll only piss
me off, all right?”

Blaze made a nervous laugh.  “I
don’t need another loo—”

But he was already changing
shape, his body becoming larger, hairier, more hunched.  She watched brown and
gold fur push through his skin as his face elongated and sprouted fangs like
something out of a horror movie.  He crawled toward her on all fours like a
mutated bear, and she heard the sound of talons on the concrete as he moved.