Alaskan Fire (61 page)

Not having the energy to stand,
knowing she couldn’t run away with it, couldn’t do
anything
to keep it
out of Amber’s reach, Blaze fought a sudden wave of despair.  She felt the
feather’s magic pulsing through the filaments, whispering, calling to her very
soul as the tendrils sank into her fingertips.

Seeing the werewolf take a rigid
step towards her, Blaze took a deep breath.  She knew if she gave it up, she
would never see Alaska again.  Jack had made that much clear:  Whoever these
people were, they looked upon her as an artifact, a
prize
, not a person. 
They planned to
use
her, and her imagination could come up with a dozen
horrible scenarios, none of which involved Jack.  Blaze tightened her fist
around the filaments, then, with a prayer to God, slammed its sharpened tip
home into her chest.

As soon as the feather’s shaft
made contact with the fiery coal of her heart, it exploded in a hungry,
jubilant greeting.  Flames rolled outwards along her spine, pulling the feather
inward, sucking it inside of her, until Blaze was watching it sink into her
chest, creating a growing pit of molten yellow between her breasts.

Then, like a spark igniting a
drum of jet fuel, the feather detonated.  The trembling coal that was her heart
suddenly erupted in a violent explosion of heat and flame, and the concussive
wave of heat that followed shattered the closest windows of the lodge.  White
fire lashed outwards, melting her bones, liquefying her muscles, sculpting her
body into a column of living, breathing inferno that billowed and grew, moving
and dancing as the snow underneath her bubbled and steamed away.

Fly
, part of her said.  She
felt part of her shift, felt the flames spread outward, aching for the skies.

But the thing around her neck was
like ice, the tiny prickles like needles, drawing away the fire, leaving
numbness in its place.  She couldn’t fly.  She couldn’t
change
.  The gold
was seeing to that.  It was keeping the fire contained, refusing to let it press
outward…

Suddenly, like another dimension
unfolding around her, Blaze realized she could see and feel every trace of life
around her, every touch of sunlight in every glittering ice-crystal, every
glistening water droplet.  She felt the joyous tickles of energy shining in
Amber’s hair, warming her sweating face, dancing against the surface of her
widened eyes.  She felt the black fabric of the paramilitary men on the other
side of the lodge as their clothes soaked in the energy, heating in blessed
wave after wave of perfect, undulating sunli—

Amber lunged forward and plunged
the dagger into Blaze’s gut.

Leaving it there, the werewolf
slumped backwards onto her elbows, laughing up at Blaze’s startled expression. 
“Aren’t so clever now, are ya, birdy?”

Blaze felt the sun dim around
her, felt the world lose its energized tinge as even the dancing water-crystals
went bleak and dark. 

On the ground, Amber frowned, a
tiny twitch of her perfect lips.   

Trembling, Blaze looked down at
the ebony hilt, buried to the guard in her stomach.  Swallowing down the
revulsion of the vileness even now seeping through her body, Blaze wrapped her
hands around the dagger and awkwardly pulled it out.

“Gonna enjoy watching you curl up
and die,” Amber was saying, “Right before I force Jack to moon-form and skin
him alive.  Could always use a good fur for my new mansion.  They gave me
eighty million, you know.  Technically, was only supposed to be seventy, but
the last ten was a bonus.  Said they thought you were all extinct.”

Looking blindly at the werewolf,
the dagger in her hand, Blaze fell to her knees in front of Amber.

“Poor birdy,” Amber sneered, as
Blaze numbly reached out for her.  “Guess you just can’t win, if you’re stupi—”

Blaze rammed the dagger to the
hilt in Amber’s perfectly human eye.

Amber screamed and yanked her
head away, her body going into a twitching, jerking, writhing mass of shaking
muscle and bone, but she didn’t die.  The tears were warring with the dread
blade, so Blaze retrieved it and did it again.  And again.  She stabbed the
woman until her skull was a rotting, red-pink slurry and her body had stopped
twitching.  Then she dropped the blade beside the dead woman and stood, feeling
the energy of the area pull to her, sealing the wound in her gut.

I’m sorry,
she thought to
the darkened world that now suffered for her survival.  She felt the land her
feather had touched wither, the leaves droop as she retrieved the energy she
had left there, her very existence battling the burning black cancer in her abdomen. 
She formed it into a cocoon of liquid fire, then pushed it from her body,
allowing it to spatter on the corpse beneath her feet.

Amber’s body exploded in a blast
of heat, charred muscles quickly giving way to bone, which simply disintegrated
into ash.  Watching it almost distantly, Blaze released her hold on the sun’s
light, allowing it to once more spread back outwards, touching the plants that
now stood brown and desiccated, tenderly re-kindling the tiny sparks buried
within.

A shadow moved in the yard before
her, and Blaze felt it as a shifting in the balance of the sun, the placement
of the rays as they bounced to Earth and then away again.  She looked up.

A man was stalking towards her,
low against the grass, rifle up, barrel aimed at her chest.  She saw a flash,
watched the sun play off of a lumpy metal pellet as it arced towards her, then
watched as it became one with her body in a joyous exchange of molten energy. 
She closed her eyes.  Felt the man’s face as the sun’s rays danced upon his
cheekbones.  Felt his dry lips twist in a smile.  She bent the energy around
her again, warping it inward, concentrating it into a single spot in the yard.

An instant later, she felt the
sunlight dance joyfully across tiny bits of fluff that drifted on the wind. 
So
pretty,
Blaze thought.  She followed it with her consciousness, admiring
every rainbow facet of every particle of dust.

Another flash.

Eyes still closed, Blaze watched
the metal arc, watched it hit and meld into the area between her ears.  She
followed it back to its source, found the sunlight playing upon the unnatural
twists and bends of cloth in the woods, and focused the light again.

A tree caught fire beside the
dancing wisps of dust.  Blaze watched the flames course up the side of the
birch, feeding on the resin-soaked bark.  They grew as they climbed, increasing
in strength and number until they had enveloped the upper branches, a massive
bonfire in the withered leaves above. 

Another shift in sunlight caught
her attention, drawing it from the flames.

Cloth soaked up the sun in the
yard.  A man-beast watched her, in a half-crouch.  He was covered in dancing,
glistening blood.  The light played off the crimson surface of it in rainbow
patterns as it dribbled from his fingers and face, slicked across his clothes
in shiny streaks.  Odd bits of flesh here and there also played with the light,
glinting, flashing in the sun.  As did the creature’s pretty green eyes.

Blaze closed her eyes, taking in
the water glinting along the edges of his eyelids, feeling the light bounce
across his lashes and sparkle on his blood-wetted cheeks.  Eyes still closed,
Blaze examined him, top to bottom, reveling in the light as it played across the
gleaming fur along his shoulders and down his back.  She caught the sun, caressed
him with it, focused it…

After long minutes of that, the
creature said, “Hey, sweetie, uh…”  He cleared his throat with a nervous
tremble.  “Not to be a party-pooper or anything, but after watching Mumbo and
Jumbo over there go War of the Worlds on me, that sorta makes me
uncomfortable.”

Blaze opened her eyes.

Jack was standing very still in
the center of the yard, watching her like a mouse that wanted to run from a
cat, but didn’t want to provoke its attention, in case the cat had somehow
missed his presence.  “You, uh, all right over there, honey?”  He licked his
lips, slowly lowering the glittering steel handgun he carried to the ground at
his feet and leaving it there, backing away, hands up.  “Did Amber get away,
then?”

“Amber’s dead.”  Blaze startled
herself at the raspy sound of her voice, almost windy, but with the hint of
fire and coal.  She swallowed at the cold that was even then tugging icy
fingers through her head and chest.  “My throat hurts.”

“Okay, honey,” Jack said, “I’m
gonna come help you, okay?”  Even at this distance, Blaze felt his fear down
the link.  Fear and an image of
fire?
  A woman of molten
fire?

“It’s hard to breathe,” Blaze
managed, swallowing again.  Ice lanced through her neck and down her spine. 
Then she frowned.  She
wasn’t
breathing.  Not with her lungs.  Her
body
was breathing, as it moved and twisted around her.

“I know, honey,” Jack said, “It’s
gold.  It’s gonna do that.  But right now, what I’d like to do is get your
assurance you’re not about to go nuclear on me or in any other way make this
little wereverine’s life unpleasant.”

She dropped to her knees in the
ash, whimpering.

After what looked like a moment
of indecision, Jack took a hesitant step towards her.  “Hey honey, you just sit
tight, okay?  I’m gonna help you.”

“Then
help already
!” Blaze
cried, falling to her hands and gripping at the warm gravel underneath the ash,
fisting her hands around the stones.  Her throat
hurt
, and it was
spreading outward, like tendrils of blood-poisoning lacing up an infected limb. 
She lowered her forehead to the ash and moaned, breathing little swirls into
the dust against her lips.

The sunlight moved gently as the
wereverine lowered himself beside her, though he made no move to touch her. 
She could
feel
his awe.  And his fear.  Of
her
.  The dismay of
that was enough to wrack her soul. 

“Please get it off,” Blaze
whimpered, unable to think of anything but the horrible, throbbing ice.  Long
heartbeats followed, each one dragging an agonizing streak of cold through her
body.  “Please, Jack.”

She felt a burst of inner agony
from Jack, shame and fear.  “Okay,” Jack said.  Sunlight glinted off of his
tongue as he licked his lips.  “
Blaze
.  Honey.  You’re just about
cooking me alive as it is…you think you could tone it down a bit so I can lean
in there and get a hold of that thing?”  Indeed, through her new
dance-of-light-sight, she saw his fur going up in little wisps of smoke, where
it was exposed to her.

Blaze whimpered and shook her
head.  Streaks of liquid nitrogen were running down her spine, through her
buttocks, throbbing into her legs, stabbing stakes through her toes.

“Fuck.”  Jack glanced at her,
then at the shop.  More indecision, more fear.  “All right, tootz.  Just stay
here a second, okay?”  He got to his feet again slowly, then backed up like she
was some sort of wild bear that was gonna attack the moment he moved too
suddenly or turned his back.

“
Get it off
!” Blaze sobbed
at him.  The thing around her neck was
eating
her, devouring her from
the inside, swallowing her heat and leaving icy agony in its wake.

Jack jerked and ran.

He came back with a five gallon
bucket of water and a wet rag.  “You are not gonna like this,” he muttered,
“But I gotta do it.”  The water danced and glistened in the light, and the
beauty of the glimmering surface inside the bucket was enough to distract Blaze
from the ice in her veins for a few short—

Jack dumped the bucket on her.

As Blaze gasped at the glacial
cold and felt herself bubble and steam with a horrible,
disgusting
wetness.  As she let out her breath in a scream, Jack reached into the column
of steam with his soggy rag, placed it around the metal ring in her neck, and,
with a hand on either side, flexed his massive shoulders as he pulled.

She heard a metallic snap just as
metal prongs pierced her skin, raking across her throat, and a simultaneous
blast of ice shattered her system.  Blaze shrieked and fell into a ball,
coldness throbbing through her numbed skin, her hold on the world of sunlight
slipped irrevocably from her grasp.

“That was it, sweetie,” Jack
said, throwing the metal band aside.  “Worst is over, I swear.”  He was backing
away from her, hands up, blood-crusted calluses facing out, panic racing down
the link at her.  “All done.  Big bad wereverine is leaving, now.  Okay?  I’m
just backing off, so no need to get disagreeable.  Got it?”

The ice was receding slowly,
giving her a peek back into the realm of sunlight as it went.

Jack, true to his word, left her
alone.  She could feel his body bending the sunlight a couple miles distant,
drifting through the woods in a wide, agitated circle.

Blaze lay on her side for the
next hour or two, drifting in and out of body-consciousness, reveling in her
senses as she felt the sunlight tumble to the earth nearby.  It played upon the
world around her in showers of rainbow color, skipping across the rotor blades,
bounding over the tin roofs of the lodge and the shop, waltzing through the
brown and withered leaves of her mango and cherry trees, sliding through the
jittery rainbow crystals littering the ground around her.  

Blaze soaked it all up in
amazement.  Eventually, her awareness sharpened enough to notice two holes in
the sunlight, two rips where the energy simply disappeared, leaving no trace.

Lifting her head to look, Blaze
saw the two golden pieces that Jack had torn from her neck.  About the
thickness of an orange peel, Blaze winced at the tiny, pin-sized metal barbs
ringing the inner band.  They only extended an eighth of an inch from the band
itself, barely enough to make her bleed, yet the
cold
she remembered… 
It had been overwhelming.