Alaskan Fire (69 page)
Authors: Sara King
Something didn’t seem right about
the question, and, cautiously, Kaashifah said, “He left on vacation.”
“Oh,” the brunette said,
scratching at her forearm. “Then this is everybody? You guys are all alone
out here?”
“This is it,” Jack said, grinning
proudly. “What you see is what you get, ladies. The Sleeping Lady. Last
bastion of civilization out in werewolf territory.”
The brunette reached up and
fiddled with the sleeve of her shirt. “Good.”
Good?
But even as Kaashifah was
digesting the strange taste to that, the woman flicked something forward in a
practiced gesture, and a tiny dart hit the wereverine in the man’s muscular
chest. His eyes widened and his mouth fell open in a wet wheeze, then he slid
to the floor suddenly, his heavy body hitting the hardwood beneath his stool
with a
thump
that shook the lodge, not even sprouting fangs.
Oh no,
Kaashifah thought,
stumbling backwards, trying to slam up a shield.
“Jack?” the phoenix asked, moving
forward, frowning. She obviously hadn’t seen the brunette’s gesture.
Kaashifah, who had seen it, was
nonetheless unable to stop it. Her shield, having gone unused and unpracticed
for so long, fizzled in the face of her fear, leaving her staring at the
Inquisitors in horror. Whereas she could have ended it all with a single
thought beforehand, now all she could do was turn and run.
She felt a sharp pain in her
spine, then her legs collapsed out from underneath her.
“Got the bitch,” the blonde woman
chuckled.
Kaashifah’s vision dimmed, her
entire body going numb within a couple of heartbeats.
A couple of steel-toed boots
stepped within sight, and the blonde woman in black leather squatted down in
front of Kaashifah, a sneer on her face. She grabbed her by the hair and
yanked back, so that Kaashifah was staring up into the woman’s pretty Nordic
face. “Guess what, beastie?” She yanked something out of Kaashifah’s back and
held it out where she could see. A tiny hypodermic needle, connected to a
silver vial. “Basilisk venom’ll put even a
wereverine’s
lights out.”
“I don’t think that one’s a
wereverine,” the unassuming brunette in jeans said. “My guess is a wolf, but
something is off…”
Spanish
, Kaashifah realized, ridiculously placing
the accent as her body failed around her. The woman was a Spaniard.
“Save your
guesses
,
Imelda. Once I get her on the rack, I will tell you what she is.”
Even as she heard the words,
Kaashifah found herself losing the battle with her eyelids, her world
blackening, swallowing her from the outside.
Suddenly a flash of light, like
the fires of heaven suddenly raining down upon her, and people screamed. The
last thing she saw, before she lost consciousness, was the leather-clad woman
above her stand up with a cry, eyes wide, scrabbling for something on her
gold-and-turquoise belt.
Guardians of the First Realm:
Alaskan Fire
Guardians of the First Realm:
Alaskan Fury
Millennium Potion: Wings of
Retribution
Outer Bounds: Fortune’s Rising
Outer
Bounds: Fortune’s Folly
Terms of Mercy: To the Princess
Bound
Guardians
of the First Realm: Alaskan Fang
Guardians
of the First Realm: Alaskan Fiend
Guardians
of the First Realm: Fury of the Fourth Realm
ZERO: Zero’s Legacy
ZERO: Forgotten
Terms
of Mercy: Slave of the Dragon Lord
Aulds
of the Spyre: The Sheet Charmer
Aulds
of the Spyre: Form and Function
Outer
Bounds: Children of Fortune
the Author
My name is Sara King and I’m going to change the world.
No, seriously. I am. And I need your help. My goal is
simple. I want to champion, define, and spread character writing throughout
the galaxy. (Okay, maybe we can just start with Planet Earth.) I want to take
good writing out of the hands of the huge corporations who have had a
stranglehold on the publishing industry for so long and reconnect it to the
people (you) and what you really want. I want to democratize writing as an art
form. Something that’s always been controlled by an elite few who have (in my
opinion) a different idea of what is ‘good writing’ than the rest of the world,
and have been feeding the sci-fi audience over 50% crap for the last 40 years.
To assist me in my goals to take over the world (crap, did I
say that out loud??), please leave a review for this book! It’s the first and
easiest way for you guys to chip in and assist your friendly neighborhood
writer-gal. And believe me, every review helps otherwise unknown books like
mine stand up against the likes of the Big Boys on an impersonal site like
Amazon.
Also, I have an email! (Totally surprising, I know.) Use
it! (Don’t you know that fanmail keeps writers going through those dark times
when we run out of chocolate???) I love posting letters on Facebook—gives me
something fulfilling to do with my time. ;) Shoot me a line!
[email protected]
You can also ask to
SIGN
UP FOR MY MAILING LIST!
Seriously, I give away free books, ask people to
beta-read scenes and novels, and give updates on all the series I’m currently
working on. Stay informed!
J
And, for those of you who do the
Facebook thing, check me out:
http://www.facebook.com/kingfiction
(personal) or
http://www.facebook.com/sknovel
(my author page) or stay up to date on continuous new ZERO publications with
The Legend of ZERO fan page:
http://www.facebook.com/legendofzero
So if you enjoy outrageous Alaskan Romance novels
(especially those with steamy sex scenes), here’s another fantastic indie
author that writes Alaska well because she actually lives here. (She and I
brainstorm together on a regular basis.) If you’re looking for a great time,
check out her uproariously funny
Two
Cabins, One Lake
on Amazon! It’ll have you rolling, especially because
it’s based on real Alaskan life (not what someone from CA imagines Alaskan life
to be after watching a few Reality TV shows…ahem). Here’s a sneak peek:
Two Cabins
,
One Lake
By Shaye Marlow
Chapte
r One
‘S
he came.’ No, I’d used that one about a
thousand times already. ‘Exploded’ and ‘climaxed’ were out. ‘Orgasmed’ was
too clinical. ‘Peaked’? No, too soft-core vague. I needed something fresh,
something new, something crazy-hot.
I was drawing a blank. There
probably wasn’t just one word for what I needed. Okay, so what about a simile
or metaphor? ‘Rapid decompression’? Too technical. ‘A million fiery shards of
pleasure lanced at her innards’… The phrase failed the wince-test, so, no; too
painful.
‘The earth shook.’
For a wistful moment, I thought I
might actually be having an orgasm, because damned if the earth wasn’t
shaking. Wait, that was my chair.
I finally surfaced enough from my
word processor to remember that earthquakes were the most common cause of shaking
in Alaska. So I did what any good Alaskan would do: I sat, and waited to see
if it was going to get bigger.
My pots and pans were rattling on
the rack over my kitchen sink when I realized this ‘earthquake’ was accompanied
by a thrumming, pounding roar. Or was that in my ears?
Hell, maybe I
am
having an orgasm. I’d been enjoying that scene, but…
But then the noise and vibrations
reached their peak and a helicopter came into view, having flown directly over
my cabin. I leaned forward, watching out my picture window as the helicopter
crossed the lake. It set down on my neighbor’s front lawn, a couple hundred
feet down the shore from mine.
Three people stepped out onto the
grass, and then the helicopter lifted back into the sky. The wind of its passage
rippled the glassy water, and as it roared by overhead, my pots rattled again.
The people disappeared into the cabin.
When they came back out, I
indulged my burning curiosity, and engaged my binoculars. I’d purchased this
set for birdwatching, but as I looked through them, I confirmed they worked
just as well on potential new neighbors. The three men looked innocuous
enough—no hunchbacks or scissor-hands, at least—and I wondered if one of them
was the new owner.
Or was my new neighbor the
helicopter pilot? It hadn’t looked like any flight-service aircraft that I was
familiar with. Besides, who would pay to charter a helicopter at over a
thousand dollars an hour, when a float plane was infinitely cheaper and could
carry more?
No sooner had I finished that
thought, than a plane on floats dropped below the treetops on final approach.
The DeHavilland Beaver
was
sporting familiar flight-service colors, I
saw as it skimmed across the water, kicking up waves until it settled into a
slow glide. It drifted up to the neighbor’s dock, and the pilot unloaded five
passengers. And then, a bunch of stuff. Boxes, a cooler, a barbecue.
Four of the guys began carrying
things up to the cabin as a fifth helped the pilot get the Beaver turned
around. The pilot gunned it, and with an ear-splitting roar, the float plane
charged across the lake. It lifted up out of the water, and then the aluminum
contraption was thrumming away over the trees.
I frowned. That was eight people
now. What was this, one of those families that had as many children as
possible because each one meant another permanent fund dividend? The permanent
fund dividend was an annual oil royalty payment that each resident in Alaska
received, usually one to two thousand dollars. There were reports of homesteading
families with over a dozen children for this reason, some of them very much
resembling the Craster’s Keep situation from Game of Thrones.
But, I confirmed with my
binoculars, none of these were children. They looked to be all in their
twenties and thirties, clean, well-dressed types. I watched them crack open
the cooler and start passing around beers. After their initial flurry of
movement, they just milled and drank, and I lost interest in spying on them. I
had misgivings about the mass consumption of alcohol on my little lake, but
watching them do it wouldn’t change anything.
The fact was, I needed to write.
I had a deadline for the juicy little story I was working on, and that deadline
was tomorrow. I’d gotten started on it first thing this morning, and was
hoping to get it done—or at least very close to done—by evening, so I could go
to the neighborhood Fourth of July party.
Not that this was much of a
traditional ‘neighborhood’. There were no roads to speak of, the main
thoroughfare being the Kuskana River, and my next closest ‘neighbor’ was a mile
downstream.
A flash of orange next door
caught my eye. Flames leapt three feet up out of the grill, and a couple guys
were laughing and patting each other on the back.
Aha!
‘Her nerve endings
flared like they’d been drenched in lighter fluid.’ ‘Douched’ with lighter
fluid? No, bad. I fiddled with it a bit, and continued on with my scene. My
sexy, ladies-first hero had his head buried between my main char’s milky
thighs, and he kept her fire burning for several decadent sentences.
I was just getting back into the
flow of things when my pots announced the helicopter’s return. Three more
people jumped out onto the grass, and the helicopter took off and thundered
overhead. Again.
I was starting to get a little
annoyed. One would think, if you owned an aircraft that loud, you’d have the
common courtesy not to fly directly over a building. In fact, I was pretty
sure there were regulations to that effect.
The body count next door was up
to eleven, and I picked my binoculars back up to see if I could figure out what
was going on over there. As I gazed though my high-powered lenses at the
people, and the beer, and the barbecue, I finally put it together. It was a
party. Housewarming slash Fourth of July
party
.
Having solved the riddle didn’t
make the activity next door any less distracting. For the first time ever, I
considered turning my writing desk away from the window. It was sunny and
already getting hot, even a little bit before noon. Seeing bare male chests
begin to emerge from beneath their shirts finally decided me. There was no way
I could write with
that
as my view.
It was as I was turning my desk
that the Beaver touched down again. Another five people emptied out onto the
dock, along with another load of boxes and a big flat-screen TV. Same drill;
to the cabin with the stuff, to the beer with the people.
I stared blankly at my screen for
a few minutes, and decided I’d break for lunch. The plan was to eat, and
hopefully my new neighbor would complete his friend-ferrying, and then I could
write.
One of the things I loved most
about living in the Alaskan bush was the quiet. I slept with my window open at
night, listening to the sunset birdsong, the breeze rustling the leaves, the
gentle lapping of the lake twenty feet below my window. There were no highway
sounds, no neighbor dogs barking, no train crossings or lawn mowers or kids
shrieking with glee.
There was just me, and the
wilderness.
And now, apparently, there was my
neighbor and his couple dozen friends, whom he continued to ferry, all
afternoon. The helicopter flew in—
whomp whomp whomp
—and out, and in—
whomp
whomp whomp
—and out, about a dozen times over the course of the day. With
each new trip, he brought a handful more people.
So, as the summer sun meandered
its way across the sky, the noise level got higher and higher. The sounds
carried with crystalline clarity across the water—the
boom boom boom
of
a quality speaker emitting heavy bass, the drunken laughter and shrieks as
people splashed in the lake.
I stuttered through another
couple hundred words—trash, all of it. In frustration, I went and sat on my
deck, wondering if I should just go to my own Fourth of July party instead of
being tormented by my neighbor’s.
But how could I enjoy myself,
with three thousand words hanging over my head? Three thousand words, and only
the rest of tonight and two to three hours tomorrow to do it in. And that
wasn’t counting editing. No, I couldn’t go.
As the evening wore into a deeper,
louder evening, and I still couldn’t concentrate, I contemplated the merits of
shooting my neighbor. On the one hand, there’d be no more loud, drunken
parties.
On the other, I’d have to dispose
of the body—dumping it in the river would probably be my best bet. That would
likely be easy enough, but I was pretty sure my new neighbor was the helicopter
pilot, so shooting him would mean I’d be stuck with his friends thrashing
through my woods for the next day or so, looking for food or phone. And
that
was unacceptable, because I was absolutely sure the first thing they’d blunder
through with their ignorant city feet was my blueberry patch.
I also thought, briefly, about
going over to join them. It would be the neighborly thing to do—uncork the
Baileys that’d been sitting in my pantry, and go introduce myself. I knew if I
was drinking with them, I wouldn’t mind their debauchery quite so much.
But the idea was repugnant to
me. I was an introvert, and I was already half-way to spitting mad. I knew if
I went over there, the first thing out of my mouth wouldn’t be a Pleasantville
“Hey neighbor, welcome to the neighborhood!”, but rather a “Shut the fuck up,
you inconsiderate asshole Outsider!”
Okay, and maybe I was PMSing just
a wee bit.
I’d owned this land since I was
seventeen. I built the cabin with my own two hands and the help of my brothers
when I was twenty-one, and I’d been living here full-time ever since.
The cabin across the lake had
been there before I ever built mine, but it had been owned by an elderly couple
who only ever came out on the weekends, and then rarely. For the last four
years, it’d basically been just me on my quiet, peaceful lake.
And now?
Whomp whomp whomp.
I watched as the shiny red
fucking thing—I don’t know a damn thing about helicopters, other than that they
are expensive, and some of them moonlight as ambulances—landed for the
umpteenth time that day.
This time, the pilot cut the
engine. The doors swung open before the blades had even slowed, and another
group of people belched out onto the once-carefully-manicured grass. I watched
closely, trying to get a lock on my miserable neighbor—surely karma had made
him a tiny, bald, pock-marked, pot-bellied lump of a man—but he must have
exited the other side and quickly blended into the crowd.
Watching so many people having so
much fun while my writing suffered was only making me angry, so I slammed my
way back inside. I breathed deep of the lingering plywood smell in my cabin’s
interior, and willed myself to calm down. Now that the helicopter was done,
I’d take a few minutes, eat dinner, and then see if I could finish up my story.
I had lights, compliments of a
generator and a small battery bank, so I turned them on. Compliments of a
well, I had running water, so I ran some into a double boiler steamer and
started dinner. I wasn’t some Julia Child out in the woods, whipping up
delicate French confections, but I had had a recent shipment of fresh
vegetables, so I steamed some broccoli, and as it was steaming, I decided it
would be even better with cheese melted over it. Because everything is better
with cheese.
Life
is better with cheese.
It was as I was watching said
cheddar melt that I began to hear the
boom boom boom
of those speakers
from inside my cabin. My nails dug into my hand-planed birch countertops as I
restrained myself. I didn’t know what I’d do if I gave myself free rein, but I
knew my retaliations tended toward poetic justice. So it’d be loud, and
probably disturbing.
I alternated bites of broccoli
with some long, slow breaths. I finished my meal, washed the dishes—which was
not a natural inclination of mine, but I’d learned the hard way to keep things
clean and put away so as not to attract bears—and I went back to my desk.