Alaskan Fire (43 page)

* * *

Jack used the backhoe to bury the
woman’s remains, then wheeled himself inside the Sleeping Lady and didn’t leave
the house for days.  He just sat on his bed, his sword in his lap, staring at
the wall, eating if Blaze happened to put something in front of him, sleeping
if she left him alone.

And, for the most part, Blaze
left him alone.  She had no idea what to say to him that would make up for the
troubles she had caused. 

She was out collecting firewood
from under the eaves of the shop, wincing up at the October snow-flurries that were
coming down in huge, heavy flakes, when she saw the two State Troopers from
three weeks before once more trudging up the path.

Shit,
Blaze thought.  A
paranoid corner of her brain wondered if the hole that Jack had dug hadn’t been
deep enough to hide the wretched smell of the dead woman, and one of her
neighbors had turned her in for the disappearances.  She forced herself to put
on a smile.

“Hello, officers,” Blaze said,
dropping the firewood back on the stack.

“Hello Miss MacKenzie,” the
gangly officer said.  He came to a halt a few feet from her and glanced at his
partner.  “Well, we found out more information on those disturbances.”

“Sure did,” his partner muttered,
nodding. 

The slender man took a deep
breath, then let it out reluctantly.  “I’m really sorry to do this, Miss
MacKenzie, but do you mind coming down to the station with us?”  The way he
said it, it wasn’t a question.

Blaze’s heart began to hammer. 
“Why?” she asked.

“Well,” the barrel-chested man looked
up at her and said, “We talked to Mrs. Jennie Mae Hunderson over at Ebony Creek
Lodge and she says she saw you hack a woman apart with an axe on the fourteenth
of October.  We’re gonna have to search the property.”

Blaze’s heartbeat was rushing
through her ears in powerful, fiery thunder, now.  So
that
was why she
hadn’t heard from Jennie Mae in days.  “Uh, I didn’t hack anyone to pieces.”

The taller man gestured at her
bandaged wrist.  “Where’d you get the wounds, Miss MacKenzie?”

“One of my pigs bit me,” Blaze
lied.

“That’s not what Mrs. Hunderson
said,” the smaller, barrel-chested Trooper said. 

“Jennie Mae is
lying
,”
Blaze blurted, so scared she was panting.  “Amber’s doing it.  She’s a
werewolf
.”

The two Troopers looked at each
other, hiding smirks.  “Oookaaay,” the barrel-shaped Trooper said, “Look, Miss
MacKenzie, we know we came out here talking about wolves, but we figured out
what was really going on.  Took us awhile, but we figured it out.”

Blaze swallowed down her rising
dread.  “What’s really going on?”

The thinner man smiled at her,
but there was no mirth in his look.  “
You’re
what’s been going on, Miss
MacKenzie.  You’re the new blood out here.  Only thing that’s changed in like
twenty years.” 

“First the lodge at Lake Creek, then
the cabins down there, but then you got lazy.  Started sticking closer to
home.  Took out the couple to the west of you, then the fishermen, then your
handyman
…” 
He nodded at her livestock pens.  “You been feedin ‘em to your pigs, Miss
MacKenzie?”

Blaze’s mouth fell open.  “No…  I
mean, it wasn’t
me.
”  Then she frowned. 
Who told them that Jack was
dead?

“Sure it wasn’t, Miss MacKenzie,”
the rounder one said.  “Would you mind putting your hands above your head and
facing the woodpile while my partner removes your weapons?”

Shit,
Blaze thought, as
she obliged. 
Shit, shit.

“Just stand still,” the Trooper
said as he moved closer.  “Now put your hands behind your back.”

Behind him, his partner began to
say, “Blaze MacKenzie, you have the right to remain silent…”

Shit!!
Blaze’s panicked
mind began to scream as she felt the cold shackles of metal touch her wrists
and snap into place.  Amber was pinning the whole thing on her, and now there
was a hacked-apart dead body buried in her backyard, right under a fresh new
hole Jack had put there with a backhoe.  She was gonna go to jail,
forever
,
and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

The shorter trooper continued, “
Anything you say can and will be used against you in
a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an
attorney, one will be provided for you. Do you understand the rights I have
just read to you?”

Oh God,
Blaze thought,
each beat of her heart a thundering wave of fire.  Then she realized she had to
help Jack.  If they took her away, he wouldn’t be able to feed himself.

  She cleared her throat. 
“Officers, I have someone…”  Before she could finish telling them about the
cripple she was caring for in her basement, however, the thinner cop shoved her
against the woodpile and his hand reached for her pistol.

“Fuck,” the thinner cop said,
pulling the gun from her belt.  “She’s using fucking
silver
.”  Blaze
heard her gun thump out in the yard behind them, followed by her other.

“I knew the gigantic bitch
smelled funny,” the other cop said.  “No wonder Amber wanted nothing to do with
her.”

With those words, Blaze felt
every hair along her back stand on end.

The smaller cop kicked her in the
back of the knees, forcing her to the ground.  “Still.  I wonder what the boss
was so afraid of,” the thinner Trooper growled.  “She’s not even a were.”

“Not very smart, either,” the
barrel-chested trooper replied.  “Gave up her guns without a fight.”  He snorted. 
“Hell, this was
easy
.”  He sounded disgusted with that fact.  In that
moment, something heavy shoved Blaze bodily to the ground, so that her face was
pressed into the eighth-inch of fresh snow.

“How should we kill her?” the
thinner Trooper demanded.  “Dig a hole and bury her?”

“Boss said to have some fun
first,” the barrel-chested trooper said.  “Then we can kill the big bitch.” 
She felt him kneel behind her and suddenly a rough hands was gripping the back
of her hair, hauling her face off of the ground.  Into her face, the man said,
“This
is
a bitch, ain’t it?”  He sniffed her neck, then, dropping her
head unceremoniously back to the ground, stuck his face between her thighs and
drew in a breath.  “Oh yeah,” he chuckled.  “It’s got a cunny, all right.” 
Rough hands started gripping Blaze between the thighs, rubbing hard against her
womanhood.

Panting in terror, now, Blaze
twisted her wrists in the cuffs, trying everything to yank them loose.  Her big
hands might as well have been barbells for how much give they had inside the
metal bands, and the barrel-chested man had a hand in the middle of her back,
pinning her to the ground as he ran his hand up and down the inside of her leg.

“I don’t know, man,” the thinner
Trooper said, sounding uncertain.  “It’s our job to stop that sort of shit.”

“
Fuck
the job, man,” the
thicker man chuckled.  “Do
you
really wanna go back to that boring crap?” 
He snorted and leaned down to lick Blaze’s neck.  “Oh yeah.  Damn she tastes
good.  Come on.  Help me undo her pants.”

“Dude,” the thinner cop said, as
Blaze began to hyperventilate.  “Leave her alone, okay?”

“We’re gonna kill her anyway,”
the barrel-shaped man muttered.  “Besides, Boss told us to have some fun.”  He
drove his hands under her waist and started unbuckling her pants.

“Hey, goddamn it!” the thinner
cop growled.  “She may have bit us, but that doesn’t make us goddamn animals,
all right?  Get up, let’s kill her and get this over with.”

“Matt, just go fuck off for a
half hour or something, okay?” the barrel-chested one snapped.  He grabbed the
back of Blaze’s shirt and, with a brief flash of pain as it tightened around
her neck, she felt it rip away like paper.  Then he flipped Blaze over, face up
at the falling snow, back to the icy ground, and gave her a dangerous snarl
that showed slitted blue eyes.  Before Blaze could pull her legs back for a
kick, he leaned forward and said, “You kick me, bitch, and I’ll eviscerate you
slowly, ya got me?”

Terror drove through Blaze’s core
like a stake.  She lowered her legs, shaking.  As if he had just warned her
about the weather, the barrel-chested trooper started tugging her pants and
panties down her legs, exposing her lower body to the falling snow.  Blaze bit
her lip and shivered, but was unable to close her eyes to the beast as he
crawled over her.

To her horror, he started to
change
. 
His slitted blue eyes started to glow, and his body grew larger, heavier, and heavy
gray fur sprouted from his arms and face.  Suddenly, there was a wolf kneeling
over her, leering down at her with his unnatural, hypodermic smile.  Blood from
where his teeth had punctured the top of his mouth was dripping on Blaze’s
exposed chest.  “Figured you wanna know what it is to be a real bitch,” her
assailant said.  “Got just what ya need here, sweet cheeks.”  He leaned down
and licked his blood off of her belly in long, wet strokes.  Blaze trembled,
whimpering.

“Pat,” the thinner Trooper
warned, “That isn’t how we do things.”  He leaned down and took the wolf by the
shoulder.

Her assailant whirled on Matt and
swiped a taloned hand at his arm.  “I said
fuck off
!”

In a move too fast to see, Matt yanked
Pat off of her.  With a roar of fury, Pat pulled himself off the ground and
leapt at Matt’s chest.  Snarling, they went tumbling towards the woodpile in a
frenzy, causing half of the pile to fall down atop them.

Ten-pound chunks of birch flying
like matchsticks, the werewolves started tearing at each other amidst the firewood,
blood and fur staining the air.  Blaze screamed when the first piece of firewood
hit her in the stomach, and started kicking backwards, trying to get away from
them.  With the pants locked around her ankles and the cuffs around her wrists,
however, she could barely move more than a few inches at a time.  She scraped
her naked arms and back against the icy gravel, sliding towards the house, as
far away from them as she could get.

Matt screamed suddenly, and Blaze
saw Pat rip the other wolf’s chest open, collecting a handful of heart and
lungs before shoving his opponent aside into the ruined pile.  Matt’s mouth was
open, blood draining from his open ribcage onto the birch quarters.  Pat threw
his heart and lungs aside in disdain, still twitching.

Letting out a little whine of
terror, Blaze flopped herself over onto her stomach and tried to get her feet
under her.

There was a fresh drag-mark in
the snow off of the back porch.  Blaze hesitated, following it with her eyes.

Then the wolf was flipping her
over, pink drool dripping from his bloodstained lips.  “Where do you think
you’re going?” he growled, pinning her shoulder to the ground as he started to
reposition himself over her.  “I ain’t done fucking you yet.”

“Hey puppy,” Jack said.

Above Blaze, the wolf hesitated
and looked up.

The blast of a gunshot made Blaze
flinch.

The wolf stiffened above her,
then rolled to the side and began to scream.

Another gunshot shattered the
yard, followed by another.

The wolf started to thrash,
howling.

Blaze felt Jack’s warm body slide
past her as he crawled up to the flailing wolf.  He took two more shots, then
the wolf went quiet.

“Hold on there, sweetheart.  I’ll
get the keys.”  She sat up to watch Jack crawl across the yard to where the
Trooper’s pants had been shredded and shed.  He dug around in the pockets until
he found what he was looking for, then crawled back to her, head down, a
determined look on his face.  By the time he got close enough to touch her leg,
he was red-faced and sweating.  He dragged his body the last few feet behind
her, then grunted as he flopped onto his side.  “Just hold still a minute.” 
She felt him fiddle with the cuffs at her wrists, heard a metallic click.

Blaze was shaking all over when
her hands fell free.  Partly out of terror, partly from the cold, every muscle
in her body was suddenly trembling, and all she could do was stare down at
herself in shock.

Behind her, Blaze heard another
metallic click.  Numbly, she turned.

Jack was holding the pistol to
the side of his head, looking at her torn and shredded shirt.  The hammer was
back, his finger on the trigger.

Blaze tensed.  “Don’t,” she
whispered.

Tentatively, Jack met her eyes. 
“I can’t go through this again,” he whimpered.  His words came out as a plea.  “Fly
out of here.  Go somewhere the hell else.  I can’t do this.  Not again.”  He
closed his eyes and took a deep breath.  For a horrible moment, she knew he was
going to pull the trigger.

“I’m going to kill them,” Blaze
said, and she knew this time she meant it.  “You shoot yourself, I’m going to
go find them and kill them all.” 

Jack hesitated.  Slowly, he
opened his brilliant green eyes and looked at her.  Gun still to his brainpan,
he growled, “You know that’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever heard, right?” 
The way he said it, Jack no more thought she could kill werewolves than she
could waltz onto a dance floor and have every guy in the place vying for her
arm.

Blaze gestured at the gun.  “Can’t
be worse than threatening to sputch yourself across the yard because you just
saved my life, leaving me shivering here, naked, with your gore all over me.”

Jack narrowed his eyes.  For a
long moment, he just kept the gun to his temple, glaring at her.  Then,
reluctantly, he let it drop into his lap.  “I moved my toes this morning,” he
muttered at his knees.

Blaze felt a surge of hope. 
“That’s
great
!” she cried.