Alaskan Fire (44 page)

He looked up to glare at her.  For
a long time, he said nothing.  Then, “Go inside and get me my chair, Yeti
wench.  My ass is getting cold.”

Naked, shivering, Blaze narrowed
her eyes at him. 
Well, at least his attitude is back.
 

They buried the wolves with the
backhoe, then Blaze bulldozed it level and they put up more fencing.  Despite
Jack’s taste in goat, the hairy little beasts were multiplying.  Hell,
everything that was within a hundred
yards
of the greenhouse was still
vibrant green, despite the three inches of snow on the ground.  What was even
more amazing, the goats, which had a gestation period of a hundred and fifty
days, were kidding at around thirty, and goats that normally had one to two
kids on average were having four or five.  Even more stunning, the woods where
they had penned them—that Blaze had thought might last two, maybe even three
weeks before the little brush-machines completely devoured all signs of life—wasn’t
even showing indication that they’d been munching on it.

“You know,
someone’s
gonna
notice this,” Blaze said, as she re-stacked blood-spattered firewood under the
shop eaves.  She gestured at the green trees in the snowstorm.  “They’re not
dropping their leaves.”

Jack twisted in his chair, his
thigh squishing the Desert Eagle on his hip.  He peered at the greenery an
unconcerned moment, then shrugged.  “Anybody asks, you can call it a weird
virus or something.”  He went back to concentrating on his feet.  He was
getting them to twitch slightly, one after the other.

Considering that, Blaze said, “I
haven’t seen Runt in awhile.”

“They hibernate,” Jack said. 
“Little twit’s probably sleeping.  Good riddance.”

Blaze frowned.  “Do wolves
hibernate?”

Jack just watched his feet, a
frown of concentration on his forehead.  “You know, Yeti wench, I could use a
drink of water.”

Blaze dropped a piece of firewood
on the pile a bit too abruptly.  Jack looked up.

“You are perfectly capable of
getting your own water.”

Instead of appearing chagrined,
however, the bastard returned his attention to his toes and said, “I know, but
I want you to do it.  It’s easier for you.”

Blaze felt a muscle in her neck
twitch.  Ignoring him, she picked up another birch quarter, this one covered in
blood and long gray wolf hair. 
Wolf
hair…  She paused, staring down at
it, her forehead tightening in a frown, as the ticklings of a new thought began
tugging at the back of her mind.

“You know, Yeti wench,” Jack said
conversationally, “My thirst will not quench its—”

“Shut
up
a second!” Blaze
snapped, looking down at the wolf fur.  She frowned at him.  “You only killed
one
of those Troopers, right?”

Jack was giving her a startled,
somewhat irritated look.  She saw the bits of fur poking from under his shirt
and realized he probably didn’t like being told to shut up.  “You know, Yeti
wench, I don’t appreciate—”

“Answer me!” Blaze growled.  She
held up the gore-stained hunk of wood.  “
You
didn’t kill the first one,
right?  His partner did that?”

Jack sighed like a professor
tasked with teaching an incompetent student.  “The moon-magic grabs the young
ones and don’t let go until it wants to.  Once they hit wolf form, they do all
sorts of stupid shit.”

Blaze frowned.  “So when they’re
possessed, the Third Lander is completely in control?  That why you blacked
out?”

“Now
hold on
a minute
there, missy,” Jack growled.  “I don’t know what that little shit was tellin
you, but I ain’t possessed.”

Blaze met his eyes and held it. 
“But you
did
black out.”

Jack narrowed his eyes.  “I’ll be
in the basement.”  He spun his chair around and started for the back steps, his
big back having already regained most of its prior definition.

Blaze grabbed his chair and spun
him around.

Immediately, Jack’s shirt puffed
out with fur and he sprouted fangs.  “I ain’t possessed,” he snarled, his
slitty eyes glowing.

Blaze decided to leave that sore
subject for later.  Instead, she squatted in front of him, still holding the
birch quarter.  “Those two, when they died, were
wolves
.  Ugly,
misshapen, nightmare wolves with way too many teeth and fucked-up eyes, but
wolves
.”

Jack peered up at her as if she
had just grown peach fuzz and testicles.  “Huh?”

“We don’t have human bodies
buried in my backyard,” Blaze said.  She shook the quarter of birch and its
glob of hair at him.  “We have
these
things, and
these
things
were happy to kill each other, given the right provocation.”

Jack squinted at her, but the fur
was starting to sink back under his skin.  He eyed the block of firewood like
she intended to beat the idea into his skull with it.  “So?”

“So how do we get the whole pack
to change into
these
things?” Blaze demanded.  “They’d take care of the
problem for us.”

Jack snorted.  “If it were that
easy, they’d have all sputched themselves the moment Amber took them on their
first hunt.”

Blaze shook her head and tapped
his chest with the gory block of wood.  “No.  I mean, once they’re
there
,
they can’t change back unless the Third-Lander wants them to.  They’d be kind
of
stuck
there if we can give them a reason for the Third-Lander to stay
in charge.”

Jack’s hackles went up again.  “I
don’t like the way this conversation is going, missy.”

“What would a Third-Lander want
more than anything?” Blaze demanded.

Jack frowned at her, and it
almost looked like he wouldn’t respond.  Then, reluctantly, he growled, “You
mean aside from not being in the Third Lands?”

Blaze nodded.

“Power,” Jack said.  “As much
power as they can get their hands on.”

“What about a magic feather?”
Blaze asked.

Jack’s eyes went wide.  “Oh
hell
no.  The
last
thing I’m gonna do is give Amber a dread unicorn’s horn
and
a magic feather.  That’s just about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.  Don’t
you even
think
about it.”

“Would the Third-Landers
recognize it?” Blaze demanded.  “If they all got a good look?”

A rattling growl started deep in
Jack’s chest.  “I said no.”

“But…” Blaze started.

Jack spun on her, and when he
did, his face was a nightmarish mass of fangs and fur.  “
No
.”  So
vehement was the fury in his eyes that Blaze decided to abandon that particular
idea.

“Okay,” she said.  “We’ll leave
the feather where it is.”  Blaze glanced up at the Sleeping Lady with a twinge
of regret.  “I have another idea.”

“Stuff it,” Jack said.  “I don’t
want anything to do with it.”  He tried to turn and scoot away again.

Blaze yanked him back and shoved
the block of birch under his nose.  “Listen here, you ornery little
weasel
. 
You are going to help me
fix
this, or I’m going to leave you out here to
wiggle your toes while I go take a high-powered rifle and stake out a spot
across the damn river from the werewolf camp and shoot them until they figure
out where I am and eat me.  You
get
me?”

Jack laughed.  “You’d never be
able to pull the trigger.”

“I pulled the trigger on
you
,”
Blaze growled, shaking the firewood, “when you tried to eat me, and again on
those werewolves Amber brought with her the night they gutted you.  Now are you
going to
listen
to my idea or am I going to have to take a
skillsaw
to that ramp you made, install a
deadbolt
on the bathroom about
six
feet high
, and run over your chair with my
bulldozer
?”

Jack eyed the block of wood as it
hovered near his face with a chagrined wince.  “Uh.  Sure, Boss.  What’s your
idea?”

Blaze lowered the block of wood. 
“I want that fire extinguishing system I brought out installed in the lodge.”

Jack snorted.  “And I want my
legs to work again.”

She raised a brow, then went to
get her high-powered rifle.

“Now hold on a minute, missy.” 
Jack grabbed her by the pant leg as she passed his chair, dragging her up
short.  Once his chair stopped rolling, he released her jeans to glare up at
her.  “You spent six hundred thousand of your ‘hard-earned’ dollars on this
place.  You sure you wanna go burn it down?”

Blaze grinned down at him.  “Wouldn’t
need a fire extinguisher if I was planning on doing that, now would I?”

Jack got all squinty-eyed and
wrinkled his nose as if he smelled something nasty.  “I’m not sure I like where
this is going.”

Blaze glanced back at the yard
where she had buried her silver bullion.  “You know how to make colloidal silver,
Jack?”

“
Bullshit!
” Jack cried,
backing his chair away from her.  He pointed a taloned finger at her,
snarling.  “I
knew
I wasn’t gonna like this.  You bossy damned Yeti,
fine
,
go get a gun and plunk away at wolves until they come eviscerate you.   I’m gonna
stay right damned here.”

Leaning over the wereverine’s
chair, Blaze said, “Listen.  My mother was a health nut.  Thought colloidal
silver was like the Elixir of Life or something like that, but even with as
much money as she had, she didn’t want to go buy the stuff for twenty bucks a
bottle.  So she had Dad make it in the shop, by the gallon.”

“I said I don’t wanna talk about
silver,” Jack growled.

“I’m telling you we can
make
it,” Blaze insisted.  “I have the silver wire.  Drop it in a glass jar of water,
hook a car battery to it, and voila!  An hour later you’ve got colloidal
silver.”

“A fat lot of good that does us,”
Jack muttered.  Reluctantly, he added, “If we’re gonna talk silver, we should
be talking silver nitrate or silver bullets.  Colloidal’s like, what, a drop of
silver to a gallon of water?” 

Blaze grinned.  “There’s about
ten parts per million, on the low end.  Can get it higher, if you do it right.”

Jack blinked at her.  “Ten parts
per
million
?  Are you
crazy
?”  He snorted.  “That’s like dunking
‘em in itching cream.  All it’ll do is piss ‘em off.”

Blaze nodded, smiling. 
“Exactly.”

The wereverine stared at her for
a long moment before saying, “Anything you want to
add
to that, sister,
or are we planning on letting them
itch
themselves to death?”

When he saw that she planned on
letting them do just that, the wereverine threw back his head and cackled. 
“Just go,” he said between spasms, gesturing at the lodge.  “You big bumbling city-slicker
brat.  You’re gonna get yourself sputched anyway.  At least the wolves’ll get a
couple day’s meal out of your huge carcass.”

Blaze shrugged, went inside,
found her rifles and ammo still safely where she had stashed them on the second
floor, and came back with them strapped over her shoulder.  Jack was where she
had left him, bristling with fur and teeth.  She paused thoughtfully.  “You
think I should bring food?  Think I’ll survive that long?”

Jack narrowed his eyes, but said
nothing.

Blaze sighed and resettled the
rifle over her shoulder.  “Probably not.  I’ll see you later, Jack.”  She
started walking down the path towards the lake.

Jack hunched in his chair and watched
in silence until she vanished around the shop.  Blaze kept going, though she
was beginning to get worried he was simply going to let her wander off to die
when she heard a distant shout of, “Get your Clydesdale ass back here and find
me a damn wrench!”

Blaze grinned and went back. 

Over the course of the next two
days, she was Jack’s arms and legs as together they installed her state-of-the-art
sprinkler system, which had been part of the bank’s requirement for the loan.

“There,” Jack growled, when it
was finished, “Now you can set your house on fire—or burn the toast—and it’ll
set this baby off.”  He tapped the sprinkler system and frowned up at her.  “We
might as well kiss our asses goodbye, you know.”

“Whatever,” Blaze said.  “Help me
board up the windows.”

Jack scowled.  “Why?  We going
somewhere?”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, “Back to
Anchorage.”

Immediately, the wereverine
stiffened.  “No.  I ain’t goin’ anywhere near that cesspool.  Huh-uh.  I’ll
stay right here and hold down the fort.”  He jammed a finger towards the
floorboards under his chair, twitching a leg with the vehemence behind his
words.

“Leg moved,” Blaze noted.

Narrowing his eyes but without
taking his gaze off of her, Jack muttered, “I saw.”

Blaze shrugged.  “The point is
moot.  I already chartered the plane,” Blaze said.  “During your last bath.  We
leave tomorrow at noon.”

“You already chartered the
plane
?”
Jack demanded.  “I’m not going anywhere!”

The way he sounded like he was
panicking made Blaze squint at him.  “You’ve never been on board a plane
before, have you?”

Jack flushed red.  “I prefer good
ol’ Gaia.  Screw flying.”

“You’ve never
flown
before, have you?” Blaze cried, gleeful.  “And you call
me
‘out of touch
with reality.’”

“Last thing I flew,” Jack
growled, “Was a dragon as it pinwheeled into the ground after a void-titan
knocked it out cold.  I would like to avoid a repeat experience.”

Blaze opened her mouth to again
ask him about dragons, then realized he was diverting her attention from the
subject at hand.  “Don’t change the subject.  We’re going flying.  The point is
moot.”

The wereverine sprouted fangs and
slitty green eyes.  “The point isn’t moot if I start taking pot-shots at the
plane when it comes to take me away,” Jack snarled, a big hand gripping the
Desert Eagle on his hip. 

…Or when he starts clawing up
the insides of the cockpit because we hit a little turbulence,
Blaze
thought, with a wince.