Alaskan Fire (60 page)

“You are taking a yak home with
you,” she said, ignoring Jack, giving Nicolai an appraising look.  “You
can
carry a yak, right?”

“Those are
my
yaks!” Jack
snapped, irritation surging across the link.  Then, when Blaze whipped around
to glare at him, he lowered his face to the pile of bones under his chin and
muttered, “Don’t see why you’re giving stuff away, anyway.”

“Because,” Blaze gritted, “as you
keep pointing out, we’re getting
overrun
.  He can take some of it off
our hands to feed his kids and everybody’s happy.”

Nicolai watched the exchange,
nervously wringing his hat in his hands as his gaze flickered between them.  “Look,
I don’t want to cause problems,” he began tentatively.

But Jack was already getting out
of his chair, a thoughtful look on his face.  “You like chicken, Nick?”

Blaze frowned.  “I said a yak.”

“Oh, he can have that, too,” Jack
said, going into the kitchen.  He came back with a burlap potato-bag from the
pantry.  “He’s also taking some of them damn fowl with him.  We got too many
eggs, and those damn crowers are keeping me up at night.”

Blaze winced, not really looking
forward to the wereverine thinning out her flock, but realized it was as good a
compromise as she was going to get from Jack.

In the end, she watched the
wereverine shove a good twenty headless, still-thrashing birds into the sack
and shove it at their neighbor.  “Come back for more
any
time,” Jack
said, grinning and showing teeth.  “With my
blessings,
pal.”

Then she and Jack stood together
on the back lawn, watching the man drag the yak off through the woods by a
single fist on its horns, the sack of chickens hung over his wide shoulder.

“So what was he?” Blaze asked,
once he’d disappeared amongst the birch.

Jack shrugged, turning back to
the lodge.  “Smelled like big cat.”

Blaze felt goosebumps crawl down
her spine.  “What, like
Siberian tiger
big cat?”

He gave her an irritated look. 
“Now don’t go all gooey-eyed on me.  All those fools and their cat-fetishes.” 
He snorted.  “They’re just haughty, arrogant, stuck-up, self-centered
assholes.”

“Ah.  And you are so much
better.”

“Uh-huh,” he agreed, “
So
much—”  Then he caught her sarcasm and he narrowed his eyes.  “I’ll be upstairs
doing dishes.”

Chuckling, Blaze followed, and,
careful to avoid the huge grease-smear and the snow-machine engine, sat down at
the bar with her notebook to scrawl out his next set of practice-words while
Jack cleaned up after dinner.

“Probably a good thing,” Jack
muttered, wiping down the last of the plates.

“Huh?” Blaze said, glancing up,
having been thoroughly concentrating on his latest series of ‘eat’ words.

“That you didn’t let me kill
him,” Jack said, matter-of-factly.  “I guess we might as well share.  No harm
in it.”  The way he said it was grudging, like every word was wrenched from his
chest quite unwillingly on his part.

“You’re right,” Blaze said,
returning her attention to the worksheet she was creating.  “And if you really
want to make that stand you were talking about, I think the first step is to
make some
friends
, instead of running everybody off who sets your
hackles up.”

Jack wrinkled his nose, but
didn’t argue.  He tossed the drying-rag aside—he still wore his swords while
doing dishes, Blaze noted—and said, “Massage?”

Blaze grinned and handed him his
next writing assignment over the counter.  “Sounds superb.”

Five mornings later, as Spring
was hitting with a vengeance, rotting the ice on the river and making huge
patches of mud on the snow-machine trails, Blaze awoke to the sound of goats
bleating.

A little note beside her head,
written in painstaking, childlike script, said, “IM AWF TO CHEK MAI PLAS.  BAK
IN A CUPPL OURS.”

Feeling a little thrill at the
note, overjoyed with Jack’s progress, Blaze was nonetheless stunned that he
would leave her alone.  He hadn’t left her out of his sight for
months
. 
And, without his presence nearby, without that flood of feeling that was
Jack
hovering at the edge of her awareness, she also felt
alone
for the first
time in months.  It was a bit startling, and more than a little unnerving.  She
wondered why he hadn’t just waited for her to wake up.

Her mind chewing on this, she didn’t
catch the odd silence of the house around her until she got out of bed.  The
furnace, she realized, wasn’t pumping hot water, which in turn wasn’t making
the comforting low ebb of flowing water under her feet and over her head. 
Neither was there a fire crackling in the woodstove outside her room.  Further,
the lodge was cooler than normal, almost chilly.

“Jack?” Blaze called, frowning
out at the empty hall.  It was early morning and no lights were on, but the sun
was already illuminating the place like mid-day in December.  She guessed it
was probably around 7:00am.

She felt a rush of irritation at
the wereverine, running off to do errands in the middle of the night, leaving
her
alone
.  She still hadn’t gotten over that.  After his constant
presence all winter, it was almost…creepy.

Well, at least he didn’t howl at
the moon.  Sighing, Blaze pulled some pants on and found her boots.  She
guessed he’d probably walked, considering that the four-wheelers were still
stowed in the shed for winter, and the snow was just the right slushy-wet
consistency to get a snow-machine stuck for
good
.  Judging the distance
between here and Jack’s—at least a mile, maybe two—and the rough, soggy terrain
in the interim, she realized he was probably doing some manly Spare The Woman
The Wet Walk Through The Woods routine.

It actually made her
disappointed.  She really could have used the walk, and she
loved
sharing the outdoors with Jack.  Walking with him, feeling his protective
presence, trusting him to keep her safe, was almost like some deep, instinctual
communion, something that went all the way back to humanity’s humble beginnings. 

Besides, she was sadly out of
shape.  Already, winter flab made a sort of pooch at her stomach, and for a
woman known as ‘Flagpole’ for most of her school years, it was definitely time
to start getting active again.  The Alaskan Bush, she had quickly discovered
upon arrival, did not have a conveniently-located, keycard-operated, 24-hour
gym.  Instead, its weight set was seemingly-never-ending loads of firewood—cut,
split, and stacked—and its treadmills were navigating the woods, rivers, and
trails on the thousand little errands necessary each day just to survive.

Unfortunately for Blaze, most of
that
took place in the summer.  Winter, in Alaska, was generally not very active. 
Aside from the lunatics who liked to get helo-dropped atop mountain peaks to
snowboard to the valley below—and hopefully not trigger an avalanche along the
way—most people stayed inside their homes and thought of spring.

Blaze went upstairs and got the
coffee-pot brewing, then tugged her coat on and went to feed the fire, that
nagging sense of being
alone
making the little hairs on the back of her
neck prickle.  Yes, she was definitely going to have to have a talk with him
about this.  Next time, he would
wait
for her, dammit.

As soon as she opened the furnace
in the shop, Blaze paused.  The coals had gone out.  Which meant Jack hadn’t
added wood all night.  She frowned, knowing that the wereverine maybe slept
two, possibly as many as three hours throughout the time she was asleep. 
Puzzled, she glanced out the shop door to the yard beyond.  The goats were
milling in a tight cluster up against the barn, and the yaks were nowhere to be
seen.

It was the brown footprints
heading out of the greenhouse, however, that made her heart pound.

Dirt.  Lots of it.  Piled up
against the windows from the inside.

Oh no,
Blaze thought,
dropping the firewood, swallowing down a bolt of terror.  She spun and ran for
the back door—

—But a blonde woman in designer
shorts and a tank top stepped from behind the firewood stacks, blocking her
exit from the shop.

Amber sneered, half of her
beautiful face showing bone through stinking, black flesh.  “Hello, little
bird.”

Blaze’s first thought was,
Oh
God, Jack…

Terror making it hard to breathe,
Blaze took a step backwards, her blood becoming molten iron flowing through her
veins.  “What did you do with Jack?” she whispered, her eyes dropping to the
dagger on Amber’s hip.  She recognized the smooth ebony pommel.

Amber cocked her head, looking
patronizing.  “The cripple?  Oh, you needn’t worry yourself with him, little
girl.”  From her shirt, she drew a long, wispy fluff of molten sunfire.  “Step
out into the yard with me,” the werewolf commanded, stroking the feather. 
“Now.”

Eyes on the feather, her heart a
concussive blast of coals in her chest, Blaze took a step backwards, angling
for the door on the opposite end of the shop.

Amber chuckled.  “Oh?  Pretty
birdy thinks she’s gonna fly away?”  She stopped stroking the feather and
pinched a single golden strand between her fingers.  “Step out here.  Now.  I
have some friends that would like to meet you.”

Blaze’s eyes caught on the
hiding-place of one of the many silver-filled guns that Jack had stowed around
the place.  She lunged for it, throwing the rags aside, reaching for the weapon. 
She was in the process of pulling the shotgun from the rack when a sudden,
fiery blast of agony hit her like a freight-train.

Screaming, both Blaze and the gun
hit the floor in a clatter of muscle and steel.

“Yep, that’s the bird,” a dispassionate
male voice said, from outside.  He seemed to almost have a Spanish or an
Italian accent.  “Definitely still linked.”

Trembling, Blaze pushed herself
up from the floor, her entire being a pounding wave of throbbing hurt. 
“Please,” Blaze gasped, just trying to regain her bearings against the wracking
pain.  “I never hurt anybody.  I just want to be left alone.”

“Frankly,” the man with the
Latin-ish accent said, “We don’t care what you want, demon.”  Two black shapes
moved into the shop with her as men—
in combat gear
, Blaze realized, horrified—came
to either side of her and each grabbed her roughly under an arm with a
black-gloved hand.

“Bring her out here in the
light,” Amber commanded.  “I’ll get her to tell us where the wereverine is fast
enough.”

“Careful about giving orders,
demon
,”
the man beside Blaze said.  “We came here today to fight the
moon-cursed
,
regardless of Zenaida’s
pardon
for you.”  He said the words with a
disgusted twist of disdain.  “Wolf, wolverine…  I don’t see much difference if
you just disappear along with him.  So watch yourself.”  But he nonetheless yanked
Blaze to her feet and dragged her outside.  More men bent to help, hauling
Blaze painfully across the gravel and wood-chips and out into the still-frozen
slush of the backyard.  Nearby, she heard a strangely-muted, whuffling
thump,
thump, thump
of a helicopter, and as she numbly tried to push herself to a
kneeling position, she saw a sleek black shape slide into view over the
treeline, as more men in black rappelled to the ground on wriggling, snakelike
ropes.

Suddenly, a hand on Blaze’s chin
yanked her head back around, until she was looking directly into Amber’s
blue-white eyes.  “So where’s the weasel?” Amber asked, her honeyed voice
filled with poison.  “They want him, too.”

“The bird’s our primary target,”
the first man in black said, sounding annoyed.  He pulled out a radio and said
into it, “Put down on the front lawn.  Bird is in custody.”

“We’re
not
letting him get
away.  That was the deal.”  Amber sprouted fur and fang in a snarl and twisted
back to Blaze.  Her slitted eyes drawing close to Blaze’s, she said, “I want
Jack.  You tell me where he is, my delicate little birdy, and I won’t hurt you
anymore.”

“The weasel can wait,” another
man in paramilitary black growled.  “This has already taken longer than it
should have.  We should be in the
air
already.”  He was reaching down,
fitting something spiky around Blaze’s neck…

Jack’s alive,
Blaze
thought, with a surge of hope.  Then she felt the metal click as something
snapped into place, and her neck started to burn where the little prickles
touched her skin.  Eyes widening, she automatically reached up to pull it off,
but only succeeded in driving the pinpricks deeper into her neck.

Gasping, she released the metal
band, her blood roaring through her ears in a furnace, now, as the pinpricks
burned like liquid nitrogen where they touched her skin.

“In case you get any ideas about
flame-throwing,” Amber said sweetly, gesturing to the thing around her neck.

“What is it?” Blaze whimpered, as
the cold seemed to seep outward, throbbing like a ice-cream headache.

“Gold,” Amber said, still
smiling.  “Can’t do your little birdy-thing if you are wearing gold.”  She
started petting the feather again.  “Where’s Jack?”

“I don’t know,” Blaze lied,
reaching up to touch the throbbing metal band around her neck.  “Please, this
hurts.”  The helicopter had moved to land in the front yard, and she heard the
thump,
thump, thump
of the rotor blades rattling the windows of the lodge.

“Oh?” Amber said.  “I was sure
this would hurt a lot more.”  She plucked another filament from the feather.

Blaze doubled over, emptying her
lungs in a scream as an arc of fire seemed to lance down her spine, from her
scalp to her toes.  Nothing in her life could rival the kind of pain that was
coursing through her body, ripping hot coals through her being, tearing the
very energy from her limbs, leaving her sobbing and trembling and spent on the
ground.

“Damn it, demon,” the man in
black snapped.  “Give me that fucking feather.”

Amber ignored him completely, her
gaze riveted to Blaze.  “Tell me where to find the weasel!” Amber snapped, impatience
burning in her blue eyes. 

“I don’t know where he is!” Blaze
screamed, from a fetal position on her side.  With the remnants of the agony
still throbbing through every vein, the icy pinpricks of the collar didn’t even
register on her awareness.  Blaze squeezed her eyes shut against tears, bawling
onto the frozen ground beneath her face.

Amber’s slitted eyes narrowed and
Blaze saw insanity, there, as the werewolf reached for another filament.

Beside her, the man snarled and
drew his pistol, aiming it for Amber’s head.  “Fucking demons.  I’ll just get
rid of you now and deal with Zenaida lat—”

A sudden distant gunshot
ricocheted off of the surrounding birch trees, followed by another.  Immediately,
the man lowered the gun and put the radio to his lips and shouted, “Was that
us?  Who fired, who
fired
?” as he and several other soldiers bolted for
the front of the lodge.  Seeing them go, Amber chuckled and shifted into a half-form,
saliva dripping from her fangs.  “Well.  Looks like they decided to give us
some time alone, there, birdy,” she chuckled, squatting beside Blaze.  The
malicious way the woman said it left no question—Amber planned to pluck the
feather clean.

Using every ounce of strength
that she still possessed, Blaze swiped tears from her face with a hand and
slapped her palm to the naked skin of Amber’s shorts-clad leg.

The werewolf jerked back,
suddenly, frowning down at her leg in total incomprehension, then gasping,
dropped the feather, her fur and fang sucking back into her small human form as
if the demon had been yanked from her body and cast back to the Third Realm. 
Suddenly fully human, Amber fell into a crouch and reached for the feather
again, teeth gritted in a low, agonized moan.

Taking a moment to collect them
all
,
Blaze slapped more tears to the woman’s arm, and Amber’s eyes went wide in an
open-mouthed scream.  She hit the ground sideways, all of her muscles seemingly
locking into place.  As her legs started to thrash on the frozen ground,
Amber’s hand went to her side and she caught the pommel of the ebony dagger and
pulled it from its sheathe.

Blaze saw the black tip oozing
voidlike fog against the ground and knew she was looking at her own death in
the twisted curl of horn.  Amber was again reaching for the feather, hands
fisted, panting, her face flushed and sweaty.

While every ounce of her wanted
to crawl away from the dread blade and lock herself in the shop, Blaze found
herself reaching for the feather, instead.  Her trembling fingers found it just
before Amber’s and she dragged it out of the way, holding it out of the
werewolf’s reach.

Her body too weak from Amber’s
torments to get up and run, Blaze held the feather for a terrified moment, knowing
that she had to get it away from the werewolf if she wanted to survive.  She
scooted backwards with pain-sapped legs, until her back was touching what was
left of the year’s firewood.

“Thank you, bitch,” Amber chuckled,
getting awkwardly to her feet.  Her body was still spasming, and she looked
like she was in great pain, but the hatred and insanity in her eyes was like a
demonic light animating a doll.  The horrible wound on her face, Blaze noticed,
was closing, the blackness fading, a golden light drawing skin over the
gleaming white bone.  “I needed that.”