Alaskan Fire (63 page)

* * *

As dawn rolled over the pretty
blue waters of the foreign lake, Blaze breathed a horrible sob of relief when
the first rays touched her body and she found she could spread her wings
again.  Excitement once more bubbling up from within, she leapt into the air to
again seek out the sun, setting more trees on fire in her passing.  She pounded
upwards, gleeful, spiraling into the deepest blue of the sky, feeling the
brilliant rays of sunlight dancing all around her, flitting upon the ground in
perfect harmony—

Misery.

It was like a cold punch to her
gut, making her fires flicker, her wingbeats stumble.  Blaze gasped at the
horrible feeling in her chest, unable to place where it could be coming from
when she was so
happy
, so
free…

And then, in one horrible rush of
understanding over the ecstasy of power, Blaze remembered. 
Jack
.  She
had
left
him.  Even then, when she concentrated, she could feel the
despair on his end, the hopelessness leaking down the link, curdling in her gut,
hollowing out her heart.

Oh God, Jack…
Blaze
thought, guilt sinking like a stone in her stomach.  She spun, then, and with
more speed than a
jet
, she arced back across the sky, flame billowing
behind her like the tail of a comet, plummeting across the sapphire planet, towards
the cluster of green roofs and the source of that link, growing stronger with
every moment, the despair growing into anguish, desolation, despondency so powerful
she felt it hard to fly those last few feet towards him.

Her shift back to human occurred
naturally, not really a conscious push, but more of an idea that took form,
borne of desire.  Then she was running, surging towards the greenhouse, where
she could
feel
him, a welling of such grief that she was choking back
tears.

“Jack!” she cried, flinging the
door open.

The wereverine was seated on the
bench, the tip of the dread horn resting against the muscle of his chest.  He
jerked and blinked up at her, a wash of startlement flooding the link.

“Oh my God, Jack!”  Panic
powering her, now, Blaze rushed up, grabbed the tip of the dread horn and
wrenched it from his hands.  Then, as he stared at her in open shock, she took an
end of the dagger in either hand and snapped it over her knee.  Even as the
blackness of the horn was fading, leaving a pearly white luminescence in its
wake, she focused everything she had on the broken blade, dissolving it into
dust.  “You fucking
asshole
!” she blurted, in rage borne of terror.  Gasping
in relief and shame and
horror
, Blaze threw the fistful of ashes aside
and dropped into Jack’s embrace, wrapping her arms around the wereverine’s
thick neck, her breasts tight against his chest.

“I’m here,” she whimpered.  “I’m
so sorry, Jack.”

She knelt in front of him for
several minutes before she felt his hands tentatively reach up and touch her
hair.  Over the mating connection, she felt
awe
.  “Pretty,” Jack
whispered.  She heard his voice catch in a sob.

Blinking back tears, Blaze pulled
back far enough to see what he was talking about.  He held a wisp of her hair,
floating like liquid sunlight in the air around her, staring at it dumbstruck. 
Then, slowly, he turned to face her, and Blaze saw the tears in his eyes, felt
the disbelief as if it were her own.  “Why?” he asked, softly. 

“Because it was
evil
,” she
growled, preparing for a fight.  She knew as she was doing it that Jack would take
offense to losing such a valuable treasure, but at this point, she didn’t care. 
“It caused too many problems.  I wasn’t going to have that disgusting thing on
my land, ever again.” 
And because you almost rammed it into your chest, you
stupid bastard,
she thought.

“I wasn’t talking about…” the
wereverine swallowed, then wiped his face with a sleeve, peering back at her
with a confused emerald gaze.  “
Your
land?”

“
My
land,” Blaze
repeated.  “I’ve got a safety-deposit box that says so.”

For a long time, the wereverine
simply stared back at her, something between disbelief, shock, and deep,
unending love and gratitude washing over her from him.  Then, almost
tentatively, he said, “I don’t really see how a slip of paper does you much
good out here, tootz.”  

Blaze smiled at him, reveling in
his love, his heartbeat.  “I’m sure we can work something out.”

That slow, predatory smile spread
over Jack’s face, and he eased slowly out of the bench, pulling her up with
him.  “I think we got something else to work out, first.”  And then he
flung
her over his shoulder and stalked off to the Sleeping Lady, and Blaze found out
what it was
really
like to get taken by a wereverine.

That night, they retreated to the
front porch to watch the sky, wrapped in a blanket.  Blaze was soaking up
Jack’s presence, idly watching her glowing wisps of hair burn against the springtime
half-light as they floated around her face, when the wereverine spoke.

“So,” Jack said, shifting where
he held her, “What the hell were they thinking?”

Blaze glanced up at his face,
confused.  “Who?”

“Amber,” Jack growled.  “Why’d
they
stab
you with it?  They could’ve used it to hold you, make you sing
like a freakin’ canary for the rest of your damned life.”

“I took it from Amber and stabbed
myself,” Blaze said, cuddling into his arms. 

Jack took a moment to digest
that.  “Hope ya got a spare set of contacts,” he said gruffly.  “‘Cause you
burned the last set.”

She grinned up at him.  “Yeah,
well, you look funny bald.”

“Then next time,” Jack muttered
against her ear, “maybe you’d like to avoid setting me on fire.”

Next time.
  Blaze considered
that.  “So where are we gonna go now?”

“Excuse me?” Jack asked.

She gestured to the lodge, and
the place where the helicopter had landed in the front yard.  “They found me.”

“Good for them,” Jack said. 
“Remind me to send condolences to their kinfolk.”

Blaze pulled away a bit, frowning
up at him.  “You don’t think they’ll be back?  Isn’t that a bit…”  She sought
out a way to put it delicately, so as not to offend the wereverine’s prickly
pride, “…overly optimistic?”  She frowned, trying to remember.  “Aside from
Amber, I only killed two of them.”  She couldn’t
remember
the helicopter
taking off, but it was no longer in the
yard
, so she knew they were in
trouble.

“Oh, they might,” Jack agreed.  “But
I sputched them all and buried their chopper.  Might make the others think
twice.” 

“You
buried
the
chopper
?”
Blaze cried, stunned.  She glanced back at the forest, and suddenly, the
bulldozer on that flat new piece of pasture had a more sinister purpose.  She
tried not to think of how many dead people were now buried on her land, feeding
her trees.

He gave her a vicious smile.  “‘Sides. 
They get too many ideas, I might start mounting heads on the roof, so they get
a good look at their predecessors before they decide to land.  This is
my
land, and I’m gonna fight for it.”

Blaze grimaced.  “I don’t think
so.”  Then something troubling occurred to her.  “Why were you gone so long? 
On your trip to your place?”

Jack shrugged.  “Kept catching a
whiff of something, here and there, so I decided I needed to get out of sight. 
Turns out, they were sneaking up for an ambush.”

Blaze placed the flat of her hand
against his chest and pushed him back until she could look directly into his
face.  “You used me as
bait
?”

“I had things under control,
honey.”  And the pride that flowed off of him at that point made her realize
that he did, in fact, think that he’d had the entire situation under control,
from Ground Zero.

“Men in
combat gear
dropped from the
sky
and
assaulted me
,” Blaze cried, feeling the
fire in her veins glowing a little hotter.

“All part of the plan,” Jack
said.  “I had to wait for the helicopter.  Knew they were gonna try to pack you
out of here somehow, but didn’t wanna play all my cards until they put theirs
on the table.”  He shrugged.  “Once they landed, I just gutted them.  Ripped up
the inside of the chopper getting at the pilot.  Bent a couple rotor blades.  Took
out the rest on my way around to find you.”

He used her as bait.  The
bastard.
 
Narrowing her eyes, she said, “And what would you have done when Amber decided
to stab you?”

Jack snorted.  “This ol’
moon-kissed blacksmith didn’t get old by being stupid.  I was gonna shoot her. 
From a distance.  Had a rifle all set up in the woods, just waitin.  Decided
maybe you ain’t had such a bad idea in that respect, after all—one poke of a
dread horn was enough, thank you.”  Then he kissed her forehead and rumbled, “But
then I saw Mumbo and Jumbo kinda explode like the bags on a vacuum-cleaner and
decided maybe toting a gun through the woods at that point wasn’t such a hot
idea.”

Blaze frowned, trying to
remember.  “Vacuum cleaner bags?”

Jack peered at her.  “The two
blokes who shot you?”

She vaguely remembered the light
glinting off of metal as it sped through the air before melting into her body. 
“Uh…”  She swallowed, looking down at her naked body.  “I was
shot
?”  Then
something more pressing occurred to her, remembering the brown leaves of the
greenhouse.  “The feather…” she managed.  “It killed everything when they dug
it out?”

“No,” Jack said, “Now that I
think about it, I’d imagine
you
did that, when you were making people
explode like little puff-balls.”  He pushed a glowing strand of hair that had
floated into his face back and tucked it down around her ear.  “It’s something
you birds can do, if you get desperate.  Whatever magic you put into the land,
you can take it back out and use it, if you need to.”

Blaze remembered how the world
had dimmed as she’d fought the necromancy of the dagger, remembered the brown,
wilted plants in the greenhouse, then swallowed.  “Are my trees dead?”

“Uh,” Jack said, wincing.  “Well,
let me put it to you this way, tootz.  I think it’s gonna be a couple months
until you’re eating mangoes again.”

But when she concentrated, Blaze
could feel the tremulous threads of life, tentatively working their way back up
the roots snuggled within the earth.  “It’ll be sooner than that,” she said.

Jack cleared his throat awkwardly. 
“So…uh…talking about
eating
, I was kinda thinkin’ ‘bout pork, though I
wouldn’t be too opposed to taking a yak to the front firepit and spit-roasting
it.  Expended a lot of energy ripping heads off yesterday.  Figured your pet
wereverine should get a treat, right?”  He sounded almost…hopeful.

He’s asking permission to eat
one of my yaks,
Blaze thought, a little stunned.  Since when did the crabby
little asshole ask permission to do
anything
?  She peered at him until
he started to fidget under her stare.  Finally, Blaze said, “You’re afraid I’m
gonna set you on fire.”

“You already did it once,” Jack
growled, on a wave of embarrassment.  Then, quickly, “And I’m not afraid of
anything.  Just bein’ polite.”  He sniffed and glanced over at the bulldozer as
if he found the machine infinitely more interesting than her face.  “Guess I
could go eat a Thanksgiving or two.  Maybe a Christmas.  Got enough of the
bloody things running around.”

“Yak sounds great,” Blaze said,
not really wanting to see what ‘or two’ meant, in Wereverine.  She was pretty
sure, in his current state, he could decimate what was left of her flock in a
matter of hours.  “You sputch all my chickens and you’re gonna find out what
it’s like to be dominated by an Amazon.”

Jack grinned down at her, and she
felt another rush of wereverine happiness swallow her in a warm embrace.  He
bent down and kissed her, long and hard, and then, just when Blaze’s lungs were
screaming for air, he released her and pecked her forehead.  “Thanks for coming
back, tootz.” 

Breakup came and went, and by the
time Blaze and Jack had to go to town to make her first loan payment scheduled
for April 26
^th
, the neighbors were already commenting about how the
snow seemed to be melting faster this year, and how the grass was already starting
to pop up under the trees and along the south face of buildings.  For her part,
Blaze would have
preferred
to go to town herself, simply due to the fact
that she didn’t think the wereverine had enough experience with bureaucracy not
to go slitty-eyed and furry on a bank teller, but Jack was absolutely adamant
in going with her.  Wearing chainmail.  And swords.  And an
axe
.  And
two
Desert Eagles.  He
would
be staying in the car.

At least he looks the part,
Blaze thought, considering her far-future plans of a renaissance resort, once
they had the Sleeping Lady making money in other areas.

It was the morning of April 22
^nd
,
and Blaze was at the edge of Lake Ebony, leaning against the four-wheeler at
with Jack, waiting for Bruce Rogers to arrive to fly them to Willow, trying not
to bite down the urge to
once again
ask Jack to at least leave the
swords behind.  Finally, though, the pressure became inescapable.  After
scuffing her boot and twiddling her thumbs and fidgeting with her shirt, she
blurted, “What’s an Alaska State Trooper gonna think, flying down the road,
look over, and see this guy bristling with antique weaponry?”

“Should I add another katana?”
Jack said, over crossed arms.  She felt his amusement and knew he’d been
watching her…and had absolutely no sympathy for her point of view.  At current
count, she saw six swords, a massive greenish axe, a dozen daggers, a couple
hatchets
… 
He’d added the axe after she had complained the first time, the hatchets when
she complained the second.

“I can’t
begin
to describe
to you how unnecessary that all is,” Blaze gritted.  “You’re gonna be a walking
neon sign that says, ‘I’m a freak, stare at me.’”

“I’ve got another scimitar, too.” 
He patted the curved scabbard at his hip.

Blaze twitched and tore her eyes
away from the hairy medieval weapons-rack and peered out at the lake.  “Swans
are back,” she growled, finding the clusters of white dots out against the far
shore.

“Might have to cook us up one of
those, when we get back,” Jack said.

“Swans are
protected
,” Blaze
repeated, for the thousandth time.  Jack, who seemed to have a penchant for
swan, simply did not seem to understand the concept behind the Migratory Bird Conservation
Act.  Conservation, to Jack, seemed to involve stuffing half a goat inside her
refrigerator, to save it for later.

“You’ll have to grow me some
swans.  I like swan.”

Considering that an adult swan
cost somewhere between five hundred to a thousand dollars,
before
the
four hundred dollars’-worth of shipping across the continent to Alaska, and considering
that Jack could probably eat four of them in a sitting, Blaze told him he could
wait.

Jack was doing an excellent job
of pouting about her ‘lack of culinary compassion’ when an ebony shape the size
of a very large dog slid out of the woods nearby and began approaching the two
of them at a wary stride.  Nearby, a much bigger, very
black
man
appeared, leaning against a tree near the boat dock, muscular arms crossed over
his chest, violet eyes watching the whole situation from afar.

“Oh shit,” Blaze whispered,
touching his arm.  “Jack.”  Seeing the wolf smoothly shift upwards into a tiny,
wretchedly-thin Arabic woman, she suddenly didn’t begrudge Jack his swords at
all.

“I’ll take care of this,
sweetie,” Jack growled, putting his hand on the hilt of a katana with that gut-deep
surge of fierce protective fire that Blaze had come to learn was
not
going
away, despite the fact that she had spent a morning growing wings and exploding
armed men like vacuum-cleaner bags.  And, in this case, Blaze was grateful for
that.  Bank tellers, Blaze could handle.  Angry werewolves and giant men who
vanished in a blink of an eye, she could not.

Jack stepped smoothly forward,
putting his body between Blaze and the approaching wolf.  They waited for the
tiny Arabic woman to get within speaking distance, then the little woman
stopped, a good twenty feet off, looking at Jack cautiously. 

“You’re on land that don’t belong
to you,” Jack said, in a low rumble.

Almost tentatively, the wolf
said, “‘Aqrab tells me the Fourth Lander awakened.”

“Don’t see how that’s any of your
business,” Jack offered. 

Kimber glanced back at the huge,
mostly-naked man looming in the woods behind her.  “My servant and I…  We’ve
discussed it at length.  We would like to stay and help you protect the
Fourth-Lander.”

Jack laughed.  “You mean you’re
starving and you noticed a bit of extra meat runnin’ around and you thought
we’d be stupid enough to throw you a bone.”  Jerking a thumb over his shoulder,
he said, “Take your slave, pack your shit, and hit the road,” Jack growled, “‘Fore
I decide to find out what you taste like, bitch.”

Courteous, lovable old Jack. 
Blaze wanted to strangle him.  Even as Kimber’s face was darkening in a mixture
of humiliation and fury, both her and her ‘slave’ turning to leave, Blaze
stepped in front of the wereverine and said, “Hold on.”

The werewolf hesitated, her back
to them.  Then, slowly, she turned back to face Blaze.

“You…want to stay?” Blaze said.

Kimber gave her an analyzing
look, then the Arabic woman shook her head and said, “It’s not to be.  If the
weasel is opposed to the idea, we don’t want to make the youngling
uncomfortable.”  She turned to go again.  In the trees, the black man vanished.

“
Fuck
the weasel for a
moment,” Blaze cried, stopping Kimber in her tracks, knowing that she was about
to disappear forever.  “You want to stay? 
Here
?”

“Of course they do,” Jack
snarled.  “
Look
at her.  Without her pack to help her hunt, the runt is
starving.  They’ve got a phoenix in the neighborhood, game is scarce, and she
thinks I’m gonna let her go hunting on my land.”

“It’s
my
land,” Blaze
said, without looking at him.  Tentatively, she said, “Your name is Kimber,
right?”

The wolf, who had been watching
the exchange with intelligent brown eyes, inclined her head slightly.

“You know how to make beds,
Kimber?”

“Oh
fuck
no!” Jack roared,
jumping between them again.  “You have three perfectly good candidates waiting
in town for their interviews.  I will
not
have a wolf in my house.”

“Good thing the Sleeping Lady
isn’t
your
house, then, isn’t it?” Blaze said, without taking her eyes
off the wolf.  To Kimber, she said, “The Sleeping Lady is mine.  I was just
about to fly to town to hire a helper or two for the summer.  Would you like me
to cancel the interviews?  I’d be happy to keep it local.”

The little woman licked her lips
and glanced at Jack, who was even then beginning to emanate a low,
chest-rattling snarl.  She saw the debate in the woman’s liquid brown eyes, the
desperation, the nervousness there.

“Jack,” Blaze said calmly,
“Remember the vacuum-cleaner bags.”

The wereverine’s growl cut off in
a strangled sound.  For a long moment, Jack glared at Blaze, then at Kimber,
then back at Blaze, and she felt fear, mixing with anxiety, mixing with that
hot, protective
need
in his gut.  Finally, he threw up his hands in
disgust.  “Okay, tootz.”  He was talking to Kimber.  “But if either you or your
slave so much as
touches
her, you and I are gonna go toe-to-toe, and I
fought plenty of magi in my life.  You’d die like the rest of ‘em.”

Kimber’s face twisted and her
eyes began to glow yellow.  “The moment I blithely take threats from a
man
is the moment I cut off my—”

“Just hold on!” Blaze cried,
getting between them again.  “Okay, Kimber.  I wanted to thank you for helping
me.  You saved my life back there, when I was too tired to move because I’d
just carried
Jack
through the
woods
.”  She said the last with a
pointed look at Jack before turning back to the wolf.  Blaze had an innate
people-sense, and she suddenly found herself
desperate
to help this
woman.  Something told her that there was something much deeper going on, some
inner working that had the little Arabic woman on the very brink.  She racked
her brain looking for something to offer her to smooth over Jack’s insult.  Knowing
the way the Third Lander in Jack seemed to be appeased with food, she blurted, “We
all know I’ve got lots of food.  You’re hungry?  I can make you something to
eat.”

She saw the twitch in the woman’s
face.  The pride.  The indecision.  The
need
.  Then the woman’s eyes
once more found Jack and her face twisted.  “I don’t need—”

“She’s starving,” a deep voice
boomed from the air beside her.  Blaze froze, seeing no one nearby, then gasped
and stumbled backwards when Jack snarled and shoved her out of the way just in
time for a huge, shimmery black shape to appear before them like a heat-wave,
glaring down at Jack.  “The weasel wasn’t far off,” the huge African man said,
his arms crossed over his chest as he peered unconcernedly down at Jack, who
had sprouted fangs and fur and had a rippling blade in his taloned hands, its
razor point aimed at the black man’s massive chest.  “My mistress is unable to
kill.” 

Jack suddenly stopped snarling. 
His head twisted to look at the woman, whose face reddened and she looked away,
hands fisted at her sides.  His brown and gold fur slipped back under his skin
and he straightened, blinking.  “Oh,” Jack said.  And, for the first time, he
looked speechless, glancing from the wolf to the big black Houdini and back.  “
Oh
.”
 He swallowed, hard, and Blaze saw sympathy in his face.

“I was cursed,” the woman muttered,
lowering her head to look at her feet.  “Long ago.”  Her eyes flickered towards
her huge companion before drifting away again.  “I would eat whatever you
deemed worthy to give me.”

Pausing to give the black man a
long look, Jack reluctantly slid the sword back into its sheath.  She felt a
wash of wariness from him, anxious and tingling, along with a distinct band of
dislike for the black man.  Dislike and…fear?

Buoyed by Jack’s anxiety, Blaze found
herself peering up at the huge African man nervously.  While Blaze knew she was
big, this man stood at seven feet, if he were an inch.  There was something
familiar
about him, too, something tingling at the back of her memory that prickled the
hairs on her neck and left her ill-at-ease…  “Uh…”  She licked her lips.  “Do I
know you?”

The man smiled slowly, showing
brilliant white teeth that contrasted sharply with the ebony of his face.  “You
know of my kind,” the man said, still grinning.  He almost sounded…shy?  “Or
you doubtless did, at one time.  My kinfolk rule the Fourth Lands, much as the
dragons rule the First.”

Fourth Lands.  Runt had said
something about that.  “Fey?” Blaze asked tentatively.

“Fey are Second Landers,” Kimber
said softly.  “He’s what’s called a ‘djinni.’  A flame-demon.”  She cocked her
head slightly, searching Blaze’s face, and added, “He hails from your
homeland.”

A
flame demon.
  And good
ol’ Jack had tried to pick a fight.  No
wonder
the wereverine was giving
him a wide berth.  Blaze swallowed, looking up at the man.  “Uh, okay.  Are you
hungry, too?”

The African man beamed at the
question.  “Actually, I am famished for a taste of home.”  For a paranoid
moment, Blaze thought he was going to do something horrible, like grow fangs
and chew on her head, but he and Kimber just stood there, casting nervous
glances at the wereverine, waiting.

Realizing that the three of them
were waiting for
her
to say something, Blaze cleared her throat.  “Uh,”
Blaze said, glancing up the four-wheeler trail, trying to decide if she had
time to stay another day or two before heading to the bank.  “I gotta make a
quick trip to town to buy groceries and do some banking.  Wanna come along? 
I’ll treat you to Subway or something.”

Immediately, Kimber flinched,
suspicion suddenly clear and tight on her face.

“My mistress will not fly in a
beast of
steel
,” the djinni snorted.  As if there were some better way
to fly. 

“Technically, it’s aluminum,”
Jack said.  But he was watching Kimber all-too-closely, now, and Blaze felt the
strange tingle of curiosity rolling down the link.

Kimber shot the black man a
glare.  “I’m sorry,” she gritted, returning her attention to Blaze, “I think I
made a mistake, coming to you.  We will leave now.  Our welfare is none of your
concern.”

“No, wait!” Blaze cried, digging
for her new phone.  “I’ll call Bruce.  Postpone my departure a couple days. 
Get you guys situated.”  She knew that, even if she by some miracle convinced
Jack to stay behind and ‘settle them in,’ she couldn’t leave the two of them
alone here with the wereverine while she went off to run errands in Anchorage. 
She might as well turn on all the burners on the propane stove, empty a few
drums of gas on the living-room floor, and stick a sock in the toaster to
smolder a little bit while she was gone.

Jack, for his part, only
grunted.  Some part of the conversation seemed to have made him relax a bit,
though he was still giving the djinni wary glances, and still kept his body
physically between Blaze and their visitors.

Kimber also seemed to settle just
a bit, and both the werewolf and the djinni watched her as she dialed the
number to Rogers’ Flying Service and rescheduled her flight for two days later.