Alaskan Fire (38 page)

On August 28
^th
, Blaze
was pulling her very first ripe tomato off of its vine, staring down at it in
flabbergasted awe, when Runt came running inside the greenhouse, wide-eyed,
hand clutched protectively around a growing bruise around his throat.  “The
demonkin is awake.  He’s asking for you.”

As if on cue, from the open lodge
door, she heard a loud roar of, “
Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaze
!”

He probably smelled the silver.  Blaze
unconcernedly began walking down the greenhouse aisles, checking on her
rabbits.  They had bred like, well, rabbits.  Even now, the cages were
overflowing with all of them, and it had only been three weeks since the
greenhouse had been constructed.

“Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaze!”
the wereverine roared again.  The Visqueen vibrated with the anger in his
voice.  Blaze opened a cage to change the water-dish.

Runt glanced over his shoulder
nervously.  “I shouldn’t be here.”  And then
poof
, the little bastard
was gone, leaving her to deal with the wereverine on her lonesome.

Blaze had been rehearsing for
this.  She knew the wereverine wasn’t going to take kindly to her use of
silver, so she’d taken great pains to place little pockets of silver
ammunition, silver nitrate, colloidal silver, and silver ingots wherever she
could think to stash them.  This time, she had no intention of going anywhere
unarmed.

The heavy weight of the Desert
Eagles bouncing against her hip giving her comfort—even then chambered with
alternating silver slugs and silver nitrate hollow-points—she continued
unhurriedly meandering through her greenhouse, listening to the wereverine
rant.

When something heavy went hurling
into a wall, however, Blaze paused at a poblano plant with a frown.  Sure
enough, she heard another roar, and something else went flying into another
room with a crash.

“Oh God damn it,” Blaze growled,
throwing aside the pepper and rushing to exit the greenhouse.

Inside, Jack was still lying in
bed, but both the heavy rough-hewn chair that Blaze had been using while
monitoring his condition and the rough wooden bench beside his head were both
scattered pieces down the hall.  He was in the process of lifting the
coat-rack, hefting it over his shoulder, aiming at the pile of broken furniture
down the hall.  “Blaaaaaaaaa—”

Blaze grabbed the coat-rack and
yanked it from his hands, surprised she could do so.

Jack turned, startled.  When he
moved, it was only with his upper body.  His legs and abdomen remained more or
less motionless.

“What the
hell
do you
want?” Blaze snapped, slamming the coat-rack down, well out of reach.

Jack sniffed, his eyes going to
the holster on her belt, but he surprised her by whining, “Food.  Please.” 
There was a feralness to his eyes that was disturbing, like he was on the very
edge of losing control.

And, if what Runt had told her
was true, that was not something that Blaze wanted to see.

“I can make you some eggs,” she
said.  “The hens started laying.”

Jack whimpered.  He collapsed
back to the bed, shaking.

“Not enough?” Blaze asked, more
than a little unnerved by the way his body seemed to be shrinking before her
eyes.

“The Unmentionable is waking up,”
Runt commented beside her.  “It’s been asleep for three weeks.  It’s hungry.”

Seeing Jack’s musculature shriveling
like a concentration camp victim starving on time-lapse video, Blaze dropped
her tomato and ran for the barn.  She hauled a goat to the back door, put a
Desert Eagle to its head, and was about to put a silver bullet in its brain
when Runt’s translucent blade flickered from its sheath and cut the animal
across the neck.

Blaze winced, realizing she had
been about to feed Jack silver nitrate.

She tucked her gun back into its
holster.  Then, picking up the limp, bleeding form, she carried it into the
room.

Jack’s body was fully changed,
his slitted eyes glowing an otherworldly emerald green.  As soon as he saw her,
he let out an animal snarl and his big claws started ripping chunks out of the
wall and floor as he tried to pull himself out of bed, towards her. 

Keeping her distance, not knowing
what else to do, Blaze threw the dead goat at him.

The wereverine dismembered it,
ate it all, and resumed snarling, reaching for her legs.  The way he was
panting, teeth bared, green eyes feral, Blaze knew that if he got hold of her,
she would not survive the experience.  She scooted backwards out of the lodge,
listening to the wereverine’s animal snarls from the porch outside.

Biting her lip, she went to get
more goats.

It took six more of the beasts,
several turkeys, and a couple dozen rabbits—all consumed head, hair, feet, and
all—before the wereverine’s chest-rattling growl began to quiet and his head
went limp against the mattress, claws still dug into the floor in his attempts
to get closer to her.  She heard snores.

Relieved, Blaze started to take a
step towards him, to check his vitals.

Runt’s hand suddenly appeared on
her stomach, stopping her.  “The Unmentionables are a crafty breed,” the fey
man said, watching the wereverine closely.  “The creatures of the Third Lands
are almost all predators, and very smart.”

Blaze scowled down at the tiny
dark-skinned man.  “Why are you hanging around?” she demanded, impatient. 
“He’s asleep.”

The fey removed his hand and
shrugged.  “Very well.  Like I said before.  It’s your grave you be digging.” 
He stepped back, gesturing impudently for her to continue.

This time, though, Blaze
hesitated.  She watched the wereverine sleep for several minutes, trying to
judge the authenticity of his snores.  They seemed a bit too…calculated.  Or
was that her imagination?  Surely the damn thing wasn’t
baiting
her. 
That was just paranoid.

…Wasn’t it?

Uncertain, Blaze watched Jack
sleep for much longer than she thought necessary, a bit unsettled by the way
the fey was hanging around a few feet behind her like some kid eager to watch a
fox rip apart a rabbit.

After a bit, Jack’s snores cut
off abruptly with a chuckle.  The wereverine’s head came up, his hypodermic
teeth exposed in a malicious smile.  He started snarling again, digging at the
floorboards once more.  Only his legs, like dead logs attached to his hips,
kept his now-skinny arms from pulling his way towards her.

Blaze stumbled backwards,
stunned.  The fucker had been trying to
eat
her.

“It’s like I said,” Runt said,
lips twisted in disgust as they watched the insane motions of the wereverine on
the mattress.  “There is no telling how long he might stay like this.  He was
unconscious for three weeks.  A demonkin starved that long…”  He hesitated, liquid-brown
eyes fixed on the wereverine’s mindless animal movements.  “It might be a mercy
to kill him.”

Blaze narrowed her eyes.  “More
goats.”

She fed him fourteen meat goats
before the Third Lander’s appetite finally began to wane.  Watching his inhuman
jaws expand to take down huge portions of meat and bones he by all rights should
not have been able to swallow, it was all Blaze could do not to be sick. 

“Where is he keeping all of that
food?” she whispered, watching the wereverine as he forced the last of a goat’s
haunches into his mouth.

Runt shrugged.  “He feeds the
beast.”  The fey seemed to be finding the helpless wereverine amusing enough
not to flicker in and out of sight, and was instead staying rather close by,
though never attempting to help her with anything.  The little dweeb.

Then, when the wereverine snarled
another inhuman scream at them and again began trying to drag himself across
the floor, towards them, Runt’s eyes narrowed.  “Or the beast feeds itself.”

“What’s wrong with his legs?”
Blaze asked, nervously.  She knew that the wereverine’s paralyzed lower half
was probably the only reason she wasn’t already in his gut.

“The dread horn’s necromancy ate
away his spine,” Runt said.  He didn’t sound too upset about the fact.  Blaze
wondered just what kind of relationship the wereverine had maintained with the
fey in his area.  So far, Runt had seemed willing to help…but not
too
much.

“I thought you said you healed
him,” Blaze said.

The fey’s eyes flickered towards
her too quickly, then he just nodded.  “I did.  However, my magic is warring
against the dread horn’s, and we have yet to see which will be the victor.”

Seeing them standing there,
talking about him, the wereverine screamed in impotent rage and hurled a boot
at them from where they were stacked against the wall.

Runt dodged it easily.

“Is he paralyzed, then?” Blaze
asked.

“Time will tell,” Runt said. 
“The Unmentionables give their victims untold regenerative capability, and phoe—” 
he hesitated and looked up at her, clearing his throat and blushing.  “The
magics I used are the most powerful healing energy known in the Five Realms,
but there is no greater breed of necromancy than the dread unicorn.  That he
survived at all is a miracle.”

The wereverine hurled another
boot, screaming his rage.

“Well,” Runt amended, his face
souring.  “That he survived is definitely interesting.”

“What is wrong with him?” Blaze
demanded.  “We fed him.  There’s enough gore covering the walls of this place
to paint a slaughterhouse.  What happened to Jack?”

Again, the fey shrugged.  “Jack
could be dead.”  With the amount of feeling he gave his words, he might as well
have been talking about the last mosquito that landed on Blaze’s arm.

Blaze turned on him, heart giving
an extra thump.  “What?”

For a moment, the little fey man
got the look he always did when he was considering whether or not to blow her
off and just disappear.  Then, with a sigh, he said, “When the beast within him
woke, it began to consume everything in its hunger.”  Runt shrugged.  “It is
possible that you didn’t feed him in time and he died.”  Again, he sounded as
if he cared as much about Jack’s demise as he did about a bothersome insect.

Blaze remembered the terrified
look Jack had given her, the pleading in his voice, the way he had curled into
a ball and started to shake as his body began to shrivel.

“He’s alive,” Blaze said, with
more conviction than she actually had.

“Mayhap,” Runt said,
noncommittally.  “But if you leave him down here in the basement like this, he
might cause problems if Jack is indeed deceased.  Especially if you have
visitors.”  Then he turned, and Blaze knew that, now he had dropped
that
particular bomb, he was about to disappear, the responsibility on
her
shoulders.

“Wait!” Blaze cried.  “Do you
have a better idea?”

Runt paused and glanced back at
her, then at the wereverine.  He pursed his lips.  “The demonkin Jack and my
elders will already be upset that I helped you…”  The way he trailed off at the
end and looked up at her expectantly, however, left Blaze realizing he wanted
to make some sort of trade.

“What do you want?” Blaze
demanded, taking a lesson from Jack and being too tired to deal with fey
bullshit to beat around the bush.

The little man licked his lips
and glanced out the door, as if he was worried someone else might overhear. 
Then, like an excited child trying very hard to hide his anticipation, he
leaned closer and Blaze had to lower her head to hear him say, “More of your
tears.”

Blaze straightened, squinting at
him.  “That’s
it
?” she demanded.

His eyes widened and he cleared
his throat and feigned boredom.  “Uh, yes.  That’s all.  Just a few more tears. 
Nothing really important.”

She scowled at him, remembering
the little blue jar that had disappeared.  “What are you doing with them?”

The sudden red-faced shame on his
face was all Blaze needed.  The little bastard was probably using them in love
potions or some bullshit like that.  He licked his lips again, then looked like
he was going to do his Houdini routine anyway.

“Never mind,” Blaze barked.  “I
don’t care what you use them for.”  Then she hesitated, remembering Jack’s ‘rules’
and how the fey could take that to mean something completely different than she
had intended.  “I mean, I
do
care, but you’re not using them to hurt
anyone?”

The tiny fey blinked up at her. 
“How could I?”  He seemed thoroughly perplexed.

And Blaze certainly wasn’t about
to start giving the little bastard ideas.  “Fine,” she said.  “Help me take
care of
that
,” she gestured at the insane wereverine, “and we’ll figure
out a way to get you more tears.”

“Faewire,” Runt said immediately,
“And that big yellow metal beast.”

“The bulldozer?” Blaze asked.

Runt nodded. “The dozer of
bulls.  Yes.  I wrap him in enough faewire to keep him occupied, then we pull
him out of the basement using the dozer of bulls.”

“Bulldozer,” Blaze said.

Runt frowned.  “That’s what I said. 
The dozer of bulls.”

Blaze felt a muscle in her neck
twitch, but she kept her mouth shut.  “So we drag him a ways out into the woods
where no one’s likely to stumble upon him, and then what?  We leave him there
for a week or two to see if he improves?”

Runt nodded enthusiastically.

“Out in the elements,” Blaze repeated.

“He’s a demonkin,” Runt said. 
“It won’t hurt him.”

Still, Blaze hesitated, trying to
think of a way of keeping Jack somewhere warm and comfortable for his recovery.

Then the wereverine grabbed a
handful of discarded viscera from the piles on the floor and flung it at her in
an animal scream of rage, spattering her from head to toe in blood and
entrails.