Alaskan Fire (39 page)

“On second thought,” Blaze said,
pausing to wipe the crimson bits of excrement and organs out of her eyes.  “I
think that sounds like a
fine
idea.”  She gave the wereverine a sweet
smile and turned to get the bulldozer.

Once she’d backed up to the
porch, Blaze shut off the dozer and frowned, listening to the ruckus inside.

“You stay here,” Runt said,
popping into existence at the base of her machine.  He was panting.  “I think
the demonkin Jack has made it off of the mattress.”

Indeed, even as she stood there,
she could see long talons clawing at the wood, powered by too-skinny arms and a
malevolent, leering snarl as the wereverine peeked around the corner of the
basement, dribbling saliva.

“That,” Blaze said, watching the
thing slide slowly closer, “Is not natural.”

“Not for the First Lands,” Runt
agreed.  He opened one of the pouches on his belt and tugged out a bundle of
what looked like glowing blue-white fishing line.  He carefully plucked one end
of the filament out and slid it from the bundle, and it came without a tangle. 
He handled it very delicately, his thick fingers moving with an inhuman
precision and speed.  Then, deftly holding up one end of the filament, he held
the tangled bundle out to Blaze.

“If you would hold that?”

Blaze gingerly took the glowing
bundle in both hands.  “What do I do with this?”

“Just hold onto it whilst I
gather up our heavy friend.”  He started pulling the line out, the luminescent filament
slid easily out of the ball in her hand without snarling.  At about ten feet
away from the wereverine, Runt paused, seemed to brace himself.  Then, like a
flash, he suddenly darted forward, the only thing visible of him being the
luminescent thread where it floated in the air.

In an instant, he was over the
porch and into the foyer beyond, and in a motion almost too fast to see, he
wrapped the filament around each of the wereverine’s wrists and knotted it. 
Then he lunged away, and would have made a clean escape, but his foot caught on
the doormat at the last moment.  Reeling, Runt popped back into existence stumbling
out of the wereverine’s reach just as the creature’s massive talons rent a hole
in his shirt.  Runt lurched backwards through the door, falling onto his rump
on the deck as he stared at the wereverine with wide eyes, then glanced down at
his chest like he expected to see his own beating heart.

The wereverine, for his part, was
yanking at his hands, screaming his rage as the slim little line refused to
break.

Gingerly, touching the
lightly-bleeding scratch in his flesh, Runt got back to his feet, his dark skin
looking more pale than usual.  He walked back to Blaze backwards, eyes still on
the wereverine.

“If you would allow me?” Runt
asked, once he reached her.  He held out his hand for the twine.

When he went to tie it to the
bulldozer, Blaze frowned.  “Is that really enough to hold him?”

“It’s unbreakable, Lady,” Runt
said, as he started draping shimmery blue-white line over the hitch.  “Only an
earth-touched may untie it.”

Then a new thought occurred to
her.  “Won’t that bite through the skin of his hand?”

“He’s demonkin,” Runt said with a
shrug.  “He’ll heal.”  Then he was gingerly knotting the glowing glacier-blue
line around the large metal ball-hitch on the back of the bulldozer, careful
not to actually touch the metal.

When he made the second knot, the
rest of the twine fell to the ground in a bundle, leaving only the knot that
held it in place.  Picking up the tangle, Runt stuffed it back into his pouch,
looking satisfied with himself despite the gaping hole in his iridescent green
shirt.  “You may wake the dozer of bulls,” Runt said, waving at the machine. 
“We should take the demonkin Jack somewhere distant, where there’s no chance
that someone will wander across him on the trails.

Blaze knew just the place.

She got on the dozer and, as the
wereverine struggled in vain to free his hands, she started the machine moving
forward. 

As Runt had promised, the line
held, and as the wereverine’s cries turned from rage to pain, Blaze bit her lip
and hit the gas, dragging him out of the basement.  As he screamed and snarled
behind her, Blaze took him down the overgrown path to the abandoned mill, then
beyond.  She picked a spot that looked like it hadn’t seen a single soul in
about ten years, then pulled off of the trail into the forest, checking
periodically to make sure the wereverine was still attached.

He was, and if anything, he
looked even more demonic than before.  Seeing that, Blaze gained more
confidence in the fey’s knots, since she was pretty sure that, had the
wereverine been able to break free, he would have done it as soon as she
started dragging him across the yard.

By the time Blaze had shut down
the engine, yanked the key from the ignition, and hopped off of the track, the
wereverine was a snarling ball of slitty-eyed hatred.  He watched her as she
made a wide circle around him, then met Runt on the path.  Stopping to look
back at him, Blaze hesitated, looking for some sign of Jack.

Only malicious animal fury stared
back at her.

Clearing her throat, Blaze said,
“We’re gonna give you a few days to think about stuff.  We’ll be back tomorrow
to check on you.”

“He can’t understand you,” Runt
said.  “The Unmentionable is in full command, and they’re much too simple to—”

“I’m going to enjoy gutting you
both in your sleep,” the wereverine said, as perfectly precise as a Yale
attorney.  “Your friend is dead.  I devoured his soul and took what was left.” 
His words sounded like the eerie baying of hounds, and it took Blaze a moment
to realize that the creature’s mouth remained closed throughout.

Runt had his glassy blade out and
was putting an arm out in front of her, pushing her backwards.  “Lady,” he
whispered, “That thing needs to die.”

Blaze’s heart, still in her
throat from the alien words, flinched and glanced down at Runt in startlement. 
“Needs to die?”

“That’s a full magus of the Third
Lands,” Runt whispered.  “They deal in
blood
.  He needs to die.”

“Not if you want your tears, you
don’t,” Blaze growled, grabbing the fey man by the back of his shredded shirt. 
“Come on, I want him alive.”

At the wereverine’s insane cackle
that followed, every hair on Blaze’s body stood on end.  She took an
instinctive step backwards, trying to resist the primal urge to bolt.  Runt
followed her, holding the opalescent sword between him and the creature as if
he were afraid it would suddenly get up and charge.

“
How
old was the demonkin
Jack?” Runt whispered. 

“He didn’t know for sure,” Blaze
lied, having that sudden gut feeling that if she said the wrong thing, Runt was
going to slit Jack’s throat, regardless of her polite requests.

“Long enough for the Third-Lander
to reach full magus,” Runt said.  “Not good, not good.”

Blaze eyed the immobilized
creature, biting her lip.  “What are the chances he’ll get loose?”

“I know you were fond of this
demonkin Jack,” Runt said softly, “but I would very strongly suggest we kill
the Third Lander magus.  He knows what you are, and if he doesn’t, he will soon
figure it out.”

Blaze frowned.  “What do you
mean, ‘what I am?’”

Runt bit his lip, then glanced at
the wereverine, who looked like he was listening intently, rounded furry ears
pricked forward with interest.  “Back at the lodge, Lady.  Not here.  Please.”

Meeting the glowing green eyes
staring back at her through the underbrush, Blaze just nodded.

Sword still out, Runt led her all
the way back to the porch, facing their back-trail, before he slumped down on
the back steps, staring at the path to the sawmill.  He still looked
pasty-white, and he wasn’t putting his sword away.  Softly, he said, “If you
would allow me, Lady, I would like to go back tonight and destroy the Third
Lands magi.” 

“What were you saying earlier?”
Blaze demanded.

The tiny man shook his head,
still staring at the forest.  “That looked like the kind capable of making a
host-leap.  He might have been a magus before he took demonkin Jack.  How the
mortal
ever
overpowered him, I will never understand.”

“You were going to tell me what I
am.”

“Miss Blaze, truly,” Runt
whispered, pale-faced and sweating.  He turned to gesture at the forest.  “That
is a creature that should never walk the First Lands.  If a mortal found it in
the woods, a simple scratch and it could switch bodies—”

Blaze grabbed him by the
iridescent green-purple braids and spun his head around to face her.  “Listen,
you little 1-800-number twit,” Blaze said.  “I woke up in a puddle of ash three
weeks ago.  My best shotgun was a melted mess.  I saw fingerprints in the
slag.  Why is that?”

The man’s native face paled and
he vanished.

Blaze felt herself snarl, looking
at the empty back yard.  “You better not hurt him!” she yelled impotently at
the barn. 

If the fey man heard or cared, he
never responded.

Amber’s face throbbed as she
smiled.  She felt her pack slip through the trees on either side of her,
willing to die at her command. 
She
was a true leader, not the little
bitch and her oathbound coward who were even then sharing the same cage in the
newcomer’s pit, for daring to argue with her plans.  She should have killed
them, but with the wereverine as such a compelling example, she felt like a
slow death would be more meaningful to them. 

Amber came to a halt, nose up, as
they approached the little cabin beside the creek.  The entire area stank of
grizzly bear.  The man, a broad, somewhat husky oaf of about five and a half
feet, was hoeing potatoes in the little garden behind the house.  The woman, a petite,
narrow-waisted remnant of an obsolete tradition, was sitting out in a parasol-shaded
chair beside him, wearing a sunhat and a corseted dress, stitching a quilt.

A quilt, of all things.

“Subdue them,” Amber said.

Her pack melted away from her,
spreading into the couple’s yard.

The woman looked up first, her
nose to the wind.  “Osgood,” she said softly, as Amber’s betas slipped out of
the forest, surrounding them.  The man stiffened, his grip tightening on his
hoe.  The woman slowly got to her feet, setting her quilting gently aside.

“What do you want?” the man
demanded, backing until he was side-by-side with the frilly bumpkin woman, a
stupid expression on his face.  His piggish eyes seemed to catch nervously on
the swords and axes her pack now carried, donated by the ever-so-talented
wereverine, and he gripped the hoe as if to use it.  “We’re just minding our
own business, folks, keeping to our own selves out here in the woods.”  His
words carried a dimwitted slur.

Amber stepped forward smiling as
her pack parted for her.  “Good morning,” she said, stopping a few yards off
from the wary couple.  Addressing the man, she asked, “Do you have any food or
valuables stashed away on the property?”  Peering at the dirt under her talons,
Amber said, “If you do, tell us, and perhaps we will spare the life of your
cute little damsel, over there.”

The man stiffened with a growl.  It
was the petite woman, however, who spoke.  Her frightened doe expression had
faded, leaving nothing but rigid ice behind.  She was glancing at the swords
that Amber’s pack carried.  “Those weapons do not belong to you, sugar,” she
said.  Her voice had the soft tilt of a Southern Belle.

“They do now,” Amber said. 
“Considering that their last owner is sadly departed.”  She smiled at the
woman.  “Which brought me to an epiphany, of sorts.  Old fools seem to hoard
valuables they can’t use.  I don’t suppose we’ll find a similar collection, in
your basement?”

The tiny woman’s smile was
glacial.  “You assume much, puppy.”

Amber drew the black dagger
almost thoughtfully.  She heard the woman hiss as its twisting ebony blade
swallowed the light.  “Something like this, maybe?”

“Where did you get that?” the
woman demanded.

“The wereverine gave it to me.” 
Amber smiled.  “After he died.”

“Wynflaeth,” the man whispered to
his wife, “Isn’t that the blade that raises the—”

“Shhh,” the petite woman hissed, too
quickly.  She cast Amber a quick glance.

Amber frowned at the nervousness
she saw in the woman’s face. 
Raises the what?
  She thought of the way
the blackness had eaten away her face, leaving throbbing bones behind. 
Suddenly, it struck her.  This was a
necromancer’s
blade.  Necromancers
killed the living…

…and commanded the dead.

Slowly, a smile spread across
Amber’s face, knowing just the use for such a tool.

The petite woman’s eyes
narrowed.  “You’re never leaving here alive, pup.”  And she began to change,
her tiny body morphing into a brown, eight-foot, grotesque melding of woman and
bear.  Beside her, her husband did the same, his head reaching ten feet as they
towered over the yard; fat, rippling masses of tooth and talon.

The woman fell to all four hairy
legs and charged, heading directly for Amber.

Amber darted backwards into the
woods, allowing her pack to take the brunt of the bear’s attack.  The woman hit
them and threw them aside like bowling pins, such power in her massive arms
that she ripped a startled packmate’s ribs in half and scattered his entrails
in a swath across the woods with one swipe.

Amber slid further into the trees
as her packmates distracted the female.  She came around behind the male, who
was howling in rage as the faster wolves were darting around him, slicing his
body apart with their new blades.  When he turned to swipe ineffectually at
another attacker, Amber lunged in and sank the blade to the hilt in his back.

Then she darted backwards,
grinning as the huge beast screamed and started clawing at his own chest.

“
Osgood
!”  The female had
been faring better than the male, but upon seeing him slump to his knees,
startled mouth gaping wide, she went into a frenzy.  She was faster and smarter
than her mate.  She caught one of Amber’s submissives in the ear with a
powerful swing, knocking the man’s head through the woods until it exploded
against the trunk of a birch tree.  Seemingly oblivious to the sword cuts from
Amber’s packmates, she charged Amber again, this time ignoring all else, her
insane brown eyes aglow with hatred.

Seeing the charging bear, knowing
what she intended to do, Amber actually felt a spasm of fear, knowing that,
should the creature get hold of her, she would fare no better than the man
whose brains were even then sliding down the birch tree.

Amber tried to run, but even with
her pack around her, this woman was faster.  Bleeding from a dozen different
wounds, half of her furry face torn away by an axe blade, the bear chased Amber
down through the woods, as single-minded as a rabid terrier.  Amber tripped,
fell.  She rolled in terror, watching the feral beast approach her, scrambling
backwards, babbling apologies that flowed from her in panic.

The bear caught the hand that
held the dagger and drove it into the ground.  The other paw pinned Amber by
the skull, talons digging into the sides of her head.  Suddenly realizing what
she meant to do, Amber grabbed the woman’s thick wrist in a panic, to keep her
from twisting off her head. 

Her muzzle glistening with tears,
the bear managed, “Why did you kill him?  You stupid little bitch…
why
?” 

As the massive fist tightened
around her head, Amber realized the bear didn’t
need
to pull her head
from her shoulders to kill her.  Staring up into the woman furious face, Amber
babbled in terror, unable to come up with an answer she thought would save her
life.

“We would have given you our
land,” the bear whispered.  “We just wanted to be left alone.”

Amber whimpered, so afraid she
couldn’t even find words.

The bear’s brown eyes hardened. 
“Osgood was a good man.”  The claws buried in her scalp started to squeeze.

One of Amber’s favorite
submissives leapt atop the bear’s back, skewering the woman between the
shoulder-blades with the rippling two-handed sword.  Amber had given the sword
to him as a gift, due to his loyalty.  The bear flinched, but tightened her
grip.  Amber felt her world shudder as her skull started to crack.

Her submissive yanked the sword
free and swung again, hacking at the bear’s neck.

The sword lodged halfway and
stuck in the bear’s spine.

Twisting, the bear caught the
man’s head between her paws.  She slammed her palms together, then threw aside
pieces of skull.  Then, choking, she fell back to all fours, looking down at
the blade in her neck.  Silvery blood bubbled up over her brown lips,
spattering the ground beneath her.  She wobbled slightly on her feet, the blade
itself obviously blocking circulation to the woman’s brain.

Sensing her opportunity, Amber
lunged forward and made a nice, long slice down the woman’s ribcage.

As the bear screamed and made a
crude swipe at her, off-balance, Amber ducked around and did it again, to the
other side.

Then, stepping back, Amber
watched smugly as the woman let out a low, gurgling scream and fell to her
knees, the blackness beginning to expose her ribs, heart, and lungs.  She
shifted back to human form, her petite body twisted in agony.

“I killed him,” Amber said,
returning the blade to its metal sheathe on her hip, “Because he was a stupid
pig.”

The bear moaned as her organs
began to turn black, pulsing under her ribcage like sacks of black gelatin.

“What was his IQ, anyway?” Amber
laughed, walking around the dying woman.  “Seventy?  Sixty-five?”  Amber
snorted.  “I bet you had to teach him not to drink out of the toilet.”

The bear began to cry as her
organs disintegrated, and the overwhelming stench of living rot filled the
forest.  Amber held her hand to her nose in distaste.  She reached out and
jerked the huge blade from the woman’s neck.

“So what was it like, being
married to a dog?” Amber asked, grinning at the pain and hatred she saw in the
woman’s brown eyes.  “Was the doggie good in bed?”  She made a disgusted sound
and gestured at the carcass in the yard.  “The fat fuck certainly wasn’t much
of a looker, so you must have kept him around for something.”

The woman went suddenly still,
looking directly into Amber’s eyes.  For a disappointed moment, Amber thought
the woman had died already.  Then, in a deep voice that sounded eerily hollow,
deep and ringing, almost as if it had an echo, the dying woman said, “You are
but a speck of dust compared to what is coming, fool.  When the Guardian of Morning
offers your corrupted flesh to her pyre, your death will be a grain of sand in
the desert of her life.”

Amber’s heart began to pound at
the alien tone of the woman’s voice, but then she realized that the odd sound
must have had something to do with the way the woman’s lungs were turning
black.

With the last of her breath used
up in poetry, the woman collapsed.  Amber sighed, wishing she had made it take
longer.  The bear had been almost as arrogantly infuriating as the wereverine.

…Whose death was yet another that
she hadn’t been able to appreciate thoroughly, thanks to the—
thing
—that
had exploded to life in the yard, hurling balls of liquid fire that had
flawlessly hit their targets, even careening around sheds and behind fences to
engulf their victims, and nothing, absolutely
nothing
, had been able to
land on it.

Between it and the wereverine,
Amber had lost thirteen of her number that day.  When she and her pack had come
back to the den, badly burned and a quarter of their number missing, with
nothing but the wereverine’s arsenal to show for it, the tiny black coward had
been waiting on the doorstep with her slave, their faces smug.

“
Told you,
” she had said.

Amber had endured that tiny act
of insolence in stride, but the next day, when Amber had begun making plans to
spread northward, taking the old ones’ hoards as they passed, the black bitch’s
balking had been the last straw.  Amber had thrown her into the cavern with her
useless slave, then sealed her inside.

But now, thinking of the bear’s
stupid slip about the dagger, Amber had something she wanted to try.

Inside the werebears’ cabin,
Amber and her submissives found a handful of massive swords and axes wrapped in
a quilt and tucked under the bed, their grips too big to be effectively used by
Amber or any of her pack.

The real treasure was the
jewelry.  Gold necklaces, gems, bracelets, rings, antique coin, tiaras, and brooches,
all stuffed into a gold-and-ironwood chest and hidden under a few false boards
in the floor.  Most of the jewelry was plain, but Amber knew its real value was
in its age.  Any one of the pieces, she guessed, would keep her pack fed for a
year.

This was such a good idea,
Amber thought, staring at the loot that her submissives spilled onto the floor
at her feet.  Her mind briefly drifted north, to the great dragons that
occupied the Brooks Range, and she felt a welling of glee in her chest. 
They’ll
never know what hit them.

Amber claimed the nicest tiara—a
golden Celtic knot-pattern dripping with sapphires—to compliment her eyes. 
Then she and her pack feasted, cleaning out the werebears’ impressive freezer
and pantry.

Once they were finished eating,
she led them home, the werebears’ stash distributed amongst her submissives.

We’ll need more,
Amber
thought, looking at the moving bodies around her.  So many had already fallen,
leaving only the strongest, the healthiest to survive.  She would have to
replace those lost with fresh blood.  Fishermen, most like.  She was beyond
caring what the authorities thought.  She glanced again at her dagger, touching
it for reassurance.  With equipment like this, nothing could stop her.  She
would create her army, then march north, taking the Thunderbird and then the
dragons.

But first, she had an experiment
she wanted to try…

They returned to the den, then
Amber sat and drank a glass of wine as her submissives dug out the little black
bitch and her minion.

Except, when they pulled out the
cage, it was empty.

Seeing the door still locked from
the outside, ice slid down Amber’s back in a wave.