Alaskan Fire (41 page)

* * *

When the girl returned the
fifteenth or sixteenth time and hesitated, staring down at the rotting dead
goat, then at him, before starting to turn away, Jack lost all control he had
on his temper.

“Listen, you gangly Yeti
bitch
,”
he snarled.  “You leave me here another night and I’m going to pack up and let
you run your own goddamn fishing lodge.”

“I’d like to see you do that,
tied to a bulldozer,” Blaze said, but she paused, a frown on her face.  “Why
didn’t you eat the goat?”

“Because it’s
not cooked
!”
Jack screamed back.  “And it’s covered in
flies
and
maggots
and
it
stinks
!”

Blaze peered at him.  “That
hasn’t stopped you before.”

Jack’s breath caught in his
throat.  “How long was I asleep?”

“As far as I know, you haven’t
been.  Not for a month.”  Blaze grabbed the rabbits she had brought along and flopped
them back on the trailer.

“Listen to me,” Jack said,
“Whatever I did, that was the moon magic, not me.”

Blaze snorted, and her face
darkened.  “Sure.  You said that last time, and the time before, and the time
before that…”  She hesitated, seemingly to consider, “Oh yeah, and the time
before
that
…  Right before you tried to
gut
me.”  She pointed out
a series of scars up her right arm, then dropped it again, glaring at him.  “I’m
beginning to think Runt has it right.  You’re not letting him wake back up.  We
should just cut off your head and get it over with.”  She stepped out of sight
and he heard her climb back onto the 4-wheeler.

Jack knew that he needed tact to
pry himself out of his current situation, but all he could come up with was a
feral, animal roar.  The moon-magic surged within him again, and he felt his
hackles sprout as he started flailing at the wire for the first time since
waking.

He heard the 4-wheeler start and
drive off.

He spent the night staring at the
moon, wondering which god he had insulted to gain this kind of wrath.  Loki,
probably.  The malicious shit.  The goat, beside him, had really started to
stink, and it made his gut roil as he fought the urge to eat it anyway.  He was
hungry
…so hungry he was beginning to get close to losing control again. 
He watched the white orb travel across the sky, racking his brain for something
he could tell her.

When Blaze appeared the next
morning, frost had crystallized on Jack’s eyelashes and he was close to weeping
with hunger.

When she saw the goat had
remained untouched, Blaze seemed to be taken aback.  As she stared at it,
frowning, Jack said, “I’m attracted to you, you goddamn Yeti.”

Blaze’s head jerked up, and he
thought he saw a flash of gold behind her blue eyes.

“From the first time I touched
you, when I made you shake my hand,” Jack said.  “It was all I could do not to
just tell you right then.  I felt that surge and I just…  Gawd.  I just like to
play with fire, okay?  Some death-wish or something, I don’t fucking know.  Mated
a dragon and a fey and a wereverine.  Rest o’ the girls didn’t really set off
my alarms enough to interest me.  I gotta get that little gut-twitch of
apprehension, you know?  And, honey, you gave me a gut-twitch that almost made
me run for the hills.  You’ve had this poor little wereverine panting the
moment you pulled yourself out of that lake.  I looked up as you went by and
boom
,
done, gone, no saving me, light my ass on fire and send it up a tree, ‘cause I
was a goner the moment you stepped off that plane.”

Blaze gave him a long, hard
stare.  She obviously didn’t believe a word, but at least she was
listening
this time.

“I’m rude and pigheaded and
stubborn ‘cause I don’t want you to get too close,
okay
?” Jack cried, so
hungry and desperate he was trembling.  “I get those tingles when I get close
to you and I just wanna drop everything and bolt in the other direction, ‘cause
outta four women, I got
all
of them killed.  All four.  Imagine that,
for a minute!  Everyone that meant anything to you, dying
because
of
you, and in
unspeakable
ways?  Girl, I’d be willing to wager you scare
the crap outta me a hell of a lot more than I scare the crap outta
you
.”

“You tried to kill me,” Blaze
said.

He swallowed, hard.  “That wasn’t
me.  That was the beast.”

“Obviously.”

“Look,” Jack babbled, “I
understand why you’re keeping me out here.  It probably scared the holy living
bejesus outta you.  But for the love of Thor, if you’re going to leave me here
like this, at least get rid of the goat and treat me like a human being.  I
need something hot to eat.  I’m close to losing control again.”

A flash of understanding crossed
Blaze’s face before her guard went up again.  “How do I know this isn’t another
trick?”

Jack had considered that, all
night long, and the best he could come up with was, “I kind of like
crossbreeds.”  He gave her a weak smile.  “They’ve got that hybrid vigor thing
going on.”

Blaze’s eyes widened.  “Jack?”
she whispered.

“I’m really, really hungry,” Jack
whispered back.

Blaze bolted for the 4-wheeler,
and in the half an hour that followed, Jack stared at the dead goat, fighting
the impulse to wrap his jaws around the frozen, maggot-infested head and
swallow it down.

When Blaze got back, she had a
couple gallons of milk, a bowl, two boxes of cereal, and a pot of scrambled
eggs.

It was the fey, however, who
untied him.  Jack narrowed his eyes, but didn’t resist as the tiny man put the
faeglass sword to his throat and held him there, pinned to the ground, as he
fidgeted with the faewire knot. 

“I
really
don’t think this
is a good idea,” the little prick kept saying as he fiddled with the string.

“I’m not going to hurt—” Jack
began to protest.

The fey simply pushed the blade
neatly into his throat, forcing Jack’s head back to the ground.  “Move again
and I’ll gut you, demonkin Jack,” the youngster said unconcernedly, obviously
trying to mimic the total detachment of the fey elders.

“What are you afraid of, twerp?”
Jack growled, his spine pressed flat to the ground as the fey worked.  “I’m
paralyzed from the waist down.”

“Tell that to my basement,” Blaze
muttered.  “We only just finished scrubbing the gore off the walls.”

Gore?
  Jack glanced at
her, swallowing over the faeglass sword.  He wanted to ask what kind of gore,
but he couldn’t find the courage.

After another few minutes of
fiddling with it one-handed, Jack’s tether fell free, and the fey darted out of
the way so fast that his blade punctured the skin of Jack’s throat.  Jack
grunted and put his hand to his neck, but was so happy to have his hands free
that he didn’t complain.

“Still hungry?” Blaze asked,
watching him with obvious suspicion. 

Using both hands, Jack was able
to force himself into a seated position.  Holding himself there with one hand,
he gestured at the cart.  “Whatever you got.  Hurry.”

It was the fey who delivered the
pot of eggs, dropping it just out of reach and then sliding it forward on the
tip of his sword.  They didn’t give him a fork, so Jack ate it with his fist,
swallowing eggs as fast as he could, barely pausing to chew.

After he had finished his third
bowl of cereal, the food had begun to quell the hunger, giving him a better hold
on the magic.  Jack slowed down, trying to go more carefully, enjoying the
first real food in over a week.

The experience was ruined when he
yet again smelled fresh shit.

Jack set the bowl aside,
trembling.  “Blaze,” he whispered, “I need you to do something for me.”

Blaze raised an eyebrow at him. 
“If it includes coming over there and giving you a great big hug, you’re
dreaming.”

“I need your Desert Eagle,” Jack
said, motioning to the gun on her hip.

Blaze’s mouth fell open.  She
glanced at the fey.  “I think the wereverine lost his mind.”

“I can
smell
the silver in
it!” Jack snapped.  “Somehow I healed…partway.  I am a warrior.  I am
not
going to spend the rest of my life smelling my own bowels.”

“You want me to give you my
gun…so you can ‘sputch’ yourself.”  Blaze sounded like she didn’t believe him.

“
Look
at me!” Jack growled,
gesturing to his withered limbs and his useless legs.  “It will be a mercy.”

Blaze seemed to consider, then
sighed and pulled the Desert Eagle off of her hip.  Instead of handing it over
to him, however, she pointed it at his skull and put her finger on the
trigger.  “The silver buckshot only seemed to make you scream,” she warned,
sounding unconcerned.  “This one’s got silver nitrate.  Won’t be able to work
it out this time, once it hits.”

She shot me with silver? 
Jack
was horrified, wondering how much of the past days he had lost.  He closed his
eyes and waited, knowing that nothing could possibly be worse than the pain of
a necromancer’s blade.  He waited for several minutes as she worked up the
courage to do it.

“Jesus,” Blaze said.  He heard
her arm drop.  “I think he’s serious.”

Jack opened his eyes to the fey
man saying, “Demonkin
do
have a penchant for stupidity.”

* * *

Blaze shut the 4-wheeler off and
glanced back at the wereverine, who was releasing the rope dragging behind the
trailer and collapsing forward with a low sob.  Neither she nor Runt were
willing to get close enough to him to heft him onto the back of the trailer—not
after the beast had tried repeatedly to coax them into believing he was Jack.  Aside
from the scars up her arm, Blaze still had a ragged scab on her neck, where
he’d raked her with his claws in an attempt for her throat, after sweet-talking
her for over an hour.

Blaze watched the exhausted
wereverine pant into the gravel, his chest heaving with low, miserable whimpers. 
For the first time since he’d almost killed her, she felt a pang of guilt.  Either
the creature had devised a whole new category of deception, or the wretched,
sobbing wreck on the ground really was Jack.

There was one way to find out.

Blaze removed her gun holsters
and set them on the front 4-wheeler basket.  Then, tentatively picking her away
around the trailer, she squatted beside him.

Jack looked up, saw her coming,
and quickly turned his head away, tears wetting his cheeks.  “Just kill me,” he
said, for the thousandth time.

When he stayed in human form and
didn’t lash out at her, Blaze found the courage to touch his arm.  “You’ll get
better,” she offered.

Jack refused to look at her.  His
emaciated arms, she saw, were trembling with the strain of holding his upper
body off of the ground.

“All right,” Blaze said, sidling
closer, “I’m gonna pick you up.  You bite me or anything like that, it’s back
to the bulldozer, all right?”

Jack let out a hopeless sound
that wracked his whole body, and dropped his forehead to the ground as he
cried.

I just threatened a cripple,
Blaze thought, ashamed.  Feeling guilty, she eased herself closer until she was
squatting over him, half-expecting the wereverine to sprout fangs and attack
her.

When he just continued to weep,
however, Blaze gingerly slid her arms under him.  Jack didn’t struggle.  Blaze
braced herself, expecting a couple hundred pounds, at least.  What she lifted
off of the ground, however, matched the withered limbs she was seeing.  The
wereverine weighed sixty, maybe seventy pounds, most of which was bone.  And,
now that she was close, he
smelled
.

“Okay,” Blaze said, standing with
him in her arms, “We’re gonna take you inside for a bath.”

Jack avoided her gaze, twisting
to look at the ground. 

Blaze carried him inside, feeling
ever-more guilt-ridden as he clung to her, trembling in her arms.  She sat him
down on the clean white tile in the bathroom, then went to start a fire in the
boiler.  Thirty minutes later, she had hot water, and went back to the bathroom
and closed the door.  The wereverine didn’t look up when she entered.

“I’m gonna strip you down,” Blaze
said.  “Then shower you off.  Then draw a bath.”

Jack said nothing, only stared
down at his hands.  She could see the defeat rolling off of him with every
breath.

Carefully, Blaze unbuttoned his
jeans and pulled them down off of his hips.

The smell of excrement was
suddenly so overwhelming that Blaze choked, pausing midway, horrified.

Jack let out a shuddering breath
and turned away.

Swallowing, Blaze finished with
his jeans, then peeled his crusted, shit-covered underwear away from his hips. 
She threw the result into the trash, then, bit her lip.  “I’m gonna need to
roll you over.”

Jack just nodded.  She saw tears
in his eyes.  Crouching beside him, Blaze gingerly turned the wereverine so she
could see the damage.

The tile beneath him was a
puddled brown mess, and his entire backside from the base of his spine to the
base of his thighs were covered in it, the edges crusted and dry, as if it had
been there several weeks.

…Which it probably had.

Feeling another wave of guilt,
Blaze grabbed a roll of toilet paper and started cleaning him as best she
could.  Jack, in his humiliation, just stared at the floor in silence.

“Okay,” Blaze said, rolling him
away from the mess.  “I’m gonna start the shower.”

The wereverine said nothing, just
stared at the floor.

She got the water going, made
sure it was hot, then gently lifted him from the tiles and into the tub.  She
took the pitcher from beside the tub, filled it, and rinsed as much of the
stuff off of his withered frame as she could.  As soon as the water rushing
down the drain began to run clear, she ended the shower, flipped the plug into place
and started filling the tub.  Then she grabbed a washcloth from the rack,
lathered it, and handed it to him.

For the first time, Jack looked
up at her as he took the cloth, and there was a pitiful mixture of gratitude,
despair, and confusion in his eyes.

“You clean up while I get rid of
this,” Blaze said, gesturing at the pile of wadded toilet paper.  “Take as long
as you need.”  She hesitated, seeing the running water, half afraid he would
try to drown himself, but then quickly hurried off to find garbage bags and a
dustpan.

When she came back, the tub was
overflowing, and Jack was collapsed against the back wall of the tub, watching
the water spill over the tub’s edge in silence.

“Shit!” Blaze cried, realizing
her mistake.  With the wereverine’s useless legs between him and the other side
of the tub, he had no way to reach the faucet.  Blaze rushed to shut it off. 
She let out some water, then replaced the plug.  “Doesn’t matter,” she said
quickly.  “Just take your bath.  I’ll take care of the rest.”  Already, the
pile of excrement and toilet paper was growing soggy, the smell of the place
amplified by hot water.  Blaze slid what she could into garbage bags using the
dustpan, then used one of the towels to start mopping the floor.

She carried four bags out to the
furnace, the towel and his clothes in the final bag, before the place had
stopped smelling like a latrine.

When she returned, Jack was still
scrubbing.  His water was thick and cloudy with soap.

“Here,” Blaze said, changing the
water for him.

Jack continued scrubbing.  It was
getting violent, now, and Blaze saw fiery red skin under his ministrations. 
When he finished, he tossed the washcloth in the garbage, had Blaze get him a
new one, lathered it, and started over again.  Blaze watched, uncomfortable,
wishing she could say or do something to ease his mind.

“Would you like me to leave?” she
finally asked, as he dropped the second washcloth into the trash and started
rinsing.

Jack nodded.

Blaze set a stack of washcloths
beside the tub, then backed from the room and shut the door.

Two hours later, when he still
hadn’t called her, Blaze gingerly tapped on the door.

She heard water swish, but she
got no response.

Tentative, she opened the door.

Jack was leaning back in the tub,
staring at something between his legs.  He had tears in his eyes.

“Hey, now,” Blaze said, “It’s not
so ba—”

She froze when she saw the brown
lump of barely-congealed feces half-floating between his legs, rubbing against
his genitals.  Biting her lip, Blaze grabbed the pitcher and scooped it out as
best as she could, then flushed it down the toilet and replaced his water.

Instead of washing, Jack said
softly, “Take me out back, put the Desert Eagle to my head, and pull the
trigger.”

“Why?” Blaze demanded.

“Why?!”  Jack glanced up at her,
gesturing to his legs.

“So you can’t move your legs,”
Blaze said.  “So you can’t stop from wetting yourself.  So you’re a cranky
little curmudgeon that enjoys calling me a Yeti.  So what?  I like you anyway.”

Jack seemed to hesitate, scanning
her eyes before dropping his attention back to his useless legs.  “No woman is
gonna understand.  It’s different for a man.” 

Blaze crossed her arms and raised
a brow.  “Different how?”

“A man can’t do his job if he
can’t walk.”

“And what job is that?” Blaze demanded. 
She had put the Desert Eagles back on her hips on the last trip out to the
furnace.

Jack tensed.  “Don’t make me say
it, woman.”

“No, go ahead,” Blaze said,
“Because I’m honestly curious.  What is it that’s so important for a man that
he can’t be a cripple, but a woman can?”

Jack snarled at the word
‘cripple.’  His green eyes fierce, he growled, “A man’s gotta protect his
mate.  He’s gotta provide for his family and keep them safe.  He’s gotta do the
important jobs—”

Blaze laughed.  “The ‘important’
jobs?  Wow.  Someone really needs to introduce you to the twenty-first
century.”

Jack narrowed his eyes.  “So the
woman can raise the children with love and respect, unhindered by the stresses
of outside life.”

“Impressive,” Blaze said.  “So
what the hell were you doing, teaching me to use the bulldozer?”

Jack actually flinched.  He
looked her up and down, and Blaze actually expected him to say, ‘You look close
enough to a man, you might as well act like one.’  Instead, he just glared at
her.

“Well?” Blaze demanded.

“You’re a maid,” he finally
growled.  “You haven’t had a child yet.”

Blaze refrained from cracking her
skull against the ceramic sink basin, but only barely.  “So let me get this
straight.  You, being the man, can’t do your ‘job,’ and therefore need to be
put out of your miserable existence.  Me, being the woman, should follow suit,
because I couldn’t possibly survive without a man to do the important stuff for
me and I would certainly starve to death when I ran out of food in the fridge,
or possibly even freeze to death because I wouldn’t even
think
of
collecting firewood on my own.”  She raised a hand, palm-up, and shook her
head.  “Huh-uh.  Too dangerous.  Something could fall on me and I could
die
. 
Yes, a bullet to the head is definitely quicker.  More humane than shivering in
a corner, wondering why some man somewhere isn’t throwing wood on the fire.”

Jack narrowed his eyes at her. 
“You’re mocking me.”

“Yeah,” Blaze said.  “How’s it
feel?”  She smiled at him.

“Like I want to crawl out of here
and throttle your leg,” he muttered.  His face, however, cleared.  His eyes
again caught on Blaze’s Desert Eagles.  He sniffed, and his nose scrunched with
distaste.  “Has Amber come back?”

“Not yet,” Blaze said. 

“How long’s it been?”

“About six or seven weeks,” Blaze
said.

Jack frowned.  “Did you kill
her?”

“Runt assures me she’s still
alive,” Blaze said.  “Though from what I saw, she probably lost about a dozen
of her wolves.”

Giving her an odd look, Jack
said, “I only killed half that.”

Blaze shrugged, uncomfortable. 

“You used silver?” Jack demanded.

“Uh, not quite,” Blaze managed. 
“Uh…”  She swallowed, remembering the bed of ashes.  “There was some sort of a
fire.”

Jack peered at her.

Shrugging, Blaze said, “There
were some corpses when I woke up.”  She laughed uncomfortably.  “Burned all to
hell.”  There.  Let him make of that what he would.

But Jack’s eyes went wide as if
he knew exactly what she was talking about.  “You woke.”

Blaze’s heart gave a sudden,
unhappy thud and she made an awkward shrug.  “Not really sure what happened.  I
woke up in a pit of ash.”  Talking about it made Blaze uncomfortable in much
the same way, she imagined, that someone with Multiple Personality Disorder
didn’t want to hear about what their alter-ego did that night in the bar.

“So you didn’t wake.”  Jack
cursed.  “Do you think you could you do it again?”  His attention had intensified
on her.  “Maybe feel your way back through it, if you had to?”  The way he
talked about it, he was already taking it for granted that Blaze might have had
something to do with the crispy werewolves.

Blaze scoffed.  “I’d have a
better chance of swimming to the moon.”

It was actually cute the way the
wereverine roared and slapped the water with his scrawny arms until about half
the bathroom was wet and dripping.  Wiping her face, Blaze raised a brow. 
“Tantrum over?”

“I swore to protect you,” Jack
muttered, staring down at the water between his legs.

“Yeah,” Blaze said.  She grabbed
a towel off of the rack and threw it over her shoulder.  “So?”

“
Look
at me!” Jack cried. 
He almost sounded like he was on the verge of weeping again.  He flung a
disgusted hand at his feet.  “I can’t even move my own damn legs.”

“Runt tells me it’s temporary,”
Blaze lied.  She went to the bath and lifted him out, then set him on the
floor, wrapped in a towel.  “So I had a wheelchair delivered on the last barge
trip.”

Jack gave her a narrow look, but
his voice was soft when he said, “The thieving prick said it was temporary?” 
The hope in his voice was so strong it was painful.

“Yeah,” Blaze said, trying not to
let him see the way the lie was making her face flush.  “He said that.  I’m
gonna go get you some clothes and the chair.”

She had ordered adult diapers
from Wal-Mart after a quick discussion with a Palmer Public Health nurse over
the phone.  The best thing, the woman insisted, would be to put him on a
backboard and send him in to the Mat-Su Regional Hospital to prevent further
damage to the spine.  Blaze, wincing as she remembered dragging the wereverine
around through the woods with a bulldozer, said that she would take that under
advisement.

When Jack saw the diapers,
though, he shook his head and tried to scoot away.  “Huh-uh,” he growled.  “I’m
a grown man.  No way.”

Blaze looked down at the ‘Adult
Incontinence Product’ and then shrugged.  “Fine.  But sooner or later, you’re
gonna run outta pants, because I am
not
putting that in my washing
machine.”  She gestured at the place on the floor where she had carefully
scraped several weeks of excrement from his body, then turned and threw the
package of diapers into the trash.  Then she shook out his pants and bent to
start pulling them onto his legs.