Alaskan Fire (45 page)

Shaking off that thought, she
said, “You’re going.  Now help me with the damn windows.”

Jack narrowed his slitted green
eyes at her in that stubborn, I’m Deciding Whether Or Not To Tell The Yeti To
Go Screw Herself look, then finally muttered, “Hammer.  Nails.  I piled the
plywood out behind the shop.”

Grinning inwardly, Blaze went to
go fetch the supplies.  She was halfway around the yard when she saw the jet
black werewolf watching her like a statue in between the tractor and the
bulldozer, only a few feet away.  “Jack!” she screamed, backing up, fumbling
for her gun.

The wolf spun and disappeared.

“Jack!” she screamed again.  Her
hand was shaking where she held the gun, and her finger felt weak on the
trigger.  Her heart was in her throat, and her arms felt like they were on
fire.

“What the hell is it now?!” Jack
demanded, pushing his chair around the corner at speed.  He saw her standing
with the gun out, shakily pointing it at the woods.  She heard him draw his own
weapon, cursing.  For a moment, they just stood there, waiting for the attack. 

“Wolf?” Jack finally asked,
sniffing the air.

Blaze nodded.

Jack lowered his weapon,
scowling.  “I wonder why she’s hanging around.”

“Huh?” Blaze asked, turning.

“Kimber.”  Jack shook his head. 
“Probably smells the meat.”  He gestured dismissively at her barn.  “Come on. 
Let’s get those windows boarded up and get you out of here.”

* * *

Amber was reclining upon a futon
her submissives had dragged from the Ebony Creek Lodge when one of her number
came back at a run.  There were so many of them now and such a huge turnover
rate that she hadn’t bothered to learn all their names.  Maybe someday, she
could afford that leisure, but camaraderie was one of the many things that
Amber had sacrificed in the name of expanding her family’s empire.

“Yes?” she asked, as the scout
slid to a stop, still in full moon-form. 

“Mith Blathe ang Thornthon fwoo
aw—”

“Oh for Chrissakes,” Amber
snapped.  “Don’t sit there slurring like a goddamn beast.  Shift!”

Her submissive—a pretty gray with
a bit of black on his rump, whined in shame and he lowered his belly to the
dirt, probably in hopes that she wouldn’t force the issue.  The young ones had
such poor control of themselves, most of them, it seemed, actually
preferred
the moon form.

“Misthreth, pleathe…” her
submissive whimpered.

Amber sighed and looked at her
fingertips.  “I’m not asking again.”  Then, frowning at the dried blood under a
few of her nails, she used one of the pretty translucent faeglass daggers she
and her pack had acquired in their latest raid—a group of fauns, most of which
had run through their precious portal back to the Second Lands in a panic—to
pry the flaky brown crust from the nail bed.

While Amber waited impatiently,
it took him a full five minutes of struggling against the moon-magic to shift
back into his human form.  Of course, as young as he was, she supposed she was
lucky he could get out of moon-form at all…

The young man who ended up naked
at her feet looked a bit dazed.  A pretty enough specimen, though, Amber decided. 
A fly-fisherman she had caught pike fishing up in the chain of lakes beyond
Lake Ebony.  He might make a decent enough mate, if he could learn a bit more
control.  She
hated
the way the new ones tended to transform mid-act. 
She found it rather vulgar, and while she didn’t mind a good screw in the
middle of a hunt, she would much prefer the species at least remain the same
throughout.

“Mistress?” the man asked, from
his knees.

“You were telling me about our
gasoline-loving heiress and her dead wolverine slut.”

“Oh, uh…”  He blushed, then
frowned.  The fool actually had to think about it.  Amber realized she probably
should start teaching them all the importance of maintaining control of the
moon magic, but she just didn’t have the time of late.  Too many miserly old
fools to kill, too many wonderful stashes to discover.

She flicked the milky tip of the
faeglass blade at him.  “Let me guess.  You don’t remember much of what
happened after you changed.”

The man looked up at her and
flinched, his face reddening in shame.  “Uh…  No Mistress.”

Well, at least he was smart
enough to get the ‘Mistress’ part down.  Amber probably would have gutted him
before this, had he not.  And why not?  She had two dozen who would happily
take his place, and could make two dozen more with a simple kiss.

“Perhaps I can jog your memory,”
Amber said.  “I told you to go figure out what happened to our boys in blue.”

The man frowned, hard.  “Uh…  I
remember the change.  And running through the forest…”  He peered at the ground
in front of him as if he were looking into a very deep well.  “And I remember
reaching the lake…”

Amber sighed, looking him over
for blood.  “Did you kill anyone?”

The man—a liberal-minded
bleeding-heart doctor by trade—cringed.  She had already broken him of
those
particular pretentions to squeamishness, when she’d made him shift and set him
loose on a group of female captives she’d bloodied up for him.  The new ones
simply couldn’t control themselves around the scent of blood, and Amber’s pack
already had too many females for her tastes.

“I don’t think I killed anyone,
Mistress,” the man whispered.  His brow was knotted in concentration.  As a
former doctor, Amber supposed that being incapable of remembering certain
things was rather new to him.  As was having to crawl on his belly around her,
she was sure.  That’s why she made them do it.  If too many submissives got the
idea that their pack leader wasn’t in complete control, the moon-magic might
spurn them into doing something unpleasant.

“But there was some reason you
came rushing in to talk to me,” Amber suggested, rather enjoying his
embarrassment.  She’d never liked doctors.  Always stuck-up, too full of their
own modern medicine that they wouldn’t know magic if it bit them.

Which Amber routinely made sure
it did, she thought, grinning.

“I remember!” the young man cried
with sudden excitement, like he’d unearthed some great archeological find. 
“The lodge is completely boarded up and abandoned.  All the food’s still
there.  Left lots of food out, though.  I think they’re planning on coming
back.”

Amber dropped the faeglass blade
and looked up from her nails.  “What lodge?  And who is ‘they’?”

But her submissive was babbling
excitedly, now.  “The Sleeping Lady.  Blaze MacKenzie and Jack Thornton.  They
left it.  I was rounding the edge of the lake and I saw Blaze and the wolverine
get onboard.  They taxied out to the river and flew off. 

Amber frowned.  “You mean she
carried the weasel’s body out of the Bush?  On a plane?”

“No, no.”  The man frowned,
obviously concentrating.  “The wolverine was alive.  His legs weren’t working,
though.  Paralyzed, I think.  Waist down, it looked like.  She had to help him
into the plane.”

“He’s
alive
?!”  Amber was
out of her futon and on her feet, half-transformed, in an instant, snarling
down at her submissive.  “And you let him
leave
?!”

The man cringed against the
ground, whining up at her.  “The girl was with him.  And the pilot—”

Amber reached down for the man’s
neck and dragged him off the ground until they were eye-to-eye.  “You think I
give a
crap
about the pilot?  He killed my
mate
!”  Her fist was
squeezing of its own accord, and the submissive peed himself as his moon-magic
once more took hold.  In full wolf-form, however, he was even more helpless to
avoid the claws around his neck.  He whined and struggled, his pretty blue eyes
pleading with her.

“He was paralyzed and you let him
get away,
” she screamed, utter rage flowing through her system, now. 
Her fingers squeezed until the whining stopped, the man’s windpipe blocked
off.  Other submissives were coming out of the trees to see what the fuss was about,
yet keeping a good twenty-foot distance when they saw her half-transformed.

The man dangling from her hand
looked like he desperately wanted to say something.  Amber reached up and
ripped the top half of his skull off, then threw it aside.  She’d never liked
doctors, anyway.

To the rest of her submissives,
who were staring at the twitching body with trepidation, she snarled, “Pack our
stuff.  We’re moving the den.  I want everything inside the Sleeping Lady by
the end of the day.  That rich brat decides to come back, she’s gonna have a
big surprise.”

She stalked off towards the river
to clean the gore from her fingertips. 

Unfortunately, it seemed that the
wereverine was smarter than he looked.  He’d probably convinced the mountainous
heiress that she was safer in the city, with her money protecting them.  Damn
him.  Amber would have to schedule a family vacation to Anchorage someday, once
she figured out where the rich bitch was hiding.

Until then, there was a good
week’s supply of food milling around the Sleeping Lady.  They could rest there,
then gather their strength and move north to find the caribou herds beyond the
Brooks Range.

In the meantime, Amber needed to
make a phone call.  She had no intention of letting the cranky little
curmudgeon hit up his friends in Anchorage—if the rabid little weasel even
had
friends—and then escape off to some remote village in Nevada.  No, she was
going to head him off and finish the job she started.

This time, she’d jam the dagger
right through the weasel’s
skull
.

Amber marched into the cabin,
bypassed the massive hole in the floor that led to the main den, and yanked the
satellite phone off of the far wall.  “Someone start the generator!” she yelled
out the open door, then settled down with her address book.  She found the
number she was seeking at the same time she heard the stuttering rumble of the
generator kicking into gear.

Grunting, Amber dialed the number
to Bruce Rogers’ Flying Service.

“You sure you two got
everything?” Phil Russels of Wasilla Air Taxi asked, eying Jack’s progress
dubiously.  The muttering little wereverine was crawling into a harness
strapped to Blaze’s back, as Blaze stood patiently on the spongy muskeg of the lakeshore,
steadied by the airplane’s wing support.

“
Damn
you’re heavy,” Blaze
grunted, as the wereverine’s full weight hit the harness.  “I
really
hope I don’t end up carrying your useless ass the rest of my life.”

She saw Phil Russels give her a
startled look.

“Oh don’t worry,” Blaze said, waving
a dismissive hand at the pilot, “The crass little jackass dishes out a hell of
a lot more than that every time he blows his nose.”

“Stop moving, you goddamn
draft-horse,” Jack snarled, yanking sharply on the harness as he secured it.  “I
can’t believe you talked me into this.  First you dump me in the lake trying to
get me on the plane, then you take me in the air and I puke my guts out all
over Bruce’s cockpit, then that asshole in the taxi tells me I smell like wet
dog—wet
dog
—and now you plan to cart me around like a freakin haunch of
moose …  Hell, I should just end us both right here and let the gods sort
things out.”

“Uh…” Phil said, chuckling
nervously, “If you guys want to go back to town, I’m headed that way anyway…” 
His eyes were on the Desert Eagle strapped to the wereverine’s hip.  “I mean,
it’s snowing out, and it’s not every day someone wants to go hiking through the
woods who’s paralyzed from the waist down.”

Blaze almost toppled over when
the wereverine swiveled on the man and snarled, “I am
not
paralyzed, you
potbellied fuck.”

Phil reddened.  “Was just
saying…”  He gestured to the wereverine’s legs.

Strapped to her back, the
wereverine growled, “Sayin’ what, exactly?”

The pilot from Wasilla Air Taxi
cleared his throat uncomfortably.  “Well, I hope you guys got a good plan.”

“Oh, we got a
great
plan,”
Jack snapped.  “The Yeti thought of it herself.”

“I mean…”  The man cleared his
throat again.  “I don’t see you packin’ much in the way of food.  And two guys
alone in the woods…”  He caught himself and flushed suddenly, looking up at
Blaze.  “I mean…  A guy and a girl…  I mean…”

“I know what you mean,” Blaze
said, years of practice putting a smile over her embarrassment.

Jack made a clucking sound that
reminded Blaze of Old West movies.  “Let’s go, Bessie,” the wereverine said. 
“Don’t want this poor mortal’s head to explode.”

Deciding that was definitely
enough
,
Blaze spun around, careful to knock Jack’s head solidly against the wing
support as she turned to face the pilot.  Holding out a hand for Phil to shake,
Blaze said, “I’m really sorry about my poor, retarded brother.  He kind of came
out like this, and, well, he’s never been very…cultured.”

“Now
listen here
, Yeti wench!”
Jack snarled.  She felt him wave his arms around, throwing her balance off a
bit.

“You should probably go,” Blaze
said, gesturing for the pilot to get back in his plane.  “My brother and I will
be fine.  I own a cabin just through the woods.”

“All right,” the pilot said
reluctantly.  “Just tryin’ ta make sure you two stay safe, seein’ how you’re carrying
around a cripple, ‘n all.”

“A
cripple
?!”  Flinging
this way and that on her back, the wereverine snarled, “The only thing that
isn’t safe is your
face
when I sink my claws into your—”

Blaze connected his skull with
the wing-strut again, hard.  Phil winced at the resounding rattle of his
aircraft’s frame.  “Oh!” she cried, peering over her shoulder at the
wereverine.  “I am
so
sorry…”  She glanced back at Phil.  “Is there
anything else you need?”

“Uh, no,” the pilot from Wasilla
Air Taxi said.  “Uh, you two have a safe trip, all right?”

“Thank you kindly,” Blaze said,
even as Jack snarled, “Just screw off already.”

She helped the pilot get
launched, then held her hand up against the blast of wind as the prop wound up
and the float plane started out across the lake.

“Someday,” Jack said, “I’m going
to break your legs and tote
you
around in a haversack.”

“It’s technically not a
haversack,” Blaze said, smiling and waving at the plane as it departed.  “It’s
a glorified baby-carrier.”

She could
feel
Jack’s
hackles push up against her back, through his shirt.  “Miss Blaze,” he said,
and it came out in a bit-out snarl, “Since when did ‘pissing off the
wereverine’ start to sound like a good idea to you?”

“Do you have the compass?” Blaze
asked, picking up her small backpack of water and snacks and handing it to him.

“I don’t
need
a compass,”
Jack growled.  “I can smell our way there.”

Blaze narrowed her eyes at the vanishing
plane.  “You left it in the cab, didn’t you?”

“Don’t need it,” Jack insisted
stubbornly.

“Don’t need it…or don’t know how
to
use
it?!” Blaze demanded.

“I got the sun and the stars,”
Jack snapped back.  “That’s all I need.”

Blaze jabbed a finger at the
overcast sky.  “And when
that
happens?!”

“…I can smell our way there,”
Jack growled.  “Start trotting, horsie.  ‘Fore I make good on my threats and
put us both out of our damn misery.”

He just called me a ‘horsie’,
Blaze realized with that dreamy half-aware state of a scholar making a note on
a rather interesting form of insect,
And I wanted to get this bastard into
my bed.

“Giddy-
up
!” Jack said,
slapping her on the thigh.  “Better get
going
if you wanna get there by
sunset.”

Blaze took a deep breath to quell
the urge to cut the straps from her back and dump the wereverine into the
water.  Getting that impulse under control, she looked at the forest behind the
swampy edge of the lake.  “Think this is gonna work?”

Strapped to her back, Jack
laughed.  “No.”

“Why not?” Blaze demanded.

She felt his hand wave around as
he gestured at the forest.  “Just get going.  You’ll see.”

Blaze very soon
did
see. 
Trudging through the woods, she quickly discovered, was
not
the same as
meandering along a nice, pre-cut path, clearly marked with pink surveyor’s tape
for your convenience.  It was a spongy, marshy, jumbled mess, where every step
was either getting her soaked to the knees or making her trip over herself as
the cranberry bushes and hidden logs caught at her ankles and dragged her down.

“I’m not paying you to
fall
,”
Jack laughed, after the fourth time she went sprawling, “I’m paying you to
walk
,
pony.”

Fury was the only thing that got
her back to her feet, that time.  Legs trembling under the strain, Blaze
dragged herself up the trunk of a spruce tree.  “You,” she panted, clinging to the
tree’s rough branches, “Are really close to getting left in the woods you
petulant little
shit
.”

Jack went quiet after that.

Knowing she wasn’t going to make
it back to her feet if she fell a fifth time, Blaze picked her way carefully, keeping
her shaking legs straight, trying desperately not to think about how much dead
weight was clinging to her spine. 

When they finally made it to the
old mill trail, Blaze let out a whimper of happiness.  She lurched onto the
relative solidity of the trail and caught herself on a spindly birch just
before she went sprawling.  Her legs, by this point, felt like trembling knots
of liquid muscle, and she didn’t trust her knees to hold her up.

“You’re doing good,” Jack said
softly.  “Just another mile.”

It was the first thing he had
said for a couple hours, aside from telling her to turn right or left, and that
he was speaking now irritated Blaze.

“What, no Clydesdale comments?!”
she snapped.  “No telling me I’m a city-slicker who can’t even carry her own
damn weight in the woods?”

When the wereverine didn’t
respond, immediately, Blaze laughed bitterly and looked out at the trail ahead,
trying to divine how she was going to get them both another
mile
.  She
barely had enough strength to cling to the tree, much less stand there.

“Blaze,” Jack said, “I told you
this was impossible when you first told me your stupid plan.  I told you you’d
be too worn out from the trek through the woods to carry my ass.”

“So you were right,” Blaze
snapped.  “Good for you.  Does the wereverine want a cookie?”

“…and you already went three
times as far as I thought you’d get us,” Jack said.  “I honestly started off
the day thinking you were gonna leave me stranded in the woods.”

“Haven’t
not
left you
stranded, yet,” Blaze reminded him.

“I was pissing you off on purpose
earlier,” Jack said.  “Trying to keep you going.”  She felt him move a little
in the pack.  “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d
really
like it if you got us
the rest of the way there, so we really have a chance of making your plan
work.”

“My legs aren’t working right,”
Blaze confessed.  She looked down at her trembling knees.  “Hell, I don’t know
if I can move.”

“You can do it, Blaze.”

The confidence with which he said
it gave her a little flurry of hope… 

…Which was squashed just as soon
as Blaze took another look at how
much
of the trail she had to go.  She
groaned and looked back down at her huge feet.

“The lodge is just a mile up the
road,” Jack insisted.  “You get us there, we’ll be like Vikings raiding an
abbey.”

“Bet that was pretty easy,” Blaze
muttered.

“They had boiling oil and
crossbows,” Jack said.  “It sucked.”

Blaze took a deep breath and
glanced again at the snowy trail.  “All right.  But you owe me a massage after
this.”

“Hell, woman,” Jack said, “You
get us through this, alive, and I’ll give you a massage every night for an
entire
year
.”

“I’m holding you to that,” Blaze
said, taking a reluctant step forward and releasing her grasp on the tree. 
“Every night for a year.  Naked.”

“Every night for a year,” Jack
agreed.  “Na—
wait
, what?”

Chuckling at the panic in his
voice, Blaze said, “Sounds like a good deal to me.  I mean, here I am carting
your sorry ass through the woods as you gripe at me and alternate between
calling me an abominable snowman and a strange new form of draft horse.”  She
took another wobbly step.

“Who’s gonna be naked?” he asked,
suspiciously.

“Why, you, of course,” Blaze
responded, planting another foot and gingerly taking the weight with a
tremulous knee.  “I’m just the one getting the massage.”

“You know,” Jack said, “I did
spend some time in Japan as a Geisha…”

Blaze tripped suddenly, and
almost sent the both of them sprawling in the snow.

On her back, Jack was laughing. 
“Only in your dreams, tootz.  Let’s get this day over with.  Then we’ll talk.”

“Naked,” Blaze muttered, taking
another step.  “Or I drop your ass in the snow.”

“You drop my ass in the snow and
you’ll have to worry about those wolves all by your lonesome,” Jack reminded her,
“Oh, and your kneecaps, when I blow them away.”  She heard the sound of metal
as he patted his Desert Eagle.

“That’s my gun,” Blaze growled.

“Maybe,” Jack said, “When you pry
it from my cold, dead fingers.”

The wereverine, to her
irritation, had taken a liking to her gun.  Which gave her an idea…

“Naked,” Blaze said, taking
another step.  “And you keep the gun.”

“Fine,” Jack said, “But I get
breakfast in the morning.”

“
Breakfast
?” Blaze
scoffed.  “If you get breakfast, I get to be pounced on, pinned to the ground,
and thoroughly taken with some hot wereverine sex.”

Jack went quiet.

Too late, Blaze remembered the
little brown turd in the bathtub, and Jack staring down at his genitals in
complete despair.  “Uh…” she stammered, “I mean…”

“Where and when?” Jack barked.

Flinching, Blaze said, “But your
legs aren’t—”

“
Where
,” the wereverine
growled, “And
when
?”

“Okay, uh,” Blaze said quickly, racking
her brain for a time far enough out that the wereverine would forget, but not
so far out he thought she was insulting him.  “The kitchen.  Two weeks from
now.  Once we’ve both recovered.”  She laughed nervously.  “As it is, I don’t
think I’ll be able to walk for a week.”

Instead of complaining of CDC
regulations that
specifically
forbade the exchange of bodily fluids on
counter-tops, Jack said, “You got it, babe.”  He reached down and patted her
ass around the backpack.  “Though I’ll take it nice and slow.  Don’t want you
to get hurt or nothin.”

She blushed furiously when she
realized he wasn’t talking about claws or fangs.  It was one of the things she
couldn’t
help
but notice, in the multiple times she’d helped him in and
out of the bath.  Clearing her throat, Blaze quickly changed the subject.  “I,
uh, think I need a drink of water.”

Jack obligingly handed her the water-bottle
from where it was strapped beside his elbow.  Blaze took it over her shoulder
and flipped the cap off, drinking deep.

“I think you’re big enough to
handle it,” Jack said thoughtfully.  “Though I have had problems in the past.”

Blaze sprayed a mouthful of water
across the snow and sputtered, “Size has
nothing
to do with it.” 
Meaning, of course, how proportionate her body was to her insides.

She could hear Jack’s grin when
he said, “Oh, believe me hon…  Size has
everything
to do with it.” 
Pride oozed from his words like an over-filled balloon.