GUARDIANS of the FIRST REALM:

ALASKAN FIRE

by

SARA KING

Chapter 1: Meet Jack

“So I guess Candy told you my brother called in a favor ‘cause he’s blowing chunks?” Blaze’s ‘replacement’ pilot was striding over to her from the brand new Mercedes he had parked with a gravel-slinging spin into the Bruce Rogers’ Flying Service driveway not a minute before.

Blaze, who hadn’t really thought about what a Bush pilot should look like, was now finding herself very concerned. The skinny kid approaching her was dressed in ragged cut-off shorts, a skateboarding Bart Simpson T-shirt, sandals, and sunglasses. He looked for all the world like an out-of-state transfer student Blaze might have shared a class with in Business 101, not at all like the plaid-and-jeans-clad Bush pilot, Bruce Rogers, who was supposed to be flying her and the rest of her worldly possessions out to her new life in the Sleeping Lady Lodge.

“You’re Lance?” she asked, trying not to wince as she attempted to calculate how old the kid was. He barely looked past eighteen. And, now that she got a good look, his hair was still wet from a shower.

“Yep.” He spun the keys of his Mercedes on a finger and stuffed them into the pocket of his pants. Holding out his hand and peering up at her, he said, “You Blaze?”

“Yeah, Blaze,” she said, taking it.

“You’re tall, Blaze,” he said, still peering up at her. “You got a little Viking in your family, then?” As if she hadn’t heard that a million times already in her life.

“Six-four,” she agreed, forcing a smile. “You know how to fly one of these things?” She gestured at the floatplane that was secured to the dock beside her.

“Oh sure,” Lance Rogers said, peeling off his sunglasses and glancing at the Cessna 206, which was approximately the size of a sardine can. “Been in those things since I was a kid. Did my first solo at twelve, much to the consternation of my dad.” He grinned at her, showing a perfect white smile, even further removing him from the ‘Experienced Bush Pilot’ column in Blaze’s head. “Didn’t fly again until I was sixteen, after that. Dad started locking the keys in his safe.” Rubbing the little blue airplane beside him like an old friend, Lance said with a note of wistful regret, “Never did figure out how to hotwire ‘em.”

“Uhhh,” Blaze said, glancing quickly back at the weather-worn wooden sign of Bruce Rogers’ Flying Service, and the little hut beside the aircraft hangar where Candy, Bruce’s wife, was working on paperwork. “I don’t know, I can probably wait for Bruce to get better…”

“Bah!” Lance said. “I fly STOL Cubs and shit for air shows and do a little crop-dusting when I’m bored, which is basically whenever I’m not behind the wheel of a 747.” He shrugged at her widening eyes. “Copilot. Haven’t given me my own bird, yet. The chicken-shits won’t come out and say it, but I’m not bald enough.” At Blaze’s flinch, Lance grinned at her. “It’s okay. I get it a lot. Probably like you and being tall.” He looked up at her expectantly.

“I do get it a lot,” Blaze admitted.

“I’m sure.” What he left unsaid—but what dangled uncomfortably in the air between them—was, When you look like you just crawled out of a spaceship from Planet Orangutan. After an awkward moment, Lance cleared his throat and patted the little blue airplane again. “But yeah. Don’t worry, I won’t crash us. Brucey would kill me if I dinged up his baby. Besides, I hear you just bought a nice place out on the Yentna. Candy said ya had to wait through Breakup to get out there. Bet you’re dyin’ ta see what ya got, right?”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, breaking into a nervous smile. “Fishing lodge. The Sleeping Lady.”

Lance made a sound of appreciation as he started unwrapping the two ropes holding the Cessna’s float to the dock cleats. “Nice place. Landed on the lake for coffee a couple times.” He gestured at his brother’s airplane. “Candy got ya all loaded up?”

“Yeah,” Blaze said, still a little stunned by the fact she was standing beside a commercial airlines pilot. “You fly 747s? Really?” He just didn’t look…stuffy enough.

Lance shrugged. “I fly anything with wings.” He yanked open the door of the Cessna for her and motioned at the blue leather seat beside that of the pilot. “Climb on in. Try not to bump your head. Gonna be a tight fit for you, but nothing I can really do about that. Just be glad it’s not a SuperCub. Man, you’d have trouble getting inside.”

Oh, thanks, Blaze thought, once more reminded of just how far from the Law of Averages that Mother Nature had decided to throw her. She stepped on the convenient little foot-rest, grabbed the inside of the door, and tried not to wince at how much her body made the little plane sink on its floats as she heaved herself into the cockpit.

“How much you weigh, Blaze?” Lance asked almost thoughtfully. Then, when Blaze cast an irritated look back at him, his eyes widened and he held up both hands and quickly said, “Just tryin’ ta judge how close we are to payload.” He gestured at the back of the plane, which was completely packed full of groceries, luggage, and furniture, so much that it was completely blocking out the back windows. “Candy packed you in there pretty good. Everything but the kitchen sink, huh?”

And this was only the first load. Blaze had many more scheduled, to bring in groceries, lumber, and other supplies.

“I’m one-eighty,” Blaze muttered, estimating about twenty pounds low, just because the only people who needed to know that information were her and God. She delicately climbed past the pilot’s console, careful not to touch any of the controls, and sat down in the tiny passenger seat allotted to her.

“Call it two hundred, then,” Lance said, in consideration. “Hmm. I think we can do this thing.”

Blaze hesitated in buckling herself in. “Wait…you think?”

But Lance was already lunging into the pilot’s seat and pulling the door shut behind him. “Headset’s right there,” he said, gesturing to the dash as he buckled himself in and tugged his own headset on. “You ever been in a small plane before, Blaze?”

Blaze, who was still staring at the exit, considering whether it was worth trying to crawl over a commercial airlines pilot to get out of the little sardine Can ‘O Death before it exploded into a ball of fire on the far end of the lake, didn’t really hear him. Anyone who had lived in Alaska for any amount of time heard of the dozens of planes that went down every year. Most because they were overloaded, or because the pilots got cocky.

“Jesus, you’re sheet-ass white,” Lance laughed. “Come on, I already told ya I been in these things since I was a toddler. Okay, look. See this little case behind my seat? That’s the emergency survival kit. We go down, there’s flares, fire-making gear, some rations, all that good stuff in there.”

The casual way he said ‘go down’ made Blaze’s stomach clench.

“But if we do go down,” Lance said, “you’ll survive it a hell of a lot better than me. I mean, hell, look at me. Brucey didn’t give me much warning. I’m wearing shorts and a T-shirt. Didn’t even get a chance to dose myself with DEET. Mosquitoes will eat my ass alive.” He flashed her a big white smile. “That should make you feel better, right?”

It didn’t. But then Lance was firing up the engine, and the entire Cessna shook as the prop rumbled to life.

“Headset!” Lance shouted to her over the roar of the prop.

Oh my God, Blaze thought, reluctantly grabbing the headset and tugging it over her head, I am so totally going to die.

“So I got to talking with Brucey on the way here,” Lance said conversationally as he increased the throttle and the little plane lurched forward, out towards the open water. “In between shitting himself and puking all over the phone, he was kind beatin’ around the bush about tryin’ to con me into talking some sense into you.”

“Come to think of it,” Blaze said, already feeling ill as the overloaded plane started idling towards the middle of the lake, “I could probably stand another day or two in town.”

“But,” Lance said, as if he hadn’t heard her, “I think it’s awesome you bought the place. You just have to watch out for crazies, and make sure you have a baseball bat behind every door.”

“Baseball bat?” Blaze asked, swallowing hard. Very tentatively, because she couldn’t think of why she would possibly need a baseball bat in the woods, she ventured, “Bears?”

“Nah,” Lance said, “To beat all the lonely guys off of you, when they come knocking. There’s a lot of single guys out there. Now shut up for a second. Gotta make a call to the tower.” Then Blaze listened to him babble off a ritual-sounding string of words to ‘Willow traffic’ about ‘north-northwest departure’ and ‘no traffic in sight’ and waited until Lance had tucked the radio away again before she asked, “Bruce wanted you to warn me about lonely guys?”

Lance laughed, “And other things. Mostly the crazies. Now hold on, ‘cause here we go.”

And then the little plane’s engine roared and Blaze was clinging to her seat in a panic as it started rumbling across the lake like a locomotive.

“Huh,” Lance said, as the spruce on the end of the lake loomed near, “looks like we’re a bit overloaded.” And kept them barreling towards the line of trees. Then, just as Blaze was about to scream “For God’s sake, shut it down!” and wrench the controls from him, the plane came out of the water and they were soaring.

“So,” Lance said, once their floats cleared the tree line and they were gaining altitude over the highway and aiming out towards the mostly-uninhabited Lake Ebony on the Yentna River, “you planning on running the Sleeping Lady as a fishing lodge? Got a guiding license?”

But Blaze was stunned at how wonderful it felt to fly. She had squished her face to the window and was peering outward at the stands of birch and cottonwood below. “Oh wow,” she said, watching the plane’s shadow slide across the ground below them. “This is so cool!”

“Bah!” Lance snorted. “This ain’t nothin. Should come check out the air show this summer. That’s cool. Oh, and you’re smearing up Brucey’s glass. He hates that.”

“Sorry,” Blaze said, quickly tearing herself away.

“It’s no prob. Here.” Then Lance ducked the right wingtip down, giving Blaze a better view of the ground.

Shrieking in glee, she plastered herself to the window again.

When Lance put the aircraft back onto a level plane, he was grinning at her. “You remind me of me, when I was a kid. You ever wanna learn to fly? I also teach classes when I’m bored.”

“I would love to,” Blaze blurted, ecstatic. Then winced as reality kicked in. “Well, I’ve gotta get things at the Sleeping Lady under control first, but yeah. Maybe next year?”

“Sure, sure.” Lance glanced out at the twisted array of silty gray rivers and hundreds upon thousands of lakes and ponds that made up the Matanuska-Susitna Valley. “So my brother made me promise to tell you about the kinds of guys that live out here. Most of ‘em are out here for a reason, you know what I mean?”

Blaze tried not to groan. She had heard this rant before, from Candy, from her mom, her Econ professor, and just about every other woman who’d ever spent any amount of time out in the Bush. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Hell, any idiot decides to get frisky, I could probably just bench-press him and he’ll back off.” Not exactly the happiest truth of her existence, but by sheer luck of the draw, Blaze was more ‘manly’ than most of the nerdy men she’d shared her Business classes with.

Lance chuckled. “Okay, sure. But just watch out for the crazies.”

“What kind of crazies?” Blaze asked, frowning.

Lance shrugged. “I dunno. Bruce wanted me to say that. Made me promise to say, ‘Just watch out for the crazies.’ I think he was on NyQuil or something.” He yawned and checked his watch. “Man, you never really appreciate how much sunlight Alaska’s got in the summer ‘til you gotta fly to the Lower 48 a few times a week. Really puts things into perspective.”

“Crazies?” Blaze insisted. “Have there been burglaries or something?”

Lance laughed. “In the Bush? Hell, they all leave their keys in their 4-wheelers out there. Most places don’t even have locks. Who’s gonna burgle them? The moose?” he chuckled, shaking his head. “Nah, I think he was talking more about one guy in particular, but I’m not gonna name names.”

“Who is it?” Blaze demanded.

“Jack Thornton,” Lance said. “But I heard you hired the guy as your handyman, so you’re kinda screwed.”

Blaze felt a spasm of panic, since most of her long-term goals depended on Jack Thornton not being crazy. “What’s wrong with Jack?”

Lance laughed again. “Oh, well, you mean aside from a really bad attitude?” He turned and grinned at her, paying absolutely no attention to the air in front of him. “Well, on one of those stops for coffee at the Sleeping Lady, Jack swam out to our plane, grabbed Brucey by the back of the head and dunked him under the lake a few times. Called him a ‘prissy flyboy’ or something like that. Bruce kinda still remembers it. Brucey’s big, but he said the guy’s got gorilla-strength.”

Blaze’s mouth fell open. All she could say was, “What?”

Lance shrugged. “You want my opinion, this was back when Bruce had just got his wings and was still being a cocky asshole to everyone. Jack was out fishing and Bruce parked on his hole. On purpose. Then demanded to know what Jack was gonna do about it. So yeah. I think Brucey had it coming.”

“How long ago was that?” Blaze demanded, pretty sure that her guests would take umbrage to being dunked in a lake.

“Oh, at least ten years,” Lance said. “It was before I had my license. Brucey was flying me out for a fishing trip, all proud of himself. You ask me, I think that dunking did a hell of a lot for Brucey’s attitude. He used to be such a prick. Mellowed him out something fierce.”

“That is not acceptable adult behavior,” Blaze managed.

Lance only laughed. “Oh yeah? Try telling Thornton that.”

“You bet your ass I will. It’s my lodge, my rules.” In fact, with just that little morsel of information as a guide, Blaze would have a long discussion with her handyman about the proper rules of decorum when potential clientele, paying guests, and lawyers were concerned.

She and Lance chatted for a few more minutes about some of the eye-opening things that her only employee had done in the last ten years he’d done business with the Rogers’ family, and then Lance sat up in his chair to peer over the dash and said, “There we go. Lake Ebony. There’s your baby, up on the hill.”

Blaze, whose mind had been shocked into stunned overdrive somewhere between ‘assault’ and ‘destruction of personal property’ nevertheless had all her worries vanish in a wash of bliss the moment she saw the huge green roof of the Sleeping Lady slide into view between the spruce trees on the crest above the lake. Immediately, she found herself having trouble breathing.

Her dream. Everything she’d ever wanted in her entire life was wrapped up in that big green roof and its half-dozen outbuildings. Bought and paid for, sight unseen. Six hundred thousand dollars for ten thousand square feet, thirty acres, and all the machinery and equipment to run it as a fishing lodge. Every penny of her inheritance, gone, and then some.

Then Lance pulled the flaps and the pitch of the engine changed as the small aircraft began its descent, aiming for the deep black waters of Lake Ebony.

I’m here. Oh God, I’m here… Blaze’s heart was pounding, somewhere between elation and absolute Oh-My-Shit-What-Have-I-Done terror as she watched the last of the spring-budding treetops slip under the plane’s big floats. Hers. The Sleeping Lady was hers. It was her dream come true, and it was only a lake’s-length away.

The landing was surprisingly gentle, and once they had come to a relative stop in the middle of the lake, Lance revved the engine again and got them moving towards shore.

He idled them over to the far bank of the lake, beneath the crest where the Sleeping Lady sat like a mistress of its domain, surveying the lands around it. As they neared the shore, Blaze lost sight of the lodge through the hillside of birch and spruce trees.

When the Cessna’s floats slid into the gravelly mud of the narrow beach, Blaze was close to hyperventilating. She was here. She was either going to sink or swim, and had nobody to blame for it except herself.

…And she was already in debt up to her eyeballs, just getting here. She’d been wanting a lodge her whole life, but now she had it, and was in debt for it, and she already almost felt like puking with nerves. Her hands were shaking as Lance unstrapped himself and crawled out onto the plane’s left float. “Well,” he said, “here we are. Lake Ebony.” He pushed the pilot’s seat out of the way and gestured for Blaze, who was still staring at the woods in front of the propeller in shock, to climb out after him. “You got a ride up to the shop, or should I just pile the stuff on the beach?”

Jerked out of her stunned silence, Blaze climbed down onto the float and stood there, gripping the wing strut with white knuckles, as she stared up at the woods shielding her new home from view, trying frantically to tell herself she was not making the biggest mistake of her life.

Lance gave her an empathetic grin. “Excited?”

Swallowing, Blaze nodded down at him. This close, sharing space on the float, there really wasn’t any way for Blaze to back up and give him space—and thereby the illusion of a lesser disparity in height. Even now, she could see the little gears turning in Lance’s head as he realized just how big she was. At six-foot, Lance really shouldn’t have had to look up at her. Unfortunately, Blaze was about twelve inches and eighty pounds off of average, and every checkout cashier and bank teller in the world had let her know it. Some gigantic Amazon somewhere had birthed Blaze, and, once Blaze had passed between her massive thighs, the woman had left her in an alder thicket on the mountain behind her father’s house. And, having just lost their baby due to a miscarriage, her parents had taken her in, quietly raised her on their own, and could probably be sent to jail for life for not turning her over to the authorities, if they weren’t both already dead.

That was one of the many unhappy surprises that Blaze had discovered in the lawyer’s office four months ago. Adopted. It still hit like a freight train, every time she thought of it.

Then she realized Lance was still looking up at her, waiting for her answer.

“So excited I think I’m gonna puke,” Blaze managed, still trying to focus all of her attention on the textured aluminum plating between her men’s Size 11 hiking boots, attempting to force her stomach into submission.

“Well,” Lance said, “If you wanna go sit down, I’ll unload for you.”

Blaze automatically felt herself prickling at how quickly he offered to do her work for her. “I’ll be fine,” she said. She ducked her head through the door and grabbed a load of groceries from behind the pilot’s seat, not waiting for Lance to unlatch the back compartment. She normally tried not to make a big deal of it, but she wasn’t stupid—she knew that the Alaskan Bush was a man’s world, and that if she didn’t want to start a precedent of Let’s All Take Care Of The Poor Helpless Woman, she needed to start proving her competence the moment she stepped off of the plane. First impressions, her mother had taught her, were everything. If Blaze showed every man she met on the river that she was smart, capable, and willing to work, they wouldn’t patronize her, and those that did, she could simply tell them to get screwed.

Blaze had been raised by the epitome of an Independent Woman—her mother, who had made her millions in real estate, had insisted on keeping separate finances despite her father’s greater wealth—and after earning her way through her Business degree, Blaze was not going to allow a bunch of scruffy, rugged, largely-unemployed men to treat her like a second-class citizen because she had a couple of A-cups and internal plumbing. Groceries retrieved, Blaze gingerly started towards the shore, picking her way across the wet aluminum float. Out in the woods, she heard the sound of an engine and looked up.

A stout-looking man was driving a blue 4-wheeler down a winding dirt track, pulling a flatbed trailer behind him. It rattled and bounced as it jumped over roots and stones, making a ruckus as it worked its way down the hill to her. Blaze watched it approach as Lance worked his way around to the other float and began opening the back compartment of the airplane to access her luggage.

When he came fully into view, the man driving the 4-wheeler looked nothing like what Blaze had envisioned over the phone. Instead of the hairy, dirty, graying, plaid-covered Bushrat she had been expecting after exchanging instructions with his gruff voice over the phone, he was clean-shaven, with jet-black hair, relatively tidy, and wearing tight blue jeans and green flannel shirt. A well-worn Carhartt jacket was slung over his shoulders, zipper open, exposing a broad chest beneath. And he looked young, which was completely at odds with how long she’d heard he’d been skulking around this part of the Yentna.

Hell, from the way some people told it, he’d been living in the same damned cabin since the Gold Rush, so Blaze had hired him fully expecting a wrinkled old fart who had to grab his reading glasses to figure out which nut went on which bolt.

But to her shock, even from this distance, Blaze could see that Jack Thornton was built like a Greek god. Pecs that strained against his shirt. Shoulders that made divots in his jacket. Legs that looked like they could crush the 4-wheeler like a used soda can. When Jack slowed the vehicle and the deepest green eyes that Blaze had ever seen met hers, however, Blaze felt her heart give an extra thud. Then she watched his muscular ass stretch against the jeans as he dismounted…

…and her elephantine foot slipped out from under her, and she went crashing backwards into the frigid waters of Lake Ebony.

Cold and humiliation washed over her like a wet blanket from God, putting out her idle fantasies as quickly as if she’d been dunked in liquid nitrogen. Blaze sputtered to the surface, gasping, blinking up at the horrified face of the pilot, who was kneeling on a float, offering a hand to help her, and then her very first employee, who was smirking.

…smirking?

“Damn,” Jack said, wading out to meet her. He was wearing rubber boots that hugged his hips, secured to his waist by loops snapped to his belt. He offered his big hand, grinning. “You dye your hair to get it that orange? Like fucking carrot soup.” No ‘Sorry, miss, gotta watch your step,’ or ‘Don’t worry, it happens to the best of us…’ He just smirked down at her and commented on the prison-orange hair that had been plaguing her since childhood. Hair that, despite her ongoing attempts to dye it, would not retain any other color.

Blaze’s jaw fell open in her horror, gaining her a nice mouthful of lakewater as it drained through her soggy scalp. Her first two minutes in this place that was to be her new home—hopefully for the rest of her life—and Blaze had made herself look like that helpless woman she was trying desperately not to portray, in front of the very man she had hired to help her maintain the lodge. She could see the amusement in his green eyes, knew that whatever respect for her brilliant mind and sharp business sense that she had managed to earn in their quick, crass phone conversations had just exploded in a wash of cold water and lake weeds.

The water where she had fallen was little over two and a half feet deep, so Blaze easily got to her feet on her own, red-faced and shamed to her core. Jack’s face darkened a bit when she refused his help, but he shrugged and started helping Lance unload the plane, wading to the trailer and back with each load of luggage and groceries. When Blaze hurriedly slapped together an armful of soggy groceries and sloshed past him, a traumatized corner of her brain noticed he was only about five-nine, giving her a full seven inches of headspace over him, leaving Blaze with the horrible realization that she towered over her mechanic like an A-cupped beanpole.

As she walked by, Jack’s neck craned back so he could look at her, his mouth fell open, and he dropped the box of bread he’d been carrying into the lake.

What was left of her ill-conceived fantasies were utterly shattered as she watched the muscular little man scrabble to pluck loaves of bread from the water. Men, Blaze had learned from hundreds of lonely nights at the bar, did not like their women taller than them, and anyone who said otherwise had never been a six-foot-four-inch behemoth thundering through the college dating scene.

After the four years she’d spent at the University of Alaska to get her degree, Blaze had long since given up. Those men who on the off-chance happened to be taller than her often had some genetic species-survival switch tripped in their brain that made them crave women on the opposite end of the height spectrum, to balance out the gene pool. As of yet, she’d only found two men who showed any interest, and both had been skinny computer geeks she had met in college, some perverted part of their nerdy brains somehow turned on by the whole Amazon thing. Both had tried to get her to wear leather armor and wield a broadsword sometime during bed-play. Neither had stayed long.

Fighting despair, Blaze went to the trailer and sat on the back, sloshing a flood of water from her clothes as she went. She sat down and pulled off her boots, emptying small rivers from their insides.

On one of his trips from the plane, her luggage over his shoulder, Jack paused and glanced at her shoes. “Jesus,” he said, “Those are even bigger than mine. Where you get feet like that? A Clydesdale?” Then, chuckling, he went back to carrying groceries as if he hadn’t just made Blaze’s stomach clench with shame.

Blaze almost fired him on the spot. She was so humiliated that it was all she could do to keep the words locked behind clenched teeth. The only thing that saved him was that Blaze knew she couldn’t make the Sleeping Lady run without Jack’s help. She was a Business major with secret fantasies of one day running a self-sufficient homestead-slash-fishing-lodge in the Alaskan Bush. He was a mechanic, handyman, and carpenter who had spent his entire life actually living her dream…and knowing what it took to make it happen.

When the Cessna was fully unloaded, Blaze watched as Jack pushed the plane off the beach and waded out into the lake as he got it turned around and pointed in the opposite direction, then gave it a big push. As Jack was wading back to shore, Lance started the engine and began idling the airplane out across the lake, toward a little channel that Blaze had noticed on the flight in.

“Where’s he going?” she asked, as Jack rejoined her at the 4-wheeler.

Jack raised an eyebrow in a manner that suggested she had just asked a stupid question. “He’s gotta go take off on the river. Not enough space to take off on the lake.” He gestured at the 4-wheeler. “Wanna drive?”

Blaze, soaked and still feeling sick with humiliation, shook her head. All she wanted to do was get home and get changed.

Jack chuckled, green eyes twinkling. “Wanna get rid of the evidence, huh?”

Blaze peered at him. “What?”

He gestured at her soggy clothes. “Evidence.” When she just stared at him, he offered, “That you’re a dumbshit city-slicker.” The way he said it, it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Blaze’s mouth fell open, and again the words, “You’re fired, asshole,” tried to tumble forth. Instead, in her horror, she managed to clamp her throat shut and only a strangled garble came out.

If Jack noticed or cared, he didn’t show it. Chuckling, he threw a leg over the 4-wheeler, once again exposing her to his tightly-muscled posterior, started the engine, and did a tight U-turn on the muddy gravel lakebed and started them back up the hill, Blaze clinging to the back end of the trailer as the bounces and jolts tried to throw her off into the dirt.

When they crested the hill, Jack slowed and glanced behind him. “Still back there, Boss?”

“My name’s Blaze,” she gritted, still fighting the urge to say something unkind.

He grinned, and she saw that sparkle in his green eyes again. “Okay, Boss.” He turned back to the trail and gunned the 4-wheeler again, weaving them back and forth on a long, yet much more gradual, upward climb. Birch, spruce, alder, and willow trees blocked her view of the lodge through the woods, and she got only glimpses here and there of a log structure before it disappeared again.

Even on the back of the trailer, the bugs were bad. Blaze had to cough and swat them away, despite being drenched with bug dope. Completely unfazed, a swarm of mosquitoes and tiny black, stripe-legged flies landed on her skin and started biting her arms and legs, sometimes even drilling her through the cloth of her shirt.

Jack glanced back at her as Blaze killed half a dozen on an OFF-soaked forearm. He grinned. “Around here,” he called over the engine, “We wear layers.” He grabbed the brim of his green boonie-cap between gloved fingers. “And hats. Keeps the bugs off.” He slowed down to give her a quick perusal. “You might wanna find a long-sleeved shirt and some workpants…loose-fitting. Lots of city-slickers come out here without good pants. Bugs bite right through tight shit.”

Blaze felt another stab of shame worming through her stomach. She was dressed in fancy jeans and a T-shirt, no hat, no gloves, and—because it had been such a beautiful day on takeoff—her jacket was stuffed in her duffel bags.

Jack apparently mistook her shame for admission to being a city-slicker. He nodded. “Gal next door, Jennie Mae, should have something that fits. Her husband’s about your size. Real big guy. Built like a brick shithouse.”

Blaze narrowed her eyes. “Brick shithouse?” But Jack was already turning back to the overgrown dirt track leading to the lodge, and either didn’t hear her over the rattle of the trailer, or didn’t care. Glaring at his broad back, Blaze began to plot out exactly how she was going to bring up Jack’s obvious lack of people skills without getting herself re-introduced to Lake Ebony a few times for being a snooty city-slicker. Some of Lance’s stories had been…eye-opening.

When they finally broke through the trees, however, Blaze’s breath caught and she forgot about uncouth cads and brick shithouses. The ten-thousand-square-foot fishing lodge was not what she had been expecting. The grounds were unkempt and overgrown, its paneling was much more weathered and gray than she had noticed in the pictures, and the big windows were boarded up, rather than open and inviting as she had been led to believe.

“What happened to it?” she blurted, when Jack drove them around back of the massive structure, exposing more ancient buildings in bad need of love and new paint. The driveway to the back was completely overgrown with yarrow and grass, the lawn speckled with baby cottonwood trees.

“Owners abandoned it four years ago,” Jack said, once again presenting her with an extremely interesting view as he dismounted. He reached into the flatbed beside her to grab a couple of her duffel bags. Hefting them each over a broad shoulder, he eyed the massive building and shrugged. “Just boarded it up and left.”

The realtor had told her something about the aging husband having a heart attack, and the couple having to pack up and move back to town. With the economy as bad as it had been, they’d been looking unsuccessfully for a buyer for many years—part of the reason why Blaze had managed to get a ten-thousand-square-foot lodge, six outbuildings, thirty acres, and all the machinery to run the place for only six hundred thousand dollars.

Blaze jumped off the trailer and took one of her bags—he’d left her the lightest, she realized, with irritation—and struggled to lift it out of the bed. Her eyes narrowed as she watched Jack’s broad back swagger away, a bag slung easily over each shoulder.

All the height, none of the brawn, she thought, disgusted. Viking warrior-woman she might look, Amazon she was not.

Gritting her teeth against that irritation, she grabbed her duffel with both hands and lugged it to the back porch, where Jack had set the bags down and was digging in his pocket. “You wanna do the honors?” he asked, dragging out a keychain and holding it up to her.

Blaze’s heart gave a flutter when she realized, for the first time in her life, she was standing on her own property, about to enter her very own home. A place that would, hopefully, become her primary source of income until her death.

Tentatively, Blaze lowered the bag to the creaky wooden porch and held her breath as she reached out to take the keys to her dream-home.

Jack dropped the keys away and held out his hand. “I’m Jack Thornton.”

Blaze’s eyes were fixed on the keys that now dangled at his side. “Blaze MacKenzie,” she growled, ignoring his proffered palm.

“Blaze, huh?” Jack said, peering up at her like an interested ferret. “Why you called that?” What he didn’t add, but Blaze could feel hanging in the air between them, was, …when you’re the size of a gorilla?

“I don’t get cold,” Blaze growled.

“Oh yeah?” He kind of sniffed the air, at that, like a dog sniffing out a new scent. He frowned, his green eyes watching with a thoughtful expression. “Huh. All that mass helps keep the heat in, then, eh?” He chuckled as if he thought that was somehow funny. “What’s your real name, Boss?”

She felt like snatching the keys from where they hung against his leg and stuffing them down his throat, but years of training on how to deal with difficult people made her force a smile. “Technically, it’s Beatrice MacKenzie, but if I hear you use it, you’re a dead man.”

He grinned. “Sure Boss. You gonna shake my hand?” He was still holding his palm out.

“You gonna give me my keys?” Blaze snapped.

Jack’s voice was calm but firm when he said, “I like to shake the hands of those people I’m going to be working with.” His smile remained, but there was a wary calculation there that Blaze found irritating.

She didn’t feel like shaking his hand, but, realizing that she probably wasn’t going to get her keys otherwise, she did it.

And, it might have been her imagination, but the moment Blaze’s hand came into contact with Jack’s, the handyman stiffened, his green eyes going just a bit wide. His nostrils flared again, and this time he bent and blatantly sniffed at her knuckles before jerking his head away like a startled fox. His green eyes lifted to her face again, and this time, there was no mistaking the wariness there.

“What…” Blaze gritted, when he just stood there, staring at her, holding her hand, “…are you staring at?”

That seemed to break whatever stupor that Jack had fallen into. He shook himself and released his grip, looking, for all the world, like a weasel that had just encountered something new and dangerous. She could almost see him brushing down his hackles as he scratched at the back of his neck.

“Well, uh, Boss, here ya go.” He tossed her the keys, instead of simply handing them over. Then he took a big step backwards, out of arm’s-reach.

That made Blaze scowl. Because she had been chronically affronted by the uncouth ass since the moment she had gotten off the plane, Blaze couldn’t keep her mouth shut. “What,” she growled, gesturing at him, “You afraid whatever disease I’ve got is gonna rub off, you’ll drop your testicles and grow tits?”

For the first time, Jack flushed, looking extremely embarrassed. He glanced at the 4-wheeler as if he wished he could hop aboard and speed away. “Uh, no, Ma’am.”

“I’m a girl,” Blaze growled. “You don’t believe it, I’ll fucking drop my pants and prove it to you.”

“No,” Jack said quickly, his face reddening to a refreshing shade of crimson, “I know you’re a girl. I can smell—” He stopped suddenly, hesitating, his green eyes flickering across her face before quickly looking away.

“Smell?” Blaze raised an eyebrow, quietly wondering if Lance had been right and all those years alone in the Alaskan Bush had been a bit too much for the poor bastard. “Smell what?”

“Perfume,” Jack said, wrinkling his nose in the very picture of disgust. “City-slicker perfume.”

Blaze narrowed her eyes. “I don’t wear perfume.”

His mask of disgust cracked a little, leaving what looked like nervousness and indecision in its place. Jack glanced again at the 4-wheeler like a man wanting to make a high-speed getaway. “Must be your detergent.”

Blaze crossed her arms, reveling in his discomfort. “I use non-scented hypoallergenic. Better for the environment.”

“Expensive shampoo, then,” Jack muttered, using a scuffed work-boot to pry at a splinter in the porch. “You got your hair wet.”

…Which was true enough. Even then, she could smell the scent of Biolage mingling with the stale dirt-stink of lakewater.

Still, Blaze scowled at him. Something was telling her that he wasn’t divulging the whole truth, and that bothered her.

“So, uh,” Jack said, motioning at the door, “You gonna open it?” He was giving off the nervous energy of a wolf that was just hungry enough to come sniffing at a human doorstep for its next meal ticket, but was also ready to drop anything and bolt at the slightest provocation. She was pretty sure that, had Jack not needed the job, he would’ve already been gone.

And he had needed the job. Judging by his worn clothes and the scuffed and scrapped-together look of his four-wheeler, she was pretty sure the poor bastard was living on food stamps. After all, employment in the Bush was fairly limited. This was probably the first real job he’d had in years.

Blaze eyed him a moment longer before turning her attention to the keys in her hand. As soon as she started sorting through them, Jack too-quickly ducked to grab the duffels—all of them, this time—and threw them easily over his big shoulders. He then waited anxiously on the deck just out of reach, looking at anything but her. Blaze hesitated in picking through her keys, instinctively wanting to get to the root of the matter, but her gut was telling her if she pushed the subject any further, her handyman was going to disappear and never come back.

And she needed him.

Blaze may have known the proper way to tally up a Balance Sheet and deliver a Quarterly Earnings Statement, but she didn’t have the first clue how to unclog a pipe that didn’t succumb to Drāno.

Blaze found the right key and inserted it into the lock. She could almost feel the sigh of relief behind her as she turned the knob and shoved the door open, revealing a darkened interior beyond.

“I’ll start taking the plywood off the windows tonight,” Jack said, following her inside. The place smelled of old smoke, wood, and dust. “Get some light in this place.” He set the duffels down inside the foyer, then started digging in his jacket pocket. “Until then…” He fished out an LED flashlight and handed it to her.

Blaze reached for it, grateful.

Instead of handing it to her, however, Jack flipped it on suddenly and shone it in her eyes.

“What the hell?!” Blaze cried, holding up a hand against the blue glare.

Jack lowered the light, frowning. He started sniffing the air again, short, brief little whuffs, like a confused bear. “You ain’t a vampire,” he said, sounding stunned. Just when she was starting to blink the red dots out of her vision, he shone the light into her eyes again. “And you ain’t a fairy.”

Blaze snagged the LED flashlight from his grip and yanked it away from him. Growling, she switched it off. “Look, Jack,” she said, “I know you’ve been out here in the sticks a long time on your own, buddy, thumb squarely up your hairy little ass, but you’re gonna learn some people skills or you’re not working for me.” She frowned when Jack simply stared at the flashlight in her hand, seemingly caught between the urge to bolt and the urge to snatch it back. She switched it back on and shone it on his face, making him start. “You listening?”

Jack blinked up at her and shielded his face, and she almost thought she heard a low growl rising in his chest.

“Good,” Blaze snapped. She waggled the light at him. “First rule. I don’t care if she looks like she belongs in steel and boiled leather, manning the helm of a Norse battleship—you don’t call your boss a blood-sucker, and you don’t ask her if she’s gay.”

Jack lowered his hand, looking confused. “Huh?”

“Second,” Blaze said, turning the light on the room, “If you’re going to have any contact at all with the guests, you’re going to stop making rude comments. Period.”

“Rude comments?” Jack asked, sounding perplexed.

She switched the light back to his face. “Suggesting I have a bit of draft horse in my ancestry? Or that I’m a ‘dumbass city-slicker?’”

“Well,” Jack said gruffly, “You got big-ass feet and you fell in the lake. Now do you mind? I’ve got sensitive eyes.”

Blaze stared at him, stunned by his hypocrisy, and left the light on his face another few seconds. Finally, she turned it again to the inside of the lodge. “So what do you think?”

Jack lowered his arm from his face suspiciously. “Think you got a hell of a deal on the place.”

“It’s a lot of work,” Blaze said, shining the light around the basement floor, the light catching the reflection of windows that were still boarded from the outside.

“Yeah,” Jack said. He gave her a long, guarded look. “What are you?”

“Business major,” Blaze said, distracted. “Ditched everything to come out here, though, so I can’t afford to screw up.” She crossed the room to shine her light on a pile of grass and black deposits on the floor beside the wall. “What is that?”

“Looks like a squirrel found its way in here,” Jack said. “They’ll probably be all over. Stuff’ll be chewed, too, so you’ll probably have to replace some walls and flooring.” He paused, seeming to hesitate. “I mean really, what are you?”

Blaze flashed him again, irritated. “Remember what I said about rude comments?”

She almost saw his hackles go up again. “I’m gonna go get the rest of the groceries.” He turned on heel and left.

Blaze sighed. As they’d loaded the Cessna 206 while waiting for Bruce’s brother to arrive, Candy had warned her that people in the Bush were…different. Most of them, the energetic little woman had told her, had retreated to the Bush because they couldn’t deal with their problems in town. Unfortunately, that meant most of them were eccentric, egotistical, hard-ass recluses who wanted to be left alone. Between Lance’s brief recountings of Thornton’s past misdeeds and her first twenty minutes with Jack in the flesh, Blaze got the general idea that her new mechanic fell into that category, and that it was desperation—and a dearth of paying jobs in the area—that had finally made him come out of his shell.

Jack dropped her remaining luggage and foodstuffs unceremoniously at her feet, all in a single massive load, and Blaze was pretty sure she heard some stuff crunch that shouldn’t have. “I’ll see if I can find some firewood,” he said, ignoring the sound of breaking glass. Then he was gone again, his broad back disappearing as he made his way to the largest of the outbuildings.

Because she refused to dig through her luggage to figure out which prized artifact of her life had succumbed to the brute, Blaze started searching the basement for a good spot to stow her stuff and take shelter for the night. Near the back, she found a small room with a tiny cot, dusty and stale-smelling. Blaze’s feet would be hanging off the end, but she decided it would work for now.

“I’m taking this one for the night,” Blaze said, as Jack stepped inside, muscles straining under a big armload of firewood.

Jack grunted and dumped the logs beside the stove, then gave the tiny room a curious look. “Owner’s suite is upstairs, top floor.”

“I don’t feel like dragging duffels all the way up there,” Blaze said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m gonna change.” She gestured at the room. “You want proof, here’s your chance.”

Jack flushed. “Don’t need proof.” Then he turned and retreated again. After a few minutes, she heard something creaking against the nearby window, and a piece of plywood began to pry free, allowing a blast of light into the dark basement. Ignoring it, Blaze dragged her belongings into the room she’d picked out and, by the bluish glow of the LED flashlight, closed the door and sorted through her duffels for a new set of clothes.

She found it—camouflaged cargo-pants, a T-shirt, and a long-sleeved, button-up flannel shirt—and quickly doffed her wet clothes to exchange for fresh. She replaced her hiking boots with the brand-new pair of work boots she had bought at the army surplus store right before hopping on her flight, then topped the ensemble off with a pale green boonie cap she had purchased at the same establishment.

When she stepped back out of the room, the basement was well-lit from the three pieces of plywood that Jack had pulled from the windows. Her handyman was currently on his knees in front of the fireplace, his grease-stained jacket thrown over a rough-hewn wooden chair, his muscular shoulders bunching as he gently laid kindling into the fancy box-shaped woodstove.

When she stepped into the basement with him, Jack looked up. She saw both eyebrows go up as he took in her new style of dress.

“Better?” Blaze demanded.

“Miss GI Jane,” Jack said. “You in the army, Miss Jane?”

Blaze scowled. “The name is Blaze.”

Jack grinned at her, green eyes dancing. “That like a nickname you got from the military, Miss Jane?”

Blaze stared at him for so long that Jack went back to making a fire. Finally, Blaze blurted, “Are you trying to piss me off?”

“Nope,” Jack said, “Trying to figure out what sort of critter landed on my doorstep, that’s all.”

Blaze choked. “Your doorstep.” She waved a hand at the lodge around them. “I’m sorry, did you just spend six hundred thousand of your hard-earned dollars on this place?”

“From what I hear,” Jack said, still working with the fire, “It was an inheritance.” He pulled back and got a little cut-open pop-can full of clear liquid and sloshed it on the wood inside. Then he yanked a book of matches from his back pocket and struck a flame, then touched it to the kindling. The fire spread fast—not as fast as gasoline, Blaze realized—but he had definitely used some sort of accelerant.

An inheritance. Blaze found herself so infuriated that it was all she could do not to tell him to get his tight, Greek-godly ass packed up and out of her lodge. Now.

“And when I say my doorstep,” Jack said, turning to her, “I mean my neck of woods. I’ve claimed this place. Everything for about ten square miles. Tied myself to the land, keep it nice. Kind of makes me anxious to see just what sort of critter is holing up right smack in the middle of it.” He peered up at her expectantly, then, like he was waiting for her to tell him she was a Martian, and oh, by the way, here’s my raygun and the keys to my spaceship.

Blaze sighed, looking at the dusty drywall of the ceiling. “Damn it. Are there any other people that can turn a wrench around here, or are you it?”

“You haven’t answered my question, missy,” Jack said. “I woulda said you got some snake in you, but smell’s not right. Kinda bitter. Like burned metal. Kinda like those flame-throwing gorillas in Africa.”

“Get out,” Blaze said.

Jack stood up, but he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his big chest. Over the crackle of the fire, he gave her a flat stare and said, “Are we gonna have to tussle, then?”

Blaze stared at him, completely unbelieving that he was not listening to instructions. “I told you to get out of my house.”

“‘Your’ house,” he growled, “Is on my land. I’ve kept it free of all sorts of nuisances and vermin for over a hundred years, and I’d hate to let it down now.”

Blaze’s mouth fell open. “You’re insane.”

“Maybe,” he growled. “And you’re trespassing, tootz.” And his growl sounded almost feral, animalistic, like a warning rattle that was coming from deep in his chest.

Impossible, Blaze thought, listening to the odd sound.

“So, sweetie,” Jack said, still leaning stubbornly against the wall, “Dispense with the bullshit. Who are you, and why the fuck didn’t you pay attention to the warning signs I posted all over the place?”

He’s completely off his rocker, Blaze thought, staring at him. She began to think of the gun she had stashed in her duffel, in case of bears. She glanced behind her.

“Wouldn’t try it, if I were you,” Jack said. “I’ve been shot about fifteen-hundred times in my life, and stabbed a time or two before that.” He flexed a bicep, then looked at her. “Ain’t seein’ much effect… You?” He grinned, and in the firelight, Blaze could have sworn she saw long, sharp canines.

“Uh, look,” Blaze said, deciding that she really didn’t want to get into a brawl with a coke-snorting Bushrat dopehead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I was told the deed was for thirty acres. If you think some of that belongs to you, I’m sure we can work it out in the courts.”

His mouth fell open and he frowned at her. “Are you smoking crack?”

“I could say the same for you!” Blaze cried. “I’ve told you twice, now, to get out of my house, and you’re still standing there. You know, people go to jail for trespassing.”

That got his hackles up. She could feel the energy in the room jump as he tensed his muscular body and pushed off of the wall.

“Maybe you didn’t hear me, sweetheart,” he snarled, pointing a finger at the floor, “But this is my home territory, and anyone with any brains knows to check out who’s claimed what before putting six hundred thousand of their ‘hard-earned’ dollars into a few acres right in the middle of someone’s home range.”

Blaze just stared at him. “What are you talking about?” she finally managed. “This is America. Nobody can ‘claim’ ten square miles of land.”

He grinned fiercely, and Blaze once again thought she saw the flash of teeth. “That’s where you’re wrong, sugar.” He took a step towards her, and Blaze suddenly realized why it seemed like she had been seeing his hackles raise every time he got angry. His back, unlike his face, was hairy. Almost inhumanly hairy. And the hair was standing on end, so that it pushed up over the shoulders and up his neck, puffing up his shirt. “So,” Jack growled—and this time, the growl was definitely not human, “Tell me what you are and stop fucking around.” It was his eyes, though, that finally made Blaze take a nervous step backwards. As she watched, they started to glow. The black pupil elongated, becoming a narrow slit.

“Listen,” Blaze whispered, “Whatever you’re on, I’m sure it’s wonderful, but I really have no idea what you’re talking about.” She took another step backwards, into the bedroom. She glanced down at the doorknob, saw the lock.

“Don’t even try it,” Jack growled. In the flickering light of the fire, she thought she saw his teeth lengthening to points.

Blaze ducked out of the way and slammed the door shut. An instant later, she twisted the lock and dove for her duffel bags.

Which one’s got the gun? she thought, panic clawing at her brain. She had an insane woodsman in her home, and he was obviously on some pretty expensive medication. Blaze found the duffel and had just knelt beside it when the door exploded off of its hinges, the shattered bits of wood and paint so tiny that they drifted around her like feathers. Seeing that, Blaze’s body locked up all at once, her frantic mind thinking that the door had somehow been hit by a shotgun—or a small thermonuclear device. She looked up, half-expecting to see the black barrel of a gun pointed at her.

What stood on the other side, however, was much worse. Over six feet tall, it seemed to be a mixture of man and beast—bearlike, but with more delicate features. It stood hunched on hind legs and was snarling, its compact body covered in four-inch-long brown and blonde fur.

Those places, of course, that weren’t still sporting ripped jeans and a shredded flannel shirt.

Blaze screamed and scrambled backwards, away from her duffels.

The creature followed her into the room, easily tossing aside the seventy-pound duffels as if they were made of Styrofoam. The eerie rumble was still coming from its chest, magnified now, its snarl bearing long, saliva-soaked ivory fangs, its glowing green eyes fixed on her with deadly purpose.

Blaze’s back hit the far wall before she realized she’d left herself trapped. She cringed as the thing rushed her, then screamed as it pounded a taloned fist into the brickwork beside her head, powdering it to dust.

“Answer me!” the creature snarled, hellish green eyes only inches from her own. “What the fuck are you?!”

“I don’t know,” Blaze whimpered, hiding her head with her arms. “Please. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

The creature grabbed her arm and pulled it from her face as easily as if she had been a reluctant toddler. It peered at her, searching her face with its slitted eyes. When Blaze tried to protect herself from its gaze with the other arm, it, too, was removed with a powerful, clawed hand and held above her head. Blaze cringed, utter terror leaving her struggling for breath. She felt her lungs locking up, terror clamping down on her chest like a vice.

The creature leaned close, its nightmarishly fanged face dropping until its whiskers brushed her neck. Blaze trembled and tried to pull away, struggling to breathe, but the beast easily held her in place. She felt a cold draft near her jugular as it took a deep breath near her neck, nostrils flaring.

Feeling the warm tongue slide out and lick her throat, however, Blaze lost it. She screamed and kicked out, catching the thing between the legs with all the strength of her terror.

The slitted green eyes went wide, then the creature kind of crumpled sideways, releasing her.

Blaze got up and ran.

She didn’t slow down for the gun, didn’t stop for her coat or gear, and, once she realized she didn’t know how to start the 4-wheeler, kept right on running, making a panicked bee-line for the trees.

Behind her, she heard a crash within the lodge, then she was hurtling through the woods, diving over fallen trees, running as fast as her freakishly long legs could go.

“Wait!” she heard, behind her. Too close. Blaze screamed and ran faster, trying to make the lake. She could see the water in the distance. Just a little further…

A rotten birch caught her ankle, sending Blaze tumbling face-first into the brush. Behind her, she heard the sound of footsteps crashing through the undergrowth, catching up. She let out a panicked cry and struggled to get to her feet.

“Now just hold on!” a very human-sounding voice cried, within kicking-range. Something grabbed her shoulder and held it. In an instinctive panic, now, Blaze rolled onto her back and started slamming her boots into anything that moved.

“Jesus!” Jack cried, stumbling backwards, hands up. “I’m not going to hurt you, okay?” He peered at her as if she were some sort of dangerous insect, keeping his distance. His clothes were tattered. “I just want you to calm down so we can talk.” His green eyes were anxious. But not, her mind babbled, glowing anymore. “Let’s just talk, okay?” He started easing towards her, one hand out.

Blaze got up and bolted. She had gone maybe thirty feet before Jack tackled her, bringing her solidly to the ground with all the authority of a ton of bricks. She screamed into the undergrowth as he crawled up her body and sat down on top of her, then flipped her over. At five-nine, Jack had to weigh something like four hundred pounds. She was finding it hard to breathe from the weight on her stomach.

“Listen, Blaze,” he panted, leaning over her and holding down her arms against the mossy forest floor, “I think we got off to a bad start.” Brilliant green eyes that had been slitted like a goddamn snake’s not a moment before were now filled with concern.

She saw his tattered plaid shirt, remembered the huge beast that had assaulted her, and sucked in a huge lungful of air.

Jack clapped a hand over her face, glancing nervously at the lake. “Okay, sweetie,” he said, over her muffled screams, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is you stop screaming, follow me back to the lodge, and we have a nice long chat. The hard way is I use this shirt, here, to gag you, tie your hands behind your back, throw you over my shoulder, and take you back anyway.”

Blaze bit his hand. Then, as he cursed and yanked his palm away to examine it, she bucked and kicked underneath him, trying to dislodge his body. He remained as solidly in place as the Great Pyramids of Egypt. She screamed again, this time making full use of her lungs.

Jack had a piece of his shirt stuffed in her mouth and secured before she could repeat the performance. Making nervous glances at the lake, he flipped her over, easily dragging her hands behind her back as she thrashed. Blaze heard the sound of cloth ripping and cursed into the gag as she felt him wrap strips of fabric around her wrists, securing them in place.

Oh God, Blaze thought, her gut twisting in horror. He’s tying me up… She knew what happened to women who got tied up in the woods, a hundred miles from the nearest road.

Jack released her wrists, fully-bound, and started on her ankles. Blaze twisted and strained against the cloth strips, but whatever else he was, he’d probably been a Boy Scout—he tied a damn good knot.

“You are going to jail, asshole!” Blaze cried into the shirt, in desperation, as she felt him finish with her ankles.

Jack flipped her over again, his face strained with anxiousness. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” he said again, almost a babble. “Just wanna talk, okay? Iron some things out. Nothin more than that.” Then, as if her six-foot-four, two-hundred-pound frame weighed no more than a carryon backpack, he flipped her over a muscular shoulder and started carrying her back to the lodge. Blaze flailed and kicked as best as she could, but she might as well have been batting at a bear with a feather for all the affect it had on him.

Jack took her up the porch steps, stepped inside the threshold, and, after scanning the woods beyond the yard nervously, yanked the door shut behind them. As soon as they were alone in the gloomy basement, Blaze felt a lump of dread forming in her gut. She stopped kicking, knowing she was probably going to need her strength.

He walked over to the wall beside the woodstove—across the room, she noticed, from a roughly beastie-sized hole in the drywall—and set her down on the floor with surprising gentleness. Then he stood up and scratched at the back of his neck, swallowing hard. “Jesus,” he muttered, “but that gives me the willies.” He seemed to shake himself, then peered out the window nervously.

This is where he rapes me, takes my valuables, and buries me in the hill, Blaze thought, realizing for the first time where Bill and Susan Olson had most likely disappeared off to. The elderly couple who had owned the Sleeping Lady before her were probably even then buried out in the woods somewhere, rotting in their nice, neat little graves.

Instead of ripping off her clothes, however, Jack squatted in front of her almost carefully, his green eyes cautious. He cleared his throat. “You…uh…really didn’t have any idea what I was talking about, did you?”

She glared at him over the gag.

“I’m gonna pull the shirt out of your mouth,” Jack said, “But don’t scream, all right? You’re all right. Nobody’s hurt. I haven’t assaulted you and buried you in a hill. Let’s just talk about this like reasonable adults, all right?”

Blaze’s heart thundered at his last comment and she felt her nostrils flare as she tried to get enough air.

For a moment, Jack looked to have second thoughts. Then, reluctantly, he leaned forward and freed the gag from her mouth.

“You are so dead,” Blaze blurted.

Jack froze, looking somewhat unnerved. “Oh? Why’s that?”

“When the police find out about this,” Blaze began, “you’re going to go to prison for the next thirty years. Kidnapping, assault—”

“The police.” Jack scoffed, and the complete disdain with which he did so shut her up. Blaze hesitated, the wind thoroughly swept from her sails with the realization that he absolutely did not care what the Alaska State Troopers had to say about his little misdeeds…probably because he planned on going down in a blazing shotgun-battle on his back porch.

Jack leaned closer and tilted his head to the side as he peered at her, like a wild animal giving her a closer inspection. He made a couple gentle sniffs of the air between them, then frowned. “You’ve got no one else coming for you, do you?”

The certainty with which he said it made Blaze go utterly stiff. “Bruce Rogers and his wife know exactly where I am. My realtor knows I bought this place, and if I turn up missing—”

He waved a dismissive hand. “No. I mean friends. Family. Kin.” He was watching her again, giving her the feel she was blessed with the full attention of a wary predator. Yep. Definitely a serial killer.

“I have tons of friends and family,” Blaze lied, “And they’re all scheduled to show up next week.”

He eyed her a moment. “You’re alone.”

Stated like that, so blatantly, Blaze felt her prepared lies shrivel up and die. She turned her head and scrutinized the wood stove, trying to hold back tears. Crying, she had learned long ago, only made things worse.

Jack sat down, just out of kicking range, and drew his knees up. Throwing his bulky arms across his knees, he leaned his chin on his forearms and studied her. For long moments, neither of them spoke.

Blaze eventually began to get creeped out by the stalker-like stare he was giving her, and to hide her bone-crunching terror, snarled, “What are you looking at?”

Jack flinched. Then, softly, he said, “You ain’t got no family? Nobody who knows you’re up here?”

“Just kill me already,” Blaze muttered to the stove.

Just at the edge of her vision, Jack seemed to flinch. “Now hold on a second, love. Nobody’s gonna go killin’ nobody. I’m just trying to figure out…” He hesitated. “Well, I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on, is all.”

Blaze’s jaw dropped open and she turned to frown at him. “You’re trying to figure out what’s going on?”

“Uh, yeah,” Jack said. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

She stared at him until he started to fidget with a hole in his jeans. Finally, she found the ability to say, “I’m trying to start a fishing lodge. Something you obviously took offense to.” She looked him up and down, trying to decide if she could convince him to let her call Lance and fly back to town. She decided probably not. He may look rugged and dirt-poor, but his eyes didn’t hold that dullness of an idiot.

“Look,” she managed, “I really think we can work this out. I won’t press charges, I swear. Just let me go, please.”

Jack blinked at her, his green eyes startled. “You really have no idea what’s going on here, do you?”

“You’re on some pretty wicked drugs,” Blaze said.

Jack raised an eyebrow at her. He winced, then swallowed, glancing again at the floor. Then, clearing his throat, he looked back up at her and said, “Okay, how about we try this another way. You saw what happened a few minutes ago.” He gestured at the shattered door, the gaping hole in the drywall. “Just what do you think you’re dealing with, here?” He sounded, for all the world, like a friend engaging in a pleasant debate with her.

“Cocaine, most like,” Blaze said. “Though I never heard of it making your eyes go funky, so I’m thinking probably a combo drug.”

Jack scratched the back of his neck again, sweat breaking out on his forehead. “Shit.”

Blaze laughed. “What, I pegged you?”

“No,” he muttered, “I just made a total ass out of myself.”

“Was it the crack or the LSD?” Blaze asked sweetly.

“Honey,” Jack growled, “I’m a wereverine.”

Blaze’s confusion must have shown, because he quickly added, “A wereverine that’s managed to keep his head low for a century and a half, and then this happens.” He gave her a worried frown. “I dunno why, but you just set off about every alarm trigger I’ve got, and my instincts are pretty damn good.”

“Alarm trigger?” Blaze asked. “I didn’t think this place had an alarm system.”

He slapped his forehead into a hand, dragged his fingers down his face. Then, peering at her through his fingers, he said, “I’m not human. Do you need another demonstration?”

Blaze remembered the wet fangs as his tongue had slid across her throat and she laughed nervously. “No thanks.” Whatever he thought he was, she wasn’t surprised. She’d heard of plenty of guys who thought they were birds when they jumped out the windows of skyscrapers, high on some new wonder-drug.

He raised a brow. “You sure? ‘Cause I’m getting the general idea you don’t believe me.”

Blaze glanced at the shattered door and the hole in the drywall, then thought of how fast he would have had to run to catch up with her long legs. She swallowed and shook her head.

“Okay,” Jack said, watching her. “I’m not human. You okay with that part so far?”

She nodded quickly, wondering what kind of drug could make teeth grow. Or maybe that was just some residual hallucinogenic smoke that she had picked up off of him… Hell, maybe the prior residents had been some sort of diehard druggies that had thoughtfully left the smell of twenty years of narcotics embedded in the very walls of the place.

“All right,” Jack said, taking a deep breath. Then he swore, seeming to deflate. “I never thought…” He groaned and slapped his forehead back into his hand. “Shit.”

Blaze waited, not quite sure what to make of the crazy woodsman on crack. He didn’t really sound mentally impaired, and, if anything, sounded anxious about his latest blunder. Maybe there was hope for him. She was pretty sure that most of his swan-diving buddies were still convinced of their own avian ancestry a split-second before impact.

“I’ve never told somebody that wasn’t one of the People,” Jack said. “You’re, uh, the first mortal I’ve entrusted—” he chuckled nervously, “—well, been stupid enough to tell—in about four hundred years.”

“You know,” Blaze said softly, “I can get you some help.”

Jack narrowed his green eyes at her.

“They have centers for this sort of thing,” Blaze insisted. “Really, there’s one downtown.”

“Okay,” Jack said, seemingly coming up with a new line of attack, “We both agree I’m not human, and that I can prove it to you again, if you need another look?”

Blaze snorted. “No, I’m fine.”

He peered at her, seemingly coming to a decision. “Actually, I don’t think so. I’m gonna get right up close, give you another good look. Don’t get scared or scream—it’ll only piss me off, all right?”

Blaze made a nervous laugh. “I don’t need another loo—”

But he was already changing shape, his body becoming larger, hairier, more hunched. She watched brown and gold fur push through his skin as his face elongated and sprouted fangs like something out of a horror movie. He crawled toward her on all fours like a mutated bear, and she heard the sound of talons on the concrete as he moved.

Then he was right there, the light of the window above her head illuminating the rabid features, the slitted eyes, the carnivorous teeth, the long, silky fur. Whatever it was, it wasn’t drugs.

“Oh my God,” she whispered, her head slamming into the wall behind her as she tried to work her spine through the masonry. “Please…”

The beast opened its mouth and pointed a long brown talon at its teeth, “See the fangs?” it demanded, its words an otherworldly snarl. Then it pointed out its slitted eyes, clawed fingers, and slicked a hand down its fur and yanked on a patch of whiskers like some tour-guide giving a demonstration to a class of eighth-graders. “Okay,” the thing said, “Now watch this.” He jabbed a hairy finger back at his mouth.

As she watched, two more layers of teeth sank down through the gumline in both the top and bottom jaw, pointed backwards toward its throat. Crimson started dripping from the teeth from where they had punctured flesh as more teeth-rows built up behind them, leaving its mouth with the general likeness of a shark’s multi-layered jaws.

“Oh my God!” Blaze screamed, once again feeling her chest locking up with terror. She squeezed her eyes shut, trembling against the bindings that held her in place, so frightened she couldn’t breathe.

She felt the creature move backwards, heard Jack clear his throat. His normal, somewhat gruff, yet human voice said, “All right. You satisfied I’m not on drugs yet?”

When she looked, he was wiping his mouth with the back of his arm. His hand came away bloody. As she watched, he indifferently wiped it on his shredded pants, then pulled his legs into a cross-legged position across from her, and waited.

It took Blaze several minutes to get her breathing and her heart rate back under control. “You’re not on drugs?” she finally whispered, her eyes fixed to the dark red stain on his jeans.

“Nope,” Jack said. “Don’t touch the stuff. Less control, which is deadly for someone like me.” Then he winced. “Well, deadly for other people.”