Wild.Fire.Love

CHAPTER ONE

Sierra

She rarely questioned any life decision she’d made, yet sitting in the living room of the new house she’d rented, a whole fucking house, after a lifetime of apartments, trailer homes, tents, and shared housing—that’s exactly what she did.

In her quest to find the place that felt like home, that felt like she was meant to be there, had she made the biggest mistake of her life?

Looking around the room, she crossed her wrists and rested them on the top of her head.

“What the hell have you done, Little Row?” she whispered, using her father’s nickname for her. As Big Rowan, her father had been molding her into his female equivalent since her mother died.

“Just live, Little Row, and life will figure itself out,” her father advised when she had these moments of uncertainty. Speaking his words only intensified her loneliness.

There were no apartment building neighbors out here.

She didn’t have people on the street walking past her living room window.

Yes, she was used to being and living in nature, but she didn’t know the rhythms and sounds of this place; didn’t trust this darkness that made her feel like she was floating in the universe untethered and alone.

You’ll adjust Si, she told herself.

She’d been adjusting her whole life.

Sighing, she let her head fall back onto the sofa. She could reach out to her father, or to her cousin/best friend Dalinda, but she wasn’t ready to hear some variation of their repeated refrain: The job’s in Florida! That place has legislation that opposes everything you are!

But she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to be an environmental health specialist supervisor.

She’d be supervising her own small team, and as a soil specialist, could return to working primarily outside in nature instead of inside restaurants, schools, massage parlors, and the like.

That work was important, but she didn’t want another job—in a long line of jobs—that she did only because she was willing to give something a try.

The upside of being under stimulated in that job was creating a social media platform where she discussed scientific tools, techniques, and procedures related to all things earth, nature, and science.

And from that she’d been recruited to her current…

bliss? She looked around the room with a skeptical eye.

It’s what you wanted, Si! Everything will be perfect once you settle. Perfect! She chastised herself.

Something screeched outside and she jumped.

What the hell was that?

It was unsettling that she couldn’t identify the animal by sound. Back home she knew the wildlife that surrounded her. Here, the not-knowing felt spooky as shit.

“It’s your first night out here. First nights in new places are always the hardest,” she whispered, not wanting whatever was outside to hear her.

Maybe it hadn’t been a great idea to stay at the hotel in town the first two days of arriving, but she wanted to be spend those days close to the job, learning the rhythms, meeting the staff, getting a sense of the culture without having to commute.

“Everyone was so nice,” she groused. They wouldn’t be the reason she used to justify leaving.

“You are not leaving,” she admonished herself. “Yet…I’m not leaving yet.”

Whatever, Si.

“You’ll be fine,” she eventually said after going back and forth with herself.

She was in a two bedroom house with a large main bathroom and a kitchen as big as the bedrooms. She’d never had a lanai, or a front porch, or a pond—which she was sure would be infested with mosquitoes come summer.

Though the garden needed tending, there was a heavy cover of trees that would bring cool shade on hot days.

She wouldn’t give all that up so easily.

Subtract the isolation and the unmitigated dark, the place really was kind of awesome. She just needed to get used to?—

Something crashed against her front door and she started violently.

“Uhn uh,” she muttered, sitting upright, heart hammering. “We are not playing this game tonight.”

Something thudded against the door again, and she stood.

Life is telling you that it is very much playing this game.

And the game was freaking terrifying.

Looking for a weapon among the stacks of boxes, she kept a watchful eye on the door. Just in case something tried to get through it.

Damn it! I should’ve gone to the gun shop before I’d left town this evening. But nooo, she’d chosen to procrastinate. She knew how to use a gun but didn’t really like them.

“First rule of living where wild things are, Little Row”—her father taught her when she was a kid—“always know how to protect yourself and have something to help you do it. The bad things, the wild things, they can both hurt you and it won’t necessarily be because of anything you did, just them following their nature. ”

If she survived the night she was going to buy enough weapons to fill an arsenal.

She inched toward a box near the hallway leading to the bedrooms. The box was marked Zombie Prep Kit because she and Dalinda believed they’d face at least one apocalyptic event in their lifetime.

Opening the box slowly—she didn’t want to be heard and cause whatever was outside to come crashing through the door and kill her —she dug through it and pulled out the canister of bear spray.

She knew it worked on large predators, but was it was strong enough to work on something supernatural. Like a chupacabra.

Tiptoeing toward the door, she looked through the peephole only to see darkness. She’d kept the fucking porch light off because she didn’t want to attract predators, and now couldn’t see anything.

A frantic scraping—paws or claws—against the door froze her in place.

Something wanted in.

The scraping stopped but she stood still for minutes on end. When she relaxed, allowing her shoulders to drop, the scraping started again followed by whimpers similar to that of a wounded animal.

“Please just go away,” she whispered. The scraping intensified.

She reached for the doorknob, unlocked it. Her conscious wouldn’t give her peace if she left a wounded creature to die.

Bitch you are Black! Don’t fall for this! Do NOT open that door.

The whimpers became pitiful, desperate.

She sighed and began bouncing on the balls of her bare feet in case she needed to run. Okay Little Row, you got this.

She turned the dead bolt and reached up pulling the metal bar down from the top of the doorsill.

The scratching stopped.

She braced, aimed the bear spray slightly in front of her and swung the door open.

“Oh shit,” she muttered, frozen in uncertainty. She scanned the darkness beyond her porch then looked back down at the creature at her feet.

“Shit.”

Placing the bear spray next to the door, she bent down and scooped the creature up. Its fur was soaked red with blood.

“Gloves, you should have on gloves,” she told herself, but it was too late.

Holding it at a distance, she walked backward and slammed the front door shut with her foot. Flicking the dead bolt locked with a single bloody finger, she walked across the room into the kitchen and placed the quivering body inside the metal farmhouse sink.

The creature—because she wasn’t quite sure what it was—had a long face and pointed ears and could be anything between a cat, a large rat, and a dog. It rolled onto its side and lay there looking at her with the most pitiful, heart-wrenching gaze she’d ever seen.

“You poor thing,” she whispered, feeling its suffering. “I’m not going to harm you and you’re not going to harm me. Is that a good deal, little chupacabra?”

It made a sharp yipping sound she decided was agreement and began to gently check its paws, body, and thick tail for injuries.

“Okay, you’ve got a few gashes along your back and side, but they don’t seem life threatening.”

She frowned at the creature.

“Something took a swipe at you, but all this blood...either your adversary died or you made it wish it was dead. Good on you, Chupa. Now,” she said, holding up her finger in warning.

“I’m going to clean you and your wounds and bandage you up tonight.

In the morning I’ll take you to the vet for a complete checkup.

Again, if you bite me, all bets are off and I will finish your enemy’s job.

Don’t abuse my kindness, it’s rare,” she lied, trying to sound tough.

She was too kind for her own good most times, but healthy boundaries were a conscious choice for her these days.

Leaving the creature alone in the sink for a moment, she went back to her Zombie Prep Kit and fished out a number of the emergency medical supplies. Returning to the kitchen she saw that the creature was still in the sink with its eyes closed. Her heart accelerated.

“Hey, hey, hey, you alive?” she asked, placing her hand on its chest, feeling the rapid beat of its heart.

“It would be real rude to come to my house to die, Chupa. It would also make me very sad and you don’t want to make me sad do you?”

It opened it eyes and grunted.

“I’ll take that as a no. But a surly no. You’ve got that look about you.”

She smiled slightly as she stroked the space between its ears.

Chupa turned out to be the most accommodating patient she’d ever had. Once it was cleaned up, she saw that her little chupacabra was actually a fox. A very young, very red, female fox.

“You’ve been such a good girl, I’m going to make us a small meal.”

She had to verify with her AI, Aisha, that foxes could eat the meal she was going to prepare for herself. She didn’t want to end up feeding it the wrong thing and kill it after all she’d done to save its life.

While the food cooked, she emptied a large cardboard box, covered the bottom with a throw pillow, placed a blanket on top of it, and created a makeshift bed. Sierra placed Chupa inside the box.

“I can’t believe you had me up in here afraid of you,” Sierra said a few minutes later as she and Chupa sat in the living room eating grilled salmon, sautéed zucchini, and an apple, plantain, cinnamon dish she liked.

Saving a chupacabra hadn’t been on her homecoming bingo card, but she’d done it.

“It’s probably illegal to keep a fox as a pet out here.”

It felt good to have something occupying this new space with her though. She’d never had a pet as an adult, too busy and mostly too uninterested in caring for anything other than herself.

She peered at Chupa eating in her box.

“Maybe I’ll be brave and get a pet now that I’m in a house; maybe a cat,” she said to Chupa.

The fox growled.

“Okay, chill, maybe not a cat then.”

She discussed her plans to take Chupa to the vet tomorrow morning, followed by buying a gun and coming back to unpack and clean.

Chupa listened, every now and again making a little fox commentary.

Sierra got the sense Chupa didn’t want to go to the vet.

After cleaning the kitchen, Sierra carried the fox-in-a-box to her bedroom, showered, and got into bed.

Sierra slept so hard she didn’t realize it was morning until she was jolted awake by the sound of someone assaulting her front door.