Wildfire Griffin (Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Crew Book 1) Read online

  Wildfire Griffin

  Fire & Rescue Shifters: Wildfire Book 1

  Zoe Chant

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Epilogue

  Bonus Extract - Firefighter Dragon

  A note from Zoe Chant

  Also by Zoe Chant

  Writing as Helen Keeble

  Chapter 1

  The bolt of lightning came, without warning, out of a clear blue sky, straight into the heart of a dry, dead pine. With a sound like a cannon, the towering tree blew apart in a cloud of flaming splinters.

  That’s impossible.

  For a long moment, Edith simply stared down at the thin plume of smoke rising from the distant trunk. She’d been outside cleaning the windows of her fire lookout tower, and had happened to be glancing straight at that part of the forest at the moment of impact. Even with the after-image of the dazzling flash still dancing on her retinas, she couldn’t believe what she’d witnessed.

  She knew the weather in these mountains better than the rhythms of her own body. There wasn’t a cloud in the vast Montana sky; not a hint of electric ozone in the air. The lightning bolt had simply materialized out of nowhere, as though the poor tree had suddenly offended some petulant god.

  Heart hammering, she dashed back inside her tiny dwelling. The tower’s firefinder stood on a plinth in the precise middle of the room—a circular map, with a mechanism for triangulating the precise location of any fire visible outside the windows.

  She hunched over the device, swinging the viewfinder around until it was precisely lined up with the smoke rising outside the window. Locking the angle, she triple-checked the reading before walking her fingers across the firefinder’s map to the coordinates where the fire must be.

  Only a mile away. Edith relaxed a little. Her fire tower was smack in the middle of nowhere, miles from any popular hiking trails. There wouldn’t be any campers in the affected part of the forest. No one would be at risk.

  No one, she belatedly realized, except her.

  “It’s okay,” Edith said out loud. She always fell into the habit of talking to herself during the long, lonely months of fire season. “Everything’s still wet from spring. Even if it does catch, it won’t burn fast.”

  Nonetheless, one hand started tapping nervously against her thigh. She focused on the familiar rhythm, using it to shut out the rising clamor of anxiety. With her other hand, she fumbled for the radio.

  She had to wait for five agonizing minutes, repeating her call sign over and over, before someone responded. “Base here, Officer Warren on duty. Edith, this had better be important.”

  The deviation from protocol threw her. Words jammed in her throat. Of course it was important—why would she call if it wasn’t?

  Warren muttered a curse as she sat in frozen confusion. “Edith, I don’t have time for you today. Some of us have actual work to do.”

  Warren had never bothered to hide his opinion of manned fire lookout towers—archaic, primitive systems that served no purpose in today’s modern world of satellite surveillance and reconnaissance drones. She’d once overheard him refer to her as “that charity case in Tower Thirteen.”

  Edith took a deep breath, forcing her chin up. She wasn’t a charity case. The work she did was real, not some made-up position thinly disguising a government handout for people who couldn’t cope with regular jobs.

  “I’ve got eyes on rising smoke near Tower Thirteen, Base.” With effort, she managed to keep her voice smooth and calm. “A lightning strike. The exact coordinates are—“

  “Lightning?” he interrupted her. “Are you kidding me? This is a hell of a time to suddenly start trying out practical jokes, Edith.”

  Her shoulders tightened at the barely-restrained irritation in his voice, obvious even to her. She’d never known how to defuse his simmering hostility at the best of times. Her free hand beat harder, faster, trying to push back panic.

  “Negative, Base,” she said, hoping that formality would magically make him believe her. “I personally witnessed the lightning strike the snag. The fire is well on its way to becoming established.”

  She heard computer keys tapping. “Edith, meteorology shows nothing but sunny skies in your area. Lightning is only formed by thunderclouds. There aren’t any clouds near you. Are you sure you aren’t looking at some mist?”

  He sounded like he was talking to a five-year-old. Edith gritted her teeth. She was tiresomely familiar with that particular condescending tone. She was autistic, not incompetent.

  “Base, I’m a qualified firefighter. I know smoke when I see it. The wildfire is small at the moment, but we need to get a team out here before it becomes a problem.”

  Edith prayed that he had a team to send. It was only early June, a week before the official start of fire season. Most of the smokejumpers and wilderness firefighters would still be scattered across America, at home with their families or relaxing on vacation. She might hate every minute of off-season, and return to her remote outpost as early as she was allowed, but she knew she was an anomaly.

  Let’s hope someone else started work early too.

  Warren blew out his breath as though she had personally started the fire just to annoy him. “It costs money to deploy firefighters, you know. I’m going to need additional confirmation before I dispatch anyone. Hold on.”

  If it had been any other fire watcher, Edith suspected he would already have been scrambling a plane of smokejumpers. The nervous twitching of her hand spread through her body and down her leg. She stared out the window, the toe of her workboot drumming against the worn wooden floorboards. The wind was definitely blowing the plume of smoke straight in her direction.

  The phone crackled against her ear. “It’s your lucky day. I’ve got a hotshot out of Thunder Mountain who’s willing to swing by and take a look. He says he can get his squad to you within the hour.”

  Edith blinked. “That fast?”

  That couldn’t be right. Hotshots were ground crew—they didn’t parachute in like smokejumpers did. Either the hotshot had just happened to decide to picnic right on her doorstep, or he was being wildly optimistic about how fast he could reach her.

  “That’s what he says. Apparently they just happened to be camping in your area. Sit tight until he arrives to assess the situation.” A sigh gusted out of the phone. “And don’t call again unless you’re actually on fire, understand? We’re busy setting up the new drone system, and I don’t have time for your interruptions.”

  The phone went dead before she could answer. Biting her lip, she glanced out the window at the smoke. Was it thicker than it had been two minutes a
go?

  “It’ll be okay,” she whispered under her breath. “It’s not dry enough to burn fast. There’s plenty of time.”

  As if in answer, a second bolt of lightning struck out of nowhere, followed immediately by a deafening crack of thunder. Edith stifled a shriek, reflexively covering her head as a tree blew apart barely a hundred yards away. A swirl of burning leaves pinged like gunshots off the tower’s wide windows, even though her lookout platform was twenty feet off the ground.

  Edith cautiously raised her head, peeking over the edge of the window. From her vantage point in the tower, she had an excellent view of the nearest lightning-struck tree. The dead snag was burning fiercely, but fortunately it wasn’t close enough to any other trees for the fire to spread through the canopy. Instead, it was crawling through the undergrowth, chewing up fallen branches and shrubs.

  She started to reach for the phone, but stopped. Warren had been very clear. And even if she did disobey his order and call anyway…he probably wouldn’t believe her.

  She was on her own.

  “You’re always on your own. This is no different.” She pressed the heels of her hands to her forehead, trying to squeeze her thoughts into focus. “You can do this. Remember. Air, fuel, heat.”

  She’d learned about the fire triangle years ago, when she’d still been chasing impossible dreams. Just recalling those words it now brought back a torrent of acute sensory memories—the chafe of her uniform collar, the taste of campfire smoke, gnawing shame and black loneliness.

  She flinched, but there was no time to dwell on old hurts now. Pushing back the unwanted emotions, she focused on her training. The classroom, muggy and filled with sweating bodies; the teeth-clenching screech of chalk over blackboard as the instructor sketched trees, flames, lines…

  Air, fuel, heat. Those were the three things a fire needed to burn. To put one out, you had to remove one of them. The fire was already too big to smother by any means at her disposal, so she couldn’t remove the air. She didn’t have a convenient fire engine to hose down the fire to remove the heat.

  The only thing she could take away was the fuel.

  Her forestry tools were neatly arrayed on hooks by the door. She grabbed her axe and shovel, the well-worn handles familiar and comforting in her sweaty hands.

  The instant she stepped outside, bitter smoke slapped her in the face. Coughing, she raced down the rickety stairs as fast as she dared.

  Her tower was built on the top of the ridgeline, the thick wooden pillars sunk deep into solid rock. She fervently blessed whoever had picked the site; the stony outcrop made a natural break in the forest, so there weren’t any mature trees within thirty feet. But there were still tough grasses and wiry bushes growing in the thin soil. A few scattered patches were already smoldering where burning leaves had landed.

  Remove the air.

  Dropping her axe, she beat out the small fires with the flat of her shovel before they had a chance to spread any further. She dumped dirt onto the smoking patches to make sure they wouldn’t relight as soon as her back was turned. These tiny blazing patches were just scouts, thrown out by the main body of the fire. She could hear the hungry crackle getting closer. It would eat her alive before she could smother even a tiny fraction of it.

  Remove the fuel.

  She sank her shovel into the rocky soil. Tough matted roots resisted the blade, but she drove through them with the strength of sheer desperation. Turning the soil over, she dug again, and again, and again. With every thrust of her shovel, she extended the shallow trench. Creating a line.

  Not just a line—a fireline.

  Fire couldn’t jump across bare earth. Even the fiercest flames could be stopped by a wide enough break. And for a small blaze, you only needed a few feet…

  Sweat stuck her shirt to her back. She dug frantically, switching to the axe to hack at the tougher roots. She wished she had a proper Pulaski, a kind of hybrid half-hoe, half-axe tool that would have made short work of the hard ground. But that was specialist equipment, only carried by real firefighters.

  She did the best she could with what she had, scraping with the side of her shovel to make sure she hadn’t left any bits of plant that the fire could use as fuel. Her shoulders and arms burned from the repetitive movements.

  Cut, dig, scrape. White light flashed with a deafening crack, but Edith didn’t glance up. No time to worry about further lightning strikes now, no attention to spare for the growing orange glow flickering through the trees.

  Cut, dig, scrape. Everything else fell away. No thoughts in her head, no sense of self. In all the world, there was just the shovel, the axe, and the ever-growing fireline. Cut, dig, scrape. Dig, cut-

  An agonized scream split the air.

  Edith very nearly thrust her shovel through her own foot. Her hyperfocus shredded like tissue paper. The whole world came roaring back, flooding into her eyes and ears and nose. Flickering light and hissing crackle and bitter smoke blurred into a sensory tsunami that swept away breath and sense. The terrified shriek voiced her own confusion and panic so perfectly that for a dizzying moment she thought that she was the source of the sound.

  Black spots danced in front of her eyes. Edith sucked in a great, gasping breath. The screams continued on, growing higher pitched and more desperate.

  She grabbed onto that panicked cry like clutching a lifeline, focusing on it through the swirling chaos. Someone was in trouble. Someone needed help.

  “I’m coming!” she shouted as loudly as she could. “Hold on!”

  Casting the shovel aside, she plunged into the forest. Immediately billows of smoke surrounded her, thrusting bitter fingers down her throat. Coughing, she pulled her shirt up over her mouth as best she could as she ran.

  Orange light glowed balefully through the thick, choking clouds. Flames ran like water between the tree trunks, gobbling up the underbrush. Most of the flames were only knee-high, but here and there patches leapt higher, the fire greedily feasting on old, dry fallen branches.

  Edith shied away as a sudden gust of wind fanned the fire, making it roar up higher. A tangle of brambles went up like a firework, spattering her with sparks. The scream came again, very close now.

  “Where are you?” Straining to see through the stinging smoke, Edith caught a glimpse of movement through the flames. “Follow my voice, I’ll get you to safety!”

  Another swirling flurry of wind swept through the tree trunks. For a moment, the smoke parted like curtains drawing back.

  Not a person—a snowshoe hare, trapped in a closing ring of fire. It dashed in tight, spinning dashes, all the while shrieking that thin, panicked cry. Edith had never heard an animal make such a human sound.

  She couldn’t let the poor bunny burn. Holding her breath, she leaped as high as she could over the hissing flames. Heat scorched her ankles, but she landed safely on the other side.

  The hare froze, staring at her. Fire reflected in its wide, black eyes.

  There wasn’t time to be gentle. Fast as a snake, Edith grabbed the animal. She wasn’t sure whether it recognized she was trying to help, or was just paralyzed by terror, but in any event it hung limp in her arms, as docile as if it was stuffed. The hummingbird-fast thrum of its heart beat against her own chest.

  Wind whipped smoke into her eyes. The fire roared as if angry to have been cheated of its prey. She plunged through them, hunched over the hare to shield it from the fierce heat. Then she was running, faster than she ever had in her life, back toward the safety of her tower.

  The fire pursued her. The wind howled, abruptly storm-gale strong, fanning the wildfire’s wrath. Flames snapped at Edith’s heels like a pack of hunting dogs.

  She broke from the forest barely ahead of the rising inferno. Still clutching the hare, she hurdled her fireline. It seemed a ludicrous defense now, no more protection than a line drawn in the dirt by a kid with a stick. The fire roared toward it like the tide sweeping down on a sandcastle—

  And stopped.


  Shaking, sweat-stained, Edith watched the fire like a hawk, every muscle tense. Though the flames spread like—well, like wildfire—through the dry scrubby grass on the far side of her line, the narrow trench held it from going any further. The wind tried to whip the flames onward, but the embers fell futilely onto the bare earth. No matter how the fire strained, it couldn’t reach her.

  Just as she started to breath easier, a hammer-blow of wind hit her. Caught off-guard, she staggered, disoriented by the sudden screaming gale. Vicious, swirling gusts clawed at her from every direction, nearly tearing the hare from her grasp. It was as if she’d been caught in the downwash from a helicopter.

  Edith squinted upward through the smoke—but there was nothing there. Yet though her eyes searched the sky futilely, her every other sense screamed at her that something was hovering over her.

  Something vast.

  Something angry.

  An ancient, instinctive terror gripped her. The wind was full of the sound of monstrous wings. She broke and ran, scurrying like a mouse before a hawk.

  She raced up the stairs to her tower so fast her feet barely touched the wooden treads. And then she was inside, dropping the hare in her haste to slam the door shut behind her, sliding the bolts home.

  Wind howled around the tower, rattling the windows. Some storm-tossed piece of debris struck one of the wide glass panes with enough force to leave a star-shaped crack. Heart in her mouth, she tore around the room, fastening all the interior storm shutters.