The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  The Summer

  Country

  The Wildwood: Book One

  by James A. Hetley

  Copyright Information

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author‘s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2002 by James A. Hetley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  eISBN: 978-1-937776-37-4

  Also by James A. Hetley

  The Wildwood Series:

  The Summer Country

  The Winter Oak

  Stone Fort Series:

  Dragon's Eye

  Dragon's Teeth

  Visit James online at www.JamesHetley.com.

  Follow him on Twitter @JHetley.

  Table of Contents

  THE SUMMER COUNTRY

  Copyright Information

  Also by James A. Hetley

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Special Excerpt from The Winter Oak, The Wildwood Series Book #2

  Author Bio

  Dedication

  To Merle, my "enabler," and the RECOG folks

  who helped to polish this and patch the holes.

  Chapter One

  That man was still following her.

  A gust of sleet stung Maureen's face when she glanced back into the night. Winter in Maine, she thought, you'd at least think the weather would have the decency to dump snow on you.

  February had been a run of sleet and freezing rain, no damn good for skiing or anything--it just made the sidewalks into bobsled runs and the roads into skating rinks. People always pictured New England with those picture-postcard mounds of fluffy white stuff. Instead, most winters plastered the city with yellow-gray ice full of freeze-dried dog shit and dead pigeons.

  She hated it. She ached to be out of it.

  And that bastard had followed her through four turns to head right back towards the Quick Shop. He kept his distance, but he was still there. It wasn't chance. She hadn’t seen another person or even a car in the last fifteen minutes. What were her options?

  The midnight streets vanished in a vision of green grass and trees, sunshine, warm breezes, and streams of peat-stained water the color of fresh-brewed tea. She breathed summer country, a cabin-fever dream she wanted so much she could smell the clover.

  Wish, the whisper came, out of nowhere. Wish. And hard on the back of the thought came a memory of Grandfather O'Brian's voice, "Be careful what you wish for, my darlin'. The gods just might be givin' it to you."

  The thought brought tears to her eyes, or maybe it was the sleet. She had been far closer to the old man than to her own father, and now Grandfather was fifteen years dead. Funny such a devout Catholic should talk of the gods in plural. Funny she should think about him, slopping through the dark streets of Naskeag Falls and thinking dark thoughts about the entire male race.

  Maureen's nightmare still followed her, half a block back--a squat black shadow under the streetlights, framed by the double rows of dark storefronts and old brick office buildings. Everything was closed and silent, brooding over her search for someplace warm and dry and public.

  The scene reminded her of a hodge-podge of old movies--Peter Lorre stalking the midnight streets with a switchblade in his pocket. For some reason, the movie image relaxed her. Maybe it made danger seem less real, the sleet turning the night into grainy black-and-white flickers on a silver screen.

  Maureen pulled her knit cap down tighter on her head and went back to concentrating on the ice underfoot. She was reading her past into the future. No self-respecting mugger or rapist would be out on a night like this. The voices in her head could just take a fucking hike.

  Besides, her mood matched the foul weather. She’d had a rotten evening at the Quick Shop, and the chance to blow some scumbag to hell carried a certain primitive attraction.

  Maybe while she was at it she should put a slug through the carburetor of that damned rusty Japanese junk-heap that had refused to start and left her walking. And pop the night manager with the roving hands who had reamed her out and docked her pay for being late, before suggesting they could maybe arrange something if she chose to be a little "friendlier."

  Hell, go big-time and shoot all the paper-mill cretins from upriver who stomped in for their six-packs of beer, steaming their wet-dog smell and dripping slush all over the place so she spent half her shift mopping up after them.

  Definitely blow away the oh-so-precise digital register that had refused to tally when she closed out at midnight. She'd ended up putting in ten bucks out of her own pocket, just to get the hell out of the place. Two hours pay, before taxes.

  CONVENIENCE STORE CLERK GOES BERSERK, MURDERS 20.

  Again, Maureen checked on her shadow. He was still there, still half a block back. The way she felt, she almost wished he'd make a move.

  She kicked a lump of slush and yelped when it turned out to be frozen into place. Adding insult to injury, her next limping stride found a pothole in the sidewalk, and she sank into ankle-deep ice water.

  Screw this psychotic winter weather, she thought. Psychosis: a mental disease or serious mental impairment, a medical term not to be confused with the precise legal implications of the word "insanity." Psych. 101, second year elective for distribution requirements in the forestry program.

  She had reasons to remember the definition, reasons for such a personal interest in the ways and means in which human minds deviated from the norm. Fat lot of good college was doing her now.

  A snowplow growled around the next corner and headed in her direction, fountaining out a bow-wave that washed up over the curb and sidewalk to break against the dark line of buildings. Maureen ducked back into the entryway of the nearest storefront, trying to dodge the flying muck. It spattered icily across her jeans, and she stepped back out into the storm, elevating her middle finger at its retreating yellow flashers.

  "Naskeag Falls Department of Roads and Bridges," the sign on the dump gate said, "Your tax dollars at work."

  The man following her ignored the truck, and the slush seemed to ignore him. Hairs prickled along the back of Maureen's neck. Without speeding up or even looking at her, he'd halved the distance between them. The paranoia kicked in, elbowing her anger aside and substituting cold calculation. She needed some defenses.

  "Enough of this crap," she muttered, or maybe it was her voices. The next alley offered places where a small woman could hide, places where muscles wouldn't help him. If he came in after her, he was history. She thumped the p
ocket of her wet ski jacket and felt the reassuring weight of metal.

  She ducked around the corner. Dumpsters lurked in the shadows, two of them, jammed right up against brick walls and close enough together to just leave space for a single person between. She ducked into the bunker they formed and waited, remembering her lessons.

  Smith and Wesson Chief's Special, she heard the instructor lecture, thirty-eight caliber. Five shots, short barrel, not very accurate--don't ever shoot at anything beyond ten yards. Light, compact, reliable--perfect weapon for close-range self-defense.

  If you ever really need your gun, don't give warning. Don't wave it around. Don't make threats. Just shoot as soon as you show the weapon. Shoot twice. Shoot to kill. He's trying to kill you!

  Her gloves jammed in the trigger guard. She slipped them off and stuffed them into her pants pockets. The wood and metal of the pistol grip actually felt warm compared to the sleet.

  The squat shadow turned the corner, outlined against orange streetlights. "You stupid ass," she whispered, "you just voted for the death penalty."

  She crouched between the dumpsters, took the two-handed stance she'd learned in the firearms course, and centered on the shadow's torso. Her senses switched into overdrive and the world slowed down. Kill or be killed, just like the instructor said.

  She wimped out. "Stop, or I'll shoot!"

  The man kept coming. He didn't speed up, or slow down, or flinch, or anything. Was the sonuvabitch deaf? She aimed at the bricks across the alley and snapped the trigger as a warning shot.

  Click.

  Her belly froze. She hadn't checked the cylinder before tucking the gun in her pocket. Had Jo been frigging around with the gun, dry-firing in their apartment?

  Her hands trembled as she flipped the cylinder open and saw the glint of cartridges. It was a goddamn dud. She'd never had a misfire before. She snapped the gun shut.

  Click. Click.

  Two more duds, centered on his chest. She ran the whole cylinder around again.

  Click. Click. Click. Click. Click.

  Clear in spite of the shadows, the man smiled in slow motion. He inhaled deeply through his nose, as if he had been tracking her by smell. His mouth opened and spouted gibberish.

  "Na gav aygul orsht. Ha an dorus foskulche."

  That's what her ears pulled out of the air. God only knew what he'd actually said. Maureen started to scream and found she couldn't. She started to throw the useless gun in his face and found she couldn't. The alley was nowhere near as dark as it had been a few seconds earlier.

  The slow-motion unreality continued. The man had a face now, not just a shadow, and his eyes were fire under heavy brows and a mop of coarse black hair. What she had thought was the drape of an overcoat was his square body, short but muscled like a Bulgarian weight-lifter. He radiated power and compulsion.

  Maureen flashed back to childhood Sundays in church, and she grabbed the crucifix she wore as jewelry rather than a statement of faith. She started to mumble the "Our Father," offering it as a prayer against witchcraft.

  The alley seemed as light as day, and the sleet had vanished from the air. Somebody must have dumped flowers in the trash because Maureen could smell them, lilacs or something sweet like that. The brick walls looked more like fieldstone masonry now, like the peasant cottages in Grandfather O'Brian's yellowed photographs of County Wicklow.

  Something flashed in the end of the alley, and Maureen saw another man striding easily through the molasses-slow air. Steel mail rippled across his shoulders and swung heavily as he struck the dark man from behind. Gold crowned the second man's head over honey-blonde hair.

  She'd stepped into a tale of knights and mages. Swords. Sorcery.

  Bullshit!

  Maureen gasped at the renewed sting of the sleet. The metal of her pistol burned cold. Shadows swirled in the darkness and resolved into one man standing and another stretched out at his feet. Her scream finally escaped into the storm, sounding more like the squeak of a mouse.

  Steel flashed again, hacking at the fallen mugger. The light-haired man swung some kind of heavy bent knife, almost a short machete. Sour bile clawed at Maureen's throat, and her bladder burned like she was going to soak her pants.

  A severed hand scuttled through the snow, sideways like a crab, searching for its wrist. Blood flowed black in the shadows. The meat-cleaver chunking seemed to go on forever. Her rescuer kicked something into the heaped snow across the alley, and Maureen gagged when she recognized it as a head. It hissed at her and clacked its teeth.

  The light-haired man dropped his knife and pulled a can from his jacket, sprinkling something over the corpse. It writhed across the filthy snow and seemed to spit steam.

  He looked up at her and nodded as if she’d asked a question.

  "Lye," he said. "Drain-cleaner. It prevents healing, blocks the tissues from connecting back together." His voice was bright and cheerful, with a faint accent she couldn't place. He sounded like a TV chef assembling lasagna.

  The whole scene was insane. His teeth flashed a savage grin from the shadows, as if killing a man was a public service like emptying the rat-traps in the basement laundry room of her apartment. Then his smile vanished as he stared at her shaking hands.

  "You tried to fire that gun. Give it to me."

  She hesitated and shrank back against the bricks.

  "Quick, you fool! Killing him hasn't ended the danger!"

  She handed him the .38.

  He swung the cylinder open and spilled the duds into the nearest dumpster, muttering something under his breath. Then he grabbed her wrist and dragged her around the corner onto the sidewalk. Two steps down the street, he slowed and took a deep breath, handing back the empty pistol.

  "He stretched time for the cartridges. That's sloppy, temporary. Never take short-cuts with your spells: Murphy's gonna bite you, every time."

  Maureen's mind chased after the surreal concept of slowing the laws of physics. Her thoughts were punctuated by a muffled pop behind them. Two more followed after a short pause, then two more.

  "What the hell was that?" she asked. "A .38 makes a lot more noise!"

  "Not enough pressure. Smokeless powder just burns in the open air. You have to confine it for an explosion."

  She shuddered and stared at her hand. Five cartridges in the cylinder . . . .

  He grabbed her wrist again and pulled her back to the entrance of the alley. The body still twitched in the slush, trying to push itself erect with the stumps of its arms, as if it was searching for its head. It couldn't balance and fell, again and again. Maureen slapped a hand across her mouth and turned away, desperate for a place to run, a place to hide.

  "You need to watch." His voice was quiet but implacable. "You must never talk of this. You'll see why, in about a minute. That man did not belong in your world."

  He turned her around. He didn't squeeze, didn't hurt, but she could feel the power in his grip and realized, with a shock, that he was built as solidly as the other man. He was immensely strong. Those hands gave her no choice.

  What she had seen as chain mail was a gray anorak of tight-woven wool. Splattered blood glistened black in the reflected streetlights. The gold crown was a yellow ski cap, equally worn and stained. His pants looked like army surplus. He must be soaked. She was soaked, and she started to shiver with the cold rain and reaction. Her gaze darted around everywhere except at the slowing jerky spasms of the corpse.

  Blue light flickered in the corner of her eye, and for an instant she thought it was the flashers of a police car come to rescue her from this madness. The light strengthened and steadied. Terror snatched her breath again and froze her pulse.

  It was the corpse.

  It burned with a blue flame like gas, smokeless, with flashing tendrils of copper green or cobalt or strontium red like the flame-test for salts in chem. lab when she waved the platinum wire over the Bunsen burner. The alley filled with a quiet hiss and sizzle that must be the rain and the slush boiling, bec
ause she could feel the heat of the burning twenty feet away through the storm. Her mind locked on the horror, and she barely noticed when her rescuer let go of her.

  Bits of flame showed her where the severed hands lay. A blue ball consumed the head and melted the snow-bank across the alley. Liquid fire like gasoline floated on the water and licked up splashes of blood from pavement and wall. It even outlined her rescuer, eating the blood off his sweater and pants.

  Flesh dissolved. Organs dissolved. Bones glowed into ash and hissed into the flowing water of the melting. The skull popped, spattering gouts of flaming skin and brain across the slush.

  Acid rushed up from her belly, and Maureen vomited.

  When she could see again, the alley was dark. Wisps of steam floated upward and vanished in the freezing rain. The only evidence of the fight, of her terror, of the corpse, was a scattering of holes melted through the snow to the brick pavement of the alley.

  She staggered out into the pale orange light of the street. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

  "You need warmth and light. I'll buy you a cup of coffee."

  The voice startled her. She had forgotten about the knight dressed like a street bum, out wandering in a storm.

  She ought to scream and run. Part of her mind was screaming. But whenever he came close to her, she felt calm radiating from him like heat from a sunlamp. She remembered strength, and grace, and a sense of protection. She remembered a tantalizing smell.

  "God, what the Mob would pay to be able to get rid of a body like that," she blurted. "Was that magic? Did you do that?"

  "Define magic. That was spontaneous human combustion, well documented in scientific literature. Of course, the subject wasn't exactly human."

  She staggered into a recessed doorway and squatted down, trying to clear her head. The apartment was at least a mile away. Maureen didn't think she could make it.