She needed coffee.
She needed warmth.
She needed explanations.
She stared up at the stranger. Silhouetted against the streetlights, he looked too damned similar to the man who had been following her. And he hadn't really answered her question. He had just killed . . . something. Something "not exactly human."
All the bone seemed to melt out of her legs and spine and she huddled back against the doorway. Maureen's memories ran off with her, fleeing the alley. Buddy Johnson had looked like that. Squat, strong, hairy, broad nose and powerful jaws like the Christmas Nutcracker and a forehead that looked like the business end of a battering ram. Java Man walked the streets of coastal Maine. He grew up to play pro football. Brutal aggression fit in there. Steroid rage. He'd bought off a couple of rape and assault charges with his earnings.
Maureen shivered and curled tighter into her ball. She was suddenly ten years old, cold and wet and frightened, hiding from the neighborhood bully who insisted on playing "doctor" with her when he came over and Jo wasn't home yet. It hurt. Every time she met a man, she had to fight down those memories. She kept wishing Buddy Johnson was dead and buried along with her teddy bear and tap shoes.
Something touched her shoulder, and she flinched back. Words flowed around her, gentle, barely louder than the sleet rattling against the storefront glass. She shrank back into the deepest corner but felt implacable hands lift her and guide her back out into the storm.
"You need a chance to dry off and something hot inside you. There's an all-night coffee shop a few blocks from here."
Those were her own thoughts, pulled out of her head and spoken. The man knew what she needed. He wanted to help her. He was concerned. And now that he was close, she smelled him again. He was the first man she'd ever gotten close to, who smelled right. He smelled safe.
"Prefer. B-b-b-booze. Need. D-d-d-drink." Her teeth were chattering too fast for coherent speech.
The apparition in the yellow ski cap shook his head. "The only bar close to here is no place for a lady. Let me buy you coffee."
"S-s-strip joint. Next b-b-block. Open. Serve booze. Walk by it every n-n-night. Seen naked women b-b-before. M-m-mirror."
Besides, she was much too cold to be affected by the atmosphere of sex. And she was used to aggressive, wanton women. She lived with one.
Chapter Two
Brian thought he'd just as soon skip any place calling itself "The London Derrière." At least it had a vestibule, and the vestibule was warm. It was dirty, yes, with cracked and peeling wallpaper, water-stained ceiling, and a smell of unwashed bodies, but warm. It was also bright after the stormy streets, as if the management liked to get a good look at its customers before it let them in.
Oh, well. He'd seen worse in his many decades of soldiering for God and King. Bangkok came to mind, a place called Wong's in the Chinese slums where the bouncer carried an Uzi. He shook sleet out of his hair and gave himself a quick once-over for evidence of the brawl.
He couldn't see any blood--only a little dirty slush to show for his night's work. The burning and his own powers had cleaned up the gore.
Call it luck. Skill. Art. Mostly luck. Liam hadn't sensed him coming up behind. The bastard had been too busy concentrating on the woman and her gun.
Speaking of the woman . . . . Brian finally got a good look at this distraction who had wandered into his shark-hunt. Thin. Medium short. Almost skinny, but you couldn't tell any figure under that drenched yellow ski-jacket and wet baggy jeans.
She pulled off a green wool cap and revealed curly wet hair, burgundy red and cut short. Her eyes were green, and a cloud of freckles stood out like they were painted in dried blood across the white skin of a ghost.
Well, she had an excuse to look a little pale. Brian fed more Power to his calming spell, soothing her thoughts while wondering just how much of her memory he was going to have to edit. That was as tricky as playing around with primers, and he’d rather skip the process.
The bouncer at the inner door was also studying her as they dripped Maine winter all over his floor. Brian gave him a professional look-over and decided to behave. The guy was a little fat, but he could probably bench-press Brian with one hand.
The vault door shook his head. "I'm going to have to ask you for some I.D., Miss."
That was understandable. She looked like she was about seventeen, maybe one of those homeless waifs. That would explain why she was out after midnight with a .38 in her pocket. It'd be God's own joke if she'd been trying to mug Liam rather than the other way around. He reminded himself that he was in America, the Wild West where people carried guns all the time.
She fumbled for her wallet and handed over her driver's license. Her fingers were still shaking from the cold or the shock or both. It made her look even younger and more afraid.
The bouncer looked at her, at her license picture, at her again. He took the license over to a light and peered at it carefully, shook his head, and then studied Brian for a moment before handing the bit of laminated Polaroid back to her.
"Kid, I'll give you a C-note if you tell me who did that for you. It's the best job I've ever seen."
"Department of M-m-motor Vehicles," she stuttered between her chattering teeth. "S-s-secretary of S-s-state Office."
"Yeah. And if you're twenty-eight, I'm the mayor of Boston."
The man opened the inner door and waved them through into a tunnel throbbing with canned techno-pop. Strobe flashes lit up the blue glow of a set of stairs leading down. Brian's instincts twitched, and he started looking for exit signs. Life had taught him the old rule of the fox: always have at least three ways out of your den. He followed the girl down, warily.
Girl, he repeated, in his mind.
Sixteen, seventeen, he thought, with an I.D. saying she's twenty-eight. What in hell has Liam been up to? The Old One might have authored a list of sins as long as a hangman's rope, but random rape or mugging weren't on it.
It doesn't really matter, after tonight. Now Mulvaney can sleep, in whatever grave he's found. Brian felt tension drain out of his back, as if he’d dropped a burden he’d been carrying for years.
The stairs spilled them into a gloom of empty tables and stabbing theatrical spotlights. A fog of cigarette and cigar smoke warred with the tang of sweat and lust and spilled booze. It looked like a thin house: either a lousy show or the lousy weather. Probably both. There was one exit sign, floating in its red glow through the haze. And another. Plus the way he came in. Good.
The music pounded at him, squeezing just behind Brian's eyeballs. It was worse than firing his FAL full-auto on an indoor range. He scanned for the speakers of the sound system and steered the girl toward the corner farthest away. The table also had a clear view of all three exits. It was well away from the stage, but Brian didn't consider that a problem.
The dancer was totally nude except for an incongruous pair of ballerina's toe-shoes. Her body glistened with sweat or oil and jiggled in about five directions at once as she did various obscene things with her hips, but if she had I.D. saying she was twenty-eight, it would be about twenty years too young.
"How do they get away with this?"
Brian thought he'd been muttering to himself, well under the noise-level, but he must have spoken louder than he thought.
"F-f-fix. Newspaper says, woman who owns this p-p-place, lives with a cop."
Her teeth were still chattering, even though the room felt hot after the winter storm. The house kept the furnace at full blast for the dancers.
The table sat right by a hissing radiator, and Brian thanked blind luck. Now he could get that soaked jacket off her and let the heat go to work while he figured out some explanations--ones he could sell whether they were true or not. He pulled out a chair for her and held the shoulders of her coat while she wriggled out of it.
Her body-smell steamed up from the sweater underneath and Brian's nostrils flared. Doors clicked open in his brain, and he felt as if someone had picke
d him up and moved him across a chessboard into an entirely new game. He suddenly knew why Liam had been stalking her.
Brian hung her coat on the radiator to dry and fumbled for a seat. His brain and his hormones tumbled over each other, racing along in overdrive as his mind followed tangled connections and his body responded to genes older than the human race.
And it explained her apparent age. Twenty-eight was still nearly a child, for her kind . . . .
A waitress wiggled her way towards them through the flashing strobes. A topless waitress, he noticed, wearing nothing but a pair of high heels and skin-tight purple Lycra pants that molded her legs and butt and showed no trace of a panty-line.
"Get you anything?" The way she hung her painted breast just in front of Brian's nose, it looked like an open-ended offer. The joint was more than a bar . . . no cover charge for the show. They must make money the old-fashioned way.
"Coffee, if you've got it."
The waitress lifted an eyebrow. "Cost you as much as a drink. Four bucks."
"Irish coffee," the girl said. "Two. Make that doubles on the whiskey."
"Six bucks for the doubles."
The girl handed over a twenty. "Make it three of them and keep the change."
The waitress threaded her way back through the maze of empty tables. Brian's gaze dismissed her in its ceaseless prowl of the shadows: he wasn't all that interested in her or the dancer. This redheaded stranger, on the other hand . . . .
And if she wasn't interested in him, she would still draw Liam's brothers, cousins, and nephews like moths to a pheromone trap. Did she realize it? Could he use her again . . . ?
The sound system was too loud for talk. He studied her in silence, as she soaked up heat and expanded from her knot of fear and cold. She could be pretty or even beautiful, if she made the effort. She definitely wasn't dressed for sex-appeal, not with those loose jeans and baggy green sweater. Either she wore no makeup or a powerful understatement, and he hadn't caught any hint of perfume in that wash of her musky smell. He saw no rings, no jewelry except a crucifix.
She didn't know who she was, what powers she could summon.
Brian's thoughts spun, leading him nowhere. His only anchor was the need to watch the exits and the entry stair. Nobody declared truces in the ancient war he fought.
He had followed Liam. Someone could be following him.
The waitress reappeared from wherever the coffeepot lived. She set three steaming mugs in the center of the table, taking no sides in the division of three drinks between two people, eyed Brian, and aimed her breasts at him again as if firing a broadside from a frigate.
Brian wasn't interested. She shook her head at his lack of response, gave the redhead a searching stare as if trying to figure out what she had, and wound her way back through the tables again. Her rump twitched irritation at the wasted effort.
The girl swiveled around and poked through the pockets of her jacket, pulling out the .38 and a speed-loader. Five fresh rounds clicked into the cylinder, and the gun disappeared under the table rather than back into her pocket. Suspicious little witch.
The noise stopped, and the dancer vanished through one of the exits. So. The blessed quiet meant it was time to use that tale he hadn't manufactured. The redhead had already inhaled half of one mug and sat there, one hand hidden, glaring at him with hard distrust.
"Okay, Galahad, talk! Who are you, who was that in the alley, and what exactly happened back there?"
Her attitude was reasonable, given what she'd just been through. However, if he spent any more time with her, he'd have to persuade her that firearms could be unreliable in the wrong company.
He kept his hands on the table and tried not to think too much about where those chunks of lead were aimed. The ones he'd dumped in the trash had been hollow-points--nasty little things.
Send her off on a tangent. "Pawn to Queen Four."
"Huh?"
"Chess. I just thought it was time to try a different opening."
She smiled. It was the first time he'd seen her smile. Granted, she hadn't had much reason. And then a shot of mischief flashed through her eyes and she became a different person, a person he definitely wanted to know better.
She nodded and sipped her coffee. "Pawn to Queen Four."
"Pawn to Queen's Bishop Four."
You haven't played mental chess since you were shivering in a captured Argie trench outside Port Stanley. Where have the years gone, since that Falklands balls-up? And why in hell did you try that as an icebreaker with this woman? Sergeant-Major Terence Mulvaney spoke up from Brian’s memories, offering his sardonic digs as the price of a mug of tea in the regimental tent. Brian and the big Irishman had bled together in a dozen ugly little wars. Two Pendragons in the entire British army and they’d both ended up in the SAS . . . .
"Pawn to King Three."
Ah. "Queen's gambit declined. It leads to interesting variations, but you're going to find yourself locked in a prison of your own pieces if you aren't careful. You must play a lot of chess, to even try it."
"Used to." Then the light went out of her eyes, and her face hardened again. "The rules never change. Your opponent stays safely on the other side of the table. And the action is purely mental." Her mouth clamped shut, and her eyes narrowed, as if she felt she’d let some secret loose.
It was Brian's turn to blink. Take it easy, Captain Albion. You've got a casualty here. Check the vital signs. Those three sentences told him the woman had problems that went far beyond Liam. And then he laughed at himself.
You're at least bright enough to recognize your own buttons, me laddie. You're hearing her say she needs a knight in shining armor, and your nose wants you to be the chosen champion. Engage your brain and switch the balls off-line.
She seemed to shake a memory out of her eyes. "Who the hell are you and what the fuck's going on, here? Did I walk into a goddamn movie set?"
He winced at her language. "My name is Brian Albion. That was Liam in the alley. It wasn't a movie set, or a David Copperfield illusion. I hope Liam's dead now, although I really can't be sure, and I can't come up with any reason why you should believe me. That's up to you."
She sucked up the rest of her first coffee and started on a second. Maybe she intended to drink all three by herself. One hand stayed under the table. With the gun.
"Saying he's dead, saying you hope he's dead, doesn't tell me shit! What the hell happened back there?"
She had a lilt to her voice, slight but noticeable in spite of her anger and crude words. Third or fourth generation Irish, he guessed, from a close family where she would have talked a lot with the grandparents. She might have heard tales . . . .
Brian quietly claimed the last mug, guessing she'd at least growl at him rather than shooting him out of hand. Except first thing in the morning, most people won't kill you for taking their coffee. Besides, she didn't have a silencer.
"What did you see?"
She muttered something into her mug, and then looked up at him. "It’s crazy."
"I doubt it."
"That . . . Liam . . . came into the alley and things started getting brighter, warmer, as if the sun was shining. It smelled good. There was some kind of round stone tower, like a castle."
Ah. "You're Irish, yes?"
She stared at him as if he had just sprouted an extra head. "Grandparents, yes. Some Scots on my father's side. What the hell has that got to do with anything?"
"He was taking you to Castle MacKenzie in the Summer Country. The British Isles have rain eight days out of seven. Trust the Celts to create a fantasy world where the sun is always shining and the wind is at your back."
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Next, you'll be telling me he really did burn up when he died. Magic. You claim to do that, too?"
"No. Liam did it. The fire wasn't a spell so much as the ending of a spell. He cast it on himself before he came here, and kept it from happening as long as he was alive. When he died, the spell completed itself."
<
br /> "Bullshit!"
Brian frowned. Maybe it was old-fashioned, but he didn't care for that kind of language from a woman. Unlady-like. But then, he was old-fashioned. Or just plain old.
She finished up her mug and started eyeing his. She'd downed two doubles in less than ten minutes: equally unlady-like. Brian slid his mug back to her. He'd gotten maybe three sips out of it.
"You said something about him not being really human."
A drunken cailín pointing a gun at his balls did not make for smooth conversation. Brian tried a delicate nudge to her thoughts and relaxed slightly as her hand strayed back to the jacket and came away empty.
"Anybody ever tell you about the Old Ones?"
There was that two-headed look again, with a slight lack of focus around the eyes. She didn't have a lot of body weight to absorb that much whiskey.
"You mean the Little People? Leprechauns, fairies, elves?"
Oh, lord.
"No. The mages, the witches, the war wizards, Merlin and Gorlois and Morgan le Fay. Merlin was supposed to be the Devil's child. He was an Old One. So was Liam. Technically speaking, Liam was not Homo sapiens. That's why he traveled this world with a burning spell set on his body. It destroys the evidence, the bones that aren't exactly right. Cuts down on questions."
"Holy Mary, Mother of God. You are fucking crazy." She stared fuzzily down into the bottom of her last mug, disappointed with what she found there.
Call it five ounces of whiskey now, in fifteen minutes. Or a bit less, since they probably watered the drinks in this dive. That was still heavy input. Maybe the booze helped her to live in a world that belonged to another species. Brian grimaced in sympathy, but that was about all he could do. If she was lucky, she might live the rest of her life without one of them brushing by her on the street and smelling that sharp musky sweat.
Liam's blood had been nearly pure. He'd had no more choice in what he did than she had. Put the right scent on a trap, and even the wiliest animal loses all caution.
She looked up again, eyes totally unfocused. "Merlin," she whispered. "Arthur. Lancelot. The Once and Future King. Mallory. Tennyson. Is that the Summer Country you're talking about?"
The Summer Country Page 2