Maureen gritted her teeth, forcing herself to behave like a halfway-normal woman. "Phone's in my sister's name. I'll write it out for you."
She turned away, pulled a piece of paper off the phone pad and scribbled against the refrigerator. She could feel his warmth behind her and squirmed away, practically crawling up on the kitchen counter.
Their fingers touched as she handed him the paper. She desperately wanted to wash her hands, scrub off the touch. Goddamn nutcase. It isn't his fault!
His eyes searched her face. "You don't mind if I call you? I can see you again?"
"Fine," she snapped. "Just leave. Call me in the morning. If you don't get out of here fast, I'm liable to puke on you."
"Maureen, what's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong, goddammit! Just, if you come to see me, don't go to bed with my fucking sister!"
He backed away and the door clicked between their faces. She set the bolt and chains and leaned her forehead against their metallic coldness. Her gut still churned its mix of hatred and longing. Half of her, mind and body, wanted to rip the door open and chase down the stairs after him. The other half of her remembered his resemblance to Buddy Johnson.
The kettle screamed on, behind her, and she turned to shut off the gas. It subsided into a serpent's hiss and then crackled quietly as it cooled.
She wondered how much Jo had heard, how much David had heard. They were awake. Probably deaf to the world, thinking any noises were the earth moving under their bed. Then they'd try another position and see if the stars fell.
She put one of the cups away, grabbed a bottle, and filled the other one. She gulped, and straight whiskey etched her throat. She wanted to heave the bottle across the room, watch the golden liquid splatter and hear the glass explode into little transparent knives. Walk on them, cut her feet, leave bloody footprints in the snow as she ran away into the storm. Disappear into the night, into the cold, into the sleep of winter.
She still had thoughts like that. One time in high school, she'd stabbed a tattoo into her left arm with an art pen and India ink. She ran her fingers over the faint scars left by the cosmetic surgery. Self-mutilation, the shrinks had called it, itemizing another symptom. They hadn't liked what the message spelled out, either.
She took another swallow. Fire slid down her throat and burned in her stomach. Maybe it would cauterize the wounds.
Dammit, David had been hers!
She'd met him after a set when his neo-Celtic group played in a local bookstore, for Chrissake, worked up her courage for a month, talked to him again and again. He was thin. Quiet in a strange intense way. Gentle. Patient. Insane subtle sense of humor. Delicate strong guitar-spider hands. An obsession with music that defused the whole man/woman scene and made him safe.
Everything Buddy Johnson wasn't. Maureen had invested three months in letting David past her boundaries. He'd come over, and the three of them would talk music, and Maureen would chisel another brick free from the wall around her, working on opening a door. And Jo wiggled a finger in her sexy way and took him.
Bitch.
She stared down into her cup, following the patterns the whiskey traced along the surface of the porcelain.
Patterns. Jo wanted something, Jo took it. That was Jo--confidence personified. She took clothes, took books, took food from the refrigerator, took makeup. Sisters were supposed to share. They were the same size, same color, enough alike to look at, they might as well be twins. Only difference was Little Mo's screwed-up head.
It was all her own fault, anyway. She couldn't blame David. Two identical women, one with a psychic chastity belt and the other who'd drop her pants at noon in the middle of Haymarket Square. Which one would any normal man choose?
Neither. A normal man would run away and hide from either of you.
You're drunk, said the cup. You're a drunk, said her empty cup next to her nearly empty bottle.
Come by it honestly, answered Maureen. Maureen's a weepy drunk. Jo's a sluttish drunk. Dad's a mean drunk. Grandpa O'Brian was a happy drunk.
She remembered how her brain had pulled Grandpa's voice out of the night wind. Maybe that had been the connection. She thought she was twelve again and terror haunted her dreams and the only adult who would hug warmth into her sweat-chilled body in the middle of the night always smelled of Bushmills. Mom just clicked the beads of her rosary, and Dad was . . . Dad.
Can't blame David. Can't blame Jo, either. Four years older. Made her fourteen at the start of everything. During the two years when It was going on, that four years made a world of difference. Difference between shit-your-pants terror and a kid turned loose in the toy store.
Jo had been old enough for Buddy Johnson. She'd wanted sex with the single-minded passion she threw at any obsession. Mo hadn't. Simple as that.
Buddy was your fault, too. You knew what he was going to do, after the first time. You could have stayed away from him.
And if you had told anybody what was going on, Jo would have caught it worse than Buddy. Dad would have killed her with that black leather strap, the one that drew bloody lines across your back.
Can't tell anybody: Dad, Mom, Father Donovan, the doctor, teachers, nobody. Never. You promised. Keep Jo out of trouble. Little Mo worships her big sister.
Can't tell the shrinks. They'd tell Dad, Mom, the cops, everybody. They'd have to. Can't even tell yourself. It never happened.
Lie. Play up the voices and delusions, they'll believe them. Turn the fear of men, the fear of your father, into paranoia to hide the real cause. Leave the real cause buried under the biggest rock you can find.
Maureen stood up with the exaggerated care of a drunk who knows she's drunk. She put the bottle away, rinsed out her cup, and very deliberately finished up in the bathroom. She stared at the mirror and chuckled with an edge of hysteria. The mirror face grimaced back at her, bloodless and wide-eyed like a startled corpse.
Those thoughts of letting a man into your pants: some other woman did that. Not Maureen.
Back in her bedroom, she peeled off her damp sweater and jeans and underclothes and tossed them with drunken carelessness until she crawled into bed naked. To hell with the open door. Maybe David would get up to pee in the middle of the night and forget which door was which. If she woke up in bed with a man, maybe nature would take its course.
Or maybe she'd kill herself.
The blankets gave no heat, and the sheets felt like they were woven from soft ice. Her body ached for a warm body next to it, someone to gently knead the terror out of her shoulders.
Bed-squeaks whispered through the wall between her room and Jo's. She'd seen Jo in bed with a man before, seen her learning the tricks of her trade with Buddy back when the world was young and innocent. That woman'd do anything. No way Maureen would ever pry David away from her. And if Brian ever did call, Jo would take him away.
Patterns.
If he comes back. Slap a man hard enough, he doesn't come back.
She forced herself to relax, willing her eyelids to quit squeezing their way down through her cheekbones. Count breaths. Visualize the calming light of a candle flame, an altar candle flickering at the feet of the Virgin. Concentrate. Chant your mantra. Trigger the relaxation response the shrinks taught you, the only thing they ever really did for you in all the sessions through all the years because you swore you'd never tell. Relax.
The candle turned into flames gushing from the second-story windows over the strip club, then metamorphosed into blue ghost-lights licking a slush-filled alley clean. Her eyes snapped open and she clamped her jaws to stop her chattering teeth. She was just coherent enough to recognize the symptoms of shock, and just suicidal enough to not give a shit.
Jo's bed squeaked, again. Maureen grabbed a set of headphones from her bedside and blocked out the sounds. The caffeine still warred with the whiskey in her veins, and the whole shitty day left her twitching.
If sleep wouldn't come, she'd try music.
She punched the CD player and ca
me up with Altan, a disk David had given her. They started in on "Pretty Peg," a Scottish reel she'd heard his group practicing once.
She ripped the headphones off and threw the portable player and phones and cables and all across the room. The whole load hit with a muffled thud, landing on something soft in the darkness. Angles and trajectories swirled through her head, and she came up with her bald-assed giant teddy bear, poor bedraggled refugee from her childhood. She couldn't have hit it on purpose if she'd tried.
Insane laughter bubbled up, and she locked her teeth against it. You fucking idiot, you can't even make a tantrum work! Not with a bang but a whimper. Ought to crawl out and get the .38 and put five slugs through that damned CD. Then sit quietly and wait for the men in white coats to haul you away to the funny farm.
Pills. Doc Frantz had given her some pills when she couldn't sort out her sleep patterns on the midnight shift. She'd gotten promoted to evenings before she'd used them up. Damned things would stun a horse. Double the dosage and they even killed the nightmares. They were still on the bedside table.
Her fingers traced the overlapping paper labels on the bottle. Four or five of them, she remembered. They spelled out dosages and warnings. One said something like "Avoid alcohol while taking this medication."
Screw that.
She swallowed two pills, dry. Then she thought about night noises and took two more. She didn't want to wake up before David left. Before Jo left. Maybe not before Mo left.
The pills nibbled at her, inch by inch, until she floated away into swirling darkness.
Chapter Four
Dougal MacKenzie forced himself to keep calm. He didn't jerk on the black leopard's collar. He didn't release it, either. Shadow was too valuable a beast to loose on a mage as wily as Sean. Fiona's pet brother wouldn't stroll into this forest without protection.
Instead, Dougal just stood there--a gnarled stringy gnome scarred by the fangs and claws of a thousand beasts. I've had too much practice keeping calm with Sean and his elegant sister, he snarled to himself. When a thorn festers in your skin, you squeeze the wound to force it out. Just a little more patience and I'll be ready to lance this boil.
He breathed deeply and concentrated on the earthy smells of the wildwood. They helped him hold his temper, studying the trees and shadowy underbrush rather than Fiona's slim errand-boy in gray turtleneck and slacks. The giant cat caught his mood, though. Dougal could feel the tension where dark fur pressed against his leg.
Shadow wanted to kill. His simple predator mind lived for these prowls through the forest--lived for warm blood on his tongue and bones crunching between his teeth.
"And you did nothing? The two of you did nothing while this Pendragon hacked Liam to pieces? Brian is as much a threat to you as he is to the rest of us! Common sense should have told you to kill the snake when you had the chance!" He glared at the eunuch in front of him, but held his temper. I'll attack only when I'm sure of winning.
The Forest of Castle MacKenzie was no place for a casual walk. Dougal had found it, molded it with his magic, and stocked it in the image of a far older and deadlier land. Some of the plants were nearly as dangerous as the animals. Even the bedrock was a living weapon--his weapon. If Sean strolled in, alone, to bring his news, his sister must have warded him.
"Fiona doesn't want him dead." Sean wrinkled his nose and then gave a smirking half-shrug--a feminine move that emphasized how much he resembled his twin sister.
They had the same intermediate height, moderate for a woman or smallish for a man, with slim muscles built for stamina rather than brute strength. Their faces could be masks from the same mold--dark brooding eyes above high cheekbones, smooth dark skin that would look more natural on Crete than Galway Bay, a nose just short of sharpness. They were sensual predator's faces, dangerous on a woman and incongruous on a man.
Dougal pulled himself out of the anger. Standing in his forest, he couldn't afford such thoughts. Sunlight dappled the shaggy trunks and tangled underbrush, forming mysterious shadows and lumps that seemed to move in the corner of the eye: wild forest, forest with the teeth and claws and danger left in it. Civilization had never touched this forest. Dougal intended that it never would.
Dougal grunted. "So Fiona wasn't ready to move. I was. Your precious Pendragon ruined weeks of planning. My next plan is going to include killing him."
Shadow flicked his ears and licked his lips, staring at Sean with hungry eyes. The cat had felt the thoughts of blood and death. Dougal read his body language clearly: the mutated leopard was thinking about a little snack. The beast-master squatted down beside his creature and ran a soothing hand over the coarse fur. The sharp smell of male cat twitched his nostrils.
Not yet, his hands said. This one does not make good prey. It is weak. It is not quick and challenging in its turns. You would find it a boring hunt and the flesh is bland.
Dougal stared into yellow eyes. Wait, he thought. We will find a better hunt for you.
One they were sure of winning. Survival in the Summer Country involved cold calculation as often as it did passionate violence.
Shadow settled at his feet, a sleek pool of ebony fur with coal black paw-print markings where the light touched just right. The cat started licking one paw and nipping gently around his fishhook claws, then lifted his gaze to meet Sean's-- coldly weighing potential prey, measuring, thinking hunter's thoughts. Dougal's thoughts.
Sean watched all this with lazy confidence and then shook his head. "Fiona wouldn't like that, you know. She'd be displeased if you killed Brian. She has plans for the little boy."
"Plans?" Dougal spat on the ground between them. "I had plans, too! Your fair-haired boy waded right into the middle of my plans and murdered Liam, and the two of you as much as helped him! I ought to string Fiona's ears around my neck for standing by and watching like it was two beasts fighting in a pit! Now she's saying I can't even take vengeance on the Sassenach who held the blade? Your bitch sister asks too much."
A sardonic smile answered him. "As the human children would say, any time you're feeling froggy, just hop. You won't be troubling my sleep, much less Fiona's. And you'll have a hard time selling that Sassenach label in the Summer Country. Brian's blood is as pure as yours or mine."
Dougal straightened up, resting his hand casually on his dagger. "Blood is one thing. Mind is another. The Pendragons have the Sassenach mind. Merlin taught them to believe in rules. Merlin taught them to believe in God and King and Parliament. Brian would bind iron chains around your wrists and ankles. Do you want to live like that?"
Sean's mocking smile hardened. "Fiona's plans won't leave Brian much room for God and King and Parliament. Just stay clear of him. Otherwise, my sister will be most displeased."
Interesting, thought Dougal. He keeps talking about Fiona's plans. His sister will be most displeased. Sean was always slipping little twists into his words, giving one sentence five different meanings. It sounded as if there might be a touch of brotherly dissent brewing, even the jealousy Dougal had noticed more than once before.
"And don't you have any plans of your own, friend Sean?"
"Oh, I like this plan." Sean's drawl carried a slight edge. "We've been playing tag with Brian since he was in diapers. This year, we've decided to win."
"And yet she doesn't want him dead. What does she want to do with him?"
The half-man shrugged, but a glint of hatred grew in his eyes. "You know Fiona, all scientific and modern. She has an experiment she wants to run."
The thought of being one of Fiona's experiments chilled Dougal. She had an evil reputation, even by the standards of the Summer Country. Rumor said that her house-rowan was all that remained of a former lover, showing his blood in the crimson berries. Rumor said that a web spun from human nerves tied her lands together, binding it to her touch.
Maybe she'd decided to make Brian a sentry spirit for her land. Grind his body into a mush of DNA and spin the warrior genes out in a centrifuge, then splice them into eve
ry cell of every tree and sprig of grass around her cottage. She'd take the genetic engineering she stole from the humans and warp it to the uses of the Summer Country. That was the way her mind worked, passion ruled by a logic so cold as to make an iceberg seem like Tahiti.
All Dougal wanted to do was kill the bastard.
Work on Sean's hidden anger. There's something about this that little Fiona's little brother doesn't like. Something more than usual.
"And are you happy taking orders from your sister? Is your manhood so damaged you enjoy serving as a ladies' maid? What do you want to do with Brian?"
Sean's sudden glare made the cold hilt of the dagger feel very reassuring. Then the insolent smile was back.
"Touchy, touchy, Dougal me laddie. Killing Brian won't really ease your pain. We both know what the problem is between you and my lovely sister. You're the only man in the Summer Country she's never bedded, never shown the slightest interest in. You're too ugly for her or for any other woman. So you sit up on your hill and stare down at her cottage and wish. I'm surprised that cat isn't female."
Dougal tensed and then relaxed, and smiled quietly. There was Fiona's trap: defensive spells wound around Sean, spells that could slip quietly into Dougal's forest without triggering his own defenses. But if Sean goaded him into an attack . . . then the counterstrike would come. Sparring with Sean or Fiona always seemed like that. Feints within feints within feints. Dougal's own magic worked in other directions.
But that would change. I'll have the Pierce woman soon. She'll rival Fiona in power and beauty. When she's trained, there'll be some changes in the Summer Country.
Malice sparkled in Sean's eyes. He'd seen the instant when their trap edged on success, and then the failure. "My sister sends her love and condolences with the news. Please do come and visit us. It's been so long since we had company for tea." He turned and strode off through the forest, ignoring Shadow.
Tea? Dougal wondered what would be in the cup, if he accepted their invitation. He doubted if it would be wholesome. When he had his woman, then they could pay a social call. Her magics were of Fiona's kind.
The Summer Country Page 4