The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  Too bad life wasn't a fucking chess game.

  * * *

  "Damn Jo!" Maureen's voice was a weak mutter, barely audible even to herself.

  "Damn Jo and Brian and David, damn them all for following me, for making such a simple thing so complicated!"

  Maureen sat on her thin mattress on her iron bunk in her cold stone cell and stared at her hands. They were skeletal and dirty, with a translucent pallor under the grime as if she didn't have enough blood to spare to turn them pink. They trembled with cold and with exhaustion.

  Padric never gave her enough food. Dougal invited her to feasts, but Padric starved her. She muttered to herself about the "good cop, bad cop" routine, but that part of her brain was shutting down. Right now, she didn't fucking care where the food came from, just as long as it came.

  Her eyes blurred. She suddenly saw twenty fingers instead of ten. Her head sank to her chest, and she jerked back with a grimace and rapid blinks to clear her sight. Her eye-sockets felt as if they were filled with gravel.

  Now each finger was ringed with a thin halo of purple light. At least there were only ten of them.

  Her skin itched as if things crawled on her, either the layers of her own sweat and the filth of the cell or bedbugs and lice. More likely, it was just the lack of sleep and food fucking with her brain, twitching her skin's nerves with another kind of hallucination. Or maybe it was the DT's, the snakes and bugs of alcoholic withdrawal. Padric wouldn't give her a goddamn drink.

  Dougal offered her fine wine.

  She didn't think it was lice. Dougal wouldn't want extra wildlife in his bed. He wouldn't want her in his bed without a bath. God knows she stank. Since she'd thrown that wine at Dougal, Padric hadn't even given her a bucket of ice water for washing. Not what you'd call a dream date, by any means.

  Her head sank down and jerked back again. She stumbled to her feet and forced herself to balance against the swirling of the walls and floor, the black dots swimming across her sight.

  She thought it was low blood pressure. Brain not getting enough oxygen. Not just balance, not just eyes--screwed up her thinking as well. Logic went to hell, went to sleep, even if she couldn't.

  "Can't go to sleep," she muttered. "Not sleep-time."

  If she closed her eyes Padric would be there in an instant, always that bastard Padric. He was just outside the spy-hole, watching, she could hear his breathing. Close her eyes, and the fucker would hang her up by her wrists again, drench her with icy water, beat the soles of her feet with his goddamn rubber hose, take her clothes away so she was too goddamn cold to sleep.

  But she could beat them. She was strong enough. The problem was Brian and Jo and David. Hold out and David dies, Jo dies, Brian lives on for years as a brainless slave. Not fair.

  Fucking liar Dougal. All she had was his word. Everyone else could be safely home in bed. Everyone else could be pigging out on greasy pizza washed down with pitchers of beer. They'd abandoned her, the bastards. They didn't care.

  Not their fault. Fiona caused this. Sean caused this, the traitor bastard. Dougal promised he'd help her get revenge, help her save Jo and David and Brian. Dougal promised he'd help her learn how to use her powers, the Power in her genes. Dougal told her that she could wash her hands in Sean's blood. All she had to do was sleep with him, bear his children.

  She'd see him in hell first, take him on a guided tour.

  "Give in, you get a bed," she mumbled, under her breath. "Give in, you get food. Give in, you get warm, you get clean clothes, you get a bath. So what if your bed includes a man? Men have slept with women ever since sex was invented.

  "Sleep. Right now, you'd sell your soul for a good night's sleep. What's this big thing against selling your goddamn body?"

  Nothing was going to happen to her that hadn't happened before. She'd survived. Saga of Woman: she survived.

  Dougal wasn't all that bad. She'd never sleep with Padric. Padric was an animal, while Dougal was a gentleman. Dougal never hit her, never chained her naked in her filth, never took food right out of her hands because she'd done something wrong. That was Padric. Always Padric.

  Good cop, bad cop, whispered the dying voice in the back of her head.

  All she remembered of Dougal was him beating Padric with a whip. The finest meal of her life. Clean clothes.

  So what if she'd prefer Brian? One man was much like another, a bunch of muscles fronting for some sperm. They were all pricks, when you came down to it. Jo sure didn't pay much attention to the differences.

  Dougal was an Old One, and he chose her, chose her out of a million women. She was special. It wasn't his fault Liam screwed up when he came to talk to her. If things had gone the way Dougal had planned, she would have come here as a princess rather than a prisoner.

  When Liam screwed up, she got tangled in Fiona's plan for Brian. All this nasty shit was Fiona and Sean, not Dougal.

  He wasn't all that ugly. Hell, walk through the mall sometime and look at people. Really look at people. They aren't actors, they aren't models. Beauty was a crock of shit, an airbrush fantasy. Even centerfolds got retouched to perfection.

  Her knees wobbled underneath her, and she slumped back on the bunk. A corner of the iron frame dug into her leg, and the pain served as a last anchor to reality.

  Somewhere, out of the last depths of her soul, she dredged up the strength to pry her eyes open and glare at the peephole in the door. The eyes on the other side blinked and vanished.

  * * *

  "Go 'way." Maureen couldn't even find the will-power to shake her head or open her eyes.

  Something lifted her. Seconds passed before the pain in her scalp made sense. The bastard was hauling her up by her hair. Fingers clamped her earlobe in a vise and squeezed until tears ran out under her eyelids. The pain shifted to her breast, her left nipple. She still couldn't care.

  "If you're that sound asleep," a deep voice growled, "I can do whatever I want with you. You'll never tell."

  She bounced against the rough stone wall and slithered down to sitting. Hands fumbled with her snaps and buttons, her zippers, tugged at her pants, forced her bare legs apart, groped between them.

  Her mind flashed across the years, thrown by that touch, those hands. Buddy Johnson was back. He'd never really left. She whimpered in the darkness behind her eyelids.

  The door clanged again, and she heard a scuffle and curses followed by blows like a boxer pounding on a side of beef. Gentle hands wiped the tears from her cheeks.

  She pried her eyes open. It was Dougal. Buddy Johnson cringed in the corner, fresh blood flowing from his nose. His hair seemed longer than she remembered.

  Dougal helped her with buttons and zippers and snaps, not even wincing at the touch of her filthy, greasy clothing, her filthy, greasy body. He helped her to her feet. He picked her up as if she weighed nothing, carrying her like a child in his arms. His face hovered just above hers.

  "Maureen, I've got to save you from all this. Come away with me. Be the mistress of my keep and bear my children."

  He'd draped her arms around his neck. She left them there. "Yes."

  His hands tightened around her body, gently, protectively. One of them pressed lightly on her left breast, the one Buddy had pinched, and warmth flowed from him to soothe the ache. She snuggled closer to the warmth and power.

  Her glance drifted across Buddy, still cringing in his corner. He'd lost weight since she'd seen him last. Tears stained his face--tears that looked more like loss and sorrow than pain. Dougal carried her out of the cell and kicked the door shut behind them, locking Buddy in, locking him out of her life. Savage glee flooded through her.

  There will be a reckoning, she whispered to herself. You will suffer ten times what you did to me.

  Slowly, gently, Dougal carried her down stone corridors and up stone stairways into brighter, sweeter-smelling, warmer rooms. She lost herself in his arms, drowsing even though she didn't feel half as hungry and tired as she had before.

  H
is encircling arms felt so warm, so strong, so protective. They were the arms of a warrior, her warrior, to fight for her and for her friends. She smelled his maleness, and it wasn't threatening. He wasn't Brian, but at least he was the right species.

  "Brian. Jo. David. Danger." Talking was an effort.

  "It's night now. We'll start our hunt in the morning."

  Good. Sleep first, then duty.

  Warm moisture tickled her nose, touched with lavender and soap and a faint resinous burning smell like incense. She opened her eyes again. He had carried her into a smaller room, tiled, warm, softly lit. Vivaldi played quietly in the distance.

  She blinked with surprise. It was a frigging California bathroom, with huge spa tub recessed into the floor and skylights that showed a moon nearly full and towels that looked like they were about an acre across and three feet thick. Some castle her lover kept, bidets and surround showers and full-length mirrors framed by sweeps of ivy climbing to the beams overhead. Stereo speakers hung high in the corners.

  The room even had a goddamn fireplace in one corner, lit with fresh birch logs to scent the air. She blinked again and shook her head, trying to chase the illusion away.

  He smiled down at her. "You were expecting an outhouse? We're not the Sassenach here, not barbarians."

  He helped her undress and kissed her again with a gentle caress that warmed her belly and made her cheeks tingle. Then she settled into the absolute bliss of hot water and soap.

  When she surfaced again, he was sitting on the tiles by the side of the bath, smiling quietly, holding a glass of beer and a genuine, non-mirage, Swiss-and-ham-on-rye, sandwich. She grabbed for it with a sudden lurch and splatter of suds, but he gently pushed her hand aside and fed her himself, alternating bites of sandwich and strong kosher pickle washed down by sweet dark beer.

  The beer seemed to go straight to her head, bypassing her stomach. It called out for more, loud enough for him to hear, but he shook his head.

  "You shouldn't eat or drink too much, too suddenly. It will make you sick. Tomorrow, the day after, you will build up gently. This is all you should have, for now."

  She splashed him. He dunked her head under water, and she got soap up her nose. He massaged shampoo into her hair and washed her back and gently, erotically, teased other parts of her awakening body. Maureen floated in a warm, fuzzy bliss.

  "Time to get out."

  She shook her head, not denying but trying to wake up. The whole scene felt like a dream. She stood, climbed out of the tub, felt soft warm towels fold her to their heart. Her hair dried itself. She caught a glimpse of something slim and pink and elegant in one of the steamy mirrors. She preened and posed for an instant, thinking that stranger didn't look at all bad for an escapee a few minutes out of Buddy Johnson's dungeon.

  A heavy door opened directly into his bedroom, a huge space of stone and wood panels and richly embroidered drapes and arched beams overhead. Weapons and animal heads hung the walls and furs warmed the wooden floor. She stood on one, kneading it with her bare toes and soaking up the sensual bliss.

  Dougal lifted the towel robe from her shoulders, and she wondered at the warm air on her naked body, such a contrast with the stone and the gloom and damp she'd always associated with castles. Such a delight, magic was, to allow both comfort and grandeur.

  Then Dougal took her in his arms again, lifting her gently and carrying her to his bed. Darkness stirred at the back of her head, a fear long felt and fought.

  Man. Bed. Sex. He was going to make love to her. She had feared this, struggled against it. It was something painful and evil. She had sworn to kill, to die, avoiding it.

  But that was all Buddy Johnson. Buddy was locked behind cold iron, in the dungeon.

  She relaxed. Dougal wouldn't hurt her. He loved her. Sex between a man and woman who loved each other was sacred, not evil. Even Father Donovan had said so. Sex was a sacrament of God.

  His kisses were warm on her breast, gentle, and her nipples hardened as if they were something independent of her mind and body. His fingers probed and caressed, below, a delicate and knowing touch. Dougal kissed her belly with a final, tender promise before he stepped away from the bed to undress and join her.

  She closed her eyes, waiting for him, trusting in him, and fell sound asleep.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Jo felt invulnerable, and it scared her shitless.

  She knew there were things out there that would love to munch her up like a cocktail olive. The dragon was one of them. And here she was actively looking for it, instead of beating feet in the opposite direction like a sensible woman. So why did this damned forest act like she was a frigging rhino with PMS?

  She crawled out from under the holly tree where she had spent the night, squinted at the morning sun, and walked to the stream--scratching and yawning and generally unlovely, picking dead leaves out of her hair. The great outdoors rated about three-point-five on a scale of ten, as far as she was concerned. Unlike Maureen, Jo preferred civilization.

  She wanted coffee instead of water from the creek. She wanted a hot shower and some clean clothes. She wanted a pizza with anchovies and mushrooms and sausage and green peppers, washed down by a big frosty pitcher of dark beer.

  She wanted toilet paper.

  Nobody has ever written an ode to toilet paper, she thought. One of the greatest inventions of modern man, and it goes totally unnoticed. I'm going to buy a ton of it when I get back.

  Her fire was dead ash and charcoal on scorched stone. She didn't need to light another one: there was nothing to cook. Oh, she could catch some more of those terminally stupid trout. Half-charred fish for breakfast sounded really great. It just needed hunger for a sauce.

  Make that starvation.

  She splashed cold water on her face and scrubbed her hands with sand from the stream after fertilizing some bushes. So much for morning rituals. She thought she should find the trail pretty soon. She hadn't run that far downstream after panicking.

  That hadn't mattered after climbing out of the sinkhole. She'd only been able to walk for maybe five minutes before her adrenaline ran out.

  She tugged Maureen's jacket closer around her shoulders, snuggling against the morning chill. Another problem with the Great Outdoors was the lack of central heating.

  Or maybe she always felt cold because she was always hungry. She looked at her wrist and then tried spanning it with her other hand. She was definitely losing weight. She'd never had much body fat to start with, and those trout weren't keeping up. Better find that dumb man and take him out for pizza before she faded into an Irish ghost.

  Jo laid her hand on a rough-barked old willow and listened with her inner ear. All she got was that static hiss pulsing quietly as if she was listening to the blood rushing in her own ears. The land lived, and somewhere in that life, David wandered.

  Scattered, he'd whispered. He'd only focused on her fear and anger. Now that she was out of immediate danger, he'd gone cloudy again, lost in the slow drift of the forest.

  The agenda for the day was move upstream, find the trail, and follow it back to the dragon. Anything beyond that was beyond her horizon. She didn't want to even think about those teeth and meat-hook claws, those razor-edged scales, those cold yellow lizard eyes. But they were tied to David, and she had to go.

  The stream burbled quietly, talking to itself like a contented baby playing with his toes. She followed it upstream, dodging tangles of briar and deadfalls and wet nasty-smelling patches of the forest floor that threatened to suck the boots right off her feet. She was amazed at what she had run through on the way downstream. Had run right straight through and never even noticed.

  Suddenly, the forest thinned, and the trail cut across the water. Directions to Dragon World, she thought. Take a right at the first traffic light, go straight on from there. You can't miss it. Biggest attraction in the whole frigging forest. Thrills and chills for all ages.

  Like those teeth, she thought, and that chill settled d
eep in her belly. She remembered those steak-knife teeth, hanging about two inches in front of her nose. She remembered the cold hardness of the claw hooked under the waistband of her jeans, holding her down.

  Arguments that had been tickling at the back of her head forced their way forward and gained a voice. Just what exactly was she doing? Why didn't she just sit down for a minute on that nice convenient moss-covered rock and meditate on her actions before they become fatal?

  She was going to find out what was happening to David and stop it. If that dragon was part of it, she was going to chop it up into paté and spread it on crackers.

  With a Swiss army knife?

  With a frigging piece of chipped flint, if that's all she had. She was hungry.

  She could get seriously dead trying. She remembered a Nature program Maureen had watched last month on PBS, they had a Parental Advisory at the start of it. Remembered what the tiger's fangs did to that cute little deer. Ugly. Jo reminded herself that she was female, about five foot two and a hundred pounds before she went on a diet, and used to shriek at creepy-crawly things and ask Maureen to kill spiders.

  But she'd just killed a man, yesterday.

  Did she? Who did she think had been following her?

  Oh, shit!

  Jo broke out of her funk and grabbed the gun. She twisted from side to side, nervously checking the shadows under rocks and the distant trunks of trees, but saw nothing dangerous. She shoved her left hand into the forest dirt and felt the same vague sense of something cold and angry watching, something afraid and staying just beyond sight.

  The chill of it had forced her into hiding. The holly tree had been her natural barbed wire, a guard no man or animal could sneak past without making noises in the dark. It had welcomed her, as if it had turned its barbs aside to let her in and then closed the gate behind her. David's work, she'd thought, but when she tried to talk to him through the trunk all she'd found was the same static heartbeat. The forest protected her but wouldn't speak to her.