Storm Road (Old School Book 3)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
Storm Road
Jenny Schwartz
When a woman with secrets saves a man hunted by a ghoul, the choice is stark: salvation or damnation.
Major Dean Fortescue, JAG lawyer and former marine, enters the Southern Appalachian Mountains to find his aunt, who has gone missing. He discovers her house burned down, a ghoul in residence, and a mysterious woman who claims to control the weather.
Beulah Morgan is a weathermage, home after months away on a scientific research vessel in the Southern Ocean. When her mountain retreat is invaded by death magic, old memories resurface and with them a chilling terror.
Children will die unless Beulah trusts Dean, he trusts her magic, and together they face a ghoul that was bound during the Civil War, but recently freed by a reckless wizard mercenary.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Epilogue
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Chapter 1
“Don’t die on me, now.” Beulah Morgan coaxed her vintage Triumph motorcycle up the second last hill. “Ten more minutes—fifteen tops—and we’re home.” If the old girl had been running smoothly, they’d be home in five minutes, but Vicky was proving temperamental. She never liked being abandoned, and Beulah had been away for three months.
Three months in the Southern Ocean and apparently I’ve turned into a big softy. Beulah was sweating in her leathers and her lungs labored to breathe. “Dammittall. Just to the top of the hill, Vicky.” Early summer nights in the Blue Ridge Mountains were meant to be cool and fresh, free of the humidity of lower North Carolina. Instead, inside her helmet, Beulah’s long red hair lay plastered to her scalp, and it itched.
To hell with it. She couldn’t fix Vicky’s engine troubles, but Beulah’s magic could clear the air. Maybe cool, clear air would even help the old motorcycle? Its air filter clogged all too easily. She pushed her magic into the atmosphere.
The atmosphere pushed back.
Beulah jerked. While Vicky stuttered and whined her temperamental way up the hill, Beulah contemplated the misfire of her magic. It never happened. As a weathermage, her magic was as natural to her as breathing. Okay, so breathing wasn’t so easy at the moment…
She gathered her magic and shoved it outward. The pressure compressing her lungs and oppressing her spirit popped, and vanished.
Vicky roared up the hill.
Beulah grinned. The motorcycle gathered speed on the downhill run. This was freedom! Beulah had been craving it; just her and the mountains. She was usually so careful with her magic, aware that the tiniest tinkering with complicated weather systems could have unexpected and potentially devastating effects, but just this once, it was totally worth it.
She slowed for the turning into a side road, then accelerated. The narrow winding road was seldom used by anyone except Beulah and her neighbors, and there were precious few of those. The woods of the Southern Appalachian Mountains crowded the slopes, currently hidden in darkness, but filling the air with pine and other, more subtle, forest scents.
The road curved and met the river, running along beside it, the water sparkling in the moonlight. Daylight would show the green of the grass and wildflowers. Beulah watched for deer or rabbits or anything else stupid enough to wander onto the road. Twilight was fading into true night.
“One last hill.” The road abandoned the river, striking out for the old homestead next door to Beulah’s mountain cabin. She leaned forward, ready to coax the motorcycle up the hill, but this time the vintage motorcycle didn’t hesitate. The Triumph chugged along steadily. Maybe Vicky wanted to be home, too.
At the crest of the hill, lights shone through the trees. The caretaker’s cottage looked cozy, tucked among oak and chestnut trees. The big house was dark. The investment banker who owned it seldom visited, but he’d given Beulah permission to roam his land in his absence. Since his land included one of the prettiest waterfalls she’d ever seen, she appreciated his generosity.
She’d be visiting that waterfall this summer. She had two months at home before her next research project.
And there was home.
The road had found the river again and ran alongside it. A wooden gate, permanently open with honeysuckle growing through it, marked her driveway. She slowed and inhaled the sweet scent of the honeysuckle and the deeper, darker and cool scents of the river and woods before riding on to the garage.
The garage door opened readily, its movements smoother than Beulah’s. She groaned as her stiff muscles cramped. There’d been too many hours on the plane from Boston, followed by the stuttering ride from Asheville that Vicky’s engine trouble had almost doubled in time.
She wheeled the motorcycle inside the garage, hung her helmet beside it, and shook out her hair. It would be foolish to trek to the waterfall tonight, but she had the next best thing waiting for her inside the cabin.
“A shower,” she said longingly, and unzipped her leather jacket.
On the far side of the mountain, a man crawled from the burned ruin of a house. The flames had died weeks ago. Everything was black with ash, streaked with water. Tremors shook the man. The wind cut at him with phantom knives. He struggled to rise, failed, and crawled on. He was a marine. He’d fought nightmares before. He kept going.
Beulah’s cabin was a simple single level design with additional storage space in the roof. The front porch wrapped around to the west, the side nearest the garage. Beulah climbed a couple of steps and walked to the front door. As always, the view distracted her. The stars claimed the sky with the same time-conquering grandeur as the ancient mountains. Her insignificance thrilled and challenged her. Then she opened the door, and bent over in a fit of coughing as dusty air rushed out.
She conjured a tingle of magic for a wind to sweep the dust from inside the cabin. Its walls, floor and ceiling were cedar that had aged to a dark honey color. She’d furnished it with mid-twentieth century furniture, the plain lines and modest size of which respected the cabin’s small floorplan. There was a kitchen that opened into the living room, which was where the front door was set. To the back was a bathroom and mud room, and two bedrooms.
Crouching in front of the fireplace in the living room, she struck a match, then a second one, lighting the fire she’d laid ready three months ago. As the flames caught and crackled on the kindling, she entered the corner bedroom and took clean underwear, a yellow t-shirt and blue wide-legged trousers from the wardrobe. The scent of lavender from sachets bought at a local market drifted from the clothes. After the cramped and spartan quarters of the scientific research vessel, she appreciated the little luxuries of life.
The shower water ran hot. Heaven. She was lucky in her neighbors. To the west, Mrs. Johnson was always looking for work for her children and grandchildren. Tyler, her third youngest son, was in his early fifties. He hated the grind of a nine-to-five workday, so he did odd jobs, including cutting the grass around Beulah’s cabin, seeing to any outdoor repairs, and—when his mom reminded him—turning on Beulah’s hot water system and fridge the day before she was due home.
Hot water. Beulah tilted her face to the spray
. And if she was very lucky…
“Thank you, Mrs. Johnson.” Shower finished, Beulah contemplated the apple pie sitting in the middle of her fridge next to milk, bread and butter. She was glad she’d bought Mrs. Johnson a bottle of expensive perfume at the airport. As far as she was concerned, it was a more than fair swap for the homemade pie. Mrs. Johnson might have intended it as a welcome-home dessert for Beulah. Beulah intended to have the pie as dinner and dessert.
“Yum!” She made coffee, cut a generous slice of pie and headed for the recliner set near the fire and front window.
A thumping knock at the door sent her coffee sloshing. Her bare toes caught a splash and she winced. But the knocking didn’t cease, and the urgency of the sound had her ignoring the slight burn. She put the coffee and pie plate on the kitchen table. “Who’s there?”
“I need help,” a man’s voice replied. An unknown man’s voice. “Please.”
A woman alone ought to be careful, and Beulah had learned the lesson well that a man could hurt her, but the desperation in the stranger’s voice drew her—and she had two reasons arguing against fear.
The first was her weather magic that could be a devastating weapon.
The second was that the man was on her porch. When Beulah had moved into the cabin five years ago, she’d had a witch friend visit. Freya had sunk a ward around Beulah’s seven acres, preventing anyone evil or of evil intent from entering. Freya had tapped a ley line for the magic. The ward was unbreakable—and it hadn’t kept out this man.
So Beulah opened the door. Cautiously.
She was a couple of inches short of six feet.
The man in front of her was a couple of inches over six feet. She’d switched the porch light on as she opened the door, and it shone on blond hair cut ruthlessly short, a powerful yet lean body, and a hand that clutched the doorframe hard.
“I need the police—or something.” The man shook his head, not in negation, but as if dazed.
Was he in shock? Beulah tried to assess her visitor and whatever problem had brought him to her door.
His blue eyes were narrowed against the sudden brightness of the light and his lips thin and lacking color; tight with pain or intense emotion.
“Are you alone?” she asked.
His eyes flared wide. “God. I hope so.” His head turned north east, back up the mountain. “I think I lost him…it.”
It? An eerie word. She tried to ignore the shiver that slid down her spine. There were bears in the mountains. Maybe the man had been chased by a bear? There was dirt on his face and hands, but she couldn’t see any blood. He’d fallen at some point.
He didn’t look like a man who’d panic at the sight of a bear. In fact, he didn’t look panicked now. He looked determined—and afraid. That was the reason for the sense of oddness he gave off. Terror had an element of shock to it. The man was dazed by his own fear, but controlling it.
He spoke quietly, reasonably. “I can’t get a signal on my phone.” He looked beyond her to the old phone fixed to the wall near the fridge. “May I—” He cut himself off, looking around more carefully. Evidently he noted the lack of evidence of anyone else present in the small cabin because he released the doorframe and took a step back. Even in his terror he didn’t want to scare her, a woman alone. “I can stay out here if you’ll phone the police for me.”
“To report what?” she queried. “What has happened?”
“I don’t know.” He shook his head again. This time, it seemed more in frustration than shock. He was recovering. “I went to my aunt’s house and found it burned, as Dad had heard.”
Beulah reassessed the streaks of dirt on his face and hands. Not dirt, but ashes. And where had a house burned down recently? Well, as recently as two months ago. “You’re Millie Tremblay’s nephew?”
“Yes.” He took two impulsive steps forward, and pulled up short when Beulah didn’t move from the doorway. “You know my aunt?”
“She’s a neighbor, over the hill.” Back in the direction the man had looked when he’d queried if something had followed him. Had he really walked here, through the woods, from Millie’s property? Beulah looked at his boots and took in his aura of competence that was coming through stronger as whatever had chased him here lost some of its terrifying grip on him.
“Major Dean Fortescue.” He held out his hand. “JAG lawyer, former marine.”
That would explain his aura of competence. But what would scare a marine?
She accepted his handshake, finding his hand warm and firm, lightly calloused in a way that meant this lawyer did more than argue in a courtroom. “Beulah Morgan. You’d better come in.”
Dean walked inside the comfortable cabin and couldn’t help the sigh of the relief that escaped him as the door shut securely behind them.
A half-mile back in the woods, maybe less, the terror that had sent him into desperate flight had lifted. He’d been able to think and move freely: no longer struggling for every breath; no longer braced to fight, yet not knowing what or where the threat came from.
What could he actually report to the police? That he’d lost his mind and feared for his life in the ruins of his aunt’s farmhouse with no one in sight and no injury on his body? Yet he had to report something. Whatever he’d encountered at the old farm, people needed to be warned.
And he had a more personal mission, the reason he’d been at the farm.
“Sit down,” Beulah invited.
He sat on a kitchen chair, assessing the woman who’d allowed him—big, desperate and unknown to her—into her home when he was pretty sure that she was alone with not even a dog for protection. Her t-shirt and silky trousers, while flattering to her full curves, didn’t hide a gun.
“You’re welcome to the pie and coffee.” She gestured to the food in front of him. “I’ll make more coffee, but I think we’ll need more than pie for your story. Have you had dinner?”
“No.”
She didn’t push for him to phone the police and go. He wondered at her behavior, and a wariness engrained in warzones kept him alert as he sipped the coffee and ate the piece of pie—which was apple, and excellent.
Without fuss, she emptied cans of soup into a pot. Pea and ham soup went in, along with tomato soup. The result was surprisingly tasty, and hot. They ate it with bread and butter from a nearly empty fridge. Yet he didn’t get the impression that she lacked money for groceries. She looked fit and well-fed, and the cabin appeared to have been renovated in the last couple of years.
By the time he’d finished eating, the last of the adrenaline had faded from his system. “I’m based in Washington. I have two weeks leave, and my dad’s fretting about his sister. He’s a retired marine sergeant, currently stuck in a hospital bed with a badly broken leg. One of his friends phoned.” He paused. “How well do you know the military?”
“Not at all. Not my world.” There was confidence in her voice, an assurance that signaled that in her world, she was respected. There was also a hint of a British accent.
Her long red hair—Celtic fire, he thought with uncharacteristic poetry—shimmered in the kitchen lighting.
He glanced at the phone hanging on the wall, and then, to the darkness pressing in at the windows. His terror had receded, and that enabled him to prioritize his first mission: to find his aunt. “The military has a long reach, and I don’t mean the formal structure. It’s the network of current and retired members that keep in touch with one another. We’re everywhere. One of Dad’s buddies phoned him at the hospital when news of the car accident filtered through the network. The guy is from Asheville, with family up this way. He casually mentioned the fire at Aunt Millie’s and asked how she was doing.”
His hand tightened too hard around the handle of his coffee mug, and he consciously relaxed his grip. “Dad hadn’t heard about the fire. He hadn’t heard from Aunt Millie in a couple of years. It was the same for me.” A difficult pause. “Our family isn’t close, but when Dad couldn’t raise his sister on the phon
e and she wasn’t responding to emails, he was all set to get out of his hospital bed and track her down in person.”
“So you volunteered, instead.” Beulah’s gray eyes searched his face.
He couldn’t read disapproval or pity for his family’s frayed ties. For him, there was only his dad. His grandparents were dead, and his mom had left when he was a kid. “Aunt Millie’s always been independent. She’s a journalist. She’s gone places that would scare a marine. But she’s never just dropped off the face of the earth.”
Beulah ducked her head, but not before he caught something in her honest eyes.
He leaned forward. “Do you know where Millie is?”
“No.” She met his gaze steadily. “I have no idea where Millie is.”
“But you know something,” he pressed. “Do you know why her house and barns burned? The official report concluded that it was an electrical fault—” He broke off as an odd, painfully rueful smile twisted Beulah’s mouth. “What is my aunt involved in?”
She swallowed some coffee. “Tell me what happened to you at the farmhouse.”
For a tense moment, Beulah thought Major Dean Fortescue was going to insist that she answer his questions first, but then, he leaned back in his chair and simply studied her. “You do know something.”
“Yes, but some secrets aren’t mine to tell.” There was an invitation there, if he was smart enough to hear it, for him to convince her otherwise.
He nodded. “I arrived at Aunt Millie’s house at 4:20. I’ve only visited a couple of times. Mostly, we’d catch up whenever we happened to be in the same city. But I remember visiting her in spring time. The old apple orchard behind the barns was beautiful, neglected but charming. So were the barns. Aunt Millie only maintained the house.”
Beulah smiled. “Millie claims that picturesque decay inspires her writer’s soul.”
He snorted. “Yeah, and maintaining the old farm would be a full-time job, and Aunt Millie has other interests.”