The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  But sometimes a useful shit.

  "You don't yet have Maureen. I don't yet have little Brian. Our two problems seem to have come together. Perhaps we can work a temporary alliance?"

  Dougal rose to his feet, cocked his head like the falcon on his fist, and took two steps that carried him into a ripple of air like a desert mirage. He didn't come out the other side. Fiona yawned. Two steps to the human world, two steps back to the Summer Country--such travel was a gift the Old Blood gave them.

  She guessed he was just checking on the questions at hand. All she really knew was that her agents had failed, that Brian had escaped them and they were unable to follow. Where and how he'd left, and in what condition, remained mysteries to her.

  She preferred a more distant style of management. Getting directly involved, either at the strip club or in the alleys, could be painful. She rubbed the back of her wrist in memory, the spot she'd burned to the bone by forcing Brian's trap.

  Magical healing might erase the charred flesh and the scars, but it didn't cut the price he was going to pay.

  * * *

  Two steps carried Dougal from Tara to Naskeag Falls. He grimaced at the icy wind, the peregrine uneasy on his wrist.

  That's the price of an image, he thought. Damned awkward bird to carry on a night like this. And she's more than a nuisance here, if some nosy law-man asks to see my federal permit. That little eunuch was right about the walls between the worlds. Most of them are made of paper, or of laminated plastic.

  Time was such a strange thing, between the worlds. They knew of her agents' failure, Fiona and Sean and Dougal, days past in the golden afternoon of the Summer Country. And yet here was the Pendragon limping along under the streetlights, spreading the smell of fresh blood on the wind.

  Dougal shook his head. He knew he could take Brian now, wounded as he was, but it would be ugly and dangerous--like following a wounded tiger into the elephant grass. He could take Brian now, but the only safe way would be to kill him. Little Fiona wouldn't like that. Oh, no, she wouldn't. Sean had made that abundantly clear. So revenge was out, for now.

  He's your tiger, Fiona dear. I track my own mistakes. I don't track yours. Not even for the blood of my own clan cousin.

  He watched from the shadows as Brian hauled his wounds up the steps of a rundown apartment building. Dougal sensed Maureen inside, sensed the power that had set Liam on her trail. So the wounded tiger considered this his lair? If the wind sat in that corner, Fiona's suggestion of an alliance made more sense.

  Two steps took him back. Dougal drew the scene of Tara in his head--the fire and the shadows, the line of the sunbeam and Fiona's beautiful dark face glimmering in the firelight. The world bent around him and reshaped itself, through the half-world of gibbering spirits and uncanny lights and a musty, boggy smell to the clean resinous tang of birch-wood burning on an autumn afternoon. Sean had added two logs to the pile of coals while they waited.

  The falcon settled again on his wrist, her bells tinkling quietly. She really was working out well. Such a beautiful bird. The woman would be next.

  "Your children hurt him. He's gone home to mother to kiss it and make it all better. Your toy appears to be playing with my toy."

  Fiona wrinkled her nose. Such a lovely nose it was, on such an interesting face. It was too bad she had this fixation on her younger brother. It wasn't so much the brother thing. Dougal didn't care if people mated with their dogs in the middle of the street. But there were others she could choose . . . .

  "Why this Pendragon? What's so important about him?"

  She smiled her malicious smile, the one that made her look for an instant like the peregrine. "He's pretty, love. I've wanted him ever since he was a baby, you know. Not like you, with your nose like the hawk upon your wrist and your eyes set too close together and your neck stolen from a scrawny rooster. Sometimes I pity this Maureen: you're nothing much to look at, Dougal, as a man. No muscles to speak of, except those between your ears."

  Sean stirred, reacting to a glare from Dougal. "She's just having fun with you. Our Fiona has a nasty streak. There's more to Brian than a pretty face. How many fathers of the Blood have two fertile children, even with the aid of different mothers?"

  Dougal had to think. "Damned few."

  The dark pools of Fiona's eyes grew remote. "Precisely. It's one of the joys of our hybrid ancestry. The ability to use Power is a complex of recessive genes. You have to get them all from both parents in order for them to show. The problem is, the Old Blood has both Power and fertility linked with a lot of lethal genes."

  Sean snickered. "Not exactly a survival trait."

  "So far, love, those genes have paid us back more than they cost. But that's one reason why you can recognize the Old Blood at sight. We tend to look alike because we don't have that many viable gene combinations."

  Dougal's head buzzed with Fiona's human words. "Why do I need to know this?"

  "Sean and I have done a little research, love. That's why we were poking around on the coast of Maine. You've heard of the Jackson Labs? Genetics research, mutant mice, tracing the genealogy of inherited disease? Sean's a wonder, you know, in the half-world of the humans. He can even chase down grants."

  Dougal grimaced at Sean. "Can you get her to stick to the point?"

  Fiona dimpled, as if he'd just paid her a compliment. "Oh, we've done a little discrete gene-sequencing, love. Nothing that would allow another researcher to discover exactly what species we were studying. I'm afraid our notes are quite hopeless from a scientific point of view.

  Sean shook his head. "What she's leading up to, in her nasty little way, is a mutation. She carries it, Brian carries it, I carry it but with a broken sequence and that stupid extra chromosome. Our father apparently was a most unusual man. Too bad he's dead."

  Dougal sneered. "Too bad he got besotted with a woman of the Kamarei, you mean. It's hard to regenerate your way out of a stew-pot. What's that got to do with us?"

  Fiona smiled, showing teeth that were nearly fangs. "So, love, you earlier mentioned breeding dogs. If one of your wolfhounds has a trait you want preserved, what do you do?"

  "Breed to the same trait in another."

  Her smile deepened. He really disliked being the target of her smiles, the way they added barbs to her venomed tongue. He knew his mind wasn't as quick as hers--but then, few were. That was a human trait. The Old Blood had other tools.

  "So, love," she went on, "isn't the same tail or nose or set of good sharp teeth often found in the same litter? Don't you often breed brother to sister for the purity of the line? Inbreed and then cull?"

  "Yes."

  Dougal nodded to himself, beginning to understand where she was leading him. So. Little Fiona looked to start her own selective breeding program? Given what he knew of her and of Brian, there probably wouldn't be that many culls to drown.

  "Besides," she said, "he's awfully cute, love. Those beautiful blue eyes, that curly blonde hair all across his arms and legs and chest. Those muscles. And he has some lovely scars. You should see him on a beach sometime."

  Dougal thought Sean was going to pick up a hearthstone and chew on it, the way his jaw was working. Sooner or later he's going to slide a knife between his twin sister's pretty ribs. Maybe, Dougal thought, just maybe I'll supply it.

  * * *

  Sean swallowed bitter rage. Brian, Brian, Brian. It's always Brian with Fiona, he thought. She could get what she wanted elsewhere. All of it: the genes, the sex, the worshiping. No, she wanted Brian. Maybe it was because she couldn't get him.

  Thou shalt have no other Goddesses before me.

  At least she still played with her twin, kept him close. Every once in a while, when her other toys lost their appeal, she even invited him into her bed. Hope held him in a cage.

  He might be sterile, but he wasn't impotent.

  "We need a plan," she said, and he dropped those thoughts. The Goddess spoke.

  "View it as a Hunt, Dougal," she went on, "ap
ply your special talents. We have two specimens we want to capture, alive and in good condition. Breeding condition, if you will."

  Dougal laughed. "Good condition? I could smell the blood all the way across the street. So much for working with your puppets."

  She shrugged. "They forgot the rules. They'll regret it. For a short time."

  Dougal's glance shifted from Fiona to Sean and back, as if sending some kind of message. "You'll enjoy that, won't you? You enjoy giving pain?"

  "Pain is a tool, love. Terror is a tool." She waved a hand in dismissal. "Like wine, I can drink them or leave them alone. The next time I need some human tools, they'll have heard what happened to this set. They'll pay attention to the rules."

  Sean met Dougal's gaze again, reading sympathy in those hunter's eyes. He seemed to be offering an alliance.

  The ugly little gnome is right: why do I let her treat me like a worm? Is it some witchery she brewed when we were babes together, or even in the womb?

  Dougal shook his head. "Pain isn't always the best form of control, sweet Fiona. Not even with dumb oxen. Use too much pain on some animals and they'll turn on you. That's dangerous, often fatal. Sometimes rewards work better. Food, shelter, sex, even just a chance to sleep. Find out what an animal wants and provide it when the beast does what you want."

  They sat for a while, in silence. Sean traced runes forming and falling apart within the coals of the fire, reading omens, meditating on the unspoken message Dougal sent. "I know what you want," those eyes had said. "I know how you feel about this bitch. I know how you feel about that Pendragon."

  Sometimes, when Sean was away from her, he dreamed of her face flushing purple, her eyes and tongue popping out with the force of his hands squeezing at her throat. Then she'd lift one finger and his soul was hers. That hawk on Dougal's wrist had more free will. But when she sang . . . .

  Fiona leaned back against a polished tree-trunk pillar, scratching her back like some sleek sensuous animal. No wonder she kept cats.

  "The three of us can control Brian," she said, "if we get him here. His injuries might even be useful: they weaken him. The woman is untrained, can't use her powers yet, has no idea what they are. Brian could teach her, if we give him time, or he could just draw upon her strength. We should move soon."

  Dougal stirred. "We need them in the half-world. We need them separate. Force isn't going to get us what we want. We need bait. We need a live-trap for dangerous prey."

  "Ah," said Fiona, "but what's the bait, love? Brian's too smart to come here weak and unprepared. And the woman's strange. Before you set your heart on her, maybe you should study what's under that oh-so-cute red hair. She's nothing but freckled skin pulled tight over fear, with anger bonded to her soul. She went to shoot Liam before he even spoke to her."

  Anger. Connections. Something clicked in Sean's memory. "You talked to her. Didn't your mention of a glamour set her off? When you hinted that Brian tampered with her feelings?"

  "Yesss . . ." Her eyes slitted in the gloom, a cat accepting a chin rub.

  "Wouldn't that mean his glamour worked? Untrained as she is, what worked once will probably work again."

  "Ah, my lovely brother. Such a delightful snake you are."

  Her words were sudden sunshine. She smiled on him, and the world was right again. For this, he'd do anything.

  "I think we have our bait," he drawled. "Two sets of bait. A glamour set on Maureen to bring her here, then Maureen to bring us Brian. Tell me, Huntsman, will it work? Will it trap our prey?"

  Fiona held up one finger. "Meet her in the light, meet her in public. Remember the fear. Liam died because of the fear, even though she didn't kill him. Dougal, love, you're going to have some problems there. The woman's strange."

  "I suppose you think the rest of us are sane," Dougal answered. "I have ways to adjust her strangeness. But if I'm to cast a glamour on her and lure her to my bed, what do I need you for? Why should I help you trap your tiger?"

  She laughed. "Dougal, Dougal, Dougal. A glamour's a weak magic. It works best where attraction's already growing. It can't swim against the tide. Forgive my rudeness, but you'd never do. I speak as a woman here, Maureen's tongue. We'll send my darling Sean to do it. He's much more suited."

  Sean studied Dougal's eyes. A slight lowering of the brows told the whole story. "Get me the woman," those brows said, "and we'll work out a way to deal with this Pendragon. We'll have an alliance. I believe in rewards as well as punishments."

  Sean nodded, one agreement for two distinct proposals.

  Fiona's eyes glistened, hard rubies in the firelight. "When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning or in rain?"

  "When the hurly burly's done," answered Dougal, "when the battle's lost and won."

  A taste for cheap theatrics, thought Sean. Fiona loves making gestures. They won't always get you where you want to go.

  "That won't be ere the set of sun," he said. "And I hope we don't have to move Birnam wood to do it."

  Fiona smiled, her hard smile with the teeth in it. "Perhaps. On the other hand, I might like to play around in my gardens a touch. We'll see, my love. We'll see."

  And we'll see about a way to kill our younger brother, love, thought Sean.

  Chapter Ten

  "Coffee, coffee, coffee," Jo chanted, under her breath. She knew she shouldn't have drunk so much of that stuff at The Cave, but she didn't plan to get a lot of sleep tonight, anyway. Her fingers twitched, and she slipped her right hand into David's jacket pocket just to give it something to do. The buzz had her eyeballs ratcheting.

  Tomorrow was Saturday. There'd be plenty of time for a lazy morning in a shared bed. They'd wake up sometime around three, have breakfast for two at sunset.

  Midnight on an icy sidewalk in the heart of a Maine winter wasn't what she'd call a romantic idyll. No place to stop and smooch for an hour, no inviting patches of warm dry grass under the stars. And then there was the cold-hands problem . . . .

  Jo snuggled tighter under David's arm. Nice thing about the chem-free club, he even smelled good. No stale cigarette smoke, no sour beer. Just warm male. Just enough fresh sweat left over from the gig to turn her on.

  "You guys sounded good."

  He squeezed her shoulder. "We need to sound better. That one reel with Adam showed how much better we need to get."

  "Pooh. It just proved how much better you can get." She extracted her hand from his pocket and herself from his side, to pook him on the nose with one finger. "Dump Mike, David. Either that or change to sea-chanteys. He sounds like a Beals' Island lobsterman. No brogue, no lilt. With a good lead singer, you guys can make it. Look at Adam and Ish."

  "He sounds like a Beals' Island lobsterman because that's what he is. His name is Mike Beals, you little cabbage! His great-grandpappy settled the place!"

  David ducked to one side and scooped up a handful of snow. She dodged and retaliated. After a fast and flurrious skirmish they both ended up rolling in a snow-bank with Jo on top. She shoved another handful of snow down his jacket.

  "Peace, woman!"

  "You surrender?"

  "What terms?"

  "Abject slavery."

  He grew still. Staring down at him, Jo swore she could see the deep brown of his eyes even in the glow of the streetlights. He smiled.

  "Done."

  Jo stumbled to her feet, suddenly wobbly at the knees. She covered her confusion by shaking snow out of her hair like a redheaded poodle. Her tongue had decided it was time to go on strike.

  "I think you mean that," she whispered, finally.

  He lightly touched her shoulders, turning her to face him, and then brushed snow from her cheeks.

  "I do."

  They hugged for some unknown length of time, just hugged through three sweaters and two layers of synthetic goose-down. Somehow it felt sexier than screwing bare-ass naked on the seventeenth green of the municipal golf course under a full moon.

  Finally, he pulled back and kissed her on the
forehead. "I love you, Jo."

  "I love you, too. David, you want to move in with me?"

  God, that was a shivery thought, her tongue running away with itself. First it shut up like a clam, now it spouted things without asking her permission. She'd slept with ten or twenty men, but she'd never lived with one. It was a huge step, from making her body feel good to inviting a man inside her life, for Chrissakes. Jo felt like she'd just jumped from a plane with no reserve parachute.

  "Jo, what about Maureen?"

  The soft focus faded. She felt the sinking lump in her stomach that said the main chute had just failed.

  "Oh, fuck Maureen." She stifled a giggle. "I mean, not literally. Oh, hell, yes literally. Go ahead. If she says yes, go ahead. I won't mind. God knows, she needs something in her life!"

  She was blithering, covering up the Maureen Question. How much did she owe her baby sister? When did she get to have a life? She could talk with Momma 'til the cows came home, but the Maureen Question wouldn't go away.

  "David, Maureen's more than just a roommate problem. She's stone-ass crazy. Clinically bonkers. Does that bother you?"

  He took her hand and started up the slippery hill. She backed off to give him thinking time.

  They paused for a traffic light even though there wasn't a car in sight. He drew her closer, wrapping his arm around her waist again.

  "Honestly, Jo, it bothers me some. Not enough to matter. Even if your sister's cracked, you look sane to me. If you're thinking about kids, most madness isn't inherited. Besides, like Teddy Kennedy once said, I guess I'll cross that bridge when I come to it."

  Kids. Age thirty-something, maybe she should be thinking about kids. David looked like good father material. He limited himself to two drinks a night, never snarled at her even when she was a bitch, willing to wash dishes and unplug a toilet and reach things down from high shelves. And he didn't snore. Everything she needed in a man.

  Everything that Daddy wasn't.

  Of course, he earned about enough money to keep himself in guitar strings. He'd make a nice pet, though, even if he wasn't a provider. He followed me home, Mommy. Can I keep him?