The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  The field wasn't just grass. Jo plucked a three-lobed leaf. Shamrock. Grandpa gave each of them one in a silver locket, when they were kids. Another hallucination. Ireland? Bullshit. Ireland would be in the middle of winter, just like Maine. The sky glowed blue from horizon to horizon, and the breeze felt warm and dry.

  Meanwhile, where was Maureen? That was the question that brought Jo here. Maybe Maureen had some answers, her or that man she was with.

  Jo could use an answer or two about now.

  She scanned again, looking for an echo. Eyes closed, she concentrated on calm and centering. Calm would help a few other things, things like the sweat forming on her palms and trickling down her armpits in a most un-lady-like display of gibbering terror.

  Calm. Centering got her into this. It could get her out again. She concentrated on her breathing. Where was the sister? Maureen knew the way here, she knew the way back. Simple.

  That way.

  Her compass pointed through the woods, a line near the ancient holly. There was a stile over the fence, flat stones set into the wall to make a set of steps no cow or pig could follow. Goats sure as hell could but the Irish were never big on goats.

  She decided to just go and call it Ireland, ignoring the sunshine. Having a name cut back on the terror.

  A trail led away from the stile, back into the shadows under the trees. Jo followed it into a fairy-tale forest, dark and old and musty and watchful, full of ancient dangers. The trees wore faces crusted with lichen beards and split peelings of bark hair, drowsing faces with closed eyes and mouths. Jo thought she'd just as soon they never woke up. She remembered fairy-tale dangers and felt her fingernails digging into her palms.

  Again, she forced herself to relax. After all, she wasn't big enough to be worth eating.

  Well, she was bigger than the woodcutter's children. Fairy-tale forests had teeth. Big Bad Wolves, the Gingerbread Witch, the Black Dragon at the Ford--dangers lurked in the shadows and waited for lunch to walk into their jaws.

  Stop it! I'm walking right into Maureen's paranoid dreams, not some storybook dragon's mouth. Next thing I know, the trees are going to start talking to me.

  She scuffed her boots in the litter on the trail, rustling along through the dead leaves and branches, trying to substitute anger for fear. She was hot. Some of that sweat was earned, dressed as she was for winter in Maine. She stuffed her hat and gloves into a pocket.

  What the hell was she going to do with this cold-weather crap? She'd need it again on the way home.

  A hiss froze her in her tracks. Something large moved among the trees--something as big, as slow-moving, as confident as a bear or moose.

  Bears don't hiss. Moose don't hiss.

  Darkness filled the trail, a heavy glittering darkness that swirled and coiled like a twining anaconda in the Amazon jungle.

  Oh, shit!

  Chapter Thirteen

  David thought that somebody sure had wrung a lot of mileage out of a single set of building plans. Maureen's new tenement looked like a clone of the one she had shared with Jo, and there had been five others just like them in the blocks between the two. Typical three-story wooden rat-palaces, all seemed to have been built within ten years of each other back around the 1920s. They were probably all owned by the same family of slumlords off in California.

  He squinted against the sunlight, trying to see if the shades were up or down.

  It looked as if somebody was awake. He hoped it was Maureen and not that freaky gangster of hers. Brian had never done anything hostile, but something about him reminded David of a police Doberman. Whether he was hurt or not, you moved carefully around him and kept your hands in plain sight.

  Jo had said she was going to see Maureen, might be late. Noon was more than late. Noon was worry-time.

  He took the stairs two at a time, muttering about the length of time that it took to get a phone installed. The apartment was wired already; he knew that from helping to move them in. It shouldn't be much more of a job than flipping electrons at the central office and assigning a number. So could Verizon do it in less than a week?

  No. David knocked and waited.

  He'd raised his hand to knock again when he heard the click and rattle of someone inside. Chains, bolts, shiny new dead-bolt lock--either Maureen or Brian didn't want surprise visitors, that's for sure. The little round eye of a spy-hole in the door also looked new.

  Brian answered the door. Damn. The gangster wore a tee shirt, jeans, bare feet, and a spectacular set of bruises, but he looked a hell of a lot better than he had a couple of nights ago. He barely limped, and he used both hands to reset the locks. That arm and shoulder must be healing.

  "Is Jo here?"

  That earned David a startled glance, followed by narrowed eyes. "No. I thought Maureen went over to your flat."

  Double damn.

  "I haven't seen Jo since last night. She went to the Quick Shop to check on Maureen. I thought maybe they both came back here and talked girl-talk all night."

  Brian sat down at a kitchen table that must have come from the same factory as Jo's. Hell, it looked like it had the same knife-cuts in the plastic laminate and the same dents in the zinc edging. David hovered near the door and kept that table between him and the Doberman, just in case.

  The kitchen smelled like a lab--or a hospital. Then details registered: surgical forceps and a few scraps of black thread lay on the table, next to bottles of antiseptic and a scattering of chess pieces.

  David blinked and shook his head in disbelief as Brian snipped another stitch with a pair of tiny stainless-steel scissors. He swapped them for the forceps and teased more black thread out of his own arm. The wound looked like it was weeks old rather than two days, edges a deep purple with the shiny gloss of fresh-healed tissue and a few peeling scraps of dead skin.

  "I heal fast," Brian said. "Runs in the family." He snipped the last two stitches, pulled them, and swabbed the arm with peroxide. It foamed gently in the holes left by the thread, spreading a thin tang of excess oxygen.

  Brian cleared away the medical debris and wrapped his tools up in a green nylon field kit. "So they decided to take a girl's night out? They need a break from us, now and then. And vice-versa."

  David shook his head. "I called the night manager for the store. Maureen went out on a break and never came back. The man said to tell her she's fired. He said Jo came in a couple of minutes later and went out again, looking for her. He's pissed."

  Brian got up and poured a cup of coffee, lifted his eyebrows at David to offer him the same, and then shrugged.

  "One other thing." David paused and drummed his fingers on the table. "The manager said Maureen left with this person, he wasn't sure if it was a man or a woman. Thin, well dressed, dark hair, dark skin. Not black, he said, more like Spanish or Italian. Good manners. Sound like anybody you know?"

  Coffee splashed all over the floor.

  "I guess the answer is yes." David stopped, rather than let his voice edge into the snarl he felt his face forming. When he could control his tongue, he went on. "Is she in danger? Is Jo in danger?"

  "Maybe." Brian growled, the kind of sound you'd expect from a bear cornered in a cave. "Probably. Bloody pig-headed bitch wouldn't listen to me!"

  David's heart turned over and froze. "Forget about cleaning up that mess! We're going to the police!"

  Brian ignored him, sopping up blotches of hot liquid.

  "What the fuck's the matter with you, man? Don't you care about Maureen?"

  Wadded towels splatted into the trashcan with a lot more force than they needed. Brian poured another cup and met David's eyes. That was the look--the one that made David think of fire and blood and sharp steel, the Doberman look. Brian's eyes had faded from blue to ice-gray, and the thoughts showing through them were even colder.

  "I care," Brian said. "The police just don't have jurisdiction in this case."

  "What the hell you mean, jurisdiction? They aren't in Naskeag Falls? The FBI handles
kidnapping! That's the fucking jurisdiction!"

  "The FBI doesn't cover where Maureen and Jo have gone. Neither does Interpol. Please move: I need to get into that closet."

  The alternative seemed to be leaving through a door without opening it first. Brian looked about as stoppable as an avalanche. David slumped into a chair, his knees suddenly unreliable.

  Jo was in danger. Jo!

  The closet spat out a mottled green knapsack covered with loops and pockets. A heavy web belt followed, clip-on canteen, and pouches. Binoculars--expensive binoculars, rubber-armored Leicas. Floppy jungle hat faded nearly white with sweat and sun. David cataloged the contents of an army surplus store as they piled up on the table. Where the hell had all that come from?

  Brian noticed David's scowl and nodded at the pile. "Maureen fetched this lot for me, cleaned out a locker down at the bus depot." The gear had seen a lot of mileage. Some of it bore patched holes that looked suspiciously small and round.

  A curved black leather sheath landed on top of the pile. Brian stood up with a grunt that was his only concession to leg and ribs. He unsheathed a heavy knife, like a short machete bent in the middle. Moving smoothly and quietly like a man performing a religious rite, he tested the edge with his thumbnail, pulled one of two smaller blades from the sheath, and used it as a sharpening steel.

  The rasp of metal on metal sent icicles down David's spine. The dull sheen of the blade spoke of hours spent honing, honing, honing. Waiting. Soldiers do that, David thought, soldiers waiting to go over the top, soldiers waiting to reach the drop zone or the beach, soldiers waiting for an enemy they know is just beyond this ridge. Waiting to kill or die.

  Those scars weren't from gang wars.

  "My God, what is that thing?"

  "It's called a kukri, the fighting knife of the Nepalese Gurkhas. I served with a special Gurkha scout unit in the British Army. Little buggers preferred these knives to their rifles. There are tales of a single Gurk with a kukri taking out a Japanese platoon, one by one, to the last man."

  David shook himself and beat thoughts back into his head. "What do you mean, even Interpol can't help us? You trying to tell me some crazy crap like they've been abducted by men from Mars?"

  "Not Mars." Brian stopped, his stare measuring David. "Do you care enough about Jo to reset your brain? To throw out a lot of stuff you know is true?"

  An eye of quiet settled in the middle of the storm. Images floated by: Jo talking, Jo skittering around the kitchen in her start-stop squirrel mode, Jo in sunlight and in moonlight, Jo in bed and Jo fuzzy-eyed and snappish and foul-mouthed in a ratty bathrobe across the breakfast table with her hair in curlers.

  "I care enough about Jo to die for her. I've asked her to marry me."

  That drew a blink and raised eyebrows. "We're not talking about pretty songs. You bloody well might get a chance to die for her." Brian seemed to think for a moment and then shrugged.

  "Get the box of matches from the stove. Take one and strike it on the box. Strike it once and then hold it. Keep your fingers well away from the head."

  David did as he was told. The head sparked but didn't light. He held it up, puzzled. There was nothing strange about that; normally he would have just struck it again.

  Suddenly the match exploded in a single burst of light and heat as powerful as a flashbulb. David blinked. Through the sparkles of the after-image, the head and half the wooden shaft had vanished. The remaining matchstick ended clean at a blackened line. There was only a faint wisp of smoke.

  "Magic exists," Brian said. "You are not hypnotized. That was not a stage trick, not an illusion. The man who took Maureen from the store uses magic like you walk and breathe."

  A suspicion crept into the corner of David's brain and whispered. Words, weapons, healing, the magic show: what does this add up to? David sat down again, very slowly, as if the Doberman had just growled and bared its fangs.

  "You've dragged them into some kind of war, haven't you?"

  Brian quieted like a cat ready to pounce. He studied the edge of the kukri.

  "Not intentionally."

  The Gurkha knife seemed huge, a bent sword. David saw his own blood on it. That thing could take a man's head off with a single stroke. He could be dead already. He might as well ask the rest of the questions.

  "Just what, exactly, do you mean by that?"

  "I mean, before I knew her, I was following some dangerous men. One of them chased Maureen into an alley. I took him out. That's where I met her."

  David shuddered at the bald, terse statements. He suddenly wasn't sure if he was willing to live with any more answers.

  "One of them . . . . What about the others?"

  "Another was the shark who took the bait. My half-brother."

  "What right did you have to risk Maureen?"

  "That first time? I didn't even know who she was. She wasn't in danger until just before I moved. Last night was desperation. She refused to call in sick. By tonight, I would have been well enough to guard her."

  "Where is she? Where the hell are Maureen and Jo?"

  "Another world, the thickness of a sheet of paper away from you. Sean would take Maureen there. How Jo went, I can only guess. She may have tried to stop Sean, or she may have followed on her own. She has the Power. David, your lover is not entirely human. Neither is Maureen. Neither am I."

  A cold knot formed in David's belly, the chill reaching out to his fingers and toes. However, things could be worse. Brian could be using that knife already. Apparently the big soldier thought David might help, or at least not get in the way.

  I suspected this. I called Jo a witch. I knew the other night was freaky.

  He swallowed his heart. "You're going after them."

  "Yes."

  "I'm coming with you. I said I'd die for Jo and I meant it. I don't want to even think about living without her."

  Brian shook his head. "No. You're not a fighter, and you don't have the blood to work with Power. Someone like Sean would take you like a grizzly snapping up a trout."

  David winced. The image was too vivid.

  He gritted his teeth. "You take me along, or I'll call the cops on you. If nothing else, I can carry your pack. You're not fully healed yet. I saw you limping. And if you have something like a shotgun, I can at least scare those bastards."

  A grim smile flitted across Brian's face. "Call the cops? Maureen wouldn't let you use the phone, and she didn't even realize what she was doing. Try to get out of your seat."

  Stand up? Simple. But nothing happened. David cussed, silently. Nothing below his waist worked. He had feeling, he still balanced upright on the chair with all the unconscious adjustments an unstable posture needs, he didn't feel heavy or have any sense of magic glue holding him to his seat, but his legs simply wouldn't make the necessary moves.

  And then his hand reached out and picked up the discarded matchstick. It turned and moved steadily toward his face, toward his right eye, and he couldn't move his head away, he couldn't turn his head, he couldn't stop his hand or drop the match or even blink his eyes.

  An animal scream forced its way out of his throat, low and quiet but rasping with pain against clenched teeth. He smelled the char on the stick, he lost focus on it, he felt it brush his eyelashes, and then it stopped. His hand finally answered the scream and whipped the splinter of wood away from his eye. It bounced off the refrigerator with a tick that echoed in the quiet kitchen.

  David collapsed across the table, his arms wrapped over his head in a vain attempt at shelter. He gasped for breath and fought against the instant replays running through his head, that blackened weapon inching toward his eye as if it was held in a drill-press made of his own flesh.

  "Sean wouldn't have stopped."

  David looked up, still shaking. "I don't care. I have to go."

  That cold, gray stare weighed him. Finally, it softened back into a faded blue.

  "And guns don't work where we're going. I don't suppose you ever studied fencing or
karate?"

  David laughed, a bark just short of hysteria. "No. What do you mean, guns won't work? The laws of physics take a holiday?"

  "Remember the match. The easiest way to see it, is think about a few additional laws. Say the Old Ones put a speed limit on oxidation-reduction chemistry. Without magic to help, nothing can burn much faster than a normal fire. It's kind of a 'union shop' clause in the way they run their world. They don't like paying attention to people who can't use the Power."

  Brian hauled more gear out of the closet. He assembled a takedown bow and started to string it, and groaned with pain. Forcing the tip down towards the string, his hand wavered just as the loop caught. The bow snapped loose like a striking rattlesnake. Brian clutched the side of his face and sank to the floor.

  The fiberglass tip had left a gouge across Brian's cheekbone. David wet a towel and swabbed at the scrape, then jerked his hand away in shock. The bleeding stopped, and a shiny film of healing spread across the wound.

  Witchcraft. Healing like that was enough to get you burned at the stake. How bad had the earlier injuries really been, if Brian hadn't fully recovered yet?

  Brian dragged himself upright and shook his head like a dazed fighter. Beads of blood had popped up along the stitch holes in his left arm, but it was his right shoulder he wiggled experimentally. He shook his head again, as if bothered by a swarm of flies.

  Archery. Memories tickled David's fingers, and his left forearm stung in sympathy. "I might be able to use that bow. I practiced target archery in high school, got good enough to compete on the local level."

  Brian's face froze with one lifted eyebrow. "How long since you drew a bow?"

  "Ten years, maybe. At least I know the mechanics--a sight picture, the draw, a smooth release."

  "You need muscles as well as skill, but it's worth a try. That's a hunting bow, twice the pull of a target bow even if you were in practice. String it and see if you can draw it."