Spellbinders Collection Read online

  Table of Contents

  Dragon's Eye

  The Summer Country

  The Forever King

  Dragon's Eye

  Stonefort Series: Book One

  by James A. Hetley

  Copyright Information

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Copyright © 2005 by James A. Hetley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  eISBN: 978-1-937776-52-7

  Also by James A. Hetley

  The Stonefort Series:

  Dragon's Eye

  Dragon's Teeth

  "Dragon's Bones"(novelette)

  The Wildwood Series:

  The Summer Country

  The Winter Oak

  Writing as James A. Burton

  Powers

  Visit James online at www.JamesHetley.com.

  Follow him on Twitter @JHetley.

  Table of Contents

  Dragon's Eye

  Copyright Information

  Also by James A. Hetley

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Excerpt from Dragon's Teeth

  Author Bio

  Chapter One

  Few things in Stonefort are exactly what they seem.

  Daniel Morgan reminded himself of that fact, as he studied the scene in front of him. This was the place. From this distance, it looked perfectly normal.

  Evening fog rose off cold salt water, closing in and hiding Daniel's kayak as it bobbed gently in the swells, and the water lay as close to calm as the Maine coast ever got. The tide had just turned to the ebb, leaving a wet line drawn across the coarse pink granite cliff. He sat in his cockpit and thought about geology and camouflage.

  Camouflage meant a sea-green kayak ballasted low in the water and a fleece jacket mottled the black and deep brown of waterlogged wharf timbers floating in the tide. It meant greasepaint on his face, a flat black double-ended paddle, and black gloves. Coming in, he'd sculled within yards of a raft of eiders without drawing a blink from the drowsing birds. Whatever gave him the creepy sense of being watched hadn't bothered them.

  There were things Maine rock did naturally and things it didn't. Sheer cliffs and offshore ledges were natural. Straight channels tucked behind rough sea-stacks weren't. Neat arch-mouthed caves hidden at the end of those channels weren't.

  This place had gnawed at his curiosity, ever since he'd spotted it while tracking down a dinghy that had broken loose. The weathered cracks in the rock, the wind-twisted spruces with their gnarled roots clawing for a hold on the lichen and shreds of soil that escaped the storms, the rockweed and barnacles below the tide line, all tried to tell him this was a natural cliff. They lied. Men had carved this rock and then gone to a lot of trouble to hide their work. Judging by lichen and trees, the last ring of hammer on chisel had been centuries ago.

  The bell buoy tolled from Tinker Ledge, reassuring in its normalcy. He really didn't have any reason to be afraid. Pratts and Morgans had played tag like this for generations. They weren't enemies as such: no blood feuds, no brawling in the streets like the Montagues and Capulets. There were rules.

  The two families had even been partners once, but they'd gone their separate ways after a difference of opinion on long range business planning. Now the two sides kept different secrets, and he couldn't simply walk along the shore and look at something that had caught his curiosity.

  Daniel’s hand caressed the silver dragon pendant at his chest, welcoming the warmth of the fire-red stone bound in its coils. Even in June, the water carried a winter chill. He noticed a sleek gray head watching him from the water at the edge of the fog, body just awash — seals grew hides for water like this. Humans had to rely on neoprene and Polartec. He'd be so much more comfortable wearing his other skin . . . . He shook his head. This needed human eyes, and maybe human hands.

  He tucked the warm glow back inside his wetsuit, along with his usual wry curiosity about how it did the things it did. The Dragon hadn't come with a manual. He'd worn it for twenty years now, almost half his life, and it still sometimes surprised him: for example, this ability to see things that had eluded the Coast Guard and a dozen other federal agencies for years.

  A flick of the paddle sent him closer to the cliff. The scene fuzzed and then sharpened, as if he'd slipped through a denser patch of fog. "There’s a channel here," he said, talking to his left hand inside its splash mitt. "Wide enough for a Novi boat."

  A hiss of static answered in his left ear, then a whispered voice. "The charts show solid ledges."

  Fifty yards out, you'd never see the overlap in the rocks that hid the channel. Even at high tide, ledges made waters like these a death-trap for anyone without a chart or decades of experience. They meant tricky work even for a narrow sliver of plastic that only drew six inches of water. Daniel would never bring his lobster boat in among these rocks, and there weren't any buoyed traps to show that others were braver or less wise.

  He wondered how the Pratts had diddled the charts. Aerial cameras weren't eyes, that they could be fooled by illusions. No matter what the voice in his ear might say: what there was, was a path of clear green water about fifteen yards across, zigzagging through the rocks to a turning basin big enough for a scallop dragger — or a smuggler's hot-rod, more likely. That hidden slot back through the cliff to the black mouth of the cave didn’t show up on any Geological Survey map, either.

  Of course, the Morgan family had a few ancient secrets, too. And ways of keeping them. He smiled quietly to himself.

  "I’m heading in," he whispered to his mitt.

  "Watch yourself," his ear answered. "The Pratts were never known for being stupid."

  "Yeah. Well, Maria would never forgive me if I missed Gary's party. She's been planning it for months. You know I'm not going to risk her wrath."

  "Wrath" was an understatement. Maria's temper was a byword in three counties. The things they didn't tell you, before you took out that marriage license . . .

  Daniel sniffed, searching the salt air, spruce resin, and rotting seaweed odors for alien tangs. A faint whiff of gasoline rode the breeze, along with the mustiness of wet rock that never saw the sun. He also picked up the faintest touch of sun-dried hemp, and smiled to himself over the guess confirmed.

  "No more talk," the voice added. "
Switch code only."

  Daniel clicked his answer, short-long-short pulses on the "talk" switch for agreement. The radios operated on unused frequencies just outside "ham" channels, and the odds were very strong against somebody eavesdropping. That didn't mean he could afford the noise of talking on his end.

  Delicate flicks of the paddle moved him south, close in along the cliff. He scanned for wires, for sensors, for cameras, for any evidence of alarms. Old habits of the trade — he smiled to himself and shook his head. Storm waves and winter ice would wipe out anything like that, to say nothing of the false alarms a sixteen-foot tidal range would trigger.

  The walls of the slot reared up around him, coarse-grained, weathered stone scattered with palm-sized splotches of orange and gray-green lichen. He spotted a single gouge left by a quarryman's chisel, and a patch of discolored mortar that plugged a hole. The cliff face dropped straight down into the water, and he guessed there would be at least ten feet of channel at dead low tide. The smell of gas and marijuana grew stronger.

  He sculled around to line up with the cave, keying his transmitter again with a Morse code "285" for the bearing on his deck compass. His earphone hissed "Roger" in reply, the growing static on the FM warning him the stone was shielding his signal. So the radio might not be much use. But then, his little hand-held always talked better than it listened.

  A single bright scrape marred the entry; someone had gotten careless with a boat hook, fending off. The shadows closed around Daniel, into the total darkness of a cave at night. He dug into his gear-bag, pulled out a headlamp, and put it on. He hated showing light, but infrared goggles gave too coarse a picture for this job, and light amplifiers would need some light to amplify.

  The beam cut into the darkness, leaving a white shaft of fog like a thin pale ghost questing to right and left. The inside of the cave was rougher stone, chisel gouges and the half-tunnels of blasting holes standing out clearly in the light. This work had been done after gunpowder and iron came to the coast, but before there were enough people to care about the noise.

  Daniel crept along, sculling gently while he scanned for alarms. The tunnel curved slowly north — a turn easy enough for any boat that had business being there, but sufficient to shield direct light from the outside. The water lay as still as a millpond, and he heard his quietest paddle-strokes whispering in the silence.

  The radio spat static at him, with "distance" barely coming above the squelch. He sent his guess back and received another burst of noise. It sounded as loud as a chainsaw in the stillness, and he killed the volume. From now on, he'd be transmitting blind.

  His light swept over a slot in the cave roof and walls, and he studied the bright metal edge it showed. Storm gate, he guessed, stainless steel, something to keep heavy swells out when the Gulf of Maine started getting frisky. He paused just beyond it, thinking about traps. Up to this point, nothing he'd seen could stop him from just sneaking right back out again.

  The tunnel opened up into a chamber as wide and high as a barn. The walls seemed smoother here, and natural, as if some troll had blown a bubble in the granite while it was cooling. Water splashed from a spring high up to one side, flowing gently down the rock and into the quiet tide below.

  He backed water a yard or two, nerves on edge as his headlamp bounced light across rusted iron overhead. He brought the beam back and steadied it, lighting up an ancient hoist and wooden catwalk high along the wall. Judging by the rotted holes in the wood, nobody had used that for fifty years or more. Probably rumrunners and Prohibition. Newer light fixtures also hung from the rock, though, connected by a spider-web of conduit.

  Then dark shadows formed into a boat and floating dock, low in the water, new and well-tended. Curiosity sucked him deeper into the cave.

  The boat was fiberglass, flat black, long and sleek like an arrow, and bore no name or registration numbers. Very interesting. Outside of GPS and radar antennas and a single VHF radio whip, it showed no metal. If the engines sat below waterline, it would have no more radar signature than a chunk of driftwood.

  Daniel sculled quietly along it, estimating length and beam and capacity in bales of marijuana or kilos of cocaine. A man could support a very comfortable lifestyle with a boat like that.

  Assuming the right connections, of course. Which the Pratts would have. Daniel had seen enough. He spun the kayak with two dips of the paddle and keyed his transceiver again with the code for "leaving."

  Lights blazed, blinding him.

  He dug his paddle into the water, thrashing through the glare towards his memory of the exit. Machinery whined, and he heard the rumble of the storm gate closing.

  The damned thing would be slow. He still might make it.

  A door slammed behind him, and then a single shot blasted and echoed, deafening in the enclosed space. His paddle jerked in his hands. The kayak slewed around and he lost his bearings. He rammed into something, hard and grating on the bow, and that was it. He dropped the paddle and raised his hands.

  His eyes slowly adapted to the light. A shadowy figure stood on the floating dock, cradling an assault rifle in his hands. Another sat on a landing by a metal door, rubbing his eyes and dangling night-vision goggles from one hand. Neither of them was actually pointing a weapon at Daniel, so he relaxed a touch. He also locked the radio mike on "transmit."

  The gunman jerked a thumb at him, waving him back to the dock. Daniel blinked and focused, trying to identify the man. He seemed to be a stranger. Slow strokes of the paddle brought the kayak over beside the float, nothing sharp or sudden to startle the man with the gun.

  Daniel grabbed a ladder and twisted through the contortionist's balancing act required to exit a floating kayak. You practically wore the damned things rather than riding in them, and you couldn't just stand up and step ashore.

  He got a closer look at the gunman. He was definitely not a Pratt, and the Hispanic complexion and features tossed any rules out the window. Daniel shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the cold water.

  The guard must work for the suppliers. Probably Colombians. They had a vicious reputation, the kind of people who gave crime a bad name.

  The door clanged again, and Daniel looked up. Three more men had entered the cavern, shadows against the light. One of them had the characteristic short and broad profile of the Pratt family. They started down the ramp to the float, and he got a better view: Tom Pratt, head of the clan, and another two Latinos. Both of the Colombians had pistols out — ugly little Mac 10s, probably full-auto.

  Tom shook his head. "Well, well. Look what drifted in on the tide." He grinned, as if the whole scene was a joke.

  Take away the guns and Daniel might have laughed. He decided to play along. "Hey, you left the door open."

  Tom nodded. Then he turned to the older Latino, a short, thin man with enough lines on his face to suggest that the black hair was a dye job. "How did he get past the illusions?"

  "I do not know." His voice had the careful precision of a man who had learned English late but very well. "Is he police?"

  That drew a laugh from Tom and the man still up on the landing, the one who'd had the night-vision goggles. Daniel finally identified him as Johnny Pratt, one of the numerous cousins. He now held another assault rifle.

  "No," Tom said, still chuckling. "Indeed not. Our cross-town neighbor is the head of a rather ancient clan of thieves and con-men. He's as likely to be nervous of the cops as we are."

  He studied Daniel for a moment, head cocked to one side. "It's a pity, him sneaking in the back door like this. That other matter you mentioned, selling some artifacts? Daniel's the man you'd want. I'm sure he could come up with a name or two, people who wouldn't ask embarrassing questions. For a finder's fee, of course."

  "That is indeed a shame. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Antonio Estevan Francisco Juan Carlos da Silva y Gomes, at your service. I am a business associate of your neighbor." The old man turned back to Tom. "A thief, you say? Is he here to steal our mer
chandise?"

  "Ah, yes, that is indeed the question." Tom turned back to Daniel. "Just what the hell are you doing here, anyway?"

  Daniel shrugged. "Curiosity. I saw something that didn't belong, and followed it. I thought it might explain a story Grandfather told Dad."

  "I believe," the Latino said, "that you have an English saying about curiosity killing the cat. We have similar warnings in Spanish." He turned to Tom again. "What is this about his grandfather?"

  Tom waved it off, like a triviality. "Probably great-grandfather. Our families used to be partners in the import business. There was a small disagreement over policy back in the 1920s, and the partnership was dissolved. No hard feelings on either side."

  Daniel snorted. A small disagreement? Granddad hadn't agreed with the Pratts' plan to cut good Scotch with wood alcohol. He preferred repeat customers.

  Tom shrugged his shoulders. "A small matter. I still would like to know how he got past the illusions and wards."

  "A question that troubles me, also." The older Colombian waved his bodyguard forward. "Please to search him?"

  Daniel gauged the distance to the water, and then remembered that storm gate. It must go right down to the cave floor, or it would be useless at low tide. He could hold his breath a lot longer than they thought. However, all they had to do was keep the gate closed until they caught him, or dumped a few grenades into the pool. He didn't doubt that they had plenty.

  The younger Latino was rough but efficient. He pulled out the radio, the microphone, and Daniel's boating knife. He missed the pendant, and Daniel allowed himself a ray of hope. It might be too small to seem like a weapon, but . . . .

  "So. A radio." The old Colombian stooped down and poked at it, ignoring the knife. "And to whom were you talking?"