Spellbinders Collection Page 2

  "Nobody. That's a standard marine VHF; I mostly use it for checking weather and stuff like that."

  The old man stood up and shook his head. He stepped closer to Daniel, slowly, staring into his eyes. The old man's eyes were dark, deep-set in his lined and graying face, and they seemed like ancient wells with a gravity that pulled sideways on the world.

  "You will find it difficult to lie to me. I am a bit of a brujo, you see, what you would call a sorcerer. I know things. I know your thoughts. To whom were you talking?"

  Weakness flowed over Daniel, as if he had paddled the kayak all day against the tide. He suddenly found it hard to stand, and he forced his knees to hold. His tongue took on a life of its own. "My brother."

  The brujo held his gaze. "Is this true?"

  Daniel's tongue said "Yes" at the same time as Tom Pratt said, "I doubt it. Ben Morgan was lost overboard from a scallop dragger about twenty years ago."

  The dragon pendant burned hot under Daniel's wetsuit, and he drew power from it to stand and fight this weakness. The brujo's eyes widened, and he looked Daniel up and down.

  "Search him again. Here, I hold your pistola. Search carefully." The old Colombian took both Mac-10s and stepped back a pace.

  This time, the bodyguard found the pendant. He flipped it out of the wetsuit, and reached to pull it off. Daniel tensed, but the older man grunted and waved the guard back. He handed both pistols to Tom Pratt, and stepped forward to stare deeply into Daniel's eyes. That eerie weakness returned, as if the old man had sucked the strength out of Daniel's muscles and left them filled with water.

  "So. Where did you get this little trinket? It is very old, very powerful, yes? It has been in your family a very long time? I think we know how you saw the entrance, how you passed the illusions and the guardians."

  The lines around the brujo's eyes were fainter, now, and his skin much smoother. The harsh lighting of the cavern must be playing tricks.

  Daniel fought back, pulling on the Dragon through its bond with the pendant. He dragged his gaze away from the Colombian, and concentrated on Tom Pratt. The radio should still be transmitting . . . . "How did you catch me? Professional curiosity, you know."

  "We all have our little secrets. Let's just say that you triggered an alarm, and young Johnny came out to watch you sneaking around. When you turned to leave, he signaled Paco to hit the lights."

  And Paco would have been beyond that door, some place already well lit so his eyes wouldn't be dazzled. It was a tidy little trap, proof that the Pratts were everything family lore had said. Daniel hoped that Ben was taking notes.

  "Padrino, the radio, it is on. It is transmitting."

  Daniel jerked his attention away from Tom Pratt. The bodyguard was staring at the handheld, lying on the dock. Its tiny meter showed the steady black band of full output power. Damn. He would run into a bunch of thugs who knew something about radio. Where's ignorance when you really need it?

  "So!" The brujo snatched up the radio, twisted the antenna off, and then swiftly popped the back open and removed the battery. He waved the radio's carcass at Daniel, shaking his head. "This is a shame. This is stupidity! Now we must think about your family as well as you. Have you no honradez, that you should endanger women and children?"

  The words hit Daniel like lead mallets, heavy but no resonance, and left a sick ache behind. Women and children. Maria. Gary, and Ellen, and Peggy. Some of the drug bosses ordered whole families killed in their turf wars. Such casual brutality served as a warning to others.

  Panic washed over him and died. This brujo witchery had even stolen his will to care. It felt totally alien, totally deadening, nothing like the bright bubbling earth-magic of the Dragon flowing through the quartz veins and basalt dikes underneath Morgan's Castle.

  The Colombian again stepped closer, bringing that sense of a cold, black drain with him. His face had lost all its lines, and he looked no older than forty. The dragon pendant burned with the flow of power. "Tell me again, to whom were you talking? Give me the name."

  Daniel felt as if he was drowning in those eyes. "Ben Morgan."

  "Must be one hell of a radio." Tom Pratt's voice slipped past the compulsion of the brujo's eyes. "Like I told you, his only brother drowned almost twenty years ago."

  "Muy misterioso." The brujo waved his other guard forward. "Diego, remove this delightful little trinket. Then we shall see what tune the bird sings."

  The bodyguard reached for the dragon pendant, and Daniel braced himself. He'd hoped the Colombian sorcerer would try to take it himself . . . .

  The guard's bare hand touched the silver. Power flowed like a lightning flash, the guard jerked twice, and then he flopped on the planking of the float. He looked unmarked, but his eyes were open and sightless. The brujo shook his head, knelt down, and closed the dead man's eyes.

  "So many years with me, macho, and you have never learned caution. Or wisdom. I would have warned you if you had not thought to steal a kilo from our latest shipment." He glanced up at the other Latino, as if he was driving home a lesson that he wanted repeated to others. "It is true, what the norteamericanos say: users are losers."

  He stood up and pulled a pair of thin leather gloves from his pocket, turning back to Daniel. "You will hold very still. You will give up this thing willingly. You will forget all thought of resistance."

  His eyes drained Daniel. His face was now the face of a young man in full strength, skin smooth and glowing golden. His gloved hands reached behind Daniel's neck and unclasped the chain holding the pendant, carefully avoiding any contact with the silver dragon or the blazing red stone it twined around and guarded.

  The Dragon left Daniel, and his knees collapsed under him.

  Chapter Two

  Kate frowned as the midnight-blue Suburban rolled past. She wasn't "on duty," but as town constable she was supposed to keep an eye out for anything odd in the general small-town humdrum of Stonefort, Maine. She felt a prickling on her skin that forced her to notice that damned car, as if she was a rabbit under the gaze of a wolf.

  Well under the village limit of twenty-five. New Jersey plates. Windows tinted so black you could have a crowd of four-eyed Martians inside gawking at the natives and nobody would know. She slouched back against Alice's weathered picket fence and ran her fingers through her buzz-cut blonde hair. The fence complained.

  At six foot six and well on the far side of two-fifty, Katherine Rowley was used to the world complaining about her presence. Back in high school, the basketball refs had seemed to think she was committing a foul just by stepping on the court. Even at thirty-nine, she was broad-shouldered and more muscular than heavy, her big hands scarred and callused and missing half the index finger on the left from years of working as a good-enough carpenter. From a distance, some people even thought she was pretty.

  Until they found out she was built to the wrong scale, that is. She straightened out of her "I'm not really this big" slouch and glanced down at Alice Haskell. The contrast between them always made Kate feel even bigger. Small, with dark hair and dark skin from her Naskeag Indian ancestors, Alice looked more like one of those pre-adolescent gymnasts, something short of five feet and about as much weight as your average chickadee. Kate nodded at the departing wagon.

  "Any idea who that is?"

  Her friend quirked an eyebrow. "Now you're sounding like a nosy old fishwife."

  Kate hooked her fingers into her belt, dropping into her imitation of a southern sheriff. "It's mah job to know, ma'am. Ahm th' law around this heah town."

  Her gaze followed the Suburban around the Stonefort green until the alien vanished towards the waterfront. Something creepy about that overgrown station wagon . . . She wasn't a tourist attraction, that strangers would slow down to stare at her. Besides, New Jersey drivers didn't believe in speed limits.

  Kate pulled out a pouch of tobacco and rolling papers, manufacturing a cigarette with unconscious deftness. She lit the product with an old Zippo that had her ex-husband's ini
tials engraved on the side.

  Alice wrinkled her nose at the smoke. "You ever going to quit puffing those cancer sticks?"

  Kate stared at the glowing end, letting smoke trickle out of her nose. It was her first cigarette of the day, and the nicotine rush gave her enough of a glow that she could ignore the Standard Haskell Healthcare Sermon.

  "Probably not."

  "Well, toss me that pouch. I need to do a little First People witchery this morning, and you might as well provide the herbs. Could even save your life."

  Alice played at being a Naskeag shaman, one of those charming eccentrics you got in small Downeast towns. At least Alice was rich enough to be considered eccentric, rather than flat-ass crazy. Kate shrugged and handed over her Bull Durham. Witchcraft was a harmless hobby. The guys at the building site would have smokes, anyway.

  "Ain't scared of cancer. I figure I've been playing with the house's money ever since I got knocked off Charlie Guptill's roof and had Dana Peters kill himself on my right front fender, all in one year. If I drop dead tomorrow, that's still sixteen years of clear profit."

  "Where's that leave Jackie?"

  Kate grimaced. "Don't want to talk about that brat. College scouts are already talking about a full ride just to play basketball, and she won't even dig in to pass tenth-grade English! We had another set-to last night. Damn near grabbed her by the scruff of the neck and booted her over to Lew's house, let him feed her for a couple of months."

  "Humph! Nine days out of ten, that man ain't sober enough to remember he has a daughter."

  "He's started AA again."

  Alice spat neatly into the bark mulch under her rose bushes. "For the twentieth time. You tell that idiot that his liver is good for about another two gallons of whiskey, max. He can drink it all in one week, or make it last for thirty years. His choice." She studied Kate's face, weighing the familiar symptoms. "You thinking to move back in with him?"

  "He gets in a year clean, maybe." Kate stared cross-eyed at the stream of smoke, trying to read the chances of that happening. "He's a nice guy when he's sober." Then, defensively: "Hell, he's nice enough blind drunk. Just useless."

  "You never give up, do you?"

  "If I gave up easy, Jackie would've been born an orphan. Rowleys don't quit. Grannie told me we've got a town named after us, down near Boston. Consolation prize for making it through those winters back in the 1600s."

  "Yeah. And when your ancestors stepped off the boat, mine were standing on that hill over behind Morgan's Castle, bitching about how the neighborhood was going to hell. You won't get anywhere playing that Old Family card around here."

  Alice’s gaze browsed on the distant view, over the hollow marking the Stonefort harbor and out to the offshore islands fuzzy in the creeping fog. "Look, about that drunk you used to live with. Anytime you get to feeling lonely, you know I've got a lot more bed-space than I need."

  Kate considered for a moment and then shook her head. "Never work out. I'd roll over in my sleep and squash you."

  "I can remember a few times when being squashed felt awful good."

  Those memories brought a faint heat to Kate's cheeks. "Hey, we were seventeen and thought it was cool to sneak into my step-dad's bourbon. I’ve outgrown both conditions."

  "Don’t go writing off bourbon. I know Lew sets a bad example, but there are a lot of people who can say no to that third drink. Relaxing your corset a bit can let you breathe."

  Kate shook her head again. "Relax your corset too much around here, the blue-noses will ride you out of town on a rail."

  "'Fraidy cat. They let me ride the ambulance, never said word one. Being queer doesn’t matter to them when we're delivering a baby in the middle of a run up to Downeast General."

  Kate rolled her eyes, carrying on the well-worn banter scripted by the habits of thirty years. "They let you on the ambulance 'cause you’re the only RN dumb enough to take the job for free. Beggars can't be choosers." She pushed away from the fence, her mind still half on that dark blue Suburban.

  As usual, talking about Alice's homosexuality made Kate twitchy. The small woman had always been quite open about it, and she was the best friend Kate had ever had — a damn sight more reliable than any man she'd known. But Jackie had enough problems without the other kids pasting labels on her, and "butch" would be such an easy one with the genes she'd caught from her mother's side.

  "Look, I’ve got to go. Have to drop some windows over at Danny Nason's project, then play soccer mom. No rest for the wicked."

  "That's 'cause you're sleeping in the wrong bed."

  Kate grimaced. "Well, thanks for the water." She heaved the five-gallon jerrycan off the ground as easily as another woman would hoist a purse. "The guys all say there's nothing like your spring, best water in town."

  Her battered green Dodge truck idled by the shoulder of the road, coughing on about every tenth spark as a reminder why she didn't shut it off unless it was aimed down the slope for a rolling start. Rowley Construction didn't earn enough money to hang her magnetic signs on the sides of anything more reliable. The beast did have four-wheel drive, ground clearance for the kind of construction sites she found around Stonefort, and a one-ton payload for a decent pile of concrete blocks and mortar. You take what you can get.

  Town Constable was ten hours a week, max, and contractor was just another frame of the movie. The concept of "job" barely existed in Sunrise County. What she really had was a succession of ways to pick up next week's grocery money. By local standards, that was doing well. At least she wasn't chasing last week's.

  By those same local standards, Alice was rich. She worked ER up at Downeast Regional, sometimes two straight twenty-four-hour sieges where she napped on a sofa in the waiting room. On days off, she puttered around her fourteen-room labyrinth of a weathered gray cape, growing antique roses and incongruous peaches in the teeth of the Maine winters and torturing innocent juniper bushes into bonsai.

  Kate looked the old Haskell house over with a professional eye, noting the straight ridge line and square gables that spoke of solid construction well maintained. Fieldstone foundations rooted on bedrock, bare cedar clapboards protected by a good overhang, a slate roof with copper fastenings that couldn't rust. She'd give strong odds that the lime mortar in foundations and chimneys was still gaining strength, more than two hundred years after the first stones were laid.

  Rambling up and over and down the crest of its hill, the house looked as if it had grown in place over the centuries, sprouting an ell here and budding out a dormer there like a healthy plant. Kate felt a kinship with that house that was stronger even than her bond with Alice.

  People had always called it "The Woman's House." It had been that way since time out of mind, always calling the latest owner "The Woman" as a sort of title. The old pile of glacier-rounded fieldstone and weathered gray clapboards was worth maybe forty grand. The ten acres of shorefront property it sat on would easily bring two million.

  Kate shook her head at the contrast. Boston and New York dollars chased any sniff of salt water and plunked a summer house on it. At least the madness paid her heating bill with a dozen caretaker accounts.

  Kate slid behind the wheel, tucking her knees carefully under the dash and steering column. Danged world didn't even make trucks big enough for her.

  Speaking of trucks . . . she ought to run a search on that Suburban. She flipped her visor down, checking the list of ten-codes before she made a fool of herself on the air. Then she pulled the mike out from under the dash. "Five-seven-seven to Sunrise dispatch."

  The radio spat static back at her, with the cicada buzz of the old Dodge ignition. "Sunrise. Go ahead, five-seven-seven."

  A sexy contralto: That meant Denise was back on the day shift. "Ten twenty-eight, blue Suburban, New Jersey niner niner eight Charlie Echo Golf."

  "Ten four, Kate. New Jersey niner niner eight Charlie Echo Golf. I'll run the tag and get back to you."

  Babying clutch and gas and gearshift got her m
oving without either killing the engine or jerking a couple-thousand-dollars' worth of custom windows over the tailgate. The cracked side mirrors showed only her normal level of white smoke. She'd heard about life in the fast lane and life in the slow lane. Her own life seemed to tend to the breakdown lane.

  *~*~*

  Alice stared down the road, muttering to herself. Kate's green truck turned right at the commons, opposite to the route that evil blue Suburban had taken. Alice relaxed a touch.

  Even Kate had felt it — Kate who had all the sensitivity of one of her rough-sawn four-by-fours. About as quick-witted, too, although she wasn't dumb. It just took her a couple of weeks to realize that it was raining.

  That didn't stop Alice's heart from jumping every time she saw those lumberjack shoulders. Alice grinned to herself. Flirting with the big moose was always fun. If she ever actually said "no," that would be the end of it.

  So far, the net result was twenty years of "maybe," hiding behind the face of a straight wife and mother that she maintained for the town and particularly for that mule-headed daughter of hers. But sooner or later, Kate was going to have to come to terms with her feelings. Alice planned on being around when that happened.

  There was more to it than sex, no matter how much fun that was. The House needed Kate. It needed a woman who was physically strong and tough, as well as one who was . . . talented. This generation, both hadn't come in one package.

  The Haskell House. The Woman's House.

  Alice knew the stories that went back to when Maine was part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and a century or so earlier. Some of them were even true. Her family had lived on this land before the Pilgrims started hanging and drowning witches down in Salem. The Woman had meant something then, a figure even the white men feared and respected. The House meant refuge for the victims, as well as protecting . . . other things.

  She weighed the pouch of tobacco in her hand and then tucked it into the pocket of her denim shirt. Good thing Kate had given the offering freely — even if she didn't believe, that mattered. The spirits that protected this land valued tobacco and enjoyed its smoke. That lummox was going to need some allies, whether she knew it or not.