Spellbinders Collection Read online

  "Son, you'll need this."

  The words pulled his attention back to the stranger. The man tossed him a pocket flashlight, one of those magnesium things like a scaled-down version of the four-cell weapons the cops carried. The black finish was worn to bare metal in spots, as if it had seen many years of use.

  Gary glanced from the man to the flashlight and back again. "Aren't you going to show me around?"

  The man shrugged. "Nope. I ain't invited. This is a private tour, just you and the Dragon. Good luck."

  He looked as if he really meant it, as if Gary needed all the help he could get. Gary nodded his thanks, and then turned back to stalking the door.

  He'd always thought the door was ancient, just like the tower was so obviously ancient, weather-beaten and stained with lichen. But when he looked at it closely, he found the worn oak face was just a veneer over something that looked like it belonged on a bank vault, thick black steel with bolts that retracted into holes bored into the stone. The inside face was blank, though, just like the outside. Those bolts must be controlled electrically.

  Electricity? He glanced around the inside face of the wall and found a switch. It worked. Bare incandescent bulbs lit a circular room about thirty feet across, empty, with stone walls and a ceiling of age-blackened wooden beams and planks about ten feet above a stone-paved floor. A steep stair curved up along the far wall to a closed trap door, and a hole underneath showed stairs down into darkness. Both stairs were carved granite, without handrails, and the treads had been hollowed out by centuries of feet.

  Dad had said the place was falling down. Instead, it looked as solid as the rock it sat on. Gary tested the stairs with his weight, and then climbed up. The trap door didn't stir when he set his shoulder to it, as if it wasn't just locked, but had furniture sitting on it or was nailed shut. So this private tour must be down, rather than up?

  Damp air rose out of the lower stair, and the lights only showed the first few treads. Apparently the power didn't go down there. Gary checked the flashlight and then climbed slowly down into the darkness.

  Stone masonry lined the first few feet, and then the walls changed to chiseled rock. The ceiling hung low over Gary's head, as if the people who had carved this passage had been shorter than his scant six feet. Now and then rough stone brushed his hair, and he had to keep swinging the light down to check the worn stairs and then up to watch that he didn't bang his head. Down, and down, and down the stair led, curving around in a spiral as if it followed the walls of the tower overhead.

  He looked back and turned off the flashlight. The curve had blocked all light from overhead. He stood in velvet blackness, damp and slightly cool, feeling the air washing back and forth past his face. It was almost as if the tunnel was breathing.

  Maybe this coiling tunnel was the Dragon that strange man had named, the one that Mom had cursed. Gary switched the flashlight on and started down again.

  The stairs vanished into a pool, nothing more than a flat surface of water that rose and fell maybe a foot with a pulse like waves. The flashlight showed more steps leading down, down, down under the water into a black hollow beyond the dropping roof of the cave. A dead end. Just how was he supposed to go on with this so-called quest? He switched off the light again, listening. Water trickled in the darkness, thin streams flowing from cracks in the bedrock. A slight hiss and suck timed the rise and fall of the water. Nothing else — apparently the Dragon wasn't talking.

  His eyes started to invent lights to fill the total darkness. Most of them swirled around as he glanced to right and left, but one stayed still. The faintest glimmer of light teased him, under water, showing around the curve of the tunnel. It seemed to pulse like a heartbeat.

  So there was something further on in the tunnel. Daylight? A lit chamber guarded by the water?

  Gary knelt on the last dry step and reached down to the surface. The water felt cool rather than cold, nothing like the icy shock of the bay even in late summer. The water tasted of salt, though, so it did connect with the sea. The pulse must come from swells, somewhere out beyond the rock.

  Was he supposed to wait for the tide, or swim?

  He remembered that the tide was near dead low. The stairwell walls had been damp for about the last ten feet. He could swim, or he could go back.

  Cave diving? The YMCA scuba teacher had said that was the most dangerous diving there was, even worse than wrecks. It was too easy to get lost or turned around, too easy to get trapped. Any time something came between you and a straight rise to the surface, you were asking for trouble.

  This tunnel was different, though. It was just one passage, and if you followed the ceiling and your bubbles upward, you'd get right back where you started. It wasn't too dangerous, and it was the only way to go any further.

  He stripped off his clothes, piling them on the last step above the damp zone. The water wasn't any colder than the pool at the "Y." He pushed gently down into the underwater tunnel, swimming sidestroke and keeping one hand on the ceiling so he wouldn't bump his head or lose his way.

  The light grew from a faint glimmer to a definite glow ahead and around the curve. He'd been down maybe fifteen seconds, swimming carefully, and he knew he could free dive for over two minutes. Going back would be faster. He was still well within safe limits.

  A spark showed around the edge, and he felt the ceiling rising into an open chamber. The light was on the left, up near the ceiling, the way out was that way. Gary fixed the map in his head as if his life depended on it. The spark grew into a glowing dot and then into an oval, shading from green through yellow and into red as he swam closer and water no longer filtered the light. It looked like an eye staring back at him. Half a minute down, look around and then go back for air.

  He reached out carefully and touched the glowing red oval, afraid it would be burning hot. It was comfortably warm instead, like touching a cat that had been sitting in the sun. The stone walls to either side felt the same.

 

  He jerked back. He bumped his head against the stone ceiling, and blinked against the stars that shot through his sight. The red glow was still there. He reached out again. The stone felt warmer this time, as if his touch had wakened something.

 

  Dad! Gary's thoughts spun around in confusion. Where are you?

 

  Who's Ben?

 

  Gary's chest felt tight, maybe half a minute of air left. Time to hurry back, grab another breath, rest.

  A ruby drop split from the eye, almost like a tear, and Gary followed it down. It drew him, wiping thoughts of air from his head. The pressure in his lungs grew, but he had to have that glowing gem. He twisted after it, snatched it, and tucked it into his mouth to keep his hands free. He started up.

  The eye was gone. The light was gone. He'd spun around in his dive and couldn't tell which way led back and which led deeper into the tunnel.

  His lungs burned.

  Chapter Five

  Kate wrestled the truck around in the school parking lot, backing and turning and babying the clutch, until she had the nose pointed downhill and she could safely shut off the engine. It coughed into silence, and a swarm of banshee shrieks rode over the echo of the last backfire.

  Why couldn't girls learn to yell, for God's sake? Why couldn't they learn to cheer? Instead, they squealed when they got excited, and girl's sports ended up sounding like mayhem in a pigpen.

  The fog was moving in again, damp gray wisps blotting out the spruces over on Morgan's Point, so Kate hauled her jacket out and shrugged it on. June could still feel like early spring in Stonefort. She scanned the field and scoreboard, trying to figure out which side had been making all that racket. Stonefort led Edgewater by a run in the second, with Stonefort's red jerseys coming
off the field and slapping high-fives right and left. Must have been a close out or a good play. She hoped Jackie hadn't done something spectacular and she'd missed it.

  "Soccer Mom," she'd said to Alice, but that was a generic title. It was spring and the game was softball, with Jackie playing third base where her reach and strong throw simply murdered right-handed pull hitters.

  Kate reminded herself to lock the cab of her truck. Besides tools and the radio, it held all her "cop" stuff — badge and ticket book and the old Browning automatic that Grandpa had "liberated" from a dead Nazi near Remagen. She tended to be careless about locks, but there were just too many kids around the school for her to take chances.

  The Stonefort field was short on bleachers, so Kate strolled over to the bank off the left foul line. She picked a patch of grass and sat, choosing her spot mainly to inconvenience the kids trying to sneak a cigarette out behind the scoreboard. Not that she hadn't done the exact same thing when she was their age, but it hadn't been illegal then. Now it was.

  That's what she did, mostly. Town Constable was a set of official eyes wandering around, someone who noticed if you looked like you were up to no good. Kate was the officially sanctioned town gossip and busybody. Serious crime was a job for the Sheriff or the State Patrol.

  A thin man climbed down from the bleachers and headed her way. Now there was your typical "bad element." She ticked off the description as he walked over: five-foot ten, about one-fifty-five, scraggly-bearded, with a dark ponytail pulled back and braided with feathers like some kind of Cheyenne warrior, grease-stained denim jacket hacked down into a vest with a skull patch on the back and big Harley logo, pack of cigarettes rolled up into the sleeve of his tee shirt, tattoos up one arm and down the other. He looked as if he should be holding a placard with a set of numbers in front of his chest.

  Instead, Bernie Peters was one of the sharpest narcs she'd ever met. He had a daughter on the Stonefort team, a senior with grades a hell of a lot better than Jackie's. She played second base. He walked straight over to where Kate was sitting.

  "Heard you calling in a tag this morning."

  "So?"

  "Leave it be."

  Kate cocked her head to one side. "Says who?"

  Bernie pulled out a cigarette, then offered her one.

  She shook her head. "I ought to write you up for smoking on school grounds."

  He blinked, then slid the smoke back into his pack, unlit. "Look, the Godfather says to stay clear of that car."

  That was a cop in-joke. "The Godfather" was Bernie's boss at the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency.

  "You got reasons?"

  "Enough. Stay clear of the Pratts, too. There's a connection."

  "You guys gonna make it worth my while?"

  "We'll see about it. No promises." He smiled, and shrugged.

  "Okay, just be mysterious. I'll be a good little girl. Just tell me where I'm not supposed to be and when I'm not supposed to be there."

  Bernie nodded and headed back towards the bleachers. Just as well she'd sat by herself — she'd have a hard time explaining that conversation to the clam-digger on the street. Bernie had been a state cop for years, before he went "bad." He still worked for the governor, though — Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, usually undercover.

  So the MDEA was running a case that involved the Pratts and that big blue Suburban? And they wanted Kate Rowley to keep her oversized elbows out of it? Well, at least she understood now why that car had slowed down this morning. Checking out the opposition.

  While she'd been talking with Bernie, the first Stonefort batter had taken two strikes and then popped out. Jackie was due up next, and the catcher walked out to the mound for a little chat with the pitcher.

  Kate knew what that meant. Jackie had the highest count of walks in Eastern Maine Class "D" softball.

  The catcher walked back and set up far enough away from the plate that Jackie would have to jump halfway down the first-base line before she could hit a pitch. Kate grinned — one practice game, her daughter had done exactly that and whacked the ball over the right field fence.

  Four straight balls and Jackie trotted down to first base. Business as usual. She took her lead and started taunting the pitcher, trying to force an error on the pick-off move. The next girl up was Jean Bouchard. Kate knew the coach kept tearing his hair out, trying to teach Jean to bunt without popping the ball up. No such luck. So she'd be hitting away.

  Sure enough, Jean took a big cut at the first pitch and sliced a grounder towards third. The fat ball died in the grass, forcing a hurried throw to second. Second base scooped the ball out of the dirt and spun for the throw to first for the double play. Jackie slid into her, feet high, and knocked the Edgewater girl halfway into center field. Her throw went high, up the bank and into the spectators, and Jean took second on the error. The Stonefort girls were squealing and bouncing around again. They had a runner on second with two out, instead of the end of the inning.

  Then the cheers died. The Edgewater girl stayed down, twisting around on the grass and holding her leg. Her coach ran out on the field, and the trainer, and her teammates clustered around. The field ump had Jackie by the arm and was pointing towards the gym, towards the lockers. She wasn't just out; she was out of the game. She slammed her batting helmet down in the dirt and dropkicked it clear to the right foul line. And Jean was trudging slowly back to first, head down.

  Dammit, that was a legal play! See it in baseball all the time! Kate found herself halfway out on the field before her brain caught up with her feet. She'd sworn to herself that she wouldn't take that Soccer Mom bit all the way, yelling at umpires and coaches, cussing the kids and parents on the opposing teams. She veered to the right, to meet Jackie when she came off the field. Kid could use some friendship, right about now.

  The Edgewater girl was up again, limping around, apparently going to stay in the game. Now she was arguing with the ump, waving at Jackie, waving at the bench. Looked like she thought the take-out play was clean.

  Kate stopped for a moment, and shook her head. Of course that kind of play was against the rules in girls' softball. Got to protect the little darlings. Just like Yogi Berra said, it was deja vu all over again. A moose like Jackie committed a foul just by being born.

  The moose was filthy, coated with dust all down one side and sweaty from running. Kate started to put an arm around her shoulders, then backed off when she saw the angry shrug coming. Teenagers were a prickly crew, especially in public. Hormones.

  "Tough call, kid."

  "That . . . ." Jackie bit back whatever she was going to say, and threw up a wall of sullen silence.

  "Get yourself showered and changed. We can talk about it later."

  "Nothing to talk about. That Edgewater kid took a dive, just trying to get me thrown out. Faking hurt. Stupid little pimple-faced twink. No guts."

  The game resumed behind them. Stonefort's next batter hooked a double down the right-field line, runners on second and third with two out — Jean couldn't run fast enough to make it home ahead of the throw. Jackie didn't even look. If she wasn't in the game, it didn't matter.

  Kate followed her daughter towards the gym. "Just change up. We can watch the rest of the game, or head home. Your call."

  "Nah. Jean's got her dad's car. Bunch of the guys are headed over to Michael's house after the game. You stay if you want."

  Typical reaction for a sixteen-year-old girl: "Back off!" As far as Jackie was concerned, Mom's function was a source of food, a roof now and then, and money for clothes. Companionship and advice didn't figure into it.

  Then Kate replayed her daughter's words. Michael. That would be Michael Pratt, Tom's younger son.

  Oh, shit! Good ol' crack-buster Bernie just warned you off the Pratts and that damned Suburban, and your pea-brained daughter hangs out with that crowd!

  Kate fumbled around in her makeshift operator's manual for a teenaged girl, trying to come up with words her daughter wouldn't just filter out and igno
re. "Jean only got her license last week. I don't think it's safe for you kids to be riding around with her. She needs more practice."

  "Mom, it's only five miles! We'll be back before dark."

  "Are Michael's parents home?"

  "Jeezum, Mom, how would I know?"

  "Well, I don't think you girls ought to go off with a bunch of guys and no adults." Kate knew she was tiptoeing along the edge of a teenager minefield. But Bernie would skin her alive if she mentioned anything about drugs. She could lose her badge, or worse.

  "Mom-mmm!" Jackie pulled the word out into the eternal wail of an outraged daughter.

  They'd both stopped in the middle of the parking lot, working into the roles of an industry standard generation-battle. Kate shifted her focus. "Look, they had that crash over in Merritt Falls last week. Six kids in a car, driver like Jean, a six-pack of beer passed around. Kid missed the curve and wrapped his mother's Buick around a tree. You can see why I'm worried. We don't need any more funerals."

  "Mom, Jean's smarter than that! And nobody in our crowd drinks or does drugs. They don't even smoke!"

  Like hell they didn't. Kate fell back into Protective-Mother mode. "Why don't you kids come over to our house?"

  Oops. She'd said the "K" word. She felt the tension escalate.

  "Moth-errrr! You don't need to watch me every minute!" Then Jackie switched on her "cat" look, the one Kate knew meant something nasty and devious was coming. "And you don't need to worry about me getting pregnant or catching VD or something. They taught us all about that in Freshman Health." Her daughter paused, with that cutting, calculating smile. "I guess they didn't have that class when you were in school."

  Oh, hell. "I don't know what you're talking about. We knew about sex. We knew about contraception."

  "What happened, then? The rubber busted? I can count up to nine, Mom. I know my birthday. I know when you and Dad got married. I'm smart enough to do simple subtraction, Mom."

  "You know you were premature. You know about the accident. I had an emergency C-section and we both nearly died. You've seen the scars."