Daniel Morgan fiddled with his telescope, making fine adjustments that panned his field of view across the Pratts' guesthouse — a rambling half-timbered Tudor "cottage" with third-floor dormer windows poking out of the weathered gray cedar shingle roof. No lights showing, no smoke or steam or even heat shimmer from the three chimneys, no oil deliveries for the boiler, nada.
They had a plan — Daniel, Ben, maybe Alice and maybe not, depending on the phase of the moon and other things. Having Gary show up this morning was a plus. Having Gary show up with Jane attached was . . . interesting. As in that ancient Chinese curse.
He sat back, away from the scope, and studied the broader scene, with both bare eyes and binoculars, and still saw no sign that anyone had lived on that whole compound since the fire last June. Nothing moved in the view from his perch half a mile away, high in a scrubby overlooking pasture and tucked in behind rocks and brush where he hoped nobody could be watching him. Nothing but a couple of crows, poking at their crow-curiosity in the middle of the guest-house lawn. Probably a crab or urchin dropped by a careless gull, or a fish lost by an osprey victim to the noble and freedom-loving bald eagles. Or maybe just something glittery.
Black beams and soot-stained chimneys and ragged tatters of walls poking out of the ash and charcoal of the big-house cellar hole, he could still smell the wet char from here. Rusting skeletons of Tom Pratt's antique car collection in the ruins of the carriage house. Brown-needled spruce and pines killed by the heat, centuries-old trees left standing to rot and fall through the years.
Drifted un-raked leaves on the ragged matted grass, not mowed for over three months. Leaves on the two driveways unmarked by tire tracks, leaves tangled in weeds growing unchecked in the Zen-garden woods and walkways. The place radiated "nobody home" vibrations.
So why hadn't the electric bills shown a big drop from last year? That empty guesthouse was drawing more power than it had before the fire, separate feed and account from the main house. And the bills were getting paid from somewhere. At least, that's what Ben's computer snooping showed.
Ben. Daniel didn't bother to suppress his chuckle, no touchy older brother to hear it and ask him what he found so friggin' funny. Ol' Ben Morgan, terror of the seven seas. Gary and that pistol-packin' mama of his had marched right into the lion's den and spat in the damnfool's eye. Put the fear of God into the old boy.
Well, Daniel had warned him that Alice had an interest. And that he was flying straight in the face of generations of parenting lore with his tactics.
Daniel snuggled up against the scope and panned it again, tight view, noting the shimmer that made his eyes hurt when he tried too hard to pick out details on the dead-leaf-strewn guesthouse driveway, the heavy front and garage doors with their forged iron fleur-de-lis hinges. He smiled again. This antique Questar was a marvel, optics and mechanics still razor-sharp even though it was about as old as he was. And he'd seen that shimmer before.
Illusions, like the ones that hid the channel and tunnel to the Pratts' sea cave. One of the tricks the Dragon gave to Morgans was this ability to see through illusion to the truth beneath. He felt the silver and stone warming against the skin of his chest.
Would Gary really throw away his Dragon, if he was forced to choose? Sounded like he'd convinced Ben, at least. Sincerity or good acting, who could tell with Morgan blood? That girl sounded like she'd be worth the cost — brains, passion, guts, and the snap reactions that made all three more valuable. Proven survivor genes, as Alice put it. One tough cookie — some demon memories to fight, but she'd come to the right place to find help. The first step is the hardest.
Welcome to the family. Gary wants you in on this, says trusting you with our secrets is vital to your feeling safe with us. Alice agrees. Gary wins, 'cause Ol' Ben is feeling penitent. Rare mood, enjoy it while you can.
The crows startled and took flight, their caws reaching him a couple of seconds later. Daniel drew on the power of his Dragon.
Ahhh . . .
The cottage door opened, framing two figures. One tall, heavy, blonde, female, ugly scar on her head. Jackie Lewis as drawn by Charles Addams, or whatever Alice thought the girl had become. Mixed up with that Peruvian brujo, Tupash, some way Daniel didn't like to know was possible. Transfer of souls, eating the lives and bodies of ten or twenty missing Pratts and Peruvian thugs. Just thinking about it made him sick.
The second figure was a skinny adolescent male in black jeans and tee shirt, dressed light for heavy labor — he must be cold in the October nip this afternoon. Daniel recognized him through the scope, the Burns kid, Kate Rowley's hired help. Boy walked like a zombie, the girl holding one elbow and using it as a tiller.
One thing he didn't see — that metal carry case, that foam-padded job Ben used to pack the Maya flint. It was there, Alice's bats had said so, and the brujo wasn't taking it. Shit. We're going to have to do it. Go in there. Otherwise, she ain't gonna be happy. Fact of life in Stonefort, if Alice Haskell ain't happy, ain't nobody gonna be happy.
If Daniel squinted in the right place, he could see a white shape looming in the driveway, big-assed SUV, looked like a Ford Explorer or some such. Dark-tinted windows so you couldn't see inside, the sort of car the death squads and secret police used in South America, Central America, grabbing victims off the street. Old habits die hard.
He'd checked that car out last night, no aluminum case, no flint. He'd been watching it all morning. That damned jaguar god was staying inside.
They climbed into the car, both by the driver's side, boy having to scramble over the transmission hump and all, as if the brujo didn't want to lose physical control even for long enough to go around from one side to the other. Must be losing his touch — he'd been able to control Daniel just by being close. Daniel shuddered with the memory. The car started with a puff of fog from the exhaust, backed out, and turned north on the Neck road. Headed inland.
The shimmer vanished from around it. Yeah, you don't want to be invisible, out on the road. Someone else might try to use the same patch of asphalt.
Dan rummaged in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a tiny hand-held radio. Keyed the transmit switch, "Elvis has left the building." Released the switch. Short-long-short clicks back, message received.
Time to rumble. He couldn't handle the brujo. He'd proved that, back in June. Daniel was quite happy to leave that fight to Alice — she tied the brujo to those corpses with no hearts and no blood left in their veins, necromancy of some sort. Last spring she'd burned the Pratts' house down, the old-fashioned "shot across the bow," but the be-damned idiots hadn't tacked up into the wind and slacked their sheets. And one warning was all you could expect from Alice Haskell, from any of the Haskell Witches. He'd tried to tell Ben that. He didn't know what she'd do next, and didn't want to know.
For their part, Daniel and Ben had been willing to wipe the slate clean, Morgans versus Pratts, and then some damn fool had to go dumping corpses on Morgan land, go shooting at seals, sneak out to Seal Island and nab that carry case. Stonefort folks wouldn't do those things, especially not Pratts. They knew the Stonefort rules. That evidence said there weren't any Pratts left alive in there. Just the brujo and his Peruvians.
And that flint. That flint that Alice said was Morgan business. "You broke it, you bought it." And apparently she'd been right, that Tupash was too weak to use it yet. He had to be strong enough to control it, or it would use him. Daniel had been waiting for the spook to leave. Now they could fumigate this rats' nest, destroy his base. Get that flint back, worry about what to do with it after. Think of it as a public service.
He stowed the radio and started to pack up his scope. He paused, grimaced, and took a deep breath. Pulled out a cell phone. Speed-dialed Alice.
He did not want to talk to her, but she needed to know exactly what he'd seen. What she did then was up to her. Always had been, always would be.
He talked. He told her the things he needed to tell her. He listened to a few choice words that burned no less for the passage through landline and cell phone from her tongue to his ear. And then he finished packing, covering, hiding his gear, leaving it for retrieval next week or next month. If all went well.
Down through the woods, smell of damp autumn rotting leaves and old bracken taking over from the charred whiff of the house, no clear sight lines for anyone to pick up his movement even if they could actually see a Morgan in full stealth mode. He picked up a satchel he'd left there, heavy with things you never wanted to be caught carrying, rigged it over right shoulder and against left hip so his right hand and hip and holster remained free. Priorities.
He paused at the edge of the road, no tire noise, faint hum from the power transformer on the pole, crows still complaining overhead, debating whether those pesky humans had left the way clear for more mischief. They seemed to be ignoring him. He slipped across the road and into the next tree line, fading into brush. The crows flapped away, something else catching their shiny black eyes and blacker hearts.
Through the woods, through the shrubbery, to the edge of the guesthouse lawn, across the lawn, Daniel drew on those chameleon genes. Caroline's phrase that was, good description. He reached the corner of the house unchallenged and slid along the front wall until he could check the door. Silent check, no touch, status light said the security system seemed to be disarmed. Daniel decided he wouldn't bet money on that seeming.
And besides, he didn't much care if he triggered the alarms or not. It'd take at least fifteen minutes before the first volunteers hit the fire station, started a truck, and wrestled it through the twists and turns and potholes out here to Pratts Neck. Another fifteen minutes before they had a full crew on the scene. By then . . .
He remembered the layout from visits back when Pratts and Morgans visited each other without weapons in their hands. At the living room window, he lifted the flap of his satchel and pulled out a short plastic cylinder, tapered at one end, heavy, pale green with a yellow band and suitably-alarming red lettering. M-34 grenade, white phosphorus, affectionately known as Willie Pete in the trade. One of the army's more curious weapons, it had a bursting radius of 35 meters and the average GI Joe could throw it 30 . . .
He pulled the pin, smashed the living room window, and tossed the grenade inside. Spun along the wall, parlor window, repeated the procedure. Around the corner and smash the library window, and the first grenade popped behind him, a few blazing fragments finding the window and trailing arcs of heavy white smoke out into the lawn. Kitchen window, high over the counter and sink, he reached up and smashed glass and threw the fourth grenade as the second popped. Garage and the fifth, Tom Pratt used to have a bulk gasoline tank in there, five hundred gallons, plus a Mercedes or two, Daniel had high hopes for the garage.
And then he was sprinting and dodging across the lawn and into the shrubs and through them into the trees, no bullets chasing him, maybe half a minute total, and nobody was going to save that house, fire trucks or not. He kept going, distance was good, cover was good, cleared the road and a soul-satisfying whomp! followed him and told him that bulk gas tank had done its thing. Two more booms followed, car tanks probably.
Like he'd told Alice, it was a lot easier if you didn't care whether the fire investigator knew it was arson.
*~*~*
"Elvis has left the building."
Okay, that means just the spook. He didn't take the flint with him. We have to go in after it.
Ben clicked his radio, acknowledging the message. They'd debated the timing on this, who should go in first. Dan would need half an hour or so to get down the hill, through the woods, enter the danger zone. Ben could head in right now. They'd decided that he should; he'd draw attention away from the guesthouse, make that attack safer.
He turned and glared up at Gary and Jane on the Maria, rising on one wave while his dinghy sank into the next trough. Damnfool kids, thought they had to be in on everything. And Dan was backing them. And Alice, sticking her nose into Morgan family business.
Stand back and study the screenplay, though — Jane and Gary made a bit of sense. If people even noticed Gary, nobody with normal hormone levels was going to wonder why a teenaged boy takes his girlfriend out on his boat, autumn full moon, anchors in sheltered waters so nobody has to mind the helm . . .
And nobody at the town landing saw that Ben was aboard, nobody except those damned Haskell Witches even knew Ben was still alive. He didn't climb into the dinghy until they were sheltered close in under the pink granite cliffs, damn few eyes to see him here. If anyone would notice him. Morgan genes.
He glared at Gary, at that girl of his, and shook his head. Kids took chances. That was the nature of kids. He hoped it would work out. Against the odds.
"Remember the plan."
They nodded. He twisted the throttle on his electric motor and the dinghy whined away from Maria and nosed into the stone slot shimmering in front of him, past rough lichened rockweed-draped lumpy cliffs and gnarled half-dead spruce, through stone that faded as he passed it. Illusions. They worked for Morgans, this time. The Pratts' camouflage should hide Maria from eyes across the cove. They'd pulled in close enough, following the channel Pratt smugglers had used for generations.
Into darkness smelling of wet stone and rockweed, and he switched on battery lights showing the carved walls and ceiling, the black water swelling and ebbing underneath. This time, they didn't care if they triggered photocell alarms. Alarms would be hooting all over the complex, pretty damned soon, and his best guess was that there'd only be a few Peruvians to deal with them. No Pratts.
Or maybe not even Peruvians. Alice thought the brujo might be living here alone, might have used up all his sacrifices. But they couldn't count on that.
The sea gate loomed in front of Ben, roll-down slats of stainless steel in tracks set into the stone walls of the tunnel. They'd had to guess the gauge of metal, then doubled it for margin. Ben nosed his dinghy up against the steel and cut his motor. Now for some acrobatics . . .
Cut a hole big enough for the Maria, that was the question. The answer rattled at Ben's feet, lengths of shaped charge for cutting steel, same explosives they used for those spectator sport "implosions" like demolishing a casino in Las Vegas. He lifted one, ten feet of metal trough loaded with touchy chemicals, held it against the gate, and slapped duct tape over it to hold it in place. Up one side, across the top as high as he could reach on the crest of the swells, down the other, down under water, six pieces, sixty feet of lethal technology. Heavy lethal technology.
And then he hoisted a five-gallon bucket up on the prow and grabbed handfuls of clay, heavy blue-gray "marine" clay as sticky as a Mafia loan shark, and plastered gobs over the shaped charges. Tamping, to force the blast through the steel. Ben sweated, holding the dinghy against the gate, bobbing up and down with the swell, slapping away at high explosives with both hands. He hoped that stuff was as stable as the books said it was.
One bucket of clay, two, three, the dinghy rode higher and bounced around more, and he was done. He rinsed his hands in the seawater, cold seawater, dried them, and opened a padded box. These things, now, nobody ever said they were stable. Blasting caps.
Ben concentrated, thinking each step through before lifting a finger. This was the point where the terrorists sometimes scored an "own goal" as the lingo put it, blew themselves up with their own bomb.
It'd be nice to do this on solid ground. The dinghy bobbed under him, up and down, in and out, and he had to time the swells and surges. Ben felt sweat beading his forehead, and it wasn't from manhandling the charges or the mud.
Gently, gently with the detonators, he slid one into each side of the arch he'd made, redundancy, unrolled the waterproof fuses and taped them to the gate until they met in the middle, and taped them together there. Didn't want to use electric caps, radio control, anything fancy. Didn't know what electronics gear hid behind the gate, ready to induce trace currents through any little wire antennas he unreeled. KISS engineering, "keep it simple, shithead."
He pulled out his belt knife and split the end of each fuse, broke a couple of kitchen matches, and imbedded the heads in each split end. Old quarryman's trick, he'd actually learned it from Maria's grandfather. Made for sure ignition.
Then he let the dinghy bob away from the gate and sat down, running his light over the whole job, checking details. All that, while bouncing up and down in a small boat. Fun way to spend an October afternoon.
It looked right.
Ben edged the boat back in under the center of the gate, next to the joined fuses, pulled out a butane lighter, and flicked it. It lit. Would be typical if he'd gotten this far and couldn't light the fuse. That was why he had spare lighters, and more kitchen matches, and even a spare set of blasting caps and fuses. Belt and suspenders. If you have a backup, you probably won't need it. If you don't . . .
The match heads flared, and red flames spat bitter smoke out from under them, both of them, the fuse cores burning. Ben twisted the throttle and turned, headed out at the highest speed the little trolling motor could make. The fuse length should give him plenty of time to get clear, but sometimes they burned fast. Plenty of gravestones and one-armed quarrymen to prove it.
Then he was out into daylight, and turning to one side of the slot so any stray bits would fly past him into the cove, noting that the Maria also rode to one side, and he kept counting his one-Mississippi two-Mississippi for the seconds. A dull boom echoed over the cliff above, rolling off the far side of the cove, and Ben grinned. Dan was having fun, too. Sometimes things worked out slicker than a smelt.
The water bounced under him, out of phase with the swells, something went crump! deep in the tunnel, and small chunks sprayed smoking out of the tunnel mouth, splashed, and sank. Ben groped around under his seat, pulled out a gas mask, put it on, and headed the dinghy back into the tunnel.
They didn't have time to wait for the fumes to clear. He needed to see how well they'd calculated those charges, check for loose rock and depth of channel and all, check clearance for the Maria. Smile at the cameras.
That damned girl didn't belong in this. At least she didn't show any signs of getting seasick. Physical guts and mental guts. Give him time, he might trust her.
If she earned it.