Matron Tauth de Aine's Glade
Logging Roads
Thurston County
United States of America
12 August, 1986
0630

The sun was starting to rise, and mist was forming in the trees around Matron Aine's glade. I could barely see the truck as I sat on the mossy log, staring but not really seeing anything. In front of me Matron Aine, Bomber, and Nancy were all tangled together in their sleep. They were all a mess, exhaustion finally stopping them, although Bomber had continued to use Aine even after she had fallen asleep from exhaustion and was boneless and limp in hands as he continued to drive into her mindlessly. Her smile the entire time had told me that she was enjoying the fruits of her mayhem and machinations, so it was all on her.

She'd poisoned them, she could deal with the consequences.

To my right was a pile of rocks. A cairn for Lonnie. I'd piled the rocks on him myself, watched by wolves, a few rabbits, and a fox as I lifted and carried each stone to cover the dead man with.

He'd gone back for her. Tried to do the right thing.

But for all his swaggering, all his bravado, all his tough-guy cruelty when we were growing up, when someone had needed him, he'd ran away.

He could have told me when I'd first encountered him. Could have told me everything. If he had, there would be a lot of girls who's beds wouldn't have been empty last night. I could have cut right to the heart of everything.

The threats of violence in Niamh's kitchen had been nothing more than to cover his shame and cowardice.

It didn't matter, things had gone too far. He'd known I was going to kill him.

And if I didn't, Matron Regina would have.

He'd been a weak link, and Regina would have known it. That's who he'd been running from. Not me, not any vengeance I might wreak on him, but Regina.

I'd done it faster and cleaner than she would have.

Nancy shifted slightly, her hand seeking and finding one of Aine's breasts and gently squeezing it before relaxing. I looked away, staring at my booted feet as I thought about things. I needed to get my cousins away, or at least make sure that they were beyond the reach of the Matrons. I had only a few people I knew that had left the military that might be able to help.

Nothing I could think of would help.

"Why didn't you let him live?" Westlin asked, sitting on the log next to me. She put her arm around me, pulling me close. "You could have, you know that, right?"

I rested my head on her shoulder, unwilling to consider how she was so solid when I knew for a fact she was dead.

...in this glade the petty concerns of the mortal world will fade away...

"I couldn't. Niamh had needed him, and he ran away," I said.

"We're not all like you, Ant. We're human. We feel fear," She said. She turned slightly and pulled me against her. Her skin was warm beneath her AC/DC shirt and her breasts were soft as she hugged me to her. "Poor Ant, do you remember the last time you felt fear?"

"Tandy," I said.

"He doesn't count. He causes fear. Do you remember the last time something of this world scared you, really scared you?" She asked me.

"When you got shot," I told her. "I was afraid for you."

"Since the guy with the axe?" She asked.

Frowning, I thought about it for a long moment before answering. "No. Not really. I mean, my reflexes kick in. I guess it's fear."

She shook her head. "No, Ant, it isn't. At least I know you can love."

"You do?" I was startled by that.

She laughed, the sound of it tinkling across the glade. "Yes, silly. Why do you think I keep coming back. You loved me, in that moment when I would have otherwise been alone. Loved me deeply." She pulled my face harder into her breasts and ruffled my hair. "You love John, Nancy, Aine, your family, Echo-Five Actual, and the Atlas crew."

Her laughter slowed and she ruffled my hair again. "You love still, Ant, and people love you."

"I feel kinda bad about Lonnie," I admitted.

"You should," she said. She kept speaking before I could protest, "It's good, it means you're still human in there. You need to remember, though, that Tauth de Aine would have never let him leave her glade alive. She would have devoured him, and you if you had tried to stop her."

I nodded.

"I wish..." she said.

"What?" I asked after several long moments of silence only broken by the calls of sleepy birds.

"I just wish I could go over and join them," She sighed. "I really loved Bomber. I really did, I just never seemed to be able to work up the courage to tell him how I felt." She laughed bitterly. "Sometimes I felt like a little kid wearing her mother's uniform around you guys."

"You were older than me," I said, surprised.

She shook her head. "Didn't matter."

"You can't, right now?" I asked her. I reached up and tweaked one of her nipples. She flushed and batted my hand away, but not before I felt it harden.

"Stop that," She blushed.

I grabbed the bottom of her shirt, stripping it off of her before she could protest. Her breasts were just like I remembered from all the times she had stripped naked at Atlas.

"Stop!" she giggled, covering her breasts with her arms.

"Go over there," I told her. I stood up, taking her hand, and pulled her up to her feet.

...why not? impossible things are possible here...

...the petty concerns of the mortal world melt away...

"Go ahead," I said, standing behind her. I reached around her, pulling her close, so that her back was against my chest, and unbuttoned her pants. "Take the leap, Westlin," I told her, pushing her pants down. I rubbed the top of her panties, then hooked my thumbs at the sides of the waistband. "Do it. You're dead, what have you got to lose?" I pulled down her panties, kneeling to push off her tennis shoes and nudge her to step forward out of her pants and underwear by kissing first one firm butt cheek then the other.

Her skin was warm and she giggled.

"This might be your last chance, take it," I told her, and gave her a little push.

She moved over and knelt down, gloriously naked, and brushed John's hair back with her fingertips. I could see her dampen up, see her arousal.

"Go ahead, Westlin," I told her.

She pushed his shoulder and he rolled onto his back, his eyes opening sleepily.

"Hi, Johnny," She said, straddling him. She leaned down and kissed him. "Do you still remember me?"

"Westlin," He whispered, putting his hand behind her neck and drawing her down for another kiss.

I turned away, walking over to the truck as they kept kissing. The door squealed when I opened it and got out an Orange Crush from the floorboards. The soda tasted good going down as I walked around the side of the truck to the back.

We'd have to go back into town, guard the girls, figure out a place to hide them again. The more 'favors' I got from Tauth de Aine, the more of a hold she had on my heart.

The tailgate squealed as I dropped it down so I could sit on it. I set the soda to the side and lit a cigarette, staring into the mist and thinking.

I felt better than I had since the maniac had popped my skull. The lingering aches and pains vanishing. The wounds I'd taken over the winter and during the summer were all old looking scars now, barely visible, and I mulled over the thought that years might have gone by in that single night we'd rutted with Aine.

The only thing that remained was that cold ice-chip lodged deep in my right shoulder and my vision problems.

Off to my left I heard Westlin moan in pleasure and Bomber comment on how she should have told him that she was a virgin.

...no, you would have turned her down, you big Texas ape...

I kept my thoughts from the nasty little pile and Westlin finally being able to consummate her crush by going over everything I knew.

Regina was going to have to die. There was no question about it. Even if I had to wade through half the family, she had to die. She had been present during Niamh's rape and brutalization. She had orchestrated all of it out of a desire for power and a weird need for vengeance over my Father.

Nuallan, of all the cousins, that one was going to be tough. A former Navy SEAL who'd served fifteen years in the Navy before getting out on the orders of the Matrons. A SERE instructor for five years. He was a known hardass.

Rumor had it that he was having a nasty affair with Regina.

Gormlaith, her eldest daughter. I'd promised her I'd kill her eldest daughter, and come Hell or high water, I was going to carry through that threat. A cruel woman in her thirties, none of her children were older than 12, so I'd spare them.

I'd have to kill her husband Tommy though, if he got in my way.

Westlin cried out, shrieking her orgasm, and I barely resisted the impulse to look. She sounded like a wild thing, primal and ancient, but what did I expect out of anything from Aine's glade?

Instead I turned my thoughts back to the members of my family I'd have to kill.

And of course, Reggie.

I'd wondered why he had pursued Niamh. I knew he was a slick bastard, a suave fucker who had all the girls fooled into thinking that maybe they could just change him if they tried. He'd torn a swath through the girls when we were in school, but looking back on it, he'd always liked them younger than him by a couple of years. He didn't quit fucking Junior High girls until he was a Junior in High School, and even then there were more than a handful of 7th and 8th graders who'd lost their virginity to him.

He was a dead man. Unlike Lonnie, I was going to take my time with him.

If the son of a bitch was smart, he was already on the run.

Their brother Mark, who was easy to forget, often hid behind his brothers, but was still as cruel and mean as his brothers. Rumor had it that he was only a half-brother, that his father had raped his mother and then taken him away, and it wouldn't surprise me one bit.

Mark had always been a sneaky asshole, and now that I thought about it, he'd vanished since I'd beaten the Retarded Trio outside of the Red Barn. He and Reggie both had vanished. Were they on the run, or were they waiting for me to leave so they could strut around town and act tough again?

The Doutree boys were all convinced they were smarter, faster, stronger, and tougher than everyone else, so I doubted Reggie would have run. He'd have holed up, and when he thought he was safe he wouldn't be able to resist walking around in the open, rubbing my face in the fact that he'd done whatever he wanted to my sister and I had been unable to do anything about it.

And the sociopath son of a bitch would probably convince her to come back to him.

There was no way I was letting that happen. No way I was giving him another chance at my sister.

Niamh had been pregnant, and the savage rape and beating had caused her to miscarry during surgery to save her life when the doctors had fought nearly impossible odds to keep her from dying.

I'd rub that in his face.

Wait, the Doutrees.

I knew where to keep the girls. Knew where we could lair up for the day.

Mama Doutree owed me a debt. I'd freed her. Let her pay her family's bloodprice to me and mine by letting her slit her husband's throat rather than killing him myself. I'd let her slice away decades of terror and abuse, let her daughters take back their dignity and power with knives.

Her and hers owed me.

I mulled it over.

It would work. Mama Doutree would protect my cousins, even if she wouldn't succor us. She was a woman, and women were tough, and the bonds of sisterhood ran just as deep as the bond between men who had shared blood. I started cleaning under my nails with the Gerber, not because they were dirty, but because it helped me think, helped me plan, helped me and the little lizard run the numbers.

Footsteps brought me out of my planning, and I looked up to see John standing in front of me. He was naked. Bite marks and scratches on his chest. Tears were on his face as he stared at me. I knew what was about to happen and held up the knife for a moment.

I opened my hand and let it fall to the ground between us.

"You bastard," He said as I dropped my hand.

And punched me in the face, throwing me back against the bed of the truck.

I sat up wordlessly, staring at him, letting him silently know that if he needed to, he could hit me again.

"You goddamn bastard," He wept as he punched me in the face again, once again sending me flat on my back on the steel bed of the truck. I sat up again, wordlessly, just staring at him. He stood there, crying silently.

I reached out to him and pulled him close. He struggled for a moment, then went limp.

"You goddamn inhuman bastard," he sobbed against my chest.

There was nothing to say.

He was right.

...I'm not even sorry...