Dog Days of Summer (Damned of the 2/19th Book Four) - Finished

Sundew Sweetness

McDaurn Family Farm

Lewis County, WA, USA

11 August 1986

0140 Hours

The rain cooled my skin as I stepped out of the wheat field. The rain soothed the scrapes on my back and the bites on my shoulder, the side of my neck, and my chest. Matron Aine had followed me, silently, as I left the wheat field. I knew she had stopped at the edge, withdrawing silently as if she had never been there, her protruding belly, with her purple bulged out bellybutton prominent, being the last part of her body to vanish into the wheat.

Her throaty chuckle, feeling like warm honey on my jangled and shattered nerves, caressed me as she vanished, the last thing I saw was her luminous green eyes that blinked and were gone.

My body felt better than it had in a long time. With the exception of that chunk of ice embedded in the shoulder socket nothing hurt, nothing ached, and nothing felt out of place. According to the lizard's status board everything read green except for the yellow on my damaged right shoulder. Everything running at optimum. It felt... weird... not to hurt.

The night was blurry, my glasses had vanished when they had taken me out to the fields and I knew that if worse came to worse I had my extra two pairs (one US Army issue Birth Control Glasses) hidden away in case of breakage, loss, or damage.

Ahead of me, standing in the rain, looking miserable in the darkness with their wet clothing. Two of my cousins, both of them knew me when I was younger, before Alfenwehr and Special Weapons had corrupted me and made me the thing that was standing behind the two of them.

...twisted steel and sex appeal...

They sensed me standing behind them, some how, and turned around. The one on my left, Ricky, shouted and jumped back, raising a sword as if to defend himself in case I rushed him. The other, Hugh, reflexively stuck the torch out at me and then yanked it back.

The lizard showed me how I must appear to them. I wasn't Little Orphan Annie any more, and no matter how many times I repeated that to myself, the majority of my family didn't understand that.

Little Orphan Annie had been five foot four when he left for the Army, had only weighed 125 pounds, didn't fight back, didn't raise his voice, always made sure he was fully covered to the point of wearing a T-shirt when he swam. He made sure that he was as small and non-threatening as possible.

What they saw at the edge of the wheat field was Corporal Anthony "Ant" Stillwater, US Army Special Weapons, NCOIC of FSTS-317/NATO Site-93 AKA "Atlas", a combat hardened killer. Six foot tall, two hundred and ten pounds of solid bone and muscle, not highly defined muscle like in the movies, but heavy soft-looking slabs of high endurance muscle. Scars across my body, my legs, arms, chest, abdomen, even my face. My mouth was twisted up on the left side, the damaged nerve pulling everything up on that side of my face. The knife in my hand was brutal looking, a weapon designed to slice away someone's life not cut meat in a kitchen or at a table.

There wasn't Orphan Annie standing at the edge of the wheat field that they say, what they saw was a monster backlit by lightning.

"Ricky. Hugh." I growled, stepping forward, squinting to try to bring them into focus. "Gonna try an' stop me?"

"Jesus, Tony..." Ricky said. He saw still holding that sword like it was a broom and he was gonna try to shoo me away like a house-wife with a mouse.

"Ya gonna try an' stop me wit dat, Ricky?" I asked, not stepping forward. Lightning struck behind me, out in the wheat field, and I could faintly hear Tuath Dé Aine's laughter. Ricky just stared and Hugh looked like he was ready to break and run. "Gonna feed it to ya if ya get in my way, boy."