Dove Season E-Book

Robin Brande

• Herausgeber: Ryer Publishing
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

A POWER SHE DOESN’T WANT.
BUT EVERYONE ELSE DOES.

Marnie Stemple has a secret. One she’s been able to hide from the world for years. But now she’s been exposed. And her worst fears are coming true.

What does the government want from her? To use her as a spy? A weapon? A warrior? She’s not made for any of those.

But Marnie can’t resist the forces who are after her, any more than she can resist using her power.

Alice Kern has a secret of her own. She’s using her position as an analyst with the Agency to find out why her parents were murdered six years ago. But now her investigation has put a target on her own back. How can she defend herself when she doesn’t know who is trying to kill her?

But Alice has hidden skills, too. And if she and Marnie can find some way of joining forces, they might both find a way to survive.

Unless somebody else gets to them first.

Leseprobe

DOVE SEASON

DOVE SEASON 1

ROBIN BRANDE

RYER PUBLISHING

DOVE SEASON

(Dove Season 1)

By Robin Brande

Published by Ryer Publishing

www.ryerpublishing.com

Copyright 2020 by Robin Brande

www.robinbrande.com

Cover art by HoryMa/Deposit Photos

All rights reserved.

All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Created with Vellum

CONTENTS

Dove Season

Dove Season

Analyst

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Five Stars, Three Moons

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

The Aviary

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Ultra

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

The Canyon

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

More

About the Author

Also by Robin Brande

DOVE SEASON

DOVE SEASON

I can only work places that allow a smoke break. I don’t smoke. My problem is different from that. My problem looks magical to other people, but it’s a compulsion, something I can’t resist, the way some people need coffee at the exact same times every day, or a sugar fix, or drugs, I suppose, although that’s taking it further than I like.

I fly.

Specifically: I walk quickly for a few steps, then I bound forward a few steps more, and then I leap and I flap my arms (I am not joking) and by now I’m airborne and I can hover there, but I prefer to swim. I like doing butterfly. I arc both arms at the same time, wide big arms, feels beautiful and graceful and strong to do it that way, and I kick my feet together behind me in the dolphin kick I learned on swim team when I was little (before I could fly), and my body sort of undulates, although that sounds awful when I say it that way, but it’s that kind of writhing forward thing a snail does, front end forward, big arm stroke, head dips down, butt comes up, here’s the dolphin kick. I can cover acres of ground like that. I once air-swam from one end of a three-mile park to another all during my ten-minute smoke break.

I know, it sounds awesome. You wish you were me. I get it.

I used to have flying dreams. We all have, right? Where you’re being chased by the bad guys and suddenly you realize if you run just a little faster and flap your arms, oh my gawd, you’re lifting up, you’re just out of their reach, you’ve escaped, you’re safe, and now you might as well keep flying and seeing what that’s like before you wake up—

Except all of that happened to me and I didn’t wake up. Turns out this was my life now.

All fine, all good, except for the compulsion part. Remember I said about that? Because it turns out something like this isn’t really as voluntary as you’d think. You can do it whenever you want, sure, but you also have to do it. If you don’t, you feel sick and edgy and jittery and weak. You feel nauseous. You feel like you’re going to jump out of your skin if you can’t break away right now and do your walking-running-flying bit, and as soon as you do, as soon as you’re airborne again, it’s like all the jittery, frayed endings of your nerves have been knit back together and fixed. It is a fix. I admit it. And I need it every single hour.

So no. No thank you. I refuse. Can I go now?

Because my hour was long past—long past. Did they not get that? Did they want to see what would happen? Of course they did. Tricky government men with their tough-guy too-tight short-sleeved buttoned-down shirts like they don’t know they should go up a size and stop strutting around their gymmed-up pecs like a woman wearing a small when she’s a 36. Come on. Boring. I’ve seen it.

I told them as little as possible, but I know I said too much. As the time ticked by I was becoming more desperate, and you say things. They count on that.

But then the door opened, someone new coming in, and quick as a lark I was up and out of my chair, out the door, running, running, desperate for open air.

“Miss Stemple? Marnie?” He was running after me, the shorter, younger one with the tight blue shirt, sweat stains in his pits, crooked front teeth but good thick brown hair, not a bad face overall, but still. Effen government men. They’d had me in there for over three—THREE—hours, studying me, questioning me, thinking they were convincing me (“Service to your country … make a huge difference … fulfill your purpose. Don’t you want to fulfill your purpose, Miss Stemple?”)

F you, I made a mistake, that short-necked guy from accounts payable with the Hitler-looking comb-over saw me, friggin saw me, and if he thinks this is serving his country by calling the feds and telling them he saw a flier, some woman right there from his own office, then F you all, and THREE HOURS, my heart was racing, cold clammy sweat was pouring down my face, my heart was going 500, my eyes were already scanning out the windows for where I could go, someplace tall where I could fly, but there was nothing, no place, not even a few trees on the medians, and still I ran full out.

“Marnie!” I could hear the gym guy’s flat government feet pounding hard against the fake tile floor, but I was running faster than he was, faster than anyone ever can, because I can do that (run, run, flap), it’s my life, and the hour, you idiots, did you think I was lying about how it feels? Exaggerating? You think it’s funny? Something I can turn off?

Burst out the doors, everyone looking, but I couldn’t help it, I was dying, I was crying and dying, then finally run, run, flap, flap again, and gawwwwd. Oh gawd. The air the freedom the lift the pleasure the release the relief the HEAVEN.

But crying. Sobbing. So relieved and happy and anguished.

Butterfly. My beautiful butterfly stroke. And all those people down below shielding their eyes with their flattened palms, staring up at me so amazed, some of them applauding. F you! Don’t you understand what you’ve done?

Because now I have to leave again. Leave immediately. Can I even go home first? Pack a light pack? Get it slung over my back and get airborne again before the feds show up and surround me?

What would they do? Bring a net? Shoot me? Tranq me?

Still crying, snot running down my chin, but the air swishes it away. The air beautiful air. If I say it’s like a lover it sounds like I love this. Like I want this. I don’t. I want what everyone has.

“How long have you had this power?”

“It’s not a power.”

“Of course it is, Miss Stemple.”

“Then a gift,” said the other one, the older one with the tight tan shirt. “Call it a gift.”

“It’s not a gift, it’s not a power, can I go now? Can you legally hold me? This is America. You can’t hold me.” (Checked my watch, even though I didn’t need a watch to tell me it was past an hour. Way past an hour. Feet tapping the floor. Jittery. Nerves thrumming. Come on, come on, I have to go. If someone had to pee now would you make them sit here and wet themselves? Can you do that to someone who’s not under arrest? Am I under arrest? This is physical. It’s real. I’ve gotta go—)

Two minutes in the beautiful air. That’s all it ever takes. I could already feel my heart beating normally again, loving me again, all of the pasty clammy sweat dried off my skin.

They were in their government cars. Had to be. They knew my address. They were already driving to my apartment, I knew it.

All that furniture I bought over the past six months. Thinking I could stay. Thinking because the office was right across from the park, all those lovely dark tall trees, I could hide it better this time. Get into the trees and just flap straight up. No big deal. Just a quickie, then right back to work.

But that flippin stalker with the Hitler haircut—did he follow me? On purpose? Or was it just his luck to see me step, step, leap, flap, straight from the ground to the boughs ten feet up?

Did he rush back and call right then? Did he take pictures? The feds never showed me pictures, but they were awfully confident if it was just someone calling on a tip line. Had to be more. I’ve gotten sloppy. I’m only twenty-eight. Too young to be so lazy.

Go where?

Maybe back to Pinedale, Wyoming. No one ever saw me there. I was Marjorie Dunham there. Strictly cash, my ex-husband is still looking for me (no ex-husband, lie), let’s not use my social security number, he might find me.

Marjorie wore corduroys and sweaters and knit hats and comfy boots. She had a cat, some stray that showed up one day and stayed. Marjorie had friends. Not many, but even one feels like a dream. Marjorie had plenty of trees, glorious trees, right there outside her little rented house in the woods and right outside the insurance office where she kept books. Marjorie was happy there. Until she wasn’t.

Then how about Millie? Millie drove an old beater truck and lived in Clinton, Iowa and even dated a few times before realizing that would never work, someone noticing you leave every hour, even in the middle of the night? Ha ha, I’m a vampire. No, seriously, I just love the night air. Come back to bed… No, seriously, I have to leave…

By now I could see my apartment building. Corner unit, bottom floor, because it’s no help to live up high on a top floor, I still always need those few steps and the leap before I can flap.

No obviously government cars. What would they drive? Black sedans? White? Would all the cars look the same, four or five of them all in a row? I couldn’t see anything like that.

I came down my usual way into the trees half a block away, then jogged toward my building, heart racing again as I scanned the streets looking for suspicious people and cars. It was a risk, I knew it. For what? A few favorite items of clothing? A wad of money hidden in my closet? No cat this time, no friends to say goodbye to, so why was I even bothering? But I was and I was at my door now and I quickly unlocked it and ducked inside.

Then I stood there, back against my door. Looked around. What was my life? That couch, the laptop (scooped that up, not too heavy to weigh me down), no photos, no mementos, my favorite sleep shirt—stuff that in the pack, too—a comfortable pair of shoes, underwear, sweats, that’s enough, you have to go, Marnie, go—

Bam bam bam!

“Miss Stemple?” Bam bam bam. “Marnie? Please let me in. It’s just me. Ted. I’m alone. Please, let’s talk.”

Ted. The one with the crooked teeth and the thick brown hair.

Other places I’ve lived had back doors. Not this one. Windows? Yes, but not feasible. Small and hard to open. Dammit dammit dammit.

Knock, knock, knock. Politely. “Please, Miss Stemple. I want to make you an offer.”

I ran away from these guys once, I could run again. But not now. There was no way now.

I was full up again on flying. Enough to last me at least another hour, maybe even a little bit longer.

But you can’t trust a government man. Well known.

But I was trapped.

I looked out through the peephole. I only saw him. My heart was speeding. My skin felt clammy again. But it was only fear, not the compulsion, so I could deal with it. I took a deep breath and unlocked the door.

He really was alone. And the pit stains on his tight blue shirt were even bigger, as if he had run all that way while I flew. He smelled a little worse than he did even in that cooped up tiny room. But not so bad I didn’t let him in.

We stood there on the little patch of linoleum right inside my door before where the matted brown carpet began and we took the measure of each other.

“I know you don’t want this—” he started.

“I don’t.”

“I know you don’t trust us.”

“I don’t.”

He held up his palms. “No weapons.” He patted his tight shirt. “No wire.” He patted down his pockets and lifted his pant hems and showed me he wasn’t wearing or carrying anything that I might object to.

“It’s just me,” he said. “But please, I have to know. I have to understand. Just you and me. Will you tell me?”

I took a step back, onto the safety of the dark brown carpet. “Tell you what?”

“Why?” he said. “Why you really don’t want to do something with this wonderful gift of yours?”

“Because if you had it…”

“Right,” said Ted. “That’s what I’m thinking.”

“That’s what everyone would think.”

“Tell you the truth,” Ted said, “I’m about dying here. I could really use a glass of water, if you don’t mind. But then I’ve got all day. And all night, and tomorrow and next week.”

“You think you’re just staying here until I talk?”

“I’m asking you,” Ted said. “I swear I’ll respect you if you still tell me no, but I’m a psychologist at heart and I can’t just let you leave without trying to understand why.”

“Who says I’m leaving?”

He tilted his head as if to say, Right.

So I got him the water.

Then I let him sit on my six-month-old couch that I bought thinking it might last me a full year.

I perched on my desk chair. Swiveled it a few times while I worked up my nerve. No weapons, no wire, just him. Just a guy. Some government psychology guy who wanted to know how I think. Or how I feel. Same thing, all part of the same story.

Just this once. Tell someone the story just once. Some kind of compulsion of its own.

“When I was nineteen,” I began, still not sure, “I saw an article in a magazine about a place called Willcox, Arizona. It looked so remote and pretty, with all these beautiful rock formations I’d never seen anyplace else. The rocks were huge and round like giant balls of dough. They weren’t jagged like you see anyplace else. And there was so much land. Miles and miles of it. And apple trees—lots of orchards and apple tree farms. I thought it would be a nice place to live.”

Ted sipped his water. I took another breath. Should I tell him this story? Should I tell anyone?

“I got there in late September, and the weather was perfect. I’d been living in the mountains for the first part of the year, and I knew the winter would be hard, so I wanted someplace milder, just until spring. Then I’d look for someplace else.”

“Is that what you’ve been doing?” Ted asked. “Moving around every few months?”

“Sometimes,” I said. “If I can stay longer, I do.”

“What’s your longest?”

“Almost two years.”

Ted nodded. “Go on.”

He wasn’t taking notes. This wasn’t an interview. He was just listening.

“I found a job. I won’t say what. Don’t bother looking, it was under a different name.”

“Do you do that, too? Every time?”

“I’m… not going to say.” He was a government man. I’ve been careful. Cash only, no records. That wasn’t part of the story.

“I was there September, October, November. Until Thanksgiving. I liked it. I liked the people. I liked how barren a lot of it was. I always need trees, but I could still visit all that wide open space and the rounded rocks and there were canyons and streams and it was all like a book. It was the Wild West. It was a beautiful place to fly.”

“Did something happen there?” Ted asked. He probably couldn’t help himself, his psychology training kicking in. It irritated me, because suddenly it didn’t feel like a natural conversation anymore, more like a session of some sort. But I let it go.

To a degree.

“What will you do with this information?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“You’ll have to report it, right?”

“Not necessarily.”

I scoffed. “You work for people. You don’t get to just come ask me questions and then never tell anyone.”

“We’ll see,” said Ted. “You don’t have to tell me any more if you don’t want. But I’d really love to hear.”

I bit the inside of my lip. Glanced up at the clock. It had been almost forty minutes, between deciding whether to let him in, letting him in, getting him water, deciding whether to tell, and telling that much so far.

“I have to go soon,” I said. “You know.”

Ted nodded. “Go on. Thanksgiving.”

“Thanksgiving was nice. The diner did a whole spread. I took a plate home. I hadn’t eaten that well in a while. The people in the diner seemed happy. I really liked the waitress who was working. She was older, probably my mother’s age, and she was always so nice to me.”

If he were really interviewing me, he would have perked up at some of that: “Which diner? What was the waitress’s name? How old is your mother? What’s her name?” But he just kept listening.

“But it was the day after,” I said. “That was the thing.

“I flew out right at dawn, the way I always love to. Out over all those wide open spaces.

“I heard gunfire. Lots of it.

“Up ahead, over the grain fields, I saw shapes of things falling out of the sky. Bam! Something fall. Bam bam! Something fall. I landed a ways away because it wasn’t safe to be in the air right then, and I ran to where it was happening to see what it was.

“It was dove season. I didn’t know. Hunters and their dogs all combing the grain fields and shooting at all the birds who had come there to eat.

“Dozens and dozens and probably fifty or more dead by the time they were done. Just a few hours right after dawn and all these men and women shooting at those poor innocent birds.

“I’m telling you,” I said, tears stinging my eyes, “I was broken. Something broke in me. All those pretty, innocent birds.

“No, but here’s the thing,” I said, swiping beneath my eyes, “it wasn’t just that. It probably would have been, but then it got worse. At dusk, they all came back.”

“The hunters.”

“The birds. Even though they’d been shot at already and so many of them were killed, the flocks still came back to that same grain field for dinner. And the same hunters, or maybe all new ones, didn’t matter, blam, blam, little gray bodies twisting in the air, feathers exploding with the shot, dogs racing out and chasing down some of the birds who were still trying to flap on the ground with still one good wing, and the dogs chomped down on them and then carried them back so proud to their owners…

“And I know the birds would have come back the next morning. And the next night. And do it day after day until dove season ended, dying and not able to help themselves, because they just had to do it.”

I stopped talking. It was enough. If he got it, he got it. If he didn’t, he couldn’t.

Ted seemed comfortable with the silence. He leaned back on my couch and stared at some speck on my rented ceiling. Minutes ticked by. I had to fly soon.

Finally he asked, “What is your concern?”

“My concern?”

He looked me in the eye. “Yes.”

I blew out a breath. (“Don’t you want to serve your country, Miss Stemple? Don’t you want to fulfill your purpose?”)

“Look at me,” I said, gesturing down to my bird-thin body and scrawny arms and wispy legs. “I’m not tough. I can’t fight. I don’t know martial arts. I hate guns. I hate violence of any kind.”

Ted listened. And waited.

“You can’t send me up there,” I said. “Not for some military mission. Not for some… secret government work. I’m defenseless. I’m useless. Yes, I can fly. But that’s all. Nothing else. I’d be dead the first day.”

Ted nodded. “I understand.”

“I have to go,” I said hurriedly. “Can I go?”

“Of course.” He stood politely. But he didn’t move toward the door.

I hesitated. Should I wait? See him out? Lock the door before flapping away?

He seemed to understand my discomfort. “How long?”

“I can… just ten minutes.”

“I’ll wait if it’s all right.”

The buzz was inside me. I had to go. Fly, fly now.

“Don’t look at anything, don’t snoop—”

He held up his palms and sat back down on my couch. “Maybe another glass of water, but nothing else. I promise.”

I opened the door and ran out. It wouldn’t matter if he snooped anyway. I’m used to leaving everything behind. There’s nothing for anyone to see.

I ran to my favorite tree, skip, leap, flap, and I was up there before anyone could see me. Just a taste of it, a ten-minute smoke-break taste. Enough. I needed to get back.

He was still sitting on the couch, but he was right, he was drinking more water. I got some water, too. Flying is dehydrating.

“And if someone caught me,” I went on as if there had been no break. “You saw how I was today. If someone tried to keep me locked up…”

“If we could address your concerns,” Ted said. “All of them.” He stopped there and waited, as if that were enough.

My mouth felt dry. I tried to swallow just the same. But my voice sounded croaky and weak. “I can’t help myself,” I said. “Just like the doves. I’d know it was dangerous, but I wouldn’t be able to stop.”

Ted stood. He offered me his hand. The flesh was warm and dry. The pit stains on his shirt were dry now, too. He smelled like he had worked a full day. I didn’t mind it so much.

“Please don’t leave,” he said. “I know you want to, but just give me a day or two.”

“Until what?”

“We know people,” he said. “We can do things. We can make things. I understand your concerns. I really do, Marnie. Is that your real name?”

I hesitated, then nodded.

“We won’t try to make you do anything. That doesn’t work. We know that.”

He was back to sounding like a government man. We we we…

He handed me his card. Ted Whitling. Just his name and a phone number. No address, no email, nothing else. If I had met him anywhere else and he had handed me that card, I would have thrown it in the trash. You have to let people look you up these days. People need to be able to do their research.

But I already knew he worked in a two-story gray brick building with a flat roof and no trees nearby, and he had a security pass that let him in and out of a tiny windowless room where they interrogate prisoners like me who haven’t done anything wrong. That was his job. Here he was in my tidy rented living room, but he belonged back there where everyone in the building from the agents to the janitors knew I was a flier and had watched me do it.

If I stuck around, how was I any smarter than a dove flying back to the grain field?

“Marnie?”

Fifty more minutes, and I’d fly again. Just fifty more minutes.

The question was, fly how? Fly where? Just a ten-minute flap up into some trees and a few glorious strokes of butterfly, or flying for distance and speed with a light pack on my back, searching for my next life to lead?