Felicia Andrews Read online

  MOONWITCH

  by Felicia Andrews

  "DO YOU SWEAR THAT YOU WILL COME TO ME?" SHE ASKED . ..

  He nodded.

  She almost laughed at the primeval lust that blazed from his eyes, but held herself in check as she searched his face for signs of deceit.

  "Don't lie to me, Trevor," she said quietly.

  "I'm ... I'm not."

  "I'm glad," she said. "I do not like people who lie to me."

  He groaned, his arms went around her and he carried her back onto the rock; he groaned again as he cast aside all pretense of lovemaking and took her hard, swiftly, exactly as she wanted . . .

  MOONWITCH

  Also by Felicia Andrews from Jove

  RlVERRUN

  RlVERWITCH

  MOUNTAINWITCH

  Copyright © 1980 by Charles L. Grant

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be mailed to: Permissions, Jove Publications, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

  First Jove edition published August 1980

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Jove books are published by Jove Publications, Inc., 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016

  PROLOGUE

  Vulture,

  The sweep of great wings sounded through the dark, an unrelieved darkness that magnified the passing of the predatory bird.

  Amanda crouched low to the ground, her long black hair brushing over her face, her green eyes flaring. She sensed the bird searching for her, forever drifting on the currents of a wind that blew hot, blew cold, and never touched her. Her heart drummed so loudly she knew it could hear her; the perspiration that ran from her face was enough, she was sure, for the predator to catch her scent.

  She looked around fearfully, trying to locate some point of light, some shadow, some landmark that would give her some-thing to run for, to hide behind.

  But there was nothing in this darkness but the sound of the vulture's wings . .. and the sound of her breathing.

  It can't be real, she told herself as she stood at last and tried to run; he's dead, he's got to be dead.

  The ground beneath her bare feet was alternately hard and soft, dry and damp. Things she could not name reached out for her arms, her legs, the banner of her hair trailing behind her. Her flesh grew cold, her throat raw as if she had been screaming for days on end. She stumbled once, and her arms flailed to retain her balance; she stumbled again and pitched forward, her face striking the ground. .. and feeling nothing.

  Dead, she thought; he's dead, he's in jail, he can't be here!

  A laugh, then, that echoed above her, settled around her head and pummeled her ears-a laugh nothing short of evil-a promise, a threat; a laugh harsh and triumphant, born of the past she thought long dead and buried.

  Vulture.

  She twisted away from the sweeping wings, the cackling laugh, buried her ears with her hands, and cried out soundlessly.

  It was close. Too close. Not yet upon her, but there was no mistaking the intent or the direction. After all this time it was still searching for her, probing the dark for her flesh.

  Suddenly there was light. She jerked her head up, and her eyes widened.

  His face.

  It was his face on the neck of a vulture, and he was smiling. Simon Maitland was smiling.

  No! she thought. No. No.

  "No!"

  The sound of her voice awakened her, and she threw her-self to one side of the bed, panting, gasping, holding her pillow tightly to her breast while the night world of Wyoming reasserted itself and calmed her. After several minutes she sat up and looked through the window to the huge silver moon overlooking the ranch and the valley. With one corner of the blanket she mopped her face and hair dry, smiling mirthlessly at the trembling of her hands.

  From the time of her childhood she had known she was somewhat different-not only because of her Algonquin ancestry or because of the dusky color of her skin, but because she knew things, sensed things, that were closed to other people. There were times when she had been called "witch" because of it, and that did not bother her.

  But the dreams did. They had been coming more frequently of late, and always the same-the vulture, the chase, and the smile that told her she had not yet escaped. She did not know how much of it she should believe, but she knew full well what had brought them on.

  In a small town called Daghaven, on the Hudson River in New York, she had learned the skills of a riverboat pilot and had worked for her father, riding the river and talking to it-until her father's supposed best friend and partner, Simon Maitland, had decided that, in addition to his wealth, he also wanted her. In his rejected fury he had arranged for a murder charge to be hung around her neck. Forced, then, to flee, she had vowed her revenge-for the false accusation . . . and for Maitland's murder of her father.

  It had taken her several years and a torturous flight to Natchez where she'd met Guy Munroe for the second time (the first being at Daghaven, when he'd arrived with another supposed friend wanting help from her father). Guy. Who had aided her in seeing Maitland placed at last behind bars in a New York State prison.

  In jail, she told herself, holding the blanket close to her chest. In jail and, by this time and with some divine intervention, perhaps even moldering in the same soil he had fouled simply by walking on it.

  But there were still the dreams.

  Her friends told her she had been working too hard, that she needed time away from the running of the ranch, time to rest and remember what it meant to enjoy life instead of just living it.

  Perhaps she should. If nothing else, it might rid her of that horrid image: Simon Maitland as a vulture. Not, she thought with grim satisfaction, that it was a poor comparison. He had been arrogant, complacent, self-righteous, vicious, of such an evil bent and upstanding facade that no one had believed he was capable of wrongdoing. No one, that is, except her.

  And his physical appearance lent credence to the imagery: he was scrawny, his face long and narrow, his hair in untidy wisps in a band around his mottled skull; his neck was long and wattled, his arms slightly longer than average with an unfortunate habit of flapping at his sides when he was agitated. His eyes were piercing, his mouth constantly pursed, and the thought of his wanting to put his hands on her body made her shudder with repulsion even now.

  She closed her eyes briefly.

  The dream: was it a sign of the future, or a sign of her weariness?

  She sighed as she felt sleep once more move to overcome her-a peaceful sleep this time, refreshing and tender.

  All right, she thought. All right, I'll go.

  Anything to get rid of that horrible vulture.

  BOOK ONE

  Ghost

  ONE

  The city crept up the surrounding hills like a gentle tide of light and laughter. Though trees of immense breadth and height had been felled to make way for the exploding population, there were still enough of them on the slopes to hide in many places those homes that achieved a grandeur scarcely equaled in any community west of the Mississippi. Yet the lights glared through-amber gaslight and flickering light of incandescent lamps, torches on standards made of delicately wrought iron, fires in backyards, lanterns gently swinging from the masts of the ships anchored at the wharves, lanterns in the hands of those who walked the dark, upper streets, making for home after a day's work, a year's journey. And the laughter rose into the black velvet night sky-raucous on t
he docks where stripe-shirted men hauled crates and bales, lumber and sacks of grimy coal, large trunks bound in copper, parcels that had survived the arduous sail around Cape Horn or across the Pacific from the mysterious ports of Asia, the rumored sybaritic ports of the South Pacific islands, the fabled (and infamous) ports of Australia. The laughter was raucous there and filled with gaiety in the famed restaurants and night spots of the wharf and Tenderloin districts, the gaudy new hotels, the elegant and garish opera house where people strode in front of fountains, dressed as though every night were a celebration of the New Year or a party refuting the prediction that San Francisco would sink into her sweeping bay by her own, evil weight.

  On an extensive, open porch that swept the midriff of a gingerbread Victorian on three sides, Amanda Franklin Munroe sat on a fanbacked wicker rocker and watched the city come to life below her. The excitement was infectious, the laughter more so, and she could not help but grin at nothing at all while she watched a light vanish here, another pop up there as a handful of young men climbed the steep, winding cobblestone street, passing the house on their way to one closer to the summit. She could not catch what they were saying, but it did not matter. They seemed to be typical of this curious California city, typical of the state itself: rugged individualism paired with a devil-may-care attitude that often was the despair of Easterners who traveled there and found that life was more leisurely, though no less competitive, than they were used to.

  Amanda, however, found it tiring.

  And when the young men had passed by the gates to the estate, she leaned back in the chair and listened to the spinet playing in the front room behind her. A woman whose name she had not heard was playing one of the faster, more melancholy pieces that were currently popular in Europe, but it was paradoxically soothing to hear in the warm June air. She sighed, shifted, rested her hands in her lap, and closed her eyes.

  She cautioned herself, then, against falling asleep-and grinned at the imagined look on her host's face should he discover her-and allowed herself instead to fall prey to the spell of the sounds of the city, the tangy and vibrant scent of the ocean, the aroma of the redwood planks that were the mainstay of building in this part of the country, and the gentle sway of the rocker as her feet pushed against the porch's floorboards.

  She was not at all sure this was what she needed, but she was not going to complain. Since her arrival in the city less than a month ago, the dreams of Simon Maitland had all but vanished and were hardly more than an unpleasant memory.

  And she had done little but speed by carriage from this dinner to that, this play and that recital, until she thought she would faint from exhaustion. It was one thing to tire oneself out running a ranch the size of Four Aces and quite another to mark an early grave in the pursuit of what one of her new acquaintances called a "grand old California time. "

  Not, she thought then, that it was not enticing. Indeed it was quite the opposite. And she often wondered if such energy and pleasure wasn't the slightest bit sinful, wondered, and dismissed it almost as soon as the thought arose.

  And not, she added, that she wasn't entitled to a few weeks loose among the civilized world's most energetic people.

  It had been seven years since the death of Guy Munroe, four since she allowed herself to snap out of her mourning and take on the running of her world again. And in those four years she saw her son, Alexander, grow into a handsome young man, her daughter reach the age of eight without serious injury, and . . . Four Aces. When she and Guy had owned a riverboat company in Mississippi, he had secretly been buying land in Wyoming as a fallback for whenever his gambling profession failed him or he simply grew tired of taking other people's money. When they'd moved there after the collapse of the steamboat industry, she had been stunned by the immensity and utter beauty of the land. And she had fallen in love with it with a passion almost matched by her love for her husband.

  There had been problems, however. A renegade named Quill and an Indian named Walking Two Suns had waged a constant war against the Munroes and the ranch, thinking they had a stake in what they believed was a massive silver mine on the ranch's western reaches. They had been wrong-both about the silver and about the way Amanda would give in to them. They had not reckoned on the fact that she had had to fight all her life for what was hers-because she was, first, a woman, and because she was half Algonquin-and she was not about to let two miserable outlaws ruin what she knew was at last her real home.

  Now they were dead. And the man who had supported them was in jail for life. Just as the man who had murdered her father was rotting in a jail in New York State.

  But Guy . . . Guy was dead. Seven years dead, and Amanda was alive.

  Then just last May Harley Peterson, who had taken over the Howard Longstreet ranch, the Circle B, and who had once been Amanda's ranch manager, came to visit with his bride of four years, Olivia. They were bubbling with the news that they were going to visit some friends in San Francisco, and it was then that Harley sprang the question: "Amanda, why don't you come with us?"

  Amanda had not believed she had heard him properly. "What?"

  Harley had laughed. "I mean it, Amanda. You've been cooped up here on this here ranch long enough. Ain't that right, Olivia?"

  Olivia had nodded excitedly. "Mandy, won't you please say yes? Why, when was the last time you went away for a bit? When was the last time you really relaxed and let Carl run things for a change. "

  Carl Davis, once foreman and now the ranch manager, was not Amanda's idea of the best person to keep an enterprise like Four Aces going without help, but when she mentioned it-carefully, since Harley and Carl had been friends since boyhood-Harley only snapped his fingers like a magician completing a simple trick.

  "Alexander."

  "But he's just a boy!''

  "Amanda, " Harley said, his voice lowering suddenly, "he is not a boy and you know it. He's a man, and he knows as much about runnin' this place as anybody. Ask Carl. Carl'll tell you that young sprat can do things blindfolded no white man would dare try with a million eyes."

  There was no tension in the remark; Amanda knew Harley better than to believe it had been made maliciously. Alexander was indeed her son, but adopted. His natural parents were Shoshone and had been killed some time before. When Amanda had come out of her grieving for Guy, one of the first acts she'd done was draw up the adoption papers. Alexander, once Little Cat, was hers legally as well as emotionally.

  She had continued to refuse for over a week. But neither Harley nor Olivia--nor her own children when they learned of it-would leave her be until, at last, she surrendered. And as soon as she had, she wondered why she had not taken a vacation before.

  And then she knew. She had become so engrossed with the running of the ranch and the raising of her children that she had come to believe that all would fail if she were not around to see that everything worked as she had planned it. It was not true, of course, and she knew that; she simply would not face that fact until it was forced upon her.

  The piano concert finished with a grand flourish, and the sound of polite applause filtered through the windows to bring her back to the present. With a quick motion she smoothed the folds of her dress and rose, her back to the porch railing as the double doors opened and some of the guests walked out to take the night lrlr before refreshments were served. Several of them nodded to her but did not stop; others did not see her. Amanda didn't mind. In fact she found their consternation rather amusing, knowing that few of them were comfortable in her presence, unsure how to handle themselves when faced with a woman who was, in one turn, one of the most successful ranchers in the West and also a beautiful woman of Indian descent who clearly had carved her place in white society without caring in the least what others thought of her.

  The men found her beauty and her views refreshing; the women, for the most part, found a hundred reasons to be suspicious of her.

  And the impressions were right: though Amanda would have liked them to accept her wit
hout question, neither did she find it so important that she would play the helpless-female-downtrodden-Indian role simply to curry their favor. There was, she told herself, such a thing as self-esteem, without which one might as well take up housekeeping in a gutter with a bottle as your only friend.

  "Ah, Amanda, enjoying the sights?"

  She smiled. The speaker was Carlton Dozois, a man who appeared at first glance to be considerably wider than he was tall. His hair was flaming red, his face the same, and his small dark eyes shot about constantly, as though he were constitutionally unable to meet anyone's gaze for more than a heartbeat.He was also, she had learned from Olivia, one of the wealthiest bankers in the city.

  "I never tire of them," she said softly, turning around to scan the vista below them.