The Dryad's Kiss Read online

  The Dryad’s Kiss

  Ancient Enemy #1

  By

  R. Scott VanKirk

  3rd Edition, June 2013

  Edited by Kira McFadden

  Cover and Internal Art by Doug Shuler

  Errors and Omissions by R. Scott VanKirk

  Copyright 2012-2013 R. Scott VanKirk

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by

  Quantum Duck Ink

  Centennial CO 80111

  ISBN: 9781479178445

  Preface to 3rd Edition

  This 3rd Edition of The Dryad's Kiss has been extensively edited in response to feedback I've received from the many readers who've reviewed it or commented on it. I've tried to address their concerns and suggestions. Despite the often times conflicting advice, I believe it is a better story for it. It's not changed enough that you would have to reread it to understand what is happening in Finn II The Shadow's Touch. I hope you agree.

  Dedication

  To my wife, Maria, who stands by me through thick and thin and doesn’t realize how beautiful she really is—inside and out.

  Special Thanks To

  Beverly VanKirk, my mother, who is my cheerleader, Kira McFadden for her editing and input. Jonna Rathburn for her early editing skills, and Jessica Knauss for one last pass. I'd like to thank Jennifer Adkisson for encouragement and input, Mike McGee, Joshua Goldstein and all my friends who let me browbeat them into reading my first drafts, and all the people who took the time to review earlier editions of this book. And finally to Neil Beaty who revealed the mysteries of the Karma Fairy to me.

  Author's Note

  While I have taken every effort to write this book in grammatically correct English, if you find an error in the book, please let me know [email protected] so I can fix it for others. I welcome all comments and suggestions. Visit me at my web-page: http://www.scottvankirk.com

  Disclaimer

  No person, place, or thing you know, or think you know, is depicted in this book—so you can't sue me.

  Table Of Contents

  Preface to 3rd Edition

  The Haunted Mound

  Bumps In The Night

  By The Light of Day

  Possession Obsession

  The Oak

  Hero's Reward

  Action and Reaction

  What Dreams May Come

  Back In The World

  Showdown at Frankies

  Life after Frankies

  Vengeance

  Be the Bear

  Hangover

  The Dream Police

  Mounds Again

  Mounds of Messiness

  Devil’s Mound

  Waiting for Justice

  The Warrior’s Apprentice

  Reality Check

  Getting To Know Her

  Finals Week—Monday And Tuesday

  Final’s Week—Wednesday

  Finals Week—Thursday And Done

  Weekend Pass

  Troubled Teens

  The Eyes That Bind

  Drain

  Rude Awakening

  Little Soldier

  Going Home

  Home Again

  Distress Call

  Distressed Damsel

  Mission Impossible

  Crystal Clarity

  Gone With The Wind

  If A Tree Falls…

  Once More, Out Of The Darkness …

  Inquiring Minds Want To Know

  The Morning After

  Broken HomeFinal Fantasy

  A Note from the Author

  Excerpt from The Shadow's Touch

  Other Titles By R. Scott VanKirk

  The Haunted Mound

  When someone says, “Let's go explore a haunted burial mound,” You say, “No.” When someone further offers to let you help them excavate it, run away. Really.

  Of course, I did neither. After all, I was only 18, and when I found out where we were going, I was already stuffed into the back of my uncle's Cessna for a secret weekend adventure. I couldn't have turned us around if I'd wanted to and, of course, I didn't. Want to, that is. It was the coolest thing ever.

  At first, I didn't actually believe my uncle when he told us our destination.

  “We're on a journey to Seaman to see old man Hatzer's mound and cleanse it of the evil which doth reside there.”

  While I was parsing this, my dad barked a short laugh and said, “Sounds like we need a bible and a couple of gallons of holy water.”

  “I get to be the guy reading the bible!” I said. I donned my best dramatic voice. “In the name of the father, the son, and the holy spirit, be gone wretched mound!”

  It was important to sound skeptical. My Uncle Mark (no blood relation) had caught me more than once with his practical jokes. Not gonna happen this time.

  He chuckled. “Nope, the only special equipment we'll need is a holy bulldozer.”

  “Too bad,” said my dad. “We just sold our last one yesterday.”

  My inner ear's warning that things weren't quite right interrupted my next devastatingly witty retort. I felt lightheaded, and my stomach gurgled as we banked during our ascent, and the land underneath us tilted alarmingly.

  My dad didn't seem to notice. “Very funny Mark. Now spill. Did you truly get Mr. Hatzer to let us onto his property?”

  “Yes sir, I did. You may now applaud.”

  I swallowed my stomach and asked, “How did you convince him to do that?”

  “I sent Dan, one of my scouts, down to talk to him. Turns out that Hatzer's much more amenable to talking when there’s money in it for him. I’ve not met a farmer yet who’s swimming in money. When Dan called him to talk about selling the mineral rights to his land, that old geezer changed his tune right quick and welcomed Dan like a long lost son. Once he started chatting with Hatzer, the talk turned to the old bulldozer in the field. One thing lead to another. Hatzer has never liked that mound. He believes that the mound was cursed and haunted. A while back, he even hired some locals to bulldoze it and remove it.”

  “That’s criminal!” I interjected.

  “No, it’s not criminal, just reprehensible,” said Uncle Mark. “It’s private property, not government land. He can do whatever he wants with it. Anyway, the men Hatzer hired only worked a couple of days before they just stopped showing up. When Hatzer finally got hold of one of the men, they said no amount of money would get them back. They were scared of the evil ghosts inhabiting the mound. One even swore a giant snake had attacked him. He didn't waver from his story, even after he couldn’t show them any wounds. That dozer has been sitting idle ever since.”

  Mark fiddled with the controls on the dash and continued. “Dan took pity on poor Mr. Hatzer’s plight, and as part of the final deal, he offered to have his own crew come down and remove the mound. Hatzer jumped at that offer. When they finished talking, Dan went out and took pictures of it.”

  Mark handed a handful of what I assumed were the pictures across to my dad. I couldn’t lean forward enough to see them around the high backed chairs, so I had to wait while my dad made appreciative noises.

  “Let me see!” I was excited because I found the mound. Well, not so much found, but I was the one who pointed out the dozer and convinced Mark to stop.

  We were driving home from one of our weekend expeditions when something called my attention away from my iPhone. When I looked out the window and saw the dozer, I got excited, because broken ground was a good place to look for artifacts. Ohio is a great state for finding arrowheads and other ancient Native American memorabilia.

  At last, my dad handed the photos back. The first picture looked just like a large squished hill in the woods. The ground near the photographer had been churned up recently. The
pica must have been taken from near the bulldozer. The other pictures showed a wooded hill. It certainly didn’t look haunted, or even interesting.

  Uncle Mark continued. “Hatzer wants to get rid of this particular mound. He wants it cleared of trees, and brush, and bulldozed flat.”

  “How big is the mound?” asked my dad.

  “Not huge, maybe forty feet in diameter and eight to ten feet at its top.”

  “So why doesn’t he just clear around the mound and let it be?” my dad asked. “He’s not really losing much land to it.”

  “He’s actually convinced the mound is haunted. He's well and truly spooked. Said he’s seen things on the mound, things that shouldn’t be allowed into this world.”

  A chill ran across my back. “That’s freaky!”

  “I think he’s just read too much Lord of the Rings,” quipped Mark.

  Huh? “What do you mean?”

  “You know, the barrow, the barrow Wight? Spooky, nasty, ghosty, thing that eats hobbits?”

  I frowned with uncertainty. “Yeah, well, what’s that got to do with anything?”

  “Finn, what do you think a barrow is?”

  I shrugged, “I don’t know. Some sort of tomb, I guess.”

  He talked slowly to me, as if speaking to a dense child, “This is a burial mound. Sound familiar?”

  “Oh! I see… I guess I wouldn’t want a barrow mound behind my barn either.”

  “Yep. That’s why he thinks Dan is the best thing since prohibition.”

  I thought so too. “That’s awesome, Uncle Mark.”

  “The only wrinkle is that we cannot show anyone anything we find until the mound is gone. Mr. Hatzer doesn’t trust the government, the Indian tribes, or what he calls “ed-jew-cated types”. He thinks they’ll try to find a way to take his land from him. A few other burial mounds have been discovered on private land near his farm, and the local tribe promptly proclaimed them sacred areas. For some, they created enough fuss that all excavation stopped for over a year. Then, when the courts finally denied their claim, they asked to be present to move any remains to rebury them properly. Hatzer doesn’t want the publicity, and some of the locals have already approached him about preserving the site. He wants it gone—on the QT—so that’s what we’re going to do.”

  My dad shook his head. “I don’t know, Mark. This seems pretty reckless and ethically questionable to me.”

  Uncle Mark paused while banking the plane again. “Jack, he's serious about scraping it. I think it would be a crime not to at least try and salvage something out of this. Anyway, I wanted to bring you two down here to see the site before we have to start the excavation. I’d also like you to consider staying on for a week or so until we finish.”

  I vibrated in my seat at the thought. “Cool!”

  “A week? That isn’t enough time to excavate a mound of that size!”

  My uncle groaned with regret. “I know, but Mr. Hatzer is adamant on getting this thing off his property, and that’s all the time he’s giving me. We’ve arranged to start this Monday and be finished by next Monday.”

  When we'd approached the guy to get access to his land, he'd done everything but run us off with a shotgun. I'd been crushed. I just knew we would find something worth finding. “Sounds like this guy's not just unfriendly, but also a serious redneck twit,”

  “Ian Finn, that was uncalled for,” growled my dad.

  “Sorry, Dad.” I didn’t feel sorry in the least. “But, come on! It wouldn’t hurt him to leave the mound alone for a while. I'll bet it's been around for centuries. What would another few months hurt?”

  “I have to agree with Finn on this one, Jack. The guy is completely unglued about this. I tried to ask for more time, but that hill has him spooked. His timetable ain’t budging. We've got a week.”

  “We're gonna do this, right Dad?”

  He shook his head. “I can’t afford to be gone for a week this close to finals without a good reason. I’m in the Geology Department, not the Archeology Department, so they wouldn’t take this as a good excuse to be gone. In addition, you have your schoolwork and finals to study for. Your mom would skin me alive if I even mentioned it. You’ll just have to be satisfied with the weekend.”

  Crap, the first no. I usually had two more tries before he'd completely shut me down. I’d try to convince him later before being totally crushed. How many people get to be part of an excavation of a burial mound? Even a hack job like this was too cool to miss.

  The rest of the trip, I kept marshaling my arguments for a longer stay and thinking about the mound. A haunted Indian burial mound! How sweet was that? Dave and Jeff would pop when they heard about it. Of all my friends, they were the most excited about ghosts. They loved all the ghost-chasing shows on television, and they always talked about going out and hunting for ghosts themselves.

  We landed in twilight at a small muni airport called the Alexander something-or-other with a good-sized runway and a few buildings on-site. We landed and parked without incident. I got out of the cramped cockpit and stretched while I looked around at the tiny facility. The heat of the day had begun to lose its worst bite, but I still broke out in a sweat.

  After securing the plane, Uncle Mark stepped out, clapped his hands, and rubbed them together. “Okay, everybody ready to go check out the mound?”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “Tonight? Isn’t it a bit late?”

  “Nope. We’re right on time.”

  I shrugged and grinned. “Okay.”

  “Great! Let’s go.”

  My dad came around from the other side of the plane. He led us away to a graveled and weedy parking lot. A few cars were parked, but no one seemed to be waiting for us. My uncle didn’t even hesitate; he headed over to an old, beat up, once-red pickup truck. As much rust as paint covered the battered vehicle. He stopped at the rear of the truck and threw his luggage into the back with a hollow clunk. We followed suit as Mark bent over the rear bumper and emerged with a set of keys.

  “I had Dan leave these here for us.” After opening the driver’s side door and looking in, he turned to me. “Finn, I think you’ll be more comfortable in the back.”

  I peered in past him and had to agree. The once continuous seat was shredded in the middle where a large stick shift stuck up from the floor.

  Once my dad saw the seat, he agreed. He grinned at me. “Just don’t tell your mom. She’ll have a fit.”

  “You got it, Dad.”

  I tried to figure out how to get in the back. The truck sat on large shocks, so the bed sat too high to climb into comfortably. At last, I settled for scrambling up the bald rear tire and swinging my leg over. Not a suave and graceful move, but it did the trick.

  We took off with a screech of grinding gears, clanking metal, and a cloud of acrid blue smoke. Fortunately for my bottom, the trip took less than a half hour. By the time we arrived at the gate of the farm, I had a lot more sympathy for lotto balls than I had ever dreamed possible.

  Uncle Mark leaned out his window. “Hop out and get the gate, will you, Finn?”

  My exit from the truck couldn’t be called a hop, but I got out, and then opened the unlocked gate. I closed it behind the pickup after he drove through. As I looked toward the mound, my Spidey senses tingled again. Something seriously cool lurked here. When I “hopped” back in, Uncle Mark dropped his phone with irritation.

  “No answer.” His grumble came through the open rear cab window.

  I asked, “Who didn’t answer?”

  “I tried to call Ricky to let her know we were here, but she probably turned her cell phone off or it ran out of juice.”

  My interest perked up. A girl huh? I hoped she was cute.

  The truck ground into gear and got moving. As I was tossed around the back, my uncle explained that the owner of the farm had given us carte-blanche to come and go as we pleased.

  Before long, the path ended, and we parked the truck next to another vehicle at the edge of a clearing shaped like a
bite taken out of the woods.

  I climbed down, nursing a few more bruises than I had started with. The parked car, a high-end Jeep Cherokee, appeared brand new, and I took an instant disliking to whoever got to drive it. Lucky bastard.

  In the fading light, we made our way through a partially cleared area. Stumps of trees spread throughout the churned ground of the clearing. The previous crew had stopped right in the middle of their work. We picked our way over the broken ground. In the warm and still night air, the crickets, cicadas, and miscellaneous other bugs screeked, cheeped, and brrruped in their loud celebration of life. This year had not been one for a large brood of cicadas, which was fortunate. They can be so loud that they make it nearly impossible to talk.

  We walked by the giant, dark bulk of the bulldozer that sat silently at the side of the clearing. I could just imagine it tearing through the mound, crushing everything in its path, and I was glad that wasn’t going to happen. We came to the end of the clearing. The shadow of the mound protruded from the disturbed soil in the growing dark. Even in person, half hidden by the woods and the twilight, it looked disappointingly mundane. But, as daylight faded, I became certain something was here.

  “I thought it would be more… mysterious or something.”

  Mark turned to me, his jaw set with a serious expression. “Don’t judge too quickly. My scout, Dan, came out here a couple of nights ago and climbed that hill in the dark. He said it gave him the willies. He ended up running back to the car. Said the back of his hair stood on end, and he felt like something nasty was watching him. It spooked him so badly he won’t come out here at night. That’s why we’re just meeting Ricky here.”

  “After dark,” I added with amusement.

  My uncle saw the Morgenstern contingent’s skeptical stares. He sounded a little defensive. “Don’t forget, something happened to Hatzer and his men out here, too. They won’t come near it and he wants it gone. That’s his dozer. He didn’t even want to retrieve the thing!”

  It sounded to me like a guy spooking himself out. It was easy to do when you were alone in the dense Ohio woods, especially with the alien cry of the cicadas whirring in the background. I looked at my dad who rolled his eyes at me. I smiled back; the whole haunted mound shtick came across as hokey, but it was kind of cool anyway. Jeff and Dave would be sooo jealous!