chapter Twenty-Four
Arnie the swamp tour guide was the oldest living human I’d ever seen.
His lower jaw had shifted forward, giving him a toothless underbite. His nose was a huge, bulbous point jutting out from an otherwise sunken face. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper, and the sound of his lips smacking against his gums was louder than whatever he was saying.
His boat was a low wooden skiff that looked like it might sink under our collective weight. Arnie hiked his overalls up over his bare chest, a tuft of white hair peeking out from the bib. When he shuffled his way to the boat with one giant oar in hand, I turned to Holden with naked concern written over my features.
Holden imitated the twanging banjos from Deliverance.
“Sure, that pop-culture reference you know.”
“You got a pretty mouth, girl.” He winked.
“I hope you get eaten by a crocodile.”
“Alligator,” he corrected.
Arnie cleared his throat and angled his chin at the empty bench in the skiff.
“Close your eyes and pretend it’s Venice,” Holden suggested.
The moon was only a few days short of being full, and there was enough space between the sycamore trees and their blanket coverings of Spanish moss for a little light from the sky to make it all the way down to the brackish green water. Along the shore, the reflective eyes of wild animals shone like fireflies before vanishing.
We’d had to pay a premium for the night tour.
Arnie flicked on a spotlight mounted at the front of the boat, and a hundred yards away something splashed off the shoreline to escape being seen. I wondered how I would fare in one-on-one combat against an alligator. I didn’t particularly want to find out.
Holden plunked onto the bench and threw a booted foot over the side of the boat. “Come on, dear, let’s not hold up the tour.”
“’Urry up,” Arnie said. Smack, smack. He spit a wad of chewing tobacco into the water. Did they make a geriatric version of the stuff? Something you could gum into pulp when you didn’t have teeth left to chew with?
I sat next to Holden and pulled my leather jacket close around me. My gun was holstered beneath it, and I was glad to have it. I’d even thrown subtlety to the wind and strapped my dagger to my thigh. Arnie took one look at the Japanese-style knife, like a mini katana, and rolled his eyes. He must have thought I had a fantasy about being Angelina Jolie in Tomb Raider.
Once we were both in place, Arnie used the oar to push us off, and I was surprised by how sturdy the boat felt once we were on the move. Holden pulled his foot back inside after Arnie gave him a warning smack with the oar. Guess we weren’t going gator hunting with Gucci loafers tonight. What a shame.
We floated farther from Arnie’s brightly lit cabin and into the true dark of the swamp with only our spotlight and the moon to guide us. In the real darkness on either side of the skiff I felt like unseen eyes were watching us. I shuddered.
No wonder no one wanted night tours. The swamp at night was f*cking scary.
Mosquitoes buzzed around our heads, hungry with a bloodlust that would put the most menacing vampire to shame. Holden didn’t seem bothered by them, and I wondered if his absentee pulse had a role in that. If avoiding bug bites was a perk to the immortal hereafter, I might have to consider my destiny a bit more carefully.
From the dark spaces the spotlight couldn’t penetrate, night birds sang to each other, calling out warnings over our intrusion into their peaceful evening. More unseen animals slid into the water, and I wasn’t sure if they were doing it to escape us or to follow us more closely.
The farther into the swamp we drifted, the quieter and quieter it became, until all the calls and answers were distant echoes, and all I could hear were Arnie’s raspy breaths and the slice of the paddle in the water. For half an hour those were the only diversions in an otherwise eerie silence.
“’Ere,” Arnie announced as the skiff bumped up onto something solid. He added, “Out.”
“Out?” I looked to Holden. “We can’t be done.”
Arnie spit into the water and grunted. “’Splore.”
A dark mound of an island unfolded from the night air once I blinked away the haze of the spotlight. “You want us to go exploring?”
The guide shrugged a bony shoulder up, and it sank down immediately like his strings had been cut. “’Ave fun.” A suggestive wink to Holden.
He had to be kidding.
“What harm can it do?” Holden said before I could throttle Arnie. “We might find something to point us in the right direction.”
Since neither of us had the foggiest clue in hell where to look for La Sorcière, I had to admit touring the small island out of reach of Arnie’s beady little eyes was as good a place to start as any.
Holden climbed ashore first then helped me out.
“’Ifteen minutes. Here.” Arnie tapped the boat with his oar.
I led the way, even though Holden’s nocturnal eyesight was better than mine. Finding Eugenia was my task, and I felt it was essential I lead us to her. Besides, it would be good to know someone who could see in the dark was walking behind me if any unexpected surprises popped up.
After five minutes of weaving through overgrown vines and slipping on the stinky muck covering the ground, I lost sight of the spotlight on Arnie’s boat.
Had we gone that far? The island didn’t seem big enough for us to wander so far we’d be unable to see the million-watt bulb.
A few yards ahead of us the bushes rustled. Twigs snapped as the weight of a body in motion bent them underfoot.
Holden and I stopped walking simultaneously.
“Shit,” I said, before stumbling backwards into Holden’s arms. “Go back. Go back.” I didn’t want to know what was hanging out on a pitch-black island in the middle of a swamp. We made it towards the shore at a run. I was in the middle of shouting a warning to Arnie when we cleared the thin tree line and came upon emptiness.
No boat.
No Arnie.
I scanned the shoreline for the light from his skiff, but there was nothing there. We’d been abandoned.
From the heart of the island the sound of one creature walking was joined by a chorus of more footsteps. A half-dozen distinctive individuals were moving in our direction from various points in the brush. Holden pushed me behind him, and my foot splashed into the murky water. A few feet to my left something huge slipped into the abyss.
“Holden,” I whispered, “we need to get away from the water.”
He allowed us a foot or two of clearance, but it wasn’t enough to make me feel secure. I watched the Discovery Channel. In this scenario I was the stupid gazelle bending over to get a drink right before the monster jumped out of the water and ate me headfirst.
In the trees, the movements stopped as suddenly as they’d started. The thrashing sounds of predators on the hunt died away, and all I could hear was my own breathing and the chirp of nocturnal insects.
We had to get off this island somehow, and swimming sure as hell wasn’t an option.
The first man materialized from the woods as smoothly and soundlessly as a ghost. Except he reeked of wolf. He skin was almond brown and streaked with a brackish green mud. The same mud caked his hair into a makeshift mohawk. At some point, probably years ago, his pants had been jeans, but now they resembled a denim grass skirt that barely concealed his privates. The shredded jeans were the only clothing he wore.
Down the shoreline another man appeared, his hair caked into dreadlocks by the same muddy goop. He was wearing a loincloth fashioned from a pair of LSU sweatpants. Dark patterns were smeared across his chest in a display that looked like it had been drawn by a five-year-old.
Another two men appeared behind the one with dreadlocks. If I hadn’t been able to smell the wolf scent coming off them, the yellow glow in the eyes of the newcomers would have been a pretty obvious tip-off as to what they were.
Four-on-two was nothing. I didn’t care how tough these guys looked. I had a vampire sentry with me and I probably could have handled these guys on my own. There were on the sickly side of skinny.
I was still more concerned about the alligators in the water and how Holden and I were going to get back to the mainland. That was until another six men emerged behind the guy with the mohawk. This new development skewed the odds a little.
“Arnie brought us a present,” the one with dreadlocks said. “And dinner.”
All ten moved forwards as one.
“Get back, you mange-infested freaks,” I said, and snarled at them.
This gave them pause. “She smells like wolf,” Dreadlocks announced.
“Keen nose, doggy. You guys smell like shit.”
Mohawk smiled and stepped closer. Holden and I had nowhere to go unless we wanted to take a moonlight swim with some hungry reptiles. I was thankful for the cover of Holden’s body. It meant the mutts couldn’t see me un-holster my gun.
“You’re a long way from the pack,” Mohawk said, and laughed. “You’re with the Loups-Garous now.”
“I don’t care who you are. Let us leave and no one gets hurt.”
They laughed in unison. If they didn’t smell lupine, I would have guessed hyena from the mad chuckling they were doing. I slid around Holden and put my loaded gun in the open laughing mouth of Mohawk.
“I’m sorry. I don’t think you took me seriously the first time I said it. You will let us go.” My tone was pure threat.
One of the wolfs let out a short yip, and I made the mistake of believing it was a sound of concern until more rustling from the woods broke my concentration and another dozen wolves—all men in various states of undress—joined their brothers on the beach.
The Loups-Garous now outnumbered us on a level that put Holden and me in a position where we couldn’t win. I could blow off Mohawk’s head right now, but the clip didn’t hold twenty-two bullets, and I couldn’t reload and achieve perfect aim fast enough to take down the ones closest to me before someone took me out.
I pulled the gun out of Mohawk’s mouth and returned to Holden.
The new arrivals all had eyes that gleamed yellow, barely concealing the beasts within. They looked hungry, but the kind of hunger varied depending on whether they were focusing on Holden or on me. I held my gun ready even though I doubted I’d get a chance to use it.
“Now would be a good time to start humming the Deliverance theme.”
Holden’s arm snaked around my waist, and he pulled me close, showing possession. I don’t think these guys cared if he called dibs.
“What’s the plan?” he whispered.
“Don’t die.”