Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [31]
Lightning flashed. Thunder rolled, shaking the leaves. The air smelled of scorched sky. Heavy, cold drops drummed on the cypresses, at first a few, then more and more, until finally the clouds burst and a torrent showered the swamp, so dense even he could barely see beyond a few feet.
William raised his face to the dark sky and swore.
Cerise turned to him. The rain had soaked her, turning her clothes into a single dark mass and mixing with the mud on her face. She looked like she had sprouted from the Mire itself, like some shrub from a mud bank. Bloodshot eyes stared at him. She was running on fumes.
Cerise opened her mouth. The words came out slowly. “Don’t worry, you won’t melt. Not sweet enough.”
“You see those dots I mentioned, you tell me.”
“Will do.”
They kept going. The boat scraped the ground and became wedged.
“We’ll have to c-c-carry it,” Cerise said, swiping her bag.
William shouldered his rucksack. She lifted the nose of the boat.
“I’ve got it,” he told her.
“It’s heavy.”
“I’ll manage.” He flipped the boat over and hoisted it on his shoulders. He could carry her and the boat for several miles, but she didn’t need to know that. His field of vision shrank to the small space directly beneath his feet, the rest taken up by dark boat and Cerise’s jacket and legs. They moved on.
Water and mud soaked William to the bone. It was under his leathers and in his boots. His socks formed soggy clumps that bunched against his feet. He would give a year of his life to shed the wet clothes and run on all fours. But the girl and his load kept him in human skin.
He missed his trailer. His small, shabby trailer, which was dry and had a flat-screen TV and beer in the fridge. And dry socks. That was one of the things he loved most about the Broken. He could buy all the socks he ever wanted.
Cerise stopped and he nearly rammed her with the damn boat. “What is it?”
“We missed the turnoff!” she yelled over the storm. “The stream must’ve changed course because of the rain. We’re too far to the left. We need to go that way, to the lake!”
She waved her hand to the right, at the gloom between the trees.
Everything that could go wrong did. Never failed.
William turned and followed her through the brush. A familiar ghostly pressure brushed his skin. They were near the boundary. For a furious second he thought she’d led him back to it in a circle.
She stopped again. He jerked back. Impossible woman.
Cerise pointed. “Look!”
He shifted the boat to see. In front of them the wide expanse of the lake stretched like a pane of muddy glass. On their left a dock protruded into the water and at the base of the dock sat a house.
Dark windows. No trace of smoke or human scents in the air. Nobody home.
The road by it looked too smooth—paved. William focused and made out the outlines of a satellite dish on the roof. A Broken house. He was right—they were near the boundary.
Cerise leaned closer. “Sometimes the Mire makes pockets that lead to the Broken. They’re usually tiny and disappear after a while.”
He bent to her. “We hit that pocket, the Broken will strip you of your magic. A cure for all your ills.”
A tiny light flared in her eyes.
Lightning struck, the world’s heart skipping a beat.
A dark object broke the surface of the lake, rising out of the water.
William hurled the boat aside and shoved Cerise back, behind him.
The dark thing stood upright. William stared, his eyes amplifying the low light.
Seven feet tall, the creature rose on thick columnar legs. Two eight-inch-long bone claws thrust from its wrists, protruding past its fingers. Its head looked human enough, but the rough bumps distorted the outline of its body, as if it had been carved out of rough stone by someone in a hurry.
Lightning flashed again and he saw it, clear as day in the split second of light. Mad bloodshot eyes stared at him from a human face ending in an oversized