Bayou Moon - Andrews, Ilona [53]
“It’s like a fight,” William said. “You attack or you dodge. If you hesitate, you’ll die. If you make a mistake and get cut, you ignore the pain until the enemy is dead. You made a decision and took a wound. Slap a bandage on it and move on. You can feel sorry and second-guess yourself later, after you’ve won and you’ve got leave, a bottle, and a woman.”
Cerise stared at him for a second.
He probably shouldn’t have said that last bit.
A powerful bellow rolled through the swamp. The hair on William’s arms rose. Something ancient, huge, and brutal hid in the gloom, watching them with hungry eyes, and when it roared, it was as if the swamp itself gained voice to declare its might before swallowing them whole.
Another bellow joined the first, rolling from the left. William raised his crossbow.
“The old gators are singing,” Cerise told him.
He peered at the darkness between the colossal cypresses guarding the stream, but saw nothing except twilight gloom.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “For trying to make me feel better and for saving Urow. It wasn’t your fight.”
“Yes, it was,” he told her.
Something shifted in the branches to the left. William raised his bow. Whatever the thing was, it was humanoid and fast.
The shape scuttled through the branches, wearing gloom like a mantle, and leaped to the next tree. Stocky body, black hair. A second thing dashed through the branches on the right. This one within crossbow range.
“Don’t shoot,” Cerise said. “It’s Urow’s children.”
The one on the left sprinted and dived into the water off the branch. The gray body shot through water, and the boy launched himself onto the deck.
They swam like fish. William made a mental note never to fight one in the water.
The kid rose, dripping water. His face was young, sixteen or seventeen, but his body was thick and muscled like that of a bear. The boy glanced at the gray man’s body and bared his teeth in a feral snarl.
“Copper poisoning,” Cerise barked. “Tell your mother, Gaston.”
The boy dived into the water.
The stream made a tight turn and opened into a pond, cradled by giant cypresses. A house perched on stilts, with a small dock. Built of logs and stone, with a roof sheathed in green moss, the house looked like it had grown from the swamp like a mushroom.
A woman ran onto the dock and clutched a rail. Bright red hair fell in a braid from her shoulders. Urow’s wife.
Cerise snapped the reins, pulling a burst of speed from the exhausted rolpie. They docked with a bump.
The woman glared at them. William had a feeling that if her eyes could shoot fire, both he and Cerise would’ve been burned to a crisp.
“Damn it, Cerise. What did you do to him?”
Cerise’s face clenched into a rigid mask. She turned her back to the woman. “William, can you help me lift him?”
“Follow me,” Urow’s wife snapped and took off.
William grasped Urow under his arms and paused, unsure how to get four hundred pounds of deadweight onto the dock. Another of Urow’s kids surfaced and pulled himself onto the boat. This one was older, layered with thick slabs of muscle like his father. He grasped his dad’s legs and together they hauled him onto the pier and to the house.
“Hurry!” Urow’s wife yelled. “On the floor here.”
William followed the boy through the door. They maneuvered through the cramped inside into a dimly lit room and lowered Urow on the stack of quilts.
Urow’s wife bent over her husband. The swelling was half an inch from his throat. “Mart! Herbs!”
The boy ran into the kitchen.
Urow’s wife dropped on her knees, threw open a large box, and pulled out a scalpel sealed in plastic. “Cerise, tracheotomy tube, now.”
Cerise tore at another plastic bag.
The red-haired woman crossed herself and sliced her husband’s neck with the scalpel.
William escaped outside.
WILLIAM stood on the dock and watched hundreds of tiny worms crawl up the roots of the cypress. The worms glowed with gentle pastel colors: turquoise, lavender, pale lemon. The entire pond was bathed in the eerie glow. He once had a drink in a bar with LED glasses that lit up