by Lisa Jackson
Fangs clamped down hard.
“Aaaah!”
Pain screamed through his arm as the fiend’s teeth sliced into his flesh. “God in heaven no!” Mathias cried, horror tearing through his body.
The demon wrenched on his wrist and he screamed out again. “Please, don’t!”
“Shhh!” The creature raised its dark head and blood—the priest’s blood—dripped from its horrid lips. “Be gone,” it hissed, spraying Mathias with his own lifeblood, a forked tongue visible through those blood-smeared incisors.
Holy Father, what kind of beast from hell was this?
Stricken, the priest fell to his knees, scrabbling for his rosary, sending up prayer after prayer in his terror-riddled, near-paralyzed state. What had he gotten himself into? What?
He heard voices. From the other side of the church. Dear God, he couldn’t be found like this…had no explanation. The fiend turned and ran, sweeping almost silently across an expanse of lawn, then into the darkness.
Mathias crumpled into a heap. Tears tracked from his eyes. Tears of fear. Tears of remorse. Tears of a broken, faithless man.
“Our Father,” he started to mumble, but the words stuck in his throat. His tongue was thick and awkward, his repentance too little, too late. He’d gone too far. Crossed a burning threshold from which there was no return. Prayer wouldn’t help. Confession, the ultimate cleanser of all sins, was no longer his salvation.
The truth of the matter was that he, like so many before him, had sold his very soul to the devil.
And Satan wanted his due.
CHAPTER 16
Boomer Moss had hunted gators all his life. Sometimes he’d done it all legal with a tag, in season, and sometimes, like tonight, not. He figured alligators were mean sumbitches who deserved to die, and if he could make a few bucks off their hides, their heads, and their meat, all the better. He was doin’ the world a big fat favor by takin’ the motherfuckers out, one slithery life at a time.
The fact that there was a season for the huntin’ and tags to be purchased and forms to be sent into the government really got his balls in an itch. His family had been hunting the swamps, ponds, lakes, and canals around New Orleans for over two hundred years. The government had no business, no damned business tellin’ him what to do.
Besides, huntin’in the swamps in the dark was a rush like none other. Boomer had a few beers stashed in a cooler as he trolled the black waters and passed the ghostly, skeletonlike trunks and roots of the cypress trees. He had his snares set, but you could never tell when you might come across a gator in the water, dormant season or not.
Sometimes he’d kill himself a raccoon or an opossum or a snake if he could catch one. He figured these swamps belonged to him. Here he ruled, and the bounty of the boggy land was his for the taking. He didn’t want to mess with any tags—hell, no. And he knew a raccoon or skunk was better bait than the cow guts sanctioned by the state.
Again, the government should have better things to worry about. Christ! Using the beam of a heavy-duty flashlight, Boomer scoured the water, hoping to see eyes emerge from the darkness, just over the inky water’s surface. The gators were sluggish this time of year, most dormant, but not impossible to find.
He had his traps set and come morning he expected to have at least one of the fuckers, maybe as many as five or six if he got lucky. For now, he’d troll, check the bait he had strung up a couple of feet above the water, hoping to lure a gator into propelling himself to leap up and snag himself on the hook.
He saw their eyes in the darkness, realized they not only saw him, but sensed him, as they did any movement in the water. Big dang toothed lizards. He heard a splash, saw one slide into the water not far from a nest where the grass had been beaten down, noticed the mound of mud and grass that indicated where the eggs had been laid.
“Come on, Mama,” he said in a cooing voice. “You all come over here to Daddy.” He waited, searching, his twenty-two pistol in his hand. But the she-gator hid in the shadows, away from the beam of his light, and he moved on, slowly, one hand on the tiller, the sounds of the night filling his ears: the whirr of bats’ wings, the hoot of an owl, the croak of bullfrogs, the hum of a few insects over the rumble of the boat’s small outboard motor. Every now and again he heard a splash, a fish jumping or a gator sliding into the still water.
He spent long hours trolling, not getting close enough to shoot a damned gator and haul him into the boat, but scouting out the swamp. Through the hours, he downed a six-pack of Lone Star and two of Mindy Jo’s fried oyster po’ boy sandwiches.
Finally, as the night waned, he checked his snares. The first was empty, the bait stripped clean.
“Shit,” he said, steering his boat further to the next trap, and there, hanging partially in the air, was a gator. Eight feet if he was an inch. “Hallelujah, brother,” Boomer said, moving close enough that he could raise his pistol to the critter’s small brain. He fired, the sound a sharp report. Had to make sure the reptile was good and dead before cuttin’ him down. Boomer sure as hell didn’t want any four-hundred-pound gator thrashing around in the boat. It was tricky enough dealing with a dead one.
He prodded at the gator with an oar, then certain the big reptile was indeed dead, carefully lowered the massive carcass into the bottom of the boat. The bull alligator was a prime specimen, not many scars on his hide. He’d fetch a damned good price. Feeling as if the night wasn’t a complete waste, Boomer checked his other snares, found the bait still hanging over the water without any gators attached. Might as well leave the traps baited for now. He could still get lucky.
He turned the boat back toward the dock where his truck was parked. He didn’t bother with gutting his prize, just wrapped the gator in a wet tarp, winched him into the truck bed, and drove back to the house, a small single-wide set on concrete blocks deep in the woods.
Boomer felt good. He’d go home, shower, then wake his wife and screw the devil out of her, just as he always did after a successful hunting trip. He could hardly wait, his hands clenched over the steering wheel as the old Chevy bounced and shimmied through the potholes in the gravel lane leading to the house.
Mindy Jo never complained about being waked for the sex, no siree. She was probably at home now, waiting for him, her cunt already wet. She loved it when the old testosterone was flowin’ fast and hot after the thrill of a hunt. He’d spend hours in the big old bed they shared, pushin’ her to the brink over and over again, rutting over her like a damned stallion.
She’d get so turned on she’d even let him slap her buttocks in the process. Man, she loved that!
At the house, he parked in the garage, put some ice over the tarp, then went inside. He decided to forget about the shower and see what she’d think if he smelled of the hunt…he’d done that a time or two and this morning it seemed like a damned good idea, so he stripped out of his hunting clothes, left the camouflage shirt and pants in a pile in the kitchen in front of the new washer and dryer, then walked into the bedroom.
King of the realm.
It was dark, the black-out curtains drawn, and it smelled of cigarette smoke and the damned cats she insisted on keeping around the place.
“Honey, izzat you all?” she mumbled, her face buried in the pillow.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “it’s me, all right, and I’m horny as hell. Caught myself one helluva bull gator.”
“Oh.”
He touched her thigh with a finger and she rolled away, making a disturbed, bothered sound. He didn’t buy it. Kneeling on the mattress beside her, his dick rock hard, he touched her again. “Did you hear me? He’s a big un.” He slipped his hand around her body, touching her breast.
“Oh, Boomer. Not now. Leave me alone.”
“No way, baby,” he said, and she sighed, already waking. Maybe he’d get lucky. Maybe she’d suck him off.
“Ooh, God, you stink.” She rolled over and faced him, her mouth only inches from his cock. “Didn’t you shower?”
“Nah!”
“Oh, God, Boomer. Go clean up!”
But he’d already leaned down to kiss her and he took one of her small, soft hands and placed it on his penis. “I can’t wait, baby. You’re just so damned beautiful.”
“And you’re a lyin’ son of a bitch. It’s too dark in here to see anything.”
“I see you in my head, honey.”
“What a bunch of crap,” she said, but her fingers were already flexing around him and as he came to her, she opened her mouth, kissing him with a fever that was always with her in the morning. More and more it seemed that at night she was just too tired for sex and slapped him away, but she woke up horny in the morning and that was fine with him.
He rolled atop her and decided since he’d been up all night as it was, he wasn’t going to spend too much time getting her to come. No siree. He would work fast and hard, touch all her hot spots right off the bat and once he’d felt her start to move against him, going into that low moan of hers, he would finish the job. But, he’d rushed things. Misjudged her reaction. She was a little tight this morning, not fully awake or into it like she usually was, and by the time he’d got her slicked up inside, he couldn’t wait and came in a rush, before she was ready, flopping down on her just like the dead gator.
Which really pissed her off.
“You big oaf,” she declared, pushing him to the side of the bed. “What the hell do ya think ye’re doin?”
“It’s all right, baby, I’ll take care of you.”
“Forget it. I’m not in the mood.” He tried kissing her roughly and she pushed him away. “Stop it, Boomer. You got your damned rocks off, now just leave me alone.” She rolled to the side of the bed and scraped her fingers across the nightstand, feeling for her cigarettes. One of her stupid cats walked across his pillow, its tail brushing his nose and reminding him that they were never alone, not with all the goddamned felines crawling through the house.
Boomer closed his eyes and figured he’d sleep for a few hours. The gator was safe, iced up as it was. He heard the click of a lighter, then smelled burning tobacco as she inhaled. Tired as he was, he fell asleep and only opened an eye when he felt her stir nearly six hours later. He wanted to sleep longer—hell, he deserved it—but he had to check on the gator and make sure it was still cool and besides, the damned banty roosters that belonged to Jed Stomp, his stupid-ass neighbor, were crowing up a high-pitched raucous that could wake the dead.
A bit of a headache nagged at him as he climbed out of bed. He gave Mindy Jo’s naked, round little butt a playful slap and headed back to the kitchen, where he pulled on his hunting clothes again.
The sun was high in the winter sky, the day promising to have a little heat for January. A crow sat on the peak of the roof, eyeing him and emitting irritating caws.
“Oh, shut up,” he grumbled, wishing he had his twenty-two. Damn noisy thing.
In the carport, he opened the bed of the truck, then worked to slide the gator and the tarp out onto the gravel of the driveway. The crow’s caws were echoed by a jay who’d come to squawk. To add to the noise, he heard the damn squeal of the coffee grinder from inside the house. Mindy Jo was up and going through her ritual of grinding coffee, which he thought was a big bother when you could buy a can of Folgers for less money at the Piggly Wiggly.
Ignoring the morning cacophony, Boomer grabbed his sharpest knife and went to cuttin’ on the gator. It was hard work, but he was already counting the dollar signs in his head and thinking that he’d go check the other traps later. Maybe he’d gotten lucky. Just about finished with the messy job, he heard the screen door creak open, then slam shut.
Mindy Jo, wrapped in some silky Asian robe, pink slippers, and faux ostrich feathers, walked onto the screened-in porch. She held a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other. Three of those miserable cats wound around her leg. The gray tom, with no tail and only one eye, had the nerve to glare at him. God, he hated that stupid lynx.
“He is a big un,” she said, not stepping off the porch as she eyed the alligator’s carcass. “Just get one?” She took a drag from her cigarette and tipped back her head to let out a stream of smoke from one side of her mouth.
“Fer now. I’ll check the traps again later this morning.” He was sweating, working hard as he eviscerated the animal. “And he ain’t too scarred. Skin’s good. The hide’ll fetch a good price.”
“Nice,” she said, drawing hard on her cigarette. The banty rooster started up again. Mindy Jo ignored the screeching. “Ya want grits and bacon?”
“Yeah.”
“Eggs?”
“’Course…hey…what the hell?” He saw something that just looked wrong. He’d gutted a helluva lot of alligators in his lifetime and never had he seen one of ’em’s stomach look so oddly shaped. “What the fuck you been feedin’ on, big fella?”
“Don’t you dare open up his guts here!” Mindy Jo screeched.
Too late. Boomer’s curiosity had already gotten the better of him. He slit the stomach wide and the inside, smelling of stomach acid and dead fish, opened up.
Boomer jumped back. “Holy shit!” He nearly threw up at the sight.
“What?” Mindy Jo asked.
“I think we’re in trouble,” he said, wondering how the hell he was going to explain the obviously poached alligator and already trying on several lies to save his own skin. But Boomer did have a conscience. “Big trouble.” How could he explain this? “Call the sheriff.”
“The sheriff?” Mindy Jo’s slippers clipped down the two steps and along the brick path toward him.
“Do as I say. This gator ain’t been snackin’ on Fig Newtons, that’s fer sure.”
The clicking stopped and her shadow passed over him and onto the open belly of the dead reptile. “Lord, Jesus!” she whispered, her eyes bugging at the smelly contents of the gator’s gut. Amongst the crayfish, frogs, turtles, and fish lay an arm, a very human female arm and hand, painted fingernails and all.
Stroke, stroke, stroke.
Kristi cut through the water of the pool cleanly, breathing easily, feeling her muscles begin to strain. She’d been at it over half an hour, was going for forty minutes.
The smell of chlorine was everywhere and there was mist on the windows of the college’s pool house, but aside from an older guy several lanes over, she had the water to herself.
She hadn’t swum in over a month and it felt great. Energizing. Cleared her mind.
Stroke.
She thought of Jay and had to admit she liked seeing him again. But just as a friend…
Stroke.
She hadn’t found anything in Tara Atwater’s personal items, but she’d look again. There had to be some evidence about her disappearance in the same damned apartment in which she’d lived.
Stroke.
Ariel and Kristi’s father were still very much alive. So her black and white vision thing might just be a physical thing, not some kind of special ESP or visions of the future.
Stroke.
There were no such things as vampires. And she was going to talk to Professor Grotto and see what he had to say for himself. Then, perhaps, the police.
Stroke.
Maybe she should call Jay…. No way. She needed his help, yes, but that was it. She was not trying to start something up with him again.
Stroke.
Liar! There’s something about him that gets you.
Damn!
She couldn’t think about Jay McKnight as a man. That part of their relationship was long over. Still…she found the way he pushed his hair from his eyes endearing, the boyish hint of a smile in the corner of his mouth fascinating, and the way his eyes darkened with humor or interest compelling. Dear God, she was a mess when it came to that man.
She told herself that she didn’t want him before and she couldn’t want him now. The whole forbidden fruit thing? Totally overrated. Yet she was thinking about him in ways she shouldn’t, and that really ticked her off.
She glanced over the water’s aquamarine surface and realized the old man who had been swimming laps when she’d dived into the pool had already left. She was alone in the pool house with the steamy windows. Outside it seemed as if night were descending, late afternoon shadows creeping through the windows.
She suddenly sensed that someone was watching her through the glass, someone she couldn’t see. Her body shivered convulsively. Chiding herself for her fear, she dabbed at her face.
Don’t overreact. All your research on the missing girls is getting to you.
Inside the women’s locker room, she tore off her wet swimsuit, showered, and changed into jeans and a sweatshirt. As she left the building, once again she wished she had her bike instead of having to walk across campus. It wasn’t as if she were alone; plenty of students were on the walkways heading to a late class or the library or their dorms. A lot of the people she passed were in groups or listening to iPods or talking on cell phones. Nothing was out of the ordinary, except that she caught a glimpse of a tall, blond girl she’d seen in some of her classes, and the girl’s skin changed in front of her eyes, the color leeching from her skin.
This was nuts!
Hadn’t Kristi just convinced herself that the whole gray pasty look was just some trick of her mind? Ariel was still alive. Her father was still walking the earth, chasing bad guys for the New Orleans PD. This black/ white thing was a figment of her imagination, her problem. Still…
Kristi kept on following the pale girl who was striding at record speed past the chapel. She nearly had to jog to keep her in sight and was worried that she was leaving All Saints, heading to a parking lot off campus.
“Damn,” she said, wondering what she’d say to the blonde, if and when she finally caught up with her. Are you feeling okay? Man, you sure look pale. Do you need a study partner for Dr. Grotto’s class? “Lame, lame, and lame,” she muttered under her breath as the girl reached the gate of Wagner House, walked inside, and hurried up the steps.