Bite Deeper (Keepers of the Swamp Book 3)

by T. S. Joyce

  “Yeah, just lose ’em, Mae Lynn,” Gene agreed from right behind him. “Them’s victim shoes. You cain’t even run from a gator in them shoes.”

  She’d spent a hundred dollars on these heels, specifically to match her black dress with the tiny pink flowers on it. The heels were glossy black and had the same shade of pink on the heel! Hobbits had rings, but she…May Lynn Dafoe…she had her shoes.

  Which stabbed into the earth again with a sucking sound, and got stuck for good. Mae pitched forward with a yelp, but was rescued by an unlikely hero. Robert Polk, Tabby’s next-door neighbor, appeared like a phantom, and palmed her head like a basketball to keep her upright. The country-strong behemoth picked her right up and slung her over his shoulder like a burlap sack. He squatted down like a pro-bodybuilder, and easily plucked her heels from the mud, then moseyed on over to the house before she could even catch her breath.

  “I can’t do it. I can’t do it!” he said. “I can’t watch you poke all them holes in Tabby’s pristine yard.”

  Mae arched and lifted up off his back just enough to see the weed-riddled, uneven yard. She scoffed, “It’s covered in dandelions!”

  “Yeah and you’re squishin’ ’em all. Stabbin’ the life out of ’em.” Old Robert plopped her unceremoniously onto the porch and patted her on the head like he used to do when she was a kid. She winced because he was still very strong and clearly did not know his own strength.

  Smoothing her hair back into place, she muttered, “Thank you, I think.”

  He clapped her on the shoulder and sent her sprawling through the open doorway. “You’re welcome. Now go on say hi to Tabby.”

  “Tabby is deceased,” she reminded him.

  Robert and Uncle Jeb stood just inside the old home and snorted in unison. “Don’t tell her ghost that,” Robert muttered.

  Chills rippled up her arms. “That’s not funny. Both of you need to stop talking about the G-word. You’ll conjure her.”

  “Good!” Jeb said over his shoulder as he headed for one of the two side-by-side refrigerators. “This town will be fuckin’ boring without her. Bring her back!” He yanked open the door of the fridge on the left, the “beer fridge” as Tabby had deemed it, pulled out a beer, and popped it open. The metal top bounced onto the pile of other beer tops people had just left on the ground.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Mae whispered, bolting for the fridge. She knelt down and started scooping up the tops to clean the floor.

  “What are you doing?” Jeb asked, staring down at her.

  “Cleaning! There’s a three-day Celebration of Life here, and Tabby would not have appreciated you heathens dirtying her house.”

  “Girl, look around. Ain’t no dirt here. She ain’t been gone long enough for the house to be dirtied. Did you really not read the invite?”

  “I’m here, aren’t I?” Mae barked, standing with a scoop of beer tops in her hands.

  “There was a list of rules attached to the back of every invite, written by your wild-ass great granny, and one of them rules was that we were to drink beer for three days straight and leave the pile of tops on the floor.”

  “For what?”

  “For good luck.”

  Mae rolled her eyes closed and counted to three to calm her simmering frustration. “I’ve never heard of a pile of beer caps being called good luck.”

  “Well, no one has. Tabby made it up.”

  Mae dropped them all and shook her head at them tinkling onto the ground. She’d forgotten so much about this place in the time she’d been gone. It had frozen in one spot, while she had moved on, grown, changed. Right now, in this moment, it felt like she had one foot in this world and one foot in hers, and her head was spinning.

  “I’m really going to miss her,” Mae uttered softly.

  Jeb’s hand squeezed her shoulder comfortingly, and he handed her the open beer. “She always looked forward to Mondays and Thursdays.”

  Mae traced her finger around the lip of the bottle. “When I called her?”

  “Yep. She said you never missed a call. No matter what was going on, she would make sure she was back at the house in time to talk to you. Every Monday and Thursday like clockwork.”

  “Yeah, well, we mostly just told each other the dirty jokes we’d learned that week.”

  Jeb smiled brightly. “Filthy jokes were her I-love-yous.”

  “Hmm.” She was easing the cold drink to her lips to take a swig, but Jeb put his hand over the beer before she made it to her puckered mouth-hole.

  “That’s not for you. That’s for Tabby.”

  “Whuuut?”

  He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket, flicked his wrist, and a list flapped open. He cleared his throat. “Rule number eight. When entering my castle after I croak, each attendee must take a beer from the fridge and put it in my hand. I don’t have to explain myself, but some of you dipshits will need an explanation on why you have to waste a whole beer on a dead lady, so here it is. You all need to get some closure. I know y’all will miss me and the town will never be the same for eternity, so you can give me a beer and say goodbye. Don’t give me none of the shitty beers either. Wouldn’t it be funny if I faked my own death so when you put the beer in my hand, I woke up and scared you? Boo! Hahahaha. Good luck and cheers.” Jeb looked up from the list and laughed. “You should see your face right now.”

  Well she was probably white as a sheet because the blood was definitely draining from her face. “Okaaaaay. Where is she?”

  “In the chicken.”

  “You mean the kitchen?”

  “Nope, I mean in the chicken.”

  When Mae blinked slowly, Jeb’s grin got even bigger. “In the dining room,” he specified.

  Heaving a sigh, Mae made her way to the door of the dining room through a couple of clusters of cousins and aunts and two old men who were crying into their red solo cups. She closed her eyes for a moment, steeled herself to say goodbye to a woman she truly loved. Tabby was one of a kind.

  But when she opened her eyes, Mae could immediately tell what Jeb had meant. Someone had made an atrocious coffin that was painted like Squirts, Tabby’s favorite chicken. It even had a giant paper mâché head and beak at one end of the coffin, and tail-feathers on the other.

  Mae stepped slowly to the edge and looked at her great grandma. She wore heavy make-up, a black spaghetti-strap shirt with her ample cleavage hanging out, and she had a smile frozen to her face. Even her long gray hair had been curled and hair sprayed into her favorite look. In her hand was a beer.

  “Hey, Tabby,” Mae said softly. She pulled the old beer from her hand and put the cold one in it. “This is weird.” She looked around. The dining room was just as she remembered except, instead of a table, there was a giant chicken coffin. The cream color on the walls was the same and the blue carpet, too. Out the doorway, she could see family clustering up, talking about memories of Tabby. Everyone knew their place here still, but Mae felt like an outsider.

  “Now with you gone, I’ll be even more of an outsider when I come home,” she whispered. “You were always the one that made sure I belonged.” She set the beer she’d taken from Tabby at the end of the nearest row of old beer bottles left before her. So many had visited her, so many had brought her a beer. So many had been affected by this woman in her lifetime.

  “I’ll always look up to you,” Mae said low. “I’m really gonna miss all your filthy jokes and inappropriateness. All the life lessons you taught me, even when you thought I wasn’t paying attention.”

  There was a folded piece of paper on her lap that said Read Me in Tabby’s handwriting. Mae opened it up and read it out loud. “Donnie, if you come in here whinin’ about wasting beer and you drink even one sip of my libations, I’ll haunt you forever. Someone feed my chickens.”

  Mae laughed despite her sadness. Tabby was a character in life and in death. She folded the paper, put it back in the casket, and then made her way toward the front door. She needed out of here
, and Tabby had given her a chore as an excuse.

  It was raining hard by the time she stepped back off the bottom porch stair, but she didn’t care much now. She was barefoot and the mud felt so good against the soles of her feet. How long had it been since she felt the earth between her toes? She smiled and greeted the groups of people milling about under an awning beside the house. They had the firepit going and music playing on an old radio. She recognized almost everyone. That’s what happened with big families and small towns.

  She walked to the chicken coop, or chicken castle as Tabby had called it. The thing was a fortress, painted red with white trim, with a big metal fence enclosure around it so the chickens could run around without being eaten by the plethora of predators that roamed these parts.

  And pacing right in front of the coop gate was Squirts, the oldest chicken Mae had ever seen. Half of its mottled brown feathers were missing off its boney body, and her eyes were glazed over like a zombie’s, but though she was as ugly as sin, Squirts made up for it with speed and personality.

  Mae made her way to the small feed barn behind the coop and filled a small pail. But when she turned to head back to the coop, there was a massive German Shepherd sitting in the barn doorway.

  She startled hard and gasped. It was dark in here, and the light was muted from the rain outside, so it was hard to make out its facial features, but it was massive. When had Tabby gotten a dog?

  “Are you a nice dog? Or a not-nice dog?” she muttered nervously. Sometimes when she was scared, talking out loud helped.

  She approached slowly, and when the dog cocked its head, one of its large ears flopped over. It wagged its tail. A friendly dog then. She could see it better the closer she got to it. A German Shepherd? It looked familiar.

  “Heeeeey,” she crooned, holding out her hand for it to sniff. “I used to know a dog like you. His name was Max. He belonged to a boy I used to love. You’re much bigger than Max, though.” Good gah, was he ever. When he sniffed her knuckles, the tips of his ears came up to her chest, and he was sitting down. “Your daddy must’ve been a Clydesdale or something.”

  He licked her knuckles once, froze, then stood and backed away. And away and away until he was standing in the rain outside. She didn’t understand. He wouldn’t meet her eyes. The dog slunk away, tail lowered, ears back, trot graceful. She followed him out. “Come here. I won’t hurt you, come back.”

  The giant dog looked over his shoulder once before he headed for the woods, and in that second, something struck her like lighting. Those eyes. Those soft brown eyes. They looked sooooo…familiar. She’d looked into those eyes a thousand times. The shape and color of them were stamped onto her soul.

  It was hard to catch her breath. She clutched the pail of chicken feed to her chest as she watched him disappear into the trees.

  “Are you okay?” Jeb called from the house. “You look like you seen a ghost!”

  “I’m…I’m…” What had she seen? A dog. Just a dog. With the same eyes as Cole. Whiskey brown eyes that got lighter near the pupils. It had to be the grief over losing Tabby, and the overwhelming feelings of being back here. The hurt was making her reach for things that were familiar.

  “When did Tabby get a dog?” she asked as Jeb approached, holding his flannel shirt over his head like the rain was going to mess up his wild tufts of gray hair.

  “Oh, that ain’t Tabby’s dog. That one belongs to the shifter, Holt Lachlan. He don’t leave his side that I’ve ever seen. Name’s Fargo, I think.” Jeb was frowning at the woods where the dog had disappeared. “Wonder what he was doin’ way out here. We’re three miles, at least, from the gator’s territory.”

  Mae was shaking, but she didn’t know why. It wasn’t cold. It was just a dog. A dog. Just a dog. She was losing her mind, imagining the eyes of the boy she used to love in a dog’s face.

  Squirts squawked, and the moment was broken.

  He was just a dog that had startled her, and she was just an outsider destined to head back to the city in a few days, and everything was fine.

  Chapter Two

  She was back.

  Cole watched Mae through the trees, talking to her uncle, Jeb.

  She was back.

  He’d hoped…

  He’d hoped…

  Fuck.

  His chest hurt so bad.

  She looked so good. Her hair was shorter. Lighter. She’d put some kind of caramel highlights in her dark hair so it look sun-kissed now. She had a little tattoo on her wrist. It was one word. Remember.

  Remember what, Mae?

  Cole sat down, curled his tail close. She was still Mae. Still smelled the same, still had those hazel eyes that changed color with every shirt she wore.

  I won’t hurt you. Come back.

  Oh, Mae, you couldn’t hurt me now if you tried.

  She was still soft, fragile…human. He wasn’t that anymore. He wasn’t anything she would even recognize.

  He’d made a mistake the night he left her for that hunt. That mistake changed both of their lives. Their path had been the same, but that night, her road went north, and his went straight down to hell.

  He shouldn’t have come. He tried not to. The second he’d heard Tabby passed away, he’d sworn to himself he would stay right by Holt’s side and not give in to the urge to see if she’d come home.

  And he’d failed.

  He wasn’t used to failure anymore. Cole, or Fargo as people called him, had a job to do. He was the protector of the gator shifters, Holt and Liam. And now he was the protector of their mates and the baby on the way. This, he was good at. Secret war…he was good at.

  But the sacrifice had been his old life.

  And that life had been Mae.

  He swallowed hard as she ripped her gaze away from the woods and said something to her Uncle Jeb. Cole tracked her as she fed the chickens then walked back to the house.

  He could have sat here all day to catch a glimpse of her, but it wasn’t fair. Not to her and not to him. This had been the hardest part of his life, letting go of the past. Letting go of her.

  He tried not to do this anymore, tried not to look back but, hell, right now, he would’ve given anything to change the way things had turned out.

  If he would’ve just stayed home that night in Mae’s arms, he wouldn’t be a dog right now. He wouldn’t be caught between two worlds. He would’ve just stayed in hers.

  Overwhelmed with these awful feelings, he stood suddenly and bolted through the woods. Back toward the edge of Tabby’s property, back toward Holt and Bre’s territory, back to the life he’d settled into because he owed a great debt that couldn’t be repaid with money or apologies. It was repaid only with fealty.

  This body was fast and agile. He could turn on a dime and find that extra gear when he needed more speed. Every instinct was heightened; he could hear and see everything. Even after three years, he was still testing the limits of what he could do in this form.

  These woods were filled with scrub brush and huge trees adorned with Spanish moss hanging down from the branches like tendrils. The bugs and frogs were quiet because of the rain. His fur was getting soaked, and time after time, drops splatted right on his muzzle as he ran.

  Was she sad? Her eyes had looked sad. They’d looked lost in thought. Tabby had lived a long, good life, but Mae would miss her. Was it strange for her being back here after all this time? Was she getting bombarded with memories? Was he in any of those memories?

  Fuck, he needed to stop this. Panting, he slowed to a trot at the border of Holt’s territory. This was the gator’s nest, as he’d been calling it in his head since Bre had found out she was pregnant. Another Lachlan gator was in the making. The shifters of Uncertain were growing in numbers. How long would it be until Liam and Morgan had a little gator, too?

  A hollowness came over him like a fog, and he shook his head hard, flopping his ears side to side to get rid of it, but that tingling, empty feeling clung to his chest cavity. He’d half-expected M
ae to show up with a man. Or maybe a baby. Or both. But he’d watched her come in, and she’d been the only one in Jeb’s truck.

  Stop it. Even if she’s single, she ain’t yours. She could belong to any man in the world but you. You ain’t a man.

  Holt was sanding down a long piece of wood on a sawhorse when Cole came trotting up. He didn’t even look up from his work when he asked, “Did you go see her?”

  Clever gator.

  Cole sat on his butt and stared at Holt. He didn’t talk in this form, which was kind of nice sometimes. He didn’t speak much when he was a human either.

  Holt scrubbed harder with the sandpaper, blew dust off the wood, and stood up to his full height. Only then did he level Cole with his eerie gold eyes. “You haven’t Changed back in a while. I think it’s time.”

  Cole flopped his tongue out of the side of his mouth and panted. Fuck you.

  “Even if you don’t tell her everything, you owe her an explanation. She’s gonna find out you’re still alive.”

  “Who are you talking to?” Bre asked from the open doorway.

  Both Cole and Holt startled hard. When had she learned to be so quiet?

  “Uuuuh, the dog.”

  Bre narrowed her eyes on Cole. “You just said Fargo hasn’t Changed back in a while, Holt Lachlan. What the ever-loving hell does that mean?”

  Ha, ha, she used his full name. He was in trouble.

  “It’s said like ‘ever-lovin’ hell,’ honey,” Holt said innocently. “Put the accent on it.”

  Bre arched one ruddy, delicate red eyebrow and crossed her arms over the tiny swell of her belly.

  Stupid Holt, correcting an angry woman’s speech, Cole thought. He must have a death-wish. Oh damn, her face is turning so red. If Cole could laugh in this body, he would.

  “Do you want to die today?” she asked low.

  “Not particularly,” Holt muttered, suddenly becoming very busy with sanding down the piece of wood.

  Kill him, kill him, kill him. Cole did his best impression of a human smile, but likely, he looked scary. He had a lot of sharp teeth.