by DJ Donaldson
The force of the first blow had been largely taken by the rear seat and the side of the boat, which now had a gaping hole in it that almost reached the waterline. She had been struck by only a sharp edge of the club, but now, with most of her protection destroyed, she would be an easy target.
He swung the club over his head again and Kit tried to flatten herself against the bottom of the boat. Her hands felt something hard beside her: Martin’s rifle. Somehow she got it around in front of her.
Actually, it wasn’t a rifle at all, but an old Ithaca single-barrel twelve-gauge, which was one of the most fortunate events in Kit’s life, because she knew nothing about guns and would have been thwarted by a safety. She pointed the wavering barrel at the leering face above her and her brain screamed, Take this you son of a bitch, as she pulled the trigger.
Jammed.
The gun was jammed. Or…
Remembering all the cowboy movies she’d seen as a kid in the little theater back in Speculator, New York, her thumb went to the hammer and pulled it back. An instant later, she closed her eyes and fired.
The recoil tore the gun from her hand and it toppled onto her, the hammer digging into her belly. Her nostrils were stung by the acrid odor of gunpowder and she heard the lycanthrope roar in pain. She opened her eyes in time to see him stagger backward, a red stain spreading over the left arm of his jumpsuit. Your blood this time, Kit thought triumphantly.
He disappeared from view and Kit struggled to a sitting position, expecting to see him on the ground. But he was still standing. It wasn’t enough.
He wasn’t hurt enough.
*
When Broussard came out of Teddy’s office after talking to Phil Gatlin, everything had fallen into place. He knew who the murderer was. But he wasn’t happy. He was worried, because he had let Kit…
In the distance, he heard a gunshot, from the direction of Leper’s Woods.
“How far are we from the Duhon place?” he asked, a cold hand closing around his heart.
“Not far,” Teddy said. “From the turnoff, the road runs around behind the town, so it’s just behind those trees.”
“That airboat down there, is it gassed up?”
“Sure, why?”
“I think Kit may be in trouble at the Duhons’.”
“Then let’s go,” Teddy said, breaking into a run. Fat as he was, Broussard could still move when he had to, and Teddy was only a few steps ahead of him when they reached the dead alligator.
“C’mon,” Broussard said to Bubba as they sped past. “I think Kit needs us. Buddy, when the sheriff gets here, tell him we’re at the Duhons’.”
The three men piled aboard Teddy’s boat and Bubba threw off the mooring line. Teddy reached for the ignition and turned the key. The big engine in the wire cage sputtered and caught but didn’t start. He cranked it again with the same results. “Damn it,” he muttered, trying again.
Seeing that the engine was nothing more than the motor from an old Chevy, Bubba reached into his pocket and said, “Open dat cage.”
Teddy opened it and got out of Bubba’s way. With the screwdriver on his Swiss army knife, Bubba made some adjustments on the carburetor. “Try it now.”
Teddy turned the ignition key and the engine coughed, sputtered, ran spasmodically for a few seconds, then died. “Again,” Bubba urged, turning his finger in a small circle in the air.
The engine coughed, shuddered for a few cycles, then began to run smoothly. Bubba shut the cage and barely had time to get to his seat before Teddy opened her up. Soon the boat was flying down a narrow tree-lined bayou, the sound of the engine a deafening roar in their ears. Up ahead, an egret sitting on a partially submerged log across the bayou awkwardly lifted itself into the air and sought quieter surroundings. The boat closed on the log and greased over it with ease.
They shot through a cut into the open swamp, a myriad of small lakes and channels that crisscrossed between boggy islands of cypress and tupelo ringed with saw grass. Teddy turned the wheel sharply and the boat skidded to the left. It seemed to Broussard that it had been a very long time since they’d heard the gunshot.
Teddy jabbed his finger at a cut in the trees coming up on the left and angled toward it. It was a place that he hadn’t entered in years, not since someone had cut down a huge cypress and allowed it to fall across the entrance.
Gradually over time, the tree had sunk deeper into the muck at the bottom of the bayou, but it was still a foot out of the water, much too high to simply slide over as he had that other one. He brought the boat in close and cruised slowly past the obstacle…. Maybe… just maybe…
He poured on the gas, took the boat out for a running start, and spun it around. Throttle open all the way, he sped toward the tree. Having even helped build airboats, Bubba had known that the first log back by the alligator farm would be no problem. He was just as certain that there was no way they could clear this one. As they closed on it, his eyes widened and his hands gripped the seat like channel locks. Broussard was holding on just as tightly, thinking of all the folks in Orleans Parish who had looked forward to a day of boating and ended up in his care as a maimed corpse. It was not the way he expected to die. Poisoned by a chef who didn’t know how to properly prepare fugu, maybe, but not in a boating accident.
Teddy pointed the blunt bow toward two closely spaced branches that came off the fallen cypress about eight inches above the waterline and ran at an angle down into the water. “Hold on.”
The boat hurtled up the submerged branches and shot into the air. Bubba felt his cap blow off but refused to let loose of his seat to save it. They landed with a jolt that made Bubba’s teeth snap and would have caused the loss of Broussard’s glasses had it not been for the tether on the earpieces.
On this side of the downed cypress, the bayou went in two directions: to the right, where they would have eventually found Kit, and to the left. To take advantage of the two branches he had used so successfully, Teddy had come in at an angle that had led him naturally into the wrong channel.
CHAPTER 20
The lycanthrope stood with a bewildered look on his face, the club dangling by his side, blood trickling down the opposite leg and onto the ground. Kit prayed that he was mortally wounded and just hadn’t realized it yet. But it was a prayer unanswered, because he bared his teeth and charged, a growl rattling in his throat.
She tried to get out of the boat, but her vision blurred and she fell backward. Dimly, she became aware of a splashing sound as the lycanthrope waded into the bayou.
Her vision cleared. Once again, he was standing over her, this time with a strange bubbling sound in his breathing. Below her line of sight, his blood ran into the bayou, mingling with the black water. His arms lifted, carrying the club into the air. Kit remembered the butler, his head crushed, his brains… She tried to move, to raise her legs to ward off the blow, but they wouldn’t respond.
In this last moment of her life, she wondered what would become of Lucky when she didn’t return for him. Would the vet find him a good home or would he send him to the pound? It wasn’t fair that Lucky should have to suffer for her mistakes. The club began to descend and she closed her eyes for the last time.
There was a loud splash and a scream. The club crashed into her….
No… not the club.
She opened her eyes but could see nothing. A heavy weight lay across her, then it was sliding, scraping across her face. Whatever it was, was squirming and she heard more screaming, much closer than before… beside her. The lycanthrope’s face slid over her own, his mouth moving against hers as he screamed.
The boat tilted to the damaged side, taking on water. The lycanthrope slid into the bayou and his head went under, his scream changing abruptly to a cascade of bubbles. The water exploded. A huge tail whipped out of the hyacinths and tore more wood out of the hole the club had made in the boat. Through the enlarged hole, Kit could see the water boiling, a bloody soup of hyacinths, brown scales, and tan fabric.
>
Then the bayou grew quiet. A bit of tan fabric buoyed by an air pocket bobbed to the surface, pushing aside broken hyacinths. A few feet away, the back of the lycanthrope’s head appeared. Drawn by an unseen force, the head began to move through the water, away from the boat. Kit let out the breath it seemed like she had been holding for hours.
It was over. She was safe. She was not going to die.
Still weak from belly flopping into the boat and hitting her head on the seat support, she threw each arm over the gunnel and pulled herself to a sitting position. The resulting pain on the top of her head felt like a cap she could reach up and touch.
She knew she was sitting in water and planned to do something about it in a few minutes. Her eyes drifted over the flowering carpet that stretched down the bayou, so pretty, yet so deceptive, hiding scaly death beneath it.
A dozen feet out, the hyacinths began to move, something under them bumping their roots. She could judge its progress as more and more of the plants came under its influence. There was no mistaking the direction. It was heading for the hole in the boat.
Three feet away, two black eyes broke to the surface, emotionless eyes that didn’t know the difference between innocence and guilt, eyes that didn’t care whether you already had been to hell once that day.
The hyacinths in front of the eyes rose into the air and floated to the side, carried by the rivulets of water that ran between the valleys on an armored snout. The creature filled itself with air and its enormous length popped to the surface. Its mouth opened and a mind-numbing hiss erupted from its glottis as a powerful flick of its tail propelled it forward like a missile. Its head went up and over the gunnel. Kit was sure it had her, but its heavy jaw muscles caught on the jagged wood where the club had wrecked the boat, so that the force of its charge simply pushed the pirogue sideways. Kit flattened herself against the side wall, the gator’s sharp yellow teeth barely an inch from her face.
She could see directly into the animal’s glistening white mouth, could see the huge tongue lolling there, the narrow opening into its throat. It hissed again and she could feel the wind blow across her eyes and could smell the half-digested frogs in its gullet. Its jaws snapped shut and it threw its head from side to side, splintering wood, its tail lashing the water.
*
As Teddy guided the airboat the wrong way, Broussard looked down a cross channel and saw the commotion the big gator was causing. He also saw the two pirogues. He rushed to Teddy and yanked on his shirt. When Teddy looked at him, Broussard made a circling motion with his finger and jerked his thumb back toward the cross channel.
Teddy nodded and put the boat into a tight turn. They shot into the cross channel and flew over the meadow of hyacinths like a hydrofoil, barely disturbing them. Teddy saw the alligator and also a pair of arms looped over the gunnel on the pirogue under attack. As much as he hoped they weren’t Kit’s arms, he knew they were.
The boat’s engine missed a beat, then another. It sputtered for a few seconds, gave a last surge, and quit. Succulent hyacinth fingers grabbed at the hull, dragging the boat to a halt. Bubba rushed to the engine, his army knife already out, but he tripped on a life jacket none of them had thought to put on and the knife flew from his hand. It went through the wire cage and lodged in an inaccessible crevice between the engine and its mount.
*
The alligator slid backward and sank from sight. Kit felt a momentary rush of relief. But where had it gone? Not seeing it was almost as horrible as having its head in her face.
Teddy knew where it had gone. He pictured it curling its tail against the soft bottom, preparing to launch itself into the pirogue.
Suddenly, the water exploded and the great reptile came hurtling toward her, its mouth gaping….
Kit heard six puny sounds like a ruler slapping a table. The alligator writhed in midair, its convulsions altering its course so that it crashed onto the rear of the pirogue, crushing the flimsy wood and tumbling back into the water. It rolled onto its back and grew still, its legs in the air like a cat wanting its belly scratched.
Still a good forty yards away, Teddy put the empty chrome pistol back in his pocket and relaxed, because he’d seen enough head-shot gators to know that this one wasn’t going to be bothering anyone ever again.
Bubba retrieved his knife and got the boat’s engine working. After hearing a very abbreviated version of what she’d been through, they gathered Kit up and headed for the Duhons’ boat dock, where they found the Duhons, the sheriff, and Henry Guidry waiting.
Teddy cut the engine and let the boat glide along the dock, so it had almost stopped on its own by the time it nudged the shore. As Broussard and Teddy helped Kit onto the dock, Claude asked the obvious question.
“What happened?”
Broussard looked sadly at his old friend. “Claude, I’m afraid Martin’s dead. And so’s your son.”
Olivia moaned and collapsed.
Claude and Henry carried Olivia into the house and up to her bedroom. Not wanting to miss a word of the conversation that would surely soon be taking place downstairs, Kit insisted that she be taken to the chaise longue in the parlor, where they tried to plunk her down without taking any precautions to protect its flowered fabric from her dirty clothes. She called their attention to this mental lapse, and Broussard smiled, happy to see any spark of normality in someone who looked so awful. Bubba ran to the kitchen. He came back with the oilcloth from the kitchen table and draped it over the chaise.
Though the sheriff was eager to ask them all some questions, he decided to wait until a more appropriate time. Broussard cleaned the blood from Kit’s face, making a purring sound when he saw that it was only a severe scratch. He shined his penlight in each of her eyes and purred again.
“Well, Dr. Franklyn, looks like you’re gonna be okay.”
“Thanks to all of you,” Kit said, clasping his hand.
“No thanks necessary. Anything happens to you, I gotta break in a new assistant. Boys, see if you can rustle up a cup of tea for her while I find the others.”
After checking on Olivia and agreeing with Claude that she be allowed to rest, the three men went downstairs and joined Kit in the parlor, where instead of tea, she was finishing the last of a small glass of sherry that Teddy had brought her.
“Feeling better?” Teddy asked.
“If I’d had some of this back in the swamp, I might not have needed help with that alligator.”
Claude crossed the room and as he passed, he let his hand trail over Kit’s shoulder. “Dr. Franklyn, I’m sorry for what happened to you.” He went to the window and looked out, his back to the others.
“I get the impression I’m the only one doesn’t know what’s goin’ on around here,” the sheriff said. “Who’s gonna bring me up to speed?”
With his back still toward them, Claude said, “It was the summer after Tommy graduated from high school.” He turned to face them, his eyes sad and watery. “He was the class salutatorian, did you know that? God but he was a bright kid, interested in everything. He could divide one five-digit number into another in his head and give you the answer to three decimal places. That year, he turned a hundred-dollar paper investment in the stock market into a five-thousand-dollar portfolio in just six weeks for a school economics project.”
Claude tapped his head with his finger. “Smart. Very smart. He was accepted at Princeton but decided instead on LSU. Would have started in the fall, but two weeks after graduation, he began to complain about odors no one else could smell. But we didn’t pay any attention… just passed it off.
“Then his mind began to go. Little things at first—losing his train of thought in the middle of a conversation, misplacing his car keys, running out of gas, that sort of thing. We began to think he might be on drugs, but he denied it and there wasn’t any real evidence to the contrary, so we believed him. Before long, he could barely hold his own in a conversation. It was like…” Claude’s voice faltered and became tremulous. “
Like he had become a child again.”
He covered his eyes with his hand and massaged his temples. When he began again, the tremor was gone. “We felt so sorry for him, we ached inside, but… we were also embarrassed at what he’d become. So we kept him home and invented excuses when people asked why they hadn’t been seeing him around. We took him to a neurology clinic in Houston, but they were totally baffled as to what was wrong or what to do about it. From there, we took him to Philadelphia, then to L.A. It was always the same. No one could help us…. No one…” He paused, obviously remembering the futility of their search. “Then it got worse. Sometimes just before a rain, he’d get violent.” Claude’s eyes filled with wonder. “And it was so strange. At the same time, his reflexes would become unbelievably quick. In one of those spells, he smashed the window out of his bedroom and somehow climbed down the side of the house. When I heard the noise, I went to his room and watched out the window as he chased and caught a rabbit. And then he”—Claude shook his head and looked at the floor—“held it by the hind legs and beat it on the ground until it was dead. Then he… tore at its throat with his teeth, like an animal.”
Claude let out a long breath and continued to stare at the floor. In a few seconds, he looked up and resumed his tale. “After that, we had heavy hardware cloth installed over his bedroom windows to keep him in. We began seriously to consider having him institutionalized, but Liv couldn’t do it. He was her only child and she was not going to desert him, which is the way she saw it.”
From the doorway to the hall, another voice said, “That was when we got the letter from the last hospital we had tried.” It was Olivia, looking so frail and weak that she almost seemed transparent. Claude went to her and put his arm around her shoulder.
“Liv, you shouldn’t be down here. Let me take you…”
Olivia patted Claude’s hand. “This is where I should be now.”
Claude helped her to a chair by the fireplace, then sat at her knee on a footstool, their hands entwined. “The letter was from the hospital’s genetics laboratory,” Olivia said. “They had found something in the blood samples we’d given them, something in my sample—a genetic defect on one of my sex chromosomes?” Her voice went up with uncertainty about whether she was using the correct terms. Receiving a reassuring nod from Broussard, she went on.