Authors: Ilona Andrews
Bayou Moon (17 page)
She glanced at the sky for a second. It spread above her, vast and cold.
Why now?
she asked in her head.
Why couldn’t I have met him a month ago, when I could flirt, and laugh, and didn’t have to worry about sending the family to the slaughter?
Why now?
she asked in her head.
Why couldn’t I have met him a month ago, when I could flirt, and laugh, and didn’t have to worry about sending the family to the slaughter?
She looked at him. Lord Bill trotted down the road, soundless, like a night shadow. She couldn’t hear his steps, and she’d spent a lifetime listening for odd noises in the swamp.
If he is that good with his hands, I wonder how he is with his blade.
She could beat him. Of course, she could beat him. But it would be interesting to see what he could do up close.
She should’ve left him in Sicktree. That would’ve been the smart thing to do. But she never claimed to be smart. He knew the Hand and was willing to fight it, and that was good enough for now. She would sort out her own feelings later. When they were safely inside the Rathole, and she was clean and had a plate of food and a mug of hot tea.
It took all of her will not to laugh when he’d refused to give her money up front for guiding him to Zeke. It was such an Edger thing to do. He still hadn’t paid her either. She killed a snicker. She bet Zeke took all of his money and Lord Bill was too proud to back out of the deal.
William stopped. One moment he strode next to her down the narrow path between the cypresses and the next he froze, caught in mid-step. His hand went to his blade.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.” He stared at the old cypress up ahead.
Heh. He had found Urow. Cerise breathed a sigh of relief. She’d figured Urow was all right when she saw Lagar’s men on the road. If they’d known where he was, either the lot of them or her cousin would be dead by now.
“Come out,” she called. “He sees you.”
A huge gray shade peeled itself from the cypress. Urow stepped onto the path. He wore blue jeans, no shirt, and no shoes. As if on cue, the moon rolled out from behind a ragged cloud. Silvery light bathed Urow’s gray skin. He stood five feet tall and seemed nearly that wide across his shoulders. Huge slabs of muscle lined his massive chest and biceps. His left arm was human. His right was at least six inches longer, with thicker longer digits. Black claws tipped his fingers and toes.
William stared. She didn’t blame him. Urow would give anyone pause, especially in the dark. His looks won him no friends, but nobody was in a hurry to become his enemy either.
Cerise walked over to him and gave him a hug. “How are you?”
Urow hugged her back, patted her gently. “What took so long?” His voice sounded like it came through a gravel grinder.
“We had a date with the sharks.”
Urow glanced at William. “Who’s your friend?”
“His name is William. He’s from the Weird. I found him in the swamp and he followed me home.”
Urow’s black eyes took William’s measure. “Did you feed him?”
“Yes.”
“There’s your mistake. That will do it every time.”
The blueblood hadn’t moved.
“This my cousin Urow,” she told him. “We keep trying to get him to work less on strong and more on tall, but he doesn’t listen.”
Urow tossed back the mane of coarse black hair and grinned, showing a mouthful of serrated teeth. William’s face showed nothing. He simply waited, his attention focused on Urow.
Urow squared his shoulders, flexing. Just what she needed. Two knuckleheads in a tough man contest. She had to nip it in the bud. Urow outweighed William by at least two hundred pounds—her cousin weighed four hundred and then some, none of it fat, but Urow got along on brute strength and a loud roar, while William threw Lagar’s crew around and made it seem effortless, like he was playing. Like he hurt people for fun.
“Stop trying to pick a fight with the blueblood.” She patted Urow’s arm. “He’s my guest, and besides, he isn’t the jumpy type.”
She turned to where Urow’s boat waited, tied to the cypress knees. He’d brought the smaller of his cargo boats, the smallest size that could be pulled by a rolpie without being tipped over. They’d go fast, and after the cramped canoe, extra room felt like a luxury.
“Is the blueblood coming with us?” Urow asked.
“He is.”
“To the house?”
“Yes.”
He chewed that over. “Are you sure?”
She let a note of steel slip into her voice. “Yes, I’m sure.”
A rolpie popped out of the water. Cerise leaned over and patted the brindled head.
Urow frowned. “It might be a mistake. We don’t know him.”
Cerise turned and looked at him, copying her father’s stare as best she could. It must’ve worked, because Urow clamped his mouth shut.
“If you have an issue with the way I make my decisions, you can take it up with my father, when he’s back. Until then, I run the family and what I say goes. Now will the two of you get into the boat, please, before I take off and leave you standing on the shore?”
THE boat sped across the brown water, sending shallow waves to lap at the nearest shore. William stood against the rope rail, resting on it but not really leaning. At the stern, Cerise sank to the bottom of the boat, leaned over, and skimmed the water with her fingertips. Her face seemed lighter, as if she had been carrying a heavy pack and had finally dropped it. He decided not to tell her how close he’d come to shooting her cousin in the throat.
Urow, whatever the hell he was, sat at the bow, guiding the Nessie wannabe with his reins and sulking. He smelled odd. William wrinkled his nose. Not a changeling, definitely, but not all human either. Something strange. If William had been wearing fur, the scent alone would have made his hackles rise.
“Any news of my parents?” Cerise asked.
“Nope.” Urow grimaced. “A woman was killed near Dillardsville. She had claws between her knuckles. Bob Vey said she shot a web at them. It hardened on their skin and ate away half of his nose. He looks like a Gospo Adir skull now.”
“Serves him right,” Cerise murmured. “Bob is a scum-bag of the first order. Last year he beat Louise Dalton bloody because she wouldn’t spread her legs for him.”
Urow nodded, shaking his black hair. “That’s what I said. I bet Louise is laughing now.”
A long narrow island loomed ahead, on the left. In the bright light of the moon, the cypresses and slash pines crowding the shore stood out, etched against the river.
“What are you?” William asked.
Urow glanced at Cerise. “He doesn’t mince words, does he?”
She laughed. “What are you talking about? Subtle is his middle name.”
“I’m half-Mar, half-thoas,” Urow said.
“What’s a thoas?”
“The moon people,” Cerise said.
“The swamp elders,” Urow said. “The mud crawlers.”
“They are an odd race.” Cerise slumped against the short rope rail. “Some think they may have been human at some point, but they look different now. We don’t know if they came from the Weird or from the Broken. They live deep in the swamp and don’t like people much. Something about the full moon mesmerizes them. That’s about the only way to see one—deep in the swamp, staring at the full moon with glowing eyes.”
“My mother was raped by a thoas,” Urow said. “Although the rest of the family seems to think otherwise.”
Cerise cleared her throat. “We don’t dispute the thoas part. We’re just a bit unsure about the rape.”
Urow leaned to him and wagged his eyebrows. William fought an urge to jump back.
“My mother was a woman of loose morals.” Urow winked.
“You make her sound like a whore.” Cerise grimaced. “Aunt Alina just liked to have fun. Besides, she was just about the only one of the family your wife could stand.”
Wife?
“Don’t say it,” Cerise warned.
“You’re married?” William asked.
She sighed. “Now you’ve done it. He’ll never be quiet about it now. The whole trip will be, ‘Oh, look at my pretty wife. Oh, look at my pretty babies.’ ”
Urow dipped his head and pulled a plastic wallet off his neck. “Just because you don’t have a pretty wife ...”
“I don’t want one.” She sighed. “Wives are too much trouble.”
William barked a short laugh.
Urow passed the wallet to William. “The redhead is my wife. On the right that’s my three boys and a baby.”
“Three boys and a daughter,” Cerise told him.
“Right now it’s a baby. When it starts talking to me and comes when I call, then it’s a daughter.”
William opened the wallet, carefully holding it by the edges. A picture of a pretty redheaded woman looked at him from the left. Three adolescent boys crowded into the picture on the right. All had black hair and a grayish tint to their skin. The oldest looked like a younger copy of Urow, down to an oversized hand and claws. The smallest, the one holding a baby, could almost pass for a human.
William closed the wallet. Even this man got to have a family. But no matter how he tried, he just made a mess of things. He slapped a lid on the familiar frustration before it took over and made him do something he might regret.
They were looking at him. This was one of those human situations when he was expected to say something. “Your wife is very pretty.”
He tensed, in case Urow lunged at him.
The gray man grinned and took the wallet from William’s hand. “She is, isn’t she? I have the prettiest wife in the whole of the Mire.”
“Maybe you should stop rubbing it in,” Cerise said softly.
She must’ve seen something in his face. William pushed his regrets deeper, away from the surface.
“Do you have any family, Lord Bill?” she asked softly.
“No.” He didn’t even know what his mother had looked like.
Urow’s eyebrows crept up. “All right, all right.” He slid the wallet around his neck.
A bolt thrust through Urow’s shoulder. It was attached to a line.
William grabbed for Urow, but the line snapped taut and jerked the gray man off the boat.
UROW plunged into cold water. Webs snapped open between his toes, and he kicked, but the line dragged him to the surface. He skimmed the face of the river in a shower of spray. Water burned his stomach. He flipped on his side and back on his stomach again, digging deep into the waves, and thrust his hands into the current. His fingers found the line and gripped it. He searched for something to brace his legs against but met only water.
A dark form rushed at him through the waves and smashed into his gut. The last of the air burst from his mouth in a violent, silent scream. Pain bathed his left side. He clutched at the obstruction, gripping it with his limbs. Rotting bark, slick with algae, crumbled under his fingers. A log, Urow realized, and dug his claws into the soft water-soaked wood.
They shot him. The sonovabitches shot him with a harpoon and pulled him off his own boat. He’d rip out their guts and make them eat it.
The line pulled. The bolt tore at his flesh, hard, harder, ripping a growl from him. Urow clung to the tree and felt the heavy sodden mass move, compelled by the draw of the line. Pain burned him, reaching down across his chest to his ribs and his neck.
Something whistled through the air and punched the tree in twin thuds. The line snapped free, and the log rolled back under his weight. Urow submerged and surfaced. Two short black bolts punctured the wet bark of the log. Someone had shot the line, severing it.
Urow grabbed the bolt lodged in his shoulder and wrenched it free with a snarl. A piece of his bloody flesh still quivered on the barbs of the bolt’s hooked head, and he rammed it into the sodden wood. Bleeding but free, he pulled himself onto the log and crouched on it.
A small river barge crowded with people headed for his boat, drawn by three rolpies. Cerise had her sword out, and the blueblood was reloading a crossbow. So that was where the bolts had come from. He’d have to thank the guy later. Right now he had work to do.
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