What Lurks Beneath (24 page)

A
shley made her way through the casino, wishing for a more direct path. She needed to get home, to get a few hours of sleep before the helicopter arrived tomorrow morning. Her supervisor had insisted she be there.

The resort's designers had intentionally made it difficult to find a path through here, to increase the odds that gamblers might pause to drop a few more dollars into a slot machine or rest at a card table as they looked for a way out. Around her, the ceaseless beeps and dings of the machines rose into cool air scented with cigarette smoke.

She never gambled. Ever. She knew it was a losing proposition in the long run, and she wasn't comfortable with the risk involved. But she appreciated that many of the guests here
did
gamble, bringing in good revenue, although not as many on a Friday night like tonight. This was the final night for a large percentage of weeklong guests, so many had already lost their money and drunk more alcohol than they had intended—

“Hey, girl!”

Ashley turned her head. Two young men near the blackjack tables were leering at her. She remembered these men, and their fathers. The Russians. She smiled, but kept walking.

“You there. You work here, right?” He had a slight accent.

Her shift was over and she was ready to go home. But she retained the fake smile and approached the pair.

She remembered that they were staying with their families in upper-floor suites. They were the spoiled, entitled sons of two men she had pegged as criminals the moment she met them at check-in. Russian gangster types, who'd moved to America to continue the family crime syndicate. Who did bad things to get rich. And who, like normal families, apparently brought theirs to fancy resorts on vacation.

They were dressed well, in pressed shirts and nice slacks. But their eyes were bloodshot, their faces sunburned. Each held a mixed drink. The shorter one was weaving.

“Can I help you?” she said.

“Hey zare, Bahama Mama. How tall are you, girl?” It was the one with curly brown hair and stud earrings, who had called her over.

“Taller than you,” she said, knowing she was only that way because of the heels she wore.

He laughed, but his eyes narrowed. “Funny. You may be tall, but I am very long.”

His friend, shorter with a shaved head and large gold medallion, laughed as he looked her up and down.

She said, “That's nice. Where are your parents, boys?”

“Not here. Why you asking? You wanna be my mama . . . Bahama Mama?”

Curly Hair moved closer to her. His breath smelled like a still, and Ashley suddenly felt uncomfortable, despite all the people around.

“I'm Niki,” he said.

“Is there anything I can help you with, Niki?”

“I can think of something.” He reached out and traced a finger along her shoulder. “Want a drink, girl?”

“I'm afraid I can't. I'm working.”

“Come on. Just one drink. We're harmless.” The way he looked at her made her wonder what awful things he had done to other girls, girls who had had a drink with him.

“Really, I need to be somewhere now. I'm sorry. Good night, gentlemen.”

Niki waved a hand at her dismissively. “Whatever. You don't know what you're missing.”

The smile left her face and she turned and hurried away to the doors that led out of the casino.

 

 

In the warm, humid air outside, it was far more deserted than usual, even this late. People were afraid to go onto the resort grounds at night. After the woman at the beach had gone missing, guests had become scared that somebody might be kidnapping guests. Rumors were even spreading that she had been killed.

Ashley heard a noise behind her and glanced over her shoulder. Nobody was there.

She hurried down the serpentine path, lined by greenery and lit from below by carefully concealed floodlights. The only sounds were the distant roar of rushing water and her heels clicking on the smooth stone pavers. She continued toward the far end of the grounds, and the main entrance. It was still five minutes away. She looked over her shoulder again, and suddenly felt very alone. She wished she'd stayed inside the casino.

She rounded a bend and saw the flat, dark expanse that marked the Dolphin Playground. The attraction, fed by water piped in from the ocean, allowed guests to swim with the playful animals. She'd always felt sorry for them, cut off from the ocean, even if it was a large pen.

The roar of water grew louder as she neared the attraction. The stone pathway entered a narrow strip where it passed between the playground and the adjacent waterpark. Opposite the darkened dolphin enclosure, the Neptune Pool was lit from within. The sound came from water surging into the otherwise calm pool at the base of the park's tallest waterslide. The man-made obelisk rose eighty feet above her into the night sky.

She wondered why tonight the water in the slide had been left running. Perhaps for some maintenance purpose. But she didn't like not being able to hear anything over the rushing water, and she moved faster. She glanced again over her shoulder, then at the dolphin enclosure. The water in it was now sloshing inexplicably, as though a small earthquake had rippled the surface. Maybe the dolphins at play? But they normally slept at night, and she couldn't see them anywhere.

She felt the hairs on her arms and neck stand on end. An overwhelming urge to get away overcame her.

She hurried down the path.

S
ergei had finally passed out facedown on the red felt of the blackjack table, forehead on a forearm. The bald, fat fuck could never hold his vodka. He was an embarrassment. Niki Melnikov shook his friend's shoulder again, but Sergei didn't move. The dealer, a young Asian woman, had stopped shuffling and looked at him with concern.

“Sir, I'm sorry, but if your friend doesn't get up I'll have to call security.”

“Chill out, girl. He's just tired. Sergei!” Niki shook him again, and he groaned, and then buried his face deeper into his arms.

Niki hadn't stopped thinking about the front-desk girl who'd passed them a short time ago. Bitch had nerve, turning him down like that. Back home, on Long Island, the girls knew who he was. If
she
knew who he was back in New York, who his family was, she wouldn't be turning him down. Even if he was younger than her. She'd be
begging
him.

The dealer said, “Sir, I'm going to call someone. They can help escort—”

“Do you know who we are, skank?” This stupid bitch wasn't going to embarrass them too, even if Sergei was a fool.

She took a step back, raised her hands off the table. “Please, calm down.”

“Nobody needs to call security. You got it? I'll take care of this.” He smacked Sergei on the head, hard. Sergei lifted his head and looked at Niki, bleary-eyed.

“Get up, asshole. You want your father to hear you passed out here?”

Sergei looked at him dumbly, his jaw hanging open, then shook his head. He fished in his pocket for a moment and produced another fifty-dollar chip. The idiot had probably blown a grand already. He started to lay it on the table and Niki snatched it up.

“Enough! Where do you keep getting those, fuck-hole? No more blackjack. Let's go. I need a cigarette.”

Niki dragged his friend out of the casino, in the direction the desk girl had gone. Maybe they could still find her. Teach her some respect.

 

 

“I think I'm gonna be sick, Niki.”

Niki shook his head. “You sure you're Russian? You drink like a girl, fat ass.”

He watched as his friend staggered to the greenery beside the path and bent over, hands on his knees. He shook his head.

He'd pulled Sergei along as they smoked their Marlboros, hoping to catch up to the tall Bahamian girl. Not sure what he would do if he found her. But they'd already crossed through much of the resort, and hadn't seen her. She was gone.

They'd only passed two other people. Everyone had gone to bed hours ago. This place was nothing like New York. It was fuckin' dead at night. Sergei stopped just before the pool with the big waterslide. The water roared down from above.

The water.
It was still running.

“I'll be over there. You hear me, Sergei?” He shook Sergei's shoulder and pointed. “Over there! By the slide.”

Sergei didn't respond, but Niki left him and continued down the path. Where it narrowed between the swimming pool and the darkened dolphin play area he'd visited yesterday, the cement was covered in water. He saw the reason why. The pool was overflowing. Its well-lit, baby-blue bottom looked odd in the darkness from this angle, as if curved and convoluted.

He thought he saw a small splash of water in the chlorine pool, accompanied by a faint plopping sound. He stared at the spot for a moment, but there was nothing there.

He shook his head to clear it. He was just drunk. Seeing things.

He stepped gingerly through the half-inch of water, cursing as he felt the water soak through his expensive leather shoes, and moved to where he could see the outlet of the slide better. Water rushed out of its mouth and into the empty pool. It had been off every other night, but maybe they'd accidentally left it on, and it was somehow overflowing the pool. He looked around, saw nobody. He suddenly had an idea, and grinned.

It was their last night here. Even if they caught him, what the hell could they do to him anyway? What was the worst that could happen?

He began stripping off his shirt.

 

 

In the new pool of water, her skin began to burn. This water was different.

She had left the safety of the salt water, to explore the strange-tasting pool she had tested with her arms while still within the confines where she had found the dolphins. She had fed, but she was still hungry, and the impulse to hunt had not abated. From the edge of the saltwater pool, she had been able to reach the tips of her arms into this other body of water. It had tasted odd, and felt very shallow, but curiosity pushed her.

She had labored out into the air once again, dragging her tons of heavy flesh over the narrow spit of hard land before rolling into the new, smaller pool. Although her entire body did not submerge, this water tingled against her skin. Then it started to burn, to cause intense pain where it flowed past her gills, against her eyes. This water was not like the ocean. It was not safe for her.

Her huge bulk still curving slightly above the shallow water, she moved back toward the side where she had entered, to return to the other pool. The saltwater pool. But then she stopped.

Something was coming.

She flattened herself down as low as she could, displacing even more water around her.
Conforming.
A moment later, she was entirely below the surface, compressed to the bottom. Instantly, her skin turned a lighter shade of blue, smoothed out to match the bottom surface of the pool. Dark, regular spots began to form on her skin, at regular intervals, as the chromatophores in her flesh patterned themselves after the dark tiles laid into the submerged surface.

She fought the burning in her gills, against her skin and eyes, and waited.

The pain quickly became unbearable. Her gills began to feel swollen. Just as she began to abandon her camouflage, she felt the vibrations again. Tasted something new. She slid an arm very slowly toward the incoming flow of water, into a large hole from which it flowed. Radial muscles contracted as longitudinal ones extended, and the arm stiffened, elongating as it moved upward into the pipe.

Within it, she tasted prey.

 

 

Niki had left his clothes in a pile, and in his underwear he jumped the heavy rope guardrail strung alongside the path. He knew there might be a guard positioned to watch the actual entrance to the tower stairs. He'd been on this slide several times already, but the rush of doing it now, at night, when it wasn't allowed, added novelty.

He found his way through the trees and other greenery planted between the path and the tower, the pain from small rocks jabbing into feet numbed by the alcohol, and soon found himself beside the stairway built into a man-made hill. He stepped over another heavy rope that bordered it and charged up the stairs, two and three at a time. He didn't care if he was caught, as long as he got to go down first.

He reached the top of the stairs and paused, looking out. From eight or nine stories above the resort, at night, the view was pretty cool. The artificially lit grounds spread out beneath him, and he could see the white line of the surf breaking on the dark beach nearby. He could see a handful of people moving between the casino and their own rooms. But he knew they could not see him. He stepped under the roof covering the top of the waterslide.

Whitewater surged loudly into the pipe from large jets on either side. The water disappeared a few feet later, where the steep pipe dropped almost vertically before curving near the bottom to slow guests before spitting them out into the pool. He stepped into the trough of shallow water just above the jets and sat down. The water felt cold.

The pipe shuddered. He paused. Was something really wrong with it, making the water run at night? For a moment, he considered heading back down the stairs.
No,
he told himself.
Stop being a bitch. The slide is fine.
Grasping the rim of the pipe, he crossed his legs and thrust himself into the darkness.

He screamed in delight as he went over the precipice, his stomach fluttering as the bottom dropped out from under him. He plummeted down, his eyes and mouth shut. In just a few seconds he would enter the water at the bottom—

He slammed into something in the pipe.

His knees buckled as he stopped suddenly, violently, his limbs crashing into the mass and the sides of the unyielding pipe. One knee slammed into his jaw, shattering it, and he felt something in his spine give at the sudden compression. He cried out in pain.

Crumpled inside the dark slide, disoriented, and no longer moving, he looked up and realized he hadn't reached the pool. He was stuck in a fetal position somewhere near the bottom of the steep part of the pipe, before it curved out horizontally. He was sitting on something.

The water from above was quickly filling the space, blocked by the obstruction below him. The water rose quickly, passing his shoulders as it filled the pipe around him. He tried to stand, to keep his head above the water, but his legs wouldn't work. He looked down toward his feet, but it was too dark to see anything. He reached a hand down through the water. The obstruction below him felt firm, textured, and yielded slightly to his touch. Like pressing down on an overinflated inner tube. Maybe one of the tubes from the waterpark—

Then the obstruction began to move. To change shape. It was not an inner tube. Under his fingers, it slid below him, harder discs protruding from its surface starting to latch on to his thigh.

It was alive.

Niki reached upward, trying to grasp anything in the smooth pipe, and screamed just before the rising water reached his mouth.