Olivia looked about the two-room shack, torn between the desire to know more, and an aching thirst.
As she settled into a seat, Olivia studied her surroundings. A wood stove sat quietly in the corner. There was no need for heat tonight, and probably had not been for months.
There was no sign of electricity that Olivia could see—no refrigerator, no microwave, no phone or clock. The only burglar alarm came from the hounds on the porch. The only sound from neighbors erupted from the frogs outside, croaking in hysteria, and the occasional barking call of an alligator or the hoot of a great-horned owl.
Olivia could only guess at the fear that had driven Bron's mother to such a primitive existence. The petite woman bore little resemblance to Bron.
"Could we have a drink?" Olivia asked. Sommer kept them covered with her shotgun, but the old man went to a corner and opened a cabinet. He rummaged around for a moment, pulled out a couple of tin cans. He tossed them across the room. In the dim light of the lantern, it was hard to read the contents. Bron's can contained lemonade, sugar free. Olivia had a beer. Their hosts didn't apologize for the fact that the drinks were warm.
This is probably as good as it gets out here, Olivia realized. There would be nothing to drink in this swamp.
"I was only eighteen when I met him," Sommer began, as she settled into her story. She spoke guardedly, as if what she had to say pained her. Yet she was resigned to tell the whole truth. "My father worked on the bayou, fishing for catfish by nights, trapping crayfish and turtles by day. I knew nothing of the world. But we lived near the city, in a fine little house, with twenty acres of swamp behind it. Our nearest neighbors lived half a mile away, and so it was a quiet existence, until I turned eighteen."
As Sommer began to speak, Olivia was struck by something: how odd her voice sounded. Here in the swamps, living with this old Cajun, one might have expected Sommer to fall into his habits. But her voice was elegant, refined. It was as if, through her speech, she clung to the last remnants of civilization with every fiber of her being.
"We were all masaaks, in my family," Sommer continued. "I longed to see the world, but we had no money, so one year I decided to take a short drive to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
"It seemed so grand—the parades, the music, floats and costumes. I sang and danced through the French Quarter, and someone shoved a drink in my hand.
"The party lasted all night long. I found myself among some drunken college girls, who stripped for the applause of leering idiots.
"I was slinking from the crowd when I smelled something glorious. There are many great restaurants in the French Quarter, with strange delicacies—barbecued alligator steaks and shrimp gumbo, powdery beignets with fresh cafe au lait.
"But this smelled glorious beyond anything, and I found my blood thrilling through my veins as I followed the scent down a side street, to a mansion with marble columns. I walked through the door into a grand entrance, then climbed a winding stair.
"By the time I reached the master bedroom, I knew what the smell was. My mother had warned me against it—the scent of a masaak in musth. But I was drunk and young, and I followed it to a door that had been left half open.
"I dreamt that I would meet a man, and that he would be the love of my life, much in the way that my mother met my father. I tried to imagine him—tall and strong and handsome.
"He was all of that, and more. When I saw the room, I knew that he was wealthy, too, beyond anything that I had imagined. He had two other people with him on a canopied bed, with silken sheets of scarlet—a dark-haired succubus, and another woman lay naked and exhausted.
"He had servants in the room, too—butlers to wait on him hand and foot, along with security guards and counselors.
"All of his servants were more beautiful than me, stronger, taller. I felt insignificant in their presence.
"He looked at me as if I was nothing, fleshy garbage.
"Compared to everyone else in that room... have you ever seen a purebred Arabian, one with a lineage that goes back for two thousand years?"
"Like in that movie," Bron asked, "the Black Stallion?"
"Yes," Sommer said, "like that. All of the people around me were purebreds, and I ... was a beat-up draft horse.
"When he saw me, he would have mocked me, if I had not bored him so.
"I went to the foot of his bed, and by then, there in that closed room, the pheromones were so strong, that I yearned for him with an unspeakable lust. I knelt at the foot of his bed, and he was so beautiful, that I could only reach up and touch his ankle, begging for him. I felt so insignificant, and he was so grand. I wanted him. I've never wanted anything so much in my life.
"He just laughed.
"'You think that I would have you?' he asked. 'We Draghouls are purebred. You ... you're nothing. Still, from time to time, one of you feral rats holds something that amuses me....'"
It was a singularly odd scene, Olivia thought. This woman who claimed to have tried to save Bron, now sat across the room, holding a shotgun on him. She was so petite, she looked almost stunted. Olivia felt that Lucius's judgment was correct. Sommer was ... plain. She was pretty in her own way, but she had none of Bron's strong build, his symmetry, his grace.
Sommer was deep inside herself, dredging up painful memories. Her voice cracked as she continued, "Lucius turned away from me then, and would have rejected me altogether, but the head of his security team grabbed me and threw me on the bed, and pinned me down. He put his thumbs up above my eyes, and grasped my skull with his fingers. Grimacing from displeasure, as if he disliked even to touch me, he invaded my head, stripped my memories bare.
"He saw my mother, my sisters, in their little house near the bayou. He learned about my tedious life, all of my insignificant hopes and dreams. I heard his voice in my mind, laughing at me.
"When he was done, he told Lucius, 'Milord, this one is a wondrously powerful leech!'
"Lucius seized me then. What happened next, I do not recall. Someone cleaned the memories from me, so I know that they must have been filthy indeed. I remember Lucius promising to leave my family alone, so long as I bedded him.
"Lucius kept me prisoner for nearly a year. I know that I had a child, and that somehow I escaped from Lucius's compound in the Hollywood Hills, and ran all over the country."
Sommer began to weep, and her eyes filled with tears. The regret was thick in her voice. "I remember that I planned my escape for days, but I don't remember you, Bron. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't remember ever having you. Lucius caught me afterward, and questioned me. His men accused me of having a baby, of stealing it away." She looked across the room blankly, and her voice trailed off to nothing, was drowned out by the distant croaking of frogs. "After that, I can't remember much."
"You don't know what happened next?" Bron asked.
"I couldn't even remember your name, if I ever gave you one," the woman said, looking vacantly at Bron. "But I've been told that I had a son once. For all that I know, you may be him. I only remember that I escaped from Lucius again, a few years later."
Silence fell in the room, and Sommer just sobbed for a moment. When she finally looked up, her voice went cold. "Now, it's your turn: what makes you think that you're my son?"
Bron shrugged, as if he didn't quite know how to answer.
Olivia could not see any resemblance between this woman and Bron. Yet as Olivia's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that her first appraisal of Sommer had been a bit harsh. Sommer was plain, but with a bit of makeup she might even have been considered pretty.
She'd worn herself out in hiding.
Olivia told Sommer, "Bron was abandoned as a child. We were told by a friend that you were his mother, but he doesn't know any more than that. She's the one who cleaned out your mem—"
Outside, the frogs were croaking like madness beneath the starry skies. Olivia had become so used to the melee of voices that she almost didn't hear the squeaking board on the porch, as someone heavy t
ook a step.
The old man whirled in alarm and fired his gun into the wall, in the direction of the sound. The explosion echoed in the shack so loudly that Olivia felt stunned. The powerful bullet blew a hole in the old wood, and outside on the porch, someone grunted heavily and fell.
The door latch turned and the door began to swing open. Bron's mother let go with both barrels of her shotgun, and Olivia caught a glimpse of someone getting blown backward, over the rail on the porch, and a heavy body hit the water.
All hell broke loose. Someone outside shouted, "Police! Come out with your hands up!"
The old fellow beside Bron began blasting with his revolver, opening holes in the wall, each one letting in a tiny bit of moonlight.
Meanwhile, an automatic rifle fired from outside. Bullets tore through the home, up at chest height. Olivia hunched to avoid a stray bullet. A lacework appeared in the wall, and the old fellow grunted.
Olivia was peering up, mouth agape in shock, when she felt hot red blood spatter her. The old man went down. Sommer broke her barrel open and the two spent shotgun shells ejected. She was reaching into the folds of her dress on her lap, trying to grab some hidden shells to reload, when someone bolted through the door.
It was a man in black body armor and a helmet. The back of his jacket said S.W.A.T. in yellow letters. He lunged into the door so quickly that he rammed head-first into Bron's mother before she could reload. The air rushed from her lungs with a whoosh, and she crumbled to the floor. She tried to struggle but the man atop her was too strong.
Bron leapt to his feet, but only got a few steps toward his mother when a woman stepped through the door and leveled a machine gun at his chest. Liquid fear oozed over Olivia's skin as she watched the red dot from the laser sight slide over Bron's heart.
"Stand down!" the woman shouted. She wore a helmet and night-vision goggles.
For an instant, Olivia was confused. Could these people really be the police? Their outfits were convincing.
Out behind the house, Olivia heard the hounds growling and barking, rushing toward them, when suddenly there was a blast of machine-gun fire, and both dogs yelped. Their voices fell silent.
Bron just stood, frozen with indecision. He raised his hands in surrender.
A helmet and goggles hid the face of Bron's captor, but the line of her jaw was smooth and flawless, suggestive of surreal beauty.
That alone confirmed to Olivia that she was dealing with Draghouls.
Olivia shouted, "Run, Bron. Draghouls!" but there was nowhere for him to go. Olivia leapt up from her chair. She wasn't a fighter, and felt that her only chance was to flee. A man rushed into the cabin and slammed the butt of his rifle into her face.
She fell back into her seat with a thud, struggling to remain conscious. Even bloody and battered, she called upon some instinct and managed a high kick that put a heel right into her attacker's face. He flew across the room, and in the blink of an eye, Olivia bolted through the open door and dove off the porch, into the dark waters.
She dove deeply, afraid that she'd hit mud or weeds, and was surprised that she made it safely. She held her breath and swam underwater until her lungs burned, and she reached the weeds on the far shore. She carefully lifted her head from the water.
"Si ji!" someone shouted at the cabin. They began firing down into the water; bullets rained, splashing her face.
Weeds formed a wall before her, and though Olivia could see into the shadows of the trees ahead, she could not find a way to safety.
Chapter 28
Lord of the Bayou
"I have never liked killing, but I have a talent for it."
— Bron Jones
Bron realized that this was his last chance to escape. The only way he could stop this Draghoul from firing at Olivia might be to knock him into the swamp.
The gunman who was shooting at Olivia stood in the door frame. Bron's captor glanced toward the shooter.
Bron seized the moment, dodged to the left, so that the laser sights were no longer on him, then shoved the shooter. The man lurched toward the railing, nearly plunged into the swamp, and lost his weapon.
The woman who'd held Bron at gunpoint slugged his neck. He saw a blue flash, heard an electric crackle, and it felt as if Thor's hammer knocked him to the floor....
The gunfire stopped momentarily, and Olivia heard a splash in the water behind her. A Draghoul was coming for her.
She caught her bearings, saw a place far ahead and across the pond where some willows hung over the water. She hoped that she'd be able to find cover there.
She dove and swam toward the willows, guided only by memory. She could not judge how fast she was swimming or how far she traveled. She'd never swum like this in her full clothing before. She didn't dare come up for air early. Right now, she was like a submarine, hidden in the depths, and she could not risk exposure.
So she kicked and swam until her lungs felt as if they would burst, and then she kicked some more. She reached some weeds, pushed on through, and pulled herself along the bottom for a moment.
At last she surfaced, timidly, and struggling to breathe. She had over-shot her mark, and found herself deep beneath the willow's hanging fronds. A small inlet hid here, a waterway that looked as if it might have been dredged away, and it led inland. She gasped, dove, and swam deeper into the swamp.
She had no gun, no knife, and no idea where she might find help. For the moment, she hoped only to escape.
They have Bron, she realized. They must have followed us.
How could they have done that?
She wondered if her phone lines were secure. Had the enemy been watching Monique? Or had they somehow trailed Bron from home?
She couldn't imagine how they'd been found. Nor could she see any way to escape.
When Bron woke, he groaned and fought to recall what had happened. He remembered the sharp sensation of bolts blowing through him. He felt like he'd been hit by lightning, more than once, and as he struggled to recall what had happened, it was like trying to wade through tar. He could make no headway.
He dimly became aware that he was sitting. He had two people holding him, and they had wrestled him onto a wooden chair. His arms were wrenched behind his back and strapped together with duct tape. He could hear tape unzipping, and felt pressure on his legs.
Bron lolled his head up, tried to see. Everything was a blur. His right eye felt swollen, nearly closed, and he wondered if someone had beaten him or if he had fallen.
For several long seconds, he let his eyes adjust, even as his captors finished taping him.
"That should hold him," one man said as he stood.
Bron pulled hard, but the tape only seemed to draw back against him.
Three people were in the room with him—the woman who had first caught him, and a pair of men. They all wore S.W.A.T. outfits, but Bron realized that they couldn't be real police. He'd never heard of policemen who carried fully automatic weapons.
The woman removed her visor, and Bron saw that he was right. Hers was the face of a supermodel, with sparkling green eyes, silky blond hair, and opalescent skin that was absolutely flawless.
She was beautiful, yet she did not look like a masaak. Her eyes were too bright green, her hair too light, her skin tone too white. Though she did not look like a Draghoul in coloration, everything about her warned of danger. She did not smile or show any other emotion. There was a toughness to her that defied description.
She's not tough, Bron thought.She's... murderous. She's a Draghoul in hiding. All it took was contacts, bleach, and a little skin cream.
"What... do you want with me?" he asked. Speaking brought an unexpected pain. His lip had been split.
The woman slapped him so hard that spittle flew from his mouth. "You do not ask the questions," she said. Her accent sounded Eastern European—perhaps Russian.
She slipped into some foreign language then, began scolding masaaks around her. The men cringed like dogs with each harsh word.
Bron was about to answer, when one of the men grabbed him and put a wide swath of duct tape over his mouth. Bron shouted, but all that came out was a wordless grunt.
Sommer moaned and whimpered, "Olivia?" She gasped, as if she was beginning to come to.
Bron heard the electric hum of a taser, and Sommer shrieked once, and then fell silent.
Sweat broke on Bron's brow and dampened his armpits. His captors had him, and there was nothing he could do. Bron thought frantically, but could see no way to escape.
Stealthily, he pulled at his bonds, but the tape around his wrists was too tight, too sticky. His heart kept pounding, and air in the room seemed thin.
The woman, their leader, barked a sharp command in that same harsh language. She left the room, followed by one of her soldiers, while the third man squatted on the floor.
He took his rifle and merely pointed the barrel at Bron's chest. The red light of his laser illuminated motes of dust in the air before the red dot settled on his heart.
Their leader brought the lantern into the room, and left it sitting on a dresser.
The guard raised up his cell phone and took a short video of Bron. He narrated in accented English, "This is video of Bron Jones, dream assassin, captured at home of Sommer Bastian."
Bron wondered at that. How did they know that he was a dream assassin? They couldn't have gotten that information from his mother. He hadn't told her. Nor could they have gotten it from Olivia, unless they'd captured her.
They must have messed around inside my head when I got knocked out, he worried. Who knows what they took, or what they've added?
When the guard was done, he punched some numbers on the phone and sent Bron's picture into cyberspace.
Far across the Atlantic, Adel Todesfall studied the video. It was just after breakfast when he raced into the study of Lucius Chenzhenko.
Nightingale n-1 Page 31
