When Darkness Falls

by Susan Krinard, Tanith Lee, Evelyn Vaughn

  "A little of this, a little of that. I know the best water holes for the fishermen, and I keep the tourists out of trouble."

  "Like me?"

  "Is that what you are, Dana—a tourist?"

  She turned her mug around and around in her hands. "I told you, I have family here."

  "So you did." He slipped the bass strips into the pan. "But you never did tell me why you came into the swamp today."

  Her silence lasted long enough for him to slice the onions and bell peppers. Finally she said, "I came here to find the place where Sally Daigle died."

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  « ^ »

  .Dana had seen many faces undergo major alterations, often under her own skilled hands. But the way Remy Arceneaux's expression changed was beyond anything in her experience.

  One moment he was affable, flirtatious and, yes, charming. The next he was regarding her as if she were a deadly enemy. He had looked this way when they'd met on the side of the road, but his behavior since then had put that disconcerting moment from her mind.

  No more. His eyes had become cold. "I told you," he said softly, "that you shouldn't come here."

  "Actually, you said I shouldn't stay in Beaucoeur Parish."

  "And I meant it." Abruptly he turned back to his fish, banging the utensils in a way that set her nerves on edge.

  What had she said? Something about Sally Daigle, or her death, had set him off. And Chad Lacoste had warned her about him. Was there some connection between the warning and Remy's reaction to the name of a dead woman? The name spoken by the cousin who looked just like her.

  She had a thousand questions, but Remy's demeanor seemed to wrap a muffling veil about both of them. She picked at the fish he set before her, knowing she ought to find it delicious but unable to enjoy it. Soon thereafter, Remy disappeared down the short connecting hall and returned with a terse comment about showing her to her room.

  Dana would have liked nothing better than to walk right out the door and leave Remy to his brooding. But she was dead tired, grimy, and desperate for a little peace and quiet. Remy showed her the small bathroom, complete with sink, shower and a toilet occupied by an outboard motor. She turned down his offer to restore the facility to its original function and accepted a flashlight and directions to the outhouse set several yards back from the bayou. She didn't relish the thought of using it after dark, but at least she would have a full harvest moon for company.

  A few sentences later, Remy left her to herself. She heard him moving around for a few minutes, and then the houseboat settled into an eerie silence. The small window was no impediment to the myriad sounds of a bayou night: the singing frogs Remy had mentioned, hoarse bellowing she guessed might be the voice of an alligator, and… once more… that eerie howling.

  She sat down on the bed, a narrow affair clearly not intended for two. Remy's, she supposed. The room was as bare bones as the kitchen, with little in the way of decoration except for an old fishing pole hung on the wall and a colorful but amateurish oil painting in an incongruously ornate frame.

  Dana got up to study the painting, wondering if it might be some early work of Remy's. It depicted the swamp, and though the technique was inexpert, there was obvious love behind the depiction of the brown water, green trees and blotches of color indicating wild-flowers. But the scrawled signature at the bottom spelled out another name: Tristan.

  A relative, perhaps. At least he cared about someone enough to hang that person's work on the wall of his bedroom.

  After a quick peep into the hall, Dana washed up, made a hasty trip to the outhouse—it wasn't nearly as awful as she feared—and gratefully returned to the boat and the relative safety of her borrowed bedroom.

  She found an oversize red T-shirt, printed with the image of an alligator in a baseball cap, lying across the bed. She fingered it, trying to decide whether or not she should wear something that plainly belonged to Remy. In the end she pulled it on, preferring it to nudity in a strange bed and with a strange man in very close proximity.

  Once under the covers, her soiled clothing draped over the room's single wooden chair, she made a token effort at sleep. She was hardly surprised when it refused to come. The sheets and T-shirt, though freshly laundered, held a faint masculine scent she couldn't ignore. The night noises seemed to grow louder and louder; if Remy was still awake, he gave no indication of it.

  Remy. He was the reason for her insomnia—he and his grin, his compelling eyes and his changeable moods. Face it, she told the ceiling, you're attracted to him.

  Most women would be. The difference was that she knew better. There was about as much likelihood of a romantic relationship between her and Remy Arceneaux as there was between a cottontail and a cotton-mouth.

  That painted a pretty picture. Dana sighed and pushed aside the blankets. It was still hot, and now that the sun had set the mosquitoes might not be quite so bad. A little walk on the deck…

  Her bare foot brushed something dry, sleek and definitely moving. She gave a brief, strangled shriek and bolted across the room. The object of her terror flicked its tongue at her.

  "Dana?"

  The door swung open and Remy stepped in, his gaze darting back and forth in alarm. Then he saw the snake, and the tension went out of his shoulders. In a darting motion almost too swift for Dana to follow, he snatched the reptile just behind its darting head.

  "Is this what you were screaming about?" he asked.

  Dana flushed. "Didn't you say this boat was safe?"

  "It's just a li'l ol' milk snake." He lifted the creature's head to eye level as if he were including it in the conversation. "Now, if it was a water moccasin, you might have something to worry about."

  "And that's supposed to reassure me?"

  "Guess you don't see too many snakes in San Francisco."

  Dana eased behind the bed. The room seemed about ten times smaller with Remy in it. "Not too many bellowing alligators, either, or howling wolves."

  "I told you…" Remy trailed off as if he'd forgotten what he was about to say, his gaze falling slowly from her face to the T-shirt, which extended to Dana's upper thighs. She had completely forgotten what she was wearing—or not wearing.

  Dana had blushed more in the past couple of hours than she'd done in nearly thirty years. She made no effort to cover herself. Remy might consider that a victory.

  "Don't you think you should put the poor snake outside?" she suggested.

  He looked down at his hand in surprise. "Oui," he said. "It's scared half to death." With pointed haste, he turned on his heel and left the room.

  Unfortunately, the door didn't lock. Dana dove back under the sheets and pulled them up to her chin. A little while later she heard footsteps on the deck outside, then a longer period of silence. She imagined serpents of every description crawling all around the room. What had Remy said about water moccasins?

  Coward. You're on edge about everything tonight. All you have to do is—

  A face appeared at the window, a pale blur in moonlight. Dana shot up, clutching the sheets to her chest.

  The face was not Remy's. That was all she was sure of. The hair was darker than his, and the eyes stared at her, unblinking, like those of a madman.

  Dana was no hapless heroine of some derivative teen horror movie. She tore her gaze away from the window long enough to search for a makeshift weapon. When she looked back, the face was gone.

  She sat very still, listening for movement, any sound beyond the pounding of her heart. Surely it hadn't been her imagination, that face. After the incident with the snake, she was less than enthusiastic about running to Remy. It might be midnight or 2:00 a.m., or even later, but dawn still seemed very far away.

  She had almost begun to doze off from sheer exhaustion when the howling came again: uncanny, drawn-out, and filled with such mournful pleading that Dana felt her throat close in sympathy. On impulse, she got up and struggled into her mud-caked jeans and sneakers. She crept onto the
deck, keeping close to the wall.

  The howling had stopped, but her investigation was not in vain. The light of a single lantern caught the gleam of red-brown hair—Remy, walking down the ramp so noiselessly that he might as well have been floating.

  It was not instinct that drove Dana to follow. Instinct might be considered a survival mechanism, and this was pure stupidity. She dashed into her room, grabbed the flashlight and ran after Remy, hoping she hadn't already lost him.

  The moon was still full, though it had moved lower in the sky, and so bright that she didn't need the flashlight. Remy was almost out of sight. She stalked him as quietly as she could, expecting him to turn and see her at any moment.

  But he had other things on his mind. All of a sudden he began to jog along the narrow path, and Dana had to use all her concentration to keep up.

  Remy vanished behind a line of cypress trees. When she reached the other side, she didn't know whether to feel relief or horror.

  A man lay sprawled on the boggy ground, and Remy knelt beside him, talking in a soft voice. He didn't seem to notice as she drew closer. Within a few steps she could see that the man on the ground was not simply taking a rest. He was, unaccountably, quite naked. His lower leg was caught in what could only be an animal trap of some kind, and Remy was in the process of prying the jaws of the trap apart with his hands.

  The man gave a barely audible whimper. Dana cast away her doubts and knelt at Remy's side. He looked up, his expression conveying chagrin, fear and relief, all at the same time. She saw immediately that the man in the trap was the one she'd seen at her window.

  He was young—younger than Remy—but the vulnerability she recognized in his face was not merely that of youth, or even of pain. He gazed directly into her eyes while Remy worked, just as he'd stared through the window. Her discomfort didn't come from his nudity; she'd seen plenty of nude bodies, in all shapes and sizes. Now, if it were Remy instead…

  Get your mind back on the problem at hand. And the problem was not the reason the young man had gotten himself caught in a trap while running around naked, but the injury to his leg. That was something a doctor ought to be able to help.

  And how long has it been since you set a bone or stitched up a wound outside of a sterile operating room? Dana moved closer to Remy, her shoulder brushing his, as he snapped the jaws of the trap apart and tossed the ugly contraption several yards away. The young man winced.

  "Remy?" he said.

  "It's all right, Tris." Remy glanced at Dana, his expression closed and grim. "I need to take him back to the boat."

  "He's injured." Dana bent over the young man's leg and examined it by flashlight. "It's a nasty wound. He may have a fracture. He ought to go to the hospital right a—"

  "That won't be necessary." Remy positioned his arms under the young man's back and knees, lifted him gently and set off for the houseboat.

  "You're crazy," Dana said, jogging to keep pace. "A doctor should look at his leg."

  "You're a doctor."

  "A doctor with the right equipment, under sanitary conditions. This is not the Stone Age."

  "I know what's best for him."

  "You do, do you? Just who is he?"

  Remy never broke stride. His eyes glittered in the moonlight. "Tristan is my brother."

  Dana St. Cyr was quiet for the remaining distance to the boat, and for that Remy was grateful. She was bound to have questions, and he had to think up answers quickly.

  He carried Tris onto the boat, pushed open the door to Tris's bedroom with his foot, and laid his brother down on the bed. Dana was right behind him. If she'd seen this second bedroom before, she would have known he didn't live on the boat alone.

  At the moment she was intent on Tris and not on Remy's deception. She arranged the sheets and blankets to cover all of Tris except his leg, and then glanced up at Remy.

  "I need you to get me some clean cloth for washing—something that can be torn easily, and boiling water, in two containers," Dana said briskly. "Also soap, and rubbing alcohol if you have it, whiskey if you don't. I may need to make a splint if his leg is broken. I don't see any bone protruding, thank goodness."

  Without waiting to see if he would obey, she leaned over Tris and touched his cheek. "How are you doing, Tristan? Can you talk to me?"

  Tris gazed at her as if he'd seen a ghost whose haunting he welcomed. "All right," he repeated. "You'll… stay with me?"

  "Of course I will. And as soon as you can be moved, we're taking you to the hospital."

  Remy strode out of the room. If he didn't do as she asked, she would think him a heartless son of a bitch. But soon enough she would see that her concerns were completely unnecessary.

  Then the questions would come. Remy prayed that Tristan wouldn't make things worse.

  By the time he returned with the cloth and boiling water, Dana had pulled a chair up beside the bed and was examining Tristan's leg.

  "No broken bones," she said. "Your brother is very fortunate." She smiled at Tris, who couldn't take his eyes from her. "I'll have a better idea what's what when we clean this blood away." She let the water cool slightly and scrubbed her hands vigorously in one of the bowls. Only then did she dip a washcloth into the second bowl and begin dabbing at the wounds.

  "I don't understand," she murmured. "That trap should have done much more damage." She frowned. "These wounds are superficial. If I didn't know better, I'd say they were already healing." She turned to Remy. "How did you know?"

  Remy stared at the wall. "I could see it wasn't bad," he said. "Tris is always getting into some scrape or other."

  She shook her head. "It's been quite a while since I've… done this kind of work. But I haven't forgotten that much." She patted Tris's shoulder through the blanket. "Any pain, Tristan? If we go to the doctor, we can make sure you'll be all right."

  There was something very admirable in the way Dana took Tristan's part and watched over him, though their meeting had been unusual, to say the least. She even spoke to Tris as if she understood that he needed gentle handling.

  Nothing about Dana St. Cyr was what Remy might have expected. But that didn't change the facts. She had to get out of this swamp, and out of the parish.

  "I'll make a bargain with you, Dana," Remy said. "If you still think he needs to go to the hospital when we're ready to leave in the morning, I'll take him."

  Dana finished cleaning Tris's leg with the alcohol and bandaged the wound with torn sheets and cotton towels. "There might be infection. I won't change my mind."

  "I think it's time to let my brother rest."

  "Yes." Dana gathered up the remains of her makeshift medical kit and covered Tris's leg. "I'll be right outside if you need me, Tristan. Call if your leg starts feeling any worse, all right?"

  Tris nodded, but it was apparent that he was fighting sleep. Once he was out, he would be out for hours. Remy guided Dana from the room and closed the door.

  "Why are you afraid of the hospital, Remy?" she asked as soon as they were back in the kitchen.

  Remy put on the coffeepot. "I'm not afraid of hospitals or doctors. We just don't need them."

  "We? You and your brother? You've never been sick a day in your life, I suppose?"

  "You said you came out here to find out what happened to Sally," he said.

  "Yes. But what does that have to do with—"

  He turned on her, eyes narrowed and fists clenched. "I guess you haven't been in town long enough to hear the rumors. Didn't you know that the Arceneaux brothers are the chief suspects in Sally's disappearance?"

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  « ^ »

  "What?"

  "You heard me." Remy sloshed hot coffee into a mug and gulped it down. "Everyone figures one or both of us had something to do with it. If they had any evidence…" He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I don't want more rumors started because of you."

  Dana folded her hands on the table. "Did you have something to do with it
?"

  He laughed. "Why should you believe anything I tell you?"

  "I don't know. I can see you've been trying to protect your brother in some way, even from me."

  "Tris isn't like other people. He's sensitive, a dreamer. There were problems in school and afterward. He—" Hell, he'd been about to tell her things he'd never told anyone. "They could destroy him."

  He waited for more questions, the kind he couldn't answer. But she held her silence and gazed out the black square of the window. If she was afraid, she didn't show it. She was too damned brave for her own good.

  "I've often wondered," she said, "what it would have been like to have someone to care for the way you do for Tristan."

  He didn't allow himself to consider the deeper implications of her personal revelation. "You mean you don't think I'm a callous bastard for not taking him to the hospital?"

  She met his eyes. "I don't understand you, Remy. Is it my approval you want? I thought you were trying to get rid of me."

  For a skilled surgeon, she cut much too close to the bone. "That's right. I don't want you around here. Anyone in town would tell you the same, if Lacoste hasn't already."

  "And I could vanish into the swamp as easily as Sally did."

  He couldn't bear the calm, almost indifferent way she spoke of it. It made him sick, and at the same time he teetered on the edge of confiding everything to her.

  And that would make him more certifiably crazy than Tris had ever been.

  "You'd better go lie down if you want to be in shape to go back to town tomorrow," he said.

  "But how can I be sure you won't murder me in my bed?"

  "You can't. Should I make some more strong coffee?"

  She got up from the table and started for the hall. At the corner, she turned back and looked into his eyes.

  "What happened to Sally isn't a joke. Not to me. And I mean to find out what happened, one way or another."

  In the morning, almost every sign of Tristan's wound was gone.