by Celia Roman
I jerked away from him like he slapped me, and for a minute, I was so spitting mad, I couldn’t speak. Hot emotion roiled within me, overwhelming any thought I had for the company or the locale, or even my growing respect for the host.
And that brought me up short. David went outta his way to welcome me, in spite of who I was, in spite of what I weren’t. He’d welcomed me without judgment or prejudice, and he was my friend. I didn’t have so many of those. Sure couldn’t afford to lose one now.
I swallowed past the raw anger choking me and managed to grit out, “I need some air.”
Gregory opened his mouth and closed it on silence, but I didn’t care. What was I but the niece of a drug runner and the daughter of a coon crazy killer? Manners wasn’t bred into me like they was Gregory and Riley and all the other folks here, and for once, I weren’t gonna try to muster any, no matter who invited me and what I thought of him.
I whirled away and left through the front door, avoiding the little clumps of polite chit chat and less polite envy, and come to a halt in the middle of the front porch. The sun had fallen while we was inside and fog had drifted down onto the lake. I sucked in fresh air in great heaves, willing the anger and hurt and resentment swirling sick and mean in my gut to stay there.
What give Riley the right to tell me how to handle Belinda? Who did he think he was anyhow, that I needed his advice?
Shame hit me with the force of a hurricane, burying ever thing else, and I scraped shaky hands over my head and down my braid. What was wrong with me? Riley’d been nothing but kind to me as long as I knowed him. He didn’t deserve the blunt end of my temper, ‘specially when it weren’t directed at him. He weren’t the cause, not even close, and I shouldn’ta lashed out at him, even in my mind.
I heaved a sigh and dropped my head back. The sky above me was bereft of stars and moon, an empty, black sea tinged purple at the horizon above the outline of the mountains. I stared into that darkness and waited for it to swallow up my shame. I was gonna have to apologize to him, weren’t no way around it. But not yet. I needed just a minute more to gather my wits and make dang sure my anger over Belinda’s thievery and the past hanging between us was locked up tight.
With that in mind, I walked down the stairs toward the dock, each step slow and even. A light breeze blowed across the water, stirring the fog, and night creatures sang along the shore in time with the mournful notes of a saxophone escaping the house.
The dock rung hollow under my footsteps. I walked to the very end and stood with my arms curled around my middle and my shoulders hunched ‘round my ears. Fog lay in an irregular blanket across the water sloshing against the support posts, and the scent of moisture enveloped me. From this far off, the murmur of voices and the quiet music David chose was silent, absorbed by the darkness enfolding me.
Metal clanked against metal in Gregory and David’s boathouse, just to the side of the dock and up against the shore. My hands dropped, reaching automatically for the hunting knife tucked against my ankle inside my boot. I curled ‘em into fists instead and laughed soft and low. It was eerie out here, was all. Nothing was on the water but me and the sleeping fishies and the frogs serenading each other.
“Sunny?”
Riley’s soft call floated down to me. I turned around and glanced up. He was standing on the second landing with his fingers tucked into his jeans, his expression hidden by the night.
“You ok?” he asked.
I managed a wan smile. “Just getting some air.”
“Supper’s about to start.”
“Ok.”
He dug his hands deeper into his pockets. “You coming in soon?”
“I need another minute.”
“Sure, baby. Look.” He shrugged and ran a hand over the top of his head. “I’m sorry.”
I shook my head. Weren’t no call for him to apologize. He hadn’t done a blasted thing ‘cept look out for me. I was about to tell him so when a shadow shifting behind him caught my eye. Riley’s whole body jerked, then slumped. He slipped off the landing and tumbled down the stairs in front of him, and I stood stock still, too horrified to do anything but watch as he slid sideways along the wooden slats and finally landed in a heap on the third landing, just above the dock.
“Riley!” I screamed, and took a half step toward him.
A low, satisfied laugh split the night, halting me, and a woman said, “Poor Riley. Ever the white knight.”
The shadow standing where Riley had started out resolved into a recognizable figure. “Belinda,” I breathed a moment before something hard slapped into the back of my skull and the night swallowed me whole.
Chapter Fifteen
I woke to my clothes catching on the dock’s slats. Two hard hands was hooked under my armpits and a man grunted with ever heave backward. I twisted around and slapped at him, and recognized that no account, good for nothing Harley Jimpson.
I was gonna kill Fame for ever introducing me to that man, soon as I figured out how to get outta this fix.
Belinda sauntered down the dock, her bare feet silent. One hand held a half-sized shovel against her shoulder. She clucked her tongue and shook her head, like a mother scolding a child. “This won’t do, Sunny. Offerings must be willing. It’s in the rules.”
I dug my heels into the dock and scrambled for a hold on Harley, anything what’d get him to let me loose. My fingernails scraped against a bare hand, and he cursed long and low under his breath.
Belinda bent down in front of me. The night was dark, lit by a fog wreathed moon and the solar lights leading up the hill to the house. I couldn’t make out her face with the light behind her like that. Didn’t need to. I seen that mock kind expression she fronted often enough to know it in my dreams.
“There, there, darling,” she cooed. “Teus will take good care of you, once his pet has taken you.”
That stopped me cold. “Teus?”
She stood up and tapped a beringed hand to her cheek. “Why, yes. He’s a sea god. Quite ancient, as I understand it, and very upset with us for dumping industrial byproducts into his water. Didn’t you know?”
Harley hauled me backward, and along I went, limp as a wet noodle. Maybe that blow to the head rattled my noggin, but I coulda sworn Belinda called Teus a sea god.
Missy’s wan face popped into my head. “If this man is who I think he is, he’s very dangerous,” she’d said. I reckoned a sea god fit right well in that category, if Belinda could be believed, though how sweet Missy coulda knowed it was beyond me.
That she devil leaned down and pinched my cheek. “Little Sunshine Walkingstick, detective and paranormal expert, didn’t know one of the men fawning after her was a sea god? Will wonders never cease.”
Her light tone set my teeth on edge, always had. This time, though, I weren’t a green kid too scared of her own shadow to stick up for herself. This time, I was a grown woman what’d sent a few dozen monsters to their graves. I weren’t helpless, I weren’t afraid, and I sure as hell weren’t gonna let this bitch get away with bullying me no more.
“Run as fast as you can, Belinda Heaton,” I hissed out. “I’m coming after you next, you and that ring you’re wearing.”
She stood up and laughed. The tinkling sound broke through the night, silencing the frogs and crickets in their song. “Don’t be naïve, darling. Teus will never let you go. Throw her in now, Harley, and watch until the creature takes her.”
She swiveled around on the ball of a bare foot and sashayed away. Beyond her, Riley’s crumpled form was spotlighted in the last bit of good light along the dock. Riley, him what’d survived Afghanistan and walked away with the scars to prove it. Riley, with his bright hair and big heart, the only friend I ever had growing up.
Riley, him what’d saved me in his own way, sure as I saved him that day at the lake.
I couldn’t let him down now.
Harley heaved again and blew a sharp breath between his teeth. “You sure don’t look as heavy as you is, Sunshine.”
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I narrowed my eyes and jabbed an elbow at his shins, and grazed denim instead. “Fame’ll hear about this, Harley. Mark my words.”
“Fame won’t hear a thing,” he said, but his voice shook and trembled like a leaf on the wind.
Satisfaction filled me. Oh, yeah. Harley Jimpson was gonna get what was coming to him, by hook or by crook. I inched my hand down my thigh toward the knife strapped to my ankle. “Why’re you stooping to doing Belinda’s dirty work? What’s in it for you?”
“Money. She pays me to do all kinds of stuff.”
My hand slid a few more inches down. “Like throwing innocent women into the lake in the middle of the night?”
He grunted out a laugh and heaved me another foot along the dock. “That and taking care of some problems she got with her new business.”
My hand paused on my knee as the pieces of the puzzle locked into place. “You’re the one what dumped that toxic waste and ruined the water.”
“Only ‘cause she asked me to, her and them bigwigs. The Greenwood Five.” He snorted and hauled me back. “La-ti-da folk and them high falutin’ ways.”
I had to agree with him, even if he was scum. Couldn’t get a bead on Hal Woodrow, but Belinda and Faith and Phillip was all cut from the same greedy cloth. David and Gregory was a different story. Not ever body in the cove was bad.
“Soon as you throw me in,” I said, “I’m gonna swim outta the water and head straight for the police.”
“Nope,” he said, and shoved me over the end of the dock.
I sank like a stone and sucked cold, stinky water into my lungs along with air, nearly choking. Son of a gun. I hadn’t realized we was so close to the edge. Don’t know what I woulda done different ‘cept maybe fight harder, but still. I shoulda paid better attention.
I bobbed to the surface, sank once, then popped back up and managed to stay. A strong swimmer I was not, but I could tread water with the best of ‘em.
Harley was planted at the end of the dock, feet spread wide, hands on knees. “You just stay right there, little miss. Shouldn’t be long now ‘til that monster comes along.”
Like I was really gonna hang around for a monster. “Help me out, Harley, and Fame don’t need to hear word one about this.”
He shook his head. “The money’s too good, Sunshine, and I done give my word. ‘Sides. This Teus fellow won’t hurt you none. Trip down to his lair might be a little hard on ya, seeing as how it’s on the lake floor, but once you get there, you’ll be fine.”
Fear crept along the muscles of my spine, fixing ‘em in place. The lake floor? I couldn’t hold my breath that long. Not many could, ‘specially in the deepest parts of the lake.
And if I was gonna make a lair in Lake Burton, that’s where it’d be, right where nothing and nobody never went.
Panic seized me then, fierce as the burning sun. I splashed a hand into the cooling water, shooting a spray of it along Harley’s thighs. “You get me outta this water, Harley Jimpson.”
Right about then, something bumped my leg. My heart clenched hard in my chest and I glanced around, searching for whatever was down there under the dark surface where light shied away.
I cursed under my breath. Belinda and Harley’d both told me there was something in the water. I knowed it from the evidence I seen with my own two eyes. I squeezed them eyes shut. Eyes. David seen an eye big as his palm. Belinda’s step-daughter seen something, too, and here I was idling my time away in the water without my knife in hand.
Stupid, stupid.
Something bumped me again, then a giant maw clamped down on my leg and dragged me under, and danged if it didn’t have ahold of the leg with the knife strapped to it.
Air bubbled outta my mouth before I could clamp my lips shut and conserve it. The thing holding me swam up and I popped outta the water like a cork. I sucked in a quick breath and held it tight, and sure enough, down we went again.
No telling when I’d get another lung full. I had to have a plan, had to think of some way outta this situation. Ten to one, Riley was still on that dock. Belinda woulda stepped right over him on her way back to the party, and Harley? He’d as soon spit on a man as help him.
Couldn’t count on nobody missing Riley neither, what with both of us gone. Likely anybody noticing our absence would assume we snuck off together and was making out somewhere or something. The truth was a far cry from that, but who was gonna suspect it?
No, it was up to me to get myself outta this situation and help Riley, and I had no clue what I was up against.
Only one way to tell.
I twisted around and bent double best I could against the force of the water swirling past me, then groped down my leg to the maw clamped around it. Smooth, slick, almost slimy, like a fish.
Which made perfect sense ‘cept for the size. This’un had to be big as a man to hold me like it was, maybe bigger if its speed was anything to go by. We was cutting through the water like it was hot butter, going faster’n I ever been in it or on it either one.
And only one fish fit that bill.
It swam up, bobbing me into the air. I exhaled and inhaled quick like, and was dragged back under with my mouth half open. Water filled my mouth. I spit it out through a narrow slit in my lips, then shut ‘em tight, holding in what air I owned.
Back when I was researching what might be vandalizing the docks, I stumbled across the legends of Lake Burton’s past. The churches left under water, a whole town of buildings buried when power meant more’n community.
But the most famous legend was of the man-sized catfish living near the dam itself. Rumors, I always thought. A fish that size woulda been seen enough for rumor to turn curiosity into truth.
What if that fish was protected, hidden away by some magic or might bigger’n what the human mind could grasp? Like, for instance, a god whose heart was created in the water.
A memory surfaced, of Teus diving into the lake without a splash. What exactly was he? Was Belinda right? Was he a sea god of old, resettled here for reasons unknown? Was I really a tribute give to placate anger over her poor treatment of the water?
I sure as tootin’ didn’t wanna find out.
The fish, if that’s what it really was, swam up again, releasing me to the night, but this time I was ready for it. I gulped in a breath, then swung my free leg around and kicked hard as I could through the water’s drag. My booted foot connected with something squishy, and the grip on my leg loosened. I yanked it outta the way, kicking as I back paddled away from the fish fast as my arms would carry me.
My daddy’s hunting knife. Had to get to the knife.
Soon as I thought it, the fish snagged my foot in its mouth and tugged me under. I squawked around yet another mouthful of water, then kicked with my other foot, hitting the fish with the toe of my boot. Crap. Couldn’t get enough force behind my kicks with the water slowing me down, and the dadgum thing had my knife foot in its mouth.
That was it. I was gonna start carrying a knife on each ankle soon as I got outta this.
If I got outta this.
Riley’s body laid out on the dock popped into my head, like a kick to the gut, hard and nauseating, and my heart skipped a beat. No, I had to get outta this come Hell or high water. Couldn’t give up with Riley’s life on the line.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, a tiny part of me wondered why I cared so much what happened to him, but that part was easy to ignore, what with the life or death situation we was both in.
The fish released my foot, maybe to get a better grip. I took advantage of the momentary lapse and yanked my foot free, then scrambled around my ankle for the knife.
Weren’t gonna let another opportunity to grab it pass me by.
My lungs was burning, begging for air. The fish was below me, I thought, or maybe in front of me. Couldn’t see it in the dark water, couldn’t feel it moving. I took a chance and kicked out with both legs. Luck held. I hit it square and shot away from it, up and outta the water. Opened my mouth
reflexively and gulped mist soaked air into my oxygen starved lungs. The fish bumped my feet once, twice. I sucked in a last breath and held it, then jackknifed into a dive, straight toward that last bump.
And got tangled up in its whiskers.
Fire stung random spots of bare skin. The hand I held my knife in, my belly, my face, all burned under the agonizing sting of the whiskers’ venomous barbs. I bit down on my tongue, refusing to scream and risk losing my last precious few breaths of air, and lashed out with the knife.
It sunk into something, stuck, then slid free, and I lashed out again.
Missed.
The fish clamped down on my legs, both of ‘em this time, giving me a firm target. I slashed downward with all my strength, aiming for where I figured the eye should be, and hit. The fish let go and tried to wiggle free, but I had him now, hooked on my knife. I angled my legs down, parallel with its body, and wrapped ‘em around what I hoped was its middle. My feet didn’t quite meet, as I hoped they would, so I tightened my knees and held on while I worked the knife out.
Best way to kill a fish? Cut its head off and gut it.
I was nigh on certain my knife weren’t long enough for the former, but the latter? Oh, yeah. I’d be swimming in fish guts while I was a-doing. I thought about that during the two seconds it took me to work my knife free. Swimming in fish entrails weren’t the most pleasant way to enjoy the lake.
I was ok with that.
The knife popped free. I positioned it in front of me and stabbed, then jammed the knife downward, cutting through flesh with each sharp slash. The fish convulsed in giant undulations, nearly unseating me. I rode it out with my legs tight around its belly and the fingers of my free hand clamped around a loose flap of its skin. And I kept cutting and kept cutting, moving my way down, shifting my grip careful like between the slowing contortions of its dying body ‘til my legs slid off its tail and my knife run outta gullet to slice.
I shoved away from it and let my body’s natural buoyancy carry me to the surface. Soon as I hit it, the world rushed in all at once around the harsh gasp of my breathing. Crickets and frogs chirping, a bluesy number echoing across the cove, the splash of water rippling outward around the fish’s death throes, and underlying it all, the smell of the lake, like fog tinged with a hint of rotten viscera. The moon peeked outta the fog and hung now above the horizon, a blurred globe. Its thin rays scarce cut the mist drifting over the lake.
