Dark Magic (38 page)

"Julian knew he was there. He felt him."

"But you saw him." Gregori pushed the man a little harder, suddenly interested in this beast that could survive when so many others had not.

Beau glanced around the canal, uncomfortable in the dark of night. He was superstitious, and he had seen things, unexplainable things, and he didn't like to speak of them without light of the sun. "Maybe. Maybe I have seen the old man," he admitted, his voice low. "But out here, if you admit such a thing, the newcomers think you're loco."

"Tell us about it," Gregori urged, his voice velvet, mesmerizing, impossible to resist.

Chapter Sixteen

For a moment the wind ceased to blow, and the insects in the bayou were silent. A dark shadow seemed to pass overhead. Gregori looked at Savannah. Beau pulled a can of beer out of a cooler, offering drinks to the couple. When they declined, he downed a third of the contents in a single gulp.

"My father was a trapper," Beau told them. "I spent a lot of time in the bayou with him, trapping. When I was about sixteen, we were camped out at the old cabin, the one I pointed out to you earlier. There were some kids partying on a boat, kids from the city. They had a real nice boat, not like the old thing we took to school. I was jealous, you know. The girls were beautiful, and the boys dressed just right. When they saw me and my father, they laughed and pointed at us in our old skiff. I felt ashamed."

Savannah made a soft sound of sympathy, her natural inclination to comfort him. Gregori laced his fingers through hers, clamping her to his side. She was such a compassionate little thing, and she wove such a spell of enchantment around men without even realizing it. He turned her knuckles up to the warmth of his mouth in appreciation of her character.

Beau took another swig of the beer, then wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand. "We watched them go down the fork leading deep into the swamp. Their boat was large and shouldn't have made it that far into the reeds. Roots are thick there, sticking up out of the water every which way. The insects swarm around you, biting until you're covered in blood. It was impossible for that boat, yet somehow they did it, as if the way had been cleared for them. An invitation to death."

Savannah felt a cold chill, a dark, brooding dread that brought a shadow across her heart. "Why would anyone want to go to such a place?" she asked with a shiver.

Gregori's arm circled her shoulders and pulled her into the protection of his body. "There is nothing to fear,
ma petite
. I am with you. Nothing can harm you when you are with me."

Beau believed Gregori's whispered promise to Savannah. Believed it absolutely. He had already noticed the lack of mosquitoes and gnats. It had been so with Julian Selvaggio, too. A strange phenomenon, but then, Beau had witnessed many strange things in the bayou.

The captain's voice dropped even lower, as if the very water beneath the boat could carry his tale to the outside world. "Many go to see if the legend is true. Trappers, poachers hunting a trophy, those hungry, in need of food and money. Those from the outside think it's all voodoo nonsense. They don't understand the power of magic or of the bayou itself. So they hunt what they don't understand. Julian respected nature, respected our ways and the magic here. That is why I told him, why I went on the hunts with him."

"Why would everyone want to kill it?" Savannah's sympathies swung to the alligator. "It just wants to survive."

Beau shook his head soberly and reached down to start the engine. The boat began to chug slowly through the water. "No, Savannah, don't waste your compassion. This is no ordinary gator. The old man is evil. He lies in wait and, hungry or not, kills anything that comes near. Man or beast, it is all the same to him. He pulls them into the water and devours them."

"I thought you liked alligators," Savannah protested. "They're part of nature, part of the bayou. They belong here. We're the ones encroaching on their territory. This poor alligator doesn't ask for anyone to come hunting him. He probably wants to be left alone. But they come anyway."

"Tell us what happened to the kids," Gregori prompted gently.

"They didn't come back. My father was very restless, very worried. He knew of the reputation of the gator, and he didn't like those outsiders going back that far into the swamp. Old man alligator killed for the joy of it. We knew he was evil. Eventually my father insisted we go looking for them. He told me to be very quiet. He took oil lamps and matches, the guns, and a hook—everything we had in camp to protect us."

The stifling air seemed to hang stiffly, waiting in suspense for the rest of the tale. Savannah pressed herself against Gregori's solid form. Suddenly she wasn't certain she wanted to hear the rest. She could feel and hear and smell the picture Beau was describing.

It will be all right
, chérie. Gregori's voice brought soothing comfort to her mind and a measure of protection, an insulation between Savannah's sensitivity and whatever she might hear next.

"There was a terrible stench. The air was thick, so much so that we could barely breathe. I remember the sweat pouring off us in rivers, and both of us knew if we continued into the old man's territory, he would have us for dinner. We wanted to turn back. We slowed the boat. My heart was beating so loud, I could hear it. And the insects descended on us. My father was black with them, moving all over him. They stung and bit at us, got in our eyes and nose, even filling our mouths."

Beau was becoming so agitated, Gregori instinctively reached to calm his mind. He matched the man's breathing, brought it under control, then matched the rhythm of his heart and slowed it to normal. He whispered the soothing healing chant of his people and waved his hand gently to create a breeze to blow away the stifling heat and cool the perspiration on Beau's body. At once the terrible pressure building in the captain's chest eased.

Beau smiled thinly. "I've only told this story to one other person. I promised myself I never would, but somehow I felt compelled to share it with Julian, and now you. I'm sorry. It's still like it happened yesterday."

"Sometimes it helps to talk about a bad experience," Savannah said gently, her dark eyes luminous in the night. They glowed like a cat's, strange and beautiful.

The captain shook his head. "As long as I never talked about it, I could pretend it didn't really happen. My father never spoke of it, even to me. I think we both wanted it to be nothing more than a nightmare."

"The city kids were drinking." Gregori picked the information out of his head.

Beau nodded. "We found empty bottles floating in the water, on the bank. Then we heard them screaming. Not just any kind of screaming, but the kind that stays with you forever. It wakes you up at night in a cold sweat. My father stayed drunk for a month afterward trying to forget those screams. I know it didn't work." He wiped his mouth again. "It's never worked for me."

I don't want to hear this, Gregori. It hurts him too much to remember
, Savannah protested, her fingers curling in Gregori's shirt.

Gregori stroked a caressing hand down her hair.
I will ease his pain later. It is interesting; in his mind I sense Julian's presence, as if he, also, soothed this man. Why would the alligator killing humans so upset his father? Why would the terror of it linger in him for so many years? In this place there have been many deaths, few of them pleasant. Perhaps it is necessary that we hear this tale.

"We were covered in insects, like a blanket, crawling on us. And it was almost impossible to breathe." Beau touched his throat, remembering the feeling of suffocating. "Still, we couldn't leave them. We kept pushing through the reeds and roots. For us, the going was very difficult even though we had a much smaller boat. The water was black and murky near the bank. It formed a pool there, and the water was stagnant. The stench was unbelievable, like a slaughterhouse of dead carcasses left to decay in the sun. My father wanted to leave me in the boat at the mouth of the pool, said he would go on foot, but I knew if I let him, he would die."

"Oh, Beau," Savannah breathed sympathetically. She was almost as distressed as the captain. Automatically Gregori soothed and comforted her, providing a stronger, insulating cushion for her. She was like a sponge, soaking up the terrible trauma.

"I guess we both accepted that we probably wouldn't make it out of there," Beau continued. He skillfully guided the boat around a snag. "But we went in. It was black. Not just like night, but black. My father lit the lamp, and then we could see them. The boat was splintered, huge chunks out of it, as if something enormous had attacked it. It was sinking, nearly under water. One boy was clinging to it, but blood was spraying into the sky. We couldn't get to him. Something came up out of the water, something prehistoric. Its eyes were evil, and its mouth was gaping open. It was no ordinary alligator, and it was enjoying itself, playing with those dying kids."

Beau shoved a hand through his hair in agitation, looking out across the familiar water. Gregori stirred, drawing the captain's attention. Those peculiar silver eyes caught his gaze and held it. Instantly Beau felt calm, centered, protected, disconnected. The tale he was relating became just that, a story that had happened to someone else.

Gregori felt the strange shifting in the captain's mind, like a hazy veil that produced a programmed reaction. He focused and followed the trail, the pattern of evil he was so familiar with. He recognized Julian's healing touch, the safeguards he had set for the mortal to prevent the tainted shadow from spreading. Beau La Rue had been touched by a vampire. He had escaped, but not unscathed.

Savannah's soft little gasp in his mind betrayed her presence. He found himself smiling that she could slip in and out of him, so much a part of him that he could no longer tell where he started and she left off. She had access to his memories and his knowledge. The more time she spent in his mind, the better she was at acquiring the lessons centuries had taught him.
More than you know
. Savannah sounded smug.

Beau was much more relaxed, not the happy captain of earlier, but his tension had definitely eased. "There was nothing we could do for any of them. We had entered the monster's playground, and he was in the mood to play. He didn't try to drown any of them right away, or kill them outright. He tossed them into the air and ripped parts of them away. Pieces of bodies were floating in the water. A girl's head bobbed up and down near the bank. I remember the way her hair was spread out like a fan on the surface of the water."

Gregori touched the man's shoulder.
Enough. There is no need for you to remember the details of this atrocity
.

Beau shook his head, the vivid picture in his mind suddenly dimming to a hazy recollection. "We almost didn't make it out ourselves. It came at us, as big as any of those crocodiles on the Nile. He didn't want food, he wasn't protecting his territory, he just liked to kill. We had penetrated into his lair, his domain, while he was amusing himself, and he was angry. My father threw the oil lamp on the water and set the whole thing on fire. We didn't look back."

"You were very lucky," Gregori said softly, his voice like a fresh, cool breeze. It seeped into La Rue's mind, his pores, and dissipated the sickness gripping him.

You can heal him
, Savannah said.

He is mortal.

You can do it
, she insisted.
Julian protected him, ensured the poison wouldn't spread, kept the nightmare away, but you can remove it
.

The hard edge to Gregori's mouth softened, almost a smile. She was doing it again. There was no way to convince her he couldn't do what she wanted. She believed it implicitly. He brought her hand to the warmth of his mouth, pressed a kiss into her palm. Je t'aime,
Savannah
, he whispered into her mind like a caress.

Savannah leaned into him.
I love you, too, lifemate
.

Gregori turned his attention to cleansing the mortal's mind, washing away the memory of the encounter with the loathsome creature, the undead. He didn't remove it completely because it was firmly entrenched in the captain's soul; the man had lived with the experience for too many years. But Gregori whitewashed it, toning it down, extracting the remnants of the vampire's tainted touch, the evil punishment for the intrusion, for the ability to escape the snare. The nightmares would be gone, the vivid horror would fade, and the terrible dread and fear Beau had lived with would be gone from his life for all time.

Gregori sighed softly and rubbed the nape of his neck where it tightened after such a mental excursion. Removing the taint of vampire from a mortal, from anyone, was difficult; it took tremendous energy. But looking down into Savannah's shining eyes made it all worthwhile. She was looking at him as if he were the only man on earth.

You
are
the only man as far as I'm concerned
, she whispered softly, the words brushing away the weariness in his mind. The sound of the ancient healing chant was soothing, as her voice, beautiful and pure, rinsed away the ugly touch of the vampire's depravity from his own mind. To walk in Beau's mind and heal it, he had had to see every memory in vivid detail. Gregori had to enter the ugliness of the vampire's sick spells to unravel them and heal from the inside out. He found his hand gripping Savannah's, a kind of humbleness sweeping through him. No one had ever done that before—looked after him, worried about his well-being, helped heal him. It was a unique experience for the master healer of their race.

"You took Julian to this place?" Gregori asked the captain.

Beau nodded. "We have gone several times over the years. We never encountered the old man again."

"Did it feel the same to you? His territory? Was it still evil?"

Beau nodded slowly, a faint frown on his face. "But I knew he wasn't there. It was evil, but not quite the same. Of course, with Julian, I always felt different. Everything was different."