Wild Midnight (27 page)

Rachel rubbed her hands against her sandy bare knees and painfully got to her feet, knowing that the ground under her was slowly turning to water. A dull need to survive, even stronger than the blind panic she’d felt when she’d been dragged from the boat, filled her mind. After taking a few steps she realized that she still had a shoe and a sock on her left foot. She pulled them off. Her next step carried her into soft, sucking mud and sand to her knees. Floundering for a few heart-stopping moments, she finally fell into a dry clump of marsh grass.
 

On her hands and knees she parted the grass and saw water—the channel.
 

A small crescent moon was coming up, a late-rising moon above a black horizon that could have been the unlighted mainland or only the salt-marsh prairie. Nothing was more than a few inches above sea level in this landscape. The little moon gave a silvery sheen to what looked like one of the bigger tidal mouths of the Ashepoo, or the edge of St. Helena Sound.
 

She could swim; she had been a competitive swimmer from college days. Should she launch out into the water or remain where she was? The rising tide was now around her ankles.
 

While she crouched there on her knees she felt the first whining sting of a mosquito settling on her bare back.
 

More time passed. If this was terror, it was a cold, unrelenting clutch on Rachel’s consciousness that no longer allowed her to think. She was naked and chilled to the bone from the damp sea wind soughing in the marsh grass. If she went into the black, forbidding water, she would be even colder. But she had to do something.
 

With a last thought that she might not get out of this alive after all, she eased herself into the icy water and a soft mud bottom that made her feet shrink back instinctively. The water wasn’t deep, but the mud gave way and she plunged in. Over her head. Under the surface. She gulped a mouthful and came up spluttering. Her feet churned for the muddy bottom and couldn’t find it. And then right before her face the moonlit shadows that had lain so still in the mud at the black water’s edge came alive, log-shaped presence that slithered like snakes or other cold-blooded things in the sudden pale light of the moon and then noiselessly, sleekly, down into the cold black water that covered them again.
 

Alligators
.
 

Rachel’s mouth opened and strained to scream, but nothing came out. She threw herself at the mud bank and the marsh grass and clung there, hauled up on her hands and knees, gasping. What had been a riverbank full of small, silent reptiles had disappeared, no doubt as frightened as she with her sudden blundering among them. She held armfuls of marsh grass clasped to her naked body and couldn’t let go. The rasping, retching sounds of terror at last came from deep inside her.
 

After a while, after a long while when she could breathe again, she lay where she had landed, facedown, her legs drawn up under her, feeling the mosquitoes feeding on her exposed flesh.
 

The moon rose higher and rode among a few misty stars. A heavy dew was falling, and she was miserably cold. Aware at last of the surges of frigid water lapping at the backs of her legs, her arms and naked breasts. She began to crawl.
 

She crawled very carefully, looking for things lurking in the marsh grass, until she came to another expanse of water, the moon full on it in a silver sheath. She heard the lone, repeating sounds of a night bird, an insistent
chuck-will’s-widow
, somewhere on shore. There was no longer a dry place; the water surged a full current around her now. It licked hungrily at her to reach above her knees, and it tugged at her cold, submerged feet.
 

Rachel opened her mouth but could only make a loud, wordless croak. It could have been anything. It could have been
Help
. She was ashamed that she couldn’t do any better than that. She wasn’t making any noise, any proper effort to stay alive. There had to be something out there. Bird. Or man. Or beast.
 

Help
! she screamed, but wasn’t sure she made any noise at all. It was as though her throat were locked, still imprisoned in the cold, crystal bubble that kept her alive. Then she heard the water moving around her loudly, calling her name, sucking at her eagerly, trying to draw her back into its cold black depths.
 

This time she screamed powerfully. No words, just a mindless, desperate shriek. And the water gurgled, wanting her, growling for her. Calling her name.
 

Rachel could see that it brought something out of the deep to claim her before rescuers might come. The sea wanted her, was longing for her. What came out of the hungry depths was a sea monster all speckled with brown and green splotches where it was not covered with black. And the water eddied around it powerfully. It was strangely beautiful, with a black and green face shining in the moonlight.
 

The sea really wanted her, Rachel knew, to send such a green and black monster for her. It was a sea dragon, and Death, and the Lord of the Alligators, all in one.
 

“Rachel,” it said.
 

Chapter Fifteen

“R
achel,” the Lord of the Alligators said, “stop yelling and tell me, are Lonnie and Roy Murrell still around?”
 

“
Don’t touch me
!” She was screaming like a madwoman. She fought off the monster’s hands when he tried to grab her. Her feet went out from under her and she fell into waist-deep water again. She had almost no strength left to struggle when he picked her up and held her at arm’s length, glittering eyes in the moonlight carefully assessing her condition.
 

“Rachel,” he said again, “shut up.”
 

Even through her quivering shrieks she could tell that the sea monster had a man’s voice. The black-and-green-painted face was stern as hands examined her cold, naked body, pressing her legs and arms and breasts, hesitating over the shadowed delta at the joining of her legs before his hands passed on to cup her face and turn it up to him.
 

“Listen to me,” he told her curtly. “We’ve got a long way to go to get you out of here, and the tide’s just about at full flood; that means the water’s deep. Are you listening? When the tide starts over these mud bars there’s a hell of a current, and I’ve got to get you to the boat.” His voice rose over her cries. “Dammit, I almost missed you—I’ve been back and forth six or seven times right in this spot, and I wouldn’t have found you if you hadn’t started yelling.” The hands on her muddy bare shoulders gave her a hard shake. “Rachel, it’s me. If you don’t cut it out I’m going to have to slap you.”
 

“No,” she moaned at last.
 

She knew the Lord of the Alligators. She knew well this beautiful, hard-faced apparition that had materialized out of the sea so magically to capture her. But she didn’t want to go with him. She didn’t want to die.
 

“That’s better,” the husky voice told her. He lifted her swollen hands to the light and examined the raw places the ropes had left around her wrists. She heard him curse softly under his breath. “Rachel honey, I can’t carry you, the weight of both of us will make us sink in the mud and we’ll get stuck here. You’re going to have to come out on your own two feet. You’re going to have to help me.”
 

“Leave me alone,” she sobbed. She knew how cruel he was.
 

“Sweetheart, you’re all right.” The hands stroked the wet, muddy tangle of her hair and pushed it away from her face. The moving, murmuring water swirled waist high around them. “I’m not going to let anything more happen to you. I know every inch of this marsh, and I’m going to get you out of here. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
 

Oh, yes, she knew his magic well enough; she had seen it before, when his mesmerizing husky voice had flowed over her, making her do what he wanted.
 

“Who are you?” she whispered.
 

He scowled. “You know who I am, Rachel. Snap out of it or you’re going to drown us both, because I’m not going to leave you. I’m not going to leave you,” he repeated, “do you understand that?”
 

“Yes,” she said, not sounding very sane.
 

“That’s my angel.” He could smile, the Lord of the Alligators, with the grim line of his painted mouth. He took time, even with the water rising around them, to touch her chin, his hard thumb stroking the corner of her mouth gently. “Tell me you can walk, honey. That you can do that much.”
 

“I can walk.” But she staggered when he let her go.
 

He took her hand, pulled her right arm over his wet shoulders and supported her weight, so much so that she was half lifted on that side, her foot barely touching marshy ground. But it worked.
 

“I can see where we’re going,” he murmured, “even if you can’t—my night vision is still pretty good. Just concentrate on what you’re doing and keep up with me. We’re going to wade through a lot of water and marsh grass. If it gets deep, I’ll swim and bring you along behind me.”
 

He half dragged, half lifted her through the rush of water, and she felt the mud slip out from under her feet several times. When she gasped he kept talking softly. “That’s it, move with me, keep a sort of rhythm. I want you to tell me where are Darla Jean’s brothers, Lonnie and Roy, the men who were with you. Did they go off in a boat? Did they say they were coming back? I have to know if they’re still somewhere around.”
 

She thought about that as best she could. “I don’t know,” she said finally.
 

The moonlight was bright around them, molten silver on an endless expanse of a nightmare flood plain. She thought it would never end. Then the moon went behind a cloud and she heard herself sobbing wearily.
 

“How did you get out here?” his voice prodded her, keeping her alert. “Were you in Roy’s boat?”
 

She tried to think about that. Finally she told him in a weary voice that they’d put a sack over her head in her backyard, tied her hands and feet, then carried her away. It seemed like a dream. She told him about being in the bed of the truck, covered with a foul-smelling rug. Then she told him in broken words about the boat, what she could remember of it, and the one called Lonnie who kept saying he was going to rape her.
 

“They didn’t rape you.” His voice was cold, deadly.
 

“I don’t know,” she whispered, and heard him curse under his breath.
 

They stopped in a higher place, the water only knee deep there. He took off his camouflage jungle shirt and pulled it over her shoulders. As she shivered, he buttoned it meticulously, just as though the sea were not running and rising around them.
 

The moon came out from behind the clouds. She looked up into the still, beautiful features, familiar now in the light, and said hopelessly, “We’re going to drown.”
 

“No we’re not. We’re almost to where I left the boat.” The Lord of the Alligators bent his head to her. “In a few more steps we’re going to have to swim. If you can’t find any place to touch bottom, put your feet down. You’re not going to start yelling again, are you?”
 

Rachel leaned into his hard body, feeling the sea’s currents trying to pull them apart. His strength held her, not letting her go, and she felt relief surging through her. She loved Beau Tillson, and he had come to find her. She was safe.
 

“They didn’t rape me,” she said in a sudden firm, clear voice. “They’re gone, a long time ago. They took Darla Jean with them.”
 

“I know, honey.” His relief was thick. “The boat’s right over there. We’re going to have to swim for it.”
 

“I was on the swimming team in college,” she said in a strangely loud voice. “I’m not totally useless.”
 

To her surprise, she heard him chuckle. “Just the same, I’m going to hold onto you.”
 

The boat was a rubberized raft floating on the dark waters. She splashed toward it with his hand gripping the back of her neck, pulling her along and swimming strongly with the other, the gold-dark eyes watching her, encouraging her. When they got to the rubber boat she put her hands on the rough, slippery side and suddenly he was under her, giving her a push through the water that lifted her up and dumped her undignifiedly on her stomach and face in the bottom as it rocked wildly. Then he was in beside her.
 

“Their boat had a motor in it,” she gasped as she sat up and saw him pick up the oars.
 

The face made of black and green shadows grinned. “Just lie down, Rachel, and rest. And don’t criticize. I’m doing the damned best I can.”
 

She was in a stupor with weariness during the boat’s slow, almost silent journey across the tidal flats and into the mouth of the Ashepoo. They tied up to the abandoned dock at the back of Belle Haven’s big house. It was a place Rachel didn’t even know existed.
 

When he pulled her out of the boat and lifted her into his arms, crossing the moonlit stretch of grass to a brick terrace, she protested weakly that she had to go home.