“Because sharks are night feeders,” Mitch informed him. “And there are a number of man-eaters in these waters. But if you want to chance it, don’t let us stop you.”
Charlie paled visibly, even under the moonlight. “I don’t swim so good.”
“Now that that’s decided,” Mitch announced, “we’ll have to return to the house.”
“The house?” Charlie couldn’t believe his ears. “That crazy Cuban is probably waiting for us there.”
“And so is Lorali,” Mitch reminded him.
“Lorali? Don’t you get what’s happening here? She’s one of them! She lured Eddie Mason here just like you, and now you’re going to wind up just as dead.”
Charlie turned his back on Mitch and stared longingly at the boat rocking gently out of reach. He couldn’t see any sharks. Surely one of them could make it.
“Charlie,” Mitch’s voice was soft. “With Captain Jack dead, Lorali is the only one who might be able to help us get through the reefs. I know she won’t betray us to Miguel. Stick with me. I swear I’ll get you home to Chicago.”
“We’re all going to die,” Charlie said again.
“Kit and I will get you home,” Mitch promised him.
****
The three men returned to the house because they had no place else to go. Mitch led the way with the shotgun. Kit followed carrying Miss Tharpe and her prize skull. Charlie and the lantern brought up the rear, jumping at every shadow.
Lorali was waiting in the drawing room, seated on a love seat beneath a long picture window. The previous night that window had been tightly shuttered, but this evening the glass was unfettered, allowing the moonlight to mingle with the yellow glow of the oil lamps. The chamber could be entered from the stairwell or the dining room through doors at either end.
Joseph stood passively in the corner, looking after Lorali without actually consoling her. She looked to be in need of comfort now. Tear tracks on her cheeks made her appear all the more precious and vulnerable.
“You were right,” Mitch conceded. “We can’t get out on our boat. Now my friend is dead and his body is gone. Are you going to tell us what is happening?”
“They’re hungry,” Lorali said simply.
“Hungry?” Charlie bellowed. “You mean they’re going to eat him?”
“Not right away,” Lorali explained, then went on to fill in the nauseating details. “First they’ll let the body age three or four days. It makes the taste more gamey and the food more nourishing.”
Mitch swallowed his revulsion, looking for a way to understand Lorali’s place in this. “Why don’t you start at the beginning?”
Lorali would not look at him. “I don’t know the real beginning. They don’t keep records like we do. Most of them are only cunning, not smart. But for us, for my brother and me, it began three days after the death of the wife of my ancestor, Robert Sinclair.”
“Wasn’t she your ancestor also?” Mitch asked.
“No, no she wasn’t.” Lorali controlled a shudder and continued speaking. “That’s the heart of my problem. Robert Sinclair was a very passionate man with only a tenuous grip on his sanity. He was mad with grief when his wife died and went completely insane when he found an a-cha-te had dug up the grave and was feeding on her corpse. He decided that the creature had consumed his wife’s soul and so had somehow or other become her. Madness and grief somehow twisted into lust and he raped the creature. It eventually had a son who bore both human and a-cha-te features.
“The a-cha-te were scavengers, not predators. They must be one of Darwin’s missing links. They lived in holes and caves beneath the island and hid from the light of day. Before this they had shunned living people, but after the birth of Robert’s son, they accepted my ancestor and he began to look out for them. They needed help. Without the natives burying their dead on Lazarus Key, the number of a-cha-te was dwindling. They needed human or a-cha-te flesh for nourishment. My ancestor revived his interest in the slave trade to obtain more bodies for them. When his less than human son was old enough to breed, he procured women for him from the slave population, keeping the most human looking of the offspring to raise as his grandson.”
Lorali looked up at Mitch briefly but couldn’t meet his gaze. “Madness must run in my family,” she wept. “My father thought that the Sinclairs needed an infusion of a-cha-te blood to keep the line strong. So Derek’s mother was half a-cha-te, only mine was fully human. Now Derek wants me to have his babies for the same reason, but I want my children to look human.”
Mitch sat down next to Lorali and tried to cradle her head against his chest. How could he believe this woman he had fallen in love with wasn’t like him? The thought defied every rational fiber of his schooling, and yet for the first time, his skin crawled when it touched her flesh. He had to know more than she had told him. “The child?” he asked. “Last night, I heard a child.”
Lorali buried her face deeper against Mitch. “Mine and Derek’s,” she confessed. “But it looks more like them. Poor thing, I can’t bare to even look at it.”
“And the missing pictures of your family?” Kit asked.
“We took the pictures down when you came because they didn’t look quite human.”
This was all heady information and Mitch didn’t know what he was going to do about it yet, but the first order of business was still survival. He pushed aside his fears. “Lorali, do you know how to navigate through the reef surrounding this island?”
“Yes.” The pragmatic question seemed to help Lorali regain control of herself. She had told Mitch her darkest secret and he hadn’t pushed her away. He was still holding her.
“There is a yacht in the lagoon. Is it yours?”
“Mine and Derek’s.”
Just like the child, Mitch thought, before pushing the notion behind him. “We have to find a way out there. Maybe I could swim out and bring the yacht closer to shore.”
“Mitch,” Kit pointed out. “That was a stupid idea when Charlie tried it, and it’s still stupid coming from you. If the sharks didn’t get you, one shout from the shore would alert the boat to be ready for you. You wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“The a-cha-te see exceptionally well in darkness,” Lorali agreed.
“Then we need another way out there. Maybe if Kit and I both try to swim out, one will make it.”
“My brother and his friends built a raft before they were killed last year,” Joseph announced unexpectedly. He added in an apologetic tone, “They were trying to escape, Miss.”
“A raft isn’t a lot better than swimming,” Kit said. “If the boat knows we’re coming, they can still pick us off from a distance.”
“It’s somewhat better,” Mitch argued. “We’ll be safe from the sharks and we can fire back at the boat.”
“The boat will provide better cover, and they’re bound to have more ammunition,” Kit replied.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” Lorali said. “I’ve never seen Derek use a gun. He was always afraid that the servants would get hold of them.”
“Have you got a better idea than the raft?” Mitch asked.
“No, I don’t,” Kit admitted.
“Joseph, will you lead us to it?”
“As long as you promise to take me with you.”
“I guarantee it,” Mitch assured him.
Mitch turned back to Lorali and lifted her face so he could see into her eyes. They were both beautiful and horrifying now that he knew their origin. “Lorali, it’s up to you now. Will you guide us through the reefs?”
Lorali couldn’t believe Mitch still wanted her with him. “I’ll do anything you ask me to.”
****
Mitch was a little less certain of their plan when he learned that the journey involved a trek through the swamps. The boat was to the north in the lagoon, but the raft, he discovered, was in the southwest, all the way across the island on the other side of the swamp. Miss Tharpe was a sick woman and lugging her through marshes could not
do her any good, and would certainly be very strenuous for Kit. Also, Charlie was completely out of shape and likely to become less helpful and more burdensome the farther the journey progressed.
Yet what other choice did they have? Leaving either person behind was unacceptable, and they all might as well surrender to the beasts if they didn’t at least try to get away. They started by gathering the supplies they might need—rope, food, water, lamp oil, a stout blanket, a hatchet, cord, and knife. These items were stuffed into old knapsacks to be worn by Mitch, Kit, Lorali, and Joseph. While everyone agreed with Charlie when he insisted he could pull his own weight, they also agreed not to tempt fate by asking him to carry more than nature had given him.
They met back in the drawing room to debate whether or not they should hole up until morning in the questionable security of the house, or try and gain the element of surprise by starting out now in the darkness.
Derek took the decision from them.
****
A fetid miasma of decay touched Mitch’s nose, a pungent taste of rotten eggs. He swung the shotgun to his shoulder immediately, all too cognizant of the indefensibility of their current location. The picture window, two doorways—they had to find a less vulnerable location. He kept his voice calm and his words measured. “Kit, get Miss Tharpe. It’s time we were out of here.”
“Come out of there, Lorali!”
The words erupted from the stairwell but no target presented itself. Kit ignored Miss Tharpe, drew his gun, and looked about uncertainly. Lorali spasmed with fear but she did not answer her brother.
“Lorali, if you don’t come out, when we come in, we’ll treat you like the others.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to say that from in here,” Kit shouted back.
“Just how many are there?” Mitch wanted to know.
“Just ten,” Lorali answered, “counting Derek and me—plus Miguel, of course.”
“You see,” Kit reassured his friends, “only ten. This is hardly a problem.”
“Don’t get cocky,” Mitch told him. “The one I saw last night looked like a problem.”
“Not cocky, Mitch, just confidant. I want them to know we can handle anything they throw against us.”
“Only three of them are pure a-cha-te,” Lorali explained. “The rest are more like Derek than me, but even less human.”
“Let’s get ready if they do come,” Mitch began as a golden-eyed creature stepped into the far doorway. It was more human than Mitch had expected, except for thick gouts of orange-brown hair spotting its body. The head was also misshapen, with large golden eyes and ill-fitting teeth. It was somewhere between an ape and a human, but nothing Darwin had ever envisioned.
Mitch coolly cocked the hammers on both barrels of the shotgun, sighted and squeezed the triggers. The weapon kicked and the a-cha-te staggered backward. With a calm he had not needed to display since the war, Mitch broke the stock, pulled free the spent shells and reloaded.
A piercing howl split the air. Two hairy shapes shattered the picture window and hurdled into the room. Mitch and Kit pivoted in unison and fired into the new comers. Mitch’s shotgun caught the first as it bounced off the love seat and drove it back through the window. Kit emptied his pistol into the second. Its bleeding form jolted to the floor where its fingers clutched spasmodically at shards of broken glass.
Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch noticed the a-cha-te by the stairwell struggling to its feet. Blood matted the hair on its chest and dripped to the floor. Trying to maintain his calm, Mitch yanked the spent shells free and fumbled in his pocket for more. The a-cha-te staggered toward him. “Don’t forget the door behind me,” Mitch warned.
Lorali stared in undisguised horror at the a-cha-te struggling to its feet by the love seat. Blood bubbled from at least four bullet wounds. Its eyes hardened when it caught sight of her.
Kit slammed his spare clip into the gun and came to Lorali’s defense. He chose a leg for a target, taking advantage of the close range to rupture a kneecap. Agonized howls greeted his success before he placed two more bullets in the a-cha-te’s skull.
Mitch brought the shotgun back to his shoulder. Full breath out, half breath in, squeeze the trigger—the only difference from the shooting range was that these targets howled and bled when they were hit. That and they were trying to get their hands on him. Mitch’s foe staggered back into the arms of another of its kind. Mitch took a step forward, adjusted his aim slightly upward and watched as the next shot destroyed two misshapen faces. Almost mechanically, he reached into his pocket for more shells.
Charlie began to recover from his shock. He pulled his .38 from its holster and picked up an oil lamp in his left hand. He slid closer to the window to see how many more were coming.
Lorali scooted farther back from the bloodshed. This was too horrible to be happening. Her family was dying and the man she loved was killing them. And if Mitch didn’t, he would disappear like Eddie.
Charlie peered out into the darkness, careful of the broken glass. His voice quivered with fear, but he kept it under control. “I think there are more of them. They’re coming toward the house.”
“Charlie get away—”
Before Mitch could finish warning him, two clawed hands snapped up and grabbed hold of Charlie Diamond. Even with shotgun pellets mangling its chest, the a-cha-te retained terrible strength. It hefted Charlie through the window, dragging his belly across the broken glass, and pulled him into the darkness. The oil lamp broke, and ignited the drapes. The revolver lay spinning on the floor where Charlie’s feet had been.
For one terrible eternity, Mitch, Kit, Lorali, and Joseph stared at the place where Charlie had been. Then the private investigator from Chicago began to scream like the damned.
Fire engulfed the curtains and moved to the love seat before Mitch reached the window. He could see several of the creatures retreating in the darkness, Charlie’s struggling form dragged between them. Kit appeared at his side and emptied the rest of his pistol as Mitch tried to reload the shotgun. By the time Mitch was ready, there was no longer a clear shot to be had.
“I promised him,” Mitch remembered.
Kit reached down and rescued Charlie’s pistol, placing it in his own holster. “Some promises can’t be kept.”
“This one should have been,” Mitch insisted.
Kit forced Mitch to step back from the window. The fire was already beyond them and Joseph was looking about as if he couldn’t comprehend the carnage. Lorali was crying quietly, and try as he might, Mitch still found it difficult to imagine what all of this must mean to her. These creatures were somehow her family. Inconceivable as it seemed, these misshapen masses of brown and orange hair were Lorali’s kin. How could he console her for the loss of cousins he had killed?
“The fire is spreading,” Kit observed.
Mitch crouched down next to Lorali and pulled her to her feet, feeling like he was in the Great War again. His voice sounded hollow, even to himself. “I’m sorry, Lorali, but it’s time to go.”
****
It was not true that there were no crosses within the swamp.
On an island that was essentially one decaying grave, no possible burial site appeared to have been forsaken. Markers poked out of the stagnant water, huddled together on every pretense at dry land, and sank with the trees in the muck that spread out over everything. The whole of Lazarus Key was a cemetery, and the swamp that covered the southwestern half of the island was a cesspool of forgotten graves.
Mosquitoes clung in clouds about the fugitives as they wrenched foot after foot out of the mud only to have the swamp suck it in again. They were tired, dirty and desperate before they began. They were exhausted, filthy and desolate within minutes of leaving dry land.
Joseph led the way, most often waist deep in water as he struggled to find a path. Mitch was usually beside him with the shotgun held up above his head. Every few minutes, he would drop back through the muck to encourage Lorali to keep the grueling pace
or ask Kit if he needed a break from carrying Miss Tharpe.
Kit invariably refused Mitch’s offers. He no longer believed Agnes Tharpe would survive, and he was not going to let his exhausted friend break himself trying to rescue a dead woman. Mitch was already walking twice the distance of the rest of them—dropping back to help Lorali and trudging forward to encourage Joseph.
Kit was very concerned. They had been pushing beyond the limits of their endurance, and Mitch was not pacing himself. Losing Captain Jack and Charlie was gnawing at him, and the quieter Lorali became, the more Mitch hurt.
Mitch dropped back past Kit again and waited for Lorali to catch up with him.
She was not beautiful in this light—none of them were. Sweat and stagnant water had become their perfume, and mud and muck their tailor. With Lorali, however, there was something more destroying her—a dull and vacant cast to those wondrous golden eyes. She looked as if her life had been drained out through them.
“You have to try to keep up,” Mitch begged her, slipping a supporting arm around her back. “We’ll rest as soon as we find a dry spot.”
“They’re all dead,” Lorali answered him, as if speaking from her own personal hell. “Whether they kill us or we kill them, there just aren’t enough bodies to feed them anymore. The leprosarium is gone. The slaves and the servants are dead. And no one comes visiting through the reef anymore. We should have brought them to the mainland where they would have had a chance. They don’t need to kill people. They just need to feed.”
“Lorali…” Mitch pulled her close against him. The shotgun dangled dangerously close to the water, but right then he didn’t care. “I don’t know what else to tell you. All we can do now is try to live. Afterwards…I don’t know.”
“I do.” Lorali pulled away from Mitch and began to trudge on after Joseph. “Whatever happens to us, they’re still dead.”
****
Mitch pulled the watch out of his pocket and vainly tried to clean the glass on his sleeve. Humidity or swamp water was beading on its surface and probably destroying its gears. It took quite a bit of effort to make out the hands and numbers.
Ten till midnight. Hard to believe that they had been out here less than three hours.
He fumbled to return the watch as he wrenched his foot out of the mud to take another step forward. He panicked when the ground refused to turn solid beneath his foot. The water rushed toward his face. He tried to thrust the shotgun up above him. The last sound he heard was Lorali shouting his name.