We floated farther from Arnie’s brightly lit cabin and into the true dark of the swamp with only our spotlight and the moon to guide us. In the real darkness on either side of the skiff I felt like unseen eyes were watching us. I shuddered.
No wonder no one wanted night tours. The swamp at night was fucking scary.
Mosquitoes buzzed around our heads, hungry with a bloodlust that would put the most menacing vampire to shame. Holden didn’t seem bothered by them, and I wondered if his absentee pulse had a role in that. If avoiding bug bites was a perk to the immortal hereafter, I might have to consider my destiny a bit more carefully.
From the dark spaces the spotlight couldn’t penetrate, night birds sang to each other, calling out warnings over our intrusion into their peaceful evening. More unseen animals slid into the water, and I wasn’t sure if they were doing it to escape us or to follo
w us more closely.
The farther into the swamp we drifted, the quieter and quieter it became, until all the calls and answers were distant echoes, and all I could hear were Arnie’s raspy breaths and the slice of the paddle in the water. For half an hour those were the only diversions in an otherwise eerie silence.
“’Ere,” Arnie announced as the skiff bumped up onto something solid. He added, “Out.”
“Out?” I looked to Holden. “We can’t be done.”
Arnie spit into the water and grunted. “’Splore.”
A dark mound of an island unfolded from the night air once I blinked away the haze of the spotlight. “You want us to go exploring?”
The guide shrugged a bony shoulder up, and it sank down immediately like his strings had been cut. “’Ave fun.” A suggestive wink to Holden.
He had to be kidding.
“What harm can it do?” Holden said before I could throttle Arnie. “We might find something to point us in the right direction.”
Since neither of us had the foggiest clue in hell where to look for La Sorcière, I had to admit touring the small island out of reach of Arnie’s beady little eyes was as good a place to start as any.
Holden climbed ashore first then helped me out.
“’Ifteen minutes. Here.” Arnie tapped the boat with his oar.
I led the way, even though Holden’s nocturnal eyesight was better than mine. Finding Eugenia was my task, and I felt it was essential I lead us to her. Besides, it would be good to know someone who could see in the dark was walking behind me if any unexpected surprises popped up.
After five minutes of weaving through overgrown vines and slipping on the stinky muck covering the ground, I lost sight of the spotlight on Arnie’s boat.
Had we gone that far? The island didn’t seem big enough for us to wander so far we’d be unable to see the million-watt bulb.
A few yards ahead of us the bushes rustled. Twigs snapped as the weight of a body in motion bent them underfoot.
Holden and I stopped walking simultaneously.
“Shit,” I said, before stumbling backwards into Holden’s arms. “Go back. Go back.” I didn’t want to know what was hanging out on a pitch-black island in the middle of a swamp. We made it towards the shore at a run. I was in the middle of shouting a warning to Arnie when we cleared the thin tree line and came upon emptiness.
No boat.
No Arnie.
I scanned the shoreline for the light from his skiff, but there was nothing there. We’d been abandoned.
From the heart of the island the sound of one creature walking was joined by a chorus of more footsteps. A half-dozen distinctive individuals were moving in our direction from various points in the brush. Holden pushed me behind him, and my foot splashed into the murky water. A few feet to my left something huge slipped into the abyss.
“Holden,” I whispered, “we need to get away from the water.”
He allowed us a foot or two of clearance, but it wasn’t enough to make me feel secure. I watched the Discovery Channel. In this scenario I was the stupid gazelle bending over to get a drink right before the monster jumped out of the water and ate me headfirst.
In the trees, the movements stopped as suddenly as they’d started. The thrashing sounds of predators on the hunt died away, and all I could hear was my own breathing and the chirp of nocturnal insects.
We had to get off this island somehow, and swimming sure as hell wasn’t an option.