Return of the Hunters (The DeathSpeaker Codex Book 4) (13 page)

T
he half-moon rising over the swamp stirred memories that had been coming back way too often lately.

Getting out of Boko’s was a blur. At some point one of the Duchenes must’ve made a call, because a handful of people showed up with a cargo van. They were hastily introduced as cousins. No one inside the club said or did anything as the bodies were carried out and loaded inside, and everyone piled in. There was a long, silent drive south through the city to the river, and another migration from the van to a wooden flat-bottomed keelboat moored at a decrepit dock.

Two cousins, Aubin and T-Sam, had boarded the boat with us while the rest drove off in the van. Rex and Senobia lay under canvas tarps at the back of the craft. Everyone else had collapsed wherever they found space while the cousins navigated the waters with a long bargepole.

I hadn’t bothered asking where we were going. We’d been on the water almost three hours, headed deep into the bayou. A searchlight mounted at the front of the boat allowed for careful passage through the treacherous terrain. Swamp cypress and tupelo trees decked with Spanish moss wove a dark canopy overhead, and duckweed choked most of the surface of the water, broken by the angular knobs of cypress knees. More than once, I spotted sleek, sinewy coppermouth snakes slipping from weed-tangled pseudo-banks into the water, or the ominous rippling V pattern of a gator just beneath the surface.

And I started to notice other, non-natural things. Like hunting traps.

We passed a good-sized hummock strewn with dead leaves, and I caught glimpses of a thick chain and a few jagged metal teeth—all of it painted black. Then, in a stagnant pool of murky water, I saw the faint outlines of a submerged cage trap baited with a live fish—well, barely live. It was swimming sluggish circles in a water-filled glass box, set just past the trigger at the back of the cage.

Those were poacher traps. Virtually invisible to animals, and to most people who might stumble across them. The Valentines were especially fond of the live-bait cage. And they’d never given a damn when their setups caused human casualties—when they found one, they just disposed of the victims like they were unwanted entrails pulled from a kill.

I tried to dismiss the idea that the Valentines actually were here in the swamps. They weren’t the only poachers who hunted these grounds.

But those traps felt too damned familiar.

I made my way to the bow, where T-Sam stood lookout and murmured occasionally to Aubin, who was poling the boat. T-Sam was a squat, muscular man somewhere in his mid-forties with a shaved head and weathered skin. He hadn’t spoken two words aloud, except what he mumbled to the younger Aubin. The strong resemblance between the two suggested they were father and son.

“Hey,” I said when I reached him. “You guys get a lot of poachers around here?”

T-Sam turned his head slowly and fixed me with dark, bloodshot eyes. “Yeah.”

“So you’ve seen the traps,” I said. “We passed at least two of them already.”

He stared at me for another minute, and then slowly turned away without another word.

“Uh, right. Good.” I sighed and shuffled off to the side where Aubin wasn’t poling, watching the forward progress. The boat was headed for a narrow throat of water between two rows of cypress, and it looked like a tight fit. But they must’ve made this trip before.

Suddenly I noticed an unnatural glint near the surface of the water, right at the mouth of the tree tunnel. A long filament flashing in the searchlight. More glinting filaments criss-crossed above and stretched into the trees. And there were three dark, faintly glittering lumps hovering a few inches above the water.

Rotted meat rubbed with sugar crystals, strung on fishing line. And I’d bet large sums of money that the lines up to those trees were attached to air-powered javelins.

Another favorite Valentine trap. And we were headed straight for it.

“Stop the boat!” I blurted. “You have to stop. Now.”

Denei stirred from her slump, and next to her, Reun looked up sharply. “What is wrong?” he said.

“We’re about to hit a trap.” I gestured frantically ahead and looked at T-Sam. “It’s right across that throat, there. Look—”

“Cain’t stop,” he rumbled. Without looking.

“Jesus, why not? You
have
to.”

“Load’s too heavy,” Aubin said as he lifted the pole from the water and plunged it back in. “Momentum, y’know. ’Sides, ain’t no trap can snag this boat.”

“This one can.” I started looking for something heavy to throw, to maybe trigger the thing before we reached it, as Bastien, Isalie and Zoba finally took notice of the commotion. “Trust me. It’ll splinter your hull,” I said. “Or kill someone.”

“The hell kinda trap you think you see?” Bastien almost sounded accusatory.

“It’s—”

I broke off with a frustrated groan. Christ, I was an idiot. Why was I trying to throw some random object I had no hope of hitting anything with, when I had magic? The moon had been up for an hour now.

I stalked to the side of the boat, leaned over and gestured at the nearly invisible rig. The word I needed flowed right to my tongue—probably a lingering effect of our side trip to Arcadia. “
Thrucíar
.”

There was a series of quick snaps, and a rustling whistle as the taut fishing line snapped and sprang off in every direction. Then two loud, hissing pops. Silver streaks whined across the opening, crossing each other’s paths as the javelins plunged harmlessly into the swamp ten feet in front of us.

I ignored the collective gasp and the murmurs that followed. Didn’t even say
I told you so
. I was too busy silently freaking out because of the existence of that thing, in this place, at this time. With fresh bait.

Once again, T-Sam turned slowly to look at me. He raised one eyebrow. “Smart,” he said. “For a white boy.”

Then he faced forward again like nothing had happened.

I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or an insult. Either way, it didn’t comfort me that we’d narrowly escaped being skewered.

That trap was pure Valentine. No question about it.

So maybe they really were around here somewhere.

C
HAPTER 22

O
ur destination turned out to be a place called Baptiste Landau—a swamp shanty town that was little more than a strip of land along an unnamed tributary with a single row of stilt houses, bordered along the back by a thick cypress forest and endless swamp.

For the Duchenes, it was home.

A small crowd of people had been waiting at the dock where T-Sam and Aubin pulled up to moor the boat. More cousins. A bunch of them carried Rex and Senobia’s bodies into the house, a sprawling single-story A-frame with splintery wood siding, three or four cobbled extensions and added rooms, and a long, screened front porch. There was a wooden sign next to the porch door with a picture of a snapping alligator, and words beneath it:
I Love Tourists They Taste Great
.

At least the place had personality.

The cousins had wandered off not long after our arrival, and the bunch of us sat listlessly on the porch, surrounded by a chorus of insects and swamp calls and the occasional harsh buzz of the bug zappers hung at the corners. I’d decided not to elaborate on my suspicion that the Valentines had set the traps. If they were in the area, they could be anywhere, and we’d traveled another hour after the javelin trap. That was the last one I’d seen.

The odds of actually making contact with them out here, in this metric ton of swampland, were slim to none even if they were around. And I sure as hell wasn’t going to go looking to find out.

“So, is this your house?” I said eventually.

Bastien was the only one who seemed to hear me. “Naw. This T-Sam’s place,” he said.

Well, that explained the alligator sign. T-Sam definitely seemed anti-outsiders. “Is he coming back?”

“Not tonight.”

“We got a long day tomorrow,” Denei said abruptly, in apparent response to nothing. “Folks’ll come here for the viewing, and then the cemetery in the evening.”

I hadn’t even considered how strange this whole thing was. After years of working as a body mover, I was more familiar with the after-death process than anyone—the police, the hospital, the morgue, the funeral home. None of those things had been mentioned once. “You’re not having them…I mean, not even coffins?” I said.

Denei gave me a dark look. “We take care of our own around here.”

“All right.” I did understand not wanting to involve the police. I mean, what were they going to say—a voodoo god killed them by ripping centipedes out of their backs? Even if they believed it, the cops couldn’t do anything. So we’d have to. “What about Legba?”

“What about him?”

Her words were heavy with warning. And she was probably right—this wasn’t the best time to talk about it. I’d just drop it for now.

But Bastien had other ideas.

“What you mean, ‘what about him’?” he snapped. “He
murdered
the young’uns. So what we gonna do about it?”

Denei stared at him. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

Isalie shivered and touched his arm. “Bastien…” she whispered.

“No!” He jerked away from her and stood. His eyes burned with fury. “We ain’t doin’
nothing
,” he growled. “I’ll tear that sumbitch apart myself.”

“We do nothing!” Denei got up too. “We lost too much already. There’s no way I’m gonna give that snake a reason to take anyone else. Leave it be.”

“I won’t—”

“You
will!
”

Isalie let out a choked sob and pushed past her brother to stumble into the house. After treating Denei to a searing stare, Bastien went after her.

Denei stood rigid for a moment. Then her shoulders slumped, and she crossed her arms protectively in front of her. “We all best try to get some sleep,” she said without an ounce of conviction. “Tomorrow…”

She bowed her head and went slowly inside. Then Reun got up and followed her, stopping to clasp my shoulder in wordless apology on the way.

I wondered if he was thinking what I was—that if we didn’t finish this fight with Legba, at least one more person was going to die. The one who was bound by a promise to free the Duchenes from him.

The mark of it had already started to burn in my chest.

Zoba hadn’t moved from his perch on a wooden crate at the far corner of the porch. He sat staring through the screen at the dark river beyond, but I had a feeling he wasn’t seeing much of anything right now.

I felt unspeakably guilty for not stopping Legba, despite doing everything I could. But the bastard had said he’d only planned to take Zoba, and then changed his mind when he tried to attack him. Basically, that it was Zoba’s fault he’d killed the little ones.

There weren’t even words for what he must’ve been feeling.

I walked toward him with no idea what I’d say. Even if I did talk to him, he couldn’t participate in the conversation. It had to be so hard for him—Denei was the only person in the world he could really communicate with. But it was clear that he loved all of his siblings.

At least he didn’t have to tell me that he would’ve gladly died in Rex and Senobia’s place. I knew that even without the vision he’d shown me.

“Hey,” I said as I stopped beside him. He didn’t look at me, and I didn’t expect him to.

And I couldn’t think of a single word to say beyond that initial
hey
.

I stood there another minute, trying to come up with something. Even if it was just to say goodnight and excuse myself. Before I could stammer some lame platitude, I felt a tug in my head. The sensation I always had at the start of every conversation with the dead.

But I wasn’t trying to talk to any dead people right now.

Gideon.

The voice in my head was painfully familiar. My heart stopped beating. “Senobia?”

Yeah, cher. It’s me.

Zoba looked up sharply and growled. I got that message loud and clear.

“Whoa. Just…calm down a minute,” I said. This had happened to me once before, when I didn’t know I was the DeathSpeaker. The first dead person I ever talked to had initiated the conversation himself. Because he was pissed, and he really wanted to let me know it.