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above our ankles.
"Isn't this taking the whole marine-ambience thing a bit to excess?" I asked.
Lup, seemingly oblivious to the dark waters now swirling up to her knees,
tapped our echinodermic attendant on the er shoulder. "I'm not that big on
fish," she said. "What would you recommend?"
"Maybe a little less surf and a little more turf," I grumped as the water
wicked up my pants legs.
Our escort leaned back and whispered conspiratorially: "I'm not supposed to
espouse menu favorites but the Krabby Patties are to die for."
"You don't say?" I refrained from asking if there was a SpongeBob Happy Meal.
It was slow going, now, as the water had reached my waist and Lup was
getting ready to dog-paddle. "You know," I said, "as brain death
hallucinations go, I could've drawn a lot worse from the deck of my
life especially the last couple of years. But I'm drowning in a freshwater
tributary, not a saltwater ecosystem. And I'm totally not gettin' the Tony the
Tiger/Guess Who's Coming to Dinner vibe . . ."
The starfish stopped and turned to me as the lights in the restaurant
flickered and went out. Lup lost form and became a beam of light, cutting
through murky waters that had risen above our heads. The light put the
five-limbed creature in silhouette and it changed subtly.
"Time is short, small one." His voice echoed strangely, as if from a great
distance. More than that, it seemed weighted with the age of untold centuries.
Millennia . . .
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"Your son must be sacrificed before the sleeping god wakes or your race will
come to a terrible end."
"What?" I felt as if an electric shock had just exploded throughout my body
leaving me numbed, burned, and dazed. "What are you saying?"
"In the end you must sacrifice him. If not for humanity's sake, then for his
own. You would not want him to live in such a world as would be ruled by the
Dread Master of R'lyeh!"
I didn't have a clue as to who this so-called dead master of really something
or other was but he was in for a real ass-kicking if he posed a threat to my
unborn son. Likewise anybody even hinting at bad karma for Chris Csjthe's
pride and joy.
"Free will is but a human delusion, a cosmic self-deception for your infant
race," he continued and his voice began to diminish, as if he were starting to
move away from me and picking up speed. "I tell you this one last thing.
Ignore it at your peril and the doom of your entire species!"
Great, a seafood restaurant with a waiter who doubled as a fortune
cookie."I'm all ears, Garon." I growled.
"You cannot order the calamari," it rasped in nearly inhuman tones, "itorders
you . . ."
A fishy face suddenly swam into view, its buggy luminous eyes staring at me
above an expression of gape-mouthed surprise.
I reached out with my hand, trying to grab its neck but it pulled back.
Neither of us was fast enough: I couldn't get my fingers behind his head and
he couldn't totally evade my hand. I ripped his throat out, instead.
A cloud of blackish blood erupted from its torn flesh and it sank out of
sight. Either this particular water bogie was made of papier-mch or . . . I
looked at my hand: small clumps of sushi still clung to my razor-tipped
fingers!
My razor-edged, straightjacket-shredding talons had reappeared like ten
spring-loaded switchblades!
Another froggy foe darted in and it was time to focus on matters directly at
hand. All I had time to register was someone had shoved a scuba mouthpiece
halfway down my throat and that the murky water had brightened considerably. I
could see the other two more clearly, now, and prepare for their attacks.
And this time the flipper was on the other foot. As the second fish-man
darted in, I threw up an arm block across his throat to keep his teeth from my
face. The back of my hand and forearm had snagged a piece of silvery kelp, a
ribbonlike leaf that stood out edgewise from my skin. When fish-face pushed up
against the edge there was a burst of bubbles and blackish blood.
Its, not mine.
Of course this could still be part of the brain-death dream rave.
Which would account for the disposition of my third finny foe: he seemed to
be occupied.
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A bright light cut through the water illuminating a series of tableaus
beyond. In the distance I could make out a large, batty form going all Maytag
agitation cycle on a cluster of froggy folk. Apparently he merited more
attention than half-monster me. Other silhouettes, however, were
bottom-walking past him and in my direction, the light at their backs. If I
didn't finish my third assailant quickly, they'd be upon me before I could
find a way to climb back out of the river.
But my third assailant had an assailant of its own. An arm was wrapped across
its scaly torso while another clutched at its goggle-eyed head. That arm
snapped back and the fish-man's head twisted past the point of spinal
cohesion. I could hear its neck snap even underwater. Then I got a glimpse of
my foe's foe.
It looked like a woman.
A human woman.
Or, maybe, not-so-human as she bore a strong resemblance to Suki, one of
Stefan Pagelovitch's vampire enforcers.
Her eyes looked dead.
Then the light went out.
Most of it, anyway.
There was still enough ambient light filtering down from above to reveal my
immediate surroundings. But the creature that had saved me, and the other
figures beyond, were now in murk and darkness, as if a great underwater
searchlight had been switched off.
I looked up again and saw the keel of theNew Moon about twenty feet above me
and over a ways.
Vampires don't swim, they sink like a rock. Once in, they don't come back
out. But I reached up and pushed down with cupped hands, kicking off the
riverbed as if I still had a modicum of buoyancy.
And I began to rise!
I swam to the surface and then splashed my way to shore. I reached up to pull
the breathing apparatus from my mouth but it was gone. By the time I had
stumbled back up the gangplank and onto the boat, a large, batlike monster was
wading ashore as well.
I climbed up onto the roof and scanned the waters from the secondary
wheelhouse. All looked quiet. But, as Zotz joined me, shrunk down to human
form and suddenly dry, I thought I could see something out in the main channel
of the Ouachita River.
"I thought you couldn't swim," he said, offering me a towel.
"I thought you knew how to fish," I answered, taking it.
Something was moving under the surface of the river. Something big where the
channel was deepest. A greater shadow shaped like a giant manta ray . . .
It moved away, angling upstream. Within a few minutes I couldn't tell if it
had gone away or gone deeper to bide its time. I raised a hand to shade my
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eyes against the glare of ten thousand diamonds as the waters fractured the
sunlight and reflected it back up at me.
"Hey!"
I turned and saw that Volpea had finally stirred from her lounge chair at the
front of the boat. She was standing atop the ladder, one foot on the top deck,
holding a saucepan stinking of burned blood and plastic. She pulled off her
sunglasses for a better look.
"I thought they called you Bloodwalker!" she said, her mouth imitating our
fishy visitors of just minutes before.
"Yeah? So?" Out of the corner of my eye I noticed that Zotz was doing a
similar fish-face impression.
"Maybe they should call you Daytripper, now," he rumbled, still in demon
voice.
That's when I finally realized that I was standing out in broad daylight,
getting a double dose of solar spectra, without turning into Csjthe flamb!
* * *
Volpea called New Orleans.
Zotz called Mama Samm.
While Mama Samm called the Gator-man I wrote up a makeshift list and sent
Zotz into town. He scanned my notes as he opened the door and headed for the
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