Could an alligator snapper move on land? Jack wasn’t waiting around to find out, especially with the bees stinging him again. He realized he’d emerged on Anya’s side of the pond, so he scrambled to his feet and raced toward her front door. It was closed but maybe it was unlocked.
Please be unlocked!
But he didn’t need the shelter of her house. As soon as he crossed into her circle of green lawn, the killer bees peeled off him the same way the palmettos had the other night when he’d jumped through his father’s door.
He heard their enraged buzzing rise in pitch and volume as they hurled themselves at him, only to be turned back as soon as they crossed the line into Anya’s space.
“Go!” he heard a voice cry behind him.
Jack turned and saw Anya crossing the lawn in his direction. She was waving both arms in a shooing motion.
“Go!” she shouted again. “Back where you came from!” She pointed to the snapper’s two heads, watching from the pond. “You too! Go!”
The bees swarmed in random confusion, then gathered into an oblong cloud and buzzed away. When Jack looked at the pond again, the snapper was gone.
He dropped to his knees, panting. His skin felt a flame, his stomach threatened to heave.
“Thank you,” he gasped. “I don’t know how you did that, but thanks.”
“Didn’t I tell you that nothing on earth can hurt you here?”
“I guess you did.” He looked up at her. “Who are you? Really.”
Anya smiled. “Your mother.”
The familiar words chilled Jack.
“That’s what the Russian lady said to me by my sister’s grave. And that Indian woman in Astoria said the same thing to Gia. What’s it mean?”
Anya shook her head. “Don’t worry about it, hon. There’s no need for you to know. Not yet. Hopefully not ever.”
“Then why say it to me?”
Anya had turned and started walking away. Over her shoulder she said, “Because it’s true.”
13
Semelee stumbled pantin’ and sweatin’ along the path through the palms. She stopped and leaned against a gumbo limbo tree to catch her breath.
That same old lady…doin’ it again…causin’ trouble, gettin’ in the way…
She was stronger than Semelee. Somehow she’d just waved her hand and told the bees and Dora to get home and that was that. Semelee’s power got canceled like turnin’ off a light. Everything went black. When she come to, the sun was pretty much down and she was flat on her back in the ferns with the shells off her eyes but still in her hands.
She had to be stopped. But how? How do you stop someone with that kind of power?
Where did she come from? Who was she that she could protect herself from Dora and a swarm of bees—not only keep them out but give them orders?
Maybe she couldn’t be hurt. Maybe she was beyond Semelee’s special power.
She stumbled up to the bank of the lagoon and saw Luke sitting on the deck of the Bull-ship.
He looked up at her with sad eyes. “Bad news, Semelee. Devil’s dead.”
A wave of sadness washed over her. Feelin’ weak, she lowered herself to the ground and rested her back against a palm.
Poor Devil…her fault…if she hadn’t—
No, wait. It was that old bitch and her dog. They were the ones killed Devil. Not her.
She ground her teeth. Had to be a way to get back at her.
She glanced to her left toward the sinkhole and saw the glow of the lights seepin’ up through the darkenin’ air. Pullin’ herself to her feet she walked over. She stopped at the edge, then stretched herself out flat on her belly with her head pokin’ over the rim. She gazed into the flashin’ deeps and tried to remember more of what happened down there. But nothin’ came back to her.
She gave up tryin’ to remember and was just startin’ to get to her feet when she had an idea. She still had the eye-shells in her hands and figured, Why not? She put them over her eyes. For an instant they blotted out the lights, then suddenly she was seein’ them again. But they looked different.
Then Semelee realized she wasn’t seein’ the lights from above, she was seein’ them from within. She was inside some kinda creature down there and was seein’ things through its eyes. She looked around and saw wings and jaws and teeth—lots of long, sharp teeth.
An idea crept into her head, an idea so wonderful she started to laugh out loud.
14
“I still say we should take you to the emergency room,” Dad said.
Jack shook his head as he shivered under the blanket. “I’ll be fine, Dad. No doctors.”
At least not yet.
He sat on the sofa and shook despite the dark blue wool blanket wrapped around him. Most of his sting-lumped skin was crusted pink with calamine lotion and he was dopey from the Benadryl his father had picked up for him in town. The stings themselves—he hadn’t counted them, but Pinhead had nothing on Jack—itched and burned, and now his muscles were aching. The chills and fever had started about an hour after the attack. He figured he had so much bee venom in his system that he was having a reaction. He felt as if he had the flu.
At least he wasn’t vomiting; his stomach was queasy but he was holding down the orange juice Dad kept pushing at him.
He’d shown his father how to break down the Glock and wipe it dry. Here was where its mostly plastic construction was a blessing. Dad didn’t have any gun oil, but substituted a little 3-in-1 to lubricate the few metal parts.
And now his father paced back and forth between Jack and the TV as the Weather Channel showed a satellite photo of Hurricane Elvis picking up speed and power as it looped southward through the Gulf of Mexico. It had graduated to Category II and was expected to brush South Florida and the Keys sometime tomorrow, then continue on toward Cuba.
“We’ve got to call the cops,” Dad said.
Dad always seemed to want to call the cops.
“And what—tell them about this woman in the Glades who sent a swarm of bees and a two-headed snapping turtle after me? They’ll take you away in a straitjacket.”
“We’ve got to do something! We can’t just sit here like targets and let her take potshots at us!”
“I can’t think right now, Dad.”
Jack hauled himself unsteadily to his feet and shuffled toward the guest bedroom.
He’d planned to drop in on Anya tonight. He’d cut her too much slack, let her evade straight answers for too long. He was going to get nose to nose with her and find out exactly who she was, how she could keep giant alligators and bees and mosquitoes from trespassing on her property, and have them obey her when she told them to take off. He wasn’t going to leave until he had some answers.
But that was all changed now. Christ, he felt awful. If he’d been sitting on the hood of Dad’s car when it got clocked by that truck, he didn’t think he’d feel much worse.
“I’m going to hit the rack. In the meantime, don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.”
“That’s all fine and dandy,” Dad said with a touch of acid in his voice, “except I don’t know what you wouldn’t do.”