River Marked (Mercy Thompson #6)(36)

Lee was in the car taking a phone call. She wasn't sure when she first noticed the phone calls, maybe after school got out, and she was home more often. Her husband worked from home, and it was not unusual for him to get business calls and take them in private. But these calls came at the same time every day--eleven fifteen. When he got off the phone, he would make a great effort to do nice things for her-- the kinds of things that someone who was feeling guilty would do. More damningly, he wouldn't meet her eyes, not right after one of the calls. Either he had a bookie or someone on the side.

After their vacation, she would talk to him about it-- so she wanted to save all the memories she could.

She couldn't get both of the boys in the shot with the right light, so she kicked off her sandals and waded out into the water a few feet and tried it again. The light hit her digital screen so she had to use the regular viewfinder and put the camera up to her eye. It still wasn't quite right. She needed just a little more field of view. She took one more step back--and there was nothing beneath her feet.

As she fell backward, something snagged her leg and pulled her upstream. She struggled for a moment more, then grew calm. Peaceful. The water rushed past her and took all of her cares away.

Green eyes examined her with interest while some light-colored and fluttery tentacles that formed a fringe around its sharp nose caressed her. It opened its mouth, and she saw long spiky teeth before a wave caught her and pushed her away.

She didn't want to go away from the creature but had no will to fight its need. She staggered out of the water, coughing and choking from the water she'd swallowed. Blood dripped from a gash that wrapped all the way around her thigh just below the line of her shorts. Her head ached, and her eyes burned, but she was calm and happier than she'd ever been before.

It wanted her.

"Mommy, Mommy, are you all right?" A young boy --her son, she thought, what was his name?--held her arm. "Are you all right? Where's your camera?"

She reached out and took his hand--and the hand of the little boy who hadn't said anything, too. He was only wearing his pull-ups and one shoe. Another time, she knew that one shoe would have bothered her. But nothing bothered her anymore.

"Janny?" A man interrupted her before she got the boys to the river, and she frowned at him. Her husband, that was who he was. "Janny, what happened to you? Are you all right?"

He wouldn't let her take the boys, she knew, so she let them go until she understood what the new plan should be.

"Janny?" His voice was soft, gentle, and for some reason, that made her really mad. "Janny, you're bleeding. Did you fall into the river?"

"I need to rinse off the blood," she told him. Her voice came out a little garbled, but she didn't think it would matter. "Can you help me?"

He followed her into the river, though he wasn't happy about it. "It's probably not sanitary, Janny. There's water in the car."

While he argued, she took him deeper and deeper. The monster took him a few feet from where she'd fallen, dragging him under so fast he had no time to cry out.

"Daddy?"

The boys stood on the shore, and when she took their hands again, they followed her in. The habit of obedience and trust stronger than their instincts.

"Mercy."

"Mommy, what happened?" the older one wanted to know.

"Mercy, wake up."

"Daddy went swimming," she told him with a peaceful smile. It wanted Janny, but she hadn't been enough, so Janny had been sent back for more. But the monster was still hungry. "Why don't we go swimming with Daddy?"

I OPENED MY EYES, CONSCIOUS THAT I WAS BREATHING too fast and that I was drooling on Adam's leg.

"Sorry," I said groggily. "I didn't mean to fall asleep."

"I kept you up too late," Adam said in a tone that was not at all apologetic. "Satisfied" might be a better word. Smug. We hadn't been living celibate before we got married, but it was hard to get much privacy when Adam was pack Alpha and had a teenage daughter. Maybe we should buy a trailer of our own.

"Got to catch your sleep while you can," Adam continued. "I didn't get the full effect this time, but it sounded like another nightmare."

"Oh yeah," I agreed. The sick feeling in my stomach wasn't leaving very quickly. "Creepy in that slow-motion I-can't-stop-this kind of way. I think that Gordon's little talk about the cut on my leg has me thinking about old horror movies."

Coyotes don't make good slaves, he'd said right about the same time he'd said I was river marked. I'd forgotten about it in the oddity of his visit, but it must have stuck in my subconscious and given me that chilling little episode. I wonder what he thought had marked my leg. Maybe someone would tell us more that afternoon.

"I'm assuming since we aren't there yet, I wasn't sleeping for long."

"About ten minutes," he said. "Here's our park."

"It doesn't say Horsethief Lake," I told Adam, as he turned off the highway toward the river, and we started down a long, gently bending road after passing a sign that said "Columbia Hills State Park."

"Name sanitized in 2003," Adam told me. "Both the states and the U.S. Geological Survey are PCing geographical names all over the place. Just ask Bran. He'll go on for as long as you want to listen about Jackass Creek--he claims he knew the jackass it was named after."