Beau shook his head soberly and reached down to start the engine. The boat began to chug slowly through the water. “No, Savannah, don’t waste your compassion. This is no ordinary gator. The old man is evil. He lies in wait and, hungry or not, kills anything that comes near. Man or beast, it is all the same to him. He pulls them into the water and devours them.”

“I thought you liked alligators,” Savannah protested. “They’re part of nature, part of the bayou. They belong here. We’re the ones encroaching on their territory. This poor alligator doesn’t ask for anyone to come hunting him. He probably wants to be left alone. But they come anyway.”

“Tell us what happened to the kids,” Gregori prompted gently.

“They didn’t come back. My father was very restless, very worried. He knew of the reputation of the gator, and he didn’t like those outsiders going back that far into the swamp. Old man alligator killed for the joy of it. We knew he was evil. Eventually my father insisted we go looking for them. He told me to be very quiet. He took oil lamps and matches, the guns, and a hook—everything we had in camp to protect us.”

The stifling air seemed to hang stiffly, waiting in suspense for the rest of the tale. Savannah pressed herself against Gregori’s solid form. Suddenly she wasn’t certain she wanted to hear the rest. She could feel and hear and smell the picture Beau was describing.

It will be all right,chérie. Gregori’s voice brought soothing comfort to her mind and a measure of protection, an insulation between Savannah’s sensitivity and whatever she might hear next.

“There was a terrible stench. The air was thick, so much so that we could barely breathe. I remember the sweat pouring off us in rivers, and both of us knew if we continued into the old man’s territory, he would have us for dinner. We wanted to turn back. We slowed the boat. My heart was beating so loud, I could hear it. And the insects descended on us. My father was black with them, moving all over him. They stung and bit at us, got in our eyes and nose, even filling our mouths.”

Beau was becoming so agitated, Gregori instinctively reached to calm his mind. He matched the man’s breathing, brought it under control, then matched the rhythm of his heart and slowed it to normal. He whispered the soothing healing chant of his people and waved his hand gently to create a breeze to blow away the stifling heat and cool the perspiration on Beau’s body. At once the terrible pressure building in the captain’s chest eased.

Beau smiled thinly. “I’ve only told this story to one other person. I promised myself I never would, but somehow I felt compelled to share it with Julian, and now you. I’m sorry. It’s still like it happened yesterday.”

“Sometimes it helps to talk about a bad experience,” Savannah said gently, her dark eyes luminous in the night. They glowed like a cat’s, strange and beautiful.

The captain shook his head. “As long as I never talked about it, I could pretend it didn’t really happen. My father never spoke of it, even to me. I think we both wanted it to be nothing more than a nightmare.”

“The city kids were drinking.” Gregori picked the information out of his head.

Beau nodded. “We found empty bottles floating in the water, on the bank. Then we heard them screaming. Not just any kind of screaming, but the kind that stays with you forever. It wakes you up at night in a cold sweat. My father stayed drunk for a month afterward trying to forget those screams. I know it didn’t work.” He wiped his mouth again. “It’s never worked for me.”

I don’t want to hear this, Gregori. It hurts him too much to remember,Savannah protested, her fingers curling in Gregori’s shirt.

Gregori stroked a caressing hand down her hair. I will ease his pain later. It is interesting; in his mind I sense Julian’s presence, as if he, also, soothed this man. Why would the alligator killing humans so upset his father? Why would the terror of it linger in him for so many years? In this place there have been many deaths, few of them pleasant. Perhaps it is necessary that we hear this tale.

“We were covered in insects, like a blanket, crawling on us. And it was almost impossible to breathe.” Beau touched his throat, remembering the feeling of suffocating. “Still, we couldn’t leave them. We kept pushing through the reeds and roots. For us, the going was very difficult even though we had a much smaller boat. The water was black and murky near the bank. It formed a pool there, and the water was stagnant. The stench was unbelievable, like a slaughterhouse of dead carcasses left to decay in the sun. My father wanted to leave me in the boat at the mouth of the pool, said he would go on foot, but I knew if I let him, he would die.”

“Oh, Beau,” Savannah breathed sympathetically. She was almost as distressed as the captain. Automatically Gregori soothed and comforted her, providing a stronger, insulating cushion for her. She was like a sponge, soaking up the terrible trauma.

“I guess we both accepted that we probably wouldn’t make it out of there,” Beau continued. He skillfully guided the boat around a snag. “But we went in. It was black. Not just like night, but black. My father lit the lamp, and then we could see them. The boat was splintered, huge chunks out of it, as if something enormous had attacked it. It was sinking, nearly under water. One boy was clinging to it, but blood was spraying into the sky. We couldn’t get to him. Something came up out of the water, something prehistoric. Its eyes were evil, and its mouth was gaping open. It was no ordinary alligator, and it was enjoying itself, playing with those dying kids.”

Beau shoved a hand through his hair in agitation, looking out across the familiar water. Gregori stirred, drawing the captain’s attention. Those peculiar silver eyes caught his gaze and held it. Instantly Beau felt calm, centered, protected, disconnected. The tale he was relating became just that, a story that had happened to someone else.

Gregori felt the strange shifting in the captain’s mind, like a hazy veil that produced a programmed reaction. He focused and followed the trail, the pattern of evil he was so familiar with. He recognized Julian’s healing touch, the safeguards he had set for the mortal to prevent the tainted shadow from spreading. Beau La Rue had been touched by a vampire. He had escaped, but not unscathed.

Savannah’s soft little gasp in his mind betrayed her presence. He found himself smiling that she could slip in and out of him, so much a part of him that he could no longer tell where he started and she left off. She had access to his memories and his knowledge. The more time she spent in his mind, the better she was at acquiring the lessons centuries had taught him. More than you know.Savannah sounded smug.

Beau was much more relaxed, not the happy captain of earlier, but his tension had definitely eased. “There was nothing we could do for any of them. We had entered the monster’s playground, and he was in the mood to play. He didn’t try to drown any of them right away, or kill them outright. He tossed them into the air and ripped parts of them away. Pieces of bodies were floating in the water. A girl’s head bobbed up and down near the bank. I remember the way her hair was spread out like a fan on the surface of the water.”

Gregori touched the man’s shoulder. Enough. There is no need for you to remember the details of this atrocity.

Beau shook his head, the vivid picture in his mind suddenly dimming to a hazy recollection. “We almost didn’t make it out ourselves. It came at us, as big as any of those crocodiles on the Nile. He didn’t want food, he wasn’t protecting his territory, he just liked to kill. We had penetrated into his lair, his domain, while he was amusing himself, and he was angry. My father threw the oil lamp on the water and set the whole thing on fire. We didn’t look back.”