Wolfsbane Read online

  “Don’t be vulgar.”

  He dropped his hands from her breasts and opened her jeans, pushing them over her hips. They dropped to the floor of the shack, her panties following them. He slipped his hand around to her belly and gently caressed the satin softness.

  “This is insane,” she said. “I’m dreaming all this.”

  “No, you’re not,” he whispered.

  His hands left her and she felt the worn denim of his shorts brush the back of her bare legs on their way to the floor. The heat and bulk of his penis pushed against her bare ass.

  Her head felt giddy—light. It’s been too long since I had a man, she mused. Too long.

  As if reading her thoughts, Pat said, “We have lots of time, Janette.” He slowly unbuttoned her blouse, then slipped blouse and bra from her. He turned her, facing him.

  They stood naked on the porch. He bent his head and gently kissed each nipple, tonguing the tautness, bringing groans from her. Then she felt him working his tongue down her belly, to linger at her navel. Her juices were flowing, wetting her, and as his tongue touched her pubic area, she shivered in what would be the first of many orgasms.

  He tongued her while the middle finger of his hands opened the folds of her, his thumb rubbing her clit. She could not contain the hiss of pleasure that sprang from her mouth.

  Rising to his feet, he turned her and bent her over the railing of porch. “It’s called dog-fashion,” he said.

  She could tell by the sound of his voice he was grinning as he said it. “I can certainly understand why,” she replied, her voice husky with passion.

  He rubbed the head of his penis against her slippery lips in a teasing manner. “Now?” he asked.

  “Do you have to ask?”

  He shoved and she screamed, not from pain, but from pure animal joy as he filled her. She braced herself and met his thrust with a rise of her buttocks as the rhythm became set, each thrust seeming to bury deeper and deeper. Her moaning intensified as her orgasms grew in fury, almost overlapping.

  “Cum with me!” she said.

  “Later,” he said. “We have time.”

  She closed her eyes and screamed her joy.

  And the river flowed by.

  Chapter Ten

  After their initial session on the porch, they went into the shack, to the bedroom. And then it had become a morning of shifting positions and for Janette, one tearing climax, after another. More sexual fulfillment than she had experienced in all her life. And still she wanted more.

  He gave it to her by burying his face in the musky perfume of her mons veneris and forcing his tongue deeper inside her than she imagined possible. With that orgasm she thought she might faint.

  Then, flat on her back on the old bed, the springs protesting, her legs spread wide, knees drawn up, she told him how she wanted it, and he gave it to her. Gave it to her with one long plunging thrust that brought a wail of contentment from her, her cries drifting out the open window, to lose themselves in the swamp.

  They slept, awakened, made love. This time slowly, the room becoming sharp with the heady scent of sex mingled with the sharper odor of sweat. Morning blurred and mixed, finally joining afternoon as the sun beat down without pity on the South Carolina swampland. The warm winds sighed through the tall trees, rustling the heavy leaves of the bull bays and sighing through the tall cypress.

  Then the sky clouded and the air grew still for a time, humid and thick just before dumping rain on the land. Neither man nor woman noticed. She had gripped his thickness and was straddling him, guiding him into soft wetness, riding him up and down, breasts bouncing as his hands sought them, cupped the mounds, gripped them.

  They came togethere She sighed, rolled from him, and fell by his side.

  They slept:

  Janette awakened shivering and pulled a sheet over her nakedness. She felt with her hands. The other side of the bed was empty. She found her watch on the scarred old bedstand. Six o’clocke , She wondered if that was A.M. or P.M. ?

  “Madame Bauterre?” Pat said. “Would you like to take a shower with me?” He said it in the most horrible French she had ever heard.

  She laughed at him and stretched her loveliness on the bed. “I think you’d better stick to English. Leave the French to me.”

  “That would probably be best,” Pat replied. “My French never was very good.”

  “Where’d you learn it? The service?”

  “No,” he held out his hand to her. “My ancestors came from France. I remember my grandfather spoke French fluently. None of us kids took to the language, I guess.”

  She took his hand and he pulled her to him. They were both naked. “Strange? That’s not French.”

  “No. Somewhere down the line one of my ancestors changed the name. From what, I don’t know. Or why.”

  She kissed him gently on the mouth. “If someone had told me yesterday this was going to happen, I would have called them a liar.”

  “Sorry?” he muttered against her mouth.

  “Non. ”

  “Let’s go take that shower.”

  She looked with a dubious eye at the makeshift shower. “I would guess,” she said, “that one bathes very quickly, with much jumping about. That water is going to be ice cold, Pat!”

  “Sure is,” he grinned. He handed her a bar of soap, pushed her under the spray nozzle, and jerked a rope.

  She screamed as the water, cooled from the heavy rain, struck her in sheets. He stopped the spray. “Now soap,” he instructed. “Quickly.”

  Then they played under the spray, soaping each other, touching, acting as kids, stopping just before arousal. She forgot about her mission and Pat forgot about his past. They dried each other and ran back to the house just as the sky opened up, a violent storm roaring in. Pat dressed in jeans and T-shirt, Janette in shorts and sleeveless blouse.

  The storm had cooled the air, so Pat decided to stoke up the wood-burning stove and fry some steaks he had purchased that morning at a country store not far from his house. He removed them from the well wall and she sat and watched him slice onions and potatoes, mixing them in one pan, the steaks in another.

  Janette realized she had not eaten since early that morning, at the motel cafe, and she was ravenous. “Pat, I’m starving! That smells wonderful.”

  “Patience, my dear,” he said, smiling. “Hope you like your steak rare.”

  “Bloody.”

  “Good.”

  They ate on the porch as the rain drummed on the tin roof, almost drowning out any conversation. Janette ate everything on her plate, and a part of what Pat had on his. She wiped her plate clean with a huge chunk of bread, then leaned back in her chair, covered her mouth with a hand, and burped as politely as possible. She said, just as the rain eased, “The end of a perfect day.”

  “No regrets?” Pat asked.

  She shook her head. “No. I’m just glad it was you. Even if your approach is not the most subtle I’ve ever heard.”

  “Are you checked out of the motel?”

  “Yes. I expected us to be on the road by now. But there is no hurry.” She looked at him, her eyes as hot as the rain was cool. “I do plan on spending the night.”

  Pat lifted her to her feet, not an easy task, for Janette was a lot of woman, and kissed her, slipping his hands under her blouse, loving the feel of satin warm skin. “As you wish,” he said, in very bad French.

  She threw back her head and howled with laughter. “Pat, that is the worst accent I have ever heard. God, man!”

  He smiled. When he spoke, his voice was just audible over the increasing tempo of the rain on the tin overhead. “Maybe I can make up for it in some way?”

  She whispered in his ear as her hands slipped down to his crotch, squeezing the thickening penis.

  “Oh? You’d like to do that, eh?” He grinned. “Lady, that’d be a mouthful. But I suppose that would be one way to shut you up.”

  Her eyes danced with mischief. “I was always taught it wasn’t
polite to speak with your mouth full.”

  They moved toward the bedroom.

  Over morning coffee (Pat discovering that Janette liked the strong chicory brew), she struggled to put her thoughts into words: how to tell him why she had traveled this distance; how to say it without him thinking her a fool.

  Something snorted in the swamp beside the house. Janette looked in that direction.

  “Gator,” Pat said. “They usually won’t bother you, unless you provoke them or try to bother one of the female’s young. Then the momma will attack to protect them. They’ll even drive off the bull gator; they eat the young.”

  “Pat . . ?” she sighed. “I want to show you something before I say anything.”

  “All right.”

  She got the prints from her luggage, some of them blown up to 8 x 10s, and handed the packet to him. “Look at those, then ask your questions.”

  He looked again. His eyes widened in disbelief. “What in the name of God is that thing?”

  “Look at them all, Pat—then I’ll answer your questions.”

  He studied the pictures, his face, at times, a study in revulsion. He looked at the pictures from all angles, then put them carefully back in the manila folder and laid them on the floor of the porch. “It’s trick photography. Someone made up in a monster costume.”

  “No,” she shook her head. “I assure you, it is not. I took them from my bedroom window only a few days ago.”

  “The old woman?”

  “My grandmother.”

  “She’s patting one of those damn things on the arm!”

  She took it from the beginning, telling him of the attack at the villa; her dreams; all she knew of her family history, and all that she guessed. “I think,” she sighed heavily, “those things are some of my relatives.”

  Pat looked at her, unable to speak. Her relatives! What the hell? Had he been screwing a crazy woman?

  “I also think my grand-père is back—in some form or the other—and I think my grand’mère has something to do with the killings in the parish. I think she is in collusion with the devil. And I can’t prove any of this.”

  “Collusion with . . . the devil!” Pat managed to stammer out the sentence.

  “Yes.”

  “And your dead grandfather is back? From the grave!?” he blurted. “What the hell are you trying to tell me? That these . . . things are vampires?”

  “No. They’re loups-garous. Roo-garous, the Cajuns used to call them.”

  “Who-garous?”

  “Werewolves, then.”

  Pat jumped from the stool on the porch. He looked at her and tried a grin that didn’t quite make it. “Janette? Are you putting me on?”

  “No, Pat—I’m serious.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “Werewolves? Like in the movies? Big, hairy, ugly bastards that bite people on the neck, or whatever?”

  “Yes.”

  “You really believe in this crap?”

  “You saw the pictures.”

  He sat back down and scratched his head. “Have they ever tried to harm you?”

  “Only the one in the villa.”

  He tried to laugh, but his humor faded when he saw the seriousness on her face. He cocked his head, looking at her. “Janette? What is it, exactly, you want me to do about the . . . boogerroos?”

  “Roo-garous.”

  “Whatever.”

  “I want you to come back to Louisiana, stay with me in Amour House . . . and kill those things. I think that’s what I want you to do. But I want you to put an end to this once and for all.”

  “What do you mean: you think? If one of those hairy fuckers comes at me, I’ll put an end to it all right. Bet on that, honey.” He thought about what he had just said. “Now, wait just a minute. You just told me the people in that town shot your grandfather and then burned him to ashes. If all that didn’t kill him . . . !” He once more jumped to his feet. “Aw, come on, Janette! This is stupid! There is no such thing as a werewolf.”

  She smiled. “I’ll pay you two hundred and fifty dollars a day plus expenses to prove me wrong.”

  He grinned a crooked grin, a sarcastic twist to his mouth. “Plus side benefits?”

  Her reply was a smile and a nod of her head.

  “Janette . . . are you sure about this? I mean . . .”

  She rose from her chair and put her arms around him. “Pat, you big ape! I’m scared out of my wits.”

  Then she broke down and let the tears and anger and frustration pour out, as strong as the rain of the previous day. She gripped Pat with strong arms.

  Like most men, Pat felt helpless and very inadequate around a crying woman.‘ He patted her shoulder, feeling like a fool as he did so. “Now, now, Janette. Here, now. All right! All right! I’ll help you find your . . . werewolves.” He said the last word very dryly, feeling even more like a fool. He patted her shoulder again, wondering if she felt he was trying to burp her.

  She lifted a tear-stained face. “Promesse?”

  “Yeah,” Pat said reluctantly. “I promise.”

  “You’ll do it, too,” she dabbed at her dark eyes with a tiny handkerchief. “My husband did not hand out compliments freely.”

  “Janette? I hate to tell you this, but I don’t have any clothes suitable for moving around in your world.”

  She dug in her purse and handed him a wad of bills. Fifties and hundreds. Pat’s eyes bulged. “Here, that’s just a little bonus for agreeing to help me. I’ll buy you some nice clothes when we get to a nice shopping mall.” She pressed against him. “Besides, after this is all over, I just may decide to keep you around.”

  “Janette? Please don’t think I’m being mercenary”—he laughed at his choice of words—“but how much are you worth?”

  “Oh . . . I guess counting everything, about a hundred and fifty.”

  “A hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “No-million.”

  Pat sat down on the stool.

  He sat in silence for a full minute. Finally, he said, “Umm. Janette? Just for conversation’s sake: how many male Bauterres are buried around that county?”

  “Parish,” she corrected. “Oh . . . I hadn’t thought of that. My family came there about 1720, I think. Twenty or more, I should imagine.” Her face brightened. “We’ll visit all the old cemeteries—see for ourselves.”

  “Oh, goody,” Pat said.

  Chapter Eleven

  She waited patiently while he changed, dressing in jeans, denim shirt, and boots. He tossed some shaving gear and a few odds and ends into an old bag, then reached into a trunk on the floor and pulled out an S & W model 57, .41 magnum with a four-inch barrel and several boxes of shells. He stowed that atop the socks and underwear shorts in the bag.

  “One of the few things I didn’t hock while drunk all those years,” he said. Then he began assembling a riot gun: a twelve-gauge shotgun with a twenty-inch barrel, eight-round capacity. Double-ought buckshot.

  “Pat?” Janette said, her voice soft.

  He looked up from his crouching position on the floor, questions in his eyes.

  “You don’t believe me, do you?”

  He said nothing.

  “You think I’m making all this up, don’t you?”

  He rose and sat on the edge of the bed. “No,” he shook his head. “No, I don’t think that at all, Janette. I think you really believe all you’ve told me. And I think I owe it to Captain Simmons to help you—one way or the other.”

  Her smile was wan. “If you don’t believe in loups-garous, then why are you taking that pistol and shotgun?’”

  “On the off-chance you may be right.”

  “I don’t know if those things will kill them or not,” she told him.

  Humor her, he thought. Someone’s only trying to frighten her with all this monster crap. Then another thought lodged in his mind: what if she’s right? He shook that thought from his brain. “Right,” he said. “How does one go about
killing something that’s already dead?” This is insane.

  “Pat? Do you believe you’re the first man for me since Lyle?”

  He moved from the side of the bed and put his hands on her waist. “Yes. That I do believe.”

  She kissed him. “Thank you for that.”

  “Janette? There is one thing I think you should consider. That is . . . ah . . . assuming all you’ve told me is on the up and up.”

  “And that is?”

  “You told me that as far as you know, this . . . whatever you call it only affects the males in the family.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But you have a son. You and the captain.”

  “I know,” she said, and would say no more.

  Pat buttoned up the house and they pulled out just before ten o’clock that morning. He felt no regrets at leaving. He just wished he could be more optimistic about the story she had told him.

  But he couldn’t get those pictures off his mind. Were they fake? If so, why—why would she fake them? Of course, she was worth millions . . . could it be a power play of some kind? A board takeover? He didn’t know enough about corporate business to even think about that.

  Of course, he had a job that was paying him well, and a woman that made him feel . . . emotions he hadn’t felt in a long while, and she seemed to feel the same about him.

  Was that good? he asked silently.

  He didn’t know.

  But, he pulled his mind back to the job that lay ahead of him, those poo-parous . . . roo-boos . . . whatever the hell Janette called them. Werewolves. They just couldn’t be real. Things like that don’t exist.

  Then, as if reading his mind, Janette said, “You’ll see, Pat. I know you don’t believe me, but you’ll see. Soon.”

  He grunted a noncommittal reply. “Your grandmother’s son . . . your uncle: you said he had been placed in a mental institution years ago?”

  “That was what we were told. But I don’t believe it. Not any longer.”

  “Where was he supposed to have been committed?”

  “A private sanitarium in Georgia.”

  “Where in Georgia?”

  “Just outside of Atlanta, I was told.” She glanced at him, her dark eyes reflective. “Yes, I see what you’re driving at. There couldn’t be more than one or two there, and this one would be very expensive.”