This is probably as good as it gets out here, Olivia realized. There would be nothing to drink in this swamp.
"I was only eighteen when I met him," Sommer began, as she settled into her story. She spoke guardedly, as if what she had to say pained her. Yet she was resigned to tell the whole truth. "My father worked on the bayou, fishing for catfish by nights, trapping crayfish and turtles by day. I knew nothing of the world. But we lived near the city, in a fine little house, with twenty acres of swamp behind it. Our nearest neighbors lived half a mile away, and so it was a quiet existence, until I turned eighteen."
As Sommer began to speak, Olivia was struck by something: how odd her voice sounded. Here in the swamps, living with this old Cajun, one might have expected Sommer to fall into his habits. But her voice was elegant, refined. It was as if, through her speech, she clung to the last remnants of civilization with every fiber of her being.
"We were all masaaks, in my family," Sommer continued. "I longed to see the world, but we had no money, so one year I decided to take a short drive to New Orleans for Mardi Gras.
"It seemed so grand—the parades, the music, floats and costumes. I sang and danced through the French Quarter, and someone shoved a drink in my hand.
"The party lasted all night long. I found myself among some drunken college girls, who stripped for the applause of leering idiots.
"I was slinking from the crowd when I smelled something glorious. There are many great restaurants in the French Quarter, with strange delicacies—barbecued alligator steaks and shrimp gumbo, powdery beignets with fresh cafe au lait.
"But this smelled glorious beyond anything, and I found my blood thrilling through my veins as I followed the scent down a side street, to a mansion with marble columns. I walked through the door into a grand entrance, then climbed a winding stair.
"By the time I reached the master bedroom, I knew what the smell was. My mother had warned me against it—the scent of a masaak in musth. But I was drunk and young, and I followed it to a door that had been left half open.
"I dreamt that I would meet a man, and that he would be the love of my life, much in the way that my mother met my father. I tried to imagine him—tall and strong and handsome.
"He was all of that, and more. When I saw the room, I knew that he was wealthy, too, beyond anything that I had imagined. He had two other people with him on a canopied bed, with silken sheets of scarlet—a dark-haired succubus, and another woman lay naked and exhausted.
"He had servants in the room, too—butlers to wait on him hand and foot, along with security guards and counselors.
"All of his servants were more beautiful than me, stronger, taller. I felt insignificant in their presence.
"He looked at me as if I was nothing, fleshy garbage.
"Compared to everyone else in that room... have you ever seen a purebred Arabian, one with a lineage that goes back for two thousand years?"
"Like in that movie," Bron asked, "the Black Stallion?"
"Yes," Sommer said, "like that. All of the people around me were purebreds, and I ... was a beat-up draft horse.
"When he saw me, he would have mocked me, if I had not bored him so.
"I went to the foot of his bed, and by then, there in that closed room, the pheromones were so strong, that I yearned for him with an unspeakable lust. I knelt at the foot of his bed, and he was so beautiful, that I could only reach up and touch his ankle, begging for him. I felt so insignificant, and he was so grand. I wanted him. I've never wanted anything so much in my life.
"He just laughed.
"'You think that I would have you?' he asked. 'We Draghouls are purebred. You ... you're nothing. Still, from time to time, one of you feral rats holds something that amuses me....'"
It was a singularly odd scene, Olivia thought. This woman who claimed to have tried to save Bron, now sat across the room, holding a shotgun on him. She was so petite, she looked almost stunted. Olivia felt that Lucius's judgment was correct. Sommer was ... plain. She was pretty in her own way, but she had none of Bron's strong build, his symmetry, his grace.
Sommer was deep inside herself, dredging up painful memories. Her voice cracked as she continued, "Lucius turned away from me then, and would have rejected me altogether, but the head of his security team grabbed me and threw me on the bed, and pinned me down. He put his thumbs up above my eyes, and grasped my skull with his fingers. Grimacing from displeasure, as if he disliked even to touch me, he invaded my head, stripped my memories bare.
"He saw my mother, my sisters, in their little house near the bayou. He learned about my tedious life, all of my insignificant hopes and dreams. I heard his voice in my mind, laughing at me.
"When he was done, he told Lucius, 'Milord, this one is a wondrously powerful leech!'
"Lucius seized me then. What happened next, I do not recall. Someone cleaned the memories from me, so I know that they must have been filthy indeed. I remember Lucius promising to leave my family alone, so long as I bedded him.
"Lucius kept me prisoner for nearly a year. I know that I had a child, and that somehow I escaped from Lucius's compound in the Hollywood Hills, and ran all over the country."
Sommer began to weep, and her eyes filled with tears. The regret was thick in her voice. "I remember that I planned my escape for days, but I don't remember you, Bron. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I don't remember ever having you. Lucius caught me afterward, and questioned me. His men accused me of having a baby, of stealing it away." She looked across the room blankly, and her voice trailed off to nothing, was drowned out by the distant croaking of frogs. "After that, I can't remember much."
"You don't know what happened next?" Bron asked.
"I couldn't even remember your name, if I ever gave you one," the woman said, looking vacantly at Bron. "But I've been told that I had a son once. For all that I know, you may be him. I only remember that I escaped from Lucius again, a few years later."
Silence fell in the room, and Sommer just sobbed for a moment. When she finally looked up, her voice went cold. "Now, it's your turn: what makes you think that you're my son?"
Bron shrugged, as if he didn't quite know how to answer.
Olivia could not see any resemblance between this woman and Bron. Yet as Olivia's eyes adjusted to the darkness, she realized that her first appraisal of Sommer had been a bit harsh. Sommer was plain, but with a bit of makeup she might even have been considered pretty.
She'd worn herself out in hiding.
Olivia told Sommer, "Bron was abandoned as a child. We were told by a friend that you were his mother, but he doesn't know any more than that. She's the one who cleaned out your mem—"
Outside, the frogs were croaking like madness beneath the starry skies. Olivia had become so used to the melee of voices that she almost didn't hear the squeaking board on the porch, as someone heavy took a step.
The old man whirled in alarm and fired his gun into the wall, in the direction of the sound. The explosion echoed in the shack so loudly that Olivia felt stunned. The powerful bullet blew a hole in the old wood, and outside on the porch, someone grunted heavily and fell.
The door latch turned and the door began to swing open. Bron's mother let go with both barrels of her shotgun, and Olivia caught a glimpse of someone getting blown backward, over the rail on the porch, and a heavy body hit the water.
All hell broke loose. Someone outside shouted, "Police! Come out with your hands up!"
The old fellow beside Bron began blasting with his revolver, opening holes in the wall, each one letting in a tiny bit of moonlight.