Bayou Shadow Hunter

Her full lips twisted in a scowl. “No. I’m the lucky one.”

Tombi shook off his fascination with Annie and her kind. “You neatly skirted my question. What did you hear back there?”

She sighed, realizing he would interrogate until she answered his question. “A laugh. Not a funny one, but the laugh of the evil or crazy or demented. And then...the voice called me a witch and told me to go away.”

Tombi considered her words. He hated knowing Nalusa knew of Annie and her gift and their connection, but Nalusa must be worried to warn her off. That was, if Annie wasn’t in league with him to start with.

“So, just like that, you’re giving up?”

She winced at the sharp edge of his tone. “The attitude of your sister and your friends didn’t make me want to stay and try harder.”

He grew hot thinking of Tallulah’s antagonism. Annie didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Even if he had his own suspicions, nothing would be gained by hostility.

“They can’t help but be suspicious of strangers. Time and again, Nalusa has gained a foothold over people, even if only temporarily. Made them say and do things they wouldn’t normally do.”

Annie lifted her chin. “I can assure you that I’m in complete command of my own thoughts and actions.”

“I’ll help you, but you have to help me, too.”

“Can’t you just say some words and cure me?”

“Nothing’s that easy. It’s a process. It takes time to learn to control your energy.”

“You say you don’t trust me. That goes two ways. I think you’re dragging out everything to suit your own purposes.”

“You’ve barely spent five minutes among us. You’ll have to gain their trust.”

“Or catch them unawares,” she muttered.

“That would be hard to do. Our hearing may not be as sharp as yours. But we can sense energy before it senses us.”

“You have to sleep sometime.”

Of course. He should have realized. Tombi laid a hand on her thin shoulder, noticing his palm engulfed the side of her neck and curve of her shoulder. “Come meet us tonight. Hunt with us and spend the night.”

Her eyebrows drew up. “Spend the night with you in your tent?”

An image of Annie, naked and curled up beside him, flushed his body with desire. “I can spring for a new tent and sleeping bag,” he said past the dryness at the back of his throat.

“I’ll think—” She came to a dead halt and tilted her head to the side, listening to a faint sound.

“Wh—”

She raised a finger to her lips to silence him. Her forehead wrinkled, and her eyes grew distant. Suddenly, Annie grabbed his arm and looked around wildly. “Let’s run!”

And then he sensed it, too. Dread enveloped him like a heavy blanket. The metallic scent of blood and a whisper of decay could alone mean only one thing. Nalusa was near.

Very near. Within striking range.

Not now. Not with Annie so close. “Go without me,” he urged.

She stood still, as if paralyzed, staring at him with brown eyes full of fear. “But what about you?”

“I can take care of myself.” He drew out the dagger from his side. “Go!”

She hesitated.

A rustling whipped through the underbrush, unnaturally loud, drowning out birds and insects and the rumble of the sea. A sibilant hiss sent a tingle across the skin of his back and arms. Another second and Nalusa would be upon them. Tombi looked over his shoulder and pointed at Annie with his dagger. “I said, go!”

Her dark eyes were like a well of smooth, black water. And in those pupils Tombi saw a triangular head arise, a long forked tongue slithering from its mouth. The snake’s copper eyes appeared to hold Annie entranced. The Medusa of the bayou.

If Bo were still alive and with him, he’d throw a dagger accurate enough to strike the snake in between the eyes. Tombi didn’t trust his aim to be as accurate. He needed to be a little closer. He slowly turned to directly face Nalusa, his body a shield to protect Annie behind him. Nalusa coiled his long snake form in upon itself, his muscles rippling beneath the gray-and-brown patchwork of scales.

The striking position. His tail rose up with its rings of rattles and shook. The sound was as loud as a tumbling steel barrel full of iron pellets.

Tombi deliberately stepped toward Nalusa, every nerve flooded with adrenaline. Warring instincts battled inside. His muscles twitched to take action, to strike the enemy, yet his mind urged caution. One miscalculation and his tribe would be further reduced and without its leader.

They were within a few feet of one another. Striking distance. Tombi willed Annie to leave, but he sensed her presence behind him.

Why hadn’t she run? His jaw tightened. It could be the two were in league together. She drew him to just the right place at the right time. Tombi shrugged off the disquieting notion, trying to stay focused. If he lived, he would have his answer. If he didn’t...the other hunters would guess at her treachery and the trap she had plotted.

But no matter. The death match was on. He had to kill this monster before Nalusa crept past his boundaries, past the deep swamp where his ancestors had bound him many years ago. Hurricane Katrina had unleashed something; her destruction and the resulting chaos in the Deep South had made it possible for Nalusa to escape his chains and increase his power.

Now he seemed ready to inflict his evil upon the world.

Now he must die.

Tombi lunged forward, aiming for the eyes. His dagger sank into the thick, muscular skin of the snake, under its throat. It was as if he could feel the pain in his own body. A bolt of agony exploded a few inches under his collarbone, a needle sharpness that quickly radiated toward his chest, as if he’d been injected with poison.

Bitten. He’d been bitten. Moaning rent the space between man and beast, and Tombi couldn’t say if it was his own or Nalusa’s. Blood poured from the snake’s throat where Tombi’s silver dagger had sunk in deep. Its black tongue whipped out, ready to strike again.

Tiny white grains and bits of dirt rained down on Nalusa’s coiled body, and he jerked backward, eyes fixed somewhere past Tombi’s shoulder. What was happening?

Tombi took advantage of the distraction and scrambled to his knees, but pain exploded everywhere, and his vision filled with tiny black dots. His limbs felt numb and paralyzed, and with every breath the pain spread farther, deeper. He collapsed on the hard ground. I’m joining you, Bo.

The image of his parents arose as he last saw them. His father whittling his latest sculpture, his mom shucking corn. All that work, and the sculpture was taken out by the tide, by that bitch of a hurricane, Katrina.

I tried. I failed. You win, Nalusa. He could do no more.

* * *

Annie ran across the field to their cottage. Ran until her lungs burned and her chest heaved like fireplace billows. And still there wasn’t enough oxygen to fuel her body’s race against time. Don’t die don’t die please don’t die. She’d flung the salt and consecrated earth from her mojo bag at the attacker, but it may have been too little, too late.

Tombi’s unconscious body, sprawled in the red clay dirt, was as clear to her as the door to the cottage. She couldn’t, wouldn’t think of that—thing, not a snake and not a man. The snake form had dissolved into a thin, tall column of a creature howling with pain. Tombi’s dagger had dislodged, and the creature retreated to the darkness of the woods from which it had come.

But not Tombi. She’d felt his pulse, saw the slight rise and fall of his chest. So fragile.

The door opened, and Grandma Tia descended the steps, carrying the large straw bag that held her roots and herbs for her healing home visitations.