Bayou Shadow Hunter. Debbie Herbert

      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?”

      â€œI 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.

      â€œHurry.” Annie tried to scream, but her voice was only a puff, as light as dandelion seeds that scattered in the briny breeze.

      Tia hustled over with a speed and agility Annie hadn’t observed in her for years.

      â€œWhere is he?” she asked without preamble.

      Annie hastily removed the shoulder strap from her grandma’s bag and hoisted it over her own shoulders. “This way. He’s been bitten, Grandma.” She felt six years old again and seeking her grandma’s comfort after other kids made fun of her. She still needed her assurance and knowledge, wanted her grandma to tell her everything was going to be okay.

      â€œOle devil snake got ’em, eh?” They were only midway through the field, but Tia’s breathing was already labored.

      â€œYour heart,” Annie said, drawing burning air into oxygen-starved lungs. She laid a hand on Tia’s shoulder. “Tell me what to do, and you can stay here.”

      â€œAin’t goin’ be that easy,” Tia huffed. “Gonna take both of us to set this right.” She nodded at the trail. “Best keep on. Sooner I start workin’, better chance he lives.”

      They hurried on, and Annie resumed her frantic litany. Don’t die don’t die don’t die.

      There. His body lay in the same spot. Annie laid his head in her lap and swept his long hair out of his eyes. Only a supernatural force could have felled such a strong man. Such a warrior. His bronze skin stretched tightly across lean, compact muscles. She wondered what had drawn him into this fight with evil, what ancient curse haunted him and his people.

      Grandma Tia began humming and chanting, calling upon her Jesus and the holy saints as she pulled out herbs and protection wards from the bag—graveyard dirt, hollowed-out dirt-dauber nests, chopped swamp-alder root, strings of Dixie John root, and other bits and pieces of unidentifiable objects.

      â€œI call on thee, archangels most high,” Tia said in her firmest voice. “I call on thee, King Solomon, and thou keys of wisdom, and I call on thee, Moses, for thy power and faith. By the spirit of the Great Black Hawk, I summon thee.”

      Annie kept her eyes fixed on Tombi’s swollen chest with its mottled skin as her grandmother continued her petitions. It could have been ten seconds or ten minutes later—Annie couldn’t say—but Tia stopped and turned grave eyes on her.

      â€œIt ain’t working.”

      Annie’s fingers sank tighter into Tombi’s shoulder, and she squeezed, willing him to fight. “You can’t quit. Keep going.”

      Tia drew a long, unsteady breath. “Ain’t but one thing left to do.” She unpacked a poultice, laid her hand directly over the