Bayou Shadow Hunter. Debbie Herbert

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.

      “Hurry.” 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.

      “Where 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.

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

      “Your 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.”

      “Ain’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.

      “I 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.

      “It 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 open wound and prayed, then placed the poultice on the broken skin.

      Annie gulped. “Aren’t you worried about infection?”

      “We way past that point, child. Now I need you to help me. We goin’ to draw that poison out of his body and into mine.”

      “But—we can’t. What will the poison do to you? Your heart—”

      Tia held up a hand, face stern. “My time on this here earth is almost up anyhows. We gots to try. Now. What I want you to do is find that gris-gris bag full of wormwood in my bag and sprinkle it all around us.”

      Annie hastily rummaged in the purse, pulled out a black satin drawstring pouch and held it to her nose. A pungent, bitter smell tickled her nostrils. “Is this the one?”

      “That’s it. Now you get to work and recite parts of Psalm 91. And don’t interrupt me, no matter what. You hear me?”

      Her upbringing left her no choice but to respond properly to the authority in that voice. “Yes, ma’am.”

      Tia’s eyes softened, and the rigid set of her face melted. “You always been a good girl,” she said. “My shining star with the gift. You hear music where the rest of us hear silence.” She turned abruptly away. “Now get to work like I taught you.”

      It felt like a farewell.

      Surely not. Grandma Tia was no voodoo hack. She was the real deal. Knew things, sensed things, felt things.

      Annie