Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set (27 page)

“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.

“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 circled around them, a few feet out, crumbling bits of wormwood petals and letting them fall onto her path. The words of the psalm were ingrained since childhood.

“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night, nor for the arrow that flieth by day, nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness, nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”

Heat singed upward from below where her grandmother knelt beside Tombi's body that was sprawled on the hard ground. The sweltering air battered Annie's temples with headache. The wormwood's bitter, camphoraceous scent deepened, and her fingers tingled with numbness—some toxic effect of the herb intensified by the spell. A golden light flowed between Tombi's chest and her grandma's hand.

Annie stopped her recitation, mesmerized by the etheric glow.

Tia cast her a sharp glance. “Don't stop.”

She cleared her throat and continued circling. “No evil shall befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling. For he shall give his angels care. They shalt tread upon the lion and adder.”

The swelling and redness of his skin decreased. Tombi stirred and wet his lips. A low moan escaped.

“It's working,” Annie exclaimed, wanting to tap-dance around the sacred circle. The golden, healing energy had wrought a remarkable change. There was still some swelling, but the angry red streaks of infection had disappeared. “You did it, Grandma—” She stopped abruptly.

Tia's olive skin had grayed and wrinkled even more, to the point it resembled elephant skin. Her eyes held an unhealthy glaze, as if she were burning with a fever.

Annie sank on her knees and hugged her grandma. “Don't leave me,” she begged. “Tell me how to help you.”

A laugh so faint that even she couldn't hear it—it could only be felt from the rumbling of Tia's chest and throat. “It's all in the good Lord's hands now, child.”

Annie burrowed her head in her grandma's gray hair with its witchy, herbal smell. The smell of home and safety and love. Her grounding force in this world.

“I'm going to get help,” she promised, mind whirling with the action she needed to take: get up, run to the cottage, find her cell phone and car keys. Call the ambulance, drive through the field, manage to get these two in the car and drive them to the cottage for the ambulance to transport them to the hospital.

Once at the hospital, the doctors would demand to know what happened...

“Hey,” Tombi asked with a note of hoarse puzzlement. “What's going on here?”

A frisson of resentment washed over Annie. This had been
his
fight. Not hers. And certainly not her grandma's. If she'd never met him, her grandma wouldn't be hovering at death's portal for the afterlife.

She'd sacrificed her own safety and, worse, her grandma's health. All for a promise. One that Tombi didn't seem in any hurry to fill.

“My grandma absorbed the poison meant for you,” she said, hot tears scalding her cheeks. “I wish I'd never met you.”

CHAPTER 4

T
ia's deep olive flesh turned ashy. The glaze of her eyes and burn of her skin indicated a dangerously high fever, as if a volcano had exploded inside her body.

How much longer for that ambulance? Seemed as if it had taken hours to get her grandma back to the cottage and make the call for help. Annie held Tia's hand and stroked her hot forehead. “Isn't there some kind of special tea or gris-gris bag I can get for you?”

“Fetch my crystal from the altar and light a candle.” Tia's voice was weak and hoarse. She swallowed hard. “And say a quick prayer while you're at it.”

Annie scurried to do her bidding, glad to take action. Seeing someone in pain, especially the rock of her universe, was to suffer alongside them.

Don't die
. Sure, she'd known Tia's heart was winding down, but Annie had expected weeks, if not months, to share with her grandmother. Time to soak in her care and wisdom. Time also to be trained in root working and to, hopefully, cajole a reverse spell to banish the musical auras that assaulted her mind.

At the altar, Annie grasped the large chunk of polished carnelian that, despite its vivid orange-red color, was cooling and soothing to the touch. With shaking hands, Annie struck a match. It hissed loudly in the quiet and emitted a whisper of sulfur. She applied the flame to the white columnar candle that smelled strongly of patchouli and cloves. Beside the candle was a framed print of a stern angel with spread wings.

Annie collected her panicked thoughts and prayed. “Dear God...universe...angels...help my grandma,” she whispered in a rush. “She's done nothing but help people all her life, and now she needs you. The time isn't right. I'm not ready.” Annie drew a deep breath, ashamed she'd wandered into selfish territory. A groan from the next room, and she drew the prayer to a quick close. “Please and amen.”

She hurried to the den, where Tombi leaned over the sofa toward Tia, as if drawing closer to hear her speak. Or check her breath for life.

A jab of fear wrung her gut. “Is she...?”

“She's alive,” he said with grim authority. “But her pulse grows faint.”

A siren sounded from far away.

Tombi straightened. “I'll wait out front for the ambulance. Make sure they don't have trouble finding this place.” He brushed past, and Annie lifted her chin, turning her body to the side to avoid accidental contact. It might be unfair to blame him for Tia's condition, but she couldn't help resenting him, nonetheless.

Tombi raised a brow but said nothing.

The door shut behind him, and Annie let out a deep breath, resuming her place by Tia's side. She slipped the carnelian crystal into her grandma's weathered palm, and Tia curled her fingers over the rock.

“Does this help you?” Annie asked, hoping it eased the pain.

Tia nodded. “Helps me focus. To say what needs sayin'.”

Her grandma took a long, raspy breath, and Annie winced at the rattle that sounded like oxygen was leaking and gurgling from her lungs. She eased down and sat beside Tia's sprawled body. “Take your time. I lit the candle and said a prayer like you asked.”

“Ain't much time left.”

“Don't say that,” Annie scolded. “You're going to be fine.”

“Listen.” Tia struggled to rise on an elbow, but gave up and sank back into the cushions. “I know I been a disappointment to you this visit.”

Annie started to deny it, but Tia cut her off.

“We ain't got time for nothin' but the truth between us. And the truth is, you need to help Tombi. He needs you. He needs your gift.”

But what about me? It's not what I want.

Tia frowned, eyes sparking with reprimand.

No doubt she'd heard the selfish, unspoken thought. Guilt and shame washed over Annie in a heated flood of remorse.

“You listen here, Annie girl. You help that man. Now. Tonight.”

Annie shook her head again. “No way. I'm staying with you.”

“I'm goin' somewhere you cain't follow.”

“You aren't going to die,” Annie insisted.

“I mean it, missy. You go with Tombi. Promise me.”

Her tone was fierce, insistent—one that Annie remembered as a child. A you-better-mind-me-this-is-your-last-warning kind of voice. The siren's wail grew distinct and piercing.

Annie crossed two fingers behind her back. “Okay.”

Tia tugged Annie's right hand around to the front of her body. “You stop that childish nonsense, or I'll haunt you all yer living days.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Now, then. They fixin' to take me to that infernal hospital.” Tia sniffed as if she'd smelled something unclean. She hated the hospital and always said they hurt more than helped. “Guess it's for the best in this case.”

“They'll take good care of you. You'll be better in—”

“Hush. If you ever loved me, if you ever trusted my judgment...don't go to the hospital with me. Say you won't.”

Annie's shoulders slumped. “Okay,” she whispered in defeat, crushed at the mandate. “Is there at least some spell or working I can do while you're gone?”

“No. You be my good girl and help Tombi.” Tia's eyes filled with tears that poured down her cheeks like trickles of rain.

Annie couldn't ever remember her grandma crying, except that one time when Annie's mama got in a huge argument with Tia and walked out, saying she would never come back to this backwater hell. That day, Tia's great shoulders had heaved in silent sobs.

Flashing red lights strobed through the window like a disco party from hell. Annie squeezed Tia's hand.

“You always were my special girl.” Tia nodded. “But now it's time for my release. Tombi is your destiny now. Ya hear?”

The screen door burst open, and two men in dark blue uniforms entered with a stretcher, Tombi close at their heels.

The men hurried to Tia's side and took her pulse, listened to her heart, assessed for damages. Tombi explained what had happened, and Annie sank to her knees, hands covering her mouth. How could her grandma expect her to stay here while she went to the hospital?

Tia was transferred to the stretcher, and the men labored to the door with their heavy burden. She still clutched the carnelian in one hand, taking a piece of home with her to a foreign place bustling with antiseptic, modern doctors who prodded you with needles and probed your flesh and innards with an impersonal, impatient air.

It was about as far from hoodoo healing as you could get.

“We're taking her to Bayou La Siryna General Hospital,” one of the young men said.

She couldn't speak past the clogged boulder in her throat, but Tombi responded. “Thank you. Family and friends will follow shortly.” He walked the EMR staff to the door and shut it behind them.

Annie curled into the sofa. The cushions were still warm from her grandma's fever and smelled like her special scent of cinnamon and sandalwood. She punched a throw pillow, aching with the need to follow her grandma.

But she'd promised.

She gave in to her grief and sobbed into the battered pillow.

A warm hand touched her shoulder. “Annie?”

She jumped. She'd completely forgotten Tombi was present.

“You,” she spat.

A flinch danced across the hard planes of his face, so fleeting that she wondered if she'd misread it. He withdrew his hand.

“I'm sorry about your grandmother.” He stood erect and awkward, as if unsure what to do or say.

Annie swiped her eyes and edged away from his presence. She tucked her feet beneath her on the sofa and hugged her knees to her chest. “Why don't you go away and leave me alone?”

She didn't care if she looked or sounded childish. Grandma Tia was gone. And it was all his fault. If she'd never met him, never made the mistake of following the will-o'-the-wisps into the woods, her grandma would still be here.

I'm going where you can't follow
. Was Tia talking about her death? Or something else?

“Is there someone I can call?” Tombi asked. “Family? A friend?”

Annie didn't want to call her mom. It would take her hours to drive down from the north Georgia mountains. That was,
if
she came. And she'd be impatient and cross that Annie hadn't gone to the hospital. No matter that she'd shirked her own daughterly duties. Best to wait a bit for some news on her grandma's condition before calling.

Annie nodded at the desk by the far wall. “Open up that middle drawer. There's a blue address book in it.”

She watched as Tombi rummaged in the drawer. His green T-shirt was streaked with red clay dirt, as were his blue jeans. It reminded her that he'd been lying on the ground deathly ill less than an hour ago. She shouldn't care but...

“Hey, are you okay?” she asked reluctantly. “Maybe you should have gone to the ER, too.”

He shut the desk drawer and came toward her. One side of his mouth twitched upward. “Nice to know you care.”

He handed over the battered book, which was crammed with names and addresses scribbled in Tia's large, dramatic script. Grandma wasn't one to trust computers for storing information.

Annie found Verbena Holley's name and picked up her cell phone. Verbena was a longtime family friend who would drop everything and stay with Tia at the hospital. She also wouldn't question Annie about Tia's demand that she remain at home. Verbena was almost as eccentric as Tia and possessed absolute faith in Tia's wisdom.

That done, Annie hung up and let out a deep breath. She felt a fraction better that her grandma would have a familiar face by her side this evening. Outside, shadows lengthened, and twilight wouldn't be far behind.

Tombi paced their small den looking large and out of place. He belonged to the night and to the swampland, not here in this mystical room with its herbal sachets, saint statues and candles. His stride was cramped, his posture rigid. He kept his eyes to the ground, hands tightly interlaced behind his back.

“You don't have to stay,” Annie said. “You should go back to your friends.” After all, Grandma Tia hadn't said she had to help him immediately. It would be best if he left, and she could gather her wits and form a plan. “They probably wonder what's taking you so long to return.” And no doubt would blame her for his injury.

He stopped pacing and gave her a ferocious stare. “I'm not going back without you.”

Beneath the glare of his eyes, exhaustion and pain had left a faint trace. Annie wanted nothing more than to demand he leave, but she couldn't send out a man who had been so near death.

My destiny.
Was her grandma just being fanciful?

Annie stood and pointed to the sofa. “Why don't you sit, and I'll fix some tea. Something to make sure the fever lessens.”

He narrowed his eyes. “What kind of tea?”

“A little this, a little that.” Realization struck. “What did you think I'd put in your drink?”

“Poison, perhaps.” He arched a brow. “What do witches brew? Toadstool soup with dragon blood and gator claws?”

That was rich. The guy practically killed her grandma and then suggested
he
didn't trust
her
? “Don't forget magic mushrooms and bat whiskers,” she drawled.

Too bad she didn't have access to something like truth serum to find out more about his background and intentions. Still, her healing nature couldn't ignore Tombi's underlying suffering. And keeping busy was her preferred method for dealing with sorrow and worry.

In the kitchen, her safe haven, Annie set the iron teakettle on the stove and mixed together a pinch of elderberry, angelica and feverfew for taking out any underlying fever, plus a dash of chamomile for relaxing. Not truth serum, but maybe if Tombi relaxed he would open up more. Couldn't hurt.

She reached up on tiptoes for the container of stevia.

“Interesting place.”

Annie spun around like a ballerina
en pointe
. “I didn't hear you come in,” she sputtered. “Sneaking up on me?”

“No. It's just my way. The way of most hunters. I came to see if I could help.”

Annie leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “I think you wanted to keep an eye on me.” She waved a hand around the kitchen. “Go on and look. We're fresh out of arsenic and eye of newt.”

Tombi squinted at the jars of dried spices and roots lining the countertops, the basket of pink mojo bags she'd assembled earlier that morning and the bunches of dried herbs hanging above on the ceiling. “Unusual, but nothing overtly suspicious, like a box of rat poison.”

Was he serious? Annie frowned. “Now, look here, you can't just—”

Tombi opened the pantry door, and she drew away from the counter, spine stiffening. “Who said you could go poking about everywhere?” she demanded.

“You said I could look around.” He stepped in the pantry and ran a finger over the shelves. “Ah, now it's getting interesting. Graveyard dirt, coffin nails and—” he picked up a sealed jar and turned “—swamp juice?” His nose crinkled at the puke-green cloudiness. “Looks like it could kill someone. Bacterial infection would be a gruesome death.”

“Put it back, and mind your own business.”

He returned it to the shelf, and Annie poured steaming tea into two mugs. She lifted the silver ball that held the loose ingredients in the teapot and waggled it. “We're drinking from the same pot. Just so you know.”

Tombi sank into one of the cane-backed kitchen chairs, and Annie sat across from him at the table. He filled the room with his strong presence, overpowered what was once her peaceful sanctuary. Made it disturbing.

Exciting.

Even the air she breathed reeked of masculinity and testosterone—forceful and heady.

Annie slid the ceramic bowl filled with packets of sugar to the middle of the table. “You'll want to sweeten up that brew. It's a bit bitter. If you'd rather use honey, we have some.”