Debbie Herbert - Bayou Shadow Protector

Never again, she vowed. It meant more if he kissed her without the influence of magic.

Curious as to how her human form appeared, April went to the bathroom and stared in the mirror. The Council had told her that this form would manifest her fairy nature, and she saw that truth in the mirror.

Dismay clouded her eyes. She looked nothing like his true love, Tallulah. The white of her skin was the pale of the white bearded iris she slept under. Her eyes were the bluish purple of the wild violets she nibbled on for nourishment, and her hair was moon-bathed in silver, as night was the time she loved to flit about. She slept during the day after a bath in the dew of the early morn. She was thin and lithe as the stalks of sea oats, and the pale purple streaks in her hair were the whisper of eggplant behind a cloud at sunset.

The Council had assured her the human form would be pleasing to the male human species. But April would have traded everything for Tallulah’s olive skin, black silky hair and muscular frame. She was like an Amazon warrior of old—the only female shadow hunter in the history of Bayou La Siryna.

No doubt the Council would laugh at her jealousy if they learned of it. “Use your enchantment,” they’d advise. “No man can resist your Fae charm while under your spell.” But April was determined to do this her own way—on her own terms.

She would succeed where her mother had failed.

Chapter 3

Chulah removed his helmet and sat on his motorcycle, studying the tree line at the point where April had suddenly—mysteriously—appeared from the backwoods. It was possible that some trace, some clue could be tracked down. With luck, he’d follow the signs to the point of origin. At least it would reveal if April had lied about getting lost after a simple hike. One that she claimed to have begun near her apartment. Her story didn’t ring true, and even after riding for hours, there was something about her...something disturbing he couldn’t quite pinpoint. Compounding his unease was his lack of physical control at her apartment. It was as if she drew him to her magnetically, removing his normal reserve.

Chulah removed a flashlight from his saddlebag and stuffed it in his backpack, which he had weighted down with rocks. His eyes adjusted to the night’s dark veil, so he probably didn’t need the flashlight, but it never hurt to be prepared. The rocks were for any stray will-o’-the-wisps.

Strapping the backpack across his broad shoulders, he approached the woods. He’d first glimpsed April by the massive oak. The tree had a sharp bend in the trunk, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina years earlier.

The scent of violets and moss teased his nose, the same scent that April bore, one that niggled at his memory. Broken twigs and pine needles marked the ground and he followed the trail.

She’d stayed close to one of the many narrow footpaths that veined the forest and her direction had been true. Never once had she strayed down a different path, or circled back to the one that led to the road and his home. Interesting. You would think somebody new to the area, and supposedly lost, would have strayed at least once, taken a circuitous path or explored a way to exit the woods.

Deeper and deeper, Chulah journeyed to the dark, quiet interior of the bayou forest. Strange that April chose to walk a path so far removed from civilization. An uneasy prickle lifted the hairs on his arms. The scent of violets grew sharper and the trail abruptly ended at the base of an ancient cypress where a large patch of wild violets bloomed—totally out of season. They were spring flowers blossoming in the heart of autumn. Chulah turned from that mystery to another, more pressing question.

Where had April gone from here?

That same April who knew of the bayou’s secret, of its evil spirits, who knew things about him she had no logical way of knowing. Whose tracks stopped in the middle of the woods, in a spot that festered with some strange magick he’d never seen. Something was afoot, something he’d never encountered before in all his years of hunting shadows.

He didn’t believe in coincidence. This place and that woman were connected. Tomorrow he would visit April and demand an explanation. Had she kissed him to distract his attention from her loose tongue? If so, it wouldn’t happen again.

Eerie silence enveloped him like a wool blanket. That was what was different. Not what was there, but the absence of what should be there—no insect droning, no underbrush rattles from small animals, no hooting of owls or even the sound of the sea breeze in the treetops. Only silence.

Baffled, Chulah raised his arms, allowing his senses to become totally immersed in the night, seeking out any sign of hidden shadows that secreted the bayou. The sensing was passed down from his Choctaw ancestors, a special line of descendants gifted to detect the evil shadow world. The shadow creatures considered humans intruders and sought to either drive them out or control the ones who stayed.

His family had chosen to stay. And to fight.

They had lived in this south Alabama swampland for hundreds of years, as far back as anyone could remember. Surely they had been here since the beginning of time—same as the shadow beings who didn’t want to share the land. Not only that, they wanted to dominate every creature—human, animal and supernatural—that roamed the bayou.

Chulah sent a prayer to his ancestors for guidance. The silence continued, but Chulah’s feet directed him to a distance of about ten yards from the tree where April’s trail stopped. He looked down. On the side of his right foot, fallen leaves blew and rustled. On his left side, all was still and silent.

Odd.

He followed the divided, splintered land, walking a circle with the cypress tree at its center. Inside the circle, all was silent. Outside the circle, all was normal. Chulah rubbed his chin, puzzling out this new development. Was it possible there was some new manner of creature that he and his fellow hunters had never before witnessed?

Quietly, he withdrew two large rocks and held each in the palms of his hands, ready for attack. He again walked the circle’s perimeter, yet found but one set of April’s footprints where she had walked from the tree to the road.

It didn’t make sense. Something was off.

Chulah halted, allowing the darkness to completely mask him from moonlight, drawing layers of the night’s shadow to wrap around his body.

And waited.

His patience was as still as the live oaks that encircled and filled the forest, living sentinels that discouraged most humans from entering deep, and contained the shadows within. A boundary between civilization and the primitive, mysterious evil that had been present since the beginning of time.

As a shadow hunter, he lived in between the two worlds, not fully belonging to either. On full-moon nights, his soul ached to be in the bayou backwoods, a part of the shadows born to shelter mankind from the old spirits who meant them harm and who longed to escape the forest’s boundaries.

He continued his watch, attentive to every sound and smell and movement. A gray fox, his namesake, stopped its lonesome prowling and stared at him solemnly before padding away on silent paws. The wily creatures never failed to greet him on his solitary vigils. When he was born, his father had entered the woods and waited for a sign on what to name his son. A fox had wandered close and stared. His father named him Chulah, Choctaw for fox, to honor his son’s appointed animal guide.

An orange glow, the color of citrine lit from within, shone in the distance, a candle in the dark. It wasn’t the blue glow of a wisp with a green, throbbing heart at its center. It wasn’t swamp gas. And it wasn’t a flashlight beam of a fellow hunter. This was something altogether new, the likes of which he’d never observed in all his years of hunting.