Debbie Herbert - Bayou Shadow Hunter

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.