Raisonne Curse (11 page)

Footsteps, slow and steady, sounded again as they broke twigs and crunched dried leaves.

“Who’s there?” she called out, still swinging the light back and forth.

The noise stopped.

She couldn’t breathe, could barely think as terror turned her muscles to stone. She switched the flashlight to her other hand as her right wrist started to ache.

Another step sounded and she hurriedly moved the light to that spot. “I can hear you! Who are you?”

Her heart was beating so damned hard, it nearly drowned out the loud drone of insects. She felt somewhat safe on the boat in the middle of the water—or she should have. But something was out there. It could easily be a deer or some other kind of animal, but the air felt heavy, malevolent.

Then, like it had the first night in the Bernaux part of the swamp, silence rolled out over the land and water and the resulting quiet echoed sharply in her head. It made the next footsteps crash into the quiet with ominous precision. But this hush was different. There were still some sounds but they came hesitant, as if the creatures around them knew something she didn’t. Like they waited for whatever was going to happen next.

A bird suddenly squawked right over her head and Elita whimpered, dropped the flashlight, and before she could pull her headset back on, a coyote barked, then howled. Others joined in before the ones closest to the shore started snarling and growling.

She hurriedly covered her ears with the headset. Her gaze darted around as she knelt to make sure the muffs covered Pryor’s ears.
Screw this!
She’d get Pryor home and safe and ignore whatever hell the smudge man had planned for her. She frantically started the boat, sure her heart was going to beat its way up her throat and out through her ears. Sweat covered her skin and the air that brushed over her as the boat picked up speed made her feel a slight bit of comfort. Getting away from whatever had been walking in that forest gave her more. Coyotes hadn’t been making that noise. She knew it. She’d felt eyes on her that had not belonged to any sort of animal.

The ride to the Bernaux part of the swamp seemed to take forever. Longer than an hour. The whole time, her gaze roamed the water and the land as if any second, some phantom would rise and attack. She wished Pryor would wake up—wished she knew why he was so still and silent. She looked at him often. He never moved.

She thought they were getting close, anticipation making her palm sweat on the steering stick. They had a straight shot for a while there, so she accelerated, her gaze staying on the spread of light on the water in front of the boat. It looked like the boat was chomping the green water hyacinth as it mowed over it and she thought about Tooter’s long bitch session about the invasive flower again. If she hadn’t been so scared about Pryor, she would have smiled. A happy Cajun was a bitching Cajun and Tooter seemed particularly skilled at it. So skilled, she no longer wondered why his boys were so quiet.

All thoughts of Tooter and his boys fled when she spotted something ahead in the water.

Elita leaned forward, squinted, thinking about slowing the boat again because there was some kind of black cloud rising from the water near the Bernaux pier. She slowed the boat, expecting the creepy silence this time and when she pulled off the headset, a low, garbled moan rolled over the surface of the water, getting louder as it came toward her.

The scream building in her throat threatened to choke her and it escaped when she glanced down to check on Pryor.

He was sitting and seemed to be looking right at her. But something was wrong with his face. She didn’t have time to turn the light on him because pressure hit the back of her hand and forced her to accelerate the boat.

Way. Too. Fast.

Chapter Eleven

P
ryor came to in the water like always. Groaning, he reached out and grabbed handfuls of thick blades of grass to haul himself to land. He spit foul water and slimy weeds from his mouth. The toes of his boots dragged the mud, caught on rocks and other debris and the muscles in his arms felt like jelly as they trembled and refused to work well. This time was different. It felt like someone had tied him to the back of his boat and dragged his body to flop through the swamp. Searing pain flared in his knee and when he hit shallow water, he rolled onto his back and looked down to find raw, abraded skin showing through a massive rip in his jeans. They were torn from thigh to shin and his knee had swelled to twice its normal size.

He lifted his hands, frowning at the raw skin of his palms. His right cheek hurt. He rolled to pull himself fully from the water, wondering about Moochon’s whereabouts right as he saw the crushed pier with his boat on top of the destruction.

It started to come back to him then. He’d been driving the boat back with Elita after visiting the LaBarre brothers and he’d been scared he wouldn’t get back in time to the right part of the swamp. The part that belonged to him and his brothers.

Stark fear sent a surge of adrenaline through his system. He’d crashed. Crashed with Elita helpless in the boat. He yelled for her as he crawled to his feet and stood swaying as he took in what was left of his pier. He staggered forward, not giving a shit about the damage to his property—just wanting to find the woman who’d come to mean so much to him so fast. Pain slashed through his knee. He must have been thrown into the water, landed on his hands and his knee. Hit his face on something.

“Elita!” he shouted.

From somewhere to his right, Moochon barked. He stumbled toward the noise, fear blurring his vision as he spotted her bare legs in a section of high grass. His dog whimpered, barked again. Pryor rushed toward them and everything in him froze when he saw the dead cottonmouth next to her. It had been shredded by dog teeth.

“Good boy, good Moochon,” he said, kneeling beside her. His hand shook as he reached out to run his hands over her legs, looking for the bite. He found lots of mosquito and chigger bites, but nothing that looked snake-like. “Did you get it before? Huh, boy?”

When he turned her over and saw the blood on her face, he thought his heart would stop. He couldn’t find anything broken. She had a knot on her head, but her hair was too thick to see if it was a snakebite and he was sure it wasn’t because she wouldn’t be alive by now—not with a bite there. Not after this long. There were strange claw marks on her right leg. Deep, yet sealed, like they’d been seared closed. Wincing, he turned her leg. The marks wrapped her shin all the way around to her calf. Glancing up, he looked around, trying to spot clues, anything that could tell him what had happened.

He didn’t know if she’d been thrown clear or if something happened to her after. She could have seen him.

Out of the corner of his eye, that black entity, her smudge man, moved and Pryor curled his lip at it. “That’s it. I’m taking care of you once and for all.”

He hated leaving her just lying there, but he needed the seeds he’d gotten at the LaBarre’s, so he limped back to the pier. White-hot pain ripped through his knee, and for a moment, he saw stars. The matching ache in his head sent a wave of dizziness through it. Staggering to the closest tree, he leaned against it, squeezed his eyes shut, and took a few steady, deep breaths.

Mercer and Wyatt hadn’t arrived.

If they had, they would have already been out here, helping. And if he used those bastard seeds alone…

He looked back over his shoulder and spotted that thing hovering over Elita like an evil mirror image. It had more substance than before—seemed thicker, darker. Panic flared through his chest. He pushed the pain back and walked to the pier, only to stop.

The boat had tilted after it crashed into the end of the pier and the cooler that held all their gathered supplies had upended into the water. It lay on the edge of the shore, open. Empty.

Frustration and fury tightened his hands into fists as he turned back to the thing hurting Elita.

“You think you’ve thought of everything, eh?” Pryor gritted his teeth as he walked back to kneel next to her. He cradled her close to his own hurting body, lurched to his feet, and gathered his strength. Snarling at the thing he could now clearly see, he let his fury spill into his voice. “
T’es pas proche un avocet
,” he muttered. “You’re not as smart as you think you are.”

Pryor walked slowly and carefully, carrying her to his home. He slammed through the back door and looked down at Elita, his gut in knots because she hadn’t roused, not even through his stumbling, lurching walk.

Fear ripped through him and he cradled her closer. He still had enough supplies here for one powerful hex removal spell. He’d teased Elita about the naked spell work when she’d first arrived, but hadn’t planned to this particular one. It took more from him than the other methods.

Pryor laid her on the couch in the parlor and hurried as fast as he could with his knee ready to give out. As the water ran in the big claw foot tub, he limped into the kitchen to grab limes and a knife. They’d kept full, dried bay leaves in the spell room, not in the kitchen. He went through the cabinets, looking for the minced stuff for cooking, hoping that would work. Without full leaves, he’d have to use even more magic.

Whispers seemed to seep from the walls as he went back into the bathroom. Raspy, angry voices that rose in volume until he wanted to scream back. Instead, he tried to ignore them—ignore the agitation they poured into his body like molten, liquid poison.

His
mamere
began to cry as he dumped the limes into the tub. “Please stop,” he whispered, his heart aching as he sliced the limes in half and dumped the entire bottle of dried basil into the water. “You know I have to help her.”

Elita still lay where he left her on the antique couch, her skin even more alarmingly pale. He lifted her and pressed his lips to her forehead. “Come on,
cher
. You can fight this.”

Undressing her and bathing her without her consent went against everything in him, despite the fact they’d slept together. Their relationship was still so fucking new. And it would never be anything more if he didn’t help her now. He left her underwear and bra on even though naked would work better. He’d have to let even more magic out of his hands.

He carried her into the bathroom and gently placed her in the water, making sure her face was clear even though he needed the water to cover her neck and soak into her hair. Propping her wounded leg on the edge of the tub, he watched for any change in her expression. Not even a flicker of an eyelash showed to ease his panic.

With his heart in his throat, he cradled his arm beneath her neck. Her hair turned dark in the water. He picked up one of the lime halves and slowly rubbed the open lime over her throat and down over her collarbone and shoulder. She had such gorgeous, pale skin. Everything about her was lovely and he wanted nothing more than to spend a lot more time with her, time to get to know her, time to make love to her. But he couldn’t. Even if he managed to survive this, keeping her would be the ultimate selfish act.

He watched her face, hoping for some sign that she would come out of whatever spell she was under. He kept rubbing the lime over her skin as he let the magic flow. It tingled in his forearms and hands.

The air suddenly changed.

Fury that didn’t belong to Pryor pricked over the back of his neck and he knew he and Elita were no longer alone. Every hair on his body stood at attention. The absolute malice of the creature spilled into the room, carrying the rusty, acrid scent of evil.

The smudge man’s anger scraped over his scalp with jagged claws.

In the next instant, it was over her again, lowering and wrapping around her body, thicker and blacker around the marks on her leg.

“No!” he growled, letting more magic leak from his hands. They began to ache, then burn.

Her skin turned pink, whether from the temperature of the water, the magic, or whatever that thing was trying to do to her—he didn’t know. “Come on,” he whispered. “Please,
cher
, come on. You can fight this. You’re so strong, so wonderful. Come on.”

He dropped the lime and reached under her arms to lift her fully against the tub. After grabbing a towel, he shoved it carefully under her neck, making sure she was propped up before he stood and hurriedly rinsed the lime juice from his hands.

Dizziness swamped him again and he grabbed the edges of the sink and took a deep breath.

She should have awakened by now.

The voices of his ancestors suddenly stopped.

Pryor stared at his hands, at the blisters already starting to form. He blinked as they blurred, then came back into focus and when he looked back in the mirror, his heart nearly stopped. Indistinct, hazy beings stood around him. So many, they merged into the air around him like one entity—a larger, black entity.

He lurched back to Elita, dropped to his knees, and wrapped his hands around the claw marks on her leg. The magic poured out of his hands and it felt like it wasn’t only coming from his body, but through it. Like he was the conduit for everyone who had suffered around him. Generations of Bernaux misery spreading like wildfire. Their pain and their fury raced through his blood, making it boil. Crying out, he held on to her leg as the smudge man began to writhe and grow in shape and size. It shot into the air above her, then tried to come back in smoky, black tentacles.

A faint golden color surrounded Pryor’s hands as one of those tentacles reached him. He heard the hiss of pain as it snatched the protrusion back.

The scream of fury that ripped through the tiny bathroom rattled the mirror on the wall. Wincing, Pryor refused to let go of her leg as he watched the smudge man rise and grow, but it was helpless against their magic. Its scream this time was long and it speared into Pryor’s ears like ice picks. He bared his teeth at it right before it went through the wall. He stared. For the longest time. Sure it would come back, that it wouldn’t give up yet. Exhaustion tore through his muscles, making his arms and legs suddenly weak and shaky.

He twisted to look around him only to see the hazy shapes slowly floating back and away. They took their heavy emotions with them and he slumped over the side of the tub, his gaze back on Elita’s face.

Beautiful green eyes locked onto his. “Pryor?” She looked down at her body in the water and slowly moved her arm until her hand came above the surface clutching a lime. “Oh, Pryor, what did you do?” she whispered.

“It’ll be okay,” he assured her even as her face blurred. He blinked her back into focus, seeing her eyes grow shiny with tears.

“Did your brothers get here?” she asked, clutching the lime to her chest.

“They will.” He was assuring himself as much as he was her.

She sat up straight. “But you don’t know that for sure, right? You have no idea.” She ran her hands through the water, bits of bay leaves clinging to her skin. “How could you do this?”

Pryor finally let go of her leg, but frowned to see that the marks were still there. Now they looked like silvery scars. He turned his palms up, his eyes going wide at the blistered, red skin of his palms. “I found you on the ground, Elita, and you wouldn’t wake up. What happened last night?” He needed to know what she saw. Needed to know badly.

“I’m not sure.” She rubbed her temples. “I’m having trouble remembering anything.” She suddenly yelped and grabbed his wrists. “Look at your poor skin.” She stood up, water pouring down her body. “Let me take care of your hands and you can tell me why I’m mostly naked in a bathtub full of limes.” She wrinkled her nose and brushed at the bay leaves. “And…whatever this is.”

He leaned back as she stepped from the tub and he wasn’t too far out of it not to enjoy the sight of all that water running down her gorgeous body. She grabbed a towel and barely swiped it over her skin before she opened the cabinet and pulled down the plastic container of first aid supplies. She wasn’t concerned at all that he could see most of her body, that her underwear was so wet he could see through it. She only cared about his hands.

He smiled at her, knowing he wasn’t masking the pain because he couldn’t. But she was so damned sweet. Even with little clumps of green stuck to her skin.

“I don’t have magic, so I can’t do much more than put some cream on your hands.” Her words were muttered more than spoken. Tears streaked her cheeks as she knelt in front of him and looked into his eyes. “What you just did could really hurt you, right?”

Not able to lie to her, he pulled his gaze from hers.

“Damn it,” she said on a sob as she dug through the container. “You only have the basics here. Where’d we put that salve from the other day? It wasn’t in your spell room, was it?”

“I’ll be okay. Just leave it.” Exhaustion pulled at him, made him want to collapse onto the floor. “How about you help me get to my bed?”

Her head jerked up. “Oh my God, I crashed your boat. I remember!”

“I don’t care about the boat.”

“We have to call your brothers.”

She was so flustered and upset, her flip from one subject to another was coming too fast for him to keep up. He blinked and reached for the lip of the tub to pull himself to his feet, then winced when he touched it.

That was stupid
.

“Hey,” she said, cupping his cheeks. “Something kept your brothers from getting here, but they could still be here by tonight. What you go through, it happens at night, doesn’t it?” She shook her head. “Right before I crashed that boat last night, you sat up and looked at me.”

“You saw me?” he whispered, horrified.

“Was too dark to see much. Something was different. You said you have to give payback for using magic. It’s not just things like your hands, is it? It’s not just being here, in this part of the swamp either. You pay out there. In the water, somehow.” Her lips tightened. “How?”