Harlequin Nocturne March 2016 Box Set Page 24

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  HOT, SULTRY, DEADLY... THESE ARE THE SECRETS THAT LURK IN THE BAYOU.

  Bent on revenge, Native American Shadow Hunter Tombi Silver could turn to only one woman, the “witch” Annie Matthews, for help. Her ability to hear auras had allowed her to discover Tombi’s friend mystically trapped by forces that could destroy them all. The accompanying message of a traitor in their midst meant Tombi could trust no one. Dare he bring Annie along on his quest to fight shadow spirits? Putting his faith in someone outside his tribe, especially one who pulled at his tightly controlled desires, could prove just as dangerous as his mission...

  Wrong time, and possibly the wrong man.

  But as if her arms weren’t controlled by her brain, Annie reached around his back and drew him to her.

  His back muscles tightened beneath her touch and he drew in a ragged breath. Tombi stilled, as if warring with his sexual desire and his duty in the world outside the tent.

  Annie wanted him desperately, just for a few minutes, a little slice of time. She saw how much he gave to the others, how they looked up to him. Didn’t he deserve a few minutes of happiness for himself?

  Didn’t she?

  Who knew what dangers the night and the hunt might bring?

  Debbie Herbert writes paranormal romance novels reflecting her belief that love, like magic, casts its own spell of enchantment. She’s always been fascinated by magic, romance and gothic stories. Married and living in Alabama, she roots for the Crimson Tide football team. Her oldest son, like many of her characters, has autism. Her youngest son is in the US Army. A past Maggie Award finalist in both young-adult and paranormal romance, she’s a member of the Georgia Romance Writers of America.

  Books by Debbie Herbert

  HARLEQUIN NOCTURNE

  Dark Seas

  Siren’s Secret

  Siren’s Treasure

  Siren’s Call

  Bayou Shadow Hunter

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  BAYOU SHADOW HUNTER

  Debbie Herbert

  Dear Reader,

  This book marks a departure from my previous mermaid books, but still has the same Southern setting of Bayou LaSiryna, where you can expect the supernatural—and romance—to flourish as always!

  This book is based on real Choctaw legends of evil spirits that roamed the bayous of South Alabama. I, of course, have added my own twists to the stories. The swamplands of the South have an eerie quality which makes it easy to fantasize that ancient spirits and creatures live deep in their woods, isolated from human eyes.

  Besides the Native American aspect, I enjoyed writing a heroine with hoodoo power—a magic she never realized she possessed until she met the hero. The love story of Annie and Tombi was such fun to write, and I hope you enjoy it as well!

  All best,

  Debbie

  This book is dedicated to my mother, April Deanne Goodson Gainey, who passed away while I wrote this book. I thank her for her belief in me as a woman and as a writer. Miss you, Mom.

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  CHAPTER 1

  “Thunder Moon comin’ tonight. Yer life is fixin’ to change.”

  Grandma Tia called the August full moon “Thunder Moon” and proclaimed it a time of enchantment. Annie had to admit tonight did appear magical and mysterious. The forest beckoned with its thick canopy of trees draped in long tendrils of Spanish moss that fluttered in the sea breeze with a silver shimmer like a living veil of secrecy.

  And so they had burned tiny scraps of paper where they’d written what they wanted purged from their lives. As she’d done every month for most of her life, Annie had written only one thing. The same thing. She held the paper to candle flame, watching it catch fire and curl in on itself before the wind carried it away. It splintered into tiny embers that flickered like fireflies before turning to ash.

  Annie sat on the bed, hugging her knees to her chest and staring out the window, pondering her grandma’s words. She could use some change. Lots of it. If only she could get rid of... No. No point agonizing over that, when she was so close to sleep.

  A green glow skittered erratically in the swampy darkness.

  Very pretty. Annie turned away from the bedroom window, yawned and slipped into bed, pulling a thin cotton sheet over her head like a cocoon.

  Wait a minute... She jerked to a sitting position and peered out the window across the room. Each glass pane framed squares of refracted moonbeams piercing through tumbles of tree limbs. A patchwork quilt of the macabre.

  But on second glance, no green, glowing orbs of light dotted the night’s landscape. Must have been a trick of the eye or the flash of a dream. Perhaps it was merely that Grandma had planted the suggestion of something magical happening tonight when they had gone outside after dinner and held a brief lunar ritual. Full moons represented death and change, a time for powerful magic.

  A ball of light again materialized at the tree line, not more than twenty feet from their cottage. It burned blue at the center and green at the edges. Annie instinctively touched the silver cross nestled in the hollow of her throat, palm flattening above the rapid thumping of her heart.

  A teal stream of light broke away from the orb, forming a tail like a comet hurtling across the night sky. The pixilated specks of color were magical as fairy dust, coalescing into the shape of an arm, beckoning her closer.

  Dare she?

  Annie scrambled off the bed, feet touching the rough-hewn pine floorboard, still sun-warmed from the day’s ferocious heat. She raced to the back door and slid into flip-flops she kept at the entry. Hand on the door, she paused and glanced to her left. Grandma’s bedroom door was open, and her deep, labored breathing wafted across the cottage. Annie softly tiptoed to the room and peeked inside.

  Grandma Tia’s hair was wrapped in a satin cloth that nestled against a white pillowcase. Her lined face was relaxed in a way only produced by sweet dreams. The weight and worry of time and life’s sorrows laid aside in a few hours of respite.

  She wouldn’t rouse her from slumber. Grandma Tia’s heart condition meant she needed rest. Annie’s eyes rested on the red flannel gris-gris bag hung on the bedpost. Which reminded her to grab her own mojo bag. She hurried back to her bedroom, retrieved it from beneath the pillow and tied it to the drawstring of her pajama bottoms. Just in case. A quick glance out the window confirmed the green light still hovered a few feet above ground.

  Despite the late hour, humidity cocooned her body in a damp embrace the moment she stepped outside. To top it off, the light had disappeared again. She sat on the concrete porch steps and lifted her hair off the back of her sticky nape, waiting and watching.

  Probably nothing but swamp gas. The night buzzed with a battalion of insects, and she cocked her head to one side, listening, actively expanding her energy outward to pick up even the subtlest of sound—the wind s
wirling clumps of sand, the hoot of an owl far away—all against the eternal ebb and flow of the distant ocean tide.

  What was she doing out here? Normally, she wouldn’t think of investigating something alone, but, like a cat, curiosity overrode her fear.

  Something prickled her skin. The air danced with a faint tinkling—like the fading echo of tiny bells rung from deep within the forest. Annie closed her eyes, gathering the vibration of musical notes, assimilating a pattern: one, two, two, three, two, two, five, two, two.

  Melodic patterns had called to her since kindergarten when a teacher handed out metal triangles and wands. She’d pinged the base, and the ringing vibration had shivered down her spine. A living pulse that had been a first clue of her gift, her curse, her fate. Other kids had banged away on the triangles until the pureness of the music changed to an unbearable din, and she’d run out of the classroom.

  She’d been running ever since.

  But tonight’s high-pitched bell notes made her feet itch to dance and throw her arms open to embrace the night. It had a certain symmetry and lyrical quality that charmed. It drew her, tugged at her soul...

  Annie opened her eyes. More than a dozen orbs of light danced in the distant darkness. They were a rainbow of colors and sizes and varied in brightness.

  That was where the music came from.

  They called her, beckoned her to draw near. She rose unsteadily to her feet, light-headed with awe, and slowly stepped away from the cottage. The lights bobbed and darted behind and between the oaks. All at once, the orbs disappeared, as if someone had turned off a switch. Annie ran toward the woods. For once she ran to the music instead of away from its source.

  Wait for me. Don’t leave me behind.

  As if hearing the unspoken words, a bluish-green orb flashed. A spectacular, southern aurora borealis. It was the first, lone light she’d seen from the bedroom window, as distinctive and individual as a human form. She ran across the yard, plunged into the woods, down a narrow trail littered with pinecones and broken twigs. Black night, thick with heat, pressed around her body, yet she stumbled forward, ever deeper. More lights bobbled ahead, just beyond reach. Mosquitoes buzzed her ears and nipped her arms and chest. The sulfur smell of swampland grew more pungent and sharp.

  Annie didn’t care. The blue light glowed like a lantern against the darkness, and the crystalline notes played from its burning core. Low-lying branches scraped her arms and face, and her legs grew wooden with exhaustion as on she walked, following ever deeper.

  A clearing opened onto a muddy bank, and Annie pulled up short at the sight of a brackish pond. Mud gooshed over her sandals and between her toes. The slimy sensation worked like a face slap. Blackness shadowed the night as a cloud passed over the moon, and the glowing orbs vanished once more. The music stopped, and silence gathered, dense and foreboding.

  “Umm...hello? Anybody out there?” She didn’t know whether she felt more foolish or frightened. She lifted one foot out of the goo and almost lost a sandal. “Terrific. This is just great.”

  Screeching erupted—as if a parliament of enraged owls or a volt of vultures were descending on her for interloping on their territory. Annie clamped hands over ears and squeezed her fingertips over the ear canals, but the noise and pressure felt like a bomber plane taking off inside her brain. Turning blindly, she ran, desperate to escape the sound attack.

  What the hell is this? Where is it coming from? It was like a combination of an animal screech, a howl of pain, shattering glass and a jarring, jumbled chorus of dissonant chords, as if someone were banging an untuned piano.

  Silence crashed the darkness. Annie leaned her back against an oak tree and hunched down, panting. Relieved the noise had stopped but expecting it to return any moment, her body was coiled and tense. She grimaced at the stitch in her side and tried to regulate her breathing to a slower pace. Calm down. Think.

  She tilted her head upward, rough bark grazing her scalp. The moon glowed, laced with a web of black thread from the treetops. The sky held a thin promise of dawn, evidenced only by a violet-hued line in the east that graduated to black by degrees.

  Great. So she knew where east lay. But that was the extent of her internal compass. And it didn’t help her figure out how to get back to the cottage. Best to stay right where she was and wait for daylight. If she was lucky, someone, maybe a hunter, would be along, or she would recognize some landmark once the sun emerged.

  How could she have been so stupid as to trot off at night into the bayou after a will-o’-the-wisp or whatever that light was? She shuddered. Focus. Right now there were rattlers and water moccasins and gators to worry about. And who knew what other cursed creatures roamed the land.

  She swatted at a mosquito nipping her arm. Hmm. Could snakes climb trees? A glance upward revealed that seeking higher ground was a non-option. The nearest limb was several feet above her standing height. When she recouped her strength, perhaps she should search for a stone or stick just in case...

  “Help me!”

  The deep baritone voice rumbled along her spine.

  Annie scrambled to her feet and searched the shadows. “Who’s there?”

  Silence. Okay, she was going to be that person in the headline news who was lost in the woods and found days later, a nutcase raving about swamp monsters and Big Foot and saying she’d been carted away by aliens on their UFO.

  Nothing’s out there.

  “Please.”

  The anguish in that word was too tortured not to be real. Annie shivered despite the heat and sweat coating her body. Ignoring someone else’s pain went against all her healing instincts. “Where are you? Who are you?”

  An orb manifested not ten feet from where she stood. No warning, no gathering of light, no sound. One second before loomed a dark void, and in a clock’s single tick, the orb absorbed the space.

  The blue-green light swirled and pulsed like a breathing, living thing. The same orb she’d seen first from her bedroom window.

  So the question was no longer where or who but “What are you?” she whispered.

  “The shadows trapped me.”

  The voice rumbled in her gut, vibrating in her being. “You’re...trapped in the light?” she asked haltingly.

  “My heart beats within. Look.”

  At the core of the blue light shone a concentrated mass of teal that swelled and contracted. In, out, in, out, pulsing with the cosmic rhythm of life.

  A heart.

  Not the flowers-and-lace, cupid sort drawn by five-year-olds, but the it’s-alive-and-it’s-real-and-it-beats kind. Annie’s breath hitched, and she took an unsteady step backward. She couldn’t stop staring at the fist-sized gelatinous mass of muscle that pumped and wobbled.

  “I need out,” the low-timbered voice pleaded. “Help me get out.”

  She shook her head violently, her own heart pounding a song of fear. “I don’t know how.” And even if she did, no way was she freeing...whatever it was. Not until she knew its true nature.

  “My name is Bo,” it said. “Find Tombi and tell him I live. He’s in grave danger. Trust no one within the circle. I was betrayed. And if he was ever my true friend, he needs to find that betrayer. I can’t be released until then.”

  “I don’t know this Tombi person,” she protested.

  “He’s coming now. Tell him to beware.”

  Annie swung her head in all directions but saw and sensed nothing in the shadows. “Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

  “He can’t hear me, witch. No one ever has but you.”

  “Oh,” she breathed. “That’s why you brought me here.” It...Bo...either knew her grandma or of her reputation. “I think you want my grandmother, not me. I’m only here on a visit and—”

  “Warn him.”

  The light shifted, swirling in individuated spar
kles and growing smaller, denser.

  “Wait,” she called out sharply. “Where are you going?”

  But it had vanished.

  A man slipped into her presence, silent as a windless sky. He leaned against a cypress, arms folded, face and body as unyielding and hard as the ancient tree. Eyes and hair were black as the night, and the only lightness on his figure was a golden sheen on his face and arms.

  Friend or foe?

  Silence blanketed her mind. A condition she normally welcomed, but not now. Where was her accursed ability when she needed it? Not the slightest syllable of sound surrounded the man.

  “Who are you?” she asked, hoping her voice didn’t portray fear.

  He stepped closer, and she willed her feet to remain rooted to the ground, to cloak the fear.

  “Who are you?” His voice was deep, sharp-edged with suspicion.

  She’d been wrong. The golden sheen of his skin wasn’t the only thing that stood out in the darkness. The man’s eyes radiated a copper glint like an encapsulated sun with rays. His teeth were white and sharp.

  He didn’t wait for an answer. “Who were you talking to? There’s no one else out here but us.”

  “I was talking to myself,” she lied. No sense exposing herself to ridicule.

  “Roaming the woods alone at night and talking to yourself?” He scowled. “You must be crazy.”

  Despite the scowl and rough tone, the icy touch of fear at the base of her spine thawed a bit. This stranger could think what he wanted about her mental health and lecture her ad nauseam about the idiotic decision to follow the wisp. At least he wasn’t attacking her. If he meant harm, he could have lunged forward and grabbed her by now.

  “Yes.” Annie agreed. “I’m totally off my rocker.” Wouldn’t be the first time someone thought that. “How about being a good Boy Scout and help me find my way home?”

  “First, tell me your name and why you’re out here.”