It shouldn’t be this bad!
All he’d done was a head wash, nothing too fancy, and certainly nothing that took a heavy concentration of magic. Must be the curse itself. He’d worked hex removals on Rousalard curses before, but he’d had his brothers to help spread the backlash.
He wouldn’t be able to help her again on his own.
And he had to get to the water. Fast.
Gritting his teeth, Pryor crawled down the hall as the voices of his ancestors rose in volume. There were so many, he couldn’t decipher sentences, only random words.
Curse.
Buffer.
Bernaux woman.
The loudest sounds were a woman’s sobs. Huge, racking gasps of pain, ones he remembered well. “Oh, Mamere,” he whispered, “I’d hoped your sadness ended with your death.”
With memories of his grandmother sobbing by the side of the swamp, Pryor made it through one of the other exterior doors, one Elita couldn’t see from her guest room. He forced himself to walk, because crawling in the dark was out of the question. Snakes and gators would bite him before he was actually in the water. Once in, they wouldn’t. Whatever took over his body kept critters away.
Water seeped into his boots, soaked the bottoms of his jeans. A bullfrog croaked once, then, as it did whenever a brother entered the water at night, the Bernaux part of the swamp went deathly silent. It was the reason fishermen stayed away and the basis for the rumors, including the one Elita had shared in his bathroom earlier.
That particular rumor was true.
He would stand here all night. And without his brothers as a buffer, the pain was gonna rip him to shreds.
A queen-sized bed dominated the small guest room, leaving space for only a side table and an ancient chest of drawers. The musty, rarely used smell to the air made her wrinkle her nose and climb over the white, crocheted comforter to push aside the lace curtains and open one of the windows. It creaked and she had to tug hard on it to get it to slide up, but it only came up halfway.
A scream ripped through the swamp and into the room.
Elita jumped back and fell on the bed, slamming her head on the headboard. Stars blinked before her eyes, and she squeezed them shut before another scream made her open them wide.
Heart racing, she scanned the room and spotted a big flashlight by the door. She was down the stairs and on the ground before she realized how crazy it would be to search out the noise. But that last scream had been so awful.
She stood still, waited for another yell to point her in the right direction and silence suddenly moved like a wave over the bayou. The usual symphony of night creatures stopped at the water and rolled out as if some great being slowly smothered all noise with a heavy blanket. And when all sound stopped, Elita thought her heart might beat through her ribcage. She cautiously stepped onto the gravel path, shining her flashlight on the ground, looking for roots and snakes. She swung the light left and right, her skin prickling. Her smudge man was somewhere near. She could feel him, hovering, like a hungry incubus.
Ma’man Raisonne would be clucking all kinds of disapproval over Elita walking toward the water in the dark. But she felt compelled, pulled by some powerful force because something in her gut told her those cries were coming from Pryor.
Just then, another yell ripped into the quiet, this time strangled and hoarse as if he fought to suffer in silence. Heart now in her throat, Elita picked up the pace. She passed outbuildings, and instead of running onto the pier, she veered left and slipped into the trees, keeping her flashlight pointed to the ground.
The air smelled strange, the over-cooked, earthy odor even more wickedly strong tonight. The humidity was so thick, Elita felt moisture weighting down her eyelashes, sticking to her skin, creeping under her clothes. And the mosquitoes should have been eating her alive, but they too were strangely absent.
A sudden, loud crack of thunder made her stop and peer through the heavy canopy of leaves to stare at the sky. The sky that, according to weather reports, was supposed to be clear tonight. Black clouds gathered and within seconds, rain hit the earth in heavy sheets. Elita was instantly soaked, despite the heavy tree coverage. She needed to turn back, but quickly realized she was completely turned around. She could be right next to the water.
“Great, Elita,” she yelled into the rain. “You just might deserve to end life as a tasty appetizer on some gator’s menu.”
Thunder rumbled over the earth again, so loud she dropped the flashlight. When she bent to grab it, she realized the ground was quickly turning into mushy puddles. She had no choice—she had to find her way back. But something heavy slammed into the back of her head. She screamed, stumbled, then turned and even as her vision blurred, she realized it had been a falling tree limb. She stood still, blinked water from her eyes and the air seemed to ripple around her. She took a step, her tennis shoe sinking into mud so far, it rose over her shoe.
Then it felt like fingers wrapped around her ankle.
Crying out, she whipped down to grab the flashlight and swing it around but could see nothing but mud that blurred as dizziness hit her. She yanked her foot back, losing her shoe in the process and fell on her ass. The flashlight went flying.
Holding her breath, she tried to see through the rain and the dark, tried to see who’d grabbed her. Rain blurred everything. With terror clawing at her insides, Elita crawled backward, hands sinking into muck, clothes soaking to her body. She crawled until she felt a tree against her spine. Disoriented and scared of passing out and drowning in a puddle, she turned and felt along the tree, breathing a sigh of relief to find it had forked into large trunks. One reached out over the ground horizontally.
The world was spinning so fast and pain had turned into a constant knock against the back of her skull, so she used the last of her energy to climb into the fork of the tree. She inched up one limb until her feet were far from the ground and anything that might decide to take a nibble. Doing her best to wedge her body between two limbs, she fervently hoped it had just been a tree root in the mud—that it hadn’t really been fingers—because she had no choice. She had to let the dark take over.
Air filled Pryor’s lungs with a painful whoosh, like someone had shoved a giant bellows in his mouth and squeezed hard and fast. He wheezed, coughed and turned onto his side, noticing as he did that water soaked into his clothes still.
The first thing he saw when he pried open his eyelids were the glowing eyes of Moochon, waiting and guarding as he always did. Only it was still dark.
Pryor never came back from the pain while it was still dark.
“Good boy,” he murmured, reaching out a shaking hand to pet his dog even as every muscle in his body screamed in protest. “How’d you get so grimy and wet?”
Moochon stood and barked. Pryor was so surprised, he sat up, groaning at the ache as life returned to his limbs. Cramps straightened his legs violently, causing his knees to crack. He blinked his dog back into focus. Moochon hardly ever barked. But now that Pryor was getting a good look at things, he could see why the dog was ready to go home. Looked like a hell of a storm had come through while he was…out.
“Don’t think I can walk yet, boy.” Pryor cradled his aching head.
Moochon barked and trotted a few steps away. The wrong direction.
“You did have a rough night, didn’t you?” Gritting his teeth, Pryor rolled over onto his hands and knees, paused to catch his breath, then slowly got to his feet. “I probably won’t make it all the way back, just so you know.” He turned the right direction and took a few steps then slumped against a thick bald cypress tree, his feet still in the water.
His brothers must not have made it back because they would have joined him, would have helped buffer the pain during the night.
Moochon walked to the edge of the water, barked and head-butted him back. Pryor narrowed his eyes. The dog wasn’t stupid—something was wrong. Really wrong.
Elita immediately came to mind.
Fear speare
d his gut. Was she hurt? Out here somewhere?
Merde! Had she seen him?
“Moochon, show me.”
He followed his dog. It was slow going because he didn’t have full use of his muscles yet. Soft sunlight began to fill the woods as Moochon led him right to her, tucked into the split of a tree, draped over a thick, low-lying branch. Blood had dripped down her face, parts of it dried and flaking already. One of her feet was bare.
“Elita!” He stumbled to her and tried to lift her, but his arms were still too weak. Sliding to the ground with his back to the tree, he tugged until she fell toward him, and he caught her in his lap. Cradling her against his raised knees, he saw that she was breathing, but her body was cold despite the muggy heat of the morning. He could only hope his body warmed up fast enough to help hers.
Chapter Four
Someone was trying to carve out the inside of her head like a pumpkin. Using a dull butter knife. Elita moaned and the sound hurt her throat like she’d swallowed gravel in addition to a ton of rain.
“You must have had some night.”
Her eyes flew open at the sound of the masculine voice so close to her head. She blinked at Pryor. Clumps of mud clung to his head, darkening the blond strands. Streaks of it smeared his cheeks. “Funny,” she slurred, blinking her eyes as she tried to make sense of this awakening—and she’d never been good at any of them. Coherency and mornings—not her mix. “I don’t remember you being a part of that night.”
He brushed her hair off her forehead. “I missed the good stuff. Found you slumped over a branch above our heads. Don’t you know trees are the worst places you can pick in a storm? Probably shared that hollow with a couple of critters.” He offered her a smile that wobbled at the edges with exhaustion.
She should have been moving out of his lap because she barely knew him. Plus, he looked like he’d fought a war with a swamp creature during the night. There was a bruise on his jaw, a scratch showing above the color of his shirt. But his arms felt safe around her, his legs sturdy against her back. She’d take another minute or so of comfort.
“Elita?”
“Sorry, I’m slow to wake up normally—okay, always—and this is just so far out of my norm, I’m a little off.” Pieces of the night before plopped into her memory like ice in sweet tea and it was as if her brain got a double dose of caffeine. She scooted off his lap, not missing the brief tightening of his arms as if he didn’t want to let her go. She stood, knees shaking, groaning at the stabbing pain in her skull, the aches and pains everywhere else. “We need to look around. Someone cried out in pain last night.”
He slowly stood and brushed some drying dirt off his torn jeans. Light brown hair showed through the rip. Along with the sleek curve of hard thigh muscle. She ran her gaze up his body, over the T-shirt that had become some indiscriminate color because it looked like he’d soaked himself in the dirtiest corner of Bernaux swamp.
That rumor she’d talked about yesterday came to mind. The one about him standing in the water all night. “Did you hear someone crying last night?”
He grinned, but it didn’t have the usual punch and fire. Exhaustion painted his skin gray. “Pretty sure you heard me.” He pointed to his clothes. “I tripped and fell in last night.”
“And stayed there?”
“Hit my head. I don’t remember much after that.”
“Seems we both got rattled, then.” She frowned. “What were you doing outside?”
Moochon barked and Elita nearly crawled out of her skin. “How long has he been here?”
“Whole time. He’s quiet.”
Moochon trotted over to Pryor and sat next to him. The dog’s multi-colored eyes looked up at her, his friendly nature making the whole situation less awful somehow. Pryor rubbed behind Moochon’s torn ear. “This boy likes to chase things in the early morning hours so I was trying to find him last night and bring him in so he wouldn’t wake you.”
She didn’t believe him. She didn’t know why it didn’t bother her more that he lied either. Maybe it was because she really didn’t know the man. Had met him less than twenty-four hours before—though right now it felt like so much longer.
“Why’d you crawl into a tree?” he asked.
She looked up at the massive split trunk that had felt like a safe haven last night and shuddered. Pryor was right. It was just the kind of tree to be home to creatures trying to get out of the storm. She’d gotten lucky. “I heard you cry out, was out here looking and it started to rain. I couldn’t see. A tree limb hit me, then—”
She snapped her mouth shut. The mud hand thing seemed really ridiculous now.
“Then,” he prompted.
“Then nothing. Everything is kind of fuzzy after that. I was too dizzy to try and find my way back. The rain made me disoriented.” She looked around. “I don’t even know which way it is now with the sun out.”
“Suivez-moi.” He bent, then pulled her missing shoe out of the mud so he could hand it to her.
She took it, grimacing at its condition. It had been white yesterday. “I’ll follow you as long as you lead me to a hot shower.”
His eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and she knew he was picturing them in that shower together. It was all she could do not to grab him. She swallowed the sudden knot of tension in her throat, stared at him.
He looked for so long back, she actually started to worry. “You okay, Pryor?”
He nodded, reached for her hand and threaded their fingers together. “Why do I have the feeling you’re something special, Elita Raisonne?”
She wasn’t. Not really. In fact, trying to have a relationship with her had been too much for the couple of men she’d tried to be with in the past. Hell, the last one had been physically hurt around her on a weekly basis during his three-month try. But she couldn’t have shared any of this if her life depended on it. His hand, warm and strong, made her feel like they were connected. Like a live wire of mutual desire started where they joined. What would it be like to be joined with him in other places? And would he be able to be with her? Could his magic somehow protect him?
She was too exhausted for this train of thought.
He tugged on her hand. “Come. The bathroom off the guest room is stocked with everything you need. If you’ll put your dirty clothes onto the steps outside your door, I’ll wash them for you.”
Their walk back to the house was more like a meandering search for dry ground. Pryor kept leading her around puddles until she laughed and splashed through one. “I’m already filthy.”
Summer heat swelled as the sun rose, and the humidity from the swamp amplified by the storm, smothered her skin like paint. Grimacing, Elita did pick her way around the next puddle but only because it looked suspiciously like a pond. She let go of Pryor’s hand, thinking about the regular callused skin on his palms—the missing blisters. Too tired to try and figure that out, she wiped the sweat from her eyebrows.
“Would you feel comfortable taking Wyatt’s room? There’s air conditioning in the main house.”
“I can sleep in the room you already offered.”
“It’s really humid and there’s no air conditioning in there.” He suddenly grinned, his teeth bright against his tanned skin. “My father didn’t like to encourage guests to stay long.”
“I don’t mind. I like the room.” Elita was surprised guests had ever stayed the night here. “The rumors weren’t around during the last generation?”
He shook his head. “Yes, but as you know, it’s quite a trip out here. Guests usually had to stay the night. Dad made sure they didn’t stay long.”
“Well, it’s nice now. Maybe he shouldn’t have made it so comfortable then.”
Chuckling, Pryor took her elbow and continued walking. “My brothers and I changed it, though nobody’s used it. It once had cots and a wash basin.”
Exhaustion hit her at the foot of the stairs. Elita leaned on the railing. “Would you mind if I put off breakfast and slept a little first? Sleepin
g in the tree after getting knocked in the head didn’t do much for me.”
“Let me see.” He didn’t wait for permission, just turned her and ran those strong fingers gently through her hair. Or over it since the locks were a mess of tangles. “You have a nasty lump back here. Shouldn’t have been sleeping in that tree at all. You got lucky.”
Elita smirked. “Lucky is not an adjective you can use with me. Ever.” Her shoulders slumped. “I’ll be fine sleeping now.”
He turned her back to him, eyes narrowed. “I’ll wake you in a few hours, just to make sure.”
She opened her mouth to argue then saw the genuine worry darkening his eyes. Nodding, she offered him a faint smile. “Okay,” she whispered.
On impulse, she stood on her toes, placed her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. It was a brief kiss, only long enough to feel the slant of his lips, but long enough to return that warm desire to her belly.
He stared hard at her as she pulled back. She didn’t miss his hands curling into fists at his sides. “Sleep well, Elita Raisonne,” he murmured as he backed away.
Elita watched him walk to the house, so tempted to call him back and offer half the shower, she had to bite her lip. She had a feeling the two of them naked and wrapped around each other would explode into something that required a lot less exhaustion. And with her suspicion now aroused from his dirty clothes and story, getting intimate with him would also take a lot more trust.
The loud slam of the screen door made Pryor wince and stop inside the kitchen to rub his temples. Everything about last night’s time in the swamp had been off. More intense than usual. More painful. He did head washes all the time, so his reaction shouldn’t have been that bad.
But then, he’d sent healing magic in for her wound as well. That usually didn’t cause a backlash though.
It wasn’t something the brothers advertised and in fact, had been warned against sharing often by their father and uncles. If people knew they could heal things like wounds, they’d lose all semblance of privacy. So they’d been taught as young boys to just hurry the healing along for small things, to never outright heal it and to never try and cure illnesses. Their power didn’t go quite that far and even an attempt could be deadly.
The Brothers Bernaux [01] Raisonne Curse Page 5