Bayou Wolf

by Debbie Herbert

  “He died out here, didn’t he?”

  She nodded. “Bit by Nalusa Falaya.”

  She’d explained the basics of the shadow world as they’d headed out for the hunt. The will-o’-the-wisps that trapped men’s souls and the Ishkitini—birds of the night that served an evil spirit by the name of Hoklonote. But the ultimate evil spirit, Nalusa Falaya, ruled over everything and had the ability to shape-shift to a snake. Thankfully, the great evil one was under containment, courtesy of the shadow hunters who battled against his quest for power and dominion over all the bayou and beyond.

  They didn’t speak. Payton placed a hand on her thigh and squeezed. Tallulah kept her profile faced away from him, but one of her small hands clasped his and squeezed back.

  “So what happened to the dream catchers that hung from the trees here?” he finally asked.

  “Gone. I burned everything that could be destroyed and what I couldn’t burn, I tossed in the swamp.”

  “But...why?”

  “Because my work kept showing up beside the carcasses of dead animals.”

  Understanding flashed. Her mementos were planted just like they were with Jeb’s body, and just as they were with the squirrel he’d found. But no need to tell her that and fuel her resolve to arrest Russell.

  Why did Russell frame her? Had he viewed Tallulah as a threat? Perhaps in wolf form Russell instinctively recognized that she was an unusual human. If that were the case, he’d have done what he could to deflect attention to his crimes.

  “That,” she continued, “is why I took everything down in the woods.”

  So she knew...and had pieced everything together. A tinge of disappointment blackened his mood. He’d hoped she’d gotten rid of the artifacts as a symbolic act—to demonstrate that she was finished grieving for Bo.

  “It was time anyway,” she said quietly, as if reading his mind. “Bo would approve and want me to move on.”

  “Good.” His anger and disappointment melted at her softening. Instead, his fury was directed at Russell.

  Bastard.

  Payton hoped Matt was right, that Russell was long gone from Bayou La Siryna. He could excuse Russell’s bloodlust; it was an unfortunate side effect of the lycanthropic fever. But this clever, calculating attempt to frame Tallulah was unforgiveable.

  A whisper of movement—Tallulah withdrew her hand, silently opening her backpack and withdrawing several rocks and a slingshot. Had she heard a noise? Wordlessly, she slipped him a slingshot and he grabbed a handful of the rocks, smooth and heavy and cool in his palms.

  Payton looked around but saw and heard nothing. His hands fisted in his lap. So frustrating to be outside in the wild darkness and unable to shift. His inner wolf howled for release, longing to roam and explore. An owl hooted from far off and Tallulah tensed.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Ishkitini.”

  He rose, remembering her earlier warnings. “And where the Ishkitini fly—”

  “The wisps will surely follow.”

  She rose as well, loading the slingshot with a rock.

  Swish.

  The beating of a hundred wings roared in his ears, loud as hurricane. Yellow and red eyes glowed in the dark as the nocturnal beasts descended from above. So Tallulah had spoken the truth. Bayou La Siryna was a haven for dangerous beings of the night.

  Small wonder his alpha had been drawn to pick this location for their next worksite. As wolves, they were true creatures of the night as well and the remote swamp had seemed like the perfect hideaway.

  Like attracted like.

  “We’re outnumbered.” No use keeping his voice down, they’d been spotted.

  “They’ll sweep through en masse and then leave as quickly as they arrived,” Tallulah said, never moving her eyes from the approaching Ishkitini. “And don’t forget the others are with us. We aren’t alone.”

  He fitted a rock in the slingshot pouch and drew back the band, ready to strike.

  “Not yet,” she cautioned, readying her weapon. “Let them fly a bit nearer.”

  “Nearer?” he sputtered. His wolf clamored for release. Already, Payton fought to contain its snarl and its desire to bare teeth.

  At last she faced him, brows drawn together.

  “Okay, okay,” he growled. Damn. That guttural rumbling had slipped past his control. He needed to pounce, to attack. But this wasn’t Tallulah’s first battle; he’d have to trust she knew the best strategy for success.

  She raised her arm, drawing back the band. He followed suit, straining not to release the rock. His skin prickled all over, every pore quivering to release the wolf fur chafing underneath flesh. The Ishkitini was so close that Payton feared its large talons were in striking distance. It looked like a cross between an owl and an eagle. Its wingspan was huge, terrifying. But the eyes and beak were unmistakably owl. Or, rather, some kind of owl mutation. Payton’s eyes watered from the pungent scent, unlike anything his wolf nose had encountered. A scent he imagined that stunk as bad as buzzard excrement would smell. His biceps shook under the strain of waiting.

  “Now!” she commanded.

  He let loose the taut band, aiming at the nearest Ishkitini’s heart. It thudded against the bird, which released an unholy screech before dropping to the ground at his feet. Payton loaded another rock, then another, vaguely aware of the whirring of rock missiles from all directions. The experienced hunters let loose a stream of volleys twice as fast as what he could manage.

  The Ishkitini screeches were deafening, setting up a frenzy that set his teeth on edge.

  And then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. About two thirds of the birds flew off at some invisible signal, leaving behind their fallen soldiers in combat. En masse, they flew skyward, disappearing who knew where to strike again who knew when.

  Silence reigned once more, although Payton could swear the echo of their cries vibrated in invisible sound waves. His ears twitched involuntarily, itching to elongate to a point.

  “Payton? Are you all right?”

  Tallulah thrust her face inches from his own, and sucked in a sharp breath. “Your eyes. They’ve turned...yellow.”

  She took a step back. “Who are you? What are you?”

  Muscle and bone crunched, twisting and contorting to wolf. Ripped clothing fell in shreds by his feet. He was past all control. Worse, he couldn’t run away. He’d waited too late for that, had been too intent on helping fend off the Ishkitini. His body was paralyzed, at the mercy of his wolf, who would no longer be denied. All he could do was watch and wait for the opportunity to escape.

  And all the while, his eyes stayed locked with Tallulah’s. Helpless to speak, to explain what was happening.

  The accusation blazing on her face gutted Payton. She had opened up to him, let him enter her world, and this is how he repaid her trust. For all Tallulah knew, he was the enemy. Some new manifestation of evil birthed by Nalusa Falaya. She might even think he was the wolf who had attacked and tried to kill her.

  Four paws anchored him to the ground. The transformation was complete.

  A blue-and-green vapor lit the air behind Tallulah, framing her body like a demonic aura. His wolf ears laid flat at its toxic miasma.

  “Wisps!”

  Tallulah whipped around and loaded her slingshot in a fluid movement born of years of experience and training. She cast a troubled eye at him, then maneuvered her body sideways against both threats.

  She believed he meant her harm.

  Payton charged, swiftly moving past Tallulah and running to the light. Pain burst on his left hindquarters as she nailed him with a rock.

  The light coalesced into orbs—at least a dozen of them. Blue on the edges with green hearts beating inside the wisp’s core. These must be the trapped souls Tallulah had
described earlier. She’d said the only way to free the soul was to penetrate the wisp’s body. The shadow hunters did this by a stone’s throw, unable to draw to close to the wisp because of its ability to drown them in waves of misery that resulted in despair. From this place of wretchedness, a hunter would give up the fight and become trapped. A lamb to the slaughter.

  He was no lamb.

  Another rock peppered his ass from behind and he bit back an undignified yelp of pain. The eerie light became blindingly strong. A colorful wet mist from the wisp clamped onto his blond fur, coating it and weighing down his movement. He wouldn’t be deterred. Payton bared his teeth, snarling...salivating. He crouched on all fours and then attacked, leaping through the blue-and-green wisp as if it were no more substantial than a ghost. It deflated like a punctured balloon.

  He must kill them all at once. He leaped into the nearest wisp form, a rock grazing the side of his snout. A narrow miss, but he didn’t care. His frenzy to protect Tallulah drove him to keep going.

  Peripheral movement caught his attention. Tallulah had shifted her focus and was aiming for other wisps other than the ones he’d killed. At last, the blue and green lights faded. In their place, tiny white lights spiraled to the heavens. Tallulah claimed it meant that the trapped souls were now free to ascend to the After Life.

  He slowly turned and faced her.

  * * *

  The wolf—Payton—was all blond fur that glittered with blue and green sparkles, a leftover reminder from the wisps he’d killed, and that temporarily clung to his body.

  Tallulah stared into his yellow eyes. A tinge of pewter-gray radiated in a sunburst pattern from the iris, a reminder that Payton was one with the animal. Incredible. Shock doused her, sending alternate waves of hot and cold through her body. She’d known he was hiding a secret—but this?

  Animal guides and spirit communication were areas she understood and had experience with. But shape-shifting from a human body to a wolf? No, she hadn’t seen that one coming.

  “Tallulah!” Tombi’s voice rang out in the woods. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

  Payton...the wolf—she hardly knew which to call it—gave her an indecipherable stare. A plea for understanding and silence, if she had to guess its meaning. Suddenly, he took off, running in the opposite direction of Tombi’s voice. His light-colored, glittering fur disappeared into the underbrush. Even with her excellent eyesight, he managed to hide. Some animal instinct drove him undercover. Familiar with animal behavior, Tallulah guessed he would wallow in the dirt in an attempt to cover his conspicuous form.

  She didn’t speak, unwilling to draw the others nearby until Payton had a chance to get away.

  Other hunters’ voices called out in the night as they closed in where she stood. Run, Payton. Hurry. The need to cover for him was strong and immediate, even though he’d kept the truth from her. Quickly, she gathered up the ripped clothing left behind and stuffed it in her backpack.

  Chulah Rivers was the first to break through the clearing. “I saw the wisps gather at your position. Have you been injured?” he asked, assessing her from head to toe.

  Dear Chulah. She’d hurt her childhood friend deeply last year when she’d turned down his offer of marriage. Not that he’d been heartsick for long. April Meadows, now his wife, had come into his life and flipped his world upside-down. All for the best as it had turned out. Through it all, they’d managed to stay friends.

  “I’m okay.”

  Chulah did a 360-degree turn. “I counted at least eight souls released. How did you do it? It happened so fast, too.”

  She shrugged. “You must have miscounted.”

  Tombi, Marcus and several others emerged from the woods.

  “What’s happened? Where’s Payton?” her brother asked. Her twin always did get straight to the heart of a matter.

  “He had to leave.”

  “Leave?” Tombi snorted. “What kind of a coward is this dude?”

  “He’s not—”

  “The guy couldn’t just up and leave,” Marcus interrupted. “A human couldn’t see the path to get out.”

  Her mind scrambled. “I let him borrow a flashlight that I had stored in my backpack.”

  Tombi narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re my twin, I can tell when you’re lying. If he’s a coward, we’re bound to find—”

  “I’m no coward.”

  Payton stepped forward into the middle of the fray and crossed his arms below his chest. He stood resolute, as if challenging anyone to question his honor. Tallulah noted the change of clothes—new jeans and a different T-shirt. He must have had them stored in his own backpack. How inconvenient the shifting must be for him. A giggle bubbled in her throat that she quickly suppressed. She must be semihysterical to consider tonight’s freak show as a mere inconvenience.

  “Then where did you go?” Tombi asked.

  Payton raised a blond brow. “Call of nature?”

  Chulah lifted his chin and inhaled deeply. “There’s a foreign scent in the air. Smells like...fur.”

  “It’s just the dead Ishkitini smelling funky,” Tallulah lied. “Let’s head home. We’ve done enough work for the night.”

  Tombi didn’t move. As leader of the shadow hunters, the others followed his lead and remained standing where they were.

  “Could have sworn you had on a brown T-shirt when we left the cabin,” Tombi noted.

  Tallulah laughed and walked away. “Goes to show you can’t be right all the time, little brother.” Her fraternal twin had been born a mere minute after her, but she liked to remind him of the technicality. If he could tell when she was lying, she knew just how to irritate him.

  “Ready to go, Payton?” she asked sweetly. As if she wasn’t furious and confused about what she’d witnessed.

  He followed her down the path without a word. From behind, the murmur of her brother and the other hunters buzzed. They knew something was off, but no way would they ever guess that Payton was a werewolf.

  Werewolf.

  Chills inched up her spine. She really had been bitten by a werewolf. She’d asked Annie and Tombi earlier if that meant she would become one herself. They had no answer. But Payton would. She whirled around. “Am I going to turn into a werewolf like you?”

  His mouth twisted in a grimace and he pointed to the almost-full moon. “Yep. Couple more nights and you’ll wake up covered with fur and howling at the moon like a bitch.”

  “Not funny. If anyone has the right to be angry and hurt, it’s me. Why didn’t you tell me you were a wolf?”

  “Would you have believed it possible?” he asked quietly.

  “You’ll never know, will you? Because you didn’t give me a chance. I spilled my guts to you and you kept your lips locked.”

  He nodded. “I’m sorry, Tallulah. If it were just my secret, I’d have told you.”

  If it were just him... Bells rang in her head, like an alarm exploding in a brain fog of sleep. The answer to the wolf puzzle had always been there, if she’d been able to connect the clues. “I get it. All of you in that farmhouse, you’re all...wolves? Like a pack?”

  His lips pursed.

  “Even now you say nothing?” she snapped. More warnings detonated inside her brain. “The wolf that attacked me, you said he was your best friend. Which one is he?”

  Payton hesitated, then let out a long sigh. “His name was Russell.”

  “Not sure I remember him.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Maybe not to you, but it certainly does to me. He’s going to pay for killing Jeb.”

  “Too late, he’s gone. Fled. We don’t know where, but Matt thinks he’s headed back out west.”

  “Matt...the timber supervisor, right?”

  “And our alpha, the pack leader.”

/>   “Yeah, not surprised. He’s kind of an ass.”

  “He’s not that bad,” Payton argued.

  So that’s where his loyalties lay. His automatic defense of Matt bothered Tallulah. “Is he like your king or something? You have to obey his orders?”

  “He expects obedience.”

  She snorted. “Sounds to me like you’re all his lapdogs.”

  “You go too far.” Payton’s words were clipped and his nostrils flared. “You don’t understand anything about my wolf nature or how a pack operates.”

  “You’re right. But I do know you as a man, or I thought I did. A man takes responsibilities for his own actions. Makes his own decisions.”

  “Of course.”

  “Then speak the truth. Did Matt order you not to tell me that you’re part wolf?”

  “It’s an understood law of the pack,” he hedged.

  “That’s what I thought.” She turned on her heel and viciously swiped at the branches around her face, practically running down the trail toward her home—the opposite of their cautious entrance as she’d led him to the thick of the shadow world. Payton could take care of himself and transform to wolf if he had difficulty seeing or got lost. He didn’t need her.

  “Wait up.”

  She walked faster, uncaring of low branches whipping her face and chest.

  A strong hand landed on her shoulder, pulling at the tender, stitched skin. “Ouch!” She spun around and glared at Payton. “Don’t touch me.”

  He held up both hands. “Sorry. Forgot about your injury.”

  “Courtesy of your best friend,” she complained bitterly.

  “Former best friend.”

  “So you say. For all I know, y’all have him harbored in that farmhouse. Protecting a fellow pack member.”

  A muscle on the side of Payton’s jaw rippled. “Russell’s gone. We can’t find him.”

  “Oh? Are you telling the truth now?”

  “I am.”

  “I should call Sheriff Angier. Have him shake down the farmhouse just to make sure.”

  “Leave him out of this.”

  She folded her arms under her chest. “I’ve known Tillman Angier since we were kids and trust him as well as I can trust anyone outside of the shadow hunters. He’s a damn good investigator. If Russell’s around, he’ll find him.”