“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 ripp
ed 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?”
He shouldn’t answer, but he couldn’t look into her sincere, pretty green eyes and not tell her the truth. “Pain. We pay during the night with pain.”
“And if your brothers don’t get here, you what?”
“Pay all by myself.”
“That’s not fair.” Her voice was hoarse, her expression horrified. “You’re helping people. I don’t understand why in the world you’d have to pay for doing the right thing. Breaking hexes is right.”
“We don’t just break them, we absorb them. And we can only release them here.”
“And that causes pain,” she murmured. “You can’t turn people down, so why not put the word out? Most folks around here are wonderful and would never want to hurt you guys on purpose.”
“Our father believed that’s what killed his father. They tried to spread the word and it was like turning everyone down at once.” He gave her a tired smile and reached out to pull a few small bits of bay leaves from her hair. “You’ll need a shower to get all these out of your hair.”
“I don’t care about my hair.” She looked down at his knee. “That looks really rough. What do we need to do to help you?”
“There isn’t anything you can do, except maybe help me get upstairs to bed. I need to lie down.”
Without any show of embarrassment, Elita stripped off her bra and underwear, let the water out of the tub, then climbed in to wash the leaves off her skin.
Pryor wasn’t too tired to enjoy that show. He leaned his head against the wall, enjoying the water pouring down her back, the graceful arch of her arms as she lifted them to wash her hair. The river of darkened red hair down her back made a stunning contrast against her skin. He could look at her forever and he loved that she seemed matter-of-fact about her own body—that she washed and didn’t seem to worry what he was thinking. Either she was too concerned about him or she accepted herself fully. Either way, he loved that about her.
Loved.
There it was—the word he’d been dancing around since the moment she’d stepped foot in his home. He’d fallen hard for this woman. He watched her, knowing this moment would stay in his memories in vivid color for the rest of his life.
She turned and the red in her cheeks could either be from the heat of the water or the knowledge that he watched her. Those green eyes locked with his and he guessed the latter. He knew that she would be able to read his desire for her easily.
He couldn’t help but wonder if she could read the love.
Elita woke and knew she was alone before she even opened her eyes. Groggy, she wondered what woke her because her body told her she needed a lot more sleep. Strange aches and pains plagued different areas. She much preferred the last time she’d awakened in this bed. On top of a warm and sleepy Pryor.
There were no sounds coming from anywhere in the darkened house. She glanced at the digital clock next to his bed, having to blink like crazy just to pull it into focus, and realized she’d been sleeping for hours. It was close to ten.
She hadn’t planned to fall asleep.
Snagging Pryor’s pillow, she pulled it under her nose and breathed him in. Damn. The man had a pull on her that was unlike anything she’d felt in her life. It was something close to the pull she felt for this place—her home. No matter how far away she’d tried to run from the curse, her longing for the basin was like a constant dull throbbing ache.
Pryor was tied to this place more than most.
And she knew without a shadow of doubt that she was in love with him.
Not just attracted to or attached to or any other kind of to. This was a with all the way. In. Love. With. Pryor.
She thought of the way he’d lo
oked before she’d drifted off. Sleeping and in…
Pain.
Holy shit! She was daydreaming here—doing her usual groggy wakeup—and he was probably out there somewhere, suffering. Or maybe his brothers had gotten home?
She jumped out of bed, nearly hitting the floor when the sheets tangled around her legs. She grabbed on to the side of the bed, kicked off the sheets and looked around for something to wear. Spotting a thin flannel robe on a hook in his open closet, she grabbed it, then stuffed her arms in the too-long sleeves. She ran out of his room and down the stairs.
“Pryor?” she called out.
Nothing but silence.
Not even the whispers of Pryor’s ancestors came to her now. Startled, she wrapped the robe fully around her, tied the belt and stood still and quiet at the base of the stairs. Closing her eyes, she turned her senses inward, realizing that even the weight of the curse was gone. She opened her eyes and waited for that slinky, oily smudge that often showed up in her peripheral vision.
It didn’t.
That didn’t mean the smudge man was gone. But she didn’t even feel the presence of another around her. Not a ghost, nothing. And especially not Pryor.
His lime bath had worked.
But she didn’t feel good about this at all.
She flipped on the light next to the stairs and looked at the claw marks on her legs. They looked months old instead of hours. Thin, silvery scars she had a feeling would be there forever. Whatever he’d done to help her had been powerful. And he’d done it alone.
Terror raced through her and she ran into the room he’d called the parlor, not really expecting him to be lying on one of the uncomfortable-looking couches, but it was the closest room. She continued on to the living area and didn’t find him on the more comfortable pieces, so she turned and ran into the kitchen. No Pryor. Just the faint smell of lingering smoke.
He’d said they paid out there in the water.
Remembering the massive flashlight Pryor kept in the last cabinet, she grabbed it and turned it on to make sure it worked.
Shoes. She needed shoes.
The Brothers Bernaux [01] Raisonne Curse Page 15
