Parlangua. The half-human, half-alligator closed its hand around Julien’s biceps, black claws digging into his flesh, rivulets of blood trickling down his arms in a red wash of copper scented fluid. Its mouth snapped as it strained, trying to crush his head.
Julien planted a boot on Parlangua’s slick yellow underbelly and kicked, hard. The beast grunted, reptilian roar tearing from its throat as it stumbled back. Its tail swung out in a rapid arc, knocking Julien off his feet. His arms pin wheeled as he fell back and landed with a wet thud on the marshy ground. Parlangua surged to its feet, chartreuse eyes wild as they narrowed on the pirate.
“Stop!” Dominique screamed, scrabbling to her feet.
There was no time for magic, no time to draw her herbs. She had nothing to stop the monster from killing the pirate. Nothing but her own flesh and blood and the vague hope that Parlangua would come to its senses in time…
Its mouth opened again and it lunged.
“No!”
Pain flowed in jagged, white hot lines down the side of Dominique’s back, a few inches to the right of her spine. Her mouth fell open as her body sucked in air, nerves contorting in agony. Distantly, she realized the beast had dragged its claws down her back, wicked tips finding her flesh instead of Julien’s chest. She hit the ground, impact compacting the breath out of her lungs in a ragged sob.
Julien’s face went slack and then tightened with an unholy rage.
That was the image she took with her into the darkness as black fog swallowed the world.
Chapter Four
“Dominique!”
Julien caught her as she crumpled to the ground, her blood coating his hands and arms, mingling with his own. No. Gods, no. Heart in his throat, he blindly probed at her back, wincing at the torn flesh. He couldn’t see properly through the shredded clothing, but his mind was only too willing to provide an image based on his memories of her beautiful sienna flesh, superimposing thoughts of what state it must be in now.
Rage boiled inside him and he dragged his attention to the monster responsible for this, the creature that was known to him only through legends and the superstitious ramblings of the sailors that hailed from this backwards village.
Parlangua stared at Dominique’s body with glassy and vacant eyes, no doubt mesmerized by the carnage its claws had wrought. A piercing cry escaped Julien’s mouth—the battle cry of his other form. Parlangua reared back, answering with a hoarse reptilian screech.
Have to shift. Can’t shift, have to hold Dominique. Dammit!
Her body sagged heavily against him, her feet barely dragging the ground as he managed to gain his feet. Julien stepped back, slowly, searching for firm ground, a space to lay her down while he dealt with the threat. The hulking reptile stepped closer with every step back he took, gaping maw opening and closing with every rasping breath.
“Put her down,” it snarled.
Without taking his eyes from his opponent, Julien shifted Dominique so that only his left arm held her against his body, taking most of her weight on himself, but unable to stop and lift her fully from the ground. She moaned softly, fingers spasming and her feet pushing weakly at the ground before her body went limp again.
“Wake up, Dominique.” He curled his fingers around the hilt of his sword and drew it out in a song of metal to point it at Parlangua. “This is no time for a nap, chere.”
She could be bleeding to death while you stand here facing off with the beast of the bayou and you’re making jokes? End this!
Parlangua lurched to its feet, bipedal like a man on arms and legs far too long for a normal alligator. Its scaled flesh provided a daunting natural armor that gave it the appearance of a macabre warrior going into battle. “Let her go!”
“Never!”
Never again.
The ground beneath his soles vibrated as the beast charged. Julien let her weight help him, dipping low and angling his sword up. The blade sliced through the butter-yellow scales of the monster’s underbelly and ribbons of red blood mingled with droplets of swamp water and washed down its body in a wave of pink.
The deep bellow that erupted from its long snout choked into a hoarse grunt. Julien glimpsed the shiny flesh of internal organs peeking through the gash as it whirled to change direction. Julien straightened, the drag of Dominique’s weight halting him, forcing him to stand helplessly as Parlangua threw itself into the swamp and propelled itself farther and farther away with powerful flicks of its massive tail, until it disappeared into the murky depths altogether.
“I will find you again, Parlangua,” he promised, words strangled as his body jerked, wanting to shift to his other form, to give chase and end what he’d begun. He swallowed hard, sheathed his blade, and forced his attention back to Dominique.
The sticky warmth of her blood soaked into his clothes, painting his chest through his shirt. His pulse quickened and he slowly knelt on the ground, shifting her body to examine her back.
“How does your magic work… I can’t remember.” He pressed his lips together, thinking, trying to remember what she’d told him about voodoo, about being a priestess. Her magic was energy, raw power, a mark of the loa’s will. It was what made her gris-gris and charms work, but he couldn’t remember if her power had any effect on its own, without herbs or objects to imbue. She probably had no supernatural healing abilities of her own. He had to get her out of this blasted swamp, get her someplace where he could clean her wounds.
His stomach rolled. “There’s nothing for it, I’ll have to take you home with me.”
She wasn’t going to like that. Parading her through the village, letting her people see her limp and injured in his arms, the damsel in distress being rescued by a pirate… Oh, she would be furious. She would have been furious about that ten years ago, now… He winced. “Options, Julien,” he reminded himself. “You don’t have any.”
He bandaged her wounds as best he could with scraps from his clothing and hers, torn and pressed against the areas that oozed the most blood. That done, he cradled her in his arms and trudged through the cursed swamp, aiming for drier ground.
“This was not how I pictured our reunion.” He glanced down at Dominique’s face, serene as if in sleep. He’d missed this the last time they’d been together. He’d left the second she’d closed her eyes, had run fast and far from her, from the warmth of her arms, the welcome of her body… and the way her power called to the part of him he hated more than anything else.
He forced his attention to the path ahead. “Free of the curse, then free of her. Focus on the goal. Nothing else matters.”
Nothing else mattered. Certainly not the fact that she’d haunted his dreams for the better part of a decade. Not the fact that he still saw her eyes when he closed his own, that her scent still followed him, had him turning around expecting to find her even when he was on his ship in the middle of the sea. Not the tiny hint of pain that had pricked his heart when she’d responded to his appearance without a trace of yearning, without a single sign that she’d longed for him too…
“Well why don’t you drop your sword and buy a dress, Julien?” He stiffened his spine, hefting Dominique’s body to get a better grip and being less than gentle about it. “Time to get this over with.”
A child’s scream tore through the air.
He halted in his tracks. “The tides take it, what now?”
Another piercing cry, this one shriller, more panicked than the last.
She would want you to save the child. Gritting his teeth, Julien hefted Dominique over his shoulder, settled her as best he could, and took off at a dead run. Well, sort of a dead run. As much as one could run through a swamp. For the hundredth time that day, he yearned to be out on the open sea again, far from the mud that couldn’t decide if it was land or water.
Soon.
The screaming grew more jagged and drawn out. Julien’s skin itched, the urge to shift all but unbearable. He exploded from a thick line of trees, cursing as the branches slapped at his
cheeks and arms, drawing tiny lines of blood like a tithe to some swamp spirit. Dominique’s skin remained untouched, at least from what he could see.
Typical.
Another scream snared his attention. A child, no more than seven or eight, clung to a tree with all the strength the loa had given him, his eyes squeezed shut against the sight of the nightmare behind him. Parlangua’s jaws were closed around his leg, blood flowing around the teeth like a red river parted by jagged rocks. Its black claws pressed against its stomach, holding together the scaly flesh that had been parted by Julien’s blade and keeping its organs from bulging through. Without its arms to tear the child free from the tree, Parlangua was forced to use its grip with its jaws, back legs scrabbling at the loose, muddy earth as it tried to drag the child into the water. The monster’s movements were sluggish, but determined, eyes fixed on its prey as it pulled.
There were no adults, no parents here to save the child—or to witness the child being saved. Moving quickly, Julien bent down and laid Dominique against the trees, propping her as best he could against two trunks. He stared at her as he shucked out of his clothes. Her breathing was blessedly even, the color in her cheeks closer to normal, a reassuring sign that she wasn’t still losing blood.
As the child’s screams filled his veins with the bite of adrenaline, Julien gave himself over to the change. Air rushed out of his lungs, the release of a breath held too long. His skin parted under waves of feathers. His bones cracked, shifted, and hollowed. His teeth merged, extending into a sharp beak. The world around him grew fuzzy, then sharper, details blooming to life that human eyes could never have seen.
Parlangua hesitated, eyes rolling back to glare at Julien. Indecision held it immobile, the desire to face the new threat warring with its need for food, its need to replenish its strength to heal its wounds. The energy whirling like a vortex inside of Julien spiraled up as he raised his wings, stretching high into the air. The grayish-blue sky darkened, faint clouds forming like the first smoky tendrils of a bonfire. He brought his wings down with a sharp snap, power rolling out, thrusting the air down.
Thunder broke overhead. It crashed and rolled above them, coming to the call of Julien’s magic, the force he wielded as his birthright. Hungry on the heel of the thunder was the crackling promise of lightning. Julien focused on Parlangua, on the monster’s renewed struggle to drag its victim away and the child’s fierce struggle for survival.
Another beat of Julien’s wings, a piercing scream erupting from his beak like an offering to the storm. Lightning speared the clouds, arced down toward the water and Parlangua. Blinding light. The giant reptile released the child, rolling with speed no normal alligator could have managed.
It wasn’t enough. Electricity struck its thick hide. Acrid smoke curled from the blackened scales and the monster choked out a ragged roar before throwing itself away from its would-be meal back into the foggy marsh. Random sparks sizzled across the water’s steaming surface as the beast submerged, the hatred in its greenish-yellow eyes promised another encounter. Thunder shook the clouds above as Julien shrieked viciously in answer.
As soon as the beast had disappeared, Julien threw himself back into the change. This time it was not so seamless, his flesh objecting to being forced back so quickly, the energy of the storm demanding he fly into the air, soar through the thunderclouds he had summoned. He held his breath, straining through the shift, reaching up to the sky with human hands. His knees connected with the thick blanket of grass beneath him as he half-collapsed, chest heaving.
The boy Parlangua had intended to have as its next meal lay crumpled on the ground, unconscious—the price to pay for the beyond-human strength a near-death situation blessed all living creatures with. Julien grunted as he straightened, his body aching from the rapid shift, but healed from the shallow wounds Parlangua had inflicted. He dressed as fast as his shaking hands would allow, scanning the area around the boy, waiting…
He had barely managed to get Dominique back into his arms when new voices erupted onto the scene. A man and a woman half ran, half fell toward the unconscious boy. Their dark skin made the whites of their eyes stand out like beacons of their terror, both of them lost in the mad dash for the child Julien guessed was their son. The woman fell to the ground and gathered the youth in her arms, slender hands smoothing over his head, a steady stream of words spilling from her lips. His father hunkered down by the child’s leg, already fighting to get his shirt off his narrow shoulders. He wrapped it around the boy’s wound. Understandably, it took both of the adults a while to register Julien’s presence.
“Blessed gods.” Julien feigned a gasp and stumbled, opening his eyes wide and offering up the unconscious woman in his arms. “She saved him!’
The child’s eyes fluttered open. As soon as he saw his mother, he broke into sobs and wrapped his arms around her, clinging to her as fiercely as he’d clung to the tree. She held him closer, rocking him gently as he cried into her skirts.
“Who are you?” Her voice wavered, though her gaze remained steady and fixed on Julien.
“I am Julien Marcon.” He took another step, sloshing into the knee-deep water. “The gods summoned me here, I didn’t know why…” He returned his attention to Dominique. “But now I know. They brought me here to save Dom—Madame Laveau. After she saved your son from Parlangua.”
“Parlangua?” The man—who had seemed distracted by Julien’s beard a moment before—bowed his head, a fine tremble shaking his body as he offered a rapid, near-silent prayer. “Praise the loa Madame Laveau was here.”
The mother’s eyes were wide too, her rocking slowing though her grip on her child did not weaken. “Mon dieu.”
Julien nodded, encouraged and relieved that his story had been accepted so easily. Shifting form twice in such a short time span left his thoughts chaotic, and it was hard to concentrate enough for a properly convincing lie. The boy had kept his eyes closed, and between the chaos of recent events and the sheer trauma of what he’d been through, he was confident the boy wouldn’t contradict his story. Besides, any contradiction would involve a giant bird and lightning—the stuff hallucinations were made of.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” Julien continued, warming to his tale and wishing he had a pint of rum handy. “She laid her hands on it and commanded it to stop, to leave the child alone. Parlangua released the child, then whirled on Madame Laveau.” He angled Dominique’s body to flash them her bloodied clothes, satisfied when they sucked in a breath. “I saw the beast flee and Madame Laveau collapsed to the ground. If the loa had not led me here…”
The father clasped his hands to his chest. “Is she all right?”
Julien cradled her carefully in his arms. “She will be. So will your son. I insist that you come with me to my home. My servants will care for Madame Laveau and your child. We must give thanks to the loa on this most blessed day.”
“We would be grateful for your help,” the father answered solemnly. “And yes, we must praise the loa on such a day.”
The woman struggled to her feet, her son clinging to her like a barnacle. The boy’s father tried to help, tried to take him, but the child screamed, his sobbing increasing. The woman held him closer to her, her thin body bowing under the additional weight. The strain showed in the lines on her face, but there was a determined set to her sharp jaw. Her husband stepped back, remaining close enough to help if she needed it.
Julien glanced up at the sky. His sudden storm was all but gone, though a few dark wisps of cloud stubbornly remained. They served as reminders that he had called a storm and then abandoned it, something that left him jittery with the need to fly, the need to stretch his wings and revel in the wild energy of nature. It would be a small torture to resist that call now that he would have guests to keep him land bound. “Follow me.”
He led the way and the couple fell into line behind him. Despite his attempts to remain composed, irritation soon had Julien biting back a curse every few feet. Each step re
minded him of how much he hated the bayou, the incessant sucking of mud at his boots, the trees that seemed childish in their delight for slapping him in the face. The fact that they miraculously avoided so much as brushing Dominique’s cheek only annoyed him further.
“Madame Laveau!”
Julien startled as a woman rushed in their direction. He hadn’t noticed they’d made it out of the bayou and now stood on solid land, not far from a large tent. The door flap still fluttered in the wake of the woman who was striding toward them with quick, long steps. She was slender, nearly as tall as he was, and had eyes like sunlight on golden wheat. Her simple white dress flowed around her legs as she scurried up to him, her gaze locked on Dominique’s unconscious form.
“What happened?” she gasped.
“Madame Laveau saved this boy from Parlangua,” Julien answered immediately.
The woman’s hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, my.”
“I’m taking her to my home where her injuries will be cared for. Hers and the boy’s.” He gestured with his chin behind him at the couple and their child. The boy had finally allowed his father to take him, and his mother looked as though she might fall over at any moment. “We need a carriage.”
The woman’s gaze lingered on his beard for a split second as if she’d only just noticed it. A question formed on her lips, already echoing in Julien’s head, a replay of a scenario he’d been forced to go through far too many times in the last decade.
He pressed his lips together, muffling the urge to say something unpleasant. “The carriage?”
“Of course, of course. Right away.”
She rushed off in a flair of white gauzy material, leaving behind a scent trail of cherries and incense. It didn’t take long for a carriage to be brought to them, not surprising considering the carriage was for an injured Dominique Laveau and the child she’d saved from Parlangua. The ounsi that had summoned the carriage for them also provided Julien with a bag of Dominique’s things, clean clothes as well as herbs, bottles, and odds and ends he could only guess at.
Blue Voodoo: A Romantic Retelling of Bluebeard (The Hidden Kingdom Series Book 2) Page 4
