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  Shattering chords of pain assaulted her ears from opened patient doors. Annie quickened her step, skipping the elevator and opting for the stairs—less chance of running into others and their leaking auras.

  She skipped along, heartened at Grandma Tia’s minuscule awakening. Not only that, but Miss Verbena had dreamed she’d come out of the darkness, and her dreams always came true.

  As far as Tombi, she’d show him she was no coward. At least, she’d try to. Annie bit her lip, picturing Nalusa in snake form. But Tombi had promised to stay by her side. She’d cling to him so tight, he wouldn’t have an opportunity to escape her if he tried. Strengthened by her decision, and comforted at the thought of lunch and some downtime alone at home before she contacted Tombi, Annie prepared for a quick exit past the ER waiting lounge.

  She took a deep breath and pushed open the door from the stairwell to the ER area. Misery wailed like a herd of banshees while an ambulance’s real wail reverberated in her brain like a shotgun blast in a canyon. The trick was nonresistance, to let the sound flow in and out and not let it get trapped deep within. Annie focused on her breathing and kept her eyes on the lobby door leading to freedom. The siren echoes decreased in decibels. Another dozen steps and she opened the door to fresh air.

  Oomph. Her elbow hit something hard.

  “Hey, watch it, lady.” An ambulance driver in an all-blue uniform scowled and jerked the gurney away.

  Annie shrank back. “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I didn’t see—” Wait. She knew this man lying on the gurney with blood seeping down the side of his scalp from a head wound. Where had she met him before?

  Two more EMR workers started past, with more patients. One of the men on the cot stared at her, recognition lighting his face.

  “Hey, you’re that Annie woman Tombi brought to camp.” The man struggled to an upright position, pushing his dark hair from his face. He held his right arm in his left, and Annie fought nausea at the crooked, unnatural bent of his injured arm.

  She recognized him now. Her gaze shifted to the other cot, to an unconscious, bleeding man.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  The EMR started to wheel him away.

  “Hold on a sec,” he told the guy. He grabbed her arm and pulled until she was eye level with him.

  “We were attacked in the woods,” he said in a low, fierce voice. “Ambushed.”

  “In broad daylight?” she asked. Horror weighted her down. “Where’s Tombi?”

  “Gone. Kidnapped. The wisps are delivering him to Nalusa as we speak.”

  CHAPTER 10

  The shadows expanded and contracted into phantasmagoric shapes as Tombi stumbled along the path, squinting at the images. Something is very wrong. The miasma of evil was thick as clam chowder and as stifling as the Southern sun. He tugged at his bound hands, staring stupidly at the black cloth tied and knotted at his wrists. How had this happened?

  The last thing he remembered was screams and rushing, colored orbs surrounding him and the other hunters. They had surged forward and converged upon him, their colored, swirling forms cloying and pouring acrid smoke into his nose and mouth. Through the smoke, he had made out the figure of a short, bowlegged man with a weathered, gnomelike face.

  Hoklonote, no doubt. A bad spirit capable of temporarily shape-shifting to human form. Tombi had glimpsed him over the years, seen his face peeking out from the underbrush or gazing down from a tall tree, ready to pounce. He’d seen him run away on occasion with a queer, wobbly gate that led Tombi to suspect his feet were misshapen, ill-equipped to give chase.

  Hoklonote must have been the one to bind his hands. The wisps were formless vapors surrounding the heart of their dead, entrapped victims. But they all were in league together with Nalusa.

  When he was a young boy, his parents used to tell him if he didn’t stay close to home or if he stayed out too late at night, the evil spirits would get him. Growing up, he’d made sure to be home before dark. As he grew into a teenager, he’d scoffed at the old tales and believed them merely a ploy to keep children from straying too far in the woods and to coerce them into minding their elders.

  The Choctaw version of the boogeyman.

  Much later, he’d learned there was more than one boogeyman, that they were real and that they had names and roamed the bayou grounds at night in search of prey.

  A sharp poke on his lower back startled him out of his stupor. Tombi reined in his wandering thoughts and concentrated on Hoklonote. He sniffed experimentally and smelled an odor of damp and decay, like rotting leaves or globs of worms surfacing above ground after it was saturated by heavy rains. He sensed Hoklonote’s physical form only rose to the midpoint of his back.

  Tombi took a deep breath. No point being led like the lamb to the slaughter. Even drugged, he should prove a match for the stunted spirit. Pride stiffened his spine. The least he could do was leave the world fighting like a warrior, same as Bo. Tombi screwed up his fists.

  “You forget the wisps,” the voice from behind cackled. “You’re outnumbered.”

  “So the old tale is true, then?” His voice was slurred, his throat dry. Yet he pushed on. “You can read people’s minds?”

  “Sure can.” The spirit’s voice was high-pitched and tinged with glee. “Won’t be taking me by surprise.”

  Damn. But he could still die trying.

  “Quit them death thoughts,” Hoklonote said. “Could be you can work out some kind of deal with Nalusa. Same as me, same as the wisps and same as other hunters over the years.”

  To hell with that, you little, stunted pygmy—

  “Stunted, huh?” Hoklonote kicked him in the ass. “Better guard your thoughts.”

  Tombi gritted his teeth against the crack of pain at the base of his tailbone and continued the labored trek in the woods. He wanted to see Nalusa, face-to-face. If nothing else, he’d like to get a lick in on the beast, whatever form Nalusa chose to assume for their meeting.

  “Foolish, foolish thoughts,” Hoklonote grunted.

  Tombi tried, yet he couldn’t sense anyone else’s presence but Hoklonote and the wisps. But that could be due to his drugged state dulling his tracking skills. Not that he expected an answer, but the question burned in his mind. “Has anyone else been drugged or hurt?”

  Hoklonote didn’t bother responding, but again prodded him with a sharp object, probably a stick, that pricked the base of his spine. With every step forward, Tombi felt more disoriented. His skin crawled and itched, and his tongue lay swollen and heavy in his dry mouth, as if he’d suffered a severe allergic reaction. His head was fuzzy, and he wanted nothing more than to curl into a little ball and sleep forever.

  The wisps skittering around him were having none of that. Tombi’s leaden legs managed to plod along. Again, he worried for his friends’ safety. Where had everyone disappeared to? Distress sharpened his mind, which brought a new flood of anguish. Nalusa could kill in so many ways: snakebite, suffocation and entrapment in a will-o’-the-wisp body, or worst of all, a slow, debilitating despair of the mind that led to madness or suicide.

  Annie had been absolutely correct. There was a betrayer in their group.

  Annie. Her image arose so sharp and clear it felt as if she was within him, alongside him as he struggled to continue. Her hair was soft and brushing against him; he could smell her herbal, floral scent. Her mysterious hoodoo eyes penetrated all his defenses, saw through all his guards into the walled, hardened heart that was scarred and calloused from death and loss.

  I’m coming, Tombi.

  He could have sworn he felt the whisper of her breath in his ear. He stopped and glanced about, the sharp object in his back pushed deeper, puncturing flesh.

  “What the hell was that?” Hoklonote ground out in surprise and outrage. “Ain’t never heard the likes of that before.”