Nalusa Falaya. Ol’ Nal. A flesh-eater from Choctaw legends. His favorite meal was children. First time I saw him was on the streets of the French Quarter, and he’d been wearing, at least nominally, a human—a tall, dark shape with a wide, hungry grin, but with limbs too long and something unholy lurking underneath, like maggots roiling beneath dead skin.
His aura had afforded me unwanted glimpses of dark appetites. Images of a dilapidated cabin, slimy, black-green moss growing on the floorboards, piles of heartbreakingly small bones in the corners, and other, gorier remnants of its meals lying in heaps on the floor. Flashes of children’s faces, eyes round with a fear they should never have been forced to feel. Mouths opened in screams that would never be answered by their mothers. Toddlers and babies, mostly. Ol’ Nal preferred his meat young and tender.
And now he had Tikka.
Josie collapsed, unable to process the fact her beloved Tikka had been taken by the bogeyman of the swamps. As far as the Marcadets were concerned, it was a horrific, agonizing death sentence, and there was nothing to be done about it.
Fuck that noise.
“I’m going to get her back.” I stared at Cayden as if daring him to try and stop me.
“And I’m going with you,” he replied coolly.
“Can we help?” Ike asked.
“We would very much like to help,” Mike added.
“Take care of Josie and her family,” Cayden said. “Lee and I are gonna need the Hummer, so you’ll have to call for another ride to get them home.” He shot a glance back at Devon, who, to his credit, had stuck around after this particular shit had hit the fan. “Dev, keep everyone calm, and keep your cell on in case we need you.”
Devon nodded, for once devoid of the cockiness that usually defined his personality. Even he hadn’t been immune to Tikka’s charm. Turning to me, he said, “Go n-éiri an t-ádh leat.” Then he added, “Bring her back, acushla.”
“I will.” And I meant it.
“Let’s go,” Cayden said.
We headed back to the Humvee, Cayden getting behind the wheel. “Do you have any idea where to find this thing?” he asked as he started the engine.
“No,” I replied, “but I think I know someone who does.”
* * *
Cayden drove from our bayou location to the French Quarter in what had to be record time, driving with a skilled disregard for the other vehicles on the road and getting us there in a half hour instead of the usual hour and change.
Automotive and pedestrian traffic was already heavy in the Quarter, but he managed to avoid hitting anything or anyone, although we did get honked at and drew obscene gestures more than once. At my directions he pulled into the red zone on Toulouse Street, in front of what looked like a closed storefront, and hit the hazard lights.
“It’s not even eight o’clock.” Cayden raised an eyebrow. “Doesn’t look very promising.”
“We’ll see about that.” Hopping out of the Hummer, I went quickly to the front door of Loa Creations, lifted my fist in preparation to knock, and almost fell forward when the door opened before my knuckles made contact.
A slender black woman in her late thirties or thereabouts stood in the doorway. Hair twisted up in an elegant chignon. Fitted charcoal-gray skirt paired with a ruby-red blouse. Heels that made my feet hurt to look at them. Eugenie, the proprietor of Loa Creations.
“Come in, child,” she said with a smile, her voice rich and musical. “I’ve been expecting you.”
Why does this not surprise me?
With a little wave at Cayden, I went inside. Eugenie shut the door behind us.
The interior of Loa Creations was part art gallery, part store. The art—most of it related to voodoo and the loas—was displayed on the walls and in short open cabinets. Claret-colored brocade curtains were pulled shut over the windows. I’d hidden in here back when Ol’ Nal had sensed my presence and come searching for me—the risk of major collateral damage to the tourists swarming the streets had been too high for me to confront him. A small, bitterly cold part of me wished I’d risked it anyway.
“Tell me how I can help,” Eugenie said.
“Ol’ Nal,” I replied without preamble. “He stole a child this morning out at Bayou Ef ’tageux. Took her right out from under her mother’s nose.”
Eugenie sighed, a deep exhalation that sounded like it hurt. “Now and again,” she said in that rich, singsong voice, “Ol’ Nal will kill himself a hunter what gets lost in the swamp, just because it’s an easy meal. For the most part, though, he preys on the young and helpless. Families that live out there, they’ve learned to put up protection to keep him out. Too many babies, human and otherwise, have been lost to that devil, damn his black heart.”
“I aim to carve it out and get Tikka back.”
“There’s many folks that’ll thank you for it.”
“Why hasn’t anyone else tried to kill him?”
“Oh, plenty of brave souls have tried, but Nal, he’s strong, smart, and fast. You’ll have to know how to find his home, and how to get back out alive. He lives deep in the bayou, in his own special pocket of hell.”
“Where should I look for him?”
“Bayou Malheur,” she replied. “Your friend will know where it is.”
“How—” I stopped, not knowing how she knew about Cayden, or how he would know where this bayou was, but I figured some things needed to be taken on faith.
“Once you’re there,” she continued, “keep an eye out for the Screaming Tree.”
“Screaming Tree?” Seriously?
She nodded. “You’ll know it when you see it. That marks the path to Ol’ Nal’s home.”
“Is there any chance Tikka… the little one… could still be alive?” I stared at Eugenie, willing her to say yes, but she hesitated before answering.
“There’s a small chance,” she said finally.
“Ol’ Nal, he likes them seasoned, and fear is the best flavoring for a monster like him.”
“That seems to be a staple in evil’s diet.”
“It is,” she agreed. “Fear and pain and hopelessness. So you have to remember, you cling to whatever hope there is, no matter how small it might be. You hold on and follow it like a candleflame in the darkness, and it’ll lead you to that child.”
“Thank you.” I started to leave, but Eugenie placed a hand on my shoulder. I stopped.
“Take these.”
I turned back to see Eugenie holding out two gris-gris bags, a déjà vu to the first time I’d been in her shop.
“These won’t hide you from his eyes, but it’ll make it harder for him to sense you, and easier for you to find him. Let you get close before he knows you’re there. But watch out for his sentries. Once you find the path to his little pocket of hell, they’ll be everywhere.”
“This pocket… is it behind the veil?”
“You’re already familiar with these places.” She gave me an approving smile. “That’s good, child. You’ll be able to handle the madness you find there—but be careful. If you succeed in killing Ol’ Nal, that pocket is going to be mighty quick to collapse in on itself. Before that happens, you want to make sure you, and your friend, and—the loas willing—that little girl, are out.”
She gave me a hug, the scents of herbs and spices washing over me, calming my soul and filling me with hope.
* * *
Cayden got us of the city and into the back country as quickly as he’d ferried us in, thankfully familiar with the back roads skirting the edges of the bayous outside New Orleans. Even though I hadn’t had any sleep in almost twenty-four hours, I was wide awake, as wired as if I’d had three Depth Charges loaded with sugar. All I could think about was what would happen if we couldn’t find Ol’ Nal in time.
“Think we’ll make it back in time for the party?” I asked, looking for something to distract myself. “Because if we’re late, all the goodwill in the world won’t stop Leandra from trying to claw my eyes out.” I was only half joking.
Cayden gave a short bark of laughter. “I think she might give you a pass, all things considered.” He kept his gaze on the road as he drove, something I appreciated. Nothing worse than someone who insists on meaningful eye contact while driving.
Despite everything, I drifted off for a little while into one of those fugue states between sleep and wakefulness. The images that danced through my head were dark and bloody, so it was with relief—and a sore neck—that I woke up as Cayden turned off onto an asphalt road that hadn’t seen repairs in a long damn time. The suspension on the Humvee just laughed at the potholes.
“Bayou Malheur is a few miles off the beaten path,” Cayden said as I rubbed my neck. “You feeling something?” He knew about the extra-special familial bond I had with my ancestor’s demonic offspring, a bond that made the scar tissue on the back of my neck burn, itch, and otherwise flare up like a bad case of shingles whenever one was nearby.
“No, not like that,” I replied. “It’s just a stiff neck.”
Abruptly, as if the universe was calling me a liar, I felt that all-too-familiar tingle. At the same time my mother’s amulet—resting at the base of my throat—began burning my skin with an icy heat. The damaged tissue was like the world’s most annoying GPS system.
“Spoke too soon,” I said. “We’re headed in the right direction.”
“Good to know.”
If anyone had told me before I came to New Orleans that I’d be glad to have Cayden Doran along for the ride, I’d have laughed in their face. Our relationship hadn’t exactly gotten off to an auspicious start. However, he wasn’t the arrogant jerk I’d first met in Los Angeles. Oh, he had his arrogant moments, sure, but there was more to him than that. And if you had a monster to kill in a scary-ass swamp, you couldn’t ask for better backup.
Since I’d found out about my… interesting ancestral lineage—as in, “may you live in interesting times”—I’d faced off against more than my share of monsters. A Janus demon who’d wanted to absorb me. Davea, shadow demons with the disposition of rabid pit bulls. A bloodthirsty seaweed dragon and, most recently, a sad, lonely, homicidal shambling horror from beyond the stars.
None of them had filled me with the repugnance I felt for Nalusa Falaya, because Ol’ Nal preyed on innocent children. This was also the first time I’d set out to track one of the monsters to its lair. All the rest had either found me, or I’d pretty much tripped over them.
The road got narrower, the way turning darker, cypress trees and other swampy foliage hanging down and doing their best to block out the sun. Stray sunbeams broke through the gaps, giving an overall effect of driving through a strobe light. Beautiful but eerie. I rolled down my window and the loud primal grunt of an alligator echoed somewhere off in the distance.
We turned off the “paved” road onto a dirt one, and the sensation on the back of my neck increased to a low-level burn.
“We’re definitely headed in the right direction,” I said, then added, “Eugenie said to look for the Screaming Tree. Said we’d know it when we saw it.”
“Like that?” Cayden nodded toward the right side of the road, up ahead a few dozen yards. I looked.
The tree was hideous, formed less by nature than some malevolent force, or the product of a nightmare. Maybe it had once been a weeping willow, the branches and swags of small, sickly colored leaves drooping as if the horrors they guarded drained all joy out of the world. The bark was somewhere between gray and green. Not the vibrant lush green of the bayous, but the color of something that had died and yet somehow managed to thrive.
It was the face in the trunk that gave the tree its name. Divots in the bark formed half-shut eyes, the hollow below opening in a perpetual scream. No matter how many times I blinked or tried to look at it from a slightly different angle, the face was still there. No way this was a whim of Mother Nature.
No, something else had created it.
The Screaming Tree guarded the way to what couldn’t even be called a dirt track. No more than a yard wide, it disappeared into a dark, foreboding tunnel of hanging branches, like the Lover’s Lane in so many of the Hook Man urban legends. We’d be walking from this point on.
As if reading my mind, Cayden pulled the SUV as far off the road as possible and shut off the engine.
“You got that big-ass knife of yours?” I asked, keeping my tone as light as I could manage. Maybe if I pretended not to be terrified by what lay at the end of that path, I’d start to believe my own bravery.
Cayden cut me a glance and nodded. “What are you bringing to the party? If it’s another spork, I may have to marry you.”
I snorted. I’d used a spork against the seaweed dragon. Not fun. “I hate eating with those things, let alone using ’em to fight monsters.” Reaching in the back seat, I pulled out one of the hero swords from Voodoo Wars.
“You get permission from Props to borrow that?”
“Nope. You gonna report me?”
“Not this time.” He reached out and ran a finger along the blade’s edge. “It’s dull.”
“Better than a spork,” I retorted. “And you saw what I could do with that.”
“Point taken.” Without another word, Cayden opened the door and stepped out. I started to follow suit, then paused. Unhooking the clasp holding the chain and amulet around my neck, I tucked the necklace into a neoprene pouch fastened securely around one calf. Only then did I exit the vehicle. I’d almost lost the necklace in a previous fight and wasn’t willing to risk it again.
“Should I lock?” I asked.
Giving another of his signature barks of laughter, Cayden shook his head. “Unless gators or water moccasins have learned to drive, I’m not too worried. Besides,” he added, brandishing the key, “this thing has a dead switch. You don’t have it, you don’t start the car.” He tucked it into the back pocket of his khakis.
In an attempt to distract myself from the fear racing through my body, I deliberately checked out how well those pants fit his admirable ass. It almost worked, which is a testament to what a great butt Cayden possessed.
The air was thick and heavy. Rotting vegetation with an underlying sweet-sour fleshy decay underneath. No breeze, no sounds, not even the persistent buzz of mosquitoes. I heard something splashing in water a few yards away, but the vegetation was too thick to offer me a glance. It was also just… wrong. Decay. Colors and shapes that made no sense. The Spanish moss hung like cobwebs, and everything had an unhealthy sheen, as if coated with slime.
We set off along the path. My Converse high tops sunk into the mud, squelching with each step. And each step became increasingly difficult to pull out, as if the muck wanted to keep me there. To hold me in place until something could come and plant me permanently.
“Is it just me,” I said carefully, “or does it feel like this crap is made of sentient Gorilla Glue?”
“You’re not far off the mark.”
“Somehow I’m not finding that comforting.“
“You shouldn’t.” Cayden grinned. He had a weird sense of humor. “Just keep moving. You don’t want to stand in one place for any length of time. It’s not quite sentient enough to reach up and grab you, but if you stop and give it a chance to get your scent, that changes the game.”
“Nal would live in a gross and skanky place, wouldn’t he?” I muttered.
“What did you expect?”
“Just because you’re evil, doesn’t mean you have to be a slob.”
“I’m sure he’ll appreciate the housekeeping tips.”
Our tepid banter fell flat in the unnaturally still atmosphere. Or maybe we just weren’t that funny. Either way, the farther along the path we ventured, the more my hackles raised and the back of my neck burned. If I’ve been wearing the amulet, it would’ve been lit up like Frodo’s blade.
We weren’t in the real world anymore, or at least what most people think of as a real world. This was a strange bubble suspended inside reality, where Ol’ Nal could live without fear of discovery. A place where he could retreat after venturing into our reality to steal the innocent for his meals.
The path grew narrower, as if trying to fool anyone stupid enough to wander this way that it was going to end any second, convincing them to turn back. The muck beneath our feet became bolder, hungrier. Tree branches snagged our clothing and hair, bringing to mind the forest in Snow White before she reached the safety of the Seven Dwarves’ home.
An enterprising tangle of twigs dipped into my hair, snagging and snarling in my increasingly loose braid. It stalled me long enough for the ooze beneath my feet to establish a firm grip before I realized what it was doing. The carnivorous mud started nuzzling the exposed skin above my ankle socks, like a disgusting snot monster pretending to be a puppy.
I smacked at the twigs entwined in my hair, getting several puncture wounds in the palm of my hand. The branches seemed to twist so that they held on ever more firmly, stubbornly refusing to give way.
“Son of a bitch!” I swore. The mud moved farther up my shins, making it feel as if I was wearing rapidly drying cement shoes. I had no plans to swim with the fishes, though, or whatever otherworldly equivalent lay beneath the muck.
Holding the sword as if it were a fancy machete, I started whacking away at the underbrush. Arriving at the same idea, Caden used his knife to similar effect. I didn’t think it was my imagination when the branches seem to recoil as others were lopped off.
Good. Let the evil Disney trees be afraid.
“Braid or bark?” Cayden inquired, his tone as relaxed as if asking if I preferred red or white wine.
“Bark, please,” I replied, appreciating that he’d asked. I liked my hair.
Cayden obliged by grabbing the opportunistic branch and chopping through it with two quick hacks. The branchlets entrapping me immediately stopped writhing, going all stiff and easy to pluck out of my hair. Grabbing me around my waist, Cayden gave a hard tug, pulling me out of the mud. Miraculously, my shoes stayed on my feet. A fetid smell swept upward from where I had been trapped, and I wasn’t sure if I could ever get the stink out of the shoes or jeans. Or skin. I’d worry about that later.
A sense of urgency pressed down on me, as if an internal clock was ticking, speeding up with each passing moment. Time was of the essence if there was to be any hope of retrieving Tikka alive and unharmed. If that didn’t happen, I swore inwardly, I was going to make Ol’ Nal pay for what he’d done, past and present.
I’d make him suffer for every kill he’d ever made.
The path cinched in until it was no wider than a foot at best. Using our respective blades to hack our way through, Cayden and I finally reached what looked like a dead end. Refusing to give up, I pushed through the twisted foliage dripping with… well, I didn’t want to know what, and the path abruptly widened, opening into a clearing with more threatening-looking trees.
It was a yard that looked like something out of Better Homes and Gardens for Cthulhu. Weeds grew in scattered clumps. There were flowers of sorts, but even that was too cheerful a description for the bloated, scabrous things that grew there. Meaty purple and red blooms that looked as if someone had sliced open bodies and planted the organs and viscera, which had improbably flourished. The smell that floated up from them was even worse than the odor left by the mud.
“No sane person should ever have to see this,” I muttered. I glanced up at Cayden, and saw that unholy gleam in his eyes, the one that told me sanity wasn’t an issue.
There was a building on the other side of the clearing, which made the dilapidated house we’d used in Voodoo Wars look like a palatial estate. The porch was warped so badly I doubted we could step on it without our feet going through rotted boards. Hellish cypress trees swayed in a half circle around the back and sides of the structure, and pools of murky water lapped gently against bubbling mud. Even as I watched, one of the bubbles rose up higher than the others and burst, releasing a smell that nearly made me vomit.
Moving closer, we saw slime the color of diseased mucus coating the shack, along with a blackish-green mold. Ribbons of sickly-looking moss intermingled with the fungus that clung to the wood. The whole structure looked almost organic, as if it had grown there rather than having been built.
Home sweet home for Nalusa Falaya.
“Is that shack going to try to eat us too?” I asked in an undertone.
“We won’t know until we go inside.”
“Great,” I replied. “Thanks.”
We walked through a patch of weeds and immediately I felt something trying to burrow into my leg through the denim of my jeans. Swearing, I grabbed what looked like a foxtail on steroids, yanked it out of the denim before it penetrated skin, and tossed it to the ground. I grabbed a few more that hadn’t quite gotten purchase on the fabric, quickly pitching them away, and took care to avoid the clumps.
“I have been to some creepy places and seen some really disgusting things,” I observed, “but this is the new number one on my ‘never again’ list.” Then I froze, holding my breath. A sound carried from inside the shack
Something between a child’s wail of terror and the scream of a cornered cat.
It cut off abruptly. Before I could leap forward, Cayden grabbed my arm.
“I have your back,” he said.
He let go.
“I know,” I replied, and I ran.
Almost immediately I felt something grab my shoulder from behind, and heard Cayden’s berserker roar, followed by the sound of something that made a squelching, meaty sound as his blade cut into it. The grip loosened, and I sprang for the porch without looking back, not daring to let my feet rest in one place for more than a second at a time.
The rotting boards began to give way beneath me, so I hauled ass like Indiana Jones. My left ankle twisted slightly, nearly plunging that leg through the unforgiving splinters of wood. I felt them stab at me, and pulled my foot out before they could find purchase.
There wasn’t a knob or handle on the shack’s front door, but I wouldn’t have used it anyway. Instead, I launched myself forward, putting all the power of my body into the heel of my right foot as I led with a side kick. The wood didn’t so much shatter as collapse inward, the door popping off its frame. It hit the floor, sending clouds of dust and debris pluming into the air.
I stepped inside, my gaze sweeping the interior.
A small rust-stained cage squatted in one corner.