“By power of water, wind, sky and sea, I ask the Goddess to stick this here ear back onto thee!” A small jet of shimmering blue light exited the wand’s tip and concentrated around the joining of the fawn’s ear and skull.
Relief washed over her when she released the ear and it stayed put. “There!” she said, fully aware of the note of hysteria in her own voice. “See? It’s okay. It’s okay.”
And it was.
Until its other ear fell off.
Followed by the small white flag of its tail. And its foreleg below the knee.
Moira sucked in a lungful of air, her throat closing over a sudden sob. “I broke it! I broke a baby deer!”
Her lament was cut short when pain, sudden and sharp, invaded her hand.
She looked down, unable to reconcile what she was seeing and feeling.
The fawn had latched on to the meat of her palm, shaking its head like a hound with a rat.
“Why, you ungrateful little fucker! How dare—”
And then she saw its eyes.
Glowing a putrid yellow, the dark pupils stretching into cat-like vertical strips.
She had seen these eyes before. Had seen this look before. Bubbling with festering hatred.
Lucy.
Agony climbed Moira’s arm like shards of ice, robbing her of breath as darkness and despair poured into her heart.
“Ain’t no demon deer bites my Moira Jo!” Uncle Sal shouted, barreling toward them, his knife raised high and Cheeto right on his heels. “Prepare yerself to get wrassled, Bambi!”
“Salvador! Move!” Nick roared. His eyes had become glowing amber, his flaming arrow pointed straight at the deer’s flank. But Uncle Sal was directly in the arrow’s path and showed no signs of changing course.
They went down in a heap, tangled legs and flying fur and the blinding flash of one of Cheeto’s fire balls.
Sal sank his teeth into the fawn’s shank and it turned loose of Moira’s hand, bleating in pain. “Ha!” Sal said, hooting in triumph. “How do you like it, you mangy-ass sum’ bitch?”
Suddenly free of the searing pain, Moira reached up to shift the fawn’s unnatural weight from her chest.
The impact had pealed a patch of pelt the fawn’s flank, strips hanging down like torn velvet. Silvery white cartilage gleamed from the exposed muscle. And just as she pulled her fingers away from the slick, slimy ribs, Nick’s arrow found its mark between them.
The fawn shrieked and writhed, a foul black smoke pouring from its mouth before it jerked and flopped over to the side.
Uncle Sal, five-time champion of the hog wrasslin’ pit, gained his feet with surprising swiftness, reaching down to help Moira do the same.
Nick sidled up to them, giving Cheeto a wide berth.
Together, they stared down at the discarded fawn husk. Singed, smoking, and missing several vital parts.
“You realize what this means,” Nick said.
“That I ought to throw the deer carcasses I picked up near the dock overboard?” Sal asked.
“It means that Lucy knows,” Nick said. “She knows that we know about the prophecy. She knows that you’ve been chosen.”
“You’re talkin’ about the devil, ain’t you?” Sal looked from Moira to Nick as he asked this. His face guileless, his hair clumping with the damp sea air like wet crow feathers.
Moira’s heart warmed as she looked at her uncle. Common man that he was, so completely willing to accept the extraordinary. A simple gullibility that people often mocked. Never had there been a human more perfectly suited to fish her out of the bayou. To accept her exactly for what she was. What she would always be.
