Enchantress
Barataria
The water was black and still.
Something, though, was coming.
She knew it.
She always did.
“Mistress…”
“Hush,” Loa ordered.
The man fell back to silence.
She heard the rustling of his shirt and the crack of his leather belt as he shifted on the floor where he’d been sitting. Uneasy.
He had drunk, she could tell. The stench of rum and tobacco on his breath mixed with rotting marsh and the damp wood of the shipwreck.
They all drank before they came to her.
To find the guts.
Loa could feel his eyes grazing her long, bare legs, her dark skin glistening in the water-thick air of the bayou. His gaze traveled up her thigh, between her legs. It lingered on the slit of her silk gown, where his hand would never dare.
Loa slowly raised her head.
She could see his desire straining against the crotch of his trousers, his chest heaving, slick with sweat, eyes dark with lust.
And fear.
A hint of a smile touched her lips.
“Come to me, my pretty” she murmured.
The man swallowed hard and gestured as if he were to obey.
Loa shot him a marble glare. “Not you.”
The man stopped at once.
Then, a moist sound made him turn.
Something heavy and sleek, sliding on wet woodboards.
“Come to me,” Loa repeated.
The man stiffened. A massive shadow slithered beside him, making him shiver.
He did not scream, though: he knew what it was.
Everyone knew.
Everyone knew that when Loa called, they came.
It moved slowly.
Loa leaned back against her seat, settling back against the velvet cushions, elbows resting on the armrests. Her legs uncrossed and she spread her knees.
Waiting.
“Come.”
The large python blindly crept toward her across the floor as if hypnotized.
The man’s eyes went wide.
The snake curled at her feet, feeling around her ankles.
Then it moved up.
One inch at a time.
Scales against skin, coils tightening around her calf.
Then around her thigh.
Cold blood. Hot flesh.
The reptile’s tongue darted out, feeling its way up.
Loa spread her legs wider as the python slid under her black dress, its thick length slowly rubbing against her groin. She rolled her hips to meet its touch while her eyes never left the man’s.
He looked like he had forgotten how to breathe. The bulge in his pants was throbbing.
“Do you like what you see?”
He tried to open his mouth, but no sound came from it.
“Answer me.”
“Yeah.”
“Yes?”
The man’s gaze travelled down the low neckline of her dress, as the snake wrapped around her waist, then brushed around her full breasts, its scales teasing her hardened nipples.
“Yes, Mistress.” He swallowed. “I do.”
Her tone changed in a beat. “Then look.”
She leaned forward, her hands hovering over the basin she had set on the low table in front of her.
The liquid surface rippled, as if something beneath it had stirred.
Loa plunged her hands in it, closing her eyes. The water was eerily cold in the bayou heat.
And then she appeared.
A young woman. Fair. Golden hair falling to her waist.
The swamp.
An open book, the wind flipping its pages. Backwards, then forward again.
Sand swirling inside an hourglass.
And Him, next to her.
Loa sprang from her chair.
Her movement was so abrupt that the man jumped to his feet, panic flooding his face.
She looked him in the eye. “Do not let her in.”
“Mistress?”
Loa rounded the table and drew closer, the python settling around her shoulders like a shawl.
“There will come a girl,” she said. “She is yours.”
He blinked, and Loa continued: “You and your men can do whatever you want with her. Fuck her. Kill her. Both. I do not care.” Her voice dropped, turning almost metallic with anger. “But do not let her near the Swamp King… Or you will answer to me.”
