I called to the blood on the earth and to the life draped high above. And I plunged my hand through the splattered blood, into the soil, fingernails breaking with the impact. I pulled on the blood, on the body hanging above me, drawing the life force to me, gathering it as if webbed between my fingers, which were buried in the dirt. I hovered my other hand over it, holding the life force like a ball of light balanced atop the ground, between my two hands a single tether of life, still secured to the body above. And I felt Ephraim begin to pass away, his spirit falling, disentangling from his body. His life force shuddering through the air. My magic caught it, pulling it to me and across my flesh like a caress, or a promise, or a threat, heated and icy both, into a glowing ball that held together, for a moment. Brother Ephraim began to slide away from me, into the ground. The process was slow and purposeful, my mind focused. The life force slid past me, clutching at me as it went, trying to slow its passage, screaming deep into the dark beneath.
The woods shivered, the soil moving in fractions of inches, fast and furious. Drinking the life away. Claiming the soul as its own. Things fell from the branch above, hitting the ground around me, bouncing, breaking, fracturing, and crumbling to powder. Bones. Hair in short strands. Fingernails. Clothes. Boots. Crumbling and sifting into piles and then into the dirt, sucked down. Along with the soul I’d stolen to feed Soulwood. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
And so I fed the life of Brother Ephraim into the earth.
This was resolute. Deliberate. This was judgment. Utter. Complete. And I didn’t care. Even knowing that this power made me evil, far more evil than a witch, no matter what the Scriptures might say. Scriptures that had no mention of my kind anywhere in them. I’d looked.
The limbs above shook and trembled. Leaves rustled hungrily. Time passed. The earth stilled. Satisfied. Pleased. Aware . . .
I breathed in, smelling loam and water. Hearing the trickle of spring water. Night had fallen, dark and thick with promise, threat, and gratification. I stood and brushed my hand off on my damp clothes. My fingertips were bleeding, blood dripping onto the ground, but as I watched, the skin healed over, clean and new. I was no longer cold; I felt warm and sated and relaxed, the power still pulsing in me. I didn’t know what that might mean, but it felt good. The church would call me witch and evil and murderess and burn me at the stake. But the church wasn’t here. And the law enforcement officer who was here? He’d never tell what he knew or thought he knew, because if he did, Paka’s secret would be out—that she had hunted a human and eaten of him. And that fact would forever alter the precarious balance of humans, paranormal creatures, and law enforcement in the United States.
I stood over the place where Brother Ephraim had vanished and quoted Shakespeare. “‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? . . . If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ You’re gone now, Brother Ephraim, into a life of my choosing and my judgment.” The ground beneath me went still, leaving the woods hushed and silent as the grave.
I considered Paka, a black smear on the night, and said, “You didn’t eat much of Ephraim, so I reckon you’re hungry. I have a venison roast in the freezer. I can thaw it and cook it for you to eat in human form, or let you eat it raw in cat form.” Paka yawned, showing me her teeth, white in the night. I wasn’t sure what answer that was, but I turned and led the way through the woods, back to the house. Paka followed in my path, her huge paws silent on the earth.
* * *
Rick, Paka, and I were sitting around the table, silent, me finally warm and dry, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, drinking homemade wine bottled by Sister Erasmus. She was my maw-maw’s friend, and her wine was delicious, at least to me; I’d had two and a half glasses, leaving me tipsy, twirling my goblet in my fingers, sleepy, like the forest surrounding the house. The goblets had thick stems and deep bowls, earthenware that had been hand-thrown by a local woman, cooked in a wood-fired kiln, and glazed in greens and browns with touches of blue. I’d had the goblets for two years, having traded vegetables and herbs for them, just because I liked them. I’d never used them until now, making do with water glasses or empty Mason jars. Company deserved better. The night itself deserved better.
Paka, in her human form, poured another few ounces into my goblet and I sipped, the wine dark and rich, which I liked, though Rick had called the wine too sweet. I hadn’t bothered to learn much about wines, knowing I’d never have a chance to try the expensive good ones, but I had considered growing grapes for local vintners. I figured my land would grow better grapes than any place in Europe. I could plant an acre, maybe two, in the front yard, if I was of a mind, and watch over it through the front window.
Paka finished off the small venison roast, which was bloody in the center and too tough, from being still frozen when it went into the oven to thaw in heated stew juices. But she didn’t seem to notice or care. Eyes dark and hooded, Rick watched her as she sliced off pieces of the roast and picked them up with her fingers, eating with dainty movement but no manners. He seemed entranced by her, but not like a normal man in the presence of a beautiful, wild woman. More as if he was pulled to her, like the moon to the Earth, held in her orbit, but always separate. I couldn’t guess at the nature of their relationship, but whatever their bond was, peace wasn’t part of it.
Paka looked at him, and slid one slender finger out of her mouth. It was unconsciously alluring, until she spoiled it with the words, “His blood, the blood of the man, it was . . . wrong.”
“We can talk about that later,” Rick murmured.
I frowned, remembering the feel of Ephraim’s life as it slid along my skin. “Metallic,” I said. “His blood smelled and felt, metallic and tart, like pennies soaked in vinegar.” Rick didn’t reply. I looked out into the dark, beyond the creature they called Pea, sitting in the windowsill, staring into the night through the glass, its tail twitching slowly. Not a cat tail—too short and too thick for that. And too neon green for any mammal on Earth. Parrot green maybe, or pea green, after which it had been named. It had hidden its huge claws, which had to be magic, because they were longer than its feet. Not an Earth creature. Something from somewhere else. If the church was right, the only other places for beings to come from were heaven and hell, but Pea looked like she—I wasn’t sure about its gender and neither were the others, but they called her female—belonged to neither. Rather, she looked like something out of a fairy tale, one of the old stories, fluffy on the surface but dark and bloody underneath.
I pulled the blanket tighter around my shoulders, glad for the warm clothes and mostly dry hair. Glad for the Waterford Stanley cookstove. Glad for a roof over my head and a house that was mine alone. Glad to have my guns back at the windows where they belong and not left outside in the raised beds, abandoned. Glad to be alive.
Not happy about the damage to the house. I’d have the insurance company out tomorrow afternoon, and I’d have to find a way to pay the deductible. I knew exactly how much cash I had on hand and it came to enough to pay for a single pane of window glass. I hadn’t looked at the other mess, the damage inside. The dollar signs were adding up fast and I hadn’t even gone to work for Rick yet. It could only get worse. I would be smart to kick them to the curb, but I couldn’t. We were bound now, in a way, by the death of Brother Ephraim, and by my claiming Paka. I didn’t know what I could do about any of it.
Having people in my house was unexpected. Except for a rare townie customer looking for an herbal remedy, I’d been alone here since John died. I’d gotten used to the feel of the floor beneath my feet, untouched by the vibrations of other people walking, used to the empty table and chairs. The silence. Used to washing only one plate. One glass. One fork or spoon.
In theory, after John died, I could have left, sold the land to a development company, moved to the city. But I stayed here, probably foolishly, waiting to see if my sisters would ever come to their senses and run away from the cult, f
rom their lives in multiwife marriages, to freedom.
Now there were people here and the house felt full, as if it needed to stretch to contain us all. The dirty dishes on the table were . . . more. The noise was more. The more I might have had if John had given me children. But he hadn’t been able to give his wives babies and the others had requested divorce, which he’d granted, and left him for other men, all except Leah. She had died here in the farmhouse, in the bed in the biggest bedroom on the south side of the house, leaving John alone except for me. Later he had died in that same bed. I hated that bed but I hadn’t been able to throw it out. Instead, I slept on the sofa or in the small cot in the loft that had been mine since I came here. Or on the screened porch in the hammock. I slept with guns at every window. I slept safe, for the most part. Safe, but alone.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” Rick asked, his tone gentle.
“About what?” I asked. Tears pricked my eyes and I stood quickly, dipping my head forward so my wet hair slid over my face and shoulders and down to my hands as I cleared the table. “About what happened in the woods? What my life was like with John? Why I left the church? Why I still live here?” I glanced at him as I stood and stacked the heavy stoneware, none too gently. The clank of pottery and the clink of utensils sounded thunderous in the silent house. “What do you want to know?”
Rick tilted his head, observing me, his black eyes still kind. No man had ever been kind or gentle to me. Not even John, no matter that he’d loved me, saved me. He’d never been tender even when he finally took me to wife at age fifteen—he hadn’t known how to be. But he’d given me freedom and safety and that was worth so much more than any kind of gentleness that there might have been.
I set the dishes in the sink and put the vegetable leftovers into the steel composter on the back porch, the meat scraps and juices into a separate tin, wiped off the plates. I stopped, staring out into the night, letting my senses free. Impressions came from the woods, fast and intense, much more so than only yesterday. The trees were happy, satisfied, alert, though not in any way that a human might have understood. Back at the sink, I piled up the dirty dishes, and realized that my tie to the woods was stronger. I had known for a long time that I wasn’t strictly human. Hadn’t been in years. Maybe forever. But this . . . this was different. This was more . . . more whatever I was.
And with the sensations coming at me from the woods, I also had to think about the fact that I had killed a man tonight. One who would have died anyway. But still.
That should have made me afraid, or shamed, or shocked, or . . . something negative. Instead, it made me happy—fiercely, ferociously happy. But that knowledge was mine alone, not something to share with strangers, no matter that we now shared the knowledge of the death of Brother Ephraim.
I turned on the spigot that let water into the farmhouse sink from the woodstove’s water heater. It steamed in the air as it gathered. I added soap and watched bubbles rise.
“Nell?” Rick prodded. Gentle. His voice so tender. No wonder he was a heartbreaker.
“I was always different,” I said, without looking back at them, “from the other women. I wanted to read books, to spend time in the gardens or the greenhouses, rather than in the sewing rooms or the kitchens or the nursery, chatting and gossiping. I never wanted the things the other girls did: a husband and a passel of children. I wanted a man who would treat me with respect, who would marry me according to the laws of the land instead of the laws of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. A man who would wait to bed me until I was of age.” I turned off the water and bowed my head, my hair sliding against me, still damp and chilled.
“When I was twelve, Colonel Ernest Jackson—Jackie’s father—asked my father for my hand in marriage.” I began washing the plates, my face firmly turned away from my guests. “I waited until Sunday and told the colonel no, in front of God and everybody, in front of the whole church. Made a ruckus, I did. I told him I’d rather marry a horse’s backside, though I wasn’t so polite about it. And then I ran out.”
Rick said nothing. I didn’t look his way.
“I guess Jane Yellowrock told you about the colonel kidnapping vampires and drinking their blood.” Rick didn’t move, not even the smallest bit, but Paka, who sat within the range of my vision, glowered at her mate. “It’s common knowledge that he and his cronies did it for Jackie Jr., to save him from a cancer. They must a also figured out how it gave the old men power in the bedroom. They kept kidnapping and drinking off and on until Jane finally put a stop it. I figure the colonel was drinking undead blood about the time he wanted me. Feeling his oats.
“Anyway, I was in trouble and afraid. I hid in the barn after the scene in the church. I was still there when John Ingram and his wife, Leah, wandered in and found me. We got to talking, him and his wife and me. Leah was sick and dying. Everyone knew it. And because John hadn’t given her children, she would be alone in her dying. So. She suggested John marry himself a nurse for her, someone young and strong and independent, who might not mind never having young’uns. They proposed to me, and promised that I wouldn’t have to take up my wifely duties until I turned fifteen. I accepted.”
In the silence of the great room, I finished washing and rinsing the plates and stacked them on the wood dish drainer that John had made in the church’s woodworking shop years ago. For Leah. Everything in this house had been made for Leah or one of his other wives, not me. But I was the one who’d ended up with it all. Life was puzzling. Unpredictable. But one thing was sure. The meek didn’t ever inherit the Earth. I wasn’t meek. And I had the land. The others were dead and gone, and it was mine according to the law of the United States and the state of Tennessee and according to the land itself. Leah had been gone since I was nearly fifteen. John had been dead since I was nineteen. More than three years I had been alone. So maybe it was time and past time to claim the house and the things in it too, to make them mine. To maybe move from the tiny half bed to a bigger one, to make a room my own.
No one was talking and the water wasn’t hot enough, so I dried my hands and opened the wood box on the side of the stove. I put a single split log inside, turning the bottom damper almost closed, the top damper shut tight. The log, sitting on the coals, would last all night, and leave me plenty of coals to start a fire in the morning. It would also heat the water. That was the first thing I’d learned when I came here, as John’s affianced wife—how to maintain the stove and its attached water heater, how to do maintenance on the windmill that ran the well pump, how to check the cistern, how to pump water by hand when needed. Chores, arduous work. But worth it for the freedom they had offered me.
“I never loved John,” I said, “not the way library books say is possible, all that passion and kissing and stuff, but John and me had married in the eyes of the church. I respected him and loved Leah, and nursed her through her dying, and I gifted him with my virtue and my honor when I came of age, according to the church.” I’d not been happy to go to John’s bed, but I had been grateful enough for his protection that I’d gone willingly at age fifteen. “Leah hadn’t been in the grave a good year when John took sick and the men of the church came sniffing around, knowing he was dying, hoping to get his land.” One of whom I had killed, my first sacrifice to the earth of Soulwood, but that wasn’t to be shared, ever. And I would never know who had attacked me. Half a dozen backsliders left the church that year. Coulda been any one of ’em. “When I turned eighteen, we married again, this time according to the law of the state of Tennessee.
“I nursed John as best I could, and kept him alive longer than the doctors said was possible. And when he was gone, I inherited Soulwood.” I rinsed the last of the dishes in tepid water.
“Why do you stay here?” Rick asked.
My shoulders went back stiffly. “I stay to honor John and because my sisters are still part of the church.”
And I also stayed, despite the danger from th
e churchmen, because the land and I were tangled together. Tighter now than only hours past.
I turned to my guests. “What do you want with me? Everything, this time, not just the easy stuff, asking questions. What about that consulting you talked about? What’s that really mean?”
Rick glanced at Paka, who had moved to sit at the kitchen table with my cats, one on her lap and the other sleeping on her shoulders, and back to me. Instead of answering my question, he asked another one himself. “What did you do with the man Paka killed?”
Pea turned at the question and gathered herself. She leaped all the way from the window to the back of the sofa. With another single leap, she landed on the table, sauntered up to Paka, and butted her in the nose. Paka hissed at her and batted her away, in the manner of cats.
I said, “Paka didn’t kill him. I never laid a hand or a weapon on him. He died of nature. And he’ll never be found.” If Rick the cop thought I meant natural causes, so be it.
“You buried him?”
“Persistent, ain’t ya?”
He pointed to himself and gave a half smile. “Cop.” It was a charming expression, black eyes flashing with good humor, showing the man he might have been once, before life, before loving Jane Yellowrock, and maybe before being magically tied to Paka, who seemed to be sucking him dry of life and happiness, like some kind of spiritual vampire he couldn’t get away from.
“There was no chance of Brother Ephraim surviving. He passed away but not at Paka’s hands.” I firmed my lips. “No one will ever find a single cell of his body or thread of his clothes.”