Blood of the Earth by Faith Hunter Read Free Book Online

the cold stealing my life’s warmth, but burying me in the earth of my woods. I found a second root with my other hand, this one larger. A poplar tree root as big around as my lower arm, tiny rootlets feathering off into the soil. This one pulsed with life like a fire hose, full and potent.
    With the two roots in hand, I could follow every life source in the forest, every bird, rat, snake, beaver, red deer, lynx in a distant tree, watching prey, and the wrongness that stalked my land. Jackie. Joshua. Brother Ephraim, dying overhead, all wrong. Paka, Wrong. And Rick LaFleur. He was still human-shaped, moving among the trees, silent and stealthy, more so than any human I’d ever known. He was closing on Jackie. He had the churchman’s scent. With him, on his shoulder, was a large rodent or small cat, another life force not seen here before, its energies wrapped around Rick’s.
Cat on the dash of the car.
Such wasted thoughts amid everything wrong that was poised to erupt into some new thing, something so very dangerous.
    Above, Paka left the body of Brother Ephraim in the limbs and began moving through the trees, leaping from huge limb to huge limb, from tree to tree, silent, except for that double purr growing closer. It reverberated through the trunks of the poplar grove and into my bones. Paka was a wrongness here in the Appalachian Mountains, the trees resisting her. I feared that my woods might hurt her like they’d hurt Joshua. Instinctively I reached out to her through the trees, accepting her, pulling her in close to me, making her part of the land. It was the same thing I did when I put seeds or a plant’s roots into the soil; I claimed them for the land. In the same way I claimed Paka, giving her access to every part of the woods, making her part of them. Like the trees and plants, I could use her to help me as I desired. But I knew that by claiming her, I was also accepting responsibility for her actions. This was the good and the bad of living in Soulwood.
    Joshua pulled his legs up under his body, in preparation to stand. “I said, take off your clothes, woman.”
    From all around came a sound that had never belonged in this forest, a sound that was powerful and terrifying. Not a roar like an African lion, but like the dark of a moonless night, half scream, half rumble, a hacking, growling roar that spoke of death and menace. Joshua cringed and looked around. Paka had moved fast through the canopy of trees.
    Overhead I caught a glimpse of a soaring hawk as it dove, hurtling through the limbs, half closing his wings. He tilted his body up, his claws opening, reaching. He caught a squirrel in his talons, the prey silent, swiftly crushed to death. The hawk spread his wings and flapped past me, to settle on a branch above Joshua. It ripped into the still warm body of the rodent and tore off a strip of bloody meat, the raptor staring down at Joshua as it ate. The squirrel’s blood splattered as it died. I knew it because of the roots I clutched, because they knew it, because the forest knew it all. Almost a whisper, Joshua demanded a third time, “Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
    I lifted my face and smiled at him, eyes only half-open, lips closed, demure, like the womenfolk were trained. “Nooo,” I said, drawing out the word.
    Overhead the hawk paused, seeing the movement of a black shadow in the tall branches.
Paka
. Stealthy. Just above me. Her paws padding along a limb, about twenty feet away from Joshua. I had seen her leap onto my house. Joshua was well within Paka’s range. I wasn’t gonna have to kill this man, or not alone, at any rate. I laughed, the tone low and mocking. Slowly I added, “And if you touch me again, I’ll make you shit your britches,
boy
.”
    Joshua stood, the shotgun gripped so tightly in his hands that his knuckles went white. A drop of something fell from above and hit him, square on his head. Joshua flinched and raised one hand, letting go, holding the gun by the barrel only.