Blood of the Earth by Faith Hunter Read Free Book Online Page B

be. It wasn’t a happy love. It was addled.
Addicted
.
    I remembered my sense of Paka as a tamer of cats. Paka had magic, and her magic was . . . I shook my head slightly, trying to figure it out in time to avoid whatever was primed to happen here, hovering over us like the sword of death.
    “I smell her victim’s blood,” Rick said dully. “His bowels have opened. His bladder gave way.” Rick took a shaking breath, the sound broken. He looked up into the trees, as if trying to locate Ephraim. “The stench of death rides the breeze.” His tone made me think of poetry, as if he were quoting something.
    “But if Paka hurt a human and he
didn’t
die at her fangs,” I said, “
and
he didn’t turn into a werecat, then what?” At my words, Joshua whimpered, as if the claws at his neck and face tightened.
    “The only way that could happen would be if someone else killed him before he died at Paka’s fangs.” And then Rick’s eyes tightened and I knew his thoughts had taken a turn, hopefully to follow mine.
    I closed my eyes and wrapped my fingers tighter around the roots, letting them speak to me about the body so high overhead. Brother Ephraim was near death, his heart racing, his breath so light and thin that scarcely any air moved through his lungs. So much blood drenching the tree branch, falling onto the ground in quiet splatters, the forest soaking it up, waiting for me to feed it fully. “Brother Ephraim is nearly dead,” I said, “but not quite.”
    “Pea . . . ,” Rick said, his voice clotted with emotion, his face showing conflict and pain. He didn’t love Paka. But he was tied to her.
Magic,
I thought.
    I shivered, my hands still buried in the clay, my fingers still gripping the roots, the power of the forest still flowing through me. “My choice,” I said to them, my eyes on Pea. At the words, a foreign emotion flooded me, engulfing me. I gasped once, like a drowning victim thrown into an icy stream. The sensation flashed through me, a raging flood, steeling my breath. Something powerful, primeval, elusive. Far more than I could grasp. It washed over and through me and away, a flash flood, too much, too potent, to really comprehend. And it trickled away, leaving nothing.
    They were looking at me strangely and, not sure what had happened, I finished the thought, “
My
land,” I said, the words ringing strangely. “
My
enemies.
My
judgment
.” I knew something had happened, but it was gone, fleeting and intense.
    The little green thing chittered at me, as if waiting for me to say something more, so I did, drawing on the ancient emotion that had washed through me. “He’s dying. There’s no way to get him to a hospital in time. But this is my land, my woods. And he’s my enemy, who came to do evil to me, just like Joshua Purdy”—I inclined my head to the pile of rock—“came to do evil to me.
    “Paka’s fangs haven’t spilled his blood, just her claws, so he’s safe from weretaint, right?”
    Rick nodded, the movement jerky.
    “So it’s just Brother Ephraim, who’s dying.” But the biggest problem wasn’t Ephraim or Joshua. Jackie was in my woods, drawing close. I didn’t have long to save Paka, who had saved me. To do so, I’d have use my strongest magic for the second time in my life. I didn’t know if I could stem the flow, once I set it free.
    And Joshua had bled on the land too.

T HREE
    Pea chittered at me, trying to say something I couldn’t understand.
    I tilted my head, my wet hair clinging to me with cold. My body felt numb rather than frozen, which meant I was hypothermic. “Brother Ephraim, who is near death, once controlled the punishment house,” I explained to the furious green critter. “It’s the place where women were sent to be reminded that they were only the helpmeet, not the man, that they were born to do and be and feel and live as their menfolk told them.
    “He had my mother one time, for a whole day. She came back changed, crying in the