Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

  Tandy’s mouth was open; I thought he might be screaming. I reached out with both hands and pulled him into my arms, wrapping myself around him. I shoved emotion into him the same way I might shove purpose into a seed—grow, be content, all is well. Tandy shuddered and I felt him take a breath. I tightened my arms around him and wrapped my legs around him too, keeping him safe. Claiming him.

  Over the roaring deafness in my ears, I heard Rick shouting orders. He and two others raced from the room. I didn’t look up. I didn’t move until Tandy tapped my forearm and wriggled free. He gestured me and Paka—who I hadn’t even noticed—into the next room, which he locked behind us. This room had two beds, no seating area, no kitchen. The bed linens were made, though the room was lived-in and smelled musky with male sweat. Tandy and Occam’s room. This one had no bullet holes, and Tandy pushed Paka and me to the floor between the two beds. He pulled pillows and a blanket off one bed and over us. Then he pulled a mattress over us too, like a fort the young’uns might make on rainy days. I didn’t think it would be much protection but I didn’t object. It was better than the nothing we’d had. Pea chittered and inspected the mattress fort with the playful energy of kitten.

  Paka repositioned the pillows, patting them like a cat might, until the shape pleased her, then pulled me against her body and curled around me, sliding the blanket over us. It was dark in the cavern of pillows and blankets. It felt safe though we clearly weren’t. Tandy spooned into me from my other side, pulling Paka’s arms and mine around him. His skin was cold and his flesh beneath flaccid. Belatedly terrified, feeling all our fear.

  Something dampened my clothes at my waist. Carefully I said, “Paka, you’uns bleeding.”

  “It is nothing. I will shift and heal.”

  “The others?”

  “I smell blood. But not death.”

  “Okay. That’s good, I reckon. Tandy?” I asked. He made a mewling sound of terror, his breath panting, heart racing, pounding against his rib cage. I forced myself to think. To figure out what needed to be done. “I’m okay. Paka says the others are going to be fine.” I crossed my fingers at the interpretive lie. “I want you to become calm.” I pushed a feeling of tranquility into him. The mewling sound stopped. After a few breaths, Tandy’s skin grew marginally warmer.

  He said, “Thank you.”

  I nodded, knowing he could feel my movement in the dark. “I thank you for getting us in here and safe. You done goo—did well.” My ears were coming back on because over the ringing in them, I heard sirens in the distance. Later, I heard Rick and police officers. Tandy eased us out of the little mattress fort he had made and pushed the mattress back into place. He gave us each a bottle of water, and I realized that Tandy might have some type of compulsion ability himself, because I was suddenly thirsty. I drank the whole bottle and followed him back into the main room, while Paka shifted and healed herself.

  It was a mess, covered in Paka’s blood and debris from the shooting. I stood in the doorway with Tandy observing as Rick talked to the local police and to the hotel manager while being bandaged by a paramedic. I understood that the rooms were a crime scene and the unit would have to vacate the premises. PsyLED was no longer welcome in the hotel. The police said that we might not be safe anywhere in the city and should consider moving to a safe house, which they could arrange by tomorrow night. That was going to mean twenty-four hours living and sleeping in the van.

  I heard myself say, “You can sleep at my place. You can’t use your cells or the Internet, but I’ll know if anyone comes onto the property.” Instantly I wished I hadn’t spoken, but it was too late. Just that fast, I had houseguests.

  * * *

  I stopped on the way home to pick up money from Old Lady Stevens, trading most of it for a slab of bacon, two dozen eggs, a chicken ready for the pot, and a small beef roast. I would have hours alone at the house before they came. The three mouser cats met me on the porch, mewling and unhappy at having been left outside all day. I opened the door and they raced inside, one of them leaving behind a dead vole on the threshold. I made a face, said, “Thank you,” and kicked it off the porch into the yard. Reaching inside, I turned on a light and closed the door behind me.

  In the kitchen, I put two small pieces of dry firewood into the stove, winter wood to heat the oven fast, but not enough to make it too hot for baking and cooking, and started a double batch of bread. The stove would warm the main rooms well—the distant rooms, not so much, but I had lots of quilts and blankets. I took a quick shower with the leftover tepid water, pulled out a couple dozen splinters I hadn’t noticed until now from my upper arm and applied a salve and thin bandages, filled the water tank, pulled on winter thermal underwear and a pair of overalls for modesty, and put out washcloths and towels. I started coffee, tea, and then put a load of bloody and damaged clothes into the washing machine on the back porch and refilled the water tank again.

  I was still moving fast, as if some part of me didn’t want to slow down, because the PsyLED unit was coming, once they finished with the crime scene experts, filed reports with local police, the FBI, maybe ATF, and the director at PsyLED central. They also had packing to do and showers to take before coming here. It would take them hours.

  I was still in shock at the gunfire attack. And at having invited the team to stay here. And even more shocked that Rick had said yes to a place with no Internet or cell service. But he’d said that no one would expect them to be here, and they could get caught up on paperwork and such. And, though he hadn’t mentioned it, Occam and Paka could race over the mountain ridge in cat form and spy on the church compound. I wasn’t stupid. The location of my property was valuable to them. And they had to wonder if I’d missed something about the church’s involvement.

  Rather than think about my former church affiliation being the main—only?—reason that they had asked me to join the team, I sliced the bacon and placed a dozen slices in a cast-iron frying pan to sizzle slowly, along with peppers and my bean-herb mix. While it cooked, I put clean sheets on all the mattresses, wondering if they’d mind sharing beds. They were all queen-sized beds, so there was plenty of room, but to people who likely grew up with their own rooms and beds, it might smack of an invasion of privacy. To be on the safe side, I rolled up blankets and lay one up the middle of each of the two upstairs beds. Rick and Paka would be downstairs in John’s and Leah’s old room, and I left their bed undivided. I brought my cot downstairs and set it up in the storage nook behind the kitchen, where I could add wood through the night to keep the house warm.

  I filled lanterns and set them in every room, and cleaned and lit the lantern hanging at the landing in the bend in the stairs, to brighten their way. The lanterns were attached to the walls with screws and bolts so they couldn’t be accidentally kicked over in the night. Modern people—nonchurch people—weren’t used to doing without electric lights and if they needed to get up in the night, in an unfamiliar place, the access to more primitive lights would help.

  I had no illusions about how long the stored power would last with so many people here; it wouldn’t be long. A few hours at most. Bigger solar arrays and a battery system hadn’t been something John bothered with, not once he knew that he’d never have children running up and down the stairs and his other wives had left. And I didn’t have the money for an upgrade I would seldom use.

  When the bacon was done I poured the spicy drippings into the beans that had slow-cooked all day, tasted them, chopped the bacon, adding that to the beans too, and placed the pot to the side to keep warm. I liked my beans spicy.

  The church compound had electricity, but most households didn’t use it often, as it tied them to the grid, made them dependent on systems that they believed would eventually disappear. Not the zombie apocalypse, as all the zombie films suggested, but the “illegal and immoral government closing down the electrical grid to punish and control its own citizens.” Stupid thinking, because the be
st way to control humans has always been to give them the things that they want, not deprive them.

  I cleaned my tiny bathroom and moved my few toiletries into the storage nook off the kitchen. I took a look at the cistern up the hill. It was fine, as was the windmill at the back of the property, the sound a soft, accustomed creak in the night wind. I dust mopped the floors and took the rugs outside to shake before deciding that the rooms looked nice enough for company.

  Back inside, I worked the dough again and put it in trays, leaving it to second rise. With the bread from earlier in the week, I’d have six loaves. Beans, rice, bread, and a salad was a full meal for a large number of people. I started the rice cooking and realized that my hands were shaking and I was jittery and uneasy.

  Guns shooting in a hotel.

  People in my house. Overnight.

  Men and women. Guests.

  People. In my house.

  I had made a dreadful mistake.

  And in the middle of what might, just maybe, be a full-blown panic attack, I wondered who had been shooting in the hotel. Shooting at the suite. Had they followed me there? “Ohhh . . . ,” I breathed, “nooo . . .” What if someone—Jackie?—had been watching the library, a place I was known to frequent, and had followed me from the library to the hotel? I hadn’t noticed anyone behind me, but I wasn’t used to the van and had been less observant than usual. Was it possible that I was the target? But then, it didn’t seem like something even Jackie would do. He would much more likely have lain in wait in the hotel parking lot and killed me there, or here at the house. The hotel had security cameras inside and out, and the PsyLED team had been studying them before I left.

  Rick had said he would bring photos of anyone suspicious for me to look at. Did he think I was the target? Or did he think I had led the shooters to the hotel to kill them? If I was the target, then it had to be churchmen who fired the shots, churchmen who chose to kill me and take out the PsyLED police at the same time. Jackie and Joshua might think they had such a reason. Vengeance.

  Even more rattled, I turned off the electric lights, pulled off my shoes, grabbed a quilt, and raced out back and into the shadows beneath the trees. I sat with my back against the big sycamore tree, my bare feet on the roots that entangled with the poplar tree nearby, and pulled the quilt over me. The tree bark was mostly smooth, the tree itself humming with power and life. I started shaking, quaking like a leaf in the wind. I turned and laid my cheek on the sycamore, my left palm on the trunk. Tears gathered in my eyes. This was all wrong.

  People were coming to stay in my house.

  Overhead the leaves stirred in the night wind, dry, desiccated, shifting together, a murmuring, whispering sound, vaguely soothing. A rain of leaves fell around me, shushing, landing on my head and shoulders and the blanket over me like a blessing, a benediction. In the distance, a barred owl called, the who-cooks-who-cooks-for-you notes carrying on the cold wind. I shivered and pressed almost violently into the tree. Far away, a second owl answered the six-note cry. Territory marking, maybe. Or family talking, taking note of who was where in the dark.

  People. Coming to my house. Onto my land. My territory. To stay here.

  But . . . it wasn’t the church people. These people weren’t going to hurt me, shoot me, burn my home. These people were going to simply sleep here. Paka. Occam. Tandy. T. Laine. JoJo. Rick.

  When I managed a breath, it shuddered in my throat and I wiped my nose on the back of my hand, dried my tears on my long john shirt. It wasn’t church people. These people wouldn’t hurt me. “Okay,” I breathed to the tree. “I can do this.”

  I gulped breaths, calming my heart, and shifted position until I could place both hands on the dirt, both soles on the roots, my spine and the back of my head against the tree, looking up into the limbs. It was miserable cold, but I could feel the ground beneath me, solid and sandy, rock and stone and fill dirt, clay and layers of long-rotten leaves, water rising through the ground, under pressure, surface water falling down the hills, under gravity. Water spreading out, feeding rootlets and moistening seeds and dancing through the air as it splashed over rocks. My breath came easier, and the panic began to slide away. With the sun gone, the earth was at rest and yet never resting. Always alive and breathing and moving and pumping nutrients. Animals slept in the nooks of trees and rocks, in nests, in dens, and curled in tall grasses. Others hunted. I reached out with my senses, into the ground, and felt of the earth, the contentment that was life, and the health of the trees.

  But . . . something was different. I repositioned my palms and my feet, pressing down on the ground into full contact, fingers and toes reaching and pushing.

  There was still something wrong. Something dark that had been there ever since Brother Ephraim’s life was taken by the land. I had expected that the disturbance would settle, would integrate with the land quickly. But the new life force was still a darkness that raced away from me, to cower at the far boundaries of the property, like shadows deep in the ground, like death in the deeps. It was strongest at the edge of my property and the Stubbins’ property, right at the place where the church boys had crossed over to get onto my land, and . . . something was different there too, above- and belowground. New roots and new growth. Thick and far too mature to have not been there only days ago, yet clearly it was new growth. I couldn’t tell what the plants were at first. They weren’t trees. Not shrubs. Not grasses. More like . . . vines, several species and varieties all growing together, tangling as they rose.

  One was catbrier, a local weed that had hooked claws on it, like a cat’s. One was silver leaf nightshade, a deadly plant if eaten. And the third was poison oak. A wild rose threaded itself through the thorny mess. All of them were growing out of season. They hadn’t been there before. And now they were. They were creating a wall.

  When the boys ran back over the crest of the hill, I remembered wishing that I was a witch. That I could snap my fingers and create a magical ward there to stop people from crossing over to my land. Like a protective wall.

  The wood was building one for me.

  Surprise, and something darker, like primitive joy, flashed through me. And a breath of fear about what such an act on the part of the woods might mean. I curled my fingers into the dirt beside the sycamore roots, digging in with my fingernails. Trying to see what else was different.

  On the far side of the wall of thorns, a creature paced, back and forth, back and forth. It wasn’t human. It walked on four legs and through its feet came curious vibrations, deep and menacing, like the sound of growls carried through the creature’s body and into the ground, to me. The darkling shadow that I felt on and in my land, the shadow that raced through the deeps, wanted the creature, was reaching toward it. But the being that inspected the thicket of thorns wasn’t aware of the darkness, separated from it by the new wall and by the power that marked the boundaries of Soulwood. I felt frustration from the one beneath the ground and fury from the one pacing aboveground. Three new things on and in my wood, a wall, a creature, and a . . . a thing that shouldn’t be there, that should have been soothed and absorbed, but was still independent, dark, and frantic-seeming. The darkness of shadows was agitated, spinning and rootling through the earth, reaching out, trying to get free. But the borders of my woods stopped it, a boundary in the soil. It was trapped. Inside Soulwood. With me.

  That was disquieting. I reached out, trying to soothe the shadow as I might soothe a rootlet or encourage a seed. Rather than lean in, as plants did to receive the soothing, or race away to avoid my touch, it broke apart and fled in streamers deep into the ground. In an instant, it was gone. On the other side of the spreading wall of thorns, the four-legged creature was moving away as well.

  I pulled my thoughts out of the ground and back into myself; I opened my eyes. The night had grown darker and deeper, and the moon hung as if trapped in the grasping limbs of distant trees. Despite the darkness of shadow
s in the ground, and the wall of thorny vines that hadn’t been there before, and the four-legged creature on the Stubbins side of the property boundary, I felt much better: calmer, settled, if far colder. I breathed the icy air, tasting snow on it, feeling the sting of fog freezing. The house windows glimmered with lantern light. The smell of burning wood danced on the night breeze. I hugged myself, thinking.

  Despite the edicts of the church, I had never had to be hospitable to guests. I had few social skills to draw upon. I would likely be considered taciturn and remote and uncommunicative. A prickly stick-in-the-mud. I also wasn’t human. But tonight I’d try to act against my nature and be gracious, courteous, and genial. I didn’t expect to be successful at any of it.

  I went inside, standing near the stove so I might warm up. I turned up a lantern, added a bit more wood to the fire, and tested the dough, which wasn’t quite ready to go into the oven. My toes were frigid but felt good pressed into the wood flooring, connected to the forest outside.

  I wasn’t afraid—not exactly—of anything I had sensed in the land, but it was . . . disturbing. I splattered water droplets on the stovetop in various places to test the temperature. Moved the rice off the hottest part of the hob.

  People in my house.

  I wondered if I would be able to sleep in a houseful of people. I hadn’t done that since I was twelve. The panicky feeling welling up in me again, I pulled on boots and went to the garden. In the dark, by touch and feel, I harvested the last of the salad greens, hoping there would be no frost and the plants might yield some more, and raked the mulch up higher over the plants as protection. I pulled up a mess of turnips. I gathered the clean clothes out of the washer and into a plastic basket. Back inside, I hung the clothes up to dry on wood racks placed behind the cookstove to humidify the house as they dried, and turned on the overhead fans for a bit to move the warm air around. I cut up a fresh salad, put the greens to cook, and the turnips themselves to the side for later. I got out jars of preserves in case someone had a sweet tooth. Busy. I needed to stay busy.