by Faith Hunter
Jason laughed, the sound all wrong. “I did it. It’s all mine.”
A different voice shivered through the ground and into the house. “I accept the bargain.” The power of the demon began to unfurl within Jason. The vampires in the cages began to bleed and to scream as the bargain was sealed.
My roots found the most powerful of the vampires and slammed thorns into him like wooden blades. Wood like stakes. The vampire tree drank his blood. I had never met Godfrey. I had seen him twice, as he tore out the throat of a store clerk and later killed a young boy. But he wanted to rule this hunting territory, drink down its people, destroy the life in the land. No one ruled here but Soulwood. I gave Godfrey to the tree. The Green Knight and I reached to the vampires still alive in cages and twined around the bars. Ripped them apart. The freed vampires raced away. Terrified of the living wood. The vampire tree was gaining strength. I didn’t care. Because Soulwood drank too, drank down the sacrifices that gave it power. Bloodlust was slowly diminishing.
I looked through the blood and the life and death all around me. Determined that Unit Eighteen and all our humans and cats were safe and free, standing in the perimeter of the yard, keeping Ming’s vampires from approaching. Good.
I found the fist inside of Jason, the demon fighting for its power, its freedom, Jason bargaining for his life. I looked back along the track to the circle. The magic was active, open. Clouds of power bloomed into the night behind the stockyard. The demon was rising. The earth shuddered, bounced, roiled like boiling water.
Earthquake.
The circle was open and protected. Any attempt to close it or break it was doomed. But . . . no one had ever tried to close a circle from belowground, using the power of life, the power of the earth. If I could break it before Jason was fully possessed or died . . .
I directed the vampire tree to find the witch circle. The roots tunneled through the earth, seeking the power of the circle. Seeking the dead flesh at the stockyard, so much not yet carted away. The tree and Soulwood found the bodies of the Blounts, buried in the yard, and together, devoured them.
B’KuL shoved through, rising into the night. The stench of sewage and plague and rot filled the air. It rose, an arm, a leathery wing, a brutal, muscled shoulder. I wasn’t going to be in time.
The tree roots and Soulwood found the circle in the same instant. They tore into the power structure belowground. The land vibrated. The demon saw the powers tearing into the mathematics of the circle. The fist opened, clawed at the power of Soulwood, but the magics were too dissimilar. The smoky fist caught nothing. It tore into the tree, but the roots were too thick, too many, and they began to siphon off the magics in the circle. And then the magics of the demon. The roots regrew, the Green Knight ripping the demon energies apart, sealing up the earth from below. Life cutting into the darkness and the filth of the demon’s passage, disrupting the bargain with Jason.
B’KuL dropped the sorcerer. The fist of B’KuL ripped away and traced its own power signature back to the witch circle. Inside. Fighting the unfamiliar energies, poisoning the roots with death and disease. But Soulwood healed the tree, destroying the death magics of the demon.
B’KuL, threatened on all sides, reached back to Jason, but the sorcerer, drained by sickness and demon magic, his blood a sacrifice to the land, stopped breathing. Too soon for the bargain. Too soon for the demon. Jason’s heart stuttered. Stopped.
The vampire tree tore apart the circle from below, from the center out. Trapping the demon in place. B’KuL screamed in fury. Inside the house, Jason’s body fell apart. Ashes to ashes.
The somnolent presence deep and deep in the earth rolled over in its sleep, uneasy, as if prodded by a bad dream. The earth shuddered. Foundations across the river valley cracked. Water in rivers and reservoirs rippled deep, where they touched the land. The sleeping soul of the land jolted.
B’KuL thrashed and fought. Trying to pull himself free. Trying to retreat into the earth, to safety.
The new moon was too far below the horizon. The sun had set. The curse had been strongest between the setting of the new moon and the setting of the sun, that sliver of time when everything was open, the sky a bright, wide, sunset expanse. I felt the power of the curse diminish. And then it was gone.
The circle closed over the dark power.
The earth shook and trembled. A single sacrifice would free the half-trapped demon.
A small quake cracked foundations and popped windows. A few dishes shattered.
And even that went still. Silence reigned in the land. The spirit of the earth, that presence in the deep, fell back into its rest. And slept.
All across Knoxville, up into the hills and down into the river valley, the earth was nourished.
Soulwood was satisfied. So were the new, gigantic trees on the Blounts’ property. So was every acre and square foot of land I had ever claimed. Trees that had been young now wore the girth of old growth. Where there was pasture, now was young forest; where the land had been spoiled by man, now there was the freshness of life.
More vampires had appeared on the land near the house. Yummy and Ming and Shaddock. Vampires left. Witches came, unknown witches, strangers, but Lainie liked them so I didn’t drain them. The land and I rested.
Hours passed. The stars moved through the blackness of the night sky.
In the new forest a mile away, I felt Lainie and four other witches make a new circle in the land. It surrounded and covered the blood-magic circle in the pasture that had become a deep wood. With magic, they sealed off the demon’s access. B’KuL would never get his sacrifice. His power remained locked away.
More time passed. The sun rose and circled the sky. The dark of the new moon set.
“There she is,” a familiar voice said. “Son of a witch on a switch. She still looks human.”
“Damn tree. Damn tree is everywhere.” Occam. I smiled.
“Can’t burn it. Can’t poison it. All you can do is cut it and hope it doesn’t kill you.” Sam.
Why was Sam here?
“Can you get to her?” Lainie. Worried.
Something furry rubbed against my shoulder and chittered. A grindylow. How . . . odd.
I felt the vines and the roots give way. Felt the tree give me up. Felt my body lifted and held against Occam’s chest. He was purring. I wrapped my arms around him and remembered to breathe.
“Got you, Nell, sugar. I got you.”
EPILOGUE
I pushed off with my bare toes against the wood decking of my front porch. My silky skirt brushed my calves as I toed the swing slowly back and forth. What with the heat and being a tree and the ways my life had changed, it had been almost a year since I sat in my swing. I had missed it.
The night air blew through the covered porch, cooler since the weather front had come through, a comfortable seventy-something. The temps wouldn’t last in summer in Knoxville. They never did. But for now it was pleasant in the aftermath of the slow-moving storm.
Mud and the new dog, Cherry, were staying with Esther and her husband tonight, as she would all three nights of future full moons. Jedidiah would drive her to school when the full moon fell on a weekday, and take her to church services when the full moon fell on weekends. I had refused when Jed first asked me to let Mud stay with them, but I’d changed my mind for several reasons.
The first was that Larry hadn’t been seen since the night of the dark of the moon. He had disappeared on the way home from devotionals. There was no sign of foul play except a bloody patch of disturbed earth found near the original trunk of the vampire tree. I figured the tree had gotten hungry and good riddance.
The second reason I relented was that Esther was growing leaves, possibly due to the burst of Green Knight magic. Or possibly because she was pregnant and hormones had caused her to sprout. She needed help, and Esther was still afraid of me and my inhumanness—though that r
eticence was thawing now, thanks to her leaves. Jed, on the other hand, was having trouble with his wife being nonhuman. I hadn’t expected that, but being a churchman ran deep in his blood. I didn’t mind Mud helping Esther and keeping an eye on Jed a few days out of the month. I was enjoying the privacy and would enjoy not having to get up as early to drive my sister to school before I went in to work.
The boxes on my porch were blocky shadows, stacked out of the blowing rain, and they would be gone soon. Brother Thad had given me an estimate on the installation and construction that I couldn’t say no to, and with the court date for Mud’s custody hearing moved up, the porch would be cleared by the end of the coming week. My sister and I would have more than double the air-conditioning I was used to, more than triple my previous solar panels, a bathroom upstairs, remodeling in the old bath, and upgrades here and there, and at a cost I could afford. With a line of credit on my house and land. There was always that.
Brother Thad assured me he wasn’t losing money on the deal, but I figured he wasn’t making any either.
I was no longer living completely off the grid and my feelings were mixed about joining the twenty-first century.
I toed the swing harder, staring at the full moon dropping into the tops of the trees in a lacy veil of cloud. It was the last night of the full moon, some two weeks after the hellmouth—Tandy’s name for the witch circle—had been ripped apart by Soulwood and sealed by the makeshift coven put together by a few of the local coven members and T. Laine. Despite the refusals of the coven leader, Rivera Cornwall, Theresa Anderson-Kentner, Suzanne Richardson-White, and Barbara Traywick Hasebe had responded to T. Laine’s plea for help and were now being touted by the local law enforcement and national media as heroes. And they were. T. Laine had kept her name out of the papers and gave all the praise to the local coven.
No one had seen the Blood Tarot deck. If it had been in the house with Jason, it was ashes now. If not, then it would turn up. Black-magic items always turned up.
It had been a busy two weeks, and I had lain low, hiding in the office or at the house. Not that anyone except Unit Eighteen and Ming of Glass associated the sudden growth of trees with me. The rest of the world, from the governor to Gonzales of SWAT to the FBI and the CIA, had been assured that Jason Ethier, an insane blood-witch, had made all the changes. The public had begun to associate the use of magic with old growth forests, and since both Ethier siblings were dead, and the demon had been safely sealed in his prison, all was good.
Except it wasn’t.
Unit Eighteen was quietly dealing with the fact that our enemies had been turned into ashes and dust. And that I had done it. Again. Or Soulwood had. Or the Green Knight had. Either way the result was the same. Just like when I destroyed the salamanders.
The debriefing had taken place between Rick, Soul, FireWind, and me. Behind closed doors. With no recording devices. I had told them a lot, but not everything. It wasn’t like I had a choice. I had killed people. Or the land had. My superiors accepted that the land was responsible but there was no doubt that the land had only acted because of me. At my behest. That was the term FireWind had used. Behest.
The reports they wrote up were carefully neutral, but they knew more than they reported and they suspected much more than that. Internal Affairs was sniffing around and that had made things tense at the office. With the exception of my work life, I was satisfied.
Yummy had knocked on my door at two a.m. the third night I spent at home, which was a perfectly acceptable time of visitation in vamp terms. Not so much in human terms. But Yummy assured me that this was a ceremonial visit and that to refuse was a gross breach of etiquette. Yummy had brought a gift from the Master of the City of Knoxville. So I had let a vampire into my home while my sister slept upstairs. If the court system ever found out, I might be denied custody, but I was between a rock and a hard place. Yummy was flawlessly polite throughout the visit. So were the blood-servant guards that kept watch on my front porch.
She had stayed in my home for an hour, chatting and drinking tea. I was assured by Yummy that Ming now owed me two boons. The MOC had sent me some very nice, very expensive, loose-leaf oolong called Tieguanyin tea. I was told by Yummy that the tea sold on the market for three thousand dollars per kilo and was named in honor of Guan Yin. Guan Yin was the Buddhist goddess known as the goddess of mercy. The tea was accompanied by a small card inscribed in Ming’s own hand, thanking me for the bodies and blood of her enemies. Yummy and the vampires somehow knew that I was responsible for the dead vampires.
Through Yummy, I learned vampire gossip. Lincoln Shaddock had retaken his clan home and hunting lands with a minimum of bloodshed. Or so he had reported to Ming. I interpreted the statement as meaning that he had drank down his enemies and thrown out the drained husks, but I might have been wrong.
Cai had survived as a human, though he was now both dreadfully scarred and particularly powerful.
Ming was upgrading her clan home’s security systems, and had discovered cameras in the walls. Alex Younger’s backdoor into the vampire’s lair had been compromised. Yummy seemed to think I would know all about it, and I managed not to lie in any meaningful way, or in any way she could smell.
It had been strange to have a vampire in my home, especially considering that she and Occam had dated before I joined Unit Eighteen. Dated meaning sex and blood. But Yummy assured me that she had no claim on the wereleopard and she begged my forgiveness for trying to “poach your lover on your land,” as she put it, when she was injured and bleeding to death. It was a very strange conversation. Even stranger that I liked her.
Occam had been healed in the burst of magic. Not totally, of course, but vastly improved, and while I never did learn why he had been so shy about his scars, he had a full head of hair growing in, his ear had grown back, his smile was no longer twisted, and his fingers were no longer fused. They didn’t bend. He still had scars, but as he said, “I don’t scare small children on the streets.” He looked pretty good to me.
I was different too. I had scarlet hair. Flame bright. My eyes were the deep, vibrant green of emeralds. I had a full line of leaves around my hairline. My fingernails and toenails had turned to wood—polished, beautifully grained wood, and one woman who noticed them at the grocery store wanted to know how I achieved the look. I had to pluck my leaves every morning and sand back my nails at night. I could still pass for human if I worked at it, though I hoped the effects would pass with time and I’d look more human. I was just glad I hadn’t grown thorns.
I laid my head back on the swing and scratched at my leaves as the day lightened around me. Waiting. The full moon would be setting soon. The wereleopards would shift to human form and come visiting as they had every morning of this first full moon—a spotted wereleopard and two black wereleopards in human form. I would offer them coffee, eggs and bacon, and we would chat. And I would share some of Soulwood’s peace with them all, soothing their pain and their spirits.
Rick (and his cat) was more self-controlled than I had ever seen him, exuberant because his magic was stronger, yet pained because his blood had turned Margot. Margot was still grieving her loss of humanity. Occam just liked being soothed. He said it made his cat happy.
Over the last two weeks, Rick and Margot had spent a lot of time together and that shared time as cat and human had begun to develop into what looked like the beginnings of an office romance. From New York, FireWind had called and offered the former FBI agent a position at PsyLED and Margot had accepted. She would have to attend Spook School, and she had accepted that too, though starting out as a probationary officer had hurt. I, however, was no longer a probie, but a full-fledged PsyLED special agent. With the concomitant raise in pay, a bump in security level, and a move to day shift, which made child care nearly effortless.
The vampire tree had put roots down in the stockyard with a huge, massive tree in the center of what had once been a blood-
witch circle. It hadn’t talked to me since it took on the guise of the Green Knight and went to war. That suited me just fine. Talkative trees were just scary.
I pushed off on the swing. Time passed. The dawn sky brightened. I felt the energies of were-creatures shifting in the woods, faster than once before.
From the edge of the woods three forms emerged. Margot was nearly invisible, her dark skin blending into the gloom. One was still cat-like, lithe and healthy, his blondish hair visible, long and swinging, his blondish beard scruffy, the way I liked it. The last one was easily recognizable. Rick LaFleur’s white hair and beard were a beacon. He had aged in the magic of the new moon curse, but we thought the aging had stabilized and, what with the were-taint in his veins, he’d still live a much-longer-than-human life span. As JoJo said, Rick was craggy and harsh, but still gorgeous, a chick magnet. At his feet two grindylows gamboled and then took off for the woods again.
The human cats reached the porch and I poured coffee into four mugs. Margot and Rick slid two chairs close together and sat. Occam walked up the steps and kissed my lips sweetly.
I had asked him to stay over today. In my bed. Not sleeping. I had been very clear about what I meant, so as to satisfy his promise to let me do all the asking. He had promised to show me all the tenderness and love in his heart—to the full moon and back. I was looking forward to it, my human heart beating fast as his lips met mine, my leaves shivering in delight.
My life wasn’t safe, but as William Shakespeare had written, “Security is the chief enemy of mortals.” At least I’d never be bored.
Read on for an excerpt from the third Soulwood novel
FLAME IN THE DARK
Available now!
I walked the length of Turtle Point Lane near Jones Cove, my tactical flash illuminating the street and the ditch, trying to keep my eyes off the lawn and runnel of water and mature trees to the side. I should be in the trees, not here in the street, wasting my gifts on asphalt. I hated asphalt. To my touch, it was cold and dead and it stank of tar and gasoline.
