Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  From behind the kitchen table, Occam smiled, a crooked twisting of his lips, one dimple on his left cheek pulling in tight. “Nell, sugar, that’s what this unit is all about. Teamwork. In everything.” He poured four glasses of Sister Erasmus’ wine into plastic wineglasses they had bought, and set two on the long, ancient, kitchen table, at the right of the plates. The two others, he brought over. “If you put your hands together, you can hold this.”

  “I need to go out into the woods,” I said, taking the stem in my padded hands.

  “After you eat, sugar. And rest a bit. You look a mite peaked.”

  “That’s the way to make a girl feel pretty, cat boy,” T. Laine called from the kitchen.

  Occam stiffened, as if hearing his own words, and the dimpled smile disappeared. For a moment, he looked lost, uncertain. Then he leaned in closer, holding my gaze with his own and announced, “Nell is, hands down, the prettiest thing I ever saw, all bloody or all dolled up.”

  A blush flashed up my chest at the words, and my glass bobbled as his meaning ricocheted through my brain like lightning. He caught the stemware, straightened it before the wine spilled, and let me get a mittened grip on it again. The silence in the house assured me they had all heard his words. “Is that better, Lainie?” he asked, his eyes not letting me go.

  “Only if you ask the poor girl out to dinner.”

  He tipped his glass at mine. The plastic edges met with a low-pitched tap. “I’m getting there, Lainie. How ’bout you butt outta this convo.”

  “Ohhhhoooo,” she said, as if this was an interesting development.

  His voice dropped. “I’m not trying to stop you from getting to your woods. I’ll help you do anything you want, Nell, sugar. Any way you want. Anytime you want.”

  My blush spread, as some strange part of me interpreted those words in a totally improper way for a widder-woman. “Ummm . . .”

  “But I’d appreciate it if you would eat first. I was scared half to death when I saw you in the ER again, all bloody and bruised and mangled. And there wasn’t a single person I could bite or claw.”

  Laughter tickled at the back of my throat, but I managed only another “Ummm . . .”

  “And I’d like to take you to dinner. In a restaurant, like regular people do, instead of like weres do, over a bloody carcass.”

  “Ummm . . .” My brain clicked back on. That one I could answer. “I’m not regular people, Occam.”

  The dimple reappeared, and he eased back. “For which I am eternally grateful, sugar. Drink your wine.” He stood and went back to the kitchen table.

  I drank half the glass. The sugary alcohol slid down my throat and into my system. I knew I should drink a gallon of water before the wine, but I didn’t ask for any. I just drank and watched Occam as he finished setting the table, wondering what all he might have meant about him needing to bite or claw someone. And me being pretty. And him wanting to take me to dinner. That sounded as if he was asking me on a date. Not now, not ever. I wasn’t even sure if I liked men as friends. But Occam wasn’t a human man, so . . . I pushed the thoughts away to deal with later, when I felt more myself.

  * * *

  The meal was simple, and though I had to sip my soup through a plastic straw, it was even more delicious than the scent had proclaimed, a far cry from the Spook School fare. As we all ate, the unit filled me in on more post-Break happenings. And I finished off two glasses of wine, which left me pleasantly tipsy.

  Dessert was a cheese called Brie, heated on slices of the artisan bread in the oven with a topping of my raspberry jam, and more wine. It was true what they said about alcohol. It gave a body false courage. And sometimes a big mouth. In a lull of the conversation, I said, “I feel a big-cat walking toward the house. Somebody has let Rick out of his cage.”

  “That would be Pea,” Occam said.

  “Why would Pea let a wereleopard outta his cage?”

  “He needs to eat?” Occam suggested.

  JoJo said, “Before she took off and left Rick high and dry, Paka had a long chat with Pea, at the end of Pea’s claws. Pea seems to be of the opinion that you can fix Rick.”

  I laughed, but her expression said she was dead serious. “Pea talks?”

  “Not to humans. Not to witches. Not even to whatever you might be,” JoJo said, staring at a third bottle of wine in the glass-fronted cabinets along the back wall of the dining area. “But she talks to the werecats. Pea indicated to Occam that you had claimed Paka for your land, and through her you claimed Rick.”

  I didn’t know how to respond to that. Truth was truth. “Paka took off, so I didn’t too good of a job claiming her. Besides. I have no idea how to fix a werecat stuck in cat form, any more than I know how to fix a werecat stuck in human form.”

  “You know how to encourage a seed to sprout,” T. Laine said. “You know how to make a tree grow fast and tall and straight. Maybe it’s like that. Tell Rick to be what he already is.”

  JoJo got up and pulled the bottle from the cabinet. I was now down to four bottles of the rare sweet wine. I’d have to ask Sister Erasmus to trade me for more. Her sister-wife, Mary, had the gout. Maybe I could trade her some herbal tea for the wine.

  “Nell?” T. Laine said.

  I frowned and shrugged as JoJo opened the wine and poured us all more. “I’m willing to try, but who’s gonna keep him from eating me while I’m working?”

  “That, Nell, sugar, is my job,” Occam said, toeing off his boots. “Let’s get you outside and healed and then we’ll see about helping Rick.”

  * * *

  My hands ached, even after all the wine. Far more than I usually drank. The world spun, and I pressed down with my swollen hands, holding myself upright in a sitting position, on the roots of the married trees. I had never had a hangover, but I feared that would change come morning. I promised myself I’d drink a gallon of water before I turned in. But for now . . .

  I took a calming breath and let my consciousness flow down into the ground, through the topsoil and the twined and twisted roots, past the rocks, broken and shattered. Into the deeps of Soulwood.

  The wood was slumbering, the sleep of winter making it slow and lazy and peaceful. But it knew me, reached out to me, and coiled itself around me, making space beneath the ground for me. Around my body, the trees moved in the soughing breeze. The chill air wisped across my flesh, a swirling icy breath, stealing my body heat. I felt that part of me start to shiver.

  As if it knew I needed something, the woods gathered warmth from deep and deep, from the center of the Earth’s crust, and curled a tendril of that heat up. Up through the ground, into me. I sighed and relaxed.

  My fingertips, frozen only moments before, warmed and dug into the wood of the exposed roots. Fingernails pressing in. Skin tightening on the stitches. Releasing micro-amounts of cells and serous fluid and blood to fall on the land. The earth saw my injury, knew the wounds. It sent tiny tendrils of vines up through the warm ground. The vines coming awake at the false spring of the ground heat. They feathered over my hands. Rootlets pressed against the unhealed wounds. Gently pushing into me. The invasion of the vines wasn’t painful, just pressure, a persistent tingling, itching on my skin and inside, deeper, on my bones.

  In my belly, the rooty scars moved. Coiled tight. Insistent and tenacious as they expanded their claim on me. After long minutes, the vines and roots inside me stilled. Healing me. A tightness I hadn’t been aware of eased. I took a breath and let it out.

  And remembered what I was supposed to be doing. Rick. And other things I had neglected to do. Rick was a thorny problem, one I had no idea how to handle. But the other things . . . those I could address.

  I sent my consciousness back to the sapling I had killed, and the earth I had salted. The ground there was barren, hard as stone. It felt like an infection that had been encapsulated from the rest of the body by a membrane. L
ike a pocket of pus, one that had hardened and died. There was no indication of Brother Ephraim at the salted earth. No bloody darkness. Nothing of life or growth or goodness.

  I left the salted earth and let my consciousness travel to Brother Ephraim, curled against the outer wall of Soulwood. Unlike Soulwood, Brother Ephraim wasn’t sleeping. He was coiled like a venomous snake, rattles clattering, trembling with hate. The thread of himself to the salted earth had been cut. Severed. The wound on his side looking like a burn scar, keloid, puckered, and misshapen. I let the sense of satisfaction ripple off me and to him. A warning. I got the impression of a hissing reply, all anger and no words. I slipped beneath the space he occupied on Soulwood land and looked up, at the wall where he cowered, studying the trail of his essence, the one leading to the church compound and the tree there. The tree’s energies were stronger than before, a reddish light of energies pulsing palely back and forth to the soil at the gate where I had splashed some of my blood. It almost felt as if the energies were considering a move there. I should go see the tree. Soon. And consider the opposite of a curse. I should consider blessing it and the ground where I wanted it to move.

  I turned my attention to the coiled snake of Brother Ephraim’s hate, and I imagined the border of Soulwood, envisioning it growing in thickness, in density, like stone beneath the ground. Stone that choked off all life and energy.

  Ephraim’s thread of power to the tree darkened, the pulse slowing to a trickle. I imagined enormous boulders crushing together, squeezing the power off. The thread had been there for so long that it had carved a pathway through the land, claiming part of it, but I tightened my hold on the land, and was gratified to see the energies slow, pale, and die. Ephraim howled in fury. I’d have to find a way to kill Ephraim. For now the narrow passageway to church land had been tightened, dammed, squeezed, and strangled. Ephraim was isolated.

  Satisfied, I reached for the two big-cats on Soulwood, Occam and Rick. They were eating a deer, the fresh kill stretched out over a massive root system, the woods taking in the blood, drinking it down. The moon was no longer full, but it was only hours past, and the cats were contented in their cat fur. One of the two was mine, belonging to the land, to Soulwood. Rick.

  I reached out and stroked the life force that was mine, much like I might stroke one of the mousers. A long mental swipe from forehead to tail tip. Rick purred. Occam went still. His claws squeezed out and scraped on a broken limb nearby.

  I stroked again. Rick rolled over and lay with his head on the ground, his bloody paws out in front of him. He stretched.

  I remembered what it had felt like to read a human, the incredible heat and wetness and noise and blood of the woman. The sight of the slime molds that had eaten into her, a darkness that didn’t belong. I reached out and into Rick, reading him as I had the land, as I had the human woman. I sank into the heat, blood rushing like myriad streams. Thunder and wind, regular and even, filled my ears—the purring of a cat, so loud it hurt me, even so far away. The metronome of a resting, contented heartbeat, thu-thump, thu-thump. And lights like fireworks everywhere.

  Magic. Rick had no slime-mold-damaged darkness; rather, he had magic, bright and sparkling, heated and steamy as a jungle night. Magic as strong as the Infinitio, the curse captured in the containment vessel. But this magic was claw and fang and blood and breath, each element that made him werecat glowing and pounding with life. With need. With hunger for the hunt, yearning for blood, and for the powerful desire to rend flesh and eat. And with a disdain for the human beneath. Werecat.

  Hidden within and beneath the cat, was the human, much less dazzling, less violent in nature, but intense and sparkling, with a piercing, cutting energy. Fierce. Furious. Bitter at what his life had become. The things and people he had hurt and lost. By his mistakes. And by the magic that had snared him. Self-loathing so acute it was nearly incapacitating. The loss of lovers, friends, family, taken from him, first by the witch who had tattooed him with magic, then by the cat that had ensnared and ensorcelled him. And last, by the cat he had become.

  Over it all was the glaring awareness of two strange things. The coloring and magic of the tattoos that bound Rick to his human form. Something in his magic was damaged. Ripped away. Torn and leaking and broken. The way a limb would look, tendons stripped and shredded, blood seeping, bone sharp and shattered. His magics had been cursed and then shredded away. I knew what was missing. The massive addiction that had been Paka’s magic was gone.

  There was nothing I could do about the self-loathing or the anger or bitterness. They were strictly human things.

  But the tattoos and the addiction . . . those I could help.

  I reached in and pulled on the tattoos. The bindings were threadlike, woven into the man’s flesh, and I could see them even in the cat form. They stretched from his arm and shoulder into his human soul. Binding him into a here and now, inflexible and static. I searched within the inks and the magic, finding the blood that sealed him to a cat form and, unexpectedly, to a vampire. The working was maggoty with death, snarled and tethered, and I was certain that I’d never have been able to do what I intended had he still been human shaped and unchanging. I snipped the threads that were knotted there, that held the working to the ink that had been tattooed into him, comprehending that the spell had never been completed, but left unfinished. The magics fell away, leaving only the glowing of the cat eyes in the tattoos.

  The leopard’s heart rate sped, the thunder and wind of his breathing altered from purr to growl. Rick rolled to his feet. His screaming challenge slashed into the night. I felt him leap into a run. Coming for me. Occam on his tail.

  The addiction I could heal the same way I might a sick tree or plant on Soulwood. I sent a tendril into the wound. Feeding it with my magic. Pulling together the broken strands, knotting them off. One, then another. Then dozens.

  Rick stumbled and rolled. Down. Into a gully. Scattering fall’s leaves, into a pile so deep it buried him. He writhed, fighting gravity, inhaling bits of leaves and dirt. Insects and small creatures skittered away. Fighting, he hit bottom and, in a sinuous move, brought his feet beneath him. He leaped straight up, hard and high. Erupting through the deep pile of detritus.

  Within him, I mended the broken parts and rewove the fabric of completeness, gifting his soul with life and wholeness. I could do this because I had claimed Rick months ago, through Paka, when I claimed her for the land. While he was here, on Soulwood, he was mine to grow and heal. I boosted his werecat energies, adding to his magic and his power, but binding it back to his will, and his intellect.

  Rick caught a root system with his claws and pulled-climbed up it back into the air. He shook and screamed his displeasure. His cat didn’t like being shackled to the man as well as the moon.

  I secured the last of the strands, smoothing them, stretching them into place. The magics that had been tied to him by the witch so long ago were gone. All that Paka had been and had ruined was gone. Now there was only man and cat. His will and the moon. Rick stopped, the sound of his scream echoing into the darkness. Nell? He thought at me. What . . . ? What did you do?

  Not sure, I thought back. I hope I helped. I pulled away and back to my body. In the distance, I heard Rick scream, half human, half cat, full of agony.

  I fell over, exhausted. My face landed on the ground, my hands near my eyes. Tiny green leaves were unfurling from the fingertips of my hand. Long and pointed at the tip, growing wide at the blade, rounding out and back to my nails. Which were green and veined.

  That . . . that couldn’t be a good sign.

  Hands lifted me beneath my arms and at my ankles and carried me toward the house. My head flopped forward. My last vision was of my belly and the leaves and roots that grew there. Growing out of me. Again I heard Rick scream, before darkness claimed me.

  EPILOGUE

  Thanksgiving would be different this year. For all the years since Joh
n and Leah proposed to me and I had gone to live with them, I had celebrated every holiday away from the Nicholson clan. After John passed and I was alone, I had still kept away, believing that my family was a danger to me. Now my life had changed. I knew my extended family loved me, and had never stopped loving me. I was free to come and go from the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. I could visit with my mother, father, his other wives, and my full and half sibs, without fearing that I would be forced to stay there. Without the risk that my life would be stolen from me.

  Many good things had happened over the last days since I’d left Spook School. I had learned that bloodlust could be controlled. I had learned that whatever the spirit of Soulwood was, it wasn’t an Old One. I had found that I could survive a battle beneath the earth. I had grown, inside, where no one but me could see it. Good things I contemplated as I drove away from my woods, toward the lands of God’s Cloud of Glory Church.

  Thanksgiving Day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, I parked in front of my childhood home. I turned off the engine and removed my driving gloves, checking my fingertips. No leaves. They had withered and died within hours of my last communing with Soulwood, and the attempted healing of Rick. Which had been only partly successful.

  I had a lot of things to address—the sentient tree near the sanctuary that hadn’t yet moved to its new place. I still had the thorns from it and the option to have them analyzed, but that might bring danger to my door. I needed to deal with—kill—the dark blot of Brother Ephraim. I needed to visit with Dougie and her family in their home. Needed to force Daddy to the doctor, and probably back under the knife. Tell my sisters that we weren’t human. That was not gonna be easy. Had to finish up my final classes and go for some additional certifications at Spook School. Winterize my garden. I also needed to consider Occam’s interest in me, which made my middle feel all fluttery. Lots of things. But for today, I would be with my family for the first time in years.