He didn’t ask why. He just held out his hand. T. Laine sliced along all four tips. Blood spurted and flowed. “Bend across Nell and bleed on her. Occam. I’m going to cut your ear. You bite me and I’ll be pissed.”
I missed the movement of the cut, but felt warm wetness on my face as Occam smeared his blood onto me. Growling. Panic in the sound.
“Nell,” T. Laine said. “Draw on Soulwood. Draw!”
I reached into the earth through their cat blood. Reached for my land through the bindings that had tied them to Soulwood when I healed them. The land answered. Soulwood flared high, bright and singing like a bell. It formed a spear of might. The same kind of spear that I had used to kill Brother Ephraim. The spear flew through the darkness of the earth and landed in my blood-filled palm. I gripped the spear of life and power and might.
I stabbed through the webbed basket of my own energies and into the heart ofdeath and decay.
It screamed. Darkness flashed, heated molten knives.
I felt more blood on me. More. More. And the land took it all.
The somnolent presence deep and deep rolled over. And over again. Struggling to awaken, struggling against the energies above it. The earth shook.
“Earthquake!” someone shouted. Occam shoved me down and lay across my torso, his cat blood slathering my face and neck. Dripping onto the blanket and beneath me and the ground beneath it.
“LaFleur,” FireWind said, demand in his tone. “You have to shift. You’ve given too much blood. Shift!Now!”
I couldn’t help Rick. I couldn’t help Occam. Not until I healed the Earth and sent the presence back to sleep. And that meant I had to put this spell into the magma in the center of the Earth. Now. Right now. Lessons from the last time I fought death, that the Earth was all healing.
I reshaped the spear of Soulwood, the light and life of all that was good in the universe, re-formed it into a net, but one much stronger than the basket I had tried to weave all alone. I tied the magic net and the life of Soulwood arounddeath and decayand cinched it tight. Soulwood flared, bright as the sun, and encircled the energies that were so opposite to its own. It sent love and willingness into me.
I shoved the net deep and deep, into the magma that rolled and roiled and pressed upward, seeking outlet to relieve its own terrible pressure. Surging into the cracks of the earth, in search of the surface, filling every vacant weakness—the cracks I had inadvertently made not so long ago.
Soulwood and I pressed the energies deep. Into the heat. The earth trembled and shook.Death and decayresisted for one awful moment, clawing at my chest. Cutting into Rick and Occam.
The presence in the Earth rolled over. The heat and energies of the Earth accepteddeath and decay, pulling it into itself.
As if a far stronger magnet had attracted the energies,death and decayturned from me and latched onto the power of the active core of the planet and... slipped into a crack. Into the magma. It was sucked down in a long spiral. And it was gone. Absorbed totally.
Or, this part of it was. There was more in other places. In the power sink. In Stella Mae’s house, her pasture, and so many other locations. But I had done all I could for now.
I heard shouting and sirens. Pain like nothing I had ever felt before stabbed me, electric and icy all at once, profound and all-encompassing, a cold tearing claws into me, as if they scooped out everything inside me and tossed it on a trash heap.
Soulwood saw it. Felt it. Wrapped around me. It sent vines and roots and tendrils plunging up from the earth to wrap around me, into me. Healing. Healing.Healingas only it could. The pain eased. Time passed. My pain vanished.
I took a breath, still intent on the earth beneath me as Soulwood worked, as life crept back to the land beneath me. That life reached up to the surface, reached for sunlight and rain and air. Soulwood searched through the roots of grass and trees on the periphery of the property, the ones with the faintest spark of life, and fed them. It drew water from the limestone beneath the ground and pulled it toward the sun. Acting on its own. Its sentience giving it full choice and full control over its own power.
When it was satisfied, it found others that belonged to it and healed them. Occam. Rick. Beings Soulwood had claimed. Energies poured into them, merging with their were-energies and creating the wholeness of a full moon shift.
A sound, a crash that shook the ground, almost pulled me back to the surface, a vibration that rocked the land. But I heard T. Laine repeating the scripture, and I reached back deep, to the sleeping energies of the spirit of the Earth, the sleeping power of the hills. I soothed it, petting it with Soulwood’s power. It quivered and it slept.
Breathe. I needed tobreathe. Air rustled through my leaves. Filled my lungs.
I blew out in a long soft sigh.
Once again, I opened my eyes. Blue sky was overhead, streaked with golden and orange clouds.Sunset. The day was gone. I was cold, shivering.
I raised my head to find I was trapped beneath vines and roots, a cage of greenery like a basket over me, as if my land had done to me what I had tried to do withdeath and decay. But there were no roots growing through me. No vines or thorns growing into me or piercing me. I was still flesh and blood.
A tree grew near the soles of my feet, massive. It was leafed out, golden in the autumn chill. Near me on the edge of the tattered pink blanket, Occam lay, also under a leafy cage, human shaped and naked, having changed from his cat back to human.
I turned my head to see Rick, in his black wereleopard form, sleeping under his own viny cage. A neon green grindylow was perched on his shoulder, chittering at me accusingly, as if I was responsible for the vine cage that enclosed her. This one’s steel claws were out, her cat lips pulled back to expose long pointed canines. She hissed.
“I totally agree,” I said to her.
“Ingram. You’re awake.” I turned my head to see FireWind, sitting on the ground on the far side of a fire. He had dug a shallow pit and lined it with rocks. His fire burned merrily in it.
