Balthazar stepped toward us. Closer. Pushed his nose near, sniffling, snuffling. Moving only my eyes, I looked around.
We were in a small crevice of rock between the rock wall and the car-sized boulder from the cave-in.
The devil dog was hunched over us, less than eighteen inches from my face, a huge, skeletally thin creature, its hairless belly concave, as if it had been starved. The rest of it was covered with shaggy black hair. It had abnormally segmented fingers and toes that ended in elongated, razor-sharp claws. But it was Balthazar’s eyes that drew me. They glowed red in the darkness.
He snuffled closer. Blew out rancid breath, the stench like rotted meat. He made a slack fist with his left hand and pointed his index finger. Like a child who didn’t know what to expect, the finger slowly pointed toward thehedge of thornsas if to tap on the cave wall. I felt its energies, a ball of poison on the earth, a thing that was not supposed to be, bred with purpose. Bred to kill.
The vibration in the earth changed pitch. And I knew, in an instant, just before thegwyllgi’s talon touched thehedge of thorns, that the vibration I could feel in my bones was the bedrock of the earth, a spirit of the hills, the sleeping, quiescent life force of an ancient granite sentience deep in the earth. It felt…restless.Hungry.
Small things came together in my mind, as thegwyllgi’s talon slowly approached thehedge, our only protection. Things I had seen and felt and even partially put together. Things that were part of my secret hidden soul, my innermost profound power.
The earth’s innate, overwhelming, terrible capacity for life and for destruction fed on the blood of sacrifice, fed on battlefields. Life ate the dead.
Like Soulwood.
Soulwood, who was a young spirit of the deep, a new creative entity with purpose and power. And I was its Keeper. Through Soulwood, I could wake all the spirits of the deep. I could feed them, feed their dreadfulhunger.
And the Dogs of War were both the servants of thehungerand thehunger’s preferred food. The earth breathed. The earth vibrated.
The claw inched closer.
I had first encountered a Sleeper deep under the earth at thegwyllgihouse of Roxy Benton, the man whose family had left the church, and who had helped Colonel Jackson breed the Dogsof War into existence again—the Welshgwyllgi, feared shape-shifters in battle—by drinking the blood of vampires. The Sleeper beneath Benton’s house of horrors had been restless, ready to wake, wanting blood, stirring, stirring in uneasy sleep, creating tremors, microearthquakes. Like now.
Thegwyllgitouched thehedge. Tapped on it. It sounded as if he was tapping on rock.
He snuffled.
We don’t smell like rock. We smell like meat.
I closed my eyes and put my bloody knuckles against the stone. I shoved myself into the deeps. Pressure built around me. Heat and cold, water and clay, rock and magma. I searched for the local ley line, not the one in the water cave but the one beneath Knoxville, that ran more or less along the Tennessee River Valley. The largest Sleeper beneath Knoxville was covered with a thin membrane created from the energy of that ley line. That membrane reached up into my hills. From here, Soulwood glowed softly in somnolent silence. Knowing where I was in relation to my land, I traced the ley line from Knoxville and found where a thin line branched off, twisted into knots, and touched the Sleeper of this hill, as well as the Sleepers of the nearby hills.
The sentient, self-aware life force of the earth.
If the Sleeper awoke, we’d have an earthquake. People would die. The magma chamber I had inadvertently created might rise. More people would die. On the surface, I reminded my body to breathe. And I sent a sensation of peace into the Sleeper.
Thegwyllgitapped again. He breathed in deeply. Snarled. His lips pulled back, revealing fangs that had no correlation in the dog or wolf world. The growl trembled into my chest before fading away.
I forced panic down. I breathed. I pulsed peace into the land.
On my third breath, third pulse, the Sleeper quieted. The vibration from it eased.
Magic cascaded over my skin. Lainie cursed, not caring that she spoke aloud. I could smell her sweat. Hear the strain in her voice.
I opened my eyes again and saw the dog’s face right in front of me, its eyes on mine. Theobfuscationworking had eitherfailed or Lainie had dropped it to concentrate on the shield. The devil dog could see us, smell us.
A growl from the adultgwyllgigrew. Louder, more…hungry, to rend and tear meat. Much like thehungerof the land to destroy and drink down life. I knewhunger. The land knewhunger. It had been starved. Balthazarhungered.
The dog’s fingers and claws were touching thehedge of thorns, had pressed into the energies of the working. His snarl went wider, the rumble of his growl deeper.
A drop of saliva drooled from his mouth and hit the floor of the cave.There.It wasn’t blood, but it would do.
I looked at my hands. Roots had grown from them into tiny cracks in the rock floor and into the pile of boulders. I was trapped. But my trap was also a weapon. I closed my eyes again and felt through the rock, through those small cracks, slipping under thehedge of thorns. And up, to the energies of the devil dog. I drew on the saliva, using it to sprout through the rock and up, around the ankles of the dog. Lightly, barely touching. Curling up his legs. Silent as the grave.
When I reached his knees, I let the vines grow thorns. Taking my power into my hands, I yanked back on the roots. Tightening. Knotting. Sending the thorns into his flesh. And I drank him down. And down. Letting the earth here feed.
I didn’t let the land take his life, not completely, just enough to drop him where he stood.
He fell. Whimpering.
