“My land. My rules,” I said to Pea. “Paka goes free, so you can back off, you little green . . . thing.”
The green thing turned to me, chittered in disgust, and sniffed the air as if perplexed. Animals picked up conversations from body language, but I was pretty sure that this one understood English. It spat, clearly repulsed, and looked up into the trees, chittering some more.
Pea went silent, its nose still working like a rabbit’s, twitching and bunching.
To Rick I said, “Would you take Joshua away, outta my woods? Paka and me, we got us a little talking we need to do.” The black cat looked at me, her eyes a beautiful shade of greenish gold in the early night, her black mottled coat disappearing entirely in the shadows. “We can walk back to the house together. Okay?”
Rick looked from me to his mate and shrugged. “Paka doesn’t like other females. It’s taken her a week to settle in with the trainees.”
“She’ll be fine with me,” I said, hoping I was right, hoping my claiming of her for the land hadn’t done something to her. I had only ever claimed plants, not a breathing animal, let alone a werecat.
Rick released Pea’s green fur and climbed the stones, bent, slung Joshua’s arm over his shoulder, and half carried him back down. None too gently, he helped the man back along the narrow trail to the house, shouldering Joshua’s bent gun without missing a step. “I’ll see him on his way and wait for you at the house,” Rick said. Being part cat, Rick had no trouble negotiating the path in the fast-falling dark; Joshua stumbled a bit and Rick didn’t seem to care, dragging the smaller man until Joshua caught his feet.
When they were out of earshot I reached into the woods and into the ground, feeling for Pea. I had no idea how I had buried its feet, trapping it, and I didn’t want to get close enough to use my hands to free the green thing. But I thought about letting it go, and instantly Pea bowed its back, digging in with its hand-claws, freeing its back feet. Hissing, it sat and began cleaning those steel back claws on the ground, the feel of metal sharp and cutting, as if razor blades slashed me instead of the forest floor. Then it raced into the shadows, reappearing back at my feet so fast I would have missed it had I blinked. It carried a droplet of Brother Ephraim’s blood on one steel claw, and held the blood up to me. Hesitantly I leaned down and extended a finger. Pea smeared the drop of blood onto my fingertip, careful to not cut with its claw. It chittered at me, its tone oddly formal sounding, as if this was a ceremony of sorts. I hoped it wasn’t a death sentence aimed at me.
I wasn’t sure what all this meant, and said to it, “I accept the blood, and the price, if there is one.” It chittered at me, softer now, and backed away.
I searched the ground for Paka’s life force, then felt for Brother Ephraim above us in the trees. Both were present in the woods, part of the earth beneath my feet and part of the woods over my head. Somehow I’d claimed them both when I claimed Paka. Maybe claiming predator and dying prey made them one? Maybe because Paka had eaten part of Brother Ephraim and his flesh was her flesh? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure of much of anything in the land that was mine, except that it had claimed me too, long ago. With something like instinct, I had been claiming it back ever since. And now, with that same instinct, I was choosing to feed its magic, its power, again, by taking another life. That wasn’t something I had ever wanted to do. Or maybe I was lying to myself and I had always wanted to use the power of the woods, always wanted to feed them. To the werecat, I said, “You feeling any different?”
Paka sat, front paws together. Watchful.
I almost said, I did something when you were tracking Joshua an’ me. The forest, it was wanting to stop you. I told it you were mine so it let you through. I hadn’t thought to claim the others, which seemed wise in retrospect. But Paka appeared no different now from before. Calmer maybe. Hunting living prey made cats calm and happy. Killing made them happier still. So I didn’t tell her what I’d done, mostly because I had no idea how to undo it. I’d play a wait-and-see game instead, and maybe not ever have to confess. The coward’s way, but I had often feared that I was a coward, shamed by some part of me that I never even saw, never knew. “Your prey. He’s still alive, up in the trees.”
Paka’s big head raised up, looking into the trees, and dropped down, then back up, nodding once, her eyes aiming back at me like weapons. “His life is the forest’s to take,” I said.
Paka did nothing, so I turned my back and took the slow steps into the dark, to the ground beneath the tree limb where Brother Ephraim lay, as close to death as a man could get and still cling to this Earth. Blood had dripped and splattered on the leafy forest floor. I stared at it, not sure how to do this. I had only ever done this once before, in fear, fighting for my life, against a man who wanted to hurt me. So much of my woods was unknown to me; so much of my power over it was unknown as well, and I had intended it remain that way if possible. But Jackie and Joshua were never gonna let me be. Not now. And tonight indicated that the woods and I were closer, more twined, than I had previously thought.
I bent my knees, placing my palm on the blood. Blood didn’t have an odor that humans could smell, not until it began to sour and rot, but this blood smelled metallic, bitter, something odd just at the edges of my ability to detect. Beneath my hand, the forest was seething with need, with hunger, the scent and patter of blood, the stench of bowels still releasing, and the reek of fear, the race between predator and prey, all had waked it. The woods thrummed through me, as if blood that pulsed and air that breathed.
I called to the blood on the earth and to the life draped high above. And I plunged my hand through the splattered blood, into the soil, fingernails breaking with the impact. I pulled on the blood, on the body hanging above me, drawing the life force to me, gathering it as if webbed between my fingers, which were buried in the dirt. I hovered my other hand over it, holding the life force like a ball of light balanced atop the ground, between my two hands a single tether of life, still secured to the body above. And I felt Ephraim begin to pass away, his spirit falling, disentangling from his body. His life force shuddering through the air. My magic caught it, pulling it to me and across my flesh like a caress, or a promise, or a threat, heated and icy both, into a glowing ball that held together, for a moment. Brother Ephraim began to slide away from me, into the ground. The process was slow and purposeful, my mind focused. The life force slid past me, clutching at me as it went, trying to slow its passage, screaming deep into the dark beneath.
The woods shivered, the soil moving in fractions of inches, fast and furious. Drinking the life away. Claiming the soul as its own. Things fell from the branch above, hitting the ground around me, bouncing, breaking, fracturing, and crumbling to powder. Bones. Hair in short strands. Fingernails. Clothes. Boots. Crumbling and sifting into piles and then into the dirt, sucked down. Along with the soul I’d stolen to feed Soulwood. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
And so I fed the life of Brother Ephraim into the earth.
This was resolute. Deliberate. This was judgment. Utter. Complete. And I didn’t care. Even knowing that this power made me evil, far more evil than a witch, no matter what the Scriptures might say. Scriptures that had no mention of my kind anywhere in them. I’d looked.
The limbs above shook and trembled. Leaves rustled hungrily. Time passed. The earth stilled. Satisfied. Pleased. Aware . . .
I breathed in, smelling loam and water. Hearing the trickle of spring water. Night had fallen, dark and thick with promise, threat, and gratification. I stood and brushed my hand off on my damp clothes. My fingertips were bleeding, blood dripping onto the ground, but as I watched, the skin healed over, clean and new. I was no longer cold; I felt warm and sated and relaxed, the power still pulsing in me. I didn’t know what that might mean, but it felt good. The church would call me witch and evil and murderess and burn me at the stake. But the church wasn’t here. And the law enforcement officer who was here? He’d never tell what he knew or thought he knew, because if he did, Paka’s secret would be out—that she had hunted a human and eaten of him. And that fact would forever alter the precarious balance of humans, paranormal creatures, and law enforcement in the United States.
I stood over the place where Brother Ephraim had vanished and quoted Shakespeare. “‘If you prick us, do we not bleed? . . . If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?’ You’re gone now, Brother Ephraim, into a life of my choosing and my judgment.” The ground beneath me went still, leaving the woods hushed and silent as the grave.
I considered Paka, a black smear on the night, and said, “You didn’t eat much of Ephraim, so I reckon you’re hungry. I have a venison roast in the freezer. I can thaw it and cook it for you to eat in human form, or let you eat it raw in cat form.” Paka yawned, showing me her teeth, white in the night. I wasn’t sure what answer that was, but I turned and led the way through the woods, back to the house. Paka followed in my path, her huge paws silent on the earth.
* * *
Rick, Paka, and I were sitting around the table, silent, me finally warm and dry, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders, drinking homemade wine bottled by Sister Erasmus. She was my maw-maw’s friend, and her wine was delicious, at least to me; I’d had two and a half glasses, leaving me tipsy, twirling my goblet in my fingers, sleepy, like the forest surrounding the house. The goblets had thick stems and deep bowls, earthenware that had been hand-thrown by a local woman, cooked in a wood-fired kiln, and glazed in greens and browns with touches of blue. I’d had the goblets for two years, having traded vegetables and herbs for them, just because I liked them. I’d never used them until now, making do with water glasses or empty Mason jars. Company deserved better. The night itself deserved better.
Paka, in her human form, poured another few ounces into my goblet and I sipped, the wine dark and rich, which I liked, though Rick had called the wine too sweet. I hadn’t bothered to learn much about wines, knowing I’d never have a chance to try the expensive good ones, but I had considered growing grapes for local vintners. I figured my land would grow better grapes than any place in Europe. I could plant an acre, maybe two, in the front yard, if I was of a mind, and watch over it through the front window.
Paka finished off the small venison roast, which was bloody in the center and too tough, from being still frozen when it went into the oven to thaw in heated stew juices. But she didn’t seem to notice or care. Eyes dark and hooded, Rick watched her as she sliced off pieces of the roast and picked them up with her fingers, eating with dainty movement but no manners. He seemed entranced by her, but not like a normal man in the presence of a beautiful, wild woman. More as if he was pulled to her, like the moon to the Earth, held in her orbit, but always separate. I couldn’t guess at the nature of their relationship, but whatever their bond was, peace wasn’t part of it.