Joshua kept talking. “They’ll marry us in front of witnesses. And I’ll have your land and you. The way it was supposed to be.”
Joshua, John’s nephew, had been my husband’s heir, until I came along. Joshua had believed that everything his uncle owned was going to be his, me included, and according to church law that would have happened, eventually. But Joshua didn’t want to wait. He never had.
Joshua, his brother, Jackie, and a couple of friends cornered me at the door to the ladies’ restroom, alone, after church services one day. I’d been almost fourteen and, though married to John in the eyes of the church, still a virgin.
John had caught his nephew and Joshua’s friends, all older than me by five years or more, pawing me, and the vengeance he had administered with his fists were images I carried with me still. My husband had changed his last will and testament soon after that. And for all intents and purposes, we left the church a year later. Everything had begun to change after that event outside the ladies’ room. And now here I was, with Joshua again, my virtue and life in danger.
“You hear me, woman?” he asked, his voice rising, a thrum of anger in it.
I quoted the Bible. “‘But if a man find a betrothed damsel in the field, and the man force her, and lie with her: then the man only that lay with her shall die.’”
“Take off your clothes, woman,” Joshua said, his voice vibrating with threat.
In the distance I heard a sound, rhythmic, a kind of throbbing resonance that might result if a music producer combined the rumble of a powerful engine with the purr of a house cat. In, out. In, out. Purring on the inhale and the exhale both. Paka. The black wereleopard in her animal form was close by.
Deep in the clay, my frigid fingers touched something solid and springy, and I wrapped them around the larger root, careful this time to take only a little, not what my panic screamed I would need. Holding on to the life of the forest, I tracked the purring, chuffing sound to a point of wrongness just to my right and slightly downhill, but . . . high, high in the trees. Below the leopard’s paw, hanging on the branch beside her, was a body, mostly dead. I could feel his blood on the tree bark, his breath slight and fast in the shadows, his heart fluttering. This blood felt wrong as well, but a wrongness I couldn’t explain. The wrongness was Brother Ephraim, and he was dying, dragged along an enormous tree branch by the powerful jaws of the black leopard. Blood poured from him onto the tree, as if deep gouges scored his flesh. The pumping of his heart was speeding, but the circulation itself was slowing as he bled out. Paka had wounded him most grievously while saving me, and he was dying. Dying fast. Blood loss and shock would kill her victim in minutes.
Joshua shifted on his pile of boulders. “Jackie said you’d let the devil into your house. A she devil and her devil man. And we had to take you back or you’d lose your soul. So . . . you’re mine. Jackie said so.” When I didn’t reply he said, “Put aside the Taser you used on me. I won’t have my wife with a weapon.”
Fear welled up in me. This . . . this was what I’d feared all my life. Punishment at the hands of a churchman. “No,” I said, so softly it was more a vibration in my chest. “No. I won’t.”
Joshua heard me and his face twisted in hate. “Take off your clothes. Submit. And I won’t hurt you.”
There was no cell signal on my land, and as best as I could tell, Jackson Jr. hadn’t gone down the road, to a place where he could call for help. He was tracking the leopard, his footfalls steady and determined. Reckless. Arrogant. But not stupid. Cunning evil on two legs. If Jackie got here first, he’d shoot Paka and help his pal Joshua rape me, while his other friend died in the trees. They’d rape me just like they’d tried to outside the ladies’ room when I was a kid. I’d kneed him in the groin then and tried to run, leaving him in the dirt. The boys still standing had grabbed me, hands up my dress. Until John found me. If John hadn’t come . . .
But I wasn’t a kid this time. I wasn’t helpless, even without a man to protect me. Even without Paka in the trees above.
“No,” I said, louder. “I won’t have you.” I shook my head. “And I won’t let you hurt me.”
Joshua’s fury beat through the ground, hot and cold all at once. I felt him gather himself, ready to attack.
I didn’t have a choice. I pushed my hands deeper into the clay, trapping myself if I had to move fast, the suction pulling at me, the cold stealing my life’s warmth, but burying me in the earth of my woods. I found a second root with my other hand, this one larger. A poplar tree root as big around as my lower arm, tiny rootlets feathering off into the soil. This one pulsed with life like a fire hose, full and potent.
With the two roots in hand, I could follow every life source in the forest, every bird, rat, snake, beaver, red deer, lynx in a distant tree, watching prey, and the wrongness that stalked my land. Jackie. Joshua. Brother Ephraim, dying overhead, all wrong. Paka, Wrong. And Rick LaFleur. He was still human-shaped, moving among the trees, silent and stealthy, more so than any human I’d ever known. He was closing on Jackie. He had the churchman’s scent. With him, on his shoulder, was a large rodent or small cat, another life force not seen here before, its energies wrapped around Rick’s. Cat on the dash of the car. Such wasted thoughts amid everything wrong that was poised to erupt into some new thing, something so very dangerous.
Above, Paka left the body of Brother Ephraim in the limbs and began moving through the trees, leaping from huge limb to huge limb, from tree to tree, silent, except for that double purr growing closer. It reverberated through the trunks of the poplar grove and into my bones. Paka was a wrongness here in the Appalachian Mountains, the trees resisting her. I feared that my woods might hurt her like they’d hurt Joshua. Instinctively I reached out to her through the trees, accepting her, pulling her in close to me, making her part of the land. It was the same thing I did when I put seeds or a plant’s roots into the soil; I claimed them for the land. In the same way I claimed Paka, giving her access to every part of the woods, making her part of them. Like the trees and plants, I could use her to help me as I desired. But I knew that by claiming her, I was also accepting responsibility for her actions. This was the good and the bad of living in Soulwood.
Joshua pulled his legs up under his body, in preparation to stand. “I said, take off your clothes, woman.”
From all around came a sound that had never belonged in this forest, a sound that was powerful and terrifying. Not a roar like an African lion, but like the dark of a moonless night, half scream, half rumble, a hacking, growling roar that spoke of death and menace. Joshua cringed and looked around. Paka had moved fast through the canopy of trees.
Overhead I caught a glimpse of a soaring hawk as it dove, hurtling through the limbs, half closing his wings. He tilted his body up, his claws opening, reaching. He caught a squirrel in his talons, the prey silent, swiftly crushed to death. The hawk spread his wings and flapped past me, to settle on a branch above Joshua. It ripped into the still warm body of the rodent and tore off a strip of bloody meat, the raptor staring down at Joshua as it ate. The squirrel’s blood splattered as it died. I knew it because of the roots I clutched, because they knew it, because the forest knew it all. Almost a whisper, Joshua demanded a third time, “Take. Off. Your. Clothes.”
I lifted my face and smiled at him, eyes only half-open, lips closed, demure, like the womenfolk were trained. “Nooo,” I said, drawing out the word.
Overhead the hawk paused, seeing the movement of a black shadow in the tall branches. Paka. Stealthy. Just above me. Her paws padding along a limb, about twenty feet away from Joshua. I had seen her leap onto my house. Joshua was well within Paka’s range. I wasn’t gonna have to kill this man, or not alone, at any rate. I laughed, the tone low and mocking. Slowly I added, “And if you touch me again, I’ll make you shit your britches, boy.”
Joshua stood, the shotgun gripped so tightly in his hands that his knuckles went white. A drop of something fell from above and hit him, square on his head. Joshua flinched and raised one hand, letting go, holding the gun by the barrel only. With the other hand, he touched the crown of his head. When he drew back his palm, it was smeared with blood. His eyes went wide; he tilted up his head, eyes darting through the branches. But Paka had already leaped. Flying through the air, silent as the shadow of death in the valley of evil.
Joshua saw. Movements jerky, he tried to raise his gun. Too late. Paka crashed into him and rode him to the earth, her claws embedded in his face, the long retractable claws holding his skull and jaw. Her back feet slammed into his middle, crushing out his breath in a strangled scream as they landed.
“Paka! No!” Rick darted into the opening between the trees and waded through the small pond, his boots sinking in the clay and splashing me with icy water.
Paka roared again, a hacking, growling scream that sent shivers through the forest and into my cold flesh. She turned greenish-gold eyes to me and hacked, asking me what I wanted to do. Rick came to a stop at the edge of the pool and looked from her to me, his eyes wide and uncertain, watching.
On his shoulder something moved, the other life force I’d noted earlier. It chittered and bounced up and down to see in the gloaming dark. When I didn’t react, it leaped ahead and landed, racing from Rick, fast as a flying bird, bounding as if winged, toward Paka. More wrongness rocked through the earth, shocking the breath from me.
“Pea! No!” Rick screamed. And I knew something horrible was about to happen. The thing drew in its body to leap. Steel glinted at its feet. Wrong, so very wrong.
“No,” I whispered. In response to my thoughts, the ground seemed to close over its back feet. The critter whiplashed and rolled, its body stuck, as if on flypaper. It squealed, the sound catlike and mad. The small creature rippled and went still. Like the others, it looked at me. It wasn’t a rodent. Not a cat. Something else. Something with dark steel claws the size of good butcher knives, longer than it should be able to use, small as it was. Neon green, shaped like a small cat, claws out. Steel claws. An animal with steel claws longer than my hand. It was so foreign that the forest would have rejected it and spit it out, sending the thing rolling, had I not clenched my mind around its feet. Yet, even through the ground, I couldn’t get a feel for what the creature was.
Rick stared at his mate, his face and eyes fierce and angry and hurting. I had no idea what the expressions and emotions meant, but they were deep and intense, an agony of the soul. “Paka. No. Please, Pea. She was trying to save the woman, Nell.”
The thing on the forest floor hissed, its claws flashing. I didn’t know what it was, but I had a feeling what it intended. “Why does it want to kill Paka?” I asked.
Paka, sitting atop Joshua, growled low, the sound vibrating through the air and the earth. Her claws had pricked him, making him bleed, and I could sense that blood seeping into the ground, Joshua’s blood and Ephraim’s blood, strange and metallic. The earth was thirsty, so eager for sustenance that it made my mouth go desert dry and my stomach cramp with need. Eight years since I had fed it. Eight long years. Distantly I heard Joshua whimper.