“Nellie?” Mud asked, worry in the word.
“No thorns. It stopped at my ankles. I’m good.”
“Okay.” But she didn’t sound as if she was okay. She sounded scared. Good. If she was scared she might not try the things I had. She might stay human. Longer than I had.
“You sure you want to be part of this?” I asked her.
She heaved a breath. “Yup. Move over.” She sat beside me on the faded pink blanket and crossed her legs, pulling her dress down to cover her knees. “I don’t gotta be barefoot, do I?”
“No. I just want you to have the chance to see and feel what this is like. But if it goes wrong, you pull out and get away. Fast.”
“Okay.” She grabbed my hand and we interlaced our fingers, holding tight.
“I’m dropping into the earth now,” I said. I closed my eyes, concentrated on the link in our hands, felt the land through the soles of my feet, and dropped into the earth slowly, easing Mud with me. Into the dark, into the deeps. She gasped in delight, her fingers tightening on mine.
I reached out and found the tree, a green, green, green being with a mind full of curiosity—curiosity about Tandy, who it liked, and me, who it didn’t. About Mud, who it considered only a twig, of little importance. About Brother Ephraim and why he was no more. The tree had noted his absence as it might a lull in the rains.
I had no language to share with the tree, no common . . . ground. Mud laughed at the thought, and I nearly laughed with her.
Instead I remembered what it had felt like to be a lump of root and limb, tethered to the land, part of it, but not. Healing it, growing the trees. And I sent the vampire tree the feeling of rain falling upon me. The warmth of the sun filtering through bare branches to caress my wooden form. I showed it Soulwood and the extension of Soulwood on the banks of the river at the two Tollivers’ homes, on the bank of the Tennessee River, the few acres that now contained mature trees. Land that now really and truly lived.
The tree followed me, absorbing the impressions, the presence of life and death. The tree understood. It turned its full attention to me. Without words, it thought at me, sharing concepts, meaning, all without words or pictures. Seeding, rooting, fruiting, reproducing. Mostly that. Reproducing.
I empathized, as Tandy did, understanding, comprehending, accepting. The tree was the only one of its kind. Like all trees, it needed to make more of its species. It wanted to spread into the land. It was compelled by Nature herself to reproduce. And it had no place that was safe to live in. No sexual opposite that would allow it to reproduce.
Humans wanted it dead.
It was . . . lonely.
I thought back, showing it the rootlets at the gate. Springing up, leafing out, becoming saplings. Uncut. Unmolested. Allowed to grow. The land dedicated to it alone. But not allowed to kill or seek blood. Not allowed to thorn or trap with vines. It considered this, but its loneliness was acute. It was isolated, solitary, abandoned, lost. It wanted what I had. Unlike other trees, it wanted . . . family.
Mud’s mouth opened in awe. “Nellie,” she whispered.
I promised the tree that . . . that I would claim it and keep it as part of my woods.
That it could become part of Soulwood, part of the trees there. But it had to live in harmony with the other trees and animals, wherever it grew. And it must no longer kill. If a human cut it down, it could come back from its roots, but it could not attack or resist. It must live in harmony with other trees in the wood. It must allow humans dominion. It must serve, not fight back. If the tree did these things then I would claim it as family.
The tree went silent. The concept of harmony and servitude was not foreign to it. Trees and the land had lived in servitude for ten thousand years. It understood. It agreed.
It agreed to being claimed as part of Soulwood.
It agreed to harm no human, no mammal, no bird. No vertebrate of any kind.
One last blood feeding, I thought at it. Then no more. One-handed, I placed the rooster on the ground, an offering. The tree pushed rootlets up through the ground. Found the chicken. It wrapped its vines about the rooster’s struggling body, but then it hesitated. Paused.
The vines around my feet tightened. It didn’t want the rooster or its blood. It wanted me. It wanted a willing sacrifice. It was asking permission. Waiting patiently, in the way of trees.
I studied the tree’s consciousness, the tree I had mutated and brought to sentience with my blood. If you take only a drop of my blood, I thought at it, fine. But if you take too much, I’ll . . . I’ll be most unhappy.
The tree extended a single barb. It pierced my toe. Pain and shock jetted up my leg. Drops of my blood welled and trailed down, to drip onto the ground. The tree sucked up my blood. Ate it. The thorn withdrew, leaving a sharp pain in my flesh. I felt the leaf that spooled out of my wound and closed it.
I felt the vampire tree’s rootlets uncoil from my feet. Uncoil from the rooster.
I felt the interest of the tree turn to Soulwood. Knew when it shifted its attention away from me and to the land.
I opened my eyes to meet Mud’s eyes.
“Whoa, Bessie,” she said. “That was . . . That was . . .” She shook her head, not having words.
“You growing leaves?” I asked her.
Mud released my hand and felt her hair, studied her fingers. “Nope.”
“Good.” I pulled away from the land. Standing, I gathered my blanket into a ball at my waist.
Tandy walked from the tree to stand in front of me. “That was . . .” He shook his head. “Oh my God. That was amazing,” he murmured. “Beyond wonderful. Not anything I could ever have imagined.” His eyes were shining bright red. His Lichtenberg lines feathered down his face and neck, scarlet against his too-white skin. “Thank you for letting me be part of that.”
“I don’t reckon you’un grew leaves?” I asked in church-speak.
“Nary a one,” he answered back in church-speak.
“Thank you for coming. I know it’s made you late to work.”
“I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”
“Me neither,” Mud said. “Let’s go home.”
“Mama and Daddy haven’t said you can move in with me.”
“If’n they don’t let me move in, I’ll jist grow me some leaves,” she said, mischief in her eyes. “I think I know how to do that now.”
“Oh, Mud.” I hugged her for a moment before releasing her. “Well. Okay. What are we gonna do about the rooster?”
“Let it go? Someone’ll claim it and when it wakes them up at three in the morning they’ll get a good meal outta it.”
Together we released the rooster. The mean old bird scratched the earth, giving me the evil eye, as if trying to decide if he was going to attack me, but then he reconsidered and raced away, crowing. I put on my shoes. Tandy in our wake, my true sister and I walked to my Chevy truck and drove back to Soulwood. Back to home.
EPILOGUE
I sat on my porch swing, warm spring breezes dancing across the lawn, brushing newly leafed plants, pale green trees waving in the wind. Birds were singing and squirrels were racing around wide trunks, playing tag and catch-me-if-you-can. A brave lizard raced across the house wall and into a space it believed the cats couldn’t reach. Had they been awake, one of the cats would have caught and eaten him, lizards being a very fine dinner to a mouser. But they were snoozing on the front porch, stretched out in the sun, unmoving, except for Cello’s tail tip twitching every now and then.
Mud was at home, packing for her move here. I didn’t know if it would be a permanent move or not. That would be up to the state’s social services department and a judge.
My cell phone rang. It was on the swing seat beside me. It was Occam’s number. Something leaped in my chest, like a wereleopard into a tree. I answered. “This is Nell.” Nell. Not Ingram. To
set the tone.
“Nell, sugar.” His voice sounded rough and coarse, like the voice of a chain-smoking old man. “I didn’t know if you’d answer.”
“I didn’t think you’d call. Seems like we both were wrong.” He didn’t reply, but I could hear the soft purr of his fancy car. “What happened? Why haven’t you—” I stopped, not able to ask why he hadn’t called me.
“I’ve been out of work. Healing.”
“From the fire?”
“You brought me back from death, Nellie. And I thank you for that. But . . . well, the healing wasn’t complete. It’s taken a lot of shifting to heal from the burns.”
I nodded, even though he couldn’t see me. “I took some time to turn back from being a log.” I risked a small joke. “A truly vegetative state.”
Occam laughed. I laughed with him.
“Nell, sugar, can we have that date?”
“I’d like that.”
Occam said nothing. And I decided to be brave. “How about now?”
Silence stretched between us. “Now is good,” he said after a while, his voice so hoarse it sounded torn.
“You gonna tell me about your life, the things you remember?” He stayed silent. I went on. “From before the cage and the traveling carnival, and the time from your leopard imprisonment?”
“I will. You going to tell me about your family? About John Ingram? About the Nicholsons?”
“I will.”
“Good. ’Cause I got things to say about how I nearly died. And how Soulwood healed me. As well as it could. I been out of work for just as long as you. Burned. Badly burned, with lots of scars that not even shifting to my cat has helped. But healing and still alive because of you and your land. This will be our ‘getting to know one another’ first date.”
“I like the sound of that.”
“And at the end of this date, or maybe at the middle, I promise that I am going to kiss you, Nell, sugar.”
Warmth spiraled through me and settled in my belly. My breath came faster. “A properly improper kiss?”
“The most improper kiss I can think of, Nell, sugar. What do you want me to pick up to eat?”
“You just come. I’ll have a picnic ready when you get here.”
“That sounds right nice, Nell, sugar. I’ll be there in an hour.”
• • •
The weather was comfortable enough to allow me to wear a long-sleeved shirt and a silky skirt, my feet bare. At my side was a basket, one with sandwiches, a plastic bowl of fresh fruit, a bottle of Sister Erasmus’ wine. And my pink blanket, clean and neatly folded.
It was early yet, but I felt it the moment the fancy car began the drive up the hill. My fingertips ached, as the small leaves that grew from there tried to quiver in nerves or excitement or both. Occam and I were going to have a picnic on the hill of Soulwood, overlooking the distant skyline of Knoxville and the even more distant mountains. And he was going to kiss me, a very improper kiss. I thought it was time and past time for me to have my first very improper kiss.
The fancy car turned into the drive. I stood and walked down the steps to Occam.
Read on for an excerpt of the first book in Faith Hunter’s New York Times bestselling Jane Yellowrock series,
SKINWALKER
Available wherever books are sold!
I wheeled my bike down Decatur Street and eased deeper into the French Quarter, the bike’s engine purring. My shotgun, a Benelli M4 Super 90, was slung over my back and loaded for vamp with hand-packed silver fléchette rounds. I carried a selection of silver crosses in my belt, hidden under my leather jacket, and stakes, secured in loops on my jeans-clad thighs. The saddlebags on my bike were filled with my meager travel belongings—clothes in one side, tools of the trade in the other. As a vamp killer for hire, I travel light.
I’d need to put the vamp-hunting tools out of sight for my interview. My hostess might be offended. Not a good thing when said hostess held my next paycheck in her hands and possessed a set of fangs of her own.
A guy, a good-looking Joe standing in a doorway, turned his head to follow my progress as I motored past. He wore leather boots, a jacket, and jeans, like me, though his dark hair was short and mine was down to my hips when not braided out of the way, tight to my head, for fighting. A Kawasaki motorbike leaned on a stand nearby. I didn’t like his interest, but he didn’t prick my predatory or territorial instincts.
I maneuvered the bike down St. Louis and then onto Dauphine, weaving between nervous-looking shop workers heading home for the evening and a few early revelers out for fun. I spotted the address in the fading light. Katie’s Ladies was the oldest continually operating whorehouse in the Quarter, in business since 1845, though at various locations, depending on hurricane, flood, the price of rent, and the agreeable nature of local law and its enforcement officers. I parked, set the kickstand, and unwound my long legs from the hog.
I had found two bikes in a junkyard in Charlotte, North Carolina, bodies rusted, rubber rotted. They were in bad shape. But Jacob, a semiretired Harley restoration mechanic/Zen Harley priest living along the Catawba River, took my money, fixing one up, using the other for parts, ordering what else he needed over the Net. It took six months.
During that time I’d hunted for him, keeping his wife and four kids supplied with venison, rabbit, turkey—whatever I could catch, as maimed as I was—restocked supplies from the city with my hoarded money, and rehabbed my damaged body back into shape. It was the best I could do for the months it took me to heal. Even someone with my rapid healing and variable metabolism takes a long while to totally mend from a near beheading.
Now that I was a hundred percent, I needed work. My best bet was a job killing off a rogue vampire that was terrorizing the city of New Orleans. It had taken down three tourists and left a squad of cops, drained and smiling, dead where it dropped them. Scuttlebutt said it hadn’t been satisfied with just blood—it had eaten their internal organs. All that suggested the rogue was old, powerful, and deadly—a whacked-out vamp. The nutty ones were always the worst.
Just last week, Katherine “Katie” Fonteneau, the proprietress and namesake of Katie’s Ladies, had e-mailed me. According to my Web site, I had successfully taken down an entire blood-family in the mountains near Asheville. And I had. No lies on the Web site or in the media reports, not bald-faced ones anyway. Truth is, I’d nearly died, but I’d done the job, made a rep for myself, and then taken off a few months to invest my legitimately gotten gains. Or to heal, but spin is everything. A lengthy vacation sounded better than the complete truth.
I took off my helmet and the clip that held my hair, pulling my braids out of my jacket collar and letting them fall around me, beads clicking. I palmed a few tools of the trade—one stake, ash wood and silver tipped; a tiny gun; and a cross—and tucked them into the braids, rearranging them to hang smoothly with no lumps or bulges. I also breathed deeply, seeking to relax, to assure my safety through the upcoming interview. I was nervous, and being nervous around a vamp was just plain dumb.
The sun was setting, casting a red glow on the horizon, limning the ancient buildings, shuttered windows, and wrought-iron balconies in fuchsia. It was pretty in a purely human way. I opened my senses and let my Beast taste the world. She liked the smells and wanted to prowl. Later, I promised her. Predators usually growl when irritated. Soon—she sent mental claws into my soul, kneading. It was uncomfortable, but the claw pricks kept me alert, which I’d need for the interview. I had never met a civilized vamp, certainly never done business with one. So far as I knew, vamps and skinwalkers had never met. I was about to change that. This could get interesting.
I clipped my sunglasses onto my collar, lenses hanging out. I glanced at the witchy-locks on my saddlebags and, satisfied, I walked to the narrow red door and pushed the buzzer. The bald-headed man who answered was definitely human, but big enough to be somethi
ng else: professional wrestler, steroid-augmented bodybuilder, or troll. All of the above, maybe. The thought made me smile. He blocked the door, standing with arms loose and ready. “Something funny?” he asked, voice like a horse-hoof rasp on stone.
“Not really. Tell Katie that Jane Yellowrock is here.” Tough always works best on first acquaintance. That my knees were knocking wasn’t a consideration.
“Card?” Troll asked. A man of few words. I liked him already. My new best pal. With two gloved fingers, I unzipped my leather jacket, fished a business card from an inside pocket, and extended it to him. It read JANE YELLOWROCK, HAVE STAKES WILL TRAVEL. Vamp killing is a bloody business. I had discovered that a little humor went a long way to making it all bearable.
Troll took the card and closed the door in my face. I might have to teach my new pal a few manners. But that was nearly axiomatic for all the men of my acquaintance.
I heard a bike two blocks away. It wasn’t a Harley. Maybe a Kawasaki, like the bright red crotch rocket I had seen earlier. I wasn’t surprised when it came into view and it was the Joe from Decatur Street. He pulled his bike up beside mine, powered down, and sat there, eyes hidden behind sunglasses. He had a toothpick in his mouth and it twitched once as he pulled his helmet and glasses off.
The Joe was a looker. A little taller than my six feet even, he had olive skin, black hair, black brows. Black jacket and jeans. Black boots. Bit of overkill with all the black, but he made it work, with muscular legs wrapped around the red bike.
No silver in sight. No shotgun, but a suspicious bulge beneath his right arm. Made him a leftie. Something glinted in the back of his collar. A knife hilt, secured in a spine sheath. Maybe more than one blade. There were scuffs on his boots (Western, like mine, not Harley butt-stompers) but his were Fryes and mine were ostrich-skin Luccheses. I pulled in scents, my nostrils widening. His boots smelled of horse manure, fresh. Local boy, then, or one who had been in town long enough to find a mount. I smelled horse sweat and hay, a clean blend of scents. And cigar. It was the cigar that made me like him. The taint of steel, gun oil, and silver made me fall in love. Well, sorta. My Beast thought he was kinda cute, and maybe tough enough to be worthy of us. Yet there was a faint scent on the man, hidden beneath the surface smells, that made me wary.