Page 91 of Curse on the Land
Over it all was the glaring awareness of two strange things. The coloring and magic of the tattoos that bound Rick to his human form. Something in his magic was damaged. Ripped away. Torn and leaking and broken. The way a limb would look, tendons stripped and shredded, blood seeping, bone sharp and shattered. His magics had been cursed and then shredded away. I knew what was missing. The massive addiction that had been Paka’s magic was gone.
There was nothing I could do about the self-loathing or the anger or bitterness. They were strictly human things.
But the tattoos and the addiction... those I could help.
I reached in and pulled on the tattoos. The bindings were threadlike, woven into the man’s flesh, and I could see them even in the cat form. They stretched from his arm and shoulder into his human soul. Binding him into a here and now, inflexible and static. I searched within the inks and the magic, finding the blood that sealed him to a cat form and, unexpectedly, to a vampire. The working was maggoty with death, snarled and tethered, and I was certain that I’d never have been able to do what I intended had he still been human shaped and unchanging. I snipped the threads that were knotted there, that held the working to the ink that had been tattooed into him, comprehending that the spell had never been completed, but left unfinished. The magics fell away, leaving only the glowing of the cat eyes in the tattoos.
The leopard’s heart rate sped, the thunder and wind of his breathing altered from purr to growl. Rick rolled to his feet. His screaming challenge slashed into the night. I felt him leap into a run. Coming for me. Occam on his tail.
The addiction I could heal the same way I might a sick tree or plant on Soulwood. I sent a tendril into the wound. Feeding it with my magic. Pulling together the broken strands, knotting them off. One, then another. Then dozens.
Rick stumbled and rolled. Down. Into a gully. Scattering fall’s leaves, into a pile so deep it buried him. He writhed, fighting gravity, inhaling bits of leaves and dirt. Insects and small creatures skittered away. Fighting, he hit bottom and, in a sinuous move, brought his feet beneath him. He leaped straight up, hard and high. Erupting through the deep pile of detritus.
Within him, I mended the broken parts and rewove the fabric of completeness, gifting his soul with life and wholeness. I could do this because I had claimed Rick months ago, through Paka, when I claimed her for the land. While he was here, on Soulwood, he was mine to grow and heal. I boosted his werecat energies, adding to his magic and his power, but binding it back to his will, and his intellect.
Rick caught a root system with his claws and pulled-climbed up it back into the air. He shook and screamed his displeasure. His cat didn’t like being shackled to the man as well as the moon.
I secured the last of the strands, smoothing them, stretching them into place. The magics that had been tied to him by the witch so long ago were gone. All that Paka had been and had ruined was gone. Now there was only man and cat. His will and the moon. Rick stopped, the sound of his scream echoing into the darkness.Nell?He thought at me.What...? What did you do?
Not sure,I thought back.I hope I helped.I pulled away and back to my body. In the distance, I heard Rick scream, half human, half cat, full of agony.
I fell over, exhausted. My face landed on the ground, my hands near my eyes. Tiny green leaves were unfurling from the fingertips of my hand. Long and pointed at the tip, growing wide at the blade, rounding out and back to my nails. Which were green and veined.
That... that couldn’t be a good sign.
Hands lifted me beneath my arms and at my ankles and carried me toward the house. My head flopped forward. My last vision was of my belly and the leaves and roots that grew there. Growing out of me. Again I heard Rick scream, before darkness claimed me.
EPILOGUE
Thanksgiving would be different this year. For all the years since John and Leah proposed to me and I had gone to live with them, I had celebrated every holiday away from the Nicholson clan. After John passed and I was alone, I had still kept away, believing that my family was a danger to me. Now my life had changed. I knew my extended family loved me, and had never stopped loving me. I was free to come and go from the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. I could visit with my mother, father, his other wives, and my full and half sibs, without fearing that I would be forced to stay there. Without the risk that my life would be stolen from me.
Many good things had happened over the last days since I’d left Spook School. I had learned that bloodlust could be controlled. I had learned that whatever the spirit of Soulwood was, it wasn’t an Old One. I had found that I could survive a battle beneath the earth. I had grown, inside, where no one but me could see it. Good things I contemplated as I drove away from my woods, toward the lands of God’s Cloud of Glory Church.
Thanksgiving Day, at eleven o’clock in the morning, I parked in front of my childhood home. I turned off the engine and removed my driving gloves, checking my fingertips.No leaves.They had withered and died within hours of my last communing with Soulwood, and the attempted healing of Rick. Which had been only partly successful.
I had a lot of things to address—the sentient tree near the sanctuary that hadn’t yet moved to its new place. I still had the thorns from it and the option to have them analyzed, but that might bring danger to my door. I needed to deal with—kill—the dark blot of Brother Ephraim. I needed to visit with Dougie and her family in their home. Needed to force Daddy to the doctor, and probably back under the knife. Tell my sisters that we weren’thuman. That was not gonna be easy. Had to finish up my final classes and go for some additional certifications at Spook School. Winterize my garden. I also needed to consider Occam’s interest in me, which made my middle feel all fluttery. Lots of things. But for today, I would be with my family for the first time in years.
A knock sounded and I couldn’t help my flinch. I turned to see Sam, his face pressed to the window glass, squishing his nose. I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed and opened my truck door. “Hurry up, Nell. Mama’s taking the turkeys outta the ovens, and Mama Carmel has the casseroles cooked. And you got to meet my wife.”
I slid out of the truck as Sam pulled a woman to me. “SaraBell, this is my sister Nell. You two got a lot in common. Nell used to steal my bubblegum. SaraBell stole my heart.”
The woman beside him was tall and limber, with angular shoulders and long limbs. Not the tiny, delicate woman I might have thought a churchman would desire, but a Viking of a woman, blond and blue eyed and strong. A girl only a few years younger than me. Maybe twenty. I should remember her; it would be the socially correct thing to remember her, but... I didn’t. She would have been nine years old when I’d left the church at age twelve. That was an eternity to a child. “My husband just said his heart was bubblegum,” SaraBell said.
“I heard. And he said you’d stole it. Good for you,” I said back.
SaraBell wrapped her arms around me in a hug. Sam gathered us both up and hugged too, a group hug, odd feeling and hooking into childhood memories like a crochet hook into yarn. Pulling. Tugging at a heart that had grown cold over the years.
“Welcome home, little sister,” Sam said. “Hospitality and safety while you’re here.”
“Welcome, Sister Nell,” SaraBell said.
“Peace be to both of you and to your home,” I said, taking refuge in one of the many proper replies a guest would share. “I’m glad to have a new sister,” I added. And then I teased, “And if this rascal ever gives you any trouble, you just give me a call. We’ll gang up on him.”
“Done,” SaraBell said, stepping back. “Let me help you with the bread,” she said.
And so my formal reunion with my extended family began.
The next weeks would be difficult. But for now, there was family. And that mattered.
