EIGHTEEN

Jackie drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a gun on me. Dawson stared at me like I was a steak, a red glow in his eyes. I felt in the seat crack for my cell phone, but it must have slid when the van skidded and fishtailed. My laptop was on the floor on the other side of the van, too far away to reach in a single lunge before I was shot dead. If I were closer I could bean the driver on the head with my geraniums, but I’d never get a backhanded hit to the front seat before Dawson simply took the clay pot away. Which left me with my wits and my crafty tongue. I figured that meant I was gonna die.

I heard a cell ring and Jackie’s eyes focused on me in the rearview. He must have liked what he saw, because he put the gun down, glanced at the screen and answered. “Roxy. We didn’t get her. But we did get the little church girl. Nell. Right.” Jackie listened and said, “That might work. Since it was PsyLED, they might agree to an exchange.” Jackie laughed, ended the call with a push of his thumb. The van sliding, rocking, he pulled over.

Moving faster than anything human ever could, he braked and was over the seat, both hands gripping my elbows, clamping them to the seat. Beside him, Dawson used a roll of duct tape to adhere me to the seat, panting as he pulled long lengths around me with that particular stripping sound of heavy tape, his hands more paws than human. When Dawson was done, Jackie patted me on the cheek, and I realized that his hands were clawed too, like a dog’s paws—nonretractile claws, rigid and pointed. Like Dawson, his ears were pointed and situated high on his head. His nose was black and coarse, though unlike his friend’s, still mostly human shaped. I remembered the smell of dog pee on the plants at Mira’s house and all over the Stubbins farm. I had indeed found the dogs.

Dawson, back in the passenger seat, whuffed. He appeared to have changed completely to dog now, and he clawed the remains of clothes and shoes away from him, to the floor.

Jackie leaned in and sniffed me. “You smell like a werecat.”

“What’s it to you, dog?” I asked, thinking it might not be the smartest thing I ever did, picking on a black dog in some kind of partial shift.

Jackie’s shoulders rose high, his nose wrinkling and his eyes going red. “Not just a dog. Not a pet. Nothing so common,” he growled, the last word dripping in malice. “We are Welsh gwyllgi.” The word sounded a bit like gwee-shee, and it was one in the long list of shifter dogs I had studied. One of the worst ones.

His nose moved along under my hair and up near my ear, sniffing, his breath heated and fast. “We like the stink of fear.” Which I figured meant he really liked the way I smelled because I was flat-out terrified. He chuckled again, and pulled back, so I was reflected in his red-eyed stare, my own eyes wide. “Think of us as the faerie dog’s scarier, darker cousin, but with a much better title—the dog of darrrknesssss.” The last word came out as a growl, and spittle flew from his lips, hot and stinking of old meat.

I said nothing, and wished I could turn my gaze away, but that wasn’t happening.

“You get to be a carrot, woman. And when we get the girl back, and the PsyLED team buried six feet under, I’ll turn you over to Joshua and we’ll get your land for our own, a safe place to hunt and kill. And you will bear our young, gwyllgi to build our pack.” With that, he eased away from me, returned to his seat, pulling the van back onto the road and into the night, misshapen hands on the wheel, his claws tapping on it. If fear sweat hadn’t been soaking my skin, I might have patted myself on the back for my deductions, but all I wanted was to throw up.

I tried to analyze what he had said. The girl had to be Mira. I had a feeling that he didn’t know about the vampires who had come along to rescue Mira, and I had to wonder why he hadn’t smelled them, despite his dog nose, unless the vampires had been downwind from him. They had never been inside the van.

But there was no way Mira was going to be exchanged for me. It sounded as if T. Laine had been right. Jackie didn’t know that Joshua was the one who had taken Mira from him. I had to assume he didn’t know that the LEOs had raided the auto repair shop. Things I knew, that they didn’t know, could give me leverage. But claws and fangs meant they would always have the upper hand.

I wondered if the vampires had drunk enough of Joshua’s blood to get information out of him. If so, it was my fondest hope that the vampire drinking him down got so excited that Joshua got drained by accident. Of course, I also guessed that Joshua didn’t taste too good, so that wasn’t likely to happen. I had better use good ol’ Josh now. I turned on my strongest churchwoman accent.

“Vampires was part of the raiding party, Jackie. And they done got Joshua Purdy.”

The van swerved slightly before Jackie righted it. I’d hit a bull’s-eye. “What?” he said, his voice a register lower.

“Joshua is the one who took Mira Clayton away from you, with help, of course. Him and . . .” I thought fast and found a twisted lie that might work. “. . . and probably the Dawsons. Simon here”—I kicked the front seat—“him and his daddy were both drinking on Mira with Joshua.”

Simon made a doggy squeak of denial.

“Don’t lie, dog,” I said. “The PsyLED agents and vampires busted in. They got Mira. They got Joshua. They put all a your dogs to sleep so they can’t fight and they’re in custody right now. More important, no way will Joshua hold out against vampires. Everyone knows they can use compulsion to learn anything they want, and these vampires ain’t chained. Even gwyllgi can’t hold out against vampires who ain’t prisoners.” I didn’t care that I might be lying. I needed to sow dissension. Divide and conquer.

Jackie growled, the note so low and deep it rattled the metal of the van. “Not against a gwyllgi,” he said. “Vampires are nothing in the face of one of us.”

Softer, speaking slowly, the way a good churchwoman should, I said, “They got two master vampires to drink him down,” which might not be a lie, because I had no idea how powerful the vamps were, “and that means they’ll quick-like know everything he knows. Everything, Jackie. Joshua is the same kind of creature you are? It won’t help him. Not against two master vamps and him a prisoner. Table’s turned, Jackie. The vamps is in charge.” I remembered what he had said on the phone. “He knows who and what Roxy is? And where Roxy is?” I let my voice drop softer, almost into a whisper. “They’ll know. Does Joshua know about your hideouts and your money?” I asked, sowing division in the ranks. And then I remembered one important thing. “And your friend here, the outcast Dawson.” I tilted my jaw at the dog in the front seat. “Does he know you shot his daddy?” I pressed, remembering what reading the land had shown me, “Dawson Sr.?” I was risking everything on words, but they felt right, and Jackie flinched, just the smallest bit. “Shot him dead with silver shot?” Beside him, Simon the dog growled long and low and looked at Jackie with his hellfire eyes.

“Silver is the only thing that kills your kind, ain’t it? I got me a feeling that you been working against your old friends, and against HST.” I lowered my voice. “Was Joshua close enough to the Human Speakers to know who made the trips to the Turks and Caicos Islands to set up the bank accounts? Will Joshua give away all your hidey-holes? Will he tell them vampires what you are? Is anything safe, Jackie?” I had paraphrased the last line from a movie I had watched. Dawson panted. The smell of wet dog and dog breath filled the van, rank and sick.

“Somebody turned in the auto repair shop outside of Oliver Springs,” I said. “The sheriff is still there. I wonder who turned that location in?” Me. It was me. “Your feeding places, your sanctuaries for your dog pack, have been raided today and tonight. You’re on the run until you can find a safe place again. The church grounds, the Stubbins farm, the locked room behind the winter storage cave, and the repair shop near Oliver Springs,” I said, almost musing, “all gone in one day. Who was it, I wonder?” It was me. Me. I wanted to say it so bad I could taste the words, but I kept them inside.

Dawson growled again, the vibrations stronger than the engine, shaking through my chest. Jackie moved, a blur in the dark. Gunshots stole all sound from me. The van braked and lurched and swerved to a stop.

The smell of metallic blood and gunfire burned the cold night air. Simon Dawson Jr. whined. Jackie raised the gun and shot Dawson three more times. Dawson fell silent. Even his breathing died away. Tears I hadn’t known I cried cooled and dried on my face. Not tears for Simon. Tears for . . . everything. This whole mess.

Jackie lifted the cell to his ear again and said, “Roxy. Three things. They got Joshua. The local cops raided the gwyllgi saloon. And Simon attacked me and I had to take him out. Yeah. Silver shot.” He listened a long time. Then he said, “Yeah. They got the last of the HST members and the church families, not that we need the stupid males anymore, but they also got the pregnant females.” He listened again. “Yeah. If we had to lose them, this was good timing.” He added, “No. None of them know where you are.” He ended the call.

Jackie looked back at me in the rearview and started making this choked, chuffing sound. I realized he was laughing. That couldn’t be good. Maybe I had played into his hands—paws. I thought about my cell again, and tried to remember if it was turned on or off, and wondered if the team could track me through it. I didn’t hear it vibrate or sing a tone, but it was a hope, no matter how faint. Or maybe they could track the van’s GPS. Assuming it had one. All I had was a flowerpot. Against a paranormal, shape-shifting dog.

We drove through the night for a long time, first on 27, and later on the I-40 corridor, and the whole way, I tried to think of a way out of this. My brain felt like mush, which never happened to the women in the films I watched or books I read. I wasn’t making any headway on an escape plan, beyond ripping off the tape, opening the door, and rolling out into the road. I tried the tape, but that stuff was strong. A sharp blade might cut it. The most I did was break a nail. Up front, dog blood dripped slowly onto the floor of the van, with little splats, metallic and foul.

I finally spotted my cell on the floor. If I could get the cell and call the PsyLED team . . . Yeah. Maybe I’d also grow wings and fly away. But it was the only chance I had, no matter how remote the possibility of success.

I stretched out my leg and pointed my foot, slid as far down in the seat as the duct tape allowed, but even when the tape was near to ripping my skin off, the cell was too far away. I pulled my flowerpot close to me. As a weapon, it wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

I was out of ideas. The thought of being in Jackie’s hands made my breath come fast, and sweat gathered, icy on my skin. That made Jackie turn his head, sniffing. He laughed that awful barking laughter. The blood dripped, slow and steady, metallic, almost caustic on the contained air.

We passed exits for towns I knew of but have never been to, until Jackie turned off I-40, onto a two-lane road and slowed the van. Farms passed on either side, and then thinned out into forest, the elevation began to rise, and I recognized mountains on the horizon. We were headed southeast on a road that hadn’t been repaired in years, full of potholes and cracked pavement. It might be an old moonshiner’s road, taking us to the Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. Away from everything I knew.

Jackie turned onto an unpaved road that was little more than a rutted drive. My fear spiked and I heard hissing sounds close by, steady and sharp, like the unrelieved spitting of snakes or maybe dragons. Fanciful fears from reading too many books. From a childhood in the church.

The lane narrowed and trees leaned in close, as if looking into the van, branches scratching along the sides like the skinned and skeletal fingers of the dead. I loved trees, and they loved me, but there was something about this patch of land and these trees that was not lovely. They seemed menacing, though that had to be my own fear, as no tree was aware enough to menace anyone. Well, except for the vampire oak on church land.

The headlights picked out shapes in the night: outbuildings, trucks on blocks, a tractor, the remains of an old commercial chicken coop, yards long, with a rusting metal roof. A dilapidated barn listing to the side as if ready to collapse, doors missing. A ranch-style house appeared, windows curtained off, with only slits of light showing that it was inhabited. The door opened and a man appeared, a shotgun in hand. The van jolted and pitched and rolled on past.

The road curled again and went uphill, bumping and rough. And then we were back on a paved road, and I realized that we had taken some kind of shortcut. Minutes later, Jackie turned again, onto a well-kept tertiary road, and then onto a paved drive and up to a fancy house constructed of wood timbers, a log home that was a century and a half and a lot of high tech away from the log homes of the early settlers. This was a log mansion, with tall, vaulted ceilings, the windows in the peaks bright with light.

Jackie braked and turned off the engine, which ticked and hissed as it cooled; white steam curled up around the hood, swirling, caught in the headlights. At least I knew there weren’t giant snakes or dragons nearby. The PsyLED van was about to blow a head gasket, if I was any kind of judge. Which meant it was not going to be a reliable way to get out of here, even if I got access to the keys.

Jackie opened his door, and the night air was damp and cold. I heard the hiss of the engine, but also the hiss of a low waterfall, splashing, dropping, landing wetly. Jackie opened my door and, with one claw, he ripped through the overlapped duct tape and yanked it off me in a fast tear. It took a patch of skin as he threw it aside, the pain instant, intense, and impossibly sharp; I cried out. He wrenched me out and tossed me. The pot landed first and shattered. I landed on top of it, on the ground beyond the drive, the torn skin of my arm on the manicured lawn . . . and the soil. Bleeding atop the potted dirt of Soulwood.

Face on the ground, my legs tangled in my skirts, I opened my hand on the ground, pressing the earth of home, to mix with the land beneath me and with my trickling blood. I dug my fingers into the mixed soils and curled them around a small fistful of dirt.

The grass, the land its roots grew in, and I woke up fast, as if I’d ingested a pot of Rick’s coffee directly into my bloodstream. I reached into the ground. And I connected with . . . something. Not my land, not my woods, but something deep, something that rested in the dark, somnolent and content. I scratched my broken nails into the soil, mixing the dirt of here with Soulwood dirt, together with my blood. Jackie gripped my elbows behind me with his claws, piercing my skin, and I hissed, like the engine. Jackie laughed.

He lifted me to my feet and shook me. “Be good.” With one hand, he pulled me after him toward the mansion, past upscale landscaping and an artificial pond with a waterfall. The door of the house opened. Roxy stood silhouetted in the light. A man. A man with clawed hands and hellfire eyes. Another gwyllgi. And I knew him. As a dozen children gathered around the dog in mostly human form, I put it all together. It had been there all along if I had just made the connections.

Roxbury T. Benton had been his ancestor and an early member of the church, the name misspelled in the newspaper as Roxbury T. Bantin. Four generations later, R. Thomas Benton the fourth ran the Knoxville FBI. And he had somehow made friends with Jackie. Maybe through Dawson, who had come through the legal system. Dogs recognizing dogs . . . Dawson led Roxy to Jackie. And now Dawson was dead.

More things fell into place, nearly clicking together as I comprehended each one.

Dogs might have bred true in some of the churchmen. Maybe recessive genes in some who had come from the old country among the first church settlers, like Mama’s people. Out of multiple wives and so many children in each generation, there was a much greater chance of more dogs being bred.

Vampire blood maybe made the trait stronger.

Roxy might even have generated the relationship with HST. So he could know that the gwyllgi were safe from detection. That would explain why the HST had been trapped in the warehouse and drained dry. They hated paranormals. They would have hunted gwyllgi down and killed them, so Benton took the war to them first. That assumption in my sea of assumptions felt solid.

Whatever his motives, Roxy was the lynchpin who tied it all together. My fear spiked, sweaty and cold.

Benton smiled at me and I knew he was remembering my sassy talk in the FBI meeting when I had attempted to school him. Now I was at his feet. He said softly, “So much for your vaunted reasoning.”

My lips wanted to quiver, but I clutched the dirt and blood in my fingers as more of my blood ran from my ripped flesh and pooled into my fist. I said, “I would have had to know that you and Jackie had two or more things in common in order to make an assumption that you would also have others in common. Had I known that Roxy was your nickname earlier, I might have made part of the connection. Had I checked to see who in the legal system Dawson had met, I might have made another part.”

When the leader of the Knoxville FBI tilted his head, I continued. “I had no idea that your first ancestor to this area was a churchman, and therefore I could make no deductions or assumptions. Though now that I do know that, I can assume that the Dawsons, the Jacksons, and the Bentons are—or were—all in cahoots together. Gwyllgi. Dogs of darkness.”

Benton stepped down the steps to the ground, his posture negligent, a big dog on his own hunting grounds, walking closer, studying me with unwavering eyes. He leaned in and sniffed. Like a dog. Coiled a hand in my hair and yanked me closer.

He and Jackie half carried me around the house, through a basement door and a bright room filled with lawn equipment, through a door that was well hidden. It opened into an area under the house—bare rock floor, concrete block walls, no windows. The lights glared, bright and intense after the dark of the night. They landed on a vampire, chained to the wall. It was skin and bones, with ratty long reddish hair wearing the remains of denim pants and a once-white shirt. It looked like a scarecrow until the scent of my blood hit it, and its eyes opened wide. It inhaled fast, its fangs snapping down with a sharp click. But the sclera of its eyes weren’t red with blood-flush, rather they were a pale pink lined with darker veins, its pupils blacker than a moonless night. The gwyllgi had starved it and chained it to the wall with silver, hanging off the ground. Benton had done with the vampire what Jackie and his father had done.

Humans who drank of vampires became blood-drunk, open to compulsion, addicted. Not gwyllgi. They were free of the compulsion, and the blood made them stronger.

That would be the source of their power—to be able to drink vampire blood, to grow stronger and more powerful without becoming addicted, without becoming captive to the fanged ones. And they could also farm out the blood to the desperate, people who were hoping to drink vampire blood to remain young, to regain health, to survive when their own bodies turned against them. And if someone they sold or traded blood to became addicted, that just gave them more control.

That was the final, real reason why the gwyllgi had joined with the HST. The CIA knew that the group had acquired the list. And added to it. Benton found that out. To get the names and personal information of the paranormals, he and his dogs had found a way into the organization. To get the information on which vampires might be easiest to take. Which women might be easy to breed with. I understood it all. And it was too late.

They shackled me to a chair with handcuffs, which was plumb stupid, as it was nothing more than an old captain’s chair, the wood dry and long-dead. I know wood. They thought a chair and handcuffs would be enough to keep me cowed. But my shoes rested on the stone floor. They turned off the lights and left me there, in the dark, with a starving vampire, closing the door behind them.

As my eyes futilely tried to adjust to total darkness, I kicked off my boots—which took some time because I’d tied them on tightly—and toed off my wool socks to place my bare feet on the cold rock. The vampire hadn’t been on this spot of rock, so there was no sensation of maggots and death. I sighed with relief. Behind me, my blood dripped off my fingers to pool into the seat and trail down the turned wooden legs to the rock.

“I thirst,” the vampire whispered, the sssing sibilants bouncing through the underground room. “Feed me.”

“No,” I said, pushing my consciousness into the stone beneath my feet, searching for contact with the dirt beneath it, or to the side of it. But instead of soil I found rock, rock, and more rock, a single massive, rounded boulder that extended far beneath the ground, probably the result of some geologic event so far in the past that even the earth itself had forgotten it. My consciousness spread out and around and down, searching for soil and moisture and life, looking for the strong sense of life that I had found in the front yard. Roxy had chosen his housing site well, and according to Biblical principles about building one’s house on rock, but . . . there was a small, hairline crack and the first grains of soil filled with moisture, just . . . there.

I gasped with relief, following the moisture as it gathered in the narrow crack of boulder and moved slowly, my mind following it down through the stone and then up into dirt and rocks and decayed matter and . . . the roots of plants and grass. I knew where my awareness was—the backyard, just on the other side of the concrete block wall where the vamp hung.

I recognized the sense of life I had felt in the front yard, old and sleeping and powerful.

“What are you?” the vampire asked, its voice rasping like leather on bone. “You are not human.”

I didn’t have time, breath, or energy to respond, too busy trying to think of a way to contact my woods from so far away. I didn’t know if the paltry bit of soil clenched in my fist and on the stone beneath me—Soulwood soil, from my busted pot—was enough. I dropped the bit of bloody Soulwood dirt onto the floor I reached . . .

My belly heaved, not with nausea, but as if the rooty muscles were straining, as if I were trying to do sit-ups. Or as if the roots inside me were stretching through solid ground, seeking water. Seeking life. Seeking home. My hands itched. I felt as if I were falling, the world twirling around me. I reached. And reached.

But it was too far. And I was too small. Too weak.

Bright lights flashed before my eyes, like stars falling. Pain beat through my bloodstream.

*   *   *

When I came to myself, I was gasping, pouring with sweat, muscles trembling. The world of blackness around me tilted and spun, a sickening whirl. I breathed deeply, trying to find some sort of stability in the blackness.

On the wall the vampire clanked its shackles. “Hungry . . . ,” it rasped.

“Yes. I get that,” I whispered, the words a faint echo from the concrete walls. Maybe, instead of reaching Soulwood, there was a way to stimulate the ancient power beneath the ground. Maybe I could get it to . . . do what? I wasn’t sure, but I had few other options.

Breathing deeply, slowly, I reached into the soil toward the slumbering sentience. I touched the consciousness beneath the ground, the way I might stick a toe into a great pool. It slept on, unmoved by the slight pressure of my mental tap, though something passed between us: a flare of energy, or perhaps of life force. I was suddenly able to take a breath without pain or exhaustion; the strength of the consciousness flowed into me, filling me, the way water flows into a pool: effortlessly.

From far away, I felt something shift. Brighten. It was a feeling akin to the visual act of seeing a candle lighted on a distant mountain peak on a moonless night. A vague, remote spark in the far darkness, seen best when looking away, to the side, and not directly on.

“I smell your blood. I thirst.” The vampire sounded stronger, more alert, and it clanged its shackles, the metal loud.

I reached toward the spark of light, the flicker of contact, a life force that was waking and stretching. The glow brightened on the distant mountain, suddenly familiar, oddly, unexpectedly aware of me. I realized that I was visualizing my actual home, not a virtual location in my own mind, but a place in time and reality; bouncing off contact with the sleeping sentience below me, I reached again through that life force. I touched the power of my woods. It latched onto me, wrapping itself around me, as if I was tied to it even more securely than I was tied to this old chair.

I had known that Soulwood was my land, my wood. I belonged to it as surely as it belonged to me. Perhaps more than I imagined.

My intestines twisted and writhed, rigid as wood within me. It hurt, the way a tree hurt after lightning hit, or when vines sent root tendrils into its bark. Attack. I felt as though I was responding to attack.

Across the room, I heard metal squeal. “I thirssst.”

I reached out to my land. And, through my land, to Paka. Here, I thought at her. I’m here.

I felt her response. She was still in cat form, and her ears perked high, her whiskers shivered; she was aware of me. Paka nudged a warm, sleek body next to her and made a cat noise that was half scream, half challenge. She leaped out of a moving car’s window. Occam followed, landing and jumping from the ground into a tree all in one move, claws sinking deep, to race along a branch. They were close. Very close.

How had they followed me?

Ah. Right. The cell phone.

Maggots followed the werecats, leaping, racing maggots. A vampire, two of them, on their trail, as fast as they were, perhaps faster.

Maggots crawled across the stone floor onto my feet.

Something clanked. Closer.

The vampire was getting free.

My eyes flew open in the darkness, like a cave, far underground. But I knew without being able to see that the vampire was no longer hanging on the wall. It had worked its shackles loose, had probably been working them loose for ages, as it was bled to feed the things in the house. And then I showed up, bleeding, the reek of lifeblood giving it the final impetus to wrench free. The maggoty feeling crossed the rock to me the moment it touched the floor. By the clanking and jangling sounds, I knew it was coming toward me. Dragging itself.

I reached out to Paka. Hurry.

But Paka was just now passing the abandoned chicken coop. They would be too late.

I rolled my weight forward and then back, the chair rising up on its back legs. I rocked forward and rocked back again, then forward, until the chair went far enough for my feet to take my weight. My ankles hadn’t been chained to the chair legs, and so, bent over, I raced, if the shuffle of feet can be called such, for the wall I had seen in the moments of light, the wall farthest from the vampire. I felt the wall growing closer, a solid force. At the last moment, I twisted my body and threw myself back, the chair legs taking the brunt of the leap and my body’s weight. They hit the wall with a splintering crack. I half bounced and rolled, bruising my knees and banging my head on the stone. Shards of dry wood pierced my side and back. It hurt, a stabbing, puncturing agony. There might be time for pain later, if I lived.

I rocked and rolled until I reached my feet again. And I threw myself at the wall, twisting to take the hit on the chair. But my aim was off, and one arm of the chair and my forearm took the hit instead. My head whiplashed and cracked. I saw more stars, white bursts of light that seemed to fall like snow. Dazed, I lay on the floor, blinking into the dark. My hair was caught under me, pulling my head back at an odd angle.

Something touched me.

The vampire laid her slimy, maggoty hand on my bare foot. Something scraped the stone beside the chair, a sound like shoe leather on rock, and I realized that the vampire was licking my blood from the stone floor, its tongue like jerky. An instant later, it bit down, fangs into the top of my foot, into the artery there. I couldn’t help the gurgle of shock and pain. Nor the thought that the churchmen had been wrong. A vampire’s bite was not pleasurable at all.

Maggots writhed over my bare foot, thrashing. Icy fire climbed up my leg, through my veins, leading to my heart and lungs. The vampire slid her fangs from me. Yes, I thought. It’s female.

Stronger already, she pulled herself up my lower leg, claws sinking into shin and calf in spiked bursts of pain, and she lifted my leg. Her fangs sliced into the back of my knee. Flame and sleet blazed through me, hot and cold, burning as brands, intense as frozen knives. I screamed. And reached. Into the earth around the house, into the stone beneath my face. Instinct. Reaching for life, for control. A charged sensation zapped through me like lightning through soil.

The vampire whipped her head back. Squealed. Rolled away. But I had her now. My blood within her undead flesh. The earth beneath us. It was all I needed. I could feed her to the earth, body and soul, if she had a soul. But she rolled away, to lie against the far, cold, concrete wall. And she sobbed.

I had heard sobs like hers before, the night my mother was brought back from the punishment house. Shattered. Beaten. Wounded in ways I hadn’t been able to imagine when I was a child. Broken, but alive. Mama had survived. So might the vampire prisoner. If I let her. If I helped her.

“I’m sorry,” the vampire whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

I lessened my hold on her. Slid the grip of my control away from her body and her blood. “Help’s coming,” I said. “Hang on.”

“Too late,” she whispered. “Can’t you hear them? Their footsteps on the stairs? They come to bleed me once again. And this time they all come. Together.”

I couldn’t hear anything, but I imagined that a vampire’s ears were far better than mine. I swallowed, trying to sense where Paka and Occam and the vampires were. Still down the road. And even after they got here, they would have to find a way into the basement and into the underground chamber. A pale light brightened around the cracks in the door. The muted sounds of male laughter followed.

“If you drink my blood, can you fight them off?”

“If I drink you dry unto death, I could take one or two. But the blood of one is not enough for me. And even if it were, there isn’t time enough to heal, to find the strength to destroy so large a group. And they bring silver to torture me. To bind me. I can feel the poison upon them.”

“With the blood you already took from me, can’t you’un—you—can’t you hurt them? It needs to be all of them. They need to bleed. It doesn’t have to be a big injury, just blood on the floor. Can you spin like a dervish? Like one of those old-fashioned weapons—a mace, I think they called them, not to take them down, but just to bleed them. Scattering them, cutting each one. Can you do that, even if it means they get you after?”

“And you would help me after? To escape? To find food?”

“Yes.” I nodded into the dark. The vampires and the werecats are coming. I just need a bit of time. “Yes.”

“I am not strong enough to be a mace, little nonhuman female. A small flail, perhaps,” she said. “Yes, I can be a flail in the hand of my rescuer.”

I wasn’t certain what a flail was, or how I could be her rescuer, but our little chat was nearly over. Another light came on, brighter through the cracks. A man on the far side said, “Nothing in the world like it, my friend.” A jangle of keys sounded on the far wall.

Fear and maggots still slimed my skin. “Can you break my handcuffs?”

“I’m not strong enough to break the steel, not with the silver shackles I still wear.”

“Then break the chair,” I grated out. “Just get me flat on the rock. And you attack them when they come through the door. I need their blood on this rock beneath me, or on the concrete out there.” I jutted my chin to the light. “And then you can drink them dry for all I care. But . . . but stay off the floor, stay off the rock, or I might take you too.” Her death, invisible to another, but real to me, bounced and wriggled, cascading over me as she shuffled near, fear in the sounds of her movements. “Hurry!” I demanded. “Hurry!”

The stretcher between the chair’s legs broke and I tumbled back. The vampire caught me, one hand tangled in my hair, catching the back of my head. She broke the arms of the chair and I tumbled to the rock. I could feel her icy breath, fetid with rot against my face, and I thought for a moment that she would lose control and drain me. But as the door opened, she slid her hand away. With a soft pop of sound, she was gone.

Someone screamed. Several men screamed. Blood flew. The bloodlust of my magic lunged out and took me in its fist.

I stretched deep into the earth again, reached with whatever my gift was, whatever my magic might be. Reached out to the blood that flew and splattered. Eyes closed, I caught an essence of blood and darkness and dog, and essence of human male, and I took all the life forces into my grimy hand.

I fed a dog to the earth, spreading my fingers onto the rock, his body and soul into the stone. And then I took a human, screaming as he fell. That one I held still, compliant, draining him slowly, to weakness, not unto death. And let him go. He lay on the rock, gasping, drained.

Two more dogs. I gripped them both and felt them break and tear into a bloody slime. The heat and moisture of their bodies coalesced and trickled across the surface of the boulder, sucked into the earth. Dead and gone. I held their combined life force within me for a moment, making sure. Knowing. Accepting that I was doing this by choice. Not just instinct, not in fear of my life. But by choice. I gave them to the rock beneath me. Pushed their life force within the granite and the soil and the roots of the vine beyond the far wall. The vine stretched and put out blooms as the ground around it was saturated with the life of gwyllgi, the darkness of the dog. Other roots stretched for that life, and the somnolent thing beneath the ground woke and saw the death of the dog. It wanted more. It saw me as well. I eased away from it but gave it the body and soul of another gwyllgi. Its attention faltered, returning its focus to the life force as if recognizing a sacrifice long denied. But I was certain that it would know me again.

I held the lives of three more, not all dead, but all bleeding, all dying, pressing them into the stone of the floor, taking their blood and feeding it into the ground, more slowly this time, a steady trickle instead of a gushing flood. All but two of the males on the stone floor were gwyllgi. As was the man the vampire held trapped in the outer room. She was crouched on a table, the gwyllgi gripped in her hands. He was trying to shape-shift as she tore through his neck and sucked the life out of him.

Just as I was sucking the life out of the men in my grasp. I let the humans go, knowing they were too drained to be a danger. They were broken now. Diminished, but alive. And I fed the gwyllgi to the earth. Jackie. Fighting, Screaming. Howling. Dead. At last.

If they hadn’t been planning on torturing a starving vampire and likely hurting me in other ways, I might have felt guilt and shame, but I felt nothing. Nothing at all.

I understood that the humans whom I had not totally drained had once been important people, considered so by themselves and by others. Now they crawled away, panting, hearts racing, aged and ruined and near empty of life. The dog with the vampire was conscious, fighting, yowling. Still alive somehow, but not for long.

Through the open door, I saw Occam leap into the outer storage room, Paka on his heels a little to the side, hunting formation. Occam saw the feeding vampire and screamed, altering course for her and her prey.

“No!” I shouted. “Occam! Paka! No!”

They skidded on tough paw pads, sliding on the concrete floor, claws extended, scratching, bodies bunching tight to change direction. Almost as one, they stretched into leaps and practically flew through the opening into the dark to land on the stone. One of the vampires was right behind them, her maggoty death-slime energies powerful. I might have gagged at the sensation, and I know I thrashed in horror when she picked me up bodily, the chair remains dangling from my handcuffs. It was like being carried by death herself, black shroud and sickle and rotting flesh, though my eyes told me she was flesh and blood and blond and beautiful, and familiar. Every footstep was an agony and I heard my own moan as she sped outside.

Rick said, “There,” pointing into dark shadows cast by security lights.

She set me on the grass out back. Broke the cuffs with a simple twist of her powerful hands. She threw the wood away and pulled the shards out of my back and side and the skin of my arm, tossing splinters and stakes deep into the woods beyond the landscaped lawn. The earth felt the wood fall and the blood splatter, and the roots reached up, taking my blood into the ground, hungry, much like the starving vampire who still fed on the dog.

When I was free of wood and shackles, the blond vampire stepped away, staring down at me. “I don’t know what manner of creature you are, but if my blood would help I am happy to off—”

A sick, oily, foul taste coated the back of my mouth and I gagged at the thought of rotten meat.

The vampire laughed, as if she knew what I was feeling and thought it was funny. It was a nice laugh, completely at odds with the blood-sucking, dead thing she was. But she seemed to understand and stepped away. The distance helped ease the sensation-thought-taste of rotten meat that glazed the back of my throat.

From the ground, I felt movement. Something pushed up through the soil, pliant and supple and full of life. Around it, other things pushed through. They were rootlets, seeking my blood. In the warmth beneath me, they burst into leaf and slithered around my body, into the tiny cuts. For a moment it hurt as if I was being pierced again, sharp and cutting. But they were healing me with the life I had sent into them. Dog of darkness life. Potent gwyllgi life, something out of mythology found to be real. I had taken, and now I was being given to. Healed. I relaxed into the roots and vines and they coiled into me, sharing.

Symbiotic. The word was there, and I understood it fully. The land and I were symbiotic, needing one another. Though I still didn’t know how it worked, or what I truly was. Beneath the ground, the life there pulled in the souls it had captured and . . . swallowed them. Swallowed them whole. I heard Jackie beneath the earth, his soul screaming and thrashing. And Roxy, weeping like a child as the darkness sucked him under. Unlike Brother Ephraim, they were subsumed, as if eaten.

Occam was suddenly there, human shaped and steaming in the cold air, naked and beautiful in the stark light and shadows. “Nell. Nell, sugar?” His hands feathered along my body. “I smell your blood. Where are you hurt? Nell? Sugar?” When I didn’t answer fast enough, he growled, the vibration quivering through me.

I breathed out softly. “I’m gonna be fine, Occam. I just need to rest here awhile. But not too long. Okay? I’ll tell you when.”

“I take it we’ll need to cut you free again?” Rick asked, something curious and amused and slightly mocking in his tone.

“Soon.” I wasn’t injured as badly as I had been when I was shot. This was more flesh wounds than organ damage. But I did wonder how many times I could be healed this way before growing leaves instead of hair, and the thought made me laugh softly. “Put some clothes on, Occam. It’s cold out.”

“Okay. Nell, sugar. If you’re sure.” A drop of his sweat landed on my cheek and steamed in the night air.

Rick squatted down beside me and asked softly, “Whose house are we at, Nell?”

I chuckled just as softly. “The gwyllgi home of Roxbury Thomas Benton, the fourth.”

Rick cursed softly and stood. And then they were all gone, except the lanky blond vampire, who now crouched on a low brick garden wall, her weight on her toes and her fingertips, her knees bent into what, on a human, would have been an awkward crouch.

She was one of the vampires who had crossed my land to help Jane Yellowrock attack the church and rescue a captive vampire. She had been at Mira Clayton’s home too, and she had carried me out of the basement, her fangs extended and her eyes all black. Her head was tilted oddly on her neck as she studied me. “Jane called you Yummy,” I said, finally remembering.

“Jane said you were a fairy, one of the little people. Maybe a wood nymph, woodsy magic.”

“Mixed with human,” I said. “At the time, mostly human.” I brought up the one of the words she had used to describe me. “Yinehi. Evil, soul-sucking yinehi.”

“Fairies aren’t evil, and you aren’t exactly a fairy,” Yummy said. “Fairies are private, though, yes. Elusive, preferring the woods to all other things.” Her head cocked the other way. “They sacrificed to the mother earth. Fed her. Fed her powers that slept deep within. And they taught the Celts to do the same, to continue the tradition.”

Well, that sounded like me for sure. I smiled without humor, feeling the anguish her words brought. “A tradition of murder.” That felt right, deep within me. I was a creature of blood and death. I had to accept that, after all the lives I had taken tonight. And learn how to live with it. Despite it, maybe. “Tell them it’s time to cut me free. And then I want to go home. I’m . . . tired. So very tired.”

“You may have anything you want. Tonight the Human Speakers of Truth have taken a blow,” Yummy said. “And you gave us back one of our own. We are in your debt. Ming of Glass has announced, ‘Clan Glass owes you a boon.’”

“Is that a good thing?”

“It is the very best thing. Your life will never be the same.”

But I had a feeling that was the case no matter what a maggoty blood-sucker might have to offer me.