Flame in the Dark (Soulwood #3)(109)

That was what I needed. Something that would divide Ephraim’s soul and spirit and joints and marrow. I hadn’t prayed to God very often, not since I’d killed the first man on Soulwood. Not really. Not with need. But now . . . Now I was avenger and death come calling, and I refashioned the spear into a sword of light and heat. I shouted to the heavens, “Death to Ephraim for the evils of his heart! I claim him for the earth! Death! Death! Until nothing is left for heaven or hell!”

Ephraim gathered the scarlet and black energies into himself. The snakelike power whipped and whirled and began to form a point, a weapon.

The blade of vengeance sliced back and forth through the walls of Brother Ephraim’s prison. I stabbed and cut and ripped into the cavern. Into his snake-energies. Ephraim tried to resist, tried to pull power from the earth, from the church and the tree that shared my genetics. But the sword of vengeance was faster and hotter. Heated by the earth and by the magma that was mine to call. And I sliced into the foul old man’s soul, cutting, cutting, dissolving each sliver of life into separate components—individual thoughts, needs, hopes, memories—and fed them to the heart of the world. This time I didn’t stop too soon. This time I gave myself as I tore and cut and ripped and fed, fed, fed Brother Ephraim to the land until there was nothing left.

Then I tore apart the cavern he had made for his life force. Dismantled the walls, the emptiness, the death he had surrounded himself with. And I cut through the tendrils he had once again sent down into the church land. To the vampire tree. I sliced and destroyed the vine-like coils and shoots of himself that he had sent into the tree. Not hurting the tree itself, but destroying the roots and vines where Ephraim’s life had touched it, had shaped it. He had taken over the tree, turning it into a death tree. He had done this and I hadn’t noted it, hadn’t understood.

When nothing was left of Ephraim or his prison or his control of the vampire tree, I turned my attention back to the land where my burned body lay.

Entwining my energies with the roots and trees nearby, I fed them. Pulled their energies in, replacing the death of the land around me with life. Soulwood stretched out and joined in the battle against the fire, sending groundwater up toward the surface, engulfing the roots, protecting them. The warmth and love and joy of my land entwined with my own soul. Together we communicated goodness and health and strength to the trees all around me, bringing the burned land and all that still contained a spark of life to fecund, flourishing, abundant health.

Life, green and full of all good things, burst forth.

Feeding it, I claimed the land.

I felt it when roots grew into and from my body and plunged deep. I felt it when they rose again and burst through the crust of dead grass and sprouted new trees. Felt it when the trees sprouted leaves out of season. Felt them grow tall and strong. Grass and vines and flowering plants followed. The land came alive. It pulled me into it. It enfolded me. And the pain of burning I hadn’t even noticed vanished. I leafed out. I grew.

Yes, I whispered to the land, to the trees. Grow. Live.

? ? ?

Much, much later, after the full moon had waxed and waned, I felt the vibrations of footsteps, footsteps I had once known. And . . . ahhh. Soul. Soul, in human form, walked across the new leaves and grasses growing atop the crisped and charred land to me. I felt her kneel beside me. Felt her touch on my side. But I couldn’t come back to her. I was part of the earth now. I was part of this land. Here there was no fear or grief. No worry or pain. Here I would stay. I felt Soul move away.

? ? ?

Sun fell upon me. Rain watered me. Moon rose and fell, waxed and waned and waxed again. Birds perched on me. My forest grew. My trees grew. Grasses and shrubs and deer and rabbits. Foxes. A family of bear. I was alive. I was the land and it was me. Soulwood was part of us and roots thrust deep. The land was alive with me.

? ? ?

Moons later, when the days had grown longer and the earth had warmed with spring, I again felt Soul return, this time not alone. There were others with her, tromping on the earth, between the saplings and mature trees that were my land. There were humans and were-creatures and a witch and they gathered about me. And . . . there was a creature like me.

Some part of my understanding woke. I understood what Soul had done. She had brought with her the sentient creatures that my former self knew. There were two in animal form, one which belonged to me, which I had claimed. Rick LaFleur. That was what this one was called. Black were-leopard. He had died. But he had died on land I claimed. And I had . . . I had given the land a great portion of the salamanders’ life force, but I had kept something back. With it, with the help of Soulwood, he had been healed.

Rick draped himself across my body. Purring. His claws extruded and pressed into the wood that I had become. He milked the wood, claws in and out, pricking me as a woodpecker might, though there were no insects within me.

Occam pressed beside him. Occam had died as well, and I had shared the land with him. I had claimed him as I had claimed the trees. He was mine. He laid his cat across my roots and he shifted into his other form. His human form. He was different, disfigured, scarred from the salamanders’ fire. I had not been able to save him from all the damage.

T. Laine, moon witch. Soul herself. Tandy, empath, whose thoughts were clear to me. He missed me. He wanted my old self back. JoJo, who was human and silent and perhaps . . . appalled at my new form.

And Mud, sister of my mother’s body. She was like me. She was part of the land.