Blood of the Earth Read Online Free

my house,” I said. “You might shoot me, but I’ll put a hurting on you’uns too.” But they just stayed there as if they were rooted to my furniture. Cello crawled around Paka’s neck and nestled with Jezzie on her lap, her nose lifting close to the werecat’s face.
Traitor
. Something that might have been jealousy settled firmly in my chest like a weight. I scowled. Paka blinked, the motion slow and lazy.
    “Mexican standoff,” Rick said, his voice soft. “Unless you have silver shot, we’ll heal from anything you can do to us. You won’t heal from a three tap to the chest.”
    I laughed, the sound not like me. It was a nasty laugh. I set the shotgun back down and placed one hand flat on the table. Paka raised her head. “I smell her magics,” she said. “They are rising. Your gun might not hurt her as it would a human.” She petted Cello and she smiled again, her eyes tight on me. “This woman is dangerous, my mate. I like her. Her magic smells green, like the woods that surround the house. And it smells of decay, like prey that has gone back into the earth.”
    “You’re like Paka, aren’t you?” I asked Rick, reaching through the wood table and floor, down into the ground, into the stone foundations and the dirt below the house, into the roots of the woods that gave the farm its name, roots tangled through the soil in the backyard, deep into the earth. “Werecat.” I placed my other hand on the table too, flat and steady.
    “We are African black were-leopards,” Paka said watching me in fascination, her nostrils almost fluttering as she sniffed the air.
    “Not exactly the same, though,” Rick said, his weapon aimed steadily at me, even though I’d put down my shotgun. “I was infected when I was bitten. She was born this way.”
    “Why do you tell our secrets?” Paka asked, not as if in disagreement, but as if she was mildly curious while being bored.
    “Because we need her help,” Rick said. “We need to know about the Human Speakers of Truth and any possible connection to the church. Nell’s the only one who might be willing to talk to me. To us,” he added, including his mate.
    “Who are the Human Speakers of Truth?” I asked, letting the power and safety of the woods wrap around me like crawling snakes, like vines, growing in place. All I needed was one drop of his blood and I could take his life. It was my best protection; it was my magic and the magic of my land. His blood on my land, on Soulwood, put his life into my hands. “What do you want to know? The federal and state raid on the compound told most folks all there was to know about the church.”
    “Do you still have family ties to God’s Cloud?” Rick asked, again not answering my question. It was probably a police tactic, but it set my teeth on edge. “Someone you could go to, or talk to, safely, but not get into more trouble with the people who killed your dogs?”
    “I have family there,” I said, using the time to gather as much of the woods’ energy as I could. “We run into one another from time to time. Farmers’ market. Yard sales. Why you asking?” I said, my tone challenging, deliberately accented by years in the church.
    “The FBI, state police, and PsyLED have reason to believe that a group calling themselves the Human Speakers of Truth, on the run from the authorities, stopped in Knoxville. But HST disappeared. They don’t have a home base here, so they may have joined forces with a local group. We want to rule out that the HST allied with God’s Cloud of Glory Church.”
    “Never heard of HST,” I said.
    “They’re a homegrown terrorist, anti-anyone nonhuman, militant group,” Rick said, “investigated by PsyLED for years. Our unit’s been tracking their financial trail, but it went cold five days ago here in Knoxville.”
    “What kind of reason?” I asked. When he looked confused I said, “You said you had
reason to believe
that Human Speakers of Truth may have holed up in