The Blood of the Land Read Online Free

that might once have been the blue of April skies shone now in no color Dorcas could name, except perhaps a hue of vengeance.
    BY BLOOD AND WATER DIE
    Tucker went down beneath the onslaught, writhing as he fought to gasp for air; McCreary not only kept his feet but leapt towards the specter approaching him as well, and his pistol spat fire at Jenny Sutherland’s ruined head. She did not slow in her mustering of the river, did not even twitch as McCreary’s bullets passed straight through her. Then she turned her baleful gaze upon him. Her hands, white as ash, snapped together before her. And the river tendrils churned, gathered themselves in the air, and plowed like cannon fire straight into McCreary’s chest.
    Dorcas didn’t see him fall. But she did hear his scream, high and thin and strangled, as he tumbled backwards out of her line of sight. Flinching at the sound, she hunkered down low over Caleb and tugged him frantically up into her arms. “Don’t let go of me,” she breathed. “Don’t you let go, you hear?”
    He murmured something indistinct in reply, something she thought might have been the Lord’s Prayer. But he also clung to her, hard enough to let her know he’d heard her, and that was all that counted.
    Two feet away, though, Elias was moving, and Dorcas shot him a horrified glance as he struggled to his knees. His pain washed over her with the same force with which Jenny had hurled the water—and it was to the figure that had once been Jenny that he cried out now. “Jenny honey—don’t—for the love of God, they’re human! They’re human!”
    Some part of Dorcas took bitter issue with that, though she didn’t dare voice any such notion, not when she risked angering the thing that had come across the water. But Jenny paid her no heed. At the sound of Elias’ voice she faltered, her hands lowering to hang at her sides, limp as bedraggled weeds. Her predatory stance didn’t change, but her head slowly canted round to Elias, and something like cognizance creased the features caked with blood—cognizance, and behind that, grief.
    they shot you
    Her mouth never moved, yet her words hung in the air nonetheless, plaintive now, almost small. As they echoed, one of McCreary’s men gave one last gasp and lay still. Tucker rolled over where he lay on the sodden ground, coughed once, and then retched across the rocks. Jenny ignored them both. When Josiah McCreary stirred, though, her head whipped back to him; around her, the river surged back to life.
    SLAVERS MURDERERS RAPERS NOT WORTH PROTECTING NOT HUMAN
    McCreary’s other two men twitched, and then they too went still. Tucker raised his head, and even from a distance, Dorcas saw fear and shock in his eyes, saw his lips moving with the same prayer Caleb babbled into her shoulder. McCreary himself lurched upright, and the sight of his face made her blood run cold. It was vacant now, dead as Jenny Sutherland’s, save for the first glimmerings of madness.
    â€œDevil,” he mumbled, soft at first, but rising in volume and stridence with every step. “Whore—harlot! Swear to God I’ll break you—!”
    He lunged, not at Jenny, but at Dorcas.
    She had no time, and could only think to react by flinging a hand towards Elias, desperate to reach him to shield him as well as Caleb with her Power. Elias paid her no mind, bent in his turn on reaching the unearthly figure that had once been his wife. When his palms connected with the earth his own Power flared, as exhausted as Dorcas’ own, and no match for the volley of river mud and water Jenny hurled at McCreary. Blow after blow she struck him; at last he crumpled, wheezing, to the ground.
    And at last, painfully, Elias hauled himself to his feet and seized Jenny’s bloodied, battered form. The bullets had passed through her, but her husband’s hands did not. She keened as soon as he touched