The Blood of the Land Read Online Free Page A

her, such energy roiling around her that Dorcas had to look away, though she couldn’t block out the sound of Elias’s desperate voice. “You can’t, Jenny honey—the magic ain’t for killing our own kind!”
    he’ll rape her he’ll kill her she can’t kill him they’ll never let her go if she kills him
    Dorcas froze. The words didn’t frighten her as much as the sudden realization that what they said was right. She was able to kill Josiah McCreary; she’d dreamed of it more than once, each time he’d laid hands upon her or any of the other women his father owned. Drained though she was and three breaths away from fainting, she was sure she could find it in herself to pierce him with her magic, and stop his heart cold in his chest.
    But she couldn’t. Never mind the sermons of the white preachers, who proclaimed thou shalt not kill. It was bad enough already that the McCrearys already thought her a witch. If she took his life, she’d have to kill the others too—and if none of the men left the river alive, then she and Caleb would be hunted for the rest of their days.
    Would they fare any better if Jenny Sutherland’s specter did the killing?
    Not if, she realized then in a burst of dread. When. There was no echo of life in any of McCreary’s other men, though Harriman Tucker was still conscious, backed up against a tree in his fear and was even now fumbling for the gun he’d dropped when he fell. But Josiah remained the nearest threat, and as he gagged and tried to fight his way back upright, Jenny thrust out her hand to inundate him once more. All the while, she keened.
    LET ME KILL THEM ELIAS TOOK ME FROM YOU TAINTED OUR LAND TAINTED OUR MAGIC HUNTERS SLAVERS KILLERS
    â€œHumans,” Elias whispered, and then his Power surged, calling up wind that gusted in circles round him and Jenny both, ripping through the water-tendrils she summoned from the river. Jenny threw back her head, her mouth gaping now as she screamed; then her ghostly form began to fade. Wind that was no wind rushed over Dorcas, a gust of cleansing Power that drove the empty echo of death back across the water. What remained of Jenny Sutherland went with it, and as silence fell along the bank, Elias Sutherland collapsed.
    For two scant breaths Dorcas froze. Her Power was faltering now, drained to the dregs by the need to close the holes in Caleb’s leg and side where McCreary’s bullets had torn through his flesh. From physical exhaustion alone, her muscles screamed. But Caleb held fast where she faltered, raising his head and pushing at her to get her to move, to do what must be done. “Go, woman,” he whispered. “Inle won’t give you rest till you do.”
    That was enough to shift her, though she nearly sobbed at the stiffness of Caleb’s motions as he pulled away from her. Yet even as she crawled for Elias, Dorcas heard Harriman Tucker bark out, “No. In the name of God, no!”
    She had to stop then, and for all her Power’s urging, force herself to pull with awkwardness slowness to her feet, hands out once more as she faced a white man with a gun. The McCrearys’ foreman was closer now, his pistol at the ready, but the gaze he riveted on her held none of the lecherousness of his young master’s. His face was haggard, his eyes dark with barely repressed fear. Not vile like Josiah McCreary, Dorcas thought—but no less dangerous.
    â€œIn the name of God,” she begged, gesturing at Elias’s broken form, “let me heal this man before he dies too!”
    â€œDo not take the Lord’s name in vain, girl,” Tucker intoned. Sweat beaded along his brow, a faint glistening of moisture in the moonlight. “Do not claim His power while you call upon your own heathen gods!”
    â€œDoes it matter what gods I call when a man is dying?” Dorcas snapped. “Shoot me and have done with it, then! You