touch me, though the emptiness searched, my blood calling to it as it flowed.
Time passed. And I thought I had won.
I held it there. All of it, cupped and wrapped and twined in my magics.
But . . . something was wrong. There was a pain. I slitted my eyes open to see Occam, kneeling beside me, his blade flashing and cutting, slicing and sawing through icy blackness coiling around my fingers. “How . . . ?” I tried, but no sound came. The death and decay had found me. I sank back into the earth and scanned the energies trapped there. And I saw the tiny hole, a spot of blackness against the vibrant colors.
It was no bigger than the tip of my pinkie finger. The tendril of the blackness had found it, had pushed through the hole and slid along the outside of my magics. Up to the lines of energies that flowed from me to my basket. And into me.
Pain flared, branding hot and cold as space. It swept up my arm and into my chest. I heard a moan. Felt a weight, heavy, pressing.
Realized that on the surface, I wasn’t breathing. Knew that moan had breathed out my last bit of air. I fought back into myself. Up along the pathway of energies.
Death and decay crawled and oozed, a sickly green now, as it digested my life force.
My magics weren’t enough. Not against this.
I forced my body to take a breath. And I screamed. And screamed. Until the screaming stopped.
I reopened my eyes. Cat-Occam was face-to-face with me, so close I could feel his cat whiskers on my cheeks. His fangs were bared, only inches from my face. His leopard was snarling.
EIGHTEEN
“Occam,” I whispered, my voice hoarse from screaming, my mouth dry as drought-parched dirt. But my cat-man heard. He pulled back enough for me to focus on his amber cat eyes and on the people around me. FireWind and Rick were slashing and sawing at the vines of death. T. Laine was stabbing null pens into the ground around me, still repeating her scripture.
“The cabbage. Now,” I whispered.
Lainie said, “Done that, Nell. It withered and died. You got anything else to suggest?”
I licked my lips. “Soulwood. Blood. Bindings.”
“Son of a witch,” she said. She drew a silver blade. “LaFleur. Gimme your fingers.”
He didn’t ask why. He just held out his hand. T. Laine sliced along all four tips. Blood spurted and flowed. “Bend across Nell and bleed on her. Occam. I’m going to cut your ear. You bite me and I’ll be pissed.”
I missed the movement of the cut, but felt warm wetness on my face as Occam smeared his blood onto me. Growling. Panic in the sound.
“Nell,” T. Laine said. “Draw on Soulwood. Draw!”
I reached into the earth through their cat blood. Reached for my land through the bindings that had tied them to Soulwood when I healed them. The land answered. Soulwood flared high, bright and singing like a bell. It formed a spear of might. The same kind of spear that I had used to kill Brother Ephraim. The spear flew through the darkness of the earth and landed in my blood-filled palm. I gripped the spear of life and power and might.
I stabbed through the webbed basket of my own energies and into the heart of death and decay.
It screamed. Darkness flashed, heated molten knives.
I felt more blood on me. More. More. And the land took it all.
The somnolent presence deep and deep rolled over. And over again. Struggling to awaken, struggling against the energies above it. The earth shook.
“Earthquake!” someone shouted. Occam shoved me down and lay across my torso, his cat blood slathering my face and neck. Dripping onto the blanket and beneath me and the ground beneath it.
“LaFleur,” FireWind said, demand in his tone. “You have to shift. You’ve given too much blood. Shift! Now!”
I couldn’t help Rick. I couldn’t help Occam. Not until I healed the Earth and sent the presence back to sleep. And that meant I had to put this spell into the magma in the center of the Earth. Now. Right now. Lessons from the last time I fought death, that the Earth was all healing.
I reshaped the spear of Soulwood, the light and life of all that was good in the universe, re-formed it into a net, but one much stronger than the basket I had tried to weave all alone. I tied the magic net and the life of Soulwood around death and