Curse on the Land

  Praise for the Novels of Faith Hunter

  “Hunter has an amazing talent.”

  —SF Site

  “Readers eager for the next book in Patricia Briggs’s Mercy Thompson series may want to give Faith Hunter a try.”

  —Library Journal

  “Hunter’s very professionally executed, tasty blend of dark fantasy, mystery, and romance should please fans of all three genres.”

  —Booklist

  “In a genre flooded with strong, sexy females, Jane Yellowrock is unique. . . . Her bold first-person narrative shows that she’s one tough cookie but with a likable vulnerability.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Seriously. Best urban fantasy I’ve read in years, possibly ever.”

  —C. E. Murphy, author of Stone’s Throe

  “The story is fantastic, the action is intense, the romance sweet, and the characters seep into your soul.”

  —Vampire Book Club

  “An action-packed thriller . . . betrayal, deception, and heartbreak all lead the way in this roller-coaster ride of infinite proportions.”

  —Smexy Books

  “A perfect blend of dark fantasy and mystery with a complex and tough vampire-killing heroine.”

  —All Things Urban Fantasy

  “Mixing fantasy with a strong mystery story line and a touch of romance, it ticks all the right urban fantasy boxes.”

  —LoveVampires

  Titles by Faith Hunter

  The Jane Yellowrock Novels

  Skinwalker

  Blood Cross

  Mercy Blade

  Raven Cursed

  Death’s Rival

  Blood Trade

  Black Arts

  Broken Soul

  Dark Heir

  Shadow Rites

  The Jane Yellowrock Collections

  Cat Tales

  Have Stakes Will Travel

  Black Water

  Blood in Her Veins

  The Jane Yellowrock World Companion

  The Rogue Mage Novels

  Bloodring

  Seraphs

  Host

  The Soulwood Novels

  Blood of the Earth

  Curse On The Land

  ROC

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by Faith Hunter

  Excerpt from Skinwalker copyright © 2009 by Faith Hunter

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ROC with its colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN: 9780698184497

  First Edition: November 2016

  Cover art by Cliff Nielson

  Cover design by Katie Anderson

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For the Hubs,

  who has the patience of a saint.

  I promise—next year I’ll find the stove.

  It has to be hiding in the kitchen somewhere.

  Thank you for taking care of us

  while I wrote too many books in too few years!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  David B. Coe for early reading on book one.

  Sarah Spieth and MG for more of the info about . . . well, you know.

  Mud Mymudes for all the botany corrections, beta-reading for accuracy, and slime mold stuff.

  The Beast Claws, best street team ever!

  The Hooligans. You know how much I love you. If this book is a success, then you made it happen.

  Ltpromos.com. Your work on this series has been amazing. I adore you!

  Mike Pruette for website stuff, marketing stuff, and the best T-shirts ever!

  Joy Robinson for the artwork on the T-shirt and on the website. LOVE the trees!

  Janet Robbins Rosenberg, copyeditor, for cleaning up the . . . everything.

  Lucienne Diver, my literary agent with the Knight Agency. You believed in this series even when I had given up on it. Thank you.

  Jessica Wade, editor at Penguin Random House. There are no words. Not one of my books is publishable without a developmental editor. Your knowledge and understanding of what a book needs (and your patience) are amazing.

  For those who like to find places mentioned in books, the PsyLED offices on Allamena Avenue, off Highway 62, do not exist. Neither does Allamena Avenue.

  My thanks to all the wonderful people above. If there are mistakes in this book (and there will be) they are mine alone.

  CONTENTS

  PRAISE FOR THE NOVELS OF FAITH HUNTER

  TITLES BY FAITH HUNTER

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  EPILOGUE

  EXCERPT FROM SKINWALKER

  ONE

  I pulled up to Soulwood and let the truck lights shine on my house and garden. The trees were leafless, stark branches reaching up to the sky and down to the earth, roots thick and gnarled and digging deep. Leaves were piled against the foundation and against the garden fence. The three acres of grass needed to be cut, despite the time of year. Following on the heels of an early cold spell, the fall had been warmer than usual, and a second growth spurt had left the lawn unkempt and shaggy, the garden full of raggedy weeds and dead plants. I had never let my house and garden go untended for so long. It had been four weeks since I had been home, and then only for a long weekend. Now, the week before Thanksgiving, I was finally home from the training center for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security, known to its graduates—which I was one of, though I wouldn’t go through formal graduation ceremonies until just before Christmas—as Spook School.

  I opened the door of John’s old Chevy C10 and the scent of home—rich loam, the creek out back, the tart scent of fall flowers, and the welcoming aroma of a wood fire from somewhere nearby—stopped me. I closed my eyes and simply breathed. The land around Richmond, Virginia, was practically lifeless, the air stank of exhaust, and the traffic roared from everywhere, the constant, distant drone of vehicles. Here, at the end of the dead-end road near the top of a low mountain, it was quiet and alive. The last of the leaves were falling, rustling across the ground, pushed by a steady, light breeze. The creak of the windmill that pumped
my water sounded lonely but peaceful.

  I left the truck door open and took two steps to the lawn, kicked off my shoes, and let my bare feet settle into the grass. Oh . . . home. Home, to Soulwood.

  The earth reached up to me, knew me, and took me back into itself the way a mother hen gathers a chick beneath her wings. I stretched out on the lawn, face and body in contact with the ground, hands extended to my sides, and reached deep into the earth. I spread myself across the life there, rich and fecund and content. I didn’t know what I was, not really, not yet, but I knew my land, and it knew me. I was home.

  I sensed the new cell tower on the top of the hill between my property and the church. Sensed the turning of the windmill that pumped my water. The presence of the spring that fed the rivulet and the small pool out back. Sensed deer, squirrels, rabbits, and foxes, the fox family having broken up and separated into four overlapping but individual hunting territories.

  This was my magic, simple and dark as it was: to read the land that I had claimed, and that had claimed me, to know what it needed. To heal it and be healed by it. And to feed the earth—though I seldom spoke of that part of my gift, that part that felt so good, yet was sinful by every human standard I knew.

  But something in Soulwood was wrong, just as wrong as when I’d left to start Spook School. Then, there had been an evil something skittering around beneath the ground, a darkness that was my fault, and that I had no idea how to fix. I had hoped the problem would resolve itself, but it was still there, the soul of a cruel, violent man I had fed to the land, a soul that my woods hadn’t absorbed, hadn’t used, and I didn’t know why.

  The evil that had been Brother Ephraim was gathered tight on the edge of the woods, a hole in my awareness of the earth, deep and stark and quiet at the moment, somnolent. The foul soul now rested on the border where my property met the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church, just over the crest of the mountain, the polygamous church I had grown up in.

  The church, Brother Ephraim, and his cohorts had shaped, defined, and confined my life and my understanding of myself for every moment until Jane Yellowrock came into it. The rogue-vampire hunter had disrupted everything I was and everything I had by showing me that I could fight back. That I could take a stand.

  It was ultimately because of her that I had fought back against the church. Ultimately because of her that I had fed the body and soul of Brother Ephraim to the land. Had taken a job as consultant with the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security, working with Jane’s ex-boyfriend, PsyLED special agent Rick LaFleur. And had later gone to Spook School so I might join PsyLED and fight evil paranormal things. The irony of me being an evil paranormal thing wasn’t lost on me.

  I still wasn’t sure if I hated or loved Jane Yellowrock for all the changes in my life.

  I was careful not to make Brother Ephraim aware of me. I had a feeling that his disembodied soul was just as dangerous dead as the churchman himself had been alive. Well, not man. Creature.

  To get better contact with my woods, I placed my cheek on the night-cold grass, pressing my palms flat on the ground, reaching deep, communing with my land. I breathed out, searching lower into the earth, listening, feeling the magic that was Soulwood. The old magic of the woods was a strong and profound power, a deep well of energy, strength, and contentment. The power had weight and mass and a greatness that reminded me of God, but wasn’t. And a magic that might become self-aware. Despite Ephraim’s dark soul, this old power still held sway over Soulwood, and it seemed more alive, more interested, and, maybe, more conscious than before I left.

  I lay in the grass, eyes closed, arms out, long enough for the mouser cats to find me, one settling onto my back, one curled around my head, the third walking up and down my legs, mewling. My mousers had missed me. I returned my thoughts to the boundary of the woods and to the blot of darkness. It was different from before. It had grown in size, had taken over a larger part of the land. I had to do something about it sooner or later. I knew the land could subsume it. I had seen it happen not that long ago in North Carolina, but I hadn’t succeeded with Ephraim. Except for the blot, the land was happy and growing and satisfied. It was good to be back, peaceful, here on my land.

  I tracked the energies of the earth out, and saw an odd glow to the east. Shimmering yellow with sparks of red and green and blue. I extended my senses, reaching out for it, but it faded like a candle on a foggy night.

  Something trailed across my senses, like a cold, dead hand, smelling like a week-old corpse. Gripping the power of Soulwood, I whipped away from the foul sensation. Jerked myself clear. And saw the evil that was left of Brother Ephraim. It was awake, aware of me. The darkness gathered itself, shaping like an arrowhead, pointing at me. Using the land like a mental rope with knotted handholds, I began to withdraw, pulling myself back to the surface. Easing my way through stone and water and earth.

  The malevolent arrowhead shot at me. Pierced me. Wrapped itself through me. Pulling me down. I yanked away, but the malicious soul twisted itself into me, stinking of death and maggots and the grave. Touching me where no one had ever touched me. Opening me. My deepest self. Violating me.

  I couldn’t draw a breath, couldn’t move. My heart stuttered and missed a beat. Pain spiraled through me. My guts roiled as if the roots that had once grown inside me were twisting and stretching and growing, fast. Something electric sped through me—the awareness of death. I was dying. And I could almost hear the dark soul howling with satisfaction.

  An electric spark, hot and flashing, hit me, flowed through me like electric lava. Ripped the evil thing off me, out of me. I wrenched free of the earth and to my feet. Cats tumbled off me, claws catching in my clothing, scraping my skin. Yowling.

  I raced to the truck. Heart pounding, I climbed on the hood and sat, hugging my knees, trying to make sense of what had just happened. Shivering. Below the ground, I heard rumbling, as if boulders tumbled and broke in a flood, carried by massive waters. A vibration, like a small earthquake, shook and rocked the land, a battle of great forces.

  It was Brother Ephraim and . . . and Soulwood.

  Fighting.

  Low in my belly, I could feel the clash of wills, a skirmish, a battle. Death and life in one place, occupying the same space, and not enough room there for both. Soulwood was trying to protect me, defend me. The wood had never done that before. I rubbed my palms up and down my icy arms, as if to remove the crawly feel of maggots on my flesh, a sensation that I usually associated with vampires or dead opossum. I sat, waiting. Breath fast, heart pounding.

  Belowground, the battle ended as abruptly as it had begun. The darkness of Brother Ephraim yowled and raced away, back to his hole. Curled around himself in the small space he had carved out of the earth at the boundary of the church land. Beneath me, Soulwood settled.

  Electric shocks still cascading through me, I bent my legs in a yoga posture, sitting on the warm truck hood like a child. I gulped and caught up on breathing and tried to figure out what had happened. Whatever it was, it was over.

  But just in case, I stayed on the truck, trying to calm my mind and my body, both of which had gone into flight-or-fight mode—settling on flight, which seemed cowardly but had kept me alive, so I wasn’t complaining. Unwilling to touch the earth with my feet, I sat there long enough for the truck’s lights to dim. I was pretty sure it needed a new battery, or maybe a new alternator. It wasn’t holding a charge. I had the money and the plans to take it into town this week and get it checked out.

  But first I needed to find the courage to get off the truck, get unpacked, and let my family and PsyLED Unit Eighteen know I had made it home safely. The special agents were already established in the brand-new Knoxville PsyLED office, where I had a tiny cubicle waiting on me. But only if I got inside the house. Right. I could do this.

  Dropping my arms, I let gravity take me, and I slid off the hood of the Chevy a
nd inside the cab. Grabbed up my shoes and yanked them on, protecting myself from the land with a layer of leather. I cranked over the engine, to let it run a bit and charge up the battery. I was underdressed for the amount of time I had spent in contact with the land, and I was shivering. But at least the maggoty sensation was gone.

  Feeling the long drive in my achy muscles, I left the truck running and made trips up the seven steps to the porch, stomping to build up body heat. I carried luggage filled with fall clothing that needed to be washed and mended and I dumped it all in no particular order at the front door, along with my umbrella and raincoat. My potted pansies and sage and chives I carried to the back porch, to be repotted. The soil in the pots had been dug out of Soulwood land, and the plants were in need of fresh soil, though that was as much for me to put my hands in when I was away from Soulwood as anything helpful for the plants. The soil and the contact it provided with my land had kept me sane while I was away for the weeks of training.

  My weapons gear came next, from where I had stashed it behind the cab seat for transport. I had a newly issued service weapon, a Glock 20, locked in the plastic carrying case the weapon had come in, along with two magazines, each loaded with fifteen rounds, and a speed loader. It was a large case. There were also two boxes of ammunition, one standard, one silver-laced hollow points for vampires and were-creatures. My fitted body armor—a Kevlar and Dyneema composite, threaded throughout with a lining of thin silver foil to provide protection against weapons of all kinds, from gunfire to vampire claws to werewolf teeth—went on the porch floor beside the pile of other stuff. Gear, not stuff. Talking like a special agent was harder than I had expected. The silver-plated stakes—I couldn’t afford solid sterling—and the ash wood stakes in their special sheaths went beside the weapon case, with the two vampire-killers, the fourteen-inch steel blades silver-plated. As a probationary special agent, I was already expected to fight my way out of any paranormal problems with guns and blades and magic. I had the training, the bruises, and the strained muscles to show for it.