Blood of the Earth Read Online Free PDF Page A

floor and scooted the cats up the stairs, where they liked to watch birds from the dormer windows.

T WO
    Moving methodically but with practiced speed, I grabbed up my guns, extra ammo, and raced to the front porch, down the steps of the house, to the ground, where my bare feet touched the earth. Power I had banked away flared up in me again, through me, out my palms, which itched and burned in reaction, my fingertips tingling. I ducked into the depression between the raised beds in the front yard, a series of narrow, twisting pathways about three feet deeper than the beds and marked with large flat stepping-stones. Places to stand and fire, paths to get away through if necessary. Paths made by the sweat of my brow and lots of broken blisters.
    The walls of the beds had been made of poured concrete that came to my waist, and bloomed with medicinal plantings: spotted touch-me-not jewelweed, a dozen varieties of thyme, and some other medicinal herbs in pots that were pretty to look at, like lamb’s ears, mullein, monarda, and graybeard. They were all mixed in with the ornamental impatiens and geraniums—some in clay pots—for the pretty flowers. I placed the guns on the raised beds, except the shotgun. Holding it beneath one arm, I scratched my palms one at a time until they were red from the pressure of my nails, trying to ease the pain of drawing on the forest’s energies. That power still boiled inside me, hot and potent but useless at a distance and without blood. But if they bled onto my land, they were mine.
    I rolled my shoulders and knelt, most of my body now protected by the concrete and the earth the beds contained, placing my back against the flagpole I’d had installed in the center of the four beds, all designed for just this purpose. The flagpole was little more than a twelve-foot-tall angle iron, and it had never flown a flag. Most people never consciously saw it.I braced my body against the concrete and settled into a comfortable, if not relaxed, firing position, raising the loaded shotgun, and placing the back of the weapon against the flat side of the flagpole. It was an unorthodox method of firing a shotgun, but I wasn’t a large woman. I had fired an unbraced one once, and the recoil had tossed me back. I’d landed flat on my backside, with a shoulder so bruised I couldn’t use the arm for two weeks. I wanted to buy an automatic rifle, a weapon much better suited to a woman’s physiology than a shotgun, but they were expensive, and I wasn’t exactly rolling in money.
    I dug my toes into the cool grass of early autumn, blew out my breath, just like John had taught me, and shouted, “Stop!” I waited a moment as the word echoed and faded away, surprised when my invaders actually came to a halt in the shadows of the woods.
    “State your piece,” I yelled.
    “Put down your weapons, woman!” one of the men called. They were too far away for me to make out their faces yet. But they’d be coming closer.
    “Don’t make me hurt you!” I yelled.
    No one answered. I couldn’t see them well enough to identify them, but I felt them through the dirt and placed the three men in a tight grouping about a hundred fifty feet away, in the cover of the forest. At least they hadn’t split up. That would make it more difficult to bring them down. They were too far away, however, for a shotgun to protect me, and plenty close enough to take me down with a rifle, providing they found a higher vantage point to fire down at me, hidden in the low paths between the beds. For the first time in my life, I wished I were a real witch, as the church had once accused, one who could bring up a protective circle or send fire shooting outta my eyes or whatever witches did to people who wanted to hurt them. Not having better options, I decided to goad them.
    “You’uns come outta the woods,” I shouted in church-speak. No one moved. “Cowards! Afraid to face a woman on equal terms? Whatchu gonna do, huh? Shoot me from a