Circle of the Moon (Soulwood #4)

“No humans nearby,” Occam said.

I realized why I had been sent with Occam, not one of the other agents. I was more tree than human and was immune to the were-taint that would turn others into a were-creature. If Rick attacked me, I could heal as soon as I got my fingers into dirt. I also had some small control over Rick because of his tie to my land. Occam and I were most likely to survive if Rick attacked. I had been expected to understand all that and I hadn’t. Until now, when I put it all together.

Right, I thought.

“Besides, I got this.”

“Hmmm,” I said, trying to decide if he really did. Occam lived in more harmony with his cat than Rick with his, possibly because Occam had spent twenty years in a cage getting to know his spotted leopard. Rick’s cat had been chained into the human body even at the full moon and was now half-feral, prickly, and intent on winning dominance games and fights. The two men got along okay, but the cats, not so much. They were alphas, and the status of who was more dominant between them—the mature spotted leopard or the more powerful but immature black leopard—was always in flux. They hunted together but were solitary cats. It was complicated.

Rick’s puppy blanket glowed in the headlights as he got closer and so did his eyes, the green magic of his cat still close to the surface. Beside me, Occam shifted in the seat and a low vibration began in his chest. A growl, quickly cut off. I glanced sideways at Occam, who said, “His cat is close.” His voice was laconic and heavy with Texas twang, trying to hide his reaction.

“Uh-huh.”

Occam grinned unrepentantly, his scarred face dragging up on one side. “I got this,” he repeated. He blew out a breath and, in my peripheral vision, I saw his hands slacken on the wheel.

I shook my head, returned my full attention to Rick, and got my first good look at the infamous scarred tats on his chest and shoulder. In the harsh light, I couldn’t tell what the mangled artwork had been, but the colorful inks and scars covered his left collarbone, ran down his pectoral, and wrapped around his entire upper arm. All that was left in the puckered scar tissue were the amber discs, like eyes, and they were reflecting gold, bright in the lights of the sports car. There was a circlet tattooed on the right biceps, less scarred and more recognizable. Possibly barbed wire. That one drew my attention and held it.

I was wrong about it being barbed wire. The tat was really a depiction of twisted vines with curved, retractable big-cat claws and raptor talons and a few drops of bright red blood interspersed throughout.

“Huh,” Occam said. “The tats on the right look better than they used to. This is the first time I’ve seen them since you healed us. You do that?”

It was interesting—or perhaps disturbing—that the right-side tats were of vines and claws. The right tat reminded me of the vampire tree (now more like a grove of vampire trees, though they were all one root system) that was growing at the edge of my land and in the church compound. Fear spurted through me as thoughts and memories and worries collided. “I don’t know,” I murmured.

It too was complicated. To mix his were-magic up a little more, I’d claimed Rick a few times for Soulwood, for healing. Rick’s cat was now bound to my land and trees.

He was close enough for me to see he carried a crumpled gobag in one hand and a folded flip-phone in the other. Rivulets of sweat traced down his flesh. His black and silver beard had grown out an inch and he was nothing but skin over corded muscle and bone. I realized that the golden orbs of his tats weren’t reflecting the headlights, but glowed from within. They looked heated and painful.

Rick stopped in front of the car, wrapped waist to thighs in the paw-print blanket, his feet shoulder-width apart, his stance aggressive, his entire body tense and glistening in the muggy heat, his eyes glowing cat-green in the dark.

“Nell, sugar, you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I lied, as worries knotted themselves all through me.

“Uh-huh,” he said, hearing the lie. “Stay in the car,” Occam said softly.

“Right.”

Occam reached behind the seat, retrieved Rick’s office gobag, and left the car, closing the door softly. He approached Rick in the glare of the headlights, his body bladed, cautious, stepping slowly, his feet lifting and setting down, cat-like, or dancer-like. Rick hunched down, as if drawing paws beneath him. He snarled. Rick’s teeth were part cat, as if he was caught in the shift or the power of the full moon. But he should have been in command tonight, with the full moon past.

Occam tilted his head and snarled back in warning. He dropped the full gobag between them and his fingers curled as if he was growing claws. This was about to go all catty with blood and claws and fangs and I didn’t know who would win in an all-out dominance fight, or if one of them would die. I didn’t want to draw on Soulwood for fear of tying them even more strongly to my land, but I was pretty sure that if I didn’t, there was gonna be blood and a lot of it.

I cracked open the car door and leaned out, putting a fingertip to the dirt. I closed my eyes and reached out to my land. It was close enough, and in midsummer the trees and plants and grasses and veggies were in full leaf and full bloom. The land was powerful and playful. It slammed into me, like an oversized young dog at a dead run. I fell back hard, against the metal of the car. My breath shot out. The might of Soulwood filled me and wrapped around me, warm as a wool blanket in front of the stove at my house. I laughed softly. “Hey there.” I soothed the land for a few breaths, and then reached for the cats in the dark, sharing the joy and peace that was my land. The magic of Soulwood.

Even with my eyes closed, I felt the cat-men calm and swivel to the car where I sat. I felt them step away from the coming fight. Felt their aggression vanish. I opened my eyes and sat upright, to see Rick walking away, into the night, his full gobag with its change of clothing in one hand, the second small gobag and his antiquated cell in the other. The car lights picked out scarring on his back at his kidney and over his shoulder. Claws had raked him deeply enough to leave puckered flesh, an old injury.

Occam walked toward the car. He was caught in the headlights, the left side of his face and skull fully illuminated, the scars showing a shocking white in his tanned face, his mouth and eye drawing up on the side. His ear a shriveled mass. The scars were a patchwork and a veining of pure white that spread down his neck, likely onto his torso, along the outer part of his arm, and down to his maimed hand. Two fingers had been burned away in the fire that had killed him and hadn’t grown back properly. They curled inward, the tendons permanently contracted like curled vines, not much more than scars over bone. He blinked against the glare.

The automatic car lights went out, leaving us all in the dark.

Occam opened the door and slipped inside. Closed it. Silently, we stared into the night, waiting for Rick to dress. He said, “His cat was loose. About to shift.”

“I noticed,” I said.

“You pulled on Soulwood.”

I frowned, uncertain.

Occam touched my forearm with an unscarred finger. “It’s okay. I felt a sense of peace. I smelled the firs and the poplars. I felt the soil and the grass and knew it was a safe place to bed down. I felt … Soulwood. I felt you, Nell, sugar. I knew you.”

I looked down at my hands, fingers laced across my lap in the dark. And studied his right hand, the contact between us the pad of a single, warm finger just above my wrist. I said, “I shared the land with you both. I wondered if you could tell.”

“Can’t say as I always know when you draw on Soulwood, but this time I could feel it. It felt good. Peaceful. As if the moon wasn’t in charge of what and who I am. As if you gave me a different kind of power over my cat, that I don’t normally have.” He withdrew his hand and I missed the warmth.