Free Blood of the Earth by Faith Hunter

or shamed, or shocked, or . . . something negative. Instead, it made me happy—fiercely, ferociously happy. But that knowledge was mine alone, not something to share with strangers, no matter that we now shared the knowledge of the death of Brother Ephraim.
    I turned on the spigot that let water into the farmhouse sink from the woodstove’s water heater. It steamed in the air as it gathered. I added soap and watched bubbles rise.
    “Nell?” Rick prodded. Gentle. His voice so tender. No wonder he was a heartbreaker.
    “I was always different,” I said, without looking back at them, “from the other women. I wanted to read books, to spend time in the gardens or the greenhouses, rather than in the sewing rooms or the kitchens or the nursery, chatting and gossiping. I never wanted the things the other girls did: a husband and a passel of children. I wanted a man who would treat me with respect, who would marry me according to the laws of the land instead of the laws of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. A man who would wait to bed me until I was of age.” I turned off the water and bowed my head, my hair sliding against me, still damp and chilled.
    “When I was twelve, Colonel Ernest Jackson—Jackie’s father—asked my father for my hand in marriage.” I began washing the plates, my face firmly turned away from my guests. “I waited until Sunday and told the colonel no, in front of God and everybody, in front of the whole church. Made a ruckus, I did. I told him I’d rather marry a horse’s backside, though I wasn’t so polite about it. And then I ran out.”
    Rick said nothing. I didn’t look his way.
    “I guess Jane Yellowrock told you about the colonel kidnapping vampires and drinking their blood.” Rick didn’t move, not even the smallest bit, but Paka, who sat within the range of my vision, glowered at her mate. “It’s common knowledge that he and his cronies did it for Jackie Jr., to save him from a cancer. They must a also figured out how it gave the old men power in the bedroom. They kept kidnapping and drinking off and on until Jane finally put a stop it. I figure the colonel was drinking undead blood about the time he wanted me. Feeling his oats.
    “Anyway, I was in trouble and afraid. I hid in the barn after the scene in the church. I was still there when John Ingram and his wife, Leah, wandered in and found me. We got to talking, him and his wife and me. Leah was sick and dying. Everyone knew it. And because John hadn’t given her children, she would be alone in her dying. So. She suggested John marry himself a nurse for her, someone young and strong and independent, who might not mind never having young’uns. Theyproposed to me, and promised that I wouldn’t have to take up my wifely duties until I turned fifteen. I accepted.”
    In the silence of the great room, I finished washing and rinsing the plates and stacked them on the wood dish drainer that John had made in the church’s woodworking shop years ago. For Leah. Everything in this house had been made for Leah or one of his other wives, not me. But I was the one who’d ended up with it all. Life was puzzling. Unpredictable. But one thing was sure. The meek didn’t ever inherit the Earth. I wasn’t meek. And I had the land. The others were dead and gone, and it was mine according to the law of the United States and the state of Tennessee and according to the land itself. Leah had been gone since I was nearly fifteen. John had been dead since I was nineteen. More than three years I had been alone. So maybe it was time and past time to claim the house and the things in it too, to make them mine. To maybe move from the tiny half bed to a bigger one, to make a room my own.
    No one was talking and the water wasn’t hot enough, so I dried my hands and opened the wood box on the side of the stove. I put a single split log inside, turning the bottom damper almost closed, the top damper shut tight. The log, sitting on the coals, would last