by Faith Hunter
“Does that put us in charge?” Occam asked.
“Yes. In the future,” FireWind said, his words clipped, “probationary agents are to be seen, not heard.”
I started to tell FireWind that he sounded like a churchman talking to one of his womenfolk, but Occam put a hand on my arm and mouthed, Later.
“Fine,” I said to the boss’s boss. To Cai I said, “We’ll talk to SWAT and to Ming. I mean, my senior partner will talk.”
Occam chuckled silently, cat chuffing. I narrowed my eyes at him and he smothered the soundless laughter. I ended the call without saying good-bye, holstered my weapon, and we followed Cai inside, into the light and frozen air of an overworked air-conditioning system. My sweat chilled and I shivered.
There were three bodies and pools of blood in the foyer. All human. All dead. Weapons at their sides. They had died fighting. I followed Occam past without looking. Much. Not seeing the difference between the blood of a threat and the blood of a victim, my land wanted the bodies. Wanted the blood.
No, I thought. No.
My stomach churned. I clenched my teeth and said nothing as we entered the main room. Medic raced in and started attending to the humans on the floor, checking for vitals. In a corner, two vampires were secured with silver cuffs, back to back. The reek of burning vampire flesh soured the air, coming from the silver wire wrapped around them. Both were bleeding and vamped out, struggling, burning. I wanted to draw my weapon and shoot them, I wanted to take their blood for the land, but I resisted. Everyone had vest cams.
I heard a soft pop of sound and flinched. Lincoln was standing beside me. Once again, he had moved with vamp speed, displacing air. Shaddock was long legged, a little rough around the edges, his shoulder-length dark hair swinging around his craggy face. He was wearing work boots, jeans, and a cotton button-down shirt splattered with a fine spray of blood. And he was carrying a single-bladed ax. Not what I expected in a vampire rescuer. More like a lumberjack on holiday. The tall, spare man nodded at me and at Occam and Cai, three small bobs of his head, in what felt like an old-timey greeting. Cai bowed back, a deep obeisance, before leading the way to the captive vampires and the SWAT team leader. Gonzales was standing in front of the prisoners, his weapon at the ready.
I stared around the room as the three men and Occam chatted about what was going to happen next, the administrative transfer of the premises, the occupants, and a lot of other legal stuff I needed to hear and would have found fascinating, if I hadn’t been holding down my bloodlust. It wanted to feed the land. It needed …
When they had everything settled to their respective satisfactions, Cai knelt in front of the captive vamps, holding the gaze of the female. She was the older of the two, her fangs a good three inches long, curved, and thicker than most. And … she had upper and lower fangs, which I’d heard was common in one bloodline of European vampires. Cai held her gaze. I knew how hard that was. Nearly impossible for a human.
Occam touched my arm and we stepped to the side. Ming of Glass appeared and took our place. Her power filled the room and ached on my bare skin. I wanted to claw it off me, but that might be construed as an insult.
Shaddock dropped his head a bit lower to Ming than he had to the rest of us. “My old friend. I wish we had been here sooner. We will stay and heal your people.”
Ming dropped her head, equally low, to Shaddock. “You are the balm of Gilead to me, my old friend. My companion in arms.”
I blinked at the balm of Gilead comment. The balm was a medicinal perfume mentioned in the Bible, maybe from a camphor-smelling plant or the terebinth tree. That Ming would mention it was unexpected and jarring. Maybe for vampires, the balm was blood, or loyalty, or a combination of the two.
“We will fight together,” Shaddock said, his voice soft and leisurely, an almost-familiar hill country accent. “I offer you my strength and my power to determine our mutual enemies.”
Shaddock held out a hand and Ming took it. Holding it, she turned to the female captive. “The name of your master,” she said softly, “or I shall drink you down and claim you as my own.”
“You do not have the power to claim me,” the female vampire said. “Even with the help of that bumpkin.” The female had a foreign accent, one I couldn’t place except that it wasn’t from around here. Maybe someplace in Europe.
“I have far more power than your pitiful master ever imagined,” Ming said. “Together, the Master of the City of Asheville and I are a force to be reckoned with.” She lunged at the vampire. Grabbed her behind the head. Sank her teeth in at the female’s neck.
I flinched, taking two steps back before I could stop myself. Ming lifted the other vamp and they settled to an ottoman. At her side, still holding her free hand, Lincoln withdrew a small blade from his boot and pricked Ming’s pinkie finger. He put it in his mouth and sucked.
I frowned in confusion. Occam was watching the vampires, his attention on the bound male. “Don’t try it,” Occam advised. He raised his service weapon, aimed at the vampire. “I got silver rounds and no mores against using them to shoot out your knees. You’ll limp forever.”
Weapons ratcheted behind us. Occam turned slightly and raised his voice. “PsyLED! We got this.”
“Don’t look like you got shit, dude. Fangheads sucking on each other? You should let us take them in.”
“You have jails that’ll hold them?” Occam asked. “Lined in silver and secured from daylight? Something to feed them so they stay sane? No? Then let us do our job.”
I heard feet shuffle away.
Occam said, “Ming of Glass, we are under local rules of parley. I surely do hope you plan to share whatever you learn. Oh. And don’t kill the li’l vampire lady, okay? That might get my butt in a heap of trouble.”
Her teeth still buried in the vampire’s flesh, Ming shifted her eyes to him and smiled.
• • •
Twenty minutes later, Ming of Glass pushed away from the vampires she had been drinking down. She was flushed, full of blood, and healthy. Lincoln dropped her pinkie finger and hauled her to her feet, an arm around her waist. There was something sexual and passionate in the action and I felt my body react. Cai guided them both to a sofa, where the two master vampires sank down gracefully. I pretended not to notice that Ming ended up in Shaddock’s lap and his arms closed about her. If I had to guess, the two had been lovers in the past. Maybe still were.
Ming said, “We have learned all they know about our attackers. And we have a name.” She looked at me. “Maggoty. Have you or your people ever heard of Godfrey of Bouillon? In French, he is called Godefroi de Bouillon.”
I started searching on my cell, texting that name with possible spellings to JoJo and Rick. As I worked, Ming kept talking. “There is a vast power vacuum in the world of Mithran and Naturaleza politics since the two strongest of us—Titus, the emperor of Europe and Leo Pellissier of the United States—are dead and the Dark Queen has gone to ground. Many attempt to fill those voids. Godfrey is here to claim my city and all its cattle as his own.”
“You got that, JoJo?” I muttered into my mic.
“Got it. Searching databases. Good guess on the spelling, Ingram.”
Ming went on, “His people have attacked your lands tonight, my friend, Lincoln. He has claimed your clan home as his own. We do not know that the Dark Queen will fight him for this.”
“We don’t need her, Zhane,” Shaddock, said in a local accent. “We defeated his people here. As soon as things are secure here, we can take back my lands. We will exact revenge, my love.”
“Yessss,” Ming said. “And now we know where they laired the last nights. In this neighborhood, among my neighbors, draining them. This too will be avenged.” Ming looked at me and then at Occam. “How long will this local parley last? Will PsyLED Unit Eighteen fight beside the Mithrans of Knoxville, or will you allow the city to fall into the hands of the Naturaleza of Europe, Godefroi de Bouillon?”
My cell rang, and the area code a
nd number were both unfamiliar. I answered anyway. “Hello?”
“Give the cell to Ming of Glass,” FireWind said.
I handed my cell to Ming. “It’s my boss, Ayatas FireWind. He wants to parley with you.”
“I do not know this name,” Ming said, still refusing again to talk to people she didn’t know.
“If he lies, you can take it out of my hide,” I said quickly, stepping back, leaving the cell in her hands.
Ming took the cell and said into the microphone, “If you treat with us without honor, we will take the life of your Maggot.”
Across the distance, I heard the voice of my newest boss say, “I always speak with honor and honesty, Ming of Glass.”
Take the life of your Maggot … Ming had just threatened my life. Which meant she would kill me and also kill my family if it suited her. She thought I was important, of value, but powerless. Well. She was wrong on both counts. I had a feeling that I’d have to show Ming of Glass I wasn’t someone to be trifled with, and soon. Shotguns wouldn’t scare her. But Soulwood would.
• • •
Around four a.m., the moon hidden by trees or the hills ringing the plateau, the killing battleground had become a crime scene, with all the dead being carried off for postmortems and the living either healed or sent to area hospitals. Occam and I left the site of the battle between Ming of Glass and Godefroi de Bouillon, and went back to HQ to file reports. Rick gave Occam another assignment, leaving me on my own. By five twenty, I was on my way to God’s Cloud of Glory Church to pick up my sister and to talk about child care. My bloodlust had gone unsatisfied but had at least quieted.
• • •
I sat in the truck for a bit, reading through my messages to see an update on Larry Aden. He was in jail, awaiting a bond hearing and a psych eval. That was good. I didn’t want to have to shoot him this morning. It was Sunday and I was here for one of the sermons I had agreed to attend as part of getting custody of Mud, not murder.
I didn’t knock, just slipped from the truck cab and in the door of the Nicholson house. No one noticed I had arrived and it gave me time to watch everything and everyone.
Sam, his heavily pregnant wife, SaraBell, my sister Esther and her husband, Jedidiah Whisnut, and Mud were all there, gathered around Daddy’s rocker, chatting with him as the patriarch drank the first of what would be many cups of coffee today. Esther was my true sib, and I remembered her touching her hairline like I did. I studied her from my hidden position and thought her hair looked more red, like mine. Over the din I heard talk about greenhouses.
There were ten or twelve young’uns—some of them neighbor kids, I was certain—running around yelling some church song about Noah and the ark and the animals that came to him to be saved from the flood. If there was a tune, I couldn’t discern it. I wasn’t sure where they had heard about SpongeBob SquarePants, but I was pretty sure he hadn’t been on the ark and I had no idea how he had been worked into the song.
A group of teens and preteens were sitting around a small table, sipping coffee and talking politics. It was boys on one side and many more girls on the other, but there was still some interplay between the disparate groups. Four older boys sat in the far corner, alone, with their heads together. They were dressed for outdoor work and had likely just finished chores. I knew Zeke, Harry, and Rudolph, my half brothers, and one who was not a Nicholson boy. All four looked troubled. Resentful.
There were three girls in the kitchen with the mamas, cooking. One was making coffee in the ancient thirty-five-cup percolator. One was working dough in a huge wooden dough bowl. One was setting the table. The mamas were cooking bacon, eggs, grits, biscuits, and pancakes on the wood-burning stoves.
That many people in the Nicholson house, with the woodstoves burning high, was unbearable hot, even with the summer fan in back dragging air through all the open windows and outside. I stood in the foyer of the big house, sweated, and watched the homey, happy commotion.
Sunday breakfast and lunch were a multifamily, multigenerational event in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, and while I didn’t agree with much of nothing the church taught, I did think getting together with family once a week was a pretty great thing. I didn’t want to deprive my sister of the Nicholsons, of the love and social discourse and interaction that a huge family could provide. In the church, all the kids were well socialized. It was a survival necessity and a skill she needed, even in the townie world.
The women and girls were in summer wear: long bibbed dresses over loose cotton shirts and, oddly, cloth sneakers. That was new. Anything new in the church was a good sign, but seeing Mama in red sneakers was surprising. Mama Grace was wearing sunflower yellow sneakers that matched the yellow plaid in her bibbed dress, and Mama Carmel was wearing sturdy, dour, navy blue sneakers to match her navy dress.
Daddy looked quiet and happy. SaraBell was propped in a chair nearby, feet up, rubbing her belly in slow steady circles, looking big enough to pop and utterly miserable. Her ankles were swollen and she seemed to be having trouble breathing deeply. I hadn’t asked, but it was possible that she was having twins. Or maybe a litter.
Sam glanced questioningly at his wife, smiled at her so sweetly, so gently, a look so full of love that it made my heart clench. She shrugged. He turned back to Daddy and asked, “When are Ben and Bernice getting married?”
“My courtin’s none a your’n beeswax,” a girl setting the table yelled at him.
Bernice was one of my half sisters. She was sixteen and old enough to be considered a woman by the church and old enough to wed in Tennessee. The only churchman named Ben I knew, who was old enough to marry, was Ben Aden, a college-educated man who had courted me before I turned into a tree. Ben was blue eyed and dark haired and pretty as a model in a fashion magazine. We wouldn’t have suited at all. But it was a surprise to hear he was courting my half sister. I didn’t know how to react to it.
“Nell!” Mud flew across the room, arms outstretched. I caught her and nearly fell back against the door. She wasn’t the skinny waif I had first seen only a few months past. Before she had become a woman grown, she had put on inches and height. But her hair was bunned up again. A tight, braided, twisted bun that had Mama’s handiwork all over it.
For a good two seconds my brain struggled. I wanted to fight this. I wanted to make a scene and tell the Nicholsons that they had no right to bun up my sister, not even as a social consideration or to fight the heat. But I didn’t have custody yet. They did. And if I wanted custody of Mud, then I needed to keep my blasted mouth shut and save this battle for another day.
I managed a slow breath. Then another. And gently set my sister aside with a slight smile and the words, “You look pretty.” Because I’d be hog-tied and set on fire before I put her in the middle of a battle she was too young to comprehend fully.
Mud touched her slicked-back hair and asked, “You’un okay with this? It’s hot.”
I muttered, “‘And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’”
Mud’s eyes went wide and she froze at my cussing.
“Shakespeare. I meant that we aren’t finished fighting this battle. We’ll pick our fights and now is not the time.”
Mud grinned and leaned in closer, whispering. “I’m gonna cut my hair someday. ‘When the hurly-burly’s done, / When the battle’s lost and won.’ I read some a your’n Shakespeare while you’un was a tree. He talks pretty and he’s right smart.”
Tears, totally unexpected, burned under my lids. “Yes. He was. And now we need to eat. Then I need to talk to Daddy and the mamas and Sam about a variety of things.”
• • •
The meal was noisy and hot and I had no chance for a private conversation with anyone. When the family left for church, Mud and me in with a group of womenfolk, Mama looked at me askance, me still wearing jeans and work shoes. I hadn’t kept a skirt at HQ. We filed into the Nicholson benches and I sat. This was the first time I’d been in the church since it had been s
hot up and Daddy and I had been mortally injured. I was a little uneasy being there, and found myself studying the wood pews for signs of bullet damage. I was glad that I had kept my weapon on me.
The song leader led three hymns. There was prayer and the Lord’s supper. And then came time for the sermon. To my surprise, Sam stood up to speak. I had intended to zone out and not listen, but with Sam preaching that went out the window. My brother had a gift for talking, for leading a crowd through the scriptures, and today’s scripture verses were based primarily on First Timothy, and he spent an hour suggesting, hinting, and implying that polygamy was not the Christian way.
I was delighted, though not everyone in the congregation was so impressed with the direction of the sermon. There were a number of men scowling, and an even greater number of women with their heads down. Being told the men were sinful for abusing women had to make the men mad. Being told that they were being treated like pieces of meat who had been forced into a sinful lifestyle couldn’t be easy on the women. My brother never said any of that, of course, but the implication and the inferences were there.
I was proud of my brother. Prouder than I could say. Finally the ninety-minute service was over and I stood and moved to the back of the church, a hand on Mud’s shoulder. Until the movement of the line stopped. Three men stood blocking the Nicholsons’ way. Blocking the mamas. Blocking Daddy, who was still using a cane. Blocking Sam. And mostly, I feared, blocking me.
I recognized Judah and Daniel Jackson, the younger sons of Preacher Ernest Jackson. Jackson and his eldest son were men I had helped kill, if only indirectly. If I hadn’t let Ming’s scions and Jane Yellowrock cross my land to search for a missing vampire, the old man and Jackson Jr. might still be alive. Maybe. Or not. Either way, I had a feeling Jackson’s younger sons were no better than their daddy or Jackie Jr.
Meshack Lambert was with Judah and Daniel, carrying a shotgun. Gad and Esau McCormick were carrying cudgels. Five against Sam and me. I slid my hand under my jacket to the holster.
Judah stuck out his chin and said to Sam, “You’un got no cause to impugn our way of life.”
