by Faith Hunter
“Yeah. I seriously need to bone up on my Bible verses if I have to keep saving your ass,” She plopped down beside my viny cage and opened a bottle of water, uncapped it, and drained it in long gulps. She was sweat stained, pale, and shivering.
I smiled, my lips dry and cracking. “Save me, huh?”
FireWind said, “Ingram. The death and decay energies are gone, though I have no idea how you did it. You did, of course, cave the house into a pile of splinters.”
“FireWind, sweet as always,” I said.
“I have never in my life been called sweet,” he said.
“That was sarcasm,” I whispered. “Like a townie woman.”
“Ah. Well. When she’s back to normal, drive her home,” he instructed T. Laine. FireWind pulled on socks and shoes and upended a gallon bottle of water over his fire. It hissed, spat, and smoked, and he stood, kicking dirt over it and rolling the heated firepit stones into it. “Ingram. The scent here is both like and unlike the scent of the magic user from Stella’s horse farm. There are two of them, working together. You still have work to do.”
I caught a glimpse of his face as he left, smiling, peaceful. I wasn’t sure any of us had known he could look so at ease. I laughed, though it was little more than a breath. I pressed my hand against my viny cage and the vines and roots parted, slithering to the sides. I rolled over and sat up, pressing a hand onto the vines encasing Occam. The setting sun cast golden light and soft shadows over him, and . . . he was such a beautiful man. Soulwood had healed the last of his burn scars. His hair was long and platinum gold. A five-day beard softened his cheeks and chin.
And then it hit me. I shouted, “FireWind! We need to go back to Ethel Myer’s house. Right now!”
* * *
* * *
Occam, dressed in gym sweats taken from his gobag and eating his second sandwich, drove me to Ethel Myer’s home and parked next to FireWind’s vehicle. He was standing with T. Laine, who was studying the house, reading the property with the psy-meter 2.0. The stone house had been perfect only hours past. Now it was a pile of rubble. Occam turned off my car, his gaze on the grouping of our coworkers. From their body language it was clear death and decay was contaminating the land. “If FireWind asks you to heal this land, you gonna do it?”
I shook my head. “I’m wore slap out, Occam. Maybe in a few days.”
“Good. You ain’t grown roots yet, but that won’t last. Not with you using your gifts so deep.” He leaned to me and tucked a strand of vine-hair into the curly mass behind my ear. He grabbed the back of my head and pulled us close, forehead to forehead, much like his cat had. “Good God, woman. I love you to the full moon and back. You know that. And you always got the right to do what you think is best. But you scared me half to death.”
“Is that what made you shift?”
“Fear is a powerful motivator, Nell, sugar. Love is a better one. Don’t do that to me again, you hear?”
Instead of agreeing, I said, “I love you too, cat-man, to the deeps of the roots and the heights of the trees.”
Our foreheads crushed together, Occam’s now-white eyelashes closed for a moment. Without a reply, he exited the car, leaving me there. Too tired to walk over and join my unit, I lowered the passenger window as Occam reached the small group.
Rick was there, looking pale and shaky, having shifted in the car on the way over, but human shaped, dressed in sweatpants and a shirt against the chill, like Occam. He glanced to me in the dim light cast by the houses closest. He lifted a hand in what looked to be more than simply hello. Maybe that friendship he had claimed, more so than boss-to-employee. I raised a hand back. He smiled. It was wan, but it was a smile, and it lit his black eyes.
FireWind said, “The scents here are mixed, but one is a scent I smelled all over the farm and in the basement at Stella Mae Ragel’s home. This is the scent of the ajasgili.”
“It’s an odd scent,” Rick said, “hard to detect with a human nose. A little like muskrat and old cat urine? And something three days dead?”
“Exactly,” FireWind said, sounding a little surprised.
“I scent better right after I’ve been my cat,” Rick said.
Occam said, “I smelled it before, but thought it was just part of the smell of death and decay and critters at the farm. And like Rick said, it’s too weak to notice until you brought it to my attention.”
“LaFleur,” FireWind corrected.
“He’s my friend as well as my boss,” Occam said, his tone calm but unyielding.
“You boys work that out later. I got nothing,” T. Laine said. “Here.” She handed them null pens as protection. I sniffed the air. I detected nothing, and that included no dead body stench. I had a feeling that Ethel Myer was not decomposing beneath the stone of her house. She had vacated the premises.
“There’s another scent.” Occam tilted his head. “I smelled this at the horse farm, near Adrian’s Hell, where he was murdered in the field.”
I called to FireWind. “The person who brought death and decay into the land managed to kill Hugo, his girlfriend, and the horse? We know it was Hugo’s soon-to-be-ex-wife. But I postulate there have to be additional reasons for the murders than simple revenge.” I stole a line from one of the others. “Dollars to donuts there was a big insurance policy on Hugo that would expire when the divorce was final. And maybe it was even more than that. Stella’s estate is huge; and add in the value of the horses, it gets even bigger. JoJo and I have been working on who benefits, but we’ve barely made a dent in the estate. Maybe Carollette had an insurance reason to kill the horse. The man in the barn, Pacillo, said there was a lot of insurance on the horses. Her mother said Stella had made sure her family were taken care of. Maybe that included the commune family. Maybe Stella allowed all her former commune members to invest in her stallion and put them on that insurance policy. Has anyone checked?”
FireWind said into his headset, which I hadn’t noticed, “Jones? Yes. Thank you.” He looked at me. “The insurance policy on Adrian’s Hell listed a Richard H. Ames. DOB and social match Hugo’s. As his heir, his wife stood to receive a hundred thousand dollars on a mid-seven-figure insurance settlement in addition to his life insurance policy.”
“Daaaaamn,” T. Laine said. “Vengeance for infidelity and money. Those are good motives.”
Too tired to think, I closed my eyes, but FireWind had understood. He said, “Insurance monies on the horse would have gone directly to the beneficiaries without going through probate. Stella dies, the horse dies, then Hugo dies, in that order, and any potential monies, including his portion of the insurance monies for Adrian’s Hell, would go to his not-yet-ex-wife. If he has not yet changed his will.”
“We’re living in Dick Francis’ world,” T. Laine said, “if Dick was a para and wrote magic death stories.”
“Yes,” I whispered.
I wondered how many people would still be alive if we had looked at the other victims of the initial attack as carefully as we did Stella. Stardom had an allure all its own, dangerous for law enforcement.
* * *
* * *
In a line of cars, PsyLED Unit Eighteen drove toward Carollette Myer Ames’ house in Crossville. A couple blocks off of Lantana Road, we turned off all car lights and eased into the drive of a vacant house, a weathered For Sale sign in the overgrown front yard. We were a hundred feet from Carollette Myer Ames’ small single-family home where she had lived with her husband. Occam handed me a pair of binoculars from his gobag and I adjusted them. He had cat eyes, and didn’t need them.
The red brick house was surrounded by dead oak trees and a dead flower garden. The death of the land was leaching out from the front porch where Ethel Myer sprawled in a rotting rocking chair, illuminated by the porch light. She was recognizable only by the holey, rotting green plaid housedress and the pile of rotting cigarette butts in a dish on the c
oncrete beside her. Ethel was leaking green goo, her body falling apart as death and decay took her. Dust filtered over her as the front porch ceiling gave way and a board clattered down.
Carollette was sitting across from Ethel in a rusted metal rocker. She was pretty in a hard sort of way, her face seeming composed of angles made by frowning, her form stiff and projecting caged fury, even while just sitting, staring at her dead aunt. She was dressed in frayed jeans and ragged layered T-shirts. Leather shoes were curled and disintegrating on the floor beside her bare feet. She was the burnished platinum of some brunettes who go white-headed early, the same shade of white I had seen in the pasture where Adrian’s Hell died.
“She don’t look like much,” Occam said of the necromancer, “until you realize how many people she’s killed.” I didn’t reply and he added, “They want her alive.”
“Who?”
“FireWind didn’t say, but he was ticked off.”
Etain and Catriona pulled up beside us in an old dented Subaru. They got out and headed for Unit Eighteen, who were talking quietly nearby. Etain tossed us—or maybe just Occam—a wave as she moved around my car.
“T. Laine called for backup?” I asked.
Occam said, “FireWind took the warnings to heart about bombing the necromancer. We’re taking her down the old-fashioned way, magic-against-magic and low-tech human weapons.”
Margot parked on the other side and joined the unit, not noticing us in the darkened car.
“I got all the energy of a dead possum,” I said, so tired that church-speak came out. “I got no way to help here, not to capture a necromancer.” I held up my raw fingers. They looked worse in the dim light—white dead skin. Exhausted tears dribbled down my face, heated and stinging. Embarrassing. I turned my head away.
“Nell, sugar. Why you crying, darlin’?”
“This is jist me feeling useless.” I dragged my sleeve across my cheeks, pulling on my tear-rough skin. I faced him, and his eyes were glowing the golden of his cat, his nearly white hair pushed back from his healed, beautiful face. Had he been this pretty before he was burned? I didn’t rightly think so. “Go on. Take her down. But if you’un get hurt, I’ll skin your cat hide offa you’un in punishment,” I threatened.
He grinned, his teeth flashing, reflecting distant lights. “Duly noted, plant-woman. But don’t worry. Lainie gave us obfuscation charms if we need ’em.” He kissed me quick and slipped from my car.
I sat and watched as Unit Eighteen and the two Irish witches talked, came to an agreement, and separated, approaching Carollette’s home from oblique angles, moving tree to tree, house to house, using what they had for cover.
Occam raced cat-fast to the far side of the porch, into the dark. Out of my sight.
Rick was in front, carrying a gun with a huge barrel, big enough to be a small cannon.
Margot carried a target pistol with a long barrel and moved into range, half-hidden behind a car.
FireWind was carrying an old hunting rifle. He positioned himself at a different angle from Margot’s. His job was to take Carollette down permanently if the other means didn’t.
The three witches spread out in a triangle, Etain moving to the far side of the porch, T. Laine on the near side, and closer to their target. There wouldn’t be time or opportunity to create a circle around the house. They would be using a triangle to cast their working, and with T. Laine the only powerful witch, the working could be limited in scope and power.
I wasn’t wearing an earbud, but I understood. Because she was so dangerous, there would be no warnings. No chance to give up. No chance for the suspect to place a weapon on the ground and raise her hands. No chance. Because Carollette was a weapon.
FireWind and Rick shared a look and FireWind gave a single jutting nod, his lips saying, “Go.” Rick aimed, took a breath, released half of it, and fired. A beanbag filled with steel pellets hit our suspect in the left chest. She rocked in her chair, her head whipping side to side.
Rick fired again, hitting his target. Carollette fell to the porch, her hands to her chest, her breath knocked out twice.
T. Laine threw all the null pens at the porch. They landed around the downed ajasgili.
T. Laine and FireWind raced in, the big boss with his weapon aimed at Carollette’s head. T. Laine secured Carollette in official steel cuffs and then in silvered null wrist cuffs. While she was still trying to recover, T. Laine bound her head in silver skull cuffs, two of them, taking no chances. They backed away and the three witches cast a ward around the downed woman, a small but powerful hedge of thorns. The ward was so strong it cast a bright red glow in the night, something I hadn’t seen before.
The body language of the surrounding unit and witches relaxed, the witches blowing out hard breaths.
FireWind backed away, his weapon pointed at the ground.
Margot, who was closest to me, chuckled and stood, her words carrying to me. “Well, that was easy.”
But it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t over.
The earth trembled.
Death and decay began to rise.
Everything happened, almost too fast to follow.
FireWind raised his hunting rifle.
Catriona, Etain, and T. Laine whirled and began pouring energies into the hedge.
Margot bent over the hood of the car she had hidden behind. Aimed her target pistol.
FireWind aimed.
Rick dropped the beanbag gun. Pulled his service weapon, racing in.
The hedge of thorns, intended to enclose the necromancer and contain her death and decay energies, sparked and stuttered. The energies died.
FireWind fired.
Occam raced toward the porch, his eyes glowing in the night. His service weapon out in front. Holding the remains of the potted cabbage in the crook of my arm, I opened my car’s passenger door, falling as the earth shook. I landed on my knees. Made it to my feet, clutching the car door. Gasping.
There wasn’t much Soulwood soil left in the pot. There wasn’t much of me left. I couldn’t do this. I couldn’t. And I had to.
Gunshots sounded, cracking on the night.
Tears raced down my face.
More shots sounded.
The earth rolled and shook.
My feet dragged as I approached the porch. More shots sounded. Death and decay roiled and stretched, aiming at our witches. Aiming at Occam, who fired from the far side of the house. When the porch was thirty feet ahead, I tried to say, “It’s not going to be enough.” But they didn’t hear me over the weapons’ fire.
Carollette rose from the porch floor and screamed, “Die!”
The ground rippled. The dead body of Ethel Myer rocked. Her body bent forward and she stood. Dead. Standing. She lurched off the porch.
FireWind shouted, “Retreat!” No one ran. He aimed his weapon. Rick and Occam aimed theirs. They fired at Carollette. But the ajasgili didn’t fall.
“PsyLED! Carollette Ames, stop your magic attack, now!” FireWind shouted.
Rick raced to the side. Trying for a better shot.
The ground shook.
Ethel’s dead body grabbed T. Laine into a hug, crushing her. T. Laine gagged and fought, thrusting her defensive magic agaisnt the dead body.
FireWind raced in and shoved Etain and Catriona toward the cars. “Run!” he screamed, and he leaped to the porch.
T. Laine moaned. A sound like death.
The tremor in the land went deep and wide. Trees shook. Windows in nearby houses popped and shattered. Margot raced toward the house, tripped, and fell. The porch where T. Laine, prisoned by the dead, stood, along with the ajasgili/necromancer and FireWind, juddered. One corner support dropped, crumbled. The porch cracked like a shotgun blast, the roof falling at an angle. Occam turned toward me, searching for me in the darkness.
I dropped the potted plant.
Fell beside it. Shoved my hands into the soil spilled on the ground. Beneath the ground, the darkness roared and shimmered. Death and decay attacked. Everything, everyone began to die.
T. Laine was suffocating in the dead embrace. Her ribs popped. Her breath stopped.
Rick screamed, a cat scream in a human throat. Agony of death. Death and decay had touched him. He was dying.
The ground trembled.
Occam raced toward me, eyes glowing, claws at his fingertips. I felt his feet as they hit the earth.
I called on Soulwood. Light and warmth filled me. Tender branches whipped at the house. Roots exploded from the ground. Vines rippled across the porch. They tangled themselves into Carollette’s white hair. Roots and thorns tore into her body. Blood splattered.
FireWind fired. Margot fired. Multiple gunshots tore through Carollette.
Rick fell to the ground.
The ajasgili screamed. My roots and vines tightened around her neck. She screamed and gurgled. Called on her dark power.
More shots echoed in the night, FireWind and Margot firing.
The house began to collapse. The dead body Carollette was riding slid to the porch floor, taking T. Laine with it into an oozing heap. Rick tried to shift. Writhing on the ground.
I fell forward. My vision was of my leafy hands in Soulwood soil. The light telescoped down, smaller and smaller, into two pinpoints. Everything went dark, but I wasn’t totally out. I still felt the battle. Felt the power in FireWind as he tossed boards away. Tore the dead body from his agent and threw it. Lifted T. Laine. He leaped away from the house and landed on the ground hard, his arms cushioning Lainie. She whimpered. Took a faint breath.
Death and decay shriveled. Quivered. Hesitated.
And died.
Occam’s strong arms were around me. His body heat burning. With my last thought, I sent health and life into them all. Healing. Warmth. Life.
* * *
* * *
I was awake. Sort of. Sitting in my car with the engine running, the heater on. Occam’s arms were around me. I was sitting on his lap. I was safe. He was safe. The death and decay was gone. Carollette was dead, truly dead. My magic knew all this.
