Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

  Other than that, there was only the information that the church itself had on their Web page, which, according to the photographs and the listing of church elders, hadn’t been updated in five years or more. However, there were other avenues open to a persistent researcher.

  I drummed my fingers on the keyboard before signing off and went looking for a librarian. Fortunately, Kristy had just come on shift, and she knew that I had used microfiche before. “Come on, girl,” she said, flipping her hair back and leading the way. “I’ll let you into the historical records room. You help yourself to any old newspapers, police reports, land deeds, marriage licenses, death certificates, and business transactions you want. Everything from every old newspaper and all the old deeds are on microfiche. Eventually we’ll get the rest of Knoxville’s history scanned into the Library’s Internet, but at least the microfiche is complete.” She opened the records room with an old-fashioned key, and turned on the lights. “You remember how to change from one source to another?”

  “I do. Thanks, Kristy,” I said. “Coffee on me someday?”

  “That’d be fun,” she said. “But not for this. This is my job. Call on the in-house phone if you need something,” she said, pointing to the wall phone.

  She closed the door behind her, and I heard the lock click shut. I could get out, but no one could get in without being let in, which gave me a feeling of security I wouldn’t have had otherwise, so far down in the bowels of the building. I started with my most obvious option—newspapers. The information storage system was set up by newspaper and by date and was not complicated to search, though it was time-consuming.

  The Knoxville Gazette and the Knoxville Register were early pre–Civil War newspapers, the Gazette with pro-slavery leanings, the Register more pro-emancipation. The Western Monitor and Religious Observer was a newsletter. I wasn’t sure what the difference was between a newspaper and a newsletter, but the newsletter was violently pro-emancipation. And it had taken a stance against the newly founded God’s Cloud of Glory Church late in 1823.

  Every child in the church was taught the tale of the church’s establishment and early history, all about how the founder, the first Jackson, had come from Wales and bought land, nearly a thousand acres outside of Knoxville. About how he had gathered like-minded Christians around him and started a church, and how the townspeople had hated them, despite the heroic and gallant actions of the God-fearing churchmen. The history I had been taught was full of Scripture verses and photographs of the founding fathers, mustached and bearded, holding weapons that they had used to defend their way of life. The accounts in the newspapers were different. In October 1823, the Western Monitor and Religious Observer newsletter described the churchmen as particularly immoral, forcing their vile acts upon the weaker sex.

  The churchmen had fought back in a series of letters, and the rhetoric from both sides had been described by the Gazette and the Register as rancorous, malicious, venomous diatribes. Not something that should have been allowed in print where the more delicate-minded might be forced to read. The language was old-fashioned and eye-opening.

  In one attack, the newsletter had called upon the God-fearing populace to “cease to provide goods and services” to the churchmen, and to “shun the churchwomen as equal to those who live in sin, as surely as any strumpet or harlot!” There were lots of exclamation marks and weird spellings. But at the bottom of a special edition, the newsletter had listed the names of the early churchmen and their strumpet womenfolk. The publisher hadn’t alphabetized the names, but I scanned them, from the founder, Quincy S. Jackson, and his four wives, to Ralph A. Emery and his three wives. There were a lot of surnames in between, some that were spelled differently back then, like the Stubbenses, the Edens, and the Mcormiks, who were surely the Stubbinses, the Adens, and the McCormicks. There were also some that I didn’t recognize, including a Pullim family, a Gramour family, and a MacMackins family. It seemed as if the church membership had decreased over the years. Midway down, between Roxbury T. Bantin and his two wives and Jormungand M. Sanders and his four wives, was the name Elias S. Dawson and his three wives. And his many, many children.

  It took only a little more work to track the family tree of Simon A. Dawson Jr. back to his illustrious—or not—ancestor. I didn’t have much money on hand, but by dint of raiding the change from the bottoms of the cup holders and the floor of the PsyLED van, I managed to scrape up enough to print out the most important pages for the team. Assuming Senior Special Agent Rick LaFleur allowed me back into the unit after the kick I’d given him.

  Before I left the library, I did an Internet search for Simon Dawson from his birth to five years ago, when he seemed to drop out of sight, presumably into a vampire’s embrace.

  TWELVE

  Still feeling much better, I touched the oak tree in thanks as I left the library. Pages in hand, I drove to the hotel. With some trepidation, I parked the van in the hotel parking lot and headed to the entrance. Night had fallen and a chill wind blew straight through my clothes, giving me the shivers. Tomorrow, if the weather hadn’t changed back to summer, as it did with great regularity this time of year, I’d get out my winter coat. I smelled Italian herbs as I traipsed up the hall, and though I had overeaten on the fried chicken liver dinner, my mouth watered at the aroma. I knocked and used my card key at the same time. The door opened.

  Tandy leaped at me and hugged me. With both arms. I froze. But it wasn’t sexual. It was . . . nice. Rick had told them not to touch me, but Tandy was an empath and he had emotional needs that were different from most humans’. Uncertainly, I patted his back. Tandy was skinny to the point of emaciation, his shoulder blades sharp beneath my palm, his spine a line of acorns. I wondered how he ate, being so attuned to the emotions of others. When others were hungry, was he? When they were overfull, was he? I had some herbal mixtures that might help him eat more. Relax more. Surely there was a legal herb somewhere that helped empaths tune out the rest of the world. Marijuana would probably work perfectly, but Rick had said something about a drug test and I figured that particular illegal herb would be tested for. I needed to do some research.

  Tandy stepped back without releasing me, his hands holding my upper arms. He studied my face, but I had a feeling that he was really studying my emotions, feeling his way through them the same way I felt my way through the soil when I needed to plant something new into an existing bed, trying to see if the plants nearby were willing to accept a newcomer, trying to see if the nutrients were the right ones to succor the new rootlet or seed. Leaning in, he softly said, “No one worries about me.”

  “Oh. No, Tandy. I do worry about you. We all do.”

  I didn’t know how to categorize his expression; calling it a smile was to trivialize it, to make it less significant. The light of it brightened his face and made the Lichtenberg figures more pronounced, the flesh between more pale. And his eyes seemed to glow with happiness. It was an overreaction to my words.

  “Really,” he said, his voice holding some emotion that might have fallen under the category of wonder. “No one.”

  I patted his forearm and backed out of his embrace. It was just too bizarre. And unfamiliar. And awkward. Though in some odd way, the embrace reminded me of the way I had hugged the tree earlier. He stepped back and I entered the suite. Occam’s eyes found me instantly, his expression hooded.

  JoJo stepped between Tandy and me and closed the door, offering a flat box centered with three-fourths of an oozing, cheesy, vegetable-laden, sausage-covered pie. Tentatively, I took a slice, the crust crispy and doughy all at the same time.

  Tandy murmured softly under his breath. “She’s never eaten pizza before,” he said. That stopped the chatter in the room as every eye turned to me. Not meeting anyone’s gaze, I bit into the pizza. And I nearly swooned at the taste as it practically exploded in my mouth. It was fabulous. Spicy. Greasy. Fantastic. Wonderful.

  Pizza was . .
. delicious. Almost as good—in a totally different way—as the Krispy Kreme donuts.

  I instantly began thinking of how to make bread that would rise like the pizza dough and which herbs to add to my homemade canned tomato paste to make it taste like this. Then whose cheese might make it even better. Maybe goat cheese and dried tomatoes. Basil, which I could easily coax to sprout. I took another slice and chewed, differentiating the flavors into the base herbs and spices. There was a lot of oregano on it, and I grew the best oregano in the county. My pizza would be even better than this one.

  I was halfway through the second slice when Rick cleared his throat and the half-heard babble of the team ceased. I opened my eyes, took a quick glance around the room, and sat in the empty seat—the same one as before.

  “First,” Rick said, “I’m sorry.”

  I realized he was looking at me, talking to me, and I didn’t know what to do. So far as I could remember at the moment, no man had ever apologized to me. I held up a finger, asking for a minute, using the excuse of chewing to find some equilibrium, swallowed, and said, “Ummm. Okay. I accept your apology.” I thought a moment more and added, “But, I have to warn you, you ever bend over me and trap me again, I’m probably gonna kick you again.”

  “It’s a push-button reflex,” T. Laine said. “He pushed your buttons, you kicked. You both need to think before you act.”

  That sounded like sensible advice, something Leah would have said, and I nodded. One of the others poured Coke into a cup and passed it to me. I drank cola and continued eating pizza. It was a small slice of heaven.

  Rick said, “We have nonfamily abductions of four females. The family of Girl One was contacted with ransom demands and proof of life of the abductee. Then the family of Girl Two was contacted via an MO that falls within acceptable parameters used by HST in the past, with exactly the same ransom demands and delivery account numbers. Yet we have the body of Girl One, in a ditch near Dead Horse Lake Golf Course.”

  The room went silent. Tandy went pale and gripped the arms of his chair.

  The photo of a girl lying on the ground, on the crime board I’d seen in the conference room at FBI headquarters, leaped into my mind. She had been dead. Thrown away. Like garbage.

  “That’s near Wyatt School,” T. Laine said, putting a hand on Tandy’s knee. I couldn’t tell that she did anything, but he drew a breath and relaxed, and T. Laine patted his knee before removing her hand. It was the sort of gesture a mother did for a child, but it felt like more. I wondered if she had used a spell to help him stay calm when the emotions of everyone in the room were spiking.

  Rick had continued, using acronyms I didn’t understand. “Prelim PM indicates several things pertinent to the case. Liver temp suggests TOD was around the time of ransom delivery. External physical assessment also indicates that except for the COD, she was not abused or mistreated. COD is a blow to the back of the head, showing significant bruising, indicating it might have occurred at the time of the kidnap, and might have resulted in her later death. The word might was emphasized by the forensic pathologist. She’ll know more about the blow in a few hours, after they open her up.”

  I had a short list of acronyms to look up. PM, TOD, COD, and open her up, though I sorta understood them from the context.

  “HST does not kill or abuse kidnap victims, which is why they have been so successful,” Rick said. “However, the forensic pathologist suggests that the girl fought her attackers and was injured early on, perhaps with a wound that didn’t look immediately life-threatening. Bruising on the brain, called”—he looked at his tablet—“a secondary hematoma or secondary hemorrhage, can happen much later.

  “Assuming the ransom demands were made according to a sequence, the Clayton family should have received a call hours ago. It didn’t come. However, the death of the victim may have complicated the situation for the unsubs.”

  “Oh!” I said, jumping up and handing Rick the papers I had somehow ended up sitting on. “Dawson, the man who used to be addicted to vampire blood, had a connection to the church way back when. If someone in the church wanted to do harm to vampires, they might have called him. I need to talk to Sister Erasmus to verify that he’s one of the backsliders she mentioned.

  “I couldn’t find any connection between Dawson and the HST, but I don’t have access to all the databases you do, and I don’t know how to dig deep electronically. He would have known the ins and out of vampire households because of being their dinner.”

  I ate more pizza as Rick went through the poor-quality copies. “Huh,” he muttered. “I tend to forget about microfiche. I bet there’s not a lot about vampires in the old papers.”

  “If you know their names at the time and what to look for,” JoJo said. “The way they changed names to protect their lifestyles—”

  “Lives of the rich and fangy,” T. Laine interrupted. “Or maybe, not lives. Undead. So, undeaths of the rich and fangy.”

  “Okay. Back to what we were doing before Nell arrived. JoJo, see what you can find that might link Simon Dawson with HST. Nell, we might need you to ask your Sister Erasmus if the men have been back on church grounds and if they have any current church contacts.” He tapped the photocopies and changed the subject. “Debrief on the trailer park canvass,” Rick said. “T. Laine’s pair first.” Which reminded me about that part of the day’s planned activities, events that had taken place without me.

  T. Laine was chewing and waved at Tandy, saying what might have been, “Him first.”

  I started to tell Tandy to keep eating and let the others talk, but stopped myself. It really wasn’t my place. But his wrists were more scrawny than mine, and I was far too skinny.

  “Three who didn’t want to discuss anything,” Tandy said. “Emanations of guilt, anger, and fear. Probably hiding weed or other small-time crimes. Honest confusion about the missing girls. Two occupants who didn’t come to the door, though I could feel people inside. And one very chatty type.”

  “She asked Tandy to take off his clothes so she could see more of his ‘tattoos,’” T. Laine supplied, making little quotation marks in the air with one hand. “Said if she liked what she saw he could come inside for beer and fun and games.”

  Tandy blushed. The others laughed. Scowling, I shoved a piece of pizza at Tandy and said, “Eat.” Tandy looked at me in surprise. “You haven’t eaten anything since I got here.” Tandy took the piece and nibbled on the point. “Eat!” I said, putting a faint command into my voice. Tandy took a big bite and chewed. Swallowed. He ate two more bites.

  And I had my first taste of understanding the life of an empath. Because Tandy picked up the emotions of the people around him, it was easy to make him do most anything. This was not good. Very, very not good. But I kept my opinions and my thoughts to myself until he finished the pizza slice. “Okay,” I said then. “That’s good. You can stop unless you’re still hungry.”

  He looked at me and smiled uncertainly. “I’m . . . hungry.” He took another piece and ate it too, with most of a beer as chaser.

  Occam smiled at me with an expression I couldn’t read. T. Laine watched the exchange with a dawning comprehension and glanced at me, her expression appraising and calculating and seeming surprised. As Tandy ate, T. Laine took up the narrative, and I listened for anything that sounded promising about the missing girls and the trailer park, but didn’t hear anything interesting, except that when T. Laine cast what she called a “searching working,” she picked up traces of magic, old and worn. They were probably spells from a water witch who had moved out long ago. And she remembered hearing sirens from off in the distance as they worked the trailer park.

  The second pair of canvassers agreed that, on the surface, there was nothing about Mira at the trailers. Or there wasn’t until Occam had shifted and sniffed around. He had some pithy Texan slang for a leopard having to wear a collar and leash, but he’d picked up the scent of wet
dog. The scent pattern was similar to the dog they had smelled at Mira’s, but he admitted that, “All dogs smell the same to me. Rank and doggy.” Coincidence. But we weren’t ignoring coincidence now. We were reporting everything, even seemingly unimportant things, in case they became important later.

  Unfortunately, the mobile home where Occam had acquired the scent had been vacated recently, and the tenants had left no forwarding address. They had paid in cash and had been asked to provide neither identification nor references, had lived there for two months, and had disappeared three nights past. They rented week to week under the names Perry Mason and Paul Drake. Occam found that highly amusing and told us that the names were characters from an old detective TV show. Apparently Occam lived and breathed old black-and-white shows—cartoons and films, with a preference for Popeye, who I had never heard of.

  I decided that most of an investigator’s job was boring. I’d rather be working in the garden, getting caught up with my fall-weather work, not that I’d tell them that. Tandy stood up like someone had stabbed him, his eyes wide. He said, “Run!” sounding panicked and strangled all at once.

  The others all dove for weapons. Rick shoved Tandy and me to the floor behind the sofa and rolled to one side.

  Bullets rained into the room at waist height. I covered my head with my arms and curled into a tight ball. Splinters, debris shrapnel, and glass from the curtained window went everywhere, cutting into my skin. The noise was horrific. No one in the room returned fire.