Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

“I don’t know. Joshua Purdy moves fast,” I said. “He’s mean as a snake and he’d do something like this. So, Joshua. Maybe. My second choice would be Jackie Jr., but I think Jackie’s too smart to pull a stunt like that on his own. He’d send his friends.”

  I remember that Sister Erasmus had hinted at divisiveness among the men. Divisiveness sometimes created factions. This could be the work of one. “This looks bad for the church.”

  Rick said gently, “Yes. It does. Though perhaps not for the reasons we think. They may or may not be working with the Human Speakers of Truth. If they are a paranormal-hating church faction, then they could have discovered independently that a paranormal unit of law enforcement—PsyLED—was in town and decided to make a statement.”

  All that was true, but it still came back to a fight too long avoided. To me hiding in the safety of my house in a defensive position instead of taking the fight—my fight—to the churchmen. I was a mouse hiding in the shadows. If I kept on hiding, someone other than me was going to get hurt. Hurt bad. Killed. Or . . . “Wait,” I said. “What about the two in the front of the SUV? Did you get photographs of them in traffic cameras?”

  Rick’s eyes crinkled in a smile that didn’t reach his mouth, and tapped a key and touched a spot on the computer screen. A close-up of the men in the front seats appeared. The driver had changed some since the high school yearbook photo I had of him. But I was fairly certain that he was Simon Dawson Jr. “The backslider,” I said. “And I bet you bunches that the older man in the passenger seat is his daddy, Dawson Sr., both seen on church grounds by Sister Erasmus. This faction of men—the Dawsons and Boaz and the little guy—might have gone over to the HST.”

  Rick punched a button on the laptop and said, “Meet Oliver Smithy, the fourth man in the SUV and an HST organizer. This puts HST and a church faction in the same place at the same time, attacking federal agents.”

  “Ohhh.” A feeling like static electricity stung its way through me, leaving me overheated and breathless. The church I had run from for so long was even more evil than I had expected or believed.

  Through the floor, something moved on the land to the southeast, at the Vaughn farm, something motorized, traveling in the dark, toward my land. I leaped to the front window and picked up a shotgun, checked the load. “Company coming,” I said. Rick followed me, a weapon in each hand, and I was reminded of how fast he was the first time I saw him. Behind me, the lanterns went out one by one.

  “An all-terrain vehicle,” I said, pointing, “is moving through the night in our general direction. I think it’s on an old farm road.”

  Silently Rick slipped outside. T. Laine followed, a gun in her right hand and something in her left. Probably a magical trinket. JoJo took up a place near me. Tandy stood between the open front door and the window, protected by a wall. “Two people,” he said, loud enough for us all to hear. “One is furious. Her energies and emotions boil like water on a hot stove,” he said. “The other is quiet, uncertain, but determined. Male.” Tandy’s face wore something like awe, the expression crinkling over his pale white skin. “I’ve never experienced emotions over so far a distance before. I love your woods.”

  The lights of the ATV cut through the trees, creating long lines of shadows and illuminating strips of land in washed-out tones of gray and green. I walked onto the porch, the night air icy as the roar grew in volume and the lights bumped from the old farm road down to the road in front of my house, and across it onto my land. It swerved to miss the dogs’ graves and then swerved to miss the raised beds. The lights brightened the porch for a moment, where we stood with guns, waiting. The vehicle stopped. The motor went silent, leaving the smell of exhaust, the lights still on but directed at the stairs, not up at us.

  “Miz Ingram?” a voice called. “It’s Clarence Vaughn. I got your sister Mindy here. She’s mighty upset and desirous of talking to you. Said you’d give me twenty dollars to bring her here and take her home.”

  “Mud?” I had expected Jackie, here to cause trouble. Or at best, Priss, coming to me for safety. And I didn’t have twenty dollars.

  Rick holstered one of his guns and pulled a twenty from his wallet, holding it in the glaring headlights. “Mindy, come get the money, and take it to the man.”

  My little sister appeared in the dark, long gangly limbs and scrawny body beneath the churchgirls’ clothes. She was wearing a dress with no apron and boots with no stockings, no coat or sweater though it was cold out tonight. Mud took the bill and sprinted back to the ATV, then raced to the porch again.

  “Daddy said I wasn’t to come,” she said. “But somebody done took Esther. She was standing with her intended, Jedidiah Whisnut, after evening devotionals, and somebody done run up and hit Jed. When he woke up, Esther was gone. Somebody took her. Priss said you would know what to do.”

  Shock stole any response from me, and all I could think of was the note. I had known. He had told me what he intended to do. And I hadn’t done anything to stop this from happening. “Jackie,” I whispered.

  “We’ll take care of it,” Rick said.

  “Promise?” Mud demanded.

  Rick smiled slightly, making me think he had sisters. “Cross my heart and hope to die. Stick a needle in my eye.”

  “That’s yucky,” my full sib said. “But it’ll do.” She raced to the ATV again and climbed aboard. “Hurry. Afore Daddy knows I’m gone,” she demanded. Vaughn started the engine and made a small circle, the tires grinding into my grass. The ATV roared and quickly disappeared back up onto the disused farm road. Rick took my arm and led me back inside, closing the door on the night. The heat was smothering. I could hardly breathe. But someone placed a cup of tea in my hand and forced me to take a sip. Someone else put a blanket around me, though it was too hot. I sat there. Thinking. All I needed was some of Jackie’s blood. A single drop would do.

  I pushed the blanket away and set down the tea, which was cold now. Time must have passed.

  Surprising even myself with the words, I said, “I’m going to the church tomorrow for dawn devotional. I’m taking bread and some canned goods. And I’m gonna make a ruckus and get back my sister.”

  Rick said, “No. That is not going to happen.”

  THIRTEEN

  “You’re no longer a civilian asset. You’re part of this unit, and you don’t have the training or the experience.”

  “I’m the only one with the training and experience,” I said softly, feeling the tremor of shock as my words ricocheted through me. “I’m going in to show the photo of Boaz and the Dawson men to an elder and his wives. People I trust. And tell them what happened. If Boaz is hiding on church land or if they’ve heard where he might be, they’ll tell me. Boaz is a weak link. He’s a bully and a coward. You get him, and you can make him talk about the people he’s involved with and where they are. Boaz is the way to stop the kidnappings.” I paused for a moment before I finished with, “And then I’m gonna raid Jackie’s house and take Esther back.”

  “She’s quite serious,” Tandy said.

  “They believe that women are weak,” I said, “and stupid and easily led by men. They think a woman will do anything, be anything, a man tells her to. In their experience, they’re right. Being hurt will make most people agreeable to anything, to stop pain, men and women both. So I’m going in and hope I can get back out.”

  “Tomorrow doesn’t give us time enough to put anything together,” T. Laine said. “Make it the day after.” There was something in her tone that set my teeth on edge, but I ignored it. “It has to be Saturday morning,” I said, hearing the quiet burr of my anger, “not Sunday, because Sunday means services all day. They won’t stop services to deal with feminine accusations,” I said, using the term the churchmen would use. “If I don’t get to Elder Aden and the Nicholson clan on Saturday, the problems will be shelved until Monday.” My voice rose. “The church doesn’t deal with problems on Sund
ay. That’s a day of worship and rest. Nothing else, and I mean nothing, is dealt with on Sunday. The elders will demand that I be locked up and left until Monday. And if it’s true that a church faction is involved with the kidnappings, it won’t be the peaceable menfolk who have them, it’ll be the crazies, the women haters. It’s likely none of the girls will last very long.”

  JoJo said, “This is stupid, first, because none of us is letting you go in—”

  T. Laine interrupted, “No, she’s right. It needs to be fast, when they least expect it. But we could wire you.”

  “No wires,” I insisted. “Now. Not later.”

  “If we give her a laptop or cell phone, we can track her with it,” JoJo said.

  Rick’s face was a stone.

  I said, “They’ll just destroy any electronics. They’re not all uneducated. Churchmen have been to college and then come home. They designed the security systems, the communications systems; they even set up a Web site for the church, though it hasn’t been updated in years.” Which suddenly struck me as curious. Had the college-educated men left the church? I hadn’t heard rumors, but I wasn’t exactly in the middle of things anymore. Rick was watching me, and I had no idea what he saw on my face, but he didn’t like it.

  “I thought God’s Cloud of Glory didn’t believe in education,” JoJo said.

  “Mostly you’re right. Education isn’t valued much; that’s part of the whole prideful thing. But Jackie Jr. went to college. So did some of his friends.”

  I tried to remember the names of the two men who had set up the security systems. To Rick I said, “See what you have on Nadab and Nahum Stubbins.” I stopped. The boys who’d come to shoot up my house had come across Stubbins property. The odd hedge of vines was growing up at the Stubbins boundary. But I couldn’t see how those things would coincide with the shooting at the hotel. None of the men in the SUV had been a Stubbins. I shook the thoughts away. “Their family land adjoins mine.” I pointed vaguely off to the wall of vines and thorns.

  “The Stubbinses used to be part of the church in the nineteen fifties or something. Then they got into a disagreement with Colonel Ernest Jackson Sr. on some key point of spiritual interpretation and left.” Or were ostracized? Had the Stubbinses been kicked out of God’s Cloud? Had they been friends with the backslider Dawsons? I pulled on old memories, trying to recall things I’d never had an interest in. “About twelve, fifteen years ago, some of them reconciled and came back. The elder Stubbins had grandsons by then, who had been raised out of the church. They didn’t fit in and were sent off to school. I don’t know where they studied, but they left and then came back. I remember them on the compound when I was a young’un.”

  All the unmarried girls—and a number of the married ones—had cast their eyes at the older boys. They had been in their early twenties or so, and clean-shaven with soft-looking hair that fell across their brows, touchable and forbidden. There had been a lot of sinful gossip about the men, couched in ways to get them to stay.

  I shook my head at the memories. “Last I heard, to keep the brothers near, the Elders offered them their pick of wives. I remember that one or the other took two girls, married according to the church, and settled down.” I squinted, pulling at old, seemingly unimportant, relationships. “I remember seeing the brothers in services when I went with Leah and John, before she died. Must a been nearly eight years ago, but things change. I remember a list of current churchmen in the PsyLED files,” I said to Rick. “Pull them up?”

  Without demur, he opened a file on his laptop, and I studied it. Neither Stubbins was listed, but maybe they lived on the farm still, not on church grounds. I had remembered thinking that one of the boys who had come to my house had been a Stubbins. It would make sense what with them coming up the steep hill from Stubbins land. A gully on the Stubbins farm had been used for decades as a shooting range, and the late-night target practice still echoed up the hills from there.

  And Priss had sent Mud for help. Priss had married into the Campbell clan, the Campbells were kissing cousins to the Vaughns, and the Vaughns lived off the compound. And a Vaughn had brought Mud to me with the warning. The Vaughns would know things. It was all tied together the way churchwomen tied things, with a quiet word here or there, a nudge, a prod, a whispered word of pillow talk. The way mice—and people who had been abused—did things. Undercover, with secrets and whispers. Churchwomen, mice, Priss, sending information to me to give to PsyLED. Yes. That was it, surely as the sun set in the west.

  But all this understanding was useless unless I could get to the church and save Esther. If I didn’t, I had a feeling that nobody would. I was changing from a mouse into something bigger. Something stronger. And I was gonna do this—save Esther—no matter what.

  To T. Laine, I said, “I’ll have my clothes, my Bible, my breadbasket, my pocketbook with ID and driver’s license. Anything I take in has to fit in those.” With my gun.

  “You’re not going in tomorrow,” Rick said, his voice cold and closed, the way a man sounded when he brooked no argument. “There was a shooting directed against federal officials. One of the gunmen, Boaz Jenkins, was positively identified—by you—as being a member of God’s Cloud. The feds are trying to put together enough evidence to convince a judge of the need for a subpoena to raid the compound. I won’t let you disrupt that possibility.” This was information that he hadn’t been going to tell me, I could tell by the look on his face, his and T. Laine’s—that they all knew about a potential FBI raid. All but me.

  Rick added, “And you need to know something. When we were researching who had passports among the HST and the church, we found something about your family. Two weeks ago, there were passports issued in the names of Priscilla Nicholson, Fredericka Vaughn, Caleb Campbell, and six children with the last name Campbell. A Johnson Campbell is involved in this in some way. I thought you said that church people never leave the US?”

  The cold that had settled in me froze my veins again. He was trying to suggest that Priss’ husband and she were working with HST. “No.” The word came out a whisper. I started to cross my arms over my chest and stopped. I realized that I must spend a bit of time in the presence of people with my shoulders hunched. Like a churchwoman with a mean-fisted husband. But I wasn’t hiding or protecting myself anymore. I knuckled my hands and put my shoulders back. The posture was odd to me, but somehow empowering.

  Rick studied my bearing and a half smile settled on his mouth. I didn’t know what it meant, but he seemed pleased. “Nell. You can’t go in to the compound.” He added, almost gently, “I won’t let you.”

  Anger flashed through me like a crick in a flood. I almost shouted, “The only way to find out anything and save Esther is for me to go inside!” Instead, I bit my mouth closed on the words. I was a woman grown. My decisions were mine. My rebellion was mine. My sins were mine. Someone—Jackie?—had attacked my sister. And me, a new small voice whispered in my head. I’m important too. I should have taken the battle to them long ago. Alien thoughts. Rebellion pushed down deep, where, hopefully, Rick couldn’t see it and Tandy couldn’t feel it.

  But I was going to have to do this the way churchwomen did things: by subterfuge, not by direct confrontation. I hated it. I hated it. But I let my shoulders droop in defeat. I let tears fill my eyes, easy to do because of fear for Esther. Lying. All of it a lie. But the only way. And because Tandy was watching, I let the fear fill me.

  I knew that the end didn’t justify the means, and that I was lying to them all. Evil was evil and a lie was a lie, no matter how well intentioned, but I couldn’t think of another way to do what needed to be done in time. By Sunday, Esther would be broken. “Fine,” I whispered, and let my tears fall.

  I stood up and walked away, shoulders hunched. I put away clean dishes, swept the floors, dusted—even the four-barreled shotgun hanging on the stairwell wall—and replenished some herbal remedies, packaging others.
I made up some herbal aromatherapy lotions and body scrubs.

  Hiding other actions beneath the women’s work, I also packed a breadbasket to be ready for the morning. Loaded John’s old six-shooter. Packed my laptop in the basket under a cloth and the gun beneath that. I seldom stayed up this late, but I couldn’t go to bed. So I worked, keeping my mind occupied with chores and fear as I schemed and planned.

  * * *

  Long after midnight, there was very little power left, the house windows dim, the motion-detecting security light in the yard off due to lack of activity. Inside the house, the special agents were sitting in the light of oil lanterns, working on their computers, draining the precious final power by charging their batteries.

  There was nothing I could add to the investigation at this point, so I was curled on the swing on the front porch, sitting in the dark, a fuzzy afghan and a blanket wrapped around me, watching the first snowfall of the year as it dropped in lazy spirals and melted upon contact with the ground. In Knoxville, in the Tennessee Valley, the snow would melt in the air and be pure rain by the time it landed. Here, I had the first hint of real winter.

  * * *

  I was halfway dozing when I heard/felt the werecats leap across the border into my wood. They moved in long loping strides, Paka in front, the vibrations of their travel drumming through the ground. They weren’t running at full speed, more a stretched-out jog that covered ground fast. They stopped at the deer carcass, chasing off a family of foxes that had taken temporary possession. I heard the squeals and growls, but the foxes gave ground to the bigger predators, who ripped into the meat. When they had eaten their fill, the cats rose and groomed each other with coarse tongues that pulled the blood and viscera off their coats. The grooming was strangely intimate, but it wasn’t sexual, not as cats would consider it, though humans would have thought it all about mating. The cats were just cleaning each other of the scent of death, a familial endeavor, something littermates might do together.