by Faith Hunter
Then they batted one another and rolled in the brush, play-fighting, biting, scratching, and growling. Paka and Occam were having fun in the falling snow, but I was tired, and I knew there would be no sleep until they were back at the house, so I tried something I had never done before. I put a bare foot on the icy porch floor and thought about Paka being back here. Thought about her curled up on the sofa with Rick, a warm cup of milk in her hand.
I felt Paka’s head snap up, ears pricking. And then she was racing down the hill, along the old logging road that wound under an arch of stone, around the hill’s crest, and down toward my house. I pulled my foot into the warmth of the blankets and waited, wondering what I had just done. I had . . . summoned her, like a witch might summon a demon. Or a familiar. That’s what the churchmen would say of me, and of her. Witch and demon, devil and familiar. Both deserving to be burned at the stake.
I was able to follow Paka and Occam as they sped down the hills, and at the same time could feel the foxes, a mother and three grown kits, as they descended on the deer’s remains once again. When the two big-cats hit the road in front of the house, I stood and gathered up the blanket and afghan. The cats had to change, and seeing them shift back to human, naked, was too personal an act for me to witness. Or perhaps I was a prude. Despite being raised in polygamous families, most of the churchwomen were. I got a glimpse of the cats, though, one spotted black and orange gold, the other melanistic, the spots nearly hidden beneath the black, as they raced through the falling snow. The vision was beautiful and deadly, and my woods liked them far too much.
The heat of the house once again hit me like a dry fist, and I dropped the blankets on the sofa, walking through the lantern light to the stove where I put on a kettle to humidify the space. Poured milk into a mug to heat for Paka. “Paka and Occam are in the yard,” I said over my shoulder. “They have clothes out there somewhere, right?”
Rick, sitting at the desk again, sounded distracted, said, “Yes. Gobag in the van. Have you seen this man before?” He whirled his laptop, which cast a sickly bluish light across John’s old desk. The photo wasn’t very good quality, but it wouldn’t have mattered. The man was old with a grizzled face and slack, bluish lips. Dead. I shook my head, uncertain. I asked, “Is he the older man from the SUV? Could it be Simon Dawson Sr.?”
Rick said, “We have no independent verification. According to his fingerprints, he’s a leader in HST, but there’s no name or ID to go with the prints. He was found, deceased, by Knoxville PD. The alert went out and downloaded to my system the last minutes before we climbed your mountain, and I just now opened it. His body was full of mixed metal silver shot.”
“Why silver shot?” I asked. “That’s expensive.” And then I felt horrible, thinking of cost when a man had been killed. Was that what I had to look forward to if I continued working with PsyLED? Thoughts less about human compassion and more about forensics and evidence?
“Yes it is,” Rick muttered, sounding worried. “And it’s for weres and vamps, not humans, though it’ll kill them just as dead.”
I wondered suddenly if silver shot would kill me and decided I could live without knowing the answer to that one.
“If he’s Dawson Sr., then that gives us a second link between a faction of God’s Cloud and of the Human Speakers,” Rick said. “Your friend, Sister Something. What’s her name?”
“Sister Erasmus?”
“Yeah. At some point, can you show her the photos of the men in the SUV and our dead guy? She might remember if Boaz and the Dawsons were involved in some way.”
“Yes,” I said, keeping my tone soft and beaten, all the while mentally berating him for not wanting me to go onto the church grounds first thing in the morning. I didn’t like being a cheat.
He handed me a tiny thumb drive. “Pics on here.”
“So did Simon Dawson Jr. and Sr. help the churchmen in the kidnappings or just in trying to kill us all?” JoJo asked.
“All we know is that they helped shoot up our hotel room,” Rick said, looking around the room the same way he had the first time he came here. “If we catch the driver, a charge of conspiracy to murder federal officials will get him to roll over on his gun-happy pals. And I hope that will lead us to the people in charge of the abductions.”
“If you can get the driver to talk before the rest of the girls die,” JoJo said.
“I checked in with Benton before we lost contact with the outside world. No one has called in a ransom demand on Mira Clayton,” Rick said, rubbing his eyes. “Mira could still be a copycat. The first two girls were taken and the media got hold of the story before the next two were taken. There’s no video footage of the last two disappearances, no witnesses, and the white van the fishermen saw when Girl Four was taken might not be the same white van we’re looking for. One thing the FBI found out, courtesy of a helpful judge who allowed them access to his medical records, is that Dawson had some contact while in rehab with a member of the HST. It’s our second connection. Or third, if you count Oliver Smithy.” Rick scrubbed his face with both hands as if trying to rub the exhaustion away. “Dawson seems to be the single link that brings the two organizations together, the abductions and the shooting of our hotel together, and HST and the church together. So far, everything else is circumstantial.
“No one picked up a scent of Mira in the woods and neither did the canine units.” Rick shook his head, as if shaking away things that didn’t add up.
I remembered that the police dogs’ search had been planned in the patch of woods near Mira’s private school. It was difficult to keep up with all the things that went into an investigation, everything fluid and shifting from moment to moment, different members doing different things at the same time, and then debriefing as needed.
I had never thought seriously about leaving my woods, but I wondered what it might be like to be an investigator for real, to go to PsyLED school and train in all the things the team had. The very thought of leaving my woods made my heart race and my breathing come fast.
But . . . what I had planned for morning would ruin any possibility of that. I’d be surprised if they’d pay me for my work until now.
The thoughts fled as the two werecats came in through the front door, wearing baggy clothes, barefooted, their eyes glowing the pale gold of their cats, Occam’s faintly browner, Paka’s slightly greener. Occam went straight to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator, pulling out the container of leftover beans, and poured some into two bowls. He brought them across the room, cold, a serving spoon in each. Paka slinked through the room and settled on the sofa. Occam put one of the bowls of beans at Paka’s knees and they both dug in.
Occam closed his eyes as he swallowed. “This is fantastic, Nell, sugar.” His face warmed into an expression close to ecstasy as he took a second bite. “Holy hell. Best thing I’ve tasted since I left Texas.” He looked at Rick. “Even better than your chili, boss man.”
“Even better than a deer, fresh killed?” I asked.
Occam slanted his cat eyes at me and smiled as he chewed. He swallowed and said, “Nothing is better than fresh-caught venison. But this is a close second. I might have to marry you.”
I knew he was teasing back and some of my awful fear for my sister eased. “I’m not the marrying kind anymore. But I’ll happily fix you hamburgers on Tuesday.”
Occam chortled and nearly choked on beans at the Popeye reference. I had done a little research on the phrase and the cartoon character while in the library. “Well, blow me down,” he said, quoting another Popeye line. “Nell, sugar, is all up on popular culture.”
“I don’t think Popeye counts as popular,” I said. “More like post–World War Two.”
“What you say? ‘I’ll take you all on, one at a time!’” Which was another famous line. “Seriously, good beans,” he added. “I ain’t had nothing better since I joined PsyLED.”
A rem
embered warmth filled an empty place under my ribs as I watched him eat. I had forgotten how satisfying it could be to see someone eat food I had prepared. John had been a delight to cook for, eating second and third helpings all the way up until he started to lose weight and died. The dinner table had been the only joyful part of our married life. Suddenly I recalled his laughter, booming in the tall ceilings as he told a joke. I ducked my head, thinking, remembering. Perhaps there were good times in among the bad, the difficult, and the compromises I had made to stay alive and safe.
Rick shuffled papers and clicked on his laptop with the intensity of a cat on hunt. Not paying the rest of us attention. Giving the cats time to fuel up. The others were working on laptops, keys tapping softly.
I brought the mug of tepid milk to Paka, not sure what else I could do except be a hostess. “Why did you join?” I asked Occam. “PsyLED, I mean?”
“I spent twenty years in a cage,” he said between bite, chew, chew, swallow. Bite, chew, chew, swallow. “I’m making sure paranormals get some protection. And no other law enforcement agency would have a were.”
He said it without anger or bitterness, the same way he would have said that his car needed washing or he needed a new pair of Western boots. As if he was used to the prejudice, hatred, and fear all were-creatures lived with every day of their lives.
“Please, sir. Can I have some more?” he asked, affecting a hungry and pitiful mien, holding out his empty bowl.
That was a cultural reference even I knew, and I dipped up more beans for him. When I came back from the kitchen, Rick pushed his laptop away and looked around the room. “Well?” he asked the cats.
They continued to shovel in beans as if they were starving, as if the dead buck had meant nothing to their caloric needs. Four spoonfuls later, Occam said, “The vantage is excellent, with a cliff from Nell’s property that looks directly over the compound.” Bite, chew, chew, swallow. Repeat. “But the church has cameras pointing up, probably motion sensing. Don’t think we triggered them. We found places in the limbs of trees and sat awhile, watching. The placement of, and number of, guards has been changed since Jane Yellowrock’s team raided it back in the summer.” Bite, chew, chew, swallow. “They’re carrying automatic rifles with extended mags, similar to the weapons used to shoot up the hotel. All mature men, all with training that seems much better than what Jane’s team reported. About half the teams have attack dogs. We think we located all the cameras.” Bite, chew, chew, swallow. “This is wonderful. Nell, sugar, you are a goddess in the kitchen.”
I knew he meant it as a compliment and not a comment about idolatry, and I ducked my head, letting my hair slide forward to hide my pleasure. He shoveled in the last of the beans, moving to the sofa, stretching out his legs, bare feet beneath the coffee table, his toes pawing the braided rag rug like a cat.
Paka took up the narrative in her hoarse, scratchy voice. “Cat eyes are better than human eyes,” she said. “We saw three white vans, but they were turned so that we could not see if dents were present.”
At some point, Rick had printed satellite views and RVAC flyover photographs of the compound and taped them together, forming one huge aerial-view map, with the use of each building noted in red ink. He spread the large map on the coffee table, each detail crisp and clear. Paka, holding her cooling milk one-handed, traced her finger beyond an open area where perhaps a dozen cars were parked in the daylight shot, to a smaller space behind a building. “Here. The white vans are parked behind this building, where they cannot be seen from the entrance or by driving casually through.”
“That’s where the vans are always parked,” I said.
Occam said, “There are more men here.” He pointed to a spot along the cliff wall that bordered my property. It was near the entrances to the caves. “And we saw some lights moving along from here”—his finger traced a line—“to here, before disappearing.”
“There’s no road there,” I said. “Look at your maps. There was no road there when I was a young— when I was a child, and there’s no road in your satellite maps. Not even in your flyover drone thing, the RVAC.”
Rick shuffled papers and found a printed view of the camp. “Remote-viewing aircraft. And you’re right. No road. So what’s over there?”
A peculiar tingling swept through me, a knowing, a coming together of possibilities that smacked of all kinds of reasoning and settled into a hunch. “The Stubbins farm. The drone—the RVAC,” I corrected, “that took photos of God’s Cloud’s property didn’t go past the property to other farms, did it? You believe that HST took sanctuary in Knoxville, maybe with some nonaligned or disaffected or former church family. The Stubbinses, they sound like good candidates to have offered their property as sanctuary. And the place you saw lights moving?” I said to the cats. “That’s near the boundary of the Stubbins farm.” When I stopped talking, the house was quiet for a long stretch of time, marked by the faint creak of the windmill out back. Rick lifted his eyes from the satellite map and met mine. His were glowing greenish gold, a supernatural glow that spoke of the werecat he couldn’t shift into.
“Could be something. The feds will be happy to hear it, when we get back to someplace with a signal. Okay, people,” Rick said, folding up the map and turning off his laptop. “Nell’s out of power, and dawn comes fast. Tomorrow, we need to gather as much intel on the Stubbinses as we can. In the morning, Paka and Occam, you’ll shift again and we’ll rig you with radios. You’ll go back as close to the Stubbins farm as possible and get intel. If Nell’s right about a faction of the church being involved with the Human Speakers of Truth, then maybe the Stubbins farm is a possible location for HST and our three missing abductees.”
I noticed that he didn’t include my sister as a missing girl. Something inside grew tight and hard at that omission. With one major exception, the local law enforcement had always felt that God’s Cloud’s girls brought whatever happened on themselves. Protection wasn’t offered to us. “I thought radios didn’t work on Nell’s property,” T. Laine said.
Rick answered, his tone without emotion, “Jane’s crew found a way to rig a system, short-term and short distance. I’ve got similar equipment in the van, so I’ll park here”—he pointed to a road on the map—“and set it up. But we have plenty of time to work it out in the morning. Let’s get some shut-eye.”
* * *
Though I was intensely aware of all the noises in the house, I did manage to get some sleep in the four hours before I had to get up. It felt abnormal to not have cats on my narrow bed, but they had deserted my blankets for the beds of the big-cats. It felt even more odd to feel the purrs of cats reverberate through the floors; were-big-cats often purred in their sleep, it seemed. Everything felt unfamiliar in every way, and my dreams were chaotic, visions of running across my garden and through the woods, chased by vans that purred like cats. And more horrible dreams where I raced into a room to save Esther. And was too late.
* * *
It was difficult getting dressed for the day in silence that allowed my guests to sleep on. In my small nook, keeping my thoughts clear and calm so as not to wake Tandy, especially, I dressed in the clothes that had dried overnight in front of the woodstove, clothing appropriate for a repenting churchwoman—gray skirt to my calves, heavy leggings, black boots to my knees, covering all the skin between hem and boot. Chemise, two layered pullover shirts, a sweater, and a coat. I was hoping that I could force my daddy to go with me after Esther this morning, or I’d go after her myself if necessary. I also needed to show Sister Erasmus the men in the photos, the ones in the SUV and Boaz from the shooting. I needed to get in and out easily even if it meant lying blatantly about everything. I wasn’t good at lying. I wasn’t good at any of this. But I had one chance to get in, get Esther, learn something, and get out. And I was taking it.
I pulled my hair up into a tight bun, the kind that made my face looked pinched, the kind the women w
ore after they had been to the punishment house, to show they had learned whatever lesson they had been taught. I had a peculiar thought as I was dressing. What if men had a punishment house, and women administered justice there? Impossible. But intriguing. And it made me smile in ways that were surely vengeful and sinful.
There was no way to get a real breakfast, so I made do with two slices of bread and some of last year’s blackberry jam and last night’s coffee, hot and thick as mud. And then I was in John’s old truck, driving down the dirt road, a cell phone I had stolen on the way outside in my breadbasket, along with the laptop and John’s old six-shooter. The phone was turned on and had a GPS tracker in it so the unit could find me if worse came to worst. It would go into my pocket, and the laptop would stay in the basket beneath the bread. The phone was surely programmed with Rick’s number and all the numbers of the team. When I got ready to go into the compound, I’d call Rick, leave a message, tell him what I was doing, hide the cell, and drive in. And hope the electronics weren’t discovered and destroyed.
As I took the dark roads, my brain started picking at me, poking holes in what was a holey proposition in the first place. On the surface going back to the compound was a stupid move, but in reality, it was a now-or-never move to try to save Esther. And if I managed it right, find Dawson, find Boaz, and . . . maybe even bleed Jackie dead.
I had been waiting for years, just sitting there on Soulwood, mouse-like, suffering increasingly more dangerous attacks from the churchmen, waiting to be burned out, waiting to be raped and dragged back to God’s Cloud, punished, and killed. Burned at the stake. Waiting. For years I had been waiting. Sitting on my land like a duck on a pond in front of a duck blind, in the faint hope my sisters would come to me for protection—a protection I could scarcely provide for my own self. Priss was right. I was just plain stupid.
For the first time ever, I had what PsyLED called backup, assuming they would back me up when I was going against direct orders. While I was there, I needed to see about the white vans, to check if, just perchance, one had a dented bumper. I needed to see with my own eyes if there were strangers in the compound, which I could do only at devotionals, when the whole church was gathered together. I needed to get in safely, which was easiest in the predawn hours. I needed to do this. For everyone. For me. Rick would be . . . probably madder than when I kicked him in the testicles.
