Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

  * * *

  Instead of churchmen at the entrance to the church grounds, there was a double line of news vans and policemen guarding the road, two marked cars blocking access. One officer pulled his car out of the way so that Occam and I could motor through, cameras following us and reporters shouting questions that we ignored. Inside the fence, police squad cars and police were everywhere, from all different law enforcement branches, uniformed, men and women in business suits, along with crime scene vans and people in white jumpsuits, all so very busy.

  Avoiding them all, Occam maneuvered toward my family’s home and braked beside my truck. Occam said, “You’ll be okay, Nell, sugar. You need me when you get inside, you call. I’ll be here faster than you can blink. And I’ll text you when I leave the compound.”

  I tried to think how to reply. You are too kind was too close to the formal phrase used by a churchwoman. I settled on, “Thank you. I’ll be okay,” and hoped I wasn’t telling him a lie. I got out, placing my laptop and the potted geranium in my truck cab for now, and checking to see my keys were still where I left them, under the seat. Mama opened the door before I could knock and grabbed me into a hug so tight it hurt my recently healed belly. Unaccustomed to the contact—a contact I had seemingly missed, as my vision misted again—I hugged back briefly, and then took her hands into mine as I stepped away, trying to find something to say that wouldn’t make my action a rejection. I blurted, “Daddy’s out of recovery, Mama. He’s doing okay so far.”

  Mama whirled away and burst into tears. She bent over, to place one fist over her heart, and the other hand on the arm of her rocking chair before she let herself fall into the seat. Tears coursed down her face, scalding her pale flesh. Mama Grace all but flew from the kitchen and I repeated the news. And then again several more times as my full and half sibs clattered in from the children’s rooms and down the stairs, all talking and asking questions at once. I was hugged and patted and kissed on the cheek by children I didn’t know, before four of them, led by Mud, dragged me to a chair with a padded seat and pushed me into it. The din was improbably reassuring.

  Mud, seeming to notice that I was reacting oddly to it all, spread a crocheted afghan over my legs and pulled a low stool to my chair, to sit beside me, holding my hand in her small one. A little boy was standing by my chair, telling me about the gunfight in the church, his words mostly unintelligible. A little girl stood beside him, and she might have been telling me the same story from her viewpoint, but I could make out only one word in three. Seemed I’d lost my affinity for understanding the speech of little’uns.

  Before I was allowed to conduct any kind of business, I was plied with food—a thick slice of bread carved from one of the loaves I had brought before dawn, smeared with homemade cashew butter spiced with peppers and honey, a cup of hot tea, a sliced apple. There hadn’t been time for manners when I appeared at dawn, but there was time now, even if I didn’t want to take the time.

  I ate and said my thanks and listened to the remembered babble of my childhood as I was introduced to my extended family. The little boy was Ethan and the girl was Idabel. The other names flew from my head as quickly as they were spoken. I was treated to a hymn sung by a bunch of young’uns who were no more than three feet tall, was shown embroidered samplers and newly made aprons by the girls, a newly seeded egg carton of basil by Mud, and hand-turned bowls and newel posts turned on a lathe by the boys.

  As soon as seemed politely feasible, without that possible rejection I had worried about with Mama, I cleared my throat and handed my empty plate back to a middle’un. In my best church-speak, I said, “I need to talk to your mamas now. You’uns go upstairs and give us some privacy, you hear?”

  When no one moved, Mama Grace said, “You heard your sister. Get on up. We’uns’ll talk shortly about what she come to say.”

  The sound of retreating feet was much less enthusiastic than when they had arrived, but Nicholson young’uns were well trained and obedient. Daddy’s belt had made certain of that. Except that Mud didn’t move, a familiar mulish expression on her face, familiar because I’d felt it on my face before. Mama Grace narrowed her eyes at Mud and said, “Don’t you start that.”

  Mud glowered and crossed her arms, but she stood. “It’s not fair.”

  “No, it isn’t. I don’t aim to be fair. I aim to be one of the mamas. Now git.”

  Our own mother sat and watched the exchange with a faint smile on her face. I wondered how they had worked out such a partnership with so many mothers in one house, so many half-related siblings. At the thought, most of my good cheer fled and I stood, setting the afghan aside and smoothing my gray skirt into place. I took the poker and shuffled the wood coals in the fireplace, adding a log. Fireplace fires weren’t as common as one might expect in the homes of the church folks. Most of the heat went out the chimney, which was a waste, and waste was a sin, but Daddy’s fireplace had been fitted with a C-shaped, passive-action steel tube grate, one that used the thermodynamic action of heated air rising to pull in cool air below burning logs and release heated air into the room, above the flames and the rising smoke. While I worked the fire, Mud stomped upstairs and the two women took seats in the rockers by the fireplace.

  When the mamas were settled, Mama Grace said, “Talk, baby girl.” The words drew me further back into family, into the good memories I’d had as a child.

  I sighed and pulled the soft yarn blanket back over me. “I don’t know any more about Daddy,” I said, “but I have a cell phone, and I’ll be informed as soon as possible.”

  “Carmel called us hours ago on someone’s cell phone,” Mama said. “She told us that, because she isn’t legally married to Micaiah, she can’t be told his medical status,” Mama said, her lips pinched. “They’s only talking to his own mama.”

  “That’s true, “I said. “One of you needs to marry him legally, and he also needs to provide you with a medical power of attorney. It’s the law.”

  “The government got no right—”

  I held up my hand. “Stop. I’m not here to debate the law. We got talking to do and trouble to deal with.”

  That shut them both up.

  “I’ve agreed to ask some questions of you and take the answers back to the federal officers. And before you can argue, you need to know that the police have connected Jackson Jr. to the Dawson backsliders to Boaz Jenkins, and through them to the organization that kidnapped the townie girls. One girl was delivered safely after the ransom was paid, two are still missing—a human and a nonhuman—and one is dead.” The two women shared a long look as I spoke.

  “Simon Dawson Jr.,” Mama said with a faint huff. “That boy left the church years ago and took up with vampires, drinking vampire blood and sexing with them too. No surprise that he’d do something awful, him and them Stubbins boys. And that preacher boy has been heading for trouble for months.”

  “Wait,” I said. “Simon Dawson Jr. and the Stubbins men were friends?”

  “Couple of the younger men, that Nadab and Nahum Stubbins after old man Stubbins passed on. Them and Joshua Purdy and Jackson Jr. were all friends, up until the Dawson boy backslid again and left the church. Things fell apart a mite after that and Nahum left the church again, him and his son and three daughters. Broke my heart to see them all leave.”

  “Today’s disgraceful troubles seem to be seated in the sin of the past. It appears that there might be a split in the church,” Mama Grace said, her tone mourning, lifting her knitting from a basket beside her chair. “A legal battle in the court of the land, over the property of the church. Evil and disgraceful,” she said. Disgraceful was Mama Grace’s favorite word.

  “Jackson Jr. ain’t been right in the head in months, not since the Avrils and the Bascoms took back their girls,” Mama said. “Jackson Jr. had claimed them as concubines and there was whispers of mistreatment, though”—Mama took a breath that sounded painful—“though not
hing as vile as the biting and bleeding Jackie done to Havilah and Henrietta Sanders and my own Esther.” Mama picked up a cup of coffee I hadn’t seen her pour and sipped the scalding black brew, her downcast gaze not quite hiding the tears in her eyes. I looked away in proper church etiquette, respecting the privacy of another.

  “How is Esther?” I asked.

  “Back home from the hospital,” Mama said. “Hurtin’ in her body and her heart. We talked about how a woman survives such things. How to live with the memories. We’ll talk some more. Micaiah will talk to her man, see he knows how to help her through. She’ll . . .” Mama firmed her lips. “Esther will survive and find joy again.” Unsaid were the words, but she’ll never be the same. Mama knew that better than some.

  After an appropriate amount of silence, as according to the way churchwomen did things, Mama Grace cleared her throat. “You was asking about Jackie. Two of his wives left him. They said he was perverse and unnatural, just like his daddy done growed to be in his later years. Wanting only young’uns. Wanting more than one in his bed at a time. Disgraceful. Unnatural. Sinful.”

  “Wait,” I said, catching up slowly after Mama’s revelations. “Someone took some of Jackie’s concubines away? And his wives left him too? How? Women can’t—”

  “We women ain’t without power, baby girl,” Mama Grace interrupted. “Once upon a time we had as much power as the men, in our own ways and in our own responsibilities, and we women are taking back what we let slip away.”

  My mouth opened in shock and stayed that way. Mama smiled slightly, and wiped her eyes with a handkerchief she pulled from her sleeve. “Flies,” she murmured and I closed my mouth, remembering the saying about flies getting into a mouth that was open too much.

  “No longer are we letting our girls and womenfolk be punished,” Mama Grace continued, her needles clacking softly. “Enough was too much a that.”

  “But let’s go back a bit and start at the beginning of the trouble,” Mama said. “Back some few years, maybe eleven or twelve, word come that Jackson Jr. got cancer.” I remembered my words to Rick earlier about the colonel’s reason for drinking vampire blood. Mama sipped her coffee, holding the cup close, shaking her head, steam rising against her face. I had never known how Mama could drink nearly boiling coffee without being blistered. It looked painful. “Jackie got better. Then he got worse.

  “About the same time, the colonel got to being all secretive. Going hunting with outsiders. Making changes here on the compound, working inside the storage caves, updating the security system in the compound with cameras and suchlike. The Jacksons and the Stubbins men, especially the young ones who come back and settled down and stayed, started spending time together. Then one night, the colonel went to every one of his wives’ beds. All four of ’em. In one night. His wives said he hadn’t visited the marriage bed for some time,” Mama said.

  “It continued every single night, him and all four wives.” Mama Grace’s tone said that was disgraceful too. Her voice hardened. “And sometime around then he asked for you as a fifth wife. That started a commotion, ’specially with you making such a scene in the church when he declared for you. Your mama and us, we got you to safety.”

  “And with you gone,” Mama said, “and the women united against him taking a fifth wife, he went after young concubines. Took hisself four young ones by force. Too young. Sinful, evil, and disrespecting of the helpmeet.”

  “That’s when we realized we churchwomen had let things go, hadn’t taken proper care of our duties to the covenant of marriage and to the sanctity of the marriage bed.” Mama Grace shook her head, her eyes on her knitting, and I could see her thinking, Disgraceful.

  Mama cradled her mug. “We’d let ourselves down and now we were suffering for it. Had been suffering for it for decades. But it looked like we was too late to effect changes. The men was considering deposing the colonel.”

  I felt like I was watching a Ping-Pong game, back and forth between them, letting them talk. I had to wonder how long they had kept it all dammed up inside, the way it was spewing forth. I kept my mouth shut and let them, nudging them only a little, with, “How did the colonel’s taking new concubines create factions in the church?”

  “Some of the older men wanted whatever the colonel had that gave him such . . . stamina,” Mama said, “and that started dissension, as others of the men wanted him to leave their daughters alone. Groups was forming, gathering, and talking, not all together as the Scripture demands, but against church charter, one group here, another there. Church was close to splitting. Rancorous talking.”

  “Jackie was well by then, but he’d become a hellion, running all over church grounds, day and night. Then one night there was an uproar on the church grounds.” The needles clicked and clacked, adding an emotional commentary to her story, sounding agitated.

  “Shots fired. No churchmen hurt, except that they had to bury a body the next day. Not a church member. And not buried on consecrated ground.” Mama glanced at Mama Grace, who took up the narrative.

  “We heard it was a vampire what got staked. That the colonel had been keeping him chained and drinking from him. Disgraceful,” Mama Grace said with a fierce frown. “The men called themselves together for a meeting. We’uns wasn’t there, but we heard. Some of the churchmen allowed as how they’d had a demon chained up more ’n once, and they begged forgiveness. The colonel once again stopped going to his wives and sent his concubines back home. And things settled down some, seemed better for a few years.”

  “Until the colonel started getting old again,” Mama said. “And he began to remember what it had been like when he had vampire blood for the taking. That was when some a his cronies decided to steal them another demon and drink her blood.” Mama punctuated that statement by drinking down a good portion of her coffee. Neither of them seemed to want to speak for a long time, and I heard the ticking of the big grandfather clock in the hallway, a counterpoint to the rhythm of the knitting needles.

  Mama Grace spoke again but her voice was low. “The Cohens had a blood drinker in the family. Everyone knew it. So the colonel locked up two of the Cohen sisters in the punishment house and made sure the vampire knew. Then they took the blood drinker. Chained her up with silver chains and had their way with her. Cruel they was, according to what we’uns heard. And they drank her blood.”

  “Didn’t give her none back to drink, neither. Starved her.” Mama finished her coffee and shook her head. “But that weren’t all.” She nodded to Mama Grace to get her to take over the narrative while Mama went to the kitchen for another cup of strong brew for herself and poured one for Mama Grace, as well, adding cream to that mug, and a big spoonful of sugar. She didn’t offer me one, just as she wouldn’t have offered me cup when I was a child, and I didn’t ask. I was gripping my hands tightly in my lap and had to force myself to relax and remember to breathe.

  “No. ’Twasn’t,” Mama Grace said. “Jackie continued to change after that, in ways that seemed unnatural, growing more untamed and out of control, running the woods like a wild animal, half-naked, him and some of his friends. Disgraceful, they all was. And we’uns got to thinking that maybe Jackie was sick again and he was the real reason that the colonel done took the demon prisoner, trying to heal his son with the foul blood of the undead, as he had when Jackie was young. But then the vampires and that Cherokee woman come and took the vampire prisoner away.”

  They were talking about Jane Yellowrock. The vampire hunter who had started the changes in my life. I didn’t know if I wanted to hug her or hit her, next time I saw her.

  “And the social services people come and took our children,” Mama Grace said. “And put some of us in jail, though we’d been doing our best to protect the little’uns. That’s when Boaz joined Jackie’s cronies, him and a few others.”

  My new cell phone made a little burbling sound, announcing a text. I picked it up to read a note from Occ
am. Jackson’s blood smells like the dog at the Claytons’. Hard to tell what he is, but not human. Finished here. Call if you need me.

  I realized that I didn’t know how to send a text, so I set the phone on the table nearest and shrugged at Mama Grace. “Newfangled thing. Not sure how to use it yet.”

  Coming back from the kitchen, Mama said, “Then the colonel vanished without a trace. Some say them vampires come through your land. And they took the colonel.”

  I didn’t respond, but it didn’t seem to matter. The mamas had a lot to say, and continued with the story.

  “With the colonel gone and the blood supply cut off, Jackie got worse,” Mama Grace said, her wood needles clacking louder. “Pure scary. He come into our houses without knocking, frightening our little’uns, looking at our girls. We’uns had to lock our doors!”

  “First time I remember that. Ever,” Mama said, placing a mug on the small table beside Mama Grace. She sat, and pushed off with her toe, sending the hand-carved chair rocking, sipping on her second cup.

  Unable to help myself, I asked, “Is Jackie human?”

  “Can’t say one way or another ’bout that.” Mama Grace set her knitting in her lap, took her mug, and stirred it with soft tinkling sounds of the spoon, her eyes on her cup, staring, not looking at me. “But he was shot in the confrontation in the church at devotionals today, and some say that he walked away from it whole and healthy.”

  “Some say the same thing ’bout you,” Mama said, “and I know for a solid fact you’re human. First because you come from my womb, and second because we had you tested, and you are not a witch.”

  I almost pressed a hand against my belly, where I’d been shot and tree roots had grown into me, but I refrained. “What do you think he is?”

  “We’uns got no idea. I saw him in the sawmill on the full moon a few months past and he was human, working, plain-sawing logs, so he ain’t no were-demon.”