by Faith Hunter
“Oh. Special Agent Margot Racer.” Margot had a strong truth-sensing ability, which I had left out of my report, though I had told Rick privately. It seemed important that my boss know when he was talking to a walking, talking lie detector. Like Tandy. “But she isn’t my friend.”
“Racer called—how many times was it, Dyson, while Ingram was out on disability?” Rick paced along in front of the window, sipping, just as Tandy had done during the long night.
“Five times,” Tandy said. “The last time was a month ago.”
I squinted up at Rick, a silhouette against the graying skyline. Margot Racer calling me was strange. Unless . . . unless she had more than a strong truth-sense. I had wondered if she was a budding, true empath. But what if she was a budding precog instead? Or something even more arcane. “Why did she call?”
“Your disability was a secret only from your family. Racer called to see if you were getting better. Why not call her back. See what she knows.”
I frowned, thinking. I wasn’t sure how to do that—call up someone and question them.
“Ingram?”
“I can do that.” But even I could hear the uncertainty in my tone.
Rick smiled, not unkindly. “Give her a call and go for coffee. Offer to share what’s happening in return for any info she might dig up on the local LEO who isn’t passing along information. It’s called quid pro quo, Ingram. You don’t have to do a spa day or become BFFs or anything.”
“Okay. I can do that,” I repeated, but more certainly this time.
Rick took his seat and rubbed his head. Tandy looked from Rick’s hand, massaging his temples, to me. Rick was in pain. “Are you okay?” I asked the boss.
“Headache.” Rick dropped his hand and said, “Kent’s having no luck tracking the witch via arcane means. We somehow got lucky last night and found a second black-magic circle. I don’t believe in luck. Is it possible that we were lured to the most recent circle? I want you to contact your friend with the Mithrans in addition to talking to Racer. See what they know.”
He wanted me to call the vampires. I had expected him to contact Ming of Glass.
I studied Rick. There were dark circles under his eyes, his skin was sagging, and the fine wrinkles that used to be laugh lines had become deeper, downward frown lines. “How long have you been having headaches?” I asked. “Now that we know there have been circles for a while, do we need to posit that the circles are giving you headaches?” And making you act fidgety, I thought.
Rick’s tone was sharp. “I don’t know.” He shrugged slightly and amended, “A couple of months.”
I considered the timelines of the witch circles. “The same time as the circles. Okay. Take some Tylenol. I’ll make the calls, then I’m heading home. While I’m gone, the team needs to ask our boss some pointed questions about witch circles.” I glared at them and left the men sitting in the conference room, Tandy watching Rick, Rick looking ornery. At my desk I made calls. Yummy was on the security team of the new Master of the City of Knoxville. I got a voice mail, but as it was after sunrise, I didn’t expect to hear back until after dusk. The voice mail left on the service of FBI Special Agent Margot Racer was more tentative. “Hi. Um. This is Nell Ingram. I thought we might have coffee tomorrow. If you want. If you have time. If you’re in town. And not working a case. And, um. Yeah. Okay. ‘Bye.” I gave my number and hung up. “And that didn’t sound like a twelve-year-old desperately trying to make a new friend, at all.”
Being a PsyLED special agent sounded all exciting, but most of the job was combing through boring databases, talking to people, and brainstorming, trying to make sense of disparate and mismatching puzzle pieces. And working long, tiring hours through the night and into the morning. I grabbed my gear and clattered down the stairs into the dawn, looking for Occam’s car in his parking spot, just in case he was getting to work early. Empty. I had hoped to see him, even if only just briefly. And wasn’t that like that twelve-year-old being lovesick. Sometimes it was as if I’d never grown up at all. I was halfway to my truck when I heard a scrape behind me.
And the world exploded into brilliant white sparks on a black sky.
* * *
• • •
I woke blind, cramped, my arm under me, twisted and dead-feeling. My head was throbbing and white sparks were going off behind my eyes. Bumping. Moving. I rammed into the thing behind me. More sparks. I dry-heaved, and the smell of vomit let me know it wasn’t the first time. Something wet and cold trickled from my scalp along my face. I had a head injury. Concussion. Arms and ankles bound. Hands numb and tingling painfully. Not gagged. In a trunk of a car. The car bumped over something. I heard voices and I managed to kick the side of the trunk and shout, but the car cruised on.
At Spook School I’d taken a course on how to escape from various places including the trunk of a car, but the course instructors hadn’t included having bound and useless arms and legs. The main thing they shared was to get away before the kidnappers reached their destination, their own home ground. I tried to position to kick out the taillight but just managed to bang my booted ankle bones on the sidewall. I gagged again and groaned. My only hope was that Tandy had seen my abduction on the parking lot cameras.
The car slowed. I heard a rooster crow. I knew that rooster. It had once belonged to Daddy and Mama and I had sorta managed to free him.
I was on the grounds of God’s Cloud of Glory Church. Fear and fury slammed through me in equal measure. My head exploded with pain in reaction. The blinding stars behind my eyes grew and fell like snow. I retched again.
The car stopped. The engine died. Everything happened fast.
The trunk opened. Daylight seared my eyes and skull. I tried to scream.
Larry Aden snarled at me. Reached in, grabbed my hair in one hand, and stretched around me to grab my bound hands. He yanked me up from the trunk.
I bit him. I caught his wrist in my jaws, biting down with all my might. I tasted blood. He shook me like a dog shakes prey. I bit harder. Ripping skin. Sucking his blood into my mouth. Bloodlust rose in me like desire, like addiction, a need so strong I whimpered and shuddered. I wanted him. Wanted his death. Wanted his body and blood for the land. I spat his blood to the ground. He was mine.
I could take him, right now.
Kill him. Feed him to the earth.
Devour him body and soul. Neeeeed slithered through me.
Instead, I whipped my body, bucking. My scalp tore. His flesh ripped. He cursed and dropped me.
I called on Soulwood.
The vampire tree’s root system answered faster.
Vines erupted through the ground and wrapped around Larry’s booted ankles. Slithered up his legs. Constricting. Thorns rammed into him. Pierced through his clothing, into his legs and thighs, securing him in place. He screamed.
Need quivered through me.
Thick dark leaves unfurled beneath me. The vines lifted me and, rustling, carried me several feet away before the tender shoots whipped up over me. Creating a mattress below me and a cage of thorns over me, a bower and a prison. Protecting me, ensnaring me.
Near me, Larry screamed and thrashed. His voice was abruptly cut off. He gurgled. Joy shot through me. My enemy was now my prey. Mine. I reached for his body and blood.
Voices sounded. Shouting. I came back to myself, just a fraction. Just enough. I gripped my bloodlust in tight reins. I owned it. My bloodlust did not own me.
Soulwood reached for me through the ground. I could feel its agitation, its desperation. More of my blood dripped on the ground from my scalp. My land responded, frantic. The leaves were keeping me from touching the ground. “I need to touch the ground. Let me down,” I whispered to the vampire tree. “Let me down, now!”
The leaves parted and my face landed on the dirt and gravel of a parking area. Scraping. But there was enough soil. “I’m okay,” I whisp
ered to my land. “Calm. Calm.”
Both the tree and Soulwood slowed, reassured, appeased, though still worried, still ready to attack. It was strange to have both Soulwood and the tree respond to me, separate but working together. I had a single blazing image of a knight on a pale green horse, carrying a tall pole that bore a flag. On it was a living tree. Something to think about when I wasn’t in so much trouble.
“What happened?” Sam’s voice interrupted.
“I thought you’un said that tree was done rooting up everywhere and killing,” another voice said. I shifted my eyes that way and spotted Ben Aden through the leaves, the man who had wanted to marry me not so long ago. He was standing in a group of men, young and old, maybe eight or ten of them.
“We’re not dead,” I managed to say. “The tree didn’t kill anyone. Sam, it’s me. Nell. Under one of the . . . mounds of leaves.”
“Nell, what the Sam Hill?”
I chuckled at Sam’s choice of cursing. “Larry attacked me in the parking lot of PsyLED.” I tried to turn over using only my heels and backside and shoulders, but my arms were a raging sea of needles and stabbing pain. I had to give up. “I’m tied up. He hit me over the head. Put me in the trunk. Brought me to the church.”
“She deserves to be punished,” Larry gurgled, hoarse. “She’s living in sin, working with a man, alone, in an office all night. A Jezebel! And that devil tree attacked us!”
“Nell?” Sam asked, wary. “I’m not sure what to do.”
The tree. It killed things. It was big enough and mean enough to kill people if it wanted. And it was sentient. It had tried to talk to me, if my vision was an indication. A knight on a horse carrying a Soulwood banner. Oh. No. The Green Knight? His weapon a staff made from fire-hardened wood? Was the Arthurian tale a reality? Maybe. I swallowed down the bile that rose up my throat and said, “Call the police. You got no choice, Sam. Larry attacked an officer of the law. It’ll be on the security camera at PsyLED. Photo evidence. You cut me free and I’ll—”
Sirens cut the dawn air. Cars tearing into the church grounds. Skidding to a stop. Doors opening. Occam shouting, “Arms up! Get on your knees!” A growl entering his voice. “Get on your knees!”
Rick shouted, his voice overlapping, “PsyLED! On your knees! On your knees!”
“Do it!” T. Laine shouted. “Put down your weapons!”
The churchmen started quoting their constitutional rights to the cops. Loudly. I shouted, trying to be heard over the clamor. “I’m here! I’m okay!”
Rick shouted, “Don’t do it, farm boy. On your knees!”
Sam said, “Nell?” Fear and violence in his words. Churchmen, two wereleopards, a witch, and too many guns.
I sobbed once, hard. My relief was potent, overpowering the last of the bloodlust, as much because I had been saved as because I hadn’t killed Larry. To the tree, I whispered, “You’un gots to let me go now. I’m safe.”
“I said, on your knees!” Occam growled.
“Nell!” Rick shouted again, his voice catty. He was about to shift.
T. Laine shouted something that sounded like, “Cactus est somnum.”
Sam said, softly, “No . . .”
I felt bodies hit the ground, solid thumps. A unidirectional sleep spell had hit the churchmen.
The leaves beneath me quavered and the rock-pocked soil juddered and shook. The vines protecting me rolled back. I rotated my hips to sit upright.
Occam knelt beside me. His eyes were glowing the gold of his cat. “Nell?”
“I’m tied up. My arms are numb. Cut me free.”
“Jeez. Your fingers are blue.”
I felt/heard something grinding, a peculiar rubbery sound, and then the bonds around my wrists snapped free and pain shot up my arms and down to my fingers. The awful pain in my shoulders eased, to be replaced with a different kind of pain as my numb arms dangled helplessly. Occam sliced through the silver duct tape holding my ankles together on top of my socks and work boots. He sheathed the blade and carried me to his fancy car, opened the passenger door, and placed me inside. I closed my eyes, sick with vertigo. Concussion. From somewhere a cool cloth wiped my face clean of blood and vomit. I had a quick thought of a cat tongue and managed a smile I didn’t explain.
Occam took my hands and, gently, began to peel off the tape. A strong smell of solvent made my eyes water as he worked the tape off my wrists. The cleaning burned, but I didn’t say anything as he peeled. It had to be done and, unlike on TV and movies, taking duct tape off wasn’t an easy thing. The smell faded and he began to massage my fingers and wrists, working the circulation back into them.
“Nell?”
I got my eyes to open without throwing up.
Rick LaFleur was kneeling beside Occam near the open door, concern on his face. “How bad are you? I don’t smell much blood.”
I knew better than to lie. “I’m hurt. Concussion. Hands without circulation too long. But not anything that needs the hospital.” Hospital meant the paranormal ER of the University of Tennessee Medical Center. They couldn’t help me. They didn’t know what I was. They wanted to study me. “No hospital,” I repeated and closed my eyes, sick to my stomach. Occam continued to massage my hands and lower arms. “Ow, ow, ow, ow.”
“Feeling’s coming back,” Occam said, his voice rough with his cat. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.”
“It hurts like fire ants and hot peppers, but don’t stop.”
“The guy who took you?” Rick asked. “Is he here?”
“The one still trapped with thorns is him. Larry Aden.” I got my eyes open again and indicated the prison over him.
An expression crossed Rick’s face too fast to be certain, but he looked . . . fiercely delighted. “Well, well. The one who tried to take our Mud?” He had gotten my message the day Larry came by and I fired into the ground. Rick didn’t wait for me to answer. He kicked at the man’s foot.
“Make the tree let him go, Nell, sugar,” Occam murmured. “We got more witnesses coming.” His long-fingered hand rested on my arm, skin to skin. I was cold, icy with shock, and wanted to curl up against his heat, but this wasn’t the time.
“Let him go,” I whispered to the rootlets that confined Larry. When nothing happened I added, “We’ll take him for punishment.”
The tree shook, all its leaves quivering. The vines whipped away from Larry, who was still asleep, leaving the thorns embedded. They’d have to be extracted by a doctor. They might be poisonous. I almost felt sorry for Larry. But not quite.
Rick cuffed Larry and picked him up. Werecat strength. He carried him away from the vines. I didn’t tell Rick the vines could follow. That might be considered creepy. More sirens sounded in the distance. Rick began to zip-tie all the men, even Sam, and T. Laine joined in, using stronger ties for the men’s ankles. I caught Occam’s gaze with my own and said, “Not Sam.”
Something flashed in his eyes and was gone, something predatory and possessive. “They were all present at the discovery of a kidnapped federal agent.” He leaned to me, closer, so I could hear the cat-growl of his words. “Be sure about this, Nell, sugar.”
“I’m sure. Sam was trying to help.”
Occam looked around and said to Rick, “Nell says some of them were trying to help.”
“That isn’t exactly what it looks like,” Rick said to me. There was no give in his tone, no . . . mercy. An alpha male protecting his kits, his leap of leopards.
“Nell, sugar, it does look like they all were part of it.” Occam frowned and lifted a hand as if to touch my hair, which was brighter red and leafy. “We called out the sheriff’s department, so we can’t go messing with evidence. This might get personal. Intrusive. And though I want more than anything to haul you straight back to Soulwood to safety and protection, I can’t.” I didn’t answer and he went back to scrubbing my hands. “Nell?
Talk to me, sugar. Did you hear what I said?”
Prickles of nerves coming back alive bit me worse than the vampire tree’s thorns, but I didn’t jerk away. “I heard. I know. Ow, ow, ow.”
“Sorry, Nell, sugar. About the pain and the loss of privacy this might mean.”
“This stinks. Dagnabbit.”
He maneuvered in front of me, protecting me from sight, and tucked my hair back from my face. “Yeah. It does. It will.” He flipped open his pocketknife and cut away all the leaves growing in my hairline, tossing them to the ground. He was a cat, grooming me, shielding me from unwanted attention, because he hadn’t been able to protect me.
SIX
The sheriff came with his deputies—five units and six uniformed county men and women—and three city units followed, all with lights and sirens, taking up the meager parking with the three PsyLED vehicles and officers. Any problem on church grounds was likely to create an excess of law enforcement, a development since the first time the compound was raided and children in danger had been taken into protective custody. The gunfight that came months later and resulted in loss of life and serious injury had only made things worse. And then there was the case of the kidnapped vampires, the abduction of their children, and the presence of devil dogs. The church was desperate to avoid entanglement with the law, but it seemed to happen with increasing regularity.
That didn’t stop the churchmen and churchwomen from gathering and standing silent, watching, including Daddy and the mamas. Mama was holding back Mud, keeping her away from me, but our eyes met and I gave a tiny nod, telling her I was okay. Except for family, the churchmen were staring at me, eyes accusing, muttering angry imprecations at the cops, all just loud enough to barely be heard, comments about witchcraft that had attacked their churchmen in clear violation of their civil right to worship as they chose. Their right to be protected from evil. Things about due process. Legal wrangling. Typical churchmen stuff.
