Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  But roots hadn’t attacked me on my own land last night. It had only happened when I stayed in communication with the land too long, when I bled onto the land, and when I needed the land to heal me. So I might be changing, but the earth’s reaction to me was—possibly—predictable. A sense of relief washed through me like a stream down a mountain, and I eased out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

  “I am guessing that started happening when the energies grabbed my wrist and tugged me down. When did you notice that I was getting all grassy?” I asked T. Laine.

  “About four hours into not being able to wake you up.” She referred to her notes. “At nine forty-two, I came over and tried to talk to you. You were propped on an elbow with one hand in your lap and the other on the ground. When you didn’t respond, I decided to give you an hour. At ten twenty, Tandy arrived to pick up the P 2.0. We exchanged info, made some calls, and he left. Then two more sheriff’s deputies showed for a face-to-face, to inform me that they had closed the road to the pond because the press had showed up, and that we might expect a low-flying drone from one of the local channels who had a permit.”

  Oh great. I was on TV?

  “At noon on the nose, I tried to pull you free for lunch. You didn’t wake up when I called your name, and so I . . .” She glanced at Rick. “I patted your face. Not forcefully enough to be called a slap.”

  I let a small smile onto my lips, remembering the PsyLED Manual of Administrative Operations, some twenty pages that covered the rules for touching, though they didn’t call it that, given to me by the equivalent of PsyLED HR. Slapping, as well as other forms of forceful or intimidating physical contact, was grounds for disciplinary action.

  “You squinted your eyes and frowned at me, so I thought you were okay. Your hand, the one on the ground, was a little gray looking. And you hadn’t moved. But you were breathing at fourteen breaths a minute, which is normalish. I called Rick to report in and he said to leave you as is, but that he’d send Occam as soon as he finished with the deer. I couldn’t leave you, so I sent one of the deputies to grab me some takeout from Number One Best Chinese, down the road.

  “At two p.m. I saw the first roots. I called Occam directly and he showed up in twelve minutes, with a police escort running lights and sirens. Occam.” Her tone was strained, which made no sense, but I figured it would soon enough.

  Occam wiped his hands on a napkin and sat back in the upholstered chair, lacing his fingers together across his stomach. He was long and lean, with runner’s musculature and the graceful movements of his cat. He spoke to Rick. “It’ll be in my report. Nell had roots, like crabgrass roots, growing into her hand.” With one finger he indicated the hand with the most stitches. “You were rooted to the ground. I couldn’t lift your hand from the dirt. You wouldn’t wake up, Nell.”

  “So?”

  “I patted your cheeks too.”

  I remembered the sensation of pain. He had slapped me. I could understand that. I’d have slapped someone too.

  T. Laine said, “At which point you fell over and landed with your forearm on the ground, your palm still flat.”

  Occam said, “Roots busted up through the ground and latched onto your arm. I cut you free. I mighta nicked your flesh a little. You bled. And that seemed to bring more roots.”

  “They went after you,” T. Laine said. “Occam cut you free, but he made a mess of your skin. You lost a good bit of blood.”

  “Not enough to compromise your blood levels,” Occam said, “but enough for the paramedics to write up a report.”

  “Against you?” I asked. He nodded and I said, “I specifically requested that I be cut free of any prolonged communing with any land. It’s in my exit interview with Spook School.”

  Occam heaved a relieved breath and let it out. He might have gotten in trouble for saving me from the deeps. I had to say something more. “This needs to be entered into my personnel file. Any time I am connected to the land via plant life, I can be cut out at the OIC’s discretion. Or Occam’s discretion.”

  “So noted,” Rick said, a faint smile on his face.

  “Thank you, Nell,” Occam said. His blondish hair had come loose from the tail and strands swung forward in the indirect light, creating shadows and strong planes.

  “Okay. Reports from the deer scene,” Rick said.

  Occam sat forward and punched something on his tablet. A map appeared on the big screen. “At this GPS, just off twenty-five west, near Claxton, about here”—he pointed—“was where the truck driver came around the curve and hit the first deer. The impact sent him off the road to the left and into the second and third deer and then into a group of four. By then he had slowed enough that he injured but did not kill the four deer. He called nine-one-one. But because the uninjured deer were acting abnormal—walking around, staring, not running away—the first officer on the scene called us. Seems word about the geese had made it through unofficial channels to the officers on the streets. By the time I got there, the four injured deer had been euthanized.

  “At nine forty-seven, I sent Tandy to get the P 2.0 from Nell. According to records, he arrived on-site with the P 2.0 at ten fifty-five. By eleven fifteen, we had ascertained that we had a paranormal event, with redlining on all four psysitope levels. We needed to get the road clear for traffic, so I took readings in a circular route and found that the earth around the deer wasn’t contaminated, only the deer and their trail through the brush. Tandy and I turned the site over to Rick and dressed out in field gear. We hiked through the area, following the readings. We ended up here”—he pointed to the screen—“on twenty-five west. At that point, we were called in to help Nell. We sent up GPS coordinates so we’d know where to start again, and headed out.”

  “Which is about . . .” Rick drew out the last word, his fingers working across his own personal tablet, “four miles from the site where Nell was.” He shook his head, looking tired again. “Too big an area for a witch working. That would make any witch circle so extensive they would have needed hundreds of witches, and we would have noted that, especially here in Knoxville. Or a gathering of the most powerful witch families in the US, which PsyLED would have heard about. So that leaves . . .” His voice trailed off, and he frowned.

  “Could it be the magical form of an RED?” I asked into the silence of his hesitation.

  “Possibly,” Rick said. “We have to at least consider it.”

  An RED was a radiological exposure device, sometimes called a hidden sealed source. It was a weapon of mass destruction used for terrorism, a device constructed of, or containing, radioactive material. Its purpose was to expose people to radiation without their knowledge. The magical version was called an MED, a magical exposure device. MEDs were postulated weapons. They would be an active or passive working capable of spreading directed and shaped magical energies over a wide area, affecting anyone in the vicinity with a black-magic, curse-based spell-weapon. The working would then spread, just like a plague. Contamination of the populace by terrorists for political aims. But as T. Laine had said, magic didn’t work that way, which was why an MED was only a postulated weapon. However, there was a macabre desire among PsyLED agents to be the first to discover one.

  I said, “I thought the dancer and the deep presence were responsible for the psysitope readings, whether it was something they were doing or something emanating from them. No one thinks that’s the case?”

  Rick said, “We don’t have enough evidence to rule out anything. We have to consider an MED and the possibility of a weaponized working.”

  Tandy said, “Back at the accident site, I collected evidence. Rick called PsyCSI and told them they had a transport truck full of contaminated deer on the way.”

  “I’ll bet they were delirious with joy,” T. Laine said.

  “Not so much,” Rick said with an amused tightening of his lips. “They’ll be even happier with your dec
omposing geese. In the morning, Occam and Tandy, follow the psysitope trail of the deer. When you find the origination point, do not enter. Call T. Laine and . . .” He looked at me. “Can you read again?”

  “Yes. But let’s keep it short, okay?”

  “T. Laine and Nell will meet you at whatever location. I also want detailed psysitope readings and evidence collecting if possible. So far no humans are contaminated. We want to contain this situation and apprehend the suspects, assuming that there are some. Meeting adjourned. Oh. Nell.”

  I looked back at Rick.

  “Keep your hands out of the grass and away from the trees.”

  “Yes, boss,” I said.

  “Go home, people. Get some sleep. Nell, you staying here?”

  “Yes, she is,” JoJo said.

  “I guess I am. Thanks,” I added to JoJo.

  FOUR

  Things were more normal to me the next morning at HQ, maybe because it was my second day, maybe because my life had been turned upside down so many times in the last few months that odd meant ordinary. Or maybe because I went in the door and smelled Mickey D’s breakfast. Bacon, egg, and cheese biscuits, hotcakes with syrup, those little ovals of potato fries. My hostess had fixed smoothies made of spinach, apples, avocado, and mango. I liked all the foods blended together in the glass, and it was green, my favorite food group, but I was used to protein and carbs for breakfast, a high-calorie meal for a farm woman. I had chowed down on the smoothie, but it wasn’t enough, so the high fat and carb content of the smells made my stomach growl with hunger. And coffee. By all that was holy, coffee. I poured a cup and grabbed a Mickey D’s biscuit on the way to my desk.

  Occam and Tandy were already in the field, back at the site where the deer had died, tracking with the smaller, handheld psy-meters. Pecking with two fingers, I completed my reports from yesterday and the equipment paperwork for my P 1.0. I also started the request for a government vehicle. Then I worked on the files of paperwork that had come in via e-mail overnight. Working for the government meant enough paperwork to fill a warehouse every week. Or maybe fill up the iCloud.

  When I had the required papers filled out and my reports turned in, and had scanned all the reports that I had missed while I was out cold yesterday, I pulled up the case sat map, or CSM, an interactive satellite map set aside for cases such as this. I was pretty sure the unit had had one on the last case, when I was a consultant, but I’d had no security clearance to speak of then, and I had never seen it. This CSM had the locations of the pond and the deer site and the site where Occam and Tandy had abandoned the search for the origination site of the deer’s paranormal readings.

  The deer had meandered through the woods, a long way from where they ended up, which was strange, as herds of deer meant does, and they usually kept to familiar locations, places where water was, and where they had already found grazing areas and grassy spots to bed down at night. Except in rut season. Which it was, but . . . herds didn’t run. Only does in heat, chased by bucks to win mating rights, ran.

  I marked the site of the deer killings on twenty-five west, then the site where the guys had abandoned the search, four miles away on foot, but only about two as the crow flew. And from there, only a few miles to the pond. Had the deer drunk from the pond?

  No one wanted this case to be an MED. MEDs were nightmares for law enforcement, something dreamed up by fiction writers at a think tank in Washington, DC, one created after 9/11 when it was discovered that thriller writers had already come up with scenarios like the bombing of the twin towers. Since then, there had been several possible MEDs but it had been impossible to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that the magical events were remotely detonated or equipped with magical timed detonation spells. None of the possible MEDs I had studied resulted in slow, encroaching contamination of wildlife or water sources.

  I pulled up photos of the deer and noted that they were mostly does and juveniles. No bucks in sight. So why had they run? I texted Tandy, Look for reason why deer ran four miles. Chased? Dogs? Coywolves?

  I got back a K.

  Rick had said that a four-mile area was too big for a witch-working, and would have required hundreds of witches. He had said, “We would have noted that. Especially here in Knoxville.”

  Why especially here in Knoxville? And then I knew. Secret City.

  Secret City was a set of governmental and military research and development complexes, underground and aboveground, in and around Knoxville. They had a public face, in Oak Ridge National Laboratory, on property where the original atom bomb research was done, and the original uranium was made, for the weapons that had ended World War II. But today the government’s R&D and testing labs had spread out into Knox County, hidden in plain sight and powered by an energy grid that was equal to or better than any other in the country. Today the research was conducted by privately owned, government-subsidized companies that reportedly did energy research, propulsion research and development, radioisotope studies, and other complex studies.

  The pond was only a few miles, as the geese flew, from the original lab at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where . . . where some of the information about psysitopes and the research on them had come from. Rick had to know this already, which meant he was about ten steps ahead of me in thinking that this might be more than a natural event. It was also why he didn’t want to consider this an MED until every other possibility had been explored and set aside. Because an MED here could be aimed at the government. Possibly a homegrown terrorist attack.

  Then again, if one of the labs had a problem, and it accidentally caused the things we had seen, they might have fixed it already and not want it bandied about. And if the problem was already corrected, then it was unlikely that we’d ever discover who had done it or what had happened. It was also possible that a testing facility had an ongoing problem and it had gotten away from them, in which case they might be trying to keep it quiet so no congressional or military oversight committee started breathing down their necks. Also, if a lab was doing studies on paranormal energies, then it was top secret. And likely not something we would be allowed to continue investigating. Our case would be shut down. I thought about the woman’s voice in the deeps. About the dancer prodding the sleeper. If we were shut down, would the woman complete a working that would curse the land? Would the dancer eventually wake the sleeper? Something about that possibility left me cold and shivery inside, as if winter had taken over my soul, freezing my spirit.

  Rick was weighing politics against the public good, against possible danger to the populace. At his security level he knew a lot more about what was happening than I did.

  I decided to take this directly to Rick, and not trust it to a report unless I had orders to. I got up from my desk cubicle and poured two mugs of fresh coffee, carrying them to Rick’s glassed-in office. The doors were shut, but the blinds were open. I was guessing that meant that it was okay to disturb him.

  I tapped on the window and went inside when he gave me a come-in gesture. I shut the door, placed his mug in front of him. He looked weary, drawn, the lines on his face deeper. There were gray hairs mixed in with the jet-black, gray that hadn’t been there when I met him. Rick was aging fast, which was strange for a were-creature.

  I gave him a rundown of my hypotheses. As I spoke, he shook his head, set the half-empty mug on the desk, and leaned back in his desk chair with his eyes closed. I feared I had put him to sleep, but his face relaxed into a ghost of a smile and he asked, “What kind of reasoning led you to all that?”

  I had been a smart-aleck about reasoning methods to the director of the FBI not so long ago. I was still being teased about that. “I observed and drew conclusions. Deductive reasoning, which links premises with conclusions or potential conclusions. Or, in this case, brought up more questions and observations leading to multiple potential conclusions. You gonna tell me if I’m right?”

  “No. I
will neither confirm nor deny your hypothesis regarding policy and potential research and development oversight by any governmental, military, or high-echelon law enforcement talking heads.”

  Which was spook-speak for Nail on the head. There was a fear that we would step on toes of a quasigovernmental operation. That might get us shut down. But Rick didn’t tell me to stop digging.

  After a silence that went on too long for social propriety, I said, “Thank you.” I got up, let myself out of his office, and went back to my desk, looking for government- or military-supported companies that might have research projects going on with energy particles. Or . . . I remembered the way the dancer had leaped and spun, like a puppy. Or a child. So . . . maybe I should look for a working that simulated artificial intelligence mixed with magic. At my security clearance level, I was looking at public domain records and things I could find on the web, on government sites and PsyLED’s intranet, and in social media. I wanted to focus on no more than five private and publicly traded companies at this time, but to do that, I needed to get a list of all companies within range of the pond and the deer, and then narrow the field by investigation and the process of elimination. I had been taught the basics of research, and this was a great time to hone my nascent skills.

  I saved the CSM map to my personal file, labeled CSM-Nell, and drew a red circle on the laptop screen, a circle with a diameter that covered five miles, centered around the pond. In the radius of my circle, I came up with a dozen businesses and companies that might be possible suspects once I eliminated nail salons and pet stores and anything commercial or industrial.

  I went back and made a new circle, same dimensions but with a green dotted line centered on the place where the deer were hit by the truck. Then another dotted circle, this one yellow, on the current location of Occam and Tandy, who were still tracking back along the deer’s paranormal trail, in the brush off Highway Twenty-five. Inside that circle, there were eight potential research companies. All were within ten miles of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I narrowed them to companies that did medical research, energy research, magical research, and ones that were black—meaning that the company purpose was a closely held secret and not available for public consumption.