Curse on the Land

by Faith Hunter

  I was going to go slow. Very slow. I was going to do nothing to attract the energies in the land. All I wanted was to observe. Like a hunter in a tree, watching a trail that a deer might take to water. Dropping slowly, I let my fingers extend and point downward, until my index finger touched the dirt. I let my mind ease into the ground a few inches, into the roots of grass and around some root runners that had come from near the lake. None of them seemed to notice my finger or me. Maybe my previous approach had been a lot like a wrecking ball rather than a surgical probe. I pressed a bit deeper. My descent into the earth was like entering a pool of still water so slowly that I left no ripples, leaving no sign that I was here if no one was looking.

  That was T. Laine’s suggestion. Go slow. Hiding just below the surface, I scanned down.

  The dancer infinity loop was different now. The rotating lights of its energies were tighter, more compact. It was moving in a regular, unvarying path, like a race track, but perfectly circular. The circle it circumnavigated was clear and concise and seemed to glow a very deep green, right at the edges of what my mind could perceive, marking it as a magical, or psysitopic, energy circle. The green circle was marked with three red-glowing spots of the equilateral triangle, and was centered with a golden glow. The glow was bright and steady, as if the infinity loop had settled into orbit around a false sun.

  I hadn’t seen all this so clearly before, but then I hadn’t thought to drop in and simply watch, like a spy, and not attract attention with looking too hard. Before, I had dropped in fast and looked around, moved around a lot. Been conspicuous. This silent and still observation was much smarter. I eased down even more, a probe instead of a battering ram.

  Below all that activity, the Old One slumbered, silent. But from the center of the circle, a faint green trail slid down, deep into the earth, to touch the Old One’s presence. Not tapping, not nudging, simply touching. I waited for a pulse of energy as on my land, but this working—whatever it was—wasn’t pulsing with anything or doing anything, at least not right now. It simply was, a thing in a state of being.

  I withdrew to the surface and let go the breath I had been holding too long. Lifted my fingertip away from the ground. There were no vines. No roots. Looking up, my eyes met Occam’s, his glowing golden, a vamp-killer in one hand. The blade caught the light of the risen sun. T. Laine stood behind him, watching me, the psy-meter 2.0 open in her hands.

  I breathed for a few seconds and then said to them both, “T. Laine, you were right. There was a way to observe and not get caught. I might have a future as a sneaky trespasser.”

  The moon witch gave me a preoccupied nod and closed up the P 2.0.

  Occam sheathed his blade and held down a hand. His eyes bled back to human, but his jaw looked leaner, his expression more fierce. I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet, steadied me with a hand on my waist. His palm was heated, scorching. I stepped gingerly away from him and his hand dropped. “What’d you discover, Nell, sugar?”

  “I’m pretty sure that something is emitting psysitopes in a slow, steady release. The dancer, reshaped into an infinity loop of energies, is orbiting it in a circle. Three points of the circle are still bright red with energies that may be getting tighter and smaller, but no dimmer. Let’s go to LuseCo and Kamines so I can do a read there.”

  T. Laine had been looking out over the pond as I spoke, and now she gestured with her chin. “What’s that?”

  Both Occam and I looked out over the water. It took me a moment to see what she was talking about. Just beneath the pond surface something glistened, something midnight black and oily looking, smooth and round. I took a step that way and Occam grabbed my arm. “Don’t,” he said.

  “Oh. Yeah. That might be dumb.” I shook my arm and Occam’s fingers slid free again. It was surely my imagination that the touch seemed reluctant to release. “Can we get a camera-mounted drone to make a flyover? Or an RVAC?” RVACs were remote-viewing aircraft, small, quiet, easy to control, and fast. I didn’t know if Unit Eighteen possessed one of our own or just had access to one, but we had used them before.

  “Tandy’s been through the training. We’ll see if he can requisition an RVAC and do a flyover out here,” Occam said.

  Silent, we went back to our cars and drove to Kamines Future Products. The property was gated, a twelve-foot-high brick wall blocking access, a single drive-in, and a security guard in the tiny guardhouse. Occam pulled up and gave his ID to the guard, explaining that we wanted to speak to someone in charge. The guard asked if we had a warrant to which Occam politely said, “I’d rather just ask a few questions of someone in senior management than make this a legal matter. But I can get a paper, sure. It’ll be extensive and invasive and disruptive, whereas a little convo might be all we need.” I thought he sounded polite and reasoned and the guard and his up-the-line managers must have thought so too because we were granted immediate access.

  Kamines was a three-story building with no windows on the sides and a steep roof. It was built of local brick in a beige-brown pattern and the roof was real clay tiles. Occam and T. Laine went to the front door and inside. I waited in the car, thinking about what I had learned today, about the case and about my abilities to sneak around underground. About my brother and his wife. But mostly about the tree I had mutated. Because I was responsible, and only I could fix it. If it could be fixed at all. I had told my brother how to kill the tree, but I didn’t think it would die easily or fast. I thought it would come back again and again, mutating as needed to stay alive. And the fact that Brother Ephraim was in touch with the tree, even through so small a line of energy, suggested that things might be more dire than even I had guessed. What I really needed to know was what the tree wanted. Which was as bizarre a question as I’d ever thought about a tree.

  The passenger car door opened, Occam standing there, waiting. The sun was behind his jeans-clad legs, and I saw for the first time that he was wearing Western boots with pointy toes, and his jacket was of a Western design, made of soft leather. I wondered if he had killed and eaten the cow in his cat form, and I smiled. Occam smiled back and stepped out of the way.

  “We have permission,” he said as I stood from the car and pulled my faded communing blanket out from behind the seat, “for you and T. Laine to search for wayward paranormal energies inside the lobby and in the front yard. According to the spokesperson, Kamines is involved in research for plastics that can withstand the surface condition of Mars, long-term. They said nothing about the energy research JoJo discovered in her deep drill. Lainie’s readings inside were ambient normal, and she’s ready to take more out here.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  I chose a spot in the sun, on the well-mown lawn, and set my folded blanket so the sun would be at my back. Just as T. Laine left through Kamines’ front door and approached, I placed the tips of my fingers on the ground and let the fingers of my consciousness drift beneath the ground. Roots and fertilizer. Grubs and beetles and ants. And then I was below the surface. The building to my side was far bigger than it appeared on the outside. It went down in the earth four stories. There were areas that suggested they had heat-producing machinery down there. Maybe very hot. Like things that would melt plastics. Or kilns for ceramics.

  I dropped below the building, into compacted soil and the remains of an ancient riverbed. There were signs of water in the crevices of rocks, and something gemlike, crystalline, but there was no sign of anything golden and glowing below the building. But . . . there was such a thing not far away. I oriented my consciousness for it and pulled back up. “Not here,” I said calmly. “That way.” I indicated with my thumb toward the east.

  “I got only surface readings,” T. Laine said. “Nothing anomalous that couldn’t be explained by them having witches on payroll to see if magic will work on Mars or if it’s an Earth-based-only energy form. So I agree. Not here. Though the spox was a smarmy little woman w
ho somehow made me want to punch her. Despite my calm nature and well-balanced personality.”

  Occam snorted like a cat in amusement. He offered his palm to me, but I was already rising. I handed him the ratty blanket, which he threw over his shoulder. “We can work up a grid for this site and get lunch before our next stop,” he said. “We aren’t that far from Tomato Head. I’m in the mood for a beef Cheddar Head.”

  “You always want meat on full moons,” T. Laine said.

  “Not me. I’m all about the ladies,” Occam said, laughing.

  T. Laine shook her head and breathed a single jaded word. “Men.”

  I had no idea what they were talking about, and opened my cell to a compass to orient myself. The golden glow hadn’t appeared to be that far away. I marked it on CSM-Nell, beginning step two of a PI—paranormal investigation—and drew on my map a grid of the grounds. At my side, T. Laine began to take P 2.0 readings—which were virtually zero. Nada. Kamines Future Products was not involved in the magic working beneath the ground. Overhead, the sun came out and warmed us, making me wish I had brought my sunglasses and a hat. More things to add to my daily gobag.

  Tomato Head was fabulous. The beef Cheddar Head had enough meat to fulfill a werecat’s protein needs. The lamb sausage and sun-dried tomato pizza we shared satisfied T. Laine’s pizza addiction and had me writing out a recipe for a homemade version on a private laptop file. It was totally worth the hour away from the case.

  * * *

  It was after one when we left for LuseCo, and by then JoJo had updated our info on all the companies and what she had found was crucial. I scanned the report, reading the pertinent parts aloud to Occam in a staccato rhythm I had learned in Spook School. “Privately owned business. Government contract. Primary focus is propulsion research. Secondary is energy, doing theoretical and practical experiments on a particle of magic that resulted from an unrelated test in the Hadron Collider in Cern. The lead physicist states: ‘The particle was discovered tangentially to particle theory experiments, as the field of study relates to proton-on-proton collisions.’ This mean anything to you?”

  “Not a lot. Maybe that they were working on atomic particles and found magic,” Occam said, “something other than psysitopes, and now they’re researching the magic particle they discovered to make it more magical. Or more powerful.”

  Which sounded dangerous and fit in with some of Rick’s theories: for the energies of a magical working to touch and mutate a creature that then evolves a way to use or perpetuate its own magical energy, or more likely, for a working witch circle to knowingly and deliberately or accidentally send psysitopic energies into the earth, and make a working become stable—a working that then begins to do things its creators didn’t plan on. At this point both seemed possible. Either one might involve the atomic magic particle and result in an accidental magical release that would look and act like an MED. I wasn’t sure which one would be worse.

  I continued scanning the summary. “It was later found to be reproduced by a full coven of evenly balanced magic users raising a hedge of thorns working. End of summary.”

  “You know the Collider people had to be pissed,” Occam said, “when a group of twelve witches, probably housewives and farmers and artists by trade, with little or no higher education, created the same particle that theoretical and experimental physicists did, without all the fancy equipment.”

  I laughed softly and checked my cell, sat maps, the GPS, and the compass, and determined that we were headed in the correct direction. The cell rang, and I answered. “Ingram.”

  “Nell,” Rick said. “Just so you know. One of the patients at the UTMC died. Adam Sayegh.”

  “But he was doing better,” I said. “He was likely one of the people in the second story, away from the stronger psysitopes.”

  “There was an incident overnight. He fell and hit his head, started bleeding, and they couldn’t stop it, but the blood was black, not red. After death, his body began redlining psysitopes. PsyCSI took the body for autopsy at the main HQ in Richmond and they said the other remains we sent, some of which had gone through autopsies and necropsies, were beginning to sludge into black goo. The deputy director over at PsyLED and Soul made the decision to cremate all the dead—geese, deer, and now humans, once studies are complete. The medical types don’t want to keep them around.”

  Usually in cases like this, bodies were kept for study and dissection, often for years. The death followed by the decay of the bodies must have been very bad to result in cremation and loss of study subjects.

  “We’re also getting an additional PsyCSI team on-site later today. The Arizona CSI team will be taking over the third floor of our building, but they have their own entrance, so we may never see them. I’ve arranged a hotel for them. Tell the others,” Rick said. “Are you on the way to LuseCo?”

  “Yes. ETA maybe ten minutes,” I said.

  “Wear your uni. Orders.”

  The call ended before I could ask what kind of incident caused Adam Sayegh to fall and bleed, redline, and die. And which occurred first, the psysitopes or the dying. Whatever this was, it was evolving fast. I remembered Dougie asking me to save her girls. So far, I was doing a mighty poor job of that. I called T. Laine and gave her, and Occam at the same time, Rick’s message.

  By the time we got to LuseCo, I had unis for Occam and me out of the space behind the two seats. He sighed but accepted his.

  ELEVEN

  “There is simply no way that our research or our facility is responsible for the problems you are describing.”

  I heard the words as I entered the front door after the fastest earth read in my personal history. “Occam. This is it,” I said.

  “This is what?” the woman demanded.

  “This is the site where the . . .” Not having a proper term, I settled on “. . . the contamination originated,” I said. “I’ve notified PsyLED and KEMA. Per Rick, no one in or out.”

  “This is ridiculous!” the woman said. She was tall and built like a woman weight lifter, all shoulders and almost no waist. She was African-American and something else, maybe Asian or Pacific Islander, and if ever fire steamed from a woman’s eyes, this was what it would look like. “You can’t come in here and interfere with our research. This is a privately held company. We have rights,” she said. “I’m calling legal.”

  “Makayla, is there a problem?” The voice was melodious and charismatic, and though I was about to head back out, I stopped and listened, standing in the doorway. The speaker was a slender man, about my height, maybe of Swedish extraction. He was blond, that white blond that looks like angel wings, and his skin was the color of fine cream. He took the concept of gorgeous to undisputed and dangerous heights, standing with a dancer’s grace and a military man’s spine, blue eyes flashing. He held a hand out to Occam. “I’m Kurt Daluege, the principal owner and CEO of LuseCo.” He took Occam’s hand, and both men stopped, still as watching cats, assessing each other. “I will handle this, Makayla,” Kurt said.

  “Nell?” Occam said, without turning my way.

  “KEMA is on the way to seal off the building,” I said, “as per standard paranormal quarantine procedures.”

  Occam nodded and stepped back. “Let’s chat,” he said to Daluege. I stepped outside, my uni swishing with each step. I had a job to do, and as probie, that meant traffic control. Literally. I’d miss out on all the good stuff.

  * * *

  An hour later, we had LuseCo locked down, the VIPs spitting mad, the employees from the top guy down demanding lawyers, and a certain feeling that we were about to break the case wide-open. I was mostly watching from outside, but the people in charge of LuseCo were brash and angry and seemed perfectly guilty to me.

  The entire unit was assembled, deputies at both parking lots and the drive, and Rick and Soul were both on premises and in charge. Everyone was wearing P3E unis, even the LuseCo
employees, though theirs were company issued and a silvery gray. Rick had an earbud in one ear, the other hanging down his shirt, the faintest strains of antimagic music audible as he walked up.

  “What did your read indicate?” he asked as he crossed the lawn to me.

  I had been thinking about how I was going to phrase my report, and how I was going to defend my claim when it was challenged to my face. “We’re standing on the epicenter of the activity.” I liked the term epicenter. It implied energy and destruction and mayhem and specificity. I wanted every single word I used to indicate all that. “If it isn’t a deliberate release, then they have a low-level leakage of something hazardous about twenty feet below the surface. The output appears stable, and my scan is backed up by repeated P 2.0 readings and handheld psy-meter readings. Everything we’ve seen in the surrounding community reflects this crisis.” Crisis was a good word too. One of my trainers at Spook School had said, “Spin is everything.” I rather considered that context was everything, but I hadn’t argued at the time. “Why? What does the company say?” I asked.

  “Kurt Daluege and his CFO, Makayla Lin, finally admitted that they had a problem earlier in the week, but they say they have it under control.”

  “Problem?” I let the disbelief into my voice.

  Rick didn’t smile and adjusted the earbud in his ear. “They were using a full coven and a special laser to test part of the collider theory, and the working ‘got away’ from them. ‘Got away’ was Kurt’s word choice. T. Laine has never heard of paranormal energies ‘getting away’ from a closed circle.”

  “Me neither,” I said.

  “Normally when a company is involved in energy R&D, no paranormals are allowed anywhere near, because mundane energies and psysitopes have been known to either cancel each other out or make them more volatile.”

  “Explosive is a better term,” T. Laine said, coming up behind me, her white uni swishing too, “but I’ll go with volatile.” Behind her, Tandy nodded, agreeing.