by Faith Hunter
“Nothing about the request or the destination makes sense,” T. Laine said. “And the request for backup came in over a nonsecured number, that old flip phone he keeps in a gobag in the glovebox of his car.”
“No other details?” Occam asked. “Grindys?”
“Not a one. No info on the grindys. I’m still trying to get back through. No luck.”
Grindylows were cute, neon green, kitten-sized were-creature killers. They appeared when a were-creature was in danger of transmitting the were-taint and killed the offending were-creature with extreme prejudice, no recourse, no appeal.
As the newest official special agent in PsyLED Unit Eighteen, and the one who had spent six months as part of a forest, on the injured and disabled list, I seldom was allowed to leave the office, my job these days being predominantly database searches and intel correlation. Excitement skittered along my nerve endings like ants in an electric current.
• • •
We made good time, most of the streets and pikes being fairly deserted at this hour, but finding a lone man outside of Knoxville proper, on the banks of a river that twisted and turned like the track of a snake, was difficult. Rick’s GPS coordinates were on a tongue of land between the confluence of the French Broad and the Holston rivers, where they merged to become the Tennessee River. We drove slowly along Riverside Drive, poorly lit, totally deserted, watching for Rick. Not knowing what we’d find. I normally would love a drive along tree-lined country roads, under a night sky, watching the stars and a metor shower, but I didn’t like this one. The things we were told to bring along suggested that Rick had a problem, and anytime a wereleopard had a problem it was dangerous.
“Dial his old cell number,” Occam said.
Rick had acquired a new cell number while I was a tree. Something about a problem in New Orleans, involving Jane Yellowrock, one of his exes. No one seemed to know what had happened between them, but Rick had kept the old number and the old cell. A way for Jane to reach him if she ever wanted. Rick’s love life was as broken and emotionally maimed as his psyche.
A lot had happened while I was out of commission. I had been back at work only three weeks and I was still getting accustomed to the changes. Rick answered, sounding out of breath and wary at the same time. “I see your lights. Pull over to the right,” he said. Satellite maps showed that the right side of the road was pasture or field, and beyond that was the Tennessee River. Occam braked onto the grassy verge.
A hundred feet ahead, Rick appeared in the darkness, a thin orange blanket printed with black puppy paws wrapped around his middle. His silver and black hair caught the light, too long, flying in the breeze, his face scruffy, signs of a recent shift.
His chest was bare, the headlights giving me a glimpse of the ruined, scarred tattoos across one shoulder and scars from wounds that should have killed him. A lot of scars, especially for a were-creature.
Long after the blood-magic tattoos had been applied, Rick had been infected by the were-taint, bitten by one black wereleopard, then chewed on and tortured by werewolves, and then spelled by Paka, a second black wereleopard. All that in a matter of months, which had affected the magic of the were-taint, leaving him unable to shift until the last seven or eight moon cycles.
Rick had been a were-creature only a few years, and in that time had been dragged through hell and back. Lately he had been looking what I called antsy—twitchy and agitated. Tonight that was multiplied times ten. Magic rolled off him, making the air itself seem to spark as he moved, balanced and cat-like, toward the car.
Beside me, Occam hissed in a slow breath, picking up the sizzling energy that Rick was throwing off. He gripped the steering wheel hard enough to make the leather covering squeak softly.
“Rick doesn’t look entirely in control,” I said quietly. “Why isn’t Pea or Bean here?”
“No humans nearby,” Occam said.
I realized why I had been sent with Occam, not one of the other agents. I was more tree than human and was immune to the were-taint that would turn others into a were-creature. If Rick attacked me, I could heal as soon as I got my fingers into dirt. I also had some small control over Rick because of his tie to my land. Occam and I were most likely to survive if Rick attacked. I had been expected to understand all that and I hadn’t. Until now, when I put it all together.
Right, I thought.
“Besides, I got this.”
“Hmmm,” I said, trying to decide if he really did. Occam lived in more harmony with his cat than Rick with his, possibly because Occam had spent twenty years in a cage getting to know his spotted leopard. Rick’s cat had been chained into the human body even at the full moon and was now half-feral, prickly, and intent on winning dominance games and fights. The two men got along okay, but the cats, not so much. They were alphas, and the status of who was more dominant between them—the mature spotted leopard or the more powerful but immature black leopard—was always in flux. They hunted together but were solitary cats. It was complicated.
Rick’s puppy blanket glowed in the headlights as he got closer and so did his eyes, the green magic of his cat still close to the surface. Beside me, Occam shifted in the seat and a low vibration began in his chest. A growl, quickly cut off. I glanced sideways at Occam, who said, “His cat is close.” His voice was laconic and heavy with Texas twang, trying to hide his reaction.
“Uh-huh.”
Occam grinned unrepentantly, his scarred face dragging up on one side. “I got this,” he repeated. He blew out a breath and, in my peripheral vision, I saw his hands slacken on the wheel.
I shook my head, returned my full attention to Rick, and got my first good look at the infamous scarred tats on his chest and shoulder. In the harsh light, I couldn’t tell what the mangled artwork had been, but the colorful inks and scars covered his left collarbone, ran down his pectoral, and wrapped around his entire upper arm. All that was left in the puckered scar tissue were the amber discs, like eyes, and they were reflecting gold, bright in the lights of the sports car. There was a circlet tattooed on the right biceps, less scarred and more recognizable. Possibly barbed wire. That one drew my attention and held it.
I was wrong about it being barbed wire. The tat was really a depiction of twisted vines with curved, retractable big-cat claws and raptor talons and a few drops of bright red blood interspersed throughout.
“Huh,” Occam said. “The tats on the right look better than they used to. This is the first time I’ve seen them since you healed us. You do that?”
It was interesting—or perhaps disturbing—that the right-side tats were of vines and claws. The right tat reminded me of the vampire tree (now more like a grove of vampire trees, though they were all one root system) that was growing at the edge of my land and in the church compound. Fear spurted through me as thoughts and memories and worries collided. “I don’t know,” I murmured.
It too was complicated. To mix his were-magic up a little more, I’d claimed Rick a few times for Soulwood, for healing. Rick’s cat was now bound to my land and trees.
He was close enough for me to see he carried a crumpled gobag in one hand and a folded flip-phone in the other. Rivulets of sweat traced down his flesh. His black and silver beard had grown out an inch and he was nothing but skin over corded muscle and bone. I realized that the golden orbs of his tats weren’t reflecting the headlights, but glowed from within. They looked heated and painful.
Rick stopped in front of the car, wrapped waist to thighs in the paw-print blanket, his feet shoulder-width apart, his stance aggressive, his entire body tense and glistening in the muggy heat, his eyes glowing cat-green in the dark.
“Nell, sugar, you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I lied, as worries knotted themselves all through me.
“Uh-huh,” he said, hearing the lie. “Stay in the car,” Occam said softly.
“Right.”
Occam reached behind the seat, retrieved Rick’s office gobag, and left the car, closing the door softly. He approached Ri
ck in the glare of the headlights, his body bladed, cautious, stepping slowly, his feet lifting and setting down, cat-like, or dancer-like. Rick hunched down, as if drawing paws beneath him. He snarled. Rick’s teeth were part cat, as if he was caught in the shift or the power of the full moon. But he should have been in command tonight, with the full moon past.
Occam tilted his head and snarled back in warning. He dropped the full gobag between them and his fingers curled as if he was growing claws. This was about to go all catty with blood and claws and fangs and I didn’t know who would win in an all-out dominance fight, or if one of them would die. I didn’t want to draw on Soulwood for fear of tying them even more strongly to my land, but I was pretty sure that if I didn’t, there was gonna be blood and a lot of it.
I cracked open the car door and leaned out, putting a fingertip to the dirt. I closed my eyes and reached out to my land. It was close enough, and in midsummer the trees and plants and grasses and veggies were in full leaf and full bloom. The land was powerful and playful. It slammed into me, like an oversized young dog at a dead run. I fell back hard, against the metal of the car. My breath shot out. The might of Soulwood filled me and wrapped around me, warm as a wool blanket in front of the stove at my house. I laughed softly. “Hey there.” I soothed the land for a few breaths, and then reached for the cats in the dark, sharing the joy and peace that was my land. The magic of Soulwood.
Even with my eyes closed, I felt the cat-men calm and swivel to the car where I sat. I felt them step away from the coming fight. Felt their aggression vanish. I opened my eyes and sat upright, to see Rick walking away, into the night, his full gobag with its change of clothing in one hand, the second small gobag and his antiquated cell in the other. The car lights picked out scarring on his back at his kidney and over his shoulder. Claws had raked him deeply enough to leave puckered flesh, an old injury.
Occam walked toward the car. He was caught in the headlights, the left side of his face and skull fully illuminated, the scars showing a shocking white in his tanned face, his mouth and eye drawing up on the side. His ear a shriveled mass. The scars were a patchwork and a veining of pure white that spread down his neck, likely onto his torso, along the outer part of his arm, and down to his maimed hand. Two fingers had been burned away in the fire that had killed him and hadn’t grown back properly. They curled inward, the tendons permanently contracted like curled vines, not much more than scars over bone. He blinked against the glare.
The automatic car lights went out, leaving us all in the dark.
Occam opened the door and slipped inside. Closed it. Silently, we stared into the night, waiting for Rick to dress. He said, “His cat was loose. About to shift.”
“I noticed,” I said.
“You pulled on Soulwood.”
I frowned, uncertain.
Occam touched my forearm with an unscarred finger. “It’s okay. I felt a sense of peace. I smelled the firs and the poplars. I felt the soil and the grass and knew it was a safe place to bed down. I felt … Soulwood. I felt you, Nell, sugar. I knew you.”
I looked down at my hands, fingers laced across my lap in the dark. And studied his right hand, the contact between us the pad of a single, warm finger just above my wrist. I said, “I shared the land with you both. I wondered if you could tell.”
“Can’t say as I always know when you draw on Soulwood, but this time I could feel it. It felt good. Peaceful. As if the moon wasn’t in charge of what and who I am. As if you gave me a different kind of power over my cat, that I don’t normally have.” He withdrew his hand and I missed the warmth.
Rick, dressed in dark jeans and a white T-shirt, reappeared, moving smoothly in the night. Occam opened the car door and the overhead light came on and the wild poured in. Evergreens and heat and mosquitoes. I hated summer in Knoxville. Rick said, “Thanks for coming. I have something to show you. Ingram, you too. Got your field boots?” It was as if the previous scene had never happened, and since Occam seemed fine with it, I guessed I was too.
Rather than reply, I unzipped my one-day gobag and kicked off my sneakers, hauling on the boots. While I changed shoes, Rick ate a protein bar. It smelled nasty and I bet it tasted nasty too. I’d tried making protein bars for the cats, but the whey protein powder was awful, the egg-based protein was dreadful, and the powdered fishmeal protein was yucky and hard to work with. Come fall I could make venison jerky and wild turkey jerky from kills the wereleopards brought me. I could also smoke trout from mountain streams. I had ordered some dried skipjack tuna shavings to increase the protein content. Until I got the shavings and hunting season was right for butchering meat, the cats were stuck with the icky commercially prepared stuff.
Stepping out of the car, I twisted my silky skirt up between my legs and tucked it in at my waist, making a kind of baggy drawers. Not having cat eyes, I flicked on my flashlight and slid my gobag over one shoulder as Rick led us into the dark, off to the right, away from the road and toward the Tennessee River. We crossed a field planted with a healthy crop of soybeans, the knee-high plants swishing as we moved, grasshoppers flying up, most moving slow, nearly dead from the poison I felt/smelled/tasted as we walked toward the water.
When the moon rose, it might be bright enough to see something, but for now, my flash was a thin beam on the plants of the field. I sent my awareness into the land as best I was able without touching skin to earth. The land wasn’t dead. It was full of nutrients and organic matter from the last flood, the soil rich. Despite the current moderate drought, the soy was healthy, putting out lots of bean pods, not that I would eat anything from this land. The pesticides that were killing the grasshoppers and other critters that attacked soy had been absorbed by the roots and leaves and into the bean pods. I closed my eyes as I walked, feeling for the life in the ground. Even amid the poisons, I could feel the magic in the land, tendrils twining around and deep. Black magic.
Occam gripped my shoulder, jerking me back. “I forgot you can’t see in the dark,” he said. The cats had stopped. I hadn’t. I’d almost stepped across a witch circle. I had been so involved with my thoughts, walking with my eyes closed, the magics flowing up through my boots, I hadn’t even noticed the soy had ended. That was stupid.
“Thanks,” I said, not sure how I felt about Occam watching over me so closely. And then he released my shoulder and walked away, following Rick, the two of them walking widdershins outside the circle, sniffing the air for scents humans might miss.
“Anything?” Occam asked.
“Something sour, like sickness. Dead cat.” The boss shrugged.
The twenty-foot-wide circle, drawn with what looked like powdered white chalk, studded with crow and buzzard feathers, was a witch circle unlike any I had seen in Spook School. Instead of a pentagram inside a circle, which created a pentacle, this one had angles like the spokes of a wheel. In each of the spokes, there were shapes that might have been runes drawn in the dirt. The spokes connected to a smaller central circle, maybe three feet across, and in the center of that was a dead black cat, blood all around, soaked into the ground. It was hanging upside down from a makeshift wooden tripod, its throat slit. The cat had been sacrificed.
Bloodlust rose up in me, demanding, insistent, needing. Feed the land. Soulwood, so recently invoked, wanted the blood.
“I was driving,” Rick said.
I yanked back on the need, holding it down, trying to smother it.
“I felt something … happening inside me,” he continued, halting, his voice growing raspy, “like a moon-calling, but … different. I pulled over, secured my weapon, shifted, and I woke up there”—he pointed—“lying near the circle, but outside it. And—” He stopped, shook his head, and looked around, his eyes puzzled and perhaps a little bit sleepy. He looked bewildered, as if he had woken up in the middle of sleepwalking.
Occam paced to Rick. He didn’t touch Rick but stood close, looking slightly to the side, cat-like.
Rick said, “That’s a black-magic circle. On
the bank of a river, a dead black cat in the center.”
“Yeah, Hoss, we see that,” Occam said, his tone kind. “Anything else you need to tell us?”
“I … I don’t know.” He stared at the dead cat. “My cat grabbed the gobag holding the blanket and my old cell. I ended up here. But I don’t know how I kept from being drawn into the circle.”
Rick must have felt the death of the housecat in the circle and tracked it by … I had no idea.
He shook himself, more dog-like than cat-like, his silvered hair flying with the motion. Sounding more like the senior special agent I knew, he said, “Black magic isn’t illegal, in the human world, except for the cruelty-to-animals part. We need to report this. This could indicate a psychopath, a serial killer, trying out her skills.”
“Statistically speaking,” I said, remembering my studies from PsyLED Spook School, “black-magic users don’t usually become serial killers.” Rick turned his attention to me and I gave a tiny shrug. “It’s a new course for continuing ed. The Statistics of Magic. It isn’t the death or the torture that witches want, it’s the power that the deaths bring.”
“That makes a weird kind of sense,” Rick said. “I can barely smell death on the cat. No release of bowels or urine on the air.” To Occam, he said, “It hasn’t been dead long. Maybe three hours?”
Occam lifted a thumb, an ambiguous agreement. “Maybe less. After sunset.”
A good six feet from the edge of the circle, I continued widdershins around it, stumbling in the dark, taking photos with my camera, the flash too bright, shocking in the night, but revealing the runes in the ground, in the spokes of the wheel. Keeping busy kept the bloodlust at bay, but I shouldn’t have—wouldn’t have—drawn on Soulwood had I known about the cat.
Occam said something that was lost on the night air.
“River is that way.” Rick pointed. “Twenty paces. “North is there.” He pointed in a different direction. “Moonrise will be in that general area.” He pointed.
I made notes on my cell, aligning with the north point on the witch circle. I tackled the pink elephant in the room. “Did the spell call you here? You specifically?”