Spells for the Dead

by Faith Hunter

  Burning. Piercing. Sharp as frozen glass.

  My entire arm cramped.

  Frantic, I wiped traces of dirt off my finger onto my jeans. Lurched to the fence and fell through the bottom two rails. To the ground. I landed on top of the blanket. My back arched in agony. My lungs shut down. I closed my eyes. I saw black flames tipped with red bending, rushing toward me. Encircling me. Frozen air sliced me. I couldn’t even gasp.

  Something else grabbed my injured finger. Tiny rootlets feathered over it. Pulled my finger to the pot. Beneath the soil. Soulwood soil. Cool damp soil, the best mountain loam. I managed a breath. The relief was short-lived. The vampire tree shoved roots into my finger. And wrapped them around my hand. Climbing, following the burning invasion. My scream strangled.

  Holding the pot tight for fear it would take off my entire hand if I dropped it, my body curled around the pot in a spasm, shaking. A long, pained mewl escaped my mouth. Tears and snot watered the pot’s soil. Some of the soil spilled onto the barn dirt beside me. When it touched, bright lights lit inside my brain.

  Against the brightness, I saw the Green Knight, sitting astride a pale green horse, the mental manifestation the vampire tree took when it communicated with me. He carried a white halberd in one hand, propped over a shoulder, trailing vines and bursting with green leaves. In the other hand he carried a lance, the long pole the dark green of fir leaves, the entire length trailing more vines, green leaves fluttering in an unseen wind. He kneed his horse forward, guiding him without reins. The horse burst into a gallop. Hooves thundered, the massive warhorse racing toward me.

  The lance was centered on my chest. My body tightened in response and I caught my breath, ready to run. But there was no place to run, not here.

  A thought came to me. Hold.

  Around me death flames crackled. Black flares flickered, ice and flame tinged dully red. Roaring closer. They attacked, burning, blistering, freezing, icy. The flames were superheated icy glass, sharp and shattered, slicing along my body. Surrounding me. They were a prison that was created to consume.

  The Green Knight’s lance passed over my shoulder. Pierced into the blaze.

  The horse rammed at me.

  I felt no impact.

  The knight rode through me, his leaves and bark and his armor frozen, an arctic steel that stole my warmth. A ripping, tearing sound.

  My finger stopped hurting.

  Just stopped.

  “Nell? Nell!” Occam cursed.

  I felt his fingers at my neck, taking my pulse. I managed a gagging sort of moan and he turned me on my side. I caught a breath. I didn’t throw up.

  “What happened? Nell, talk to me.”

  “Get off the ground. Death and decay,” I whispered, warning through a throat that felt as if I had guzzled acid. “Here.”

  “I don’t feel it,” he said. He pulled me onto his knee, off the ground, cradling me. “I shouldn’t have left you alone.”

  I got my eyes to focus. I wasn’t where I had been before. I looked around, finding my location with the house and barn as reference points. “I got away. I must have . . . run . . .” I stopped and breathed for a bit. Occam pulled me closer against him and positioned the tree’s pot in the crook of my body, my hand still wrapped with roots. We were on safe ground. “I got attacked by . . . trapped in a burst of energies. They kicked my butt. The vampire tree saved me.”

  “The vampire tree? The potted plant that has roots stuck into your whole hand? Looks like it’s claiming you rather than saving you,” he growled.

  “Trust me. It was saving me.”

  “I trust you, Nell, sugar.” He rocked me and I leaned into him. “I don’t trust that damn tree, but I trust you. You’re ice-cold, Nell. Do I need to get you to a hospital?” I started shivering, and Occam unfolded the pink blanket, draping it over me. We sat there, me snuggled up to his werecat warmth, which was several degrees warmer than standard human. And he was right, I felt no death and decay right here. Thank goodness, because Occam was touching the dirt, holding me. And the null room was closed up for the night, nullifying the dead, and I didn’t have a key anyway.

  My head began to clear. “I think I’m okay,” I said, my voice rough. Occam hugged me tighter. Closing my eyes, I pressed closer, feeling too cold and too hot all at once. I tried to picture the Green Knight, the shape/name/form/purpose the vampire tree had chosen when it gained sentience. I saw a field of green grass, a green horse grazing. A man wearing pale green armor stood at a fence, and though his helmet was in place and I couldn’t see his eyes, I got the feeling he was looking right at me. He lifted a hand and drizzled green stuff through his green-steel fingers. It seemed to be important to him, but I had no idea what it meant.

  “Ummm? Okay? And thanks,” I whispered to him. He nodded his helmeted head.

  Occam said, “I didn’t do anything, Nell, sugar.”

  I smiled. “You can let go now, I think,” I whispered. The knight gave a formal nod and the roots let go of my hand, pulling out of my finger. I hissed with pain and my blood ran into the potted Soulwood soil.

  “You’re bleedin’,” Occam said.

  In my vision, or whatever this was, the Green Knight reached out and held his gauntleted hand beneath mine, as if capturing my blood in his steel-covered palm. I felt my blood land in the pot and feed the root. That might be bad . . .

  “I’m taking you to the hospital,” Occam said, his tone grim.

  “No. Not needed. I’m really okay,” I said softly, opening my eyes. Even my throat was better, though I was thirsty. I pushed back from Occam and placed the plant pot on the ground. “I’d been touching dirt in the barn and paddocks, but pasture soil is different. It’s alive in ways that barn dirt isn’t. I was stupid. I shoulda touched grass leaves first, then the soil. I’ll be fine.” Leaves then soil. Always.

  “You’re not fine,” he cat-growled. “Your heart was racing and you were breathing too fast and you were cold as death.” His hand touched my face as if testing my temperature. “You smelled like you were dying.” His eyes were glowing the bright golden amber of his cat. It wasn’t the full moon, but he was still close to losing control of his were-creature. Which would be very bad at a crime scene with humans all around, armed security everywhere.

  I reached up with my good hand and gripped the back of his head, pulling him close and kissing him. In the dark, kneeling in the dirt, behind a barn. It was a sweet, clinging kiss, lips to lips, warm and tender and giving. When I pulled away, his eyes were human again. I smiled up at him. “I’m okay, cat-man,” I said softly. “And we have a job to do.”

  “Woman, you scared me silly.”

  “Scared me too. And after this case, I have a lot of thinking to do about the vampire tree. But for now, let’s get the job done.”

  “You sure?” When I nodded, Occam got to his feet and lifted me to mine, cat-strong, cat-graceful, and pulled me close in the night. Into my ear, he said, “How ’bout you don’t scare me again tonight. Or ever. I might have nine lives, but you surely scared one outta me jist now.”

  “Nine lives,” I said, smiling at the cat-lore comment and pointing. “We need to make sure no horses have access to that pasture. There’s a lot of death and decay in it.”

  “Pacillo moved all the horses earlier. I might need to find out why he emptied that particular one.”

  I stood on my own. “Good idea.”

  “He offered to drive us across the acreage in one of the farm’s golf carts, so you can read the land.”

  Sounding mostly normal, I said, “I think that would be lovely. A chauffeured moonlight ride in a golf cart through the countryside with my cat-man.”

  He hugged me and his arms betrayed the depth of his relief. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” Occam murmured.

  “What’s harder?” I asked.

  “Being in love wit
h my partner.” He chuffed in restrained anger. “Watching her get hurt.”

  “There’s good and bad in everything,” I said.

  Including having a potted tree for a protector. One that did indeed have some kind of paranormal ability to talk to its other part over many miles. I remembered seeing the knight drizzle green stuff from his fingers just before he took my blood. The vampire tree was trying to tell me something important. Had the green stuff been Soulwood soil, a protection as I read the earth?

  I needed to figure out what to do about the Green Knight. It protected me, but it wasn’t under my control. The vampire tree had killed before. It could, probably would, kill again.

  What if it decided Occam was a danger to me? Or Mud? To keep that from happening, I needed to claim the vampire tree. Or, if that wasn’t possible, I might need to kill it.

  SEVEN

  Pacillo knew the farm, every nook and cranny, and every horse in every pasture. He would roll us up to a gate that I couldn’t see and Occam would hop out, open the gate, let us roll through, and then close the gate. Even in the pitch-black dark, Pacillo could find every springhead, rocky outcrop, ditch, patch of trees, access trail, horse trail, mud hole, and salt block. At each stop, I got out holding my cell phone as if I was using it to read the land, drizzled a few grains of Soulwood soil onto the ground, and touched the grass with one fingertip, one that hadn’t been harmed. The injured ones were still tender and I hadn’t had the guts to look yet. I wasn’t using enough soil, my power, or any of my blood that might accidentally claim the land. And I was touching only leaves, not dirt. At all.

  I found nothing. Not one single trace of a death and decay, or any other kind of working, in the entire back fifty acres, in the orchards, or in the forested area farther back. The front pastures and the ones to the far side of the house were fine. Only the one pasture was affected. Near it, a pea-gravel parking lot was set back from the big RV shed, the lot holding eight vehicles belonging to the security crew, Stella, and some of the victims in the hospital. Or dead. Each vehicle had a small sticker with Stella’s logo in the rear window. The parking lot and the cars and trucks were fine too. I took photos of each tag and sent them to HQ to be run.

  I still had to narrow down the trail of death and decay and that meant going back to the grassland that had attacked me. I was tired. I was a little frightened. But I had a job to do. “I need to go back to the pasture where I found the energies.”

  I expected Occam to argue with me, but he merely said, “Okay,” and instructed Pacillo back toward the barn and to the area farthest from where I’d been attacked. We were a good two hundred yards from the barn when I got out, Occam at my side. This time I carried my blanket and placed it on the ground. The night had chilled and I shivered. Or maybe that was fear.

  Using extra care, as if the land was venomous, I touched the leaves. They were clean and alive and happy, so I risked a bit more and tapped the soil fast, jerking my finger away. The land beneath was fine. I blew out a breath and climbed into the golf cart. “Take me a hundred feet closer to the barn,” I directed. I could feel Occam’s disapproval, but he kept his mouth shut, merely fingering the clasp that secured his steel hunting knife to his thigh.

  I was especially careful, reading in increments, going closer until I was near the barn. I didn’t encounter death and decay until I was thirty-something feet out. Less than a quarter of an acre of the pasture was infected with the death energies. There was no trail from the parking area to the pasture. How had death and decay gotten to the pasture and the house?

  We had zigzagged around the entire farm, but I couldn’t figure out how the death and decay energies had gotten close to the barn or how they had reached the house. FireWind was going to be disappointed. Death and decay had seemingly popped into existence, infected a pasture, and reappeared inside the house.

  It was also clear that unlike the energies inside the house, the ones in the pasture were decreasing.

  Had the potted vampire tree, in its form of the Green Knight, zapped the death and decay out of existence in the land where I had been attacked? Was that what the lance had done when it passed me and hit the frozen glass flames behind?

  Our three-person team was fast and efficient, and if Pacillo thought I was reading the land with my cell phone, which I carried each time, well, I wasn’t about to disabuse him of that notion. By three a.m. we were back at the barn. I was yawning and too sleepy to continue, so we said our good nights, and Pacillo turned on the security lights.

  Occam and I walked back toward the car, stopping on the way when he touched my arm. “Lemme see.” When I didn’t understand, he said, “Your finger. Your hand. Lemme see.”

  “Oh.” I curled my fingers protectively into a loose fist. I didn’t want to look.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  I nodded.

  He held out his hand and I placed my hand into his. Uncurled my fingers. Occam turned on a small penlight and directed the narrow beam at my fingers. The index finger was white as bone, the skin dead. It was covered with pinholes, as if I’d stabbed it with needles. With his burn-scarred hand, Occam lifted the finger to his lips and kissed it. My heart melted. Before I could think it through, I pulled his hand to my own lips and placed a kiss on his knuckles. I felt him start in surprise, and saw a flash of his teeth in the shadows. He released my hand and wrapped his arm around my shoulders and I relaxed against him, feeling . . . cherished? Loved. Yes, that was it. Feeling loved. My entire heart melted, resting against my cat-man.

  We were almost at the car when a light came on inside the house. Occam came to a stop and swiveled so I could see what he saw. “That’s a mite strange, don’t you think, Nell, sugar?” he said. “No cars in the yard. Officer Stanhope, you still on duty?” he asked without raising his voice.

  “I’m here. The witches and the crime scene folks left while you were off working. No one has approached the house within my sight since you came through. Don’t mean someone didn’t get through another entrance, what with the lights off and the security system off-line for the witches and the techs. I’ll check it out.” Keys jangled and Stanhope appeared out of the dark. He was a tall man, wearing the uniform of Stella’s security company, a gun at his belt. Stanhope was fit and carried himself like former military.

  “Want backup?” Occam asked.

  “Never turn down backup, my man. Never turn it down.”

  Stanhope opened the door and Occam followed him inside. I went on to the car and placed the potted tree in the milk carton in the passenger seat. Its roots were exposed and in need of fresh soil, but I didn’t travel with a bag of Soulwood soil. That was something I might need to remedy.

  While I leaned against the car, I sent JoJo a text. Security system not show suspect entering house carrying trigger?

  She texted back, System autostores and eventually rewrites itself. I’m trying to reconstruct old data from a saved version.

  Good thing you’re our Diamond, I texted.

  She didn’t reply. Jo had once been known as Diamond Drill, one of the top hackers in the world. She worked for us now.

  Stanhope jogged from the house. “Kid got inside. He had a key, knew how to work the security system,” he called to me, irritation in his voice, “and didn’t mind crossing crime scene tape. Your partner says to go on in.”

  Leaving the pot and the blanket, I entered the house empty-handed, to find Occam and a young man sitting at the big kitchen island. The “kid” was drinking coffee, in the middle of the night, and eating a sandwich that he had clearly just assembled from the contents of the fridge. Packages of lettuce, cheese, an open loaf of bread, condiments, and sliced turkey were on the island top.

  He was older than he looked at first, a shaggy-headed blond with sad eyes, maybe midtwenties. Occam’s eyes were trying to tell me something as he said, “Special Agent Ingram, this is one of Stella’s roadies, Theron W
orkham, tech and support roadie for the band. He came in for the meeting today and apparently slept over in one of the RVs. He woke up hungry and avoided all the security guards to make a sandwich.” He put a faint emphasis on “avoided all the security guards.” Which should not have been so easy.

  Not meeting our eyes, Theron shoved a good three inches of sandwich into his mouth and chewed. Keeping his mouth full so he couldn’t talk? I tilted my head to show I understood Occam’s concern.

  “And he’s not the only one on scene. According to him, upstairs are two of the part-time riders”—Occam referred to his notes—“Bevie Rhoden and Elisa Yhall.” He spelled both names. “They’re all three part of Stella’s inner circle and they sleep in the bunk room upstairs, when they aren’t in school. They didn’t see a problem with crossing over crime scene tape either.”

  So, we had three people with the ability to make use of the property without getting caught. There were probably more. “Cameras?” I asked, about the security system.

  Occam said, irritation in his tone, “There’s a light on the door panel that shows red if the system is armed. And he knows the code.”

  Anyone who knew about this could get in, turn off the cameras, and come and go without being filmed. I swiveled my hand, thumb slightly up, to show I understood.

  “Theron has agreed to clarify for me the names of the band members, backup singers, roadies, assorted personnel, and groupies following the band.”

  I gave him a half smile. Theron didn’t seem the least bit willing to do that. He looked as if he’d been caught and knew it and didn’t know how to get out of the breaking-and-entering mess he was in. He finished the sandwich. Put his plate in the sink. Blew a resigned breath.