by Faith Hunter
“You ready to change shape, boss man?” Occam asked him. FireWind looked at the door. Occam tapped and T. Laine opened it, one hand moving unconsciously in a seeing working.
“Clear,” she said.
Occam carried the St. Bernard outside, into the shadows, where he laid the big dog on the grass. Curious, not knowing what to expect, I followed. FireWind closed his eyes, and . . . things happened. A cloud of glowing grayish mist seemed to lift from his furry coat and swirled slowly around him. The mist was shot through with darker bits of something, but it was hard to see, impossible to focus on. It had to be some kind of magical energies. I stuck my fingers into the Soulwood soil, but that didn’t help me any. Occam had no trouble seeing the magics, however, his eyes roving over FireWind and inspecting the air around him.
I heard a sharp snap that echoed off the nearby house. FireWind, draped in shadows and hidden by the silver mist, panted again. He began to re-form out of the St. Bernard. His bones cracked and snapped and he whined and grunted, breathing faster, though, despite the snapping bones, the sounds didn’t sound like agony, more like hard exertion. However, it looked excruciating. FireWind had been a skinwalker for around a hundred seventy years, and he had shifted shape all that time. I wanted to turn away because it was too horrible to watch. But it was a teaching and a learning and something I needed to see, even though it hurt.
Eventually, after a good ten minutes, FireWind was human, on the ground in the fetal position, naked, his black hair like a veil over him. He looked skinnier than he had before, the muscles clearly defined, his cheeks and jaw and prominent nose sharp in a spare face. Naked glory.
“Food,” he whispered.
Occam said, “Nell brought sandwiches. Roast beef okay?”
“Not as good as bison roasted over a fire at night, but I’ll take it,” FireWind said, beginning to uncurl. I left for the house, feeling as if I had just witnessed something spiritual and wonderful and terrifying and maybe even holy—though it was a very different form of holy from that preached by the church.
Back inside, I told T. Laine the boss was human, opened the foot-long roast beef sandwich, and spread the paper wrapping on the island countertop. I poured a glass of water, which I placed by the sandwich. It was busywork while I considered what I’d seen. When FireWind and Occam entered, FireWind was dressed, down to the polished leather dress shoes I had put in the expandable pouch. His hair was loose and fell down to his hips, a lustrous wash of black, darker than the night. I wondered what would happen if he cut his hair. Would he shift back with cut hair? If it was all DNA, how did his body know? Why didn’t he come back with fingernails two feet long or hair that was no more than a buzz of black roots? Still caught up in the thing I had witnessed, I didn’t ask.
Moments later, my boss had inhaled the sandwich much like his dog had inhaled the jerky. When he still looked hungry, I opened a turkey sandwich and placed it in front of him. He ate that too. When it was gone, he drained the water and went to the sink, washed his hands and dried them, turned, and leaned his backside against the counter, facing us. He began to braid his hair into a single plait. The movements were economical and smooth and much less shaky.
“You’re not moon-called. So you pay for all of your shape-shifting energy use with calories, don’t you,” I said.
As his fingers flew among the three strands, FireWind lifted his eyes to me, sharing the minuscule smile that had to be a tribal thing. “Yes. Were-creatures take some energy from the moon when they shift. Skinwalkers must eat or we die.”
I hadn’t realized that, but it made sense now that I saw it in person. “That’s why you liked my bars. What do you need most? Fats? Protein? Jerky?”
“Commercial jerky has too little oils and fats”—his smile widened—“and it stinks when I have an animal nose. But it’s convenient and has a long shelf life. When I’m human, the commercial bars and jerky are too sweet or too dry or they taste like clay.” He bent his head, like a small bow. “I am hopeful you will create the perfect protein bar for the weres and that you will share some with me. If I hunt a bear this fall in my cat form, I’ll bring the bear fat to you to add to your homemade protein bars. And I can hunt deer for jerky.”
I didn’t know what I’d do with bear fat, which I thought had to be rendered to be used in food, but his statements felt formal, like a pact. Carefully, I said, “Whatever I make for the weres you are welcome to share. For now, I have some more energy bars in my vehicle. Homemade fish-flake and nut, a dried milk and peanut butter bar, and some commercial salmon jerky.”
“That would be kind,” FireWind said.
I wondered for a moment why I normally disliked him.
He stood straight and said to all of us—T. Laine, Occam, and me—“There is a body at the barn. It will need the null room, and it’s likely too late to obtain any clues beyond a scent I recognized from the pasture where Nell sent me.”
I had done no such thing, but I didn’t contradict him.
“I think it’s possible that I have the scent of the magic user—not a witch in the traditional sense,” he said to T. Laine, “—who cursed the T-shirts. And . . .” He paused, thinking, finishing up his hair and hunting in a pocket for a tie. “It isn’t truly the human scent of the practitioner, but the scent of foul magic. Yes, that is what I was smelling,” he mused. “I will shift again as soon as I’ve recovered and search the house for more of the scent, hoping to identify the practitioner.”
“The death magic is still active, stronger in the basement than it was before,” I said.
“That’s not possible,” T. Laine said. “The North Nashville coven put a shield around and under the energies. They’re stable.”
“Not now,” FireWind said. “I believe the murderer returned. Perhaps the practitioner got back inside with some sort of focal attuned to the original energies. Nell thought she saw someone in the field. I believe I have the scent. The body in the barn has only been dead a few hours. The horse in the pasture has been dead several hours longer.”
“Can you tell if the practitioner is female?”
“I believe so, though the scent of the energies makes it difficult to be certain. Do we have a list of everyone who was allowed onto the property today?”
T. Laine frowned, thinking. “Yes. Kept by the deputies,” she said, sounding distracted. “I’ve been here all day. If someone got in, right under all our noses, then she’s very, very good.”
“That specific magical scent is all over the pasture where the stallion died and around the barn and the house. If it is also inside the house, then, yes, you are correct. We are dealing with someone quite controlled and powerful.” His lips turned down in an expression I had seen on Jane’s face. “Perhaps she is controlled enough to pull an obfuscation glamour? Or to carry an amulet that provides one? I believe that I can recognize the scent of the practitioner even in my human form now. It was potent, smelling like a whiff of raw, rotten beef, a stronger mix of decaying trees, and even more strong, the scent of blood and . . .” He shook his head slowly, thinking. “Perhaps graveyard dirt?” His face cleared. “Are there old graveyards near here? Or better still, battlegrounds?”
“Except for Virginia, Tennessee saw the worst fighting in the Civil War,” Occam said, pulling his phone to verify and identify any sites. “There are dozens of them listed, and that doesn’t count smaller skirmishes. The Battle of Stones River, near Murfreesboro; the battle near Gallatin; a battle near Hendersonville; and the Battle of Nashville were all close by. Sherman spent a lot of time in the state. And back a century ago, people buried their kin on their farms as often as they buried them in church graveyards. There are battlegrounds and unmarked graves everywhere. And before that, tribes fought each other for land and resources.”
T. Laine said, “You think the practitioner took dirt from a grave and dirt from a battleground and used it as part of the death and decay wo
rking?”
“The plants in the basement,” I said softly. “The soil felt . . . odd. I need to read it again.” I dashed to the stairs and down. There was a window at the landing and a dead plant on the high window ledge. I grabbed the ceramic pot and carried it back to the kitchen, placing it beside the potted vampire tree. Before I could change my mind, I stuck my left fingers into the dead plant’s dirt, and my right fingers into the tree’s pot. I expected it to hurt. A lot. It didn’t.
Thoughtfully, I inspected the dead soil, the dead roots. The oddity I had noted but paid no mind came clear. There were two kinds of soil in the pot. Most of it had come from here, from the horse farm. That part was rotted hay, dried manure, commercial vermiculite, crushed eggshells, the rotted detritus of green plants. The other was different. The different stuff rested on top of the pot. It was foreign. And dangerous. That small bit was electric, biting at my fingers like tiny spiders.
I drew on Soulwood.
My land raised its metaphorical head and pricked its ears, so much like a cat in my mind. It searched slowly out from the hills that were my home, out and out until it reached me and surrounded me in its embrace. Soulwood stretched like a lazy cat, wanting me back. It warmed me, pressing into me, much like a cat would roll over begging for attention. I thought to my land, This soil has been mixed with death. Where did this dirt come from, this dirt of death?
Holding me, or holding on to me, it swept out and back, from the hills to me, back and forth, as if tying itself to my location. It settled for a moment, then began to reach out, circling farther, hunting, tracking, shadowing, prowling. Searching out earth that was battlefield and gravesite . . . They were everywhere. Hundreds of cemeteries and family plots. Dozens of battlefields. A half dozen locations within a hundred miles where war and violence had taken place, where blood had been spilled. One was close by, within a few miles. It was a small, ancient plot of ground where a skirmish had been fought, a battle, and men had died, bleeding their life into the land. There . . . Yes. Right there. All the soil from all the pots in the studio were contaminated from there. But I couldn’t seem to locate it on the surface. It was just farmland, shaped by man for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. I could find nothing that would lead me to that land, nothing that showed me how to find it aboveground.
I marked the place in my mind and pulled back. Closer to the house was a bright spot of grass, the place where FireWind had shifted shape. The grass and roots and the dirt itself were glowing and dazzling. Beautiful. Soulwood wanted to know it, so I reached out to it, sank my mind into the earth there, and sighed with delight.
“Nell!” Occam shouted. He wrenched my hand out of the vampire tree. “Nell, stop. Stop now.”
I tried to speak. Tried to lick my lips. A faint croak came out. I looked at my hands. The skin of my fingertips was white again. Tiny pinpricks covered them. I looked at the vampire tree. It was putting out new leaves. It was growing.
The room telescoped down. I tried to warn Occam, but no words came. I dropped the pot.
I fell forward.
* * *
* * *
In the dark of semiconsciousness, I knew I had been placed on the grass out front. Oddly enough I was close to the place where Occam had laid FireWind. I slid my hand across the lawn to the warmth of the happy grass. My fingers ached and I was cold all over, but the ground where FireWind had shifted eased some of that.
Occam dropped to his knees beside me.
“Good, you’re awake,” he said. “That dang blasted tree put in roots through the floor. I yanked it up by the roots and it stuck me,” he said, irritation in his voice. I smiled. It stuck me too sometimes, when I did stuff it didn’t like. “T. Laine says that in the short time it was rooted in the house, it already sucked up and digested some of the death and decay. Did you know it could do that?”
No, I mouthed, but no sound came out. I had a feeling that the vampire tree would be happy to clean the earth of the death and decay, but it would claim a patch of land in return. A big patch. And probably the house and all the horses and any people nearby. And it would fight to keep control of the land it had claimed.
I was managing to plant vampire tree forests all over and that would never do. Eventually the tree would be seen killing a human and humans would try again to kill it. I would have to use Soulwood to destroy the tree, just as I had threatened. And if I was unsuccessful, the military or combined law enforcement would bomb it, burn it, and destroy it. Eventually the military and the government would figure out the tree was connected to me and they might kill me too, and probably Soulwood and my sisters. The tree might be sentient, but it wasn’t mature nor did it understand human problems or human judgments. It killed things and people for nourishment. I couldn’t let it be free.
“Is it back in the pot?” I whispered.
“Yeah,” Occam groused. “Looking no worse for being dropped, rooted, uprooted, shaken, and replanted. But it probably ain’t happy.”
“It ain’t never happy,” I said.
Occam made a cat sound. “FireWind wants us in the barn manager’s office. I’m figuring the manager is dead. T. Laine’s pulling the trailer around and backing it in close. And I have a feeling this case is never gonna end.” He stood and held down a hand. “Nell, sugar, I’d offer my hand to any linebacker who got tackled. And you got tackled by a tree and a death and decay working.”
I managed a smile and looked at my white, waxy fingers in the meager darkness. They ached. The damage looked similar to frostbite. “Where’d you put the tree?”
“In your car.”
I wanted to smile at his tone, but I thought he might think I was laughing at him instead of commiserating. “It’s jist a tree, cat-man.” I put my hand into his and he clasped it gently, pulling me to my feet.
When I wavered, he put an arm around me and steadied me. “It ain’t jist a tree, Nell, sugar, and you and me both know it.”
I sighed and stood on my own. He was right. I did know it. “Come on. Let’s check out the barn.”
“Don’t get in FireWind’s way. He’s back to being a dog and he’s in nose-suck.”
“Squirrelly and all over the place? Tail wagging?”
Occam snorted. “More like a two-hundred-pound wrecking ball. On a mission to knock down all his coworkers.”
I leaned into Occam again. Pressed into his warmth. Knew I was safe, just for this moment. His longer-than-normal hair was soft under my cheek and he rubbed his jaw into my hair, cat-scent-marking me. I rubbed a fist along his jaw the way his cat liked and gave him a final hug, pushed away, and walked to the barn door under my own power. The stench hit me before I opened the door, the foul, sweet-sick reek of the death working. The lights were on and, though it wasn’t glaring, it was bright enough to see that the stalls were all empty, the tack room door was open, and so was the manager’s office door. The body was lying in the wide central area between stalls.
I had expected to see Credence Pacillo, the breeder and trainer, or perhaps the farm manager, Pam Gower, who had been away on vacation when Stella died, and who I hadn’t met, but who had been interviewed over the phone by Occam. I’d seen her bio and photograph, and Pam was a bulldog of a woman, midforties with prematurely gray hair. This body was female, but it wasn’t Pam. Instead it was a short, slender, young white woman with cropped blond hair, a girl I had seen on the first day; I had taken her preliminary statement. Ingrid Wayns, a twenty-one-year-old college student, had been ready to graduate, a part-time rider looking to find work in the agribusiness industry. She was stretched out, facedown much like Stella had been, her arms under her as if she fell forward. She was still human looking, still had skin, hair, and her flesh was nearly normal, not oozing green bubbles. Yet.
Ingrid had not been inside the house and there was no reason for anyone in the barn to be dead.
I touched Occam’s elbow to get his attention
. Softly, I said, “I need to reread the earth here and around the barn to see if the energies have changed or worsened or spread.”
“I don’t like it, Nell,” he said.
My instant response was less than nice, because it was clear he was talking like a boyfriend and not like my coworker. I held in my reaction and said instead, “I’m not too fond of the idea either, Special Agent Occam, but I wasn’t asking your permission.”
A strange look crossed his face, to be replaced with a dawning comprehension. “Oh.” He stepped back. “It’s hard to let someone I love do things that might hurt ’em.”
“I get that. But that’s the way life is, cat-man. Difficult, dangerous, and disturbing.”
Occam laughed, a single odd, pained note. “You got a point, Ingram. Otherwise you’d be boring. And I reckon I never signed on for boring, not with you, woman. Fine. I’ll accept it. Jist remember. I’m here if you need me.” He flipped me a companionable wave and vanished into the night.
As Occam, the security guys, and T. Laine maneuvered the null room trailer into the barn and scooped up the dead girl, I took a fortifying breath and leaned down to touch the ground with an uninjured pinkie. The death sensation was present but not nearly as strong as the sensation at the house. I stepped into a stall and tested the earth beneath the deep wood shavings. Less strong. I moved into each stall, testing, and most were without the death working. Then I checked the manager’s office. The sensation there was much more powerful, but not on the floor. More as if someone had walked in, touched things, and then left. The coffeemaker was particularly strong, the plastic cracking, and I left a note in the grounds bin that the appliance was contaminated.
Satisfied that the barn was not inherently dangerous in the short term, I sat and opened my laptop, signed on, and started work, but my fingers, still looking frostbitten, ached and my typing was slow. I looked longingly at the coffeemaker and reached slowly back over the chair, stretching my spine.