Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

  Dressed, I stopped and looked at myself in the mirrors. And frowned. I was wearing clothes the church would approve of. Until just this moment, I hadn’t even noticed that . . . that I didn’t own anything that the church would scowl over except my gardening overalls. I didn’t wear jeans like T. Laine, or the wildly patterned, filmy skirts like JoJo wore. Or the flesh-hugging tank tops and slacks that Paka wore. I was . . . I was still a churchwoman.

  I studied myself, my face pale in the mirror. My skin was good thanks to the creams and oils I made for myself, but I could use some makeup, some blush to pinken my cheeks. Maybe some lipstick. And mascara, though I feared I’d poke out an eye with the wand. Makeup. And lessons to use it. Maybe some colorful shirts. Pink. Red. And maybe I’d get my ears pierced and buy some earrings. Tingles flew through me at the improper and unholy thoughts. And I smiled. Next time I had money, I’d stop by the CVS and peruse the aisles.

  I ate an apple, drank two cups of coffee, and rinsed the beans and added fresh water, salt, and a packet of hot peppers and herbs I kept premixed for beans. I dumped in a cup of apple cider vinegar and some dried onion. Putting the stew pot on the hottest part of the stove, I set the dampers to last the day, then surveyed the house. The sheets needed to be changed, the stove’s wood ash cleaned out, and sachets in Leah’s old closet needed to be replaced. Out in the garden, the trellis was listing, needing to be staked up. My tools were going to rust if they didn’t get cleaned. The dead plants needed to be pulled, diseased leaves removed. But none of that was urgent; it all was going to have to wait.

  I picked up my keys and small bag and let the cats out. I stood on the back porch and knew that no one was on my land. No one was watching. I walked through the dark and started up the Chevy, pulling out of the drive and down the mountain.

  I beat the rush-hour traffic and stopped at the store to pick up a big bag of flour, some flax meal, and black quinoa, wishing I had money to buy one of the insulated coffee cups that the special agents used so often. This was what the churchmen taught—that association with nonchurch members would change a body and soul, sending a believer into covetousness, idolatry, and sin. I was already heading down that road to damnation, but I discovered that I didn’t care. I wove through the near-empty streets with a dark resolve, hands clinging to the steering wheel with a death grip, as if making this drive was sealing me into something I had never imagined and would never be able to return from.

  I was at the hotel early. There was no light under the door at the room, and so I went back to the lobby and got the desk clerk to remind me how to log on to the hotel Wi-Fi. Once in, I e-mailed them on the laptop that I was downstairs. I also discovered several orders for herbal treatments and oils, and the good news that I had received nearly fifty dollars through Old Lady Stevens’ PayPal account, which meant I could stop by her place, pick up the money, and buy more groceries. I could also put some cash aside for the stove wood I’d need in order to get through the winter. I firmly turned away the temptation to buy lipstick and fripperies. When I got paid—if I got paid—by Rick’s agency, I’d see about giving in to that particular delicious sin.

  * * *

  The smell of coffee met me at the suite’s common room when I opened the door with my card key, that and stale pizza, and multiple creatures under stress. Unwashed humans and cats, sweat, sleeplessness, and frustration gave the air a strong, unpleasant tang. It made me wary, and I stopped just inside the door, surveying the small space.

  Tandy and T. Laine looked the most strained, which made sense as they had pulled the all-nighter. They were curled on the sofa, heads at either end and feet in the middle of the sofa as if they’d been playing footsie. T. Laine was dressed in wrinkled black sweats and a flamingo pink turtleneck T-shirt, and was wrapped in a blanket. Tandy was dressed in what looked like flannel pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt. It was an intimate scene, too personal and cozy for my comfort level.

  Tandy stopped my reaction with, “We haven’t been fooling around, Nell, despite the comfy impression.”

  “Good God, no,” T. Laine said, swearing. “I adore Tandy, but having sex with a guy who can tell what I’m feeling would be miserable. I couldn’t fake anything.”

  Tandy offered a small tired smile, as if they’d had this conversation often. “True. There’s no cheating with an empath, but then again, we always know what our partners want and need. Empaths make the best lovers.”

  “I’ll make you a coffee mug with that on it for Christmas, but since you’re the only empath any of us know, I’ll have to take your word for it. I need my bed.” She called louder, “Rick! Nell’s here and we can pass the baton. I’m beat.”

  Pass the baton?

  The door to the room with the super-king-sized bed opened, revealing the foot of the bed and the rumpled covers with Paka still curled in the twisted blankets. Rick was dressed, like T. Laine, in sweats with socks on his feet. He turned and crossed the room to tap on one door into an adjoining room. Occam stepped out instantly and glided past the king bed without looking at the occupant.

  Unlike the others, Occam was dressed for the day, in black jeans and a black T-shirt, though without shoes. The tops of his bare feet were thinly dusted with a lace of light brown hair and his toenails were rounded and smooth. Something about the smooth toenails struck me as so very odd. John had never smoothed his nails. He had kept them clipped, but the ends had been jagged and the nails themselves had been thick and rough. They had always been rough on the sheets, ripping them more than once. And they had been grating on my calves and thighs. I’d hated his toenails. But Occam’s were . . . nice. Even his fingernails were rounded and smooth.

  A flare of something unknown sped through me, and I dropped my laptop on the low table, went to the coffeemaker, and busied myself at the machine. When I had a fresh pot gurgling I turned around and caught Tandy watching me. His face was solemn and intent. I realized that he’d felt my spike of . . . whatever that had been. And my reaction after. He gave a small nod that I couldn’t interpret.

  I glanced at Occam. He was eating a slice of cold pizza, his blondish head bent to capture the cold pie in strong white teeth, his hair swinging forward and curling on the ends. Such long hair wasn’t all that rare to see on a man, but such beautiful hair was. His hair gleamed in the lamplight. It had to be the cat genes.

  When all but Paka were assembled, and coffee had been passed around, and a second pot started, Tandy said, “To rule out God’s Cloud of Glory Church and to search for signs of HST, the FBI is making RVAC flyovers of the compound at dawn. We have prelim footage and some still shots of panel vans that could match the description of the snatch-and-grab kidnapvan used by the kidnapmaniacs, except they had plates and the camera angle wasn’t sufficient to determine if any vehicles had a dent to match the kidnapvan.”

  Kidnapmaniacs. I had the feeling that Tandy was using the jargon to help me relax. The terminology sounded like made-up words or street slang, not cop lingo, unlike RVAC, which sounded all law enforcement with the initials instead of words. “RVAC. Is that like a drone?” I asked.

  Rick lifted his hand and dropped it fast, hesitating, as if he wished those words hadn’t been spoken. Almost unwillingly, he said, “RVACS are remote-viewing aircraft. Smaller, quieter, easier to control than a drone.”

  I let a tiny smile soften my face at the hesitant and complicated body language in the small room. Rick was against letting me know things about their practices and technology, but Tandy’s complacent expression said that it was too late now, and had been done deliberately.

  Tandy placed photos on the tabletop, saying, “Each one shows the cult compound from different vantage points. Note the vans parked here”—he pointed with his strangely marked hand, one finger tapping pictures that had been printed out on plain paper—“and here, all pale-colored, gray, blue, or white.”

  I said, “If I remember, that’s where the church’s passenger
vans have always been kept. God’s Cloud buys old vans and paints them white.”

  Rick raised his eyebrows at me. “And you didn’t think to tell us that until now?”

  I realized that with the church and the kidnapmaniacs using white panel vans, I probably should have mentioned that. “Sorry,” I said softly. “Not used to thinking about everyone and everything being some kinda clue.”

  “Where do visitors park?” Rick asked.

  “Beside the chapel building,” I said, pointing.

  “No vehicles there at the time this was taken,” Tandy said.

  “We also have good visual intel on the building that Nell said was the old punishment house and is now the guest quarters. There is no sign of anyone using it. Our contact on the FBI will do an infrared and low-light cam flyover tonight to verify.” He tapped again. Four pictures, this time each one from a different side of the building, but all from above. RVAC height. The churchmen had been right about the government invading privacy and keeping watch. Their conspiracy theories had been confirmed.

  Part of me wanted to make a scene about privacy. Another part was in fear for the missing girls and my own sisters. And yet another part was wondering why the outsiders were so important, why missing nonchurch girls were worth a hunt, but the evils taking place against children within the church had deserved a blind eye for so many decades. Social services had returned so many children after their raid that it seemed the atrocities committed by some of the churchmen had been swept under the rug and the children there again forgotten.

  T. Laine took up the narrative, saying, “County and state canine units have spent the last twenty-four hours on the first two scenes, in the order the girls were taken. They got a hit on the ballet school site, though the feds can’t tell us what it means. Or won’t. What I was told was that the dogs went, and I quote, ‘Squirrelly.’” She made finger quotes in the air. “Frankly, we were there, so we might be to blame. They now want to keep the dogs separated, not mixing up dogs and scents on the nonhuman case, so we have a new team coming in from Nashville. This team has worked paranormal cases before and will be here by one p.m.”

  “Specifics on the K-nines?” Rick asked.

  “One tracking dog, one air dog. We haven’t had rain, so we might get a scent,” Tandy said.

  I knew a lot about hunting dogs. A tracking/trailing dog followed a scent on the ground. An air-scenting dog followed it through the air. Some dogs did both tracking and air scenting. If there was little wind and no rain, air dogs with really good noses had been known to follow scents for miles. The official record was twenty-four miles to rescue a kidnapped girl. But I remembered the wind yesterday and had serious concerns about that possibility.

  Rick said, “When JoJo gets here, we’ll get a quick debrief, and then I want her and you two”—he pointed to T. Laine and Tandy—“to have five hours of downtime before joining the canine unit, to keep the dogs from wigging out at our cat smell. The dogs will start at Wyatt School and move into the woods nearby,” Rick said. “And before you say anything, yes, we should have stayed out of the woods until the dogs had a chance on-site, but we have better noses than humans, even in human form, and I had hoped we might find something. I’ve requested a dedicated dog team. We might get one, making it easier to track with dogs accustomed to our scents, but I’m not holding my breath. And even if we got a team, we’d have to share them with all PsyLED units nationally.”

  “Brute?” Tandy asked and then yawned hugely.

  Rick looked at me. “Brute is a werewolf stuck in his beast form. He’s usually part of this team, but he’s . . .” Rick paused as if trying to figure out how to say the unexplainable. “. . . not someone we can compel. He’s in New Orleans, spying on, or maybe working for, the Master of the City there. Unless he asks to join us, that’s a no.

  “The rest of us smell like nonhumans, and that’s why I’m pulling JoJo off the FBI and back to us for the day. We might confuse the dogs’ noses, so she can take point. The all-nighter means we’ll have three team members out for the morning. While JoJo, T. Laine, and Tandy are getting shut-eye, we’ll divvy up the teams differently today. Occam will still handle the trailer park door-to-door, but, Nell, can you go with Occam today, once the canine units are done? See if you feel anything about our girl?”

  I nodded slowly. I could work with Occam. That funny feeling I’d felt when I saw the smooth toenails and fingernails on the werecat was gone.

  “I want T. Laine in after the canine unit completes its search, to see what she can pick up magic-wise once we have a trail. If we have a trail.”

  Tandy said, “While we’ve been talking, I got a text. JoJo has news, and she should be here in—” JoJo shoved open the door and flung herself into the room, dropped two boxes of Krispy Kreme donuts on the table, and raced through the room saying, “I gotta pee like a racehorse!”

  I thought about that peculiar statement while Rick opened the top box, took one and passed around the box. Through a mouth full of donut, Tandy murmured, “Dear God in heaven, they are Hot Nows. Thank you, Jesus, for the Krispy Kreme company, and may you bless them and JoJo forever.”

  I had a feeling he wasn’t really praying, so it might have been blasphemy. Or I thought that until I bit tentatively into a glazed ring of fried dough. It melted in my mouth. Sugary sweetness flared through me. I wanted to pray thanks too. It was, by far, the best thing I had ever eaten. It beat Leah’s apple uglies by a mile and a half, and her uglies had been declared the best pastries the churchwomen had ever made. It seemed the others in the room agreed, as there was no sound but moans of pleasure, the soft sounds of chewing, licking and the slurping of coffee. I drank my coffee from the Styrofoam cup and ate some more and thought that this donut might really be holy.

  I finished my donut and licked my fingers. Into the silence I asked, “How sure are we that all the girls were taken by the same people? I mean, we only have timing and age. What if someone heard about the first kidnappings and used the opportunity to take Mira? If someone had figured out that she had some kind of magic, she might be useful. Or maybe someone wanted control over the vampires.”

  Every eye came to me. It was unnerving.

  “What did I say?” I asked, taking a second donut.

  “Part of the briefing this morning,” Rick said, his face too rigid to be expressionless, “that we have yet to get to. Part of what we discussed last night after you left. In this room.”

  “I did a sweep,” T. Laine said, starting on her own second donut. “No electronics.”

  “Except we didn’t sweep the electronics themselves,” Occam said.

  “And there’s no way to sweep her gift,” JoJo said, coming back into the room, “since we don’t know what it is.”

  “And I didn’t set a circle at either meeting,” T. Laine said.

  None of which made any sense at all.

  They were all staring at me. Evaluating. Calculating. Accusing. I had been looked at this way by the church for years, so it didn’t surprise me. Too much. But, oddly, it hurt. I bit into the second donut and thought about what we had all been saying, trying to figure out what was going on and how to get beyond it. Whatever it was.

  “She doesn’t know what we’re talking about,” Tandy said, “except the accusation part. She understands that, as if she expected to be accused of something. Or, rather”—he tilted his head, his eyes half-lidded—“as if she has always been accused, all her life, and why should we be any different?”

  And then I did understand. They were accusing me of planting listening devices in their room or listening in some magical way. I stopped chewing and sat there, in the upholstered chair, thinking about the accusation, gooey dough in my mouth. Thinking about the conspiracy theorists in the compound of God’s Cloud of Glory Church.

  I felt something strange bubble in my chest, push its way up and out through me. It was that stra
nge sound again. I was laughing. It was a peculiar noise, sort of giggly and high-pitched, muffled by the donut in my mouth. I chewed and giggled some more, investigating this new feeling inside me. Giddy. Silly. The others looked baffled. I shook my head and managed to get the bite of donut swallowed, without choking, and drank some coffee to make the half-chewed bite go on down.

  “She had no idea what we were talking about,” Tandy said, “until she started laughing. And now she’s . . . I don’t know what to call it. Drunk on amusement?”

  “Nell?” Rick said.

  I sipped more coffee, still giggling. When I could speak, I said, “Conspiracy theorists.” Tandy started laughing too, one hand over his mouth as he chewed. Much more slowly, as they pieced together what I might have meant, the rest of them started laughing.

  Rick shook his head. “We are . . . conspiracy theorists? Like your cult is?”

  “Not my cult. I told you that.” I licked delicious sugar off my mouth. “And I told you that I’m capable of deductive reasoning. And you told me that you wanted me because I thought on both sides of a box, inside and outside. So either you trust me or you don’t.” My amusement died in an instant, and I glared at him to make my point, my church vernacular hitting its strongest twang in years. “But iffen you accuse me of cheating again, I’m outta here, slicker ’n goose grease. We clear on that?”