Blood of the Earth

by Faith Hunter

  Rick stopped breathing entirely.

  “I think they were drinking from and eating men and drinking from and breeding with women, looking for useful bloodlines.” I thought about my half sib Zebulun, from Brother Ephraim, but I didn’t say his name. “Maybe that’s how they make more dogs.”

  “Yes,” he said, the word slow and hissing with shock. “That makes sense. But they’re safe now.”

  “Safe?” I asked, thinking about Esther. “How can you ever be safe again after something like that?”

  From the front seat, T. Laine said softly, “Your mama survived. And so has Esther. I met them both at the hospital when they went to see your daddy today.”

  I hadn’t realized that T. Laine was even in the van. JoJo as well.

  T. Laine said, “The women in your family are strong, Nell. And we’ll—we all will—see to it that the women are offered comprehensive treatment, physical and mental.”

  I shook my head. “Wounds don’t always heal.” Exhausted, I curled in my coat on the van seat, my potted plant in my arms. Before sleep took me under again, I saw car lights pull in behind us, and heard voices talking. But I was too tired to care what they were saying.

  * * *

  I woke to the feel of movement beneath me and heard Rick ask, “How many vehicles?”

  “I see five cars, most sedans,” JoJo said, her fingers tapping fast, “and three RVs in various states of disrepair on the vid. And one older eighteen-wheeler. The videos the cats got for you are all fuzzy and won’t make it through the court system, having been downloaded from a leopard cam, but some appear to be the same make and model as the vehicles the feds were looking for from the Stubbins farm. I’m running the tag numbers the cats got for you now.”

  T. Laine said, “I can throw a pre-prepared sleepy time spell over the grounds. It’s not big enough or strong enough to put the occupants unconscious, but I can make them drowsy enough to ignore most anything, up to a house fire.”

  The van slowed and bumped over rough ground before coming to a halt. The door opened, T. Laine slipped out into the darkness, leaving the sliding door open. The van rocked as two big cats—Paka and Occam—leaped inside. I sat up, pulled my fingers out of the soil, where they had migrated in my sleep. I stretched and checked my cell phone, to see that three hours had passed. Occam sat at my feet and stared at me, and I said, “You’re a pretty cat, Occam.” He yawned to show me his teeth in agreement.

  Paka vocalized, a demanding sound, and butted Rick’s leg.

  “No, Paka,” Rick said. “We don’t have enough people. We have to wait for the hostage negotiator and SWAT backup.” She butted him again, harder, and when he swatted her head, she sank her claws into his thigh. Rick cursed and jumped from the van, cursing again, steamy breath caught in the gleam of headlights. I covered my mouth. It shouldn’t have been funny, but it was.

  “Why is the cat harming him?” a woman’s voice asked, the syllables stilted and old-fashioned sounding. I knew, without looking, that it was a vampire, and pulled my feet back onto the seat in case one of them came inside the van. Standing outside were the blond and redheaded vampires from Mrs. Clayton’s house. Surprise laced through me like the roots in the pot I was holding.

  “She says we should hurry,” Rick said, his tone exasperated. “But we need Joshua in the room with her in order to have evidence worthy of charges. And we need armed law enforcement backup.”

  “We have waited over an hour for your law officers,” she said. “We offered to be your backup.” I peeked over the seat to see the blond-haired vampire, long and lanky and dangerous looking, with her fangs out and her eyes black. When she spoke, her breath didn’t steam in the night air, which was unnerving. “We know where Mira is,” she said. “We are done waiting.” She turned to the dark and said, “We go. Now.”

  “Just in time.” T. Laine appeared out of the night, startling even the vampire, who leaped back a dozen feet into the dark. T. Laine chuckled at the sight. She had been under a don’t-see-me spell and even the vampires hadn’t sensed her. “Sleepy time spell is in place, boss. Everyone went to bed and the music was muted. There’s one man on the back porch of the house, smoking weed. He might be one of the Stubbinses, if the man in the social media photos grew a beard and started going gray.” She stepped in front of the blond vampire and turned her back, which the vampire didn’t like. The vamp snarled silently. I had a feeling that T. Laine was annoying her on purpose.

  “And the best part?” T. Laine said. “Joshua just headed for the shed. According to what I overheard Joshua tell the man on the porch, Jackie doesn’t know Joshua and his group took the girl. But they’re expecting Jackie to find them eventually, at which point they plan to kill him and take over the church. Nell’s factions are getting smaller and more murderous.”

  “I have all the cams integrated,” JoJo said from the front passenger seat. “I can send the feds and the local law notice that we’re ready to move.”

  “Do it,” Rick said. “Paka, Occam, get into place. On a three click.” He demonstrated by clicking something over his mike three times. The sound came from Occam’s neck, where a headset was wired next to his gobag. Occam and Paka chuffed and vanished into the night, leaving the van rocking again. “You two.” He pointed to the vampires. “There will be no draining of anyone. He will be arrested and taken into custody.”

  The female vampire bowed from the waist, but it looked mocking. “The Mithran vampires of Blood Master Ming of Clan Glass do not drink down humans.” I didn’t know why, but it sounded like a lie.

  The vampires raced into the shadows, Rick beside them. T. Laine ran in their wake, holding something round and shiny in her hand, like a Christmas tree ornament. JoJo, left in the van with me, tapped keys and muttered to herself.

  “Where’s Tandy?” I asked her.

  “Back at the hotel. The sheriff’s deputies used him on approach to the warehouse they took down, and it . . . it was hard on him.” She glanced up from the screen, her eyes glowing in the LED light. Her fingers never stopped tapping.

  “Did they get Jackson Jr.?”

  “No.”

  I frowned. Something seemed wrong about that, but I put it away for now. I was too tired to make sense of it all. I was alone, but for JoJo, and the footsteps of the vampires and the other members of Unit Eighteen were quickly out of range. To find them I would have to put my hands into the earth, and I didn’t think I could. But JoJo could see what they were doing, each little camera on her screen in its own little block. I leaned closer, watching. I followed them all, through the dark. Saw it when Occam and Paka leaped to the roof of a shed, four-legged. When T. Laine pulled back her arm, ready to release her ornament, I realized it was a spell to batter down the door. In the same instant, caught on T. Laine’s camera, the two vampires gripped a vine-made crack in the wall, shoving their strong fingers along the vines and into the old, dry wood. Three clicks sounded over the computer.

  “Takedown,” JoJo muttered.

  The takedown was fast and violent. The ornament ram hit the door with a splintering bang, and Rick slammed the door with his shoulder, just as the vampires ripped one wall off the shed. The two cats leaped inside from a shuttered side window, wood and glass smashing down together. It was a fast-moving montage of action and sound. I saw Occam’s front legs, stretched into a leap, as his claws hooked into a man and bowled him down. He had Joshua Purdy on the ground.

  Joshua, I thought. I had been chasing Joshua, but . . . where was Dawson? And Jackie? They should have been at the warehouse. Something is wrong with this.

  The blond vampire twisted the metal shackles off the prisoner. The other one ripped his own arm with his fangs and held it to Mira’s mouth. Nearly bloodless, she didn’t respond at first. And then her eyes opened wide and she gripped his arm, sinking her own teeth—long and pointed all around like a shark’s—in and sucking. The vampire sai
d something in a foreign tongue, and I knew it was a pained curse, even without knowing or hearing the language.

  I breathed out with a smile. Mira was a blood drinker of some sort. They hadn’t told us that. But she was safe. The other vampire, the blond one, bit into Joshua’s neck and sucked. JoJo said, “Blood to blood. Now the fangheads will know everything Joshua knows.”

  “That’s not a myth?” I asked. “Drinking blood gives vampires control of their victims’ minds?”

  “Absolutely.” JoJo frowned and looked over the seat back to me. “Well, maybe not the dogs. They did keep fangheads prisoner, which is pretty much unheard-of in the vamp world. So maybe vamps can’t—”

  The front doors of the car ripped open. A dark arm grabbed JoJo and her computer and threw her from the van. She landed ten feet away with a thump and a crack of broken plastic. JoJo didn’t make a sound. As if I moved in taffy, too, too slow, I swiveled on my seat and reached for the van’s side door.

  The front doors closed with bangs. The engine started. The dark form in the passenger seat shoved me back and belted me in place as the van spun rocks and careened in a tight circle. With a roar of exhaust that blew inside, choking, it tore toward the road, knocking me back and forth, into the door and, without the seat belt, I’d have landed in the floor, rolling awkwardly.

  I heard a schnick and the words, “I was after the girl that Joshua took from me, but you’ll do. Move and I’ll shoot your kneecap. Your blood and body will be just as good either way, wounded and gimpy forever or not.”

  In the dim greenish lights of the dash, I saw a hand adjust the rearview mirror, followed by a semiautomatic handgun pointed at me. On the other end of the gun was Jackie.

  But he was different. Leaner. Joints more bulky. Short, midnight black hair covered his body like a thin coat, all except his face, which was pale as the moon rising over the treetops. He laughed, the sound coughing, and I saw a mouth full of pointed teeth, dog teeth, canines white and impossibly sharp. Shock struck through me like lightning, painful and heated. In the passenger seat was Simon Dawson Jr. But Dawson was mostly dog now, black fur and pointed muzzle, black nose. Glittering eyes. Pointed, tall ears. Lots of teeth, long and razor sharp.

  The van’s tires hit the highway and I knew I was lost to Occam, T. Laine, Rick, and Paka, who might have saved me. And JoJo was hurt.

  EIGHTEEN

  Jackie drove with one hand on the wheel and one hand holding a gun on me. Dawson stared at me like I was a steak, a red glow in his eyes. I felt in the seat crack for my cell phone, but it must have slid when the van skidded and fishtailed. My laptop was on the floor on the other side of the van, too far away to reach in a single lunge before I was shot dead. If I were closer I could bean the driver on the head with my geraniums, but I’d never get a backhanded hit to the front seat before Dawson simply took the clay pot away. Which left me with my wits and my crafty tongue. I figured that meant I was gonna die.

  I heard a cell ring and Jackie’s eyes focused on me in the rearview. He must have liked what he saw, because he put the gun down, glanced at the screen and answered. “Roxy. We didn’t get her. But we did get the little church girl. Nell. Right.” Jackie listened and said, “That might work. Since it was PsyLED, they might agree to an exchange.” Jackie laughed, ended the call with a push of his thumb. The van sliding, rocking, he pulled over.

  Moving faster than anything human ever could, he braked and was over the seat, both hands gripping my elbows, clamping them to the seat. Beside him, Dawson used a roll of duct tape to adhere me to the seat, panting as he pulled long lengths around me with that particular stripping sound of heavy tape, his hands more paws than human. When Dawson was done, Jackie patted me on the cheek, and I realized that his hands were clawed too, like a dog’s paws—nonretractile claws, rigid and pointed. Like Dawson, his ears were pointed and situated high on his head. His nose was black and coarse, though unlike his friend’s, still mostly human shaped. I remembered the smell of dog pee on the plants at Mira’s house and all over the Stubbins farm. I had indeed found the dogs.

  Dawson, back in the passenger seat, whuffed. He appeared to have changed completely to dog now, and he clawed the remains of clothes and shoes away from him, to the floor.

  Jackie leaned in and sniffed me. “You smell like a werecat.”

  “What’s it to you, dog?” I asked, thinking it might not be the smartest thing I ever did, picking on a black dog in some kind of partial shift.

  Jackie’s shoulders rose high, his nose wrinkling and his eyes going red. “Not just a dog. Not a pet. Nothing so common,” he growled, the last word dripping in malice. “We are Welsh gwyllgi.” The word sounded a bit like gwee-shee, and it was one in the long list of shifter dogs I had studied. One of the worst ones.

  His nose moved along under my hair and up near my ear, sniffing, his breath heated and fast. “We like the stink of fear.” Which I figured meant he really liked the way I smelled because I was flat-out terrified. He chuckled again, and pulled back, so I was reflected in his red-eyed stare, my own eyes wide. “Think of us as the faerie dog’s scarier, darker cousin, but with a much better title—the dog of darrrknesssss.” The last word came out as a growl, and spittle flew from his lips, hot and stinking of old meat.

  I said nothing, and wished I could turn my gaze away, but that wasn’t happening.

  “You get to be a carrot, woman. And when we get the girl back, and the PsyLED team buried six feet under, I’ll turn you over to Joshua and we’ll get your land for our own, a safe place to hunt and kill. And you will bear our young, gwyllgi to build our pack.” With that, he eased away from me, returned to his seat, pulling the van back onto the road and into the night, misshapen hands on the wheel, his claws tapping on it. If fear sweat hadn’t been soaking my skin, I might have patted myself on the back for my deductions, but all I wanted was to throw up.

  I tried to analyze what he had said. The girl had to be Mira. I had a feeling that he didn’t know about the vampires who had come along to rescue Mira, and I had to wonder why he hadn’t smelled them, despite his dog nose, unless the vampires had been downwind from him. They had never been inside the van.

  But there was no way Mira was going to be exchanged for me. It sounded as if T. Laine had been right. Jackie didn’t know that Joshua was the one who had taken Mira from him. I had to assume he didn’t know that the LEOs had raided the auto repair shop. Things I knew, that they didn’t know, could give me leverage. But claws and fangs meant they would always have the upper hand.

  I wondered if the vampires had drunk enough of Joshua’s blood to get information out of him. If so, it was my fondest hope that the vampire drinking him down got so excited that Joshua got drained by accident. Of course, I also guessed that Joshua didn’t taste too good, so that wasn’t likely to happen. I had better use good ol’ Josh now. I turned on my strongest churchwoman accent.

  “Vampires was part of the raiding party, Jackie. And they done got Joshua Purdy.”

  The van swerved slightly before Jackie righted it. I’d hit a bull’s-eye. “What?” he said, his voice a register lower.

  “Joshua is the one who took Mira Clayton away from you, with help, of course. Him and . . .” I thought fast and found a twisted lie that might work. “. . . and probably the Dawsons. Simon here”—I kicked the front seat—“him and his daddy were both drinking on Mira with Joshua.”

  Simon made a doggy squeak of denial.

  “Don’t lie, dog,” I said. “The PsyLED agents and vampires busted in. They got Mira. They got Joshua. They put all a your dogs to sleep so they can’t fight and they’re in custody right now. More important, no way will Joshua hold out against vampires. Everyone knows they can use compulsion to learn anything they want, and these vampires ain’t chained. Even gwyllgi can’t hold out against vampires who ain’t prisoners.” I didn’t care that I might be lying. I needed to sow dissension. Divide and co
nquer.

  Jackie growled, the note so low and deep it rattled the metal of the van. “Not against a gwyllgi,” he said. “Vampires are nothing in the face of one of us.”

  Softer, speaking slowly, the way a good churchwoman should, I said, “They got two master vampires to drink him down,” which might not be a lie, because I had no idea how powerful the vamps were, “and that means they’ll quick-like know everything he knows. Everything, Jackie. Joshua is the same kind of creature you are? It won’t help him. Not against two master vamps and him a prisoner. Table’s turned, Jackie. The vamps is in charge.” I remembered what he had said on the phone. “He knows who and what Roxy is? And where Roxy is?” I let my voice drop softer, almost into a whisper. “They’ll know. Does Joshua know about your hideouts and your money?” I asked, sowing division in the ranks. And then I remembered one important thing. “And your friend here, the outcast Dawson.” I tilted my jaw at the dog in the front seat. “Does he know you shot his daddy?” I pressed, remembering what reading the land had shown me, “Dawson Sr.?” I was risking everything on words, but they felt right, and Jackie flinched, just the smallest bit. “Shot him dead with silver shot?” Beside him, Simon the dog growled long and low and looked at Jackie with his hellfire eyes.

  “Silver is the only thing that kills your kind, ain’t it? I got me a feeling that you been working against your old friends, and against HST.” I lowered my voice. “Was Joshua close enough to the Human Speakers to know who made the trips to the Turks and Caicos Islands to set up the bank accounts? Will Joshua give away all your hidey-holes? Will he tell them vampires what you are? Is anything safe, Jackie?” I had paraphrased the last line from a movie I had watched. Dawson panted. The smell of wet dog and dog breath filled the van, rank and sick.