by Faith Hunter
“Shut up, Alex. I’m going to follow her home.”
“Copy that. Restore the cell to video when you get there so we have a record.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” I closed the cell’s Kevlar-protected cover and straddled Fang. I turned the key that started the bike, which was one reason why I wouldn’t buy it. Key starts were totally wussy. I rode a Harley, and a real Harley had that kick start. That’s all there was to it. Not that my opinion was shared by many, but it was mine and I was sticking to it.
• • •
Long miles of city driving and then country roads followed. I stayed out of her rearview, following by scent patterns and dead reckoning. All the way to Nell Ingram’s farm.
I turned off the curving road that switchbacked up the low mountain, or high hill, into the one-lane entrance of a dirt drive, and over a narrow bridge spanning a deep ditch sculpted to carry runoff. The mailbox had no name, only a number, 196, Nell’s address on her tax records. I keyed off the bike, rolling Fang behind a tree, where it would be hard to see from the road. The driveway angled back down and curved out of sight through trees that looked as though they had somehow escaped the mass deforestation of the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. The trees were colossal. Healthy. Some trees were bigger than three people could have wrapped their arms around. Farther down the drive and up the hill were even bigger trees. The leaf canopies merged high overhead, blocking out the sunlight and creating deep shadows that seemed to crawl across the ground as sunlight tried to filter through, just enough to make a bower for ferns and mosses and shade-loving plants. High overhead, the leaves rustled in a breeze I didn’t feel, standing so far below.
I had no idea why, but goose bumps rose on my arms and traveled down my legs, in a sensation like someone walking over my grave, a saying used by one of my housemothers at the Christian children’s home where I was raised. Creepy but not for any obvious reason. Standing behind the tree, I turned slowly around, taking in the hillside with all my senses. On the breeze I smelled rabbit, deer, turkey, dozens of bird varieties, black bear, early berries, late spring flowers, green tomatoes, herbs, okra buds, and bean plants, plants I remembered from the farm at the children’s home and from Molly’s garden. But there was that slightly different something on the breeze that made my unease increase. The hair on the back of my neck stood up. For no reason at all.
I had no cell signal, but I texted Alex to look at every sat map he could find and study the land and the mountain, a message that might get to him now but would certainly reach him the next time I was near a tower. I had a feeling that there was something hidden here, like a place of power, a terminal line, or some place that was holy to the tribal Americans. Some place I should see while I was here, though that was outside of my job.
In the distance, the sound of Nell’s truck went silent, leaving the air still and . . . and empty. No motors, no traffic, nothing sounded as the roar of the truck faded. I could have been transported back a hundred years or more. No cars, tractors, no airplanes overhead. As the silence deepened, birds began to call, a turkey buzzard soared on rising thermals. Dogs barked somewhere close, the happy welcoming sound of well-loved pets. I liked this place. My Beast liked this place.
Want to shift and hunt, she thought at me. Many deer are here, big and strong and fast.
When the vamp is safe, I thought back.
She sniffed, and I was pretty sure it was meant to be sarcastic. Vampires are good hunters.
I thought about that for a moment. They were, weren’t they? So what was Heyda hunting for when she let herself be taken prisoner without a fight? Or . . . what was she protecting? Or whom? I texted that question to Alex too.
The wind changed, and I smelled a human. Male. Wearing cologne to cover up the day’s sweat. He wasn’t close, and so I closed my eyes, letting the wind tell me where he was.
The topo maps of Nell’s property showed a ridge of rock on the other side of the road, just beyond her land. A likely hiding place for a deer hunter, except the season was wrong and only an idiot hunter would wear cologne that his prey could smell. Unless his prey was Nell.
Slipping into the trees, I moved into the deep shadows. It felt stupid, but the woods seemed to welcome me, until, as I moved away from Nell’s property, the trees became smaller, younger, maybe thirty or forty years old, and the feeling disappeared.
I’m not as silent when walking in human form as I am when walking in my four-footed Beast form, but I got close enough for my phone to manage a few photos. A man in camo was sitting in a deer stand, but he wasn’t holding a rifle. He was holding binoculars, and he was aiming them down Nell’s drive. Watching Nell’s house. The deer stand was off Nell’s property, near the juncture where her land met the church’s property and two other parcels of land. Was he protecting her? I had a feeling not, but I’d been wrong before. Weird stuff happened all the time. I moved closer through the brush, placing my feet silently among the leaves left from the previous autumn. I got a better scent, a head and lung full of the man and his feelings, emotions that emanated from his pores. Beneath the cologne, he smelled sweaty, angry, and something else, something I couldn’t quite name. I drew in the air again and this time the pheromones and scent chemicals found their way into my brain. If vicious had an odor, this was it. And possessive. That too.
I sent a third text to the Kid asking who owned the adjoining parcels of land, and to see if he could get driver’s license photos of the owners and their kids. Satisfied that I had done all I could for now, short of assaulting and then interrogating the spy, I eased away, back to Nell’s driveway and down the two-rut gravel lane, keeping to the shadows and angling in on the tree line.
As I walked, I felt the faintest of tingles through my boot soles, a magic permeating the ground. It came in waves, like the ocean onto the shore at low tide, a surge, rising and falling away. I figured only a witch or someone like me could sense it, but it was there, a low thrum of power and scent. It got stronger as I neared the opening in the trees ahead, a low rolling yard of maybe three acres.
The house was in the center of the acreage, set at an angle to the drive, showing the front and one side, and providing a glimpse of the rear corner. It was a ranch-style post-and-beam construction with wide-plank siding painted a fading green, white trim on the window and door frames, and dormers in the high-pitched front roof. It had a long front porch with rockers and a swing, the chain rusted. The house had been situated to take advantage of the view, the undulating hills and the distant vista of city buildings. The back porch was screened and narrow.
The acre-sized garden at the side of the house was fenced with chicken wire to keep out the rabbits and the deer. Even this early in the growing season, there were plants standing tall, flowering, and promising bounty. The lawn had been recently cut, the grass thick and green. I turned on my cell to record video again.
Three dogs announced me, barking like fools, according to Beast, but I had a feeling that Nell had known I was on her land anyway. I was still fifty feet from the house when she stepped from the front door, a shotgun aimed my way. “If it ain’t Miss Busted.” She sounded a lot more poised than most twenty-two-year-old women.
Her dogs caught my scent. As one, their tails dropped and they spread out from her feet, a semicircle of intent and threat. I could hear them growling, that low throaty sound that said I was about to be attacked.
“Yeah,” I said, holding my hands out to the side to show I wasn’t holding weapons. “Sorry to intrude.”
“Liar.”
I thought about that. She was right. I wasn’t sorry to intrude. I’d done it on purpose. “You know you got a guy in a deer stand up the hill”—I thumbed the direction—“watching your place?”
“He ain’t on my land, so I don’t care. If he comes onto my land, I’ll shoot him. You are on my land. Give me one reason I shouldn’t shoot you and give you to my dogs
.”
Her aim looked rock steady, and I believed her. But I wondered how such a tiny thing was going to handle the kick of the shotgun. I had tried polite words, information relating to her security, both usually effective in dealing with humans, and Nell Ingram wasn’t interested, but all I had was honesty.
“I told you. Four nights ago, Colonel Ernest Jackson and his so-called church kidnapped a female vampire named Heyda Cohen. You think she’s being raped. I think she’s being drained of her blood too. I intend to get her back.”
Nell’s fear increased, a ripple of unease so strong I could see it prickle over her skin. I’d have been able to smell her reaction if the breeze had permitted. But other than that, Nell didn’t move, didn’t speak. Birds called. The dogs circled closer to me, showing teeth, snarling. I didn’t want to hurt the dogs, two of them old beagle mixes and the other an old bird dog, but I would if attacked. Nell whistled softly and the dogs instantly stopped moving, but they didn’t take their eyes off me.
I wondered what the man in the deer stand was thinking about the standoff. I felt an itch between my shoulder blades, as if he had a scope on me even now. After the silence had stretched out far too long, Nell said, “Going onto the church property is a stupid move, but you don’t look stupid. You also don’t look easy to kill.” She frowned, thinking things through. “What do you want from me?”
“Everything. I want to know everything you know and remember about the compound, the people in it, and their habits. I want to know how they got off the property when the cops had the accesses guarded. I want to know if there are caves leading onto the church land. Then I want access to the compound through your property for my men. And I want to be able to retreat through your property when we’re done. And anything else you might have to offer or suggest.”
Nell laughed, the sound as stuttered and clogged as before. “Don’t want much, do you?”
Honesty seemed to be working, so I pushed ahead with it. “I want lots of stuff. Most of which will put you in danger from the church.”
“Woman, I been in trouble from God’s Cloud of Glory and the colonel ever since I turned twelve and he tried to marry me. Anything you can do to piss him off will just make my day.”
She dropped the weapon as her words penetrated my brain. “Marry you? At twelve?”
“Yeah. He’s an old pervert. Come on in. I got coffee going and food in the slow cooker. Hope you like chicken and dumplings. I missed lunch and I’m starving.”
“I’m always hungry. But twelve?” Nell didn’t smile, but she did call off her dogs. That and an offer to feed me was a start.
• • •
Nell knew stuff. Nell was like a font of knowledge and wisdom, strength and power, innocence and hard-won independence. I liked her instantly, which didn’t happen to me often. I sat at her antique kitchen table, the boards smooth from long use, the finish mostly gone and the grain of the wood satiny beneath my fingertips. She had an old boom box loaded up with CDs: jazz and blues and even some forty-year-old hard rock, which started while we set the table. And her chicken and dumplings smelled so good I wanted to cry. Trusting her for reasons that had everything to do with her magic and her calm self-assuredness, I turned off the video; I had no desire to record Nell Ingram. She was a private woman and I wanted to honor that.
Nell didn’t offer grace, and when I commented on that, considering her ultra-right-wing background, she said, “I believe in God. I just don’t know if I like him much. I sure don’t like the colonel’s God, but then Ernest Jackson’s going to hell someday. If I get lucky, I’ll be the one to send him there.”
She was fierce for such a tiny little thing. Sharp-faced, delicate, and lean, with long, slender, strong fingers and hair she had never cut, worn parted down the middle and hanging to her hips. She’d have been almost pretty, if she had tried to be. But Nell didn’t put on airs for anyone. Nell was just purely Nell. Pale-skinned where she wasn’t tanned, farmer-John-style clothes, work boots. Capable-looking. And, man, could she cook! The odors were enough to make Beast want to come out and chow down, the music selection was funky enough to make me want to dance, and Nell had cooked enough to feed herself for a week, which meant that there was plenty for me without the guilt of taking someone else’s food.
As I ate my second helping of flaky biscuitlike dumplings in thick chicken gravy, served up in green, hand-thrown pottery bowls big enough to double as horse troughs, Nell sketched what she remembered of the compound. I was able to overlay her sketch with the sat-map photos of the current compound, and quite a few of the buildings were unchanged, which helped a lot in the planning stage of a raid. She knew which building the colonel lived in and where the jail was. And best of all, she knew where the armaments were stored. “They keep ’em here”—she tapped the uneven rectangle that represented a building—“which is right next to the nursery. They know no one’s gonna blow up the weapons and risk killing all the children.”
“Yeah. That’s”—I thought through possibilities and discarded cruel, insane, and evil, to choose—“not unexpected.”
Nell snorted, and it wasn’t a ladylike snort; it was a hard, ferocious sound. “It’s the way cowards work.”
I didn’t disagree.
“You asked about caves,” she said. “They got several, but they’re used for storage. So far as I ever heard, they weren’t the kind that went anywhere. But there’s a long crevasse here.” She pointed at my sat map to a darker green area. I had thought it was just a different kind of tree growing close together so the leaves overlapped, but according to the topo map, she was right: it was a narrow ravine. “That’s how they get in and out. A crick runs along the bottom, then goes underground for a ways. It comes back out on the Philemons’ property, and the entrance can be seen from their house. There’s no way past. Trust me. The Philemon family are church-related, and they let the colonel use their vehicles in return for concessions.”
“Money?” I asked.
“Access to the womenfolk.” Her eyes went harder, a flint green. “Young womenfolk, the ones who don’t agree with the plans made for them by their men.”
“Oh,” I said softly. I had no idea what this woman had been through in her short life, but it sounded as though it might have been pretty horrible. Somehow she had escaped. She had survived. I was curious, but the expression on her face warned me not to intrude. I kept my questions and my sympathy to myself.
Nell knew the history of all the families who were members of the church, and showed me her family’s house on the church grounds. She also posited one reason why Heyda had gone with the colonel. “There’s a family named Cohen in the compound. If one of them was sick or in danger, or was confined to the punishment house, and if they were related, she mighta gone with the men willingly, thinking she could do something to help.”
“Punishment house?”
She tapped the drawing she had made, and when she spoke her voice was colder than any winter wind. “Here. Where the women are kept until they achieve the proper Scriptural attitude of obedience and do what they’re told.”
I took a chance and asked, “Did you do what you were told?”
Nell shot me a look of pure venom. “My life is none of your business.”
“Okay.” I sent another text to Alex to check out the Cohens, but so far, he hadn’t responded. When Nell realized that I wouldn’t bring up her former life again, she quickly became talkative and helpful, but all her reticence did was make me want to know more—a history I knew she wouldn’t share.
The very best thing Nell told me was about the old logging road that twisted through the woods from her property right into the heart of the church grounds. It curved around and under a ledge of rock and hadn’t been visible from cameras in the sky. “Last time I looked, which was this past winter, when we had a couple of feet of snow on the ground, they didn’t have the road blocked or booby-trapped, but
it’s grown up pretty bad. You’ll havta hoof it in.”
“This may make all the difference in saving the v—Mithran the colonel took prisoner.”
“Sure. One thing,” she said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “Vampires. Are they spawn of Satan? That’s what we were taught at the church. And if they’re devils, why help them? Why work for them?”
I gave her a halfhearted shrug. “I was taught the same thing. But I’ve met humans who are surely Satan’s children. And I’ve met vamps who are no worse than the best of us. Except for that whole needing-to-drink-human-blood thing.”
She grinned and slid her hands into the bib of her overalls. “I reckon that could be a mite off-puttin’.”
I expected her to ask if I’d ever been bitten, but she didn’t. Private to her core, was Nell. I walked to the door, where she shook my hand, hers feeling tiny but with a grip like a mule skinner’s. I said, “Thank you so much. I have no way of letting you know when we’ll get back here, what with no cell signal, but either tonight or tomorrow night.”
“I’m good for whenever, but you better take out my observer if you want this to go off in secret. I got no idea who it is, but it’s a good guess he reports to the church. Most folk hereabouts do.” She stuffed a plastic grocery bag into my hands, one filled with Ball jars of raw honey and preserves. “If he’s still there, he’ll think you got my name from someone in town and came for remedies or jelly.” She smiled shyly. “I make pretty good jellies, and my antioxidant tea is great for colds.”
I smothered my surprise at her use of the word antioxidant. Nell might talk like a country hick and wear clothes that swathed her in shapelessness, but she wasn’t stupid. Not at all. “In that case, I’ll pay my way,” I said, and placed two twenties on the table. Before she could object, I said, “The hospitality was free. I know that. But my partners will love the treats, so I’m paying for them. Period.” She smiled, and her face was transformed from merely almost pretty to downright lovely.