“And mad scientists,” JoJo said with a straight face.
“True,” Soul said. “I agree we have no hard evidence other than the presence of known and unknown paranormals scented there and the Tollivers owning this medical research facility; however, a pyro is coming after the Tollivers and the Tollivers may be pyros. We have circumstantial evidence pointing to this facility and want to leave no stone unturned.” She seemed to realize she was coiling her hair and placed her hands at her sides instead. “I know it isn’t safe for you to read deeply,” Soul said to me, “but if you could read specifically for the traces you picked up in the ground at the crime scenes, it might help.”
“What do special agents with children at home do when they have a case like this, that requires long hours?”
Soul looked perplexed at my non sequitur. “Woolgathering again, Ingram?”
I said, “Yes, I’ll do the reading. No, not shearing sheep. What do people do with their children?”
“They have family. Spouses. Or day care,” Soul said.
“Day care is for babies. What about a twelve-year-old who can’t stay alone at night. What about that?”
Occam was watching me with sharp eyes. “Nell, sugar, you talking about Mindy?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“You’re gonna adopt that girl to keep her safe.” His mouth spread into a smile, his dimple peeking out on the side. “I’m proud of you, Nellie.”
I scowled. What he said was nice, but I wasn’t sure I wanted anyone to be proud of me for something I should have started months ago.
“We would have to make concessions with your schedule,” Rick said.
“In an emergency, a child of twelve or older could sleep here while you pull paperwork hours,” JoJo said. “I’d never tell.”
Rick and Soul exchanged a look that I couldn’t interpret. As a child raised in God’s Cloud of Glory Church, I had gotten pretty good at reading body language, but some things were beyond me. Rick said, “We’ll chat once you know if this will be a conflict or a problem. For now, I’d like you to go read the land near DNAKeys.”
“I’ll go with,” Occam said, too casually, too offhand.
JoJo coughed into her hand, burying the words, “Captain Obvious,” in the fake cough.
Without looking at him, knowing my face was flaming, I got up and left the conference room, and then HQ. Outside, the weather was dry and warm. It would get up to sixty tomorrow as the cold front moved off and a front from Southern California moved in, desert dry. Weather in the South—you don’t like it today, wait a couple days and the entire season will change.
I threw my gear into the space behind the seat and climbed in. Gunned my C10 out of the parking lot and out toward Rutledge Pike. Within a few minutes, I spotted Occam’s headlights in my rearview mirror. My cell rang. I glanced at it, not surprised to see Occam’s number. I punched answer and put it on speaker. “Ingram,” I said, setting the tone for conversation.
Occam hesitated at the name. “Ingram. I apologize for anything untoward I may have said or done. Sometimes I’m jist stupid. And my cat is stupider.”
I smiled out into the night, remembering him sitting on the floor, blocking the hallway. Remembered his cat scent-marking me, claiming me. “Apology accepted.”
“I was trying to find a time when we could chat, face-to-face. In private.”
“We’re pretty private right now.”
I heard him sigh. “I reckon we are.” He sounded mighty Texan in that moment. “You going to date Ben Aden?”
“No. Ben’s human. Ben needs a human wife. I’m not human.” I scowled out at the world through the windshield. “I plan on having a chat with my parents about being not human.”
“And Mud ain’t human either? So you figure you might have to shelter her.”
“Correct.”
“I’m good with that. You gonna date me?”
Was I? I thought again about what that might mean. It made my insides clench. But that was fear talking and uncertainty and distrust that hadn’t been earned. “Dinner and a movie,” I said softly, “in a theater. The first night we have off at the same time.”
“Steak?”
“Pizza. And a comedy.”
“Chick flick,” he said. His tone was only slightly scathing.
I smiled and changed lanes. His headlights followed. “If you don’t like comedy I’ll go for historical drama or even something like Star Wars.”
“Okay. I can make that happen.” His tone was smiling. That might not be a real thing, but I could hear it nonetheless.
“And, despite the approval already given by Pea, what if an older, more experienced grindylow is against us . . .” I didn’t know what to call it, but settled on, “. . . dating. Pea’s a baby still.”
“That won’t be a problem, Nell, sugar.” He sounded pleased, maybe a tad smug.
“Yeah,” I said. Because I wasn’t human and so might be unable to contract the were-taint, the prion that caused were-ism. “Hey, Occam. I put in for a car ages ago. How do I get it approved and make sure it has heated seats?”
“JoJo can make that happen.”
“Yeah? JoJo can do anything.”
“JoJo is the queen of making things happen, sugar.”
THIRTEEN
I pulled off the narrow private road on the far side of House Mountain and backed into a weed-covered drive, about half a mile from the place where Rick and Occam had parked last time. Maybe the distance would give us some protection from spying eyes who might remember the cars or surveillance equipment that the cats might have missed. Occam pulled in behind me, his car facing out too. There would be no time-consuming three-point turns to slow down our escape route if we needed out fast.
The lack of streetlights and the cloudy skies left the night darker than the armpit of hell—a saying of Daddy’s that seemed appropriate. I got out, carrying my gobag, in which I had placed the psy-meter 2.0, a bottle of water, and a protein bar. I slung my pink blanket over a shoulder, seated my weapon, and took the flashlight in one hand, but off. I should have brought the low-light/IR headgear. I’d surely remember next time. This was one reason I was still a probie. I didn’t always plan ahead.
In the dark, I crossed the road into the woods. Occam would be along in cat form when he could, and with his cat vision, I’d be easy to find. Pressing the light against my belly, I turned it on.
Shielding the beam, I found a rabbit trail into the woods, thankful that most barbed and poisonous plants would be dormant. A thin fog was growing up around me, created by the cold earth and the slow-moving, warmer weather front.
Deep in the woods, the scent of pine needles and dead fir trees and loamy soil strong in my nose, I spread my blanket and sat, cross-legged. Without the flashlight, my eyes adjusted and I could see the distant lights of the DNAKeys compound. On my cell phone map, I had thought the area was all uphill, but the lights seemed to come from belowground, so the compound was in a hollow—what I had grown up calling a “holler,” a fold in the mountain, visible only from this angle.
I tested the psy-meter to the four compass points, getting a baseline normal, then pointed it at the lights. I got baseline normal again and pushed a button to put the unit to sleep. Holding it on my lap, I relaxed and put one fingertip on the earth, easing into the land in the way T. Laine had suggested not so long ago. Like on Soulwood, the land here was dormant, sleeping, but it seemed weak and . . . maybe stupid wasn’t a nice word but by comparison to Soulwood it was both. My woods were growing more powerful, more aware, and therefore more intelligent year by year. This place was not even half-aware. The land was no threat to me, and so I placed my palm flat, reading deeper, wider. I searched through the trees, finding so many dead that it gave me pause. There was a disproportionally high number of dead pine and Douglas fir trees, and a lively army of bark beetles hibernating just
below the surface of the trees’ outer skins. I moved among the trees, letting my consciousness touch here and there, giving a bump of energy to a tree that was still on the brink of death but hadn’t crested the hill. And another tree. And another. But there were so many trees on that cliff face of dying that I would never be able to save them all. Half of this forest was dying and there was nothing I could do short of claiming the land and . . . well, I wasn’t going to kill a human to save the conifers.
Unsettled, I turned my attention elsewhere and searched the shape of the land, reaching out for the creatures moving upon it, sleeping on it, or hibernating below it in dens. I reached out and out. There were bear and lynx and dozens of deer. Skunk in a den. Squirrels high in trees. Birds sleeping in trees and thickets. I moved through the ground, looking for buried electronic devices and electrical lines, and then up, into the air, searching for the same, plotting out the electrical and water that supplied the corporation. I found four places with minute changes in the electromagnetic ambience that seemed likely locations for cameras or alarms. And there was the larger incongruity that would be DNAKeys.
I was sensing things I hadn’t before. Or maybe identifying things that I hadn’t recognized before. The burning by Devin and healing by Soulwood had done something to me on a deeper level than just leaves and twigs and sprouts.
I marked in my mind where the compound was and explored its outlines, its parking lots, walking trails, and outdoor pens. The pens were massive, with tall mesh fences and taller mesh roofs. The building had basements, two deep. There was a familiar but fuzzy sensation in the basement levels, as if something was interfering with my perception. Rebar? The thickness of the basement walls? I pulled away for now. I’d need to get closer to be sure my impressions were correct.
Changing direction, I pressed my awareness out and down, into the heart of the small mountain. I found rock and water, the shattered stone of an ancient mountain, slab upon fractured slab, broken and splintered and rotting back to sand. The water table was higher than I might have expected and the earth’s crust thinner. The water in many places was hot and rising through cracks in the earth, as if struggling to become hot springs. I eased back to the surface, clasped my hands together, and thought about that.
Hot underground water was produced when water came into contact with magma (molten rock) and was heated. It became hot springs when that hot water rose to the surface. The town of Hot Springs, named after the heated water that boiled up to the surface there, was only a stone’s throw from Asheville, North Carolina, which was a short distance as the bird flies from Knoxville, so the wider region had geothermal activity.
Most geothermal systems were near volcanoes that had been active in the past, or were still active, but there was no known volcanic activity in this immediate area. Soooo. What had caused this thermic change?
Soulwood had recently forced heat through the ground when I was hypothermic. Had magma risen closer to the surface under the command of Soulwood, just to warm me? If so, had allowing magma closer to the surface caused some kind of unexpected instability? Should I—could I—do anything about it? If I had caused the change in the earth’s temperature, had I also caused the death of the trees by making the environment a better place for the beetles to live? Robert K. Merton’s thoughts about unintended consequences danced through my mind.
Disconcerted and uncertain, I got up, turned on my flash, and carried my blanket deeper into the woods. I read the land by the psy-meter 2.0 again and got the same levels. My personal, less scientific reading confirmed the readings as well. I wondered if I should walk deeper in the woods for a closer reading, if I could do so safely, and decided that I’d know if a stranger came toward me. But the thought of being caught was distressing. I had been given a basic class on what to do if I was ever held captive by a dangerous subject, but the lesson at PsyLED Spook School had done little to salve my fear of attack. Not that I was afraid of being hurt while in the woods—any woods, anywhere—but I didn’t want to kill anyone just because they were stupid.
Taking my own fears in hand, I gathered up my supplies and walked deeper into the woods, the trees catching stiff branches in my hair, as if reaching out to me as I passed. I knew they weren’t doing that. I knew it. But it still felt a little spooky as the fingers of dead trees touched me.
As I was detangling a branch from my hair, I heard a sound like a breath behind me, and I whirled to look back. Occam, in cat form, was crouched on the narrow path, leopard paws giving him a silent approach in the dark, his eyes glowing a golden brown. He wasn’t stalking me like food. Not exactly. I knew not to give in to the shiver that raced up my back like a dash of little spiders. I also knew not to run, not from an apex predator, even one with a human mind. Instead I aimed the flash at him, all forty-eight hundred lumens, right in his eyes, and hissed at him, “I don’t like being stalked even in fun, you dang cat. If you’uns gonna track me, you’d be a heap better in the trees.”
Occam turned his face away, squinted, and huffed.
“I need to get a little closer to the compound.” Much closer than Rick and Occam had gotten.
Occam looked toward the distant lights and back to me. He shook his head slowly back and forth, telling me getting closer wasn’t a good idea.
I ignored him. “Where’s Pea?”
He huffed again and looked up, over my head. I shifted the light that way and caught a glimpse of a tiny, neon green critter before she jerked away from the light. She chittered and leaped down, landing on Occam’s back. The big-cat dropped and rolled, the two wrestling and play-fighting with hisses and spits and slashes of claws. I shook my head, rolled my shoulders to get rid of the nonexistent spiders, and moved on down the pathway to the crest of the hollow, where the compound lights trailed through the barren and dead trees.
I spread my blanket out again. It was damp from contact with the ground, but I sat on it anyway and hugged my knees. I was cold and wished I had brought my mug with me, though the scent of coffee might have alerted any possible canines in the compound. Coffee is strong and might carry far on the night air.
I sighed quietly and tested the land with the psy-meter. Level three psysitope measured into the high midrange. Psysitope one rose about half that much, and psysitope two was erratic. Psysitope four—the one that indicated the paranormal creature burning the grass—stayed nearly at zero. The numbers were off for any specific paranormal creature, but seemed fine for a mixed bag of them.
Not knowing what this might mean, I turned off the machine and pressed the tips of both index fingers onto the ground. I slid through the land, closer and closer to the compound, careful to search out the telltale hints of the presence of magical danger, magical attacks, magical anything. There was nothing. No witches had set a working or curse into the ground. No plants or trees were burned and dying. This close, however, I could discern what had made me think of fuzzy familiarity among the presence of guards. There were four humans and a were-creature patrolling the grounds, and I thought the were-creature might be a wolf. Something dog-like at any rate.
There were more were-creatures in the basements. And the maggoty feel of vampires. The vampires were on the move, first in one room and then in another. I wasn’t able to tell if they moved by choice or by force. And then I caught the sensation/presence/feel of blood. My bloodlust woke with a start. Blood. So much blood. Enough blood to feed the land, to heal the land, to—
I yanked myself back to the surface, breathing deeply, reining in the need to take blood and feed the land. Forcing it down, gulping it back. Why would there be that much blood? Gallons of it. And not safely within bodies, but loose and free and . . . I hugged myself again, forcing down the need to take it all. When I had it under control, and the sweats had passed and left me chilled, I put one finger on the ground and checked the position of the guards again. Still in the same area. They hadn’t sensed me or smelled me or come hunting for me. It wa
s taking too long. Too long. But I needed to be sure we were safe before we moved back to the vehicles.
I eased out of the land to sense warmth at my side. My elbow hit Occam’s ears. He had pressed up against me, the way wolves might in the alpha’s den. His body warmth was higher than mine and while I often came back to the surface to find myself feeling deeply chilled, this time I was warm. I rested my hand on his head and he snuffled my fingers, licking once. I petted his ears. Occam sighed and pressed against me. “Thank you’un for keeping me warm,” I whispered.
The wind changed, blowing harder up the hill and directly at us. Occam was on his feet in an instant, sniffing, nose in the air. He began to growl, the sound a vibration I could feel through my backside on the ground. I pulled myself to my feet and gripped the cat’s ear tab firmly to get his attention. He whined softly and tilted his big head up at me. “You smelling weres?”
Occam dropped his head and raised it in a nod that was all too human on the big-cat.
“Okay. Let’s get back to the vehicles. You lead the way. I’ll follow,” I said, to give him a job that would keep his cat brain occupied. With the flash on but shielded, I kept him in sight as we wended out through the dying woods. Minutes later, Occam jumped away from the path and I stumbled onto the road, where I spotted our vehicles.
Standing in the edge of the trees, I watched as Occam leaped over the hood of his fancy car and I felt the magic of his change start. I was tired. More tired than I expected to be. I was often full of energy after reading Soulwood, but here, I was enervated. I had to wonder if my recent healing, the dying trees at the crime scenes, the rising boiling water, and the presence of all that blood in the compound had affected my body as much as they had my psyche. And I had to wonder what kind of torture room had let so much blood pool.
I yanked my thoughts away from the possibilities and forced my feet to lift and carry me forward, knowing I wasn’t safe, not yet, not until I was back at HQ. All that blood . . . I stowed my gear, fell into my truck, and drove into the street before putting the Chevy in park to wait. I laid my head on the headrest and closed my eyes, the engine rumbling quietly up through the seat, soothing.