Occam said, “I didn’t do anything, Nell, sugar.”
I smiled. “You can let go now, I think,” I whispered. The knight gave a formal nod and the roots let go of my hand, pulling out of my finger. I hissed with pain and my blood ran into the potted Soulwood soil.
“You’re bleedin’,” Occam said.
In my vision, or whatever this was, the Green Knight reached out and held his gauntleted hand beneath mine, as if capturing my blood in his steel-covered palm. I felt my blood land in the pot and feed the root. That might be bad...
“I’m taking you to the hospital,” Occam said, his tone grim.
“No. Not needed. I’m really okay,” I said softly, opening my eyes. Even my throat was better, though I was thirsty. I pushed back from Occam and placed the plant pot on the ground. “I’d been touching dirt in the barn and paddocks, but pasture soil is different. It’s alive in ways that barn dirt isn’t. I was stupid. I shoulda touched grass leaves first, then the soil. I’ll be fine.”Leaves then soil. Always.
“You’re not fine,” he cat-growled. “Your heart was racing and you were breathing too fast and you were cold as death.” His hand touched my face as if testing my temperature. “Yousmelled like you were dying.” His eyes were glowing the bright golden amber of his cat. It wasn’t the full moon, but he was still close to losing control of his were-creature. Which would be very bad at a crime scene with humans all around, armed security everywhere.
I reached up with my good hand and gripped the back of his head, pulling him close and kissing him. In the dark, kneeling in the dirt, behind a barn. It was a sweet, clinging kiss, lips to lips, warm and tender and giving. When I pulled away, his eyes were human again. I smiled up at him. “I’m okay, cat-man,” I said softly. “And we have a job to do.”
“Woman, you scared me silly.”
“Scared me too. And after this case, I have a lot of thinking to do about the vampire tree. But for now, let’s get the job done.”
“You sure?” When I nodded, Occam got to his feet and lifted me to mine, cat-strong, cat-graceful, and pulled me close in the night. Into my ear, he said, “How ’bout you don’t scare me again tonight. Or ever. I might have nine lives, but you surely scared one outta me jist now.”
“Nine lives,” I said, smiling at the cat-lore comment and pointing. “We need to make sure no horses have access to that pasture. There’s a lot ofdeath and decayin it.”
“Pacillo moved all the horses earlier. I might need to find out why he emptied that particular one.”
I stood on my own. “Good idea.”
“He offered to drive us across the acreage in one of the farm’s golf carts, so you can read the land.”
Sounding mostly normal, I said, “I think that would be lovely. A chauffeured moonlight ride in a golf cart through the countryside with my cat-man.”
He hugged me and his arms betrayed the depth of his relief. “This is harder than I thought it would be,” Occam murmured.
“What’s harder?” I asked.
“Being in love with my partner.” He chuffed in restrained anger. “Watching her get hurt.”
“There’s good and bad in everything,” I said.
Including having a potted tree for a protector. One that did indeed have some kind of paranormal ability to talk to its other part over many miles. I remembered seeing the knight drizzle green stuff from his fingers just before he took my blood. The vampire tree was trying to tell me something important. Had the green stuff been Soulwood soil, a protection as I read the earth?
I needed to figure out what to do about the Green Knight. It protected me, but it wasn’t under my control. The vampire tree had killed before. It could, probably would, kill again.
What if it decided Occam was a danger to me? Or Mud? To keep that from happening, I needed to claim the vampire tree. Or, if that wasn’t possible, I might need to kill it.
SEVEN
Pacillo knew the farm, every nook and cranny, and every horse in every pasture. He would roll us up to a gate that I couldn’t see and Occam would hop out, open the gate, let us roll through, and then close the gate. Even in the pitch-black dark, Pacillo could find every springhead, rocky outcrop, ditch, patch of trees, access trail, horse trail, mud hole, and salt block. At each stop, I got out holding my cell phone as if I was using it to read the land, drizzled a few grains of Soulwood soil onto the ground, and touched the grass with one fingertip, one that hadn’t been harmed. The injured ones were still tender and I hadn’t had the guts to look yet. I wasn’t using enough soil, my power, or any of my blood that might accidentally claim the land. And I was touching only leaves, not dirt. At all.
I found nothing. Not one single trace of adeath and decay, or any other kind of working, in the entire back fifty acres, in the orchards, or in the forested area farther back. The front pastures and the ones to the far side of the house were fine. Only the one pasture was affected. Near it, a pea-gravel parking lot was set back from the big RV shed, the lot holding eight vehicles belonging to the security crew, Stella, and some of the victims in the hospital. Or dead. Each vehicle had a small sticker with Stella’s logo in the rear window. The parking lot and the cars and trucks were fine too. I took photos of each tag and sent them to HQ to be run.
I still had to narrow down the trail ofdeath and decayand that meant going back to the grassland that had attacked me. I was tired. I was a little frightened. But I had a job to do. “I need to go back to the pasture where I found the energies.”
I expected Occam to argue with me, but he merely said, “Okay,” and instructed Pacillo back toward the barn and to thearea farthest from where I’d been attacked. We were a good two hundred yards from the barn when I got out, Occam at my side. This time I carried my blanket and placed it on the ground. The night had chilled and I shivered. Or maybe that was fear.
Using extra care, as if the land was venomous, I touched the leaves. They were clean and alive and happy, so I risked a bit more and tapped the soil fast, jerking my finger away. The land beneath was fine. I blew out a breath and climbed into the golf cart. “Take me a hundred feet closer to the barn,” I directed. I could feel Occam’s disapproval, but he kept his mouth shut, merely fingering the clasp that secured his steel hunting knife to his thigh.
I was especially careful, reading in increments, going closer until I was near the barn. I didn’t encounterdeath and decayuntil I was thirty-something feet out. Less than a quarter of an acre of the pasture was infected with the death energies. There was no trail from the parking area to the pasture. How haddeath and decaygotten to the pasture and the house?
