For safety’s sake, I returned to the stairs, holding my middle, looking around at the rotted guitars, the cracked plastic casings of electronic equipment, the pile of dust and rusted wire where the piano used to stand. The metal chairs were piles of rust. The wall colors were faded and brittle. The carpet was gone and the slab cracked, as if I looked at a long-abandoned house.
At the top of the stairs I heard a thump and shout. I stripped off the uni and other protective gear and raced down the hallway, into the kitchen, my heart in my throat, breath fast. No one was in the kitchen. And then I heard a faint panting. On the other side of the island, Occam was kneeling beside FireWind, who was still in St. Bernard form. He was panting in distress, his tail down, head hanging. FireWind’s legs quivered, his knees unable to hold his weight. He dropped to the floor in a doggy heap.
“Nell,” Occam said. “T. Laine!” he shouted.
I was by FireWind in an instant. I touched him and jerked back fast, shaking my hand. “He’s covered in thedeath and decay.”
“I don’t feel anything,” Occam growled.
T. Laine raced in from outside and dropped to the floor, her hands tracing over the dog in a professional manner, checking for fever against her own skin, checking pulse and respirations, shining a light into FireWind’s eyes. T. Laine had been to vet school and was the unit’s were-creature medic in the few times when shifting wasn’t enough to heal them. But what did she know about skinwalkers? Had FireWind told her about his species’ health? I told her what I thought had happened and T. Laine wove a null pen deep into FireWind’s silky coat. Nothing seemed to happen, so she wove in several more. “Don’t lose these,” she whispered to the dog. “My boss says they’reexpensive and he might kill me.” She was talking to said boss and it might have been funny if FireWind wasn’t having trouble breathing. “Why aren’t you shifting?” she asked him.
Occam sat back on his heels and watched. “What do we do?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” the witch said. “The null pens don’t seem to be making a difference. I don’t know how to help a skinwalker shift. Can you?”
“Methodology is totally different. Magics are different. If it’s thedeath and decaykeeping him from his human form,” Occam asked, “do we put him in the null room or would that mess up his skinwalker energies?”
I envisioned FireWind stuck in some broken shape of mismatched parts forever.
“I don’t know,” she said. “We need a manual. ‘How to Skinwalk for Dummies.’ Nell? You healed LaFleur and Occam. What do you think?”
I studied the panting dog. He had never hunted on Soulwood. He wasn’t mine. Still, I reached out a hand again. Thedeath and decaygrabbed my fingertips as if it recognized me. I jerked back. “I need my plant from the car.”
Occam moved out the door werecat-fast and was back in a moment with the potted tree. I scattered a little of the soil over FireWind and stuck my fingers into the pot, shoving them deep. “You try to stick your roots into me or my boss and I’ll let thedeath and decaytake you,” I warned the tree.
Occam raised his uneven eyebrows, a gesture that was both cat and human and would have made me smile if FireWind wasn’t in such distress, his panting growing faster. I drew on Soulwood through the soil, and my land welcomed me, warm and safe and full of joy. Through that connection, I could tell that Esther and Mud were in the house and were fighting. Cherry was inside with them, miserable at the anger in their words, her tail thumping softly on the floorboards. The cats were in the garden chasing mice in the dark. When I focused on them, the cats jerked midleap/step/crouch, and raised their noses. Cherry stopped the rhythmic thumping of her tail. I realized that the animals knew I was paying attention to them and the land and I soothed them. “It’s all good. You’uns go on aboutyour business.” The cats tore back after the family of mice. Cherry huffed a breath and put her head down, relaxing.
“Nell?” Occam.
FireWind was hurt. I remembered.
I reached for the skinwalker. And wrenched away. Yanked my hand from the pot. Found myself standing, my entire body tingling. Breathing hard. The leaves on the tree shivered. I felt some of my own leaves uncurl in my hairline. “No.” I shook my head. I’d have to bleed my blood and his onto the land to possibly heal him, and that would claim the land and my boss for me. At the thought, my bloodlust, which had been quiescent for days, raised its predatory head.So much strong blood in FireWind...Itwanted... “I can’t help him,” I whispered. “I’d have to claim him and the land and I doubt he’d like that.”
“Better than being dead,” said Occam.
“Maybe not,” I said, thinking about the vampire tree and the bloodlust of my land. “He might be dead before it was done.”
T. Laine said, “His pulse is fast and irregular at nearly one fifty and his respirations are too fast, about twenty-seven a minute. I don’t know why he isn’t shifting.” She looked at me. “We need to talk to another skinwalker.”
She was asking if I would call Jane Yellowrock for advice.
I didn’t argue. I pulled my phone and scanned through the address book for Jane Yellowrock, FireWind’s sister and my sorta-friend. I dialed and it went to voice mail, not that I had really expected her to answer. Jane was busy being the Dark Queen of vampires and trying to stop a worldwide vampire war, or so one of Rick LaFleur’s confidential sources had said. Jane might not even be in the country. We hadn’t been able to confirm or deny any of the rumors surrounding her. When the mechanical voice finished leaving instructions, I left a message. Then I called the council house of vampires in New Orleans and spoke to a man who identified himself as Wrassler, which was a strange name. I told him about FireWind’s condition. Wrassler said he would try to get a message to Jane but that we shouldn’t hold our breath. “She’s underground,” he said. Which made no sense at all, not that I’d come to expect sense when talking to or about Jane.
I hung up and shook my head.
“We might have to try the null room,” T. Laine said, “but we’ve never tried it on a skinwalker in crisis.”
“Better than being dead,” Occam repeated.
“I’m not so sure of that,” T. Laine said, echoing me.
Occam got his feet under him in a squat and lifted FireWind by his front legs and upper body, up over his shoulder. “Get the door.”
I got the door. Occam stood, easily lifting FireWind’s two-hundred-plus pounds and carrying him outside. Wereleopard strength. T. Laine raced ahead, pulling on special null gloves. She opened the back ramp to the portable null room and shoved out a roll of soggy, stinking carpet. She pointed to a folding table and I helped her carry it into the middle of the null room cargo trailer. Occam dropped FireWind onto its surface with a thump-rattle that shook the trailer.
T. Laine walked down the ramp and closed it up, leaving us shut inside, in the silence and the dim light. I opened some folding chairs and sat, though the stench still in the trailer was so bad I was nearly ready to lose my dinner. Occam repeated his exam of his boss.
“When thedeath and decayis neutralized, can you make him shift back?” I asked.
