I had been part of two previous cases of dark death arts—blood-magic curses and salamander death energies. They were supposed to be rare and maybe for the average law enforcement officer they were. Maybe if I was a deputy I’d never see one, but this was my third. And not a one of them matched the typical death magics theorized and taught in PsyLED Spook School. Not a one.
“Do you smell it?” FireWind had stopped, his face lifted. Sniffing the air.
Occam and I followed suit. “Nothing except country and turned earth and harvest,” I said.
“I smell what Nell does. Nothing. Why?”
FireWind frowned slightly, his eyes flowing over the landscape. “I am getting whiffs of thedeath and decay. Faint on the wind. That and chemicals I can’t identify. Something other than pesticides and herbicides and fertilizer.”
Occam and I glanced at each other. His brows rose. I shook my head.
“Let’s move in beside the drive and read at ten-foot increments,” FireWind said. Which we did. An hour later, my fingers were aching, my back was stiff, I was sweating, and my coffee high was long gone. But the trailer finally came into view, something made in the sixties or seventies, with tiny windows placed up high, a rickety front porch and cinder-block steps, and acouple dozen wild privets that had grown a good twenty feet high and nearly obscured the metal structure. We kept moving in, ten feet at a time. After the umpteenth reading we were nearly at the front door and the energies in the grass hadn’t changed.
I pressed against my lower back, stretching hard, trying to stay alert. To my boss I said, “This don’t make a lick a sense. If Cale was a magic practitioner, we shoulda gotten higher readings everywhere, and shoulda been getting higher and higherdeath and decayreadings as we got to the place he laid his head. In fact, if he was creatingdeath and decay, those readings should be off the chart right now. And his car, at the accident, shoulda been red-hot with them. Ain’t nothing any stronger here than back there where we started.” I thumbed at the drive and the farmer’s house.
“I agree,” FireWind said, staring across the property.
“How about down there?” Occam asked, pointing.
The drive we had been following curved past the trailer, down a low hill. About half a mile later a small building appeared. On the sat map, I had seen a small vine-covered roof, what I had assumed was a shed. As we moved toward it, the slight breeze died and the day’s humidity began to rise. I was sweating in long wet trails beneath my clothes.
As we rounded the curve, a barbed-wire fence came into view and a farm gate blocked the way. On the other side, halfway down a low rolling hill, perhaps another half mile away, was the shed.
I mentally compared the shed on the satellite photos to the building in front of us. The tin-roofed outbuilding had never seen a coat of paint. There was a single closed door but no windows on the two sides I could see and the far side had a small porch. A power line ran to the building. More telling, the kudzu was dead. Kudzu didn’t die until frost set in. Yet every single leaf within a ten-foot radius of the near walls was dead, dry, broken off the spiraling vines. The plants at a much longer distance were also dead, in a long trail.
I got a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach and in my hand, which been aching for too long now. I tucked those fingers beneath the other armpit to warm them. I wasn’t going to be worth much if I didn’t get a break and a lot of Soulwood time. And sleep. I surely needed two days of sleep.
We came to a stop, and FireWind was watching me. “Yeah,” I breathed. “There.”
“Approach slowly,” FireWind said. “I want a reading every five feet.”
“No. Nell needs to stop,” Occam said. He pulled my hand from beneath the warmth. My fingers were blanched white and the little pin-sized holes in it had grown larger, exposing dead flesh beneath. I should have bled, but I never had. Because dead flesh doesn’t bleed.
“Ingram,” FireWind said softly, his tone full of reproach. “You were supposed to say something.”
“I can give it another few readings,” I said.
“Nell—” Occam started.
“I know my limits. Five more fast readings, and one deeper one. Then I need to get to Soulwood.”
Occam didn’t like it, but this was one of those job things where he had no right to protect me any more than he would another unit member. Here he was not my boyfriend. Here he was a partner. The near snarl he sent me and then sent our boss told us both how much he didn’t like it, but he stepped back and aimed the wand of the psy-meter at the shed. He walked five short steps and took a reading, walked five more, took a reading, leaving us behind, the stiffness of his spine communicating how unhappy he was, but he didn’t persist in his disagreement.
FireWind and I followed up to and through the gate. A hundred yards beyond the gate, I bent to the ground and touched a blade of a weed. I yanked my hand away. “Death and decayenergies,” I said to my boss. “A little stronger.” Yeah. This was the place.
It took another half hour of careful approach, with readings to both sides, before we reached the shed. By then I was shaking and cold and miserable and wanted to throw up from the stress and thedeath and decayon my fingers and crawling up my arm.
The shed door was latched with a simple padlock-style hatch, the kind with a metal loop you could hook a lock through, but this one was secured with a leather thong. It was drawn tight, knotted in a Spanish bowline, a knot taught by churchmen to their sons.
FireWind glanced at Occam, who gave a quick nod. Occam put the psy-meter 2.0 on the ground and drew his weapon,holding it down beside his leg as he moved in a crab step around the building. FireWind inspected the door, and the wood to either side, then bent to shine a light around the threshold. He was looking for traps, which did nothing to improve my shakes, and made me realize that I was in no condition to help should this be a ruse or an ambush. I pulled the potted plant closer into my abdomen, feeling the pot’s edge grind against my rooty belly. Stuck my burned fingers into the soil. I didn’t feel it when they touched the soil, which seemed very bad.
Occam reappeared on the other side and gave a stiff, sharp nod.
FireWind lifted a pants leg, exposing a leather sheath strapped there. From it, he pulled a knife, which shocked me. I was pretty sure that eight-inch blades were against regs. Occam joined him at the door. FireWind jutted his chin to Occam, who leaned close to the doorjamb, out of the way but close enough to provide cover. With a swift downward motion, FireWind sliced the leather latch and kicked open the door. Occam ducked inside and called, “Clear,” before stepping back out.
FireWind pulled sky blue P3Es from his gobag and we put on booties, gloves, and masks before we went in. Electric lights came on, illuminating the interior. I followed last, the overheated air still escaping with a chemical stench, the place feeling like an oven and stinking like a commercial soap maker.
The inside of the shed was in little better shape than the outside, with a deeply stained concrete floor, a dilapidated sofa, electric lights, and two large steel cylinders, standing upright, reflecting light from the overhead bulbs and the open doorway. One of the round contraptions was a good four and a half feet high and that much around; the other was a third that size; and both were older than I had thought at first glance, corroded and spotted with filth around the seals.
