FireWind unlatched a lever on the kettle’s side. The kettle moved a little on its horizontal axis. “The spout points that way.” He indicated the back wall.
Occam holstered his weapon, ran his hands along the wall to one side, and shoved upward, making something click. He moved to the wall’s other side and shoved up, making a similar-sounding click. The exterior wall groaned a little and light poured in from one side as the entire wall cracked opened several inches.
As Occam worked, FireWind adjusted the psy-meter 2.0 and took a reading, with the small wand pointed at the kettle. “I’m not certain what’s going on here,” he said, “but the psy-meter is readingdeath and decaymagics stronger here than outside. Let’s get CSI in here for a full CBRNEP workup, and make sure the portable null room is on-site.”
Occam and he moved to the front door and started pulling off their P3Es for collection by the PsyCSI team. I didn’t move. “Nell?” Occam asked.
I stepped around them to the back wall and placed my gloved hand on the old wood. There was nodeath and decay. I shoved the wall-door fully open. On the other side of the shed was a twelve-foot area, round on the shed side, draining down to a dry creek on the far side. Everything beyond the shed was dead, down to the ground, the dirt itself looking thick and hard and almost roasted. Lifeless. Dead plants everywhere. I clutched my potted tree close to my chest. I didn’t even have to touch the earth to know the earth was dead. Didn’t have to. But. I grippeda fingertip and pulled off one glove, the blue nitrile dangling. I stepped out there and bent, placing a bare fingertip to the bare branch of a sapling.
In an instant, a fraction of a heartbeat,deathanddeathanddeathswarmed from my fingertip to my palm, around my wrist, up my arm. Holding me in place like burning icy chains. A scorching wreath coiled from a vine of fiery frozen thorns.
A cage of arctic agony.
Superheated broken black glass.
Deathstole my breath. Blistered my flesh. I staggered. Breaking the contact with the dead tree.
Dropped the potted tree. Tried to catch it.
Deathstabbed into my chest like a red-hot poker. Stopped my heart.
I fell. The pot hit the ground with a distinctcrack. Clay shattered, spilling Soulwood soil in a tiny avalanche. My hand landed in the soil. I fell, Soulwood soil cupped in my hand.
The Green Knight thundered toward me, his massive pale green horse in a full gallop, lance aimed at me. I knew what would happen this time. I braced myself anyway. The lance pierced my chest and the Green Knight raced through me. Rammed into the fiery, raging death land.
Thedeath and decayrose up, blacker than tar, blacker than a night with no stars, yet red as steel in a forge, heated, glistening like glass. Rising up, amorphous yet cutting, dense as a sizzling fog.Death and decayand the Green Knight met on a field, green on one side, burning coals on the other.
Deathparted.
The Green Knight galloped into the blackness and disappeared.
FOURTEEN
I came to sitting on the seat of the car, my body leaning forward, sweating and shivering, the sun through the windows nowhere near warm enough. I made a faint hand motion, heaved, and Occam turned my body to the side, supporting me. I didn’t vomit, but it was a near thing, and the sick, gaggy feeling left me gasping. The P3Es were gone, a faint memory of someone cutting mine off me. A blanket appeared from somewhere and went around me, warm as the car, a loomed geometric pattern in bright reds and blues on an undyed wool background.
It was soft and smelled vaguely of horse and hay and tobacco. It was sweater-soft.
“Ingram,” FireWind said. “Did you break protocol?”
“No. I touched a branch with one fingertip. Just like I’m supposed to.” My fingers ached. I was afraid to look at them. “You know how I told you the land has a mind of its own and it sometimes... does things?”
“I recall our debriefing after the incident with the demon you trapped and the forest growing overnight.” His tone told me that he knew then and knew now that I had still not told him everything.
I sat up, eyes closed as the world spun about me. When the earth settled, I glanced down and saw dead brown leaves at my fingertips. Occam’s body was between the big boss and me, and I watched as he plucked withered leaves out of my hairline and off my fingertips. He didn’t look me in the eyes. He was mad that I had done something stupid, mad enough that his eyes were glowing the gold of his cat. But he didn’t say anything. He just finished grooming me and put a bottle of tepid water in my hand. I drank. I could feel more dried leaves in the toes of myfield boots. They’d be crinkled and squished. I drank some more. “Well, there’s the tree I made.”
“The one you call the vampire tree,” FireWind stated. “I have observed the tree on your property line eating, or perhaps digesting would be the better term, a field mouse. I assumed that was why you called it a vampire tree. However, there has been no discussion of youmakingthe tree. What do you mean by this?”
“I was on church land. I was shot. I fell on an oak tree. I called on Soulwood to heal me. Soulwood used the oak, shoved its roots into me. They grew into me and healed me.”
“The tree near your land, eating the mouse, was not an oak.”
“Right. Well. What I didn’t know when I was trying to stay alive, was that when my blood and the tree mixed, and Soulwood was healing me—” I stopped and breathed, forcing down nausea. The words felt odd in my mouth, on my tongue. “The tree mutated. Into a tree that eats meat. And... it’s sentient.”
“Sentient. You created a sentient plant.” There was disbelief in his tone.
I wasn’t looking at him, didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see derision on his face. “Yep,” I said softly. “Not that I knew right away it was sentient, and a separate sentience from Soulwood itself. But I figured it out. It calls itself the Green Knight. It fights for me.”
“Did you know of this?” he said accusingly to Occam.
