I laughed softly, watching the boss-boss. I followed FireWind’s gaze. Overhead, three arcenciels danced against the sun, brilliant against the last of the snow front’s clouds. I pointed into the sky. “They’ve been in Knoxville awhile,” I said. “First time I saw them, I thought it was lightning. Like a snow thunderstorm, but I never heard the thunder.”
An arcenciel who looked like liquid pearls flashed through the clearing and away. Lainie’s bracelet glowed once.
“Okay. I’d say we’re here, then,” Lainie said. She cut off the engine and began to gear up. I simply sat and studied the setting.
We were on the crest of a cleared hill, the snow nearly melted even at this higher altitude.
To the left was an early 1900s farmhouse, a square one-story with a wraparound porch, a pyramid roofline, gabled windows on each side, bedrooms beneath the eaves. A bathroom had been added onto the back porch at some point, an antique tub visible through a rotted exterior wall. The house had been abandoned for decades, the roof caved in here and there, with evidence of water damage, rot, and termites. The windows had been broken out and the wraparound porch was rotted through. The open roof system meant sunlight entered every day; there was no way that vampires laired here.
On the near side of the house, there were two doors in the foundation, the small shape and location suggestive of a coal chute and bin, but there was no sign of a root cellar, which was odd in a house this old unless it was located beside the coal chute, with access from inside the house.
The arcenciels were flitting through the sky, diving toward FireWind and away.
I turned my attention to the overgrown yard. There were no saplings, which indicated that someone had mowed the yard in the last year or two. Through the tall, winter-brown weeds, there were trails, made by animals, humans, and/or vampires. No cars in the area, but the dirt road had tire tracks everywhere, so it was used by someone, even if it was just locals out with ATVs.
I checked the sky again and grabbed my gear.
Sunset was minutes away. Dusk would follow shortly after, the time when vampires rose to face the night. Just to be on the safe side, I texted Yummy where we were, sending her the GPS pin. I didn’t ask permission. If my vampire friend wanted to come, she could.
Standing by T. Laine’s vehicle, I geared up: vest, stakes, null sticks—one in my front pocket, one in my back pocket—and all the goodies FireWind might suggest. I added a rechargeable tactical flashlight from my gear bag, one that had been advertised as having three hundred thousand lumens. I liked hefty flashlights and had several, the better to bonk bad guys on the head after they were blinded by the light.
I also borrowed a floor mat from T. Laine’s vehicle. I held it up in the air, asking for permission with the gesture.
“Help yourself,” she said.
I stepped into the weeds, some of which were as tall as me. Occam walked through the tall grasses to me and stood close as I dropped the rubber floor mat and spread my army blanket on top of it, crushing the weeds down to leave a puffy-looking mound that crunched when I sat. The ground here was drained well and the soil under my blanket wasn’t muddy. I put the new, small vampire tree sprig between my knees on the blanket, gave it a fierce glare, and touched one finger to the ground.
Nothing grabbed me. No roots, no weeds, no vines, no thorns. The soil under me was thin, a scant layer of dirt and vegetable matter, as if it hung on to the broken rock of the mountain beneath with desperate claws. I placed more fingertips on the ground and let my consciousness trail around, finding an area that had once been a vegetable garden; an old, covered well lined with rocks and long dried out; a chicken coop, fallen intoa heap. A burn pit was off the far side of the property, filled with rusted, scorched cans, jars, household goods, paint cans, plastics. There were also spots where petroleum products had been dumped and burned and had poisoned the ground.
I found the foundations of the house and the coal bin, heavy with a layer of coal dust, along with the remains of an old coal-fired heating system and a rusted water heater. I delved deeper around the house itself, back and forth, scouring a narrow trail, and so far there was no root cellar.
Delving deeper, I dropped into the stone heart of the mountain, the rock so close beneath me. The stone was broken, slanted, a mixture of jagged granite, quartz, and feldspar minerals, with smaller pieces and dirt in layers above and beneath the broken granite.
I followed the largest table, a straight, almost smooth slab with shattered edges. At the upper edge, I fell through into air and yanked myself back underground. About twenty-five feet down, a narrow cave opened up under the house. There was a spring in it, water halfway up the stone walls, flowing away from the house and into the hillside in small openings. A small, weak ley line was knotted above the springhead, below the waterline, and it tied off far away to the ley line along the Tennessee River. More stone canted up to one side and then the rock heart of the hill fell away to the valley below.
The ley line was interesting, but other than that, there was no magic in this land, nothing unexpected, no blood or graves. But I did spot what I thought might be the root cellar near a boulder about thirty feet from the house.
As I pulled back close to the surface, something gently touched me, pressing. Air. A second front was moving in, dry cold air stirring, chasing the wetter winter storm away.
The wind had changed direction as warm areas lost trapped heat and cold air moved back in. It would quickly refreeze patches of half-melted snow. The earth breathed. The grasses rustled. Trees to the sides clacked branches.
I opened my eyes. Occam was kneeling in front of me, staring at my hands. His cat wasn’t close to the surface, not gleaming through his human eyes, and he seemed pleased.
I lifted my hands. My fingers were a tad knobby and rooty, and I had grown leaves on my fingertips, but I hadn’t beeninvaded by local plants, and the potted vampire tree looked just like it had before I started my read. Pulling the leaves off my fingernails, I tucked them into my pocket before I let Occam haul me to my feet. I put the tree and the blanket back in T. Laine’s car and nodded to FireWind. “This place seems fine. Mostly a lot of rock and one small, water-filled cave with a springhead and tiny ley line. T. Laine will want to make note of that, I’m sure. No other signs of magic.”
“No root cellar for a vampire lair?” he asked.
I gestured to the house. “Coal bin at the house. That’s all. Root cellar might be that way, away from the house—which is kinda strange—” I gestured. “Under a slanted rock.”
Occam frowned. “There were root cellars in Texas, always close to the house.” He lifted his head to the arcenciels still in the sky and wandered toward the edge of the hill. He was holding a psy-meter 2.0 and extended the wand to the crest of the hill I could see beyond the house. As he measured for the four different kinds of paranormal psysitopes, I put away the floor mat and rechecked my gear, waiting with the others for the psy-meter to read if there were energies for paranormal creatures: were-creatures, vampires, Welshgwyllgi, or even witches.
Rettell moved around the side of the old farmhouse. Rick’s eyes searched the area until he spotted her. The tension between them had altered in the last two days. Now instead of the crazies, it had strong elements of sexual and emotional attraction. There was no way they had found time to consummate their relationship unless they’d jumped into a closet at HQ, but they looked ready to do so at the earliest opportunity.
The black wolf suddenly appeared, standing near the house.
Ignoring Rick, Rettell looked at the sky, hunting for the winter moon. It wasn’t visible, still below the horizon, so the power of the moon wasn’t active on were-creatures yet. But it would be, and soon.
Occam handed the psy-meter off to Rick and knelt. The wolf loped up to them. Rick said softly, “Do you need the soundboard?”
