“Fine,” Wincome said. “Sandra, Jack, get cameras set up and we’ll photograph and film what we can.”
I gave the null stick back to T. Laine. Another bout of shivers hit me. I went and sat in John’s old truck, turned on the engine and the heater. FireWind joined me, which I thought was nice. Until he started taking my official statement and I had to decide how to tell him about the third vampire. With the fresh bruising around my neck, my being attacked wasn’t something I could hide. I settled on, “I got away from the guy who attacked me. I scratched him pretty good. Might have caught his eye. When I looked back, he was lying on the ground in a patch of vines and saplings.” I pointed to the spot. “I’m pretty sure the land took him.”
“Your weapon?”
I handed him the Glock and he sniffed it. “You haven’t fired this recently.”
“Not since I cleaned it after Occam and I went to the range the week of Thanksgiving.”
“DNA under your nails?”
I held out my hand. There was dirt under them all, garden dirt, Soulwood dirt. And under one there was some blood mixed into the dark earth. FireWind manually rolled down the window and called for CSI to come take a sample. I sat silent while the tech did so, wondering if vampires were in a national database somewhere.
When the tech left, my boss said, very quietly, “Will they ever find a match, Ingram?”
“I have no idea,” I said honestly. “He may have committed crimes at some point in history.”
“But he never will again.”
I scowled at him.
“ ‘O, it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant,’ ” FireWind said. It sounded like a quote, maybe fromMeasure for Measure, one of Shakespeare’s least known plays. If so, the boss was again using Shakespeare—the one thing I had studied so hard all my years of aloneness—against me.
I said, “ ‘The trust I have is in mine innocence, and therefore am I bold and resolute.’ ” Still using a bit of a Shakespearean tone in my words I added, “I did him no harm by my own hand but that scratch, boss-boss.”
“ ‘Truth is truth, to th’ end of reck’ning.’ We shall never know,” the boss said.
With that bit of word jousting, he left the old truck and walked back to the CSI team.
Yummy, standing alone among us all, watched from the trees. She used her cell several times, texting and placing calls, and twice I thought she was weeping.
* * *
It took half an hour before there was nothing left of the attackers, but meantime, CSI, and therefore every unit in PsyLED, knew that a patch of “cursed” land had eaten three dead vampires, leaving no leftovers, and that there was nothing anyone could do to get the evidence back. The techs mostly got pics of the land feasting and the plants in Esther’s yard blooming like it was spring instead of the start of a cold snap. As they filmed, the temps dropped into the twenties and the newly bloomed flowers wilted, browned, and drooped to the ground. The winter chill finally convinced the earth to stop trying to put out new growth. Vines stopped punching through the topsoil. Everything quieted.
But all the attention meant that my kind and I were becoming fully documented by PsyLED.
When the last of the excitement was over, the team’s vehicles and the CSI truck left, except for FireWind and Occam. My cat-man sat in his fancy car and waited for me, patient, furious that I had been attacked again, happy that I was a fierce woman. That’s what he’d called me the one time he came to check on me. “You’re a fierce woman, Nell, sugar. Fierce as any person I’ve ever known.”
It had made me proud and teary-eyed as I’d watched him return to his car.
Alone, I walked the property around Esther’s one last time, seeing all the new growth. Stopping near the far edge of the property, I saw a new tree, and got an itchy feeling under my skin. It wasn’t an itch I could scratch until I had sunlight, so when FireWind called me over to Occam’s vehicle, I went.
“Ingram,” FireWind said. “I know I told you to take the night off, but I need you and Occam to go with me to UTMC and look at the dead body that Ming gave us.”
I frowned. “Okay. But why?”
“I’d like to get your thoughts.”
“Mud is gonna kill me. She’s stuck at Mama’s.”
“I’ll call Mud.”
My face musta shown all kinds a shock, because FireWind laughed softly.
“I’m not a monster, Nell. I’ll call your sister.”
SEVEN
