“We have video of them participating in the attack on Lincoln Shaddock’s clan home. One of them injured another human. It won’t hold up in court, but it’s enough to hold them for questioning. FireWind wants us to go to Ming’s and…” He let his words slide away.
I was supposed to read Ming’s land at eleven this morning. I lifted a hand, my eyes on the damaged flesh.
“…talk to Ming’s people,” he said. “You up for it? If not, we have reports to look at. PMs on the…the others at the morgue.”
He was talking about the bodies tortured like Arial Holler had been.
“Hang on, cat-man.” To my family I said, “Y’all might need to know that all the vampires, all over the world, got their souls back.” My family didn’t react except for mild puzzlement. “That means they’re acting out of character even for vampires. Crazy as rabid barn owls. And some of them like the feel of my land. And they can feel the difference in us plant-people. Some of them blood-suckers already caused trouble on our land, and somma them already died there. I also ain’t ruled out that they might want Mud, me, Esther, the twins, and could maybe settle on all a y’all or any a y’all if they can’t get us. You’uns keep everyone close to home, safe, and guarded. And—” I stopped.
Carefully, I chose my words. “They have shown an interest in the family lines that bred into devil dogs. They killed Arial Holler. I ain’t—haven’t—had time to come by and tell y’all. We can notify the family while we’re here, and see if they want to claim the body.”
The mamas exchanged hard glances and then turned to look at Daddy.
“Ain’t no need for police officers to tell the Hollers,” Daddy said gruffly. “I’ll handle it. And the family won’t want the body. Arial was no longer a part of the church.” Daddy hesitated, his chair rocking on the wood floor. “Was he…Was he…drank down?”
Daddy meant was he sexually assaulted. For a churchman, sexual assault on a woman was fine, but on a man, it was an abomination.
“No,” Occam said. He offered nothing else. And neither of us mentioned the torture.
If the family didn’t want the body, then they hadn’t wanted the boy and the man he had become. This was a quagmire of church sin and church politics. Arial Holler had been a Lost Boy. Cast out. Unwanted.
“If you need my help, I’ll come,” I said. “PsyLED will come.” Slowly, I added, “And if you need the tree to do something to help you, you can ask it.”
Daddy rocked back in his chair and dropped his cane, which banged on the floor, echoing through the unusually empty house.
“I ain’t saying it’ll understand,” I added, “but it might.”
“Witchcraft?” Mama Carmel asked quietly.
“No, ma’am,” I said, adding a hint of irritation to my tone as if that was foolish but I was too polite to actually say so. “You know. Like a trained dog.” I hoped the tree wasn’t listening to that one. “It evolved and it might be willing to work with you’uns.” I’d sorta said all that before, but Daddy and the mamas weren’t exactly open-minded about anything townie or paranormal, so repetition was useful.
“And, just so you’uns know, Esther and the twins brought an American chestnut tree on the edge of her acre back to life. It’s healthy and everything.”
“Long as they don’t bring dinosaurs back I’m good with that. Feral chickens are bad enough,” Mama said.
Daddy said, “Nellie, the world is changing too fast. Too dangerous. And I’m getting too old to protect my daughters, my family.” Daddy looked away, as if the admission took a lot out of him. His eyes settled on Sam, still standing at the front door. Sam, who, though not the eldest son, had been selected as the leader of the Nicholson clan when Daddy passed the mantle.
“Mr.Nicholson,” Occam said, “you’re still healing. I know how weak and useless that leaves a man feeling, but you got a lot of good years left in you. I got the ones who live on Soulwood. I’ll keep them safe.”
Occam ignored my scowl that told him I could keep my own self safe. But with my hands full of roots, Iwaspretty useless.
“You and your family,” Occam continued, “are enough to take on a few blood-suckers. And forgive me for saying, sir, but your boys ain’t babies, and from what I see, your girls ain’t either. You brought ’em up to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and stubborn and hardworking as mules. The Nicholsons are a force to be reckoned with.”
Daddy’s shoulders went back, and his head, which had been bowed, rose. I had a feeling an outsider’s encouragement might be viewed as real to Daddy, and not pity.
Mama Carmel added, “You’un listen to that man. You taught your young’uns well. They’ll handle things around here till you’un get back on your feet, Micaiah.”
Daddy nodded once, a firm gesture. I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed that assurance, that self-confidence, during hisillness and postsurgical recuperation. I sent Occam a look with all the love I had in my eyes as a thank-you.
My cat-man mighta blushed.
To Mama, I said, “I got travel mugs in the car. Any way we can get a tea and a coffee to go?”
* * *
Occam drove my car. We spent the trip to Ming’s listening to an AI-quality voice reading from my tablet all the postmortem reports from Dr.Gomez. The men had died horrible deaths, each very different, but each involving several forms of torture with the Boot.
Each body hadgwyllgihairs, one as many as seven hairs, from several different devil dogs. Arial Holler had only the three hairs. The PsyLED lab had sent back more testing and confirmed that—though the preliminary testing had not shown up positive—the bodies all had trace amounts of vampire saliva on them in open unhealed wounds.
