And worse, each of the men had ties to the church. Each of them a mother or grandmother who had once been part of the church. Most of the tortured men had likely been part of a devil dog bloodline.
We had proof that vampires and devil dogs had participated in killing humans.
We now had a serial killer case.
That also gave us full legal authority to work the case and apprehend the killers, but, unfortunately, we had no prisons that could hold vampires due to their speed and strength, no way to feed them, no way to keep them out of sunlight, and no way to keep them from mesmerizing humans and walking out under cover of darkness. Human prisons would have been deemed cruel and unusual punishment, and no punishment at all.
And we still had no idea where Tomás de Torquemada’s lair was, what he wanted personally, or what his goal was politically, and therefore no way to predict his next move. As a six-hundred-year-old vampire, he would have layers upon layers of desires and plans. All we had was: five dead humans with church affiliations; vampires wearing crystals with a place inside to capture an arcenciel; vampires using the Torah’s Coda tolearn who knew what; vampires wanting the Blood Tarot; vampires following the scent of the Blood Tarot and discovering plant-people and strange trees; vampires working with Welshgwyllgishape-shifters, the result of genetic material passed through church bloodlines.
We also had a dead female body buried with her head between her legs. The last one seemed to have nothing to do with the first part, but I wasn’t ruling anything out.
* * *
Ming of Glass’ clan home was gone. There was nothing left but smoking ruins. Occam and I parked in the street, left a PsyLED sign in the window, and crossed under the fire department’s crime scene tape. The wide acreage on the Tennessee River was burned: The fancy landscaping, the greenhouse, the big clan home with its multicar garage and horse barn with horse ring and jumps were all gone. The only things left were sooty white-painted fencing and tennis courts. The house had caved in on itself. The barn’s back wall was still partially standing, but it didn’t look as if it would remain upright in a stiff breeze. Far upwind, I spotted horses standing in a pasture. I hoped all the horses had gotten out of the barn.
Water from fire hoses dripped. Puddles of blackened water stood in low spots. Smoke was heavy and oppressive, rising and settling. Ash covered most everything. Being a tree-person meant I hated the stench of smoke, the feel of fire, the plant death on the air and in the land.
“What am I supposed to read?” I asked Occam.
I supposed he knew the question was rhetorical, because he didn’t answer. We walked across the crunchy blackened grass to a single patch of unburned lawn, downwind and downstream from the house.
Occam refolded my newish army blanket and put it on the small patch of green. With my hands bandaged, I was fairly useless, and Occam was doing everything that required any manual dexterity.
Already ash had stained my work field boots and the hem of my work pants. And the blanket. I’d have to wash everything on me to get the ash and smoke stench out.
I stared down at the blanket, and then around at the grounds,and sighed. Reading damaged ground and burned and dying plants was always bad.
“You sure about this, Nell, sugar?”
“A’course not. Maybe it’ll be helpful, but probably not. But I been thinking about the possibility that if I got some vampire tree inside me, then I may not need to carry around a potted tree.”
That didn’t seem to make him any kind of happy, but he unwrapped the bandages from my left hand. My entire hand looked pretty horrible and he shook his head. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I know I don’t.” We were on the job, but I kissed his cheek anyway, and that made him smile. “Don’t tell FireWind I did that.”
“Never, Nell, sugar.” Carefully, he unwrapped my right hand.
I sat and got comfy. The sun was bright, but the air was still cold. Little clouds were scudding across the blue sky. The wind shifted and the familiar smell of horses came to me, and the sound of whickers on the breeze. I put all ten of my fingertips to the ground and reached into the earth with my spirit. Nothing tackled me, so I reached a few inches deeper and spread out, toward the road and toward the river, feeling the land beneath me.
There was a vastly different sensation from the last time I read Ming’s land this thoroughly. It was burned. So much was burned. Plants were screaming. Roots were digging for moisture. All the plants in the greenhouse were dead except some sweet potatoes.
I reached beyond the scorched earth and found the places where the vampires had walked into the sun. There were no more of them since I was here last, and the sensation of joy and wonder had disappeared. I pushed farther out, widening my range. Down to the river. Then out to the sides. Beyond the fencing that marked Ming’s territory.
I found bodies. They were buried on the far side of the fence, and they weren’t buried deep, only about three feet underground. I was certain that they hadn’t been here before. They were fresh, still in the early stages of rot. I pulled back out of the earth and looked up at Occam. “Do me a favor?” I asked. “Call Yummy’s blood-servants and ask about the bodies buriedover there.” I pointed to a slice of undeveloped land just past Ming’s white fencing, downstream. “Three. Maybe four. They could be the vampires that were killed here, but they don’t feel like vampire bodies used to feel. No maggots.”
Occam dialed his cell and walked away, speaking to someone human, someone who could and would be aboveground in the daylight and not catch fire. I tuned him out and went back into the earth.
When he returned, he said, “Yummy’s primo says she doesn’t know anything, but that people went missing after the vamps got back their souls. She thinks that property is Ming’s. That’s all we have. I texted JoJo about the deed, to find the owner, and about getting a warrant. I don’t think your reading the ground would count as an acceptable reason to go digging up anything.”
Occam’s cell rang and he and Rick LaFleur had a short discussion about whether PsyLED Eighteen was concerned over the presence of bodies on vampire land, and whether it was worth the resources to get a warrant to dig them up at this time. If they were vampires, it would have to be nighttime work so they didn’t burn in the sun. After a little back-and-forth, LaFleur finally said, “Jones says the property is indeed Ming’s. Since Nell is reading the land at FireWind’s request, without a search warrant, and without Ming’s personal permission, for now we can’t do anything. Come back to HQ.”
* * *
We didn’t make it to HQ before we were alerted to proceed to Soul’s home. As requested by FireWind, the local police had done a more intensive safety check, and found the house empty. FireWind wanted us to check it out.
Occam parked on a busy street and we got out, an unexpectedly cold wind trying to blow right through me. I felt the chill most in my rebandaged hands and tucked them into my coat pockets.
Soul’s place was a one-room efficiency on the ground floor of a converted older building in downtown Knoxville. Though the outside had been modernized, was freshly painted, and had been fancied up some, it was not the kind of place I would have expected the assistant director of PsyLED to have as a home.
