No one responded.
“That’s not the best news,” Occam said grimly. “We don’t know where we’re going and it’s nearly dawn, such as it will be, with unidentified assailants torturing Soul and Cai.”
That meant we were cut off from the world, getting ready to face unknown numbers of unknown paranormals. In a winter storm. When my earth energies would be less powerful than in the summer.
We were still miles from Marble City when Tandy’s voice cracked over the earbuds. “Ingram and Occam. Can you respond? Acknowledge.”
“Ingram here,” I said.
“What is your twenty?”
“I’m not sure what mile marker, but we just passed the exit to Tennessee College of Applied Technology,” I said.
“I have a location,” Tandy said, “one of five houses off Southerland Avenue.” He gave us five likely addresses. “Trying to narrow it down. Get off Forty at the next exit and make your way to Southerland Avenue.”
I mentally translated that and had a vague idea of where we were headed.
“It’ll be one of five homes near the intersection of Southerland and Victory Street Northwest.”
“We’ve seen what they drive,” I said. “We can look for the vans.”
“Backup?” Occam asked, even more grimly.
“Negative. A van with a mother and five kids skidded into a salt truck, and FireWind and LaFleur are at the scene. It’s my understanding tha—” The connection abruptly ended.
The icy city passed us by, homeless people trudging with their soaked belongings through the cold, heads down against the sleet, trying to stay warm with movement. Most were headed toward the shelters.
Occam carefully corrected for a slide and managed to avoid hitting an abandoned car. Moving at speeds that approached a walk, he passed a run-down trailer park and made the turn onto Victory, cutting the truck’s headlights.
The neighborhood was dark, no power, but the ice was white enough to reflect back what little light there was, and I could see. “There,” I said, pointing at a house with two vans in the frontyard. “White vans.” I strained to see in the uncertain light. “They have a layer of ice and snow. They’ve been there awhile.”
Occam motored on past and pulled to the side of the road.
The headsets crackled again and Tandy’s voice came through with broken syllables that meant nothing.
Occam turned off the car. We both studied the house. Occam said, “I know you got this, Nell, sugar. But I’d say this to any non-were-creature except a vamp. I’d like you to stay back while I reconnoiter.”
“Okay.”
Occam’s face was a study in stunned perplexity. I burst out laughing. “I’d be way more likely to fall on my backside than you.” I patted the potted tree. “I got me some Soulwood soil, so I’ll sit on the ground in this miserable icy precipitation and see what I can read underground from here. Might be something. Might be nothing.”
Occam nodded and strapped on a waist and hip harness with a fourteen-inch blade. The blade had a strip of real silver along the blunt side. He checked his weapon, making sure the magazine had a silver strip down the side, marking it as loaded with silver-lead rounds. He slapped it home and pulled back on the slide. It was ready to fire when he slid it into the holster. Any vampire Occam shot or cut would be poisoned by silver.
He turned his head to me, his eyes already glowing with his werecat. “I love you to the full moon and back, Nell, sugar.”
“I love you to the deeps of the roots and the heights of the limbs that cradle that full moon, cat-man.”
He didn’t kiss me. He simply opened the door and slid out, into the sleet, shutting me inside with the remaining warmth.
There was always survival gear in John’s old truck. In a feat of calisthenics, I found a dirty blanket behind the seat, an old tarp under the seat, a trowel, a coil of rope, duct tape, and some tools, including two screwdrivers and a hammer, and his old coat where I’d stuffed it earlier. I was glad I had never cleaned out the truck. John’s old stuff was mighty handy.
Taking what I wanted, I opened my own door and slid out, pulling the dirty rubber floor mat with me, along with the gear I needed. As I closed the door, darkness descended on the night. I sat on the mat with my back against the truck’s warm frontside panel, and where I could see the house, the potted plant between my knees. Pulling the tarp over my head and shoulders, I stabbed the ice with the trowel until I could see the ground. It wasn’t frozen at this elevation, though that was changing fast as the temperature continued to drop and the freezing rain turned to pure sleet again.
Occam was already out of sight. I glared at the twig of a tree. “Play nice,” I ordered it.
Scraping two handfuls of soil from the pot, I dumped them into the ice-coated depressions and sat with the pot against my thigh. I put my bare hands over the piles of Soulwood dirt and let my consciousness flow through my land and into the soil beneath.
Even had it been midsummer, there would have been little life in the ground. It hadn’t been fertilized in years, it hadn’t been watered through many dry summers, and when weeds did manage to take root, they had been mowed too short, chopped off right at the root. I felt sorry for the few surviving shrubs next to the house.
