Flame in the Dark Page 3

  “Then the shooter is tackled by a security guard, Amos Guerling. Amos said he could see the gun, but not the person. You can see here, the flash of flame when Amos was burned, deep second or maybe third degree on his upper arm and left hand, with visible and significant muscle damage. Source of the flame is unknown at this time, though ATF and the fire department are checking for accelerants on Amos’ clothing. Assassin then seems to disappear into thin air. Our security people put out the fires, inside and out, with extinguishers and began emergency medical treatment on the victims.”

  “What branch?” Soul asked.

  “Beg pardon, ma’am?”

  “What branch did you serve in? All the men and women who work for ALT Security Services are former military.”

  “I see you do your homework, ma’am.” Khaki Man spun in his chair. He was tanned brown, the color of a hickory nut in fall, with close-cropped dark hair and greenish eyes. The name tag said his name was P. Simon. “Green Beret, ma’am. Four active tours in the Middle East.”

  “Where and when?”

  “Classified, ma’am.”

  “Of course.” But I could tell by her tone that Soul would find out in case the man was involved with the shooter on the wrong side. If this shooting was an inside job, the security team would be the first suspects.

  “Can you tell me what the dogs found, ma’am?” Simon asked.

  “No,” Rick said. “Sorry. Need to know.”

  Soul glanced at Rick before speaking. “The Canine Unit’s findings will be released to the press shortly. I think we can divulge this now. The standard crime scene K9 dog was able to track a suspect across the back lawns, across the tip of the cove, to Lyons Bend Road, where the trail disappeared. We have officers going door to door to see if a vehicle is missing or if an unfamiliar vehicle was seen parked somewhere. The paranormal K9 dog gave scent signs only for human scent, giving no signs for nonhuman species.” The paranormal dogs were trained only to known paranormal types, so Soul wasn’t giving much away. She went on, “Despite the shooter’s disappearing act there is no indication of magic used at the scene of the crime nor at the scene of the perpetrator’s appearance and disappearance. He used a mundane military weapon and he scents human.”

  Simon said, “It’s obvious by the camera distortion that he used some kind of an obfuscation spell over himself. Therefore not human. Ma’am,” he added.

  Proving that whatever classified jobs he’d had in the military, he knew how some magic affected digital tech. Obfuscation spells were fairly new, having been around only three years or so.

  “And that places this under our jurisdiction,” Rick murmured.

  “Discussion is taking place at high levels about who will take lead on this case,” Soul said, her voice calm.

  By discussion, I knew she meant arguments. Every branch of law enforcement wanted this case except the sheriff, who had too much political acumen to want anything to do with a United States senator, three rich dead VIPs, multiple wounded, and vampires.

  “Ingram,” Soul said.

  I jerked upright, away from the wall where I had slouched, and said, “Yes, ma’am.” It was time for whatever job Soul had for me. Her eyes flashed darkly in her olive-skinned face and she smoothed her platinum hair, twisting it in its long, curling coil.

  “K9 is finished. CSI has completed their outdoor work. Walk the grounds. Sit for a while. Look things over. Tell me what you find.”

  “Yes’m.” I turned and hightailed it out of the security cave and outside. I was being told to use my gift, to read the land. As I fled the house, my gift crouched and licked its lips. Metaphorically speaking. Not in reality. Or that was what I told myself.

  I buttoned my jacket as I walked to the truck again, getting out the psy-meter 2.0 and my faded pink blanket, and then back to the window where the shooter had stood. Turning, I viewed the grounds and the drive and the darker smear of the cove. The air smelled icy and rivery—that peculiar odor of the Tennessee River at normal levels—and my nose felt frozen. My breath was a white cloud in the security lights. Somewhere nearby, an owl hooted. Farther off, a dog barked, distressed.

  The K9 dogs and handlers were gone. SWAT was gone. The coroner’s vehicle pulled away with the woman’s body as I watched. The lights illuminating the backyard went out, which made me smile. Rick, or maybe Soul, was making sure no one could see me when I went to work. I saw Hamilton walking back from the street up the drive, my flashlight still brightening his way. He didn’t see me, and went on inside. Three sheriff deputies’ cars pulled away. Two couples and a group of five guests left, walking down the road for the cars parked along the verge. Three of the BMWs left too. Overhead, the sky was still black, but it wouldn’t be long until it shifted into the gray of predawn. I closed my eyes, letting my night vision return. I breathed the air and let my body relax. It was easier to read the land when I wasn’t hyped up. That was JoJo’s term for excited and nervous—hyped up.

  I set the folded blanket on the grass and calibrated the psy-meter 2.0. I did a quick scan of the area under the window and then across the yard, getting only small psysitope spikes on level four. Nothing definitive. Not even anything I could point to and say, maybe. And when I checked a second time, they seemed to be fading, reading slightly lower on the scale than before. Anomalies?

  I wouldn’t be determining the species of creature just now, but that couldn’t be helped. I turned off the unit and sat on the blanket. Blowing out a breath, I placed my hands down, palms open, on the lawn and pressed down. Scratched my fingertips into the thick grass until I touched the dirt below. Instantly the discomfort I had been feeling all night eased. This was where I belonged. I breathed for a few minutes, letting my body settle and my gift quest free. Down. Into the earth. With a job to do and earth to read, my bloodlust settled too.

  Grass leaves, crisp and dormant, the roots thick, well fed, and satisfied, was the first thing I read. It had been grown as sod and placed atop soil that had been enriched with mushroom compost and a good mix of supplements. Roots of trees, shrubs, and plantings intertwined. Insects and grubs and earthworms were hibernating. Down into the ground, I quested. Deeper. Rocks were here, the rounded stones of a much larger river bottom. Limestone below that, holey and shattered. The first water table was only a few yards deep.

  I pulled back and let my interest settle on the grass. Plants didn’t tend to notice things outside of rain, abundance or lack of nutrients, abundance or lack of sunlight, fire, seasons, and the phases of the moon, so I didn’t expect to sense anything. But I did.

  I found a path of damage. It trailed from the trees near the cove, to the window and back. Both paths crossed a runnel that fed the water in the cove. The path of wounded plants extended beyond that, all the way to the asphalt. I rechecked with the psy-meter 2.0, which showed next to nothing, now.

  The shooter had left a trail. One only I could follow.

  TWO

  The grass was dying, its leaves injured, the roots failing. The shooter had damaged them all. By next week the path he—it?— took would be brown and dead. There was no way that the shooter was human. But I had no idea what it was and that was the first thing that Rick and Soul would want to know. If I could identify the type of paranormal creature it was, that might place the entire investigation into the hands of the PsyLED team. Without that, no federal agency would consider relinquishing control.

  I stood and carried the psy-meter back to the truck, where I locked it in, and then took my blanket into the darkness, toward the trees, following the trail of the . . . whatever it was. Every place where its feet touched down was dead. To the sides, spreading out, was less damage, but I didn’t think that grass would survive either. It was a type of injury I could follow even without having my hands in it, yet the dormant grass didn’t even know it had died, as if passing away in its sleep.

  I walked through the yard, my fingers fr
eezing, my toes frozen. My cheeks felt even colder, and I realized that I was crying, crying for the death in the ground. I reached the trees at the back of the property and moved deeper into them, into the darkness. The roots along the shooter’s pathway were wounded, but I thought the trees would survive. All but one little scrub oak. It was maybe five feet tall, only a few spindly branches to either side, and it was nearly dead.

  I spread my blanket out and sat next to the oak. I cupped my hands around the base of the tree, so that the outer pads of my hands touched the ground, my fingers on the bark. Sinking into the tree, I felt along the pathways up and down it, the starchy sugars and oils and organic molecules that spoke of life. The ruined limbs were at the outer edges where the thing had brushed by it, touching it with the death in its body. I could trim them back but it wouldn’t help. The roots were damaged in ways I couldn’t even understand. I tried pushing life into them, tried to heal the small tree. But it was ruined. It was dead. I sat back on my backside.

  I understood why people cut down healthy trees. I understood the concept of trees as crops and building materials, of trees as being removed for habitations and business buildings. But killing for the sake of killing—even trees—was an alien concept to me. And this creature—the shooter—was a killer. A killer by nature, perhaps? A killer by its cellular composition? It appeared that it killed just as it breathed, by body chemistry, or by instinct, by predisposition and reflex. I knew it but I couldn’t prove it. I didn’t know what the shooter was. But the death of the tree made me weep.

  I wiped my cheeks, feeling the chapped skin. I didn’t question why I cried more over a baby tree than I did over the woman the shooter had killed. Surely the woman with the gray eyes deserved a greater grief. I would have to look at my own biases, but later, when I had time, after this long night was over. Wiping my face, I stood. Gathered up my blanket. And continued after the killer. I followed the death of plants through the woods, ignoring the scratches of nearby limbs, the vines and shoots and roots set to trip me, reaching down to the roots, trying to support them all, to the end of the cove, where I stopped. The destruction led directly into the water.

  I thought about following the trail in, but a stupid image of a crocodile coming out of the water to chew me up stopped me. I knew there were no crocs or alligators this far north, but knowing wasn’t believing. Instead I walked to the end of the cove and down the other side about twenty feet. He had probably tried to throw off tracker dogs, but good dogs didn’t get fooled so easily. Neither did I. The dead earth was simple to spot. Easy as pie, I picked up the trail and followed it out of the neighborhood.

  By the time I stumbled out onto the main road, I was exhausted. I had given too much of myself to the land and to the dying sapling. I crossed the ditch and sat down hard, the frozen earth penetrating through my pants instantly. I shoved the blanket under me and huddled into my coat, hands in my pockets, where I discovered a pair of gloves I hadn’t known I carried. That was stupid. My fingers were so cold they ached bone-deep. I pulled the coat high on my neck and huddled down, searching for body warmth that seemed dangerously lacking.

  Down the road, I saw bright lights coming my way. A car, slowing.

  I was alone. On a county road before dawn. I should be afraid. I should open my coat and have my hand on my service weapon. But I was mad. And if anyone tried to hurt me right now, pulled over in a car and tried to abduct me, I’d drain them into the earth and feed the land. And feed myself. And that thought was scary. When had I thought about replenishing my own energies with the life force of another? A dark pit opened up in me, full of dread dreams and fear.

  The car stopped and the door opened. “Nell?”

  It was Occam. I blinked against the glare and squinted at him. And remembered him asking me to dinner only a few weeks or so ago. The dread and fear spread. We had never addressed that invitation. We had gone on as if he had never spoken, never asked. But I remembered. And I was apprehensive and fretful at what dinner with the wereleopard might mean.

  “You okay, Nell, sugar?”

  “Not really.” He started toward me, and I barked, “Don’t touch me!”

  Occam stopped, backed slowly to the car and behind the door. “Come on. Get in the car. I’ll take you back to the house. Rick should never have sent you out alone.”

  “Why? ’Acause I’m a woman?” I asked in my strongest church dialect, indignant.

  “No. Because this is a dangerous situation and we should be working in pairs.”

  I thought about that. If I’d had someone with me, would I have spent less of myself trying to save the sapling? Probably. I’d have been smarter because I’d have been thinking more about humans and not so much about trees. Occam stood by his car, letting me think. In a more townie accent I asked, “Where’ve you been all night?”

  “In the office off the master suite, questioning the partygoers,” he said, his Texas accent stronger than usual, deliberately calming, soothing. “Bunch a self-entitled snobs. Useless in a firefight. Two of ’em wet their britches.”

  A chuckle burst out of me. Dark cop humor, bloody and coarse, but it helped newbies to adjust, to view death and horror impersonally. My laughter faded away. Yes. I had needed a partner. The wearies pulling at my muscles like claws, I stood and dragged my blanket with me, trudging to the passenger door. I got in to find the heater blasting on full. I pulled my gloves back off and held my hands to the vents as Occam’s fancy car took us back to the house.

  I watched him as he parked in the drive, his blond hair swinging, his amber eyes looking fully human. He glanced at me and away. As if sensing my mood, Occam said nothing, just got out of his fancy car, taking my blanket and putting it in my truck before he followed me inside the house and went back to whatever he had been doing before he came to check on me.

  • • •

  Standing in the cramped space of the security system, I made my report to Rick and Soul.

  “Can you prove he—it—wasn’t human?” Soul asked.

  “Empirical evidence in a few days,” I said, speaking in my work accent. “Maybe. But not scientifically.”

  Soul heaved a sigh she might really need. I wasn’t sure if her species needed air the same way humans did. Maybe they breathed through their pores or had holes in their rib cages or something. “I’d like you to speak with Ming of Glass and her bodyguard. See what you can get out of them. When you are done, they may leave, with our thanks.”

  I stood, flatfooted, meeting Soul’s gorgeous and slightly amused eyes. At her side, Rick looked as surprised as I felt.

  “Ummm. Don’t you think there might be someone better than me to talk to a vampire?”

  “No,” Soul said. “You are precisely the right person to address the issue of paranormal beings who’ve committed first-degree murder and/or hate crimes with the highest-ranked vampire in Knoxville. And it will be an opportunity to rebuild bridges that you set fire to when you referred to all Mithrans as smelling ‘maggoty,’ I believe?”

  I blushed hotly, and the last of the chill flushed out of my body. “Ohhh. You think she knows—”

  “I am quite certain that she knows. Your reaction to Mithrans has made all the rounds. Go make nice with the head of Clan Glass. Rebuild some bridges. She’s waiting on you upstairs in the office we are using as an interrogation room. Go on,” she added when I stood there. “Take Tandy with you.”

  I left the room, which had suddenly grown too close and lost all oxygen. Tandy was outside the door, his reddish brown eyebrows lifted. Like Occam, I hadn’t seen him all night.

  “You heard?” I asked. “That you’re supposed to go with me to question the vampires?”

  “No. But I felt. What happened?”

  Tandy was the unit’s empath, which meant he could tell what other people were feeling—humans and paranormals both. The gift had been forced on him by Mother Nature when he was hit b
y lightning three times, and the reddish Lichtenberg lines that crossed his pale skin like the veins in leaves were a lasting legacy. I told him what had happened and about my punishment as we climbed the stairs to the second floor. He didn’t laugh, which was nice. He handed me a folder containing several printed papers, including the questions that had been asked of all the party guests and two floor plans of the crime scene room, one with Xs for where everyone had been standing. A dozen more. There was no time to memorize any of them. I shoved them back into the manila folder.

  My thoughts were rattled and I pulled what I could remember about proper protocol with a powerful vampire to the forefront of my memories. I needed excellent manners, a calm attitude, and the ability to play conversational chess, thinking ahead a dozen moves or so. And if Ming had ordered the shooting? There was nothing I could do.

  Vamps were policed by their up-line boss, which in Knoxville meant Ming of Glass. And Ming could be judged and punished only by the Master of the City of New Orleans, Leo Pellissier, her up-line master. Or any vampire who managed to challenge her to a blood duel. Or any non-law-enforcement human who got close enough to stake her and managed to survive. The position of vampires as regarded by law enforcement was hazy.

  “Nell,” Tandy said. “You’ll be fine. Just remember: be polite, and never, ever meet her eyes.”

  “That’s good advice,” I whispered and cleared my throat when the words came out like busted gravel. We passed through the bedroom and into a sitting room, where Tandy opened the door on the far side. The small room beyond was set up as an office, decorated with heavy draperies, heavier rugs over wood floors, dark wood wainscoting, a leather sofa, two leather armchairs, and a desk the size of Minnesota. Well, not really, but it was huge, oversized for the small office.

  Ming and Yummy were sitting in the armchairs, Ming upright as a board, Yummy stretched out, with a leg over the chair arm. The blond vampire looked relaxed, but her position shielded Ming from the doorway and allowed Yummy to roll down to the floor in the event of an attack. The position would fall below any gunshots and give her plenty of room to strike and take out an opponent. As a vampire, she had the speed to cross the distance and take out a human shooter in an eyeblink. And bullets wouldn’t hurt her anyway unless they were silver. Ming was positioned to roll under the massive desk, into relative safety.