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 freezing, 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.