Blood of the Earth (22 page)

“I want a travel mug like you have,” I said. The words came out of nowhere as I kicked off my shoes and pulled my legs into the chair, smoothing my skirt, wrapping my arms around my knees, hugging myself. “I have to use a Styrofoam cup, and you have cool metal travel mugs. I want one.” They all stared at me for too long, silent. I said, “That was a non sequitur. I needed time to think.”

Occam’s mouth stretched slowly into a grin, his lips wide and his eyes unblinking, much like a cat—maybe
his
cat, his werecat. He stood and took a mug from beside the sink near the microwave. His back to the room, he said, “Non sequiturs are also very catlike.” Which made me blink. As the others watched, he rinsed the steel mug, poured coffee into it, and turned to me. “Sugar? Creamer?”

“Both,” I said, my voice hesitant. “Thank you.”

“Anytime, sugar. Anytime,” Occam said, his voice a deep burr of sound as he prepared my coffee. It all felt oddly intimate. John had never fixed my coffee. In my experience, men didn’t fix coffee, not even their own. He pushed down the travel mug top and held it out to me.

I unwrapped my arms, accepted the mug from him, and drank. The coffee was perfectly heated and sweet. I smiled up at him, knowing there was relief in my eyes and, from the way his nostrils fluttered, probably in my scent. He smiled back, and I felt less stressed about being in the hotel room, with people who had been strangers only a few days ago.

*   *   *

Rick passed around several lists of HST members for all of us to study, all hard copies in a purple folder. One was a universal
list, of every family and family member in the organization. There were files for each, listing crimes they were purported to have committed or been an accessory to, before or after the fact. There were lots of photos, some clearly selfies from social media, most taken with long-distance cameras, which again proved the church’s claim that the government was spying on its citizens. Sometimes conspiracy theories were real, but sometimes they were for a good cause.

There were even some children, which means they were being brought up in an environment where hate was not only acceptable, but looked upon as good and righteous and proper. Which was the way the church did things. Raise up a man in the way he ought to go and he will return to it when he is old—a Bible paraphrase I had grown up with. I thought about the boy with the assault rifle, and the gunshots at night, and paid close attention to all the photos of young men, but none looked like him, which relieved me more than I had expected.

Rick’s phone rang, that odd little tinkle sound of his cell. He answered it, “Senior Special Agent Rick LaFleur,” which meant he didn’t recognize the number. I was learning things, and that small bit of awareness made me feel good about myself in ways I didn’t understand too clearly. This time, Rick didn’t leave the room for the call, just listened and grunted a few times. He said, “Copy. Thank you.”

Moments later Rick’s cell rang and again he took the call. Tandy’s minute cringe told me it was bad news. Rick hung up and said, “We now have a Girl Four. She’s a little older than the others, age nineteen, a college student, working off campus. We think she was picked up when she got off work about half an hour ago, from Sweet P’s Bar-B-Que and Soul House on Maryville Pike. A group of fishermen saw her go outside to wait on her ride. Approximately four minutes later, they saw a white van pull off. Two minutes after that time, they left. When the girl’s ride got there, approximately two minutes after that, she was gone. Eight minutes, give or take. That’s a very small window of time to plan for, but someone pulled it off. When the Amber Alert hit the airwaves, the fishermen realized they had probably been paying their bills during the abduction, but by the time they called it in, too much time had passed. A team already ruled out complicity by the fishermen.”

By the time he finished speaking, all the unit were buried in their tablets and laptops, keys tapping softly. Girl Four was named Anne Rindfliesch, and her parents were land rich, owning acres of the Tennessee countryside. No known connections to vampires.

“We need to see the crime scene,” T. Laine muttered.

“We will,” Rick said. “As soon as the feds are done. The family of Girl Four has no known current association to Ming, but they also have liquid funds available and won’t need to contact vamps. The feds are at the house of Girl Four, on high alert, waiting for a call.”

“HST has never taken more than two abductees at one time,” T. Laine said.

“Yeah. This isn’t a characteristic HST MO,” JoJo said, fingers tapping on her keyboard.

“No. It isn’t,” Rick said, his tone grim. “The feds think they need money, and that’s why the exceptionally large number of abductions. And the family of Girl Two just paid the ransom demand to the account in the Turks.”

With a quick look my way, Rick said, “The account for the bank in the Turks is under the name Johnson Campbell, DOB eleven twenty-five, nineteen eighty. That name is not on the list of HST members, but the bank is resisting turning over any more information than the name and date of birth. Nell? Is he a God’s Cloud member?”

I leaned forward a fraction of an inch and then sat back against the cushions and nursed my coffee. After a bit I said, “I don’t know a Johnson Campbell of any age in the church, or any other Campbell in that age range, but Campbell is a common enough name, not solely a church name. And the churchmen don’t do offshore banking. They don’t get passports. They don’t travel.”

JoJo stood, looking wobbly on her feet. “Looks like things will get interesting today, but I’m for a shower and bed. Clearer heads than mine can come up with our next move. Night, all.”

“Me too,” T. Laine said, following JoJo back through Rick and Paka’s room. To her roommate, she said, “I showered at four to wake me up, so we don’t have to flip for who gets to shower first. I’m setting a silence circle around my bed. Don’t touch it.”

JoJo mumbled something vaguely obscene under her breath and they closed the room door. Tandy studied me a moment and then smiled. “I’m going to turn in too. Have fun, you guys.”

That left only Occam, Rick, and me in the small sitting area, Occam staring at his laptop, eyes scanning left and right as he read, his blondish hair hanging loose around his jaw. Rick was tapping keys on his. I didn’t have an assignment, so I spent the time reading online about all the kinds of paranormal crimes
and creatures that fell under PsyLED’s purview, and looking over case reports from previous PsyLED investigations. And then studying about PsyLED itself. PsyLED was a semisecret government organization under the leadership of Director Clarence Lester Woods, and he was a former special forces guy, a Green Beret who had seen active duty. He had lost an arm to an IED—an improvised explosive device—and when he left the military, he’d taken a job with DoD. He’d put PsyLED together and still ran it, directly under the authority of the Department of Defense.

Each PsyLED agent (no matter how well trained in other law enforcement agencies or departments) received more training at a PsyLED instruction facility. The person who ran the school that trained all PsyLED special agents was the CA—chief administrator, Dr. Smythe. A
woman
. I smiled at that. A woman in charge of an entire school. The Training Facility for the Psychometry Law Enforcement Division of Homeland Security—called Spook School by the trainees—was located near Langley, Virginia, on the grounds of an old private school.

I closed the search into PsyLED and started one into the accumulated case files on the church raid. I was still studying them when Rick called for lunch break to KFC. My head was filled with all sorts of thoughts and questions, none of them leading to good outcomes under the current situation. Or
sitch
.

Before we could get out of the room, Rick’s cell phone rang. He answered with, “LeFleur.” Then he said, “We’ll be there in twenty.” He pressed a button on his cell and said to us, “Grab your gear. The body of Girl One was just found.”

Body?
The room went silent, and Occam and I turned to the photo of the girl. Her name was Rachel Ames. And she was dead.

Into the silence, his voice gentle, Rick said, “I said to grab your gear. The FBI has requested an update on the abductions. In person.”

*   *   *

“HST does not kill its abductees. They
always
come through. It’s their rep,” Occam explained. “Even law enforcement knows it. It’s less likely that people will pay if they know their loved ones turn up dead.”

“This changes the focus of the investigation,” Rick said, “from HST members as primary suspects to multiple potential groups.”

“Okay.” I was sitting in the backseat, listening and eating fried chicken livers as Rick drove and talked.

“We knew that two of the kidnap victims were related, several generations back, to Ming, the Mithran Master of the City, and of course Mira Clayton’s mother is one of Ming’s scions. Things were starting to point back to vamps on every level, which was also unusual for HST. During the night, JoJo was building lists of possible suspects from an HST Mithran perspective, trying to narrow down to any HST leader who might know all the families. She came up with several names, and the FBI found something that interested them in the lists she sent. Then we got this.” He handed his cell phone to Occam with one hand and said, “Open the note file at the top.”

We rode in silence as Occam opened the file. He sent all the information to his own cell and passed me Rick’s. It was a statement from PsyLED Unit Twelve from an informant. It claimed that HST had a list of paranormals from all over the United States and was planning to bring their version of ethnic cleansing to the vampires, via staking and beheading. Rick took a turn too fast, making the wheels squeal. I rocked into the seat belt and back upright. My cherry soda sloshed. Rick said, “Too much hinky on this case. With the vampire connection, the murder of Girl One, and the lists, this just became more of a joint effort. Everything we previously ruled out and everything we never looked at because it didn’t fit HST MO will have to be reconsidered.”

*   *   *

The FBI office on Darrell Springs Boulevard was built to impress, a fortress of a building, four stories with cameras everywhere, few trees to obscure anything or anyone who might want to approach, four massive columns at the front entrance, lots of good lighting so that enemies and criminals couldn’t hide in the shadows and the night couldn’t lessen the cameras’ effectiveness, and a five-foot-tall black iron fence surrounding the property, the fence topped by sharp points. The building was constructed atop an artificially bermed hill,
which meant that there were likely more stories underground. We pulled up in front of a guardhouse staffed with an armed guard and a dog, and Rick talked to the guard through a speaker and bulletproof glass. Once Rick held up ID for all of us, the gate rolled back, more quiet than the clanking I had expected.

Rick parked, and he and Occam got out of the van. More slowly, silently, I followed, my laptop tucked inside a tote bag under my arm. I didn’t really expect to get into FBI headquarters, but they surprised me. Even with so little background to be checked through, living off the grid, not having banking records, which could have made me out to be a terrorist in hiding, they let me inside. But that was as far as I made it—the front lobby. Without any attempt at politeness, I was told to take a seat and wait. So I did, ignoring the sign that said no food, no drinks, and finished off my KFC livers, mashed potatoes, slaw, and biscuits, and then slurped down my jumbo cherry drink.

By the time a uniformed guard came up to tell me about the no-eating rules, I was finished and politely stuffed the greasy papers into the bag and handed it to him, while wearing my best churchwoman, I’m-too-dumb-to-know-better smile. I might no longer be among the church conspiracy theorists, but I still didn’t like big brother. Not one bit. The uniformed guard stood there holding my garbage for a few moments while I cleaned my hands on a moist-wipe and opened my computer, ignoring him. I had research to do on who might want to anger the Knoxville vamps.

I spent two hours on the laptop searching through the avenues open to me—the government and nongovernment sites that the laptop allowed me into. And I found nothing.

So I took the easiest route and contacted one of Jane Yellowrock’s business partners, Alex Younger, on e-mail and simply asked if he knew anyone who might want the vampires in the Knoxville area harmed. He sent me back a short note with links to all the online sites I had found and a dozen more, and he added a single terse paragraph at the bottom of the list.

For what it’s worth—after Jane Yellowrock rescued and delivered the abducted fanghead to the Master of the City, Ming did a massive bleed and read of her humans and
determined that a white male knew quite a lot more about the kidnapping of her blood-servant by the church leaders than he first expressed. He was sanctioned and punished by removal from the food chain, went through vamp-blood withdrawal in rehab. It’s possible that he blames the Knoxville MOC Ming Zhane of Clan Glass for his situation. He doesn’t happen to be very bright, but he might want to draw out the suckheads, hoping for a chance to hurt them. Or he might want to get back at the church people who contributed to his loss of liquid dinner. His last name is Dawson. Hang on. Looking for more.

The name
Dawson
wriggled in the back of my mind like a worm on a hook, luring me in. There was something I’d read or heard about the name, maybe something in church history, from the establishment of God’s Cloud? But it wouldn’t come. Moments later, Alex sent another e-mail that said,
Simon A. Dawson Jr., age thirty-three, has three prior convictions, two for assault and one for stalking. See attached rap sheet.
And then it clicked.
Dawson
was the surname of the men Sister Erasmus had referred to as backsliders.

I sent a polite thank-you to Alex Younger and downloaded the information. Fingers tapping on the arms of my chair, I studied the rap sheet—which stood for “record of arrest and prosecution.” Dawson was born in Knoxville. He attended Farrington High School, the school attended by two of the victims. That made my insides clench in agitation. I came up with questions but no definitive answers. I had what the cops might consider circumstantial information on a guy who might hate vampires, and nothing pointed to an HST connection or to involvement with another organization that might target vampires and their human servants. But the coincidence bothered me. Once means happenstance, twice means coincidence, three times means problems.

How likely was it for this particular Dawson to be the church backslider? Or tied into HST? Would the FBI ask Ming about Dawson if I gave them the name? Would they call Yellowrock Securities for information? I almost smiled at the thought that I might have a source they didn’t have or wouldn’t use. When I gave them the name and the source, would they
follow through? Would Rick LaFleur call Jane? I had the feeling that he might want to, very badly. Want to and not do it because of the whole man-woman thing.

So. Unless I gave them the name, or the cops went to Ming Zhane herself, or to Jane, and asked, they might never learn the connection of Simon Dawson to the local vampires. And he wasn’t on Rick’s lists of suspects with ties to the vampires.

I compiled all the data I had, leading with the paragraph about my confidential source suggesting that Dawson had been a blood-servant, punished with withdrawal, and sent an e-mail to Rick with an attached high school photograph I found online.

Ten minutes later I heard a faint
ding
, and Rick strode from the elevator across the carpet to me, an unreadable expression on his face. He stopped a foot short of me, bent over me, and dropped his hands to the arms of my chair, using his height to intimidate me, making his body and my chair into a cage. Quietly, too quietly, his voice a cat’s low burr, he said, “How the hell did you find out something
we
haven’t? Have you been shielding God’s Cloud from this investigation?”

My first reaction was shock. Then fear raced across the shock and through me like quicksilver, the fear of a child who had been beaten, the fear of a young woman who had been threatened and . . . My breath stopped; my heart raced as memories spun through me. And then fury slammed into me so fast that my skin felt like it had been set on fire. So softly even Rick, with his cat ears, had to lean in to hear, I said, “My foot is perfectly positioned to kick you. If you don’t get off me,
now
, I will.”

He didn’t move.

So I kicked him.

And had the satisfaction of seeing him fall, his hands holding his crotch. JoJo had been right. It felt really good. Well, for me.

The uniformed security guard was back so fast I hardly saw him arrive. I was in handcuffs faster than that. And then I was hauled upstairs, my arms lifted painfully high behind me, and thrust into a room filled with men and women in suits, each wearing the same expression—cold anger. The security guards, three of them by this time, shoved me into a chair and
looped a second pair of handcuffs through the first set and wrapped them around a chair arm before latching them shut with a ratcheting
click
that sounded sharp and final in the quiet room. I was seated at the center of the table, my back to the door, the tabletop littered with papers and electronic devices, screens up all over the room, lit with photos of crime scenes, including one of a dead girl. She lay in weeds, fully clothed except for one shiny blue shoe, which was missing. Heart racing, I dragged my gaze away from the photograph of the body.

On the tabletop there were dozens of laptops and tablets and papers strewn in loose pages or stacked neatly. The people sitting around the table looked tired, angry, forbidding, and a little mean.

The man at the head of the table was older, colder, and by his expression seemed perfectly willing to have someone beat me for information. I gave him my best churchwoman smile, sweet as honey. He frowned back.

From behind me I heard something. Or maybe felt something. Twisting around, I saw one of the guards holding a black thing about the size of a pack of cigarettes, lifting it directly over me and then along the contours of my body. I didn’t know what it was, but I didn’t like it. Not one bit. Finally, he backed away, and I could see him communicating something nonverbally with the man at the head of the table.

Rick, walking slowly and slightly bent over, took a chair across from me and placed my laptop and other things on the table between us. I didn’t look his way, not once, but when he finally got seated, he demanded, his voice slightly more breathy than usual, “Explain yourself.”

I kept my gaze on the man at the head of the table and pulled on all my childhood accent when I answered. “’Bout what? There’s a lot I could explain, from why I ain’t adopted a new dog, to the reasons I prefer organic vegetables over ones grown with poison, to why I kicked you in the nuts. Be more specific.”