“What did we get from the camera?” Soul asked.
“Mind-blowing. JoJo is on-site, downloading the footage to her laptop.”
“Hmmm. So she had good instincts about the value of the evidence she broke protocol to attain. And I must say that saving the baby can be spun to excellent PR advantage. Also, it was the right thing to do, correct protocol or no.” I blinked and relaxed again, tension that had built as she talked easing away. “Thank you, LaFleur,” she said. “That will be all.”
On the heels of those words, Soul stepped into the tent and let the unfastened doorway fall closed behind her. She stood in the entrance and studied me, her fingers laced together, draped in front of her hips, white booties the only thing that suggested she was on a magical contamination site. I stared back at her, my face giving nothing away, one hand on the sleeping baby. Beyond the cloth walls, I heard gurneys being rolled away, two by two, into the PsyCSI tents. They had begun to carry the dead from the shore.
Finally Soul smiled, her full lips stretching open and a look of real humor on her face. “When I came to PsyLED, they had no idea what to do with me. I was a singularity at the time, the very first known paranormal being in federal law enforcement, a singularity as you are now. A species that humans had no idea existed.”
“What are you?”
“That information is above your security clearance,” she said easily.
I gave a tiny nod to show that I was listening and, as I always did in the face of authority, took refuge in quotes. I said, “About singularities, ‘nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.’ And ‘nothing can come of nothing.’ So you were not, and are not, a singularity, not any more than I am.”
Beneath my hand, the baby’s leg jerked in her sleep and she made a little popping sound with her lips as she exhaled. Absently I patted her and adjusted the baby blanket. I had spent the first twelve years of my life surrounded by and taking care of young’uns, and I could soothe one in my sleep.
Soul watched and cocked her head to the side. “If you and your sisters are genetic, familial singularities?”
I shrugged as if that wouldn’t bother me.
Soul said, “I was nearly fired my first week on the job for not following the rules and regs set down by the people in charge of my unit. I ended up saving a family of four who were being attacked by a werewolf, and this was before the weres were out of the paranormal closet.” She smoothed her silver hair from her nape to her waist, curling the tail under. It looked like a self-comforting gesture. “It’s an old story, and it proved nothing then or now, except that I have always put doing the right thing before the job.”
Which meant that I had done the right thing in Soul’s eyes. That was reassuring, not that I would share that either, saying instead, “To thine self be true.”
She laughed, and it sounded like wind chimes. Mesmerizing. Like magic. I narrowed my eyes at her and she laughed again. “Shakespeare. They told me you liked to quote things instead of giving a direct answer.”
“I always give a direct answer.”
“You never give a direct answer.” When I didn’t reply, she said, “Then tell me what happened here.”
“I don’t know. But the thing or things under the ground? The shadow-and-light dancer? It likes you. It’s been following you since you stepped onto the ground. Which you did without benefit of a car. How did you get here?”
“And you know this how?”
“I bled into the ground and now I know it. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know how I do what I do, or know what I know. Did you fly?”
“Of course not. This is a no-fly zone.” Which sounded utterly irrelevant to the problem beneath our feet, the problem that was moving slowly in a circle, around and around beneath the tent, between us. I could feel the dancer, watching or sensing or whatever the blue blazes it was doing. Soul leaned toward me, and when she spoke there was something in her tone, a magical demand, an influence that burrowed into my skin and pricked my spirit. “How. Did. You. Know. When I stepped onto the land?”
I let a small smile onto my face, speaking with the church accent I had grown up with. “You ain’t human, lady, and that ain’t a secret anymore. Some secrets are like the wind, blowing where they will, for good or ill.”
“More Shakespeare?”
“No. Just me.” Before she could question further, I changed the subject. “What are you going to do with the baby?”
“Her name is Lisa Langston-Smith. Her mother and father are at the gate.”
My eyes filled with unexpected tears at the sound of the name, and the fact that the baby wasn’t an orphan. Another part of me unclenched and eased, a part I hadn’t known was tight with worry. I had to wonder how many parts of me there were and how many were still clamped tight.
Soul clasped her hands. “Her aunt brought her here for a party while babysitting.” Her tone said she wasn’t impressed with the aunt’s version of babysitting. “Social services has been called. Don’t look at me like that. They’ll work with the parents and I’m certain that her parents will get her back. Possibly, especially, now that the irresponsible aunt is no longer among the living.”
Which was a coldhearted assessment. I crossed my arms over my chest. “When?”
“When will the parents get her back? As soon as social services protocols allow it.”
I frowned hard, staring Soul down. In my best, formal, talk-like-a-special-agent voice, I said, “There have always been rumors that PsyLED wants magical beings for their research. Now they have a baby who survived what might prove to be a magical MED event. They’ll take her to the labs and do tests first.”
“Labs?” She looked amused.
“Government labs. Like all the ones in the Knoxville area. Like one of the ones that possibly contributed to this MED.”
“Magic from a laboratory?” Her fingers made a little don’t-be-an-idiot gesture. “Conspiracy theories. Foolishness shared by the uninformed and the uneducated.”
“‘Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.’ That was a roundabout way of saying that the government needs to prove itself if it wants to be considered among the angels.”
Soul tilted her head to me, her eyes sharper than a hunting hawk’s, a gesture that suggested I was being tested in ways I didn’t understand. “Lisa will be taken to the University of Tennessee Medical Center, the same place you were taken and well cared for. She will receive all the medical care she requires. If a few vials of blood are drawn along the way and a few scans are run, they will not hurt the baby and might help us.”
I glared at that.
Soul turned away and stepped out the cloth door.
The shadow-and-light dancer beneath the ground attacked.
SEVEN
The ground threw Soul up and forward; she landed, hard, on her left side. Roots erupted and three vines grabbed her ankle, climbing her leg, faster than my eyes could follow. Soul made a noise I had never heard anyone make before, a wind chime, violin, and wood flute sound all together.
I screamed, “Occam!” and dropped to my knees on the ground beside her. I grabbed the roots and heaved them away from her. But they were faster than I was. Her left leg was wrapped to the knee in vines that were fully leafed, the leaves deep green with black veins and a tarry petiole—the small stem from the bottom of the leaf to the larger stem. Soul’s right foot was being pulled into the ground. I tore vines, freeing her right foot. Soul kicked at the ground, trying to crawl away. The roots began growing thorns and between one handful of roots and the next, half-inch-long thorns pierced my skin. My blood splattered on the ground. This was bad.
A white-clad form landed beside me and began hacking at the stems and roots with a vamp-killer, the silver-plated edge catching the light. Through the clear faceplate I recognized Occam. I tore up three vines, but they grew back faster than I could destroy them.
Rick fell beside me, a vamp-killer in his hand. He pushed me out of the way. “Get back inside before it decides you’re tasty again too.”
I stepped into the tent, but kept the door open, watching. Sucked the blood from my hands. I felt the thing in the ground, even through the tent bottom and the protective spells. If it had been a puppy, now it was a wolf, ripping and tearing at Soul’s flesh.
The bloodlust I had thought I’d defeated rushed back. I forced it down, fighting the need to take Soul for the earth. The desire was a painful lump in my gut, in the rooty scars. Soul’s powerful blood called to me.
The men whacked with their blades, burying the edges in the ground. The vines bled, but in the bright of day, it was a shiny, blackened color, like burned motor oil, cave-black with a hint of iridescent silver when the light hit it just right. The oily black stuff coated their blades and dripped to the ground. Soul was fighting, too, ripping at the vines, and her blood was scarlet, splattering in a wide arc. And everywhere blood landed, roots and vines thrust up from the earth, drinking it down. Searching for her.
Both men were shouting, their voices muffled beneath the suits. Soul’s voice was unfettered, however, and she was screaming in that violin–wood flute voice, the pitch rising. Soul’s legs began to glow, a pearlized radiance that looked as if they were lit from within.
“No! Soul! Don’t!” Rick shouted through his faceplate. “You’re almost free!”
But Soul’s legs roiled beneath his hands and the men leaped back, both cursing. Light blasted out and Soul . . . twisted. Coiled. Her body shifting into something much larger. Lighter. A nacre-lit brilliance of light and energy, over twenty feet long. Massive back legs. Serpent face with curved and spiraled and spiked horns and opal white teeth and fangs. She swiveled her head to me, her eyes taking in the tent and me and . . . my bloodlust. She screamed in defiance and snapped her fangs at me. I leaped back, into the uncertain safety of the antispell tent. Soul’s wings unfurled. She leaped for the sky, trumpeting fury and victory.
A light dragon.
An arcenciel.
Soul was an arcenciel . . . “Ohhh,” I whispered, my mouth falling open.
Rick looked around, his face grim, noting where everyone was. Not one person beyond the radius of us three seemed to have noticed anything. No one came running. No one pointed at the sky where Soul had disappeared in a blast of light. No one had even seen the transformation except Rick, Occam, and me. As soon as I could get my mouth to rehinge, I smiled sweetly at Rick and said, “I guess Occam and me just gained a few points in our security clearances.”
Rick cursed again and whacked the ground with his vamp-killer, cutting the vines that were still writhing and thrashing, splattering drops of that oily black stuff. I had to wonder if the silver-plated blades were killing whatever the growing viny thing was. Almost as if in answer to my question, the earth writhed, lifted, fell, and went still. Rick said to us, “This goes no further.”