raced toward me, eyes glowing, claws at his fingertips. I felt his feet as they hit the earth.
I called on Soulwood. Light and warmth filled me. Tender branches whipped at the house. Roots exploded from the ground. Vines rippled across the porch. They tangled themselves into Carollette’s white hair. Roots and thorns tore into her body. Blood splattered.
FireWind fired. Margot fired. Multiple gunshots tore through Carollette.
Rick fell to the ground.
The ajasgili screamed. My roots and vines tightened around her neck. She screamed and gurgled. Called on her dark power.
More shots echoed in the night, FireWind and Margot firing.
The house began to collapse. The dead body Carollette was riding slid to the porch floor, taking T. Laine with it into an oozing heap. Rick tried to shift. Writhing on the ground.
I fell forward. My vision was of my leafy hands in Soulwood soil. The light telescoped down, smaller and smaller, into two pinpoints. Everything went dark, but I wasn’t totally out. I still felt the battle. Felt the power in FireWind as he tossed boards away. Tore the dead body from his agent and threw it. Lifted T. Laine. He leaped away from the house and landed on the ground hard, his arms cushioning Lainie. She whimpered. Took a faint breath.
Death and decay shriveled. Quivered. Hesitated.
And died.
Occam’s strong arms were around me. His body heat burning. With my last thought, I sent health and life into them all. Healing. Warmth. Life.
* * *
* * *
I was awake. Sort of. Sitting in my car with the engine running, the heater on. Occam’s arms were around me. I was sitting on his lap. I was safe. He was safe. The death and decay was gone. Carollette was dead, truly dead. My magic knew all this.
I was draped in an unfamiliar sweater. Cold shook me. Nausea rose in my throat, acidic and rancid. I was alive. In some kind of exhausted fugue state from healing the land at Hugo Ames’ and defeating an attack of death and decay at Carollette’s home.
Leaves rustled and fluttered across my fingers and through my hair.
Ambulances and first responders were everywhere. There were gas leaks from the small, localized earthquakes. People all through the town were injured. A fire was spreading down the street and residents were being evacuated. As if he knew I was awake, Occam’s arms tightened about me.
T. Laine was on a stretcher, wheeled past me to an ambulance, Margot trotting at her side. “Where?” I croaked.
Occam cat-growled in my ear, “Heading to UTMC. She suffered a crushing injury. FireWind called Gonzales to meet her there.”
“He’s turning into a softie,” I whispered. I was cold. So cold. I closed my eyes, pulling the sweater around my shoulders with my leafy fingers. I didn’t know when or how the sweater had gotten here, but it was warm and fuzzy and comforting. The heat blew across me. I slept.
* * *
* * *
“Nell?”
I woke again, this time from a confusing dream full of angry people teetering on the edge of violence. I got my eyes open and blinked, confused. I was at HQ. I didn’t remember getting here.
“Nell?” FireWind asked. He had used my first name. That was enough to wake the dead from sheer shock. He was kneeling in front of me.
Occam’s arms were no longer around me, but he knelt beside my chair, his paws—paws—on my hands, his eyes the brilliant gold of his cat. He was . . . part cat. That was strange.
I looked around, discovered I was in HQ’s conference room, with no idea how I had gotten there. “Occam?” I whispered. He cat-hissed. “Boss?” I whispered.
“Kahwi. Asvhvsga,” he said.
I smelled coffee. There was a mug of coffee in FireWind’s hands, extended to me. Kahwi. Cherokee for coffee? I had no idea of the other word. I accepted the mug, warm in my icy hands, and drank. There was sugar and creamer in it, a lot of both, and the sweets and the caffeine and the fat of the creamer went to work. When the mug was half-empty, I looked around the room to see JoJo, Occam, and my boss, who was still kneeling in front of me. “I’m okay,” I said. I wasn’t. I was lying. FireWind knew that. “T. Laine? And Rick? And . . . Carollette?”
The skin around FireWind’s eyes tightened ever so slightly.
I remembered the vines wrapping around her neck. “Did I kill her?” I asked.
Occam’s arms tightened around me. He snarled silently at our boss.