When I focused on them, the cats jerked midleap/step/crouch, and raised their noses. Cherry stopped the rhythmic thumping of her tail. I realized that the animals knew I was paying attention to them and the land and I soothed them. “It’s all good. You’uns go on about your business.” The cats tore back after the family of mice. Cherry huffed a breath and put her head down, relaxing.
“Nell?” Occam.
FireWind was hurt. I remembered.
I reached for the skinwalker. And wrenched away. Yanked my hand from the pot. Found myself standing, my entire body tingling. Breathing hard. The leaves on the tree shivered. I felt some of my own leaves uncurl in my hairline. “No.” I shook my head. I’d have to bleed my blood and his onto the land to possibly heal him, and that would claim the land and my boss for me. At the thought, my bloodlust, which had been quiescent for days, raised its predatory head. So much strong blood in FireWind . . . It wanted . . . “I can’t help him,” I whispered. “I’d have to claim him and the land and I doubt he’d like that.”
“Better than being dead,” said Occam.
“Maybe not,” I said, thinking about the vampire tree and the bloodlust of my land. “He might be dead before it was done.”
T. Laine said, “His pulse is fast and irregular at nearly one fifty and his respirations are too fast, about twenty-seven a minute. I don’t know why he isn’t shifting.” She looked at me. “We need to talk to another skinwalker.”
She was asking if I would call Jane Yellowrock for advice.
I didn’t argue. I pulled my phone and scanned through the address book for Jane Yellowrock, FireWind’s sister and my sorta-friend. I dialed and it went to voice mail, not that I had really expected her to answer. Jane was busy being the Dark Queen of vampires and trying to stop a worldwide vampire war, or so one of Rick LaFleur’s confidential sources had said. Jane might not even be in the country. We hadn’t been able to confirm or deny any of the rumors surrounding her. When the mechanical voice finished leaving instructions, I left a message. Then I called the council house of vampires in New Orleans and spoke to a man who identified himself as Wrassler, which was a strange name. I told him about FireWind’s condition. Wrassler said he would try to get a message to Jane but that we shouldn’t hold our breath. “She’s underground,” he said. Which made no sense at all, not that I’d come to expect sense when talking to or about Jane.
I hung up and shook my head.
“We might have to try the null room,” T. Laine said, “but we’ve never tried it on a skinwalker in crisis.”
“Better than being dead,” Occam repeated.
“I’m not so sure of that,” T. Laine said, echoing me.
Occam got his feet under him in a squat and lifted FireWind by his front legs and upper body, up over his shoulder. “Get the door.”
I got the door. Occam stood, easily lifting FireWind’s two-hundred-plus pounds and carrying him outside. Wereleopard strength. T. Laine raced ahead, pulling on special null gloves. She opened the back ramp to the portable null room and shoved out a roll of soggy, stinking carpet. She pointed to a folding table and I helped her carry it into the middle of the null room cargo trailer. Occam dropped FireWind onto its surface with a thump-rattle that shook the trailer.
T. Laine walked down the ramp and closed it up, leaving us shut inside, in the silence and the dim light. I opened some folding chairs and sat, though the stench still in the trailer was so bad I was nearly ready to lose my dinner. Occam repeated his exam of his boss.
“When the death and decay is neutralized, can you make him shift back?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I was able to help LaFleur some, early on. But shifting won’t be the same with skinwalkers. They aren’t moon-called. They aren’t forced into their beasts. With them it’s an effort of will. They can and do shift anytime, anywhere, into anything if they have sufficient DNA for the form they want. The only similarity FireWind has mentioned is the mass-to-mass ratio and he hinted at the possibility that it might be easier to shift during the full moon.”
Occam dialed Rick, but the call went to voice mail.
FireWind opened one doggy eye, looked at Occam, and whined softly.