He made a turn, thinking. Made another turn. “Probably,” he said grudgingly.
“Then he was venting his rage and violence, not teaching you manners.”
Occam thought about that for a while, shifting lanes, his speed inching up. “Werecats fight their sons. It’s the only way to teach them manners. ‘Manners’ in this case means not to eat or bite or harm humans. It’s a bloody lesson.”
“Different situation,” I said. “If a human child is rude, no one dies. If that human child takes a few dozen reminders to be taught a lesson, then the parent learns a little patience. Werecats are completely animal when they first shift. Their human is buried under the were-brain. If werecats don’t learn manners, and accidentally spread the were-taint by infecting a human, they get killed by a grindylow. What an adult cat does to teach them not to kill is different from teaching a human manners. Was your daddy a werecat?”
“No.”
“Your mama?”
“No. You really wanna do this now, Nell, sugar?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
Occam squinted into the distance. “I don’t remember much. Stuff is still coming back to me in bits and pieces.” His voice softened. “I was bit the day after I turned ten. My daddy was a minister in a hellfire-and-damnation church and when I came home from playing in a gulch with friends, with tooth marks from a big-cat, he locked me in a cage. The full moon came. I shifted.”
Were-creatures hadn’t been out of the closet then. His daddy had known what had happened to his son. Somehow. Or guessed. Or just took a chance on myths being real. “What happened after?”
“I woke up partially, found myself in a cage. Couldn’t shift back because somebody had put a silver-threaded mat in the cage with me. But the silver didn’t stop me from remembering, slowly, that I was human. It took me twenty years to get free and I did. Shifted back and found the nearest police station, telling them I had been hit on the head and had no memory. Got lucky and had a chance to go to school. Graduated from Texas Christian University with a degree in ranch management. I survived.”
“Your mama and daddy?” I whispered, my hands clenching on each other.
“Dead. Died in a car accident five years after I went ‘missing.’”
“You think your daddy sold you?”
“I know he did. I remember.”
“When were you going to tell me this?”
“When you finally admitted that you were in love with me.”
I flushed. In love . . . I had no idea what that even meant except from reading a rare romance book and living the skewed life of a God’s Cloud wife, neither of which was probably normal. “Ummm.” I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say or do now.
“I didn’t want no pity getting in the way of us . . . becoming whatever we’re becoming.”
“I don’t pity you, Occam,” I whispered.
“Damn good thing.”
I fought a smile.
Occam said, “So. Back to our original subject. You’re saying you’re against spanking?”
I thought about a child reaching to touch a hot stove. A child ignoring a parent’s caution and running for a swift-moving river. A child scaring a horse or a mother pig even after being told of a danger. Worse, and more of an issue when it came to abuse, an older child, one old enough to know better, deliberately hurting another, younger child. Was there a difference between a swat and a beating? Was there ever a time to hit a child, even one growing up evil? Was Brother Ephraim beaten when he was a child? Most likely. It hadn’t helped him a lick. If I hadn’t been whupped, would I have grown up mean and evil? Probably not. “Lots of the church folk beat their young’uns. But ninety-nine point nine times out of a hundred, a whuppin’ isn’t necessary. It’s the adult’s emotional problem, not the kid needing a beating.”
“I’ll concede that. Are we having a philosophical discussion about corporal punishment in child-rearing, Nell, sugar?”
I ducked my head and looked out the window. We didn’t talk again until we were in HQ, and giving Rick and Soul our impressions of the Tolliver household. It didn’t take long. I finished my part with the words, “I’m worried that things are about to go to hell in a handbasket at the Tollivers’.”
Rick put his head down, studying his hands on the table-top, thinking. “I hate to send you back out, but I want Unit Eighteen on the grounds tonight,” Rick said. “With the private security and the feds gone, it’s the perfect time for an attack. Also the perfect time for us to look around.”
“We don’t have a warrant,” I said.
“We also haven’t received a call from Tolliver relieving us of responsibility for the welfare and protection of the family. And I don’t listen to third-party claims—like those of ALT Security.”
“Occam and me aren’t exactly a third party.”
“No. You’re not,” Rick said. “And you told me you were worried about the salamanders and what was going on there.”
“Sneaky,” Occam said. “I like it.”
SEVENTEEN
It was just after two a.m. We were wearing night-gear camo unis in shades of gray with PsyLED in huge white letters across the back. The unis were combined with high-tech bullet-and stab-resistant personal armor and dark field boots. I wore a low-light monocle lens on one eye. Occam had cat eyes that could see in the dark. We both had vest cams running and comms headsets. An RVAC was giving us flyover protection and eyes in the sky. We were carrying our service weapons just in case.
T. Laine was off duty, getting some rest. JoJo was in the passenger seat of PsyLED’s old panel van, all her electronics fired up and running. Tandy was belted in behind her, looking sick from the excitement he was surely picking up. Rick had been driving, but now he slid open the doors and we stepped from the van, watching as we slid into the shadows, Occam more graceful and silent, me uncoordinated and noisy by comparison, shuffling in the fall leaves behind him. We walked from shadow to shadow down the road and entered the property. I heard the van door shut, Rick now safely inside with the others.
Back at HQ, Soul was watching the whole thing on the big screens. Having the assistant director observing was difficult. If the probie screwed up, I might be out of a job. Worse, if I screwed up, people might die.
Someone had lit a bonfire in the backyard, near the pools, and smoke blew on the uncertain river wind. Shadows and light danced through the night as we circled the house to approach on the river side. We stopped in the protection of a dead spruce, hearing splashing and grunts and soft laughter, the sounds advertising that people were there. Someone was swimming in the heated pools.
I touched my communications gear. “Ingram here. RVAC?”
“Coming in now. Stay put. I see you,” JoJo said.