FireWind shook his head no.
“Do you intend to sniff around and tell us how many humans and vamps have been on-site?”
FireWind nodded yes and trotted off, nose down.
Rick said, “The rest of you, pair up and gear up. Vests, wood stakes, null stakes, silver and traditional rounds, one member of each team with silver, the other with traditional. Stay paired. Everyone human shaped. Do not become separated. Comms on.”
FireWind circled, circled, until he came to a hard stop on the drive and turned at a sharp angle. He trotted about twenty feet in the opposite direction of the house to a hillock with a rounded, oval-shaped boulder sticking from one side, not far from where I thought the water-filled cave was located. Occam and I followed, the occasional patch of snow crunching beneath our feet, tall grasses swishing. I could see the edge of the hill. It fell off, a long way down. On the other side was the sky, bright clouds, and the setting sun. The cleared hill offered a view down on Knoxville’s lights and the Tennessee River Valley floodplain. As a housing site it was amazing, and I was stunned that a developer hadn’t snapped it up for high-end town houses with a view.
FireWind climbed to the top of the hillock and made a chuffing sound. We all moved through the winter dry weeds to the hillock and I spotted two wooden doors set flush, butting up to the boulder. Root cellar doors. Good, well-made, strong root cellar doors. New ones, unlike the wood of the rotting house.
Studying the entrance, I walked around the low hillock. “It’s a really odd place for a root cellar unless it’s also a natural cave that abuts a rock shelf I found. I guess the shelf could be tied into this boulder.” I hadn’t looked far enough this way when I was reading the land.
The unit converged on the doors. The hasp of the lock was broken, but the two doors were closed tightly, almost as if wedged together.
Overhead, jarring against the pinkening sky, muted rainbows flashed in blues and purples and hints of shell. A pearlescent sheen touched the underbelly of the low clouds. Three arcenciels were dancing in the sky: Cerulean, Pearl, and Opal were not enough to attract attention when in the city and competing with city lights, but here in the hills where darkness reigned, there was no doubt what they were. Rainbow dragons. Angry rainbow dragons.
Cerulean slammed to the ground in front of FireWind. To his credit, Aya didn’t flinch.
I did, though. It was like a bolt of bright blue lightning hitting the earth. The power shot through my shoes and into my bones like a lightning strike.
When my eyes cleared from the glare, I saw a female-ish form, standing in front of the boss-boss. She was tall, improbably lean, brilliant blue, and totally naked. She carried two rows of breasts as if she fed a litter at a time, and had what looked like horns at her spine, shoulders, hips, and groin. A crest rose along the center of her head and down her spine and it moved as she breathed, opening like a frill with each breath.
The arcenciel spread her hand in front of FireWind’s snout. Her fingers were webbed, with three fingers and a thumb that might correlate with the design of a hand, but with several more spiny finger bones that pointed out to the side and others to the back along her arms to her elbows. They looked like spines on fish fins.
“Mermaid form,” Occam said in my ear, “siren. Interesting.”
“He who walks in the skin of predators,” she said, her tones dulcet and breathy, like a quartet of wood flutes, like a song, a melody meant for the heavens and not the Earth.
LaFleur stepped up, his white hair caught in the evening wind blowing up the hill, swirling. It picked up the blue lights of the arcenciel. “He who walks in the skin of predators cannot speak the speech of humans while in this form. I will speak for him, the words of his will and intent.”
“I accept your words,” Cerulean said.
LaFleur said, “We attend your words.”
“There are two caves. One has a water source that empties from the hill, three of my dragon lengths below the crest. It trickles to the valley. The water cave contains energies that repel my kind. The other cave I have entered and have observed. It is long and winding, with openings to the air in three places.” Cerulean pointed. “There are this many drinkers of blood within.” She held up four fingers of one hand and two on the other for a total of six. “And this many humans.” She flashed her open hands at him four times.
I had no idea if that meant thirty-two or four times the spines too. Rick didn’t ask, and Cerulean continued.
“Three of the humans are also young shape-shifters of the canine family and they are injured. She Who Guards the Rift isthere. She is captured in a crystal. It is a small crystal. I have been locked in a crystal and ridden by blood drinkers. One like this one”—she pointed at FireWind—“but female, set me free. You will go inside and you will set She Who Guards the Rift free or your people will die at my hand.”
Opal hit the earth beside Cerulean, and even before the pale blue and pink lights dimmed, she said, “This is not the words of the negotiation, sister.”
Cerulean’s voice altered into the notes of ill-tuned wind chimes. “I do notnegotiatewith lesser beings. They will obey as in the olden times or I will destroy them.”
T. Laine said, “Will you be able to kill all of us before one of us kills you with cold iron?”
Rick pulled a small blade from a sheath at his side.
Cerulean stepped back quickly and hissed at him. Her teeth were like shark’s teeth and there appeared to be several rows of them. She turned to Opal and said, “You will use the words of the negotiation with the lesser beings.” In another blast of light, Cerulean changed shape and flipped into the air in a spiral. From above us she said, “I will go back into the air cave through the opening down the hill. I will be ready to fight when you enter and will eat them from behind.”
Pearl landed beside Opal. Both looked more like human women than Cerulean and were again clothed in filmy, silky gauze that waved in the swirling wind. Pearl handed LaFleur a paper rolled like a scroll. In tones like bells and harp strings, she said, “This is the shape of the cave for beings who cannot fly and who must walk upon the earth.”
Rick unrolled the paper and T. Laine moved to stand beside him. The rest of us stayed well back. Rick knelt so that FireWind could see the scroll.
I didn’t have cold iron on my person. I used that for cooking and keeping the fires burning. Maybe I needed to get one of the churchmen farriers to hammer out an iron blade for me.
“Here,” Opal said, pointing to the map, “are the human prisoners.” She moved her hand. “Here, we will emerge. There will be three of us. We will try to save the humans and the dog shifters here; however, the energies in the water cave will impede our power and ability to…forward fly. Soul is here.” Shepointed. “You must find Soul and release her and incapacitate the blood drinkers so that we may eat them.”
