The Green Knight was to our left.
Here, in this reality beneath the land, two vampires walked from the Vaughn farm, across the road, across the graves of the dogs, and separated. They didn’t look like vampires did in real life. They looked like an empty outline representation with fangs, like something a child might draw. The Green Knight’s vision of them was bare and sparse, based on the vampire blood he had tasted when the land ate the ones at Esther’s house, and also when he buried Inigo. But one of the vampire figures was smoky dark. The stick figure was coated with demon smut. Tomás de Torquemada.
The stick figures moved to either side of the hillock where the Green Knight stood guard with us. The small hill where my house stood.
Behind them trailed two adult devil dogs, these much more realistic. The land had probably known the genetics of devildogs much longer. Generations of churchmen had been buried in the ground, long before I was born.
The vampires and the dogs spread out, making harder targets.
Beneath the vision, the Sleepers were settled, silent, unmoving.
In the vision, there was no wind. There was no sound. Yet vampire feet vibrated on the earth, no matter how vampire-stealthy they moved. The land knew they werehere, whether they moved fast or slow. The land knew. The Green Knight knew. Mud and I knew. They werehere.
From the side, from the Vaughns’ land, a black blur appeared, a wolf, running. A blacker shadow-cat raced at his side. Behind them, another cat sped. FireWind, Rick, Rettell.
The vampire without the demon smut drew a gun. He fired four shots, two and two. FireWind fell. The earth thumped beneath my feet as he fell, tumbled, and lay still.
Rettell fell.
Rick went still as death for an electric heartbeat.
He screamed. Cat scream into the night.
His mate had fallen. He stood over her body, protecting her. Quivering with the need to attack, the need to protect. His cat undecided what to do.
But the intruders were not moving. The Green Knight lifted a hand and the ground sprouted vines. Long and sinuous. They curled up the legs of the vampires and the devil dogs. Just long enough that they stood still. The tree had them.
Buying us time.
Iknewthe breath and blood of the injured through the trees. They weren’t dead, but they were full of silver. The skinwalker wolf and the Asiatic cheetah would die if I didn’t do something.
“Nell?” Mud murmured aloud, her voice panicked.
Don’t take the weres or the wolf,I said to the knight. Then, aloud, I added so my sister could hear, “Not Rick. Not Aya, or Leann. Tell the tree not to take them.”
In my mind I heard Mud talking to the knight.
To my side, I felt Occam. He had squeezed in through the cat door and climbed onto the sofa, sniffing me all over. He licked my jaw, turned, and raced back outside.
The demon in Torquemada recognized the life in the tree. And attacked. Death spread out from where his flesh touched the tree, the demon seeking entrance to the tree, to the sentiencethere. The knight leaped to the back of his horse and drew his sword.
Rick screamed out a challenge.
I reached out to him through the earth.Be still. We’re here.I didn’t know if he heard, but he went silent, standing over his mate.
“Not dead,” I said aloud to Mud. “Use your life. Feel their hearts beat. Feel the pain in their bodies. First thing we do is heal them.” I sent pulses of healing into Rettell, the most seriously wounded of the two. “We’re going to do surgery. You’ve seen animals butchered. Seen the vet work on animals in the barn. You know anatomy. Feel the holes in her chest.” I sent a thin shoot of vine into the hole of the first round. Moving deep, moving fast. The blood was black as tar, tainted, the way paranormal blood got when silver was involved. There was silver in her chest. Silver was poisonous. Silver kept were-creatures from shifting, from healing. She was a young were. She’d be dead fast.
“The rounds are silver-lead,” I said to Mud, “solid, not frangible. Watch.” I sent small vine shoots to knot around each of the broken arteries and veins, closing them off. With the main part of the vine, I traced the path of the first round until I found it. I wrapped the poison with wood, sealing it away from blood and tissue. Pulsed life into the torn flesh. Began to pull the round out.
“I can start on FireWind,” Mud said.
I felt her move away. FireWind was wheezing. I didn’t know what silver did to his kind, but if he couldn’t shift, he’d die, no matter what.
“Look in his lungs,” I said.
On the land, the vampires and devil dogs fought the vines and the thorns.
Only feet away from them, the cheetah whimpered. Dying. I pulsed in more life and decided quicker was better. I yanked the vine-tangled round out of Leann’s chest. She didn’t react. That was bad. I shoved a fresh vine into the other hole and found the round more quickly. It had done less damage, and I got it out fast.
