I drew on the life of the land and sent the healing of Soulwood into her, making her mine, making her the land’s, but there was no help for that.
In the real world, Occam leaped from the dark, snapped at the wrist holding the gun, and bit down. Bone crunched. Thegun fell, Occam nipped it up and sped away. In an instant he was back, weaving back and forth between all the trapped beings, biting each, leaping past, swiping with claws. Buying us time. Vines grew up around Leann’s cheetah body. Made a cage around her, thorns pointing outward. Protecting her. “Shift when you can,” I whispered aloud, hoping she could hear me, figuring I had spoken to the military woman in the yard and also in my house.
Rick seemed to hear. He leaped away as the thorns made a protective cage around her. Occam nudged him with his nose, as if saying she was okay.
I transferred my attention to FireWind.
In the house, Mud’s hands in mine were icy. She was panting in time with the black wolf. The wolf on the grass out front and also in the earth.
Still tied to the sleeping strength of the earth, I sent calm to Mud, healing into the wolf, following her vine into the skinwalker’s lung. Right lung. Lots of blood. I found the round in it. Circled it, wrapped it with a vine. And then I said, “Okay. Mud. We’un’s gonna have a mess of a time getting it, ’cause it went clean through the lung, broke a rib, hit his shoulder blade, and bounced back in. So we’re gonna have to stop some bleeding first. You’un tie off the bleeders on the entrance while I tie off the bleeders on the ricochet entrance and start figgering which way to pull the round out.”
“If’n you’un push it back through the body, here and yon, it’ll do more damage. Push to the shoulder blade,” she suggested. “Once we’uns get it beside the shoulder blade, we can stabilize it there.”
“He’ll have to have surgery to get the round out, but I reckon that’ll do.”
“We’uns talking all churchy.”
“Mmmm. We are, ain’t we? Get to work.”
In my mind, Mud said,I’m working. It’s a lot harder than butcherin’ a hog.
I’m not a damned hog.FireWind. Sensing us in his body.
You’uns say cussing things like that and I’m’a leave the silver in and let you die,Mud said.Shut up or die.
I was so proud of my baby sister I’d have hugged her if I hadn’t been trying to save the wolf.
Stiffly, his mental voice frosty formal, FireWind said,Forgive me. This is…interesting. And extremely painful. May I suggest you move quickly? I believe I’m dying.
Did I say shut up or die?Mud asked.Hush.
I pulled the poisonous round in under FireWind’s shoulder blade and fortunately it had hit the lower part of the scapula and stopped. It could likely be felt from the outside, and it would take a doctor only a minute to excise it.
The other round had passed through his upper leg, a clean shot. From deep in the earth I sent healing into the silvered wound and watched the blackened blood and flesh turn back to wolf-red.
When we were done, Mud and I pumped FireWind full of life and pulled back to the surface.
I was exhausted. I just wanted to rest, to sleep a bit, like the Sleepers, maybe. Just curl up and let everything go. Eyes closed, I took a breath. I smelled smoke. In the vision, I opened my eyes.
Smoke filled the three acres of lawn and my dormant garden. The trees near the street were on fire. The vampire tree. Not cut down, but burning, dying, like the knight had warned.
Occam was in the house again, on the kitchen floor, shifting into human.
I dove back into the earth and found the knight’s vines twisted tighter to the vampires. They were still trapped, the knight in a battle royale with the demon in Torquemada. I didn’t sense the poison of accelerants on them, in the air, or on the ground. So where had the fire come from? I sent my awareness up the vines, up the unknown vampire’s legs and torso. There was no indication of matches or even a lighter, and the trees and the ground were still all wet from the snow and ice, so there was no way the fire started without an accelerant. I stuck the vampire full of thorns all over. Aimed for the place in his belly where he could be paralyzed by wood. Missed.
I pulled away from the first vampire and inspected Tomás. He too carried nothing to start a fire. And vampires were highly flammable, so why would they start a fire while trapped on the burning land in the first place? It didn’t make sense. I studied the vampires carefully.
At the edges of my mind, I sensed a third vampire, mostly forgotten in the hurry of the last day. Inigo was still trappedbeneath the land, thorns in his body, but the stake dislodged. He was screaming in pain, but had no way to start a fire. I staked him again and withdrew, back to the vampires trapped by the tree, close to the house.
I saw-felt-discovered an anomaly.
Tomás de Torquemada wore a broken crystal on a chain around his neck. In his pockets were gold coins, and several gold crosses wrapped in lead bags to keep him from burning at the touch of the holy icons. Beneath his clothes were wounds. Massive wounds, half-healed. There were four wounds altogether, round, except for one area on each that was serrated. Two wounds were on his left chest in front, two on his left back.
I checked the other vampire, the unknown. He too had been wounded, and the wounds were lined up just like on Tomás, four, front and back.
They were bites. The vampires had been bitten by something bigger than even the wolf. Bigger than an adult Dog of War.
“Oh,” I said aloud in the cold house. “Oh dear.”
