Things that hadn’t made sense, made sense now.
Soul had been a prisoner of the vamps, caught in human form, and yet she had emerged from the cave in dragon form. She ate a devil dog on the way out. She left somegwyllgiin the cave alive. Why?
Chasing the vampire who got away?
The bites?
Arcenciel bites? Arcenciel bites made the bitten crazy. Crazier. Tomás de Torquemada was possessed by a demon. He had worn a crystal on his chest in the old paintings, a crystal trapping an arcenciel. Now he wore a broken crystal on his chest. So…his crystal had been broken at some point recently, freeing the arcenciel he had worn trapped for centuries.
It bit him and bit the other vampire with him? Or Soul did? And no one ate the vampires as Soul had eaten the adult devil dog.
Soul had been caught—allowed herself to be abducted, but not to save the devil dogs. One of the other arcenciels had said Soul knew how to get out of a crystal, she had a working of some kind that she hadn’t shared. So maybe she allowed herself to be ensnared because she was tracking a trapped arcenciel. One worn by Tomás de Torquemada. That made sense.
The trapped dragon had not been among the three we knewof, Pearl, Opal, and Cerulean. The dragon in Tomás’ crystal had been there for centuries and recently gotten free. A dragon had recently—very recently—bitten Tomás. The same dragon? Had it happened in the cave when the others of Unit Eighteen had gone on before me? Before that? Had she escaped before we had ever reached the cave on the hillock? That made sense. No way to prove it.
I wondered what had happened down there, why Tomás had run off like his pants were on fire. Or why Soul had followed. But I was guessing she had been on the trail of the fourth, unknown arcenciel, who was now…breathing fire onto my land, trying to kill vampires.
Did dragons really shoot fire? They were made out of energy. So I’d guess they had that ability. Just like with healing the wolf and the werecat, first things first.
Dragon fire.
I was suddenly standing on the hill, Mud beside me, her hand in mine. I said to the Green Knight,Send moisture up the roots and branches and put out the fire.I looked out over the field of battle.What happened to thegwyllgi?
Mud thought,A blast of light went from there to there, and the devil dogs were gone. Chomp chomp.
To the Green Knight, I asked,Did a dragon eat them?
The knight bent his head down and back up. A nod. So maybe Soul was here. Or maybe only an angry arcenciel, a stranger. Maybe devil dogs were just tasty treats to arcenciels. Either way, the dead dogs weren’t my biggest concern. My concern was what happened to the dragons. How many were here, which ones were here? And did they all know we were friends?
I felt a vampire race across my land. Yummy. The Green Knight knew her. She was envisioned as part of the landscape fully fleshed. Swords in each hand. With slinging motions, she cut the wolf and the cheetah free of the thorny cages, sheathed the shortsword.
I had forgotten about the wolf and werecheetah. The fire was raging closer.
One-handed, Yummy picked up Leann by her front paws and slung her to relative safety. The werecat flew through the air and landed and bounced at my feet. As if the massive wolf weighed no more, Yummy repeated the process with FireWind,though he flew considerably less far. Rick raced to his mate and lay down next to her, licking her head with his tongue.
“Gross,” Mud said.
Near Yummy, fire spread and crackled. If a wind popped up, this would spread. And Yummy was terribly flammable.
She raced to Tomás, swung her longsword back.
Yummy,I said.
She shouldn’t have been able to hear me through the land. But she stopped at the highest point of her backswing. “Nell?” She did a fast pirouette. “Where are you?”
You came through the trees. I smell your blood. So I might be inside you. Anyway, be careful about cutting them free. I think they were both bitten by an arcenciel. And Tomás is demon possessed. If you kill him, the demon may take you.
“Fuck. Bites make our kind crazy. And now we have an arcenciel-bitten, demon-possessed vampire.”
Yummy resheathed her longsword and pulled stakes from her waistband. Faster than I could follow, she staked both vamps in the belly. They slumped in the vine cages and into the thorns that had pierced their flesh. Yummy proceeded to cut them free.
The vampires were mine. If I wanted them. I drained a little undeath from them, and the Green Knight slapped his hands together hard enough for me to stop.
I turned to him and looked up, way up, at him on the huge horse.What?
He touched his mouth and shook his head no.
They—I thought about it a second as the fire blazed closer.They taste bad?
