“Nell? Where’s FireWind? Rick and the others? No one is answering their comms or cells.”
“Oh. They’s all critter shaped, getting healed too. It’ll be in my report. Now hush and listen.
“The vampires are underground in my front lawn, but not true-dead, but are infected at the bite sites. Yummy says the arcenciels can inject enough venom to hurt, or a full load that will kill vampires.”
Cautiously, Jo asked, “Can you keep them underground until a time of FireWind’s choosing?”
“Yes. But why?”
“If they survive, we’ll need blood donors at hand when they rise or they might drink down you, your kid sister, and all your chickens, but that’s something we can deal with later.”
Yummy made a face at the thought of drinking chicken blood.
“Okay. Right,” I said. “I’d hate to heal them only to have to kill them again. Yes. I can do that.”
“Then I say do it. Is that all?”
“No. Ming is at my sister’s, and is acting crazy too, so maybe she was bitten when her place was torched. Or maybe long before that. How’d I know? The twins are okay for now, but Esther might kill Ming. Occam’s on his way there to check her out and assist in staking her. Permission to detain Ming, check for wounds, and bury her too if she’s bitten?”
“That…” JoJo Jones stopped. “Ummm. That’s above my pay grade.”
“Can Yummy decide?”
“Better than me,” Jo said. “The political implications of detaining the Master of the City to heal her, versus letting your sister and fiancé kill her, seem obvious to me, but maybe not to vampires.”
All vampire-formal, Yummy said, “I give permission. I now know what arcenciel venom smells like. My former mistress has smelled like the venom of arcenciels for decades.”
“That’s…interesting? When did she get bitten…Never mind. Okay, Jones. Ingram out.” I ended the call and closed my eyes. Instantly I met the eyes of the Green Knight. He had taken off his helmet. His beard was green and braided, and his hair pulled back in a queue. But his eyes were greener than I had ever seen them, and intense. I spoke aloud. “Take extra care of healing the vampires if you can,” I said. “And the vampire I’ll put out for you at my sister’s. That’s four in total.”
He gave that regal nod.
“But the one with dark energies, I want to see if we can work together to…to…expel the energies from the vampire and help catch the energies.”
The knight lifted his hand. It no longer wore a gauntlet. In fact, all his armor was gone, leaving him wearing a really long shirt and leggings of some sort. His warhorse was behind him, chomping grass, ears twitching.
In our vision, I was dressed in the plant armor. Should be itchy, but it wasn’t.
The knight pointed down. The ground rippled and shifted and a vampire’s body erupted from the earth. Tomás de Torquemada.
“Okay.” In my imaginings, we were standing at my car. In the back was the gear I had packed in preparation for stopping some big bad ugly evil thing. I pointed at the containment vessel. I wanted to capture the demon in a containment vessel.
He showed me Yummy, who was talking to FireWind. FireWind in human form. The boss-boss reached out to grab my arm, as if to shake me.
“Stop that. She wasn’t talking to you,” Yummy said. “She was talking to the land or to something in the land.”
“How do you know that?” the boss-boss asked.
“You’re not shaking her,” Yummy said, sounding stubborn. Protecting me.
I opened my eyes. I wasn’t sure when I had gotten here, but I was standing beside lumps of earth and vines that buried two vampires. I said, “Jo. I’m going to Esther’s to bury Ming. Then I’m going to try and lure a demon into a containment vessel and trap it. Occam is at Esther’s. I have Yummy, an anemic FireWind with a silver round in his shoulder, and an even more anemic Rettell with silver-poisoned blood, but who is also in heat and mating with Rick on-site. No one is going to be much help.”
“I’ll be a great deal of help if you feed me first,” FireWind said.
There was a click on my cell and I switched calls to T. Laine. She said, “I’m driving lights and sirens your way, ETA fifteen, Country Hick Chick. Where’s LaFleur and Rettell?”
“Busy. Do not ask. See you in fifteen, if I live that long.” I ended the call and looked over to where Tomás and Alonso had once lain. Neither one was visible, but the land where they had fallen was humped up and suspiciously grave shaped. I shook my head.
To Yummy I said, “I like the armor. You up for us figuring out a way to get Ming into the yard and letting the land take her down?”
