Ming threw back her head and screamed. I clapped my hands over my ears. The ululation was similar to the sound vampires made when they were dying, but lower pitched, a basso roll of vibrations that made my head ache.
Yummy screamed in response, “You are not worthy to rule!¡Prepárese para la muerte!”
“Well, hell,” Occam said. “I’m pretty sure that was Spanish for ‘Prepare for death.’ I probably,” he added, his words overly slow and Texan and with a lot of catrrrowlin them, “should have staked the Master of the City before the swordplay started.”
“Best-laid plans of mice and cat-men,” I murmured.
Ming leaped off the porch, drawing swords. Yummy already had hers held high and low. Ming was still in the air when the swords clashed.
Steel glinted in the headlights. They slashed, lunged, cut, blocked, swords clanging and ringing.
I closed my eyes. Plunged into the deeps. I woke the land.
The Green Knight and I were standing on our battlefield, he in armor, astride his warhorse. In the center of the battleground two warriors engaged in battle. Steel and flesh. Hot emotions. Cold bodies.
Mud joined us in the vision beneath the ground, her body warm and steady against my cold one. Both of us in our plant armor, and oddly, both of us armed with swords and shotguns. I figured Mud had brought those. We watched the land’s vision of the fight: Two bipedal undead, steel clashing. Occam, crouched to the side. Then first blood was drawn. Cold blood.
The earth knew Yummy’s blood. Familiar.Belonging.
Ming’s blood followed. A single drop from the thinnest slice. But it was enough. Her blood was different. Tainted. The tree separated and identified the abnormalities in her blood. Arcenciel venom.
Watching, sensing, I shaped my mental sword into a fist of thorns. Mud, following my lead, shaped hers into a trap-like thing, with snapping jaws and teeth. But the vampires moved too fast for us to differentiate the feet we needed to trap, popping back and forth across the lawn.
As if we were inside each other’s minds, my true sister and I followed the battle. Together, we sent roots tunneling through dirt and pressing aside rocks, growing, surrounding the fighters, beneath them, ready to spring.
More of Yummy’s blood flew, a thick cold spray. She was losing.
Beneath the surface of the land, Esther strode to us and stood, a churchwoman with a meat cleaver in one hand and a whiplike vine covered with thorns in the other. “Holy Moses,”she whispered, as she watched the fight. The power of the land rose up in her, filled her.
“Now.” Occam rose and stepped toward the fight. He appeared on the battle scene, part of the conflict. He was half human, half cat. Claws like rakes.
Belonging.
Yummy fell.
Occam-cat leaped. High in the air above the battle. Off the earth.
Ming raised her sword high. A backstroke meant to decapitate him.
Together Mud and Ireachedthrough the sacred ground, sending life. Vines sprang up, thorned traps. Esther’s vine whipped out. Snapping.
Occam flew through the air, spinning, tucking. Beneath Ming’s death stroke.
Vines erupted, thousands of shoots making a steel thorn glove and a barbed thorn trap. Together, my sisters and I snared Ming’s feet. Caught her arms. Twined around her body, piercing her with living wood stakes.
Still in the air, Occam-cat hammered his stake into Ming’s body. Through her armor. Into the undead flesh of her belly. She faltered. The downstroke of her sword shifted as Occam tumbled to the side, his trajectory altered.
Ming’s stroke tracked him, heading toward Occam, somersaulting in the air.
The Green Knight was suddenly behind Ming. Justthere.
He grasped the sword handle. Stopped its fall.
Occam slid by the sharp edge.
Mud and I yanked. Down and down. Pulling Ming through the ground. And beneath it.
The roots and thorns beneath the ground were wood. Wood could make a vampire true-dead. I had to hope the vampire tree would keep her alive. Though I admitted to myself that if Ming died, I wouldn’t grieve much. Under the ground, we shoved the stake in more securely. Deeper.
