Okay. When I get there, bring Tomás to the surface.
To…más?
The Green Knight was talking to me. In English.Holy Moses.I thought at him…it, saying,The vampire with the dark energy.
The Green Knight nodded again, all elegant and stately. I needed to learn how to do that.
* * *
Mud was in the house, though not without argument, guarding Cherry, the cats, and the house itself. With her were Esther and the twins, the babies squalling at the top of their lungs, even though they had been fed and burped and changed and sung to.
Occam, still extraordinarily weak, lay in cat form near my knees, his breathing almost fast enough to be called a pant, though he would have argued the canine comparison.
T. Laine sat on the steps to the house, magical and mundane weapons scattered to either side in a pattern she could find easily in the dark. She had cast aseeingworking over the property.We didn’t know how long it would last, but for now we could all see magic like witches did.
Leann Rettell, Margot Racer, and Rick LaFleur were fully clothed and sitting in a car, weapons ready.
FireWind was again in black wolf form and had devoured a side of smoked bacon delivered by my brother Sam. He sat on the porch, ears perked, alert, golden eyes shining, ready to help T. Laine or me. Not that he could actually help us.
The captured humans had been released from their thorned cages, handcuffed, and carted to the city lockup for trespassing and weapons charges. That was the best and worst we could do to them.
It was well after midnight and I was so tired I wanted to cry. But we had one more job to do. One more thing to accomplish before we could turn the vampires—who were guilty of torturing and killing humans, and currently captured in the land—over to the emissaries of the Dark Queen’s court.
Jane Yellowrock had people on the way over from Asheville, led by a vampire called Koun. They were flying in via helicopter to beat the dawn, so we had to hurry. Hurry to free and then capture a demon, and turn over the vampires to the Dark Queen. And manage not to release the demon and get one of us possessed.
I placed my ratty pink blanket on the ground in front of the lumps of dirt that covered Torquemada and his friend. Don something, that started with anA. Whatever it was. I half fell to the blanket and crossed my knees, which snapped and popped like green sticks breaking. I put my hands on the ground and dropped into the bliss of Soulwood. There was no need of a potted tree to bring me close to the knight and to the earth of Soulwood. I was here. They were here. We were here.
Rule of Three?
Lainie’s voice had mentioned that during the fight at Esther’s house. Sooo, the three of us were stronger together?
The containment vessel I put beside me, tilting it so I could remove the lid without fumbling. The Blood Tarot was propped against the vessel, having been brought from HQ by a very confused county deputy running lights and sirens.
Bait. The deck was bait. In case that was what the demonwanted, and maybe had been using Torquemada to acquire. It was an educated guess put forth by Tandy, who, along with JoJo, was manning comms at HQ and liaising with county officials. Just in case some unseen and unplanned-for scenario happened and we needed human backup.
Keeping in mind Mud’s words about how not to go rooty and turn into a tree, I instructed myself to become and stay human shaped. Nothing happened: the stiffness in my knees didn’t improve, my hips didn’t stop aching, and my fingers didn’t look less bumpy and knotty. Ah well. I stroked Occam once along his cat body. I had all that I needed, right here, beside me. Hands to the winter dry grass, I scratched my woody nails into the ground and slid into the earth.
Breathing out, relaxing, I let Soulwood gather me up and hold me. I shared with my land all that I was, and all that I hoped, all that I loved, all that I wanted. It wasn’t prayer. It was hope.
I closed my eyes and slid my thoughts down. And down. Bypassing the vampires lumped in the ground near me, I moved out, beyond the borders of the land marked on the deed, to edges of the land Soulwood claimed. And even farther, to the land the vampire tree was claiming. I located each animal, few out this late, most sleeping in dens or nests or in small herds or clutches. I caressed each non-vampire-tree, each interconnected thing that was simply and solely the life of Soulwood. Beneath me, the land sighed and slept and suffused me with something that might have been love, though it was a love as unlike human love as the day was from the night. It wasother. Ancient. Beyond my understanding. TheEarth.
The darkness here, in Soulwood, beneath the trees and the ground, seemed to have texture, as if I could brush my fingers across the lack of light and feel it prickle on my skin, light like bioluminescence. Sleeping in winter. Not aching withhunger. The land had fed well and itshungerwas satiated. For now.
On the surface, my body sighed. I reminded myself I didn’t need to become a tree.
I stepped into the visual pasture created by the Green Knight.
To him I saluted, lifting a weapon that looked like a spear made of living wood, with blossoms at the base of the sharppoint and vines trailing from the end. I was armored in wood and, in the vision, was growing leaves and thorns and a few small scarlet flowers here and there. I looked like a walking bower. Or maybe like the knight’s vision of Soulwood.
I thought,When I open the vessel, you best be gone or it might take you in too. And maybe watch out for that demon who tried to take your power. All this stuff we’re getting ready to do is dangerous.
His horse’s hooves became restive beneath him, dancing in place.
The containment vessel was an equal opportunity energy vacuum, sucking in anything noncorporeal. I figured the demon could only hurt the tree if the demon could visualize Soulwood the way we did, and also understand that the tree was self-aware and sentient. A tree in the real world would not appear to be a likely host for a demon. I hoped it was still confused about the powers in my land.
Overhead in the green sky, a few stars shone through leafy branches. As we walked, the bracken around us seemed to grow taller, the stones sharper and glowing with phosphorescent moss, lighting our way.
Together we approached the mounds of buried undead. Here, deep in the life of Soulwood, in the vision of the Green Knight’s place within the land, the two vampires lay in the fetal position, unrotting flesh pierced by thorns with wooden stakes in their bellies. In the vision, maggots writhed within the bodies’ wounds. But within each vampire there were sparks glowing, things that danced or writhed and twisted.
