I sent other images of Yummy on the land, running, sitting, standing.
The Green Knight shook his head no.
I re-sent the image.Yes,I thought at him.She is mine.
He sent an image of a thorn with her blood on it. And then that thorn in my mouth. He wanted me to taste her blood, which was a form of cannibalism and I’d surely go to hell. He re-sent the image to me again, insistent.
“Occam, pick me one of them thorns with Yummy’s blood on it, purdy please,” I said, sliding into church-speak.
I felt him almost ask why, but instead, totally naked, he strode to the bloody patch of ground where Yummy had been trapped, and returned with a broken-off thorn. I took it in one hand and licked it, bitter, salty, cold.
The Green Knight cocked his head the other way, considering. Then he held out his hand, fingers spread, palm facing me, waiting until my mental palm lifted and touched his. There was no sensation beyond what might have been the night air flowing across the hillside.
The cold taste of Yummy’s blood flashed through my brain and I realized that we had both tasted her blood.
An image of Yummy appeared near him, his fence between them. In the vision, Yummy was a stick figure with fangs. At her feet were two trees, one me, the other Mud. Yummy tied us up with vines and threw us onto her shoulders. She raced out of sight of the green world.
Ahhh.I thought. He wanted me to be alert. I envisioned the three of us as he saw us. In the vision, I called on the land. Vines erupted from the earth and trapped Yummy, who dropped our tree-bodies to the ground.
Palm to palm, he nodded once, then vanished.
I opened my eyes to see Occam, now wearing a pair of sweatpants and nothing else, kneeling beside Yummy. His wrist was at her mouth, and she was drinking his blood, still weeping, a note of fear in the sounds. I realized that I had never heard any vampire weep with fear.
I wasn’t jealous that my cat-man was feeding his old girlfriend. There was nothing sexual about it. He was doing her a kindness. As I watched, the punctures and lacerations on her ankles sealed over. They didn’t go away completely—I figured that would take the blood of another vampire—but they stopped bleeding.
She pushed his wrist away. “Thank you. They still hurt like a bitch, but they feel better.”
“You’re welcome,” Occam said, sounding cautious and formal in his Texan accent.
“The tree shouldn’t hurt you now,” I said.
Yummy pointed to her ankles. “How did you do this?”
“Wasn’t me.”It was a carnivorous tree. Not a wise thing to say.“My land thought you were a threat.”
“Youarea witch.”
“No. We’ve had this conversation before. Jane Yellowrock said I was maybe a fairy or a wood nymph. Whatever I am, my kind were mixed with humans long ago.” Jane was Cherokee, and in American tribal lore, only the Cherokee had fairies and little people, possibly from the British who intermarried among them for so many centuries. Or the Knights Templar. Or the Scots, who were said to have settled here centuries before the Spanish arrived.
Occam, who had been silent for too long, said, “If you gonear the children, Mud, Esther, or Nell to do them harm, I’ll kill you and feed you to the land myself. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Soulwood sent you a message,” I said, gesturing to the bloody thorns, visible in the moonlight. “You’ve bled on the land. It knows your blood and your thoughts. It sent me an image of you tying up Mud and me to carry us away. It’ll attack if you try, if you harm us. And I’ll know it was you, even if I’m not here. You need to remember that. It will also try to protect you if you’re in danger.”
“Ming still holds my allegiance. For now. I suppose you know that too?”
Occam said, “You don’t smell very happy about that. What’s she holding over you?”
“My two chained scions and six blood-servants.” Yummy pulled her hair to one side, the shorter hank of hair falling back toward her face. “They’re my friends. She has all of them chained in her lair. She planned to take you when you came to the clan home tonight, but you brought backup. Every time she talks about you and your land and what drinking your tree did to Charlainn, she has another use for you. One is she has some crazy notion that you can fix her scions. Another is that you’ll kill Torquemada. And she never told us about the angel bringing our souls back. Anangel.” She laughed without humor, a sad sound, and shook her head in wonder.
I said, “So we need to get your people free. She owes me two boons. Let’s see what I can do with that.” I patted my pockets and found my cell. Dialed Ming’s number. When Cai answered, I said, “Ming owes me two boons. I’m calling in one now, and it’s a two-parter. I want Yumm—Yvonne’s—two scions and six blood-servants kept safe until they can be delivered to a place of Yvonne’s choosing. Safe, healthy, and not missing any blood. No cuts, no drinking, no weakening. And Yummy is mine now. Not Ming’s.”
Cai cursed in his native language, whatever that was, and hung up.
“Why?” Yummy asked. “Why would you waste a boon on something like that?”
Discomfort wriggled into my soul. “You’un—” I stopped.“Your friendship to me is deeper than your loyalty to Ming.” My discomfort grew. After tasting her blood, I knew that Yummy had really meant it when she had called me her bestie. She liked me way more than I did her, but she had been growing on me. I shrugged away my awkward feelings. “You’re free now. This way, you’re safe and Ming can’t retaliate against you.”
