I slid my eyes back.
In the light of my flash, there were only three vampires.
An arm wrapped around my neck. Again. Lifted me off the ground.
My breath stopped.
Well,damn, I thought, figuring this needed an actual cussword.
“You have touched the Holy Deck,” he said into my ear, “you and the woman vampire. You stink of the magic of the Holy Deck. You stink of this land and great power, evil power.Witchpower. He will have you all. And then he will burn you at the stake.”
The pressure on my throat increased and my breathing passages closed. Darkness stole my field of vision. I had the sensation of movement. I was being pulled away.
Fear should have claimed me. Anger tore through me instead. I dropped the light. Didn’t fight the arm. I reached over my head and scratched the man’s face with my fingernails. I drew blood.
He is mine,the tree and I thought together.Hungerroared up through my fury.
The vines beneath the roadway burst through the gravel and twined up his legs. He tripped.
We went down. I landed on top of him. I twisted my arm and touched the earth.
His undeath was mine. His soul was mine.
Life force and the undeath force, opposing magics, fought within him. His vampire magic, his undeath, battled his newly returned soul, a soul that was tattered and filthy, and had been even when he was human. The vampire part of him was a perverted, distorted thunderhead of energy, boiling with lightning and rage, trying to drink down his human soul’s life force. Traces of clear blue spirit peeked through wild clouds of blood-tinted undeath, as if the last glimpse of the sun warred with darkness, with lightning, and with a pelting blood rain.
The storm within him was formless, chaotic, and bloody. His vampiric undeath and his human soul were at war.
I shaped my power, my gift, into a glowing glove of sunshine and light, a glove netted with fingers of brilliance. I gathered up the tarnished, enraged soul, tangling it with the darkness of the raining blood and the wild winds of the undeath. I began to shove them together into the earth. Claiming this spot of ground, this ancient roadbed, the roots and vines that twisted and burst through.
The strangling arm released and I sucked in a breath. Another.
I heard pops of vampire travel and sent the vines up to grab anything that moved.
A shotgun boomed again.
Beneath the vampire’s still-struggling body, the vines gathered. The earth roiled and juddered. I breathed again, gagging out a ragged laugh, which hurt.
I had been carried up the street. Couldn’t see Esther’s yard, but caught a glimpse of my sister through the bare trees, standing on the porch, shotgun aimed at the yard. There was no sound of swords, no sound at all. Good thing. I was pretty sure I wasn’t able to stand right now.
I nudged the vines and roots and the body they had claimed until the tangled mass rolled off the side of the road into the drainage ditch. I didn’t need a forest blocking access to my house, and a tree would surely grow up where the land absorbed the vampire. The plants complied and, without my help, pulled him farther to the side. The vampire began to disappear, bits and pieces, blood and gore, his shoes. The earth vomited back up pieces of gold and silver into a little heap.
That’s new.For a moment I rested in the power of Soulwood, letting it trickle into my throat to heal me. My breath came easier. I made it to my knees and then to my feet, and gathered up the rings, a bracelet, and a gold necklace made of a natural crystal, maybe smoky quartz.
Breathing hurt, and I touched my sore neck, figuring I was bruised. I was also freezing, both from the cold and the shock of…of being attacked.Again.Of killing someone. Where his body had lain was a small sourwood tree, easily identified by the sour stench. The stinky sapling was growing fast, inching up half a foot as I watched. But I hadn’t added any of my blood, so the tree wouldn’t mutate. I hoped.
I stood with my feet wide apart until the world stopped spinning. I touched my belly. The woody knot of roots was bigger.Dagnabbit.I tottered down the street like a drunk.
The vampires were gone. Yummy was sitting in the dirt, vines and roots all around her, tendrils waving in an unseen breeze. She was crying. There was a little pile of gold between her knees. Oddly there was an old rusted ax-head there too. Herlongsword and her shorter sword were on the lawn beside her and were being cleaned by vines. Small coils of mutated maple vines and leaves were wiping the blades meticulously, almost tenderly. Esther’s tree might be adopting Yummy, which was a scary thought.
Esther was still standing on the porch in her housecoat, her shotgun cradled. She wore a mulish expression and her eyes narrowed as I stumbled out of the darkness into the round spot of the security light.
“You’uns all right?” she asked.
“I think so.” I approached John’s old truck and fished the still-glowing flashlight out from where it had rolled against a tire. With it I found my Glock and my cell phone. I dialed Occam first. “I’m okay,” I said, before he answered. “We’re at Esther’s. Three dead vampires. Three missing vampires.” I figured I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. “I killed one of them when it attacked me. Will you call it in?”
“You sure you’re okay?” he growled, his cat strong in his voice.
“I’m…I’m good enough.”
