I dragged my gaze away from the man chopping the branch. I forced myself to breathe, though I wanted only to drop into the earth and drain them all. Four minutes had passed since I arrived. I gripped my cell in one hand and wrapped my other hand around my weapon. Knowing what was coming.
The vampire tree had been playing with the men. It attacked. Vines snapped out, snagged into clothes. Roots writhed to the surface. Wrapping their ankles. Trapping them. Piercing them. Tearing flesh. There was so much blood as it pierced them, I could nearly taste it. And I realized I had gotten out of my vehicle and crossed closer to the tree. I had to stop myself.
I dropped to the ground and put my palms flat. I shoved my consciousness into the earth.
The Green Knight was waiting for me, he and his warhorse fully decked out for battle. He carried a sword and a shield. Furious, his breath and the stallion’s blew in an icy green mist. Around him, the meadow was a trampled battleground, the fence he always stood behind broken, split, as if it too had been chopped with an ax, the ground no longer lush with green grass but browned to a dead olive shade and crushed into brown sludge.
His hands were red from the blood of the binding, when I’d introduced Esther to him and we put our bloody hands to his. And the face of his steed was marked with the blood of Mud’s handprint.
The horse pranced, ready to fight, ready to make war. A battle lance was in a deep sheath on the back of his saddle with the point high, and on it fluttered a white banner marked with a tree and three scarlet handprints.
“Stop,” I whispered. “I need their knowledge. I need to know what they know. I need them to be alive.”
The Green Knight shook his head, his eyes invisible beneath the closed visor.
“Ayatas FireWind can take them in. Into a jail. I can questionthem. We have their blood, so if they get away, we can find them wherever they walk the earth. They will still feed the land.”
The horse snorted and tossed its long green mane. Shook its head violently. The knight raised his head and stared over my shoulder. The last time he’d done that, he pierced me with his lance and nearly scared me into a heart attack.
“Nell?”
It was Sam’s voice. “Nellie. Open your eyes. We got problems.”
I opened my eyes, my unfocused gaze landing on my hands, buried in roots that also twined up my arms. I was slumped over, my knees bent, my hair scarlet, curled, and tangled with leaves all around my face.
I raised my head to see Sam, standing a few feet away from me, staring at my hands buried in the roots, the roots growing into my flesh. He was dressed in his Sunday best, holding a shotgun. Around him were men of several factions, all armed, all surrounding the vampire tree and its prisoners, watching it, facing away from me, fearful of the tree.
A car slowly rolled into the clearing. I knew by the sound Ayatas FireWind had arrived. The silence of the morning fell upon us as he turned off his vehicle and got out. The men divided their attention between Aya and the tree, turning slightly as if to cover the tree and this new, potential threat. None of them looked my way.
I felt Aya’s boots on the earth as he walked slowly to me, his steps wary of all the men with guns. He leaned over me and draped an open blanket around my shoulders, over my arms, covering my hands, and over my head where leaves sprouted. He whispered, “Occam is on the way. He will cut you free. Or…can you make it let go?”
My mouth was too dry to reply so I shrugged and shook my head. Aya opened a bottle of water and held it to my lips. His normal aloofness always made the kindness surprising. I drank, tilting back my head. I met his eyes and he lifted his brows as if asking if I’d had enough. I gave a tiny nod and he pulled the bottle away. I sat straighter, watching the churchmen through the strands of hair curling wildly over my eyes. I sent a pulse through the earth, pulling the power of Soulwood to me, Soulwood, which was mine, and which the tree knew had power. Through the Earth herself, I thought at the tree,Let go. Let themen go. They are mine. I need them. And releaseme, you blasted tree.
FireWind stood in front of me and faced the tree and the prisoners and the churchmen. “I am Regional Director Ayatas FireWind, PsyLED,” Aya said. “These men are wanted by the law. I am deputizing you, you, and you”—he pointed to three men, not Sam, which was probably smart—“to help me bring them in. When the tree releases them, capture them, take their weapons, cuff them, and search them. I will escort them off the property in my custody.”
The men of the church were looking at the tree and a new ring of saplings that were growing around the prisoners. They knew about the saplings that surrounded the property. They had known for a while that it would make two good things: a cash crop and a watchdog, if it was willing. They knew and accepted that the tree ate meat sometimes. They hadn’t really, consciously, accepted that the tree could act of its own volition, in their interests, and trap enemies.
Let them go,I demanded of the tree. Soulwood boiled up in me, heated and fecund and teeming with life.We can find them again if needed.
In the back of my mind, I heard the horse snort. Or maybe it was the knight.
The tree withdrew its thorns and vines from the prisoners. At the same time, the tree released my outer arms to snake back into the earth, and began to pull out of my skin. I hissed with pain and the motion stopped.
At the tree, the churchmen moved in and began to search and secure the intruders. I felt Occam step onto the land. He knelt beside me and repositioned the blanket over my right hand. With a sharp steel knife he cut the roots away from my hand, leaving bleeding pieces protruding from the ground and from my bleeding flesh. Then he freed my left hand, slid his arms under my knees and behind my shoulders, and picked me up like a baby. “I gotcha, Nell, sugar. I always gotcha.”
I wrapped one arm around him and held on tight.
TEN
Occam’s body heat was a furnace at my side. I was hypothermic. I wondered if I’d go into tree hibernation if I stayed cold too long.
He bent and sat me in my car’s passenger seat, climbed into the driver’s seat, and, very strangely, drove to the chapel. He got out, and I watched him walk inside, his boots loud on the wood steps and the front porch floor. I was confused, hurting, not thinking straight, until he walked out with all three mamas, loaded up Mama Grace and my mama in the backseat, and sent Mama Carmel to have Sam bring her to the Nicholson home.
Tears gathered in my eyes at his forethought as he silently drove us all to the Nicholson house. Behind us, Sam followed with Mama Carmel and Daddy squished in his truck’s bench seat. We rolled to a stop and Occam came around, lifting me from the seat and carrying me inside to the kitchen table, where he sat me in Daddy’s chair and turned to the mamas and Daddy and Sam gathered at the doorway. “We’ll need some alcohol, some sharp garden snippers, and maybe some needle-nosed pliers. And then we all need to have a chat.”
“I’ll get the pliers and the snippers,” Sam said.
“I’ll get the medical kit,” Mama Carmel said. “Grace, we got any clean diapers? From the looks a things this’ll be messy.”
