FireWind and LaFleur met me at the foyer, a smear of blood on Aya’s sleeve, the knuckles of both hands bruised and torn. The three of us left the house, a heavy river mist coiling around us. As the door closed, I pulled my cell, turned it off, and then slapped my hand against my chest as if to start my heart beating again. “That was horrible. Did you get all that?”
“Yes,” FireWind said, ushering me toward the vehicles through the heavy fog.
I pointed to his bloody hand. “Fight?”
“Cai was insistent that we leave you,” he said wryly. “We tried to dissuade him, but he was stronger than usual.”
“And faster,” Rick murmured.
“Dead body?” I asked.
“Haven’t seen one,” Rick said. “And Cai didn’t mention one when we were beating on each other.”
“Let’s get out of here and back to HQ,” FireWind said.
“If you can wait just a few minutes,” I said, “I should read the land deeper this time. And I want to touch one of the burned circles at the edge of the property.”
Both men pulled their weapons as I got the vampire tree and my new blanket from the passenger seat of my car. No vamps or humans followed from the house, but the mist had grown heavier, the air wetter. I could see maybe a foot in front of my face with any certainty, but the land was a good enough guide. I bent and touched the ground, scanning the lawn before zeroing in on the closest burned circle. “There’s no one on the estate but us and vampires and Ming’s humans, and we’re alone on the lawn,” I said. Leading the way, I walked into the swirling fog.
A foot out from the burned land I unfolded my backup blanket (an old army blanket Occam had found in a surplus store) and laid it on the wet grass. I sat and crossed my knees, the potted vampire tree in my lap. “You bite me and I’ll make you regret it,” I told the plant.
It was a testament to my life that neither of my bosses thought the threat to the tree was odd enough to comment over.
I touched the ground with one fingertip, and when nothing felt wrong, I placed my palm flat on the wet grass and dug into the dirt with my fingertips. It was vampy ground, a little deadish, a little bloody, needing some supplements and vegetable matter, maybe some mushroom compost. But when I placed my fingertips in the blackened circle, things were very different. In the dirt were traces of fire and the horror the grass felt at being burned, but the roots were still alive. Whatever had burned here had burned high and fast, not deeply, not slowly. And mixed in among the grass’ pain was a strong sense of ecstasy, and beneath it, a fainter sense of awe and joy, the kind I might have felthad I watched a particularly beautiful sunrise. The vamps had died…happy.
I pulled my hands and consciousness from the dirt and handed the potted tree to Rick, accepting Aya’s hand to pull me to my feet. I tossed the blanket over my shoulder. “One more. Just to be sure.” I walked through the fog toward the next burned spot and tested the ground with a fingertip before I squatted, my weight on the backs of my calves, my arms forward around my knees, and pushed all ten fingers into the dirt.
“Dead leaves, living roots,” I said. “And she was…The vamp who died here was singing as she burned.”
“These circles are from dead suckheads?” Rick asked. “From burning in the sun?”
“Yes. And they weren’t tied down to burn at dawn for punishment. They died happy.” I stood and brushed off my hands. “Okay. Let’s go back to HQ. Things are very wrong here.”
Wackadoodle, I thought as we approached the drive and the parked cars. And we still didn’t have the promised dead body.
But we didn’t make it back to the cars.
Yummy appeared out of the mist, standing near my vehicle on the driveway, a bright green floral satchel in her left hand, a sword in her right. Parked behind our cars was hers, a Ferrari LaFerrari gold flake 2015 convertible she had “confiscated” from an enemy. She had been standing on the driveway, and not in the grass, so I had missed her appearance.
I took the last step to the concrete drive. I felt them step onto Ming’s land. A dead sensation whipped through me.
“Vampires,” I whispered. “There.” I looked to the fence downriver from Ming’s. I grabbed my best weapon away from Rick, the vampire tree. Stuck my finger into the soil, calling on Soulwood, pulling the wakened energies to me.
Rick cursed and tossed off his suit jacket.
Aya pulled multiple weapons.
Yummy pitched her satchel to my feet. Pulled her sword. Dropped the scabbard.
Everythingfast.
To me she said, “Smallsword. Get it.” She pointed at the satchel that had landed at my feet.
She screamed into the night, “I am Yvonne Colstrip, bloodchild of the Warlord of the Dark Queen, the scion of Ming of Glass! I offer blood challenge to you all!”
A vamp in ninja black plunged out of the night. Landed to my side, but stumbled on the uneven ground and somersaulted away. He carried two swords, to Yummy’s one. I ducked to the ground and opened her floral satchel. A smaller sword rested on top. I pulled it out.
She ripped it from my hands. Somersaulted, leaping into the air.
