Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (13 page)

“You’re the only one who thinks leaving is an option,” Diego told him.

Lindal’s jaw sagged. He looked as though Diego had punched him in the face.

Diego got to his feet and helped Sera to hers. “Let’s go see Blake.”

Sera took his hand. “I can’t wait to see his face when he finds out you’re his maker.” She looked up at Diego, her eyes sparkling. “And just think, Diego.
Both
of you can bite me in bed…”

Diego kept the happy little thought front and center. It helped ward off any worry about all the things that might still go wrong with this.

* * * * *

Cole shook Zoe awake and held the coffee out to her as she sat up, scrubbing at her hair and face. She had found the darkest corner in the warehouse to lie down and rest for a few minutes. That had been two hours ago. Declan had insisted she be left to sleep. Cole and he were close enough to hold Declan in place.

“What’s happening?” she asked, taking the coffee. She looked at the brightly lit operating area. There were half a dozen people in there now. All she could see from this angle was the back of the raised bed, the tops of people’s heads and the banks of equipment around the bed.

Cole lowered himself down to the concrete and rested his back against the wall. He had expected it to feel cold and it didn’t. Many every day practicalities like the relative heat of objects compared to his vampire-cold body he was still adjusting to. “They’re going to turn him.”

“To a vampeen?”

“Vampire. The vampeen toxin is gone.”

Zoe blew out her breath. “Then the wound was too severe. I thought it might be.”

“He’s lucky to have the option,” Cole added.

“Then…you don’t mind that we turned you?”

Startled, Cole looked at her. “No! God, no. Whatever made you think I did mind?”

“You never said anything, after. Well, you barely talked at all for a while.”

“I had to remember how,” Cole admitted. “It was easier to growl.”

Zoe shivered. “Cole….”

“What?”

“Would you…I mean…later, when I get older, or if I’m ever injured like Blake…would you turn me?”

He picked up her hand. “I don’t think I could stand living in a world without you in it. When the time comes, yes, I’ll turn you.”

“And after,” she pressed. “Even if…” She licked her lips. “If Declan goes away again, will you still want to?”

Cole took the coffee from her hand, put it on the ground and pulled her into his lap. “I’ll still want to,” he assured her and kissed her. “I never thought I could ever love anyone after Declan, yet I
did
love you. That will never change, no matter what.”

* * * * *

Once Blake had been removed to a self-contained, secure location where Diego could ease him through the transition to vampire, Declan told Beth curtly to go home and sleep.

Beth found the energy to jump back to the apartment, only she knew there would be no sleep for her.

Lindal was sprawled in the armchair, doing his version of snoring, which was a heavy, deeply relaxed and audible breathing.

Zack was standing at the range, stirring something in a pot.

“That smells delicious,” Beth said, sniffing.

“I could tell you were hungry,” Zack said over his shoulder. He ladled the soup into the waiting bowl and pushed it across the counter where the placemat and spoon waited. “Besides, I wanted something pleasant to hand over to you along with these.” He picked up a notepad and put it in front of the bowl.

Beth sat on the stool and picked up the spoon. “I’m too tired to focus on your ancient handwriting. What is it?”

“Messages. Frantic ones, mostly.”

“Of course.” She sipped the soup. It tasted as good as it smelled. It helped that she was as famished as Zack had sensed. “What’s the most critical one?”

Zack grimaced. “That one isn’t on this list.”

“The elves?” Beth guessed. She glanced at Lindal. “Let me guess. They want Lindal back. They want Sera back. They want to shut the portal right now and good luck winning the war against the Grimoré.” She sighed.

“You can’t really blame them,” Zack said. “They just lost their most senior general.”

She lowered her voice. “
And
the one person who might have taken the throne instead of Lindal.”

Zack looked as if he had been slapped. “Shit…I didn’t even
think
of that.”

“We’ve all been busy.”

“You still thought of it, though. Don’t make excuses for me,” Zack replied. He rubbed his thumb over the quartz surface of the counter, wiping at a spot that was invisible to Beth. “I don’t know how much longer they’ll wait for him, Beth.”

“You mean, they’ll just lock the door without him?”

“If they wanted to do that, they would have done it already. What’s to stop them from taking him and Sera back, whether they want to go or not? Larien just popped up here tonight, I mean, this morning—”

“Who is Larien? I don’t know that name.”

“I think she’s the general who is going to take over Amrod’s role. She was wearing the uniform. She didn’t give me her resume. She was highly pissed, in that Arctic chill way they have.”

Beth stared at him, her heart plodding unhappily along. She could feel the strain of too many decisions, too much urgency, in the ache in her chest. Sluggishly, she forced herself to think it through, to deal with this one critical issue in front of her and ignore the rest.

“The shielding on the warehouse is holding?” she asked.

He nodded. “The modulation to the algorithms worked.” Then he grimaced. “Everyone was too freaked out about Blake to stop and wonder how they could jump to a location inside shielding. I don’t think a single person asked me about the facility. They just wanted to hear about Blake.”

“They’ll get around to appreciating your work, Zack. I already do.” She pressed her hand on his.

“Eat,” he told her, returning her hand to the spoon.

“If the shielding is holding,” she said, picking up the spoon, “then maybe we should all camp there for a while.”

“The shielding won’t keep out the elves, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“I’m thinking that the shielding stops the Grimoré from locating us when we’re all in one place, which is how they found the old bunker. This new place is the only location where we can congregate without drawing attention to ourselves. The shielding will probably stop us from showing up on the elves’ radar, too. The elves don’t know about the new bunker. They have to find it first and if I’m right about the timing of the war, then this might all be over before they do find it.”

“They won’t appreciate us holding back information.”

“I’m fast reaching a point where I don’t give a damn whether they like it or not,” Beth said. “I’ll placate them enough to make sure they stay here and fight with us, but I’m never going to trust them. Not anymore.” She couldn’t help looking at Lindal. “No wonder he kept coming to Earth, looking for meaning.”

Zack straightened up from his slouch against the counter. “I’ll get some stuff together. When Lindal wakes, we can haul it over to the bunker. Once you’ve finished that soup, you’re going to bed.”

“No, Zack. There’s too much to do.”

He pulled the notepad covered in his sloping, copperplate handwriting from under her fingers. “No.” He said it flatly. “Sleep, or I’ll
make
you sleep. Lindal and I will hold the fort for a while.”

“Very well,” she said meekly and finished her soup, knowing he was right. The war would still be there when she woke, when she would be able to think beyond the risk of losing Lindal and look at the bigger threat of losing the world.

It was coming down to the wire. She could feel it like a building pressure in her head. A mistake now could be fatal.

Everyone was looking at her, waiting for her to produce the thing, the trick, the strategy, that would give them victory and she had no idea what the magic key was.

Sleep looked very attractive in comparison.

The house Remmy had rented in New Mexico they had chosen primarily for its lack of neighbors and prying eyes. It sat in isolated splendor in the middle of open land, on the east side of Las Cruces, with mountains for a backdrop. The ground was so flat around the house and the land so dry that no one could approach the house without sending up a trail of dust, or having their silhouette stand out on the horizon, more than a mile away.

Octavia always landed them in the parched front yard outside the house, because she liked to take a deep lungful of the desert air before going inside, to orient herself. Jumping around the country as they did, it became very easy to lose track of the time of day, the day of the week and normal human concerns, such as weekends and public holidays.

That first deep breath always centered her and brought her life back into focus. Only this time, when she breathed in, Octavia froze. She looked around, sniffing.

Remmy was staring at the mountains.

“Something is wrong,” Ángel said, studying both of them.

“It’s not
wrong
exactly,” Octavia murmured. “Not wrong like vampeen feel, or the Grimoré. It’s more…something is out of place.”

“It might be a good idea to move inside,” Remmy said.

Octavia felt the ends of her hair brush the back of her elbow. A breeze ruffled the locks even harder, bathing her face with a fresh, sweet air that smelled of snow and green, growing things. “Too late, I think.”

The breeze became a wind, that whipped around them, plucking at their clothes and stinging their eyes.

Ángel pulled Octavia against him and Remmy pressed up behind her, both of them shielding her as the wind howled around them, tugging at them. She closed her eyes against the dust and sand scraping her face. Ángel put his hand over her cheek, protecting it.

Then the wind moved. It didn’t stop. In fact, the banshee scream of it grew louder. It did move away from them, leaving them in the calm center of a very small, very tight cyclone. Inside the raging wind, sand, dirt, small bushes and more were whipping through the air, making the wind a wall that hid the rest of the world from them.

In the center where they stood, the air was calm. Above them, the sky was blue and cloudless.

Octavia pulled out her knife and held it up, looking around for the thing that was making her skin prickle.

“There,” Ángel said, pointing. Inside the wall of wind, dark shadows were evolving into figure shapes. The figures were coming toward them, moving through the raging wind as easily as they would walk through still air. The dust prevented Octavia from seeing any detail about them.

She realized that Remmy and Ángel had moved back to back, making up a triangle with her on the third side. They had their knives out, too.

There were hundreds of figures inside the wind. Some of them were tall, others were shorter and wider.

“What are they?” Octavia breathed.

“I think they might be elementals,” Remmy said.

“
Think
?” Ángel repeated.

“No one has ever met an elemental and lived to tell the tale,” Remmy said.

“Oh, joy,” Ángel muttered.

“They go their own way. They are not interested in our world.”

“The human world?” Octavia said.

“Or the supernatural one. They live apart from everyone. Nature is their domain.”

“Clearly,” Octavia said.

“I think one is coming out,” Ángel said. “Look.”

Octavia looked where he was pointing. One of the taller figures was coming closer. As it did, it grew more distinct. A slender body, loose clothing that floated in the fierce wind, instead of snapping and whipping at the wearer. Big eyes. Golden hair that waved as gently as its clothes.

The creature stepped out of the wall of wind, into the little circle of still air all around them. Her clothes fluttered down around her. So did her hair. She was definitely female. She looked almost completely human, except for the pure flawlessness of her skin. She glowed, much as Lindal and Sera did, yet with a brighter light. The elves glowed like white neon tubes, while this woman seemed to be wearing the golden halo of the sun itself.

“Vampire, hunter, fighter. I would speak to you,” she said. Her voice was lovely.

“You know who we are. We would appreciate knowing who you are, in order to speak with you,” Remmy said.

“I am the air.”

“A sylph,” Remmy said in an undertone.

“Not elementals, then?” Ángel said.

“Just one of them.”

She seemed to hear what they were saying and didn’t seem to be offended by their speaking about her as if she wasn’t there. “We are troubled by the forces that are arrayed against our world.”

“The Grimoré?” Octavia clarified.

“That is the name they have been given,” she said.

“Do you have a name?” Remmy asked.

“I was Aria, long ago.”

Octavia recognized the Italian roots. “Means ‘air’,” she whispered.

Remmy put his knife away and stepped closer to Aria. “You don’t like the Grimoré. We don’t, either, only we’re working to rid the Earth of them. What are you doing about it?”

Octavia blinked. Remmy’s tone was brusque and held no trace of his usual poetic southern lilt. For a moment, he was Bear, the boss who had always seemed cranky and disappointed with her.

Aria’s eyes narrowed as she considered Remmy. “Yes, they must be gone from here before they choke the air and soil the ground so that nothing else will grow. We offer you what strength we have.”

“We?”

“We elementals, as you call us.” She lifted a hand toward the wall of wind. The figures inside it were closer, now. Octavia could almost make out details. “Air, water, earth and fire are ours to command. They are us.”

“Except that wherever you go, you impact upon the Earth,” Remmy said. “Blight, drought, firestorms and floods. You can’t control yourselves. Look at what you’re doing right now.”

Aria smiled. It was a wise smile that made Octavia think of Diego, whenever he spoke of something from long ago in his personal history. “We have learned much since we were formed,” Aria said. She lifted her hands and spread them out. The wall of wind backed up, the inner circle increasing until the house and the front yard were included inside it.