Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (20 page)

“You’re not sending Sera into the middle of them without a fucking army at her back,” Diego said. His voice was hoarse and uneven.

“I’m not
sending
Sera at all. She has volunteered,” Beth reminded him. “And no, I don’t intend that she go there alone. I want Octavia to go with her.”

“Me?” Octavia looked only mildly surprised. She didn’t look at all afraid, merely interested. Beth remembered that she had been fighting the cartels for years before her trinity had formed. The idea of facing monsters was not new to her.

Remmy put his hand on her shoulder. “They can’t track us,” he said, reminding her.

“Exactly,” Beth said. “Sera can jump to places she’s never been to before with the sketchiest of details—”

“She jumped to Canada when Diego said snow and trees,” Blake said.

Diego shot him a hurt look.

Blake looked at Beth. “In and out. To confirm and to locate, yes?” He was using his police officer voice. The no-nonsense attitude and his posture said he didn’t think this was insane at all, that it was a perfectly reasonable next step.

Beth could see his straight-forward tone soothing everyone around him. She mentally hugged him and for a moment his eyes twinkled.

“Yes, in and out,” Beth said. She spoke to Sera. “I want you to stay there only long enough to see what you need to see, then you jump back again.”

Octavia pulled her long-bladed knife out of the scabbard she wore on her back. “No problems,” she said in her husky voice. “I’ve seen these fuckers up close before. I can do that.”

Sera smiled a little. “Is Octavia to be my body guard?” she asked, her hands on the twin blades on her hips.

“I need Octavia to see the place, so that she knows where to go when she and Remmy and Ángel go back there.”

Octavia grinned. “I’ll carve up a few white ones if it comes to that.”

“No, no engagement,” Beth said sharply. “Not this time. That comes later. If you two could get there, look and jump back without the Grimoré even guessing you’d been there, that would be even better. I’m not holding my breath on that one.”

“Then they’ll know we’re coming,” Remmy said thoughtful.

“They can’t track you, so they don’t know
when
you’re coming,” Beth replied.

Ángel nudged Remmy with his elbow. “No problems,” he said, with his thick accent.

Remmy looked thoughtful, rubbing his chin.

Beth left him to think about it. She looked at Sera. “Ready?”

Octavia moved around to where Sera was standing and took up a stance next to her, the bare blade in her hand. She looked at Sera expectantly.

“Make it fast,” Blake told Sera. “You’ll absorb more detail than you think, just by doing a quick turn on your heels. Don’t linger.”

“The more everyone fusses, the more nervous I get,” Sera said. “We’ll be fine. Octavia.”

Octavia was shorter than Sera, so she put her arm around Sera’s waist. “Let’s go.”

They disappeared.

Beth felt as if she held her breath for the whole time they were gone. It couldn’t have been for longer than five seconds. It seemed to last for a month. She didn’t move the entire time. No one else did, either. Diego kept his eyes closed.

Despite waiting for them, when they did reappear, Beth was startled.

Octavia shoved her knife back and plucked at the shimmery tee shirt she was wearing. “Man, it is
hot
in there!”

Sera was smiling.

“They’re there?” Beth asked.

She nodded.

* * * * *

Despite his English skills improving rapidly in the last few weeks, Ángel still sometimes had problems following a fast-paced conversation, especially if it had lots of euphemisms, although everyone was very kind about explaining themselves when Ángel asked. Diego, in particular, would add a word or two in Spanish, often without prompting.

So some of the conversation around the roughly made table skipped past him, too fast and too complex to grasp meaning from it. Ángel had no problems, though, understanding the building tension in everyone as they listened to Octavia and Sera.

Octavia was strapping light armor over her chest, tearing the fasteners open and reclosing them for a better fit. “The floor is rough as shit,” she said. “It’s not really a floor at all. It’s as if the wall of the pool just keeps climbing upward, then bends over to run sorta horizontal and that’s what they’re standing on.”

“The portal is there,” Sera said quietly.

“You saw it?” Beth asked.

Sera glanced at Lindal, as if she was looking for support. “You don’t
see
them. You just know they’re there and you step through.”

“Through nothing?”

Sera frowned. “This is very hard to explain. The portal
we
use is hundreds of feet above the surface, here.”

“Over Indiana,” Lindal added.

“You’re kidding me,” Zack said. “You mean, there really is a door to your world, that even I could use? I thought you guys just…I don’t know,
willed
yourself here.”

“So what did you think my father meant when he spoke of shutting down the portal?” Lindal asked him, amused.

“I just figured it was some sort of general order telling everyone to stay put. All travel visas rescinded.” He shook his head. “Indiana….”

“I doubt a human could use ours, anyway,” Sera said. “Not when it is sitting at twelve hundred feet.”

“You don’t go to Indiana to go home, do you?” Zack said.

“That’s why it’s hard to explain,” Sera said. “We jump from there to here or back there and we barely think about it. If I were to slow it down to human perception speed, though, you would see me jump to Indiana, then through the gate. I just do it all at once.”

“So the Grimoré are doing the same thing? Jumping from their home world, through the gate, then to wherever they want to go on Earth after that? All in one jump?” Beth asked.

“Yes. Except the three leaders didn’t go anywhere,” Sera said. “They’re right in front of it, safely below ground, snug and warm.”

“They’re protecting the portal,” Ángel said.

Everyone looked at him, surprised.

Discomfort crawled up his back. It made him uneasy to have everyone looking at him. Being noticed had been a bad thing for too many years. He made himself explain. “When my father took a stash over the border, when it was all in one place, my father put people guards on it. Always the best, most…most…” He looked at Remmy. “Trustworthy?” he asked in Spanish.

Remmy told him the English version.

“Always the most
trustworthy
and best men he had,” Ángel finished. He rubbed his fingers and thumb together. “Too much to lose.”

“As far as the Grimoré are concerned, that portal is the most expensive stash in the world,” Zack said. “If they lose that, they lose everything. They’ve put their strongest and best in front of it.”

“The ones who can think for themselves,” Beth said, her face thoughtful.

“Sounds like fun,” Octavia said. She patted the last fitting in place. “Anyone got a gun I can borrow?”

“We don’t know if bullets kill them,” Diego said, reaching under his jacket and withdrawing one of the pair he always wore, even though most of the time he used his version of the long knives everyone else seemed to prefer. He held the gun out to Octavia, butt first.

She took it and weighed it. “It’s nine millimeter.”

“You don’t need a forty-five if your aim is straight,” Diego said.

“I shoot straight. It’s not enough. I want these fuckers tossed into next week,” Octavia said and handed it back. “Thanks, anyway.”

Ángel smiled. Even though he now knew her tough act hid a soft, empathetic soul, he still liked watching her go toe-to-toe with some of the hardest people in the world. She had survived living with his brother, which was no small feat.

Quietly, he moved around the back of the people still standing at the table. Nobody had left. Nobody seemed even remotely bored.

Ángel tapped Blake on the shoulder and held out his hand with a small smile.

Blake looked startled, then almost embarrassed. He reached under the light windbreaker he was wearing. “You have to understand. We are trained to within an inch of our lives…handing over our gun to anyone makes us break out in hives.”

“I have lotion to give you for that,” Ángel told him.

Blake slapped the heavy .45 into Ángel’s hand. “Just kill the fuckers, okay?” he told Octavia.

“That’s the plan,” she said. “Thanks, Blake,” she added.

Ángel gave her the gun and she shoved it in her jeans and clapped her hands together. “Let’s do this,” she declared.

She was nervous and trying to hide it. Ángel pulled out his knife, let it roll over the back of his hand and put it back in the sheath. “Ready,” he told her.

The others were clearing a space around them.

Remmy was retying the bottom of his old fashioned six-shooter holster around his lower thigh. He straightened, tested the drop to the revolver sitting in it, then nodded and came over to where they were and stood on Octavia’s right. He fitted his arm over Ángel’s behind her back.

“Go for the eyes,” Diego called out. “It might not kill ’em, but blinding ’em will slow ’em down.”

“Bail if you have to,” Beth said. “The advantage you gain from surprise will only last for a while. If you get bogged down, don’t stay there.”

Octavia drew in a deep breath. “Fuck,” she muttered. “I want to puke and scream at once.”

Ángel could feel her shaking. “Jump,” he urged, in Spanish. “Jump now. Don’t think anymore.”

She jumped.

* * * * *

The heat was like nothing Ángel had ever experienced. It seemed to slap him with a wet, invisible hand the moment they arrived. He realized that the oppressiveness was from humidity, which wasn’t known in northern Mexico.

Rough walls, just as Octavia had described, with rippling shadows moving over them. It was the reflections off the pool of water to their right, which glowed with light that must be coming from the day outside the cave.

“Fuck, they’re everywhere!” Octavia cried.

“Knives,” Remmy growled. “Clear a space, so we can see the primary three.”

There were dozens of the tall, bony-headed Grimoré all around them, reaching for them with their long fingers, the blank holes of their nostrils and their black eyes looking huge, this close up. Their skin was sickly white and damp.

Ángel tugged his knife free and swung, going for the neck. The first Grimoré fell at his feet, his hands barely lifted.

He didn’t have time to think. There were more of the things behind that one, all of them reaching, a solid wall of them. He hacked and sliced, grunting with the effort of it.

“There. I can see them!” Octavia cried. “Cover me!”

Ángel moved until he could see Remmy from the corner of his eye, which put Octavia behind them, her back against the wall. He waited until the Grimoré were within reach before swinging the blade and brought yet another one down. It fell and lay over the bodies of those he’d already killed.

“They’re not fighting back!” he yelled.

“They’re protecting the three,” Remmy said. “Hurry, Octavia.”

Ángel risked a glance upward. The floor did curve like the back of a whale emerging out of water. Three figures, identical to the ones gathering around them in a white wall, were standing motionless, facing each other.

Talking to each other
, Ángel thought. He wondered why he was so certain that was what they were doing.

The air between the three and the wall shimmered like sunlight on water. The portal.

He hacked off the arm of the Grimoré that was reaching for him, pulling his attention back to the task at hand.

The gun bellowed. In that enclosed space it sounded like a small cannon and left Ángel’s ear ringing.

One of the three at the top of the slope jerked forward. Then it folded and sank to the ground.

“You got it!” Ángel cried.

Even as the Grimoré hit the ground, another one appeared in its place.

“God’s festered balls,” he muttered.

“Jump, jump!” Remmy shouted. “Grab her!” His hand slapped Ángel’s shoulder.

Ángel looked up, wanting to confirm that yes, he really had seen another Grimoré take the place of the first.

The three Grimoré were looking at them, now. Their hands lifted, in a way similar to the Grimoré surrounding Remmy, Octavia and him were reaching. Then they moved them to one side, as if they were sweeping a table clear of clutter.

Fear gripped him, even as a giant, invisible hand knocked him sideways….

* * * * *

He blinked, listening to birds calling. Far overhead, he heard the distant roar of an aircraft and even farther away, a sound he had never heard in real life before. It was the sound of the sea, with waves rolling into shore.

The raucous bird song must be seagulls, then.

His head hurt and he was lying at a peculiar angle, his head almost tucked under his shoulder. There was a firm structure behind him and his legs were sprawled across more harshness. As he moved, his boots scraped across small pebbles.

He opened his eyes carefully. There was tarmac beneath his hands. He pushed himself up into a sitting position, untangling his legs. It was as if someone had thrown him against the wall, like a rag doll.

Overhead, there was bright blue sky and the air was dry like it was in Chihuahua.

There was a kid in jeans and a hoodie standing and watching him. He had a long skateboard under his arm, olive skin and black eyes.

“You know Spanish?” Ángel asked him.

He nodded.

“Where am I?”

“Hermosa.”

“
Los Angeles?
” Ángel laughed, the sound shaking his shoulders and making his head throb. “Shit on a stick. Hey, kid, do you have a phone?”

The boy, who couldn’t be more than ten years old, pressed his lips together and didn’t answer.

Ángel dug in his jeans and pulled out a rumpled five dollar note and held it out. He lifted a finger of his other hand. “One call, promise. Then I’ll give it back to you.” He could feel something moving inside the collar of his jacket and swiped at the back of his neck. His hands came out bloody.

He held them out to the kid. “I just want to call my friends and get them to come and get me. Before the cops get here, you understand?”