Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (24 page)

Beth realized that in the era when these trees had been cleared, there had been no such thing as power saws. Every tree had been felled by hand, after arduous hours of chopping with simple axes. The effort it would have taken to clear out this area was staggering.

In between the stumps, there was nothing but red dirt. No plants grew, none of the ferns that curled up at the foot of the living redwoods Beth could see beyond the edges of the clearing, no grasses and no saplings. The earth was bare.

Around them, trinity members were appearing in twos only, dropping bags and packs of gear and equipment, then disappearing. Some lingered long enough to look around. They had orders not to stay too long. Beth didn’t want the Grimoré triggered until she was ready.

“After a century, still nothing grows?” Beth said, awed at the silent sadness of the place.

Remmy had been watching her reactions. “Now you understand why the company left the area. The loggers thought it was cursed and refused to touch another tree.”

“Is it cursed?” Beth asked bluntly.

“Why don’t you ask them?” He pointed behind her.

Beth whirled.

Standing at the edge of the clearing, within reach of the trees there, were slender humanoid creatures. She couldn’t tell if they were male or female, or neither. They were as tall as humans, yet only half the width. Their skin was a pale green.

“Dryads,” she whispered. She went closer to them, moving slowly so they wouldn’t be startled. She held out her hands as she got close, hoping it meant the same thing to them as it did to humans.

They didn’t move, although their big eyes grew bigger.

“This is your place,” Beth said. “You keep it bare, as a reminder?”

One of them nodded.

“These trees…they were the souls of your friends, who were lost to you, too.”

All of them nodded, this time.

“Do you know what we plan to do here?”

She expected another nod, or perhaps a shake of the head. Instead, one of them spoke, with a voice that was androgynous in timbre. “You will destroy the monsters.”

“The pixies told you, then. Good.” Beth nodded. “Do you mind? Can we use this place where your friends fell, to defeat another enemy?”

The first one who had spoken stepped forward. “We will help.”

Beth drew in a breath and let it out. She looked at Remmy. “We’ve got ourselves a ball game.”

* * * * *

They spent the morning setting up and preparing the field, always making sure only two of each trinity was present at one time. The jumpers in each trinity ferried people and equipment to the field, which the others unpacked.

Beth jumped back to the bunker for coffee and a late lunch around noon, Pacific time, her stomach grumbling in protest. After wolfing down the bowl of stew that Zack had heated for her, the two of them prepared to jump back to the clearing.

All around them, the final members of the trinities were also being picked up by their jumpers and taken to Oregon. They were all wearing light armor and multiple weapons. They were geared up for war.

Zack had his sword and a heavy leather jerkin to protect his chest. He had no shirt underneath it. “Sleeves get in the way,” he had once told Beth. “There’s a reason the Redcoats would dump the coat as soon as the going got rough. Those big cuffs and buttons weighed a ton for a start and they could throw a soldier’s aim off, too.”

Now, he put his arm around her waist and waited for her to jump.

It was almost automatic, the reach for Lindal. Beth aborted the movement and brought her fist up against her chest. It was trembling.

Zack squeezed her. “He’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “Here.” He gently pulled her fist down and gripped her elbow, so that the two of them made a circle.

Beth took a breath, trying to tamp down her building anticipation, then jumped.

* * * * *

Even with every trinity present and spread out across the clearing, it still seemed overwhelmingly large and empty. It was no longer silent, though.

The trinities were setting themselves up as they had discussed well into the night, last night, turning over all the possibilities and building up strategies, trying to anticipate the Grimoré, given what they had learned about them.

It was vital the trinities all stay in their threesomes, working together. Alexander and Wyatt hadn’t been happy about that, while Mia had been dismissive. “I can shoot better than everyone here, including Diego. Give me a repeater rifle and a crate of ammunition and I’ll take the Grimoré out before they have a chance to get anywhere close to me. Besides, there is no way you’re going to leave me here sitting on my thumb. I don’t care how many differential equations you have to solve in your head to calm down, Alex, so don’t look at me like that.”

Among the giant redwoods and the monstrous great stumps in the clearing, the trinities looked small and fragile.

Beth hoped…no, she
knew
that was an illusion.

“What now?” Zack asked, looking around.

“We wait.”

The first wave of vampeen didn’t appear until night had fallen. Beth had expected that. The Grimoré and their allies all preferred working in the dark.

The dryads warned them of the vampeen approach, flitting among the trinities like wisps of mist, whispering their warning, before merging back into the trees and disappearing.

Beth had conversed at length with the one who was their spokesperson, arriving at a
modus operandi
agreeable to both. She still didn’t know if Kaleh was male or female. She had settled on “him” simply so she didn’t keep tripping over pronouns. English was a very gender-oriented language.

So now Kaleh and his dryads returned to the trees. This time, they were to hide and let the vampeen pass.

Shortly after, Beth could hear the approaching vampeen herself. She didn’t have extended hearing the way the vampires did, yet the vampeen were not trying to hide their approach. They used no stealth at all.

Beth glanced up at Mia where she stood on one of the taller stumps. As she had jested, she had been handed a repeater rifle. The box of ammunition at her feet was not the standard crate of cartridges she had requested, though.

Her two Glocks were hanging from her hips, the holsters pinned to the band of her pants. She could no longer keep them in the under-arm holsters. Her belly was too large for her to reach them there.

The trinities stirred, getting to their feet and checking weapons for the last time. In the light of the early moon overhead, Beth could see them talking to each other. Last touches. Final kisses.

Her heart squeezed.

Zack picked up her hand.

“Don’t jinx it,” she said quickly.

“Since when did you become superstitious?” Zack asked with a smile. His black eyes were dancing. She could see it even in the dark.

“Since I met you and Lindal and found out that things really do go bump in the night,” she tossed back.

“I
was
about to suggest you and I get together for a drink sometime.”

Beth stared at him, utterly lost for words.

“Let’s say McGinty’s, a week from tonight. Eight o’clock.”

“Zack…”

“Say yes,” he said softly. “Give me a reason to come out of this alive.”

She swallowed. “Of course, yes. Zack, I lo—”

He put his fingertips to her lips, stopping her from finishing the sentence. “I thought you said no jinxing?”

She nodded.

The sound of the coming vampeen was louder. She could hear the slap of branches, leaf litter cracking underneath their hands and feet. Their snarling breath. Then the first one burst out into the clearing, howling its fury, all teeth and red eyes. Just like that, the battle had begun.

“Lights!” Beth shouted, adding a firm mental command to it.

They had strung up lights all around the edges of the clearing, strapped to the trunks of the trees. Yet the light that flooded the clearing was more than the sum of the spotlights. It was as if the sun itself was shining down through the break in the tree canopy. The clearing was lit with the brightness of a playing field, startling and dazzling everyone, not just the vampeen.

The elementals were doing their bit.

Mia, who had been keeping her eyes closed for just this reason, was the first to recover and shoot.

She took out three vampeen with quick efficiency, before Beth could see properly. The rubber bullets she was using to stun them and knock them out bounced against stumps, zinging around harmlessly. She had a whole box of pre-loaded shell cases and orders not to move from the top of the stump. Her deadly aim meant she didn’t have to.

As soon as one fell, Declan pounced on it and injected a sedative that would stop an elephant for twelve hours. They’d had no time to test what worked and figure out the optimal dose, so he had guessed, happy to take a chance rather than kill vampeen outright.

They couldn’t deal with every vampeen that way. There was simply too many of them. Those who directly attacked the other trinities were dealt with as mercifully as possible. Beth had directed that if they could disable the vampeen instead of killing it, Declan would follow up.

At least one of each trinity had a cudgel of some sort, from blackjacks to lumps of unadorned timber and lead piping. They were using them more than they were using blades. Zack was swinging the pipe he had found at the back of the warehouse with happy abandon.

The vampeen bodies lying still and silent began to accumulate around the trinities.

Ferr appeared in front of Beth, dancing and sprinkling glitter everywhere. Her excitement communicated itself.

“Where?” Beth demanded. “Show me.”

The vision appeared in her mind’s eye. Three of them. Of course. Still and silent in among the trees, directing efforts. Watching the distant clearing with the bright lights, secure in the knowledge that no one knew they were there.

“Zack! Grimoré! Let’s go!” she cried and held out her arm.

Zack whacked another vampeen on the head, dropping it at his feet, then lunged and threw his other arm around her.

Beth jumped.

The three Grimoré were too busy directing their vampeen army to do much more than turn their heads to look at them.

Beth shoved her knife into the guts of the closest one and yanked upward. It dropped to the ground like a spineless, empty sack.

Zack had switched the pipe to his left hand and held his sword in the other. He thrust the sword at one of the other two. Both of them disappeared before the blade could reach them.

“Ferr!” Beth called.

An image appeared. Bright lights, confusion, noise. Murphy was there. His head jerked up, alerted.

Get them!
Beth screamed at Noemi. “Ferr, are there any more?”

Ferr was buzzing around, excitement and fear surrounding her like a cloud. The image came to Beth. Three more, in the forest, not far away, avoiding the lights.

“Zack, I’ve got more.”

“Coming.” He grunted as he brought the sword down in a hard slash, decapitating the fallen Grimoré.

Beth felt no regret, not even remorse. She held out her arm, Zack grabbed her and she jumped.

Beth lost track of time. With Ferr and the other pixies guiding them, she and Zack would jump to the next trio of Grimoré and attack them, provoking them into jumping somewhere else. The Grimoré never jumped far—the battle in Georgia had taught them that the Grimoré needed to stay nearby. Also, if they were jumping without thinking, it was likely they were jumping to a pattern that was predetermined.

That had been proved by the remaining pair of the first trio, who had jumped straight into the clearing.

Ferr hovered overhead and passed on other images to Beth, of Grimoré appearing in the clearing and the nearest trinity falling upon them, ignoring the vampeen around them.

Each time the Grimoré jumped, the nearest trinity was pulled there by the pixies, to attack and harass and to take down at least one of them if they could. Disabling all three would be better. The strategy, though, was to wear them down. Beth was happy if the trinities just kept the Grimoré jumping continuously. They couldn’t control the vampeen while they were doing that.

“I need a breather,” Beth told Zack, after some indeterminable time. She could feel physical tiredness tugging at her. It would be good to stop just for a minute and get her breath back. “I need to see what is happening,” she added.

Zack handed her his lead pipe. He couldn’t sheath his sword because the blade was covered in the thick black substance that was Grimoré blood. Instead, he held it away from him and put his other arm around her. “Top of a stump?” he suggested.

“Good idea.”

She thought of the stump that had been closest to them before they had jumped away from the clearing. She leapt.

The stump was uneven beneath their feet and about six feet across. The tree had been sheared off nearly five feet above the ground. Beth leaned on the pipe and studied the clearing.

It was looking quite a bit more full now, than it had before the vampeen first crashed through the trees. There were a lot of bodies on the ground, forcing the trinities to step over and around them. Most of them were vampeen. There was the occasional Grimoré among them, beheaded per the decision the trinities had arrived at last night.

The vampeen that were still on their feet were milling around, their jaws chomping, their eyes still glowing red. They looked confused, though. Beth saw one of them casting around as if it was wondering where it was. Then, its eyes seemed to pulse and it turned and snapped at the nearest figure, growling. It paused again, looking about, the glow in the red eyes fading.

“They’re losing control,” Beth said, between breaths.

“Not much blood on the trinities,” Zack said. “Everyone looks as though they’re unscathed, so far.”

“That’s because we’re doing the hit and run thing,” Beth said. “No standing fights.”

Grimoré kept appearing in the clearing, sometimes three of them, sometimes two or only one. The trinities leapt at them as soon as they appeared, forcing them to jump away again. Sometimes, one of the Trinity was fast enough to bring another of the Grimoré down.