Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (14 page)

Then she waved her hand sideways.

The stony, arid yard turned into a green oasis. Octavia gasped as she watched the soil turn dark with moisture and tillable richness. Plants bloomed in the soil, germinating and growing right in front of them. A tree zoomed upward and sprouted branches, then leaves, then fruit.

“Lemons…” Octavia whispered.

In front of it, low bushes flourished, then grew blooms of their own. Roses.

The yard flowered. Honeysuckle, hibiscus, a grapevine that trailed up the front of the house and over the windows. Under their feet, a low ground cover dotted with tiny white flowers formed. Flowers of every color and description erupted all over the yard. Bees hovered over them and butterflies alighted on stamens.

“Oh…” Octavia breathed. Disappointment touched her. As beautiful as it was, the garden was doomed in this arid land.

Ángel and Remmy were turning, taking it all in, while Aria stood with a small smile on her face, pleased with her own work.

“Control
is
possible,” she said, “especially for those who work to achieve it. We have worked very hard to preserve our world and those who share it with us. The Grimoré do not share. They will drain Terra of her energy and leave her an empty husk.”

“They will,” Remmy agreed heavily. “I will take your offer to those who lead us. How are we to contact you, to coordinate our efforts?”

Aria smiled and it was like watching the sun come out from behind a cloud. Remmy’s response pleased her.

She raised her hands up over her head and the wall of wind lifted with her. When she brought her hands together, the wind suddenly ceased. The figures who had been inside it were also gone.

The silent was almost deafening after the roar of the wind.

Then Octavia became aware of the sounds in the garden. Crickets. The buzz of the bees. The scent of thousands of flowers, lifting up into the sunny air.

“I will come with you,” Aria told them. “Through me, all can be arranged.”

“Conduit,” Ángel said, using the English word.

“Yes,” Aria told him, with another brilliant smile. “You must talk to those who lead you,” she added.

Remmy pulled out his phone. “Oh, I most certainly must do that,” he agreed.

Octavia bent and sniffed the gorgeous cabbage-sized flower in front of her, that was pink and nodding in the sun. “Oh, it’s going to be so sad when they die.”

Remmy turned away, the phone to his ear.

Aria looked at Octavia, puzzled. “It is not sad when things die. That is their natural cycle. More will replace them, for then it will be
their
cycle.”

Ángel just stared at her, his forehead wrinkled.

Octavia puzzled it out. “You mean, one dies, then another grows in its place.”

“
From
the one that dies.” Aria nodded.

“Just not here,” Octavia said. “There is no rain here. The soil…well, it’s not soil. It’s broken up rock, mostly.” She glanced at the baked, flat earth that started where the garden stopped, then ran to the horizon.

“Oh. Yes, Terra must have earth, air, water and fire to thrive,” Aria agreed.

“Well, then,” Octavia said.

Without warning, the rain began. It was a gentle shower, coming out of a blue sky and only falling upon the garden and the house. Ángel gasped and lifted his face up to the water.

Remmy swore. “My phone!” he added and sprinted for the house.

* * * * *

As soon as they arrived back at the hotel room they were renting, Rhys put his phone on the charger. The new bunker had not run to multiple spare power outlets and he didn’t carry the power cord around with him, either. The phone had died hours ago. Being out of touch made him grumpy. He’d reached for it a dozen times to do something as simple as check the time, before remembering the battery was dead.

Aithan stripped off his clothes. The shower was already running. Rhys glanced at the hard curve of his ass and his body tightened in response. Perhaps he’d join Aithan in the shower. There was enough room in there that Cora could fit, too….

His phone suddenly started cheeping with alert after alert, vibrating on the glass top of the nightstand.

Aithan glanced at it and raised his brow. “Someone wants you badly.”

“We were right there, five minutes ago. They could have tapped me on the shoulder,” Rhys said, frowning. He went over to the nightstand and picked up the phone. Three more alerts popped up on the screen as he turned it around the right way. All of them were the same.

“Mayor Williams,” Rhys muttered.

“Jeoffery Williams?” Cora asked.

“The mayor of Erie?” Aithan added.

“Yeah.” He thumbed through the messages. “Starting from about three yesterday, Pennsylvania time and picking up again around eight this morning. There are…” He started counting and stopped at ten. “Shit.”

He sank onto the mattress.

“Maybe they need you,” Cora suggested, sitting on the bed in front of him.

“Call him back now,” Aithan said. “You can’t deal with it until you know what it is.”

Rhys glanced at the time. Just after midday. Toronto time was Erie time. There was a good chance the mayor was having a business lunch somewhere and wouldn’t appreciate being interrupted. Aithan was right, though. He had to make the call.

He picked one of the alerts and hit the little phone icon, then listened to the phone connect and ring.

“Then you’re alive,” Jeoffery Williams said, without pausing for a hello.

“Sorry, Mayor. I had to get out of town for a while. The media were overwhelming.”

“They chew me up and spit me out daily. I don’t take a powder when they write nasty things about me. I certainly don’t drop off the ends of the world without warning.”

“I left Bobby Elfmann in charge. He’s a good deputy. Nothing will get dropped. Besides, I haven’t had a vacation in six years.”

“So you’re somewhere sunning it up with those friends of yours?”

Rhys swallowed. This was not a good conversation. There was a note in Williams’s voice that made him uneasy. A hard note that had never been there before. “Why don’t you say what you need to say, Mayor?”

Williams sighed. “I’ve had several long conversations with Chief Dobson over the last few days. We think it might be best if you step aside and let someone more centered take over.”

“More
centered
?” Rhys gripped the phone, fury washing through him. “I’ve worked my ass off for your city, for the county!”

“I didn’t see the dogs you dealt with, you and your friends. Chief Dobson doesn’t generally exaggerate, though. I really think you should stay on your vacation, Rhys. Maybe, talk to someone while you’re there.”

“I was protecting
his kids
,” Rhys breathed. “What was I supposed to do? Let the hound tear out their throats while I shot my politically correct bullets into its brain pan?”

Aithan gripped his arm. “No details, Rhys,” he said gently, reminding him. He had pulled his jeans back on and sat down next to him.

Cora was staring at Rhys, her eyes large. She could probably hear every word Williams was saying.

“It’s statements like that and others you’ve made lately that concern us,” Williams said. “I’ve already appointed Elfmann to the Sheriff role. This phone call is just a courtesy, Rhys.”

Rhys couldn’t think of a sane response. So he disconnected and tossed the phone back onto the nightstand. The back cover busted free and Cora caught it with one of her whiplash-fast movements, picked up the phone and fitted it back on, all while looking at him.

Rhys pushed his hands through his hair. “Well, there goes my career.”

Aithan put his arm around him. “Now you’re free to do more of the work that
really
counts.”

It was exactly the right thing to say. Rhys could almost feel the high-strung tension in his chest snap and disappear. “Yeah. There are more people out there than the citizens of Erie County,” he said slowly. “Only, goddam it, sixteen years and I don’t even get a gold watch as a thank you.”

Cora unclipped the Rolex on her wrist and held it out to him.

The little laugh pushed out of him, despite wanting to stay grumpy and hurt.

“Or, if you prefer, there’s another way we can thank you.” She lifted the bottom of her shirt up with her hand, revealing the taut plane of her torso and her navel. She raised her brow in question.

Rhys’ cock stirred. “I don’t quite understand the second option,” Rhys told her. “Maybe you need to lift the shirt higher?”

“Or I could just go and have a shower,” Aithan suggesting, standing up and sliding the zipper of his jeans undone.

Rhys sucked in a deep breath, the last of the tension evaporating. “Both,” he said, his voice hoarse.

That was when the pounding started on the door, making all three of them jump.

The pounding on the door woke Beth and she laid still, her heart racing, orienting herself. This was her bedroom in her apartment, in New York.

The knocking came again. Someone was at the apartment door. Why weren’t they using the chime, for heaven’s sake?

“Zack? Lindal?”

No answer.

The knocking came again, this time even heavier. Maybe whoever it was had already used the bell and Beth had slept through it, her sub-conscious not disturbed by something that Zack and Lindal would take care of.

Except they weren’t here. Now she remembered. They were going to take some essentials to the new bunker.

She hauled herself to her feet and pulled on the long, dark green silk robe that the three of them used interchangeably. She had other, more lacy, peignoirs, but preferred wearing the gown because it smelled of both of them. Zack insisted he didn’t have a scent, that vampires didn’t have a metabolism or body heat to give off a scent. Only, he did have one and she could detect it as she wrapped the silk around her.

The pounding started up again.

Her long knives weren’t on the bureau. She couldn’t remember where she had left them and had an uneasy feeling they were still propped up against the drug cabinet in the surgery at the bunker.

She opened the top drawer. Zack’s old hunting knife was sitting in the corner, in the battered leather sheath. She grabbed it, tossed the sheath on the bed and hurried to the apartment door and looked through the viewer.

Perfectly normal human. FedEx uniform. Parcel under his arm.

“ID, please!” she called.

He dug in his pocket and held up a laminated card. The FedEx logo, his photo.
John Debney
was printed beneath it.

“I’m not expecting a delivery,” she called through the door. “Who is it from?”

He rested his hand-held device on top of the parcel and thumbed through the data. “A Kim Miller. Morningside address.”

Kim. Her old roommate. This had to be a Christmas present, which the mail delivery system had ensured arrived long after Christmas was over. Beth took the chain off the hook.

The door busted inward, shoving her through three feet of air. She staggered, just barely keeping to her feet.

The FedEx guy hissed at her. His eyes were all black, his skin crawling with red, pulsing veins. He leapt at her, his clawed hands reaching for her.

Beth just barely got the knife up in time to ward him off. His hand stabbed onto the point of the blade and he howled. It was a dreadful sound, making the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

It would stir the neighbors, too.

The knife had halted his initial lunge at her and now she had her feet under her again. She kept the knife down by her leg, lulling him into thinking she didn’t know what she was doing.

He leapt and this time she aimed for his chest. The old, iron-bladed knife slid home with very little resistance.

The demon parading as John Debney looked down at the blade, surprised.

“Bet you didn’t think I’d have an iron knife handy, huh?” she asked.

It threw its head back and howled again, louder than before. Then it puffed into a cloud of vaguely human-shaped smoke, that curled up toward the roof.

Pounding on the stairs told Beth that a second demon, the back-up, was on the way, called by the first’s howling.

She looked around quickly. There was no time, not even to grab clothes. As the second demon burst through the ruined doorway she jumped, throwing herself back and out of its way.

The bunker appeared in front of her and she staggered backward to regain her balance as the silk fronts of the gown settled around her. There were a dozen people there, including Zack and Lindal. Everyone looked up at her.

She pulled the dressing gown around her more firmly. “I guess this is home,” she announced to everyone and tucked the knife into the belt.

* * * * *

Aithan, Cora and Rhys arrived barely five minutes later, as Beth was retrieving her long knives from the surgery unit. Aithan wore only jeans and they were open, too. All three of them were breathing heavily. Aithan hastily adjusted his jeans.

Lindal went up to them. “Demon assassin?” he asked.

Cora’s eyes widened. She nodded.

Aithan sighed, looking down at the ground.

Lindal looked at him. “You knew who it was?”

Aithan grimaced. “One I didn’t think would ever side with the real devils. He was an incubus, like me.”

“Sorry,” Lindal said. He was. The civil war forming among demons and their kind as they chose sides wasn’t something he would wish upon any race, including demons. The ill-will and hatred it engendered was far more personal than any emotions that rose from facing an enemy who was a stranger.

Aithan shook his head. “Axel made a choice. All of us have the freedom to choose. That’s more than the vampeen have. I won’t get upset about Axel’s choice. I won’t get upset if I see him on the battlefield and have to run him through, either.”

Lindal patted him on the shoulder. “You three should pick out a corner for yourselves now. I have a feeling you won’t be the last trinity forced to jump away from descending demons.”

Rhys held up his phone and the charger, still attached to it. “Is there somewhere I can plug this in?”

* * * * *

“They’re using demons for human-style information,” Beth told Zack and Lindal, in the little corner by the washrooms, where they had tucked themselves away in order to talk freely. “Demons know how to blend in. They understand the culture. The Internet, the media. They’re the Grimoré’s go-betweens. That’s how they found us. They used human databases to track us down. Plus the demons can go unremarked where a Grimoré or a vampeen would stand out.” She shivered, because she felt cold in the flimsy silk gown, even though the warehouse had environmental controls. The chill was an illusion, yet she would feel much better when she had boots on.