The heat in her tightly held expression faded. “You’re right,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think of it that way. God, Alex, I’m sorry….”
He shook his head and drew her into his arms. “Can I go beat your three up for you? Please?”
She laughed, the sound muffled against his chest. “If you really have to, sure,” she said. “I can think of a better way to vent all that frustration, though.”
His body tightened, a thousand barely seen images flickering through his mind of Mia and Wyatt, naked and twined together, or against him, or any of the hundred ways they had made love. He could almost feel her breast in his hand, heavy with pregnancy, the tip heated with arousal.
He smothered a groan against her hair. “How in hell am I going to get through this damn meeting, now?”
* * * * *
Beth lifted her hand toward Blake. “Rhys, this is Blake Harvey. He’s with the NYPD. I told you about him a couple of weeks ago. I’m sorry it’s taken this long to get you two together. Blake, Rhys Wisherd. Sheriff of Erie County.”
The two law enforcement officers shook hands, studying each other. Rhys looked ill-used and exhausted. There were dark rings under his eyes and Beth wasn’t certain but she thought there was a bit more gray in his hair than she remembered from the first time she had met him.
He gripped Blake’s hand. “Seaveth says you have all this shit figured out. The war, being human and not letting any of it spill over into the other.”
Blake grimaced. “Then you haven’t heard the latest news.”
Rhys shook his head. “I’ve worked straight through Christmas, ten days straight, so far. This is the first time I’ve been out of the county office for longer than it takes to get four hours’ sleep and go back.”
“I know what that’s like,” Blake assured him. “I had to fight to get time off this year.” He drew Rhys toward the buffet table. “First defense is keeping up your calorie intake with decent food. There’s roast beef over here…”
The two of them moved through the crowd.
Beth turned back to where Cora and Aithan were standing together.
Aithan nodded at her. “Thank you for this,” he said, his voice low.
“We’ve been worried,” Cora added. “He’s been pushing himself too much. No one can keep that pace going for long.”
“I’ve seen Blake do the same thing,” Beth told them. “The law enforcement types like them have the hardest time juggling everything, because even in their human roles, they’re protecting people. It becomes overwhelming.”
Aithan glanced at the two at the buffet table. “Rhys feels responsible. For everyone.”
“Exactly,” Beth said. “Although, if it is any comfort, this war should end soon, if I am right about the prophecies and Mia’s pregnancy being the calendar.”
Cora nodded toward a handful of vampires talking to Lindal. “The elders of the Blackarcher clan say you haven’t got a thing wrong, so far.”
Beth smiled. “PR spin helps smooth out fears and anxieties. I make mistakes just as everyone else does. I just try to make sure the slip ups are over minor matters.” She gave them a small smile. “It’s twelve-thirty. I should call the meeting to order. Please excuse me.”
She stepped around the eddies and flow of people, squeezing past them on the edges. She made her way around to the dais, where the lectern waited. She had put on one of the long green velvet gowns, because when she was wearing them, she felt a lot closer to being Seaveth, instead of merely Beth, former bar waitress and librarian.
As she stepped up onto the dais, she flashed on the night she had first seen vampeen, the night she had finally understood that Lindal and Zack were not human and there was a whole supernatural layer to the world beneath human consciousness, a supernatural world that was on the brink of war.
She had given up every trace of her human life after that, devoting herself to the war effort and to defeating the Grimoré.
As she faced the room over the lectern, everyone shuffled and turned to face her. The room grew silent.
“Four years ago,” she told them, “none of us could have predicted we would be standing here, drawn together and united against a common foe. Look around you and marvel at the power of the trinities. Vampires stand with elves, who were once their mortal enemies. Demons stand among us. Shifters, too. Pixies have revealed themselves, when their very existence was unknown to all of us. The power of the trinities has given a ghost a corporeal existence and saved a human hunter from dark, solitary days filled with hatred for those he hunted. It has brought together old lovers and those who yearned to love. All of us have learned valuable life lessons that will linger long after this war is over.”
She paused. No one reacted. No one was looking bored, either. She had their full attention.
“The ranks are filled,” she continued. “The trinities have all been successfully formed and sealed. The Grimoré have failed to prevent us from growing to our full strength and for the first time, all twelve trinities stand in this room together. They are a symbol of hope and, as the prophecies have promised, the key to victory.”
She paused again. She had to, for somewhere in the middle of the room, someone started to clap. The solo sound lasted for only a heartbeat before everyone began to clap and cheer.
The sound was thunderous, washing over her with a power that sent a ripple down her spine.
They were celebrating just being here. She understood that. Every single trinity had faced difficulties and challenges. The clans and the elves had fought endless Grimoré and vampeen incursions, to help give the trinities time to claw their way to life. No one knew for certain the trinities would work. All they had were dusty, endlessly translated prophecies to cling to for hope, while they fought and bled and died.
For right now, though, none of that mattered. Doubts had been put aside and everyone, as they clapped and cheered, was giving voice to the fierce satisfaction in having made it this far.
Beth’s eyes swam with hot tears and she blinked to clear them. It wouldn’t do for Seaveth to break down and blubber, as much as she wanted to. She glanced over to where Lindal and Zack were standing together.
Zack gave her a small smile, while Lindal just glowed.
Then Beth realized that the lectern was trembling under her hands. She looked down at it, puzzled.
The rumbling was coming up through her feet, from the ground itself and it was intensifying.
The clapping checked and faded. Everyone looked around and down. Glasses were rattling on the buffet table, now. One dropped off the edge and shattered.
Zack and Lindal leapt onto the dais and gathered around her. Lindal pulled out his twin knives and Zack his long one. “We’re under attack!” he shouted at her, over the top of the swiftly building rumble.
His voice was picked up by the microphone and relayed to the room at large.
No one screamed. No one panicked. There was a shift in the crowd, like a giant hand swept over it, rearranging everyone. Backs were turned to each other. Weapons were drawn.
Then the world exploded around her, deafening her and stealing her sight.
Chapter Six
The blast was so loud that after, Mia couldn’t hear anything except a ringing in her ears. There was smoke and dust swirling over the top and around everyone, making it look as if they were moving through heavy fog.
Distantly, barely seen through the fog, she could see where the side of the room had collapsed inward. The wood paneling that had disguised the subterranean and windowless concrete walls was splintered and rammed inward as though a giant fist had punched in from the other side of the wall.
There was a gaping hole in the concrete behind the paneling. It was the mouth of a tunnel. Through the hole poured vampeen and creatures Mia knew instantly were the hounds everyone had been talking about.
She gripped her guns, her heart leaping with fierce and sudden anger, mixed up with a deep fear. This was unprecedented. This was almost im
possible. The Grimoré dared attack them here, in their shielded and supposedly impenetrable bunker?
That was where the fear came from. She had grown lax, assuming that deep down in the bunker, they were completely safe. The shields wouldn’t allow even teleporters to jump inside the keep.
Yet the Grimoré had found a way around it. A very human way.
Alex was drawing her away from the gaping wound in the wall and the flux of enemies pouring out of it.
“No, we have to help!” she shouted and could barely hear herself.
He put his mouth against her ear. “Everyone is retreating!”
She looked again. There were three trinities forming a semi-circle around the vampeen and hounds, containing them. Everyone else was stumbling and running for the big doors on the other side, that led deeper into the bunker.
Alex pulled on her arm and she let herself be tugged into escaping, too, although in her heart, she was with the three trinities working to shield them. She suspected it was that way for everyone.
* * * * *
Beth landed heavily, her bruised foot twinging and Zack, who was on that side of her, staggered forward.
“Sorry,” she said automatically. She looked around the apartment. It was good to be home, even if it was for all the wrong reasons. When she eventually had the chance to sleep, which she suspected would not be for a long time yet, she knew she would sleep deeply, in her own bed with its familiar squeaks and softness.
Lindal moved straight over to the windows looking out over the roof balcony. It was snowing again. There was three inches of untouched snow on the balcony and the sight of it was vaguely reassuring. Then she realized that she felt reassured because the perfect snow cover meant no enemies were near.
She shivered.
Zack sighed gustily and looked at her. “I could help your foot heal,” he offered.
She shook her head. “I need the reminder. Besides, there’s too much to do.” She pulled out her cellphone. “Contact your trinities. We need a head count.”
Both Zack and Lindal pulled out their phones.
It was the start of a long three hours. Beth made at least one pot of coffee. Zack made more and perhaps Lindal even unbent enough to make some, because her coffee cup didn’t remain empty for long.
She talked herself hoarse, as she worked over a spreadsheet on the laptop on her knees, accounting for as many as she could. It was hard to establish who had escaped the bunker, because as soon as they had climbed the emergency stairs to the underground parking lot and stumbled up the ramp into the cold day, they had scattered. The trinities would have jumped away and the elves, too. The vampires, shifters and others who were not part of the trinities would have to escape on foot, or by car, if they had brought them.
Later phone calls confirmed that the elves were still feeling kindly enough to have taken some of those on foot with them when they jumped away, although Beth still had to track everyone down by phone and confirm who had escaped the bunker.
While she did that, Lindal scanned the news feeds on his computer, while Zack rolled through the cable channels on TV, hunting for more.
It only took forty minutes for the news to hit the local syndicates. This time it wasn’t just wild speculation that made the reporters resemble the worst sort of tabloid thrill seekers. This time they had images and that changed everything.
Beth froze, her phone in mid-air, as she watched the jerky images from a hand-held camera—possibly it was even a cell phone video taken by a witness and sold to the station. What the shaking camera revealed was undeniable. Smoke and dust poured out of the emergency stairwell and the elevator shaft and through hundreds of cracks in the base of the office building. That wasn’t all.
It was Boxing Day, so the thirteen floors of offices above the bunker were empty and that was a small blessing. The humans who worked there were safely out of this.
Through the smoke and dust came an outpouring of hounds and vampeen, their teeth bared, their eyes red and glowing through the dust. There were dozens of them, spilling out into the parking garage and farther, onto the street itself, in broad daylight, for the world to see.
They spread out, searching for prey, while sirens sounded in the near distance.
The cops, if there were enough of them, could slow and maybe even stop them, but only if they adjusted quickly enough to the reality there were creatures who could move faster than them, were stronger than them and wanted nothing more than to eat them….
Beth felt sick. “They have no idea what they’re dealing with.”
The image on the TV went back to the station anchor, who looked as ill as Beth felt. It was one of the little independent stations, that barely covered the whole of Manhattan. “Those images are quite real,” the anchor said calmly, “and we have reports of similar incidences across lower Manhattan. Now we take you live to Bruce Barry, on Wall Street. Bruce?”
“Hello?” Beth heard from the phone she held in her hand.
She lifted it to her ear. “Remmy, I’m sorry. The news just broke. They have footage of vampeen, hounds…it’s horrible. Tell me you’re back in Chihuahua?”
“Just arrived, ma’am,” he said, his slow voice calm and soothing. “My first call was to Alexander, that’s why the phone was busy.”
“I understand perfectly,” she assured him. “However, we’re all spread out to hell and gone now, so I’m having to cut across the usual communications channels. Rhys says you three were the last to leave?”
“I guess we were at that,” Remmy said. “I watched Rhys and his two jump away and I don’t remember seeing anyone else after that.”
“Thank you. You helped save hundreds of lives.”
“That’s our job, ma’am.”
“It is. I’m thanking you anyway. No one expected this. No one even conceived of such a bold move.”
“Such a public one, too.”
“Yes,” Beth agreed. “Octavia is your jumper, correct?”
“She is.”
“Please ask her to come to my apartment in Soho, as soon as she can. We’re having an informal meeting of the trinities and there’s only room for one from each trinity, so it will have to be the jumper. She was here once, just after we took down the Grimoré in Mexico. She’ll know the location.”
“I will.” He hesitated. “Was anyone…lost?”
Beth sighed. “Of the trinities, no. Twenty-seven others, though. Nineteen of them were elves, who lingered to take out those who could not jump for themselves.”
Lindal was watching her and Beth made herself look away from him.
Remmy sighed, too. His was heavy and gusty. “I’ll ask Octavia to step over at once. Good afternoon, Seaveth.”
She put the phone down.
“Nineteen?” Lindal said.
Zack looked up from the TV.
There was no way around this hard truth. “Yes,” Beth said flatly.
Lindal hung his head for a moment. When he looked up again, the blue of his eyes was intense. “This will drive them. They will be even more determined to close the portal, now.”
Zack watched Lindal, as if he was trying to measure him. Perhaps he was.
Beth had found it easier to refuse to think about the decision Lindal had to make. So now she waited passively, not trying to anticipate what he might say.
Instead, Zack spoke. “Hey,” he said quietly. He aimed the remote at the TV and jacked up the volume.
The CNN logo showed in the corner, with a red header at the top with RABID DOGS ON NY STREETS in white. “…reports of a group of wild dogs, possibly rabid, roaming the streets of lower Manhattan,” the anchor said smoothly. “Residents are advised to stay indoors and not approach the dogs. Animal Control and other authorities are on the scene and we are assured the situation is under control.” The camera angle switched and the anchor smiled. “Earlier today, Santa paid a visit to a group of lucky children in—”
Zack switched the TV off. “ABC, NBC, all the majors, are either
not reporting it or not breaking in to report it. CNN are minimizing it.”
“Despite actual footage of hounds that look nothing like domestic dogs and vampeen that are neither?”
“I think,” Lindal said slowly, “they’re all waiting to see how the other stations spin it. The earlier one was a local and beneath notice in their estimation. They can laugh and call them hysterical, even accuse them of exaggerating to inflate their ratings. At the same time, none of the majors is going to be the first to say ‘supernatural’ because they don’t want to be laughed at, even if they know damn well it’s nothing natural out there.”
“It’s a giant game of chicken,” Beth breathed.
“First one to flinch loses, too,” Zack added.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been grateful about ratings wars until now,” Beth said. She got to her feet. “I need a shower in the worst way. Then, we’ll have to clear room for the trinities. They’re already on their way.”
* * * * *
With each trinity sending their jumper as their representative and with Zack and Lindal in the room, too, there were fourteen people squeezed into the tiny living space. Beth realized with a touch of shock that most of them were women and few of them human.
Mia had the one armchair in the room and a cushion behind her back. Everyone else sat or sprawled on the floor or leaned against a wall.
“I can’t guarantee we won’t be disturbed,” Beth told them. “It seems that the Grimoré are still drawn to us, especially when we gather in large numbers. It’s not just a forming trinity that beckons them. That is how they found the bunker. This may well be the last peaceful gathering of the trinities, so I want to make the most of it. From now on we will have to depend upon electronic communications, which the Grimoré do not seem to understand, and the telepathic conduits between each jumper in the group.”
Sera held up her hand. “Did everyone make it out, Beth?”
Beth sighed. Lindal didn’t react, even though she could feel the tension in him. “I’ll tell you what I’ve spent the last few hours sorting out. Cora, you can pass the information on to the Blackarcher clan and Camilla, the west coast clan. Octavia, Remmy will give you clan contacts for the Wildhammer clan, for you to keep them informed. Let me bring you up to date.”
Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) Page 5