Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (23 page)

Lindal’s thrusts were uneven, almost strained. The pleasure he was taking from her and the arousal from what Zack was doing to him was keeping him off balance and his excitement growing. He was trembling with it.

So was Beth. She couldn’t take a full breath. The climax was building, making her lie helpless, writhing, as it raced for the peak, while Lindal worked against her and in her, directing it. She gripped the edge of the mattress, clamping down on the sheet, as it gathered.

The orgasm washed over her, stealing her breath completely, making her body arch. Muscles and tendons strained. So did her throat. She was incapable of making a sound.

Her chest unlocked and the blinding, sizzling pleasure tore through all her nerves, abrading them with silvered heat.

She clutched Lindal to her as he strained, stiffening, as his climax took him. The tendons on his neck stood out and his eyes closed.

Then he drew in a deep breath and reached around behind him, twisting. The movement let Beth see him grab the back of Zack’s neck. He tugged him forward, pulling him down to the mattress.

Zack’s cock was glistening with lubricant and the veins were crawling along its length, thick with blood. It looked as if he would come at the slightest touch.

Lindal flipped him on his back. He kissed Beth briefly, then pulled himself over Zack. Zack groaned and rolled his head back as Lindal took him.

Beth caught her breath once more, watching as Lindal thrust deeply and steadily, his eyes almost completely closed. It was as if he was concentrating on every sensation and nuance. Storing it up for future reference.

Zack had been too close to coming already. He lasted only a few beats before his climax was triggered. He jerked, as he came with a choked-off groan. Beth could almost feel the way his body tightened, straining with the pleasure and how he would be clamping around Lindal.

Lindal’s jaw rippled and his eyes opened wide as he came with a harsh breath, almost ramming into him. He grew still, propping himself up on one arm, his chest heaving.

So was Zack’s. Zack reached up and pushed at Lindal’s shoulder and Lindal fell between them.

Beth threw her arm and leg over him, turning on her side as Lindal was.

Zack rolled over to face them both. They were still breathing heavily, slowing as they recovered.

“I thought, when you pulled me in here, that we were going to talk,” Lindal said quietly.

“We did ‘talk’,” Zack said. His grin faded quickly.

Beth bit her lip. She couldn’t put it off any longer. Both of them knew, even if they didn’t understand the details yet. It wouldn’t be fair to leave them waiting any longer.

“I know how to end this war,” she said.

Neither of them reacted. It wasn’t a surprise to them.

“What I don’t know,” she added slowly, “is what happens
after
.”

Zack’s gaze dropped away from hers. He wasn’t pretending to not understand. “Can’t we…just pretend nothing changed? After?”

“Can we?” Beth asked.

“Or maybe,” Lindal said heavily, “we should start again. Afterward, I mean.”

“What, all the way back to McGinty’s when I didn’t have a clue about either of you?” She tried to make her tone light and failed.

“Why not?” Lindal said. “After, we’re all going to have to figure out what the hell we do once the Grimoré are gone. We could figure us out while we’re at it.”

“Maybe you won’t want to, afterward,” Zack said.

Lindal swallowed. “No.” He said it flatly. Denial.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Zack said gently, “That doesn’t apply to you, son of morning.”

Then he
did
know. Beth drew in a breath that shuddered. Her eyes stung with hard tears and she blinked them away.

Lindal shook his head. Mute mulishness.

Beth leaned over him and stroked his cheek. “I know how to finish this war,” she said softly, “and the only way we can win it is if you go back to your father.”

Lindal didn’t speak much as he packed the backpack with the things he thought he might need. None of them were weapons.

Beth and Zack helped him, while everyone in the bunker moved around them, sorting out gear, weapons, armor and more. No one came to Beth for answers or directions. The trinity manning the communications area didn’t bring messages or request responses.

Perhaps, in the ways the trinities worked, everyone had sensed their mood and was leaving them alone.

Finally, Lindal closed the backpack and shoved his arms through it, shrugging it into place. He stood looking at them. His eyes were stormy, dark with emotion.

Beth didn’t wait for him to say goodbye. She didn’t think she could stand it. Instead, she kissed him, damming back any farewell he might have uttered. His arms tightened around her for a moment, then let her go.

He pulled Zack closer and stared into his eyes. Then he kissed him.

“Lindal!” Sera was running across the open space between the nearest tents and cubicles and the table where the three of them stood. Blake and Diego were both hurrying, behind her.

Sera threw herself against Lindal and hugged him. Tears sparkled in her eyes.

Lindal hugged her, hard. Then he turned her and pushed her back toward Blake and Diego. “Take care of her,” he told them.

He turned his head to look at Zack and Beth again.

“Don’t forget—” she began, as even more details and possibilities occurred to her. Failsafes, strategies. Things to keep him safe.

“Never,” Lindal said, his voice hoarse.

Then he was gone.

* * * * *

Beth found Remmy perched on the old workbench in the dusty corner where no one else went, his long leg thrust out in front of him. He had a piece of chamois leather spread over the bench next to his hip and had broken down and was oiling and cleaning the six-shooter he normally kept strapped to his hip, even while using the old cavalry sword he favored.

He was peering through the barrel, inspecting it, when Beth approached. He put it back on the leather and got to his feet. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he had bowed to her. He was an echo of centuries long gone, much more than Zack or even Diego, with his long life, ever were.

Remmy studied her. “Are you coping, Seaveth?” His voice was gentle.

Even though Lindal’s departure had not been announced, everyone just seemed to know about it. Beth pulled the long cardigan in around her more tightly and held it closed by crossing her arms. “I’m staying busy,” she told him honestly.

He nodded. “If there is anything I can do to help, you have only to ask.”

“That’s why I’m here.” She turned and leaned her back against the bench, feeling an odd tiredness. She didn’t need sleep—she had only just had twelve solid hours—yet she felt enervated. Drained. “I’m trying to find something. A place.”

“Somewhere you have forgotten?”

“Somewhere a long way away from the Triumvirate and their portal. As far away as possible. Then I remembered that you spent decades in Oregon. All those redwoods and firs…there must surely be a place among the trees that you know, a location that no one else could possibly stumble across by accident.”

Remmy hitched his hip back onto the bench next to her. “You mean, a place that no human would find unless they knew about it? Somewhere far away from human settlements?”

“Yes, exactly.”

He crossed his arms to match hers. “You’d need a big clearing. Enough for two armies.”

“With trees around the edges,” Beth said.

He raised his brow at her.

“Dryads,” Beth said.

“Ah, I see.” He considered. “There is one place. The timber cutters over-harvested the trees and cleared the Earth of every last seedling.” He grimaced. “This was long before the damage to the land such clearing caused was properly understood. Then they discovered that the river no longer ran pure, the soil would not stay in place…they began to understand what they had done. The company moved on yet the clearing remains. Reforestation was also not a concept back then.”

“It sounds perfect,” Beth said. “Only, wouldn’t the forest have reclaimed the clearing now? That was how many decades ago? There would be seedlings, whole trees, even.”

Remmy’s smile was twisted. “You’ll understand when you see it.”

“Very well. I’ll take your word for it,” Beth told him. “Thank you.”

“Then it is your intention to draw the Grimoré out?” he asked.

Beth got to her feet. “I’m not waiting for the hammer to drop, anymore,” she told him. “I’m done with waiting.”

Remmy gave her a long, measured look. “Good,” he said quietly.

* * * * *

Lindal had forgotten how, each time he returned, he was reacquainted with the fresh air, the scent of growing things and the sense of balance and peace that pervaded the elven world.

He tramped through thigh high grasses that bent in the gentle breeze, creating ripples across the meadow and looked up at the sky. It was very pale, almost colorless. The sun didn’t dazzle.

His father’s personal retinue was standing at the top of the short rise that Lindal was climbing, waiting for him. His presence had been detected immediately, of course. Elementals with their fingers on the pulse of the world could not help but notice a new arrival. He would have sent out ripples that the smallest child among them would have felt.

Despite that, they had made him wait. He had been walking steadily for several hours now, always heading in the same general direction, crossing fields and rivers, woods and glens and more than one meadow filled with lush grass like this one. Sooner or later, he knew, his father would appear simply because he would not be able to help himself. He would come to find out why Lindal had returned.

The retinue had appeared on the horizon when Lindal cleared the last copse of trees. Somewhere among them, his father would be sitting or standing, passing judgments and making decisions. His court was a mobile one. It was also a busy one. Lindal had no illusions that his father didn’t work hard.

Every now and again, one of the figures around his father would stand and peer at him, watching his progress.

Lindal climbed the last of the little slope, his legs working hard. He stood at the top, level with the courtier who had watched him cross the last quarter mile. The elf was a stranger to him. “Is he here?” Lindal asked.

“This way, your highness.” The elf stepped back and waved him forward, toward the loosely clustered elves, in their robes and elaborate formal accessories. Lindal had deliberately worn jeans, sneakers and a tee shirt, the casual uniform of millions of humans from every country on Earth.

The courtiers parted silently to let him through.

Baralathor stood with his hands behind him, staring out over the next valley. That put his back to Lindal and Lindal didn’t need confirmation to know his father had deliberately chosen the position in order to silently put Lindal in his place.

If Lindal was here to ask to be taken back, then the subtle put-down might have been appropriate.

“I’m here to ask for your help, Father.”

Baralathor didn’t move. “You and your humans have had our assistance for far too long and it has gained you nothing. I heard what happened to that city of theirs.” He turned to look at Lindal. “They’re losing.”

“We’re about to win.”

“Then go and win.”

“As I said, I need your help.
Yours
, Father. No one else’s.”

Baralathor frowned, for the first time showing anything other than mild boredom. “What sort of help could I possibly give you?”

“Only the king himself has the power to shut down the portal.”

Baralathor smiled. “I’m glad you appreciate that fact. Only now I am puzzled. If you are aware of that, then why risk coming here? I could shut the portal behind you right now.”

“You wouldn’t leave Séreméla behind.”

Baralathor scowled. “That person is lost to me. She was lost a long time ago.”

“Yet you still asked her to return,” Lindal pointed out. “She sits behind shielding that not even you could penetrate. Your shock troops won’t find her. She’ll stay there for as long as I am here.” Lindal smiled. “You won’t shut the portal.”

“Yet that is why you need my assistance?”

“It’s not
this
portal of which I speak.”

Baralathor’s lips parted. His eyes widened. Then he straightened up with a snap. “I have power over my own world. What makes you think I could close that one? That I would even deign to draw near to it?”

“Sera and I have power of a sort on Earth,” Lindal told him. “Not just from the trinities, but from Terra herself. It is a raw, far younger power than here. There, you might not have the power to close the portal by yourself. However, with the three of us working together—”

The same courtier who had led him here stepped up next to him now. “You dare suggest that the king sully himself with the soil of that…that…filthy place! Why, even the air is unclean.”

“How would you know?” Lindal asked him. “As you’ve never dared step there?”

The courtier drew himself upright. “The king cannot risk himself on such a hopeless venture. To be so close to the Grimoré? If anything were to happen to him, while he was in that disgusting place, our world would grow sick and diseased. Without a king, everything falls apart. Entropy would accelerate! We would all
die
!”

Lindal kept his gaze on his father’s face, reading his reactions, trying to guess what he was thinking. “Even if the worst were to happen,” he said slowly and clearly, so no one misunderstood him, “and Baralathor could not return, this world will go on.”

Baralathor blinked. An emotion was born, making his face shift and his eyes glow with fierce satisfaction.

“Without a king?” the courtier said, sounding suddenly uncertain and afraid.

Lindal looked at him. “If Baralathor falls, I will return and take his place.”

* * * * *

The clearing was nearly the size of a football field. It was also elongated, so that it was longer than it was wide. Everywhere, dotted across the clearing like tables at a banquet, were the stumps of giant redwoods. Most of them were more than table-sized. Their surfaces were rough-hewn and uneven. After more than a century of being exposed to the weather, the tops of them were also bleached, split and splintering.