Terra's Victory (Destiny's Trinities Book 7) (25 page)

Keep it up!
Beth encouraged everyone.
It’s working!
Then she called out to Ferr using her voice. “Ferr! Where are they?”

“How many more Grimoré will the Triumvirate send as replacements before they figure out it’s a no win situation?” Zack asked, pulling her up against him again.

“There’s no way to answer that,” Beth told him. “The pixies are watching for us. They’ll let us know. Ready?”

Ferr danced around in front of them. A lot of the fear she had been radiating had faded. There was a more positive excitement in her mental voice now.

“Show the way, Ferr,” Beth told her.

The image formed of another Grimoré trio hiding out nearby and Beth jumped.

They kept pressure on the Grimoré themselves, always attacking, always chasing them. It was arduous work, yet it was barely dangerous, not once they got the hang of attacking as soon as they jumped and forcing the Grimoré to jump away from them.

“They’re relentless,” Zack said. “You’d think they’d quit after getting their asses kicked this much, but they’re just going on and on.”

“It’s not their decision to make, remember,” Beth told him. “They’re under the control of the Triumvirate, who are safe and cozy in their cave.”

“Sooner or later, they’re going to have to come here and find out why they’re losing so many,” Zack said.

“Clearly, we’re not making a big enough dent yet,” Beth said. “If we keep chipping away….”

“Pretty soon, the trinities are going to get tired,” Zack warned her.

He had fought in wars too numerous to mention so Beth took the warning seriously. “We can start spelling people off, giving them a breather. Mia can coordinate. She was leaning on her rifle when I last looked.”

So Mia coordinated rest breaks for the trinities, with each threesome joining her in turn on the top of the big stump, while Alex and Wyatt guarded the stump from below. Possibly it was their static position and observational mode that let Alex see it. Certainly, his mathematical brain helped.

Alex says they’re jumping in a pattern
, Mia told Beth, some time later.

What
pattern?
Beth tried to keep the anticipation out of her voice.

Mia answered with an image. A single group of Grimoré, repeated five times around the clearing, with a line drawn from location to location to location.

“It’s a pentangle!” Beth breathed.

“There’s a pattern?” Zack asked sharply.

Beth nodded. “Watch over me for a moment. I’m going to relay that to everyone and it’ll take concentration.”

He put her up against a tree and turned his back on her, keeping guard.

Beth sent out the pattern and new instructions.
One trio of Grimoré to one trinity. Stick with the trio until you have them all, then move on.

Everyone was too busy to answer, although Beth could feel their sudden excitement.

She straightened up, with a rush of enthusiasm and renewed energy. “Let’s finish this,” she told Zack. “Ferr! Next?”

Ferr led them to yet another trio of Grimoré in their loose robes, their knobby heads turned to look at them with a complete absence of emotion. Zack sliced up one of them, while Beth stabbed at the second.

Around them the dark forest was echoing with the shouts and exclamations of other trinities doing the same thing as they were. Only a hundred yards away, the clearing was glowing with light, reaching out even to here to spill across the dirt and ferns at their feet.

There was a creaking sound of timber under strain, then a huge limb of a fir tree whipped past them, slapping the third Grimoré off his feet. He flew through the air and slammed into the trunk of a redwood, slithered to the ground and laid still.

Zack stepped over to deal with him.

Beth saw three dryad faces peer around from the fir tree. “Thank you!” she called.

The faces disappeared. Then Ferr landed on Beth’s shoulder, chittering. An image appeared in her mind. An empty spot in the clearing.

“There’s no one there!”

The single Grimoré remaining upright jumped away as Beth spoke.

The image in Ferr’s mind changed to show the same Grimoré arriving at the empty spot. The black ooze on his robe was just as it had looked after Beth had stabbed him.

“Oh my lord, she’s
anticipating!
” Beth cried. “Ferr, you wonderful,
darling
, talented pixie, I love you!” She grabbed Zack and jumped, while concocting the message in her mind. Then she made her mental voice as loud a shout as she could.
Let the pixies lead you to where the Grimoré will be next!

There were some startled mental reactions, but that was all. Underneath the surprise, she could feel everyone’s growing elation.

The tide was turning.

By the time they arrived where the single Grimoré had jumped, a second had materialized next to him. Zack lunged with the sword, as Ferr tugged at Beth’s ear, showing her another dark spot in the forest. The general direction matched the next point on a pentangle.

Beth wrapped her arms around Zack and jumped as the Grimoré disappeared. They reappeared right in front of them, barely an arm’s length away. Zack took one with his sword and Beth took the other with her knife.

No more Grimoré appeared.

They looked at each other, both of them breathing heavily.

“That’s it,” Zack said. “That’s how we defeat them. We jump just ahead and take out all of them in a trio at once. Then they can’t top it up any more, because it doesn’t exist.”

“I’ll tell the others.”

The fighting, after that, became an exercise in timing. They couldn’t jump too soon, or the Grimoré wouldn’t be forced to jump away from them. If they jumped at just the right moment, they could arrive just before the Grimoré or just after. It gave them no time to react.

After they had dealt with a dozen or so Grimoré trinities, they had got the hang of the timing. Beth would have felt exultant, except she was physically tiring and she had to stay alert because the few vampeen who were still under Grimoré control could be used to attack them. They had to keep watching their backs and instantly assessing the location they had jumped to for threats.

Whenever the next location was in the forest beyond the edges of the clearing, the dryads helped in any way they could. Knocking Grimoré off their feet with bent branches seemed to be the most effective. Beth tried to listen for the groan of bending branches as well, to make sure they were well out of the path of the whipping branch when the dryads let them go.

The calls from Ferr, directing them to the next Grimoré trio, started to slow down, with breaks in between.

“Watch very carefully now,” Beth warned the pixie.

The alarm, when it came, wasn’t just from Ferr. It felt as if every pixie in the area gave sudden vent to a high pitched mental alert that sent a hot surge of adrenaline shooting through her.

Even before the image of the Triumvirate standing in the forest had built in her mind, or the sense of direction, Beth reached out frantically. It was almost a bellow that emerged from her.

Sera! Now!

Sera threw herself forward, leaping almost without considering where she was jumping to. She had held this destination in mind for hours now, afraid that she would forget it, or mess up.

The highway rest stop had a pergola with a picnic bench beneath it and an empty children’s playground, the swings moving slightly and squeaking. Dawn light was streaking the sky to the east.

Sera clutched the post of the pergola as her balance adjusted to the flat surface beneath her feet and the precipitousness of her arrival.

Lindal and Baralathor got to their feet. Lindal jumped to his, while Baralathor moved more slowly. He was wearing human clothes—a conservative pair of suit trousers and a button-through shirt.

Sera dismissed her wonder at the sight and leaned toward them, slapping her arms around their middles and leapt again.

The cavern was as hot and humid as she remembered. Water lapped with quiet slopping sounds, up against the rock. The ledge itself was empty. The cavern was empty of everything except the nearly invisible shimmer of air, at the far back of the cave.

The three of them ran and stumbled over the rock. They surrounded the portal. In normal space it took up only a meter or two, although in real terms, it was bigger than a star system and held as much energy as a small sun.

Sera encompassed the energy of the thing, then reached out with her mind to find Lindal and Baralathor. Their heavy mental signatures connected with her and she could feel the rise of power inside her.

Now, make it small. Then smaller still. Fold the ends in on itself
. That was her father’s voice.

He reached out and grasped the ends of the portal, barely one edge of it. He pushed it in on itself. The portal resisted, because being open was its natural state. Her father would have to overcome inertia, a physical force that existed across all planes of the universe.

We
all
have to overcome the inertia
, Lindal reminded her.

Sera mentally nodded. She threw herself into the task of bending the ends of the portal back in on themselves, just as her father and Lindal were doing.

The portal grew smaller.

Altogether, once more,
her father said.

Sera spared a tiny fraction of a second to send Beth a warning.

Now! Now!

Then she gripped the end of the portal and wrestled it with her mind, watching it grow smaller and smaller.

* * * * *

As soon as Beth heard Sera’s fierce shout in her mind, she threw her own across the clearing.
Jumpers! To me! To your assigned places. Weapons up!

Beth leapt to where Ferr said the Triumvirate were. The other eight jumpers had their assigned positions, relative to where Beth landed. Nine jumpers altogether, three per Triumvirate member.

The triumvirate was farther away from the bright clearing than the Grimoré had dared to go. Their sphere of influence was much wider.

The one in front of Beth was well over seven feet tall. His head was bigger than any Grimoré she had yet seen, while his eyes were not black, but an opaque white, hiding all thought and any emotion the Grimoré could possibly feel.

It lifted its hand and the fingers flickered.

Cairo, who stood with Barrett around the same Triumvirate member as Beth did, was pushed through the air, much as the Dryads had been slapping around the Grimoré. He disappeared, tossed to some far away location.

That was exactly how Beth had expected them to react. All three of the Triumvirate had three trinity jumpers surrounding it. She saw Chandra disappear, too.

“Now!” Beth said.

Barrett raised his sword. Beth lifted her knife. Around the circle, so did the rest.

Barrett grunted, was pulled sideways through the air and disappeared.

The Grimoré could not deal with all three of them at once. Using the moment when it was tossing Barrett away and was therefore distracted, Beth plunged the knife into the neck of the creature, standing up on her toes and stabbing downward with all her body strength.

The thing stiffened.

Beth changed her grip on the knife, putting both fists around it. Then she swiped sideways.

The head dropped backward and black stuff spurted. She yanked, severing the last connective tissue.

The head dropped to the ground. So did the body.

So, too, did the other two of the Triumvirate.

Beth stood over the thing, waiting to see if it would be replaced.

Sera?

It’s closed! Something tried to come through at the last second, only the portal was already too small. Now it is gone!
Sera’s voice was triumphant.

“Ferr?” Beth whispered.

The pixie hovered in mid-air, crossed her arms and shrugged.

Beth looked at the trinity jumpers who remained. Cora, Zoe and Octavia. All breathing hard, their blades black and dripping. Noemi, too, with a big grin on her face.

Beth bent and put her hands on her knees. “I think…we might actually have won.” She felt faint.

From the clearing rose shouts and cheering.

“Let’s find out, huh?” Octavia suggested. She jumped away. So did the others.

Beth stayed there for a moment, letting the knowledge sink in and really, properly register.

They had won.

* * * * *

They returned to the same roadside rest stop. It was raining and the little gazebo was dripping moisture from the conical roof. Somewhere behind the clouds the sun had risen, so the rest stop just looked gray and miserable, instead of black and deserted.

It didn’t impact on Lindal’s state of mind as it might ordinarily have. There was a foundation of bubbling elation, yet over the top of it laid caution. His father was the source of his wariness.

Baralathor brushed at the pants he was wearing with a distasteful grimace and looked around. “Even the rain here is wrong,” he muttered.

Sera wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t mind it at all,” she said. “It’s very refreshing at this time of year.”

Baralathor shook his head. “I must return. It is not good for the king to be absent for too long. Things start to unravel if I lift my gaze from them.”

“I believe it,” Lindal said and waited.

Sera was watching him, too. She was tense, and Lindal guessed she was ready to jump away instantly if she needed to.

“I had not realized until my mind touched yours,” Baralathor told Lindal “You are no longer a part of our world. You have been changed. I do not know why or how. Yet I know that if you were to return to our world and attempt to control it as king, you would fail.”

Lindal drew in a breath. “An elemental here on this world said the same thing. She said my power had become aligned with Earth.”

Baralathor considered. “Yes, that is what has changed. You resonate as this world does. Both of you.” He glanced at Sera. “I have never heard of such a thing, yet it has happened.”

“The elementals here have offered to teach me what they know. Their control is substantially more advanced than ours, in some areas.” Lindal took a breath. “Perhaps, if I was to learn what they can teach me and combine it with what we know, that is something I could share with both worlds, to the betterment of both.”