Octavia's War Read online

  “Don’t even think about calling for her,” Alex told him.

  “I’m not. It would help if she was here, is all I’m saying.”

  There was a flutter of clothing and something that felt like a fresh cold breeze washed over them. Alex could almost smell snow.

  He swiped off the head of the closest vampeen and turned to look over his shoulder quickly. His foot slipped on the rocky ground and he swore. This was not New York pavement. It wasn’t even close.

  Sera had arrived, with Blake in one arm and Lindal in the other. She had two long knives strapped to her hips.

  “Ah, shit….” Alex breathed and braced himself.

  “Sera, for the love of all that is fucking holy and divine! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Diego shouted. He shot another two vampeen and strode over to her. “Get your ass back to New York before I kick it back there.”

  “I’m here to fight,” she said, pulling out her knives.

  “No!”

  “Yes,” Blake said, his hand on Diego’s arm.

  Diego stared at him. Then he brought his hands to his forehead, as if his head was hurting. The guns were still in his hands. “Fuck!” he shouted.

  “Behind you!” Alex shouted.

  Both Blake and Sera whirled. Sera was actually faster than Blake, who was supposed to be the hunter. Sera, though, was purebred Elvish. It showed. She didn’t seem to put much effort into it, yet three vampeen slithered to the ground, headless, inside three seconds.

  “Alex!” Wyatt warned

  Alex turned back to the work, confident now they had a full trinity among them that they could deal with this.

  * * * * *

  After it was over, when there was nothing but black blood and bodies everywhere, they walked down the gulley to where the stench couldn’t reach them.

  Lindal faced Alexander. “Where is your new trinity?”

  Alex sighed. “Somewhere ahead of us. They’re moving too fast to keep up with.”

  “Aren’t two of them human?” Linda asked. “You’re a vampire. You could walk faster than they run.”

  “It’s more that they’re…masking where they are,” Alex said. “I know they’re somewhere out there. I just can’t pin down a direction.”

  “So you’re wandering the desert in search? Very efficient,” Lindal said dryly. “This trinity is the last of the beta tier, Alex. We must protect it.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” Alex shot back. “Remmy always was a devious son of a bitch. Now I can’t even sense his presence.”

  “This is your trinity,” Lindal replied.

  “I don’t think you’re hearing what he’s saying,” Wyatt said quietly.

  Alex didn’t realize Wyatt had stepped up quite so close to his side. “It’s fine, Wyatt,” he said.

  Wyatt was looking at Lindal. “I’m not saying this because it’s Alex you’re trying to beat up. I’m saying it because it’s true. Did you hear what he said? He can’t sense his trinity, not in the same way the rest of us can. It’s not his failure. He could sense them just fine twelve hours ago.”

  Lindal tilted his head, studying Alex.

  Alex shut his heart down as it tried to stir. Beth had emphasized over and over that there was no hierarchy in the defense forces forming to fight the Grimoré. While there was no chain of command, there were leaders and Lindal was one of them. Being an Elvish prince was part of it. It gave him a regal air when he needed it. Like now.

  While Zack bellowed, Lindal made decisions and executed them. While everyone was looking at Seaveth for direction, Lindal was murmuring in her ear.

  So Alex was silently grateful Wyatt had verbally kicked Lindal into properly processing what he had said.

  “That’s the trinity’s strength?” Lindal said at last. “No one knows where they are?”

  “Not exactly,” Alex said. He pointed. “They’re somewhere north. While you could jump straight to where your three are at any moment, all I can do is point in the right direction, like a compass. They could be anywhere along that line.”

  “That might be useful, by and by,” Lindal said. “Right now, it’s a pain in the ass. We need to protect them. Why did they run in the first place?”

  “Human complications,” Alex said shortly. “It wasn’t just them. A whole town’s worth of people headed for the hills.”

  “Literally,” Diego added. “Old instincts die hard down here.” He glanced at Sera, where she was calmly cleaning off her swords with rags taken from the carcasses.

  Sera gave Diego a smile that made it feel as if a small sun had come out from behind a cloud.

  Lindal stirred. “Let’s hope the Grimoré are having just as much trouble pinning down their location as you are. Will Remmy know what to do, to seal the bond?”

  Blake rolled his eyes. “You guys have put out a metric crapton of information over the last year. You put the NYPD public affairs bureau to shame and that’s really saying something. If he doesn’t know what to do, it’s not your fault. It’s not Alex’s either.”

  Lindal held up his hands. “Okay, back off, everyone. You’re acting as though I’m going to skin the man.”

  “You were,” Wyatt said, his tone flat. “Symbolically, at least.”

  Lindal rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just that…this is the last trinity and we can’t find them. The loss of even one trinity will weaken all of us and there’s only a few months left.”

  “Yeah, we know that, too,” Diego said. “Why do you think we’re all down here?”

  Sera slid her knives back into the leather scabbards with a soft “shick” sound. “I might be able to find them,” she said. “I can jump to places I’ve never been before. The jumpers in the trinities can’t. I could keep jumping north with Alex and Wyatt.”

  Lindal shook his head. “Too risky. We’ve got a whole village of humans out there, the stars alone know how many vampeen and the Grimoré controlling them. You could get caught in the middle.”

  “Like the trinity are, brother?” Sera asked sweetly.

  Lindal sighed. “I should never have made those bloody knives for you.”

  Diego nodded. “And that is a discussion we will have later, too, elf,” he said darkly.

  Blake grinned and rested his hand on Diego’s shoulder. “Please wait until I’m there to see it.”

  * * * * *

  They had been walking for nearly an hour after squeezing back through the slot and out into the wider canyon, when the pixies appeared.

  It was Ángel, with his developing senses, who noticed them first. He stopped and then deliberately turned in a full circle, looking in every direction.

  “What is it?” Octavia asked, her heart thudding.

  Remmy turned back. “I feel…something.”

  “We’re being followed. Except they’re not exactly following us.” Ángel frowned, peering down at the ground. “They’re not really here at all.”

  “Not yet,” Remmy said, reaching for the knife he had strapped to his belt, when he had dressed beside the pool. It was one of the blades they had taken from the farmhouse.

  Octavia pulled out the gun from her backpack. It didn’t feel as heavy as it had back at the house. She was going to have to get some sort of holster for it, though. Reaching into the backpack would only slow her down.

  She waited. Her senses weren’t as acute as Ángel’s and Remmy’s. Instead, she was stronger than she had ever been. Once the enemy was there in front of her, it would be her turn to act.

  It wasn’t an enemy that appeared. The tiny person flicked into view right in front of her, hanging in mid-air, like an apparition. They tilted their head to look at her. The air behind them was blurred and Octavia realized the little creature’s wings were moving so fast she couldn’t see them.

  She found herself smiling, even though she didn’t know why. “Hello,” she said, laughter pulling up from inside her.

  “Sprites?” Ángel whispered, sounding awed. There was another
little one hovering in front of his face, too.

  “Pixies,” Remmy said, his voice low and rumbling. “I’d heard rumors they existed. No one has ever seen them until recently.” He rolled his eyes up. There was a third pixie standing on his head, its hands on its hips. The fine veined wings were moving, slowly opening and closing. They glowed with golden highlights in the moonlight. “I believe the little things may want us to follow them.”

  The pixie on his head stamped its foot and he winced. “My apologies,” he said. “You are not at all little.”

  Octavia pressed her lips together, holding back her laughter. The pixie in front of her looked female, so Octavia gave her a sunny smile. “Do you want us to go with you?”

  “This is so surreal…” Ángel breathed. “Pixies? Next, we will be visited by the ghosts of the dear departed.”

  “May fifth is a ways off yet,” Remmy pointed out.

  “You mean, they really do visit?”

  “Of course.” Remmy rolled his eyes.

  The pixie in front of Octavia had flitted forward a few feet. Now she came back. In Octavia’s mind, as if she had created the thought for herself, was a firm and unequivocal notion that yes, they were to follow the pixies.

  “We have to go with them,” Octavia said. “It’s urgent.”

  “So I’m given to understand,” Remmy said. He put his knife away.

  “They told you that? I didn’t hear anything,” Ángel complained.

  “You didn’t listen,” Octavia said. She raised the gun, intending to put it back in the pack, then hesitated, reluctant to place it out of reach in that way. Instead, she held on to it and moved in the direction her pixie had gone. Immediately, all three pixies flittered together, circling each other and moving ahead of them.

  “They’re thrilled we understood,” Octavia said. “Come on. It really is urgent.”

  Remmy and Ángel came behind her as they strode and sometimes broke into a slow jog, to keep up with the pixies. They had no difficulty seeing them now, for gold sparkles lit the air behind them like a jet contrail, slowly fading until there was only the imprint left on their retinas like the afterimage of fireworks when they died. There was always more of the trail ahead, though. Sometimes it circled and jumped and sometimes three or more of them twined together, yet the direction was always there. They were heading nearly due east now and the ground was rising.

  For forty minutes they followed the pixies and their trails, while the ground climbed sharply and the air grew colder around them. Octavia was immensely grateful for the denim jacket and even Ángel zipped up his parka.

  “How high are we?” she wondered aloud.

  “As high as anything else in this land. Look around,” Remmy said.

  She took her gaze off the pixie trail and looked. Then she came to a stumbling halt, startled into it by the view.

  They were on top of the cliffs now. The pixies had led them up a steep yet climbable slope to the flat top. For as far as she could see, the ground was smooth, glowing ochre red in the moonlight.

  There were canyons snaking through the flat-topped land, creating dark sinuous shadows and rifts in the surface. They had been in the depths of those not long ago. The spider web of shadows looked like a crazy person’s idea of a maze. It was as well Remmy knew where he was going.

  The moon itself hung in the sky to her right, almost ready to set for the night. It looked huge, with glowing yellow edges and the white face marked with the familiar pale grey tattoos. There were wisps of cloud here and there. Otherwise, the sky was a blanket of stars. There were so many of them there was barely any black sky to be seen. The stars were so many they didn’t just twinkle, they glowed with a collective light.

  “Mother of God….” Ángel breathed.

  “Possibly,” Remmy said thoughtfully. “Mother of Creation?” he amended.

  Octavia could easily believe in this moment that she was looking at Creation itself. It was spectacular.

  And humbling.

  The pixies reappeared, circling around them and she could hear their voiceless chattering in her mind. They were urging them on with anxious thoughts.

  “Keep going,” Octavia murmured, moving forward.

  So did Remmy and Ángel.

  Instantly, the pixies leapt ahead of them, flittering away in the dark, their trails fading and drifting down toward the ground.

  Soon it became clear that the pixies were leading them toward a dead end.

  “The bluffs end just ahead,” Ángel said. “The canyon is miles wide.” His tone was worried.

  “Let’s just see what the little…what the pixies want us to see,” Remmy said. “They seem to know what they’re doing.”

  “You aren’t worried?” Octavia asked.

  “I trust that their message is urgent enough they have overcome their reluctance to show themselves to humans or, indeed, a dreaded vampire.” He sounded complacent. “They are worried. There is no mischief in their voices.”

  The flat-topped bluffs ended in sheer cliff face that dropped for hundreds of feet to the canyon floor below. More than a mile away, the cliffs rose again. The canyon snaked between the two in ragged curves. Following the curves was a narrow stream that wound through the center of the canyon.

  Looking down from this height, Octavia could see where the stream had once been a raging river. Over the eons it had carved itself the bed it now lay in, glittering in the very last of the moonlight. The moon had touched the horizon now. Soon, there would be only starlight to see with.

  The pixies were flitting around them anxiously.

  “Look,” Ángel said, pointing.

  In the middle of the canyon there were tiny black shapes clustered together, moving like ants.

  “That’s Raphael Alonzo,” Ángel said, his eyes narrowed as he studied the cluster of dots. “Miguel…Maria…it’s the people from Manuel Benavides.” He crouched, watching them. “Why are they so far away from the town? Why are they travelling so late in the night? They should have returned by now.”

  Remmy pointed. “That’s why. Look.”

  Octavia frowned. These two could see far more than she could. She peered anyway. Then she saw it…and heard it. The inhuman whine and growl.

  Dark shapes darted at the tightly grouped people. They would run at them, dodge and circle back to the wide perimeter they were keeping. The pattern, the movement, reminded her of something she had seen as a child, many times.

  “Ranch dogs….” she breathed. “Oh my lord, they’re herding them!” She squeezed her fists, her chest suddenly aching. “They’re driving them up the valley!”

  Remmy turned to look to the north end of the valley. It narrowed down to a crevasse and just beyond the slot there was a slightly larger coda.

  “It’s a dead end,” Ángel growled.

  Remmy held up his hand. “Do you feel that?” he asked him.

  Ángel rose to his feet once more and stood next to Remmy, facing to the north. “Blackness. There in the dark, at the end of the canyon.”

  “Grimoré,” Remmy breathed. “I don’t know why I am so certain of that, as I have never seen one before. Yet I know they are gathered there as surely as I know the mole on Octavia’s hip and the scar on yours.”

  Octavia couldn’t pull her gaze away from the people down below. The vampeen were toying with them and she could almost hear their fright. They had no idea what the vampeen were. They didn’t know that there were more evil forces around them than the vengeance of a cartel hatchet man. They were helpless down there.

  Anger trickled through her. “We have to do something,” she told the other two.

  “Yes,” Ángel said flatly.

  Remmy held up his hand. “Consider that the Grimoré could be doing this to provoke the very reaction you propose.”

  “A trap?” Ángel said. “Probably. That doesn’t mean we sit here and watch, though.”

  “They want us,” Remmy said.

  “You said the vampeen eat humans,” O
ctavia replied. “The Grimoré might want us, but those vampeen down there are rounding up dinner.”

  “They are being directed by the Grimoré, remember,” Remmy said patiently.

  “Then let’s kill the fucking Grimoré!” she cried, hefting her gun.

  “We can’t. Not now,” Remmy replied. “We are most vulnerable right now. That is exactly why they are doing this. If they kill any one of us, if they disable any one of us, the entire war will swing in their favor.”

  She strode over to where he and Ángel stood shoulders together. “We can’t just sit here!”

  Ángel pointed at the tight little knot of people inching along the floor of the canyon. “Do you think you could hit anything from here? Even with that gun?”

  Octavia glared at the dark drop-shaped canyon end to the north, where all the darkness was that Remmy and Ángel could feel. Now that they had said it was there she could feel it herself. She suspected it was just her imagination working overtime.

  If the Grimoré were there and she had no reason to doubt either of them on that point, then they were making the vampeen bring the people to where they waited in the dark.

  Her fury swelled, boiling over. It was the Grimoré that were the key. If she could figure out a way to deal with them, if she could reach them from here—

  —the darkness and the cold was suddenly all around her. The air was thick. Miasmic.

  The tall shapes were also all around her…and drawing in toward her. Their faces were long, inhuman. Bone white and knobby at the top. They reached for her with long fingers.

  Octavia fired the gun. She didn’t have to aim. They were too close together.

  The bullet took out one, driving it back off its feet and making it canon into others behind it.

  Octavia fired wildly, turning on her heel, taking out at least one with each bullet. The sound of the gun in the enclosed little canyon was enormous, rolling like thunder. The stench of gunpowder was acrid, making her eyes water.

  Then the gun clicked emptily.

  * * * * *

  Ángel gripped Remmy’s arm, as the low thundering sound of gunfire rolled across the canyon. From here they could see the flash of the muzzle, like lightening.