Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) (10 page)

“Someone is coming,” she said, struggling to sit up.

The pixie, a tiny woman in a silvery dress, was flitting around now. Excitement and agreement came from her, mixed up with a fear that was directed beyond the house.

Cole stirred.

“Blessed Mary Mother,” Declan said. “Pixies. So they really do exist.”

“Hey!” Cole said. There was a second pixie tugging on his hair, trying to get him to sit up. “I’m coming, I’m coming,” he muttered.

Suddenly, the air over the bed was filled with little creatures fluttering and hovering anxiously.

Zoe waved at them, trying to move them out of the way. Their combined distress and anxiousness that the big people rise to meet the threat coming their way forced her off the bed, to scramble for her jeans and shirt. Cole strode over to the closet and pulled out a pair of work jeans.

Declan looked around the floor. “Hell. What do I do now?” he asked. His clothes had disappeared when he had dropped them.

One of the pixies hovered in front of him.

“What?” he said. Then his brow lifted. “I see.” He stood still, looking into middle distance and suddenly, he was dressed again. This time, in a shirt and jeans that Zoe also remembered from before. He tugged at the waistband of the jeans. “That’s a time-saver,” he said. “Especially if it works in the opposite direction.” And he looked at her and winked.

Zoe grinned. “I don’t know which of you two is the worst.”

“Declan is!” Cole called back over his shoulder as he opened the bedroom door, already striding to meet whatever the threat was.

“Definitely Cole,” Declan added.

They hurried down the front stairs, accompanied by the fluttering pixies. Diego was standing at the front door with a gun in his hand, looking up at them as they descended. “There’s someone coming,” he said. “Big, black truck with lights on the cab.”

Cole glanced through the pane and sighed. “It’s Brady.”

Zoe bit her lip.

“My brother?
That
Brady?” Declan asked.

“How many Bradys do you know?” Cole asked.

“He’s changed, since you died,” Zoe added.

Declan frowned. “The house, right? I gave it to Cole and he thinks it belongs to the family, even though I built the damn thing.”

“That’s about the size of it,” Cole said heavily. He looked at Diego’s gun. “You won’t need that. He’s a reasonable man. Mostly.”

“Generally, he might be. Only, I want to know how he got through the blockade,” Diego replied. “There isn’t a scratch or dent on the truck that I can see and I can see a long way.”

“They let him through?” Zoe said. “Why would they do that?”

“We’re about to find out,” Diego said. “Declan, you should leave.” From the outside came the sound of sharply applied brakes, the tires skidding in the gravel. The rumbling engine turned off.

“I want to see him!” Declan said.

Boots crunched on the gravel and climbed up the stairs.

“You can’t. We don’t reveal ourselves to the normal world,” Zoe said, speaking quietly, for they were all gathered close by the front door. As she spoke, Brady’s figure crossed the space visible through the pane on the left side of the door and she drew back, startled.

“He’s my brother,” Declan said hotly. He spoke in a harsh whisper.

“Right now, he might not be,” Diego said. His voice was normal and touched with impatience. “Be a good boy and fuck off for a few minutes until we figure out why he’s here and how he got through.”

Declan’s lips parted in surprise.

The front door was shoved open. Brady didn’t knock, or ring the bell. He just turned the handle and pushed.

Everyone
jumped backward, shocked.

Brady strode through the opening and came to a halt just beyond the door, looking as startled as they were.

Zoe glanced at Declan. He had disappeared. He wasn’t in the hallway and he hadn’t had time to move into one of the other rooms, not even if he had sprinted and they would have surely heard that.

Where was he?

Something squeezed her hand and Zoe sucked in a breath.

Declan. He actually
had
disappeared.

No one noticed Zoe’s surprise. They were all focused upon Brady.

As Declan did, Brady had Black Irish features and a temper to go with it. He was a physical man, with a slightly bigger build than Declan. However, he also liked to drink and his belly and extra fat made him slow on his feet.

Yet all the Stewart family was intellectually brilliant. They had produced generations of doctors and lawyers, scientists and thinkers, plus the odd politician or two. All of them had added to the family’s wealth and power. Brady ran his own construction company and after the death of Declan’s father only a year before Declan’s, Brady had nominated himself the head of the family. He wanted to preserve the family legacy and that included the big house that Declan had built.

Cole had been in an endless legal battle with Brady since Declan had died and the few times they had met face to face had been tense and unpleasant. Cole wasn’t about to give up the home where he and Declan had lived so happily just because Brady had an overblown sense of family and a distaste for the gender of Declan’s spouse.

Brady didn’t look irritated now. He looked mad and not just angry-mad. He had been drinking. Zoe could smell the booze from where she stood by the bottom of the stairs. His eyes were bloodshot and his face was working with fury.

He looked around at the three of them in the hall that he could see. “I’d have words with you, Pasternak.”

“Did you see anything among the trees when you drove through them?” Cole asked.

Brady blinked. He shifted on his feet, swaying a little. “I’ve come to take the house back.” He spoke as if he was reciting words that he had rehearsed. “It rightfully belongs to the Stewarts, not a man like you.”

“Except Declan didn’t leave the house to the family,” Cole said. “Brady, this is such an old argument. When are you going to give up on it? The law is on my side. No judge will ever break the will.”

“Silence,” Diego said. He stood with his head down and turned, his eyes narrowed. He was listening to something no one else could hear.

Except Zoe could hear it. Snuffles and growls and other… “Voices,” she said. “I can hear voices out there.”

Diego drew his other gun. “Vampeen,” he said. “They’re building up. Preparing.”

“Is that guns?” Brady said. He turned to look at Diego fully. “I don’t know you.”

Diego gave him a hard smile. “Who did you talk to out there? Who said it would be a good idea for you to come and argue with your brother’s husband?”

Brady frowned. “How did you know…” Then his frown cleared. “Oh, right,” he muttered and reached inside his open coat. He moved fast, even as drunk as he was. Zoe had seen Declan in the same state more than once in the past and both brothers seemed to have an infinite capacity for alcohol. It had never slowed Declan down too much, either.

“Gun!” Cole cried. His hand slammed into Zoe’s shoulder and she staggered away from him, pin wheeled her arms as her balance tottered. She pressed a hand into the floor to regain her balance and push herself back upright.

The sound of a gun firing in the foyer was incredibly loud.

Zoe screamed and crouched down, flinching.

“Where did he go?” Brady demanded.

The acrid smell of smoke and cordite made Zoe’s throat close up and her eyes to sting. She turned to look.

Cole was not where he had been standing, which was where Brady was aiming the pistol.

Diego snatched the gun out of his hand and pushed him backward, toward the corner of the hall. “
Who did you talk to
?”

“Cole!” Zoe cried.

“Here. I’m here,” Cole said.

She looked up at the top of the stairs. Cole was climbing down them and she threw herself forward to meet him. “God, I thought he’d shot you!”

Cole held her. He was shaking, too. “I’m not sure what happened. I saw the muzzle then suddenly, I was back in the bedroom.”

Diego had his hand around Brady’s throat. He jerked his chin around to look at Cole. “You teleported?
You
? It’s supposed to…” Then he sighed. “It’s generally the woman or one of the women of the trinity who can jump. You’re the first man, apart from the elf, and he could always do that.”

Zoe frowned. “Then what am I supposed to be?” she asked.

Diego looked at her sharply. “You heard the vampeen.”

Brady was watching them with his red eyes, a faintly puzzled air about him. “What’s a trinity?” he asked.

Diego gave him a little shake. “Tell me who you spoke to.”

Brady blinked slowly again. “Spoke?”

“Who told you to come here?”

“I…just wanted to,” Brady said. “I’m allowed.”

“Who did you speak to on the way here?” Diego demanded.

“Maybe he really did come here on his own volition,” Cole said. “He’s done it before.”

“Not through that pack of things out there,” Diego said with flat certainty. “He was wound up by someone and aimed at you. I told you they would try to break up the trinity before the bond was sealed. They figured out your brother is someone you would open the door to.”

Zoe’s throat seemed to tighten once more. “You mean…they’ve been
studying
us?”

“Military intelligence. I would have done my research if I had been them, too,” Cole said quietly.

“The white-faced dude,” Brady said suddenly.

They looked at him. “What about him?” Diego said and gave him another little shake. Even though Brady was taller than Diego, it still looked like a dog dealing with a caught rabbit.

“He kept whispering and whispering. Lips never bloody moved. Only I couldn’t get the words out of my head….” Brady wiped the back of his hand over his mouth. “Even shooting him didn’t stop it.”

“
You shot it
?” Cole said.

Diego hauled Brady out of the corner and pushed him toward Cole. “Is there a bedroom you can lock him in, where he can sleep it off? We’re not going to get anything coherent out of him and we don’t have time, anyway.”

Cole gripped Brady’s arm.

“Try jumping there with him,” Diego said shortly, pulling out his phone. “If you’re the jumper, then it’s your job to take passengers.”

Cole raised a brow. Then he looked at Brady. “Here goes…” he said.

Abruptly, neither of them were there.

From upstairs came a sound that Zoe had heard more than once as a medical assistant. Someone was vomiting.

“Oh, for the love of Pete!” Cole bellowed, from the same direction.

Diego laughed. “Wish I’d seen that,” he murmured and dialed. “Yeah…Beth. We’ve got a development. You’d better come.”

Zoe could hear the woman’s voice on the other end of the phone, even though she was standing by the bottom of the stairs still.

“Who?” Beth asked.

“Everyone,” Diego said simply. He looked at the air next to Zoe. “You, too, Declan.”

Declan appeared, standing next to her. “How did you know I was here?”

“You’re covered in pixie dust. I can smell it,” Diego said shortly. He spoke into the phone. “Sooner the better, Seaveth.”

* * * * *

The room was full of people Zoe didn’t know, which generally made her uneasy until she had mentally catalogued them, figured out names and the degree of danger they might represent. The old mental habits of hunting were coming back in a rush. Despite her caution among a group of strangers, Zoe found she was looking back at the mantelshelf over the fireplace, her gaze pulled there by fascination.

Among the photos and knickknacks were at least eight pixies that she could see. They were tiny people, both male and female, although even the males seemed delicate, with their gossamer wings and ageless faces.

They were sitting, standing, leaning and hovering among the photos, listening to the big people and talking among themselves. Their talking was almost silent, highlighted by the high-pitched trilling they made.

One of them had arrived with the man—the elf—called Lindal. He was astonishingly tall, with limpid blue eyes that reminded Zoe of the woman who had brought Diego his guns. There was a relationship there, she suspected.

The woman was here, too, sitting next to Diego, her hand in his. Sera. Another elf.

The other woman in the room was Seaveth. She was statuesque, with masses of red curls that tumbled down her back to brush her ass as she moved. There was absolutely no doubt that she was the leader in the room. Everyone was looking at her or deferred to her. Everyone listened carefully when she spoke, as she was doing now.

“If they influenced Declan’s brother, it must have been some sort of mental domination,” Seaveth said, “as you say he wasn’t under physical stress, if you discount the effects of the liquor.”

“That’s a new trick,” said the man standing behind Diego and Sera. He had dirty blonde hair and stood with his arms crossed. Zoe pegged him as some sort of law enforcement, based on the stance alone. “I wonder from how far away they can exert the influence? We’ve never really gotten close to one of them before.”

“Blake’s right.” The dark-haired man sitting next to Lindal said. “They use the vampeen as a barricade. If there is a wounded one out there, we should go find it.”

“Just getting close would give us a lot of information about them,” Seaveth said in agreement.

“If it is wounded, it will need help,” Declan said. He didn’t speak particularly loudly, yet everyone turned to look at him. He was wearing the jeans and tee shirt Zoe had first seen him in. They were what he had reappeared in and she wondered if that was his default clothing. Would he always be wearing them, if he didn’t consciously choose to appear in something else?

“Medical help,” Declan said, clarifying himself.

Diego shook his head. “Let the fucker die,” he said harshly. “You don’t know what these things have done. What they’re capable of doing.” He glanced at Blake.

Blake’s jaw rippled. “They’re heartless,” he said, his voice low. “They’ve already used your brother against you and Cole, and that’s mild.”

Zoe wondered who it was they had used against him.

“So we should be heartless just because they are?” Declan asked, heat in his voice.