Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5) (2 page)

More of the dog-things launched at them. Claws scraped the sides of the car, making the metal scream. They brushed up against the side of it and Diego felt the rear wobble, threatening to fishtail. If they spun out, they would be lost.

He stamped on the gas and the car straightened up. They were going way too fast, now. If he hit ice, he would have no control at all.

The bridge was just ahead.

Three of the dog creatures were standing shoulder to shoulder in front of the bridge. Guarding it.

They were snarling, audible over the noise of the car engine and the growling of the other dogs around the car. One of them pawed the ground. They all looked ready to spring.

“Jump, Sera!” Diego shouted.

Instead she lifted her arm to shield her face and turned her head away from the windshield.

Diego slammed into the creatures. The Mustang was a small car and low to the ground. The heavy engine at the front weighed it down, keeping it stable.

The middle creature flipped over the hood of the car, thudded against the windshield, which starred and bowed in the middle, but didn’t break. The creature was thrown over the roof. The other two were hammered aside by the corners of the car.

The Mustang shot forward onto the steel grid work of the bridge. The rear wiggled, then shifted some more…and kept turning.

The car began to spin. The rear slammed into the low steel girders protecting the sides of the bridge and bounced back. On the icy deck, the tires couldn’t grip. The driver’s side of the car ricocheted off the girder. By that time the front wheels were off the bridge deck and back onto gravel, which offered only slightly more grip. It was enough to anchor the wheels, sending the back of the car into a complete spin.

Diego turned the wheel, cranking it, trying to steer into the spin and halt it. They didn’t have enough speed to compensate. The car drifted into a full four-wheel spin, coming to a stop twenty yards beyond the bridge. The engine cut out.

The silence was broken only by the non-canine growling of the dogs, back on the other side of the bridge. They were making no attempt to cross the bridge.

“Hell’s hounds!” Diego swore. He looked at Sera. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Is that what they are? Hell Hounds?”

Diego shook his head. “Hell hounds are meaner and faster. These are creatures of the vampeen.”

“They’re guarding the bridge. Stopping anyone from coming or going,” Sera said. She looked through the cracked window next to her. “They’re halting whoever lives there from leaving,” she added.

Diego dipped his head to look through the window where the cracks and starring didn’t block the view. There was a ranch house ahead. It was made of logs, although it bore little relationship to the rustic log cabins of yore. There were two levels and a third attic level with dormer windows thrusting from the sharp-pitched roof, hidden beneath a thick layer of snow despite the slope. Heavy posts held up verandahs on both levels.

There was a big Ford Explorer sitting on the gravel in front of the house. It was empty.

“I guess I’d better go and give them the good news,” Diego said.

Sera studied the house, biting her lip. “Is that the place, Diego? Is that the trinity?”

“Even if I wasn’t certain it was the place, the vampeen make it a lock.” He looked around. “They’re probably waiting for low light to make a move. They’re as drawn to the forming trinity as I am.” He looked Sera over once more, checking her for wounds. She was as pretty and untouched as always, her crystalline blue eyes calm.

“The call to Blake got dropped in all the excitement,” he told her. “You’d better jump back there and tell him what happened or he’ll be on the first flight out here to find out for himself.”

She nodded. “Beth, too. She needs to know about the hounds.” She leaned over the console and kissed him. “Be careful, Diego.”

“For you, I’ll try.”

She gave him a smile, the little one that promised much. Then she was gone.

Diego started the car. It ran choppily. Something was fatally wrong with it. It would get him to the house and that was all he needed for now. He glanced at the hounds once more. They still made no attempt to draw closer, even when he pulled the nose of the car around to face the house. They seemed to be content to bar access over the bridge.

“Let there be another way out of here,” Diego breathed.

Zoe paused, the kettle lifted over the French press, listening. Had she heard dogs? When she heard nothing more except for the caw of the big crow that liked sit on the powerlines outside the window, she started pouring the water again. Cole would be down soon. She wanted to have the coffee ready when he padded into the kitchen. He had been out late last night, dealing with a group of winter campers on the lower slopes of Mt. MacPherson.

As she was fitting the lid to the pot, she heard the clatter of a car engine approaching the house. It was a very sick car, from the sound of it. Someone on the Trans-Canada highway had obviously gotten into mechanical trouble and had pulled into the house for help. It was a dumb move. They were only five miles away from Revelstoke here. The car could have made it to the town just as easily as negotiating the rutted road from the highway. Although Zoe had learned that city-based tourists weren’t used to thinking those ways.

With a silent sigh, she moved through the house to the front door, shoved her snow boots and heavy parka on, then stepped out onto the verandah. The freezing air washed over her.

The first sight of the car made her heart give a little flutter of unease. It was a late model Mustang. The windshield had been busted in and there were heavy dents in the hood. Had he hit a deer? Deer would do that sort of damage on a low car.

The Mustang pulled up next to Cole’s truck and the driver got out. Dark hair, olive skin, eyes that looked as though they could see everything.

Zoe shivered and pulled her jacket in around her, even though it was only minus ten and the sun was warm on her face.

The man looked up at her. “Hello.”

He was wearing a light jacket and black runners. He would get maybe half a mile cross-country in those and even less far at night when the temperature dropped. What was he thinking?

“Hi,” Zoe replied. “Did you hit a deer?”

He shook his head. “I came to see you. May I come up and speak to you?”

Zoe’s heart pattered a little faster. “I don’t know you.”

“I know. I’m quite harmless,” he said. “I’ve come a long way, too.”

Her instincts were against the idea of talking to him. She hesitated.

He was looking at the peaks behind the house. “Is there a way to get to Revelstoke that doesn’t use the bridge?” he asked.

“Sure. There’s a trail that goes over the shoulder of the mountain and into town, only it’s impassable at this time of year.”

“No other way?”

“Not unless you can fly. We just use the truck.”

He glanced back down the long drive toward the tree line and the bridge. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said quietly, almost to himself. He climbed the steps up to the verandah and came toward her. “I’m going to have to dump this on you. We don’t have time.”

“Dump what?”

Up close, Zoe could see his unshaved chin, dark with growth, and his even darker eyes. He had moved in a way that spoke of reined-in and controlled strength, well beyond the capabilities of a man of his build.

She had seen that sort of control before. Startled, she studied him anew, looking for more signs. The stubble was not right. It was a human thing.

His eyes narrowed. “Perhaps I don’t have to dump as much as I thought,” he said quietly.

Zoe drew in a deep breath and glanced at the front door, which was still half open. “You’d better come inside,” she said. “Keep your voice down. I don’t want you to wake my husband.”

His brow lifted. “There’s just the two of you here?” he asked sharply.

“We’re only five miles from town. It’s not
that
isolated here.”

His jaw rippled, as if he could say more yet chose not to. “Inside would be better,” he said, instead.

Zoe led him inside and shut the door. She shucked off her coat and boots and took him back into the kitchen. The coffee would be nearly ready. “Coffee?” she asked him, testing.

“Thanks. I just had one,” he replied.

She waved toward the kitchen table and pulled out the stool at the end of the counter and rested her hips on it, so her feet were on the floor.

He considered her again. “I said I was harmless.”

“Why do you say that?”

“You have your feet on the floor, on a chair high enough that you can stand quickly. You put yourself right next to the knife block there, where all the blades are.”

Her breath caught. “
What
are you?” she demanded.

“I think you know,” he said quietly and scratched at his chin, “despite this.”

Zoe swallowed. “Vampire….” she breathed.

“You’re a hunter, which will save me hours of conversation, which we don’t have time for.”

“Ex-hunter. Why don’t we have time?”

“How long have you been out of the game?” he asked sharply, as if it was important.

“Years. Since I left the States.”

“That would explain why you didn’t notice the build-up on your doorstep.” He nodded toward the big windows. “You’re surrounded. There are creatures out there who have no intention of letting you leave this place. When it’s dark, they will come for you.”

Zoe’s breath squeezed out of her. “You’re joking,” she said. Yet she knew in her bones he wasn’t. Now he had spoken of it, she could feel the darkness out there, all around the house except for where the mountain barrier sat behind them.

“Joking about what?” Cole said from the door and rubbed his hand through his tousled blond hair. He was wearing pajama bottoms and nothing else. Zoe was only thankful he’d stopped long enough to put pants on.

* * * * *

Cole stared at the Latino man, wondering if he was still dreaming. The words coming out of the man’s mouth were comprehensible yet the meaning was too ridiculous to consider seriously. As the man kept talking, Cole got impatient. He put the coffee mug down with a thump.

“Diego,” he said. “That’s what you said your name was, right?”

“Diego Savage,” the man said. “I know this all sounds fantastic. You’ll find out very quickly that I’m not exaggerating. I’m not lying at all. This really is going to happen to you.” He glanced out the window again. “I hope sooner, rather than later.”

“This bonding thing you keep talking about?” Cole asked. “We’re supposed to be fighters in some supernatural army?”

“Cole…” Zoe said softly. She was warning him in her gentle way to keep a civil tongue in his head.

He sighed and tried again. “I don’t believe in monsters, Mr. Savage.”

“Cole,” Zoe said, more sharply.

He looked up at her. She was standing at the corner of the counter and she was tense. “I believe him,” she said quietly.

Cole laughed. “You don’t even like horror movies!”

“I don’t,” she said calmly, “because I think they’re silly, not because I don’t believe in monsters.”

Cole stared at her, trying to get his mind around the fact that his wife, who was the calmest and sanest person he had ever met, was professing to believe all this mystical nonsense.

“Diego,” she said softly. “Perhaps, just once, would you mind showing your fangs?”

Diego hung his head for a moment. “In the name of saving time, sure.” He lifted his top lip in a snarl.

Cole stared as two long, pointed teeth descended from the gum line above Diego’s normal teeth. He
watched
them descend. They weren’t a prosthetic, or fake things worn over the other teeth. They
grew
, right as he watched them.

He swallowed.

The fangs withdrew as smoothly as they had extended and Diego stopped snarling.

“Vampires don’t like to show their fangs,” Zoe said. “For them, it’s a bit like being naked, all mixed up with sex and procreation.”

Cole stared at her, amazed that Zoe was speaking these words with the same calm gentleness she used to speak of grocery lists and canning produce for the cold cellar. “How do you know that?” he asked, the question only occurring to him after his amazement faded.

“Remember I told you I was a bounty hunter when I lived in the States?” she asked.

He nodded. “Yeah. Bail enforcement agent. You worked with bail bondsmen in California.”

She shook her head. “I was a hunter, only I didn’t hunt human fugitives.”

Cole turned to look at the man, the thing, called Diego. It shook its head. “Vampires haven’t been on the hunting lists for centuries,” Diego said shortly. “We’re hunters ourselves, now. It suits our natural talents.”

“You’re…a monster,” Cole said slowly.

“The
real
monsters are out there,” Diego said, nodding toward the windows. “Which is why I need you to move past all your shock and indignation about your wife hiding her real past. Accept that vampires are real. So are lots of other things that go bump in the night and the really nasty ones are all around your house, waiting for nightfall.”

Cole gripped his coffee mug. “So I could gut you with my hunting knife and you’d live anyway?”

“I’d get pissed and I would bleed all over your kitchen and it would waste another few minutes. You have to focus, Cole.”

He blinked. “How am I supposed to believe you?”

“Drive down to the bridge. Try to drive over it,” Diego said. “Only, take a gun with you.”

“I don’t have a gun,” Cole said. “What’s out there?”

“Go and see,” Diego said impatiently. “Go on. I’ll wait. Just…be careful. Don’t get too close. They ripped the sides out of my car.”

Cole stared at him, weighing it up. He settled, as he usually did, on the side of action first. He got to his feet.

“Cole, no,” Zoe protested, jumping to her feet. “You don’t know what they’re like. They’ll kill you.”

“I have to see for myself,” he said.

Zoe followed him to the front door. Her face was pale. “You don’t understand this world,” she said softly. “They’re more than your average bear.”