Zoe's Blockade (Destiny's Trinities Book 5)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
About Zoe’s Blockade
Readers’ praise for Zoe’s Blockade:
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
The next book in the Destiny’s Trinities series
About the Author
Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Copyright Information
About Zoe’s Blockade
The impossible just might be possible when trinities are forming….
Zoe got out of the hunting business years ago and headed north into the Canadian Rockies, shortly before meeting Cole, a Canadian military officer, and Declan, the town’s sexy doctor. Cole and Declan are married, but still weaken her knees and her heart and change her life forever.
When Declan dies in a skiing accident, Cole is devastated. Zoe helps him pick up the pieces and after years of circling each other, they marry and settle into a quiet life in the mountains.
Then a man called Diego Savage arrives on their doorstep and says they are two of a special trinity who must halt the evil forces that are surrounding their house, blocking them from the outside world and determined to stop the forming of the trinity.
Only…who is the third?
The bonding has begun….
Warning: This short MMF vampire romance features two super-hot alpha heroes, multiple sex scenes, including anal sex, MM sexual play, and MMF sex. Do not read this book if frank sexual language and sex scenes offend you.
No non-humans were harmed except for large numbers of Grimoré, who died with satisfactory squeals…
This book is part of the Destiny’s Trinities series:
Book 1.0: Beth’s Acceptance
Book 2.0: Mia’s Return
Book 3.0: Sera’s Gift
Book 3.5: The First Trinity – Novellas 1-3
Book 4.0: Cora’s Secret
Book 5.0: Zoe’s Blockade
Book 6.0: Octavia’s War (August 2016)
Book 6.5: The Second Trinity
Book 7.0: Terra's Victory (September 2016)
A Vampire Ménage Urban Fantasy Romance
Readers’ praise for Zoe’s Blockade:
All Romance eBooks Bestseller
There is a twist to the trinity, and it was one I have really never seen before, but it was a super idea and I loved it.
I really love the way you again meet characters from the previous Trinity stories; it's exciting to see them still involved and what they do to help.
I can highly recommend this book, it is a page turner, hot and steamy, with a fast paced storyline that reels you in, something that this author excels at.
I fell in love with the characters and the forces pulling them together - the chemistry was sizzling.
The descriptions are so vivid and the narrative is so realistic and flowing that I felt like I was in the room with the characters.
Zoe's Blockade has everything you can think of—travel, fighting, magical beings, teleporting and last but not least really hot, sexy, erotic love scenes.
I have loved all of the books in this series but this one managed to keep things fresh with interesting twists! I read it in one sitting.
Chapter One
“I gotta be somewhere near the north pole by now,” Diego groused. “I feel as if I’ve been driving for a century.” He paused to steer the Mustang around a deep curve of the road, which was hugging a monster outcrop of rock, using both hands on the wheel.
“You didn’t learn how to drive until last year,” Blake pointed out. His voice emerging from the car speakers sounded reasonable and calm. “It’ll be a while before you catch up.”
“You can’t possibly be near the north pole yet,” Sera said, her voice as serene as always. Even though she was in Florida, she sounded louder and clearer than Blake, who was sitting at his desk in New York.
Diego gritted his jaw against the emptiness in his chest that always made itself felt whenever he was talking to them. “I miss you guys,” he breathed.
“You have to find your trinity soon,” Blake assured him, his voice dropping in volume. He was trying to avoid being overheard. “Where are you, anyway?”
Diego saw a big green sign coming up. “Hang on,” he said and waited for the lettering to be clear enough to read. “Revelstoke.”
“Still in British Columbia, then,” Blake said.
“Revelstoke in the Rockies, isn’t it?” Sera said. “I’m looking at a map now. It must be beautiful.”
“Beautifully white and boring,” Diego muttered. “The bloody snow is already a foot thick around here and it’s only October.”
“Oh! It sounds wonderful!” Sera breathed. “There are trees, too, yes?”
“You be careful, driving in that stuff,” Blake added.
“Yes, lieutenant.”
“I mean it. In driving terms, you’re every cop’s nightmare. You’ve been driving just long enough to think you’re great at it and not long enough to know how to get yourself out of trouble when it happens.”
Diego gritted his teeth together.
“He’s scolding because he loves you,” Sera said, only this time it was from right next to him. She was sitting in the passenger seat.
Diego jumped. “Mary, mother of God and all her saints! Sera! What the fuck?”
She smiled at him, her big eyes wide.
“What? She’s there?” Blake asked.
“Yes,” Diego breathed. He felt winded. “Sera, I’m going way too fast for you to try that sort of stunt. You’ve never seen this place, you have no idea what you were jumping to. Of all the stupid….”
“And now he’s scolding because he loves you,” Blake said.
Sera’s smile was complacent. “Yet despite all the risks, here I sit.” She looked at the mountain peaks around them, completely covered in snow. The endless march of fir trees, the only color in the landscape anywhere. “It is beautiful,” she declared.
Diego had to admit that she was right. The farther north he’d gotten, the more spectacular the scenery had become. At times he regretted having to concentrate on driving. He would have enjoyed stopping to look around, only the urge to keep going, to keep seeking, had been pushing him onward for a week now.
He had flown to Seattle and rented the Mustang there, then started north, crossing into Canada late that afternoon.
Why he had come this way, he didn’t know. He’d learned from the others that the impulse to seek out their trinity didn’t arrive with maps and directions. He had to follow his gut. Well, he had been doing that for centuries, so it was no burden. Although it was boring.
He braked, slowing. Then he dropped the speed by changing down the gears, easing it to a slow stop. He’d learned quickly that stamping on the brakes could send the little sports car into a heart-squeezing fishtail on these icy roads.
“What’s wrong?” Sera asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What’s happening?” Blake asked.
“Diego is stopping,” Sera said.
He brought the car to a final halt, pulling off the cleared section of the road into the inch of snow carpeting the edges, dropped the car into neutral and put on the handbrake. He looked at Sera, in her skimpy tank top and cotton skirt. “Stay in the car. It’s only fifteen degrees out there.”
As he opened the door, she wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
He s
hut the door and did a slow full circle, taking in everything. Had the direction changed? Something had forced him to stop.
His breath came out in thick, steamy billows, so he stopped breathing. Then he held still, put his head down and eased his senses out to their maximum and waited.
There. From over there.
He lifted his head and looked in the direction he felt the urge to go. It was off the road, up against the base of a mountain range. A thick batch of trees hid all other detail.
He strained his vision to the utmost and saw that the green swathes were broken up by a structure. He glimpsed white, too. More snow, which meant open areas. A house?
Diego got back into the car and pulled warm air into his lungs. He put the car back in gear and drove slowly along the road, looking for a side road to appear. “Somewhere on the left, up there,” he told Sera.
“Among those trees?”
“Think so.” The compulsion was growing stronger now. Except it wasn’t the only thing building in his mind.
“I can feel blackness ahead,” Sera murmured, her voice strained.
“Still there, Blake?” Diego asked.
“I’ve got Google Maps up. I can see where you might be. There’s nothing on the map around there.”
“Private house,” Diego muttered. The darkness in his head was growing thicker. “I think we might have company, too,” he added.
“Grimoré?”
“Or vampeen. That trinity over in Pennsylvania figured out that the Grimoré were using forests to farm the vampeen. Maybe it’s the same here.”
“In the snow?”
“It’s not that cold,” Diego protested.
“Says the vampire who can’t feel anything,” Blake replied.
“I can feel it,” Sera said. “The cold and the black.”
“Sera, jump back out of there,” Blake said sharply.
“I can fight,” Sera said firmly. “Diego is on his own.”
“Then jump back here and get me and I’ll help him,” Blake said. “You don’t have a weapon.”
“Diego has two guns,” Sera pointed out.
Diego shook his head. “I had to leave them behind. International border and this is Canada. You can’t carry guns around, even if you can get a permit.”
Sera bit her lip. “Then what are you going to do? Blake, I can come and get yours.”
“You don’t even have a knife, Diego? What the hell?” Blake said, sounding pissed. “Sera, jump back to the apartment, you can get his spares.”
“No, no time,” Diego said. “Hold on.”
He turned into the side route that had appeared. It was a gravel road, well ploughed and clear of snow. White fencing and two wagon wheels propped on either side for decoration told him this was private property. Beyond the fenced opening, they plunged into a tree-lined tunnel with pale blue sky for a roof.
From the corner of his eye, Diego could see movement through the trees on either side of the car. Flashes of something moving at speed. Matching them.
Sera gripped the armrest, her knuckles white. “There’s something out there,” she whispered.
“Don’t stop,” Blake said, his voice quiet. He liked to give orders and constantly fussed about safety and security, only when the real fight was about to begin, he turned into the hunter he really was—wary and short on conversation.
“Sera, jump back to Blake,” Diego said tersely.
“No.”
He hissed his frustration, but didn’t try again. Sera wouldn’t leave until he was safe, now.
Instead, he settled down to drive the car as fast as he could on the narrow route. That wasn’t fast at all and whatever it was out there, it was keeping pace with them. That meant it probably wasn’t vampeen, who started off life as human. No human could run as fast as a car, even a car dipping into every little pothole and bumping along a country road. It just wasn’t physically possible.
Yet he could feel vampeen. Out here, where there were no other sentient signatures and traces to confuse the markers, the sense that the vampeen were nearby was almost screaming at him.
“A bridge,” Sera said and pointed ahead.
The trees were broken up by a small ravine. A bridge of steel grids crossed it. The average bridge was slippery, Diego had learned. This metal one would be even more icy.
The shadows flashing through the trees alongside them were coming closer. They were big and low to the ground.
Diego gripped the wheel. “Hold on,” he said shortly. “They’re coming for us.”
“Can they stop a car?” Sera asked, her voice high.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what they are.”
The things broke through the trees and leapt at the car. They looked like really big dogs. Larger than wolves. Their eyes were red. The teeth in their snapping, drooling jaws were the same as the familiar vampeen—crossed, crooked, sharp and deadly.
The lead dog rammed into the side of the car, rocking it and cracking the glass in the passenger door next to Sera’s shoulder. She muffled a scream against her hand. Diego fought the wheel, keeping the car steady and keeping it moving forward.
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 thrust
ing 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.
Chapter Two
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.