The Trinity (Fall of Venus)

  The Trinity

  Daelynn Quinn

  Copyright © 2014 Erin Meredith

  All Rights Reserved

  ISBN: 1494926873

  ISBN-13: 978-1494926878

  To Walton—thanks for sticking with me through this. And for actually reading my book.

  Prologue

  Dear Evie,

  The day I learned your father died is burned into my memory like a branded cowhide. I remember it like it was only last week, though it happened about a year and a half ago. Dad had just gotten home from work and was changing into some sweats to go do some work on the car. Mom was baking a veggie casserole and had just pulled it out of the oven to cool. The entire house was filled with the scent of lemons and garlic. I was in your room, pretending to be playing with you while instead I was sneaking a phone call to Glenn. The doorbell rang. I hung up the phone when I heard mom wailing. I told you to stay in your room while I checked it out. Three uniformed officers stood at the front door with the folded up North Cythera flag. Mom had collapsed on the floor and dad was trying to comfort her. They decided that night that they weren’t ready to tell you yet. So we waited. We spent the entire summer underground and we still didn’t feel ready to tell you. And then the virus struck. After mom and dad died, I couldn’t handle it anymore. I broke down and told you the truth. I should have waited longer.

  That night, the night we found out your father supposedly died, I wrote my first of what would become many letters to Drake. It was sort of like a diary for me, a way for me to express my feelings and document what was going on in my life. And it made me feel close to my brother even though he wasn’t around. I felt like I could somehow communicate with him through the letters. Then I found out he never actually died. He was alive and trapped at Crimson all this time.

  I write this letter to you now, Evie, in the hopes that you are also still alive. I don’t believe the Trinity would kill you intentionally, but I’m afraid to know what they might actually be doing to you. I rescued your father, Evie. He is safe here with us at Ceborec. And I swear, I will rescue you too. Then we’ll leave this forsaken planet forever. We’ll start a new life on A1D3. And we will all be happy again.

  Love,

  Auntie Pollen

  Chapter 1

  My face tingles with a million tiny red-hot pinpricks and sweat pours down my face, pooling in my ear canals. My eyes open to reveal a fiery wasteland, singing with snaps and crackles while ribbons of yellow and orange dance around me. A high-pitched hum invades my ears as I stare up to see rippling waves of fire spreading over the darkened ceiling, just as seawater washes ashore on a beach. The stifling heat steals the breath from my lungs, leaving me gasping for fresh air.

  Dread takes hold of me. I squeeze my eyes shut, willing the horrifying scene to go away. My aching limbs shiver despite the intense heat. How did I end up here? The hard surface below my aching back feels like a skillet. I might as well be a fried egg.

  “Auntie Pollen!” a voice cries out in the darkness.

  “Evie?” My eyes shoot back open and I cower again at the terrifying sight before me. My heartbeat thumps so forcefully it feels like a wild, flailing monster is trapped inside my ribcage. I press my palms to my chest in a feeble attempt to steady my heart rate. I breathe deeply, swallowing more air than actually inhaling. Then again. And again. It takes a few seconds—though it feels like an eternity—before my breath returns to a steady rhythm and my body can move again. The floor is getting hotter by the minute and soon I’ll have to get up anyway if I don’t want to end up a crispy slab of bacon.

  “Auntie Pollen! Help me!” she calls out again. My heartbeat quickens and I lift my aching back to sit upright. My entire body feels like it is covered in bruises. Every tiny movement induces pain in some fragment of my body. A twinge in my hip. A stab in my knee. A burn on my elbow.

  “Evie?” I call out, but my voice is hoarse and my lungs can’t get enough leverage to carry over the hissing of the flames. I gaze around, turning my head in sharp movements, but all I see is fire. Everywhere.

  I roll over to my hands and knees. A drop of sweat splashes onto the back of my dirty hand. But it’s not dirt—it’s blood, dried and crusted. Whose blood is that?

  “Auntie Pollen! Hurry!”

  I’ve no time to search for the source of blood. I have to find Evie. Every bone and muscle in my body screams as I rise to my feet. I feel like I’ve fallen off a ten-story building and furthermore been smashed between two blocks of hardened cement.

  As I lift my head a boy, about nine years old, comes shuffling out of the flames. His short, wavy hair is dark chestnut brown like mine, with streaks of copper glowing from the illumination of the flames. He holds a white candle in his hands, smooth and dripless. As he approaches me, he smiles and I feel a sense of calm wash over me. I know this boy. But I can’t remember how I know him.

  He holds the candle out to me, his eyes urging me to take it. But before I can get a grasp on it, the candle slips through his fingers. When it falls to the ground a blanket of flames fans out across the floor and I’m forced to stumble backwards before they reach my toes. When I look up the boy is gone.

  “Evie? Evie, where are you?” I call out. But there is no reply.

  I hug my arms tightly to my chest as I carefully maneuver through the cavern of fire. The fiery tendrils reach out to grab me, threatening to swallow me as I inch my way past them. A scorching finger lashes out at my bare arm, singing the fine hairs and biting the skin beneath. I stagger backwards, unaware that I am stumbling into the endless inferno behind me.

  But before I succumb to the flames, a pair of arms reaches out and pulls me away from the blaze. The fire reaches its gnarly tongue out in one last effort to devour me, but it’s too late. Marcus has me in his firm grasp. His arms are cool and soothing, wrapped around my searing body. I close my eyes and imagine us in the woods together, the suns golden rays warming us instead of this hell fire.

  “Auntie Pollen!”

  My head snaps back up. Marcus pulls away from me violently. The fire has snaked its incandescent tendril around his waist and yanks him into the conflagration.

  “Marcus! No!” I scream as I reach for him, but it’s too late. The fire consumes him instantly and it seems to taunt and laugh at me as it crackles and dances gleefully over his crumbling pile of ashes.

  Suddenly, I’m not afraid anymore. The fire within me burns a hundred degrees higher than the smoldering flames that encompass me. My insides simmer with resolve. I will not give up.

  “Evie!” I shout. This time my voice comes out louder, stronger, resonating over the drone of the blaze. I hammer forward through the arch of flames, ignoring the glowing arms that reach out for me. I have to find Evie.

  My toe catches on something hard and the sound of scraping metal slices through the air. I fall, landing on my palms. The sizzling floor sears my skin and steam rises in a ghostly stream from under my fingers. As I pick myself back up, I spot the source of my fall—a warped hunk of metal with some text on it. I lean over to get a closer look. A sleek black line is emblazoned over some blistered silver paint and I immediately recognize it as part of the COPS Web train.

  Large black droplets splash over the surface of the metal and then a stabbing pain punches me in the ribs. I gaze down to find a gaping wound in my abdomen. My shirt is stained and the blood oozes out like molten chocolate. I gasp and clasp the wound with my hand. Was I shot?

  “Help!” Evie cries out again.

  “I’m coming Evie!” I choke. I can’t stop now. Must. Find. Evie.

  I soldier on, keeping my hand firmly clamped on my belly. I flinch as the flames lash out at me in the deepening inferno. The fire become
s denser and more intense. I could turn back. I could. Make a run for it and save myself. But that’s not me. Not anymore.

  My hair and clothes are drenched in sweat. My mouth is a desert, cracked and desiccant. Still I muster on.

  I nearly collapse when I take a step and there’s no floor beneath my foot, but I catch myself, waving my arms wildly to regain my balance. A flame licks my wrist and I snap my arms back to my body. I look down at the mangled chunks of metal, glowing among the rampant flames. I’ve arrived at the tracks.

  “Auntie Pollen! Over here!” cries Evie. My eyes shoot up. She’s just on the other side of the tracks. I have to find a way to reach her, but there’s a thick barricade of flames separating us. My heart rate quickens and I can feel each pulse as if my heart is pumping molasses through my veins. I don’t think I can do it. A lump rises in my throat. I can’t swallow.

  “Evie?”

  A shadow slinks behind her and I’m frozen to this spot. Paralyzed by my fear. I can’t do it. I can’t save Evie. Slowly, a dark figure slithers up and around Evie trapping her in a deadly coil. The snake tightens its sinewy form around her as she shrieks.

  “Evie!” I scream. It’s killing her. I will my feet to move. I have to do something. Even if it kills me. My chest rises and falls with each gasping breath and my heart beats in time with them until I take in one huge inhale and hold it. Then I leap into the fire.

  Chapter 2

  Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

  The mechanical clock on the wall of our tiny bedroom has a sharper intonation than the mental clock in my head. My eyes shoot open, welcoming the darkness. Beads of sweat cling to my face and I peel the sticky sheet and blanket off my legs to cool down under the feathery current of the ceiling fan.

  That nightmare has evolved and become more recurrent over the past few months. It used to be just the rampant fire when I was a kid—sent me into a raging panic in the middle of the night. I remember my mother having to crawl into my bed with me to calm me down. She would talk to me, sing lullabies to me while I curled locks of her hair, the color of dark brown sugar, around my tiny fingers, but I’d never really go back to sleep. Recently other elements have been added: the Web as a setting, Evie screaming, Marcus succumbing to the flames. And tonight that strange little boy appeared. Every time there’s something new, something different. I can’t help but think my subconscious mind is trying to tell me something. Maybe I should bring it up to Dr. Nesbith, the resident shrink.

  I sneak a peek at Marcus lying next to me. He’s sound asleep, his head nestled comfortably over his bent elbow. I don’t want to wake him. I simply lie on my side with my head propped up on my fist and watch him for a few minutes, committing the sight to memory. It was only a few weeks ago that I was sleeping alone every night, crying myself to sleep because he hated me for having an affair with my ex-fiancé, Glenn. But he’s forgiven me now. I don’t quite understand why or how, but he has. And I feel like I’m walking on broken glass with him. I can’t lose him again.

  I focus on the infinity fly tattoo imprinted on his left temple. His long shaggy hair used to obscure it, making him look almost normal. I still have a hard time adjusting to his new, shorter hair. And I’m not used to seeing the tattoo so openly, except when I look in the mirror at my own. It saddens me to think of all we’ve been through in the past year. All the people who’ve died from the virus. Our imprisonment at Crimson where we were tagged with these abhorrent tattoos. My kidnapping and encounter with the Trinity. Evie’s kidnapping. And now the upcoming war with Crimson that General Granby says is imminent. I constantly have to remind myself that if none of this had happened I’d never have met Marcus. That’s my silver lining in this whole disaster.

  I can’t go back to sleep, so I gently roll off the bed, making sure to keep the movement light enough that I don’t wake Marcus. There’s a slight twinge on the left side of my belly where I was shot last week while rescuing my older brother, Drake, from Crimson. He was a soldier in the army of North Cythera and we were told he had died, but as it turns out, he was just imprisoned for about a year and a half before we rescued him. Luckily, the bullet missed my vital organs and the fetus I’m carrying. “By just a hair,” Dr. Yipolis told me.

  My pregnant belly is getting so large it is difficult to stand up easily. It feels like I just woke up one morning and discovered that I was five months pregnant. I spent so much time denying this baby that it all seems so new to me now. I’m going to be a mommy again. And I’m scared to death. My firstborn son died at my own hands. I accidentally killed him by placing too many blankets in his crib. I was naïve and way too young to be a mother at seventeen. But even though I’m older now, I’m still scared to death something will happen to him, especially with the strained tensions between Ceborec and Crimson. And the fact that the Trinity has placed a huge flashing target on my head.

  I trudge clumsily four steps to the door and another four steps to our mini kitchen. The darkness is illuminated only by the indirect warm glow of an outdoor light filtering in through the window and the hall lights from the crack under the door, but I know my way around enough that I don’t need any more than that. I lean in on the counter, close my eyes and take in the serene silence. Too many things I’ve taken for granted. Like the peace and security of being safe at home. I take in this moment of solitude, wishing things would stay this way. But they won’t. My dream was a painful reminder that I’ve got more work to do. I have to find Evie and bring her back.

  The faucet gurgles and drones as I fill my glass to the rim with water. It splashes over my fingers and down the sides of my chin as I guzzle some down before I need to stop to take a breath. I glance over at Evie’s bedroom door and see her standing there in my mind’s eye as I draw the glass back to my lips. Her long copper curls frame her perfectly round porcelain face. Her bright green eyes shine in wonder under her feathery lashes. That candy-coated grin and tweeting-bird giggle that could soften even the hardest miser.

  “Are you okay, baby?”

  My fingers arch back and the glass slips from my hands, crashing into tiny pieces on the tiled floor. I turn around, heart leaping into my throat.

  “Marcus, you scared me!” I yell in a whisper. I don’t know why I still whisper at night. It’s not like we’re going to wake anyone. Evie’s long gone, kidnapped by those monsters that have destroyed our planet. I will get her back. I will.

  Even in the darkness, Marcus is the embodiment of a god, standing before me in only his shorts. His muscles are perfectly sculpted, his bone structure impeccably carved. In the old days, artists and sculptors would have mauled each other for a chance to study his form. The only flaws on his body are the infinity fly tattoo and the scars that adorn his chest and back, from his time in the Crimson torture chambers.

  I squat to the floor, scrambling in the darkness to pick up the shattered pieces of glass. Marcus crawls next to me.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. “Let me. Go on back to bed.”

  “I can’t sleep. Ow!” A shard of glass slices the tip of my middle finger. My fingers stiffen and clench in reaction to the pain. Warm liquid trickles down my finger and balloons at the tip, just before it drops to the floor.

  “Let me see,” Marcus says, taking my hand.

  “I’m okay.”

  “Pollen, you’re bleeding pretty badly. Here.” Marcus pulls a hand towel out of a drawer and presses it firmly to my finger. “Hold it tight. I’ll get the rest of this. You go lie down.”

  I nod. Marcus helps me up but as soon as he lets go of me, the room spins and nausea overcomes me. I stumble into the edge of the counter.

  “Pollen, what’s wrong?”

  “I just feel dizzy. Would you walk me back to bed?”

  “Of course.”

  Marcus wraps his tender arms around me and I lean into his chest as we take the short journey back to the bedroom. He flicks on the lamp next to the bed and my eyes feel strangled beneath my lids.

  “Keep holding it tight,”
Marcus says, squeezing the towel over my finger. “I’ll be right back.” He disappears and I lean back against the headboard, blinking and staring at the empty wall in front of me. I can hear a collection of clinks as Marcus sweeps up the broken glass from the floor. How could I be so clumsy? Pregnancy or just plain nerves?

  After a few minutes Marcus returns to my side. He removes the crimson-splotched towel to study my finger. Blood has soaked through the fabric and it still gushes from the deep gash in my skin. Marcus kisses the wound, and then licks the glossy scarlet fluid from his lips. He presses the towel back over the wound and dashes to the bathroom. When he comes back he’s holding a bandage and one of my hair elastics.

  “What’s that for?” I ask.

  “To help slow the bleeding.” After wrapping some gauze and a bandage over the wound, he twists the elastic over the base of my finger like a tourniquet. After a few seconds my skin turns pallid and my finger is like ice.

  “What’s the matter, baby? Why were you up in the middle of the night?” Marcus brushes the hair out of my eyes as I gently prod my blue finger curiously.

  “I had the dream again.”

  “The fire?”

  I nod. “This time there was a little boy. He was holding a candle out to me, but when I tried to take it he dropped it and then disappeared.” Marcus is quiet for a moment.

  “A boy? Do think he could be . . .” Marcus’s voice trails off. He’s thinking exactly what I am. That the boy in my dream could be the baby. Dr. Yipolis said he is a boy. And who else could it be?

  “Possibly. But what could it all mean?” Marcus shakes his head.

  “Nothing. It means nothing, Pollen. It was just a nightmare. You’ve been through a lot. Your subconscious mind is just trying to work some stuff out. That’s all.”

  “So what do you think it all represents then?”