by Nora Roberts
He turned to her slowly. The old Colin would have leaped with a: Hell, yeah! And she could still see that in him. But over it the man he’d become studied her, took his time.
“Why?”
“Because you’re smart, a good trainer, resourceful. You’re a damn good solider, you even know some of the IT stuff. Because holding Arlington is as important as taking it. And I trust you can do it.”
“What about Travis?”
“I need him here, for now at least. I need you there.”
“Then I guess I need to pack. Except . . .” He rubbed his jaw. “Mom and Dad may be a problem.”
“No, they won’t. We’ve talked, and it’s your choice.”
He took another minute, looked around. “I like this place,” he told her. “I like the people. I even like the candy-ass recruits. I love the farm, you know? But I’m never going to be a real farmer.”
“You’re never going to be president, either,” she said, and made him laugh. “You’re a soldier, Colin.”
“Hey, soldiers can be president. I’ll hold Arlington for you. But one thing. What’s my rank?”
“Since when do we do ranks?”
“Since now. What’s mine?”
“How about Five-Star Dickhead?”
He gave her a light punch in the arm. “I like ME Commander.”
“ME?”
“Most Excellent.”
She just rolled her eyes. “Pick ten recruits, willing and able to go with you. If they have families, the families have to be willing to let them go or relocate with them.”
“Got it. Jesus, do you see those two? I’ve got to get back to this.” He strode away, glanced back. “I won’t let you down.”
“I know it.”
Still watching him, she mounted Grace. Then she turned the horse and rode toward New Hope.
When she rode past the community gardens, she saw groups of volunteers hoeing weeds, others harvesting vegetables and fruit into baskets woven by other volunteers and craftspeople.
Kids too young to help, or to help for long, played on swings and slides, seesaws and jungle gyms, all scavenged and repaired or built from scavenged parts. Members of what New Hope dubbed the Triple Cs—Community Child Care—kept a watchful eye.
Parents, she knew, bartered for the babysitting with other services, food, crafts. She watched a faerie, no more than three, try out her wings. One of the watchers scooped her up before she went too high or too far.
The system worked, she thought as she continued on to the clinic. Just as the bartering for medical services worked, or for the milk and eggs and butter and so on produced on farms, the wool sheared, the fabrics woven.
She’d seen it work in other communities, just as she’d seen in some the lack of center, of leadership, of structure. And in others still a subtle segregation and lack of trust between magickals and NMs.
Winning the war wouldn’t be the only challenge. Establishing that center, that structure, that trust would be its own kind of battle.
After tethering Grace, she walked into the clinic, past the waiting area—only a handful of people today—and turned to the desk.
“I need to talk to Rachel when she’s free. Hannah, too, if it’s possible.”
“Rachel’s with a patient. I think Hannah’s doing a round in maternity and peeds.” April gestured. “All the way down, turn right.”
“Thanks.”
She moved down, past exam and treatment rooms, beyond a ward—only three beds taken, a good sign. When she turned right, she heard the fretful cry of an infant, and Hannah’s soothing voice.
“Somebody wants her mama. It’s feeding time, isn’t it, sweetie?”
She turned into what had been a classroom, saw Hannah pick up a swaddled infant from one of the clear baby beds. In another, one wearing a little blue knitted cap slept on.
Across the room a woman sat in a rocking chair with a tiny baby at her breast.
Hannah cuddled the crying baby, rubbed her back as she smiled at Fallon. “Welcome to the happiest spot in the clinic. Are you looking for Rachel?”
“And you.”
“I just need to get this little darling to her mother. We’re giving our moms a rest, but somebody’s hungry. If you give me a couple minutes, I’ll track down Rachel once I get Jasmine settled.”
“Sure. I’ll walk with you.”
“Fallon Swift.” In the rocking chair, Lissandra Ye carefully shifted the baby to her other breast. “Could I speak with you?”
“All right.”
“I won’t be long,” Hannah said, and carried the baby out.
“He can only be out for short times,” Lissandra said, and glanced at the incubator. “He’s still very small. My milk wasn’t enough to help him grow, but your mother helped me, and now . . . he’s nearly five pounds. Rachel says he won’t need the incubator when he’s just a little bigger.”
“That’s good.” She moved closer. “He’s really pretty.”
At her words, Lissandra’s eyes filled. Tears spilled.
“I’m sorry.” Fallon pulled over a second chair, laid a hand on Lissandra’s arm. “You’re worried, but he’s in good hands here.”
“I know that. I trust that. At first, I didn’t believe he’d live. He was so tiny. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to. I’m ashamed of that.”
“You shouldn’t be.”
“He’s mine, you see? He’s mine, but . . . It wasn’t only one who raped me, and it wasn’t only once. I couldn’t fight back. They gave us drugs so we couldn’t fight, but I could feel, and see. They let the guards have us when they wanted.”
Fallon had heard similar stories before, too many times before. But those stories never lost the ability to shock and enrage.
“You’re safe now. Do you talk to the counselors here?”
“Yes, yes. It wasn’t just the guards. The Torturer. The Dark Uncanny in the lab. He . . .”
Understanding now, Fallon sat back. “You’re worried he might be the one, that his blood is in your son.”
“He’s mine.” Even through the tears she said it fiercely. “I named him for the man who died trying to save me. Brennan. He’s my child, and no matter what, I love him. I thought I wouldn’t, I couldn’t, but he’s my son. But I have to know. If he carries the dark in him, I have to know so I can help him fight it. Please, you can see. You can see and know, and tell me.”
“The dark’s a choice, Lissandra, just as the light’s a choice.”
“Please.” The child lay quiet, his mouth slack as the milk and warmth lulled him to sleep. With eyes filled with hope and tears, Lissandra held him out to Fallon. “Please.”
What torment had the woman endured already? And how much more would she endure without answers, without the comfort of them?
So Fallon took the child. Her brothers, she recalled, had seemed so tiny to her at their births. But compared to Lissandra’s son, they’d been robust.
“Brennan,” she whispered, “son of Lissandra. I see you.”
She looked at him, looked into him, laid a hand on his chest where his heart beat under her palm.
“I see the light in you.” Lowering her head, she brushed her lips over his downy head. “I see you.”
With a smile, she looked back at Lissandra. “This is your son, and he holds light.”
“Do you swear it?”
“I swear it. He’s innocent, as you are. Innocent, and he’s your son. He’s your cub.”
Now joy glimmered through the tears. “He’s . . . like me?”
“Yes.”
“Would you bless him?”
“I don’t—”
“Please.”
“Ah . . .” Following instinct, Fallon touched her fingers to the baby’s head, his lips, and again his heart. “Bright blessings on you, Brennan, son of Lissandra.” She repeated the words in Mandarin.
Now Lissandra smiled. “I haven’t heard anyone speak Mandarin since my grandmother died. Thank you, more than I can say.” Lissa
ndra took the child back, rocked. “More than I can say. You’ve been blessed by The One,” she murmured.
As Fallon rose, Rachel stepped in. “Give him a little skin-to-skin time, Lissandra, then you can change him before we put him back.”
“He nursed really well.”
“We’ll weigh him a little later, but I think maybe tomorrow he can go into a regular crib.”
“Did you hear that, baby? You’re going to graduate.”
“One of the nurses will be in to help you.”
Lissandra nodded, but looked at Fallon. “I can fight. I’ll fight for you. I’ll fight for him.”
“I’ll fight for him,” Fallon told her. “He needs you to tend to him. I’ll see you both again.”
She walked out with Rachel to where Hannah waited in the doorway.
“That mattered as much as any care we’ve been able to give them.”
“She’s strong,” Fallon stated.
“And she’ll be stronger now. You needed to see me?”
“I wanted to talk to you and Hannah about the mobile medicals. It’s a big lift to flash your teams and your equipment to the safe zone at Arlington.”
“Lana’s talked to us already, but we can take this into my office. I want to show you the plans we just got.”
“Plans?”
“For expanding the clinic.” Rachel, a soft cloud of curls around her face, worn sneakers on her feet, led the way. “I know it’s not top of your mind right now, but it’s got to be pretty close to the top of ours.”
“I didn’t realize you wanted to expand.”
“Need to even more than want to. We talked to Roger Unger weeks ago. He was an architect before the Doom—just starting out. He’s been tutoring a few students with an interest.”
“We need people who know how to design and build.”
“Jonah and I like his plans. Maybe we want a few changes, but it hits the right notes. We’re looking—might as well go for the gold—at making this a medical complex, bringing in the dental, the basics we’ve been able to put together on ophthalmology.
“A long way to go there,” she added, tapping the reading glasses hooked to her chest pocket, “but we’ve got a start. The herbalists—and Kim’s on board—the chemists. The healers. Everything in one place,” she continued, “instead of spread around town. We’ll need more equipment, more beds, more staff, but we can’t go there until we have the space.”
“It sounds . . . ambitious.”
“So does taking Arlington.”
Fallon managed a half laugh. “You’re right. Let’s talk through Arlington, one more time. Then I’d like to see the plans.”
Plans, Fallon thought later as she rode home, spoke of hope, of optimism, and of determination. They’d need all of that to win, to survive, and to build those centers.
She intended to take all of it to Arlington, and beyond.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A half-moon rose over the base as she stood with the men and women she’d lead into battle. With sword, with arrow, with bullet, with tooth and claw and fist, they’d fight with her on a night so hot, so close the air had weight.
In the south on the beach, they’d fight. And more than two thousand miles to the west in the desert, they’d fight.
They’d fight and take the next step on the journey begun centuries before.
“Now,” she murmured, and so the order passed from place to place, to the south, to the west.
Lifting her hands, she thought of the lessons Mallick had taught her at a deserted prison. Patience, quiet, control.
She slid her power along the dark magicks circling the base like a deadly moat. Strong, drenched in blood sacrifice, thriving on the flesh and bone of whatever creature might cross into its open jaws, it floated into her mind’s eye.
Black and bubbling.
“On the blood of the innocents slain I call. Hear their cries, taste their tears.”
She heard them; she tasted them.
Mournful. Bitter.
“I am your sword. We are your justice.”
The black magicks clawed, scraped, snarled as she pushed against them. Bubbling dark, pulsing with heat.
“Let the light of those cut down flicker, shine, rise into flames, and burn bright to break the chains. Bodies sacrificed for ill, let the light into your spirits spill.”
She heard them calling out, felt that rising as her muscles trembled to hold it, embrace it.
And felt her father’s hand on her back, drew from that strength, that faith.
“On this night, at this hour, I call upon the power of those slain. Hear me, join me to wipe away the bloody stain.
“Your light, my light, our light unwinds the spell. And so in silence it falls to hell.”
With sweat running down her back from the effort, she nodded. “It’s down. Troy.”
The witch and her coven bespelled the security cameras. Even those few minutes would add advantage.
“Archers.”
Arrows winged their quiet death to those manning the towers.
“First wave, go.”
As elves swarmed out of the dark to scale the walls, she pushed power against the gates. She felt the locks give, turned to meet her father’s eyes. “Gates down. Second wave, go.”
And she flew up on Laoch, dived toward the base. As her forces poured toward the gates, she called for the third wave. Faeries swooped toward the prison, the slave quarters.
No alarm sounded—not yet—as she touched down. A team of elves surged toward the HQ and communications. Shifters streaked toward the armory. Since she hoped to save the fuel tanks rather than destroy them, she ringed them in cold fire.
As the first shouts sounded, the first clash of battle rang, the first bullets flew, she drew her sword, pivoted on Laoch. She rode toward the enemy charge, sword singing, striking, her blood as cold as the fire she’d conjured.
Screams ripped the air. As bullets struck her shield, she flung out power to engulf guns in flame. Each one rendered useless was one less that could be used against her people.
She heard the raging, rapid report of automatic fire, rode straight toward it and the man who sprayed the air with bullets. Even as he swung toward her, Laoch impaled him.
She heard the screams of women, the shrieks of children as faeries risked their lives to lift them to safety. She heard the moans of the wounded, leaped off Laoch to strike down an enemy before he could slice the throat of one of her people who lay bleeding.
She saw a shifter take a bullet in mid leap, fought her way to him as she mind-spoke to Travis.
We need more medical transport.
Working on it.
Work faster.
She raced toward more gunfire, a barrage of it, coming from one of the fortified buildings. Bullets pinged off her shield as she pushed her way toward it. With a sweep of power she took down the door, then rose up as she once had as a child in a faerie glade.
But this time she rose up with a flaming sword, shot a stream of fire into the sniper’s nest. She flipped back through the air as Mick had taught her, landed. Five came at her at once.
She took the first out with a sweep of her sword at his legs before she leaped up. Sent another flying back with a vicious strike of her shield. She blocked a sword, spun, pumped up and back to kick out with both feet.
Blows landed, but she’d been trained to fight with pain. She struck back a sword, danced away from the swipe of a knife. With a slash of her blade, she cleaved the arm from one, and with his screams ringing in her ears, drove the point of her sword through the heart of the other.
Through the stench, the smoke, the screams, they fought. Bodies, so many bodies, littered the ground. She pushed away any thought of the carnage and the cost because she felt, she knew the tide had turned hard in their favor.
Some of the enemy ran for the gates, deserting the field. They would meet another line, she thought, be given the choice to surrender.
All prisoners and slaves s
ecured, Travis said in her mind.
She caught an arrow in her shield inches from her heart, drew it out, flung it with a whip of power at the bowman.
Colin charged up to her. “We’ve got fifty secured in the prison. A few deserters got through, but we’ve got about a dozen of them. They’re done.”
Once again her shield blocked an arrow, this one before it cut her brother down. “Not quite.”
“Just mop-up now.”
Even as he grinned, she felt it.
“Get behind me.”
“Bullshit on that.”
“Don’t argue.”
She swung around to face the dark.
He stood tall, well over six feet. He dressed in black, and the air around him rippled with it. He flung a bolt of lightning toward her, easily blocked.
And he smiled.
She saw him, clearly, pouring the blood of the sacrificed onto the ground, burning the black fire, chanting the foul words to create the moat.
“These are nothing.” He spread his arms to take in the fallen. “Tools and dupes to be used and discarded.”
An arrow sang out, dropping with a hit that rippled air. He bent to retrieve it, glanced up at where Tonia stood on a rooftop. He shot it back at her with a strike of his arm.
Fallon swept out with her own power, broke it to pieces.
He laughed.
“She knew you’d come, would have to come to try to save these pitiful creatures. She knew you’d bleed for them. Your cousin sends her best.”
He flung out power that rattled her bones when it struck her shield.
“Get clear,” she ordered Colin.
“I’m not leaving you to—”
“Get clear. And mop the hell up. That’s an order.”
The brother in him nearly snapped back, but the soldier obeyed orders.
“You’re what she sent?” Fallon kept her tone mildly interested.
“I am Raoul, the Black Wizard. I am bound to Petra by blood, imbued with powers dark and glorious by what lives in her. I am the slayer of The One, in her name.”
“Raoul, the Black Wizard?” Now she added contempt. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Burn, burn, burn.” He circled his hands as he shouted the spell. “Now the fires and hungers of hell.”