by Nora Roberts
Hours every day centered on combat training where they fought dozens of Mallick’s ghosts. If they defeated one, he sent three more, sent darker ones, more vicious ones.
Every night they nursed bruises, rattled bones, sprains, wrenched joints.
“They can’t go into this weakened and exhausted,” Lana argued.
Mallick watched as Fallon fought five at once, as Duncan pushed back the sweeping flame of a ghost dragon, as Tonia leaped off the back of an enemy to shoot for the eye. And when her arrow went wide as the slashing tail struck her, the force sent her tumbling to the ground.
“They can’t win unless they’re prepared for whatever comes. We can’t know what form it might take, how many forms. They have to be ready.”
“It’s too much.” Lana pushed out power, destroyed two ghosts. “It’s enough. Enough!” Slicing her hands down, she shattered all of Mallick’s ghosts.
“All you see are warriors,” she snapped. “I see my daughter bleeding, the children of my friend bleeding. Again. When does it end? When will we stop watching our children bleed?”
Fallon pushed up from her knees, but Duncan was already walking to Lana. He put his arms around her.
“It’s all right. We’re all right. Nothing the old man can come up with is going to take us down. Nothing in Scotland’s going to take us down. We need you to believe that.”
Tears in her eyes, she eased back, stroked her hand over his cheek. “Look at your face,” she said, and healed raw bruises.
“Scary handsome, right?”
She stroked his other cheek. “You always were.”
“My mom could use some company. She’s pretty upset about all this, too.”
“You just want to get rid of me.”
“She’s scared. She and Hannah are both scared. They could use you. Especially if you could get Arlys and Fred and Rachel. You’re her circle, Lana. She needs her circle.”
“All right.” She sighed, stepped back. “I’ll get Fred, we’ll go into town.” She looked at Fallon. “Stop holding back your power. Use it.” She flashed away.
“I am using it,” Fallon muttered, wincing as she rubbed her throbbing shoulder. “Judiciously. It’s called tactics. Anyway, thanks,” she said to Duncan.
“No problem, and straight truth.”
“He’s right.” Tonia walked off the stiffness in her knee, in her hip. “Mom’s wrecked over this. Trying not to show it—so’s Hannah—but they’re wrecked.”
“In a couple of days, they won’t have to worry.” She looked back at Mallick. “Again.” And swung her sword to meet the first strike.
The night before her birthday, Fallon prepared herself. She bathed in candlelight in water infused with sage, rosemary, hyssop, to purify her body for the battle to come.
She drank a cup of faerie wine from grapes harvested during a blue moon, offered another to the mother goddess. She lit the candle Mallick had given her, set it in the window, in the moonlight, and dressed by the twin glows.
“For this I was born. This is the path I chose to take, of my own will. For this I opened the book.” She carried the Book of Spells to the candle, set it in that light. “For this I took up the sword and shield.”
She hooked on the shield, strapped on the sword.
“By the heart of the sire, the heart of the mother, the heart of the father, I will not return here until I have done what I was born to do. Should I fail, I ask your care for my family. I ask that someone else open this book, take up the sword and shield, and fight on.”
She hooked on her knife in the sheath Travis had made her so long before. Thinking of it, she got a pouch, added the painted tulip, the wind chimes Ethan and Colin had made her for that seminal birthday. A copy of The Wizard King with Max’s words inside, his photo on the back, the stone she’d taken from Laoch’s hoof that Mick had carved with her face. And the pink teddy bear.
Around her neck she wore the ring and medal—both worn by her fathers.
Talismans, she thought as she packed another bag with the tools of magick. Gifts given from the heart.
Duncan and Tonia packed their tools and weapons. Each performed their own private rituals and met outside their rooms.
“Ready?”
Tonia nodded. “Revved up and ready to go.” She glanced toward the stairs. “This part might be harder than Scotland.”
“Yeah. Let’s get it done.”
Katie and Hannah waited downstairs.
“I was thinking French toast for breakfast,” Duncan began.
“And bacon,” Tonia added. “Lots of bacon.”
Hannah gripped Katie’s hand tight. “I’ll even do the dishes.”
“Now we’re talking. We’ve got this, Mom.”
Katie held up her free hand to stop Duncan. “First, I have something for the three of you. Lana and Fred helped make them, so they’ve got magick from that, but what went into the making, I think that’s magick too.”
She squeezed Hannah’s hand before releasing it, then drew three small pendants on chains from her pocket. “I used the wedding ring your father gave me.”
“Oh, but, Mom—”
Katie shook her head at Tonia’s objection. “He would have loved his three children so much. And I used the earrings Austin gave me his last Christmas. He loved you so much, too. So these are from the three of us—magickal number—to the three of you.
“My babies. I’m so proud of all of you. Hannah. Dr. Parsoni,” she corrected.
Hannah took the offered pendant. “A caduceus. It’s beautiful. It means so much.”
“Duncan.”
He took the sword pendant, held her eyes as he slipped the chain over his head. “You’re the real warrior, Kathleen MacLeod Parsoni. Always have been, always will be.”
“Tonia.”
Tonia blinked at tears as she took the pendant of a bow with arrow already nocked. “You’re the glue, Mom. You’re the reason all of us are here.”
They surrounded her, her three children.
Fallon hoped to say good-bye at home, but her family—including Colin—insisted on going with her to the community gardens to meet Duncan and Tonia. So they rode to New Hope together, as they had years before.
She nudged Laoch over to Colin. “I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone. Could be a couple hours, could be days. It’d be good if you could hang around until I get back.”
She didn’t say if she got back, didn’t allow herself to think it.
“Arlington’s secure. I don’t have to be magickal to know where I’m needed.”
“Okay. How’s the arm?”
He bent it at the elbow, managed to bring it to about a forty-degree angle. “Give it a few more months, we’ll go some rounds.”
“You’d still lose.”
“Not unless you cheat.”
“Not a chance. Just like you’re still not president.”
“Given that up,” he said easily. “I’m thinking Supreme Global Commander. SGC Swift.”
“You would.” Oddly comforted, she rode into New Hope where the gardens were lit with lanterns, faerie lights, streams and beams of moonlight.
And where hundreds upon hundreds waited.
“I didn’t expect . . .”
“Katie organized it,” Lana told her. “And with your father, your brothers, Mallick, and some good friends, we refined it.”
“Please tell me I don’t have to make a speech.”
“Not necessary.”
No cheers rang out, but people moved back so she could ride through to where Duncan and Tonia waited.
When she dismounted, Lana embraced her one last time. “Your light changed me. All I have goes with you tonight.”
When she stepped back to stand with Mallick, Simon hugged her. “Come back to me, baby. Fight strong, kick ass, and come home.”
Before she could speak, Mallick and her mother stepped forward. They lifted their hands, and she felt their power pulse and merge. From it, a flame rose, straight as a spear.
“This fire burns until the children of the Tuatha de Danann return. When their battle is won, this flame will be cast in stone, a flame eternal to symbolize the light.”
People formed circles, the New Hope Originals innermost, those familiar faces illuminated by the fire’s light, others spiraling out behind them, ring after ring.
“This is New Hope,” Fallon decreed. “This is the center. This is why we can do this. Why we will.”
Circle after circle, she thought. Unity and faith.
With Taibhse settling on Laoch’s saddle, Faol Ban by her side, she joined hands with Duncan and Tonia.
Another circle, forged in blood, in trust, in purpose.
She felt the clock ticking toward midnight, closed her eyes. And when that moment struck, opened them.
As one they flashed from New Hope, and straight into the storm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lightning cracked, red and black, pounding the ground with hammer strikes, splitting the already blazing fields with fissures that belched smoke. The smoke rode whirling cyclones skyward to smother the moon and stars so the night drowned in black.
Crows streamed and screamed through it.
Duncan shoved a ball of light against the dark, then another, illuminating the stones and its undulating center.
“Looks like they’re expecting us.”
“Cast the circle!” Fallon shouted and, pointing her sword north, called the gods.
They set candle and cauldron, lit the flame, rang the bell, said the words. Defiant, releasing her anger, Fallon deflected bolts of lightning, power against power.
“On this hour of my birth, we challenge the evil that walks the earth. I am The One, born of power and light, destined by blood and choice to lead this fight.”
“We,” Duncan continued, “sister and brother who shared a womb, join with The One to build your tomb. With blood and power the gods foretell, we send dark’s creatures back to hell.”
“We, children of the Tuatha de Danann, are the three,” Tonia shouted. “And here and now accept our destiny. This place, this time, this night, we pledge all we are to the light.”
“Blood joins blood,” they said together as Fallon scored their palms. “Light joins light. Power joins power.”
As they joined hands, the shock of merging snapped light from their palms. As the surge rocked them, swept through them, they gripped tighter.
“Hold on!” Duncan pitched his voice above the gale. “It’s working.”
The force of the wind nearly buckled Fallon’s knees. She watched it snatch the band from Tonia’s hair like angry fingers so the wild curls flew free.
And the undulating earth in the circle of stones began to open, to reveal the maw beneath.
“Finish it!” With the storm raging around them, Fallon drew in her breath.
“Now rise magicks, rise, rise, and strike the creature of death, of lies. Show us the path to find him, and into the pit we drive him and forever our blood will bind him. Here is the vow of the three. As we will, so mote it be.”
The leading edge of the wind died, but what remained blew raw as winter. Inside the stones, the ground held still, and open.
“Is it enough?” Tonia wondered.
“It’ll have to be.” Fallon gestured to a thin stream of light leading into the woods. “We have the path.”
“And we’ve got company,” Tonia added, breaking the connection to nock an arrow.
Duncan enflamed his sword as dozens of Dark Uncanny surged from the woods. “We’re going to need a bigger circle.”
Energized, even eager, Tonia laughed. “Points for you,” she said and let the first arrow fly.
“Keep clear of the pit.” Fallon punched out power, took out three with one swipe. “They waited until we opened it. They want to push us back, into it.”
She leaped on Laoch, shot up to attack from the air.
“I’ll take the left flank,” Duncan told Tonia. “You get the right.”
“Deal.” She dropped and rolled under a fireball, shot a light-soaked arrow.
With a sweep of his sword, Duncan swatted bolts back into the enemy, pivoted to meet the pulsing black blade of another. Sensing movement behind him, he swung to kick out. Faol Ban leaped for the throat of a shifted panther and saved him the trouble.
Fallon’s fire and fury rocked the earth, cut swaths through oncoming power as Taibhse tore through the crows, sent them smoking, screaming into the pit below.
She dived, leaped off. “Take him up,” she shouted to Tonia, then striking, cleaving, burning, moved in to fight back-to-back with Duncan.
“They’re a distraction.” Despite the cold, sweat ran down his face. “A damn good one, but a distraction. They want to drive us into the pit? We drive them.”
She nodded, reached back to grip his hand. “Push!”
It poured out in a kind of rage, hot, savage, strong.
In the screams that followed, the howl of shifters, the flaming blur of elves, they battered them back, back. But worse, the sounds that came, no longer human, as they fell, tumbled, spilled into the pit, tore through the shrieking wind.
A handful broke off, ran.
“If they reach the village,” Fallon began.
“I’ve got this.” Astride Laoch, Tonia circled. “Go, go. I’ll take care of this and be right behind you.”
“She can handle it.” Duncan looked at Fallon. “Ready?”
Together, they charged into the dead woods.
Shadows loomed, shifted. Some breathed, and that breath held death. They felt it, that beat, beat, beat of the dark heart. The pulse of the source.
The light, called by the spell, lay thin and winding.
“It knew it would come to this night.” With sword and shield, Fallon followed the light. “It’s always known. Maybe all of it, all the blood, the battles, the death and misery, was another distraction. Because this is what it’s waited for.”
You’re what it’s waited for, Duncan thought, and stayed close.
The ice-slicked, skeletal trees seemed to slink over the ground as if to block the path. Jagged fingers of branches jabbed out. Duncan sliced one aside with his sword, heard a quick, high-pitched shriek as the severed limb bled black.
“That’s fucking creepy.”
“Enough. Enough.” Sheathing her sword, Fallon used her hands to slice the air. “Clear.”
Those ice-coated trees went still, leaving the path open.
“Distractions,” she repeated.
“Yeah. It’s leading to where we found the girl, the altar.”
“It wants us there. It thinks it wins. It wants us there. Can you feel it? Can you hear it?”
She gripped his hand. “Now I can,” he answered as that pull, that tug nipped inside him like sharp fingers, as the voice echoed softly inside his head.
A woman’s voice, a lover’s. Promising, promising.
They moved on. The pulse beat, faster, louder, a voice of its own that shook inside the belly, that rumbled underfoot. The path widened, then spread to another circle of stones, and the smooth slab of rock resting on them.
On it, the inverted pentagram pulsed red.
“A new dance, a new slab. Petra’s work,” Duncan noted. But not only hers, he said in Fallon’s mind.
Not only hers, she answered. But she’s here. She’s close.
Now, Fallon thought, and once again reached for her sword. At the roar, she looked up, saw the wave of fire, heard the wild laugh.
“And here she is now.” The elation that spurted through Duncan died on sudden, sickening alarm. “Oh, Christ, Tonia.”
She fell from the sky already bleeding, the arm of her jacket smoldering. She struck the side of the altar, tumbled bonelessly off to land at his feet.
“No, goddamn it. No.” Dropping down, Duncan swiped a hand over the jacket to stop the burning, then ran them over his sister to find the wounds.
Fallon leaped forward, threw her shield over them to block a
stream of fire.
“There’s too much. I can’t find it all. We need to get her back to New Hope.”
“No.” Tonia found his hand, struggled to close hers over it. “It has to be the three of us. Help me up.”
“You’ve got internal injuries. There’s so much broken. Fallon, help me.”
“Let me see. Let me try.” Her arm trembled holding the shield against the steady barrage of fire, but she closed her hand over Duncan’s, over Tonia’s, searched.
Blinding pain, unspeakable pain, and a light dimming.
“Help me.” Her voice weak, her face pale as the smothered moon, Tonia closed her eyes. “We have to finish this.”
__________
In New Hope, the tower of light shivered, seemed to shrink. In the circle with her mother, Hannah fell to her knees. Around her neck the pendant symbolizing her power glowed.
“Baby.” Katie dropped down beside her. “What—”
“Tonia. She needs me. They need me.” She pushed up, grabbed the medical bag she’d set on the ground for the return. “Tonia. She’s hurt. I can feel . . .” She closed her hand around the pendant. “I have to go. Lana, take me.”
“You’re not prepared. I’ll go, bring her back.”
“I have to go.” Hannah held out the glowing pendant, then took Lana’s hand. “She’s my sister. I was chosen, too.” She looked at her mother. “I was chosen, too,” she repeated. “Hurry. She’s hurt.”
When Lana took her hand, Simon stepped forward.
“I can’t. I can’t take both of you, two unprepared non-magickals.”
He nodded, forced himself to step back again. “Bring our girl home. Bring them all home.”
“I love you.” She looked at Katie, her heart in her eyes. “All I have to protect yours. I swear it. All I have.”
Gathering Hannah close, she flashed.
“My babies.” Katie pressed her hands to her mouth, all but fell into Arlys’s arms. “My babies.”
“You have light,” Mallick called out. “You have a mother’s light and love. Send it!” He drove his own light into the fire. “All here, you have light, you have faith, you have love. Send it.”
Tears still falling, Katie straightened, reached for Jonah’s hand, for Rachel’s. “You helped me bring them, all three of them, into the world. Help me bring them home.”