by Nora Roberts
With all of that, it wasn’t hard to follow Lana’s rule of no war talk during dinner. Instead, they talked of the plans for expanding the clinic, Ethan’s addition of a veterinary clinic, Hannah’s upcoming exams. And the practical joke some of the recruits had tried—and failed—to pull on Mallick.
“They figured they’d catch Mallick in his shower,” Duncan relayed, “and one of the magickals would flip the water to ice-cold.”
“Some objected to training outdoors in the recent ice storm,” Mallick explained.
“Wouldn’t bother you.” Relaxed, Fallon wagged her fork. “Even when I got an actual bathroom—after a year—Mallick still used the stream, which equaled an ice bath from October to May.”
“Refreshing.” Mallick lifted his wine.
“They’d hoped for shouts and curses, got nothing,” Travis said between bites. “But that’s not the best part. When the recruits hit the showers after training, turned on the water, it wasn’t just water that came out.”
“Snakes,” Duncan said with a grin. “You can bet there were shouts then. Screams, shrieks, pandemonium. We ran in there—Travis and I—figuring we were under attack.”
“And holy shit! Wet, naked recruits—from both sides—running around, skinny little snakes slithering all over the place. And this guy?” Travis jerked a thumb at Mallick. “He just sort of glides in, Mr. Dignity, poofs the snakes, then glides out again. Never says a word.”
“I believe they understood without any.”
“I like snakes,” Ethan said cheerfully. “Dad doesn’t.”
“They should have feet like everybody else.” Simon shot a smile at Mallick. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”
“I’d tolerate a great deal in exchange for an invitation to a meal such as this.”
“And we haven’t even gotten to dessert.”
When they did, Lana lifted the ban on war talk.
“I’d like to see the cowboys,” Ethan mused. “And the buffalo, the mustangs.”
“They’re pretty magnificent,” Fallon confirmed. “I asked Meda to go back, to help get them battle-ready. She agreed.”
“That’s a good choice,” Simon decided. “The nomads have people who can work with the communities in the Midwest, but you should think about making an appearance there. Let them see you.”
“All right. In the next few days.”
“I’ve got a tidbit I haven’t had a chance to pass on.” With enthusiasm Travis dug into his tart. “When Meda and I transferred the prisoners to Hatteras, I poked them a little more. Easy reads,” he added. “White was at their base before the quake. Just a couple days before.”
“White, in California?” With a frown, Fallon nudged her tart aside. “We don’t have any intel putting him in California.”
“Now you do. You remember the younger one?”
“Wilber. The one you punched in the face. Twice.”
“Yeah, that one. He’s hoping White will come save him—all of them—lead them to their righteous victory. He kept thinking how it was the biggest day of his life when he heard White, in person, preach at the base in California. The dude’s a true believer. It’s not even so much he sees White as what you’d call a conduit to this asshole god of vengeance and bigotry he worships. More like White is his asshole god. That’s who he’s praying to anyway, to come bust him out so he can kill you personally for White. It’s what he imagines doing to you before he kills you that earned him a punch in the face. Twice.”
“He has to be flashing.” Since Travis had already told him what the man had thought about Fallon—and it wasn’t the sort of thing you spoke about at dinner—Duncan moved on. “No way he could get all the way to California otherwise without our getting some word on it.”
“He’s been known to work with DUs before. How does he, how do his followers justify that?” Fallon wondered.
“Ends, means,” Simon answered. “The man’s been preaching his ugly racism and twisted god for more than twenty years. Plenty did the same before him, before the Doom. He’s just taken it to a new level.”
“We’re cutting into his numbers, and after New York, we’ll hunt him down. He can join Hargrove in prison. We cut off the head of the snake.”
“There is always another snake,” Mallick said.
“One at a time.” Deliberately, she pulled the tart back, took a bite. “He’s poisoned the world long enough.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Winter raged on, week by week with brutal cold, icy winds, long nights with bulging clouds, pregnant with snow, that smothered the sun, the moon and stars. No hopeful February thaw broke the bitter so the world seemed cased inside a snow globe constantly shaken.
Fallon considered waiting another week, two weeks, to launch the attack on New York. Indeed, some she respected advised just that.
She went out alone, cast the circle, stood inside it under the blank sky and called the gods.
“Fill me, gods of peace, gods of war, into me your wisdom pour. For this world you’ve placed in my hands, I accept all your commands. To help me guide this world to light, open the curtain to my sight. This I ask with humility, for as you wish, so mote it be.”
She let the vision come.
The once great city burned and smoked, its flames and ash whirling through the wild wind of a blizzard. Red lightning streaked over the black sky, staining it like blood blooming on a dingy cloth. The battle, brutal and bitter as the night, raged below the murdered sky with a roaring as vicious as the gale. Men and women fought on the streets with filthy snow heaped like mountains. Rats, toothy and fat, scurried under those streets to feast on the dead and dying piled in tunnels. Dogs, feral as the rats, prowled and snapped. Inside buildings or the rubble of them that formed caves, the very young and very old huddled in terror. Balls of fire exploded, turning men into shrieking torches.
Overhead, she saw the sweep of a black dragon. For an instant his eyes, red against the black, met hers. He turned his sinuous body, graceful as a swan. And breathed his killing fire.
On his back, Petra rode with her hair streaming, her face exultant. Her laugh, savage bells, rang and rang and rang.
The curtain closed. She had her answer.
Fallon waited another moment, letting the vision fade, then closed the circle. Duncan stood, wind streaming through his hair, just outside it.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“You were a little occupied. I couldn’t sleep, then wake-dreamed of you standing here. I saw what you saw.”
“We can’t wait.”
“No. But I was never on the side of waiting.”
“No, you weren’t. We attack as planned, when we planned. Midnight tomorrow.” With her eyes gray as the smoke, fierce as the battle, she held out a hand. “Let’s take tonight.”
At midnight, in the raw whip of February, Fallon sat astride Laoch, Taibhse on her arm, Faol Ban beside her. Troops stood or mounted, as did those in Arlington, on The Beach, in forests, on plains, in fields, on rocky rises.
She looked at her mother and Ethan, who’d stay behind for now. Healers and support would be needed in waves, just as fresh troops would be needed.
She knew her mother’s thoughts: Come home safe. Bring your father, your brothers home safe.
But Lana said, “Fight well, fight strong.”
She saw Arlys gripping Bill Anderson’s hand. She wouldn’t risk the chronicler or the elder on this launch. Fred, not only with her brood but the children of others who stood ready to fight, sent a smile full of faith toward Eddie.
Katie moved to Lana so the women slid arms around each other’s waists. Hannah and Jonah, she knew, waited at the clinic, beside a mobile with a team for the signal.
It was time to give it.
She drew her sword, cast her mind to every leader in every base. “Fight well,” she said as her mother had. “Fight strong.”
Lifting her sword to the sky, she flashed. Thousands flashed with her.
Lightning
exploded in the sky. The spires that still stood bled red in its savage light. Smoke choked the frigid air, spewing up from fresh fires whose heat churned the snow into ash-black sludge. Buildings along the wide avenue that bisected the city into east and west huddled battered and broken where wild laughter echoed.
A rumble of engines, the blast of explosions, tortured screams ripped from the west. As planned, her troops fanned out along the grid of what had been Midtown.
A small army of Raiders on snowmobiles, in burly trucks roared in.
You first, Fallon thought, and charged.
Duncan veered his horse left as she took out the lead rider with one killing slash and sent the rumbling vehicle and its pillion rider tumbling through the air.
He fought his way to the first truck, smashing power at the windshield, following it with flame. While the driver and his companions screamed, he surged through the trampled snow to the back of the truck, broke the locks to free the half a dozen people locked inside.
“Get clear!” he shouted as the crack of gunfire, the whiz of arrows in flight ripped through the city’s canyons.
A girl of about sixteen, blood running down her face, leaped out. “Screw that.” She grabbed for a charred piece of wood and, wielding it like a club, rushed into the fight.
He felt the first slap of power whip toward him, whirled to meet it with his own. As those magicks, dark and light, clashed, the air bloomed bloody red. He pushed into it, sword flaming, power pulsing.
Dealing with a group of Raiders, he knew, was only the beginning. As he took the next truck, burst the doors open so prisoners tumbled free, black lightning rained from the sky. With it came a new surge of power on dark wings.
He saw the face, contorted with glee, the eyes, black, piercing. Even as he braced, sword and power ready, an arrow winged out, struck the enemy in the heart. The wind tore through the great, edgy wings, tattering them as power died. Duncan looked toward Tonia when the body fell into the soot-stained snow.
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I did.” Guiding her horse with her knees—she’d been one of Meda’s top students—Tonia nocked another arrow. “Ready?”
“For this? All my life.”
Together, they led their brigade west.
As Duncan and Tonia moved west, Simon east, Fallon south, block by brutal block, Colin fought in Queens, Mallick in Brooklyn. By boat, on foot, on horseback, Mick’s troops surged on lower Manhattan from the east, Flynn poured his in from the west.
War cries ringing, resistance fighters teemed into the streets, climbed over rubble, many armed with nothing more than clubs or fists. While crows screamed, while magicks clashed as violent as swords, they stormed the city held by the dark for a generation.
Faeries swooped through fire and smoke to fly wounded out of the fray, to lift children, the elderly out of the war zone. Some struck down had to be taken out through lightning strikes, through sudden, shocking explosions.
Hour by hour, foot by agonizing foot, they drove the enemy back. When they lost ground, lost men, they regrouped, pushed on.
At first light, weak, dull, smeared with smoke, Fallon drew her exhausted troops back, called in fresh.
The first strike in the battle of New York raged for fourteen hours with a toll of five hundred dead or wounded. For the price they regained the heart of the city, several sectors on its fringes.
Fallon ordered a triage set up for wounded, a shelter for the horses, guards posted to hold the lines they’d drawn. Troops from the first wave were billeted, fed, ordered to rest.
She stood outside a building in that heart and, curious, used the sleeve of her already filthy jacket to wipe at soot.
Magickal symbols, she noted. Protective symbols, still beating, still carrying light. She moved to glass doors, waved a hand, and when they opened, walked inside.
Large, echoing, marble and gilt dulled with time, but undamaged. Many doors—elevators, she corrected. Photos of people, smiling through layers of dust, lined the walls. Some had fallen—vibrated off from explosions, she imagined.
She opened herself, searched, searched, but could find no scent, no taste, no remnants of dark. So here, she thought, she’d make her HQ.
She turned to Travis. Like her, he was soaked with blood, grime, wet from the snow. But, and she thanked the gods, unharmed.
“This’ll work. It’s protected, and whatever protected it was strong enough to hold that light all these years. We can billet more troops here, and wounded who haven’t been transported or treated.”
She rubbed at the dirt on her face, managed to make it worse. “We need to send elves to the other commanders, get updated sitreps.”
“You need sleep. Hey, me, too.”
“As soon as we’re set up. We need to hold the ground we took today. And I need, as soon as possible, a list of the dead, a list of the wounded. I need to talk to the resistance fighters we picked up today. We need to coordinate.”
She squeezed the back of her neck, tried to roll the worst of the ache out of her shoulders. Her eyes stung so each blink felt like a swipe of sandpaper. So much to do now, right now, she thought, with this breath between the fight between life and death.
“POWs need to be transported.”
Travis pulled off a wool cap, dragged a hand through his filthy hair. “I don’t know if we’ve got any yet.”
“When and if. We need a team to handle the bodies. Ours, theirs. Any minors, any too old, sick, or unwilling to fight should be taken to safety.”
“They’re already on that. You chose those teams before we left New Hope, so they’re already on it.”
“Good. Travis, I need to get word to New Hope, I need to be sure, then send word back that Dad and Colin are alive, Duncan and Tonia, Eddie and Will, and—”
“I know. I’ll send some elves out. What was this place?” His eyes, red-rimmed like hers, scanned the space.
“I’m not sure, I need to check the old maps and find out. Because it was important enough to earn strong protection. I’m going to go through it, find the best place for a kind of command center.”
“You’re sure it’s clear. I don’t feel anything, but—”
“It’s clear.”
He took her at her word. “Then I’ll find you once I’ve got the reports.”
She searched out a stairway, empty and echoing with her boot-steps as she walked up. She found offices, most with desks, some with other furniture. Desks separated with partitions in big open spaces.
Dead plants, framed photos coated with dust, computers Chuck might revive, strange little notes, their edges curled, the paper crisp as bacon.
Bagels for 8:00
Table read 1/3
Mike (maybe) 212-555-1021
Another echoing area had rows of seats, rows and rows, and a kind of stage, big lights overhead, a large . . . camera?
A . . . performance space? she wondered. A theater? A studio?
She’d need someone who’d lived through the Doom to study it.
On another level, she found more desks—no partitions—the remnants of computers—destroyed—more lights, another camera, screens like Chuck had in his basement. Monitors.
She wandered through, then into a large office space—big desk, she noted. It would serve well. The dirt and soot lay so thick on the big window she couldn’t see through it. So she laid her hands on the glass until it cleared.
She could see fires still burning, a large blaze to the east, smaller spurts to the west and south. Below, troops carried the dead through another snowfall that swirled in high winds.
Others transported supplies to another building. Elves blurred by. Archers held positions on roofs, or through the broken windows on high floors.
“Yes, this’ll work,” she murmured.
She shrugged off the saddlebag on her shoulder to a sofa. Sent up plumes of dust. They’d clean, she thought. Clear away the dust, the grime, the spiderwebs. But for now she waved her hand to clean the desk, th
e desk chair. She pulled out her maps, sat.
She spread out the newest one to mark the progress of the first strike. Then, weary, laid her head on the desk.
She’d close her eyes for a minute, just a minute.
She fell asleep instantly, and dreamed of war.
Duncan found her there, set the New Hope version of MREs down on the desk, dragged a blanket out of her saddlebag to throw over her shoulders. Then, without bothering to clean it off, he stretched out on the dirty couch to grab some sleep for himself.
He woke to the smell of coffee and hot food, blinked his eyes open to see Fallon awake at the desk. She spooned in soup while she watched him.
“How could you sleep on that filthy couch?”
“It’s no dirtier than I am.”
As he sat up, she held her hand over the second MRE to heat it.
“How can you sleep sitting?” he wondered, and got up to grab the food. “Your dad and Colin are fine,” he began.
“I know. Travis told me.” She tapped her head. “Tonia, Mick, Mallick, all of them, holding their own, holding the line. It’ll be dark soon. The troops in the first wave should be rested and ready.”
“We took them by surprise, the enemy, with the first strike.” He thought the soup the most excellent ever made in the history of soup. “They’ll be ready now, too. We got to Times Square. It doesn’t look like the DVDs or books now, but we got there, and we’re holding it. What I hear is Mallick’s forces sent the PWs running to hell. But there’s a pack of shifters, DUs, giving them some grief.”
He ran through what he knew, and Fallon adjusted her map accordingly. “We’ll send more shifters to Mallick, have the merpeople cut off the PWs’ escape route by water. We’re going to need to take the tunnels, but for now, we can close them off. I still need to go over the old maps. There are landmarks still standing, and we can use them. Taking the city’s more important than preserving specific sites, but whatever we can preserve will matter later. Especially to those who lived through the Doom.”
“It still beats,” he said as he ate. “Not like D.C.”
“Yes, it still beats. And this place mattered,” she added. “Enough to cloak it in protection strong enough to hold back the DUs, the military, the crazies.”