by Nora Roberts
“I know that, Fallon. I’ve known this was coming since he started training for it back at the farm. What I don’t know, what I don’t understand is why you talked to your father about this, to Will, to Chuck, to everyone, it seems, but me.”
“I only talked to Dad, seriously about Arlington, last night after I’d worked on the details. I asked him not to say anything until I’d talked to—”
“Everyone else.”
“Mom.” Fallon put down the kitchen tool, turned. “I needed to talk to Travis, to Tonia about the recruits, get a sense if we could use any of them, or if any of them were ready to … move up if we lost people on this mission.”
“And still, you didn’t—”
“Wait, please.”
A bee buzzed in, hovered over the crackers. Fallon merely gave it a warning look to send it zipping away.
“I came back home after I’d talked to them, had a look for myself. I knew you had a meeting with Arlys and Katie and Fred about establishing permanent homes for the new rescues. I wanted to talk to all four of you about Arlington, but you were having a little fun. The four of you were just having a little fun, and I didn’t want to ruin it.”
Lana stopped what she was doing, turned to Fallon. “I’m sorry. I should’ve known better.”
“You looked so happy, all of you, buzzed on wine and friendship. I really wanted you to have that. I wanted some of it, too. I took it with you.”
“You did.” Lana drew her in. “I’m glad you did, and I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. All this is hard and ugly, and … I thought of the four of you when I left. I thought of all you’ve done, what you faced, overcame, what you’ve made. Your circle—not quite the full one, as Rachel and Kim couldn’t be there—they’re all heroes to me.”
“One day.” Lana brushed a hand through Fallon’s hair. “One day my circle and yours are going to get buzzed on wine and friendship and talk about men and sex.”
“I hope I have some experience with the last two by then so I can add to the conversation.”
“You will. But tonight, we’ll do what we have to do.”
“Starting with food.”
Lana laughed. “Always.”
* * *
So on a sultry summer night with the younger children with sitters or older siblings, the New Hope Originals gathered on the patio. Members of the next generation gathered with them for food and drink, and talk of war.
Across the field, green with summer, cows lowed as the first stars began to blink awake. Growing fuzzy again after their shearing, sheep dotted the gently rolling hills like small clouds. In the coop chickens hummed as they bedded down.
She saw Faol Ban slide like white smoke through the trees beyond where Taibhse sat wise and silent on a branch. Over the western hills, the sun slowly simmered its way down toward the rounded peaks.
She watched their Jem and Scout romp with Eddie’s dog Hobo while old Joe, ever faithful, snoozed at his feet.
Not like her mother’s little private party that afternoon, she thought, but still a circle of friends.
“I should start by telling you I spoke with Mallick and with Thomas.”
“By radio?” Katie asked.
“No, I flashed. I wanted to speak face-to-face.”
“Did you see Duncan?”
“No, sorry. He was out on maneuvers. I laid it out for both of them, and they agree it can be done. They’ll work on tactics, logistics, do the scouting, and we’ll continue to coordinate. Not by radio or computer,” she added. “I know Chuck’s got those covered, and we’ve added shields. But if any of our communications leak, well, it all goes to hell.”
“Not insulted.” Chuck popped a fat strawberry in his mouth. He wore sandals of braided rope with soles made from strips of old tires. “They’ve got some good hackers,” he added. “I’m better, but they’ve got some good ones. I’ll keep monitoring all three bases. Can’t get much direct out of Arlington itself, but I got a clear line to the others, and it leads back. Any changes, champ, you’ll hear about it.”
“And we’ll adjust to them,” Fallon confirmed. “Right up until we strike. Will and I worked out the broad strokes, and some of the finer ones earlier. To start.”
She held up her hands, drew the power up, out as she spread her hands over the air.
The map she’d drawn appeared, standing as if pinned to a wall.
“Excellent,” Eddie said, and crunched into a cracker.
“Tonia and I worked on it. Target bases in red, ours in blue. I’ll have more detailed maps after the targets are scouted.”
“What’s the green?” Flynn asked. No sandals for him, Fallon noted, but sturdy boots he likely made himself.
“Locations where we can potentially relocate the rescues. We’re about at capacity in New Hope, considering housing, supplies, medical. And we need to start establishing bases farther south, west, north. Colin, you and Dad need to pull out some of our experienced troops, ask for volunteers to relocate. We’ll also need the town council to talk to skilled, experienced people—what we can spare—to help with that. Tonia and I will speak to some of the rescues, and Hannah, Rachel, Jonah need to work out who we can spare with medical experience, and if we can spare any supplies. If we can’t, we’ll scavenge as we go.”
She turned back to the map. “The group in Utah taken by the PWs had settled in Nebraska—farming community, and from what we’ve gathered, poor security and defense. We can get them back to Nebraska, but we’ll establish a base.”
“It’s a long way,” Rachel chimed in. She held a glass of wine, but had yet to drink. At her feet sat a small medical kit the doctor carried everywhere.
“We can rotate volunteers, but we need a solid contingent to build and secure not just a community, but a base, one that can defend itself against PWs, Raiders, and the government forces still hunting magickals. We need the same in South Carolina. There’s a forest here.” She gestured to the map. “And access to the ocean. We can set up to mine salt.”
“Roads have to be cleared.” Arlys paused in her note taking, frowned at the map.
“And repaired,” Poe added. “Likely bridges, too. You need water, power, sewer or septic—your basics.”
“Fuel,” Kim put in, “lumber, tools.”
“We transport what we can, scavenge. We build. There should be plenty of game in both locations, and it’s good farmland in the west. We’d clear for farmland, if necessary, in the south. We plan for this, or taking the targets, getting people out … we’ve got nowhere to put them safely. And we need to start adding locations. Once we have these bases, they can scout, scavenge, rescue where we haven’t.”
“You’re talking about doing a lot in a really short time.” Will adjusted the cap Fallon knew his daughter had made in crafting class. Across the forest green it read LAWMAN in precisely embroidered white.
“I know. The new bases would be rudimentary, initially, but we’d claim our ground, then build. Just the way you, all of you, did right here. We need more like you. We have to find more like you, more people like my father, like Thomas, Troy, and others my family and I found on the way here. You don’t know Thomas or Troy or those others yet, but they built communities, societies, and they’ll fight to protect them because, like you, they know survival comes first, but it isn’t enough.”
“We don’t know the world you knew.” Tonia got to her feet. “We only know it through books, DVDs, what you tell us. We were babies, or not even born in those first years where every day was life-and-death, when everything you knew was gone. But we know this world, what it takes to live in it.”
“We’ve seen what you’ve done.” Now Travis got to his feet. “At the farm, Dad, the cooperative, the village back home. Here in New Hope, and all the places we found people fighting to build a life. Here we are sitting together, feeling safe on a really nice night with Eddie’s farm over there and the barracks over there. You can’t have one,” he said, gesturing toward the farm, “wi
thout the other,” and to the barracks.
“Like Tonia said,” he continued, “we know this world and what it takes to live in it, because you gave it to us, you fought for it, built it, and taught us how to live in it. But the world goes beyond the farm back home, New Hope, and the places from here to there. If we don’t take it for the light, they’ll take it for the dark.”
“They’re right.” Hannah let out a sigh. “Sometimes I imagine what it would be like if New Hope was the world. If this was all there was. Our homes, our neighbors, working at the clinic, learning to be a doctor, spending time with friends, music in the gardens on a night like this. Then I remember another night like this in the gardens. I remember when someone I thought was a friend tore through our home. I think of Denzel and Carlee and everyone she killed. I think of what we do, Rachel, Jonah, in the clinic after a mission. You taught me what to do.
“I don’t have magick like Fallon, Tonia, Travis. I’m not a soldier like Colin. But I know what to do, and what needs to be done, because you all taught me.”
“Basically,” Colin said after a pause, “we’re saying it’s time we kicked some ass.”
That got a laugh, reluctant in some corners, but a laugh.
“You’re not wrong,” Fallon told him. “Ass kicking’s on the list. So’s rescuing, training, staking claims, building, expanding.”
“Okay.” Katie lifted her hands in what struck as a gesture of surrender. Her eyes, Duncan’s eyes, Fallon thought, scanned the group. “First I’m going to say I’m proud of all of you. Next, I’m going to say it sounds like you’re telling us it’s time to pass the torch.”
“No. I don’t want you to pass the torch,” Fallon said quickly. “I hope like hell you won’t pass it.”
“But we need more torches,” Simon finished, and had her releasing a relieved breath.
“Yes. We need more torches. They bring the light.”
“The light will grow,” Lana said.
Fallon felt the vision take her mother even as it took her. “From the source to The One and beyond.” It rose in Fallon, spread with the words she spoke. “The end is done, the beginning begun. The five links joined, for good or ill.”
“The dark will come, with blood and death, in madness and guile. It lives to extinguish the light. On a dark beast it rides to bring grief and loss. You will weep, daughter, child of the Tuatha de Danann, and the dark will drink your tears. You will despair, and the dark will feed on your heart. This is your mother’s sorrow.”
“Light against dark, life against death, blood against blood. We will rise up, rise up, rise up, and when the storm passes, if the light holds, five will stand together.”
“The five links joined,” they said together, “never again to break. Who rides through the storm and stands brings good or ill for all.”
With the visions fading, Fallon gripped Lana’s hand. “I won’t fail. I can’t.”
“The dark beast is real. A black horse. No, a dragon.”
“With a red inverted pentagram.” Fallon ran a finger down the center of her forehead. “I saw it. I can’t tell you not to worry, because that would be stupid. But I’m asking you to believe in me.”
“If I didn’t, I’d have defied the gods and kept you on the farm.”
“What’s up with the five links?” Eddie asked.
“Fallon’s symbol. Well, the fivefold symbol,” Fred corrected. “I think of it as Fallon’s because it’s on her sword.”
“The four elements,” Fallon explained, “linked by magick. So, whoever wins this, those links are for good or for ill.”
“So, we win,” Colin said simply.
“You got that right. We’re going to start lighting those torches. Tonia, Flynn, and I will scout Arlington tonight.”
“Tonight?” Katie jolted in her seat. “We haven’t begun to organize.”
“It’s a lot to accomplish in a short time. We can flash Flynn—it’s always easier with another magickal. Duncan, Mallick, and another of their choosing scout the Utah base, Thomas and two of his people the one in South Carolina. Then we coordinate, work out plans of action.”
She looked back at Katie. “Organize. Meanwhile, we’ve got a—I’ll go with rudimentary again—idea of the layout in Arlington from what Chuck’s pieced together, and what I’ve pieced together through a series of looking spells.”
“I would have helped you with those.”
She glanced at her mother. “I know. I started doing them when I couldn’t sleep, then realized needing to do them was why I couldn’t sleep.”
Fallon put up another map. “The problems are the distance for the looking, and their DU shields, so there are areas where it’s more best guess and logic than actual seeing. The DUs working with them are highly skilled, so I didn’t want to push it, risk leaving a trace they’d pick up.”
“It’s bigger than I thought.” Will rose to walk closer to the map.
“Thirty-five acres, walled and shielded. I’ve marked the guard posts, and they have sentries patrolling twenty-four-seven. Additional security with the black magick shields. I watched a couple of deer drop when they got about three feet from the wall. When we’re ready, we won’t worry about traces or alerts, and take them down.”
“Can we?” Kim, a woman with courage and brains Fallon respected, stood as well, walked closer to the maps. “There’s no point losing people before we get through the wall.”
“We’ll take it down. Not all the buildings are going to be fortified or shielded. That takes too much power, and too many supplies. But we can count on the prisons—they have two—the armory, and other key buildings having their shields and fortifications.”
She went over the layout section by section, asked Chuck to fill in with his bits of intel.
“So, we think they have somewhere between four and five hundred troops in the base at any given time. And possibly another fifty Raiders who use the base between raids by virtue of an alliance.”
She nodded at Poe. “They rotate them out, do some training there, have designated squads for raids and Uncanny sweeps. As far as we can tell, Raiders don’t serve on security, as guards, or the basic workforce.”
“They keep some animals,” Chuck put in. “Fresh eggs, fresh milk to supplement their hunting parties. And they grow some crops—all of that’s taken care of by slaves. It’s a lot of mouths to feed, clothe, and like that. Raiders bring in supplies, and get use of the base.”
“We calculate they hold at least a hundred as slaves,” Fallon continued. “It looks like they rotate them, too. When they need more in another location, they transport them. We can’t really estimate prisoners at this point. While they hold weekly executions according to their fucked-up tradition—” She caught herself, looked at her mother. “Sorry.”
“Considering the subject matter, it’s hard for me to comment on your language.”
“Ah. They hold their public executions every Sunday, but our best information is they keep it at one prisoner. The base serves as a kind of holding center for anybody they grab between—most likely—Virginia, down to North Carolina, and over to West Virginia, possibly eastern Tennessee.”
“See, they pull them in,” Chuck explained, “then if some of their other bases are running low for that Sunday picnic, they send some out.”
“Add to that anyone—civilian, magickal—they pull in from a mission into D.C. What passes for the government still holds the city. James Hargrove stands as president.”
“Fucker.” Chuck shot up a middle finger for emphasis. “And I’m not sorry.”
“It’s no democracy,” Fallon continued. “Basically, he’s an autocrat, running the show with the military.”
“We can’t get much from inside the White House,” Chuck added. “But rumors fly. Executions again, but not public.”
“A veneer of the civilized,” Arlys put in. “But it’s clear he’s shredded the Constitution, and his agenda is removing magickals by any means.”
“Exp
eriments, containment centers,” Chuck went on. “Vaults full of treasures—that’s a rumor, so who knows. But it’s pretty clear he’s living in the lap, and likes it.”
“He holds the power center in a dead city.” Fallon had been there, felt it. “The resistance keeps fighting, has had some victories. And the Dark Uncanny prey on both.”
“White wants D.C.,” Simon commented. “There are plenty of locations, like theirs in Arlington, more removed from that war zone—twenty years now. He chose strategically, allied with Raiders so he doesn’t have to worry about them. Allied with DUs for their power and again, so they don’t go after him.”
“I agree. He’s wrong because they will go after him when they don’t find him useful, but I agree. White wants the city.”
“Symbolism, a seat of power. If he can take it, and publicly execute Hargrove, some generals, that’s a statement.”
“Hargrove goes by CIC more than president,” Travis told him. “Commander in chief. It’s more military.”
“He was military,” Fallon put in. “Served during the Doom, and commanded the forces that swept New York, Chicago, and Baltimore.”
She knew more of him, much more, but left it at that.
“They want the city, Hargrove, and as many key officials as they could take. But equally, they want the magickals, dark and light, in containment there. They want the locations of other containment camps. However much White wants D.C., its symbols, its structure, and whatever’s left of its resources, his reason for being is still to destroy us.”
“He’s going to die disappointed.”
She smiled at her father. “Yeah, he is. Because he’s not going to take D.C. We are.”
“Whoa.” Jonah picked up the beer he’d set aside. “Even if we managed to hook up with the resistance there, we’d be outnumbered a hundred to one. We’ve treated escapees from D.C. in the clinic. It’s a daily bloodbath.”
“Today we’d be outnumbered. We won’t be when we take it, and we will take it. It starts here.” She turned back to the first map. “With Utah, South Carolina. And Arlington.”