“I gotta go.”

“Take ’em out, take ’em down.”

They bumped fists, and Denzel stepped back to the sidewalk to watch the warriors head out.

Duncan swung onto his bike, with Antonia riding behind him. The first days and nights of April remained pretty damn cold, but he wanted the agility and speed of his bike. Not that they’d speed through eighty miles, especially since parts of the best route still had old vehicles jammed on them.

Eddie drove Chuck’s old Humvee—slow as it got, in Duncan’s opinion, but it came in handy for busting through those rust buckets. Plus, they’d armored it, and it was a damn good weapon.

They left at night, calculating speed, miles, potential delays and detours, with plans to arrive for the raid an hour before dawn.

He saw his mom with Arlys, shot her a salute. Others stood outside to see the rescue party off. He saw the brothers he’d helped rescue, and Petra.

He sent Petra a quick grin. He knew she was stuck on him, but as pretty as she was, she struck him as just too young yet.

Give her another year maybe, and who knew.

“It’s sticky,” Tonia said in his ear.

“What?”

“The hero worship. It’s so sticky it’s going to clog your pores.”

“Ah, give it a rest.” He shot the bike forward and left New Hope behind.

They hit the first jam at mile thirty-two, and stopped while Eddie broke through the bottleneck. On her own bike, Maxie, one of the elves from Flynn’s original party, pulled up beside Duncan, gestured east.

Flickers of fire through the dark, the haze of smoke rising.

“Raiders,” Maxie said. “They burn for the fuck of it. We ought to send a team to drive them off.”

Normally he’d have agreed with her, and volunteered to join in. But they had fifty miles to go.

“Probably be gone before we got there. Raiders usually set the fires after they’ve picked a place clean.”

“Yeah.” She looked ahead, revving the bike. “Like a shot at them though.”

Maxie had purple hair with feathers pinned on the side. She was about three years older than he was and had seriously interesting breasts.

As they drove on, the possibility that he might talk her into getting naked with him kept him occupied for ten miles—and through another jam.

Stop and start, he thought, start and stop. He wanted to get there, get doing. Five miles out, when they stopped, he and Antonia would head northwest, with Maxie and Solo the shifter. Another team would peel off northeast. Duncan would take out the guards, then his primary task was the gate. Get it open, shoot some lightning—he’d gotten damn good at it—back to the building he could see on the map in his head. The armory.

Boom, bang, boom.

Sweep in. Tonia would head for the prison with her team; his team would head for the communication center. Most everybody still in bed, scrambling for weapons, half-dressed.

Guards, gate, armory, comms, he thought. They’d be in a world of hurt already.

They were fifteen miles out when their headlights swept over the girl on a white horse standing in the middle of the road.

She might have been a statue, spotlighted in the blue cast from the half-moon.

He knew her, Duncan thought as the party stopped. From dreams. He knew her from dreams, and the thought of it left him shaken and angry and thrilled.

“It’s a trap,” she called out. “They know you’re coming.”

He got off the bike, vibrating. Pleasure, temper, fascination all at once battering at him.

Did she know a dozen weapons were aimed at her? If she did, she didn’t seem to care.

Will jumped out of his truck. “If you make a move for a weapon, it’ll be a mistake.”

“I’m not your enemy.”

Eddie walked up beside Will. “Who the hell are you then? And where’d you get that horse?”

“We found each other.” She dismounted, just flung a leg over and leaped down to stand with her hands out and up. “It’s a trap,” she repeated.

“Eddie, go down the line and tell everybody to hold.”

“Eddie?” the girl repeated. Duncan watched her face, so serious, bloom with a smile. “Eddie Clawson. Where’s Joe?”

“He’s back at the … How do you know about Joe?”

“I know a lot of things about you. How Lana and Max found you, how you taught them about snow chains. You play the harmonica and come from Kentucky. I’ve seen where that is on maps.”

“Listen, kid, you’re going to have to …” Eddie walked forward as he spoke, then saw her eyes. “Oh my God. Oh sweet Jesus. You have his eyes.”

“I know.”

“You have your daddy’s eyes.” He ran the last few steps, threw his arms around her. “It’s Max’s kid. Max and Lana’s kid.”

“You were his friend. I’m your friend. I’m Fallon.”

THE SWORD AND THE SHIELD

Men at some time are masters of their fates:

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,

But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

—Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare, Act I, Scene III

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Hands on Fallon’s shoulders, Eddie drew back, his eyes damp as he studied her face. “She gave you his name. You look like him, and her, too. Got the best of both. Your mom’s okay?”

“She’s very okay.”

“I … I promised Max I’d look out for her, for you. I didn’t.”

“That’s not true. You risked your life to try to get to them during the attack. But Max was dead, and she was already gone.”

“Where is she?”

“I can’t tell you. It’s not time. I’m sorry, but she’s safe.”

“Okay. Okay.” Eddie rubbed his hands over his face. “We’ll get back to all that. But right now, you’re what, fourteen? What are you doing out here by yourself? On that big-ass horse.”

“Warning you. They know you’re coming. They set a trap.”

Will stepped forward. “Hold on, Eddie. And how do you know?” he asked Fallon.

“You’re the leader?”

“Will Anderson.”

“Your father’s Bill, and he was with Eddie and the ones with him. They left you signs to follow, to New Hope. And you did. My mother told me about you, all of you. But I know about the trap because … I’m the daughter of Max Fallon and Lana Bingham. I am a child of the Tuatha de Danann. The man you found is a true believer. He let you capture him so he could give you false information, to lead you into a trap.”

“He was half-dead.” Duncan moved in.

He felt a pull, warm, slow, deep. He knew her. Knew her from dreams. But he’d been in on the capture, he’d seen the condition of the prisoner.

“A true believer,” Fallon repeated. Her eyes latched on to his. “You’re Duncan, and your twin with you is Antonia. Your gift is like mine, and you know—you know I’m telling you the truth. The prisoner’s name is Patrick. Nigel Patrick, and he volunteered, to be shot, to be beaten, to be left where they knew you’d come to scout.”

It rang like truth inside him, and still … “How did they know where we’d scout?”

“I can’t tell you. I haven’t been shown. But they’re waiting for you. Five miles more. Twenty-five of their soldiers, armed. They’ve fortified the walls of their base with more. One of the men in charge is Lou Mercer. His brother was killed in the attack on New Hope, the attack that killed my birth father. Mercer wants your blood, even more than White and his circle want mine. For Mercer, this is personal.”

“This is Max’s kid,” Eddie said. “She wouldn’t lie.”

“Trap or no trap, we can’t leave those people in there,” Duncan began.

“I’m here to help you.” She took out a map, illuminated it with a brush of her hand. “Patrick told you the prison’s here, but it’s not. It’s here. The armory’s here. And they have fuel tanks. Here. He told you about the main gate, but he didn’t tell you about the one on the west side. It’s guarded, but they expect you to come here. Their first line, here, twenty-five armed with automatic weapons, stationed on both sides of the road leading in. They’ll catch you in cross fire, while a squad moves to your rear to cut off retreat. They’ve been stockpiling ammo for weeks now to prepare for this. Those who survived that first wave would be bottled in. Kill or capture. They want some of you alive, if possible.”