“Please don’t.”

“Indulge me. We’ve waited so long. Welcome, mother, father, brothers.” She rose, walked to Fallon, laid a hand on Laoch’s head. “Welcome and bright blessings on you all.”

Others came out, men, women, children, and as Troy had done, dropped to one knee.

“Do they think she’s a queen?” Ethan whispered to his mother.

“Not a queen.” Troy smiled at him. “But a witch and a warrior, and a promise. Come, please. We’ll have food and wine. We’ll tend to your animals.”

When Fallon dismounted, Troy embraced her. “We’re your army, and we’ll help you raise more.”

It wasn’t always so simple and welcoming as that first day. Some wouldn’t be convinced, some threatened.

Some, like the big, hulking leader of a band of two hundred she met on a sweltering day in June, laughed.

“We’re doing fine here. Any bastards come around looking for trouble, they find it, and they don’t come back.”

“They will. In greater numbers.”

“Save it, sister. We know how to handle ourselves, and nobody around here’s going to fall in line behind some teenage witch. But you’ll pay the fine for trespassing. One of the horses, and the supplies on its back.”

Several dozen weapons lifted, aimed at her family. “That would make you thieves,” Fallon said coolly. “I won’t have thieves in my army.”

“I don’t see no army.”

“Then see this.” She swiped a hand through the air. Guns, knives, clubs turned red, burning the hands that held them. As people screamed, as weapons fell, she kept her eyes on the big man. “Nobody threatens my family.” She didn’t have to turn to know every member of her family now held a weapon of their own. She held up a hand.

“Wait. I’m about to make a bargain with … I didn’t get your name.”

“Fuck your bargain, little bitch.”

“Not so little. Not as big as you, but not so little. Here’s the deal. I fight you—you and me. If I lose, you get the horse and what he’s carrying. If you lose, you and the rest here train when I say train, fight when I say fight.”

She looked around. “Some of you know who I am, what I am. You’ve waited long enough. But I’ll prove myself.”

“I don’t fight little girls. I don’t fight damn witches who pull magick tricks out of their asses. And I don’t fight when I’ve got that girl’s daddy pointing a gun at my head.”

“Fair fight. No magick—my word on it, and if I break my word, I’m disgraced in front of your people. And some of your people are like me. My father won’t shoot anyone, none of my family will use a weapon against anyone who doesn’t use one against us first.”

As she spoke, she took off her sword, took out her knife, passed both to her father.

“Fallon.”

“Trust me, or they won’t. Fair fight, one-on-one.” She turned back to the leader, let herself smirk to rile him up. “Do you agree to the terms I set?”

“I don’t like fighting girls.”

“When what’s coming floods over you and yours, it won’t matter what shape they wear. You were ready to steal from a girl, have your people pull weapons on a girl.”

She turned the smirk into a sneer.

“Be man enough to fight one who’s ready to fight you.”

“You asked for it.”

His face already red with insult, his mouth already twisted in a snarl reminded her of some raging bull. And rage was easily countered with cold tactics.

He charged—to knock her down, she realized. He honestly didn’t want to strike her. Her advantage was that she didn’t have the same sensibility regarding him.

She flipped back, to the side, so the momentum of his charge carried him through, had him stumbling.

Had several of his people laughing.

His face went redder. He charged again, she spun away. This time he skidded, tumbled, landed on his face.

“No magick!”

“It’s not magick, it’s training. I could train you, even though you’re more bulk than muscle.”

When he came at her again, she knew he expected her to spin or dodge. She did neither, but brought a boot up solidly between his legs. His face drained of all that burning color, and though she hated to hit a man on his way down, the point to prove was more important.

She knocked him flat with an uppercut that had her fist yelping, and her arm singing.

“You’re down.” She walked over to him while he wheezed. “Stay down. I’m better at this than you. You could be better. You will be better.”

“Kicked me in the balls.”

“The enemy would slice them off. I’m not the enemy.” She went to her father, took her sword and, drawing it, held it up so the sunlight flashed on it like fire.

“I am The One, chosen to roll back the dark. And so I will. If you’re afraid to fight, run, hide. But they’ll still find you, root you out. Join me. Face them, fight them, and when the light burns the dark to ash, you’ll be free.”

She lowered the sword, looked down at the big man now sitting up, wiggling his aching jaw with his hand. “I won’t hold you to the bargain. A warrior isn’t something to be won in a wager.”

He stared up at her. “You kicked me in the balls. And you damn near broke my jaw.”

“Damn near broke my hand doing it.” She offered the other. “Fallon Swift.”

He got to his feet, winced. “John Little.”

“Really? Like Robin Hood?”

He sighed. “Yeah. Son of a bitch. Why don’t you just turn us all into zombies and make us fight for you?”

“My zombie spell’s hit-and-miss.”

He cracked the ghost of a smile. “Don’t have one, do you?”

“Actually, I have something close enough, but I don’t want anyone I’d have to make fight with me. With me, Mr. Little. Not for me.”

“Calls me mister after she kicks me in the balls and breaks my jaw. I guess we ought to have a beer and talk this over.”

“I’m not allowed to drink beer yet.”

He stared at her. “Are you kidding me?” He looked toward her parents. “Are you fucking kidding me? She can fight a man twice—hell, three times her size, knock him flat, and she can’t have a christing beer?”

“She’s not old enough,” Lana began, but Simon overruled her.

“Half. Half a beer. She put exes in his eyes, Lana. Half a beer.” Lana watched Simon and Fallon grin at each other, felt a hard tug of love. “Half.”

As August dripped into September with unrelenting heat, Arlys Reid came out of the basement where she had what she called her studio in Chuck’s cave. He lived there—always a basement dweller—with the equipment he’d brought with him from Hoboken and what he’d scavenged and built over the years.

Together, with a few hackers and IT nerds he’d groomed during those same years, they ran their communication underground. New Hope News—NHN—had gone from the broadsheets Arlys had hammered out on an ancient manual typewriter to a system of ham radio broadcasts and covert visual and Internet transmissions.

A long, long way from the anchor desk in New York she’d inherited thanks to the Doom, but to her mind more vital.

She dug up what could be dug, and continued to do what she’d done on that last fateful day at the anchor desk.

She told the truth.

She walked through the house where Jonah and Rachel raised their kids and out into the summer steam bath. She could dream of air-conditioning, but the mayor and the town council had deemed that use of power wasteful for anything but essential locations. And she had to agree.

So she’d go home to her oven of a house, turn on her stingy electric fan, and finish the final edit of the weekly New Hope Bulletin.

Maybe she’d walk over to the clinic first. She could use the hunt for another story as an excuse—and spend a few minutes inside one of the essential locations.

Teenagers ran along the sidewalk—Garrett’s pack, Arlys noted. Some kids raced after them—Rachel’s little boy Gabriel, Fred’s Angel. The two of them had bonded like superglue.