“Plans?”

“For expanding the clinic.” Rachel, a soft cloud of curls around her face, worn sneakers on her feet, led the way. “I know it’s not top of your mind right now, but it’s got to be pretty close to the top of ours.”

“I didn’t realize you wanted to expand.”

“Need to even more than want to. We talked to Roger Unger weeks ago. He was an architect before the Doom—just starting out. He’s been tutoring a few students with an interest.”

“We need people who know how to design and build.”

“Jonah and I like his plans. Maybe we want a few changes, but it hits the right notes. We’re looking—might as well go for the gold—at making this a medical complex, bringing in the dental, the basics we’ve been able to put together on ophthalmology.

“A long way to go there,” she added, tapping the reading glasses hooked to her chest pocket, “but we’ve got a start. The herbalists—and Kim’s on board—the chemists. The healers. Everything in one place,” she continued, “instead of spread around town. We’ll need more equipment, more beds, more staff, but we can’t go there until we have the space.”

“It sounds … ambitious.”

“So does taking Arlington.”

Fallon managed a half laugh. “You’re right. Let’s talk through Arlington, one more time. Then I’d like to see the plans.”

Plans, Fallon thought later as she rode home, spoke of hope, of optimism, and of determination. They’d need all of that to win, to survive, and to build those centers.

She intended to take all of it to Arlington, and beyond.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A half-moon rose over the base as she stood with the men and women she’d lead into battle. With sword, with arrow, with bullet, with tooth and claw and fist, they’d fight with her on a night so hot, so close the air had weight.

In the south on the beach, they’d fight. And more than two thousand miles to the west in the desert, they’d fight.

They’d fight and take the next step on the journey begun centuries before.

“Now,” she murmured, and so the order passed from place to place, to the south, to the west.

Lifting her hands, she thought of the lessons Mallick had taught her at a deserted prison. Patience, quiet, control.

She slid her power along the dark magicks circling the base like a deadly moat. Strong, drenched in blood sacrifice, thriving on the flesh and bone of whatever creature might cross into its open jaws, it floated into her mind’s eye.

Black and bubbling.

“On the blood of the innocents slain I call. Hear their cries, taste their tears.”

She heard them; she tasted them.

Mournful. Bitter.

“I am your sword. We are your justice.”

The black magicks clawed, scraped, snarled as she pushed against them. Bubbling dark, pulsing with heat.

“Let the light of those cut down flicker, shine, rise into flames, and burn bright to break the chains. Bodies sacrificed for ill, let the light into your spirits spill.”

She heard them calling out, felt that rising as her muscles trembled to hold it, embrace it.

And felt her father’s hand on her back, drew from that strength, that faith.

“On this night, at this hour, I call upon the power of those slain. Hear me, join me to wipe away the bloody stain.

“Your light, my light, our light unwinds the spell. And so in silence it falls to hell.”

With sweat running down her back from the effort, she nodded. “It’s down. Troy.”

The witch and her coven bespelled the security cameras. Even those few minutes would add advantage.

“Archers.”

Arrows winged their quiet death to those manning the towers.

“First wave, go.”

As elves swarmed out of the dark to scale the walls, she pushed power against the gates. She felt the locks give, turned to meet her father’s eyes. “Gates down. Second wave, go.”

And she flew up on Laoch, dived toward the base. As her forces poured toward the gates, she called for the third wave. Faeries swooped toward the prison, the slave quarters.

No alarm sounded—not yet—as she touched down. A team of elves surged toward the HQ and communications. Shifters streaked toward the armory. Since she hoped to save the fuel tanks rather than destroy them, she ringed them in cold fire.

As the first shouts sounded, the first clash of battle rang, the first bullets flew, she drew her sword, pivoted on Laoch. She rode toward the enemy charge, sword singing, striking, her blood as cold as the fire she’d conjured.

Screams ripped the air. As bullets struck her shield, she flung out power to engulf guns in flame. Each one rendered useless was one less that could be used against her people.

She heard the raging, rapid report of automatic fire, rode straight toward it and the man who sprayed the air with bullets. Even as he swung toward her, Laoch impaled him.

She heard the screams of women, the shrieks of children as faeries risked their lives to lift them to safety. She heard the moans of the wounded, leaped off Laoch to strike down an enemy before he could slice the throat of one of her people who lay bleeding.

She saw a shifter take a bullet in mid leap, fought her way to him as she mind-spoke to Travis.

We need more medical transport.

Working on it.

Work faster.

She raced toward more gunfire, a barrage of it, coming from one of the fortified buildings. Bullets pinged off her shield as she pushed her way toward it. With a sweep of power she took down the door, then rose up as she once had as a child in a faerie glade.

But this time she rose up with a flaming sword, shot a stream of fire into the sniper’s nest. She flipped back through the air as Mick had taught her, landed. Five came at her at once.

She took the first out with a sweep of her sword at his legs before she leaped up. Sent another flying back with a vicious strike of her shield. She blocked a sword, spun, pumped up and back to kick out with both feet.

Blows landed, but she’d been trained to fight with pain. She struck back a sword, danced away from the swipe of a knife. With a slash of her blade, she cleaved the arm from one, and with his screams ringing in her ears, drove the point of her sword through the heart of the other.

Through the stench, the smoke, the screams, they fought. Bodies, so many bodies, littered the ground. She pushed away any thought of the carnage and the cost because she felt, she knew the tide had turned hard in their favor.

Some of the enemy ran for the gates, deserting the field. They would meet another line, she thought, be given the choice to surrender.

All prisoners and slaves secured, Travis said in her mind.

She caught an arrow in her shield inches from her heart, drew it out, flung it with a whip of power at the bowman.

Colin charged up to her. “We’ve got fifty secured in the prison. A few deserters got through, but we’ve got about a dozen of them. They’re done.”

Once again her shield blocked an arrow, this one before it cut her brother down. “Not quite.”

“Just mop-up now.”

Even as he grinned, she felt it.

“Get behind me.”

“Bullshit on that.”

“Don’t argue.”

She swung around to face the dark.

He stood tall, well over six feet. He dressed in black, and the air around him rippled with it. He flung a bolt of lightning toward her, easily blocked.

And he smiled.

She saw him, clearly, pouring the blood of the sacrificed onto the ground, burning the black fire, chanting the foul words to create the moat.

“These are nothing.” He spread his arms to take in the fallen. “Tools and dupes to be used and discarded.”

An arrow sang out, dropping with a hit that rippled air. He bent to retrieve it, glanced up at where Tonia stood on a rooftop. He shot it back at her with a strike of his arm.

Fallon swept out with her own power, broke it to pieces.

He laughed.

“She knew you’d come, would have to come to try to save these pitiful creatures. She knew you’d bleed for them. Your cousin sends her best.”

He flung out power that rattled her bones when it struck her shield.

“Get clear,” she ordered Colin.

“I’m not leaving you to—”

“Get clear. And mop the hell up. That’s an order.”

The brother in him nearly snapped back, but the soldier obeyed orders.

“You’re what she sent?” Fallon kept her tone mildly interested.

“I am Raoul, the Black Wizard. I am bound to Petra by blood, imbued with powers dark and glorious by what lives in her. I am the slayer of The One, in her name.”

“Raoul, the Black Wizard?” Now she added contempt. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Burn, burn, burn.” He circled his hands as he shouted the spell. “Now the fires and hungers of hell.”

Black fire struck her shield, circled her. She felt the pulse of heat, of dark joy. Some of her people rushed to defend her. As she shouted them back, Raoul snapped out a whip of lightning. It streaked toward Flynn, fast and deadly. Before it struck, Lupa leaped to shield him.

And fell bloodied and burned to the ground.

She heard Flynn’s cry of grief like a heart breaking inside her head. With rage, she flung power at the fire around her, beat at it with furious fists of light.

His laughter rang as he pulled lightning from the sky, pummeling the ground with it like rain. She pushed through the dying fire, striking at bolts with her sword, flinging them upward with her shield.

He chanted, drawing up smoke from the ground that hissed and snapped like snakes.

“Your light dims and dies,” he shouted. “And the shell that’s left of you I’ll spread at Petra’s feet.”

Drawing in, drawing up her power, pulling it as she charged across the bloodied field. She swore she heard the sword in her hand sing.

“By the blood of my blood.” Heat soaked her, but she fought forward. “By the flesh of my flesh, the bone of my bone. By the light of my light, be damned.”