“She’s well.”

“And that’s a blessing. And you, boy, with your father’s fine looks and your mother’s eyes.”

“Duncan. It’s nice to meet you, Mrs. Frazier.”

“Duncan, for the MacLeod end of things. You’ll give your mother my best, won’t you? The best from old Dorcas Frazier, who lived just down the road and used to give her ginger biscuits.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Your family were friends to me. I knew the Duncan you’re named for. Flirted with him when we were younger than young. Sit here now, there’s a lad.”

She drew a breath and, clear again, her eyes met Fallon’s. “I wondered so many times why I would live and live, wake every morning to a new day. So many new days. Some reasons, I thought, were for my Nessa. How could I leave my sweet lassie? Now I know I lived and lived and lived some more so to welcome the MacLeods back home. And to welcome The One into mine. Bright blessings on you, Fallon Swift.”

“And on you, Dorcas Frazier.”

She took Mrs. Frazier’s hand and marveled at how bold and bright the light burned in a body so stiff and bent with age. She took the chair offered as Nessa passed out whiskey and cake.

“The whiskey’s good,” Mrs. Frazier told them. “We still know how to make it around here. And the cake my own Nessa baked just this morning.”

“You said we’d have guests tonight, and to put a little extra love into it.”

Her grandmother cackled. “So I did. My Nessa is full of love. To the love, we’ll drink then, and to the light.”

They lifted glasses, and Fallon learned the whiskey was indeed good.

“You’ll have questions. You sit now, Nessa, for you should hear the questions and what answers I can give.”

“How is it the house hasn’t been touched? There are things inside,” Duncan continued, “that would be of use to you and others.”

“The house is of the MacLeods. Those of us who come from here respect that, and those who’ve come since are told. I think the house itself holds others out. It let you in, you ken. You’re blood, after all. Hugh died within two days after your family left for home and for London on business. Millie, ah, a strong woman was she, lived two more. I nursed her, as when the sickness came, I only became stronger. So I nursed her, and then Jamie, your cousin.”

“You cleaned the house,” Tonia said. “Cleaned it, made their beds.”

“As a friend would do for a friend. My son and my granddaughter, who lived, helped with it. We took the food, but nothing else.”

“Thank you.” Duncan took her hand again and, following his heart, kissed her thin fingers. “For tending to our family, and our home.”

“We buried them, and so many others, in the churchyard. There was hope in some that it would pass and things would be as they were. Fear as well, and no word from outside for some time. Some fled, never to be seen again. Others came and stayed. Those like we here, and those who accepted that magick was back in the world.

“I know the day you were born,” she said to Fallon. “I saw it that night, that last night with the party lights and the celebrating. I took Ross MacLeod’s hand, and saw. A good man, and none of his doing, not of his knowing. But it would start with him. And on the night he died, in that moment the dark struck, your light burst free, sparked by the blood of the Tuatha de Danann, the blood the MacLeods would pass down to theirs. You would be born in the storm, and delivered not into the hands of the one who sired you, but into the hands of one meant to rear you.”

She sipped more whiskey. “You’ve known loss, all of you, and still so young. You’ll know more. Loss can shake faith if you let it, and the dark gloats when faith seeps out with loss.”

“The dark comes here, too.”

The old woman nodded at Fallon. “It does. They come to the sgiath de solas.”

“Shield of light.”

“Aye, the circle, the shield, the evil they unleashed. And every year, near to the time it opened, they come and make a sacrifice to the dark.”

“Granny, they found Aileen.”

“Ah.” A long, long sigh as she reached for Nessa’s hand to comfort. “I feared it. Since the first year after Year One, they come. They lure a young one, usually a girl, but not always, into the woods. The woods were once green and full of game, a good place. Now cursed by what lives there.”

“What lives there?” Tonia asked.

“It has no name I know. No face, no form but what it steals. It’s a dead place now, that wood, and no one dare enter. I don’t know what they do to the poor girls there. I can’t see, or it may be I won’t see.”

“They tried for me only last year,” Nessa said. “But Granny has charms on my window, on the door. And I wear this.” She gripped the charm around her neck. “Still I felt the pulling, I heard the music, so bright and fun. I went to Granny and stayed all night in her bed. It was Maggie went missing that night, and never found again. She was but twelve.”

“Who are they?” Fallon asked. “Has anyone seen them?”

“The first year there were two, a man and a woman. Both handsome, but a false front, that beauty. Scarred they were under it, and beneath the false front and scars, souls dead and black as pitch.”

Shivering, she drew the shawl closer around her shoulders. “I saw them fly over the MacLeod farm, him on black wings, her on white, and she threw flames at the house, but they bounced away like balls as they flew on. To the circle, to the wood. It was that night the first of the children went missing.”

“Eric and Allegra,” Fallon stated.

“You know them?”

“They killed my sire. They’ve come every year in January?”

“Each year. But the next after that first they had a baby, and they became three who fed the dark. The child grew—pretty as a plum—but with hair dark on one side, pale on the other. As were her wings.”

“Petra.” Duncan’s hand balled into a fist.

“There’s more in her than in them.” Because they trembled a little, Mrs. Frazier used both hands to lift the whiskey to her lips.

Nessa added wood to the fire, whiskey to the glasses.

“More dark in her,” Mrs. Frazier continued, “and a madness you can feel wild on the air as she passes over. Only days ago, they came, but like these last few years, only the mother and daughter.”

“I killed Eric. Or I wounded him,” Fallon corrected. “My father—my life father—finished him.”

“As is just.”

“Only those?” Tonia asked. “No other DUs—Dark Ones?”

“We hear tales of Dark Ones, others, but none have come here but those three. Now two. I see them, though in the week they’re known to come, I close the cottage tight. But I see them.” She tapped her temple. “And on the night they feed the dark, storms rage.”

“Granny says…” Nessa hesitated, then continued at her great-grandmother’s nod. “She says they leave us be so we’ll stay, and we’ll keep having children they can take to the wood. We’re taught not to listen to the music, to wear the charms, but some don’t really believe, or the lure is too strong. Can you stop them?”

“We’ll stop them. Have you seen the black dragon?”

As the glass tipped in her granny’s hand, Nessa reached out to steady it. “Is it real then? I thought it a fancy. I’ve seen it soar over the wood, and into it, but no one else has. And in a dream I saw it sleeping inside the stone dance, but there’s been no sign of such a creature.”

“It guards the source.” Fallon’s eyes deepened as the vision rose. “It spies, in dragon shape and man shape, and plants dissension like weeds to grow and choke off the light. It serves its master as does its rider, as does the pale witch. It mates with the mad one, and in her seeks to plant the seed that will become the child. In the child, the source reborn so the dark rules all.”

Fallon got to her feet. “We will strike them down, with sword, with arrow, with blinding light, with the blood of the gods, because we must. Look for the light, Granaidh,” she told the old woman. “When you see it burst like the sun, when the tree of life blooms on MacLeod land, you’ll know it’s done.”

“I will look. I will pray, and we will send our light to you.”

She took the woman’s hand. “Thank you for your hospitality. Can you tell us where to find Aileen’s family?”

“Nessa will take you.” She kissed Fallon’s hand. “Safe journeys to you, to the children of the MacLeods. May all the gods go with you.”

* * *

Lana had done as Tonia asked, so when they returned, they found Katie and Hannah with Lana and Simon, with wine and a fire. And waves of relief when they came in.

“The dragon slayers,” Hannah said with a smile.

“Not tonight. There’s a lot to tell anyway, but first…” Tonia went to her mother, offered the photograph.

“Oh, oh God. Oh, this is from the Christmas before. The last time I was there.” She pressed it to her heart, rocked. “I never thought I’d see them again.”

She tipped it down. “Your father. It’s Tony. Do you see?”

“Let’s get some more wine.” Lana rose, signaled to Simon, to Fallon. “We’ll give them some time. Where did you find a picture?”

“We went to the house. The MacLeod farm. I wouldn’t mind the wine. It’s been a night. Like Tonia said, there’s a lot to tell. We should do that all together, after they have that time.”

“And maybe a little something to eat.”

“I wouldn’t say no.”

Simon got the wine, rubbed a hand on Fallon’s shoulder. “There’s blood on you again.”

She only sighed. “Demon wolves. We’ll get to them, and all the rest.” But to make things easier, she swiped her hands down, vanished the bloodstains.