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Some still green, he thought, but the hours of training, the rotations of scouting, scavenging, cooking, drilling had sharpened them up.
Still, some of them were green, and he’d need every one of them seasoned, well seasoned, by January second.
He’d heard that on the wind. She’d probably send word to him, though she had to have felt him just as tangibly as he had her. But Fallon would send word, one way or the other, and he’d prepare those troops for the onslaught on D.C.
Not yet enough of them, and that worried him. Not all they’d freed had stayed. Most, but not all, and the scouting had only gathered in a handful.
He knew there were more, he’d felt that, too. Watching. Waiting for who knew what.
Restless, edgy, mildly pissed off for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint, he got his bike. He’d ride out a few miles, take a little solo time, let the wind and speed blow away the mood.
He went out through a checkpoint, then opened the bike up on the long, flat road. From the first, he appreciated the sights, scents, sounds of the West. The echoing canyons, the fast rivers with their wild rapids tumbling, the sheer brilliance of the stars. But tonight, he yearned for home, the fields and forests, the roll of hills, his family, his friends. All the familiar.
When he’d worked with Mallick, he’d been able to take an hour or two now and again to flash home. But here, fully in charge, he couldn’t afford the luxury.
The agrodome had just begun—ha-ha—to bear fruit. Coyotes and wildcats meant constant vigilance with the livestock. Scavenging alone could equal a full-time job.
He shouldn’t, he knew, even be out like this, but, God, he needed it.
He needed to kick up the hand-to-hand training. D.C. meant street fighting, of the ugly and bloody. He wondered if he could devise a way to conjure the illusion of streets, buildings, rubble. It would help if he had a clear idea what D.C. looked like. It sure as hell wouldn’t look like the old pictures and DVDs.
Brooding, he nearly missed it, that shimmer of power on the air. Instinct kicked in. He slowed the bike, reached out.
Watching, he thought. Waiting.
Well, screw that.
He stopped the bike, got off. Put a hand on the hilt of his sword.
“If you need help, I can offer it. If you want a fight, I can oblige. Either way, grow some balls and come out.”
“I’m not interested in growing balls.” She rode a painted horse out of the dark as if she’d parted a curtain. “I’ve no problem slicing them off a man, if necessary.”
“I think I’ll keep mine.”
Late twenties, he thought, and striking enough he wanted to sketch those sharp cheekbones, the deep eyes, the long black braid that trailed to her waist. She carried a bow and quiver and sat the horse bareback.
“I might let you keep them, and just take the bike.”
“Nope.” He felt the movement behind him, tossed power back, heard the whoosh of stolen breath.
“Good reflexes,” she said. “But small brains to ride out so far alone.”
Another dozen riders walked through the curtain to flank her. In a finger snap he had his sword in his hand, laid down a line of fire between them.
Most of the horses shied, but not hers. Both she and her mount stayed steady.
“Is it worth your life?” she asked.
“Is it worth yours?” He started to scan the faces, stopped on one, a girl of about fifteen. “You were with the PWs. They made you a slave. Kerry—no. Sherry. They hurt you. They hurt her.” He looked back at the leader. “They branded her and . . . worse. Is she one of yours?”
“She rides with us.”
“Then you know we didn’t hurt her, and dealt with those who did. Our medic treated her, but she took a horse, slipped out of camp before morning. We looked for you,” he said to the girl, “to help, to give you supplies if you wanted to go, but we couldn’t find you.”
“Why would she stay? You may have done the same as the others.”
Heated now, Duncan’s gaze whipped back to the leader. “You know better. What kind of bullshit is this? Is this how you treat people who rescue others from PWs?”
She studied him, straight as one of the arrows in her quiver on the horse. “You didn’t kill them all. Why?”
“The ones we didn’t surrendered or were no longer a threat. Now they’re in prison.”
“Where?”
“In the East. They won’t hurt you again,” he said to the girl.
“Why do you care? She’s not one of you.”
“You don’t look like an idiot,” he shot back, “but that’s a stupid, ignorant question.”
Her eyebrows arched over those intense, dark eyes. “Your ancestors slaughtered mine, stole their land, brought them disease and starvation.”
“Maybe. My mother’s people came from Scotland. The English slaughtered our people, stole their land, burned their homes. But if some English dude’s ready to fight with me against the PWs, the DUs, and the rest of the fuckers, I don’t give a rat’s ass about what his ancestors did to mine. This is now.”
He looked back at the girl. “I’m glad you’re okay, and from the looks of it, you’ll be safe with her.”
“What do you fight for?” the leader demanded. “Who do you fight for?”
Duncan muttered, “Shit,” when he felt the vision fall into him. Resigned, he let it take him.
He raised his sword, shot a bolt of light into the sky before his blade flamed.
This time her horse shied, and she controlled it with a murmur, a squeeze of her knees.
“I am Duncan of the MacLeods, child of the Tuatha de Danann. I am the sword that slashes through the dark, brother to the arrow that pierces it. I am blood to blood with The One, and am pledged to her. I fight with her, I fight for her. My light for life. My life for her, and all who stand with her against the dark.”
Lowering the sword, he passed a hand down its length to extinguish the flame. “Got it?”
She dismounted, walked to the low wall of flame. “Then, Duncan of the MacLeods, you’re the one I’ve been looking for.” She held out a hand. “I’m Meda of the First Tribe. We’ll fight with you. We’ll fight with The One.”
Once again he trusted instinct. He let the flames between them die, shook her hand. “Welcome to the war.”
Fallon had felt him, and it left her unsettled. She felt Duncan’s sorrow for those lost twine with hers. A kind of grieving intimacy she hadn’t been prepared for.
Like him, after the ritual she felt unsettled. She’d hoped, as she’d hoped every year since he’d come to her, her birth father would come to her again. But she knew it wasn’t to be.
Not yet.
She made excuses, slipped away from the festivities in town, the bonfires, the carved pumpkins, the treats made for costumed children, the music in the gardens.
She told herself she needed to go back to her maps, her plans, refine all her battle tactics. But she knew she lied, even to herself.
It was time, she thought, to do more than plan. Time to see, time to be, time to take the next step.
Risky but worth it, she decided. And she’d look into the crystal first, judge if the way was clear.
At home, she lit the candle Mallick had given her when she’d been an infant. In the quiet, with only that light, she laid her hands on the crystal.
“Open now and clear for me. Let me see what I must see.”
Like clouds rolling, then a wind blowing to part them. And now colors, shapes, space.
“More,” she urged, sliding a hand right, watching, watching, before sliding a hand left. Drawing one up, waiting, studying, then drawing it down.
She spent nearly an hour with the crystal, once again sketching a detailed map until, satisfied, she went to her closet.
Inside she kept the Book of Spells, potions, charms, tools. Though on the day she became, every spell in the book lived inside her, she deemed this one important enough to validate.
She passed a
hand over the book so that it opened to the spell in her mind. With the care and precision she’d learned from her mother, from Mallick, she gathered what she needed. Floating a small cauldron over her desk, lighting the fire beneath it, she added ingredients, measured others, said the words.
Here the power ran through her, warm and liquid. Here a pouring into as the spell coalesced with a pulsing beat, as a tower of pale blue smoke rose, thin and straight as a needle.
She put out the fire, cooled the cauldron, placed what she’d created inside it into a pouch.
“It’ll work,” she said aloud, tying the pouch to her belt.
Once again, she checked the crystal. Focused, focused.
Time, she thought again. It was time.
“There I go as powers flow, through you, in you, so I pass through the glass. Through you, in you, beyond the shields both dark and light, beyond the locks I take this flight. Take me where you let me see. As I will, so mote it be.”
As she spoke the last words, as she threw out her power, Tonia and Hannah stepped into her room.
Tonia said, “Holy—”
Then the mad pull Fallon unleashed took all three of them.
“Shit,” Tonia finished as the pull released, dropped them. “What—” She broke off, dropped down as Hannah slid bonelessly to the floor.
