by Nora Roberts
“Start on Jonah’s side,” Simon suggested. “I’ll start on Carol’s.”
So she walked to Jonah, and to the stranger with her eyes closed in the hospital bed. Under her eyes circles spread dark and deep. Her skin had a gray cast, and her hair—deep, deep black—had been shorn brutally short, like a skullcap.
“How is she?” she asked Jonah.
He rubbed tired eyes. “Dehydrated, malnourished—that’s common throughout. Burn scars—old and fresh—over about thirty percent of her body. She’s had her fingers broken and left to set on their own. Your mother worked on that, and we think she’ll get the use of her hands back. Her records show she was in there for over seven years, one of the longest in the facility.”
Fallon glanced at the chart. Naomi Rodriguez, age forty-three. Witch.
“The records listed an elf she’d taken into her care.”
“Dimitri,” Jonah told her. “He doesn’t know his last name, or remember it. He’s twelve. He’s okay, if any of them are. He finally agreed to go with a couple of the women we were able to release.”
“Okay. I want to—”
She broke off when the woman opened her eyes, stared at her. Eyes nearly as dark as the shadows dogging them.
“You’re The One.”
“Fallon Swift.”
When the woman groped for her hand, Fallon took it. Not physical pain, she realized—the medicals had taken care of that. But they couldn’t touch the mental anguish.
“My boy.”
“Dimitri. He’s all right. I’m going to go see him soon.”
“We’ll bring him to see you,” Jonah added. “As soon as we can. He’s safe now, and so are you.”
“They held a gun to his head, so I had to go with them. They said they’d let him go if I did, but they lied. Full of lies. They drugged me, and my boy. He was just a boy. They wouldn’t let me see him, but I could feel him, hear him. They kept us drugged so we couldn’t find our power. Sometimes they kept us gagged and blindfolded and shackled for hours, maybe days. They’d take us to that jackal and his devils to torture us. Some looked ashamed, but they took us to him. And they knew what he did to us.”
She closed her eyes again. Tears leaked out, trailed down her cheeks. “I lost faith.”
“There’s no shame in it.”
“I wanted to kill, at first I lived by imagining killing them all. Then I only wanted to die, just end it.”
“No shame,” Fallon repeated, and those anguished eyes opened again.
“But you came, even though I had no faith.”
Fallon leaned in. “Do you see me? Do you see the light in me?”
“It’s like the sun.”
“I see you, Naomi. I see the light in you.” When Naomi shook her head, Fallon laid her free hand on the woman’s cheek, let some of that light flow in. “They dimmed it, but I see your light. I see the light that shined, that took in a frightened boy, a small, confused, grieving boy, and gave him a home. I see the light that was willing to sacrifice herself for the boy. I see you, Naomi.”
Fallon straightened. “Now rest and heal. We’ll bring Dimitri to you.”
“I’ll fight with you.”
“When you’re well,” Fallon told her, and moved to the next bed.
It took nearly two hours. She joked with a soldier who claimed being shot, then kicked and stomped on was just a day in the life. She comforted the distraught, reassured the confused.
Before she left she saw the boy, the bone-thin boy with dark skin, sitting on the side of Naomi’s bed. Haltingly, he read to her in a voice rusty with disuse from one of the children’s books in the waiting area.
She slipped outside for some air, saw her father had done the same and was currently kissing her mother.
“You know, you guys don’t need to get a room. You’ve got a whole house.”
Lana turned bluebell eyes on Fallon, and smiled. “There’s my girl.” She moved quickly, gathered Fallon up tight. “You’re so tired.”
“I’m not alone.”
“No, you’re not.” She drew back. “We didn’t lose anyone. Thank the goddess.”
“Including the premature baby?”
“Including. It was rough, but I finally got the baby to turn. Rachel wanted to avoid a C-section unless he stayed breech.”
“He.”
“Brennan. Four pounds, three ounces, sixteen inches. Rachel’s still monitoring, but she’s pleased with him, and his mother. She’s one tough lady.”
“So are you. Now go home, check on Colin, then get some sleep.”
“I’m going to. We’re about to rotate here. Let’s all go home.”
“I need to talk to the people in the auditorium, then I’ll be home.”
With a nod, Lana ran her fingers through Fallon’s hair. “You’re going to find some of them need more time to acclimate. Katie’s working on housing—there are so many, and many of those shouldn’t be left on their own yet.”
“We’ve got volunteers who’ll take some in,” Simon pointed out. “Those who seem steadier can take some of the housing we prepped before the rescue. But some may just want to go.”
“They shouldn’t, not yet, but—”
“I’ll talk to them,” Fallon assured her, and guided her mother to the horses. “Wanna flash?”
“Actually, a ride would be good.” Lana waited until Simon mounted, held up a hand and swung up behind him, as if she—once an urbanite, a New York native—had been riding all of her life. “Come home soon,” she said, and nuzzled into Simon’s back, wrapped her arms around him.
Love, Fallon thought as they rode off. Maybe that was the biggest miracle. Feeling it, giving it, knowing it.
She swung onto Grace and rode toward the school hoping to convince the tortured, the exhausted, the sick at heart to believe.
CHAPTER TWO
When Fallon arrived home, she spotted Ethan coming out of the stables, the dogs Scout and Jem trotting at his heels, as usual. His recent growth spurt still gave her a little jolt. She remembered, clearly, the day he’d been born, at home, in the same big bed where she, Colin, and Travis had come into the world.
He’d let out a cry that had sounded to her ears like a laugh. When she’d been allowed to hold him the first time, he’d looked at her with those deep, deep newborn eyes, and she swore—still swore—he’d grinned at her.
As the baby of the family, his sunny nature revealed itself in that first laughing cry and every day since. But he was, Fallon admitted with some reluctance, no longer a baby.
Though he remained slight of build, he’d put on some muscle. He had their mother’s butterscotch hair and lovely blue eyes, but it looked as if he’d inherited their father’s height, as he’d sprung up inches in what seemed to be five minutes.
She smelled the stables on him—he’d been mucking them out, no doubt—as she dismounted.
“How’s Colin?”
“Mom says good. He slept the whole time she and Dad were gone. Probably still is.” As he eyed her, Ethan took Grace’s reins while the dogs leaped, leaned, and looked for attention. “You should sleep, too.”
“I will. Travis?”
“He came home for a few minutes, just to check in. He’s taking Colin’s schedule with the recruits, so he had to get back.”
Her middle brother may not have lost his penchant for a good prank, but he stood up. Travis always stood up.
“Grace is happy you took her for a ride,” Ethan said as he managed to nuzzle the dogs and the horse at the same time. When it came to animals, Ethan understood their thoughts, feelings, needs. That was his gift. “Now she’s hoping for a carrot.”
“Is that so?”
Fallon imagined the garden, the rows of carrots, the orange spears in the ground, the springy green tops. Choosing one, she let the words form in her head, flicked out a hand.
And held a carrot, fresh from the ground. Beside her, Ethan laughed.
“That’s a good one.”
“I’v
e been working on it.” Fallon swiped the dirt off the carrot on the thigh of her jeans, fed it to her sweet, loyal mare.
“I’ll cool her down, get her settled,” Ethan said. “Go get some sleep. Mom said to tell you there’s leftover pasta if you’re hungry. They’re conked, too.”
“Okay. Thanks, Ethan.”
He started to lead Grace away, paused. “When Eddie got back—when I was over helping Fred with the farm, and he got back—he said what they did to the people you rescued was an abomination. That’s his word for it.”
“It was. It’s exactly the right word for it.”
“He said there were little kids locked up there.”
“There were. Now they’re safe, and they’re free, and nobody will hurt them.”
Those lovely blue eyes, so like their mother’s, clouded. “It never makes any sense, you know? Being mean never makes any sense.”
For Ethan, she thought as she walked to the house, the first choice and the last would always be kindness. She hated knowing he trained every day for war.
She considered the pasta, decided she was more tired than hungry, so went straight downstairs.
And found Colin waiting for her in the family room. Obviously he’d woken with an appetite, as an empty bowl, plate, glass stood on the table.
A good sign, she thought, as was his color, the clear look to his hazel eyes.
“How’s the shoulder?”
He shrugged with the good one, lifted the other arm in its sling. “It’s fine. Mom says I have to wear this dumb-ass thing for the rest of the day, maybe tomorrow, so I don’t jerk it and screw things up. Pain in the ass.”
“She’d give you a bigger ass pain if you screwed things up.”
“Yeah.” He might be a fearless soldier, but he wasn’t stupid enough to take on their mother. “Hell of a fight, huh?”
She let him talk it out. He’d need to, she knew, as most of the men and women she’d visited in the clinic had needed to.
“We were basically on cleanup, you know? Man, we had them on their heels, Fal, on their fricking heels. This is when you were down in the torture chamber, right? Eddie said you were down there.”
He paced as he spoke—a nervous habit she understood, as she often did the same.
“So, a couple of the faeries are working on the locks on the cells because we’ve got it under control, right? You could hear some of them who were drugged to shit and back calling for help. And kids crying. Jesus.”
He paused at that. “Jesus, kids. You just never get over that part. Anyway, this guy drops down, put his hands up. I’m not going to neutralize some dude who’s surrendering, so I move in to take his weapons—he laid them down, for Christ’s sake. And, Jesus, Fallon, one of his own shoots him, and wings me before I could take him out.”
A soldier to the bone, one who’d formed a strong band of brothers—and sisters—in arms, Colin’s disgust came with a lacing of fury.
“He shot his own man. His own, unarmed, man. Who the fucking fuck does that?”
“True believers,” she said simply. “Don’t underestimate the true believer.”
“Well, whatever the son of a bitch believed, I believe he’s burning in hell now. He shot his own man, a man with his hands up. No threat. Anyway.” He gave her that one-shoulder shrug again. “We got them out. Did you talk to Clarence?”
“Yes. He’s doing fine.”
“Good. Good. I saw him go down, but I couldn’t get to him.”
“Most of our wounded have been treated and released. The others need a little more time in the clinic, but they’re going to be fine.”
“Yeah, Mom said. I think I’ll go into town, see how everybody’s doing anyway.”
“Tell Ethan so he can tell Mom and Dad if I’m still sleeping.”
“Sure.” With his free hand, he stacked the plate, bowl, glass, balanced them. Then his eyes met hers, warrior to warrior.
“It was a good mission. Three hundred and thirty-two prisoners freed.”
“Three hundred and thirty-three. One of them just had a baby.”
“No shit?” He grinned. “Good deal. See you later.”
She walked back to her room as he started upstairs. He’d been raised a farmer, she thought, one who loved basketball and bragging and finding little treasures. Once he’d claimed he’d be president. He wouldn’t, Fallon thought as she stripped to the skin. He was, and always would be, a soldier. And a damn good one.
She dragged on an oversize T-shirt she’d scavenged years before and used for sleep with a pair of boys’ boxers. After countless washings the image of the man and his guitar on the shirt had faded like a ghost. Her dad called him The Boss, said he’d been—or was, who knew?—a kind of rocking troubadour.
She didn’t have any musical talent, but she knew what it meant to be the boss.
So she slid into bed thanking the gods no one she loved or commanded had died. And as the voices, the stories, the nightmares of those she’d helped save rang in her head along with their fears, their gratitude, their tears, she ordered herself to shut them out.
And sleep.
She woke in moonlight with the chill of fall in the air. Fog grazed along the ground, thin smoke that wound through the stone circle. Frost, sharp as diamonds, sparkled on the high grass of the field.
The woods beyond rattled and moaned with the wind.
“Well.” Beside her, Duncan scanned the field, the woods, then turned to study her with dark green eyes. “This is unexpected. Did you pull me in?”
“I don’t know.”
She hadn’t seen him in nearly two years and then only briefly when he’d flashed back to New Hope to report. She knew he’d come back at Christmas to see his family because Tonia mentioned it.
He’d left New Hope two years ago come October, after the battle in the gardens when he’d lost a friend who’d been a brother to him. When she’d struck down her father’s brother, his murderer—and Simon Swift had finished him.
He’d gone to help train troops, to work with Mallick, her own teacher, at a base far enough away to give them both time and space.
“Well,” he said again. “Since we’re here.” He kept his hand on the hilt of his sword as he spoke, as he went back to scanning the woods, the shadows, the night. “I heard the rescue mission hit the marks. Big one,” he added, glancing at her again. “We could have helped.”
“There were enough of us to handle it. More are coming. You . . .”
He wore his hair longer than he had, she noted, or just hadn’t bothered with a trim. It curled over the collar of his jacket. He hadn’t bothered to shave, either, so his face—all the strong angles of it—carried a scruff.
She wished it didn’t suit him. She wished she didn’t feel this . . . want for him.
“Me?” he prompted.
“I’m disoriented. I don’t like it.” She heard the angry edge in her voice, didn’t care. “Maybe you pulled me in.”
“Can’t tell you. Wasn’t intentional either way. For me it was summer, evening. I was in my quarters thinking about capping off a long day with a beer. We’ve got a nice little brewery going on base. You?”
Ordering herself to calm, she answered in kind. “Summer, the day after the rescue. I’d just gotten home. I was sleeping. It could be evening by now.”
“Okay then, we’re likely on the same time both ways. It’s not summer here. MacLeod land, my mother’s blood’s land. The first shield, the one my grandfather broke.”
“The dark broke the shield. The boy and the man he became was a tool, innocent. He was innocent.”
Her voice changed, deepened, when a vision came on her. She changed, all but glowed. He’d seen it before. “Here she goes,” he murmured.
“You are of him, Duncan of the MacLeods. I am of him, for we are of the Tuatha de Danann. As our blood and the taint of the blood of what waits opened the shield to magicks, bright and dark, so will blood close it again.”
“Whose?”
�
��Ours.”
“Let’s get to it then.” He drew his knife from its sheath on his belt, prepared to score his palm.
“Not yet!” She gripped his arm, and he felt the power in her, through him, pumping. “You risk opening all, risk the end of all. Famine and flood, scorched earth and the ash of the world. There’s so much more to come. Magicks rising, light and dark, dark and light. The storm whirling, swords slashing.”
Now she laid her hand on his heart, and he felt too much. Every muscle in his body quivered when her eyes, dark with visions, met his. “I am with you, in battle, in bed, in life, in death. But not this night.
“Do you hear the crows?”
He looked up, watched them circling. “Yeah. I hear them.”
“They wait, it waits, we wait. But the time is coming.”
“Can’t come soon enough,” he muttered.
She smiled at him, and something in the look was sly and seductive and full of power.
“You think of me.”
“I think of a lot of things.” God, she made his mouth water. “Maybe you should snap out of it.”
“You think of me,” she repeated, and slid her hands up his chest until her arms circled his neck. “And this.”
Her body molded to his; her mouth brushed his once, twice. Teasing, alluring. A damn laugh in her throat. He ached everywhere, all at once, and wanted, needed more than he could bear.
“The hell with it. All of it.”
Now a sound like triumph in her throat as he took those offered lips.
She tasted of the wild, and made him crave it. The savage and the free, the unknown, the always known. Desperate, his hands ran up her body, over it—at last—while he changed the angle of the kiss, deepened it.
Crows circling overhead, the stones swimming through the fog, the wind like mad music over field and wood.
Hard against her, his heart beating like thunderclaps, he would have dragged her to that frost-coated ground, taken her at the entrance of doom.
But she knocked him back, and nearly off his feet with a sudden jolt of outraged power.
Breath heaving, he stared at her, saw the visions had drained. What stared back at him was a very pissed-off female.
