by Nora Roberts
* * *
Fallon waited until full dark before she walked away from the house with Tonia and Flynn. Lupa walked by Flynn’s side.
“I wanted to leave him with Joe and Eddie, but…” He laid a hand on Lupa’s head. “He wouldn’t have it.”
“He’s welcome.”
Flynn had a rifle strapped over his shoulder, a knife on his belt. Tonia had her bow and quiver, her knife, and Fallon her sword and shield.
When she lifted her arm, the white owl glided out of the dark to land on it.
“Okay. Who’s better at scouting than an owl?” Tonia decided. “You know, we shook them pretty good tonight.”
“I wish we had more time, but we don’t. Flynn, you’ve been with them from the beginning.”
“And younger than either of you when we started. They’ll handle it. It’s hard, you’re their children, but they’ll handle it.”
He’d never taken a mate, Fallon thought, though she knew he’d taken lovers here and there. She wondered why.
Nobody’s rung the bell, he said in her mind, and added a half smile when she winced.
Sorry. “Then let’s get started,” she said out loud. “Before we do, I’m aiming for a spot about a half mile from the base. I’m estimating, as I couldn’t risk going into the crystal, leaving a trace to pinpoint it more exactly.”
“Won’t we leave that trace tonight?” Tonia asked.
“I’m going to use a cloaking spell.” She took charm pouches out of her pocket. “Keep them on you,” she said, then laid her hands on their arms.
“From friend and foe alike, we are hidden from their sight. Though within us burns the light, it leaves no trace upon the night. They may look but will not see. As I will, so mote it be.”
“We’re going to be invisible?” Tonia slipped the pouch into her pocket, patted it. “So, so cool.”
“Not invisible—though very cool. More like shadows, shapes. Magickal searching spells should pass right over us.”
“Should?”
“There are spells to counteract cloaking spells. We have to risk it. Any trouble, we flash out. We can’t risk the whole mission. Ready?”
They flashed onto a deserted road that cut through a stretch of empty houses. Some had been burned to the ground—a waste of resources and shelter. Someone more enterprising and practical had dismantled others to the foundation, and a handful more still stood, window glass smashed, doors removed or hanging open.
As she scanned what had been a neighborhood before her birth, she felt it.
“They left the dead,” Fallon stated.
“Where?” Hand on her knife hilt, Tonia scanned the area.
“In the houses. There are still remains from the Doom in some of the houses. Children would have played here once. Friends would have gathered on patios, like we did tonight. Now there are rats.”
She watched one tunnel through the high weedy lawn as they walked.
“A half mile,” Flynn said. “And still some housing, easily repaired. When we take the base, we could use this as an outpost, a checkpoint.”
They followed the road, then into what had been a small park. Now the trees had thickened and wild things grew in a kind of mad splendor.
“Probably snakes,” Tonia said.
“Probably.”
They saw deer, a red fox, a lumbering possum, crossed a thin stream clogged with debris.
Both Fallon and Flynn stopped, heads cocked.
“Elf ears,” Tonia muttered. “Both of you. What do you hear?”
“An engine.” Flynn glanced at Fallon, nodded. Lupa stayed by her side as Flynn blurred away in the dark.
“He’s going to look. The base should be just a couple hundred yards to the east, and the engine’s coming from the road that leads to it.”
They moved ahead, keeping to shadows as security lights from the compound glowed through the dark.
Flynn slipped back to them. “Single cargo truck, cleared through the main gates. Guard posts coordinate with your map. The walls are a good fifteen feet high. We’re not going to be able to see over them from this vantage point, and we’ll be in the open if we go another twenty feet. I can scout the perimeter, see if there’s a better angle, higher ground.”
“We need to go higher, but not on the ground. We separate. Flynn scouts the east side, Tonia the west. You’ll meet up on the north side. We need to know the terrain, any additional sentry positions or security measures, potential weak spots. You know the drill. Tonia will flash you both back here.”
“And you?” Tonia asked.
“I’ll go up.”
“You can fly now?”
“Taibhse can, and I’ll see through his eyes.”
“You mean to merge with him,” Flynn began as Tonia shook her head.
“Then Flynn and I should stay with you. You’d be vulnerable—body here, spirit there. And you told me you were still working on a true merge.”
“The owl god’s mine for a reason. And Faol Ban will guard me.”
“Lupa stays, too,” Flynn insisted.
“All right.” She held up her arm so Taibhse glided down from the tree branch where he’d perched, landed softly. “Move out. We’ll rendezvous back here. What we take back with us tonight is going to be the difference between success and failure.”
“You can mind-speak to both of us,” Tonia said. “Any trouble, you signal.”
“And the same goes.”
Fallon waited, and when she stood alone with the owl, looked into his eyes. “I’m yours; you’re mine. You are wisdom and patience. You are the hunter. My heart beats with yours; my blood flows with yours. Be my eyes.”
As she looked into his, she saw herself, a shadow in shadows.
“Be my ears.”
She heard all the whispers of the night. A mouse breathing, the crawl of a spider over a leaf, a fox slinking through the grass.
“Taibhse the wise, my spirit joins with yours. Now be my wings.”
She rose up in him, through him, and with the great spread of his wings glided up, up, above the trees. She felt the air swim by her, scented the mouse, the spider, the fox below.
For a moment, the thrill took her, the freedom of flight, the power of sight that picked out a squirrel nesting in a tree, and the union that allowed her to soar.
The sting of fuel, the stench of dark magicks, the smell of man.
She saw the elf to the east, the witch to the west, moving shadows in shadows.
She circled above the houses, the streets connecting them. A garden surrounded by fencing, penned livestock. She noted the guards posted outside of buildings, drew the map in her head.
Four men unloaded the truck Flynn had seen—of prisoners. She caught the smell of fresh blood, watched as they were dragged to a guarded building. Someone drove the truck across the compound. Another guarded area, another gate.
She counted the vehicles inside the fence, and the fuel tanks.
A group of Raiders—four, five, six, seven—sat outside, in the rear of a big house with a peaked roof. Two of them smoked something that clogged the air. The others drank … whiskey?
With Taibhse’s ears she heard their voices, rough and drunk. Celebrating a successful raid that day, she realized. Two dead, three slaves to trade to the PWs.
Another pulled a woman on a leash. Fallon saw the mark of a slave on her wrist, the bruises on her naked body. One of the female Raiders got up, walked over, plowed a fist into the slave’s belly that would have doubled her over if the leash hadn’t snapped her back.
“You flirting with my man, bitch.”
That brought on uproarious laughter, calls for a catfight.
The woman punched her again.
“Don’t damage her too much, Sadie,” one of the men warned as he puffed out smoke. “We gotta turn her back in in the morning.”
“She was giving you the eye.” Sadie drew a knife. “Maybe I’ll cut hers out.”
“We only rented her for the night. No po
int paying for a buy. Come on and bring that hot ass of yours back over here. Who won the first taste?”
One of the others stood up, rubbed his crotch.
“Well, take her on inside, start getting what we paid for.”
Sadie turned the knife in front of the slave’s face, then spat in it before she turned away.
Fallon’s spirit burned. She could help the slave. But in helping her, she risked all the others they could save. Heartsick, she glided away.
She’d remember them, she vowed. Sadie and the others, she’d remember them. And hoped with all she was they remained on the base when she led the attack.
She saw a man in black step out of a building, and felt the power from him, the ugly edge of power. Even as she understood he could feel hers, as he hesitated, began to lift his face to the sky, Taibhse winged away.
She separated from him with the wolves beside her, and Flynn, Tonia standing by.
“You were gone a long time,” Tonia began.
“There was a lot to see. Not here,” Fallon said quickly. “They have at least one powerful DU, and he might have caught a whiff of me. If he did, he’ll push out. We go back now.”
She gripped Flynn’s hand, called Taibhse to her arm, and, with Tonia, flashed home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Duncan had never seen anything like Utah.
He’d flashed west before when he, Tonia, and Fallon had searched out warheads to transform and destroy. But the time they’d spent had been inside, deep inside, those bases and compounds.
He hadn’t seen the strange, endless land, the jagged rise of mountains, the fascinating sculptures of rock or deep canyons with twisting rivers.
He hadn’t felt the breathless, baking heat or witnessed the eerie beauty of the star-drenched desert sky at night.
They’d come, he and Mallick, to scout the enemy base—what there was of it. But he took back so much more than battle plans, logistics. He brought back a kind of wonder.
Even as he asked himself what drove people to settle in a land so inhospitable, he understood it.
Eerie or not, there was beauty, and the sheer scope of space. He wanted to come back in the daylight, see what colors the light teased out of the baked earth, the towers and coils of rock, the rough peaks.
Something had driven and pushed people to leave the green of the east and travel so far, in such hostile conditions, to the browns and burned golds of the West. To build scrubby little desert towns like the one the PWs now used.
With Mallick, he studied the target—a huddle of buildings, half in serious disrepair. Trucks, bikes, a paddock holding half a dozen horses, a single milk cow, a scatter of chickens.
And one sentry, asleep on duty.
They didn’t speak much as they quietly circled the target. Sound carried on the desert air. Duncan heard the echoing calls of coyote, wolf, and the bored conversation of a trio of men sitting out at a picnic table playing cards.
He felt magicks on the air, dim, struggling, from the building behind the card game. Prisoners, he thought, drugged or injured, or both.
Fury eked through the wonder.
“We could take them out tonight, ourselves,” he whispered to Mallick. “They’re idiots.”
Mallick nodded. “No doubt, but it’s not for us, not tonight.”
“I get it, but, man, it’s hard to walk away. I’m going to get a closer look, back of the building where they’ve got the magickals.”
“Be quick, and quiet.”
He could flash, but that wouldn’t give him as many lay-of-the-land details. So he moved swiftly over the hard-baked ground, keeping out of the range of the battery-run security lights.
As he got closer, he realized the building had been—and was—an actual jail, with barred windows, no rear door.
He peeked in, saw a trio of small cells, a locked interior door separating it from the rest of the building.
Twenty-six by his count, including kids, all sprawled out in a stupor. He saw fresh brands on foreheads, fresh bruises, old bruises, dried blood. Bare feet—torn up from being forced to walk Christ knew how far. Hair shorn so close and rough that scalps showed raw gashes.
He spotted two dirty jars on the floor outside one cell, and the weak lights inside it.
He heard the locks on the interior door slide, ducked down from the window.
“Told you they were all out.”
“We got orders to check every four hours, we check every four hours. Now get over and do the same on the slave quarters. And keep your dick in your pants this time.”
“What’s the point having slaves if we can’t have some fun with them?”
“Command put me in charge, and slaves are for work, not recreation. You want to fuck something, you fuck one of the bitches in here before we hang them. Now go do the goddamn check on the slave quarters.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Duncan heard one leave, the other move deeper into the room. “Dream of hell,” the man muttered. “Because you’re going back there soon. We’re going to send every one of you sons and daughters of demons back to hell. We’re going to take back our world.”
He stood there in silence a full minute. “We’re going to start building the scaffold tomorrow—right out there.”
He walked to the window where Duncan crouched below, looked out. “Right out where you can see it every damn day and know what’s coming for you. We’re going to wipe the abomination of you off the face of the earth, one noose at a time.”
He went out, locked the door.
When they finished the mission, flashed back to the cabin, Duncan pulled a beer out of the cold box, poured wine for Mallick.
“I’ll draw it up. If they don’t get reinforcements before we go, we can take them with fifty troops, max.”
“I agree. We close off their access to their weapons. They’re poorly organized as yet, and not yet fortified.”
“They think they’re off the radar—that’s the term, right? They don’t figure we know about them, think they have plenty of time to set up. They’re taking a break, more or less, after the trip out there.”
He took a long drink. “Twenty-six prisoners, drugged, most injured. I couldn’t tell how seriously. At least one of the PWs in charge is a true believer.”
Calm as a lake, Mallick sipped wine. “You’re angry, and anger clouds judgment.”
“They had pixies in fucking jars on the floor. One of the kids in the cells couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. Damn right I’m angry. You and I could’ve ended it tonight.”
He threw up a hand before Mallick could respond. “I get why we didn’t. Get why we couldn’t. It’s a freaking brilliant plan, and it could net us Arlington. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t hard to walk away from what we saw there.”
His thoughts as rough as the scruff on his face, Duncan dropped down in a chair. “They’re going to start building the scaffold tomorrow. They might use it before we hit.”
“Think strategically,” Mallick advised.
“I will. There’s no law saying I can’t bitch about it first. I know we can’t save everybody. I learned that early on.”
But it ate at him, always.
Mallick sat, sipped his wine. “Let me know when you’ve finished bitching so we can begin the work needed to save who we can.”
Duncan studied the sorcerer, the white-streaked beard, the dark eyes, the unflappable dignity. “You’re a hard-ass, Mallick. I’ve got to admire that. They’ve got fifty-two troops by my count.”
“Your count’s incorrect. They have fifty-four.”
Duncan might have argued, but he knew Mallick missed nothing. Ever. “Okay, fifty-four. Most of them carry sidearms or long guns. Every one I saw had a knife. I didn’t see any swords.”
“They have three stored in the building they use to house weapons.”
Duncan’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know that?”
“I looked. While you checked the prisoners, I went inside. I have
count of their stored weapons.”
“You said no going inside the buildings.”
“I said you weren’t to go inside,” Mallick corrected—unflappably. “I had an opportunity, and took it. And we now know they have three swords, ten more of the long guns, twelve more of the handguns, and ammunition. Not enough ammunition for all the weapons.”
Duncan pushed resentment aside for later. “They’re low on ammo. Good to know.”
“It’s possible they have weapons and ammunition for them in other locations.”
“I would,” Duncan agreed. “I’d have at least one more weapon than the one I carry where I sleep, so there’s that. I might keep one or two in some of the vehicles. But the point is, they’re not particularly well armed and, like you said, not all that well organized as yet.”
“And how would you take the base?”
“Depends. We’re coordinating with the other two attacks. She’ll hit Arlington after dark, but it could still be light in Utah. That matters.”
“She’ll have factored that into her timing. Assume we strike at night.”
Yeah, she’d factor it, Duncan had to agree. Fallon was another who rarely missed a thing. “Okay. We take out the crap sentry—or sentries if they post more. Quick, quiet, so archers or elves with blades. Move in from the west and east, cover the prison, slave quarters, and armory first. Secure the prisoners—get them out. Secure the weapons and vehicles. Neutralize any enemy forces necessary to achieve that.”
“Do you wish the enemy dead, or the prisoners freed?”
“Trick question?”
At Mallick’s arched brows, his silence, Duncan huffed out a breath. “Okay, all right. They’ve got no DUs, not unless they have any passing as civilians. So we can overwhelm them with power, neutralize them that way, and cut down on body count. Take out the sentry or sentries with a power punch. Give them a zap, secure them, move in. Fallon wants us to give them time to send out an SOS, and that’s part of the smart here. We let them do that, then take down the comms.”
He took another swig of beer. “But I’m not risking anyone to spare that enemy body count. If it comes to it, we take them out.”
“Then we’re agreed. Make your map. We’ll plot out the strategy, select our troops. We’ll take the map and the plan to Fallon in the morning.”
