by Nora Roberts
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Might’ve picked up a couple of bruises. They were stupid. Now they’re dead.” She rubbed her cheek against Laoch’s. “I gave them a choice, they chose death.”
“You saved two lives.”
“Yes.” Lives taken, lives saved. She went back to the rubdown. “I saved two lives. They’re in love, those two lives. Her grandmother doesn’t approve of mixed relationships, so they ran off together. I think they’ll be fine now.”
He set a hand on her shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“Is something wrong?” She set the cloth aside. “I wasn’t gone that long.”
“I saw you leave. I was about to come out, happened to see you and Duncan.”
“Oh.” Then it hit her. “Oh,” she repeated. “Dad—”
“Hold on. Just hold on.”
Like Duncan—so like Duncan, she realized in a huh moment—he shoved his hands in his pockets, paced away, paced back.
“You’re a grown-up,” he began, a war clear in those changeable hazel eyes she loved. “More. You’re a warrior, a leader. You’re not an idiot. You’ve never been, I don’t know, flighty or careless, and…”
He stopped, and with his face covered in frustration, stared at her. “You’re still my baby, damn it. You’re still my girl, so I’ve got things to say.”
“You disapprove.” And his disapproval, his more than anything or anyone, would cut her to the bone.
“No. Yes. Shit! Yes, on a general level, because my baby, damn it. Specifically Duncan? No. I’m not an idiot, either.”
“You’re not making sense.”
“Why the hell should I have to make sense?” His hands flew out of his pockets, into the air. “Sense, my ass, when I look out and see—and realize—”
“I thought Mom had, you know, prepared you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Hands back in pockets, more pacing. “She reminded me, but I didn’t really … I just figured, okay, a little puppy love. It doesn’t matter I knew better somewhere in my head, it was a nice buffer until I look out and see his hands on you, and the two of you. My baby.
“Buffer?” He took his hands out again, mimed an explosion. “And I get, on some level, why you talked to your mom about it and not me, but you didn’t, so it smacks me in the face, and I’ve got about thirty seconds to adjust before I grill Duncan.”
“You … you grilled Duncan?”
“It’s my fucking job, Fallon. My goddamn job.”
“Yes.” Touched, amused, a little horrified, she got an apple out of the bin, carefully cut it in half for Laoch and Grace. “It is. How’d he do?”
“He did all right,” Simon replied. “He’s not an asshole.”
“Good to know.”
“Maybe I knew this was coming. I’ve seen the way he looks at you, from the time we got here, when you’re not looking. I know that look because I used to look at your mother when she wasn’t looking the same damn way. But—”
“Really?”
“I’m not going there, adding to the damn stars in your eyes. It’s too much for me. I know he’s a good soldier. I know he’s a good son, a good man. I know when he tells me he loves you he believes it.”
“So do I. I love him. I had feelings for him pulling at me since the first time I saw him in a dream. The reality’s stronger. I know he’s loyal to The One, to the light. There’s no question of it. But he sees me, Dad. He sees Fallon Swift, and he loves her.”
She stepped to him. “You were the first one to hold me. You were the first man to love me. To love Fallon, just Fallon. You showed me, all my life, what it was to be a man with strength and heart and courage. I couldn’t love a man who didn’t pass the bar you set. I could want, but I couldn’t love. So I know, with all that’s asked of me, all that’s happened before, all that’s to come, I’ve been blessed. You’re the love of my life, Dad. And now I’ve been given another.”
She put her arms around him, nestled her head on his shoulder. “Two loves of my life.”
He wrapped around her hard. “You’re still my baby.”
“I was born in the lightning, in the storm, as it was foretold, and your hands were there to bring me into the world.”
He eased back to look into her eyes, into the visions.
“You were there for the mother, there for the child, and you loved without demands or restrictions. That is love pure. It is light beyond power. And with the sun of that morning, after the storm, while the mother slept, you held me on your heart, and I knew you. You are the father given me, a gift from the gods.”
She came back, let out a breath. Smiled at him. “Daddy.”
And like Duncan, so like Duncan, he just lowered his forehead to hers.
* * *
With Simon, Lana stood in the cold with the first snowflakes drifting while Fallon called Taibhse to her arm.
“Are you sure about this? We could come with you.”
“It has to be the three of us. Well, six.” She laid a hand on Laoch’s neck while Faol Ban sat at her feet.
“Maybe you could have Mom and Hannah over for a while,” Tonia suggested. “I think Mom’s having some sad because of where we’re going.”
“Of course.” Thinking of her friend, Lana pushed at the hair spilling loose over her shoulders. “I should’ve thought of it. Are you going to be warm enough? It’s bound to be colder there, and probably damp.”
“We’re fine.” Fallon already wore the knit cap and scarf at her mother’s insistence. “It’s really a scouting mission.”
“With a black dragon in the mix,” Simon added.
“If we’re lucky. We’ll be back as soon as we can. Don’t worry more than you can help it. Ready?”
She caught the look her father sent Duncan, nearly laughed before they flashed.
And there the dark held deep, the wind sliced like angry blades, cutting through the trees that bowed and creaked, throwing up the snow lying thick on the fields so it flew in ragged curtains.
There, things breathed in the night, in the dark, that watched. That waited.
There the circle stood, its center black and slick as oil.
“My gods,” Tonia uttered. “Feel that? It’s like a black heart beating.”
“I want to say we can close it, we could try, but…” With the wind blowing, streaming through his hair, Duncan stared into that heart and shook his head.
“We’d fail. I don’t know why it can’t be done now, and over. I just know we’d fail if we tried now.” Fallon glanced toward the woods. “And if we fail we wouldn’t be able to try again.”
“It lives here. There are some animal tracks.” After tugging her own cap down on her head, Tonia gestured. “But not nearly as many as you’d expect. And not one sign of a human.”
The crows came to circle and scream. On Fallon’s arm, Taibhse, his great eyes golden flames, stirred restlessly. “Not yet,” she told him. “Their day will come, but not yet.”
“It’s in there.”
Tonia looked toward the woods where Duncan stared. “Then let’s go say hello.”
“Yeah.” Fallon circled a hand, conjured a bright ball that illuminated the snow, tossed the dark woods into relief. “Let’s see how it likes a little light. Stay together,” she said as they trudged through knee-deep snow. “Separating us would be a win.”
“It’s not going to win.” Duncan drew his sword when they reached the edge between light and dark.
With the next step, the air dropped from blustery cold to biting and bitter. Ice coated the trees in lizard scales that cracked and re-formed with a sound like gunshots through the deadening silence.
“No tracks.” The thickness, the fog unrolling over the snow, turned Tonia’s voice into a muffled murmur.
“No life,” Fallon responded. She pressed her hand to the trunk of a tree, found no beat. She gestured to Duncan. When he pierced the trunk with his sword, a black liquid bubbled out of the wound.
The air stank with sulfur.
>
“It’s taken these woods.” Calmly, he cleaned his sword with snow. “Whatever’s unlucky enough to wander in here doesn’t wander out again.”
Fallon guided the light left, right. “We’ll pick a direction and—”
The wolf picked for them, moved left. She urged the owl to Laoch’s saddle so she could have her sword in hand. So they followed the white wolf through a world of dead trees that shivered in their scaled coats of ice, through brambles crawling with thorns hidden under mounds of snow and creeping fog, through silence that echoed with the hollow breath of the dark.
“There’s something.” Neck prickling, Fallon gestured to the dark stain on the snow, a scatter of entrails. “Frozen solid, but they can’t have been here very long. There’s no snow over them, no snow over the blood.”
“And where’s the rest of it?” Duncan wondered. “It’s not enough, more like another animal dragged a few bits here. And the bits are too big for a rabbit or fox. More like—”
“Human. A girl.” Fallon fumbled out a hand for Duncan’s as Tonia’s came to her shoulder. And with their power joined with hers, she saw clearly. “Sixteen, only sixteen. Lured away in the night. Pretty music, pretty lights.”
The hair on Faol Ban’s nape rose up as he let out a growl.
Fallon snapped back from the vision, scanned the woods.
“We’re being stalked,” Tonia whispered, and nocked an arrow.
The wolf, black as the night, slunk out of the dark. Then another, and another. Thirteen, Fallon counted, that surrounded them with bared fangs and mad eyes ringed with red.
“They’re not real.”
“Those aren’t illusions,” Duncan said.
“No, they’ll rip us to shreds, but they’re born of blood magicks.”
“If magick created them, magick can destroy them. I’ve got a quiver full of bespelled arrows ready to prove that theory.”
“Get ready,” Fallon advised, and Duncan enflamed his sword.
When the first wolf sprang, Tonia’s arrow struck its heart. Faol Ban, gold collar burning bright, leaped at another’s throat. Guarding Duncan’s back, Fallon impaled another, heard the scream of one more trampled under Laoch’s hooves.
The air seemed to howl, fetid with smoke as, like the tree, black ooze bubbled from the wounds until only that black pool remained.
Duncan set two burning. While they writhed and howled, he spun to protect his sister from another. And was spared the effort as Taibhse tore it open with talons.
Fallon struck down the last, then stroked a hand down Faol Ban’s fur. “They took a beautiful animal and twisted it into something evil.”
“They?” Duncan repeated.
“Whoever lured the girl. There. That’s what they were guarding.”
“Someone broke a trail.” Tonia moved closer. “Magickally, right? It might as well have been plowed. Why?”
“To make it easier for the victim to get where they wanted her to go. One set of prints, human.” Fallon looked to Tonia, the best woodsman among them, for confirmation.
“Yeah, and, Jesus, she was barefoot.”
“Maybe she’s still alive.”
He would always think first of rescue, Fallon thought, though he had to know no one lived in this place now but the six of them.
“We’ll follow the trail. They lured her from her bed,” Fallon continued as they walked. “Out of the window. In a trance, and she dreamed she flew like a faerie.”
“Why have her walk once she was in here?” Tonia wondered.
“For sport.” Grim, because he did know, Duncan watched for a new attack.
“For sport,” Fallon agreed. “And so as they let her wake from the trance she’d be afraid and confused. Fear adds power to the ritual.”
As they moved deeper, they saw symbols hanging from branches or carved into trees. Now she felt a beat, heavy and deep. The pulse of black magicks.
“What holds this place doesn’t perform rituals.” With a lash of temper, Duncan sliced down symbols, sent them burning. “It has rituals performed for it. They brought the girl here, offered her.”
Fallon touched his arm, felt the ripple of tensed muscle nothing would soothe. “You brought me to the stones the first time so I’d make my choice. I chose to fight to stop this. We will stop it.”
“I know it.” Though far from soothed, he took her hand in his. “I know it.”
“We need more light.” Tonia added hers to Fallon’s.
In the glow they saw the circle ahead, one burned deep into the floor of the forest. And the rough altar of stone in its center. What remained of the girl lay splayed over it.
“We couldn’t save her, but we can destroy this.”
Duncan drew his hand from Fallon’s. “We’re not leaving her in this fucking place. I’ll get her.”
“Duncan—”
He whirled on Fallon. “I said I’ll get her.”
Because she understood his fury, she didn’t flinch from it. “I have a blanket in the saddlebags. You could wrap her in it. Give her to Laoch. We’ll take her out with us.”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Fallon just shook her head, turned to Tonia. “We’ll destroy the symbols with fire, then the circle. There’s salt in my bag, too. An athame, some fresh water, some crystals. Blood magick did this, and blood magicks—ours, blood of the light—will destroy it. We can do what we need to do.”
Her own heart sick with helpless rage, Tonia watched Duncan begin to wrap the remains in the blanket. “He’s always hated seeing innocents hurt. It’s harder yet since Denzel.”
“I ask myself why wasn’t I pulled here before this happened, and there’s no answer.” She shot out a hand, released her own rage to send symbols flaming. “There’s no damn answer.”
When they joined hands, mixed the blood of the Tuatha de Danann, said the words, brought the light, something roared through the woods. Not in pain, but fury.
They didn’t hurt it, not yet, Fallon thought as their joined powers poured through her. Only angered it. But they would hurt it. They would.
“And here the light burns through the dark. And no more will the earth carry its mark. By our blood, by our power we cleanse this space.”
The altar broke, crumbled, and the earth they opened swallowed its curling dust.
“So from this day, from this hour, no innocent life can be taken in this place. Hear the voices of we three. As we will, so mote it be.”
And they salted the earth.
“Its power’s less. Not gone,” Tonia said, sniffing the air like a wolf. “Not gone, but less.”
“We need to find out who or what did this. We shouldn’t take her back to New Hope.” His eyes drenched in sorrow now that his wrath had dissolved, Duncan looked at the body. “She’s probably got family around here. We can’t just take her. And I … I want to go to the house, the farmhouse. I want to see it before we go back.”
“So do I. Maybe—maybe it’s stupid, but there might be something in there we could take back to Mom. Just something she could have.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid. It’s loving,” Fallon said. “We need loving after this.”
Something loving, she thought, to take away the sorrow. “We’ll go to the house. And after, we’ll try to find some people. Someone who knows about the girl.”
“And about any DUs in the area,” Duncan added. “It won’t be the last time we come here, so we should get the lay of the land before we come again.”
“Yeah, we should know our battleground.” Fallon looked around, the dead wood, the ice-slicked trees, the salted ground. “It’ll gather again, and someone will find a way to feed it again. But for now, we’re done here.”
Again, she put a hand on Duncan’s arm. “If we can’t find anyone who knows her, we’ll bury her at your family’s farm.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Dark, deserted houses were commonplace in the world Duncan knew. But this one, this rambling house with its time-we
athered outbuildings, blank, blind windows, and overgrown land, stood apart from all the rest.
Family had built this with stone, wood, sweat, lived here, slept and woke here, worked the land acre by acre, generation by generation. Until.
“I half expected it to be burned down.” As she felt much the same as her twin, Tonia took his hand. “Or torn down for materials. It just looks like it’s…”
“Waiting,” he finished. “Well, wait’s over.”
As they approached the back door, Fallon gave them a moment, then followed. The spirit animals would guard the body.
He’d expected to find it locked, but the door opened with a long creak. He swore he felt the house itself release a long-held breath. He brought the light, a quiet one, and stepped inside.
In that quiet light, beneath the dust of time, he saw a large, tidy kitchen. Counters cleared, a table with a pottery bowl—bright blue under the dust—centered on it and chairs neatly tucked in. Curious, he opened a cupboard, found stacks of dishes filmed with spiderwebs. In another, glasses.
Tonia opened the refrigerator. Empty, scrubbed clean so the faintest whiff of lemon wafted out with the sour smell of disuse.
“There’s a pantry here—cleaned out,” Fallon said. “No food left to spoil or go to waste.”
“But dishes, glasses, pots, pans, all of that.” Tonia continued to explore. “Someone survived, at least long enough to do all this. To clean, to take the food out.”
“It’s been alone a long time. Waiting a long time.” He could feel it, both the grief and the joy. “They had pride in their home, in the land, in the legacy.”
“You’re the legacy,” Fallon said. “You and Tonia. Hannah, too. This is yours. They left it for you.”
“It’s full of them. The voices.” As they murmured inside him, he moved on, into a dining room. “They’d have had that last dinner here, New Year’s Eve. Mom said they always had a big dinner before the party.”
The room held an old buffet. Candlestands and what he thought must be pieces passed down still stood on it among the dust and cobwebs. A cabinet with dulled glass doors displayed what had been the company dishes, or those for special occasions.
