On his back, Petra rode with her hair streaming, her face exultant. Her laugh, savage bells, rang and rang and rang.
The curtain closed. She had her answer.
Fallon waited another moment, letting the vision fade, then closed the circle. Duncan stood, wind streaming through his hair, just outside it.
“I didn’t know you were here.”
“You were a little occupied. I couldn’t sleep, then wake-dreamed of you standing here. I saw what you saw.”
“We can’t wait.”
“No. But I was never on the side of waiting.”
“No, you weren’t. We attack as planned, when we planned. Midnight tomorrow.” With her eyes gray as the smoke, fierce as the battle, she held out a hand. “Let’s take tonight.”
* * *
At midnight, in the raw whip of February, Fallon sat astride Laoch, Taibhse on her arm, Faol Ban beside her. Troops stood or mounted, as did those in Arlington, on The Beach, in forests, on plains, in fields, on rocky rises.
She looked at her mother and Ethan, who’d stay behind for now. Healers and support would be needed in waves, just as fresh troops would be needed.
She knew her mother’s thoughts: Come home safe. Bring your father, your brothers home safe.
But Lana said, “Fight well, fight strong.”
She saw Arlys gripping Bill Anderson’s hand. She wouldn’t risk the chronicler or the elder on this launch. Fred, not only with her brood but the children of others who stood ready to fight, sent a smile full of faith toward Eddie.
Katie moved to Lana so the women slid arms around each other’s waists. Hannah and Jonah, she knew, waited at the clinic, beside a mobile with a team for the signal.
It was time to give it.
She drew her sword, cast her mind to every leader in every base. “Fight well,” she said as her mother had. “Fight strong.”
Lifting her sword to the sky, she flashed. Thousands flashed with her.
Lightning exploded in the sky. The spires that still stood bled red in its savage light. Smoke choked the frigid air, spewing up from fresh fires whose heat churned the snow into ash-black sludge. Buildings along the wide avenue that bisected the city into east and west huddled battered and broken where wild laughter echoed.
A rumble of engines, the blast of explosions, tortured screams ripped from the west. As planned, her troops fanned out along the grid of what had been Midtown.
A small army of Raiders on snowmobiles, in burly trucks roared in.
You first, Fallon thought, and charged.
Duncan veered his horse left as she took out the lead rider with one killing slash and sent the rumbling vehicle and its pillion rider tumbling through the air.
He fought his way to the first truck, smashing power at the windshield, following it with flame. While the driver and his companions screamed, he surged through the trampled snow to the back of the truck, broke the locks to free the half a dozen people locked inside.
“Get clear!” he shouted as the crack of gunfire, the whiz of arrows in flight ripped through the city’s canyons.
A girl of about sixteen, blood running down her face, leaped out. “Screw that.” She grabbed for a charred piece of wood and, wielding it like a club, rushed into the fight.
He felt the first slap of power whip toward him, whirled to meet it with his own. As those magicks, dark and light, clashed, the air bloomed bloody red. He pushed into it, sword flaming, power pulsing.
Dealing with a group of Raiders, he knew, was only the beginning. As he took the next truck, burst the doors open so prisoners tumbled free, black lightning rained from the sky. With it came a new surge of power on dark wings.
He saw the face, contorted with glee, the eyes, black, piercing. Even as he braced, sword and power ready, an arrow winged out, struck the enemy in the heart. The wind tore through the great, edgy wings, tattering them as power died. Duncan looked toward Tonia when the body fell into the soot-stained snow.
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I did.” Guiding her horse with her knees—she’d been one of Meda’s top students—Tonia nocked another arrow. “Ready?”
“For this? All my life.”
Together, they led their brigade west.
As Duncan and Tonia moved west, Simon east, Fallon south, block by brutal block, Colin fought in Queens, Mallick in Brooklyn. By boat, on foot, on horseback, Mick’s troops surged on lower Manhattan from the east, Flynn poured his in from the west.
War cries ringing, resistance fighters teemed into the streets, climbed over rubble, many armed with nothing more than clubs or fists. While crows screamed, while magicks clashed as violent as swords, they stormed the city held by the dark for a generation.
Faeries swooped through fire and smoke to fly wounded out of the fray, to lift children, the elderly out of the war zone. Some struck down had to be taken out through lightning strikes, through sudden, shocking explosions.
Hour by hour, foot by agonizing foot, they drove the enemy back. When they lost ground, lost men, they regrouped, pushed on.
At first light, weak, dull, smeared with smoke, Fallon drew her exhausted troops back, called in fresh.
The first strike in the battle of New York raged for fourteen hours with a toll of five hundred dead or wounded. For the price they regained the heart of the city, several sectors on its fringes.
Fallon ordered a triage set up for wounded, a shelter for the horses, guards posted to hold the lines they’d drawn. Troops from the first wave were billeted, fed, ordered to rest.
She stood outside a building in that heart and, curious, used the sleeve of her already filthy jacket to wipe at soot.
Magickal symbols, she noted. Protective symbols, still beating, still carrying light. She moved to glass doors, waved a hand, and when they opened, walked inside.
Large, echoing, marble and gilt dulled with time, but undamaged. Many doors—elevators, she corrected. Photos of people, smiling through layers of dust, lined the walls. Some had fallen—vibrated off from explosions, she imagined.
She opened herself, searched, searched, but could find no scent, no taste, no remnants of dark. So here, she thought, she’d make her HQ.
She turned to Travis. Like her, he was soaked with blood, grime, wet from the snow. But, and she thanked the gods, unharmed.
“This’ll work. It’s protected, and whatever protected it was strong enough to hold that light all these years. We can billet more troops here, and wounded who haven’t been transported or treated.”
She rubbed at the dirt on her face, managed to make it worse. “We need to send elves to the other commanders, get updated sitreps.”
“You need sleep. Hey, me, too.”
“As soon as we’re set up. We need to hold the ground we took today. And I need, as soon as possible, a list of the dead, a list of the wounded. I need to talk to the resistance fighters we picked up today. We need to coordinate.”
She squeezed the back of her neck, tried to roll the worst of the ache out of her shoulders. Her eyes stung so each blink felt like a swipe of sandpaper. So much to do now, right now, she thought, with this breath between the fight between life and death.
“POWs need to be transported.”
Travis pulled off a wool cap, dragged a hand through his filthy hair. “I don’t know if we’ve got any yet.”
“When and if. We need a team to handle the bodies. Ours, theirs. Any minors, any too old, sick, or unwilling to fight should be taken to safety.”