“You would.” Oddly comforted, she rode into New Hope where the gardens were lit with lanterns, faerie lights, streams and beams of moonlight.
And where hundreds upon hundreds waited.
“I didn’t expect…”
“Katie organized it,” Lana told her. “And with your father, your brothers, Mallick, and some good friends, we refined it.”
“Please tell me I don’t have to make a speech.”
“Not necessary.”
No cheers rang out, but people moved back so she could ride through to where Duncan and Tonia waited.
When she dismounted, Lana embraced her one last time. “Your light changed me. All I have goes with you tonight.”
When she stepped back to stand with Mallick, Simon hugged her. “Come back to me, baby. Fight strong, kick ass, and come home.”
Before she could speak, Mallick and her mother stepped forward. They lifted their hands, and she felt their power pulse and merge. From it, a flame rose, straight as a spear.
“This fire burns until the children of the Tuatha de Danann return. When their battle is won, this flame will be cast in stone, a flame eternal to symbolize the light.”
People formed circles, the New Hope Originals innermost, those familiar faces illuminated by the fire’s light, others spiraling out behind them, ring after ring.
“This is New Hope,” Fallon decreed. “This is the center. This is why we can do this. Why we will.”
Circle after circle, she thought. Unity and faith.
With Taibhse settling on Laoch’s saddle, Faol Ban by her side, she joined hands with Duncan and Tonia.
Another circle, forged in blood, in trust, in purpose.
She felt the clock ticking toward midnight, closed her eyes. And when that moment struck, opened them.
As one they flashed from New Hope, and straight into the storm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Lightning cracked, red and black, pounding the ground with hammer strikes, splitting the already blazing fields with fissures that belched smoke. The smoke rode whirling cyclones skyward to smother the moon and stars so the night drowned in black.
Crows streamed and screamed through it.
Duncan shoved a ball of light against the dark, then another, illuminating the stones and its undulating center.
“Looks like they’re expecting us.”
“Cast the circle!” Fallon shouted and, pointing her sword north, called the gods.
They set candle and cauldron, lit the flame, rang the bell, said the words. Defiant, releasing her anger, Fallon deflected bolts of lightning, power against power.
“On this hour of my birth, we challenge the evil that walks the earth. I am The One, born of power and light, destined by blood and choice to lead this fight.”
“We,” Duncan continued, “sister and brother who shared a womb, join with The One to build your tomb. With blood and power the gods foretell, we send dark’s creatures back to hell.”
“We, children of the Tuatha de Danann, are the three,” Tonia shouted. “And here and now accept our destiny. This place, this time, this night, we pledge all we are to the light.”
“Blood joins blood,” they said together as Fallon scored their palms. “Light joins light. Power joins power.”
As they joined hands, the shock of merging snapped light from their palms. As the surge rocked them, swept through them, they gripped tighter.
“Hold on!” Duncan pitched his voice above the gale. “It’s working.”
The force of the wind nearly buckled Fallon’s knees. She watched it snatch the band from Tonia’s hair like angry fingers so the wild curls flew free.
And the undulating earth in the circle of stones began to open, to reveal the maw beneath.
“Finish it!” With the storm raging around them, Fallon drew in her breath.
“Now rise magicks, rise, rise, and strike the creature of death, of lies. Show us the path to find him, and into the pit we drive him and forever our blood will bind him. Here is the vow of the three. As we will, so mote it be.”
The leading edge of the wind died, but what remained blew raw as winter. Inside the stones, the ground held still, and open.
“Is it enough?” Tonia wondered.
“It’ll have to be.” Fallon gestured to a thin stream of light leading into the woods. “We have the path.”
“And we’ve got company,” Tonia added, breaking the connection to nock an arrow.
Duncan enflamed his sword as dozens of Dark Uncanny surged from the woods. “We’re going to need a bigger circle.”
Energized, even eager, Tonia laughed. “Points for you,” she said and let the first arrow fly.
“Keep clear of the pit.” Fallon punched out power, took out three with one swipe. “They waited until we opened it. They want to push us back, into it.”
She leaped on Laoch, shot up to attack from the air.
“I’ll take the left flank,” Duncan told Tonia. “You get the right.”
“Deal.” She dropped and rolled under a fireball, shot a light-soaked arrow.
With a sweep of his sword, Duncan swatted bolts back into the enemy, pivoted to meet the pulsing black blade of another. Sensing movement behind him, he swung to kick out. Faol Ban leaped for the throat of a shifted panther and saved him the trouble.
Fallon’s fire and fury rocked the earth, cut swaths through oncoming power as Taibhse tore through the crows, sent them smoking, screaming into the pit below.
She dived, leaped off. “Take him up,” she shouted to Tonia, then striking, cleaving, burning, moved in to fight back-to-back with Duncan.
“They’re a distraction.” Despite the cold, sweat ran down his face. “A damn good one, but a distraction. They want to drive us into the pit? We drive them.”
She nodded, reached back to grip his hand. “Push!”
It poured out in a kind of rage, hot, savage, strong.
In the screams that followed, the howl of shifters, the flaming blur of elves, they battered them back, back. But worse, the sounds that came, no longer human, as they fell, tumbled, spilled into the pit, tore through the shrieking wind.
A handful broke off, ran.
“If they reach the village,” Fallon began.
“I’ve got this.” Astride Laoch, Tonia circled. “Go, go. I’ll take care of this and be right behind you.”
“She can handle it.” Duncan looked at Fallon. “Ready?”
Together, they charged into the dead woods.
Shadows loomed, shifted. Some breathed, and that breath held death. They felt it, that beat, beat, beat of the dark heart. The pulse of the source.
The light, called by the spell, lay thin and winding.
“It knew it would come to this night.” With sword and shield, Fallon followed the light. “It’s always known. Maybe all of it, all the blood, the battles, the death and misery, was another distraction. Because this is what it’s waited for.”
You’re what it’s waited for, Duncan thought, and stayed close.
The ice-slicked, skeletal trees seemed to slink over the ground as if to block the path. Jagged fingers of branches jabbed out. Duncan sliced one aside with his sword, heard a quick, high-pitched shriek as the severed limb bled black.
“That’s fucking creepy.”