She’d been waiting for him. Waiting, she knew, since before her first breath.
She drew her sword, struck, sliced through the edges of his left wing. The shock sent him careening to the ground, the force like the thunder that boomed overhead.
“Hold them off me.”
She wanted to see his face, his true face. And the bubbling thirst for vengeance burned in her blood. “You took his life, your brother’s life, for power and greed. I’ll take yours.”
He rolled away from the strike of her sword, flew up, wavering where Allegra folded him in a wing.
His true face, Fallon thought. Like raw meat, one eye gone, his lips seared and drawn back by scarring.
She heard others coming, fast. Heard the shouts as Petra, hissing like a snake, flung fire, toothy black darts.
When her parents flashed a few feet away, Fallon’s heart stuttered.
“Get back! Get away from this.”
In the chaos of smoke and flame, of clashing magicks, gunfire and calls for help, she pivoted in front of her parents.
“You did this to me!” Allegra screamed down at Lana.
“I did, and I can do it again.”
“Not yet, not yet.” Fallon saw it, that wild red haze of power, saw it in the way her mother’s hair streamed back in her own storm. “Not yet.
“Taibhse! Ionsaí! ”
The owl exploded out of the sky, a white streak through the dark. With talons and beak he tore through the crows, sent mangled bodies falling.
“Faol Ban! Garda!”
The wolf charged through the smoke, fangs gleaming, to stand in front of Lana and Simon.
“Laoch!” Through the haze, he galloped to her, and she thrust her sword toward the boiling sky. “Eitilt!” As he rose, wings spreading, she leaped on his back.
“Not alone.” Lana pushed that fury, barely banked, toward Allegra. “Duncan, not alone. I can help, from here. Please.”
“Tonia?”
“I’m good.” She lifted her bow. “I’ve got this. Arrows!” she shouted. “I need more arrows.”
Trusting his sister, and hoping like hell he could hit a moving target, Duncan flashed.
He nearly overshot as Fallon wheeled the horse to the left, and slammed hard into her back.
“Goddamn it!”
“Sorry. Blame your mom. Later. You want your uncle, let’s go get the bastard. But Petra’s mine. Do you hear me? She’s mine.”
Vengeance. She heard it bubbling in him as it did in her. Did it strengthen or weaken?
They rode through a rain of fire, slicing spears of lightning, into heat that boiled the air. She blocked attacks with her shield, deflected with her sword. And would have taken a hard hit if Duncan hadn’t slapped a bolt away.
They hit the edge of her mother’s fury, and Duncan hissed out of breath at the toothy, red flood. “Shit. Push through it! Just push through it.”
But it shifted away.
“It’s my mother’s power.”
“It still fucking bites. Move in.”
“I know what I’m doing.”
They circled the three, striking power to power. Whirlwinds spun, spinning flames she met with fists of ice, sweeps of driving rain.
And Fallon’s mind cleared just enough of her own fury for her to see.
They flanked their child. Shielded her. Took strikes for her.
Loved her.
“Can you talk to Tonia? Mind to mind?”
“A little, sometimes. Not like elves. We need to draw them away from the park, from town.”
“No. Do it now, call Tonia. Do it with me—I have elfin blood. Tell her to train everything on Petra. Everything she has. On Petra.”
Duncan fought to open himself, felt a blaze of black lightning scorch by an inch from his face. Sweat dripped into his eyes, his side pulsed with pain, but he felt the click of connection.
A glance below showed him Tonia looking up, and notching another arrow. And to his horror, Hannah on the smoldering grass using her body as a shield over one of the wounded.
“On Petra,” Fallon told him. “Concentrate on Petra. Everybody! Everything!”
The barrage was brutal. Arrows flaming, fire shooting from sword strikes, bullets winging. And the thrust and push of light against dark that rocked sky and earth.
They shielded her, losing the force of attack in defense. Blocking missiles and magicks in panic while Petra, Fallon thought—coolheaded now—laughed.
Not just a twisted heart, not just a twisted gift. A twisted mind.
“Hey, cousin!” Fallon shouted it, putting a taunt in her voice. “I guess you don’t want to play, since you’re hiding behind Mommy and Daddy.”
Allegra threw a bolt that stuck Fallon’s shield with enough power to shoot shock into her shoulder.
“Maybe you’re just shy.” Drawing in, Fallon punched with the shield to thrust the bolt back.
Understanding now, Duncan filled his shout with contempt. “She’s not worth it. Cowardly little bitch. Weird-looking, too. Let’s just finish this and go have a beer.”
“I’ll kill you both!”
Face clenched in fury, Petra swung clear of her mother’s wings. She flung fire, bolts, angry power with her eyes—one blue, one black—mad with rage.
Fallon blocked, blocked. “Wait,” she said to Duncan. “Wait.”
And when she raised her sword, shot light through it as bright as the charging horse, Eric screamed.
He flew in a gale of wind, shoved his daughter away, and took the blade.
Fallon’s strike cleaved off his wing, scorched across his chest, burned down to his belly.
As he fell, and with Allegra’s shriek shaking the air, she took Laoch into a dive.
“Now. Mom! Now!”
She saw her mother’s full power—old grief locked with new—love joined unbreakably with love. The red haze roiled, rolled. Allegra wrapped herself around Petra, shot high as the killing edge clawed at her.
Mother of Darkness, Fallon thought. And Mother of Light.
“Let it go. Mom, let it go. Help me clear the air. Duncan! I have to see.”
“They’re gone.”
Still, she urged Laoch into a climb, searching.
“Are you hurt?” she asked Duncan as she scanned the sky, as she saw the first stars blink back through the thinning haze.
“Not much. Not as much as they are. We need to go down.”
When Eric fell on the edge of the cornfield, Simon left Lana’s side. He knew the sounds of a battlefield—the cries of the wounded, the calls for medics. He knew the stench of it—smoke and blood and death.
Just as he knew death when he looked it in the eye.
Eric, what was left of him, still breathed, but it was short and bubbling bloody froth. No medic, no magick, would save him.
“You’re done. Maybe you’ll live long enough for my women, my incredible women, to say what they have to say to you.”
“Who—” Eric wheezed, coughed up blood. “Who are you?”
“I’m the man who brought The One into the world. She came into my hands.” Sidearm aimed, steady, Simon glanced over briefly as Fallon brought the horse to earth, leaped off, ran toward him.
Then he saw sweat mix with the blood on Eric’s face, saw the shaking hand form a black dagger. As Eric lifted it to throw, Simon put a bullet into him.
“That was for Max Fallon, you son of a bitch.”
Breathless, Fallon looked down, saw the dagger dissolve into muddy ash, the single eye glaze as it stared up at her.
“I wanted to be the one who ended him.”
“You did.”
Fallon shook her head, sheathed her sword, took Simon’s hands. “No, you did.” Then her mother’s as Lana ran to her. “You did. It was always meant to be you. Not standing in for my father, because you are my father. Standing for the man he betrayed, the brother he killed.”
“You’re hurt.”
Fallon glanced down at herself. Some cuts, some burns. “Not really, but others are.” She turned to her mother. “I underestimated you.”
“You’re not the only one,” Simon agreed.
“I won’t do that again.”
“Right with you.”
“You’ll help with the wounded.”
“Yes. You first. I’m your mother,” Lana said when Fallon started to object. “You first.”
While her mother tended her, she studied Eric and found the rage that had driven her ebbed just like the burning under her mother’s touch.