When they had, the count was forty-three enemy prisoners to transport. The rest they’d bury. Medics moved in to treat wounded from both sides while Fallon began the laborious process of vetting those held in cells.
Some, she knew, might be like the ones in the lab. Others might have had their minds broken, and a broken mind could bring danger to the rest.
“Take a break,” Simon told her, and shoved coffee into her hand.
“There are some shaky ones.” She gulped down coffee as she studied her father’s face. He’d mopped off the blood, and his hazel eyes held clear. He’d been a soldier long ago, in the other time. He was a soldier again in this one.
“They’ll need to move into one of the treatment centers before they’re clear to go. Why does that always feel as if we’re keeping them prisoners?”
“It shouldn’t, because it’s not. Some are never going to be right again, Fallon, and still we’ll let them go unless they pose a real danger. Now tell me how you knew that bastard on the table down in the lab was a bad guy.”
“First, he wasn’t as powerful as he thought, and it leaked through. But logically, the spell on the door, witchcraft. The other magickal in the lab was an elf. Bad elf,” she said with half a smile. “Elves are good at getting through locks, but they can’t bespell them. I felt his pulse when I released the first shackle, and it was hammering. It wouldn’t have been if he’d been under a paralytic.”
“But you released the second one.”
“He could’ve done that for himself.” She shrugged. “I’d hoped to question him, but … well.” She downed the rest of the coffee, and blessed her mother and the other witches who’d created Tropics to grow the beans. “Do you have the status of the woman they’d dumped off the table?”
“Faerie. She’ll never fly again—they excised most of her left wing—but she’s alive. Your mom’s got her at mobile medical.”
“Good. The faerie’s lucky they didn’t just kill her instead of tossing her off. Once our injured prisoners are cleared, I need you to debrief. I know it’s hard for you,” she added. “They’re soldiers, and most of them are just following orders.”
“They’re soldiers,” he agreed, “who stood by or even abetted while their prisoners were tortured, while children were kept in cells. No, baby, it’s not hard for me.”
“I could do this without you because I have to do it, but I don’t know how.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll never have to figure it out.”
She spoke to magickal children who’d been ripped away from non-magickal parents, reunited two whose parent—by blood or choice—had been locked in another cell.
She spoke to those who’d been locked in for years, others who had been swept up only days before.
She checked each one off the very precise records kept by the—now deceased—prison commander, reviewed the horrific records of experiments done in the lab.
Both Dark Uncanny—the witch, the elf—who’d worked there had hidden their natures, so her intel hadn’t shown any magickals on staff.
Intel only went so far, she thought as she marked the witch as deceased, the elf as a prisoner of war.
The storm passed and dawn broke when she did a last pass through the building. Cleaning crews already worked to scrub away the blood staining the concrete floors, the walls, the stairs. The supply team had gathered everything worth taking—the rations, the equipment, the vehicles, the weapons, clothing, shoes, boots, medical supplies. All would be logged, then dispensed where most needed or held in storage until it was.
The burial unit dug graves. Too many graves, Fallon thought as she walked outside, across the muddy ground. But today they dug none for their own, and that made it a good day.
Flynn slid out of the woods, his wolf Lupa by his side.
“Seven of the prisoners need more treatment,” he said. “Your mom’s helping with their transport to Cedarsville. It’s the closest clinic that can handle their injuries. The rest are on their way to the detention center on Hatteras.”
“Good.”
Flynn, she thought, fast—an elf, after all—efficient, and solid as the rock he could blend into, had met her mother and birth father when he’d been a teenager.
Now a man, he stood as one of her commanders.
“We’ll need a rotating security detail here,” she continued. “Hatteras is close to capacity, so we’ll need this facility. And they may come and check when they can’t get through, or just bring in another load of prisoners.”
She rattled off several names for the detail, including her brother Colin.
“I’ll set it up,” Flynn said. “But Colin took a hit in the op, so—”
“What?” She whirled around to Flynn, grabbed his arm in a vise grip. “I’m just hearing this?”
“You’re The One, but the mother of The One is downright scary, so when she says keep it to myself, I keep it to myself. He’s good,” Flynn added quickly. “Took a bullet in the right shoulder, but it’s out, and he’s healing. Do you think your mom would go with enemy wounded if her son wasn’t okay?”
“No, but—”
“She didn’t want you distracted, and neither did your brother, who’s more pissed off than hurt. Your dad already shoved him in the mobile heading back to New Hope.”
“Okay, all right.” But she pushed her hands through her short crop of hair in frustration. “Damn it.”
“We freed three hundred and thirty-two, and didn’t lose anyone.” Tall and lean, eyes of sharp green, Flynn looked back toward the building. “No one will be tortured in that hellhole again. Take your victory, Fallon, and go home. We’re secure here.”
She nodded, and walked into the woods, breathed in the smell of damp earth, dripping leaves. In this swampy area of what had been Virginia, near the Carolina border, insects hummed and buzzed, and what she knew to be sumac grew thick as walls.
She moved through until she stood within the circle of the shimmering morning sun to call Laoch.
He glided down to land, huge and white, silver wings spread, silver horn gleaming.
For a moment, because despite victory she was bone weary, she pressed her face to his strong throat. For that moment she was just a girl, with bruises aching, with eyes of smoke gray closed, with the blood of the slain on her shirt, her pants, her boots.
Then she mounted, sat tall in the saddle of golden leather. She used no reins or bit on the alicorn.
“Baile,” she murmured to him. Home.
And he rose up in the blue sky of morning to take her.
When she arrived at the big house between the New Hope barracks and the farm where Eddie and Fred raised their kids, their crops, she found her father waiting on the porch, his boots up on the rail, a mug of coffee in his hand.
He’d had a shower, she noted, as his mop of dense brown hair still showed damp. He rose, walked down to her, laid a hand on Laoch’s neck.
“Go on in and check on him. He’s sleeping, but you’ll feel better for it. I’ll see to Laoch, then there’s breakfast for both of us keeping warm in the oven.”
“You knew he’d been hurt.”
“I knew he’d been hurt and I knew he was okay.” Simon paused when she dropped down. “Your mom said not to tell you until you’d finished. She said that’s that, and when your mom says that’s that—”
“That’s that. I’m going to see for myself, grab a shower. I could use that breakfast after. Travis and Ethan?”
“Travis is at the barracks working with some new recruits. Ethan’s over at Eddie’s and Fred’s helping with livestock.”
“Okay then.”
And now that she knew where her other brothers were, she went in to check on Colin.
She went inside, turned for the stairs in the house that served as home, but one she doubted would ever really be one. The farm where she’d been born, had been raised would forever be home. But this place, like the cottage in the woods where she’d been trained by Mallick, served a purpose.
She walked to Colin’s room, where he sprawled over his bed wearing an old, fairly disreputable pair of boxers. He snored heroically.
She moved to him, laid her hand lightly—very lightly—over his right shoulder. Stiff, achy, she noted, but a clean wound already well healed.
Her mother had serious skills, Fallon reminded herself. Still she took another minute, touched his hair—a darker blond than their mother’s and worn these days in what he thought of as a warrior’s braid: short and fat.
He had a warrior’s body—muscular and tough—with a tattoo of a coiled snake on his left shoulder blade. (Done at sixteen without parental permission.)
She stayed a moment in the chaos of his room—he still collected whatever small treasure appealed to him. Odd coins, stones, pieces of glass, wires, old bottles. And had never learned, apparently, to hang, fold, or put away a single article of clothing.
Of her three brothers he was the only one without magicks. And of the three, the one who seemed born to be a soldier.
So she left him sleeping, walked downstairs, down again to her rooms on the lower level.
Unlike Colin’s, her room was scrupulously neat. On the walls she’d pinned maps—hand drawn or printed, old and new. In the chest at the foot of the bed she kept books, novels, biographies, histories, books on science, on magicks. On her desk she kept files on troops, civilians, training, bases, prisons, food supplies, medical supplies, maneuvers, spells, duty schedules, and rotations.
On the stand by her bed sat a white candle, a ball of crystal—gifts from the man who’d trained her.
She shed her clothes, dumped them in the basket for later laundering. And with a heartfelt sigh, stepped in the shower to wash away the blood, the sweat, the grime and stench of battle.
She dressed in jeans, worn at the knees and barely hitting the ankles of long legs, a T-shirt that bagged a bit over her slim frame. She pulled on her second pair of boots until she could clean the ones she’d worn to battle.