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.
“He’ll be enflamed with spell fire, and the ashes salted and taken away to barren land to be buried with the head of a snake, the fang of a jackal, the head of a crow.”
She looked at Lana. “You hurt her again.”
“Not enough. They’ll come back.”
“They’ll come back, but this time we don’t run.”
“No, we’re done with that. Go on.” She touched Fallon’s cheek. “People need to see you. I’ll help the medics, and your father will deal with that.” She looked down at Eric.
“Yeah, I will.”
When Fallon moved off, Lana turned into Simon. “Max died here, right here where Eric fell. Fallon’s sword sent him here, and you finished it. Right here, Simon. Max tried to stop him. I tried. You and Fallon did. It matters, I think, it was you and Fallon.”
“It’s done.” He kissed her. “Go help patch people up. I’m going to get a couple of guys to help me move him more into the open, and we’ll keep a guard on him until we can do what Fallon wants done with him.”
It relieved Fallon to see familiar faces as she moved across what had, for the second time, become a field of battle. She saw the wisdom in Fred and some of the other faeries recharging the earth where it had been struck and scorched, and people gathering up the ruined remains of the gazebo.
Some wept, and there should always be tears over blood, but most dealt with what needed to be done with a grim determination.
She stopped Hannah.
“Can you tell me how bad it is? Dead, wounded?”
“A lot of gashes and burns, and shock. Some serious injuries.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “Starr’s one. She took a hard hit, but she’s fighting treatment. She panics if they touch her. I know Flynn’s trying, but he’s hurt, too. And—and Tonia.”
Fallon gripped Hannah’s arm, hard. “How bad?”
“Rachel says second-and third-degree burns, probably a concussion, whiplash. I’m not sure. Mom made her go to the clinic. She couldn’t make Duncan go, and he’s hurt, too.”
Fallon looked to where he sat, his arm around a woman who held Duncan’s dead friend. Who rocked, who keened.
“Denzel … her son … I loved him. We all loved him. And I heard Duncan tell Will to check on Carlee, and on Mina and her little boy. That Petra—oh God—that she said she’d killed Carlee and Mina. I have to go, they need me.”
“I’ll come to the clinic. I can help. I’ll be there.”
First she went to Duncan. He didn’t look at her, just held the grieving mother, kept his eyes on his friend’s face. But he jerked away when Fallon laid a hand on his wounded side.
“Leave it alone.”
“You’re more help uninjured.” Despite him, she pressed her hand against him, slid her power in. Searing, she thought, and deeper than she’d realized. She had to clamp her teeth on the shock of the burn, kept them clamped until it eased and she could breathe clear again.
“Rachel will want to have a look at you,” she said, and rose, began her walk to the clinic.
Scores injured, she saw as she went in. Some huddled in chairs with their wounds, others lay on gurneys. Some wept, some moaned, some just sat with eyes glazed in shock.
Her mother, hair pinned up, worked with other healers. She stopped by a girl she recognized as one of Tonia’s friends. April, a faerie, who shivered with shock under a blanket.