She looked over as Duncan came to the door, pulled it open. “Welcome home. Hi, Lana.”

“Hi yourself. Come in and shut the door. We’re about to have some hot chocolate.”

He stomped snow off his boots. “I could go for some, thanks.”

As she got the mugs, Lana studied the way they looked at each other. Love, she thought with an inward sigh, that came with longing and a healthy dose of lust.

“And for the goddess’s sake, kiss the girl.”

“Good idea.” He strode across the kitchen, lifted Fallon off the stool, circled her once. And kissed the girl.

* * *

He couldn’t stay long, but had a little more time with Fallon when she walked back to the barracks with him. She watched the troops train. Battles didn’t wait for fine weather, so they held their mock fights in the snow, taking on Mallick’s ghosts and each other.

Others did the same, she thought. In the West, the Midwest, the South, the North. And more, still more, would come.

* * *

At Lana’s invitation, Duncan and Mallick joined the family for dinner. She put on a hell of a spread—a kind of welcome home, Duncan imagined—with a rack of lamb, potatoes that looked like accordions—which, it turned out, Ethan called them—roasted with butter and herbs. Kale, nowhere on his list of favorites, done in some creamy sauce that made him a convert, a fancy salad crunchy with sprinkles of grain. Bread, wine, and the promise of lemon-berry tarts for dessert.

With all of that, it wasn’t hard to follow Lana’s rule of no war talk during dinner. Instead, they talked of the plans for expanding the clinic, Ethan’s addition of a veterinary clinic, Hannah’s upcoming exams. And the practical joke some of the recruits had tried—and failed—to pull on Mallick.

“They figured they’d catch Mallick in his shower,” Duncan relayed, “and one of the magickals would flip the water to ice-cold.”

“Some objected to training outdoors in the recent ice storm,” Mallick explained.

“Wouldn’t bother you.” Relaxed, Fallon wagged her fork. “Even when I got an actual bathroom—after a year—Mallick still used the stream, which equaled an ice bath from October to May.”

“Refreshing.” Mallick lifted his wine.

“They’d hoped for shouts and curses, got nothing,” Travis said between bites. “But that’s not the best part. When the recruits hit the showers after training, turned on the water, it wasn’t just water that came out.”

“Snakes,” Duncan said with a grin. “You can bet there were shouts then. Screams, shrieks, pandemonium. We ran in there—Travis and I—figuring we were under attack.”

“And holy shit! Wet, naked recruits—from both sides—running around, skinny little snakes slithering all over the place. And this guy?” Travis jerked a thumb at Mallick. “He just sort of glides in, Mr. Dignity, poofs the snakes, then glides out again. Never says a word.”

“I believe they understood without any.”

“I like snakes,” Ethan said cheerfully. “Dad doesn’t.”

“They should have feet like everybody else.” Simon shot a smile at Mallick. “Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

“I’d tolerate a great deal in exchange for an invitation to a meal such as this.”

“And we haven’t even gotten to dessert.”

When they did, Lana lifted the ban on war talk.

“I’d like to see the cowboys,” Ethan mused. “And the buffalo, the mustangs.”

“They’re pretty magnificent,” Fallon confirmed. “I asked Meda to go back, to help get them battle-ready. She agreed.”

“That’s a good choice,” Simon decided. “The nomads have people who can work with the communities in the Midwest, but you should think about making an appearance there. Let them see you.”

“All right. In the next few days.”

“I’ve got a tidbit I haven’t had a chance to pass on.” With enthusiasm Travis dug into his tart. “When Meda and I transferred the prisoners to Hatteras, I poked them a little more. Easy reads,” he added. “White was at their base before the quake. Just a couple days before.”

“White, in California?” With a frown, Fallon nudged her tart aside. “We don’t have any intel putting him in California.”

“Now you do. You remember the younger one?”

“Wilber. The one you punched in the face. Twice.”

“Yeah, that one. He’s hoping White will come save him—all of them—lead them to their righteous victory. He kept thinking how it was the biggest day of his life when he heard White, in person, preach at the base in California. The dude’s a true believer. It’s not even so much he sees White as what you’d call a conduit to this asshole god of vengeance and bigotry he worships. More like White is his asshole god. That’s who he’s praying to anyway, to come bust him out so he can kill you personally for White. It’s what he imagines doing to you before he kills you that earned him a punch in the face. Twice.”

“He has to be flashing.” Since Travis had already told him what the man had thought about Fallon—and it wasn’t the sort of thing you spoke about at dinner—Duncan moved on. “No way he could get all the way to California otherwise without our getting some word on it.”

“He’s been known to work with DUs before. How does he, how do his followers justify that?” Fallon wondered.

“Ends, means,” Simon answered. “The man’s been preaching his ugly racism and twisted god for more than twenty years. Plenty did the same before him, before the Doom. He’s just taken it to a new level.”

“We’re cutting into his numbers, and after New York, we’ll hunt him down. He can join Hargrove in prison. We cut off the head of the snake.”

“There is always another snake,” Mallick said.

“One at a time.” Deliberately, she pulled the tart back, took a bite. “He’s poisoned the world long enough.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Winter raged on, week by week with brutal cold, icy winds, long nights with bulging clouds, pregnant with snow, that smothered the sun, the moon and stars. No hopeful February thaw broke the bitter so the world seemed cased inside a snow globe constantly shaken.

Fallon considered waiting another week, two weeks, to launch the attack on New York. Indeed, some she respected advised just that.

She went out alone, cast the circle, stood inside it under the blank sky and called the gods.

“Fill me, gods of peace, gods of war, into me your wisdom pour. For this world you’ve placed in my hands, I accept all your commands. To help me guide this world to light, open the curtain to my sight. This I ask with humility, for as you wish, so mote it be.”

She let the vision come.

The once great city burned and smoked, its flames and ash whirling through the wild wind of a blizzard. Red lightning streaked over the black sky, staining it like blood blooming on a dingy cloth. The battle, brutal and bitter as the night, raged below the murdered sky with a roaring as vicious as the gale. Men and women fought on the streets with filthy snow heaped like mountains. Rats, toothy and fat, scurried under those streets to feast on the dead and dying piled in tunnels. Dogs, feral as the rats, prowled and snapped. Inside buildings or the rubble of them that formed caves, the very young and very old huddled in terror. Balls of fire exploded, turning men into shrieking torches.

Overhead, she saw the sweep of a black dragon. For an instant his eyes, red against the black, met hers. He turned his sinuous body, graceful as a swan. And breathed his killing fire.

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.