can’t keep them here, Sal, and that’s a fact. Somebody’s bound to get their blood up and do them in. Too much of me, I gotta say, wants to let them, and be done with it.”
“We have prisons,” Fallon explained. “Travis and Meda can take them back tonight. They’ll be locked up. They’re murderers. They’ll be locked up for life. We have the means, the system. It’s your place, your people, your decision, but I can promise you if you let us take them, they’ll pay.”
“You talking bars and locks?” Sal demanded.
“I am. We have other facilities for prisoners of war, those who qualify. But these aren’t POWs. They’re killers. Bars and locks.”
“I can live with that. How many you got locked up?”
“Including POWs? Several thousand.”
Sal’s mouth dropped open. Yancy simply stared out of narrowed eyes.
“You don’t have any outside communication,” Fallon decided.
“We get someone comes through now and again,” Yancy said. “Maybe brings some news in. Heard some rumors about fighting back east, about you. We got Carrie—she sees things. She says she’s seen you fighting, an army with you, but she didn’t know where.”
“There’s been more than one fight. You don’t know we’ve taken D.C.”
Sal gripped Fallon’s arm. “Girl, you took those government bastards down?”
“We did.”
“You’re the answer to prayers I’ve been afraid to speak. I’ve got a pile of questions for you.”
“They got Sal’s son, the government did, and my sister.”
“I’ll answer your questions. Let me arrange to have Travis and Meda transport the prisoners. I’ll stay the night. We have a lot to talk about.”
* * *
When she got home, snow fell in fat, soft flakes. And she saw her mother coming from the greenhouse with a basket, moving along a shoveled path.
Her hair bundled up under a red cap that matched her knitted gloves, Lana kept her eyes on the ground to watch for slick spots. On a surge of love, Fallon rushed toward her.
“Mom.”
Lana’s head jerked up. She very nearly lost her balance, then beamed and opened her arms. “You’re home! You’re finally home.”
“Just this minute. Let me get Laoch settled—and I promised Faol Ban one of your biscuits.”
“I’ll get it for him.” She met the wolf’s patient eyes while Taibhse glided—white through white—to one of his favorite perches. “I’m so glad to see you all. This calls for some serious hot chocolate.”
“With whipped cream?”
“It’s not serious without it. Don’t be long. Come on, boy, I’ve got a biscuit with your name on it.”
Home, Fallon thought as she scooped grain for the alicorn, gave a carrot treat to the faithful Grace. Not the farm, but still, home. Stepping out again, she looked through the snowfall toward the barracks. Duncan should be there, she thought.
She sent her mind toward his. I’m home.
Moments later, she heard his voice in hers. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I missed you.
So smiling, she walked through that snowfall and into a kitchen that smelled of chicken soup, bread, and, gloriously, chocolate.
“Have you eaten?”
“Not since breakfast. I stayed a little longer than I’d planned.”
“Then it’s soup first.”
“I’ll get it, for both of us. Where’s Dad?” she asked as she got bowls, ladled them with soup.
“Hunting party. Ethan’s in town. He’s had this idea to hold a kind of vet clinic. They’d both be here if they’d known you’d be home today for certain.”
“I stayed longer to help with some basic training—combat and magickal. Bright Valley’s an interesting place.”
“So I hear. Travis filled us in. Earthquakes in California?”
“Apparently severe enough to destroy a PW base. I flew over to see for myself. It’s rubble. The prisoners?”
“In the Hatteras facility. It seemed the best choice for now. Hard cases,” Lana said as she turned the hot chocolate to low, sat to eat with her daughter. “Travis said their minds are, at least for now, hardened. Even the young one. He also had a lot to say about the land out west. The mountains, the plains. He enjoyed every minute of the trip—and said you’d managed to recruit over five hundred.”
“A lot of the five hundred are green and greener than green. But they can be used as non-combatants. I want to hear about your trip.”
“Well, it cemented I’m an East Coast girl. All that flat land, miles and miles? I like the hills. And my God, Fallon, the wind. It just screams over that flat land. And so much of it empty,” she said. “It brings it home just how desolate the world is now. You can forget, living here