“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.