explosions, tortured screams ripped from the west. As planned, her troops fanned out along the grid of what had been Midtown.
A small army of Raiders on snowmobiles, in burly trucks roared in.
You first, Fallon thought, and charged.
Duncan veered his horse left as she took out the lead rider with one killing slash and sent the rumbling vehicle and its pillion rider tumbling through the air.
He fought his way to the first truck, smashing power at the windshield, following it with flame. While the driver and his companions screamed, he surged through the trampled snow to the back of the truck, broke the locks to free the half a dozen people locked inside.
“Get clear!” he shouted as the crack of gunfire, the whiz of arrows in flight ripped through the city’s canyons.
A girl of about sixteen, blood running down her face, leaped out. “Screw that.” She grabbed for a charred piece of wood and, wielding it like a club, rushed into the fight.
He felt the first slap of power whip toward him, whirled to meet it with his own. As those magicks, dark and light, clashed, the air bloomed bloody red. He pushed into it, sword flaming, power pulsing.
Dealing with a group of Raiders, he knew, was only the beginning. As he took the next truck, burst the doors open so prisoners tumbled free, black lightning rained from the sky. With it came a new surge of power on dark wings.
He saw the face, contorted with glee, the eyes, black, piercing. Even as he braced, sword and power ready, an arrow winged out, struck the enemy in the heart. The wind tore through the great, edgy wings, tattering them as power died. Duncan looked toward Tonia when the body fell into the soot-stained snow.
“I could’ve handled it.”
“I did.” Guiding her horse with her knees—she’d been one of Meda’s top students—Tonia nocked another arrow. “Ready?”
“For this? All my life.”
Together, they led their brigade west.
As Duncan and Tonia moved west, Simon east, Fallon south, block by brutal block, Colin fought in Queens, Mallick in Brooklyn. By boat, on foot, on horseback, Mick’s troops surged on lower Manhattan from the east, Flynn poured his in from the west.
War cries ringing, resistance fighters teemed into the streets, climbed over rubble, many armed with nothing more than clubs or fists. While crows screamed, while magicks clashed as violent as swords, they stormed the city held by the dark for a generation.
Faeries swooped through fire and smoke to fly wounded out of the fray, to lift children, the elderly out of the war zone. Some struck down had to be taken out through lightning strikes, through sudden, shocking explosions.
Hour by hour, foot by agonizing foot, they drove the enemy back. When they lost ground, lost men, they regrouped, pushed on.
At first light, weak, dull, smeared with smoke, Fallon drew her exhausted troops back, called in fresh.
The first strike in the battle of New York raged for fourteen hours with a toll of five hundred dead or wounded. For the price they regained the heart of the city, several sectors on its fringes.
Fallon ordered a triage set up for wounded, a shelter for the horses, guards posted to hold the lines they’d drawn. Troops from the first wave were billeted, fed, ordered to rest.
She stood outside a building in that heart and, curious, used the sleeve of her already filthy jacket to wipe at soot.
Magickal symbols, she noted. Protective symbols, still beating, still carrying light. She moved to glass doors, waved a hand, and when they opened, walked inside.
Large, echoing, marble and gilt dulled with time, but undamaged. Many doors—elevators, she corrected. Photos of people, smiling through layers of dust, lined the walls. Some had fallen—vibrated off from explosions, she imagined.
She opened herself, searched, searched, but could find no scent, no taste, no remnants of dark. So here, she thought, she’d make her HQ.
She turned to Travis. Like her, he was soaked with blood, grime, wet from the snow. But, and she thanked the gods, unharmed.
“This’ll work. It’s protected, and whatever protected it was strong enough to hold that light all these years. We can billet more troops here, and wounded who haven’t been transported or treated.”
She rubbed at the dirt on her face, managed to make it worse. “We need to send elves to the other commanders, get updated sitreps.”
“You need sleep. Hey, me, too.”
“As soon as we’re set up. We need to hold the ground we took today. And I need, as soon as possible, a