enemy, pivoted to meet the pulsing black blade of another. Sensing movement behind him, he swung to kick out. Faol Ban leaped for the throat of a shifted panther and saved him the trouble.
Fallon’s fire and fury rocked the earth, cut swaths through oncoming power as Taibhse tore through the crows, sent them smoking, screaming into the pit below.
She dived, leaped off. “Take him up,” she shouted to Tonia, then striking, cleaving, burning, moved in to fight back-to-back with Duncan.
“They’re a distraction.” Despite the cold, sweat ran down his face. “A damn good one, but a distraction. They want to drive us into the pit? We drive them.”
She nodded, reached back to grip his hand. “Push!”
It poured out in a kind of rage, hot, savage, strong.
In the screams that followed, the howl of shifters, the flaming blur of elves, they battered them back, back. But worse, the sounds that came, no longer human, as they fell, tumbled, spilled into the pit, tore through the shrieking wind.
A handful broke off, ran.
“If they reach the village,” Fallon began.
“I’ve got this.” Astride Laoch, Tonia circled. “Go, go. I’ll take care of this and be right behind you.”
“She can handle it.” Duncan looked at Fallon. “Ready?”
Together, they charged into the dead woods.
Shadows loomed, shifted. Some breathed, and that breath held death. They felt it, that beat, beat, beat of the dark heart. The pulse of the source.
The light, called by the spell, lay thin and winding.
“It knew it would come to this night.” With sword and shield, Fallon followed the light. “It’s always known. Maybe all of it, all the blood, the battles, the death and misery, was another distraction. Because this is what it’s waited for.”
You’re what it’s waited for, Duncan thought, and stayed close.
The ice-slicked, skeletal trees seemed to slink over the ground as if to block the path. Jagged fingers of branches jabbed out. Duncan sliced one aside with his sword, heard a quick, high-pitched shriek as the severed limb bled black.
“That’s fucking creepy.”
“Enough. Enough.” Sheathing her sword, Fallon used her hands to slice the air. “Clear.”
Those ice-coated trees went still, leaving the path open.
“Distractions,” she repeated.
“Yeah. It’s leading to where we found the girl, the altar.”
“It wants us there. It thinks it wins. It wants us there. Can you feel it? Can you hear it?”
She gripped his hand. “Now I can,” he answered as that pull, that tug nipped inside him like sharp fingers, as the voice echoed softly inside his head.
A woman’s voice, a lover’s. Promising, promising.
They moved on. The pulse beat, faster, louder, a voice of its own that shook inside the belly, that rumbled underfoot. The path widened, then spread to another circle of stones, and the smooth slab of rock resting on them.
On it, the inverted pentagram pulsed red.
“A new dance, a new slab. Petra’s work,” Duncan noted. But not only hers, he said in Fallon’s mind.
Not only hers, she answered. But she’s here. She’s close.
Now, Fallon thought, and once again reached for her sword. At the roar, she looked up, saw the wave of fire, heard the wild laugh.
“And here she is now.” The elation that spurted through Duncan died on sudden, sickening alarm. “Oh, Christ, Tonia.”
She fell from the sky already bleeding, the arm of her jacket smoldering. She struck the side of the altar, tumbled bonelessly off to land at his feet.
“No, goddamn it. No.” Dropping down, Duncan swiped a hand over the jacket to stop the burning, then ran them over his sister to find the wounds.
Fallon leaped forward, threw her shield over them to block a stream of fire.
“There’s too much. I can’t find it all. We need to get her back to New Hope.”
“No.” Tonia found his hand, struggled to close hers over it. “It has to be the three of us. Help me up.”
“You’ve got internal injuries. There’s so much broken. Fallon, help me.”
“Let me see. Let me try.” Her arm trembled holding the shield against the steady barrage of fire, but she closed her hand over Duncan’s, over Tonia’s, searched.
Blinding pain, unspeakable pain, and a light dimming.
“Help me.” Her voice weak, her face pale as the smothered moon, Tonia closed her eyes. “We have to finish this.”
* * *
In New Hope, the tower of light shivered, seemed to shrink. In the circle with her mother, Hannah fell to her knees. Around her neck the pendant symbolizing her power glowed.
“Baby.” Katie dropped down beside her. “What—”
“Tonia. She needs me. They need me.” She pushed up, grabbed the medical bag