They moved ahead, keeping to shadows as security lights from the compound glowed through the dark.
Flynn slipped back to them. “Single cargo truck, cleared through the main gates. Guard posts coordinate with your map. The walls are a good fifteen feet high. We’re not going to be able to see over them from this vantage point, and we’ll be in the open if we go another twenty feet. I can scout the perimeter, see if there’s a better angle, higher ground.”
“We need to go higher, but not on the ground. We separate. Flynn scouts the east side, Tonia the west. You’ll meet up on the north side. We need to know the terrain, any additional sentry positions or security measures, potential weak spots. You know the drill. Tonia will flash you both back here.”
“And you?” Tonia asked.
“I’ll go up.”
“You can fly now?”
“Taibhse can, and I’ll see through his eyes.”
“You mean to merge with him,” Flynn began as Tonia shook her head.
“Then Flynn and I should stay with you. You’d be vulnerable—body here, spirit there. And you told me you were still working on a true merge.”
“The owl god’s mine for a reason. And Faol Ban will guard me.”
“Lupa stays, too,” Flynn insisted.
“All right.” She held up her arm so Taibhse glided down from the tree branch where he’d perched, landed softly. “Move out. We’ll rendezvous back here. What we take back with us tonight is going to be the difference between success and failure.”
“You can mind-speak to both of us,” Tonia said. “Any trouble, you signal.”
“And the same goes.”
Fallon waited, and when she stood alone with the owl, looked into his eyes. “I’m yours; you’re mine. You are wisdom and patience. You are the hunter. My heart beats with yours; my blood flows with yours. Be my eyes.”
As she looked into his, she saw herself, a shadow in shadows.
“Be my ears.”
She heard all the whispers of the night. A mouse breathing, the crawl of a spider over a leaf, a fox slinking through the grass.
“Taibhse the wise, my spirit joins with yours. Now be my wings.”
She rose up in him, through him, and with the great spread of his wings glided up, up, above the trees. She felt the air swim by her, scented the mouse, the spider, the fox below.
For a moment, the thrill took her, the freedom of flight, the power of sight that picked out a squirrel nesting in a tree, and the union that allowed her to soar.
The sting of fuel, the stench of dark magicks, the smell of man.
She saw the elf to the east, the witch to the west, moving shadows in shadows.
She circled above the houses, the streets connecting them. A garden surrounded by fencing, penned livestock. She noted the guards posted outside of buildings, drew the map in her head.
Four men unloaded the truck Flynn had seen—of prisoners. She caught the smell of fresh blood, watched as they were dragged to a guarded building. Someone drove the truck across the compound. Another guarded area, another gate.
She counted the vehicles inside the fence, and the fuel tanks.
A group of Raiders—four, five, six, seven—sat outside, in the rear of a big house with a peaked roof. Two of them smoked something that clogged the air. The others drank … whiskey?
With Taibhse’s ears she heard their voices, rough and drunk. Celebrating a successful raid that day, she realized. Two dead, three slaves to trade to the PWs.
Another pulled a woman on a leash. Fallon saw the mark of a slave on her wrist, the bruises on her naked body. One of the female Raiders got up, walked over, plowed a fist into the slave’s belly that would have doubled her over if the leash hadn’t snapped her back.
“You flirting with my man, bitch.”
That brought on uproarious laughter, calls for a catfight.
The woman punched her again.
“Don’t damage her too much, Sadie,” one of the men warned as he puffed out smoke. “We gotta turn her back in in the morning.”
“She was giving you the eye.” Sadie drew a knife. “Maybe I’ll cut hers out.”
“We only rented her for the night. No point paying for a buy. Come on and bring that hot ass of yours back over here. Who won the first taste?”
One of the others stood up, rubbed his crotch.
“Well, take her on inside, start getting what we paid for.”
Sadie turned the knife in front of the slave’s face, then spat in it before she turned away.