But in helping her, she risked all the others they could save. Heartsick, she glided away.
She’d remember them, she vowed. Sadie and the others, she’d remember them. And hoped with all she was they remained on the base when she led the attack.
She saw a man in black step out of a building, and felt the power from him, the ugly edge of power. Even as she understood he could feel hers, as he hesitated, began to lift his face to the sky, Taibhse winged away.
She separated from him with the wolves beside her, and Flynn, Tonia standing by.
“You were gone a long time,” Tonia began.
“There was a lot to see. Not here,” Fallon said quickly. “They have at least one powerful DU, and he might have caught a whiff of me. If he did, he’ll push out. We go back now.”
She gripped Flynn’s hand, called Taibhse to her arm, and, with Tonia, flashed home.
CHAPTER FIVE
Duncan had never seen anything like Utah.
He’d flashed west before when he, Tonia, and Fallon had searched out warheads to transform and destroy. But the time they’d spent had been inside, deep inside, those bases and compounds.
He hadn’t seen the strange, endless land, the jagged rise of mountains, the fascinating sculptures of rock or deep canyons with twisting rivers.
He hadn’t felt the breathless, baking heat or witnessed the eerie beauty of the star-drenched desert sky at night.
They’d come, he and Mallick, to scout the enemy base—what there was of it. But he took back so much more than battle plans, logistics. He brought back a kind of wonder.
Even as he asked himself what drove people to settle in a land so inhospitable, he understood it.
Eerie or not, there was beauty, and the sheer scope of space. He wanted to come back in the daylight, see what colors the light teased out of the baked earth, the towers and coils of rock, the rough peaks.
Something had driven and pushed people to leave the green of the east and travel so far, in such hostile conditions, to the browns and burned golds of the West. To build scrubby little desert towns like the one the PWs now used.
With Mallick, he studied the target—a huddle of buildings, half in serious disrepair. Trucks, bikes, a paddock holding half a dozen horses, a single milk cow, a scatter of chickens.
And one sentry, asleep on duty.
They didn’t speak much as they quietly circled the target. Sound carried on the desert air. Duncan heard the echoing calls of coyote, wolf, and the bored conversation of a trio of men sitting out at a picnic table playing cards.
He felt magicks on the air, dim, struggling, from the building behind the card game. Prisoners, he thought, drugged or injured, or both.
Fury eked through the wonder.
“We could take them out tonight, ourselves,” he whispered to Mallick. “They’re idiots.”
Mallick nodded. “No doubt, but it’s not for us, not tonight.”
“I get it, but, man, it’s hard to walk away. I’m going to get a closer look, back of the building where they’ve got the magickals.”
“Be quick, and quiet.”
He could flash, but that wouldn’t give him as many lay-of-the-land details. So he moved swiftly over the hard-baked ground, keeping out of the range of the battery-run security lights.
As he got closer, he realized the building had been—and was—an actual jail, with barred windows, no rear door.
He peeked in, saw a trio of small cells, a locked interior door separating it from the rest of the building.
Twenty-six by his count, including kids, all sprawled out in a stupor. He saw fresh brands on foreheads, fresh bruises, old bruises, dried blood. Bare feet—torn up from being forced to walk Christ knew how far. Hair shorn so close and rough that scalps showed raw gashes.
He spotted two dirty jars on the floor outside one cell, and the weak lights inside it.
He heard the locks on the interior door slide, ducked down from the window.
“Told you they were all out.”
“We got orders to check every four hours, we check every four hours. Now get over and do the same on the slave quarters. And keep your dick in your pants this time.”
“What’s the point having slaves if we can’t have some fun with them?”
“Command put me in charge, and slaves are for work, not recreation. You want to fuck something, you fuck one of the bitches in here before we hang them. Now go do the goddamn check on the slave quarters.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Duncan heard one leave, the other move deeper into the