gives us more room to spread out. But Arlington.” He shook his head. “It’s hard to see it, to tell the truth. Nobody’s put a dent in that base. The government’s tried, from what I hear.”
“We’re not the government,” she said over a few murmurs agreeing with Little. “Beyond freeing prisoners, Arlington is the purpose. It may not break the back of the Purity Warriors, but it cuts off an arm.”
“We get our asses killed trying, and lose? It cuts off both our arms. And legs.”
She’d expected objections, half hoped her father would take up the debate. But he remained silent, kept his gaze on hers.
Okay then, she thought.
“As long as Arlington remains in their hands, they hold an advantage. The strategic position, the sheer size of the base and its resources, its training ground. We need it in our hands. And we’ll have it.”
“Well.” Mae Pickett shifted in her seat, pushed back her long gray hair. “I get why you want it, but it seems to me you’re going after a hell of a lot, and you haven’t been at this very long. A lot of the rest of us have been at it less. Maybe we ought to take smaller bites for a while yet.”
“I’m looking at the numbers up there,” Little added. “The ones you got under Arlington. That’s a high number. And that ain’t talking about how we hear they have freaking rocket launchers, and got Uncannys working with them who can fry a man with a look. And some of them fly around like bats. Now, I like a good fight as much as the next, but we’ve already got our hands full. Maybe we study on this awhile, take a few months to train more men, get a better lay of the land. We can look at it again later on.”
“We strike, all three, tomorrow night.”
“Tomorrow?” That not only brought Little out of his seat, but started a roll of those murmurs and mutters. “Listen, girlie—”
“Here is the light.” She drew her sword, and it flamed. “Here is the storm.” The air in the room trembled at her words. “You are not bound, and so you will choose. Fight or flight, courage or caution. You think this is the beginning? The beginning was long ago, long ago when men turned from magicks. When faith lost turned to hate and fear. When the dark crept over and through.”
“Okay now.” Little patted a hand at the whirling air. “Just bank that down.”
She stopped him with a look from gray eyes gone to smoke. “The shields are seven, and one is open. What poured through killed your mothers, your children, and still you doubt. They feed on your fear in feasts, and still you question courage. Look and see, look and see what comes if the next opens.”
She flung out a hand. Where the blackboard had been stood a window, and through it, madness.
Men striking down men in fields where crops lay dead and dying. Children huddled with the glassy eyes and distended bellies of the starving. A sky ripped with lightning, red and black.
And the crows, always the crows, screaming in triumph as the world burned and bled.
“I will strike the light against the dark, and I will cleave it until its blood runs black on the ground. I will burn the blood, bring a storm to whirl away the smoke.
“We will strike this blow, one, two, three, on the desert, by the sea, near the battle cries of the dead city. Before the dawn breaks, the standard of The One flies.”
As she felt the power ebb, she sheathed her sword.
“Okay then.” Eddie gave Fred’s hand a rub. “Arlington.”
Giving Eddie a nod of approval, Mick echoed him. “Arlington.”
Colin stepped up beside her. “Arlington.”
As others did the same, Little rubbed his jaw. “You punched my lights out once before. I guess you did it again. Arlington.”
PURPOSE
Necessity’s sharp pinch!
—William Shakespeare
CHAPTER SIX
With the plan in place, Fallon addressed the numbers again.
“We have ten from Mae, ten from Troy added to Thomas’s troops. Boris, Charlie add the rest to New Hope’s. We’ll need volunteers willing to relocate, to secure and hold those bases, to recruit from those locations, and train.”
“We have fifteen who’ve agreed to go to South Carolina,” Thomas told her.
“You’ll need that many more to start, and at least one with tech knowledge, two medicals.”
“Ray would go,” Rachel said. “We’ll miss him here, but he came to me, told me he’d like to go. He was born not