with their power joined with hers, she saw clearly. “Sixteen, only sixteen. Lured away in the night. Pretty music, pretty lights.”
The hair on Faol Ban’s nape rose up as he let out a growl.
Fallon snapped back from the vision, scanned the woods.
“We’re being stalked,” Tonia whispered, and nocked an arrow.
The wolf, black as the night, slunk out of the dark. Then another, and another. Thirteen, Fallon counted, that surrounded them with bared fangs and mad eyes ringed with red.
“They’re not real.”
“Those aren’t illusions,” Duncan said.
“No, they’ll rip us to shreds, but they’re born of blood magicks.”
“If magick created them, magick can destroy them. I’ve got a quiver full of bespelled arrows ready to prove that theory.”
“Get ready,” Fallon advised, and Duncan enflamed his sword.
When the first wolf sprang, Tonia’s arrow struck its heart. Faol Ban, gold collar burning bright, leaped at another’s throat. Guarding Duncan’s back, Fallon impaled another, heard the scream of one more trampled under Laoch’s hooves.
The air seemed to howl, fetid with smoke as, like the tree, black ooze bubbled from the wounds until only that black pool remained.
Duncan set two burning. While they writhed and howled, he spun to protect his sister from another. And was spared the effort as Taibhse tore it open with talons.
Fallon struck down the last, then stroked a hand down Faol Ban’s fur. “They took a beautiful animal and twisted it into something evil.”
“They?” Duncan repeated.
“Whoever lured the girl. There. That’s what they were guarding.”
“Someone broke a trail.” Tonia moved closer. “Magickally, right? It might as well have been plowed. Why?”
“To make it easier for the victim to get where they wanted her to go. One set of prints, human.” Fallon looked to Tonia, the best woodsman among them, for confirmation.
“Yeah, and, Jesus, she was barefoot.”
“Maybe she’s still alive.”
He would always think first of rescue, Fallon thought, though he had to know no one lived in this place now but the six of them.
“We’ll follow the trail. They lured her from her bed,” Fallon continued as they walked. “Out of the window. In a trance, and she dreamed she flew like a faerie.”
“Why have her walk once she was in here?” Tonia wondered.
“For sport.” Grim, because he did know, Duncan watched for a new attack.
“For sport,” Fallon agreed. “And so as they let her wake from the trance she’d be afraid and confused. Fear adds power to the ritual.”
As they moved deeper, they saw symbols hanging from branches or carved into trees. Now she felt a beat, heavy and deep. The pulse of black magicks.
“What holds this place doesn’t perform rituals.” With a lash of temper, Duncan sliced down symbols, sent them burning. “It has rituals performed for it. They brought the girl here, offered her.”
Fallon touched his arm, felt the ripple of tensed muscle nothing would soothe. “You brought me to the stones the first time so I’d make my choice. I chose to fight to stop this. We will stop it.”
“I know it.” Though far from soothed, he took her hand in his. “I know it.”
“We need more light.” Tonia added hers to Fallon’s.
In the glow they saw the circle ahead, one burned deep into the floor of the forest. And the rough altar of stone in its center. What remained of the girl lay splayed over it.
“We couldn’t save her, but we can destroy this.”
Duncan drew his hand from Fallon’s. “We’re not leaving her in this fucking place. I’ll get her.”
“Duncan—”
He whirled on Fallon. “I said I’ll get her.”
Because she understood his fury, she didn’t flinch from it. “I have a blanket in the saddlebags. You could wrap her in it. Give her to Laoch. We’ll take her out with us.”
“Okay. Sorry. I’m sorry.”
Fallon just shook her head, turned to Tonia. “We’ll destroy the symbols with fire, then the circle. There’s salt in my bag, too. An athame, some fresh water, some crystals. Blood magick did this, and blood magicks—ours, blood of the light—will destroy it. We can do what we need to do.”
Her own heart sick with helpless rage, Tonia watched Duncan begin to wrap the remains in the blanket. “He’s always hated seeing innocents hurt. It’s harder yet since Denzel.”
“I ask myself why wasn’t I pulled here before this happened, and there’s no answer.” She shot out a hand, released her own rage to send symbols flaming. “There’s no damn answer.”
When they joined hands, mixed the blood of the Tuatha de Danann, said the words, brought the light, something roared through the woods. Not in pain,