“Okay.” Katie lifted her hands in what struck as a gesture of surrender. Her eyes, Duncan’s eyes, Fallon thought, scanned the group. “First I’m going to say I’m proud of all of you. Next, I’m going to say it sounds like you’re telling us it’s time to pass the torch.”
“No. I don’t want you to pass the torch,” Fallon said quickly. “I hope like hell you won’t pass it.”
“But we need more torches,” Simon finished, and had her releasing a relieved breath.
“Yes. We need more torches. They bring the light.”
“The light will grow,” Lana said.
Fallon felt the vision take her mother even as it took her. “From the source to The One and beyond.” It rose in Fallon, spread with the words she spoke. “The end is done, the beginning begun. The five links joined, for good or ill.”
“The dark will come, with blood and death, in madness and guile. It lives to extinguish the light. On a dark beast it rides to bring grief and loss. You will weep, daughter, child of the Tuatha de Danann, and the dark will drink your tears. You will despair, and the dark will feed on your heart. This is your mother’s sorrow.”
“Light against dark, life against death, blood against blood. We will rise up, rise up, rise up, and when the storm passes, if the light holds, five will stand together.”
“The five links joined,” they said together, “never again to break. Who rides through the storm and stands brings good or ill for all.”
With the visions fading, Fallon gripped Lana’s hand. “I won’t fail. I can’t.”
“The dark beast is real. A black horse. No, a dragon.”
“With a red inverted pentagram.” Fallon ran a finger down the center of her forehead. “I saw it. I can’t tell you not to worry, because that would be stupid. But I’m asking you to believe in me.”
“If I didn’t, I’d have defied the gods and kept you on the farm.”
“What’s up with the five links?” Eddie asked.
“Fallon’s symbol. Well, the fivefold symbol,” Fred corrected. “I think of it as Fallon’s because it’s on her sword.”
“The four elements,” Fallon explained, “linked by magick. So, whoever wins this, those links are for good or for ill.”
“So, we win,” Colin said simply.
“You got that right. We’re going to start lighting those torches. Tonia, Flynn, and I will scout Arlington tonight.”
“Tonight?” Katie jolted in her seat. “We haven’t begun to organize.”
“It’s a lot to accomplish in a short time. We can flash Flynn—it’s always easier with another magickal. Duncan, Mallick, and another of their choosing scout the Utah base, Thomas and two of his people the one in South Carolina. Then we coordinate, work out plans of action.”
She looked back at Katie. “Organize. Meanwhile, we’ve got a—I’ll go with rudimentary again—idea of the layout in Arlington from what Chuck’s pieced together, and what I’ve pieced together through a series of looking spells.”
“I would have helped you with those.”
She glanced at her mother. “I know. I started doing them when I couldn’t sleep, then realized needing to do them was why I couldn’t sleep.”
Fallon put up another map. “The problems are the distance for the looking, and their DU shields, so there are areas where it’s more best guess and logic than actual seeing. The DUs working with them are highly skilled, so I didn’t want to push it, risk leaving a trace they’d pick up.”
“It’s bigger than I thought.” Will rose to walk closer to the map.
“Thirty-five acres, walled and shielded. I’ve marked the guard posts, and they have sentries patrolling twenty-four-seven. Additional security with the black magick shields. I watched a couple of deer drop when they got about three feet from the wall. When we’re ready, we won’t worry about traces or alerts, and take them down.”
“Can we?” Kim, a woman with courage and brains Fallon respected, stood as well, walked closer to the maps. “There’s no point losing people before we get through the wall.”
“We’ll take it down. Not all the buildings are going to be fortified or shielded. That takes too much power, and too many supplies. But we can count on the prisons—they have two—the armory, and other key buildings having their shields and fortifications.”
She went over the layout section by section, asked Chuck to fill in with his bits of intel.
“So, we think they have somewhere between four and five hundred troops in the base at any given time. And possibly another fifty Raiders who use the base between raids by virtue of an alliance.”
She nodded at Poe. “They rotate them out, do some training there, have designated squads for raids and Uncanny sweeps. As far as we can tell, Raiders don’t serve on security, as guards, or the basic workforce.”
“They keep some animals,” Chuck put in. “Fresh eggs, fresh milk to supplement their hunting parties. And they grow some crops—all of that’s taken care of by slaves. It’s a lot of mouths to feed, clothe, and like that. Raiders bring in supplies, and get use of the base.”
“We calculate they hold at least a hundred as slaves,” Fallon continued. “It looks like they rotate them, too. When they need more in another location, they transport them. We can’t really estimate prisoners at this point. While they hold weekly executions according to their fucked-up tradition—” She caught herself, looked at her mother. “Sorry.”
“Considering the subject matter, it’s hard for me to comment on your language.”
“Ah. They hold their public executions every Sunday, but our best information is they keep it at one prisoner. The base serves as a kind of holding center for anybody they grab between—most likely—Virginia, down to North Carolina, and over to West Virginia, possibly eastern Tennessee.”
“See, they pull them in,” Chuck explained, “then if some of their other bases are running low for that Sunday picnic, they send some out.”
“Add to that anyone—civilian, magickal—they pull in from a mission into D.C. What passes for the government still holds the city. James Hargrove stands as president.”
“Fucker.” Chuck shot up a middle finger for emphasis. “And I’m not sorry.”
“It’s no democracy,” Fallon continued. “Basically, he’s an autocrat, running the show with the military.”
“We can’t get much from inside the White House,” Chuck added. “But rumors fly. Executions again, but not public.”
“A veneer of the civilized,” Arlys put in. “But it’s clear he’s shredded the Constitution, and his agenda is removing magickals by any means.”
“Experiments, containment centers,” Chuck went on. “Vaults full of treasures—that’s a rumor, so who knows. But it’s pretty clear he’s living in the lap, and likes it.”
“He holds the power center in a dead city.” Fallon had been there, felt it. “The resistance keeps fighting, has had some victories. And the Dark Uncanny prey on both.”
“White wants D.C.,” Simon commented. “There are plenty of locations, like theirs in Arlington, more removed from that war zone—twenty years now. He chose strategically, allied with Raiders so he doesn’t have to worry about them. Allied with DUs for their power and again, so they don’t go after him.”
“I agree. He’s wrong because they will go after him when they don’t find him useful, but I agree. White wants the city.”
“Symbolism, a seat of power. If he can take it, and publicly execute Hargrove, some generals, that’s a statement.”
“Hargrove goes by CIC more than president,” Travis told him. “Commander in chief. It’s more military.”
“He was military,” Fallon put in. “Served during the Doom, and commanded the forces that swept New York, Chicago, and Baltimore.”
She knew more of him, much more, but left it at that.
“They want the city, Hargrove, and as many key officials as they could take. But equally, they want the magickals, dark and light, in containment there. They want the locations of other containment camps. However much White wants D.C., its symbols, its structure, and whatever’s left of its resources, his reason for being is still to destroy us.”
“He’s going to die disappointed.”
She smiled at her father. “Yeah, he is. Because he’s not going to take D.C. We are.”
“Whoa.” Jonah picked up the beer he’d set aside. “Even if we managed to hook up with the resistance there, we’d be outnumbered a hundred to one. We’ve treated escapees from D.C. in the clinic. It’s a daily bloodbath.”
“Today we’d be outnumbered. We won’t be when we take it, and we will take it. It starts here.” She turned back to the first map. “With Utah, South Carolina. And Arlington.”
* * *
Fallon waited until full dark before she walked away from the house with Tonia and Flynn. Lupa walked by Flynn’s side.
“I wanted to leave him with Joe and Eddie, but…” He laid a hand on Lupa’s head. “He wouldn’t have it.”
“He’s welcome.”
Flynn had a rifle strapped over his shoulder, a knife on his belt. Tonia had her bow and quiver, her knife, and Fallon her sword and shield.
When she lifted her arm, the white owl glided out of the dark to land on it.
“Okay. Who’s better at scouting than an owl?” Tonia decided. “You know, we shook them pretty good tonight.”
“I wish we had more time, but we don’t. Flynn, you’ve been with them from the beginning.”
“And younger than either of you when we started. They’ll handle it. It’s hard, you’re their children, but they’ll handle it.”