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Chains jingled in agreement.
“We meet again, and I’ll kill him.”
“Fuck off. She’s too powerful for you. She’ll protect me,” Red said.
“The blood that flows through me was old when she was but a vague idea. Look into her eyes, if you don’t believe me.”
“We won’t meet again,”Morrigan promised.
Behind her, mist swirled in a solid wall. It slunk along the ground, licked at Morrigan’s feet, wound about Red, and swallowed them whole.
The tech hit, crushing the magic under its foot. Julie stood alone in the field of dead bodies and iron, her face numb with shock.
EPILOGUE
IN THE MORNING, WHEN THE WITCHES CAME FORBran’s body, they found it sprawled among white flowers. Blazing like small white stars, with centers as black as his eyes, the flowers grew overnight, sending a spicy scent into the air. By the time the day was over, the flowers had been christened Morgan’s Bells and a rumor floated person to person that Morrigan was so distraught over her champion’s death, she had wept and the flowers sprang forth from her tears.
Bullshit. I was there and the bitch didn’t shed a tear.
The witches buried Bran in Centennial Park and built a cairn over his grave. I was told I was welcome to visit him anytime.
The next two days were spent next to Andrea bent over the reports to the Order. We’d plugged every hole, smoothed every bump, and routed out every inconsistency, until she was pure human and I was just a blade-happy merc.
It didn’t help that without magic in the world for the next few weeks, we had to resort to conventional medicine. I had a half dozen cuts, a couple deep enough to be bothersome, and two cracked ribs.
Andrea sported a gash across her back that under ordinary circumstances would’ve healed with embarrassing quickness. Postflare, it took its time. She wasn’t accustomed to pain and she popped painkillers by the handful.
After Red left, Julie had retreated deep into herself. She gave noncommittal answers and stopped eating.
On Thursday I dropped off the last report together with a leave of absence request, loaded her into my ancient gas-guzzling Subaru, and drove down South, toward Savannah, where I kept my father’s house.
Andrea promised to smooth things over with the Order when the knights returned.
The drive took forever. I was out of practice and had to stop to take a breather. We passed the turnoff to my house and kept driving down along the coast to a small town called Eulonia, until we reached an old restaurant called Pelican Point. The owner owed me a favor or I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
The restaurant sat on the edge of the river, just before the freshwater found its way through the reeds and mud islands to the Atlantic Ocean. We sat in the gazebo by the dock and watched the shrimp and