“You’ve seen now more than I’ve shown you. The crystal is yours. In it, with it, you’ll see more.”
“I followed her for a while, to make sure. She was so tired, her heart so broken, and so strong. Stronger than I ever knew. I saw that, and I saw the faces of the ones who killed my birth father. I didn’t see if what she threw at them killed them. I know if they live, I will. I am their death. I swear it.”
She walked back to the locked cupboard, tried again. It didn’t budge. “I will open it.”
“I trust you will, when it’s time.”
She drank the wine, frowned at the glass. “It’s okay. When I go into the crystal, am I protected?”
“You are both here and there, and are vulnerable in both places.”
“All right. I’m going for a ride. I need to clear my head.”
When she left, he sat, no longer annoyed or insulted, and more afraid than he’d expected. She’d go into the crystal again, and now it was beyond him to stop her. This step was hers, as it had always been.
At fifteen, Duncan tolerated classes at the academy. He instructed more than he played the student, but attendance satisfied his mother and kept the heat off.
He worked in rotation on supply runs, scouting missions, hunting parties. When cornered, he took his turns in the community gardens, the trash and refuse committee, power and maintenance.
He knew first aid and could fill in as a medic.
He enjoyed weapons training, basketball, and heading out to the farm road on his bike. He liked hanging with his friends, messing around with Denzel, listening to Denzel rock it out on his guitar or kill it on the ball field.
He’d done considerably more than get his hands on interesting breasts, and enjoyed that, too. A lot.
That spring he began to help plan and organize rescue missions as well as joining the ranks.
He’d helped plan the one they prepared for tonight. As he and Flynn had captured the wounded Purity Warrior, brought him back to be questioned, he’d earned his spot.
“Better’n eighty miles out.” Eddie looked at the map again. “Farther than we’ve ever tried one of these. A lot of road between here and there.”
“And according to our guest, more than thirty being held, tortured, and up for execution.” Will studied another map, one Arlys helped him create. “He says they’ve got about a hundred people—but only half of them soldiers. Built up walls here, barbed-wire fencing here, here, guards.” He tapped the stick figures on the map. “Communication center here, in what was the town library, and prison here, in what was the local police station.”
“Those are the primary targets,” Duncan added, “after we neutralize the guards, get through the gate or through the fence. If we don’t blow open the gate, or take out a piece of the wall, the fencing, we could end up cornered inside.”
“Exactly right. And before we get there, we have to get through or around Raider camps scouting reports put here, here, here. So let’s go over every step of it again. If anybody sees a hole, let’s plug it.”
As Duncan stepped out to join his squad, Denzel, hair in dozens of braids bunched back with a band, loped over.
“Can’t you talk Will into letting me in on this? Come on, man.”
“Can’t do it, bro. You tanked weapons training again. And chem.”
Denzel, already more than six feet of packed muscle, kicked at a stone. “Chem’s bogus.”
Duncan leaned back against his bike. “You need to study up.” Never going to happen, Duncan thought, but he hated seeing Denzel’s disappointment. “You got speed, agility. You just have to study up, and pick a weapon, practice.”
“Kato’s my weapon.” With a grin, Denzel swiped the air with a panther claw.
“You got that. Look, you suck at chem, I suck at the guitar. I’ll help you, you help me. Maybe we won’t suck.”
They’d tried it before with pitiful results on both sides, but they could try it again, Duncan decided.
“I’m up for that.” Still he gave the trucks and bikes and weapons a wistful look.
“I gotta go.”
“Take ’em out, take ’em down.”
They bumped fists, and Denzel stepped back to the sidewalk to watch the warriors head out.
Duncan swung onto his bike, with Antonia riding behind him. The first days and nights of April remained pretty damn cold, but he wanted the agility and speed of his bike. Not that they’d speed through eighty miles, especially since parts of the best route still had old vehicles jammed on them.
Eddie drove Chuck’s old Humvee—slow as it got, in Duncan’s opinion, but it came in handy for busting through those rust buckets. Plus, they’d armored it, and it was a damn good weapon.
They left at night, calculating speed, miles, potential delays and detours, with plans to arrive for the raid an hour before dawn.
He saw his mom with Arlys, shot her a salute. Others stood outside to see the rescue party off. He saw the brothers he’d helped rescue, and Petra.
He sent Petra a quick grin. He knew she was stuck on him, but as pretty as she was, she struck him as just too young yet.
Give her another year maybe, and who knew.
“It’s sticky,” Tonia said in his ear.
“What?”
“The hero worship. It’s so sticky it’s going to clog your pores.”
“Ah, give it a rest.” He shot the bike forward and left New Hope behind.
They hit the first jam at mile thirty-two, and stopped while Eddie broke through the bottleneck. On her own bike, Maxie, one of the elves from Flynn’s original party, pulled up beside Duncan, gestured east.
Flickers of fire through the dark, the haze of smoke rising.
“Raiders,” Maxie said. “They burn for the fuck of it. We ought to send a team to drive them off.”
Normally he’d have agreed with her, and volunteered to join in. But they had fifty miles to go.
“Probably be gone before we got there. Raiders usually set the fires after they’ve picked a place clean.”
“Yeah.” She looked ahead, revving the bike. “Like a shot at them though.”
Maxie had purple hair with feathers pinned on the side. She was about three years older than he was and had seriously interesting breasts.
As they drove on, the possibility that he might talk her into getting naked with him kept him occupied for ten miles—and through another jam.
Stop and start, he thought, start and stop. He wanted to get there, get doing. Five miles out, when they stopped, he and Antonia would head northwest, with Maxie and Solo the shifter. Another team would peel off northeast. Duncan would take out the guards, then his primary task was the gate. Get it open, shoot some lightning—he’d gotten damn good at it—back to the building he could see on the map in his head. The armory.
Boom, bang, boom.
Sweep in. Tonia would head for the prison with her team; his team would head for the communication center. Most everybody still in bed, scrambling for weapons, half-dressed.
Guards, gate, armory, comms, he thought. They’d be in a world of hurt already.
They were fifteen miles out when their headlights swept over the girl on a white horse standing in the middle of the road.
She might have been a statue, spotlighted in the blue cast from the half-moon.
He knew her, Duncan thought as the party stopped. From dreams. He knew her from dreams, and the thought of it left him shaken and angry and thrilled.
“It’s a trap,” she called out. “They know you’re coming.”
He got off the bike, vibrating. Pleasure, temper, fascination all at once battering at him.
Did she know a dozen weapons were aimed at her? If she did, she didn’t seem to care.
Will jumped out of his truck. “If you make a move for a weapon, it’ll be a mistake.”
“I’m not your enemy.”
Eddie walked up beside Will. “Who the hell are you then? And where’d you get that horse?”
“We found each other.” She dismounted, just flung a leg over and leaped down to stand with her hands out and up. “It’s a trap,” she repeated.
“Eddie, go down the line and tell everybody to hold.”
“Eddie?” the girl repeated. Duncan watched her face, so serious, bloom with a smile. “Eddie Clawson. Where’s Joe?”