“Yeah, I can. I’m with her.” She clasped her hand on Fallon’s forearm for the boost up.
They both felt it, an instant connection, deep and strong in the blood.
Tonia swung on behind her. “Nice meeting you and all that.”
“Same here.”
“Let’s do this. First teams, go.” Will looked up at Tonia. “You fall off, your mother’ll have my head on a platter.”
“I’ve got this.”
Now at Fallon. “Good luck. We’ll move in when we hear the boom.”
“Then get ready. This won’t take long.”
With that, Laoch bunched his powerful legs and rose up on a spread of silver wings.
“You think you’ve seen it all,” Eddie murmured, “then you go and see something else.”
“We’re putting a hell of a lot of faith into that girl,” Will mumbled.
“She is The One.”
Will glanced over at Flynn, nodded. “Positions.”
Duncan got back on his bike, but his gaze stayed glued to the horse and riders. He could feel his twin’s joy—it shined as bold as those wings. And he felt something else, something he couldn’t quite identify, from Fallon.
He’d think about it later, he told himself. Right now, he had work to do.
“This is amazing!” Tonia lifted her face to the wind. “We studied alicorns at the academy, but nobody’d ever actually seen one. Now I’m on one.”
“He’s wonderful. You’re brave to think of the prisoners first.”
“Do you know what the PWs do to them?”
“I’ve heard.” And seen, Fallon thought, through the crystal. “You’ll want to brace yourself. We’re going to move fast now.”
“I love fast.”
Fast, Tonia discovered, was an understatement. She had to hold back the war whoop that rang inside her, and wondered as the wind battered, as the ground below sped by, if they blurred like an elf on full run.
“I see the ambush. I see them stationed just where you said. They’d have torn through us.”
“Can you conjure fireballs?” Fallon asked.
“It takes me longer than it takes you, and I haven’t managed one as big as the one you did. But my aim’s awesome.”
“We could hit the armory, after the fuel tanks, on the way to the prison. Not to destroy, but to block them from getting more weapons. Then your people can take what weapons you can, destroy the rest.”
“That’s good. Let’s do that.”
“Fuel first.”
They skimmed over the wall, above the heads of guards and troops at the ready. She saw the prison, the armory, the houses. The scaffold.
And three tanker trucks of fuel.
“I hate blowing it. We could use the gas.”
“It’s a waste,” Fallon agreed. “But the best way. Maybe the only way. Hold on.”
Though she wasn’t easily impressed with magicks, Tonia admired Fallon’s speed—one, two, three fireballs the size of basketballs were hurled. And admired the accuracy as each hit the tanks.
They blew, bombs of fire and, hurtling shrapnel from the destroyed trucks, became an inferno. She saw flaming metal fly as the hot smell of gas smeared the air.
Fallon turned Laoch in a tight circle, then dived for the armory.
“We circle it with fire,” she shouted as people scrambled, scattered in panic below. “All the way around so they can’t get through. You can open your mind to the elf, Flynn?”
“Yeah.”
“Let him know what we’re doing so he can pass the word. I didn’t think of it until we were in the air or I’d have told Will. Bring the fire, as much as you can.”
Tonia dug deep, and with her body pressed to Fallon’s, surprised herself by how quickly she produced a fireball. She measured the distance, chose her spot, flung the fire.
“Nice.”
“I pitch for the New Hope Youth Baseball team. Flynn’s on it,” she added as Laoch swung to circle the building, and his riders built a wall of fire.
Over the roar of flames, more explosions, they heard gunfire.
“Get ready to jump,” Fallon called out as they charged through the air. “I’ll see you again.”
“At the checkpoint.”
“No, I can’t stay. I’ll help until I’m pulled back, but I’ll see you again.”
“Pulled back where?”
“Get ready.” Fallon took Laoch into another dive. “No guards outside. The cowards ran. Jump! Good luck.”
She saw Tonia land, notch an arrow, then break the door open with power.
Fallon took Laoch into a climb. She could feel the first hints of the pull. Only a little time left, she thought, studying the battle below to look for weaknesses to exploit, or to help plug. Duncan, with two others, swung his bike to a stop just outside her fire wall. She expected he could douse his sister’s fire, but wasn’t sure about her own. So she opened a door for him and his team, drawing the fire back enough to give them a path.
He glanced up, met her eyes, held them for a moment, just an instant, that seemed to spin out and out.
Then she and Laoch stood in the clearing facing Mallick. He held the crystal in his hands.
“Are you injured?”
“No.” She slid off Laoch, ran her hands over him. The way the shrapnel had flown, exploded so high … But he didn’t have a single scratch. “We’re not hurt.”
“Were you successful?”
“I caught them in time. Some of them knew my parents, so they believed me. The map you helped me draw, and showed me how to light it in the dark, helped. I followed the plan you approved, except …”
He lifted his brows. “Except?”
“Tonia asked to ride with me, to get to the prison faster. And together … I thought of it after we were in the air. We ringed the armory in fire so the enemy couldn’t get more weapons. So the New Hope soldiers could take what they had time to take, then they’d destroy it.”
He considered. “An acceptable amendment to our agreement.” He wouldn’t have known, he admitted. He wasn’t permitted to see into the crystal.
“The rest is up to them, but they had the advantage. If I could’ve stayed a little longer—”
“One hour. We agreed. See to your horse, then come inside.”
“I want to see. The crystal will show me.”
“When you come inside. Laoch needs your attention.”
“He was perfect, Mallick.” Still pulsing from the journey, from the battle, the flight, she turned to nuzzle Laoch. “We were bound so tight. He knew, I knew, every move, every turn. You were right when you said Grace wasn’t meant for battle. He is.”
She led the horse away. You are, Mallick thought, and went inside to wait for her.
They would call it the Battle of Fire.
More than a rescue, Duncan thought as he sped home with Tonia behind him. They’d secured all the prisoners, freed more than twenty slaves, and added twelve semiauto long guns, twenty-two handguns, four boxes of grenades, a couple of sawed-off shotguns, and pounds of ammunition to their own stores.
What vehicles they hadn’t disabled or destroyed they drove back to New Hope.
A rout, he thought, a frigging rout. What had nearly been a massacre had turned into one of the biggest victories of the New Hope Resistance.
“No way she just vanished into thin air.”
Duncan rolled his eyes. Every few miles Tonia shouted some variety of that same statement in his ear.
“Certain way, because she did.”
“She flew away.”
“I told you she didn’t. She was there, then she wasn’t. She poofed.”
“She wasn’t astral projecting. I touched her. I was on the damn horse. She was there.”
“She was there. Then she wasn’t.” How the hell had she done it? he wondered—as he did every few miles. He damn well wanted to figure it out and do it himself.
“There was something about her.”
“Yeah, yeah. The One. The Savior. I’ll give her the wicked cool horse and the firepower, but she looked like a regular girl witch to me.”
“You didn’t touch her. When I did? I felt this buzz, like in the blood. Not exactly like it is with you and me, but something. And I’ve been thinking about it since I’ve had time to think instead of fight. I was touching her—pressed to her on the horse—when I made the fire. I’ve never made it that fast, I’ve never made it that big. It just rolled, Duncan. I think, because of the contact. The physical contact.”