“The three I brought with me. All of them, Mallick said. I should go back to the beginning. We were attacked on the way to the cottage. Raiders.”
She took them through the two years as best she could. The hard things she’d left out. She watched her father cover her mother’s hand when she told them about going to the prison, what they found there, what they did there.
As time passed, Lana rose, brewed tea.
“Dad taught me the basics of hand-to-hand. You know more than you taught us. You didn’t teach us because you thought we were too young. I’ll need to keep up my training. I can bring the ghosts, but you could help teach the boys. And they’ll need to know how to use a sword.”
“Why a sword?” Simon asked.
“There are still plenty of guns, but they’re not always easy to find now, and ammo’s even harder. We can make it. But blades, arrows, fists, feet, they can and are just as lethal, and easier to come by. Some are already using them, even prefer the sword or the bow.”
She told them what she’d seen in dreams. The man with the sword speaking to her from outside the circle of stones, how she’d seen that same place through the crystal.
“I can go into it, into the crystal, go to what I see in it. I’m there, and here, both. It’s hard to explain.”
“Not astral projection?” Lana asked.
“No, different. It’s like a split, but I’m in both places. It’s how I met the rescue party. How I met people from New Hope.”
“You … New Hope?”
“Eddie,” she told Lana. “Flynn. Others.”
“You met Eddie.” For a moment the worry cleared. “He’s alive and he’s well?”
“Both. He asked about you. I couldn’t tell him where you are, not yet, but I could tell him you were okay. I met Duncan and Tonia.”
“The twins.” On a happy laugh, Lana pressed a hand to her heart. “Katie’s twins? And Hannah?”
“Not yet.”
“Oh God, Katie’s babies. They’re almost grown by now.”
“They’re warriors—I don’t think Hannah is. Duncan drives a motorcycle and uses a sword. Tonia uses a bow. They’re trained in other weaponry, but that’s their preference.”
“Katie must be … You didn’t meet her?”
“She wasn’t in the rescue party.”
“Or Arlys or Fred, Rachel, Jonah?”
“Not them. Will Anderson. He leads them now.”
“Will.” Lana nodded. “Yes. Yes, I can see that.”
“It was an ambush.”
“What? Oh God. Was anyone hurt?”
“I saw through the crystal what the Purity Warriors had done, how they planned to lure the rescue party in, ambush them. I went to Mallick. He let me go through to warn them, and tell them how to turn the ambush into an ambush.”
“You figured that out?” Simon asked.
“I’ve trained, and studied, and I had the advantage of seeing where the enemy had their lines, their positions, so I could plan and map it out.”
“You could walk me through that sometime.”
“I will. None of your friends were hurt, Mom. And they rescued people who were being tortured, enslaved, people who’d be executed.”
“You’re glossing it over.” Lana folded her hands together. “You fought. You fought with them. I may have channeled my power into softer things, Fallon, and done what I could to build a safe life for my children, but I’ve been in the war. I’ve seen death and caused it. Don’t think to wait until you have your father alone to say the rest.”
Lana turned to Simon. “She walks us both through.”
“You’re right.” Simon took Lana’s hand, brushed his lips over it. “Your mom’s right. Lay it out now.”
“Okay. They had fuel tanks,” she began.
She took them through it.
“They’re strong soldiers, the people of New Hope. You’d like them, Dad.”
“So your mom’s always said.”
“After the battle, after more training, after I saw the first shield through the crystal, and the dark there tried to draw me to it, that’s when the Book of Spells called me.”
The moon set before she finished telling them all of it.
“I probably left some things out, but not on purpose. I needed you to know everything because it’s not right you don’t. And not telling you makes it seem like I think you’re weak, and you’re not. I want time to just be home, like today. Just to be home. And to train and practice, to help you and the boys train and practice. Then … I’ll know when I have to go. I’ll know.”
“Where will you go?” Lana reached for her hand.
“New Hope,” Fallon and Simon said together.
Fallon smiled at him, nodded. “Yeah, New Hope. So much started and ended there. So much is waiting there. It’s where I’ll need to go.
“To New Hope,” she said as her eyes deepened. “Where the light brought them, where the signs led them, where the blood of the sire stained the ground. There to raise an army, to forge the weapons against the dark. From there to the great cities, to the rubble and the ruin, across the seas, under the earth. Betrayal, blood, lies bear bitter fruit, and some will fall along the way. With the rise of magicks, the clash of the light and the dark, the worlds tremble.”
Now Lana rose, took a small bottle from a cupboard. “Two drops,” she said.
“I don’t get queasy from visions anymore.”
“Maybe not, but you don’t usually have one after you’ve been up most of the night. Two drops. Stick out your tongue.”
Though she mentally rolled her eyes, Fallon did as she was told. Lana leaned down, kissed the top of her head.
“I know what it’s like when it comes on so fast and strong. Like being filled up and hulled out at the same time.”
On a sigh, Fallon leaned into Lana, comforted by someone who knew, really knew.
“What works in us gives so much.” Gently, Lana stroked Fallon’s hair. “And demands so much. I haven’t forgotten what it’s like to feel that power surge inside me, or how to fight. How to use everything I have, everything I am to fight. Now, because I was given time and love, I have more to fight for.”
“I didn’t mean … I saw you, through the crystal. In New York, the life you had before, the way you had to leave it. And how strong you were going forward, always going forward. In the mountains, what you did there, faced there. I watched you fight for yourself and me and others, day after day, month after month. I saw that day in New Hope.”
“I would have spared you that.”
“Why?” Fallon pulled back, eyes fierce. “I saw people who’d begun to build something good, something bright and real. Honoring their dead, celebrating life. I saw the faces of those who came to kill me. I know those faces now. I saw my birth father give his life for you, for me, and saw you strike back.”
“It was grief.”
“It was power. Power—yours and mine. How many lives did you save that day? And how many more when you, with me inside you, with his blood on you, ran, alone? Left another place, another home you loved, friends who’d become family. You took his ring, for love. You took his gun. A woman thinks of the rings, but a warrior thinks of a weapon, Mom, and even in your grief and shock, you were a warrior.”
“I had a child to protect.”
“You did. Alone, hungry, scared, you kept going.”
“I nearly gave up. You came to me.”
“You wouldn’t have given up. You never give up. I just gave you a boost when you needed one. I saw you come to the ridge above the farm, and I saw on your face something I hadn’t since you ran. I saw hope. And …”
Fallon reached out, took Simon’s hand. “I saw that hope realized in kindness, and the building of trust, and love. It’s a lesson, that trust can build between strangers, but they have to take the first step, and that’s faith.”
“When did you get so smart?” Simon asked.