“Your word. Your promise,” Sasha insisted. “Because you won’t break it to me.”
“I’ll take you.” The choice was no longer his. “My word.”
“Now that that’s settled,” Riley put in, “let’s make sure we kick her ass, and her ugly minions—good word—too.”
“All over it.” Sawyer slid a second knife in his boot.
“After we kick her ass,” Annika began, and made Sawyer grin at how carefully she enunciated the phrase, “we go here.” She looked at Sasha’s painting. “I know this place, and can swim there. I can get there quickly, and then Sawyer wouldn’t have to take so many.”
“Nobody’s alone.” Sawyer shook his head. “It’s not safe. We go together.”
“I can get a plane, but it’s going to take a couple more days.” Like Sawyer, Doyle slipped a knife into his boot. “And I’m thinking getting gone sooner rather than later is the smart move.”
“I’ve got a place nearly lined up. Friend of a cousin of a cousin’s getting it set up. I might be able to get us a plane,” Riley considered. “I can see if I’ve got some lines to tug.”
“Let me try it.” Sawyer shrugged. “If I can’t do us all at once, I can take half of us, come back, take the other half. If it doesn’t work, we can try for the plane.”
“And the boat?” Riley asked, mostly because she got a kick out of seeing it sitting in the yard.
“No big deal there—but I’ll wait until after midnight, after the area around it’s mostly going to be clear of people.”
“I’m not sure it matters.” Sasha sighted the bow. “We’ve had three ugly battles, and no one outside of us seems to have noticed a thing. I think what we’re doing isn’t making a ripple on reality.”
“Maybe, but when I was sixteen and training, I dropped down into a strip club in Amsterdam. It caused a ripple. My coordinates were a little off, and well, being sixteen, naked women were always on my mind.”
“I like clothes. They’re pretty. But for swimming, naked is best.”
Sawyer glanced at Annika, then carefully away. “Okay, now that’s on my mind.”
“Set it aside, pal. I for one don’t want to drop into a strip joint. Sun’s setting,” Riley added.
And a storm’s coming, Sasha thought.
With the weapons handed out, they brought the rest of their belongings down. If they had to retreat, they’d count on Sawyer, and leave behind anything he couldn’t transport.
They ate, for fuel rather than hunger, as the edginess of waiting overwhelmed everything else.
As the clock ticked toward midnight, Sasha stood.
“What is it?” Bran demanded. “What do you see?”
“Hear. I hear her calling to them. Singing to them. She’s gathering.”
“Let’s saddle up.” When Riley rose, Annika laid a hand on the dog’s head.
“Apollo. We should shut him inside, safe.”
“He’ll just bust out. I’ll keep an eye on him.”
Strange, Sasha thought as they moved into positions—two by two on the verdant green lawn—that she could feel so much dread and so much relief at the same time.
The combination left little room for fear. The Fire Star was safe, beyond Nerezza’s reach, she thought. If they survived the night, they would begin the search for the next. If they didn’t, someone else would pick up the quest.
She reached out, took Bran’s hand. “Whatever happens, I’ve had more in these last two weeks than I ever had or thought to have.”
“A ghrá.” He brought her hand to his lips with a kind of steely defiance. “There’s more yet.”
“They’re coming.” She released his hand to swing her bow into position.
They’d come before in swarms, in clouds, but they came now in a tidal wave that blacked out the stars and the light of the waning moon.
And the sound of them filled the world.
Bran blasted light up, illuminating them—the sick yellow eyes and fanged teeth, the spread of razor-sharp wings. She thought it was like watching hell roll over the world. Then she shot the first bolt, and stopped thinking.
They fell like black, oily rain, screamed as they raked the air with claws that gleamed deadly in Bran’s conjured light.
Her world contracted into load, aim, shoot with the blasts of gunfire echoing, the horrid sound of steel hacking gnarled flesh, the zing of light snapping from Annika’s bracelets.
Bran set off the first vial, and in its bloom of light that greasy blood splattered.
And still more came.