Page 6 of Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One 2)

She poked him lightly in the nose. “It wouldn’t be so funny if you had to walk home in wet, squeaky shoes.”

She dried them, then his pants, then the faded Under Armour shirt she knew had once been scavenged for Colin.

After taking up Grace’s reins, she turned to Colin.

“Come on.” He waved a hand at her. “You paid me back for paying you back.”

“I’ll dry you off if you give me your word you’re not going to pay me back for paying you back.”

He hesitated for a minute, then just grinned. “I had a good one I’m working on, but I can save it until the next time you’re a bitchy bitch. Probably won’t take long.”

She stuck out her hand. “But this round’s done.”

“Done.”

They shook on it.

Dry again, he glanced around. “Why’d they take off?”

“I told Travis I needed to talk to you.”

Suspicion and retaliation gleamed in his eyes. “We said done and shook.”

“Not about that.” She began to walk, the horse plodding lazily behind. “It’s almost my birthday.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“My thirteenth birthday.”

“So?” With a shrug he found a stick to bang on trees as they walked. “You’re probably going to start kissing boys and putting bows in your hair. Dopey.”

“I’ll have to leave.”

“And you’re going to get to drive the truck. I could drive the truck. I don’t see why you get to do everything first.”

“Colin, I won’t be here to drive the truck. I’ll have to go.”

“Go where?”

She saw the knowledge flash over his face. Her parents hadn’t held the story of Mallick, of The One, of two years of training away from home a secret.

Furious denial immediately followed knowledge. “That’s bullshit. You’re not going anywhere. That’s just a bullshit story.”

He liked to swear, Fallon thought idly. He swore at every opportunity out of their parents’ hearing.

“It’s not. And when he comes, I’ll have to go with him.”

“I said bullshit.” Furious, red-faced with it, Colin heaved the stick away. “I don’t care who this weird guy is, he’s not going to make you go. We’ll stop him. I’ll stop him.”

“He won’t make me. He can’t make me. But I have to go with him.”

“You want to go.” Bitter now. So young, so bitter now. “You want to go off and pretend you’re some big-deal Savior. Pretend you’re The One who’s going to save the world. Just more bullshit.”

He shoved her, hard.

“You’re not so damn special, and there’s nothing wrong with the stupid world. Look at it!”

He flung out his hands to the thick woods, the dappled sunlight, the verdant peace of late summer.

“This isn’t the world, just our part of it, and even that may be threatened.”

It rose up in her, rose so fast, so hot, it left her breathless. “You look at it. See the world.”

She lifted her hands, flung them apart like whipping open a curtain.

A battle raged, dark and bloody. Buildings in rubble, others aflame. Bodies, torn and mangled, lay across … sidewalks, she realized. Streets and sidewalks of a city, a once great city.

Gunfire ripped across the still woods, and screams followed. Lightning struck, black and red, exploding chasms where more fell.

Some flew on wings that slashed through flesh. Some flew on wings that tried to shield.

Uncannys, dark and light, people, good and evil, waging war over the blood of those already fallen.

“Stop it.” Colin gripped her arm as she stood, transfixed. “Stop it, stop it.”

He sobbed the last, got through.

Shaking, she whipped the curtain closed again.

“How did you do that? How did you do that?”

“I don’t know.” Queasy now, dizzy with it, Fallon slid down to sit on the path. “I don’t know. I feel sick.”

He yanked her canteen out of her saddlebag and, crouching, pushed it at her.

“Drink some water. Drink it and maybe put your head between your knees.”

She sipped, shut her eyes. “I see it in my head sometimes. When I sleep mostly. Like that, or other places. It’s always fighting and dying and burning. Sometimes I see people in cages, or on tables, strapped down on tables. And worse, even worse.”

She capped the canteen. “I’m okay now. I don’t know how I did that. I don’t know enough.”

He helped her to her feet, put the canteen away for her. “Where was that place?”

“I’m not sure. I think it was Washington, D.C., but I don’t even know why I think that. I don’t know enough. It’s why I have to go. I have to learn more, I have to, and I’m afraid. I’m so scared. They want to kill me, they tried to kill me and Mom. They killed my birth father. They’ll find me sooner or later. They could come here and find me. If anything happened to Mom and Dad, to you and Travis and Ethan…”

She turned to her horse, pressed her face to Grace’s neck.

“I have to go and learn how to stop them or it won’t ever stop.”

Awkwardly, Colin patted her back. “I’ll go with you.”

“You can’t.”

“Just try to stop me.” The bullheaded bravery, the sincerity and innocence of it, sprang back. “You think because I can’t do stupid tricks and all that crap I can’t fight? I’m going with you, you jerk.”

It touched her, she didn’t know if she could ever tell him how much, that at her lowest point, he stood up for her. “It’s not because of magick.” And, even at so young an age, she understood basic tactics. “It’s not because you wouldn’t fight.”

She wiped at tears, turned, saw he’d shed tears of his own.

“You have to stay because you have to be president.”

“What the fuck?” Even with his newfound love of swearing, Colin reserved the Big F for his most important cursing.

“It’s like this.” Steadier, she began to walk again. “Mom and Dad are like the king and queen, right? They rule. But they don’t know everything that goes on. They’ll know about the stream today unless you guys swore Ethan to secrecy. If he’s not sworn, he’ll blab.”

“Damn it.”

“So they’ll know, but that’s okay. Nobody’s mad about it. But they don’t know everything, and the oldest—that’s going to be you—has to be in charge, too. You have to be president and look out for Travis and Ethan, and Mom and Dad, too. I need to know everybody’s going to be okay. Please. It’s a hard job. You have to make sure everybody’s okay, everybody does their chores and lessons. And you can’t be too bossy about it or it doesn’t work.”

He hip-bumped her as they walked. “You’re bossy.”

“I could be bossier. Lots. Please, Colin.”

They stopped at the rise where so long before their mother had first looked down at the farm, first felt hope again.

“I can be president,” he mumbled. “I already told you I could.”

“Okay.”

She draped an arm over his shoulders, and for a few moments they looked down at home.

Ethan fed the dogs, the old and the young. Travis walked along a row in the garden, filling a basket with green beans. Their father, head shielded by a cap, walked back from a near field with one of the horses, and their mother straightened from her work in the herb bed to wave at him.

She’d take this picture with her, Fallon thought. This and others, wherever she had to go. Whatever she had to do.

* * *

Day after day, night after night, Lana watched her children with a kind of wonder. Before the Doom, she’d never given more than a passing thought to having children—someday. She’d enjoyed the life she’d lived, the urban glint of it, with a man she’d loved and admired.

She’d dabbled in magicks mostly for the fun, and her powers had been barely whispers in any case. Or so she’d believed.

 

; Her work satisfied her, so ambitions for more had been, like children, a passing thought for someday.

She’d lived with a writer whose books had found a solid niche. Max had taken the Craft more seriously than she had, and his powers had been more overt—but still, in those days a pale shadow of what would come.

Their love had still held the bright shine of the new and exciting, and the future—if she looked beyond a day or two—had seemed limitless.

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