Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(104)

“You don’t know that,” Darlie began.

“Tell that to Macon Addams,” Simon interrupted. “We buried him after the Raiders hit.”

“Over three years ago.”

“Raiders,” Simon continued. “Purity Warriors, bounty hunters, rogue military, military following what passes for the government orders, holding people in camps and labs.”

“Those are just rumors.”

“You know they’re not. We’ve all heard the stories from people who’ve come through. Some of us have stories of our own.”

“I saw the inside of one of those rumors.” Maddie Bates of Sisters Farm kept up with her knitting as she spoke. “Soldiers, some of them as scared of me as I was of them. And for some, fear made them hate. Six months for me, under the ground, being tested. If you tried to fight it, they used Tasers and worse on you. I didn’t know what I had in me, not all of it, back then. But I found out, and I got away. They’ll never put me underground again, or in one of their labs.”

She looked up at Darlie. “You love your boys, I know you do. You want to tell me you wouldn’t fight with all you had if those who put that mark on your Charlie came back for him?”

“They won’t.”

“Mom.” Charlie put a hand on her arm. “She’s scared, that’s all. I was nine when they burned this onto me, and that was a year after soldiers—American soldiers—came in and took my mother away. She made me hide, so they didn’t find me when they came and dragged her away.”

He kept that comforting hand on his mother’s arm. “We thought we were safe, too. We weren’t hurting anyone, and we’d made a home, a small community of people who weren’t hurting anyone. But they came.”

“That was before, Charlie,” Darlie insisted. “That was before.”

“It was three years after the Doom, and they came for us. My dad was a marine, and he died in the Doom. He was proud to serve, too, but it was soldiers who dragged my mother away, three years after my dad died. I never saw her again. It was the PWs who caught me when I got away from the soldiers, and beat me and branded me. And would’ve hanged me like they did others if some locked up like me hadn’t fought back. Some of them died fighting so some of us could get free.

“My dad was a marine,” he said again, “and I know you were army, Mr. Swift. Just like I know if my dad was here, he’d say what you’re saying. You’re saying we’ve gotta learn to fight, gotta make an army. Mom.” He squeezed her arm when she let out a little sob. “You’ve gotta understand, my mother likely died protecting me, and I saw others die protecting me. And for ten years now you’ve protected me—eight years you’ve protected Paul.”

He glanced at the young man who’d become his brother, got a nod.

“It’s time we protected ourselves and you, and fight back.” Charlie, an elf with straw-colored hair and a small, jagged scar under his left eye where a ring on a fist had torn the skin, looked now toward Fallon. “Do you have the sword and shield?”

As Fallon nodded, Darlie’s voice cracked out.

“That’s nonsense. I’ve told you and told you—”

“It’s not.” Paul, compact and quiet, a serious seventeen who always weighed his words, spoke. “Charlie and me, we love you a lot, but it’s time you swallowed down what is instead of chewing on what you want.”

“She’s just a girl.”

“She’s my girl.” Simon kept his eyes on Darlie’s. He knew, and Fallon knew, he already had the others. “And I can wish all I want she was just a girl, and your boys were just boys. But that’s not how it is, and it’s never going to be how it is. We can put all that aside for now. It’s a lot to swallow down. But what we can’t put aside is we need to be ready and able and willing to fight for our families, our neighbors, our land, and the world we’re going to make out of what we have.”

“They used to call it boot camp.” Maddie went on with her knitting. “I’d say you’d be a fine drill sergeant, Simon. My sisters and I, and Lana, I’m sure, will be happy to help with magickal training. Why don’t you tell us how you want to set things up, Simon?”

He had a plan. Fallon realized he always had a plan.

Simon talked with the town elders, spoke with several others—former military—over a beer or a piece of pie.

He kept Fallon’s connection minimal with most of the nonmagickals. They had to get things started first, he explained, one step at a time.

He began, with other handpicked instructors, what he thought of as basic training. Ages sixteen and up. Always on a voluntary basis. For the younger children, he began the way he’d begun with his own. Calisthenics, sports, elemental self-defense.

He brought Fallon in, telling her the tactical way would be for her to straddle the line. Working with him, and working with her mother.

It appalled her to learn how many of the younger magickals had no training with their gifts, and how many of the older had either not explored theirs, or had let them go rusty.

Because, she understood, they wanted to believe as Darlie did. That they were and would remain safe, that their world was a kind of bubble that would never be penetrated from outside.

She understood also that her two years with Mallick had served her well. She knew how to train others, knew how to separate bullshit excuses from genuine concerns.