Of Blood and Bone (Chronicles of The One #2)(134)

Even as the gazebo erupted, shooting hunks and spears of wood, Fallon brought the rain. Smoke billowed from the smolder, hazed the air.

“You spoil my fun.” Petra slapped away a trio of arrows Tonia loosed. “Mummy! They’re so mean to me.”

Suddenly Allegra appeared, pale hair streaming, white wings spread. “There, there, precious.” With a laugh, she stroked a finger down her daughter’s cheek.

“Can we kill them now? Can we?”

“Of course, my treasure. But we want them to suffer first, don’t we? There must be pain, and blood. On their suffering, on their screams, we feed.”

Allegra snatched the arrow aimed at her heart out of the air, hurled it back. Tonia dodged it, but not the vicious fist of power that flung her up and back.

With a delighted giggle, Petra tossed balls of fire as Tonia lay crumpled and dazed. Duncan leaped to shield his sister, slamming the balls with his sword, ignoring the shocking burn as one slipped by, grazed his side.

“I’m okay, I’m okay.” Swiping blood from her mouth, her nose, Tonia shoved to her feet. “Just woke me up, that’s all. I’m a distraction. Fallon.”

She stood alone now, face lifted, sword sheathed.

“Do you feel their pain, whelp?”

“I do. And I see beneath your mask. Your beauty’s false.” She stared into Allegra’s eyes, streamed vision with power.

And watched the flowing hair dissolve to a straggle, watched it recede to leave part of the scarred scalp exposed even as one of the crystalline-blue eyes drooped, the cheek puckered. The pure white wings blackened and frayed.

Enraged, Allegra pounded lightning, flame, wind. And Fallon saw tears of humiliation spill from the ruined eyes.

“My father did that to you,” Fallon shouted. “And my mother. So now your face reveals your heart. Ugly and twisted. But I’ll end you.”

“At your six!” Duncan shouted as he enflamed his sword, deflected the attack.

“I know,” Fallon murmured, and whirled as Eric flew at her back.

She’d been waiting for him. Waiting, she knew, since before her first breath.

She drew her sword, struck, sliced through the edges of his left wing. The shock sent him careening to the ground, the force like the thunder that boomed overhead.

“Hold them off me.”

She wanted to see his face, his true face. And the bubbling thirst for vengeance burned in her blood. “You took his life, your brother’s life, for power and greed. I’ll take yours.”

He rolled away from the strike of her sword, flew up, wavering where Allegra folded him in a wing.

His true face, Fallon thought. Like raw meat, one eye gone, his lips seared and drawn back by scarring.

She heard others coming, fast. Heard the shouts as Petra, hissing like a snake, flung fire, toothy black darts.

When her parents flashed a few feet away, Fallon’s heart stuttered.

“Get back! Get away from this.”

In the chaos of smoke and flame, of clashing magicks, gunfire and calls for help, she pivoted in front of her parents.

“You did this to me!” Allegra screamed down at Lana.

“I did, and I can do it again.”

“Not yet, not yet.” Fallon saw it, that wild red haze of power, saw it in the way her mother’s hair streamed back in her own storm. “Not yet.

“Taibhse! Ionsaí! ”

The owl exploded out of the sky, a white streak through the dark. With talons and beak he tore through the crows, sent mangled bodies falling.

“Faol Ban! Garda!”

The wolf charged through the smoke, fangs gleaming, to stand in front of Lana and Simon.

“Laoch!” Through the haze, he galloped to her, and she thrust her sword toward the boiling sky. “Eitilt!” As he rose, wings spreading, she leaped on his back.

“Not alone.” Lana pushed that fury, barely banked, toward Allegra. “Duncan, not alone. I can help, from here. Please.”

“Tonia?”

“I’m good.” She lifted her bow. “I’ve got this. Arrows!” she shouted. “I need more arrows.”

Trusting his sister, and hoping like hell he could hit a moving target, Duncan flashed.

He nearly overshot as Fallon wheeled the horse to the left, and slammed hard into her back.

“Goddamn it!”

“Sorry. Blame your mom. Later. You want your uncle, let’s go get the bastard. But Petra’s mine. Do you hear me? She’s mine.”

Vengeance. She heard it bubbling in him as it did in her. Did it strengthen or weaken?

They rode through a rain of fire, slicing spears of lightning, into heat that boiled the air. She blocked attacks with her shield, deflected with her sword. And would have taken a hard hit if Duncan hadn’t slapped a bolt away.

They hit the edge of her mother’s fury, and Duncan hissed out of breath at the toothy, red flood. “Shit. Push through it! Just push through it.”

But it shifted away.

“It’s my mother’s power.”

“It still fucking bites. Move in.”

“I know what I’m doing.”

They circled the three, striking power to power. Whirlwinds spun, spinning flames she met with fists of ice, sweeps of driving rain.

And Fallon’s mind cleared just enough of her own fury for her to see.