But she and those with her surged toward the lab and its chamber of horrors. There, another iron door. She started to punch her power through, stopped a breath away from the blast as she sensed something more, something dark.
Magicks, black and deadly.
She held up a hand to halt her team. Forcing patience, she searched, tall in elf-made boots and leather vest, black hair short, eyes blurred with power.
“Stand back,” she ordered, and shouldered her shield, sheathed her sword to hold her hands to the door, the locks, the deep frame, the thick metal.
“Booby-trapped,” she murmured. “We push in, it blows out. Stand clear.”
“Fallon.”
“Stand clear,” she told her father. “I could unwind it, but that would take too long.” She swung her shield up again, and her sword. “In three, two—”
She shoved her power, light against dark.
The doors erupted, spewing fire, raining out jagged, flaming metals. Shrapnel thudded on her shield, whizzed by to impale the wall behind her. Into the torrent she leaped.
She saw the man, naked, eyes glazed, face blank, shackled to an exam table. Another in a lab coat flung himself back, sprang on his hands, then scaled the back wall in a blur of speed.
She flung power at the ceiling, brought the one in the lab coat down in a heap as Simon dodged the scalpel swipe by a third before taking him out with a short-armed jab.
“Search for others,” Fallon ordered. “Confiscate all records. Two to secure this section, and the rest move out, clear the rest of the level.”
She approached the man on the table. “Can you speak?”
She heard his mind, the struggle to form words.
They tortured me. I can’t move. Help me. Will you help me?
“We’re here to help.” She watched his face as she sheathed her sword. Blocked out the chaos of fighting from above while she kept her mind linked to his.
“Got a woman over here,” Simon called out. “Drugged, cut up, but she’s breathing.”
They hurt us, hurt us. Help us.
“Yes.” Fallon laid a hand on one of the shackles so it fell open. “How long have you been here?”
I don’t know. I don’t know. Please. Please.
She circled the table to release the shackle on his other wrist. “Did you choose the dark before or after you came here?” she wondered.
He reared up, glee on his face as he struck out at her with a bolt of lightning. She simply swatted it back with her shield, impaling him with his own evil.
“I guess we’ll never know,” she mumbled.
“Jesus Christ, Fallon.” Simon stood, the woman limp over his shoulder, his gun drawn.
“I had to be sure. Can you get her to a medic?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll clear the rest.”
When they had, the count was forty-three enemy prisoners to transport. The rest they’d bury. Medics moved in to treat wounded from both sides while Fallon began the laborious process of vetting those held in cells.
Some, she knew, might be like the ones in the lab. Others might have had their minds broken, and a broken mind could bring danger to the rest.
“Take a break,” Simon told her, and shoved coffee into her hand.
“There are some shaky ones.” She gulped down coffee as she studied her father’s face. He’d mopped off the blood, and his hazel eyes held clear. He’d been a soldier long ago, in the other time. He was a soldier again in this one.
“They’ll need to move into one of the treatment centers before they’re clear to go. Why does that always feel as if we’re keeping them prisoners?”
“It shouldn’t, because it’s not. Some are never going to be right again, Fallon, and still we’ll let them go unless they pose a real danger. Now tell me how you knew that bastard on the table down in the lab was a bad guy.”
“First, he wasn’t as powerful as he thought, and it leaked through. But logically, the spell on the door, witchcraft. The other magickal in the lab was an elf. Bad elf,” she said with half a smile. “Elves are good at getting through locks, but they can’t bespell them. I felt his pulse when I released the first shackle, and it was hammering. It wouldn’t have been if he’d been under a paralytic.”
“But you released the second one.”
“He could’ve done that for himself.” She shrugged. “I’d hoped to question him, but … well.” She downed the rest of the coffee, and blessed her mother and the other witches who’d created Tropics to grow the beans. “Do you have the status of the woman they’d dumped off the table?”
“Faerie. She’ll never fly again—they excised most of her left wing—but she’s alive. Your mom’s got her at mobile medical.”
“Good. The faerie’s lucky they didn’t just kill her instead of tossing her off. Once our injured prisoners are cleared, I need you to debrief. I know it’s hard for you,” she added. “They’re soldiers, and most of them are just following orders.”
“They’re soldiers,” he agreed, “who stood by or even abetted while their prisoners were tortured, while children were kept in cells. No, baby, it’s not hard for me.”
“I could do this without you because I have to do it, but I don’t know how.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You’ll never have to figure it out.”
She spoke to magickal children who’d been ripped away from non-magickal parents, reunited two whose parent—by blood or choice—had been locked in another cell.
She spoke to those who’d been locked in for years, others who had been swept up only days before.
She checked each one off the very precise records kept by the—now deceased—prison commander, reviewed the horrific records of experiments done in the lab.
Both Dark Uncanny—the witch, the elf—who’d worked there had hidden their natures, so her intel hadn’t shown any magickals on staff.
Intel only went so far, she thought as she marked the witch as deceased, the elf as a prisoner of war.
The storm passed and dawn broke when she did a last pass through the building. Cleaning crews already worked to scrub away the blood staining the concrete floors, the walls, the stairs. The supply team had gathered everything worth taking—the rations, the equipment, the vehicles, the weapons, clothing, shoes, boots, medical supplies. All would be logged, then dispensed where most needed or held in storage until it was.
The burial unit dug graves. Too many graves, Fallon thought as she walked outside, across the muddy ground. But today they dug none for their own, and that made it a good day.
Flynn slid out of the woods, his wolf Lupa by his side.
“Seven of the prisoners need more treatment,” he said. “Your mom’s helping with their transport to Cedarsville. It’s the closest clinic that can handle their injuries. The rest are on their way to the detention center on Hatteras.”
“Good.”
Flynn, she thought, fast—an elf, after all—efficient, and solid as the rock he could blend into, had met her mother and birth father when he’d been a teenager.
Now a man, he stood as one of her commanders.
“We’ll need a rotating security detail here,” she continued. “Hatteras is close to capacity, so we’ll need this facility. And they may come and check when they can’t get through, or just bring in another load of prisoners.”