“We don’t have any choice about that.”

“Of course we do. I know a bit about loneliness, and what can chase it back, even for the short run.”

“So I should jump Larkin because I’m lonely?”

“That would be one answer.” Cian retrieved the knives again, and this time replaced them. “The other might be to take a closer look at him, and at what he sees when he looks at you. Meanwhile, the tension and repression gives you a nice edge. Want to go a round or two?”

“Wouldn’t say no.”

S he felt better. Bruised but better. Nothing like a good grapple with a vampire—even one who didn’t want to kill you—to clear the head. She’d just go down and grab something to eat before the evening training session.

But first she was going to stop by her room and rub some of Glenna’s magic cream into the bruises.

She walked into her room, and onto the rise above the Valley of Silence.

“Oh crap. Crap, crap. I don’t need to see this again.”

“You do.” Morrigan stood beside her, pale blue robes fluttering in the wind. “You need to know it, every rock, every drop, every blade of grass. This is your battleground. This will be the stand of humankind. Not the caves in Kerry.”

“So we just wait?”

“There will be more than waiting. You are hunter and hunted now. What you do, what you choose to do, brings you closer to this.”

“One battle.” Suddenly weary, Blair raked a hand through her hair. “Everything else is just another skirmish leading here. It’s all about this. Will it end it?”

Morrigan turned those emerald eyes to Blair’s. “It never ends. You know this, in every part of you, you know this single truth. But if she defeats you on this ground, worlds will be tossed into chaos. There will be suffering, death and torment for a time beyond imagining.”

“Got that. What’s the good news?”

“Everything you need to take this ground is within you. Your circle has the power to win this war.”

“But not end it.” Blair looked over the ground again, the misery of it. “It’s never going to end for me.”

“The choice is yours, child, has always been yours.”

“I wish I could walk away. Some days I wish that, and others…Others I think wow, look what I’m doing, what I can do. And it makes me feel, well, righteous, I guess. Right, anyway. But some days when I go home after a hunt and there’s no one there, it all seems too hard, and too empty.”

“You should have been cared for, and were not,” Morrigan said, gently now. “And still, all that came before, all that comes now has made you. You have more than one battle to win, more than one quest. And always, child, more than one choice.”

“Turning away isn’t a choice for me. So we’ll come here, and we’ll win. Because that’s what we have to do. I’m not afraid to die. Can’t say I look forward to it, but I’m not afraid.”

She looked back at the ground, the way the mists filled the pockets in the earth, the way the rocks speared up through it. Now, as always, the look of it shuddered through her. Now, as always, she saw herself lying bloody there. Ended.

She nearly asked if what she saw was truth or imagination, but knew the god wouldn’t answer.

“So if I go,” Blair decided, “I’m taking a hell of a lot of them with me.”

“In one week, you, the circle of six, will go to the Dance of the Gods, and from there to Geall.”

Blair turned away from the drop now to look into Morrigan’s face. “One week.”

“One week from this day. You’ve done what needed to be done here. You’ve gathered together, and now, together, you’ll make this journey to Geall.”

“How?”

“You’ll know. In one week. You must trust those with you, and what you hold inside you. If the circle doesn’t reach Geall, and come to this place at the appointed time, this world, yours, and all the others are plunged into the dark.”

The sun went out. In the black, Blair heard the screams, the howls, the weeping. The air suddenly stank with blood.

“You’re not alone,” Morrigan told her. “Not even here.”

She snapped back, and stared into Larkin’s eyes. She felt his fingers digging into her shoulders.

“There you are, there you are now.” She was too stunned to evade when he pulled her into his arms, wrapped them around her like bands as he pressed his lips to her hair. “There you are,” he repeated. “Was it the vampire?”

“No. Wow. You need to turn me loose.”

“In a minute or two. You’re shaking.”

“I don’t think so. I think that’s you.”

“It may be. I know you scared six lives out of me.” He drew her back, barely an inch. “You were just standing there, just standing, staring. You didn’t hear me when I spoke to you. Didn’t see me when I was right in front of you. And your eyes…” He pressed his lips to her forehead now, firmly, the way she imagined parents checked a child for fever. “So dark, so deep.”

“It was Morrigan. She took me on a little excursion. I’m okay.”

“Do you want to lie down, to rest? Steady yourself a bit. I’ll stay with you.”

“No, I said I’m fine. I thought you were mad at me.”

“I was—am a bit. You’re a frustrating creature, Blair, and I’ve never had to put so much work into wooing a woman.”

“Woo?” Something snapped shut in her throat. “I don’t like the whole woo thing.”

“That’s clear enough, but I do. And a man has to please himself as well as the woman who’s caught his eye, doesn’t he? But in any case, whether or not I’m annoyed and frustrated, I wouldn’t leave you alone.”

They always do, a little voice whispered in her head. Sooner or later. “I’m okay. Just a little wigged out at getting a message from the land of the gods.”

“What is the message?”

“Better get everyone together and deliver it all at once. In the library,” she decided. “It’s the best setup.”

S he paced, waiting for Hoyt and Glenna. Apparently, magic couldn’t be interrupted even by messages from gods. Struggling against impatience, she toyed with the two crosses around her neck. One, she’d worn nearly all her life. It had come down through her family, through Nola, and all the way back to Hoyt. Morrigan’s Cross, one of those given to him at the onset of this battle while he was still in his own time.