“I wouldn’t have thought so if it had been the first attack.” As she drank, Sasha curled up her legs. “There were so many this time, more than we’ve had before. But without the—without the same ferocity. Except toward Riley.”
“We should— Here he is,” Annika said as Sawyer came in with a basket of herbs.
“Keep it going. I’m multitasking.”
“All right. I want to say first, I didn’t sense, not initially, their focus on Riley. And when I did . . .” Sasha laid a hand on Riley’s outstretched leg, rubbed. “It was nearly too late.”
“They—or Nerezza—figured I was off my game.”
“You were,” Doyle responded, mercilessly.
She wanted to bristle, made herself shrug. “Marginally. I’d like to see you take on a few hundred mutant birds from hell all determined to slice and peck you to death.”
“He pretty much did.” As he spoke, Sawyer continued to chop herbs. “The rest of us were too spread out.”
“Okay, point, and again, thanks for the save.”
“I’m not looking for thanks. You were off your game,” Doyle repeated. “A soldier still fights. It’s more to the point we were spread out. Nerezza may be off her game as well, but she had the tactics here. She pulled us away from each other, or more accurately, pulled us away from Riley, in hopes of eliminating the one she believed was most vulnerable.”
“It came too close to working.” In his chair, Bran studied his beer. “We can’t forget to protect each other.”
“We did. Not arguing about how close she came to turning
this around,” Sawyer continued. “But we did protect each other. And we won. She went for the shock and awe, right? Blocked out the freaking sun. And it worked—temporarily. Each one of us was so busy cutting them down we didn’t have each other’s backs. But then we did.”
“I saw you fly,” Annika murmured. “The wind, it was alive. It wrapped around you, and threw you.”
“Felt that way,” Riley admitted. “It was like—not that I’ve had the experience—being sucked into a tornado.”
“It threw you,” Annika said again, “even more away from us. I saw you fall, and I was afraid. But I was even more very, very angry.”
“I was a little pissed off myself. You came running. All of you. She doesn’t have that in her bag of tactics. That all-for-one deal. And I’m feeling a hell of a lot better.”
“She’ll be feeling better, too,” Sasha pointed out. “Whatever she sends next won’t be as slow or weak.”
“We work on positions.” Doyle nodded when Sawyer pulled another beer out of the refrigerator, waggled it. “No one gets cut off, separated, or pulled away. They may have been slower, weaker, but we weren’t sharp. Not sharp enough.”
“If I’d sensed the intent, even five seconds sooner—”
“It’s not all on you, Blondie,” Doyle said. “We got flanked.”
Since one of Sasha’s sketch pads sat on the table, he picked it up, took one of her pencils. He drew quickly.
The structure, to Riley’s eye, looked more like a barn than Bran’s house, but it made the point. So did the curved lines, the squiggles to represent garden paths, shrubs, trees, the cliff wall.
And as far as she could tell, he had everything in its place, and nearly to scale.
“We started here.” He used first initials—and an SK for Sawyer—to note positions. “Annika shifted here, Bran here.” Now he used dotted lines to note the change in positions, for each. And again until he laid them out when Riley had been tossed.
“How do you know where everyone moved, during the thick of it?” Sasha demanded.
“I know where my people are.”
Studying the diagram, Riley leaned closer. “Impressive. And assuming this is accurate—and I do,” she added before Doyle could snap at her—“it illustrates how easily she drew us apart. Bran—magick man—is the full length of the field from my position when I hit my ass. Whatever she thinks of the rest of us, she respects power, his power. Sawyer’s closer, but again, pulled way back. Lowers the chances of him pulling out the compass, getting me out of there.”
“Sasha is back against the wall above the sea.”
“And facing away. I was facing away. That was probably deliberate, too.”