Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (18 page)

I thought about that and about the way that
some of the spelled amulets and fetishes had felt from the street
earlier. They had felt passive, not weak, just waiting for
something. Until I cut their strings and let them out. Not that any
of that mattered at the moment and I said so.

“I still don’t know how to fix him either,
Ethan. I’m not a doctor.”

“But I can show you,” he said. Then he said a
lot more, but I didn’t hear that much of it. None of it was in
English and the very first word rocked my world. Literally. It
shook me till I blacked out. At least I thought I did, but the
words just threw me into the cavern in my mind, away from the
center and the battery so that I had no reference and everything
was black.

Kieran lay prone before me, suddenly huge in
my perspective and badly damaged. I couldn’t tell why. He looked
the same to me here as he did on the bed out there, pale, breathing
shallowly, covered in bruises. He looked like death warmed over. I
heard Ethan distantly, echoing, and Kieran’s body shimmered
suddenly, appearing to me to be a magazine picture with offset
problems: three images overlaid but ever-so-slightly off from one
another.

It took me a moment, but I was able to
isolate and look at one overlaid image at a time. The first was his
physical body and the most obviously damaged. It was the drug. I
could see it working its way through his system even now. His
kidneys and liver were trying to filter it out, but it was damaging
them with every heartbeat. Why had they kept him under for so long
under so harsh a drug? They could have killed him. I was too tired
to be angry and I still had too much to do. How did that poem go?
And miles to go before I sleep. I needed to destroy the drug and
remove it before any more damage was done, to pull out the poison.
I pulled in power and touched Kieran’s chest, infusing his body
with pale blue energy. I could see better now. I could see the
chemicals pumping through his bloodstream and where it was building
up and tearing away at tissue. So I started tearing away at the
chemical, breaking chemical bonds like leaves from a tree.

More of Ethan’s words flowed into me. I could
feel the power of them flow into me, too, and see how it related to
what I needed to do. When I couldn’t find any more of the drug, I
started looking at the damaged organs. He had several cuts and
scrapes but they were mild. The most damage was to the kidneys,
liver, heart, and the brain. Ethan had stopped Kieran’s body from
healing itself. Unbelievably, this was a good thing. The build-up
of scar tissue would have created too many problems later for
Kieran. I could work with that.

I started with his kidneys. Jumping bodily
into the first cell, I peered into the DNA and figured out what it
was supposed to look like, then started making it happen. I pushed
and prodded rips and tears into place, re-growing from whatever I
could find nearby. And there were plenty of ruptured cells to work
with, too. And scar tissue from previous injuries. By the time I
was done, his kidneys probably looked better than when we met. I
moved on to his liver, then his heart. I had to stop his heart for
a moment. That scared me. Scared me so bad. One muscle was
stretched badly and was about to tear and I only needed a few
seconds to realign it. But that fear was nothing compared to his
brain.

And I was so tired. I wasn’t sure how much
longer I could keep this up as I squeezed his heart back into
pumping. My arms were so heavy.

Parts of his brain were just dead. Some small
blood vessels in his brain had burst and killed brain cells. I knew
from what I’d already done with the magic and power that Ethan had
given me that I could rebuild the cells, at least to some degree,
but I couldn’t rebuild the knowledge or relationships those cells
provided. The brain was just too complicated with millions of
neurons. And it was strongly linked to the second overlaid image,
making it even more difficult to understand.

When I shifted my perspective to see the
second overlay, all I saw was a reflection of me. I was shocked. I
pulled back a little, even though distance made no sense where we
were, and looked again. It looked like he had invested all of his
emotional capacity in a sense of failure because of me and the
damage in his brain had cut away any handholds he had to climb out
of that pit of despair. That made absolutely no sense whatsoever,
but that’s what it looked like. What was I supposed to do with
that?

I moved back down to the physical level and
started correcting the blood vessels that had ruptured. Then I
moved on to the cells. I couldn’t replace knowledge or
functionality, but it didn’t look like the affected areas were
long-term storage of anything, but I’m not a neurologist. I fixed
what I could and shunted what I couldn’t into the bloodstream. Then
I moved back up to the second overlay and considered what to do. It
was getting harder to think, I was so tired.

It was hypnotic, staring at my reflection
especially as tired as I was. I almost gave in to the same feelings
of despair that Kieran had. It felt like I was falling into him,
but without that feeling of vertigo since there was nothing around
to judge against. I shook my head to get the cobwebs out and
wondered mildly if I did the same in the real world. Then I
concentrated again on Kieran. He’d transferred a great deal of his
self-worth onto me and now he was losing that because he felt he
was failing me. No matter how stupid that was to me that seemed to
be what he was doing. I didn’t have a clue as to what to do about
that. I’d done all I could do.

I pulled back into myself and the hotel room
resolved around me. Kieran lay on the bed with me kneeling beside
him still. I didn’t see Peter, but I didn’t have the energy to look
around the room. I said something. I don’t remember what it was.
They were just words.

Then I collapsed.

“Come on, Seth, just drink a little,” a voice
said. Someone put a plastic cup up to my lips. They were so dry. I
sipped at the water, slowly. Then I must have passed out again. The
next thing I remembered was I needed to pee badly, but I was really
disoriented and sluggish. I think Peter helped me to the bathroom
and back to bed. Everything was fuzzy.

“Wake up, Sunshine, you need to eat a
little,” said Ethan, rousing me from sleep gently. I was in a hotel
bed propped up with some pillows behind my shoulders. He sat
cross-legged on the bed beside me holding a steaming Styrofoam cup.
I looked up at him bleary-eyed but at least I could focus now. And
I was hungry. Ethan lifted the cup to my lips slowly. I tried to
intercept him—I’d been eating on my own since I was two—but my arms
weren’t listening yet. I sipped at the too-hot broth and pulled
back, letting it cool slightly before running down my throat. My
arms finally started working again and Ethan let me take the cup
from him.

“What’s going on?” I asked hoarsely between
sips. I could hear a television in the next room at low volume, but
it didn’t look like the same hotel room.

“You’ve been asleep for a couple of days,” he
said. “Kieran is helping Peter unload the car. They’ll be back in
just a minute.”

“A few days?” I asked in disbelief, finishing
the cup of broth.

“Yeah, pulling off miracles can exhaust a
young man,” he said grinning.

I heard the door in the connecting room open
and daylight shined in briefly. Kieran and Peter were talking in
low voices and rustling bags. Ethan got up off the bed and leaned
into the room, “He’s up.” That’s when I smelled the best, most
enjoyable smell in the entire world: pizza!

“See, Peter, he is alive,” said Kieran,
jovially falling lengthwise on the bed beside me. I’m afraid all of
my attention was on the boxes Peter carried in with him, though.
The broth Ethan fed me just kicked my appetite into high gear.

“How are you feeling?” Peter asked, handing
me a slice of pepperoni pizza on a napkin. “Eat slow!”

“Just tired,” I said, weakly, taking a bite.
Turning to Kieran, “What about you? How are you? You had me scared
to death.”

“I am hearty and hale,” Kieran said, smiling
at me. “You did a remarkable job.”

I just stared at him, chewing slowly.

“What’d I do?” I asked. “Peter and I just
cleaned you up. I don’t remember much after that.”

“You did a lot more than that, little
brother,” he said, patting my leg roughly. “And you nearly
exhausted yourself doing it. You’ve been asleep for three days. Had
us all worried that you wouldn’t wake up.”

This was a lot to take in over a slice of
pizza, even eating slowly. “We’ve moved?” I asked.

“Yes,” answered Kieran, sitting up as Ethan
handed him a pizza box from the table. I craned my neck up to see
what kind, ham and pineapple. Maybe my next piece. Kieran
continued, “Once we were sure you were just sleeping off a huge
power burn, we felt it worth the risk to move to another location.
One that would be easier to defend since obviously there are things
in the world I hadn’t considered if we could be taken so easily and
quickly.”

“Who was that woman?” I asked. “From the
other night?”

“She is a Princess of Summer,” he said,
taking a bite of the pineapple and ham pizza. Turning to Peter, he
said, “You’re right, this is good.”

“Did you kill her?” I asked carefully,
finishing my slice.

“No, I just sent her back to the
Shadowlands,” he answered casually.

“You did what?” exclaimed Peter, punctuating
each word.

Kieran looked over at him bemused. “I sent
her home.”

“A Fairy Princess?” Peter asked, bewildered.
Kieran nodded calmly.

“Is that hard?” I asked him.

“It’s damn near impossible!” he exclaimed,
standing, throwing his arms up. “But look at who I’m talking to.”
He left the room muttering to himself about getting him killed or
fried or something. I didn’t hear all of it. Ethan was near the
table snickering. My one slice of pizza landed like a boulder in my
gut. I wanted more, but I didn’t think I could eat any more right
then.

“Why don’t you take a quick shower,” Ethan
said from the doorway, carrying the pizzas into the other room.
“You can eat more later if you want.”

“That sounds really good,” I said, getting up
quickly. And sat right back down. Dizzy. I’ve never been dizzy.

“Go easy, Seth,” said Kieran, tossing the
crust in the trash basket near my feet. “You’re exhausted. That
takes time to get over.”

I stood up more slowly this time. Okay, I get
it, just move slow. Not exactly a snail’s pace but not much faster.
I felt decrepit walking like that, but I made it to the bathroom.
Did the necessaries, then took a slow, warm shower. Someone, I
assumed Kieran, put a change of clothes and bathroom kit, both
newly purchased, on the vanity for me when I got out. I brushed my
teeth and hair, but didn’t feel up to shaving. Felt a thousand
times better, though, and the boulder in my belly had moved on. I
was hungry again.

When I walked into the other room, it was a
big surprise. The room was a mess, with one corner piled several
feet high with trash from packing materials, boxes, and such. The
dresser was lined with cell phones and rows of credit cards behind
them. Peter was sitting at the table working on a laptop and there
were two others closed and stacked on the table beside him. Kieran
and Ethan were sitting on the bed hunched over a fourth with Kieran
tapping the keys rapidly and Ethan urging him into action. I had no
idea what they were doing. I’d never used a computer before so it
was foreign to me, though I knew what they were. I grabbed a piece
of ham and pineapple pizza and sat at the table with Peter.

“Peter,” I said, realizing I’d done nothing
but cry on his shoulder since he got here. “I want to thank you for
everything you’ve done for me. I couldn’t have done this if you
hadn’t been there for me.”

“You’re welcome, Seth,” Peter said, smiling.
It brightened his eyes to a warm brown and he seemed to relax. I
wondered why he bothered to help but I didn’t know how to ask.

“Aw! He killed me!” Kieran all but shouted
from the bed, matched by Ethan’s mocking laughter. He arched an
eyebrow at Ethan, saying, “You didn’t do any better.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t boast as much as you did,
either,” Ethan said, chuckling as he took the computer out of
Kieran’s lap.

I pointed at them with my pizza and looked at
Peter quizzically while I chewed. “They discovered video games,”
Peter said, with a sideways grin. “They’ve been like that since
yesterday. You’d think they were twelve with the way they’ve been
competing.”

“He doesn’t know what they are, either,” said
Ethan, tapping at a mad rate on the keyboard.

“Still?” Peter asked me. “I would’ve thought
your dad would’ve brought a computer in by now.”

“Electronics always seemed to have a way of
failing around Dad,” I said. “Usually involving sparks and arcing
electricity.”

“Good point,” he said, panicked and grabbing
his laptop away from me. Then he stared. And kept staring. “You
don’t have an aura anymore.”

“Huh?” I said. Kieran and Ethan both looked
up. Ethan closed the laptop and set it aside. I looked down at
myself, but I looked normal to me. Just like the three of them
looked normal. Well, as much as I could see Kieran’s and Ethan’s
auras, I could still see them, sort of a faint heat outline.

“Peter’s right,” said Kieran, as they
gathered around me like vultures. He raised his right hand up like
he was warming it with me as the fire and I felt a gentle push of
energy.

“No, his aura is still there,” he said,
changing his statement, “it’s just changed.”

“Yeah, I saw it briefly when you pushed on
him,” said Peter. “But why? Why is he like you guys now?”