Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (4 page)

“But you just said it,” I asked.

“Yes, but I am no longer constricted by the
Pact,” he said, smiling. “You are.”

“So remove it.” This didn’t sound difficult
to understand.

“It is entwined in your soul,” he said. “I
cannot remove it without killing you. And then it would dissolve
before I could take it.” Okay, that sounded difficult.

“But you removed yours.”

“No, my teacher taught me how to disengage it
from my soul to do other things,” he said. “His language was much
older even than that of the Pact. The beast pulled the Pact with it
when it left my body. I can teach you the same way, but it will
take some time.

“And we must be certain that you are not the
last holder of this Pact. If you are, then I have the duty to find
a suitable replacement. The story must not die.”

“Why is it your duty?” I asked.

“I accepted the Pact.” He said it so simply,
he was almost child-like again.

“So where is this beast now?” I asked,
playing idly with a blade of grass.

He stiffened. “It was able to do with you
what it could not with me. The body disintegrated creating the
gateway attached to your soul. Right now, it’s sitting in its home
between worlds waiting on you to call it.”

Okay, this was another astounding moment. My
head snapped up, but my jaw was on the ground. This was the biggest
yet.

“I’m possessed?” I shouted. Didn’t mean to,
but when a demon makes a doorway through your soul, whatcha gonna
do?

“Not exactly,” he said softly. “More like
you’re a door now.”

I stood up and started pacing. Several times
I stopped to say something, but I couldn’t get the words out.
Frustration was just too high. My parents were God knows where. I
was stuck in the hills with this giant redheaded Rumplestilzkin
telling me stories about magic. I couldn’t ignore the magic because
I felt and saw it. And even performed some of my own.

“Why me?” I finally got out.

“Oh, that actually does make some sense,” he
said, sitting up straighter and getting his legs underneath him.
That was amazing in itself, considering how thick his legs were.
“The spell that sent me back concluded with a word that translates
to ‘home.’ For me, that would be my house. All that remains of my
house are the two ward stones. This one here and the other one we
found in the lake. Now the word ‘home’ has strong connotations to
family and friends. So from the spell’s perspective, the ward stone
in the lake had a stronger sense of home since you were closer to
it that night. See?”

I cocked my head at that explanation,
wondering if he had some snake oil for sale. A spell had a
perspective? Hmm.

“So if I had been at home that night, you
would have shown up here?” I asked.

“Probably,” he said, nodding and smiling. I
wondered if he was using magic to get me to buy this crap. Because
I was and I didn’t know why. Maybe I was just too bored and needed
the excitement.

“This demon inside me…” I started, looking
down at him.

“It’s a protector of the realm I just left,”
he said looking up, green eyes gleaming in the sun. He looked proud
of the thing, whatever it was. “It is the last of countless beings
that stood as a barrier between that realm and everything else in
the universe for untold millennia. I was the only person or thing
ever to have gotten past them. When he sent me away when the realm
finally died, it followed me here. Neither it nor I know if he
caused it to follow or if the magic of its creation caused it. But
it cannot stay on this plane without an anchor so that it can move
between here and there.

“Confusing terminology, there. The ‘he’ is my
teacher and his name should not be spoken just yet. There is power
in names and his is a very powerful name. The creature lives in the
dark place between worlds. That is how it protected my teacher’s
realm, by not allowing anything through. But as with anything that
has a beginning, the realm had an end and I saw it. I was there to
see the end of the most peaceful and exotic land in all of
creation.

“As I was cast out, the creature watched me
leave and followed. The damage it accrued fighting its way through
the destruction and up through the many levels of the universe to
get to me was immense. It will never be fully what it was. But now
it wants to protect me as the last of the realm.”

Then let it make a door outta you, I
thought.

“It is still a very powerful being,” he went
on, “but neither of us could tell exactly what the extent of the
damage is. Or how it will change, being on its own.”

That was alarming. “Great,” I said, “So not
only am I the doorstep for a demon, but you don’t even know how
it’s gonna act?”

“No, not really,” he admitted. “After I
followed it and recognized it for what it was, I was more
interested in taking care of you. It told me where you lived and
how to get in. So I carried you home, watched, and waited.”

“You said I told you where I lived,” I
said.

“A matter of perspective,” he said. “When it
created the anchor, it had to know you well enough to not hurt you
in any way. It effectively knows you better than you know
yourself.”

“It has my memories?” I asked. He nodded and
I felt really dirty. Violated. Icky. I wanted an hour in the
shower. “That’s just gross.”

Kieran made a face and shrugged. I suppose
that was agreement.

“It has been sleeping almost as long as you
have,” he said. “We need to get it started acclimating. And you
need to meet it.”

“Why?” I was angry now. “Why do I have to
meet this thing? This damn thing is just using me to get to you!
Hell, for all I know, you’re just using me for something! Why
should I believe this? What have I done to deserve any of this?” I
stormed off, stomping and kicking at clumps of tall grass. I
stomped all the way back up to the house, slamming the door on the
way in.

I lost it somewhere between the backdoor and
my room. Yeah, I know, guys aren’t supposed to cry, but get real.
Look at what’d happened to me in the past six months, in the last
two days. It didn’t last long anyway. I was in the shower longer. I
went to my bathroom to blow my nose and wash my face. When I walked
back into the room, I was already sitting on the bed. I mean,
someone who looked just like me, exactly like me, was sitting on my
bed.

“Hello, Seth,” he said, with my voice. Time
for another breakdown. A nervous one, this time.

A few months ago I watched an episode of I
Love Lucy where Lucille Ball dressed up like Harpo Marx and got
caught by the real thing. I hadn’t seen much television before then
so it was really funny to me. It was also the first time I’d seen
anybody playing a harp before. I thought it a piano on its side and
out of its case. That started my love affair with the Marx
Brothers. Don’t care for the Three Stooges, though.

Doing that bit didn’t occur to me then. This
man was an exact duplicate of me, down to not shaving this morning.
He stood as I exited the bathroom. I looked at him sideways and
circled around him. There had to be a flaw in the disguise
somewhere. He didn’t move at all while I did this. When I came back
around to the front, I poked his shoulder with a finger to prove to
myself I wasn’t dreaming. He was solid. And unthreatening, which I
supposed was a good thing.

“So, where are the pods?” I asked him.

“I do not know,” he said, totally devoid of
inflection. “Oh, a joke. I understand.”

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I do not have a name,” he said, still
blankly. It was eerie, like I was a robot or a real pod person or
something. “The last time we met I was a large, black, sparkly
dog.”

I backed into the doorframe hard. “First you
steal my head and now you steal my body! What the hell are
you!”

“I have upset you,” the other me said, this
I-not-I. “I have made many mistakes in a short time. I am sorry. I
assumed that coming to you in the form you were most familiar with
would be the most calming considering the circumstances of our
first acquaintance. There is much that I am having difficulty
understanding.”

“Where is Kieran?” I asked, calming slightly.
This thing scared me and I didn’t want to be alone with it. It
turned its head in the direction of the back of the house.

“He is just coming back from in-between,” it
said, turning back to me, “I came through the anchor in you. He
could not survive that way, so he went back the way he came. I was
hoping I could assure you that I meant you no harm while he was
away. I will wait outside.”

With that, he disappeared. Just blinked
completely out of sight. Like a reflection or something. I didn’t
know if he moved really fast or just popped out of reality. Either
was possible, I guess. This was getting disturbing. I had to find
out what was going on in my own house. I walked through the house
again and out onto the deck just as Kieran cleared the trees and
caught sight of my double standing at the bottom of the steps.

“Oh no,” I heard him say, “Tell me you didn’t
talk to Seth looking like him.”

“I did not realize how upsetting it would be
to him,” my double said, blankly.

“I told you to wait for me,” said Kieran. He
sounded frustrated. Good, maybe he was feeling a hundredth of what
I was feeling.

“Yes, Kir du’Ahn,” my double said, bowing his
head. That phrase made my head buzz, like the words resonated and
echoed in that empty space around the Pact and sigil. It didn’t
hurt exactly, but I definitely took notice.

“Seth,” Kieran called, looking directly at me
from the ground, “It doesn’t know. It doesn’t understand yet.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said,” I said and went
back in the house. I know it was petulant, childish even. But I had
to have time to think. Too much weirdness was happening too fast. I
walked down the hall and into the office. I’d always thought of it
as my dad’s, but considering I’d never seen him in it, I guess it
was more mine than his. In the safe, there were a ton of papers,
mostly bonds and real estate deeds, all in my name. A good bit of
cash in several currencies, too. Just looking at the safe now
bothered me. It was like my parents were taking care of me before
they disappeared, like they knew they weren’t coming back.

There’s that word again: maudlin.

It did make me think about my life up till
then, though. I had a lot of opportunity for that in the last six
months. As an only child, I spent most of my life around adults and
was having a very difficult time making friends around here with
people my own age. I couldn’t figure out why, but I kept trying. My
last failure was explosive. It was time to get help. It was time to
find my parents because now problems were invading my house and I
didn’t know what to do about them.

I sighed and got up, deciding to tackle the
smaller problems first: getting my “houseguests” taken care of.
Then I’d start working on finding my parents. I let myself stay in
the dark on that for way too long and I wanted them back. I needed
my family back.

I went to change. There was no way I was
going shopping looking like a twin whose mommy dressed him. It was
bad enough that I suddenly had a twin. I grabbed the flip-flops for
Kieran and went to find them. They were on the deck, sitting at the
table and talking.

“We need to go shopping,” I said, dropping
the shoes at Kieran’s feet as I plopped into a chair. I looked at
my twin and asked, “What do you need? Food? Clothing?”

“I don’t know,” it said. “My previous
incarnations did not last long enough to need nourishment and had
no need for clothing.”

“So for the moment, we concentrate on a name
and a personality, is that what you’re saying?” I asked. I’d turned
into quite a smartass this morning. Kieran chuckled, though.
I not I just nodded robotically. “I’ll plan on you
eating, anyway. At least that way, we won’t run out of food. Let’s
go.”

I led the troop through the kitchen to the
garage, grabbing my wallet, keys, and cell as I passed the basket
on the counter. The cell’s battery was so dead, it wouldn’t cut on.
Charge it in the car. I had to move the seat for Kieran—he wasn’t
too electronically adept and couldn’t figure where the controls
were much less how to use them. I-not-I sat behind me but I think I
could have put him in the trunk and he wouldn’t have complained. I
did consider it briefly. I started the car, hit the garage door
opener, cranked up the radio, and pulled out into the world.

Except for the music, it was a very quiet
hour drive into town. The drive was relaxing, mostly because I saw
normalcy right away. People driving in cars with normal auras
around them. Kieran had one. It was just hidden somehow. I guess it
was the same for my double. Kieran looked out the windows quite
enthusiastically. I could tell he wanted to ask questions about
things, but I just wasn’t ready to talk just yet. And I think he
knew that asking I-not-I would probably tick me off again. That
hour gave me time to plan this shopping trip to maximum affect.

The first stop was a warehouse department
store. We found a place to park on the side and piled out of the
car. I grabbed my cell from the charger, turning it on as I shoved
it in my pocket. It rang before we got to the front door. Jimmy’s
home number lit the display.

“I don’t want to talk to you, Jimmy,” I said,
answering the call, “Just lose my number.”

“Seth, John Morgan, Jimmy’s father,” said a
deep, raspy voice. “I am so glad to hear your voice. We’ve been so
worried about you.”

“That’s kind of you, but I’ve been taking
care of myself for a while now,” I said, not really caring that he
worried. I did try to keep the bitchiness out of my voice, but I
don’t think I succeeded.

“Jimmy came home saying that he left you in
the middle of Bankhead…” he said. I wasn’t really sure exactly
which question he was trying to lead me to answering.