Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (55 page)

The next morning, we had breakfast with Mr.
Borland then left for the airport. We allocated plenty of time to
process through Customs, and it would have been enough even with
the lines at that time of day, but we got singled out for, well,
let’s be honest, we were on a “list.” And that meant “pick on us.”
Peter was already reaching for his cell phone to call attorneys
when a cookie-cutter-dressed Marshal lightly touched his arm and
said, “Please, Mr. Borland, this really isn’t as it seems. If you
would accompany me, we’ll have you on your way to Ireland
shortly.”

Peter glared at him for a moment through
heavy-lidded eyes then nodded once, keeping his phone in his hand.
I felt a light flutter of air on my neck that told me Shrank had
moved to me for support and safety. I raised my body sense to
include him so I wouldn’t squish him by just moving. A steward
loaded our luggage onto a cart for us then the blue suit led us
through an unmarked door and into a warren of hallways. At one
juncture, he had the steward stay behind and moved us another turn
down a hall and knocked on a door, entering without waiting for a
response.

We were greeted by the most unwelcome sight
of Deputy Harris seated at the long conference table in the room.
He looked up as we came in, his anxiety level doubled and redoubled
almost instantly. To his right sat Señor Florian with two Hispanic
men and a woman, all dressed in expensive business suits and all
quite a bit more relaxed than Harris. Everyone in the room wore
identification badges with Florian and his group showing diplomatic
markings and Harris’ group showing US Marshal identifications.
Florian rose quickly.

“Gentlemen, I had not expected to see you
again so quickly,” he said to us, smiling broadly and moving around
the table to shake our hands. “Please allow me to introduce you to
Carlos Madero, Porfiro Huerta, and Maria Calla. Mr. Huerta will be
traveling with us today. It is a pleasure to see you all
again!”

“It’s a pleasure to see you again, too,
Diego, but, traveling with us…?” Kieran asked, head tilted
slightly.

“Yes, well, it appears that our mutual
acquaintance,” said Florian, sweeping his hand back to indicate
Harris, “learned only this morning the specifics of your travel
plans. At that point, he realized that you probably don’t recognize
the dangers of air travel for people of our persuasion and felt it
necessary to step in and be accommodating.”

“Didn’t we have this exact conversation a
week ago?” Ethan asked grinning and looking at Peter.

“Yes, I do believe we did. It was the day we
discovered Seth’s aura had disappeared,” Peter answered. “And now
that you mention it, I see what you mean by ‘sparks.’”

“‘Sparks’?” Harris said his first word. We
ignored him.

“Do I still give off as much as before?”
Peter asked Ethan.

“No, you don’t, come to think of it,” Ethan
said, looking at Peter intently. “You’re actually very tight and
controlled now.”

“What ‘sparks’?” Harris asked again. He was
getting frustrated, not used to being ignored, I’m sure.

“Conflicts between a wizard’s innate energy
presentation and the normal universe,” I said calmly. “It manifests
to us as sparks.”

“Why can’t I see these things?” he asked.

“It suggests that there is a difference
between the astral plane and the energy plane,” I countered, “and
you can’t see onto the energy planes. Just a thought, though,
seeing as I’m just a ‘prentice.” I smiled just a little for him on
that.

He glowered a bit and scribbled something in
a little notebook he had open on the table to his left. A southpaw,
I noticed. Señora Calla made a similar note.

“In any event,” said Florian, stealing back
control of the conversation. “Mr. Harris has gone to some trouble
to make your travel easier, providing Diplomatic Passports and, at
least for this trip, a private jet with a specialized cabin that
has dampening features that soften the difficulties and dangers of
intercontinental flights.”

At the end of the table, facing us sat four
new passports. As new as the ones we already had for Kieran and
Ethan, anyway, except these had us as part of the Diplomatic Corps
of the State Department. Peter looked at his without picking it
up.

“I’m a Canadian citizen, Mr. Harris,” he said
simply.

“And now you have Diplomatic status with your
government and dual citizenship with mine,” Harris said. “It is a
very complicated arrangement, Mr. Borland, not at all similar to
your father’s. One of your seven attorneys, Mr. Cruz I believe, has
been notified of it and its National Security classification.
Please feel free to contact him. There are no strings attached to
this, gentlemen. I just don’t want a 747 going down in the Atlantic
Ocean and contrary to many indications, I do not want you as
enemies. For very obvious reasons.”

Ethan smirked as we picked up the passports
and clipped the id badges to our shirts. Harris didn’t appear to be
lying about this. The flare of green and orange that flashed from
his groin to his sternum was a good indication that he remembered
his humiliation at Ferrin’s hands.

“There are more than a few ways to travel
without using planes,” said Harris. “Mr. Florian and Cahill can
provide you with a list of methods, as well as myself. I did not
want to intrude on your search for your father or a visit to Seth’s
mother.”

“Very magnanimous of you,” I said curtly.
Nope, I wasn’t giving him an inch. His frustration level was
rising. Considering how Kieran felt about him, though, I wasn’t
worried about his frustration so much as his mortality.

“Mr. Calhoun will escort you to your plane,
then,” said Harris, standing up and gathering the few items from
the table in front of him. “Have a safe journey and feel free to
call my office if I can aid you in any way.

The door opened behind us. The first blue
suit stepped back in. “Gentlemen, if you will follow me, I will
take you to embarkation,” he said. He led; we followed, leaving
Harris, Calla, and Madero behind.

Halfway down the first hallway, Ethan called
out to Peter, who was just behind Huerta, “Hey, Peter, I just
realized something else. Everybody we’ve dealt with has flunkies.
We need to get us some flunkies.”

Peter laughed. “Come on! Seth had problems
with brownies. You think he’s gonna do better with people?”

“I got over it!” I said defensively. “They
turned out to be really nice people, er, whatevers.”

“Language, gentlemen,” warned Calhoun as we
entered a more public area.

We attracted minor attention as we tramped
through the hallways. I was already lost, but it wouldn’t have been
too hard to find the main concourse from where we were. Kieran,
Florian, and Huerta chatted in Spanish, idly passing the time.
Calhoun passed through an exit onto the tarmac, ushering us into a
van while our luggage was loaded into the back. Then he drove us,
interminably slowly, through the airport to some backwater hanger
where a jet sat waiting for us. Two men in orange jumpsuits and
huge ear protection ran out from the hangar to load our luggage
into the plane while Calhoun supervised loading us onto the plane.
We were met by a lone hostess, who asked us to sit slightly behind
the wings, the back and center of the plane. That didn’t really
make much sense to me, but I didn’t really know anything about
airplane architecture.

I dipped quickly down into my cavern and
asked the Stone if it could shield the cabin from sparks. The
foundation Stone just sat there, holding everything up. Effectively
it just stared dumbly at me. They all did. I felt like they were
saying, “You do it this time.” Okay then, we follow the plan.

“Hey, Shrank, come on out and take a nap,” I
called, not too loudly. He was sitting on my shoulder, after all. I
said it more for Calhoun.

“Yes, Master Seth,” he said, flitting into
view and landing on the armrest as I buckled my seat belt. Calhoun
jumped a little, shying away from the pixie. Of course, Shrank
giggled and pointed. “You should see the shiny things he can make
appear! They’ll knock your socks off!” He giggled some more and
fell off the armrest laughing.

“Shrank, be nice to Mr. Calhoun,” I said
sternly, leaning over to look at him on the floor. “He’s going to
be with us for seven hours now and he’s been nothing but nice to
us. Now get up here and get comfortable, just like before.” We’d
done this on the first trip, from Huntsville to New York.

“Ethan, you ready?” I called. Kieran passed
me a pillow and sat down again, buckling in. I have no idea where
he got it from, but I shoved in between me and the seat so Shrank
could snuggle in. He got comfortable in the crook of my arm on the
pillow.

“Whenever you are. Oh-five, right?” Ethan
asked.

“Yes, please,” I answered, glancing sideways
at Calhoun. “Ehran will explain once we’re airborne.” Faraday cage,
right? Still didn’t see quite how that name related, but I knew
what I needed to do. Keep magic away from the airplane while
keeping Shrank alive.

I pushed out my awareness of the flows of
energies around me, feeling the cycles of atoms, the pulse of
machinery, and the heartbeat of life. Seriously, it is a weird
sensation and it’s somewhat intoxicating. I reached out into the
cabin of the plane and started drawing in all the errant magic
sparks lying about, then spread out past the shell, and again past
the wings until I completely encompassed the jet within the field.
I started drawing all the magical energy in, but blocking the
energy outside the jet. Florian and Huerta turned in their seats to
look back at me. It wasn’t something I could hide. I was basically
pulling on their coattails. The pilot announced something I didn’t
pay attention to and the jet started moving slowly. I could feel a
definite difference between this and our first trip from
Huntsville. There was energy to actually pull here, whereas before
there wasn’t. Several wizards on this flight.

Ethan’s awareness snapped sharply into place
in my mind. He was mapping ahead of us. Anything that might
interfere with what I was doing he would notify me through the
anchor at least a half of a tenth of a second before the jet
intersected with it. While that seemed incredibly fast, faster than
the mind can operate even, we were already operating outside of
reality. Real time didn’t quite have the same meaning where we
were. It made me understand better how Kieran could spend over four
hundred years in another realm. A ten to one ratio didn’t seem that
large now. Ethan’s current mapping extended into minutes instead of
seconds, but that would change when the jet got to speed.

Shrank settled down further into the pillow
as I formed a bubble around him to keep a reasonable amount of
energy in the environment for him. Then I seriously stripped every
bit of magical energy out of the field. I tried to leave the cabin
alone, but I’m pretty sure I killed a few of Calhoun’s amulets and
maybe one or two of Huerta’s. There was something in Florian’s
briefcase that cocooned itself against me, so I left it alone, but
watched it for the trip.

As the jet took off, Ethan discarded possible
intersections from the map he presented to me, and I changed the
shape of the outside field I was manipulating, forming a pointed
cone. I left Shrank’s bubble and the cabin alone. I just needed to
repel the outside magic so a complicated geometry wasn’t necessary
outside. It meant I could at least follow the conversations in the
cabin, if not take part in them. Personally, I thought Ethan had
the tougher job, scanning out thousands of square feet into space
in front of us, identifying what could affect us. Not once did he
let the map fall below one second and he participated in the
conversations in the cabin, moving around at will. Showoff.

Before I knew it, the jet was banking around
and descending, readying for a landing. Ethan’s map became much
more volatile, demanding more of my attention. There were a lot of
possible hits to take here, nearer the island of Ireland, but I was
handling them easily, adjusting the outer shape to better redirect
the energy conflicts and shed them away. I think Ethan was getting
a little bored with it by that time, though. He started varying the
times on his map, making me adjust more quickly in places, giving
me time in others.

A few hundred feet off the ground, he totally
collapsed his map down to half a tenth of a second and made me work
for it. I could hear him leaning backward on the seat in front of
me as we landed—totally not buckled in—saying repeatedly, “Come on,
Seth, you can do it!” We pierced a thick red ley line as the wheels
touched the surface. I pushed out against the angry energy that
threatened to overcome my misshaped shield then decided to just let
it come. We’d be through it before it had a chance to attach to any
of the electronics. I released both the outer shield and the cabin,
holding Shrank’s bubble until everything around us equalized.

I opened my eyes to see Ethan grinning at me
as time took hold again. “Good job,” he said, then twisted himself
in the chair, falling and bouncing into the seat. “Finally! I was
getting claustrophobic.”

Shrank started to rouse himself, stretching
out his arms and legs, slowly beating his two sets of wings. He
took to the air and it was my turn to stretch and yawn. Calhoun had
abandoned his seat for another. Shrank peered out the window,
taking in the silvery moonlit glow. He turned back around when the
jet coasted to a stop, grinning and brimming with enthusiasm.

“You did great this time, Master Seth!” he
squeaked. “I don’t feel the slightest bit tired.”

Jumpsuited men in huge gray headphones ran up
to attend to the plane. Calhoun opened the door to the cabin,
leaning out to latch it into place, as a truck drove up to the side
with a stairwell running over the top of it. Two large silver gray
vans pulled up beside it. A single man got out of one and went to
wait beside the stairs.