Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (6 page)

Mister Crossbow snarled, jerking our
attention back to him. He’d dropped the bow and was standing twenty
feet off in front of Kieran with his hands out in front of him, one
on top of the other with palms facing about a foot apart. A dark
green ball of energy was forming between his hands. With hate in
his eyes, the elf spoke a word and the ball exploded from his hands
and shot towards Kieran.

Then it turned. Halfway to Kieran, it turned
and headed straight at me. I saw the shock in the elf’s eyes before
it registered in me that this big piece of honking deadly magic was
heading my way. I heard Kieran shout, “No!” and saw I-not-I step
directly in the path of the growing green ball of fire,
intercepting it. He just stepped right in front of it. With my
newly installed sight, I saw the magic eat him, or rather try to
eat him. It was more like he ate it. When I looked back to Kieran,
he was looking back at us, smiling. The forest of bolts had moved
up the roadway a little and packed more densely. In the shape of
the elf, actually.

I’d just watched four people killed, I
realized. I ran for a corner and puked, grateful that breakfast was
long ago. The dry heaves weren’t pleasant either, though. My double
stayed with me, patting my back gently. Most human thing it’d done.
Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I rejoined Kieran who was on all
fours beside the white Toyota, peering underneath it.

“Time to come out, little one,” he said in a
commanding voice, standing up.

A fluttering ball of leaf green slowly
drifted out from under the car. It flew up timidly to Kieran’s head
height, leaving a small trail of glittering dust behind it and
taking a more solid form. It was a pixie, just a couple of inches
high with bright multicolored wings. He looked frightened out of
his mind. I couldn’t blame him one bit about that. His wings hummed
slightly as he hovered just out of Kieran’s reach.

Kieran asked him, “What were you here for?”
The pixie started answering him in another language, but Kieran
stopped him. “In English.”

“We were here to take the boy,” the pixie
squeaked. He knew English. Huh. I wondered if all the Fae knew my
language. Kieran cocked an eyebrow at the pixie. I wished I could
do that.

“This was an assassin team,” said Kieran,
trying to lead the pixie.

“Yes,” squealed the pixie in agreement,
brightening his glow to red. “A powerful one, too.” He didn’t take
the bait Kieran had offered.

“What was your job in this?” Kieran
asked.

“Fascinate the boy until the swap,” said the
pixie, squelching his colors into the blue ranges. “See to his
needs until the delivery.”

“Delivery where?” Kieran kept probing.

“I don’t know,” the pixie squeaked. His eyes
were huge compared to his body and had the deer-in-the-headlights
quality to them. “I’m the hired hand, not part of their group. They
told me nothing more than what I had to know to do the job. I
swear. And you don’t ask questions of the Black Hand.”

“The Black Hand?” asked Kieran. “Are they of
Winter or of Summer?”

“No one knows for sure. They both take
credit,” answered the pixie. “At least the rumors at the lower
levels do. The Royals never acknowledge them. That would be
uncouth.” He rolled in place then returned to hover quite steadily.
I guess that was his equivalent to rolling his eyes.

“Was this the first of your attacks on Seth?”
Kieran asked.

“This was the first contact,” the pixie said
in a high tremor. “We set out two nights ago to a lovely forest to
the west but something fouled the tracking and we came back
empty handed.”

“Back to where?” Kieran asked, eyes narrowing
on the pixie searching for misdirection.

“A cabin in the woods. I don’t know where it
is,” he squeaked and flew slightly away and pointed at the
elf-shaped forest of bolts. “That one could pierce the veil at
times. The cabin had a gem in it that he could sense. And there was
a man here tonight that had a similar stone, but he left before you
came out of the bazaar. He pierced the veil and we walked here.”
Bazaar, good word for a mall. There were definitely some bizarre
things going on in and around it. Especially tonight.

“What did the man look like?” I asked him. He
buzzed down to my height, keeping the same distance from me before
answering.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said, deferentially,
“I didn’t see him, but I felt the gem’s song. It was very close to
that of the cabin’s gem.” He flitted back up to face Kieran,
waiting for more questions.

“Leave,” Kieran said, sighing. The pixie flew
past me at breakneck speed trailing gold and silver dust in his
wake. I followed him for a short way to pick up the bags we’d
dropped.

“You did well, Eth’anok’avel,” I heard Kieran
say to my duplicate. Reality shuddered a little at the phrase, not
as bad like the first time when Kieran showed me how to see the
Elves. Just like before, though, I knew what it meant: Brother to
the Fires of Creation. How did I know this? What language was this?
I glanced up at the entrance of the garage and saw the pixie
darting back and forth indecisively. He drooped down on the
sidewalk after a moment and stopped, his glow dimmed near
nothingness. I passed the bags and quietly approached him. The
sidewalk and street in front of the mall had an oppressive “Go
Away” feel to them I hadn’t felt before. I guess the elves had done
something to the garage to keep people out.

“What’s wrong?” I asked the pixie, sitting
down on the sidewalk a few feet away, trying not to invoke his
flight instinct.

He shot into the air on a red column of dust.
Apparently he hadn’t heard me approach. “I’m sorry!” he squeaked.
“I’m just trying to decide where to go. I’ll leave now.” He looked
totally heartbroken, but started to turn and leave again.

“Why?” I asked, “Can’t you just go home?”

“No, sir,” he stopped and squeaked at me. “I
accepted a contract through the assassins’ guild. If I come back
and they don’t, I’m a dead pixie. And they will root out my entire
family for generations, if they can. My whole family is doomed
because I am stupid.”

“I don’t understand why,” I said, “You said
your job was to keep me busy. What part do you play with the
assassins’ guild?” Like I knew what the hell an assassins’ guild
actually was and what rules it followed. Outside a few novels I’d
read, I had no idea how such a guild would work. Or what elves
looked like. Or pixies, for that matter. Or any Fae, as if they
existed at all!

“None, directly,” he said. “But they will
think I betrayed my team to get away or I will spread the fact that
the Black Hand failed in its job throughout the Courts of the Fae.
They are the elite of the guild. They do not fail, and yet they
did. Either way, I am doomed.” He sunk back down to the
sidewalk.

“You can’t just stay here?” I asked.

“I wouldn’t survive for long outside of a
community,” he said. I was getting used to the high pitch. “There
are too many predators, too many things to watch for by myself.” I
sighed heavily. Looking down on this little thing, this pixie, the
likes of which I’ve never seen before, knowing it was going to die…
It was like leaving a puppy on the side of the road. Like leaving
me in the middle of a forest. I stood up.

“Come on,” I said, patting my shoulder,
“We’ll figure something out.” I went back into the garage and
grabbed the bags. As I went deeper, I noticed the weapons and bolts
had disappeared along with the bodies and blood smear on the wall.
I kept going toward the car to see Kieran and I-not-I waiting
there. I hit the remote to pop the trunk and unlock the doors.
Kieran looked at me askew.

“So you have a name now,” I said to my
double, “’Brother in the Fires of Creation’ seems a bit long,
though.” I smiled crookedly, ignoring Kieran’s question for a
moment while I packed the bags in the trunk.

That shocked Kieran. “You translated that?”
He tossed both swords and scabbards on top of the bags, and added,
“Don’t touch those,” as I slammed the trunk. I got in the driver’s
seat, Kieran beside me and my double in the back seat. The rock,
crossbow and quiver went into the floorboard behind me. “Don’t
touch those either,” said Kieran.

“He means the weapons are enchanted and will
kill you if you touch them,” piped the pixie from my shoulder,
dodging the seat belt as I pulled it around me. Kieran nodded when
I looked at him with raised eyebrows.

“Good to know, thanks,” I said quietly to the
pixie.

“Why is the pixie still here, with us?”
Kieran asked.

“Because he doesn’t have anywhere else to
go,” I said and started the car.

“How did that become your problem?” Kieran
asked me. I could feel the coy smile on his face as he watched me
navigate the car out of the garage.

“The same way that Eth…” I stopped. I knew
the phrase, Eth’anok’avel. I knew what it meant. It rattled around
in my mind like the steel ball in a pinball machine with no tilt,
banging on bumpers and bells like crazy. My tongue just wouldn’t
form the words against my palate. I veered out of my lane and
almost hit another car concentrating on trying. “Why can’t I say
it?”

“Speaking the language takes training,”
Kieran said quietly. “It will be easier in time since you seem to
have an innate understanding of its meaning.”

I grunted. “And until then?”

“’Ethan’ is a decent Anglicization of it.
Will that work?” he asked. I looked back at the I-not-I in the
mirror. I didn’t look like an “Ethan” to me, but it wasn’t my
decision. I turned into a chain supermarket. Late on a Monday
evening, it was pretty empty so we parked near the front. We all
got out of the car. Locking the doors with the remote, I asked my
double, “Is ‘Ethan’ okay with you?”

He hesitated, then said, “I believe Kir
du’Ahn has overestimated my abilities in comparison to
Eth’anok’avel.” There was a ripple in reality with each non-English
phrase he spoke. There was absolutely no doubt that Kir du’Ahn was
Kieran. It felt like the entire universe pointed to him with the
phrase.

Kieran sidled up beside Ethan, putting his
arm around Ethan’s shoulder companionably, and said, “Have you seen
them?”

“Who, sir?” he asked, and again, there was a
small inflection in his voice this time. Just a little like
mine.

“The Fires of Creation,” he said, starting
them toward the door, smiling slightly.

“No, sir,” said Ethan.

“I have, Ethan,” Kieran said, patting him on
the shoulder and stepping forward a bit. Ethan ducked his head and
blushed. Good, he was developing a personality. I couldn’t tell if
he was using my personality though or if this was something else
burgeoning out of him. I wondered how much I would like myself
being around all the time. Probably not.

I put the convoluted thought out of my head
as Kieran grabbed a cart out of the vestibule and pushed through
the double doors into the delicatessen section. I blanched at the
smell of roasted chicken as it turned in the rotisserie, seriously
overcooked. It emphasized the taste in my mouth and brought the
memory of the four dead faery back to the forefront. I almost ran
to the checkout line for gum and a soda. I didn’t want to even
think about food, though admittedly I remember about fifty horror
films that were gorier than what I saw today. The elves didn’t even
look real.

Except there was a pixie sitting on my long
lost brother’s shoulder as he walked through a grocery store that I
drove them to. I need my dad. But until I could find him, all I had
were a couple of very strange men who killed to protect me. At
first, it was fun to be here all by myself, then boring, then
lonely. Now it’s scary. Assassins are trying to kidnap me.
Assassins? Why assassins? Why me? I don’t have any enemies. I don’t
know anybody, outside of a dozen or so tutors my parents brought in
over the years. I was acquainted with a few businessmen my parents
dealt with, but not the sort of business done. I’d never been
exposed to any kind of magic before I caught one of my tutors
teaching his son one day when my parents weren’t around. Now I’m
rolling in magic. And all I could do was make a little light and
noise. Kieran did things that ate people and Ethan ate people’s
magic. Damn, Dad, where are you? These aren’t the kinds of problems
I know how to handle.

My more immediate problems are roaming the
store someplace. I paced the front of the store looking down each
aisle for them. They hadn’t made it past the first aisle.
Apparently, the bread confused them. I had limited room in the car
and limited patience in general. I grabbed two loaves of bread that
I liked and laid them in the kiddie seat of the cart. They were
relieved as I pulled the buggy back into the produce section. This
side of the shopping trip was definitely all mine, though the pixie
did flit onto my shoulder and ask meekly for some fruit. Twenty
minutes later, we left with enough food for three days and some
restocking of some staples. Tonight’s dinner would be frozen pizza.
I wasn’t getting stuck in the kitchen tonight—I had work to do.

The drive back home was just as quiet as the
drive into town. It gave me time to think about how I was going to
go about finding my parents. It was depressing how little
information I actually had at my disposal. I didn’t even know how
my bills got paid. The card I use had to be attached to some method
of payment after all. I knew how the financial aspects of life
worked, but I had no experience doing them. Mom showed me how,
several years ago, using household accounts as examples and some of
her financial accounts and some joint accounts. It never occurred
to me to wonder why there were so many. Now that I can’t ask, where
am I gonna find a paper trail? How much could I actually find
out?