Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (64 page)

“There’s a fifth version here,” I said softly
as I mapped the bug. “This one can fly. Looks a bit like a dull-red
hornet. One of ‘em is coming through the opening now.”

Ethan squatted down near the rip, staring
down into the grass. A small space in front of him became slightly
occluded for a moment, then out popped a dull-red flying insect
reminiscent of a wasp tumbling to the ground. Just before it hit,
it started buzzing its wings and took flight, fumbling through the
air. It landed on Ethan’s knee, unnoticed while he stared into the
channel it came through. I couldn’t sense much about the conduit
except a vague feeling of familiarity. Maybe if I wasn’t intimately
connected so strongly to so much land…

“I think we’ll have to close the other end
first,” said Ethan, brushing the red wasp-thing off his knee and
standing. “I can’t see where it ends and just ripping the conduit
off could cause more than a few problems there. Kir du’Ahn said we
weren’t to endanger anyone.”

“Yeah, but why would we care if someone who’s
trying to kill us gets hurt?” I asked. The idea didn’t bother me in
the least. At lot of people had already died because of whoever was
doing this.

“Collateral damage,” Ethan said turning to me
with his eyebrows raised. “What if this ends in a basement in New
York City? It could suck up three or four skyscrapers before anyone
could do anything about it, providing anyone could in the first
place. Not everybody that got blown into dimension-less space would
be part of the problem. That’s a lot of innocent lives. And the
resulting explosion from the translation of energy would affect
several worlds. Possibly blow up half the planet.”

“Guess that’s why you’re doing this instead
of me,” I said quietly, awed by the thought. Ethan grinned at
me.

“You say that as if I’ve done this before.
This is theory we’re workin’ with. It’s entirely possible that end
will simply seal itself instantly.”

“Oh, God,” I whispered, swallowing a
softball-sized something, suddenly feeling extremely anxious. “What
do we need to do?”

Ethan looked back at the tear, inhaling
slowly and exhaling just as slowly. “Well, I think the best move
would be for me to ride the tunnel almost to the end then jump out.
If it’s somewhere I’ve been I’ll be able to recognize it there,
otherwise I won’t be able to tell at all. Then I’ll be able to
squeeze that end shut while you close this end. The tunnel itself
can just fall away into the in-between places to be used like
cholesterol in the blood.”

“Okay,” I said, scratching the side of my
head. Awareness of the land didn’t give me that kind of
understanding of the universe. All I could really do was tell where
Kieran and Peter were. “First you’ll have to explain how to close a
rip in space. It’s not like I can just grab a needle and thread and
sew it up, is it? That I could do. Well, with cloth anyway.”

“No, not quite that simple,” he answered,
glancing around us at the bugs. “Seth, tie me into the ward with
you, please. These bugs are making me nervous and I’d like to see
how they’re grouping.”

It did seem odd that they arrayed themselves
in crescent-shaped perimeters around the two groups of us. I pushed
my awareness out to Ethan and watched the positioning of one bug
change slightly in the grass nearby. They were aware of something,
then, but they couldn’t see what or exactly where.

“A collective intelligence?” I asked.

“I don’t see any evidence of that,” said
Ethan. “Did you?”

“No, but I also wouldn’t really know what to
look for, either,” I admitted. “And I don’t feel anything directing
them.”

“I think they’ll attack as soon as I go in,”
said Ethan ominously. “I don’t know what to do here.”

“What we need to do,” I said
matter-of-factly. “First you show me how to close this end, then we
do what you said. We’ll deal with the consequences as they
happen.”

“All right,” Ethan said, nervously. “That’s
as good as anything, but realize it’s going to take me time to get
back here. You’re gonna be on your own till then.” He looked at me,
concerned, as he poured the concepts I’d need to close the rip
through our connection. The ideas were fairly simple; most
far-reaching concepts sound simple in the beginning. It’s when you
start thinking about putting them into practice or thinking about
their ramifications that things start to get really complicated. I
needed to reach into the hole some, cut the conduit loose, then use
the bit I had to plug the hole up and let this dimension heal
itself, sorta like tying up an umbilical cord. Two spells.
Shouldn’t be too terribly hard.

“Be careful, Ethan,” I said, looking around
at the creepy things. “At least I know what I’m up against.”

“You got a point there,” he said nervously.
“Let’s get this party started, then.”

He jumped into the hole in reality. The bugs
on this side of the house converged on the portal en mass and the
Stone flared to life, creating the armor as well as a solid cube of
force around me. I jumped into action, shoving my awareness into
the conduit with the full force of the ward. There was no way to
judge distance in this dimensionless space so where to cut the
conduit was a guess. I fired Ethan’s spell to cut just as I felt
him leave the tunnel. Grabbing the cauterized edges, I pulled just
as the first wave of bugs hit the Stone’s shield wall. They
couldn’t see the barrier but they could definitely feel it. I
pushed power into Ethan’s second spell to force the hole shut and
glue it together.

An ice pick of pain shot through my head:
Ethan. I lost my grip on the spell and the short tunnel. Ethan was
in trouble and hurting badly, but there was nothing I could do
right then. I tried to block out his pain and force myself back to
my tasks. Forcing all the power of the land to stop the flow of
matter through the hole, I reached through again and grabbed the
edges. Someone was trying to reassert the conduit and he was very
strong. Stronger than me apparently, because I couldn’t pull the
edges back in again.

The Stone hummed in warning as it started
sloughing off layers of its outside shield. All the bugs on this
side of the house were on its perimeter, slamming their curses onto
the shield wall and exploding them instantly using the ley lines
for fuel. The Stone wasn’t going to be able to keep this up
forever. Then I felt the bugs on the far side of the house heading
this way. They gave up on their game of Blind Man’s Bluff with
Kieran and Peter. They had an active target now: me.

I caught sight of one of the scorpion-looking
ones scurrying toward me in the grass about twenty feet out, its
barb held high and ready to attack. With the faint glimmer of an
idea, I pushed energy into the power structures of the curse on its
tail and watched it bloom fully in the little insect. Just shy of
three seconds later, it exploded leaving a two-inch scorch mark in
the grass.

This could work. I created four funnels of
shield energy with the Stone’s help, wide vortices of energy that
spun down to three-inch ends that terminated at the tear. It would
be easier if I could wait until all the bugs were around me, but I
didn’t feel that confident. Pushing my awareness into the conduit,
I waited until the tunnel was passable but not complete. When I
felt that, I pulled the land’s plug from the hole and reality
started escaping again. Then I dropped the Stone’s cubic
shield.

Whether the bugs were sucked out or blown
out, I really didn’t care as long as they went in the wide end and
out the skinny one. As each one passed into the tear, I lit its ass
with power. I felt the occasional explosion within the conduit, but
once the bugs exited the other end, I couldn’t sense anything.
After about twenty seconds, there wasn’t a bug within fifty yards
of me.

I heard a faint call, Little Brother, as I
reached back into the conduit. I felt something big coming through
and I didn’t know what to do. Indecision lasted about three
seconds. I started scrambling for the cauterized edges from my
previous cut when Ethan arrived through the hole in space, standing
in front of me.

He wobbled in place for a second. “Ow,” was
all he said before he fell face forward in the grass bouncing
slightly. Another something entered the conduit as I found the
edge. This one felt big, bigger than Ethan, and angry but I lost
the sense of it when I fired Ethan’s second spell, pushing as much
power and intent into fusing this reality closed as I could muster.
The ice pick pain in my head evaporated. When it seemed like the
spell had nothing left to do, I let go of it and ran to Ethan.

He’d been soundly beaten, his face and arms a
bloody mess. I pushed in through the anchor to look at his other
side and it too was damaged. Whatever had done this was aware of
his dual nature, either before their contact or after. He’d once
said to heal himself he’d have to go “home,” which meant getting
him to this in-between space with the rest of him, but I couldn’t
force him there and he wasn’t conscious to do it himself. I needed
Kieran and he was on the other side of the house hunting for bugs.
There were less than thirty left. Twenty-seven to be exact with
only nine on the other side of the house. They weren’t in a hurry
to get anywhere anymore, going back into their circular containment
pattern. Apparently, the loss of their brethren confused them.

The ward gave me a feeling of omniscience as
well as omnipotence. I knew it wasn’t real, though. Still, I knew I
could push enough energy into the bugs to make them explode and not
allow any to triangulate on my position. I could diffuse the flow
through enough of the lines to the cloud where it was coming from.
I started exploding them randomly with mini-lightning bolts out of
the sky, directly on top of them. When none were left, I fixed my
attention of Peter and Kieran and shifted them to me through the
ley lines. I got the definite feeling that if Kieran hadn’t known
it was me, I’d have wrenched my back, figuratively speaking, trying
to pull him. Or worse. But they came and Kieran was kneeling
opposite me by Ethan in a flash.

“Ethan,” he called, his voice deep and
commanding, his hands on Ethan’s chest pulsing fast with blue
healing energy. “Go home. Rest, recuperate. Come back when you
can.” Ethan took in a deep breath and let it out in shuddering
gasps, then disappeared. In my cavern, I shifted one of the
batteries closer to the Pact and pulled out a small line of power.
It took me a moment to figure out how to change the color to blue,
but that turned out to be a simple matter of intent, then I started
feeding it through the anchor slowly.

“Damn it!” Kieran shouted, slamming his fist
into the ground that Ethan had just evacuated. The land felt the
force of the punch, which meant so did I. Kieran was… really
strong. The blow had a shockwave. “When I said endanger no one, I
meant him, too!”

“We both knew that, Kieran!” I yelled at him,
angry now. “He left the tunnel before it ended. He didn’t go in.
Whatever it was that attacked him did it from outside of reality
while he was trying to close the tunnel.” His aura was bright with
concern, anger, helplessness, and fear.

Peter stepped in between us, gently taking my
shoulders and leading me back away from Kieran a few steps. “Let’s
all just calm down a little,” he said gently, looking at Kieran
over his shoulder. “We’re all worried and emotionally charged.
Seth, would you make those vortexes go away then tell us what
happened.”

I looked over at the vortices blearily and
wiped my eyes. I didn’t remember when I’d started crying, but I
needed to get a hold on myself. Wearing my emotions on my sleeves
takes away the advantage of a hidden aura, and if I keep crying
like this, they’re gonna slap a little red dress, black
patent-leather shoes and white ankle-high socks on me, and start
calling me “Mary.” Slowing the energy, I sent the funnels away, sat
down in the grass, and started telling what I knew from when we
left them. It wasn’t a long story. When I was done, Kieran was
calmer, less angry but no less frustrated.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Seth,” Kieran
mumbled. “It’s just… Ethan is very badly hurt. Even with what
you’re doing, he might not make it.” That explained the
helplessness in his aura. I saw Peter’s aura crash into shock at
the statement. I already knew how dire the damage was, somehow. I
just didn’t know how somebody could have caused it. We’d both
thought of Kieran and Ethan as invulnerable, which was actually
kind of stupid considering we had to rescue them in Atlanta and
they were both close to death then.

“There’s someone else here,” I said, suddenly
feeling someone in the house. Whoever he was he was very weak, or
she, I couldn’t tell much.

“Take us to ‘em, then,” Kieran said, anger
building again.

“I don’t think this is an enemy, Kieran,” I
said, but I still pushed us through the leys and into Lucian’s
office. The three of us coalesced in front of the desk from which
Kieran had removed the book. Lying on the floor beside the desk was
a rail-thin man, barely breathing and trying desperately to not
pull power from the leys. He had not one, but three different
curses stamped on his body. The first time we’d seen more than one
on someone.

“Hold still, sir,” I said as I called for the
Night Sword and knelt down beside him. Once again, Kieran took
position opposite me with Peter at the man’s head.

“Lucian,” Kieran said gently, “It’s Ehran
McClure. Just be still and let Seth remove the curses from you,
then we can work on your body, okay?”

Three made me nervous, so I didn’t go for
subtlety. The first one was in his leg so I just shoved the tip of
the Night in and sucked the curse up. If it left a mark, I wasn’t
worried about it. The same for the one in his shoulder. I did take
a more careful hand for the one on his forehead, though not so much
for a mark as for proximity to his brain. I thanked the Night Sword
for its help as I sent it home. While I was there, I checked on the
feed to Ethan and the level of the battery feeding power to him. It
had taken a significant drain but wasn’t near empty yet. I stood by
while Kieran worked on Lucian. It might have been selfish, but I
was the only one who could do anything for Ethan at the moment and
I wanted to save everything I had for him.