Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (73 page)

Nothing to see on the second floor landing.
Nice carpeting over the woodwork. The mezzanine level gave a nice
view of three buildings further down the hill through an oak tree.
Still no sounds came from above. I slipped a slight sound buffer
around me and ran up the steps of the stairs and out on the fifth
floor. At the top, I sneaked a peek down the hall and found it
empty, but there was noise on this level. Men moving around.
Pushing out my awareness, I could see them finally, some of them
anyway. Six men on this floor. If Jeff was right, that meant that
four were still unaccounted for in the building.

I stepped further down the hall, past three
opened doors, checking the rooms as I passed them. The men were
trashing the place as they went, leaving a light dusting of
something behind them. I heard a faint gasp as I passed the third
door and stopped. I turned and looked menacingly into the room. I
hoped it was menacingly, anyway. The room looked empty, torn up but
empty of people. Ephemeral traceries of magic lit the walls, floor,
and ceiling, but you’d expect that in such a place, right? Then a
slight movement near the outside wall caught my attention and the
veil evaporated from my mind and I saw him, hiding in the crevice
between the stone wall of the fireplace and drywall. His fear was
palpable, once I knew he was there.

“Stay put,” I whispered. “I’ll be back when I
get rid of them.” His eyes grew to the size of dinner plates when
he realized I was talking to him and he tried to sink even further
into the stone. He looked like he was twelve, maybe thirteen.

I turned back to the hall with angry
determination and walked to the first occupied room. Three men to a
room, one to guard while the two men searched, all three were
armed. The guard held something out from him, a gold and ruby gem
of some kind on a silver chain. They weren’t getting out of that
room. At least, not in one piece.

“Hi, guys,” I said cheerfully, walking up
beside the man with the gem. “Whatcha got there?” I was pretty sure
he couldn’t see my smile through the armor, though. The two
searching jumped, surprised by my voice, but being consummate
professionals, my assumption, brought their weapons the bear on me
while the guard fell away from me and the line of fire. He quickly
brought his own handgun up.

“All I did was ask what the pretty rock was,”
I said, then they started yelling at me. Yelling things like “Get
down” and “On the floor, punk” except theirs had nastier language,
violent, threatening, and demeaning. Their yelling was good in the
respect that it got the other team’s attention on the otherwise
quiet floor. A quick glance at the wall behind the guy on the floor
showed their auras moving in this direction quickly. Good, that
means I’ll get the six at once or at least in the same room.

“Day,” I said, softly, holding out my right
hand, then went into motion. Three quick steps and I was between
two of the gunmen. They started firing their semiautomatic weapons
on the first step, but the Sword’s graceful magic kept me ahead of
the bullet-stream. Then a sweeping semicircular motion a bit higher
than my shoulders stifled both weapons and I was facing the door
with two men still falling to the floor dead when the other three
men entered the room running. They opened fire immediately, seeing
the shining Sword and the green and black armor.

Time seemed to slow for me as the three
separate streams of steel-jacketed lead headed for me at amazing
speed and accuracy. My tiny amount of training kicked in and I bent
back and away from all of them, twitching left and spinning against
a table, changing my height slightly. The streams followed without
touching me and still I moved left and up over the table. I swung
the blade down to intercept two of the streams momentarily as my
feet left the tabletop. It sent them rebounding into the wall
behind the men a half-second later, forcing them to separate for an
easier swing. I dropped the Sword as I rolled face down on the
floor behind a small sofa. Keeping my momentum going, I bounced up,
kicking off the wall and jumped full force on the rock-holder of
the first set of three men. Knocked the breath out of him and
cracked a few ribs, too. Felt good. Calling the Night forward, I
turned to move on the three new arrivals.

Then I froze. Another man appeared in the
doorway, holding the boy from the room two doors back. The boy had
a huge gash on his head that was bleeding profusely. And he’d wet
his pants. The man held a gun jammed to the boy’s temple.

“Hold it right there, freak!” the man yelled
at me. I stepped off his man, watching the boy and the gun. “Make
another move and the boy dies.” He grinned wolfishly at me as I
stood there and his men formed a loose circle around me, weapons
ready to fire again.

He relaxed a little then and surveyed the
room. He saw the bullet-ridden walls and the two decapitated men at
the far end of the room, still bleeding out onto the carpeting. I
waited patiently and politely for him to finish.

“Bullet-proof armor, huh?” he growled at
me.

“Don’t know,” I shrugged. “They haven’t hit
me yet.”

The man stared at me without a word for a few
seconds. “Drop the sword.”

The Night Sword fell obligingly to the floor,
so one of the gunmen bent to pick it up, keeping his eyes on
me.

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you,” I
warned, staying completely still. He ignored me, of course. As his
hand wrapped around the hilt, I felt the Sword questing outward for
me. I felt a rush of gratitude from it. It knew I’d let others hold
the Day and it was making certain this was not another of my
friends it was about to eat. I gave it my assent. The man’s screams
lasted longer than his physical body existed, thanks to the
acoustics of the room, roughly a second and a half longer. His
entire aura was enveloped by a quick wave of black smoke that left
behind about a half a pound of some sort of soda ash that fell to
the floor. The soft thud of the Night Sword on the carpet signaled
the end of his scream.

“Warned him,” I said sadly.

The two around me rattled their weapons as
they tensed and took a half step back. The man holding the boy
tightened his grip on him, inhaling sharply. The man on the floor
scuttled away like a crab, holding his chest with one arm and his
pistol aimed at me.

“What did you do to him!” he barked
angrily.

“Me?” I asked innocently. “Nothing, but some
things don’t like to be touched. That’s one of them. I did warn
you.” The Day Sword’s scabbard clunked against my thigh and the
Crossbow hung heavily on my back. They didn’t ask for those.

“That does bring up an interesting question,
though,” I said, thoughtfully. I decided it was time to get a
little sneaky on this thing impersonating a man. The two gemstones
they were carrying had a passive magic attached to them, both
easily wiped out and not threatening to me at all. In fact, they
didn’t register to me in any way. They did register to the boy.
That’s how I figured how what they were. They were measuring aura
strength in some way. I mean, for some reason. I could see how it
worked.

“Why, exactly,” I started asking, and as I
did I sent the Armor home and the Stone set a cylindrical shield
around me from floor to ceiling. I wanted these men to see the boy
who was going to kill them. Damn, I was feeling cold now. “Does a
group of men bearing conventional arms come into a school of magic
and start killing children? Surely there’s someone here who could
take you on.”

“Think of us as the clean-up crew,” he said,
grinning. He thought he’d won. “You come along quietly and the boy
won’t get a bullet to the brain.”

“He won’t,” I said matter-of-factly. “He
won’t get hurt at all from this point forward. Not from you,
anyway. There are many things that you don’t seem to understand
about standing in the middle of a school of magic. The first being
that you would definitely run into people who know how to do
magic.”

Stealing a page from Harris’ book of tricks,
I made four different portals, each about inch across and slipped
the openings around each man’s weapon. The other ends, I put
directly in front of each of the four gunmen, aiming their own
weapons at them directly between their eyes. I rushed forward and
grabbed the man’s arm hard, pulling the boy loose. The men started
moving around, trying to shake the guns from their face in some
way, but I held the portals in place while I dragged the boy a
little back into the room.

“Stay this time,” I said to him sharply,
halfway back. From here, he couldn’t quite see the gory mess of the
decapitated bodies. He nodded up at me, his lips quivering in fear
and his looks darting quickly between me and the men with the gun
problems. They were getting more aerobic in their attempts but
still hadn’t released their weapons. I went for a pistol off one of
the dead bodies and one of the small radios they carried. As I
stood up, I called the Day Sword off the floor and sent it up my
arm for the time being. They all knew we weren’t done fighting for
the day, but at this point the kid needed to see me as a human.

“What’s your name?” I asked as I came even,
putting my hand on his shoulder.

“Jacob,” he said, quietly. He was an inch or
two shorter than me, slight build, curly brown hair cut too long
for him, and a prominent nose that together gave him a mousy
appearance.

“Jacob, do you know how many of you are in
this building?” I asked him.

He shook his head no. And he was lying to me.
It was clear as a bell in his aura, and his body language, and his
voice cracked. I grinned at him, “You’re a terrible liar, Jacob,
but I have to get everyone out of this building to safety. What’s
Ian’s brother’s name?”

“Michael, I think,” he said.

“Jeff said there’s you, Ian, his brother, and
Martin in the building with ten of them. Does that sound right to
you?” I asked moving us to the door, past the gun waving men as
they continued to jerk and spasm, still trying to get their weapons
out of their faces. If it weren’t a horrendous situation, it’d be
funny to watch.

“Jeff’s okay?” he asked, his voice full of
hope.

“He’s hurt really bad, Jacob,” I said
seriously. “I did what I could, but he needs better help than me.
That means you and me need to get rid of them as fast as possible.
Now Jacob, please, how many of you are there in this building.” I
was getting frustrated.

“Me, Jeff, Ian, Michael, Martin,” he said,
ticking the names off on his hand. “That’s all I know of.”

“Okay, Jacob, that’s good. Let’s go,” I said,
grabbing his arm and pulling him through the door. “Stay close and
my shields will cover you.”

I pulled the door closed as we left and went
to the next room, pushing out for energy signatures, any hint of
power use. Then we called out names. Nothing. We went to the next
room and tried the next, and the next. It didn’t make sense to me
that they had six guys searching for Jacob. I didn’t think Jeff’s
estimate of ten could be right, but I also didn’t think that
someone could have been on the next floor down and not heard the
hellacious noise from their barrage against me earlier.

Speaking of barrages, the four men needed
taking care of. It was simpler than I thought it’d be. I already
had a portal centered on their guns. I just sent an electrical
charge through each one, forcing the hand to spasm. Boom times
four. It was sickening but necessary.

“Is there another way down to the next
floor?” I asked Jacob, looking back. He’d stayed very close,
fearful that he’d lose me. We stood at the end of the hall and had
searched all ten roomy suites, including closets, utility rooms and
miscellaneous other small spaces that seemed unused currently.

“No, just the main stairs,” he said quietly,
so I moved us down the hall to the stairs. As we passed it, I felt
Jacob turn toward the closed door and shudder. That reaction I
understood completely, I just didn’t have the time to join in.

“Where’s your room?” I asked.

“Third floor.”

“When we get down to that floor and make sure
it’s safe, you change clothes into something less bright, more
durable. Shoes you can run in, rubber soles. We still have to get
off the campus and we don’t know what we’ll run into, okay?” He
nodded. He was also starting to stink, poor little guy. “Now wait
here for a moment and let me make certain the next landing is
safe.”

I left him at the rail and tiptoed down the
steps, looking down over the rail. That’s when I realized I’d
gotten back into a stealth mode instead of the brazen attack from
the hilltop. Looking up told me why: Jacob, Jeff, and anybody else
still on the campus. I may be mad as hell and powerful because of
the weapons Ethan gave me, but I couldn’t protect everybody.
Especially if I didn’t know they were there. Still, I could be more
obvious in this building, and I had three students and three or
more soldiers to find and I needed to speed this up.

I waved Jacob down. Once he’d clumped down
hurriedly, we started yelling their names and beating on doors,
literally. We were back to the stairs a few minutes later empty
handed. We repeated our pattern down the steps with Jacob waiting
on the fourth while I scouted the landing on the third, except this
time, I did hear someone. Looks like we found some soldiers,
finally. I put my finger to my lips and waved Jacob down in slow
motion. He took the clue and stepped lightly. We stepped lightly
out into the hall and I motioned Jacob behind me to my left with me
in the center of the hall.

They’d found something and were trying to dig
it out. We’d found them and there were more of them than we
thought.

Moving further down the hall, we heard two
sets of voices in two different rooms. Pushing my senses out, I
could map out the two rooms partially and pegged six men. They were
facing the same wall in the two rooms, trapping something between
them. I couldn’t tell what, but I had an idea it was one of the
three boys I was looking for. This, however, was a simple problem
to solve. I stepped in, called the Crossbow, shot the three of
them, went to the next room and did the same there. Jacob didn’t
flinch once as he watched me do it.