Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (74 page)

“You doing okay, Jacob?” I asked him quietly.
He looked so close to shutting down.

“No,” he answered me blankly.

“That’s a good answer, Jacob,” I said as I
moved to the dead men. “Cuz there’s nothing ‘okay’ about this
situation. For now though, as long as we can cope well enough to
get out, you’ll be okay.” I looked into the wall, searching for
whatever it was that the men had caught. There was something there,
reverberating between the walls, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Something was interfering with the energy signatures, warping the
waveforms.

Looking at the three dead men on the floor, I
saw the answer to the problem fairly quickly: the gemstones they
carried, the aura monitors. Just like over-sized woofers in a car,
the bass line inside the car sounded fine, but outside the car, it
rattled windows on houses for a block. I sent enough power directly
into the gems to fry them and the echoes stopped quickly. I could
see fairly easily into the façade in the wall.

“Martin, you can come out now,” I called. He
was dazed from holding the spell for so long and being trapped in
that echo chamber for however long the men toyed with them. He
looked exhausted.

“Seth?” he asked in barely a whisper, still
close to the wall in the tiny alcove next to the fireplace. “Is
that you?”

“Yeah, Martin, it’s me,” I said calmly.
“Gordon’s here, too, and Peter. We’ve come to get y’all out of
here.”

Martin clamped me in a hug so tight I thought
the Stone would throw him off at any time. Jacob was rummaging
through the closets quietly so I held Martin for a few moments,
comforting him. Then I saw the second aura in alcove, smaller than
Martin’s.

“Martin, is there someone hiding with you?” I
asked him.

“Oh, yes, Ian,” he said, wiping his eyes and
pulling away, sniffling. “Ian, come on out. It’s safe. This is
Seth.”

A short little blond kid poked his head
around the wall of the alcove to look. He looked to be nine or ten
years old. His clothes looked more worn than this excursion would
explain. I mean, this was pretty much a rich kids’ school, after
all. There was fire in his aura, though. He was going to be a
strong mage when he grew up. While Martin coaxed Ian from their
hole, I turned to see Jacob had changed clothes into what I’d told
him earlier.

“This is your room?” I asked him. He nodded,
mute. “Aw, bud, I am so sorry,” I said, glancing at the dead bodies
bleeding out onto the carpet.

He shrugged it off. “You didn’t force them to
attack us.”

I had to grow up quick, but not that quick.
Damn, I hope they had enough therapists for these kids. Martin had
managed to get Ian out finally and I got a better look at him.
Bedraggled was a good word. So was rail-thin.

“Jacob, do you have some shoes that would fit
Ian?” I asked, eyeing the sandals he wore. Good for the summer but
not for running for your life. “And some pants and a shirt?”

“Don’t need no hand-outs,” snapped Ian hotly.
His aura flared with pride that reminded me of someone.

I knelt down beside the boy and said, “Ian,
this isn’t charity, it’s necessity. We’re not out of this yet and
we still have to find your brother, Michael. There’re still a lot
of bad people out there trying to hurt us and you will have to run.
Sandals will trip you up. This shirt won’t protect you from brush
and tree branches. I’ll do my best to keep you all safe, but you’ve
got to work with me here, okay?”

“Okay,” he said weakly, accepting the clothes
Jacob handed him.

I stood as he went to change hurriedly. “Do
you know where his brother might be hiding?” I asked Martin.

“No, he set up the veil for us,” Martin
answered, “then went to try to find out what was going on. He
should have been back by now. You know him, you know. By his last
name. That’s Ian Ferrin; his brother’s name is Michael Ferrin.”

That was a bit of a shock. It answered who
Ian reminded me of, though.

“Does Ian know this?” I asked him, not really
knowing where I was going with that question.

“I’m not exactly sure what Ian knows about
his brother,” Martin said. “He’s very loyal to him, I know that.
Michael’s raised him since he was three. Neither is exactly
forthcoming on complete details on their lives, but the father
never was and the mother was killed in an industrial accident,
whatever that means. Ian’s been here a little less than a year and
Ferrin has been a conscientious guardian the entire time, present
for every meeting, visitation, you name it. But he struggles
financially to meet the dues of the school. That’s why I pressed
Gordon so hard to have you at least talk to him about a steady
job.”

“I don’t think I’ll be doing job interviews
today, unfortunately,” I said. “But I will definitely be glad to
see Ferrin here right now. As long as he’s on our side anyway.”

“You know my brother?” asked Ian, standing to
cinch his belt. The new clothes were too big on him, but would
protect him better. The shoes were a close fit, though.

“Yeah, a bit,” I told him, nodding. “Let’s
go. You three stay close to me. Be watchful. You see anything you
don’t think I see, you speak out, but trouble starts and you all
stay low. Okay?”

We left that room and checked the other
rooms, shouting for Ferrin. The rest of the floor was empty. Same
for the second floor. We headed back to get Jeff. He’d passed out
from exhaustion, but the sleep seemed to help him some. He was able
to stand and walk with Martin’s guidance. I paused at the door out,
looking over the campus. It was still amazingly serene and quiet
out there. Apparently, no soldiers had seen their fallen comrades
on the ground fifteen feet from our door. That was suspicious.

I pulled the earpiece from my pocket and
tapped the activator. “Peter?”

“Wait,” came the reply after a moment of
static. I kept watching the three buildings that I could see from
the door. No movement except for the wind in the trees. No auras
were present anywhere. It looked like a nice, pretty autumn
day.

“Seth, where are you?” asked Peter in my
ear.

“Same building,” I answered. “I have four
survivors and took out another fifteen attackers. You?”

“Just outside the Admin building. We’ve gone
through three empty buildings and found nobody. A three-man sentry
unit just passed near us and we’re going to follow it,” he
said.

“Keep an eye out for Ferrin,” I told him. “I
have his brother, Ian, and Martin. With me is the safest place I
can think of. I guess I’ll keep playing Moses until something else
presents itself. Yell if you need me. I’ll come running.”

“Good hunting.”

“Be safe, my friend,” I said. Looking back at
my motley crew, I asked, “Does anybody have any idea what’s going
on?” Four heads marginally younger than me shook in unison. “How
many of us might still be here?”

“There couldn’t have been many here,” said
Martin. “Most left Thursday night and the rest were trickling out
this morning till about noon when something hit the wards. Hit ‘em
hard, Seth. Wasn’t nothing like drills at home with Da. It hurt.
None of us knew what was going on.”

“Jeff and me were in my room swapping charged
crystals for a class,” said Jacob. “When the ward flared, so did
the crystals. They hurt us, too, when they discharged. Dazed us.
Then the men came rushing in with the guns. Michael and Ian rushed
into the building ahead of them and Michael helped us hide. We
couldn’t have done it without him, hiding from them.”

“Gunfire outside was scary as hell,” said
Martin, taking up their story again. “At first they just ran
through our dorms shouting and screaming for anybody and everybody
to come out and give up. Then they left and the building was quiet
for a while. Ferrin came out of hiding, but told us to stay put.
Demanded it, yelled at us about it. But he was just scared for us,
right Ian?” He looked at little Ian, so stoic standing beside him,
and put his arm across Ian’s shoulders. It made me wonder how Felix
had been able to instill that kind of character in his youngest so
early in his life. Proud in them both for being able to do it, too.
This was noblesse oblige at its best.

“You saw the results of them coming back,”
finished Martin. “I don’t know what they were doing to me, but I
couldn’t have kept Ferrin’s veil up much longer. We were lucky you
came along when you did, Seth.”

I sighed heavily. There wasn’t much
information in the story. Mostly it was a timing issue. This event
occurred last, starting at roughly noon. The attack on us, which
honestly could be called our attack on them since we were
preemptive, was before noon. The attack on the castle started
before that. Were there other attacks we didn’t know about yet in
other places? Something that might explain why? This one certainly
wasn’t making any sense. I definitely needed more information. We
needed more information. That seemed to be the consistent
problem.

“Where do you suppose they are now?” I asked.
“The soldiers, I mean. Where would they take anyone they
found?”

“I think they were taking me to the
auditorium,” said Jeff. “Couldn’t really say for sure, though. I
wasn’t very… clear on what they were saying.”

“Good a place as any,” I said. “How do we get
there?”

Ian got the job of guide while Jacob and
Martin took either side of Jeff. He was walking on his own, but he
was still awkward and needed a watch, if only for my peace of mind.
We stayed within a few feet of one another as we followed the
cobblestone path past the Upperclassmen’s dormitories and past the
huge oak tree. The path branched there, going both up and down the
hill. Up lead toward another intersection that led to two other
buildings that were barely visible. Those should have been in Peter
and Gordon’s path, but we’d make sure of that later. We took the
downhill path.

Our horror waited over the crest of the next
terrace. When the auditorium building came into view. This time I
didn’t appreciate the changes to my perceptions. I could see the
eleven shredded bodies in immaculate detail, along with the five
beaten teenagers tied and staked to the ground nearby. Twenty men
formed a loose perimeter around the boys, taunting them and
laughing at them. What could possibly be funny about the carnage, I
didn’t have a clue, but the boys were in shock beyond words at that
point.

So was I. I just acted. “Stay close,” I said
and started down the hill. I thought about just shooting them. For
about a half second. But I just couldn’t let them get away that
easily, not this group. They needed to fear, to hurt. It wouldn’t
be enough, not by far, but I needed for them to have it. I needed
the Stone to protect the boys, so I built the force fields around
the twenty men myself. The first one contained the desecration and
the shell-shocked kids to protect them. The second I put around the
men to contain them, two rings forming a donut shape.

I shot spikes of power into their radios,
frying them. Over half the men in the ring were wearing one in
their ears. It was their first indication they had trouble as they
spasmed and fought to get them out and off their persons. They
bounced off the invisible force fields. One of the teenagers was
aware enough to notice the change in volume and looked up, seeing
the men start to struggle against the fields. He looked around
blankly, still too shocked to know something useful was
happening.

We walked down the hill without changing our
pace. “Keep an eye out around us, guys. I need to pay attention to
them. And please forgive me for what you’re about to see me do. You
shouldn’t be witness to this.” None of them said a word but they
fanned out around me, still close though. When we stopped at twenty
feet away, most of the men had figured out the shape of the fields
and had moved to face us along the ring, using knives to test where
the field ran. There was a small group of three on the backside
trying to dig their way out and another group of four trying to use
their gemstone amulets to diminish the wall enough to break through
it.

I reached up and tapped the radio. “Peter,
where are you?” The man in the center of the collection of men
seemed surprised that I used the radio.

“We’re coming up on the Auditorium,” Peter
answered in a whisper. “We’re following three sentries in now.”

“Come to the other side of the Auditorium as
soon as you can,” I said. “I’m about to get five more kids. Then I
think I’m gonna just take the ward over and fry ‘em all like with
the bugs.”

“You think you can do that?”

“Don’t really know, but I sure as hell am
going to try, but I can’t leave these guys unprotected while I do
that.”

“Be right there.” There was a bright flash of
green light from the far side of the building followed by a short
but loud scream. My boys jumped and turned in that direction.

“Don’t worry, guys,” I said with an evil grin
on my face. “That’s our side.” I took a few steps forward and
called the Day Sword forward, holding it high in front of me so
that the thirteen gun-toting maniacs could see it shining brightly
in the sun. Then I started shrinking the thickness of the donut,
forcing the ones in back to give up their fruitless tasks and
giving none of them room to move. I let three men in front out of
the ring, waving my hand in the universal “Come Get Some” motion.
They looked at each other conspiratorially. Two moved in with
rather obvious attempts to disarm me while the third tried to move
around to my back side, either for a second attack or to get to my
boys.

The Sword slid me forward, lazily removing me
from the first man’s poorly angled attack from the left and turned
me slightly to the right while swooping the Sword around and up in
a circle clipping the second man behind the knee. He fell over,
screaming and holding his leg as it fell off, cauterized rather
neatly. The Sword continued its circle, twisting me backward and
around to the second man again. It was a high arc and if I had been
against a real swordsman, I don’t think it would have worked, but
the man was already off balance and he presented his back to me.
The Sword took advantage of the position in the swing and took his
head off. Just thunk and his head fell to the ground. His
broad-shouldered body took a moment to realize nobody was in
control.