Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (75 page)

I was facing the back-stabber as he watched
the headless man fall. He started backing away from me, still
staring at the corpse as it fell. Until he ran into the shield
around the boys. He dropped his eight-inch black metal knife and
turned to run. Again, he ran right into the Stone’s shield around
the boys, my boys, slamming back onto the ground. The man started
pleading for his life, begging on his knees, tears streaming down
his face. I glanced at the boys then back at the ring of soldiers
in camouflage clothing. Half of them were shocked at what I’d done
so quickly. The other half was disgusted at the begging man.

I was just disgusted by all of them. “Did
they beg, too?” I asked him. I let power rush through my body,
amplified by my emotions. First, the field needed adjustment to let
sounds in. Then it needed to be resized, so I picked the man up in
one hand, gripping his shirt tightly, and heaved him hard back over
my shoulders into the group of men, bowling several over. I heard
bones breaking in the collision. Realizing they suddenly had room
to move, several raised their guns, only to find themselves
suddenly facing the barrels of their own weapons inches from their
faces. They froze in shock, just like before.

“Did these little boys beg for the big men to
stop beating them?” I yelled causing several to cringe at the
amplified volume. A thought occurred to me and I turned back to my
boys and asked, “Is this a boys’ only school?” They all shook their
heads, solemnly. When I turned back to see the soldiers, there were
at least three men leering at me, two more with auras showing
spikes of guilt without conscience.

I truly don’t remember exactly what I did,
but those five men were suddenly ablaze with white lightning.
Anyone standing nearby was thrown violently aside, forcing the five
to be the center of attention. They all lay on the ground and
against the walls of their invisible cell while energy cooked the
five from the inside. I forced them to feel every possible second
of it. Maybe I was deluding myself on that one. I released the
energy loops that held the bodies as they turned to ash.

Gordon and Peter walked into view behind the
soldier, going for the tied up boys. Gordon thought I’d lost my
mind. He showed it clearly as he built up the resolve in his mind
to try and take me on. And he was afraid of me. Not that I blamed
him. I’d just flash-fried five men without thinking about it. And
the side effect of it was that I tied myself directly into the
wards at the same time. I could feel more now and my awareness of
the grounds grew as I thought about what I was looking at. It
wasn’t as strong or as comprehensive as mine at home or the
Cahills’ castle. There were more points of control, too, but at the
moment, I had them all.

When Peter and Gordon came up on the carnage
still in front of the boys, their shock and awe drew me back to
myself. Peter continued on without a pause, the scene affecting him
but the boys needed him. Gordon, though, stumbled, looking at me
and Martin. Peter was still afraid, but for Martin, not of me. He
was happy to have me around. Gordon was coming back around
slowly.

“Come on, guys, let’s go help out,” I said
and started leading a trail around the bodies and the cell of
soldiers to where Gordon and Peter were gently untying the five
totally shell-shocked boys. Once clear of those obstacles, the
three able-bodied boys ran ahead, leaving me with the slower Jeff.
We were still reasonably safe from any soldiers but they had
noticed something amiss. Martin ran straight for Gordon and the
only emotions I could read for certain through their tight embrace
were fear and love. Everything else was too tumultuous.

I’d finally managed to map the entire campus
by the time Jeff and I had walked the distance. There weren’t many
more survivors—only two, a teacher and Ferrin. There were another
thirty-eight soldiers left other than the thirteen penned in behind
us. They were beginning to get agitated, having lost contact with
some forty-three of their comrades in arms.

Peter was performing some kind of triage
action on one of the boys, not exactly healing his injuries but
stopping them from getting any worse and dulling the pain somewhat.
Jacob and Ian stood close by, watching and eager to help. They were
still scared by the fact they couldn’t quite see all of Peter, but
they could see the results of what he was doing.

Peter looked up at them and said, “Talk to
them. If you know them, say their names and tell them we’re here to
help. We’ll get them more help and we’ll get them home as soon as
we can, okay?” They nodded and knelt down beside the hurt boys and
started talking to them softly in whispered encouragement. Peter
moved to the next boy. I hated to interrupt him.

“Peter, can you take the cell from me? I need
to clear the rest of the campus and I might lose control of it,” I
asked.

“I’ll do it,” said Gordon, breaking his
embrace with Martin, wiping away his tears. “Martin, help Peter
now. Let’s be useful here. This is what Da has been training us to
do, after all.” That was an interesting statement to hear. I’d have
to remember to ask about that later.

Gordon straightened up as Martin moved over
to help with the first aid. Crossing his arms over his chest, he
slowly insinuated himself into the control structures I held over
the cell walls. The gun-and-portal trick I’d played had faded with
the lightning show so all of them were watching us. Their fear was
conspicuous.

“You people have taught me two things today,”
Gordon said loudly to the group. “First is that I could kill a man
if I had to. Second, I never really hated anyone before today. I
only thought that was hate. Just give me a reason…” He made the
ground shake with emphasis—and I don’t think he did it on purpose,
either.

The wards needed to be reset to be effective,
but that was a secondary goal. Primary was saving the survivors and
getting rid of the soldiers. I had enough control of what still
existed to sense where everyone was, just not of their defensive
powers. We’d cut a huge swath into their middle without realizing
it, taking out half of their fighting force at the same time. To do
anything about the rest, I’d have to be within sight of them. Not a
problem. I shut the front gate from where I stood.

I held out my hand for Ian and said, “Come
on, Ian. Let’s go get Michael.”

Ian took my hand and we headed for the
auditorium. Gordon was having the men disarm. We were taking
prisoners now apparently. I understood the decision from defending
ourselves. I wasn’t sure I had the cold-blooded murderer in me,
either, even if I hated them as much as Gordon did. And I refused
to allow myself to consider flash-frying the five sociopathic
rapists as cold-blooded murder. File that under pest control,
beside monster.

“Is Michael a’right?” asked Ian as we got
closer to the door, squeezing my hand tightly.

“He seems to be, but he is hurt,” I said to
him. “They’ve left him alone at the moment, turning their attention
to their missing men.”

There was movement around the door we were
about to use. The wards here were spotty, most likely because of
the psychic onslaught of the murders and beatings that had occurred
outside the building recently. I pushed out harder with my
augmented second sight, focusing on the energy patterns beyond the
walls and fixed on four auras around the door, two on either side.
They’d seen us coming. From the layout of the land and the
direction of the building, I guessed that they could see Gordon
standing ominously in front of the other soldiers, but not Peter
and the other boys kneeling close to the ground administering what
aid they could.

“Ian,” I said, looking down at him. “As long
as you hold my hand, you will be completely safe from the four men
around the door. Okay?” He looked up at me and nodded, pale blue
eyes wide with fear. His aura said it all, though. He was going to
help his brother and no simple fear was going to stand in his
way.

We stepped through the door and paused to let
our eyes adjust to the dimness.

“Hold it right there, hellspawn!” a gruff
voice demanded to my left, shoving the muzzle of a weapon into my
back. It might have hurt, but the Stone only let me feel a slight
pressure. I snickered.

“Hellspawn?” I asked, still snickering.
“That’s a bit melodramatic, don’t you think?”

“I saw what your friend did with the
witchfire,” the man growled. “Hellspawn works just fine. Now move.
Commander wants you.”

That sounded promising. “Good,” I said,
turning to the speaker and smiling. “I’d like to meet that man
before I kill him.”

He snorted. “Yeah, right. Move.” He waved his
weapon toward one of his men in the hall for Ian and me to follow
so I followed, taking a leisurely pace. The spokesman took up
behind us, leaving the other two at the door to guard it. It was a
useless tactic because as soon as we were out of their sight I
tossed both of them through portals and dropped them into the
holding cell Gordon was keeping. From thirty feet up in the air. I
needed to thank Harris for teaching me how useful portals could be
against the unprepared.

The man led us through three different
corridors, studiously avoiding the auditorium itself. I couldn’t
see the room through the wards, but I could feel the hotspots
there. They’d taken casualties from someone in there. So they had
issues treading through their own blood, but none with treading
through ours. How… grossly hypocritical of them. When they
attempted to change our path away from Ferrin toward their
commander, I just pushed them both through a portal to Gordon’s
cell rather than deal with them. Ian and I went our own way then.
After the first two, Gordon didn’t bat an eyelash when others got
added in or that they started from a height.

We turned into the hall leading directly to
the auditorium. The building contained several small amphitheaters
surrounding one big one. The two surviving adults had been taken to
the largest one and held there in some sort of cage. This cage was
the first magical implement other than the gemstones that I’d seen
the soldiers using. It was far more complex than the gems and it
was active magic, not passive. They had help setting this trap. I
studied the trap from the time we entered the room, but Ian didn’t
see it until we stepped up onto the stage.

“Michael!” he shouted the moment he saw his
brother and tried to run to him.

“No!” I jerked him back by the hand and
scooped him up by the waist with my free hand. “You touch the cage
and it’ll hurt you both. Let me get him out first.” He wriggled
furiously in my arms, trying to get free. “Ian! Let me get him
out!”

“Yon?” croaked Ferrin inside the cage. He was
barely recognizable as he lifted his head off the floor, one eye
swollen shut.

“Mikey,” Ian cried out. “We’re coming, Mikey.
Hold on.”

“McClure,” he hissed. “You behind this?”

“Yeah, Ferrin, that’s me,” I said
sarcastically. “I couldn’t kill you in Faery so I concocted this
convoluted trap just for you.”

The cage they had him in was made of brass
and there were eight of them on the stage in different stages of
readiness. Four lay at the edge of the stage, collapsed but ready
for use. Two others were currently empty, but had recently been
used—there was blood and other bodily fluids on the floor—and two
currently in use with Ferrin and another man, a teacher presumably.
The bars were etched with sigils that locked into the ley lines
once activated. They fed that power back and forth through a
complicated pattern, creating greater oscillations inside the cage.
Anyone trying to reach for energy from the leys got a lot more than
they bargained for as a result. It was almost the exact opposite of
what Peter called my Faraday cage and definitely more cruel to the
occupant. It was a pressure cooker that fueled itself and I
couldn’t see a relief valve anywhere.

I felt the spell taking hold in the air as it
flew toward us unbelievably fast, but the Night was faster, burning
through the air as it snapped a broad circle in front of Ian and
me. The coalescing fireball stopped in midair and the Sword
punctured the middle of its circle and slurped the magic up
noisily. Ian jumped at the sudden display and wrapped both arms
around my waist. I took advantage of my now free hand and called
the Crossbow out, firing five times at the fuzzy spot starting to
run offstage. The elf got two, maybe three steps before the first
Bolt hit his shoulder, sending him spinning. He didn’t cry out when
the other three hit his chest in a line, slamming him back against
the wall, pinning him there. The fifth Bolt hit dead center between
his eyes. I don’t think I’ll forget those eyes.

I turned back to Ferrin and his cage and
started draining away the energy from the room. If I had any hope
of getting either Ferrin or the teacher out, I needed to stop the
amplitude magnifications first. I sent the Crossbow home, but kept
the Night at hand, kneeling down at Ferrin’s cage with Ian beside
me. Taking the cages off their power supplies wasn’t enough,
though. It was a devious trap to get thrown into, almost an
oubliette except it was visible. But I was not without options as
the Night Sword hummed in my hand. Its influence pushed on my
consciousness so I followed where it led and dove into the foam of
reality to feel my way through the charms that held sway on the
brass bars.

From outside, I could see the relationships
the sigils held between each other and how the energies shifted and
flowed through each. What I didn’t see was the dependence on the
medium. The sword wasn’t seeing this dependence either. It wasn’t a
true intelligence hiding in the ebony blade, or in any of the
tools, not that I could define exactly what it was. Or if it was
intelligent, it was truly alien. But once I saw the need for brass
at the beginning, I figured out how to break the spell, I just
needed to figure out where to start.