Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (80 page)

The wards were down for less than a
second—Felix barely felt the change. He did however feel the
attempts to open portals and knew they were being attacked. He
changed the castles defenses from ‘wary’ to ‘battle ready’ and
ripped the portals open, literally sending whatever was trying to
pass through into the veil between worlds and causing the energy to
flow back out into the portals’ creator. It was very similar to
what happened to the elf that tried to escape from the wards on the
campus.

“You wouldn’t believe this place under
‘battle ready’ conditions,” said Kieran, green eyes bright. “It
looks like a castle instead of just a big house. The fortifications
are immense. The wards in this place are awe-inspiring and they can
be expanded to cover miles more.”

The conventional attack on the castle fared
no better, but was confusing because its intent was unclear. It,
too, was similar to the school’s attack and seemed to ride on the
coattails of the Loa attack, gaining entrance to the grounds by the
breaking of the wards. Since the wards didn’t actually fall, Cahill
was able to take all of them by himself, one man against sixty. It
was no contest. He let them in far enough to be out of public view
then trounced them hard, only sending in his men to collect them
when the enemy was unconscious.

The coup of the castle was basically
bloodless with the only casualties being Lucian, the Loa, and
whoever or whatever was in the portals. The attackers were being
housed and questioned in dungeons of the castle now. Billy had
taken our captain and colonel to add to that group earlier. Gordon
did assure me, though, that while “dungeon” brought on many
medieval connotations, they merely meant a series of secure rooms
in the lower levels, similar to the practice rooms I found Peter
and Ethan in.

Between Martin, Gordon, and Ferrin, much of
our side of the story had already been told, so thankfully there
wasn’t much that Peter and I had to add. I would still make sure
that Felix and Enid knew how proud they should be of their sons but
later, when it wouldn’t turn into a “Who Did Best” contest.

When Billy came into the room, Enid decided
it was time for the boys to head for bed. It was too early and we
all knew it, but we also knew that it would be much later before
the battle ended to get them into bed and asleep. Ferrin walked
with Ian to the stairs and spoke to him quietly for a few minutes
before Ian followed the Cahills up the stairs. I marveled at the
difference between the spiky-haired street punk from a month ago
and the doting brother I saw now. It was amazing that they could
coexist.

“Marchand’s been calling,” said Billy once
the boys and Enid had left. “Wants me to send someone out on the
grounds to find you and have you call him, preferably come to him.
He thinks you’re ducking his calls. He wants to know where Seth and
Gordon and the rest got off to. Marshall’s gonna tell me about it
as soon as he sees me.”

Gordon laughed and Felix said, “You should
see me in about an hour. Thanks, Billy.”

“Thought I should make a point of it,” he
said, sitting down next to Peter. “Bishop called, too. His message
was a little more direct. He said and I quote: ‘What the hell did
McClure do to these wards? I can feel a fly take a piss in here!
Yet I didn’t feel him portal any one of them out! He shouldn’t have
been able to do that. And Felix, there have been more terrorist
attacks across the world so don’t take too much damn time!’ Again,
his words, not mine.”

“Huh,” muttered Ferrin, “Looks like you can
forget about the universe centering ‘round you, McClure.” Now that
was the sort of comment I expected out of him.

“That’s not good news, Michael,” I said,
glancing over at him. As I did, I caught a glimmer of orange around
the bangles he wore on his wrist. It caught Peter’s attention as
well.

“Mike, what’s that?” Peter asked, pointing at
his wrist. “The orange one?”

“What? This one?” he said, sitting down at
the table, pulling the band off his wrist and tossing it to Peter.
“That was part of the purse from MacNamara’s. Bloody worthless
thing. The elf called it a ‘Fairy’s Tear’ and said it would hold
magic from Faery, as if that were stronger than the power
here.”

“I doubt it does anything,” said Peter,
handing it to me. “It’s broken. Look familiar, Seth?”

“It’s the same color as the stone you gave
me,” said Gordon, digging into his pocket and pulling out the
battery I gave him this morning. I just put one into my hand. The
colors were similar, but not an exact match so I expected other
differences.

“Do not pull that in like your other stuff,”
Shrank piped in warning from my shoulder, making me jump a little.
I’d forgotten he was even in the room, he’d been so quiet.

“Why?” I asked, because that was exactly what
I was about to do. I wanted to see what shape it would take, since
my batteries changed so dramatically.

“It’s been tagged with Elf magic,” Shrank
said, sniffing at it. “It’s faint but still there. You could mark
yourself if you pull it in, maybe, I’m not sure, but why chance
it?” I nodded in agreement.

“Is that how they found me, then?” asked
Ferrin, eyes narrowing in anger. “At the school? That would explain
how that blasted captain caught me so easily.”

“Could be,” said Shrank. “Unless your veil
covered it specifically, it was probably visible to them.”

“That rat bastard,” muttered Ferrin.

“More than you know,” I muttered in answer,
then louder, “This isn’t the same as mine. It lacks the
dimensionality to properly contain energy for any length of time.
It probably blew up in somebody’s face and that’s why they call it
a ‘tear.’ Here, Ferrin, take this one. At least it’ll be useful.” I
slid the battery across the table to him, keeping the orange chunk
bracelet.

“You saved my life today. I think you’re
familiar enough to call me Mike,” he said, reaching for the stone.
“And what is this, anyway?”

“It’s a ley line in a rock,” said Gordon,
grinning at him across the table. Felix’s confusion was evident so
Gordon slipped his dad his battery to experiment with while Ferrin
experimented with his. It was fun to watch their faces as they
tugged and pushed the line energy from the stones, but there was a
lot to do tonight. I brought out the Night long enough to send the
Fairy’s Tear into oblivion along with its elven mark.

“Where did you get these?” asked Cahill,
astounded. “How are they powered?”

“They’re just storing energy put into them,”
I said. “And I make them.”

“We haven’t figured out how he does it yet,”
said Kieran. “There are… peculiarities in the way Seth works his
magic that we do not yet understand.”

“Mr. Cahill?” said one of the house staff
from the door. I hadn’t seen this person before. “Mr. Bishop is on
the phone and won’t take that you’re still out on the grounds for
an answer.”

“Thank you, Jenny, I’ll take care it,” Cahill
said, standing from the table. “We may as well get comfortable,
gentlemen. It’s likely to be a long night.”

“We’ll be right in, Felix,” said Kieran
smiling casually. “I’d just like a moment with Mr. Ferrin
first.”

Ferrin eased himself slowly back into his
chair. He was expecting something like this, he just didn’t know
what was going to happen, or even what he wanted to happen, I
think. Kieran placed a sound barrier over the room without even a
whisper of power use. I had to admire the ease with which he did
it, too. Of course, when I do it, it’s with the Stone’s help and
I’ve yet to see anybody come close to operating the same as the
Stone.

“Seth, what have you promised him?” Kieran
asked me.

“Only that I’d pay for whatever schooling
that Ian needs,” I said. “With what he did for Martin and what he’s
going through just to take care of Ian and himself, it seems a
small price to pay.”

“That’s it?” he asked. He seemed surprised. I
nodded, glancing over at Ferrin. His aura spiked horribly low with
disappointment, expecting Kieran to nix that out of hand. That
would have caused a huge argument since it was my money and I could
do what I wanted with it, but Kieran wouldn’t do that anyway.

“Okay,” he agreed. “Once we find out what’s
going on elsewhere in the world tonight, we’ll be able to make more
complete plans. In the meantime, get with either Gordon or Felix
and get a reasonable cost estimate on that. Remember, though, that
school is more than just tuition and lab fees and costs never go
down. You’re looking at a minimum of probably a million and a half.
Go ahead and call the New York lawyers and get the transfers
started. We should have enough cash upstairs to open accounts in
town. You’ll need those before you can make the transfers.

“Why don’t you three take the boys into town
and go shopping? We all need some more clothes again and Ian and
Michael don’t have anything right now,” Kieran said. Looking over
at Ferrin and finally seeing the look of pure shock on Ferrin’s
face, he asked, “What?”

“I-I don’t…” Ferrin stammered and sighed. “I
don’t understand you lot. You’re just giving me a million dollars?
With no conditions? The last time we met you threatened to kill me,
for Christ’s sake!”

Peter started snickering.

“I didn’t say there weren’t conditions,” I
said.

“Finally!” Ferrin said. “What’s the
catch?”

“You have to use the money to take care of
Ian and provide for his education,” I said. “I thought that was
clear.”

Shrank bolted out of the centerpiece on the
table, stopping in midair a foot from Ferrin’s face, and squealed,
“I told you!” In a flash of golden light, he took off again and lit
on Kieran’s right shoulder, biting a blueberry in half and sucking
greedily on his tiny fingers as the juice ran down his hand. Peter
snickered louder and harder.

“As to the threats to kill you,” Kieran said,
“I believe that it would be counterproductive to follow through on
that considering the preparations for your brother’s future, don’t
you?”

“Well, um, yeah,” Ferrin stuttered.

“And what position do you wish to take in the
current problem we’re dealing with?” asked Kieran, leaning on the
table.

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

Kieran shrugged softly and said, “I have no
problem allowing you to continue here with us since you were a
victim. I believe you have the right to find out why and to be part
of the retribution. But you are going to be dealing with people who
are outside of your normal sphere of influence. People who have
lived with power and money their entire lives and, with the
exception of Peter, we’re the oddballs.”

“I take exception to that!” cried Peter. It
was my turn to snicker and I did. So did Kieran.

“What you sayin’ is, I’ll be dealin’ with a
buncha snobs and knobs, eh?” retorted Ferrin.

“Partly,” Kieran said, grinning. “And while
they may defer to a small degree to us, mostly because we confuse
them and we have garnered a reputation in the past month, I don’t
know how they will react to you.”

“I’ll lay odds on how Cliffy will react,” I
said, laughing outright. So did Peter.

“Happy lads, aren’t they,” Ferrin muttered in
Kieran’s direction.

“They’ve earned it,” Kieran said softly to
Ferrin, grinning at us.

“I think I can handle myself with anyone
here,” Ferrin said confidently. “I may not live in places like
this, but I make it my business to know who does. I’m a little
shaky in Asia and South America and the Near East is in constant
flux, but I have sources.”

“All right,” Kieran said. “Then one last
thing, everyone in our, uh, business has secrets, whether trade or
personal. Do not attempt to obtain any from us. You will not like
my reaction. If you want to know something, ask. If there is a
reason we cannot tell you about something, then there is a good
reason. Live with it. Otherwise, we’ll tell you.”

“That’s fair,” Ferrin said cautiously.

“Speaking of,” I said, coming out of my
laughing fit, “Gordon knows who Kieran is. I slipped up after the
sending. It was really powerful and I’d never gotten one before so
I was surprised by it. Sorry.”

Kieran shrugged it off. “We didn’t expect it
to last forever anyway.”

“What does that mean?” asked Ferrin.

“When Seth and I first met, we had no idea
who the other was,” explained Kieran. “When he asked my name, I
gave him the closest English approximation to the name I was given
in the land from which I had just come, which was Kieran. It was
only later that we found we were related by blood and my homecoming
at that time and place was more than mere coincidence. The name
however has meaning for the four of us so we continue to use
it.”

“Sorta like Yonnie for Ian,” Ferrin
suggested.

“Very close, yes,” Kieran agreed. “Seth,
there is something I’d like you to do tonight after we talk with
the Cahills.” He paused, looking off into space, having difficulty
framing the question from what I could see. Kieran’s aura was as
bright and stable as usual. The only turmoil seemed
intellectual.

“I need you to go get Ethan,” he said,
turning to me and shrugging. “If what I believe is true then I
cannot go. He would force me into answering questions that would
make him stay away.”

Well.

“What sort of questions would he be asking?”
I asked him slowly. That statement was loaded with a boatload of
innuendo.

“I would prefer not to say,” Kieran answered
as neutrally as he could. “I would prefer not to prejudice your
discussion with him in any way, except to say this: Ethan started a
life here. He got three people to care about him. Why give that up
for something that may or may not happen?”

“So he’s given up on his purpose?” I asked,
trying to get more information out of Kieran. I wasn’t going to get
anything obvious from him, so I had to look for hints. Ethan
considered Kieran a god, so whatever Kieran wanted to hide from
Ethan had to be big and scary. Freakin’ big and scary.