Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (95 page)

“A little,” answered Peter, smiling. His eyes
glistened at the compliment.

“Good night, Dillon,” I said, grabbed the
three of them and jumped us to the roof. I don’t think I’ve ever
spent this much time on any one roof before in my life. Looking
over the skyline, I could see a huge double rotor military
helicopter heading in our general direction in the distance. I
guessed we had about five minutes to wait.

“Why was Trelaine so freaked out about seeing
Peter?” I asked Ferrin when he came up beside me. Peter took the
other side. Mercer stayed back a few feet, uncomfortable with
us.

“Nothing to worry about,” his voice even
softer in the wind. It made his accent romantic somehow. “He’s just
had a bad experience with an elf or two in his time. Peter just
outshined them all. It terrified him. Man like that doesn’t terrify
easy. Good thing he didn’t see you.”

“He’ll be okay, then?” I asked, watching the
helicopter course-correct toward us. It occurred to me I would need
to control another Faraday cage and neither Mercer nor Ferrin had
felt that before. Turning back to get the cop’s attention, “Mike,
Inspector Mercer, I will be doing a good deal of work to make sure
we stay in the air. You’ll feel this as a pressure against your
skin for the duration of both flights. At times, this may get
uncomfortable. You can relieve this pressure by pulling in your
auras as close to your bodies as possible. Okay?”

Ferrin nodded and immediately started
channeling power. It seemed to go down into him, so he must have
been fueling his battery. Mercer was just lost and scared. He was
confusing me. Why was he here?

“Mercer, how long have you held your
position?” I asked. I could barely hear the chop echo in the
distance.

“Just a couple of months,” he admitted,
scratching his head.

“What got you into your current
division?”

“There were a… series of… incidents,” he
stammered through an explanation, “with a few of my mother’s
friends and a con man…”

“And that caught someone’s eye?” I said
trying to help him. He started to say something, but decided a nod
was sufficient. I chuckled and said, “Just keep your head down and
your eyes and mind open and you’ll be fine.” I didn’t believe it
either, but he couldn’t see that. We were about to be loaded into a
military helicopter to be flown off to only God knows where, after
all.

Searchlights stabbed into the night around us
as the helicopter arrived overhead, beating the air down on us. Not
wanting to be blinded, I didn’t look up, but Mercer did. He paid
for it. The helicopter hung in the air for a few minutes,
indecisively. Mercer’s cell phone chirped insistently. Thinking
that this wasn’t going to work well for us, I looked up through my
hand trying to block out the lights. A helmeted head poked out of a
door in the side, looking down. The man swung a winch out and was
attaching a harness to it. Yeah, that was not going to happen.

“Hang on guys, we’re going up,” I yelled over
the chop of the rotors in the air. Using the Stone, I raised us off
the roof high, also putting a roof over us so that we wouldn’t be
beat down so hard. Stopping a few feet from the open door about
level with the man still attaching the harness. Peter reached out
and tapped the man’s arm. He jumped back, arms flailing as he fell
farther into the cabin. The helicopter shifted in the air
constantly, making me adjust to its position constantly.

It occurred to me that it would be easier to
attach to the helicopter rather than the ground, so I cantilevered
the shield to the ledge and the struts. This made our ride
considerably more erratic. Mercer was already having a difficult
time, meaning he was already having a pretty severe panic attack.
Ferrin was trying to calm him down, but he wasn’t going to get far
with him until Mercer got something hard and opaque under his feet.
Peter moved over to the cabin and tried to help the helmet-head up.
I grabbed Mercer’s free arm and moved over, too, waving coyly at
uniformed man who was poking his helmet-head through a small door
in the center of the cabin, mouth agape.

Immediately, I set up a sound baffle at the
open door, then set a magical Faraday cage around the helicopter.
“Where do we sit?” I asked loudly.

“How did you get here?” was the response I
got.

“Through that door,” I said, pointing at the
opening. “Now, where do we sit? Aren’t you supposed to take us
somewhere?”

“Yes, Colonel, our passengers are on board,”
the man said. I assumed he wasn’t talking to me as I wasn’t a
colonel of anything. “Negative, Colonel. They appeared at the open
door while I was rigging the harness, Colonel. I don’t know
how.”

Ferrin shoved Mercer into a harness on a
bench and tied him down next to Peter. They both looked like they
were guessing at what to do, halting every few seconds to study
something then pull and yank till it worked or try something else
when it didn’t. They worked quickly and fairly efficiently. Ferrin
was seated and starting to harness himself in before the
helmet-head finished talking to the Colonel.

“Is it safe for me to put the headphones on?”
Ferrin asked me.

“Um, yeah,” I said, sitting down next him to
strap in. “Probably a good idea. So I can release the door.” I
slipped on the headphones, instantly hearing voices. “Can we go
soon?”

“Who is this?” asked a voice, deeper than
helmet-head.

“This is one of the four people you came to
pick up,” I answered. “I’m not particularly sure I’m supposed to
give you my name. The way this trip was arranged screams state
secret.”

“With the exception of Inspector Mercer, that
would be a correct assessment, sir,” the Colonel replied through
the headset. Helmet-head slid the side door closed and I dropped
the sound buffer. It got louder in the cabin. “Beginning our
flight. Lieutenant, identify Mercer.” We all pointed for
helmet-head.

“Inspector Mercer is in the middle of a
rather severe panic attack and has been sedated,” Ferrin said. “I
can bring him out of it, but it would be better to do that on the
ground than in the air.”

“He’s not unconscious,” Peter added. “He’s
just dazed.” Peter had a wicked grin on his face. He was enjoying
making the cop look drunk.

“Are you Inspector Mercer?” Lieutenant
Helmet-head asked Mercer.

He looked at the Lieutenant drunkenly for a
moment, then he nodded, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a
wallet with his identification and badge. He flipped it open with
practiced ease, even through the harness. Slower but still
professional, not fumbling. Maybe he had some military experience
before the police.

“Colonel, I have Inspector Mercer,” the
Lieutenant said.

“Ask Inspector Mercer how they arrived in my
helicopter,” said the Colonel.

Helmet-head relayed the question to Mercer,
who again stared at him drunkenly for a moment before answering. He
said, slowly and slurring a little, “I have no idea. We were down
there and now we’re up here.”

I understood that. I couldn’t see the Stone’s
power either. It played out as visual representations in my mind
when I asked for it, but otherwise I just sort of felt it. I just
knew where it was. When I grabbed us, he probably felt like gravity
gave out and he was shooting towards his death at a giant egg
chopper. Which if you think about it, is pretty absurd. I really
shouldn’t be letting Ferrin and Peter do this to him, but I had
other work to do.

My awareness shot outward from the helicopter
relative to the front of the vehicle has it surged forward. This
was going to be harder without Ethan’s guidance, but this ship was
significantly smaller and slower so the field could be tighter and
stronger. My awareness keyed in on the energy plane, keenly
highlighting power sources ranging from rivers to power lines to
cars on the roads below us. The engines above and in front of me
made no small dint themselves. Still, this wasn’t going to be that
hard.

I faded out of the conversation as I
concentrated on our path, but Peter invited Ferrin to be our
spokesman. There were some questions asked and Ferrin either
answered or evaded; I just remember not being particularly alarmed
by anything he said. And Peter was paying attention really,
watching all of us, and it’s easier to do that when you’re not the
center of attention. We landed much sooner than I thought we would
but that happened the last time I did this. Ferrin was releasing my
harness when I came fully back into myself and Peter was releasing
Mercer’s.

Lieutenant Helmet-head helped us out and ran
with us a short distance away, making sure we ducked down below the
sweep of the rotors. It was purely a psychological move as even
with the trailing edge of the blades bending down there wasn’t a
danger of hitting any of us. A danger of needing a brush and a
mirror, certainly, but not of decapitation. Helmet-head turned back
for the helicopter after twenty-five feet and we carried on to the
waiting van.

That took us for a five-minute trip through
whatever airport we were at to a small, sleek ten-seat jet. Peter
had sobered Mercer up completely during the short trip. Ferrin kept
the lead of our group and I wasn’t going to argue—it worked for me,
especially since the point man for the jet team was a lot more
argumentative. Ferrin matched the man in that quality, not yielding
a quantum of information. The pilot finally came out and demanded
we embark, even over the point man’s protests. Once in our seats, I
started the Faraday cage all over again, while the man glared at
Ferrin and Ferrin ignored him.

This trip was harder for me. We traveled
higher and faster, so I had to seek further out than with the
helicopter ride, but the ship was small so that was some help. We
turned easterly and out of the water at high speed. This time I had
to work, pushing a few lines up or down as we neared. Nothing came
too close. It was mostly precautionary. If I knew the flight plan,
I probably wouldn’t have touched them, but it was harder when the
jet started its descent, somewhere in France or Germany. Maybe
Belgium, I’d need to see a map to be sure.

I released the cage when the plane taxied to
a stop at a private hangar at a small airport. We were waved into a
waiting limousine at the bottom of the stairs without a word from
the driver. Customs wasn’t in sight this time. The car traveled
through some fairly hilly roads for a little over an hour. Both
Peter and I took the opportunity to recharge our batteries and doze
during the short trip, while Ferrin and Mercer admired the lack of
a view through the tinted windows. Mercer was still a tightly wound
ball of elastic, ready to pop at any moment. His previous sedation
had helped him dial it back a notch, though, and he was getting
more accustomed to our presence.

The limo pulled down a long driveway to the
front of a large and well-lit chateau. Well, if we were in France
or Belgium, I suppose it was a chateau. If we were in Germany, I
wasn’t quite sure what to call it. The wash we felt as we passed
through the wards was uncomfortable at best, itchy at worst. Even
Mercer felt it. There were a lot of people walking the paths and
walkways, looking threatening. The whole place reeked of power. The
wards became less noticeable as we got closer to the nexus of that
power.

As I looked at the house, I got less and less
comfortable with where we were going. The dint in the energy plane
was massive, and I mean massive! There were many high powered
humans here. On the astral plane, there were warding and seeking
spells active all around us, watching for incoming spells. Ferrin
attracted their attentions quickly, but he passed through the
proper gates so they ignored him. Mercer barely merited a second
glance from all but the most strongly attenuated of them. Neither
Peter nor I attracted any attention at all.

An older man in a tuxedo stopped us at the
top of the steps, greeting only Mercer by name. He escorted us
through the front doors and into what appeared to be a dinner
party. We were definitely underdressed for a dinner party, even
though it didn’t appear to be a black tie affair. That, and it was
really late in the evening for dinner.

“Food!” barked Ferrin, seeing the buffet
table. He shot away from us abruptly. The man stopped, staring
after Ferrin. Mercer almost ran into him. Peter and I exchanged
glances, then followed Ferrin. Dinner was a while ago, after all.
Mercer came up behind us shortly, filling a plate lightly, more out
of politeness than hunger. We were piling it on and eating at the
same time, like we hadn’t eaten in weeks.

“Please stay together. At least until we can
find out what’s what,” Mercer growled. He wasn’t used to being at
the bottom of the totem pole. He was used to muscling his way
through situations. It frustrated him that he couldn’t do that with
us.

“We need to eat, Mercer,” said Peter, just
before stuffing something in his mouth. He made noises as he chewed
it, enjoying whatever it was. I hadn’t been watching, ‘cause I was
busy stuffing my own face.

“I had a date tonight,” grumbled Mercer,
quietly.

“About time we found you,” said Gordon from
behind Mercer. He was nearly hidden by the cop.

“Did you try calling my cell phone?” I asked,
then stuffed a mushroom cap with cheese and crab in my mouth and
nearly gagged trying to swallow it. I didn’t go back for those.
“What’s going on, Gordon?”

“Transcontinental council meeting, of sorts,”
he said grimly, coming in front of Mercer. “It took a lot of
effort, argument, and bruised egos, but we managed it.”

“Why?” I asked, still trying to get as much
food down my gullet. “I thought we’d decided on a group of
eighteen?”

“We’re trying to mobilize an army to defend
ourselves, Seth. We need everyone on board or we’ll lose,” Gordon
said, condescendingly.