Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (97 page)

Ducking down different trails, I kept us
close to the house until we neared the edge of a small inlet for
the pond that spread out further back. The whole area was crawling
with elves. The one fighting for the wards was sitting in a small
utility shed hidden behind a tree, barely visible. He was heavily
shielded so a Crossbow attack wouldn’t work. We’d have to go
in.

“Mike, please remember you’re not
bulletproof,” I whispered in the dark. “I’d like you to see Ian
graduate.”

“These people have their way and he won’t see
it either, Captain Buzzkill,” he whispered back. Two elves were
sneaking up behind us, silently and effortlessly, arrogantly
certain they had us. When I turned sharply and thrusted, forming
the Swords as I moved, that arrogance turned to shock for the split
second they remained alive. The swords took everything they had to
offer. Surprisingly, the Day Sword didn’t light up the surroundings
as it normally did. I sent the Night to its sheath.

Peter looked around in the dark, then grabbed
one of the nearest trees, grinning. “Everything’s related, isn’t
it?” he asked quietly, pushing a light green energy down through
the base of the tree. He glowed ever so slightly the same color and
he grinned. “I see you,” he called out softly in a singsong voice
and shook the tree hard. For twenty yards around us, all the trees
shook hard, too, as if we were in an earthquake and that tree was
the epicenter.

We heard thumps and crashes in the tall trees
around us, and Ferrin and I took off running in different
directions, laughing at Peter. Elves were falling out of the trees
to our left and right, too dazed from hitting branches on the way
down to do much. If this weren’t so ghastly, it’d be fun. We
managed to kill about twelve of them as I headed down the trail to
the shed.

Whoever this was, they were expecting to come
up against me. One of the elves had cast a strong spell locking
space in the area. It wouldn’t last long, but it effectively cut me
off from using portals. It didn’t affect bringing the weapons in
and out of my cavern, which told me that it wasn’t a related
action, another thought for later. That told me someone had been
watching me recently. Or maybe they just didn’t want me escaping
easily. Still, it was one less weapon in my arsenal.

I was closer to the shed now and got a better
look at the elf. There was one, a female, sitting at the front,
too. The shield was blocking the Quiver’s targeting. I could see
elves around the shed, but not the two physically sitting against
it. That probably meant there were two more on either side and some
on the inside, too. I needed something like what Peter just did.
No, wait. I needed Gordon.

I turned and ran back up the path to Peter.
He was heading to meet me, limping, his thigh bleeding. Grabbing
his shoulders, I pushed my thoughts down into his body, down into
his leg. He’d already closed the wound but it would tear open again
if he kept the running up.

“Where’s Ferrin?” I asked.

“Hurt, fifteen yards back on the left,” he
answered, breathing hard and in pain. “You get him?”

“Not yet. Need Gordon,” I said, picking him
up like a baby and ran the fifteen yards. “Where is he?”

“There,” Peter said, pointing behind a tree
and bushes. I could barely see his feet in the dark.

“Mike!” I called. His aura wasn’t as bright
as it had been and he wasn’t conscious. I wrapped a portal around
all of us and moved us back to the balcony, knocking a man I didn’t
know into the railing. Peter grabbed him by his jacket before he
fell over the side. I stepped quickly into the ballroom, melting
the helmet. “Medic! I need a medic NOW!” I yelled. Every person in
the room shut up and turned. Peter followed me into the doorway and
stopped there. “Gordon Cahill, where are you?” I yelled next.

“Here!” he called from the corner of the room
that I left the traitors in. He stood beside his father. I jumped
over.

“I need an earthquake, Gordon, like on the
side of the road the other day,” I said quickly. “I’m going to take
you to some woods to a path and we’re going to start running. We
have about twenty yards to run. At the end of the path is a small
shed next to a pond. On each side of the shed is an elf helping to
hold a shield around this shed. I need to destroy that shed. Can
you do it?”

“I’ll try,” Gordon said.

“We’ll both go,” Cahill said.

“No!” Gordon objected. “You’re needed here.”
I didn’t have time for the argument. I grabbed Gordon and moved us
directly from the ballroom. I gave him a few seconds for his eyes
to adjust to the light then started running. Gordon was right
behind me. With every footfall, Gordon gathered power. After only
ten yards, he was thunderous behind me. Another five and I couldn’t
even hear my own feet hitting the ground. When the shed came into
sight, Gordon leapt up straight into the sky and planted both feet
hard onto the ground and released the pent up power with a word,
focusing his intent on the shed. I felt the surge under me,
fighting to break free of the sine wave Gordon had created to
dissipate through the ground. Instead, it gave in to him and flew
up to the surface and hit the bottom of the shed.

I leapt through the air and called the Night.
Gordon’s power ripped through the bottom of the shed, blowing the
sides out and slamming the elves on the outside against their own
shields. They were pulverized in a tenth of a second. Their
protection failed and I flew through without a hitch. The Night
Sword hit the shield that I expected inside the shed, but it was
feeble by comparison. The Night pierced it like a soap bubble. Then
it pierced the temple of the elf controlling it just as easily. I
wrenched my arm twisting the elf’s head around in the tumble and
pulling the epee free. A small price to pay for me.

Gordon killed five in the miniature
earthquake, four in the perimeter of the shed and one inside. I got
the other, the one vying for the wards. He ran up to me, skirting
the mess that was the shed. The only thing discernible about the
shed was the elf I’d killed. Everything else was pulped. The ground
still rumbled and shook and the pond behind us rippled in the
moonlight.

“Excellent, Gordon,” I said, panting on the
ground. “Exactly what we needed.” The Day shifted me hard to the
left as an arrow narrowly missed me. I shielded Gordon with my own
power and shot the elf from the tree without looking. I doubt the
elf even saw me pull the Crossbow from my back and return it. The
Bolt returned to the Quiver and we moved on regardless, albeit
slowly. That took a lot of energy out of both of us.

Running up a different path to the house, we
still faced a gamut of attackers. Space around us this close to the
house was still too thick to allow portals, so we ran. My training
with Ethan was as effective as the Day’s guidance. Rounding a turn
on the path, the Day twisted me right, missing a strike from a
staff. I rolled and dipped further right, avoiding yet another
strike from the same elf. Continuing to roll, I jumped up and left,
regaining my feet and facing my opponent. I was trapped in a circle
of four. Behind me, Gordon was similarly trapped by another three
elves waving short swords or long rods. My opponents alternated
between long staves banded in bronze at irregular intervals and
long, very sharp swords, reminiscent of the Night but nowhere near
as beautiful.

They circled me slowly, neither opening nor
closing the gap between us.

“So, MacNamara has decided to go public with
his enmity, huh?” I asked the lead staff elf. He cocked his head
slightly, saying something in his own tongue. “Won’t work, elf.
Feigning a lack of knowledge won’t help you. I know better.”

The staff elf grinned evilly at me and began
circling again. The elf at Gordon’s back decided to strike. With my
eyes still on my staff elf, I whipped my hand between my shoulders,
ripping the Crossbow free, and swinging it back. The sword elf at
my back swung out. I fired, then sent the Crossbow back between my
shoulders. Completing the follow through, I called the Night and
twisted my body right to meet the other swordsman. With a parry and
a twist, the Night Sword bit the elf’s magic, severing his
connection to the metal. I’d have to ask someone what that did. At
the moment all I knew was he was in agony.

In front of me, the first swordsman’s follow
through swept through the plane of the Crossbow’s path, not mine.
Either way, he missed. And the staff elf was attacking at my back
but short of where I was. They were trying to destroy the weapons.
Or maybe disarm me. I brought the Day up into my right hand and
swung back down hard, decapitating the sword elf and breaking the
snippy staff elf’s stick into toothpicks in one sweep. Gave him a
nice long cut along his jaw, too.

“That’s what you get for bringing a stick to
a knife fight,” I said to the elf, looking back and forth between
them. The fourth one, the second staff elf of my group, had been
actively blocking my shot at Gordon’s attacker. This had been a
concerted feint. The top quarter of his staff was missing now.
Apparently, they had underestimated the power of the Crossbow and
the magic of how the Bolts found their targets. Elves get really
attached to their weapons as he was in shock over the partial
destruction of his toy. Freaky.

“Gordon, you doing all right over there?” I
called, casting out into the bushes in case they had backup. I
still held a shield up around Gordon and very aware of his
condition.

“I’m good,” he growled. “See what Peter means
about you grabbing all the glory. Three in your group and one in
mine? Glory hound.” His back was clear now. Once I killed the sword
elf, Gordon fired fast successive shots of dark violet rings of
concussive force at both staff elves he faced, but he concentrated
on the right most one. I got busy at that point.

“To be fair, I only killed one of mine and
dazed the other three,” I called back. “I may be calling for help
again.”

“Well, Peter did say you gave interesting
first dates,” he said laughing. “I don’t see how you could top this
one!”

Toothpick elf disapproved of our banter. He
drew a sleek black dagger from the folds of his coat and slung it
up at me. Before the dagger left his fingertips, the Day was moving
me, turning me until my practice took over and I saw what was
happening. The Day shifted up into my forearm a half-second before
my thumb closed fully around the haft of the dagger.

“Oh, you did bring a knife. Kudos for
branching out,” I snarled at him, tossing it back hard. He wasn’t
as deft with his hands. The knife pierced his chest and drove him
down to the ground. “And then there was one!” I turned to the last
elf. He’d been the least active of the four, the three-quarter
staffed elf. He was backed up against Gordon’s last elf, another
staff. His stick was thinner with smaller rings of different
metals. There were etchings on many of its surfaces, infusing it
and bonding it with power to fight certain fights. It was a cool
looking stick.

“We’re in a crossfire, aren’t we,” called
Gordon. “You’re down to one now?”

“Yeah, pretty much. I think the other one is
in iron poisoning. Looks pretty awful to me. Funny thing is, I
didn’t even touch him,” I shrugged at the elf facing me. “How’d I
kill him?”

“You severed his connection,” the elf trilled
to me. “The one that existed between the saber and he.”

“Yeah, got that part. I severed the
connection. Then what? Massive stroke?”

“The relationship a swordsman forms with his
weapon is a connection that holds back the effects of iron
poisoning throughout his lifetime,” the elf was actually explaining
this. He had to be stalling for something. If they were, then they
had to be communicating in some way. Well that was stupid, of
course they were. MacNamara spoke through them. While he was
talking, I hardened the outside of the armor helmet then attached
one end of a portal inside the helmet mouthpiece with the end at
Gordon’s ear canal on my field, like I had with Dillon.

“Gordon, they’re stalling us,” I told him. He
stiffened slightly at the change in my voice. “They expect me to
strike. Take them both out… Now!”

I twisted left and wrapped myself in a
portal, appearing on Gordon’s right side to parry the thin rod’s
attack on him. The elf’s eyes were locked on Gordon as he released
his sheet of percussive force. The Night seared the surface of the
staff, taking only a subtle sip from its magic and stripping away a
small portion before Gordon’s wave hit. And it hit with the surety
of gravity.

Unlike Gordon’s first spell on the elves, the
one that teased and battered, this spell was an all-in,
designed-to-kill spell. The elf had time to realize I parried his
blow on Gordon and turn his eyes to me. He felt the Night strip
away that simple layer of power and the pain that went with it.
Then he felt Gordon hammer him, beat him like a tectonic plate
during an earthquake. His staff was supposed to protect him from
such things. It was supposed to make them bend around him like
bamboo. The Night appreciated the irony of stripping away that
protection and thrummed as the elf was crushed to gravelly bits
under Gordon’s onslaught. I almost missed the fact he got the other
one, too.

I sheathed the Night and caught Gordon as he
stumbled. The huge channeling of power left him weak. I portaled us
back to the ballroom balcony then again into the corner of the
ballroom near his father, staging the jumps so I wouldn’t run into
anyone. Cahill took a hold of his son’s left arm and shoulder,
alarmed at his red face and heavy breathing.

Melting the helmet, I told his father loudly,
“This man is freakin’ awesome!” I turned and looked for Ferrin. I
spotted Peter near the balcony and jumped. Ferrin lay on the floor
between two slender women deep in concentration.