Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (98 page)

“How is he?” I asked Peter quietly. Ferrin
looked very pale, even for him.

“The knife was poisoned,” he said calmly. “It
nicked his left leg, near his femoral vein, and got pulled through
a good deal of his body. They’re still trying to find all the
poison.”

I bent down and touched Ferrin’s forehead. I
sensed the seeking the women were doing, the careful prodding they
made as they moved through his body. I could appreciate their
skills. I had done a similar action with Kieran a month or so back,
under different circumstances. Kieran had been more hurt but the
poison wasn’t as… debilitating. Two different extremes. And I
really wanted Ferrin to see Ian’s graduation someday. One of the
women found a small amount of the poison and began extracting it as
I watched. It looked familiar to me. Yes, it is familiar. It was an
extracted part of…

“Does anyone have any Esteleum?” I called out
into the room.

A man, dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed in
an Italian business suit and smelling faintly of roses, stepped up
and started digging through one of the woman’s bags, coming up with
a small silver box about two and a half inches to a side square. He
handed it to me and I pulled it apart. Inside on cotton padding sat
a fresh light purple Esteleum. I drove my sight down into the flesh
of the fruit looking for the chemical that was killing Ferrin.

Kneeling, I bent Ferrin’s head back and
opened his mouth. I crushed the fruit, still looking for the poison
inside it. There, I found it, near the seeds, to help protect them
but not part of them. I crushed the fruit, letting the juices run
down my hand and into his mouth. The part I needed though was the
seeds. Trapping five seeds between my thumb and forefinger, I
squeezed and pushed tight threads of heated blue healing energy
through them, winding the threads around the embryonic plant then
ripping them out of the seeds. Dripping the juices with it, I
pushed the embryo pill under his tongue like nitroglycerin and
closed his mouth, pushing energy down through him to force the
Esteleum to work its magic even faster, slipping my power
underneath the women so I didn’t interfere with healing him. When I
reached his feet, I stood up. I’d done all I could do now.

Something big exploded to the west of us.
“McClure!” Bishop shouted.

“Can’t I get a break!” I shouted back, but
shoved my mind up into the wards anyway. Bishop was there in full
control now, but with the picture he was giving me, that was only a
small favor. Rommel had smaller armies. Maybe not, but it felt that
way at that moment.

“What exploded?” I asked. Bishop centered the
ward on a burning building, a once solidly constructed outbuilding
with concrete and cinderblocks.

“It held grounds keeping equipment, mostly,”
he projected through the ward. “Had a good amount of gasoline and
some minor grade dynamite. It blocked the road to the armory, too.”
He indicated one of two access routes to another building further
out from the main house. That building was surrounded by elves,
fading in and out of the wards’ perceptions.

“Why are they fading like that?” I asked.

“They call it ‘Dancing the Veil,’” Bishop
explained. “It’s done to confuse us. They pass partially into the
veil between Faery and here and back again, fading from view. It
plays havoc with wards, but it leaves them open to attack. They can
actually appear to be in more than one place at the same time which
means we really don’t know exactly how many we’re up against here.
If they hadn’t trounced the wards so badly, I could do something
about this, but as it is…”

“You’re kidding me,” I said, flatly. “We’re
looking at radar ghosts?”

“Effectively, yes, some of them are ghosts,”
he admitted.

“Be right back,” I said, pulling my attention
back and turning to Peter watching Ferrin. “Pete! You ready for
more action?” He nodded once, angrily. I jumped us to the dais
beside Bishop. He startled slightly but Peter was unfazed by the
transition. Good, because we were going to be doing that a lot in
the next few minutes.

“Bishop, let Peter into the wards,” I said.
“This is what we’re gonna do…” I talked fast then launched myself
into Peter’s mind, attaching my power to his control in his cavern
and let go. I felt his touch as I called the Crossbow and felt the
foundation Stone growl fiercely at me in complaint but it acceded
to my wishes. In each hand Peter formed four balls of green fire
mottled with oily black, each the size of a quarter. We turned back
to back and I felt my power rise.

Peter wrapped us in portals and shifted us
into the night directly into the middle of a group of eight elves.
Simultaneously, we yelled, “Dance now, elves!” I fired the Crossbow
twice and Peter sent a ball of oily fire directly into the chest of
the elf in front of him. Then he raised my power again and we
shifted to another group. And I fired the Crossbow twice and Peter
shot out another oily green fire. I called the Night forward now
and Peter called my power. We shifted differently this time,
choosing different positions and angles. Peter got two in this
group and I skewered one with the Night and two with the Crossbow
again.

“Stuck!” Peter called out, so we ran. I’d
expected that. That was part of the plan, for the elves to thicken
space again. They couldn’t Dance the Veil that way. We couldn’t
escape either, but that’s what I needed Peter for. I could keep our
escape route cleared if Peter could watch for the jumps. I could do
all of that up until we got stuck. At that point, I had to either
test the thinness of space or watch the wards for enemies, but not
both.

Two elves ahead of us were doing the best to
look like trees along the path. I sped up and leapt, pushing off
with both feet. Switching swords and hands, Day was suddenly
swinging hard right and taking me with it. It cut deeply into the
first elf, its blade cutting sharp and its magic driving it deep.
The elf’s sword swept through where my chest had been and the
torque of his action continued the Day’s cut. He fell to the
ground, halved, as I hit on my shoulder and rolled to face the
second elf, thrusting the Day Sword up into his ribcage. He was
still watching the pelvis of the first elf when he died.

Peter stopped against a tree opposite me as I
pulled the Day free and tossed the tall body aside. We both needed
a moment to breathe and the wards showed we were clear for a time.
Only one group of elves had stopped fading though. The one we’d
just left was dispersing. I felt the Quiver regaining its
bolts.

“I am so not up for this,” I rasped out.
Peter glanced over and grinned at me.

“You ready?” he gasped out, still breathing
heavy.

“Whenever you are,” I said. “We can’t help
‘em if we’re dead doing this.” At least my lungs were telling me to
be pragmatic. Peter gave me another full minute.

“Okay, let’s go,” he said, standing. I sighed
and stood up, exchanging the Day for the Crossbow, and Peter jumped
us. I fired down this time, once straight and once down and
slightly to the right. Peter jumped us to solid ground again and I
fired rapidly in a semicircle. The Night flashed into my left hand
and I thrusted up to parry a strike directed at Peter. “Stuck!” he
cried and fired shot after shot of oily fire. Each orb hit its
target, but there were more targets than the ward showed.

We were caught in a trap. Just as in Atlanta,
though, Peter controlled his panic. He sidestepped through the
brush to the path, tossing his spheres at every elf brave enough to
risk the searing agony of those black and green orbs to try to get
past his shields. And we were invisible to them in all but one
aspect, the power that flew out of Peter and the weapons that I
used. They could feel the power and energy of normal mages, but we
drew our power from my batteries and they were hidden in our auras.
Still, Peter was channeling a lot more magic than I was. He was
tiring out faster. I had to end this.

“Peter, take the Crossbow,” I called, handing
it to him behind my back and silently pleading with it and the
Quiver. I called the Day and stepped forward to face the enemy
head on. “It’s showtime,” I shouted and this time, the Day was
true to its name. The clearing shined as bright as the day at noon.
All five of the weapons thrummed in tempo with my heart racing with
the adrenaline surge. The foundation Stone reached across the
connection that Peter and I had formed and channeled the Crossbow
and Quiver with it. He fired and I moved.

It looked like a carefully orchestrated
dance, but it was really a melee. I took two steps then thrust
right and parry left, slash, cut, kill, turn, duck, punch,
decapitate, parry, parry, turn, slash. On and on. Bolts flew past
me in a flurry, never hitting me and I never had to duck for one.
At the edge of the clearing, I backflipped over a sweep of the legs
by a stick fighter, thrusting out with both swords in different
directions as I landed, skewering both elves around me as a Bolt
blossomed in each of their heads at the same time.

I straightened, sheathing both Swords without
looking, as Peter walked the path toward me, looking into the woods
after one last escaping elf. “Go for it,” I called. He grinned and
raised the Crossbow up over the trees and fired once more. The Bolt
flew through the night sky, almost lazily, before starting to fall.
Through the wards, we watched as the elf stumbled then disappeared.
The Bolt reappeared in the Quiver a moment later, along with all
the rest Peter had fired. All forty-six of them.

“This is an amazing weapon,” Peter said,
handing it back to me. The Stone pulled back on its connection to
Peter. I slipped the Crossbow onto my back into its place on the
Quiver. “Ah. It’s a little intense.”

I smiled at him. “That was three of the
five,” I said. “You should try all five at once.”

“They’ve stopped the Dance,” Peter said,
concentrating on the wards.

“Good. Let’s walk back then,” I said, melting
the helmet. “I need a breather.”

“Damn, these shoes are ruined,” Peter
groused, turning back up the trail. “They weren’t made for
running.”

“We’ll send Mac a bill tomorrow. He trashed a
lot of property here tonight,” I answered. I could see Peter’s back
through tears in his shirt. He had some nasty looking scratches.
“Your shirt is ripped to shreds, too.”

“You’ve gotten very good with those things,
ya’ know,” he said, ducking a sapling leaning across the trail.

“Huh?” I asked.

“The weapons,” he said. “You’ve gotten very
good at controlling them, using them.”

I barked out a laugh. “They do a considerable
amount of that work themselves,” I said, still chuckling.

“I’m not so sure of that,” he said in return.
“I mean, yes, there is a certain amount of magic to what they do
and how they work and I’m not belittling their power in any way.
I’m just saying that you shouldn’t belittle your own ability in the
equation of how well you work with them either.”

“Like I could do a backflip or pick Gordon
up,” I said, pulling my shorts out from between my cheeks.
Thankfully, Peter was in front of me so he didn’t get that lovely
sight. “I am soaked.”

“Me, too,” Peter said, adjusting himself.
“Does this mean we never get to dress up again?”

“I hope not. I do actually want to have a
date sometime.”

Peter laughed. “The best dates end all
sweaty, though.” He grinned at me slyly, looking back. “You ready
to take your power back?”

“You in a hurry to be rid of me?” I asked as
I pushed through the connection and pulled it back to me. It was a
simple, gentle pull that Peter released easily.

“You know that’s not what I mean,” Peter
said.

“I know. It’s a very… intimate contact, isn’t
it?”

“Yeah,” he said, pausing long enough for me
to come up beside him. He threw his arm across my shoulder and the
Stone let it sink in below the armor to touch my sweaty back. “It
is. I don’t think I’d be comfortable doing that with anybody
else.”

“I know I couldn’t,” I replied.

The wards started buzzing. Both of us whipped
our heads toward the house. Bishop was projecting our names through
the wards. He couldn’t find us. We both focused on the remaining
elves and saw them forming into lines. No, the lines kept breaking
up. People in and around the house were moving out, some were
confronting small groups of elves and some were just running away,
trying to escape.

“I can’t tell what’s happening,” I said.

“Let’s get to the house,” Peter said. I
wrapped portals around us and jumped into the ballroom again. It
had emptied considerably since the last time we’d been there.

“You bellowed?” I called to Bishop. This time
he was so startled he fell off the dais.

“Damn it! Somebody put a bell on that boy!”
he yelled.

“Do you want to be the one to try that?”
called Cahill from the doorway. Gordon came in behind him,
laughing. The two of them could fill the room all by themselves
with their presence.

“What’s happening now?” Peter demanded. Good,
at least someone else was getting tired and cranky.

“I don’t know,” answered Bishop, aggravated.
“I can’t figure out what the damned elves are doing. I’ve got
people spread out to protect us and the house, but too many people
are running scared. Cockroaches abandoning ship. And we still have
traitors loose.”

“We stopped the Dance of the Veil, though,” I
said.

“And killed close to a hundred doing it,”
Peter added. Bishop’s head swung around at that. Peter stared him
down. “The proof is still bleeding on the grounds, dude.”

“How many are left?” I asked. I didn’t feel
like counting.

“Sixty-three,” Bishop answered.

“The ley lines are stretching,” I said. “Why?
Are your people drawing a lot of power right now?” I pushed my
senses out, feeling for the draws.