Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (10 page)

“Why didn’t you?”

“I believed them too much,” he answered ruefully. “And I wouldn’t risk you.” His brow furrowed, regret still strong in his eyes. “So I went home. I thought we could regroup. Track you down before they’d gotten far.” He shook his head. “But in our apartment, I found five more guards, with your mother drugged at their feet and our home in shambles. The guards simply ordered me to ignore her and come with them, or else they’d have to do something about Clara too. And that was to be the end of it.

“Mason killed them,” he said flatly. “They didn’t even know what hit them, I think. But we made it seem like they’d been caught by Merlin vigilantes by scrawling death threats against Taliesin and other such garbage on the walls. And yet, even with that, we knew it wouldn’t be over. As long as I was alive, the council could use you as leverage. But if I was gone, you’d become the sole heir to the throne, making you infinitely more valuable and thus safe. So a few days later, we staged an internal power struggle, from which I ostensibly died. I went into hiding. And spent the next eight years looking for you.”

He paused. “I never thought it would take so long.”

Cole waited, but his father didn’t say anything else. He wetted his lips, wanting to speak, and fearing what might come.

“And Mom?”

Victor didn’t move. Briefly, his gaze slid toward the mirror.

“She was a victim of the war.”

A quiver clenched Cole’s chest. “What do you mean?”

His father didn’t answer.

“Is she… dead?”

Victor looked away.

The trembling grew stronger. The air felt like soup, thick and hot and choking on his lungs, and more than anything, he didn’t want to speak the words chasing themselves around inside.

“Dad, did you…?”

“No.”

Victor pushed to his feet and headed for the door.

“But–”

“Please,” his father interrupted, glancing back. “I… I will tell you about it. But not now. It was…” His mouth tightened, and then he dropped whatever he’d been about to say. “Come on,” he finished brusquely, pulling open the door. “There’s something I want to show you.”

Cole hesitated. He wanted to press for more, to demand to know why people would claim Victor’d killed Clara if he really hadn’t, but then it came back to him. Everyone in this mess said whatever they wanted to blame the other side.

Maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t any different.

Clinging to the idea despite the doubts clamoring inside, he rose and followed his father. He had to believe someone was telling the truth in this situation.

He just hoped it was his dad.

Two guards stood on either side of the door. At the sight of Victor, they bowed and murmured ‘your majesty’ in solemn tones.

Victor glanced to Cole as the guards spoke. His eyes narrowed, a hint of suspicion in his gaze.

“They’d already told you that part, hadn’t they?”

Cole hesitated.

“Which was it? Taliesin or Merlin?”

He swallowed, discomfort rising. His gaze went to the guards in an attempt to buy time.

“Never mind,” his father said, dropping the question. “Perhaps later.”

Victor motioned onward and then led the way down the hall. At his touch to the small arrow beside the elevator, the door hissed back. Victor stepped inside.

Warily, Cole followed.

A door opened in the hallway and he looked back as his father leaned over to push a button for a lower floor. From a room near the guards, the scarred giant emerged. The man’s gaze flicked to the elevator before he headed in the opposite direction along the corridor.

And then the door slid closed.

“That was Mason.”

Cole glanced over.

“The man you saw,” his father elaborated. “Though most people just call him Brogan.”

Gears and cables whispered as the elevator rushed down.

“What, um…” Cole asked quietly. “What happened?”

“His scars?”

Cole nodded as the elevator slowed and then dinged. The door rolled open.

Victor’s face hardened. “Ashley.”

It took Cole a moment to follow.

Striding down a colorless hall that could have been pulled from any office building on the planet, his father wasted no attention on the rooms beyond the open doorways lining the corridor. Reaching the double doors at the end, he glanced back only to check that Cole was still with him, and then pushed the latch and continued through.

It’d probably been a conference room once, though not much to designate it as such remained. Cots covered the floor and a handful of people moved between the wounded curled upon them. Wire racks were arranged along a wall, stuffed to overflowing with medical supplies, while against another wall, blankets were piled.

Beside one cot, the blonde Blood wizard from the factory straightened, and Cole tensed. Beautiful if she hadn’t looked like a Nordic assassin waiting for the command to strike, she studied them, and only when Victor gave a nod did she bend down over her injured charge again.

“Isabella,” his father said. “Our healer extraordinaire, among other things.”

Victor watched her. “There used to be more of us. The Blood, I mean. But war and the retaliation of any who’ve learned of our existence has taken its toll.”

He sighed. “But that’s not why I brought you here,” he said, turning back to Cole. “I know you can’t see the difference, but there are cripples and Taliesin in here both. We even have a few Merlin and a human or two with us.”

Victor met his eyes. “I need you to understand this. We’re not like the wizards you’ve met so far. All these people, they aren’t fighting for Taliesin’s side, or Merlin’s side, or any side. They’re here to end a system that started over five hundred years ago. A system of dividing people into groups and putting one above the other, to the destruction of anyone below. And that’s all. You, me, the Blood, we lead. But we listen to everyone. We’re open to help from any who want to bring an end to what the sides of Merlin and Taliesin have done. And we don’t care what people may have been in the past. Only what they can be in the future.”

His gaze on the cots, Cole said nothing. The room looked like the lawn outside the mobile home, only with about three times as many wounded.

Wounded who’d been fighting Ashe, or the Taliesin council, or both.

He swallowed, feeling strangely ill. It just seemed so stupid. The fighting. The killing. All of it, when this was the only result anyone had seen in nearly a decade.

But maybe all wars ended up looking that way.

The door behind them opened, interrupting his thoughts. Brogan strode through, a dozen people carrying more injured hurrying in after him.

“Council loyalists,” Brogan stated succinctly as he passed.

Victor glanced back toward the door.

A hand on the handle, a man stood frozen. “You found him.”

Cole paused, struck by a sense of familiarity he couldn’t place. And then it clicked.

Harris dropped his hand from the door, coming closer. “Have you seen Ashley?” he asked, a note of interrogation pressing hard on his voice.“Do you know where she’s hiding?”

Taken back, Cole stared.

“There will be time for all that, Detective,” Victor said peaceably. “Cole has only just arrived.”

Harris ignored him.

“N-no,” Cole answered, fighting to keep from looking at his father. “I don’t.”

Harris was silent, his eyes weighing the response.

“The detective is one of the humans I spoke of,” Victor supplied into the pause. “He has been helping us since Ashley set his partner on fire.”

Cole blinked, trying not to feel punched in the gut by his father’s casual tone.

At the reminder of his past, Harris’ expression tightened. “I should get back.” He glanced to Cole. “We’ll talk more later.”

Without waiting for a reply, he headed after Brogan.

Cole could feel his father’s eyes on him as he watched the detective walk away.

“Did he… um…” he tried, the words slipping from his grasp. “Did he say why she, um…”

“They got in her way.”

His gaze went to his father as Victor turned and headed for the door.

“What do you mean?”

Victor paused. “Merlin teach their charges to have little concern for those who cannot protect themselves,” he explained carefully as he looked back. “Human, cripple, young or old. It does not matter. If they get in the way of the wizard’s goals… they die.”

“But were they… did they threaten her or something?” he asked desperately, knowing he was defending the girl he remembered from the farm more than anything.

His father studied him. “How much do you know about the young Merlin queen?”

Cole couldn’t respond. Suddenly, all the hours of restless sleep and the pathetic excuses for food were making themselves known on his aching head. What did he know about her? Nothing, apparently. Or at least the tip of an iceberg he
really
didn’t want to see.

He’d left Lily with this girl.

Swallowing hard, he shoved down the panic. Ashe would protect Lily. At what cost, he didn’t know, but that wasn’t the point. Lily’s safety was more than guaranteed.

Everything else was just information to help him figure out where to go from here.

He gave his father a small shrug.

“I think it is difficult to describe how truly relieved I was to see you, Cole. And not just because of the years the council kept us apart. Queen
Ashe
, as she has rather appropriately renamed herself… I thought she had killed you when she pulled you through that portal. And even if through the use of that staff she had somehow managed to keep you alive…”

Victor’s mouth tightened. “She feeds on your kind, Cole. To strengthen her power. Queen Ashe, upon taking the Merlin throne, led a campaign of destruction against cripples the likes of which our world had never seen. No one knows how many died, though those who escaped to join us estimate hundreds, if not more. But ‘Bloody Queen Ashe’, as she’s now known, summoned men, women, even little children to her side, all under the pretense of fighting
us
. And then she killed them. Brutally. Systematically. And without any but her fellow murderers the wiser. It wasn’t until people began to question why they never heard from their friends that the ruse came to light, and even though the surviving cripples have fled…” He shook his head. “There’s no guarantee she’s stopped killing.

“I’m sorry,” Victor finished. “I know she can make herself look like just a girl.”

Cole didn’t move, though he knew his father had fallen silent. It was all he could do to just take in the words.

She’d watched him ever since they found her again. What did she think? He’d turn her sister against her? Or that she couldn’t kill him while Lily was there?

He saw her face again, bloodlessly pale and huddled over her little sister as he drove them away from their farm.

He wanted to be sick.

“Cole?”

Drawing a rough breath, he fought to push the horrific accusations aside. It was all just information. Just information to help him figure out how to deal with the situation. Or something. But it couldn’t be the focus. Not right now.

Blinking, he dragged his gaze up to his dad.

“Why did you…” he swallowed. “Your men. Keller. I heard him. They tried to kill… on the farm, they tried…”

“We didn’t want to hurt them. We just had to stop their father. He was…” Victor paused. “He wouldn’t have ever given up the war. But we did not go there to harm his girls.”

“You shot her!” Cole protested. He threw a glance to the rest of the room, trying to keep his voice down. “I mean, your people. They said they only needed one and they shot Ashley. And me.”

Silence answered him and he looked over to find his father frozen still.

“What?” Victor asked quietly.

“One of them. I don’t know who. They shot Ashley and me and…” He shook his head, his shock fading, though it was doing little for the clouds fogging his brain. “Lily saved me.”

“Lily?”

He cursed himself, but there was nothing for it. And it didn’t really matter anyway. “Yeah. Ashe’s sister. She did something. She didn’t know what. But she saved my life.”

Victor seemed to remember how to breathe. “Then I owe her. Tremendously.”

His dad paused, and then visibly drove the possibilities from his mind. “I don’t know what happened that night. And I don’t know what my men misunderstood that they would do such things. But I can promise you, killing you or the girls was never the plan. Not remotely.”

Cole watched him. “Then what was?”

“To bring them with us. To see if maybe, as the last of the Merlin’s Children and as the leaders of their people, they could be convinced to help us bring an end to this violence.”

Cole looked away.

It sounded so much like what the council had said to him, once upon a time.

“And if they couldn’t?” he heard himself ask.

“We believed they could.”

He glanced back to his father. Victor shrugged, a ruefully optimistic look in his eyes.

Cole’s gaze fell away.

Footsteps approached and from the corner of his eye, he saw Brogan walk up.

“My apologies. You are needed.”

Victor’s face tightened with frustration, but after a moment, he drew a breath and pushed the expression away.

“I’m sorry. Duty calls.” He glanced to Brogan. “Are the rooms ready?”

The man nodded.

Victor echoed the motion. “Then I’ll see you later,” he continued, directing the last to Cole. He reached over, clasping Cole’s arm with a smile, and then headed for a door on the far side of the room.

“Come with me.”

He glanced to Brogan warily. The man’s voice was a growl and his one good eye pinned Cole with a stare that somehow made it clear how unfathomably easy it was for him to kill if he felt the need. Without another word, Brogan turned and disappeared back out the double doors.

Breathing again, Cole cast a look after his father and then followed.

People cleared from the giant’s path quickly as he stalked down the hall and, when the elevator arrived, the door seemed to open faster for fear of the man waiting for it. Striding forward, Brogan hit the button for a floor without giving it a glance, and then turned, silently waiting for Cole to join him before the door slid closed. The ride upstairs was no better and when the door opened, Cole fought to keep his pace slow as he fled the confines of the elevator.