Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (12 page)

Ashe wouldn’t let Lily go easily. Hell, she wouldn’t let Lily go at all. She’d kill anybody who tried to get near the girl, to the destruction of anything else around her.

And that was just the start of the problem.

Roughly, he tossed the towel back at the rack. Avoiding his reflection in the wall-sized mirror, he headed for the door.

He had to find his father. Unavailable be damned, they needed to talk.

The two guards outside the apartment glanced over as he leaned around the door.

“May we help you?”

“My dad. Have you seen him?”

“I believe he is occupied at the–”

Victor walked around the corner. “They said you were looking for me?” he called, ignoring the guards’ bows.

Cole nodded. Victor motioned toward the apartment and at the gesture, Cole stepped back inside.

“What’s going on?” his dad asked as the door shut. Crossing the room, he headed for the couches circling the sunken area of the floor.

Cole paused before following, suddenly trying to find where to begin. Sighing tiredly, Victor dropped onto the black leather cushions and stretched his arms across the backs of the seats next to him.

“You okay?” Cole asked, watching him.

Victor shrugged. “Long night.”

Cole’s brow furrowed and at the expression, his father seemed to hesitate, as though deciding what to say.

“Prisoners,” he admitted. “From the council.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, nothing. It’s just… a process. When they’re brought in, it’s better if they can’t hurt anyone, so I take their magic before we start talking to them. Things go smoother that way. But this bunch had gotten closer than most before we caught them, so we had a few more questions than usual.”

“Closer?” Cole asked, lowering himself onto the couch without taking his eyes from his dad.

“To me. I have a house in upstate New York where I’ve been staying the past couple years and they managed to make it within a few hundred miles. But it’s fine. They had no idea they were near us, and neither did their superiors, apparently.” He smiled. “In any case, I’d love to take you there someday. I think you’d like it.”

Cole wanted to smile at the idea, but the words just brought him back to the topic at hand.

At his silence, Victor’s brow furrowed. “Are
you
alright?”

He hesitated. “Not really.”

His father waited.

Cole grimaced. “It’s Lily. Ashe’s sister. She… she’s just a kid. And I can’t stop thinking about Ashe turning her into… or teaching her to…”

He looked away. “You know what I mean.”

His father sighed and nodded, the ease of the moment before fading from his face.

“I just wish I’d tried to bring her with me. To… keep her from that or whatever.”

Victor was quiet for a moment. “We still could.”

Cole glanced up. A strange look of consideration was in his father’s eyes, but at Cole’s expression, sympathy took its place.

“I told you,” Victor said. “We’ve wanted to find Ashley and her sister for years. You’re not asking us to do anything we haven’t tried already. After all, these are the girls who can help us end the war.”

Cole nodded.

“Even if,” Victor continued carefully, the considering look creeping back into his eyes, “it won’t necessarily be that simple anymore.”

His father’s eyebrow climbed pointedly.

Cole looked away again.

And that was the problem, and the realization that, when it finally came to him last night, he’d wanted to do anything but entertain. Sending Brogan’s people after Ashe wasn’t a bloodless proposition. They couldn’t just go in there and ask nicely for Lily to come back to Chaunessy. They’d have to use force. They’d have to start a fight.

And against Ashe, with her little sister at stake, there was no chance that would go well.

“We can try to separate her from the girl?” Victor offered. “Perhaps wait for a time when they’re not together–”

“They’re always together.”

His father’s mouth tightened. “And thus trying to separate them means–”

“I know.” He didn’t look back for all that he could feel his dad watching him. “Ashe might die.”

The words were distant, and so much colder than he felt, and when he glanced up, he saw his father’s eyes narrow with curiosity in response.

“If she will not surrender and it’s the only way to save Lily,” Victor allowed. “Yes.”

Cole’s gaze returned to the floor. He knew she wouldn’t.

“Are you okay with that?”

A scoff escaped him. Okay? He was the farthest thing from, considering he was having a conversation he’d never planned on having in his life.

They were discussing the possibility of someone’s death. And not just that, but someone he’d tried desperately to help. Someone whose life he’d nearly died trying to save. She’d just seemed like a kid. Practically his own age, yes, but that night at the farm, she’d looked just like a scared child, fighting to hang on while her world fell down.

He felt like breaking something and his stomach wouldn’t stop churning. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t. That girl had been gone for a long time, if she’d ever existed at all.

And the present was what they had to deal with now.

“We have to save Lily,” he answered tightly, struggling to focus on the words and ignore the way his stomach kept trying to rise.

His father nodded compassionately. “Whatever the cost.”

Cole couldn’t respond.

“If it helps,” Victor said. “I promise we won’t go into this trying to kill Ashley. We’ll do everything in our power to avoid it. After all, if we can separate Lily from her sister without Ashley’s death, having the girl with us will likely make the queen willing to listen to what we have to say. Perhaps even to cooperate with us, in the end. We want to negotiate for peace, Cole. Bloodshed has always been our last resort.”

He swallowed, working to be comforted by the words.

“Do you know how many people Ashley keeps around her?” his father continued.

Cole drew a breath. This was part of it too. Just, thankfully, the one that was less hard.

The people with her were bastards. At a minimum, they’d supported Ashe’s brutality. More likely, they’d taught it to her in the first place. If anyone was to blame for this, chances were it was them.

He owed them nothing. Nothing at all.

“Only three wizards, last time I saw,” he said. “Nathaniel, Elias and Cornelius. Nathaniel’s a big guy, some kind of bodyguard who could probably give Brogan a run for his money, and the other two used to be on the Merlin council. I can give you descriptions, if you want. There was a woman with them for a while. Katherine, Elias’ wife. Looks like some crazy schoolteacher. Whole bunch of guards and other wizards were running around as well, but those first three were the only ones Ashe kept close.”

“Probably the ones who support what she’s become the most.”

He gave a dry laugh at his father’s ability to read his mind.

“We can get descriptions when our people are ready to head out,” Victor continued. “But in the meantime, do you know where they would have gone?”

“No,” he admitted. “But I overheard Cornelius say he had some safe houses in the south, so they may stay in that area.”

His father nodded. “Then we’ll start there.”

Cole echoed the motion and then looked away, the resolution of the moment before fading into the cold reality of what might happen.

Seconds drifted by.

“I should go tell the others then,” Victor said, rising to his feet.

Cole glanced up, and his stomach clenched at the pride in his father’s eyes.

“For what it’s worth,” his dad said. “You’re doing the right thing. Unpleasant as the possibilities may be… this needs to come to an end.”

He watched as his father climbed the short steps to the main living room floor.

“And it’ll be good for her that you’re here,” Victor added optimistically. “Lily, I mean. We’ll do all we can to keep her from seeing if things go badly. But no matter what, even if you’re not her family or a wizard, you’re still a familiar face. You’ll be a tremendous help to her in understanding this as time goes on.”

His father smiled and then left the room.

The door closed.

Cole didn’t leave the chair.

And that was the other part. The one that couldn’t possibly be more hard.

Lily’d know. The moment she got here… the moment she saw him in the company of the ‘bad men’ who’d just dragged her away from her sister…

Her dead sister.

His imagination tossed up images before he could stop it and his stomach lurched with the result.

Lily would know.

And she’d never forgive him.

He shoved away from the couch, his feet carrying him around the glass table as though it would get him anywhere.

There wasn’t another option. They had to go after Lily, and Ashe had chosen what she’d become. He couldn’t let her turn her sister into the same thing. And Ashe getting hurt wasn’t inevitable. His father said they wouldn’t go into this trying to kill her. They didn’t even
want
to kill her. Bloodshed was their last resort.

Though it might be the only way…

The white walls stared back at him, cold and unsympathetic, and everything around him suddenly felt so stupid when people only a few floors away were prepping for the possibility of being forced to kill a girl his own age. And he’d have to explain to her eight-year-old sister why. He’d have to help her understand the death of the only family she had left in the world.

Because it’d been the only way.

His feet hit the steps and then he was across the room, unable to stand the silence and the lack of distraction any longer. He didn’t have to like it. He didn’t even have to tolerate it. But they had to save Lily.

Dear God, he wanted another way.

The guards looked up in alarm as he threw open the door. He ignored them, heading down the hall without the least destination in mind. The elevator didn’t answer his call and after a few heartbeats, he abandoned it for the stairs.

Motion helped. It kept him from thinking about what he was running from.

He stopped at a random floor and bolted past the exit. People filled the hallway and stared at him in shock as he passed, and every one of their gazes seemed to ask him why.

Why he’d agreed to this. Why he couldn’t have come up with something…

Anything…

He darted down a service stairway, escaping their scrutiny.

The floor below was better. Quieter, although that swiftly began to lose its appeal. Noise was better than anything, though if it could have not had people in it, that would have been even nicer. But the empty, gray hallway was anything but distracting.

A door opened behind him. He spun.

“Oh, hey,” Harris said, pausing halfway out of what appeared to be a makeshift bedroom. “What’re you doing down here?”

Cole froze, wanting to flee though there was nowhere to go.

Harris’ brow furrowed at his silence. “Cole?”

“Uh…” He glanced down the hall. Blank doors lined either side, and short of running from the man, there wasn’t anything to do but answer the question. “I needed some air.”

Harris’ skepticism didn’t fade. “You alright?”

An incredulous laugh threatened to escape him. Seeming to read the impulse, Harris paused and then shut the door behind him.

“There’s some chairs around the corner,” he offered. “Nice view. Good place to think. I was just heading there, if you’d care to join me?”

Cole eyed him, knowing the latter words had to be a lie. The man had been starting in the opposite direction when he’d come out the door. But he found himself turning to go back down the hall anyway.

Two armchairs and a small pedestal table stood in an alcove at the end of the next hall, framed by plants so green they could only be artificial. Tall windows ran to the ceiling in front of them, looking out on the city and the bright blue sky.

Grabbing the leftmost chair, Harris moved it for a better view and then sat down.

Cole watched him, but the man never glanced his way. Warily, he took the opposite chair.

Silence filled the hall. Outside the window, a flock of birds spun through the sky.

“Not quite Monfort, is it?” Harris commented.

Cole looked over at him. The man’s gaze remained on the window.

“No,” he answered, returning to the view of the city.

Seconds slid past, and the clouds and mirrored sides of the skyscrapers did nothing to help clear his mind.

“You weren’t coming down here to think,” Cole said finally, the silence wearing thin.

Harris glanced to him askance. “And this is the last place to look for much air.”

Cole exhaled and pushed the chair back to leave. He didn’t need this right now.

“Does she have the little girl with her?” Harris asked, his voice hard.

Halfway out of his seat, Cole paused. “What’s it to you?”

Harris scoffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to see one of the only innocents left in this situation get blown up in the crossfire.” He grimaced. “Listen, whatever your history is with Ashley, you still seemed to be looking out for her sister so, like it or not, you’ve got a responsibility to the kid now.”

Cole didn’t move.

Exasperation flickered over Harris’ face. “Come on, Cole. Help me help her, alright?”

Carefully, he eased back into the chair, not taking his eyes from the detective. “What’re you going to do?”

“Well, that’s partly up to you. Right now, you’re the best chance I’ve got at information, since besides you, me and Mud, everyone else who’s seen that girl is either on her side or dead.”

“Mud?”

“Little guy. Looks like a walking advertisement for the necessity of basic hygiene. Barely made it out of Ashley’s rampage against cripples and anyone else she felt like killing.”

Cole swallowed, feeling shaken for all that Harris’ words didn’t confirm anything he hadn’t already been told. “Did Ashe really set your partner on fire?”

Harris’ face hardened and Cole suddenly found himself stifling a shudder at the look in the man’s eyes. “Scott’s in physical therapy. He hopes he’ll get the okay for a part-time desk job with the department soon. If he’s lucky, that is, and the rest of the office thinks they can stand the sight of his scars.”