Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (31 page)

“You too,” Spider told her as she put her backpack in the pickup, nothing but polite sincerity in her tone.

Ashe managed a smile and then climbed into the back seat.

“And if you need extra time, don’t worry, alright?” the woman continued as Cole shut the door. “Don’t stress yourselves to hurry back on our account. We’d rather you be safe.”

He nodded. “Thank you.”

The engine turned over easily, and in the front seat, Lily swiftly buckled herself in.

“So when
are
we coming back?” the little girl asked as they pulled away from the house.

No one answered as the truck turned onto the road.

*****

“And the southern contingent?” Jamison asked.

“We’ve had run-ins with Merlin in Banston and the surrounding area, sir,” Simeon replied. “Including at several locations we believe they were using as hiding places. From what we can tell of their movements, they appear to be searching the city as much as we are.” The man paused. “But no. Nothing on the Children or Cole.”

From his position by the bookcase on the far side of the office, Brogan watched Jamison look away.

“Have any been taken alive?” Jamison asked.

Simeon hesitated. “Not yet, sir. The Taliesin seem to have an opposition to–”

In his pocket, Brogan’s phone buzzed. Turning from the attempted explanation, he drew the cell out and eyed the unfamiliar number.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Mr. Brogan? This is Wally. From Washington? Remember, we talked back–”

“I remember, Mr. Dodd. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call?”

Across the room, the king ordered Simeon into silence.

“Uh, yeah,” Wally said. “You remember how you asked me to call if I saw those kids again? The ones staying with Redmond?”

Brogan waited, but nothing more came. “Yes?”

“Right. Well, uh, they were just here. At the farm, I mean. The Summers’ farm? In Washington?”

It took actual effort to keep the tired note from his tone. “I remember, Mr. Dodd. Please continue.”

“Yeah. They were here. A guy and a kid who looked just like the descriptions you gave. Had two others with ‘em too. Blonde chick, looked like she might be a gangbanger or one of them Rasta people you hear about, and then a black-haired girl.”

Brogan’s eyebrow twitched up. The queen and her sister were possibly on their own, save for a single guard? Matters for the Merlin were worse than he’d thought.

He glanced to the king, covering the mouthpiece of the cell. “Washington,” he relayed quietly. “Cole, the Children, and only one bodyguard.”

Jamison turned to Simeon. “Plane. Now.”

“Uh, Mr. Brogan? You still there?”

Releasing the mouthpiece, Brogan returned to the call as behind him, Simeon dialed the aircrew for the late council’s private jet. “Of course. So no one else was with them?”

He could almost hear Wally shaking his head in response, for all that the man was on the other end of a phone. “Uh, nope. No one else.”

“And where did they go?”

“Headed for the highway about five minutes ago.”

“The highway.”

“Uh-huh.”

Brogan waited. “Do you have any more
specific
information, Mr. Dodd?”

“Yeah, sure. They were in a red Chevy Silverado. Crew cab, chrome bumper with standard wheels and a small dent on the right rear fender. Oh, and Washington plates too. Number three-three-something. Seven, maybe. Or four.”

“Is that all?”

“Uh…” the man drawled helplessly. “The blonde girl did mention something about a crazy old lady. Or something a crazy old lady said.” Wally hesitated. “You know, the highway’s only about twenty miles from here and if you hurry you could probably–”

Brogan hung up. For a heartbeat, he paused, and then turned back to face the room.

The king was watching him.

“Simeon,” Brogan said.

The gray-haired man told the person on the other end of the line to hold on.

“There was an old woman… mentally unstable… associated with the Children…”

“The neighbor in Montana,” Simeon confirmed with a nod.

Brogan glanced to the king.

Jamison smiled.

The truck came to a stop and, with more effort than she would have expected it to take, Ashe pulled her gaze from her lap.

Six months hung like decades on the bungalow.

Half the porch railings had fallen, victims of decay or a summer storm, and one of the support posts had cracked, leaving the porch sagging precariously. Cobwebs clung to the surviving rails, and on the house itself, what shutters were still attached dangled wildly askew. Moss-covered shingles littered the ground, and by the base of the house, the wooden screen door moldered among the weeds.

Spider glanced back from the driver’s seat, which she’d taken from Cole the moment they’d lost sight of the Summers’ farm. Wordlessly, Ashe pushed open the door and climbed out.

She could feel the farmhouse like a physical pressure past the rise behind her.

Carefully, she walked toward the bungalow, avoiding the broken steps that had given way an unknown amount of time before. Reaching the weathered door, she drew a breath and then knocked.

A solitary meow answered her.

She swallowed hard.

Seconds crept by. She knocked again.

Nothing changed.

Her lip slipped between her teeth. Gingerly, she reached out and tried the door handle.

The door swung open with a rusty creak.

She flinched as a cat shot past her feet. Bolting down the steps, the animal cut a sharp turn and then vanished through a hole in the crisscross siding that skirted the base of the house, where frantic squeaking rose a heartbeat later. Remembering to breathe, Ashe grimaced at the sound and then turned back to the room beyond the open door.

Old blankets were draped over everything from the worn furniture to the cracking hardwood floor. Tattered sheets covered the windows, dampening the light and leaving the whole space feeling as insulated as a padded room. The stale smell of dust and cat hung in the air, and empty tin cans were scattered across the otherwise barren countertops.

The place could have been abandoned for years and no one would’ve been able to tell the difference.

“Thelma?” she called.

The silence remained.

Her eyes closed briefly, and then she turned from the door.

At the base of the steps, Lily watched her, Cole a few feet behind, while from her place by the truck, Spider just looked away.

And behind them, the countryside spread toward the horizon till it ran headlong into the dark line of trees.

She pulled her gaze back to the porch steps, shivering though it wasn’t cold. Struggling to force as much expression from her face as possible, she headed back down the stairs.

“Spider,” she said. “Could you–”

A rustle of leaves by the bungalow made her turn. From around the corner of the house, a scrawny woman and a sea of cats came into view.

Cole grabbed Lily, shoving her behind him as Spider drew her guns.

“Wait!” Ashe cried.

The girl froze, both weapons trained on the wide-eyed woman clutching a bundle of sticks in her arms.

“It’s okay,” Ashe continued. “This… this is Thelma.”

Spider looked incredulous. “She’s a
Blood
?”

The air froze in Ashe’s lungs.

“Sort of a Blood,” Cole amended warily. “Sort of… like her too.”

He jerked his head in Lily’s direction, though his eyes didn’t leave Thelma. Spider hesitated, her brow twitching as if she couldn’t figure out what she was seeing or why, and then she allowed a careful nod.

Ashe looked back at the old woman. Bark flecked her wild gray hair and her bony fingers were white around the twigs. The months had been as good to her as they’d been to her home, leaving a fog in her eyes thicker than any Ashe had ever seen. Uncomprehending, she stared at them while, oblivious to the standoff, the cats melted through the broken siding to join their counterpart below the house.

Slowly, Ashe exhaled, ordering herself to stay calm. Thelma had lived near her family for almost eight years. And the night the Blood came, the woman had distracted them to give her time to escape.

She couldn’t be one of them, no matter what she looked like.

“Thelma?” she tried.

With eyes too vacant for comfort, the old woman turned toward her.

“Do you remember me?”

Seconds passed. “Ashley?”

Ashe nodded.

A happy smile crept through the uncertainty on Thelma’s face. “Ashley burning bright.”

Ashe’s brow twitched down.

“You found the little flower,” Thelma continued, her smile growing as she looked to Lily.

“That’s right,” Ashe said, forcing herself to stay focused. “And now I need to ask you something, okay?”

“She’s pointing guns at me,” Thelma said, staring at Spider in bewilderment.

Quickly, Ashe motioned for the girl to lower the weapons. Glancing between them, Spider hesitated, and then made the guns vanish beneath her jacket.

“See?” Ashe said. “The guns are gone. Everything’s fine. But I need you to concentrate now.”

Thelma blinked as if she’d already lost track of the thought.

“Do you remember the night…” Ashe grimaced, making herself go on. “The night the firemen came?”

“I didn’t know. I–”

The old woman glanced to Spider and Cole, blushing with apologetic embarrassment.

“I… I know you didn’t,” Ashe said, confusedly following Thelma’s gaze to the others. “But you said something to me. Something about there being three at the beginning. Two others and one who looked like Elvis.”

Her gaze on the mossy shingles beneath her feet, Thelma sighed. “Elvis…”

Ashe paused, feeling every ounce of the absurdity of the question. “Thelma, were you talking about the spell to bind Taliesin? The spell Merlin did in the last war?”

The woman hesitated, a hurt expression moving over her wrinkled face. “I was just trying to help,” she said defensively, and then began to turn away.

“No, no,” Ashe said, stepping forward hurriedly. “I know. I–” She drew a breath, forcing herself slow down and working to ignore her disbelief at the same time. “I know you were. But I need you to tell me again.”

“There were three.”

“Yes. I remember that part. But who were they? Can you tell me that?”

Thelma’s brow furrowed in confusion. “The paladins should know.” She looked over at Spider and Cole. “She even looks like him.”

“Who?” said Spider.

“Elvis,” Thelma replied as though it was obvious.

Ashe saw Spider glance to her incredulously.

“You do,” Thelma insisted. “Like his eyes… and maybe his eyes…”

Spider’s brow rose higher.

“Why should they know?” Ashe pressed.

“They see the differences. Or did. Still do, I guess. At least with the ones they haven’t given the differences to anymore.”

Ashe tried to ignore the incredulity she could feel radiating off the others. “Okay,” she allowed. “But–”

“They’ll help you,” Thelma continued. “They know what it’s going to cost now. And the flower’s here. I would, but with her… it’s why I stayed. Why I looked for you. Didn’t know you’d have her.” The woman’s gaze drifted toward the ground. “Should have said something, though. Would have. It was just so bad last time, and it started to look the same way again, and if it really had been, I just… I couldn’t be sure…”

She trailed off, gazing at the ground mournfully.

Ashe blinked.

“Are you getting any of this?” Spider asked.

Ashe shook her head, watching Thelma mumble to herself. She’d been clutching at straws, coming here. Thinking that a mad old woman, whether or not she apparently looked like the Blood, could possibly have the answers when no one else had managed to find them in five hundred years.

She just didn’t have any other options left.

“Thelma,” she said as the woman nudged a shingle with her mud-covered shoe.

“I wanted to help,” the old woman responded firmly, as though someone had asked.

“You did,” Ashe assured her. “But can you tell me about the spell?”

“What spell?”

A desperate gasp escaped her at the woman’s puzzled expression. “The spell that bound Taliesin. The spell their king broke when he killed my grandfather.”

“Nobody broke any spell.”

“Oh sweet…” she heard Cole mutter behind her.

“They didn’t!” the woman protested. “Fractured, yes. Cracked a bit. But the spell’s not
broken.
Just look at her.”

Ashe couldn’t keep the confusion from her face as the woman gestured to her, losing a few sticks in the process. “What about me?”

Thelma studied her briefly and then turned to Cole, disapproval in her eyes. “You should know better,” she admonished him.

“
What
should he know better?” Spider demanded.

The old woman gave Cole a last glare and then turned to the girl. She went still for a moment and then her brow furrowed. “What happened to your hair?”

“Okay!” Ashe cut in as the woman reached for Spider’s dreadlocks. Drawing a quick breath, she tried to refocus. “How do I fix the spell, then? Put it back?”

Thelma stared as though she’d asked a strange question. “You?”

“Yes.” Ashe said with frustration. “Me.”

“You can’t.”

She could feel something drain from her, and it seemed a lot like hope. “I can’t,” she repeated.

“You can’t fuel the canyon on your own.”

Wondering if this was what a yoyo felt like when it was jerked around, Ashe closed her eyes. “Canyon?”

Thelma nodded. “He always had it. After, I mean. Not before. But after… always after. All around him. All around everyone, though not in the same way.” She shook her head ruefully. “They couldn’t see it like he could. Feel it like he could. And even with his toys to help, nothing was ever really better. The canyon was still there.”

“Who?”

“Merlin.”

Ashe sighed. Merlin and a canyon. She felt a grimace coming onto her face, and then she paused as suddenly, the gibberish clicked.

The abyss. The black void at the edge of her power.