Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (48 page)

And in the center of the concrete expanse, over a hundred people stood, eyeing the guards and casting furtive glances to her as though waiting for the moment when she’d try to kill them all.

“Whoa, this is weird,” Cole said, coming to a stop behind her.

Spider glanced back, tense agreement in her eyes. “I’m assuming you did this?” she asked Ashe.

Walking up next to her, Ashe couldn’t respond. Everyone looked the same. As human as Harris. As unremarkable as the Blood had appeared to be. The instant recognition of Merlin and Taliesin and cripple was gone, leaving nothing to differentiate them from any of the ordinary people strolling obliviously past on the sidewalk.

“All wizards once,” Thelma murmured.

She looked back. By the doorway, Thelma smiled.

“So,” Elias began uncomfortably. “We’re pretty certain these are all allies of–”

“They are.”

Spider’s voice was flat and tight, and when the others glanced to her, the girl didn’t take her eyes from the park.

Irritation flickered across Elias’ face. “How do you–”

“Get away from me!”

Ashe turned.

In the lobby, Tanya stood, a disappearing portal and a little girl both at her back. Guards circled the woman, and sparks flew from their defenses as Tanya threw bursts of magic to hold them at bay.

“Well,” Elias commented, watching her. “Guess we know who sold us out.” He paused. “Again.”

“She was upstairs with Jamison,” Ashe said quietly.

“Put her with the others,” Cornelius called to the guards.

Tanya’s eyes went wide and her gaze snapped over, spotting them beyond the glass door.

Magic raced from the woman.

And died as it passed Cole.

Ashe blinked. Her attempt to intercept the attack faded as the guards snagged Tanya and shoved her to the ground. Distractedly, she took the woman’s magic, ignoring the shriek it elicited from Tanya, and turned to Cole.

He looked as confused as she felt.

“Bastards!” Tanya shouted, struggling in the guards’ grip. “You killed him!”

The woman choked as the guards hauled her up from the tile. Muscling her forward, they headed for the door, one of them bringing the little girl behind.

“I’ll make you pay,” Tanya snarled as she came closer. “I know what you had planned for us. How the king wanted to have us killed and how his guards murdered Howard that night for showing the Blood how to find them first. I know
everything
, and I will see you burn in hell before you lay a hand on my daughter!”

Ashe’s brow furrowed. “What?” she asked, glancing to Elias.

“Just get her out of here,” he sighed tiredly, motioning to the guards.

Holding Tanya, the guards started forward, only to come to a stop as Thelma wandered into the doorway. “A friend came with the bad firemen?” the old woman asked.

Thelma looked between Tanya and her daughter in confusion, and then she paused, cocking her head.

“Dead man by the road,” she said slowly, studying the child. “Glasses. Heavy. Her eyes.”

She blinked at Tanya. “Never came near the farm. I went out when the Jabberwockies left and I saw him… saw him lying by the roadside. Bullet in his back and hands all clawed up with dirt like he’d tried to crawl away.” She paused. “Had to hide as the firemen came to drag him back when they were burning the house down.”

Tanya stared. “No,” she whimpered. “No, that’s not true. They–”

“Get her out of here already,” Elias ordered the guards.

Ashe came over, taking Thelma’s arm. The old woman blinked again, and then obediently followed her aside.

“No,” Tanya said again. With her gaze locked unseeing on the ground, she kept repeating the word as she stumbled after the guards.

“There’s not a chance…” Ashe started, looking to Cornelius and Elias.

“Your father valued the Bartlow family’s safety almost as much as your own,” Cornelius replied. “No.”

Ashe exhaled. Her gaze returned to Cole.

The confusion on his face hadn’t changed.

“Yeah,” Elias said, reading the young man’s expression. “About that.” He glanced over as Spider came closer. “Guards figured that out real quick a few minutes ago. One second they were covering your friends here on a retreat from the Taliesin, and the next…”

“It appeared magic could no longer touch them or those they were near.” Cornelius supplied into the pause. “Magic intended for harm, in any case.” He hesitated. “We are not certain what this development entails.”

Spider scoffed. “Says the guy suddenly glowing like a damn Christmas tree.”

Cornelius eyed her. “Or that as well,” he acknowledged.

Ashe glanced between them, but no one seemed to want to continue. “Well, um,” she said to Cole awkwardly. “Thanks for that.”

He seemed at a loss. “Anytime.”

She paused. Clearly uncomfortable, Cole turned back toward the park and after a heartbeat, she followed his gaze.

“So, your majesty,” Spider said dryly. “Now what?”

For a moment, Ashe didn’t respond, her eyes on the people filling the park beneath the shifting colors of the setting sun.

“Now,” she answered. “We end the war.”

Three Months Later

“The worst was one called Penguin Rally,” Lily said.

“Penguin Rally,” Ashe repeated.

The little girl nodded. “You had to race these really ugly penguins around this ice-rink thing, and Travis kept insisting I play it because then he could tell his Aunt Mauve he’d gotten to the end. He even emailed Cole last week wanting to know if I could remember a certain part, because his five-year-old cousin wouldn’t stop asking about it.”

Ashe laughed as she pushed aside a low-hanging tree branch. The ice on the wood melted at her touch, sending fat drops of water down into the snowbank below.

“And you had to do this for how long?”

“Like a month!” Lily replied incredulously, and then she paused, amending the statement. “Well, I mean, not every day. I did get to make some stuff while I was there. Not like I did at Sue and Ben’s, though. They had so much stuff for making things. Craft paper and beads and yarn like she used in that blanket she sent. You liked that one, right? I thought it was so pretty.”

Ashe nodded, but Lily had already moved on to talking about their plans to visit the Summers’ farm. Clambering over a snow-covered log, the little girl continued down the path through the trees.

She shook her head in amusement. No matter what was happening, no matter how busy they became, she always tried to make it back to spend some time with Lily. It helped that the joint headquarters for all the wizards had been placed in a city not too far from their new home, and that with their stronger powers, the wizards had discovered they could push the distances of portals farther than before. So far, she’d managed not to miss a day, even if sometimes she had to resort to playing the trump card of the whole queen thing.

Life had become so different since the end of the war. Politics now dominated everything, and demanded balancing acts that sometimes even Elias and Cornelius couldn’t believe. Half the Merlin still wanted the council to speak for her, while the rest wanted each former member removed. The Taliesin were much the same, despite Brentworth’s agreement to acknowledge Cole as heir to the throne, though they had the added trouble of some among their number who still believed the Blood had been right all along. Maintaining the peace process was hard, especially in light of those who’d rather do anything but compromise, and it had swiftly become a full-time job that, if they weren’t careful, would perpetually keep her and Cole away from home.

It made them both crazy, even if she knew he was as grateful as her that they’d at least reached the point where their people were talking, rather than just trying to kill each other all the time. And though they technically represented what most continued to view as different sides, it was still a relief to be able to come home and vent about the stupidities they both perceived.

There’d never really been a discussion of the three of them not staying together. Lily wouldn’t hear of leaving Cole now that, like them, his family was gone. Within a week of the war’s end, they’d moved to the manor in rural upstate New York that, along with the rest of Jamison’s property, now belonged to his son. It’d been hard for her, at first, to stay where the man who killed her family had lived, but with the constant flow of wizards coming and going and the pressure of day-to-day needs from all sides, the discomfort was slowly beginning to dissipate and just leave the place feeling like home.

Overall, she had to admit the changes had mostly been for the better – not counting the politics and nonsense that seemed to accompany it. The threat of the ferals had vanished overnight, owing to the fact their prey could not only spot them a mile off, but had become magically impervious to boot. Those who could be identified had been taken into custody, and plans were in the works to try them according to the laws that existed before the war. And of the rest still out there, the advantages of seriously considering a new lifestyle seemed to be quickly sinking in.

For their part, the former cripples kept their distance from the wizards, though Spider and Bus had still been by to see her plenty of times. Their work kept them both busy, as most of their efforts now were focused on setting up shelters where their own people could come and start rebuilding their lives after the war. Nothing much identified the buildings beyond the symbol of Bus’ own creation that he said meant ‘nice place, bring food’, but when they’d last stopped by, they’d told her they already had twenty such locations throughout the country, mostly courtesy of the network Carter had built. And although they still tended to go silent whenever someone else walked into the room, they didn’t let their feelings toward the majority of wizards stop them from helping her from time to time. Two months back, they’d uncovered the Blood, Isabella, hiding in a five-star hotel in San Francisco, and every few weeks seemed to bring another short phone call to tell her where more troublemakers could be found.

Thelma had been given a new home in the care of some of Katherine’s best healers, and gradually, she was rediscovering life among her own. She still clung to her cats – though most of the wizards had taken to owning a pet or two, simply for the novelty – and occasionally drifted into talking about the distant past like everyone else had been there, but she was steadily becoming a favorite of the historically inclined on both of the former sides, and was loving every minute of the attention.

Harris had moved into an apartment not too far from the manor and spent most of his time flying around the country, helping Cole piece together his father’s empire and locate the money Brogan had hidden away. The detective had only returned to Utah once, owing to difficulties with his department about which he’d never really gone into detail, but after the short trip with Katherine, a weight seemed to leave him, and lately he’d looked more at peace than she’d ever seen.

“I can still bring back a few of Butterscotch’s new kittens, right?” Lily asked.

Ashe blinked, the question pulling her from her thoughts. “Yeah, Cole’s already warned the pilot he’ll be taking them back for us on the plane.”

“Cool,” Lily said, her lips twitching with an excited grin.

She buried a smile as the girl kept walking. It’d been a good three months, despite the stress of working out some new issue between the wizards every day. And if negotiations and politics were the worst things she ever had to deal with again, there was no way she’d claim to be anything but happy.

The trees parted as the path came to an end, leaving them on the broad swath of grassland leading to their home.

“So where to tomorrow?” Lily prompted.

Ashe smothered a chuckle. Miles of forest and hills surrounded the sprawling manor, and she was developing the sneaking suspicion that Lily planned to explore every inch of them.

“There’s the path south of the conservatory that we haven’t tried yet,” she offered.

“Perfect! But can we start early? I think I saw a family of deer not far from–”

A crash from the house brought them up short. The door to the patio flew open and Cole raced out, his feet skidding on the ice and snow.

His eyes swept the yard and then went wide at the sight of them.

“He lied!” Cole yelled.

Ashe didn’t move, her shields dropping cautiously. Behind her, Lily began to squirm in her grip.

“What?” she shouted back.

He didn’t answer as he rushed down the steps. “Come on!” he called, waving an arm at them.

With an uncomfortable noise, Lily broke out of her grasp and started through the snow.

Warily, Ashe followed. “What’s going on?”

“Nathaniel and Gavin are waiting at the portal,” he replied, taking Lily’s hand and hurrying back into the house. “I’ll explain when we get there.”

Brow drawing down, she continued after him. “Get where?”

He didn’t respond. Swiftly, he helped Lily out of her winter coat and tossed it aside, and then turned, catching himself as if suddenly recalling that her sister rarely bothered to use one.

“Cole, seriously,” Ashe stated flatly.

“Come on,” he said again.

She followed him to the portal. Nathaniel and Gavin bowed at the sight of them, half a dozen of the royal guard at their side.

“The doctor has been told to expect you,” Nathaniel said to Cole.

She looked up in alarm, but the wizard didn’t say anything more as he headed into the portal. Exasperatedly, she went through after him.

Light and sound blurred, depositing them in city after city. Gavin and Nathaniel traded off, creating portals as the other stood guard, until finally they stepped out onto a sidewalk beneath a cloudless blue sky.

“Cole, where the hell are we?” Ashe asked, eyeing the palm trees swaying in the faintly salty breeze.

“San Diego.”

Without another word, he started across the street, heading for a white mission-style building. An archway stood before the entrance, with gold letters glinting in the sunlight.

Her brow drew down at the words and she glanced to Cole. He seemed as tense as she’d ever seen him.