Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (25 page)

Florence chuckled derisively. “Most historians worthy of note consider stories of Merlin
requiring
something of this nature to be roughly on par with eternal life spells and magical cripples.” She laughed merrily and turned back to him. “Children’s stories and fairytales. It’s all very amusing, really. At least, to the educated community. I’m certain the canaille find such possibilities
fascinating
.”

Silence fell as she finished, growing more awkward by the second. He made a noise more cough than chuckle and shifted uncomfortably. “Uh, right.”

She gave him an approving smile. “Now,” she concluded. “That is undoubtedly enough for you to digest in one day, so perhaps this would be a good time to return you to your room. Though,” she hesitated thoughtfully. “I suppose sending a book or two with you couldn’t hurt. If you feel ready…?”

Eyebrow raised, she waited for his answer.

“Um, sure,” he said, using another uncertain look to cover a glance at the yard. Alfred was out there now. The man seemed to be reaming the guards for something.

Ignoring his hesitancy, Florence turned to the shelves. “Perhaps something easy to–”

Cole flinched hard as a crash from the kitchen brought her up short. Startled, Florence blinked at the sound of shattering glass.

“Louise!” she shouted. When no answer came, she darted a glance to Cole and made an impatient motion. “Stay here. Don’t let the human touch anything.”

Without waiting for a response, she rushed off, yelling for the other woman as she went.

Lily made a disgusted noise.

“Yeah,” Cole agreed absently.

He looked back to the yard. Geoffrey was approaching from the forest. At his shout, Alfred left off berating the cousins and turned. The dark-eyed wizard held up a broken camera. Red-faced with rage, Alfred spun back to the others, motioning sharply for them to return to guard duty and then rolling his eyes as they rushed away.

Cole exhaled, his heartbeat slowing. Ben hadn’t come looking, then. Or something else hadn’t happened to jeopardize Lily’s safety. Hopefully, anyway. Running a hand over his hair, he turned back to the parlor, wracking his brain for what to do. With the wizards back on duty, Florence determined to send them upstairs, and alarms on every damn window and door…

From the corner of his eye, he could see Lily regarding the room. Tossing a scathing glance to the kitchens, the little girl reached out, deliberately laying a fingertip on the staff.

White-blue light fluoresced between the twists of wood, casting sharp shadows from everything else in the case. Gasping, Lily jerked backwards.

The light vanished.

Cole stared as, wide-eyed, the little girl looked to him.

“I swear, that woman gets stupider every day,” Florence announced as she strode back into the room. “How difficult is it to polish crystal? I mean, honestly?”

With an aggrieved sigh, she pushed the irritation from her expression. “Now, which book should we choose for you?”

Raising a narrow finger, she perused the shelves, conversing with herself quietly as she considered the options.

“Uh…” Cole said, tearing his gaze from Lily. “So the staff. It really only does anything for the, um, royal family?”

She glanced back at him suspiciously. “I told you that.”

“No, yeah, I know,” he recovered quickly. “I’m just surprised. I didn’t know magic could do that.”

Her suspicion fading, she nodded. “Wizards have been tying magic to one thing or another for millennia. In the staff’s case, it would glow in the hands of the royal family, but remained inert for others. Quite theatrical, really,” she added. “Another point to its disadvantage.”

The parlor doors swung open and Geoffrey entered, only to come to a stop at the sight of Lily and Cole. “What are they doing down here?” he demanded of Florence.

“One of your dear cousins obviously let the boy and his pet slip past their guard,” the woman replied, still examining the books. “I found him here, studying the artifacts.”

Geoffrey’s gaze slid glacially over to Cole. “Studying,” he repeated flatly.

“Even cripples are capable of appreciating history, Geoffrey,” Florence admonished with a pointed glance over her shoulder. “To the best of their ability, anyway.”

Her son didn’t answer, and with a sniff she returned to the books, only to make a pleased noise a moment later. “This should do nicely,” she announced.

Turning, she presented Cole with a leather-bound book. Distractedly, he glanced down, catching sight of the words, ‘A Merlin Primer: Being a History of True Wizardry’ embossed in gold on the cover.

He felt nauseated.

“That should be a good starting point. This edition dates from the early eighteenth century, but we have three copies, so I’m willing to let you borrow it for a short time. But if I see so much as a scratch on that leather or a crease I don’t recognize, we’re restricting you to reproductions, understand?”

“Yeah,” he managed, taking the book.

“I’ll have someone bring you a genealogy of the royal family once I find one that won’t be too difficult for you to understand. The more detailed accounts …” She shook her head pityingly.

Swallowing, he struggled to keep his gaze from straying back to Lily. “Sure.”

Florence glanced to Geoffrey. “Would you mind escorting him back? Your aunt has mussed the cleaning again.” She started to leave, and then caught herself. “Oh, and install some additional security measures around his room. He may well prove redeemable, given his desire to learn, but with a human in the house, we can’t be too careful.”

Geoffrey watched as she walked out of the parlor. “Move,” he growled to Cole.

One hand clutching the ridiculous book and the other holding Lily, Cole gave a last glance to the wizards outside and then turned, trying not to swear as he headed back through the house with Geoffrey stalking his heels. Halfway to the fifth floor, they met the cousin rushing down toward them. At the sight of Geoffrey, the man paled.

“I-I just needed to use the–” the man started.

“Shut it,” Geoffrey snapped. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.”

Awkwardly, the cousin let them pass, and Cole could feel the man’s gaze on their backs as they continued up the stairway. At the storage room, Geoffrey stepped aside, eyeing them as they walked in.

“Stay,” he snarled.

And then he slammed the door.

“Cole…” Lily started worriedly.

“Shh,” he hissed. Crossing to the door, he leaned close, listening. Down the hall, Geoffrey was snarling at the cousin, his words mostly indistinguishable, though several shouted obscenities were abundantly clear.

Cole glanced back at the girl. Looking terribly small in the center of the crates, she watched him nervously, the deific painting of Merlin hanging behind her.

“Your dad’s name was Patrick,” he asked, fairly certain of the answer. “Wasn’t it?”

She looked away.

Slowly, he exhaled and then walked the few steps back to the nearest crate, where he sank down. Giving a brief look to the book in his hands, he set it aside and motioned to the girl. She came over and sat next to him.

“It just keeps getting more complicated, doesn’t it?” he said.

She nodded.

He glanced up as, on the other side of the door, someone began driving bolts into the frame. Part of their defense against having a human in the house, probably.

Cole closed his eyes.

“What happens now?” Lily asked.

He looked over. Uncertainty radiating from her, she didn’t meet his eyes.

“We’re still getting out of here,” he said, actively ignoring the noises from the opposite side of the door.

Lily’s brow furrowed, and he realized that wasn’t what she’d been asking.

“Nothing’s changed,” he told her.

He put an arm around her shoulders. After a moment’s hesitation, she leaned against his side.

“So how’s it feel to find out you’re royalty?” he asked in a feeble attempt at humor.

His weak smile died at the look she gave him. “Yeah,” he agreed. “Same here.”

A headache surged and then faded as they activated whatever alarms they’d placed on the doorframe. Lily shifted uncomfortably.

Cole didn’t take his gaze from the door. Obstacles upon obstacles, and complicated didn’t cover it. He had no weapons, and she was just a kid.

A kid with magic. A kid who might kill him if she lost control.

And yet, when the staff burst to life at her touch, there’d been nothing. No pain. Nothing but a vague sense of ‘otherness’ occurring, which he’d barely registered amid his shock.

He grimaced, cursing himself for even allowing thoughts like this in his head. She was eight years old. She’d die going up against these bastards. Their little display when he and Lily had first driven onto their property was more than enough of an object lesson in how they treated a perceived threat.

He pulled his gaze from the door. Something would change. He’d get them out of here. And he’d do it without using a little kid as a weapon.

Somehow.

*****

“Your highness?”

Ashe sighed, closing her eyes. The mid-afternoon sun streamed through the windows, unfettered by the curtains lying in heaps of moldy fabric on the floor, and lit upon the white outlines nearby. Flaking blood splatters dotted the shattered dishware and stained the grimy carpet brown. Bullet holes peppered the walls for good measure, piercing wallpaper that had long since surrendered its color to the years.

It was the third crime scene today. And except for the position of the outlines and the general décor, each one had been exactly the same.

She turned, expressionless, and strode past Elias as she left the room. Wordlessly, Nathaniel pulled the police tape aside, letting her pass.

The breeze felt good on her face, though she could sense the tension in the others as she stepped into the open. Darius’ forces might see her. Or the inordinate amount of Taliesin roaming the area would finally spot them. They’d been avoiding both all day, taking portals from one part of the city to the next, hoping to stay a step ahead of everyone looking for them.

It was Elias’ idea. Hiding. Running. And she knew he was aware that, on some level, she was just playing along.

She exhaled slowly and then glanced back as a group of teenage boys came out of the building door. Laughing and joking, they jogged down the steps, moving unconsciously around the girl standing in the center of the stairway.

Ashe watched them as they disappeared around the street corner. Not Blood then. Or humans trying to kill them.

Probably not, anyway.

As the heat around her faded, she ran a hand through her hair and turned back toward the door, though her gaze just caught on the sigils hidden in the graffiti on the building’s side. A pang of guilt hit her. When she first spotted them, she hadn’t recognized the names mixed in with the markers denoting the apartment as a hiding place, and now that she’d seen the inside, she hated the fact her lack of recognition made her grateful.

It didn’t matter if she hadn’t known the people who died here. Someone had.

With every attempt at casualness, she dropped her gaze away, hoping the wizards hadn’t noticed her pause. They didn’t know why she was choosing certain buildings over others, and though her unerring ability to find the abandoned crime scenes was leaving them blatantly skeptical, she was determined to keep them in the dark as long as she could.

Just in case.

“Where to?” Elias asked as he came down the stairs. “Somewhere out of sight, I hope?”

She pretended not to hear the annoyance in his voice, or see the disapproval behind Nathaniel’s expressionless stare. The large man’s stoic gaze at nothing should have sent the thin air running in fear, and the fact he knew she didn’t care what the wizards thought right now just made the look more intense.

“Back up top.”

“He’ll be expecting that.”

“Fine.”

Elias scowled and then buried the expression with obvious difficulty. With a cursory nod, he turned to the doorway. A heartbeat later, she followed him through the portal, ignoring Nathaniel’s impassive attempts at killing the air.

Wind tugged at her as she stepped onto the rooftop. A few yards away, a low concrete barrier separated the gritty surface of the roof from the sky. The sound of traffic rose from over twenty stories below, fading each time the breeze picked up speed.

Without pause, she crossed to the barrier and scanned the streets. By and large, the wizards stuck to nighttime hours when they wanted to move around; even for them, the darkness made it easier to hide. But the rule wasn’t hard and fast, and while the sense of otherness around wizards was impossible to detect at this distance, spotting a person no one else seemed to see wasn’t as difficult. Humans had a way of steering clear of her kind. To some degree, that avoidance was better than radar.

She tensed, her gaze locking on a man strolling down the street. Without breaking their conversation, two women stepped around him, barely seeming to notice he’d gone past. She started to call Elias, and then stopped. The man tripped on the smooth sidewalk and stumbled sideways, catching himself on a light pole. Waving his hand at the pavement, he launched into a tirade, while the two women looked back, their avoidance obviously intentional all along.

Closing her eyes, she sighed. Another homeless lunatic. Probably, anyway. She contemplated going back down to street level to check, but abandoned the idea as pointless. Of the few she’d seen, they’d all turned out to be human, and it wasn’t like Elias’ patience was going to last forever. Even among the wizards they’d spotted in the crowds, not a single one looked human when she and the others reached the ground.

Wherever the Blood were hiding, it certainly wasn’t Croftsburg.

Opening her eyes, Ashe grimaced at the street. Katherine’s questioning of Harris hadn’t turned up anything beyond the admission that Brogan was alive. The detective didn’t know where the wizard was, or what he would do now. The wizard’s cohorts were also a mystery to Harris, as was nearly everything to do with the war. He didn’t care about them or Taliesin. He just wanted to stop Ashley and anyone on her side.