Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (30 page)

She didn’t answer.

“They’re just kids, your majesty,” he continued after a moment. “And if the Blood
are
real, then what we’re asking…”

He paused, glancing up as though uncertain what to do with her age as well.

“Maybe it’s better if they do leave,” he finished uncomfortably.

Silent, she didn’t look away from the door.

Time crept along. Drops of rain slid from her face. Still watching the door, she made no move to wipe them away.

“Come on, your highness,” Elias said.

A heartbeat passed. Closing her eyes, she sighed.

“What’d you expect, your queenness?” Mud offered, making an attempt at sounding consoling. “They’re children. You’re Bloody Queen Ashe. They see things in black and white, and–”

She turned to him, her heart pounding.

His brow furrowed at her expression. “What?” he asked worriedly.

“What did you call me?” she whispered.

He blinked. “What did I… oh! Oh, no, no, no.
I
don’t call you that. It’s just… that’s just… I mean, because of all the–”

“Shut up,” Elias told him.

Mud glanced between her and the wizard apprehensively. “I don’t call you that,” he risked repeating, trying desperately to appear reassuring.

She looked away, her gaze running across the gravel as the title spun through her mind. On the wall, she could hear Mud shifting uncomfortably, and without even looking, she could feel the pressure of Elias’ gaze.

Bloody Queen Ashe.

She closed her eyes.

“Your highness?” Elias said softly.

Not answering, she clenched her hands tighter around the wall’s edge, letting the rough cinder blocks dig into her skin.

The sound of the door unlatching made her open her eyes.

From the shadowed entryway, the red-haired boy emerged. Clutching his arm, the girl followed. Watching the wizards, they edged away from the building out onto the gravel path.

Not taking her eyes from them, Ashe dropped down from the wall. Pushing away from the cinder blocks, Elias joined her, with Nathaniel a half-step behind.

“We want to help,” the girl called timidly. Still clinging to the boy’s side, she stopped as Ashe came closer.

“And the others?” Elias asked.

The girl hesitated. “They took off.”

Ashe tried to stop her face from showing any reaction, and only partly succeeded. Swallowing uncomfortably, she kept her focus on the girl. Up close, the similarity between her and the boy was even more unmistakable.

“What’s your name?” Ashe asked, working to keep her voice emotionless.

Nervously, the girl’s gaze twitched over the wizards. “Crystal,” she said. She nodded toward the boy. “Everybody just calls him Ghost.”

She paused. “You’re that queen, aren’t you?”

Ashe hesitated, at a loss for what to say.

“Her highness, Queen Ashe of Merlin, lately betrayed by some of her council,” Elias supplied. “Yes.”

“I just meant… you’re the one who stayed with the Hunters… the one they said we could trust.”

Feeling sick to her stomach, Ashe fought the urge to turn around and walk – or maybe even run – away.

“B-but you didn’t know?” Crystal persisted, her gaze darting across the wizards as though expecting them to attack.

Not really trusting her voice, Ashe shook her head.

The girl looked at Ghost, meeting his gaze. Her eyebrows twitched up, and his drew down. With a tentative nod to him, she turned back to Ashe.

“We’ll help,” she said. “Both of us. We think… you could have killed us all in there. But you gave them money to get away instead. And you haven’t gone after them. So maybe you’re telling the truth, and maybe…”

She trailed off and then winced as Ghost gave her another insistent look, shaking her arm gently. “Maybe you could help us… me… too.”

His brow drawing down, Elias glanced to Ashe. “With what?” he asked cautiously.

Crystal didn’t respond. His mouth tightening, Ghost looked between the girl and the wizards, and then reached around her and drew up the edge of her dark shirt, exposing her stomach.

Elias swore under his breath. Ashe felt the tiny traces of expression still on her face melt into nothing.

Scraps of old t-shirts wrapped the girl’s midsection, the bandages stained with blood. Past the edges of the worn fabric, the ragged tips of burns and countless shallow gashes could be seen, each of them ringed by the glossy sheen of swollen flesh.

“We couldn’t go to a hospital,” Crystal explained as Ghost lowered her shirt. “They were looking for us, and when they caught June and Case, we just…”

She swallowed. “Will you help us?”

Ashe looked at Elias.

Nathaniel cleared his throat. “Weapons,” he warned succinctly.

For a moment, he met Ashe’s gaze, and then he motioned to the others. The two cripples tensed as a guard came near. Barely breathing, they waited fearfully as the man gently patted them down.

With a nod, the guard stepped away.

Nathaniel bowed his head to her and then returned his gaze to the two kids.

“Can you?” Ashe asked Elias softly. “Without hurting her?”

He hesitated. “Katherine can try,” he said, his voice equally low. “And even if she can’t use magic, she’ll still do something.”

Ashe nodded. “We’ll help in any way we can,” she said to the girl. “I promise.”

Crystal smiled nervously. “Thank you.”

Nodding again distractedly, Ashe looked away. “Call the others,” she told Elias. “Tell them to bring the cars.”

Without waiting for a reply, she headed back for the road, eager to leave the reminders of what Darius and Sebastian had done behind.

*****

The kitchen door swung open.

Ashe didn’t bother looking away from the coffee cup on the table in front of her. By her side, the first traces of dawn filtered beneath the thick curtains.

“Will the girl be alright?” she heard Elias ask.

Katherine sighed. “She’ll be fine. I did what I could to prevent scaring, but the infection is gone.”

“Those sick, twisted…” Elias muttered.

Her hands wrapped around the mug, Ashe watched the creamy liquid quivering inside. They’d been waiting for the better part of an hour, letting Katherine heal Crystal’s wounds while Ghost hovered close by. Mud had taken the opportunity to find more food in Joe’s refrigerators, while Nathaniel sat at a table behind her, surveying the brightening world beyond the edge of the restaurant curtains.

“We should go,” she said to no one in particular.

Silence answered her, and she glanced up.

“The girl needs rest, your highness,” Katherine said. “And quite frankly, that twin brother of hers could use some as well. He was hiding a few wounds of his own.”

“Then we’ll take Mud.”

As if on cue, the kitchen door swung open and, his mouth and hands full of sandwich, Mud shuffled in with a guard on his heels.

Seeing everyone looking at him, he stopped cold. “What?” he asked around the mouthful.

“We’re heading out again,” Ashe said, pushing away from the table.

Swallowing forcibly, he blinked at her. “You sure? I mean, with the kid hurt, maybe we should just stay–”

“You don’t need them to look for Blood wizards.”

“Well, right. I mean, that’s true. It’s just… I’m pretty sure your folks here don’t even believe the Blood exist, and that could be dangerous, so I’m just not certain I feel safe going out there with–”

He cut off as the kitchen door opened. Crystal and Ghost came in, each looking paler but more determined than before.

“I told you to get sleep,” Katherine admonished. She gave a pointed glance to Ghost. “Both of you.”

Crystal didn’t meet her gaze. “We want to help.”

Elias looked to his wife. “You should listen to her,” he told Crystal gently.

“This is important,” the girl said, shaking her head. “And we feel better. Really.”

Not seeming convinced, Elias eyed them briefly and then grimaced. “She sounds like you,” he said to Ashe.

Crystal looked to her in confusion.

Ashe ignored him. “Three teams then?” she asked Nathaniel. “Keep in touch by cell–” she glanced to Elias “–provided you can get us some extras?”

He sighed, and then nodded.

“Well, if that’s the case,” Mud started. “Then I’m going with her queenness because–”

Ashe held up a hand, silencing him as Crystal made a small noise.

“What?” she asked the girl.

Crystal hesitated. “Um…” she glanced to her brother. “He… Ghost doesn’t, uh, talk to anybody but me. He won’t. So we need to go together.”

At the questioning looks, the girl grimaced reluctantly. “It’s fine,” she said, directing the words mostly to Katherine without meeting the woman’s eyes. “It’s not like that. He just… Mom and Dad were wizards, and when the Taliesin found us, they… I was hiding, but he tried to help and they…”

For a moment, she searched for words. “They made him watch,” she finished.

A heartbeat passed.

Ghost turned and left the room.

Crystal made a helpless gesture. “I’m sorry,” she said to them. “I shouldn’t have–”

She hurried after her brother.

“Well, guess they’re not coming then,” Mud interjected cheerfully into the silence. “So it’s just one team… if we’re still going, that is.”

“Shut up,” Ashe said.

Ignoring his confused look, she headed after the two cripples.

Whispering together in a corner of the shadowy kitchen, Crystal and Ghost cut off as the door swung open. Defiance touched the young man’s face as he turned toward her, while Crystal just looked away.

Ashe paused, choosing her words.

“You can still see, can’t you?” she asked him, accusation in her tone.

His eyes narrowed.

“We could use your help.”

Hope showed on Crystal’s face as she glanced at her brother. After a moment, he nodded, still watching Ashe.

Turning, she walked out of the kitchen.

“Two teams,” Ashe said to the others. “And the twins come with me.”

“Hey, now!” Mud protested. “I already said–”

She looked to him flatly.

For less than a heartbeat, frustration showed through his beady eyes. “Fine,” he muttered.

She glanced back as Crystal and Ghost emerged from the kitchen, and then returned her gaze to the others.

“So come on then,” Ashe said. “Let’s go.”

Over the past five days, Cole had determined very few things. One was that he’d have to be Spider-Man for them to escape through the fifth floor window and reach the ground alive. The other was that ‘paranoid’ didn’t even come close to describing the Carnegeans.

The wizards hadn’t let them out for days, except to use the restroom under guard. Within an hour of depositing them back in the storage room, Geoffrey had replaced the solid wooden door with a screen, robbing them of the ability to even whisper without being heard. Whenever food arrived, two cousins watched while the third opened the screen, and both he and Lily had to stand in the far corner till the door was sealed again. The alarms around the doorway set his head to pounding if he came too close, making him suspect they were far stronger than any other guarding the house.

Whether or not Florence believed his interest in studying their hoard, Geoffrey and the others obviously thought it as likely as a pig taking flight. And though Cole pushed himself to look at the books they brought, trying to buy their belief with near-constant feigned interest, the wizards just scoffed and told him not to let the human touch the pages while he pretended to understand what they were giving him to read.

It was maddening. He couldn’t speak to Lily and the cousins barely blinked anymore. To a person, the men were clearly too afraid of Geoffrey and Alfred’s wrath to risk even looking away long enough for Cole to mouth a word to the girl.

Feeling in danger of losing his mind from sheer lack of ability to do anything else, he’d resorted to pacing their prison between chapters of the endless books, while Lily studied the paintings or stared out the window. He knew the Carnegeans would make a mistake eventually. The uncles would slip up; the cousins would get bored. Something would change.

Though, by this point, he’d started to wonder if that ‘something’ would just be him going completely insane.

Halfway through another circuit of the tiny cell, he stopped as Geoffrey’s cursing carried along the hall. Outside the door, the two cousins straightened quickly, watching the man storm down the corridor to glare at Cole and Lily through the screen.

“You’re wanted downstairs.”

Cole didn’t move. “Why?”

The derisive lip twitch that seemed to be Geoffrey’s standard answer didn’t materialize. Without a word, he opened the padlock securing the screen. A flicker of magic surrounded him, making Cole wince.

“Now.”

Without taking his eyes from the man, Cole extended his hand to Lily, clasping it tightly before walking through the doorway. The two cousins led them away from the room, with Geoffrey striding behind.

At the parlor entrance, Magnus and Florence stood, the former in a posture of military parade rest and the latter with her white-knuckled fingers clasped as though to keep her from strangling him. Slowing warily, Cole glanced back. By the archway, Louise was peeking into the room, a look of barely restrained anticipation twisting around her face.

His grip on Lily’s hand tightened. This could not be good.

“Check security,” Geoffrey growled to the cousins. With a nod, the men disappeared into the recesses of the house.

“What’s going on?” Cole asked cautiously.

“Who did you contact?” Magnus replied, his voice dangerously low.

Cole blinked. “What?”

“Stupid brat,” Florence snapped. “‘Who did you contact’? How hard a question is that?”

“I didn’t–”

“Was it that farmer?” she interrupted, stalking toward him with her narrow finger pointed at his face. “Because I’m warning you–”

“I didn’t contact anybody!” he protested, pushing Lily behind him as he backed away from the red-faced woman. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Right,” Florence sneered. “And we’re supposed to believe that the Taliesin wandering around with your photo have… what? No connection to you whatsoever?”