The Children and the Blood (29 page)

“Okay.”

Infuriated, Travis scoffed. “And what if it is a trap? What then?”

“Then you’ll be the only one who knows the truth. And you’ll have to tell the world, so they don’t get away with making us disappear.”

Despite the melodramatic wording, he could see the wheels start turning in Travis’ head. A heartbeat later, the boy shook off the fantasies.

“That doesn’t justify being a moron,” he insisted. “You’re just going to walk in there and
hope
he’s not playing you. What kind of plan is that?”

“You have a better idea?” Cole replied, starting to feel the minutes ticking away. “A sniper rifle Lily could use, maybe?”

Travis thought briefly. “I got a Taser for my birthday.”

Cole paused. “Okay.”

For a moment, the two of them stared at each other, and then Travis rolled his eyes. Still grumbling about stupidity, he headed into his closet to dig out the Taser.

“And what if something happens here?” he asked when he returned, slapping the compact device down into Cole’s palm. “How am I supposed to reach you? I’m guessing you don’t want to keep the phone?”

“No.”

Travis grimaced. “Fine. Use mine. I’ll get another one and call you if something comes up.” He paused. “And you can take the Toyota. It’s in better shape anyway.”

He pulled out his cell and keys, and tossed them both to Cole before heading for the door. Cole followed, still holding Lily’s hand. The girl’s grip on his fingers was marginally crushing.

Downstairs, the sound of Travis’ younger sister watching cartoons drowned their footsteps, and as they rushed past the kitchen, Travis’ mother never glanced away from directing the dinner preparations. Edgily, Cole watched the kitchen door over his shoulder as he waited for Travis to check the garage and almost theatrically make certain the coast was clear.

At the truck, Lily clambered onto her seat and buckled the belt swiftly, her every motion daring him to change his mind about her coming. He shook his head and thumbed the control clipped to the visor, watching in the rearview mirror as the garage door slowly climbed the rails.

“You’re being a moron,” Travis told him, leaning on the wall.

“You told me.”

Travis scoffed.

Cole glanced over at him. “Thanks for your help.”

Rolling his eyes, the boy looked away.

A grin pulled at Cole’s mouth as he put the truck in reverse. Stonework grumbled beneath the tires as the truck rolled down the drive and then pulled out onto the wide, empty street. Breathing a sigh of relief at simply doing something, he headed for the interstate.

*****

Cautiously, Cole eased the truck down the narrow campground lane. Tents and RVs dotted small clearings beneath the trees and, around a few picnic tables, children ran.

He glanced to Lily. Over the bottom of the windowsill, she watched the forest and campers, her fingers digging into the ledge between the door and the glass.

“Anything?” he asked.

She shook her head.

Lot twenty-three came into view, and he slowed the truck to a crawl. On the other side of the road, another clearing sat unoccupied by campers, though a beat-up old station wagon gave proof someone planned to return.

“Get down,” he said to Lily. “We’re almost there.”

Silently, she slid into the footwell and pulled her legs up tight, hugging them to her chest.

Drawing a steadying breath, he drew closer to the lot. Surrounded by spring wildflowers and shaded by the trees, the clearing sported nothing more than a gravel drive and a picnic table, with Robert nowhere to be seen.

He stopped the truck. “Stay there,” he told Lily quietly.

Watching the motionless campground, he climbed out. In the distance, he could hear highway traffic, interspersed with birdcalls.

Robert stepped from behind a tree on the far side of the lot, gun in hand.

Cole froze.

“You came alone?” the man demanded.

Resisting the urge to check if Lily remained hidden, he kept his eyes on Robert and wondered why the man thought he would tell the truth anyway.

“You never answered my question,” Cole said.

The man’s lip twitched humorlessly. He walked away from the trees, keeping the gun level at Cole’s chest. Craning his neck, he looked over the hood of the truck to check the passenger seat, missing the small girl huddled in the footwell.

“Fine,” Robert said, glancing around warily. “But not here. I don’t know where you got that truck, but leave it. We’re taking my car.”

Cole shook his head. “No. I came this far. Now tell me what the hell is going on.”

Robert grimaced. “You always were a little punk, you know that?”

Eyes narrowing, Cole paused, and then shrugged casually. “Alright, well if
that’s
all you had to tell me…”

He reached for the door handle.

“Damn you, kid!”

One hand still on the door, Cole waited.

A flurry of anger and frustration passed over Robert’s face, and then suddenly, it faded. Shaking his head, he scoffed like a man staring over the edge of the abyss, wondering if he should just jump in.

The sound made Cole’s skin crawl.

“You won’t believe me,” Robert said. “No one will. They make sure of that.”

“Who?” Cole asked slowly.

Robert’s gaze returned to him. “The wizards.”

Cole paused. A glowing girl was sitting in the footwell and Vaughn was killed by men with superpowers. And now his fake adoptive father believed in wizards. As explanations went, it was about on par with everything else. Which meant insane. He just needed to find the point where this all translated into something
not
crazy.

“Okay.”

“You don’t believe me,” Robert scoffed.

“The freaks who killed Vaughn ripped the door from his car without touching it.”

Robert froze. “Edmund’s dead?”

“Lots of people are dead, Robert,” Cole said shortly. “Now what’s going on?”

But the man wasn’t listening. His gaze skittered across the ground as though searching for answers there, and Cole couldn’t tell from his face whether he was elated or terrified.

Carefully, he glanced to Lily, jerking his chin slightly. Hoisting herself on the edge of the seat, she peered over the dashboard, and then dropped back into the footwell, her eyes wide. She pointed to Cole.

“Like you,” she mouthed.

Cole’s gaze slid back to his adoptive father.

“They were real,” Robert said in amazement.

“Who?”

The man tore himself from his gravel study. “I don’t know.”

Cole reached for the door handle again.

“Don’t go!”

“Then tell me something worth the gas to get out here.”

Familiar anger returned to the man’s expression, but after a moment it gave way to whatever motivation made him call in the first place. Swiftly, Robert scanned the campground as though expecting monsters to appear from the wildflowers, and when that didn’t happen, he motioned with the gun toward the picnic table.

Cole glanced into the truck cab, meeting Lily’s worried gaze. Fingering the Taser in his pocket, he followed the man.

“Gun where I can see it,” Cole ordered as he eased onto the wooden seat.

With exaggerated indulgence, Robert set the weapon on the table. “You are
such
a little–”

“Whatever it is, you’ve told me already. So how about you start explaining what you meant by wizards instead?”

Robert glared. “I meant
wizards
. Magical people. Hocus pocus. The whole nine yards.”

At Cole’s silence, the man scoffed. “Your mommy and daddy were wizards. Your dear ‘counselors’ were wizards. People with magical powers, determined to keep that information from the rest of the world. You and me are what they call ‘cripples’ – the bastards. Means we don’t have magic. Can see them, but can’t tell the difference between a wizard and a human to save our lives. Which is the problem.”

Cole’s brow furrowed.

Robert made a frustrated noise. “You are such a–”

“Said it already. Get to the point.”

The man drew a breath. “Look. I need your help. And you need mine. The wizard bastards who set this up – the whole thing with Melissa and me and all of it – they don’t give a shit about me. I was just there to keep you happy in your perfect little suburban life.”

Images from his time with the Smiths flashed through Cole’s mind, and it was all he could do not to laugh.

Eyes narrowing, Robert seemed to see the impulse. “Whatever, brat. I did the best I could with that harpy and the damn neighbors watching our every move. You got a hangnail, the wizards came pounding on our door, wanting to know what we were doing wrong. It was always ‘keep him happy’, ‘keep him complacent’, and you–”

“Why?” Cole interrupted.

“Hell if I know. All I do know is that eight years ago when the damn war started, three wizards showed up at my door and offered me a deal. They’d keep me safe, keep the other wizards away, and set me up with a great life, if I’d just play daddy to some orphaned ten-year-old. What the hell, right? People were dying every day, and I get this sweet deal just for watching you? How was I going to argue?

“So I went. Had to put up with that bitch, Melissa, which was a test, I’ll tell you. ‘Don’t draw attention’, ‘make the wizards happy’… if it wouldn’t have gotten me killed by the bastards, I’d have shot her in the first week. But I made it work. Kept you in line and kept everything going smooth, till that harpy had to screw it up by not mixing your drink right.”

He hadn’t thought he could get more confused, but Cole’s brow furrowed deeper.

“The cocoa, moron,” Robert explained. “Melissa’s ‘special recipe’. God knows what she put in there, but it always knocked you out.”

“I never drank it. I usually just poured it down the drain.”

Robert scoffed. “Figures. She was such an idiot. Swore to me it was working every time.” He shook his head. “And then you go and prove her wrong by ruining everything.”

Scowling, the man looked away. Cole stared at him, trying to figure out where to start in the mountain of questions he’d just amassed. “War?”

“Merlin and Taliesin trying to wipe each other off the map, like the world wouldn’t be better with them both gone.”

“Okay,” Cole said, picking up the next question immediately. “Merlin and Taliesin?”

“Sides of the wizard groups. Some old bastards five hundred years ago they all think are so special. Merlin bound up Taliesin’s magic, and his followers’ too, and left them all useless till about eight years ago when the Taliesin king knocked off the Merlin one. And voila,” the man said dryly, “we have ourselves a war.”

Filing the information away as psychotic, Cole went for another question. “And some of them wanted you to keep me happy… why?”

“I told you, I have no idea. They didn’t say and I didn’t ask. We were just supposed to watch you and keep you cheerfully oblivious to the war.”

“And they’d kill you if I wasn’t.”

Robert made a motion as though the statement was obvious.

Cole ignored him, running through the conversation again and trying to remember each crazy detail. “Because you’re a… ‘cripple’?”

“Person who came from a wizard family, but doesn’t have magic,” Robert translated. “It’s a damned insult. Magic’s a talent, they say. Like being good at the piano or painting or whatever. But because you, me, and damn near fifty percent of their population are born without it, they call us ‘cripples’ and treat us like crap. It’s a narcissistic double standard created by self-righteous cretins who should just wipe each other out and spare the world any more trouble.”

The man went on grumbling, but Cole was only half listening. “But what was that about ‘telling the difference’?”

“There’s three groups. You, me and others like us. The wizards and all their crap. And then the lovely little regular humans who don’t have a clue.”

Cole stared at him, waiting for the vituperative explanations to begin. Smirking, Robert complied. “No, kid. You’re still human. They all are. Talent, remember? You don’t bleed green or anything.

“But as a part of their ‘talent’, the bastards don’t blend well with regular humans, meaning people have trouble seeing them when the wizards don’t want to be seen. Being wizard-yet-not, you and I don’t have that problem. We see them just fine. But it means they don’t like us much, probably because we keep them from just being all-powerful demigods and leaving us mere mortals behind.”

He paused. “We do have something though, and some of them hunt us for it. I don’t know what it is, but if their magic hits you right…” Robert shrugged his eyebrows illustratively. “No more you. Then they take it, and grow stronger.” He smirked. “So watch your back.”

Cole glanced away, remembering the man by the strip mall. The hungry look in his eyes. Suppressing a shudder, he turned back to Robert. “So which side are the glowing ones on?”

Robert’s expression wrinkled into confusion. “Glowing ones?” he repeated as though Cole was the one who was insane.

He hesitated. “The guys who killed Vaughn glowed.”

“Wizards don’t glow, kid. They feel something different about each other, like shadows on the Taliesin and light around the Merlin. But they look the same as anybody to us.”

Cole said nothing. So he was crazy. Hit his head too hard. And accordingly, an eight-year-old glowed in the dark and healed him from near-fatal bullet wounds.

Right.

“Which side were the ones you dealt with on?” he asked, dropping the topic momentarily.

“I don’t know,” Robert said dismissively. “I think Melissa’d caught on after a while, and definitely knew more than she’d say, but the selfish bitch was too busy protecting her own skin to let me in on anything.”

Cole let the blatant hypocrisy pass. “What about the ones you didn’t think were real? Who’re they?”

“Whoever the hell the wizards wanted to keep you away from. We were supposed to watch for anything suspicious, people getting too close. Why do you think Melissa was so obsessed with everyone you met? But we didn’t have details. All I know is I never saw anyone. But obviously, they were out there.”

“And why do you need me?”