Black Frost (15 page)

After a tense introduction, I explained the
events of the night, my words focusing my parents’ worry and
attention onto me. Mom had sort of collapsed into a chair at the
kitchen table, one arm around Ashley who was leaning against her.
One hand over her mouth in horror, my mother listened to my
description of the fight, forgetting for a moment that she was
sitting across from Greer who was now petting Max. My father
alternated with checking the windows and watching my face as I
talked.

“What now?” my father asked into the silence
when I finished.

“Well, we think we can meet with both Courts,
or at least their ranking representatives to try negotiating some
sort of deal,” I said, glancing at Greer who nodded.

“What’s to keep them from just killing you
outright?” Dad asked, ignoring my mother’s gasp.

“Neither Court wants the other to have
control of Ashley’s potential,” Greer answered. “My sister is Heir
to Winter and Eirwen is Heir to Summer, both having enormous power
and influence on my world. Also, your son is, I believe, of
interest to both princesses,” he added. That was news to me.

“Huh? How do you figure?” I asked.

“My sister has never left a human witness
alive before. It got me thinking about why she killed the Hunter
and then left you alone and I’ve developed a pretty strong theory,”
he said. “But first let me ask you a question, and I’m afraid it
will be rather blunt. Where was Ashley’s mother from? Who were her
parents?”

Okay, I never saw that one coming. Not being
prepared for sudden shift in the bizarre conversation’s direction,
I was silent for a moment.

“Mom was born in China, but she was adopted
by my other grandparents when she was a baby. The Chinese didn’t
value girl children,” Ashley said in a quiet voice.

“We don’t know anything about her natural
parents. Just that Ting is some type of family name, so it became
Ashley’s middle name when she was born,” I added.

“Okay, that mystery will remain unsolved. But
it doesn’t change my basic theory. Ashley has potential that
arrives maybe once every two or three of your generations. That
potential, whatever it is for, is the result of her genetic
heritage from her mother AND from her
father
. Talent from a
single parent is often passed down, but major Gifts are always the
result of
both
parents’ contributions. You, Ian, have
obvious Gifts with metal and maybe weapons. Now that I’ve met him,
I can tell your father has a Talent for weapons and I even think
your mother may have a trace of Gift,” Greer said. “So you see why
each of the Princesses could have an interest in you.”

“I thought they only took children,” I
replied.

“Jeesh Dad! He means they want you to have a
kid with them,” Ashley said, exasperated.

I started to object but Greer was nodding his
head.

“Ian, both Eirwen and Neeve have very strong
Talents. A child produced from the union of you and either of them
would have an extremely high chance of high strength Gifts,” he
said.

“So, because they want Seabiscuit here for
stud services, they’ll keep him alive?” my father asked.

“I don’t know what a seabiscuit is but if you
mean Ian, then yes,” the platinum haired elf answered.

“So how do you set up a meet?” Dad asked.

“If Ashley will lend a hand, I think we can
use one of her pucks to carry a message.”

“What the fuck is a puck?” my father
asked.

***

Five minutes later he was staring wide-eyed
as Pancho and his clan finished off a beef brisket that Mom had
been thawing in the fridge. Then the little leader landed in front
of Ashley and listened as Greer spoke at length. Pancho seemed to
agree after looking at Ashley, who gave him a nod. Then it got a
bit weird.

Greer kneeled on both legs and closed his
eyes, hands on the tops of his thighs in meditation. After a
minute, eyes still closed, he raised both hands, palms up in front
of him. A small ball of blue light, about the size of a jawbreaker
gumball, popped into existence over his outstretched hands,
hovering an inch over his palms. Greer opened his eyes and spoke at
length to the ball, which pulsed in time with each word. Finished,
he looked to Pancho who called his second in command, the biggest
puck, as well as another male forward. They both flew to Greer,
hovering on hummingbird wings in front of him expectantly. Greer
lifted his palms and moved both hands apart, the glowing ball of
light suddenly splitting into two identical orbs. Then he shoved
his hands at the pucks and light floated right into a puck, passing
into their chests and disappearing. The jet black puck didn’t even
blink, the other brown one rubbed his fur over his sternum then
seemed okay. Both pucks gave little hand waves at their boss and
then in Ashley’s direction, then blurred off into the night.

“What the hell was that?” Dad asked,
bluntly.

“It is one of our methods of communication.
It takes training and Talent, but does not rely on your metal
science,” Greer answered.

“How does the blue ball thingy get back out
of the puck?” Ashley asked.

“It is called out by the recipient, in this
case my sister and Eirwen. They will send a reply back with each
puck.”

“How long?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Not too long. Maybe a quarter
or half of one of your hours. They will feed the puck something
high in sugar content to replenish the energy of the flight then
send them back.”

“Pucks like sugar?” Ashley asked.

“Yes, they eat a lot of protein and fat, but
they love sugar.”

Ashley looked at her grandmother who raised
one eyebrow, then both headed into the house. I looked at Dad who
just gave me a shrug and looked as perplexed at I had. A few
moments later the two ladies in my life came back out with a couple
of tubes of cookie dough.

“We were going to make some early Christmas
cookies, using the easy way out, but I think the two of you could
forgo some sweets,” my mother explained. Mom used the scissors in
her hand to open the tubes and shear the dough into chunks which
she handed to Ashley who handed them to the suddenly excited pucks.
Pancho claimed the first piece then sat on Ashley’s shoulder and
supervised the handouts. Whirring bodies swooped and blurred around
the yard to the barking of both dogs. I had Charm’s collar and my
father held Max to keep them from the sugary frenzy.

Greer cleared his throat and spoke when we
all looked his way. “I forgot to mention that they get a
little….drunk when they eat sugar. Like a human on ale.”

Sure enough the pucks’s flight paths began to
get erratic and several of the adults crashed into each other,
falling to the ground where they sat for a minute or two, looking
all the world like St. Patty’s day revelers at the end of the
night.

“How will the messenger pucks find the
princesses?” Ashley asked Greer.

“The same way they found you – they are
attracted to Talent. On this world, at this time there are just the
three main sources, Neeve, Eirwen and – you.”

“I don’t understand all this talk of gifts
and talents, I mean Ashley is an extraordinary girl, but what power
is it that you think she has?” my mother asked, snappishly.

“Talents or Gifts are many and varied. One
person’s ability to produce beautiful song with their voice or art
with paper and brush are Gifts, albeit minor ones. The abilities
most sought after by my people are the ones your older cultures
called Second Sight, witchery, and sorcery. Now, in this age, you
call them psy-kick,” Greer said.

“Psychic. The word is psychic,” I supplied.
“But Ashley has never shown any ability to read minds or bend
spoons or guess the Lotto, except with Lindsey, but that’s cause
they’re so close.”

He shook his head, smiling slightly. “See you
are wrong. Lindsey, who has some Talent of her own, and Ashley
actually do connect on a level beyond just knowing each other’s
behavior. It amazes me that you people ignore what’s right in front
of you with such steadfast determination to be blind,” Greer said.
“It happens to people on this world thousands of times and no one
notices. You pick up your communication device to contact your
friend or family member and they’re already on it, calling you!
Husbands and wives complete each other’s sentences, mothers
know
when something is wrong with their children who are
nowhere near them at the time, people feel something present in an
empty house then laugh it off as nerves. It happens every day all
over the world, but in Ashley’s case it hasn’t manifested yet,” he
said. “On this planet, without guidance, Major Gifts are often not
fully realized. Sometimes it takes training or a specific stimulus
to bring them to the surface. My people specialize in that kind of
training.”

“So what is a Major Gift?” Mom asked.

“Eirwen is a strong user of glamour, able to
completely change her appearance or hide a small army from view. My
sister can communicate with and inspire obedience in almost any
individual animal, so much so that Summer’s Hunters won’t bring
their familiars near her for fear of corruption. She has a second
major Gift for combat. Mother, Queen Morrigan, has the Gift of
Command. If she orders you to do something you would find yourself
doing it, unless you were one of the very few who can resist. Queen
Zinna has the Gift of Change, able to mold and form the very life
code of living things.

“DNA? She can change DNA?” I asked.

“If D-N-A is the code that each organism
carries inside it than yes.”

“What is this crap about a gift for combat?”
my father asked.

“You have it..to a degree. So does Ian. My
sister has it in spades. It is difficult to explain, but it is a
kind of synthesis of the senses and reflexes that allows the gifted
to make more of the right moves and choices in combat. To see
openings in an opponent’s defenses, to change from attack to
defense and back to attack in the same motion. To sense attacks
from behind, to
know
at an instinctive level how to defeat
an enemy.”

“Humpfff!” was my Father’s only reply. Not
quite ready to buy into it fully, he was still not scoffing either.
In fact, my pragmatic father was handling this entire situation
much better than I would have thought possible. My thoughts must
have reflected on my face as he raised one eyebrow at me.

“What?” he demanded.

“I’m wondering how you are dealing with all
this?” I said.

He shrugged, looked a little uncomfortable,
then came to some kind of decision.

“I’ve seen things, Ian. During my career,
I’ve been all over the world and been in all kinds of situations.
Some things defy explanation. We tried to question a person of
interest in Louisiana once. The locals feared him, claiming he was
a voodoo practitioner. When we caught up with him in an old
warehouse, he gave us the slip, disappearing from a locked room.
And as we chased him through that building, things happened. Doors
slammed shut on us, boxes and crates suddenly fell in front of us,
and objects were thrown at us by no one,” he said. “I try to live
in the black and white, concrete world, but I’ve seen a bit of the
gray. This, though, takes it to a new level.”

“Greer, how come Summer didn’t swarm us with
Hunters at the farm house?” I asked.

“This machine of yours, the thing in
Switzerland, it opened most of the pathways to this world, all at
once. The queens covered all of them, making this the largest
Gathering we’ve ever had. They sent the bulk of their resources to
the bigger, better known sites,” he said.

“But they sent their best teams here? To this
backwater site?”

“The queens are sisters, and the ability to
glimpse the future runs in their bloodline. Both must have felt a
strong pull to this location. Mother wouldn’t have sent her Black
Frost otherwise.”
“I thought your weapons were called Black Frost blades?” I asked,
confused.

“Mother refers to Neeve as her Black
Frost….her killing frost.”

“Oh!” was my only comeback.

My father had perked up at the mention of
weapons so I asked Greer to show him the blade. The lanky elf held
up his right arm and pulled back the sleeve of dragonskin to reveal
the
siooc dubhh sginna
wrapped around his wrist. It flowed
into his palm, moving slowly this time so I could see more of its
action. There were two small dots of blue blood on the underside of
his wrist.

“What are those from?” I asked.

“The weapon is a living creature, made with
my own D-N-A as you call it. It needs my blood to stay alive, thus
it is always bonded to me.”

“How can it cut so easily through flesh?” I
asked. Dad was enthralled, watching as the Frost blade formed from
a spear to a knife to a sword to a club with first multiple spikes,
then one big spike.

“It changes the structure of its parts…its
makeup,” he said.

“Molecules?” Ashley threw in.

“Maybe that’s the word. They change their
mole-e-cules to something similar to gemstones, at least on the
outer edge,” he said, holding up the Frost blade, which reformed,
lengthening into a long thin blade.

Turning the newly formed sword blade sharp
side up, he pointed at the gleaming edge. “The
siooc dubhh
sginna
shapes itself to its Guardian’s will. With practice it
becomes second nature for me to have it form its blade edge to less
than razor thin.”

He flicked the midnight black sword at the
dead, dried stalk of a plant in Mom’s flower bed. The plant hardly
moved as the tough fibrous stem was cut, the dead blossom taking a
second to fall as if it was the last one to be informed of the
cut.

Dad picked up the cut blossom and looked at
the stem, whistling in appreciation at the smoothly shorn stub.
Then he glanced at me. “Tough to get close to a fighter with
something like this,” he noted, one eyebrow arched.