Blood Kin (20 page)

“Oh, damn. I meant to tell you. It’s okay,” Rhys answered with a sheepish look. “I talked to Ianto. Dad and Isabel arrived and told him to relay the message and that it’s fine to stay. They’re handling Gideon.”

“They, huh, what?” I couldn’t have heard that right. Dad and Isabel were at the enclave? “What happened to Dad and Isabel driving here from Seattle? To someone calling us when it was okay to fly there? I don’t get it, Rhys—why hasn’t anyone called to tell us we could come on up?”

“Ianto called before you guys were awake,” Rhys said. “Sorry. I should have totally gotten you up so you could talk to him or Dad. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Isabel at all but I could hear Dad in the background mumbling something about ‘the boy’ and having had to change plans. When I asked about it, Ianto just laughed and said Dad had been pacing around the place for a couple of hours and not talking. Isabel went directly to Gigi and the two of them were still sequestered.”

“Now what?” I asked.

“No idea, sis, but my twin relayed Gigi’s message.”

“Which was …” I prompted my brother.

“To stay put.”

“You’re having me on, right?”

“Toss me one of those glasses, eh, brother?” Rhys waved a hand in the direction of the highball glasses adorning the side table next to Tucker. My other brother complied and Rhys poured himself a couple of fingers from a decanter. I could scent the single malt whisky’s distinctive aroma even from across the room.

“Lagavulin?” I asked.

“Yeah, sixteen-year-old,” Rhys replied. “Want one?”

“Damn right,” I said, and grabbed a glass for myself. “Anyone else?”

Nods from everyone.

“Well then, whisky all around, brother.” I definitely needed strong spirits with this news. What in the world was my dear granny playing at? First she tells Isabel to come get me right away because Gideon is dying. My father and aunt were headed here, but instead, drove directly out to the enclave without even calling us. Now, I’d basically been told, oh, hey, no rush, go ahead and stay at the condo. This did not compute.

I settled back in the wide leather couch, sipping my whisky. We were all quiet, no one speaking for several minutes. I studied Rhys, who was still watching me over his own glass. He was definitely amused. His mouth twitched as he raised his glass. “
Sláinte
, dear sister and heir apparent.”

“Fuck you very much, dear brother,” I teased back. “I’ll give you good health, but can the heir apparent shite, okay?”

“Not enjoying it, then?” Rhys grinned.

“It’s been all of a few days, Rhys. Not much to enjoy … except …” I smiled as I remembered Tucker’s and my sojourn as wolves the other afternoon.

“I taught her wolf, brother,” Tucker said. “She enjoyed it.”

“Ah, and well you should have, sweetheart,” Rhys said. “Wolf is my favorite shape.”

I raised my own glass. “Then to the wolves. Brothers, Niko, Adam.”

The men raised their own glasses to me. “To the wolves.” We all sipped, enjoying the peaty smoke flavor of the best whisky in existence.

“So, seriously, Rhys,” I said, putting down my glass. “Gigi’s okay with us staying here?”

“Absolutely,” he said. “Seeing as how she’ll be here soon.”

I knocked over the cut-crystal glass, spilling what was left of my drink on the table.

Oh. Bloody. Hell.

“Y
OU DID
NOT
say that.” I bent down to mop up the spill. “You are totally kidding me, right?” “ ’Fraid not, Keira,” he answered. “Look, it’s going to be fine. She’s meeting you here instead of the enclave, yeah?” He took another sip of whisky, then refilled my now empty glass. “Saves you a trip and you can enjoy the luxuries of Vancouver longer—and we can do another reccy for the Sidhe.”

Frowning, I bent my head to my glass and inhaled the aroma of the Lagavulin as I tried to marshal my thoughts. Was this one of Gigi’s power trips? But no, the mountain was indeed coming to me, so what was her game? Our matriarch was forever playing them. I couldn’t recall anything she’d ever done that was free of her unique flavor of gamesmanship. But this time her moves had left me beyond confused. It was as if she was kicking over the chessboard and resetting the pieces. About the time the game started making sense, she’d kick it over again. “I don’t know, Rhys. Why would she come here? Did you tell her about Daffyd?”

“I didn’t,” Rhys said. “Wasn’t sure if that was a good idea or not. All I said was that we were spending time here and were looking forward to seeing her. I could’ve told Ianto the truth, but I didn’t want him to get in the middle of an explanation he couldn’t handle.”

“She may still know,” Tucker reminded me gently. “She
is our matriarch, our kin—and as the Clan chief, she’s got the same Talents you inherited … with several centuries of practice.”

He was right. I should have known. Gigi wasn’t omniscient, but she’d known I was Changing before I did and had sent Tucker to me. Why on earth couldn’t she know what was going on here? I sighed a deep and utterly exhausted sigh. “I need to process this a while,” I said, looking at the three men. “I think I need some air.” I got up and headed for the door, intent on taking a long walk before dark. I wanted to think.

“I’ll come with you,” Rhys said. He tossed Adam a look I couldn’t decipher. “We won’t be long.”

N
EITHER
R
HYS
nor I spoke until we got outside. It was sometime in the late afternoon, but I had no idea of the actual time. The city buzzed with its usual quiet Vancouver version of a workday heading toward rush hour. Downtown tended to lose momentum early during the weekdays, workers bicycling, busing or driving home politely winding their way through the streets. We ambled in the direction of Gastown, my brother matching his longer strides to mine. I really did want to go back over to where we’d seen all the people earlier, to poke around, take my mind off things. I said as much to Rhys, who, to my surprise, agreed.

“Maybe we can stop by the music festival. According to the
Sun
, there’s nothing formal going on today or tonight, just folks gathering as they arrive in Vancouver. Impromptu jam sessions and such. Like home.” The corners of Rhys’ mouth turned up in a fond smile.

“Like the home I was glad I left,” I said.

“I meant our home, you dolt.” Rhys cuffed my head in a brotherly gesture of amusement. “Not Wales.”

As we got closer to the park, we began to see more pedestrians than usual—musicians, their families, perhaps, or companions. Many of them carrying some sort of instrument case, most of them dressed outside what the average North American would wear unless they were appearing in a play or going to a Renaissance fair, and I wasn’t sure you counted as average if you did either of those. I’d wondered why the festival was being held at Victory Square instead of the much larger Stanley Park, but a quick perusal of the
Sun
earlier explained it. Some movie company was using the larger location for a shoot. Plus, according to the write-up in the paper, this festival normally only attracted a small crowd. As I watched the increasing numbers of creatively dressed pedestrians, I wondered what the reporter considered small.

“We saw a lot of these people earlier,” I said to Rhys. “A bit weird, really, it’s like a gathering of the Sidhe, except …”

“What?” Rhys asked and moved closer to me. We kept walking, but slowed our pace to more of a leisurely stroll.

“Except they all feel human—not that I’ve tried to sense them.” I tried to explain. “Things are more intense since … I’ve had to reinforce my shielding. More so since I got here.”

“You’ve not really been around many people since you Changed,” Rhys said. “At least many people where you could let go.”

“Not bloody likely to have been,” I said, feeling my temper rise for no real reason. “I Changed all of four days ago, Rhys, it’s not like I’ve been on some cozy tourist excursion.”

He put up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “Okay,
okay, Keira, no sense raising your hackles. I was—”

“I know, I know, damn it.” I ducked my head, embarrassed that I’d almost bitten off his head—metaphorically. “Sorry. It’s been difficult, what with Daffyd having gone AWOL and now Adam being here. Not what I expected, really.”

He threw an arm around me. “I’m sure it has, little sister. Now, what say we go find ourselves some music and let some of this energy loose?”

“Excellent idea,” I agreed. We increased our pace and headed in the direction of Victory Square. Rhys, like Tucker, was one of my favorite brothers. I’d seen so little of him over the past few years. He and his twin, Ianto, spent a great deal of time at our British Columbia enclave and in Vancouver, even when the bulk of the Kellys had been in Texas. They loved the weather here as did their current more-or-less spouse, Adela. Several of their sons and daughters (by much earlier alliances) lived in the Fraser Valley. Rhys and Ianto often split their time at the condo, at the enclave and with Adela. She wasn’t a Kelly cousin by birth, but had come from a distant Clan branch in Spain some century or so ago. She’d hooked up with my brothers around seventy years back, and they’d been a happy sometimes trio ever since.

We walked by a souvenir shop, its doors open, a silly fake moose dressed in red Mountie serge posed in the window, the store full of shoppers. “Hey, is Gareth still up in Inuvik?” I asked, the moose reminding me of Rhys’ youngest, who’d Changed twenty some years ago. A weather watcher, he lived near Inuvik, in the Northwest Territories, an Inspector with the RCMP detachment there. I never learned how he’d managed to fool modern medical technology and go through Depot to become a
Mountie. I’d asked Rhys that once. He’d just said that Gigi had arranged everything. At twelve, I’d been too young and too frightened of her to ask any more questions. In my head, Gigi had somehow bought out the RCMP and was controlling them, too. Hell, for all I knew, that was true fact.

“He transferred to North Van a while back,” Rhys said. “Haven’t talked to him in ages, though. He’s always busy.”

“You ever find out how he passed all the physical exams and such—for the RCMP?”

“Still no clue, sis,” Rhys replied. “I think some things are better left as mysteries.”

“You don’t think she’s bribed the RCMP at the very top levels?” I wondered in hushed tones, the awe I’d felt as a child creeping back in.

Rhys let out a belly laugh. “My brilliantly wonderful little sister,” he said as he pulled me into a crushing hug. “I really don’t think that’s possible, but I’m sure if anyone could do it, Gigi could.”

I was enjoying my brother’s company. My new Talents were still so raw, so unrefined, I could feel them lurking just below my skin. With the few non-family members I’d been around since my Change, I’d kept myself under tight control, shielding as if I was a nuclear bunker and my shield was the only thing between me and a worldwide holocaust. I was still too new at this to feel entirely comfortable around anyone but family. Adam and Niko had crossed the line into family by dint of having been there when I Changed. Daffyd was family by blood, though our kinship was strained. Still, his energies didn’t disrupt mine. Unlike …

“What was that?” I started at a brush of something …
energy? A wisp of thought, of feeling slid past me. Other. A shimmer and then nothing.

“What was what?” Rhys immediately stood in front of me, scanning the area for potential trouble. “What did you see?” We weren’t at Victory Square yet, but a few blocks away. Nothing but storefronts and a rather run-down hostel across the street. There were a few men standing in front of the place as if on guard, but I could tell they were human. Whatever I’d felt had brushed by me, gone past in the direction we’d just come from.

“Feel,” I said. “Other, something different. A not-human. Headed back that way.” I cocked my head to indicate direction. I wanted to keep a low profile.

“Shields up, sis,” Rhys said. “Let me scan.”

I nodded and held still, letting him do this thing. Wolf, or hound, he might be, but Rhys always had a touch of sensitivity, a trait that had allowed him and his twin to get away with their crazy antics more times than not.

Rhys dropped out of sentinel mode and turned to me with a frown. “Are you sure you felt something? I’m getting nothing but human.”

I shook my head. “Not sure. It was too quick, like a breath of air passing me.” I looked around, seeing nothing more than the three men in front of the building, a small group of folksy hippie types and some locals, probably residents of the hostel, huddled in a group, heads bent, several of them in what looked like intense discussion. It occurred to me that this wasn’t standard behavior. “Hey, Rhys, look—what do you think is going on over there?”

Before my brother could answer, a man stepped up next to me, his attention focused on the gathered group. He was tall, thin, narrow-shouldered; a shock of dark hair
topped his black-on-black attire; slung on his back was a battered leather guitar case. Next to him, a broader man stood quietly, a frown marring his face. Thinning brown hair fell back from his forehead. He was dressed in jeans and a hoodie and carried a bodhrán. The first man sighed and ran a hand through his messy hair.

“Excuse me, sir,” I began and stepped closer to them. “Could I ask if you know what’s going on?”

The first man looked at me, his frown deepening as he obviously tried to figure out if I was some sort of cop or reporter. Seemingly satisfied, he answered me. “Someone else dead,” he said. “This time at the hostel, in one of the rooms. Wasn’t from Van.” He looked at his companion. “Rodney and me, we tend to stay at the hostel for the festival.”

Rodney spoke up, his own voice carrying a note of weariness. “This is the third one,” he said. “Two over the past few days. John and I don’t feel so safe anymore.” I guessed John was the name of the first man we spoke with.

“Dead how?” Rhys asked. “Murder?”

“That’s just it,” John said. “Police don’t know much right now. Not really sure they care ’bout us. They haven’t even come to tape off this place yet.” His disgust was evident in his tone. “Nothing but a bunch of street folk, us. No autopsies back on the other guys. No signs of anything weird. Just, you know …”