Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (60 page)

“That’s good, Bill,” said Harris, “How big
can you make the envelope?”

“I… don’t know,” he stuttered. “I’ve never
gotten this far.” No, I don’t suppose he has. Shrank lit on my
shoulder, giggling softly in my ear. I stepped farther into the
room, but the men’s attention was so rapt on Bill that they still
didn’t notice me. My interest was waning and I had a busy day ahead
of me, so I pushed the envelope around Bill quickly outward to
encompass the group of them.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” I said cheerfully
as I stepped into the envelope. “Mr. Calhoun, I would greatly
appreciate it if you would stop referring to me as ‘the boy.’ I do
have a name.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. McClure,” Calhoun said,
blanching to near elven paleness.

“Thank you,” I responded, nodding and
smiling. Turning to Harris, “Mr. Harris, I tried to call you last
night. Your office said you were in transit. To here, it would
seem. What can I do for you?”

“I imagine our visit and your phone call
share the same purpose, Seth,” said Harris, rising from his chair
and smoothing his vest and slacks out. “Glen called from the
airport and said that you found the curse still under the brand on
his hip. You drew a far more detailed picture of the curse in the
astral than we were able to discern. You had to be looking at the
real thing. We were hoping you would remove the others and you did
say that it looked like the curse could flare at any moment,
right?”

“Yes,” I said, nodding in agreement. “And I
see that Mr. Cahill’s assessment of two others is correct.” I
turned to the closer of the two men with the curse. He was medium
height, forty-ish, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes. Totally
average looking. He might have even studied how to look average.
“Would you mind removing your jacket and shirt?” He obliged without
commenting, revealing a better-than-average physique. The brand was
along the muscle ridge on his right side. The curse sat below it in
the scar tissue, pale for the lack of magical energy flowing
through its conduits. Cahill’s was much brighter and easier to
see.

“This one looks just like Calhoun’s,” I said,
pushing against the man’s side gently to look at the brand in the
light better. “It is harder to see without the energy flow. The
brand obscures them well. Why was Bill trying to purge all the
magic from the room?”

“Who are you asking?” the bent over man said,
gruffly.

“Anybody that’ll answer, I guess,” I said,
then with excellent timing, I called to the Night and it came,
testament to while they were without power, I was not. Pushing my
senses tighter into the foam around the curse, the Night Sword
pierced his skin lightly, insinuating the tip between the brand and
the curse. The sword was more brutish now than with the last two.
Once the curse was isolated, the sword just ate it, then the core
of the brand itself, too. When I’d pulled the sword free, the man
fell onto the couch, breathing hard, adrenaline flooding his
system. A fear reaction, I decided.

“Bill,” said Harris calmly, “Stop straining
yourself. You’re not doing anything. It’s Seth’s doing, not yours.”
I turned to see Bill almost purple with exertion, though what he
was exerting I couldn’t tell. “Why didn’t Ehran come with you,
Seth?”

“He’s busy,” I said, noncommittally, turning
to the second man, the one Shrank dropped the book on. “And quite
frankly considering the times you’ve tried to murder him, I thought
it best to keep you two apart as much as possible. You haven’t
answered my question.”

He sighed again. That was getting a bit
irritating. “It’s a very good tactical weapon, you’ve got to
admit,” he said in what I assumed he thought of as a soothing tone.
“If we can master the technique, it would prove extremely useful in
the coming war.” That comment spiked surprise through the other
men’s auras.

I chuckled at the man in front of me. “Are
you surprised because he thinks there’s a war coming or that he
admitted it to me?” I asked. “Or does the boy with the big knife
still scare you?”

“The last two, I think,” he answered. “He
doesn’t normally talk about the war to outsiders and frankly that
‘knife’ would scare me regardless of who wielded it.”

“Yeah, I’m afraid I’d have t’agree with ya’
on that one,” I said with probably the thickest drawl I’ve ever
had. “It sure is a gorgeous piece of work, though. Now if you
wouldn’t mind dropping your pants, please?” A smile split my face
when I realized how badly timed those two sentences were. I heard
at least one snicker to my left—ah well, can’t win ‘em all.

“Who are supposed to be the participants of
this war, Mr. Harris?” I asked as I waited for the man to drop
trou. I really wasn’t paying attention to Harris anyway. I couldn’t
trust anything he said. Maybe he’d say something of interest, but I
wouldn’t bet the farm on it.

“The Fae against us,” Harris said calmly.
“It’s been building for many years now.”

I turned to Harris with raised eyebrows and
asked, “And how would pushing all the magic out of a room help
against the Fae?”

He shrugged, clearly not understanding my
confusion. “Cut them off from magic and they can’t use it against
us.”

I turned back to look at the curse on the
man’s inner right thigh, just above his knee, shaking my head.
Kneeling down, I let my awareness push down tightly into the foam
of reality until I could feel the conduits of the energy flow of
the powerless curse. This is one I hadn’t seen before, the third of
Cahill’s four.

“Mr. Harris, I think I can explain why that’s
not a particularly smart direction of research with two questions,”
I said. I mapped the curse out onto the astral plane for everyone
to see and set copies of the other two on either side it. “First,
what magical defenses do you have available to you at this moment?”
I asked. “No need to be particularly specific. I’m not fishing for
holes in your security to attack you. Just think of it this way,
you’re in a battle against an equivalent force and your team just
blew all the magic out of the vicinity. What can you do now?”

“Guns, knives, explosives,” he answered.
“Whatever we can get our hands on.”

I cradled the rapier’s blade through my right
hand with the tip just below the brand. Fascinated that the blade
didn’t bite into my skin, I tapped the man’s leg and whispered,
“You be still now.”

More loudly to Harris, I said, “Second
question, what makes you think your opponent would be similarly
disadvantaged?” I didn’t have to see the question confuse him, I
just knew it would. The Night’s influence seeped in underneath the
curse, wrapping itself around the tendrils of receptors the curse
used to gather its power so slowly. It was so like a natural thing,
a bug, that it was uncanny. But so like its namesake, the Night
held sway and sucked the creature in and I slid the blade free of
the man’s skin. He collapsed, panting but conscious, on the couch
with his pants still around his ankles. He’d felt the Night’s
influence even if he didn’t feel the curse, and it scared him.

Yeah, the Sword was a real work of the Arts.
I turned back to Harris, who still seemed to be struggling with the
question.

“Let me help you out there,” I said moving
closer. “There is nothing that says your opponent will be
disadvantaged at all, especially if it’s against the Fae. Shrank,
would you mind showing everyone where you are right now?”

“Yes, Master Seth,” said Shrank from Harris
right shoulder, shimmering into view for the rest of the room. He
stayed attached to Harris’ collar when Harris jumped at the sudden
high pitched voice so close to him.

“See?” I asked. “Now, I don’t really
understand the whole hierarchy of power thing, but from what I do
understand, an elf or a troll would be significantly more able to
deal with a lack of available external magic than a pixie. Yet this
pixie was able to sneak up on you and sit on your shoulder without
your knowledge.”

I felt Cahill enter the hall, coming to my
“rescue” as he said earlier. As he got closer to the Observatory,
he felt the bottleneck of energy around the room where I was
pushing back against it and became alarmed. He gathered power,
shielded himself, and pushed through the barrier and into the
“magic free zone.”

“Furthermore,” I said, “I am not powerless
either.” I sent out several small flash-bangs that were more like
twinkle lights from a Christmas tree than firecrackers to prove my
point. Cahill rushed into the room, then, taking in the situation.
I’m sure it was difficult to read, me with the Night sword slung on
my left shoulder rather casually, standing in front of a very
nervous Harris, everyone else totally powerless and nervous,
chewing on the ideas I’d just fed them. With me invisible, he was
the brightest man in the room.

“Seth,” Cahill said slowly, coming up behind
me carefully, “Is everything okay?”

I turned to him, smiling, “Yes, sir, Mr.
Cahill. Just proving a point to Mr. Harris, here. Nothing wrong at
all. Are we ready to go?”

“Yes,” he answered. “Gordon is waiting with
Ehran. He’ll take you up to Enid and your mother.”

“Cool,” I said, turning back to Harris, “If
there’s nothing else…?” Knowing full well there was still his curse
to deal with.

“A few things, actually,” he said,
embarrassment running through his aura. “There is the matter of my
curse…”

“On your ass, I believe,” I supplied for him
happily. “I am a bit confused on why you would ask for my help when
you have tried to hurt me and mine so often in recent history, but
in an effort to get you out of Mr. Cahill’s hair faster…”

Using the Stone’s power, I twisted Harris
around backward and “pantsed” him, then shoved his face down into
the chair he had been sitting in. I shoved the Night sword into the
bottom of the brand rather unceremoniously. I didn’t bother
presenting this one to everyone like the first three, but Harris
had the final version of Cahill’s four. Filing the image away, I
pulled the curse out on the tip instead of letting the Sword devour
it right away. Harris fainted dead away, slumping first into the
chair, then falling out onto the floor. Two of his men rushed over
to help him.

“Mr. Cahill,” I said, bringing the tip closer
to look at the curse sitting there. “Please keep your shields up.
I’m curious about something.”

I felt several of the men back away from me,
a simple precaution that wouldn’t have been much use if what I
thought would happen actually did. They’d still be in the blast
radius. Cahill’s shields felt strong enough and the Stone would
augment them if necessary. I let the energy flood back into the
room. The curse immediately started gathering energy at an alarming
rate, very much unlike Calhoun’s had done. Within five seconds, the
curse ruptured its power cells sending enormous amounts of energy
outward spherically. I let the Night have its breakfast before the
sphere grew more than a foot. It hummed as it pulled the power of
the curse into its black depths, sated from its morning’s work.

“Yeah,” I said, sending the happy Sword home
with a flourish. “I was afraid the first pull had changed it.”

I looked around the room. Mr. Cahill was
still the brightest, but a few of the men were struggling to
control some of their defensive magics that came quite suddenly to
fully active status. Bill was wrong when he said there were seven
convergent ley lines. There were twelve—he just couldn’t see the
other five through the house. Cahill’s family had built their
family home here for generations for good reason. Power wasn’t
simply suddenly available; they were battered with it.

We waited a moment, watching everyone. Shrank
bounced around the room from person to person, playing. “No one
appears to be exploding,” I said to Cahill, grinning. “I think it’s
safe to go now.”

“Wait, Mr. McClure,” called Calhoun.

“Ooh, too slow,” muttered Cahill under his
breath, turning back to the group.

“We do have to talk to you about something
else,” he said, standing up from where Harris was just regaining
consciousness, leaving him to another.

“Well, you’ll have to wait,” I said. “My
brother and I have more than enough to do today. I’ll see if Ethan
and Peter have time for you today. If not, wait in Dublin and we
will contact you at our discretion, but do not infringe on Mr.
Cahill’s hospitality or mine again. You’re getting by with it today
only because I was already going to do what you wanted at Mr.
Cahill’s request.”

We turned as a unit and strode to the door
with Shrank buzzing in the air happily in front of us. We were
almost to the door when the man with the third curse caught up to
us.

“Seth,” he called, almost in a whisper,
reaching for my shoulder then thinking twice about it. The Day
Sword hummed a warning in my head, but my awareness still permeated
the room and I felt him coming. “I, uh, just wanted to say thank
you for doing this.”

“You’re welcome,” I said, smiling at him. At
least one of his men has some manners. We continued out the door,
leaving the Americans to their own devices. Once we’d turned down
the second hall, Shrank burst out laughing.

”You should have seen Harris’ face when he
saw Master Seth!” he squealed to Cahill, his peals of laughter
making us both wince a little. Cahill turned to me with a
questioning look.

“He’d asked one of his men to practice
pushing the magic out of the room,” I explained. “They hadn’t seen
me in the doorway yet and his man was doing a poor job of it, so I
sorta helped him out. That’s what you walked into.”

“A Faraday cage,” Cahill said softly.

“That’s what Ethan called it,” I said with a
little surprise. “Yeah, effectively, that’s what it is. He thinks
he can fight elves with it. I was explaining to him why I thought
that was a bad idea when you came in.” He led us past the stairs
that led to our rooms to another doorway to another stairway, a
much narrower set of stairs leading down. He took the lead since we
couldn’t walk abreast here.