Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood) (8 page)

She looked over as the hardwood floor squeaked. In the archway entry to the living room, Cornelius paused, catching sight of her in the darkness. With a glance to Nathaniel by the window on the other side of the room, he crossed to her side.

“I thought you were sleeping,” he said quietly.

She didn’t answer, returning her gaze to the street.

“We will be leaving early. You would benefit from a few–”

“I know.”

Cornelius paused, and then sank down beside her and leaned back against the wall.

“Cole will not find her.”

Ashe swallowed and said nothing.

“Lily will always trust you more than him. You are her sister. You cannot–”

“She’s scared I’ll get hurt,” Ashe interrupted. “She’s scared I’ll die like Dad.”

“We will not let that happen.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“My lady–”

She glanced at him. His brow flickered down almost imperceptibly, and he looked away.

Silence fell between them. Somewhere down the street, a jazz band began to play.

“I didn’t know what I was doing at the factory, Cornelius,” she confessed. “I just…”

She trailed off. Over the past few hours, she’d had to admit it to herself. Taking Lily to the factory had been stupid. Emotional and stupid. She just hadn’t wanted to be apart from the girl. And she’d wanted to keep her safe.

Those two things didn’t exist in the same world anymore. They hadn’t for a long time.

“You still did well.”

She drew a breath. “And someone shot me last week.”

He looked over at her. She dropped her gaze to the patterns of shadow on her jeans.

“She’s scared I’ll die,” Ashe said. “I’m terrified she will. That someone will try to kill me and hit her instead. But I have to stop Jamison. I can’t run. And if I go after the Blood–”

“I know.”

His voice was cold though his face was not, and despite his gaze on the middle distance, he didn’t seem to be watching the apartment at all.

She looked away. Music twisted and danced through the open window, interspersed with clapping from the crowd. On the couch in the center of the room, Lily rolled over in her sleep and sighed.

“You could send her elsewhere.”

Air escaped her, despite the fact the suggestion had been hovering in the back of her mind. She’d just wanted another answer. Something.

But she knew there wasn’t anything else.

Lily was a target. Equal or perhaps only slightly less so than her sister by benefit of Ashe’s knowledge of how to bind magic. And whether or not she was with the little girl wouldn’t stop Lily from being one. Not as long as Jamison was alive.

But if he was distracted…

If he thought there was a better chance of catching Ashe than of scavenger-hunting for the girl across the whole damn world…

Her eyes found Lily in the darkness.

Jamison hadn’t won. Not with this. Not while Lily was safe.

She wondered if this was what her father felt like when he’d sent them both away.

“Could you do it?” she asked.

Protests rose on Cornelius’ face, each fighting the others to be the first to emerge.

“My place is beside you.”

She said nothing.

“Your highness,” he pressed.

“She’s the only family I have left, Cornelius. I can’t let them take her from me too.”

He turned away, his gaze catching on Lily asleep on the couch.

“Please,” Ashe whispered.

“And what are you going to do, your majesty?”

She didn’t answer. His tone left little doubt he was actually wondering anyway.

“I should be here,” he said as though she’d spoken.

“You should be protecting the last of the Merlin’s Children. One of them, at least.” She paused. “How fast can you arrange something?”

A moment passed. “It would take about a week to put everything in place. Perhaps a bit more.”

Ashe swallowed. In spite of herself, she’d hoped it would be longer. Several years, maybe. Or never.

She shoved the thought away. Across the room, she could feel Nathaniel watching them as much as he was keeping an eye on the street, and the pressure of his gaze was almost too much to bear. And Lily would be furious. Incensed. She’d never agree.

Assuming anyone told her.

Drawing a sharp breath, Ashe pushed to her feet, suddenly needing to be out of the line of Cornelius and Nathaniel’s gazes.

“Do it,” she ordered.

“My place should be here, your highness.”

She ignored the words, unable to continue the lopsided debate. “Don’t tell me where you take her. Just in case.”

Her gaze darted to the girl and back. “And don’t say anything to Lily.”

Before he could respond, she strode from the room, desperately trying to convince herself she wasn’t running away.

*****

Chaunessy Tower looked in better shape than last he’d seen it, though Cole supposed even quasi-invisible wizards wouldn’t want to leave holes blown through the walls and windows forever.

“Keep the change,” he said to the cab driver, pushing the money through the grill toward the front seat. Without waiting for the man’s reply, and doubting there would have been one anyway, he climbed from the taxi and headed for the revolving door.

The cherry wood front desk in the center of the room was empty, as was the rest of the lobby. Chips and scars still marred the gray marble walls where debris had hit them, though the security cameras near the ceiling had obviously been repaired. In unison, they turned to the door as he stepped inside.

Cole hesitated. It wasn’t quite the reception he’d been expecting. It wasn’t quite anything.

“Hello?”

His voice bounced off the walls, sounding small in the cavernous room. Somewhere in the distance, the air conditioners kicked on, almost perversely deadening his call with their white noise hum.

And nothing else happened.

Letting out a breath, he glanced to the cameras. Someone was here, anyway. Or else they’d left behind a perfectly good security system for no reason.

Still eyeing the cameras obliquely, he started across the lobby.

Marble squeaked beneath his shoes, accompanied by the whisper of the fabric of his jeans. The hum of the air conditioners pressed on his ears, impossible to ignore for being the only other sound.

His steps slowed as he neared the opposite side of the lobby. An island of elevators waited ahead, with a hall leading between them, but he barely glanced to the gleaming doors. At the end of the corridor, a black abyss gaped beyond the remnants of a decimated wall. Above the broken hinges of the missing doors, a few lonely brass letters dangled from shredded plaster, and in the darkness, the air-conditioned breeze sent small bits of something skittering down.

The ding of the elevator nearly made him jump out of his skin.

An elevator door rolled to the side. Magic spiked a migraine straight through the back of his skull.

“Hello, Cole.”

Wincing, he retreated, but he wasn’t fast enough. Three wizards rushed out and encircled him, leaving behind a monster who approached as if he had all the time in the world. Scars and melted flesh distorted half the man’s face, though they did nothing for the glow emanating from his skin or the cold distrust in his one normal eye.

“Isn’t this a surprise?”

The man could have been commenting on the weather.

Drawing a rough breath, Cole tried to keep all the wizards in sight at once, despite the fact it was impossible. Surrounding him on all sides, the men circled, cutting off any escape.

“Are you alone?”

Cole looked back at the giant who could’ve given Nathaniel a run for largest wizard he’d yet seen. “Where’s my father?”

Humor twitched the man’s lip. “Alright,” he acquiesced. He stepped to one side, clearing a path to the elevator. “After you.”

Cole hesitated, his gaze darting between the wizards and the distant street baking in the summer sun.

It was too late to back out now.

He walked inside the elevator.

*****

“He is not a threat to me, Mason.”

Brogan glanced to Jamison. The man didn’t turn from the one-way window taking up the majority of the wall.

“You know that’s not the point, sir.”

“It’s been six hours.”

“The Merlin would not have just let him leave. They must have an agenda.”

Jamison exhaled. On the other side of the glass, the boy seated at the metal table in the center of the bare room shifted uncomfortably on his folding chair.

“Perhaps. But for the moment, I do not care. He is my son. He belongs with me. And I have been kept waiting long enough.”

Without another word, Jamison headed for the door.

Brogan’s mouth tightened as the door closed, but he made no move to follow. There was only so much arguing he would allow himself since, security issues aside, he couldn’t help but understand the king’s point of view.

He let his gaze slide to the boy in the other room. The boy who both Jamison and the rest of the Blood had assumed was dead. The boy who had somehow escaped a portal, and then dozens of wizards, only to arrive on their doorstep. They had no explanation. Cole hadn’t said a word since they brought him up here, except to ask after Jamison. Any other question was met with silence and an expression that, whether the boy knew it or not, was patently his father.

It was interesting.

With a coldness that could have been cloned from Jamison, the boy glanced over as the door opened. And then he froze.

Sound vanished from the room.

Brogan sighed. The boy was a cripple and the king was no fool. Let Jamison have his privacy, such as it was. Cole didn’t present a threat.

His Merlin captors, on the other hand…

Brogan drew out his cell phone. Simeon answered on the first ring.

“Expand the perimeter. You see so much as a Merlin baby, I want it reported.”

He hung up. On the opposite side of the glass, Cole rose, sudden uncertainty in the boy’s every motion.

Brogan’s eyes narrowed.

It was all so very interesting.

Cole shifted in the metal folding chair, succeeding in almost rocking himself sideways on the uneven legs for the hundredth time in however long it’d been. White walls devoid of anything as helpful as a clock stared back at him from all sides, save the one occupied by what could only be a one-way mirror. Blazing fluorescent lights burned on the ceiling, illuminating every mind-numbing inch of the room and making his reflection look like raccoon-black circles hung beneath his eyes – although the latter might’ve just been the truth.

He felt like he’d stumbled into a cheap cop movie somewhere between the elevator and here.

Hours had crept by, he was fairly certain. Possibly days. His stomach was gnawing at itself with a determination that left him feeling every single moment since the candy bar he’d snagged at the bus stop, and his head had long since begun to pound in dull rhythm with his heart. The restless night aboard the bus had left him aching all over, though the sharp edge of the chair on his spine wasn’t helping anything. And meanwhile, the wizards and the Blood kept coming, asking the same questions about where the Merlin who’d sent him were hiding, as though expecting the sheer repetition to do anything other than drive him insane.

But they said nothing of his father. And thus they got nothing in return.

It was petty revenge and he knew it. But as each passing minute fueled the fear that his dad had died since he’d last seen the man, it’d become the best he could settle for, short of trying to see how the chair and his temper would fare against them.

Though that option was getting more tempting.

The door opened.

He glanced over, idly placing odds as to whether it would be a Blood or Taliesin this time.

“Hey, Cole.”

His breath caught.

Gray touched Victor Jamison’s temples and a suggestion of weathering showed around the corners of his dark eyes. A thin scar barely an inch long traced his cheekbone and his suit was nicer than anything Cole had ever seen him wear. With one hand on the doorknob, he stood motionless, the glow around him so similar to that around Lily and yet so inexplicably different at the same time, and then he carefully stepped farther into the room.

The door closed.

Air pressure shifted and the silence became deeper than before.

“It’s been a long time,” Victor said.

Broken syllables tried to order themselves in his mind, and all he could think to do was laugh, though the sound strangled itself before it could emerge.

The council chamber in the moments after his father’s arrival flashed through his mind.

Beneath him, the chair rocked and his hand instinctively gripped the metal table. Drawing a breath, he tried to drive the image away. Steadying himself on the table, he rose to his feet.

“Dad,” he said.

Victor paused and then crossed the distance between them. With infinite care, he reached out, wrapping Cole in a hug.

Cole froze. Uncertainly, his arms rose and embraced the man. A heartbeat passed, and then Victor pushed him back, holding him at arm’s length and looking firmly into his eyes.

“I never stopped searching for you. I want you to know that. Not for a single day.”

Cole forced a breath into his lungs. “I know.”

Victor hesitated, but he only nodded in response. Still gripping one of Cole’s arms, he turned and sank down onto the edge of the table.

Shakily, Cole returned to the chair.

The silence stretched with the awkwardness of a break in a script to which neither of them knew the lines.

“So,” Victor said, a hint of tension leaking into his voice. “‘How’ve you been’ hardly seems appropriate, don’t you think?”

Cole chuckled weakly. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look at the man. And all he wanted to do was stare at him.

“They tell me you were in Utah,” Victor tried.

“For a while.”

“Ah.”

Silence set up camp in the middle of the room.

Cole forced his gaze up from the table. “They told me you were dead,” he said, a question wandering somewhere in the words.