Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (102 page)

“What did you mean by the elves defied
classification?” I asked.

“That the normal test for High Elves came up
ambiguous,” Bishop said. “Neither Winter nor Summer.”

“Why are those the only choices you think you
have?” I asked, shaking my head. “I’ve never understood that.”

“There are no other kinds,” Bishop said,
sitting up with brows knitted together. He knew he was right just
as strongly as he knew the sun would rise in the morning.

“Shrank,” I said, looking down at my shirt,
not that I could see him this close. “Are you a Summer or a Winter
pixie?”

“No, Master Seth,” squeaked the pixie, not
leaving the confines of his sling in my shirt. He did poke a leg
out lazily.

“That’s not possible,” Bishop said,
shocked.

“I’ve been meaning to ask about that,” I
said, turning to Peter. “Isn’t it instantly obvious to you whose
bindings an elf holds? Like something in their eyes?”

Peter thought for a moment and it looked like
he was about to say “no” when he stopped. “Oh,” he stretched to
word out for a few seconds as he searched through his memories.
“Only recently. I see what you mean and why you’re so sure of whom.
They hide this from us, don’t they?”

“Probably,” I agreed. At least I knew I
wasn’t the only one now.

“But… for millennia… the elves…” stammered
Bishop.

“And for years during the Cold War, the only
nations to exist in the world were the United States and the USSR
said the Canadian to the Brit,” Peter said sarcastically. “Seth
said at Dunstan’s that these weren’t Summer’s or Winter’s elves.
You’ve had time to adjust to the idea.”

“All right, then,” Bishop sighed,
exasperated. “A third option then. Who?”

“Fourth, I know who holds Shrank’s geas,” I
said. “And I would think that there are more possibilities than
that, but none quite so powerful, I’m sure.”

“Seth,” Gordon rumbled. He didn’t like
playing mediator.

“I’m sorry, Gordon. It just seems so obvious
from a logical standpoint that I don’t see why everybody isn’t
seeing it. Of the three most powerful elves in Faery, it isn’t
Winter or Summer, therefore it is MacNamara. Simple, logical
elimination. Yet no one wants to say it but me.”

“But he is bound, too,” argued Bishop. “Isn’t
he?”

I laughed. “Yes, to power, not to Winter or
Summer. And he’s rather obvious about it. Does it right in front of
everyone.”

“What are you planning to do?” Bishop
asked.

“Kill him.”

“How?” Bishop pressed.

I shrugged. “I haven’t known how I was going
to do anything else I’ve done and I’ve managed.”

Bishop leaned forward, looking past Gordon to
Peter. “And you’re going to follow him on this fool’s errand?”

“I’m sure we’ll run into Ehran and Ethan
along the way,” Peter said smiling back at him. “And he does have a
knack for beating the odds, you’ll have to admit.”

“I’m going, too,” said Gordon with
conviction.

“Like Hell!” cried all three of us in
unison.

“Your family needs you, Gordon,” I said.
“Right here and right now. I won’t take you away from them.”

“The two of you can’t face MacNamara alone,
Seth,” Gordon argued. “I helped last night and I can help now.”

“Yes, Gordon, you helped,” I said as I rose
from the table. It was easier to make an impassioned plea while
pacing. “I’ll even go so far as to say you lynchpinned the entire
night. Twice. If it weren’t for you, we wouldn’t be here now, most
of Europe would be gone and a good deal of the Eastern seaboard of
the United States would be a salty marsh from the backwash.” From
the look on Bishop’s face, he hadn’t known how bad the resonance
was if it had hit.

“But right now, there are three people that
you care about—that I care about—that need you here. Just… be here,
Gordon.”

“I can’t do that, Seth,” he stood, his chair
falling to the floor. The whole house shook when he slammed his
hands to the table. His brown eyes were surrounded by red and tears
streamed down his face. “I saw what you did for him. I know the
pain you bore for over two hours. You kept his blood pumping and
his lungs moving while you screamed and screamed and screamed and
we couldn’t make you let go until Braelynn managed a nerve block in
his spine and to restart his rebuilt heart. I won’t let you go
alone, Seth. That’s all there is to it!”

We faced each other across the table quietly
for a time. I wasn’t the only one who could make impassioned pleas
apparently and I didn’t know what to do about this one.

“Looks like he trumped your family card with
one of his own, little brother,” Peter said quietly. Like I needed
that pointed out to me.

“You’re putting me in a terrible position
here, Gordon,” I said with resignation.

“You are not going alone,” he said gruffly,
stressing each word.

“No,” said Bishop, standing up beside him.
“He’s not. At the very least, we can offer some distraction. Give
me a few hours.” He picked up the file he’d given to Gordon and
tossed it across the table to me, landing in a more haphazard way.
“Some light reading to keep you distracted. Come on, Gordon, let’s
go make some calls.” He took his valise and headed for the door
with Gordon in tow.

Gordon looked back at Peter at the door and
demanded, “Don’t you let him leave!”

“Like I can control him?” Peter called at the
empty doorway.

“We should just leave,” I said, sitting down
at the table across from him.

“That would not be a good idea and you know
it,” Peter said. “You’ve been lucky with the Cahills, you know.
You’ve only seen a small part of them over a few weeks, but they’re
not exactly the big happy family you see. Felix and Gordon are too
much alike to exist together without conflict and Felix supplied
that in spades. Whatever your father did or said to him a year ago
was enough of a kick in the pants that he managed to start building
a bridge to Gordon. Not a perfect relationship but a start to one.
Then you came in a plopped a bridge down on top of Martin to both
Felix and Gordon. Enid’s been trying to do that for years.”

At the mention of Enid, I reached up into the
wards and sought my mother. She was still in the infirmary,
unconscious, wrapped in the Pact spell and protected with medical
stasis magic. Lucian had both helped and hindered her and while it
was possible that MacNamara was at the root of this, too, I had a
nagging feeling that he wasn’t. I couldn’t explain why. I pulled
out of the wards before I got maudlin.

“So, looks like we have a few hours to kill,”
I said. “Anything you feel like doing?”

Two hours later, we were in a field with the
Ferrin brothers riding along the shady edges with Shrank flitting
around in the clover. It was a nice afternoon with an absolutely
beautiful view across the pastures and down through the valley to
the house. I suspect we’d been guided in that direction by the
grooms that were always in sight. The wards gently buzzed twice and
slowly faded away.

Within moments, three large portals opened
onto the driveway to the house and started rapidly disgorging men
and women carrying packages and boxes. Their only apparent goal was
to get out of the way of the person behind them. I couldn’t help
but to look inside the portals while they were open. They were
right there in front of me, energetically ripping at space. Noisy
and power-consuming to maintain, by the looks of them. All felt
like different people, made with a different magic, leading to
different places. The far end collapsed on its own when the
magician maintaining it cut its power and closed the near end. The
tunnel itself shriveled into a one-dimensional string forever
connecting the two places. That was an interesting side effect.

“Damn, that was loud,” muttered Peter.

“You heard that from here?” asked Ferrin
across Ian.

“Like a card in bicycle spokes,” I said,
coming up in front of them. “A stampede of wild horses could be
quieter. Please, I beg you, Peter, tell me I’m not that loud.”

“You’re slick as snot,” said Ferrin. “Even
with a gate. No intervening space what so ever. Haven’t seen Peter
do that one yet.”

“No, you’re nowhere near that loud,” Peter
agreed with Ferrin. “As for a gate, let’s see what’s going on then.
Giddyap.” He spurred his horse into a light gallop down the slight
decline toward the stables. Ian laughed and took off after him.
Peter disappeared through the portal he created a few hundred feet
down the hill with Ian fast on his heels. Ferrin panicked at Ian’s
disappearance, spurring his horse forward into a confused spiral.
Neither he nor the horse was in danger of getting hurt but I pulled
him off and calmed the horse anyway.

“You know you’ve got to learn to let go a
little,” I said as he climbed back on the horse. “He’s growing up.
He’s gonna want to get out on his own sometimes.”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,
then,” he said testily. “If I don’t load it down with C-4
first.”

I barked out a laugh. “You’re not quite the
street punk you presented yourself to be originally.”

“Every street punk has a story, mate,” he
said. “Mine just had an unusual ending.”

“Are you guys coming?” called Ian’s
disembodied head from fifty feet away.

“Ewww! Don’t do that! That’s creepy!” I
yelled at him. He giggled in that little boys’ way that told me he
was going to find as many ways to gross me out as possible with
this if I didn’t hurry. We didn’t give him much time before we
trotted the horses through Peter’s gate. It was a nice and smooth
transition, without the ragged edges and very little noise. Six
people stood beside Peter watching us as we rode through and he
pulled the far side through, closing the connection neatly, without
leaving that telltale string behind.

“He taught me,” Peter told them. “And his are
a lot less noisy.” He grinned at us as we dismounted and handed the
reins to the groom handling Peter’s and Ian’s horses. “So, Mike,
what’dya think?”

“Didn’t feel a thing,” Ferrin said, moving
closer to his brother. It was quite crowded here, close to two
hundred people, so I understood his protectiveness.

The doors swung open wide and Gordon, Bishop,
and John stepped out onto the entry, looking quickly over the
gathering. John and Bishop started calling names and directing
people into and around the house, splitting them into groups that
had no meaning to me but hopefully they understood. Gordon surveyed
the crowd, brightening when he saw us.

“Seth, Peter, excellent timing! Please come
with me! Ian and Michael, you, too,” he called over the heads of
many people. He headed out through the throng straight out from the
door and through the small garden bed in the center of the drive.
As we angled our way through the mass of people to Gordon, every
single one of them seemed to know us and spoke to us by name, not
expecting a reply either, just saying “hello” and acknowledging us.
It was eerie. Okay, it was creepier than Ian’s disembodied head,
but at the moment Ian was safely atop Ferrin’s shoulders so at
least he was buffered from the weirdness. He was getting a kick out
of how many people knew Ferrin by name. By the time we’d made it to
Gordon, the drive was almost clear.

“How did all those people know you, Michael?”
Ian asked once Ferrin had swung him to the ground.

“I dunno, Yonnie,” he said shaking his head.
“I’ve been a little busy lately, but honestly, I don’t think I’ve
ever seen most of those people before.”

“You won MacNamara’s Games,” I said. “That
alone would be enough for most of these people to know you.”

“Not so much,” Gordon countered, stepping up
to us. “Not everyone considers that particular part of our society
important at all. These people are more aware of last night’s uh…
adventures.”

So much for low profile for a Pact holder,
but I didn’t ask for this part either so screw ‘em if they can’t
take a joke. I had no idea what that meant but I heard it in a
movie.

“These people weren’t there, either,” I said
suspiciously.

“Bishop had models of the resonance waves
bounced throughout four continents,” Gordon explained. “Then he
made sure that the rumor mill ran at exponential speeds and
included as much visual imagery as possible, which meant last
night’s ballroom battle played a big part in his PR campaign.”

“I still didn’t play that much of a part in
that either,” Ferrin said, looking down at Ian as innocently as
possible. “Don’t you go believin’ no cock’n’bull stories they tell
ya.”

Ian narrowed his eyes up at his brother. “Are
you telling me that you didn’t kick some serious wizard ass on top
of a gay bar in London? Then take out another ten or twelve in
Germany? That’s what Peter said. He said I should ‘specially ask
you why you were at the gay bar in the first place.”

Ferrin was bright red after Ian’s mention of
London and it looked like he’d dislocated his jaw by the time Ian
finished speaking. Peter was hiding behind a smiling Gordon but his
snickering gave his hiding place away.

“So he didn’t mention that I was there to
meet him and that he left before I got there?” Ferrin managed after
a moment of shooting daggers at Peter with his eyes. “Or should I
say, got tossed. That because of me, a group of zealots got a
chance to pop Seth when they shouldn’t even have seen him. Seth
requires excellent backup. I was the only thing available at the
time so I had to perform. In the ballroom, Seth was able to break
the spell under the wards that helped to hide the elves. I was one
of the few close enough to pass the spell to. And I got hurt then,
pretty badly too.”

“That guy got his face emulsified for his
trouble, too,” said Peter still snickering behind Gordon. “Hope
fingerprints and id’s hold out.”

“Gordon, what’s up? What are we here to see?”
I asked, trying to move the conversation away from London gay
bars.