Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (23 page)

The man stood up from the table, forcing the
waitress and me a step back from the table. He was big, wearing
camo pants and a black sweat shirt with the sleeves ripped off. His
arms were as thick as my legs and were covered in ink, ink that
seemed to move when I looked at it. Creepy. I considered briefly
pulling one of the Swords out but recalled her story from earlier.
Yesterday, the man had avoided violence with Eddie because of the
elf. They were peace bonded for some reason. So instead, I
decided to use the Stone. I slid a shield around the waitress and
me just to be safe, then a very thin tiling of shielding onto the
floor as he stepped toward me. I slowly raised us an inch off the
ground as he centered his aggravation on me.

“Look, pup,” he said, poking me in the chest
with his forefinger. “I’m just havin’ a bit of fun and nobody’s
getting’ hurt, so back off!” I looked down at his finger where he
struck my shield about a half-inch off my chest and wondered if he
noticed that. He was in full intimidation mode and thought I was
another Eddie. It must have been my accent. It was time to clear up
that little misunderstanding.

I splayed the fingers of my right hand and
shoved him in the chest hard while at the same time pulling the
shield tile he was standing on in the opposite direction really
fast. Surprised, he shot his arms out trying to catch himself as he
fell backward, but he hit hard against the concrete floor,
momentarily stunned. The cheap carpeting didn’t buffer his fall at
all. I sent another layer of the Stone’s shielding out over the man
and over the floor where others where gathering in a circle around
us to watch, hoping for a fight. I used their weight to hold the
man in place on the floor. I took a few steps to him and calmly sat
on his chest, arms crossed over my knees, looking directly into his
eyes. He was having difficulty breathing under the weight of so
many men and his eyes were wide and panicked.

“I am not happy with way you are treating
this nice lady,” I said to him. “It is disrespectful and mean. And
while I may be a ‘pup,’ I am more than enough to take out a mutt
like you. So I will tell you one more time to apologize to the lady
and leave. Am I clear here?” He nodded his head slightly. I’m
pretty sure that was because that’s all he could move. I stood up
and evaporated the tiles around him. He coughed hard a few times,
keeping his dark eyes glued on me while he scrambled to his feet,
one hand on the back of his head where he’d hit the concrete. I
smiled at him slightly.

“I do apologize, ma’am,” he said, looking
over my shoulder at the waitress. “It was rude and uncalled for and
it won’t happen again.” I knew she was there since I was still
shielding her. I knew where everybody within thirty feet was
actually, including the elf standing a full head taller than
everyone else watching in the aisle twenty feet back. It was
somewhat comforting knowledge at that moment.

“Thank you,” she said meekly to the man as I
turned to her. He scurried out behind me to jeers and laughter of
everyone else in the building as they returned to their food. As I
walked back to the table, I could feel everyone’s eyes boring holes
into my back. Kieran had an odd look on his face, but Peter was
smiling broadly. Ethan was watching out the window. I glanced out
as I sat down to see the man who’d just left climbing into a van.
The van rocked violently for a few minutes then a torn and battered
bench seat came flying out one of the sliding doors into the lot,
narrowly missing the hood of a nearby truck. I guess he was upset.
Ethan started laughing, reaching back blindly for me and pointing
out the window.

“That was nicely done, Seth,” said Kieran,
still surveying the room. “A power play without showing one iota of
power. Now we just have to decide whether to leave now or wait till
they leave.”

“You should wait,” said the waitress, kissing
me on the cheek. “Thank you, Honey, that was really sweet of you
and amazing to watch, but that guy and his friends’ll kill you now
if they get the chance. Y’all just stay here until they all leave.
It’ll be safer.” She smiled and tousled my hair and slipping the
check off the end of the table, like I wouldn’t see. I still
blushed and ducked my head, embarrassed.

“Thank you, ma’am, but I’m not sure staying
would be the better idea,” I said. “We’ll talk it over.”

“Whatever you decide, be careful,” she said,
smiled again, and left for the fray.

“Staying means we can’t follow them,” I
said.

“Assuming we can follow them,” said
Peter.

“And assuming we need to,” said Kieran. “We
have a general direction already and a fair approximation of
distance. A trip out to the county assessor’s office or even the
Sheriff that’s down by the highway and we’ll have Langdon’s farm.
Or, we could ask anybody here. Not everything has to be hard,
guys.”

I nodded, accepting Kieran’s advice. It was
simple and it made sense.

“How did we find them so quickly?” I
asked.

“Shrank,” said Ethan, mildly. “He felt the
presence of the Faery realm from a hundred miles away. MacNamara
pulls on a pretty big chunk of it to create the rift that he
controls. Still, knowing where it is and knowing how to get in are
two very different things.”

“Like not knowing where the head of a coiled
snake is,” offered Peter. “It could still strike at any
moment.”

“So who are these people?” I asked,
standing.

“Cannon fodder, most likely,” said Kieran
sullenly, standing up with me. “Hired muscle and lackeys that have
a much higher opinion of themselves than their masters have of
them. A few are of high enough caliber to be good fighters, I
suppose.”

Ethan and Peter threaded their way through
the crowd so we followed, taking the stares by staring back without
remorse, confident in our lack of visibility. Well, Kieran and
Ethan were confident. I was able to fake it. I hoped. We didn’t see
the elf again, though. Outside we turned to the back of the
restaurant, away from the other vehicles and to my car. The noon
heat was oppressive, but at least there was a breeze. Kieran
dangled the keys out to his side and I snatched them up
quickly.

“What? I get to drive my own car?” I asked
with mock indignation. Kieran chuckled as Ethan and Peter switched
sides so that Ethan would sit behind Kieran so he could slide the
seat back further. I started the car, turning the air on full blast
and waited for it to cool.

“Do we wait for Shrank?” I asked.

“Wait for me to do what?” Shrank asked,
flying up through my knees to land atop the steering wheel in a
puff of golden dust. I jumped a little, startled. “Good day, Master
Seth. You are in better spirits now.”

“Yes, I am, thank you,” I said to the
pixie.

“Did you find the entrance, Shrank?” asked
Kieran.

“Yes, Master Kieran,” piped the pixie. “It
was not challenging at all, not in the slightest. I believe you can
see it from here once you clear these trees.”

I pulled through the parking lot and out onto
the highway. “Shrank, is that the right direction?” I asked,
pointing out to the northeast. The bright blue sky was cloudless
except over one small patch of ground between a small mountain and
the river. There were dark blue, black, and pink striations of
power running through the clouds to the ground, thin and pale
against the clouds. The pink made the blue and black stand out
because it was on either side, probably surrounding it.

“Uh, Seth?” said Kieran, softly as the car
jolted off the shoulder of the road.

Jerking my attention back to the road, I
slowly turned the wheel so that we jumped the shoulder, jarring us
without tearing out the front end. “Sorry about that,” I said.
“Maybe you should do the sightseeing and I’ll drive.”

“Sounds good to us,” volunteered Ethan from
the back seat. “The pixie’s right, though. He’s not hiding that at
all. I’m surprised we didn’t see it earlier, really.”

“Don’t be,” squeaked Shrank. “I was watching
when the veil dropped, shortly before all those men went into the
building. It was quite a dramatic change, even knowing it was
there.”

“Turn north at the next highway, Seth,” said
Kieran, reviewing a folded map against the road signs.

The car quieted as we navigated our way
toward what appeared to be a huge storm of energy in the sky,
rapidly moving from four-lane to two-lane roads, then to narrower
county roads. Farmland surrounded us on both sides, but I couldn’t
tell what was being farmed. As we got closer to the aerial
disturbance, the farmland became less and less tended and more open
pastures. A lot more hills and windbreaks filled the landscape.

Shrank jumped up onto the dashboard and said,
“We’re close to the entrance now, Master Seth.”

As we crested the top of the hill, the road
turned sharply to the left, but there was a gravel drive to the
right that lead to a large and new steel building with a small
brick facing on the front where the doors were. I slowed to a stop
at the drive and looked at the building. From where we sat, there
wasn’t much to see except the concentration of power lines leaping
upward into the sky at the rear of the building. I wasn’t even sure
that was coming from the building, just near it. No cars or trucks
sat outside it. It looked perfectly empty from here.

“What do you think?” I asked. “Do we go
in?”

“May as well,” said Kieran. “We’ll have to
try something.”

He wasn’t enthusiastic about it. Couldn’t say
I was either. I pulled slowly into the gravel lot, watching for
holes. I parked close to the building, angled enough to pull out
fast if I needed to. We all piled out.

“Here, Peter,” I said, handing him my keys.
“Stay with the car.”

“You have got to be kidding me.” He was
standing with his arms crossed, glaring at me when I turned around
to look. “You are not leaving me here to worry. That is not
happening.”

“Peter,” I started, confused. I didn’t want
to go in there, so I couldn’t understand why he would. I didn’t
know how to frame an argument around how he shouldn’t. “Peter, this
is dangerous. I can’t ask you to go in there for my sake. Kieran
doesn’t even want to go in there. Think about this. Please, stay
with the car.”

“Has it occurred to you that when you go
through that door you won’t be back for a few days, if you come
back at all?” he asked. “And you’re not leaving me holding the
purses.” He slammed the door shut and stalked past me into the
building, the first in. I locked the car up and headed in behind
Kieran and Ethan. I didn’t understand about the purses—none of us
had a purse—but I had to admire his conviction, as stupid as I
thought it was. I guess I could assuage my guilt some, maybe, if he
got hurt knowing that I at least tried to talk him out of it.

I doubted that.

When we entered, none of us had a clear
concept of what we’d see once we passed the doors. Good thing,
really, because a hardware store was out of left field. Not one of
those modern day megastores that I avoid like mega-bars but the
kind from the fifties and sixties with the long counters in front
with the foot-thick catalogs and clerks that fetched things from
the shelves in back. There were a lot of shelves in back, row after
row, with bins lining each shelf. There were large bins in front of
the counters holding common items like penny nails and coils of
copper wiring. Everything looked new, including the bins, and the
flooring was wood. The walls were wooden, too, and decorated in
early Twentieth Century memorabilia, like a wooden plow, a butter
churn, and a milking bucket and stool. I grinned briefly at the
poster of the milk wagon carting the half-dozen milk containers
with the over-sized, smiling driver. It reminded me of my batteries
safely ensconced in my cavern.

“I thought the Fae hated iron,” I said to
Peter at the counter quietly. He was still irritated at me and I
needed him to calm down. Maybe that guy was right and I was a
puppy, but I didn’t want Peter mad at me.

“They do, why?” he said, just as quietly,
scrunching his eyebrows down briefly.

“There’re nails and screws all through here,”
I whispered. “And this building is steel, isn’t it?”

“Like all of our beliefs about Faery,” Kieran
said in a normal voice, “they have been exaggerated for our
detriment.” He picked up a handful of penny nails from the bin in
the center of the room. “Take the rumor of iron being physically
sickening to the Fae, for example. Shrank, what am I holding?”

The pixie flew to Kieran, landed lightly on
his wrist, and looked dramatically into his hand. I’d forgotten he
was with us and hadn’t seen him come in the door. He could
apparently conceal himself quite well when he wanted to.

“Pikes, sir,” squeaked Shrank, looking up at
Kieran. “Metal pikes made mostly of iron and zinc and aluminum, I
think.”

“Are they balanced well enough for battle?”
Kieran asked.

Shrank picked one up near the head and rolled
it down his arm halfway before tossing it aside. “Not that one,” he
said, reaching for another.

“That’s good, Shrank, thank you,” said Kieran
smiling at him. The pixie shrugged his tiny shoulders, creating a
ripple in his wings and lifted off Kieran’s wrist, almost
disappearing into the woodwork like a haze in the air. He was
translucent and he never stopped in one place long enough for the
eye to register his outline anywhere. It was an interesting and
natural trait, I supposed.

“The higher up the ladder you go, though, the
more susceptible to iron poisoning the Faery are,” said Kieran,
moving up to the counter close to us. “But in general, you actually
have to hit them with it to hurt them, same as you, or be in
prolonged contact with it, elves even more so than any of the
others. The Faery do not use iron and it is not found in their
realms, but they don’t burst into flames or anything when they are
in its presence.”