Sons (Book 2) (83 page)

Looking over at Sean, I saw the lonely, scared little boy in a strange hospital from four years ago.  He was probably kept at arm’s length from his mother when she died, watching from the door, too, but knowing all the same what was happening.  Seeing dark bruises around ugly, broad bandages brought back the same sorts of memories.  Sean took my look to mean I wanted a report.

“Mr. Phillips will be here in a few minutes,” he said, his voice shaky.  “I don’t think he believes you’re here, but he does believe that Dad’s had a relapse.”

“Okay,” I responded, nodding.  “Why don’t you come closer, Sean.  It just looks scarier from a distance.  We got here in time to help him, I think.”

“No, please,” Fuller gasped, gulping hard.  “Don’t let… him see me… like this…”  He wheezed and fought to catch his breath.  Whatever blocks he put in place for the pain were breaking down, tenuous anyway for the lack of proper medical care.

“Darius,” I said sternly, leaning over to catch his light brown eyes, “The last time he saw you, you were bleeding out on the floor from eight places.  Unless you are ashamed of what he did for you, you need to let him see you healing.  You know, Darius,
not
dying.”

“Never… ashamed…” Darius gasped.  Sean had moved close enough to the bed to hear and stared at the thick bandages and severe bruises on his abdomen.  His normally tanned skin looked like a catastrophe map to a tornado supercell outbreak.

Jimmy shifted into the other room and immediately turned for the bedroom.  “Here you are, Lord Daybreak,” he said, causing a slight breeze on Sean as he stopped at the end of the bed with my supplies.  “As fast as I could find everything.”

“Thanks, Jimmy,” I mumbled, taking the cutting board and mortar from him.  “Sean, would you get several towels wet for me, please?”

“What are you doing, Seth?” Peter asked as I pulled the
Estelium
from the mortar.

“Darius is very weak right now and he can’t take the kind of magic that Kieran could,” I said, dropping several of the herbs that Jimmy brought into the mortar and grinding them with the pestle.  I hadn’t really seen these things before but I was going on instinct.  “As soon as I can make a poultice of this, I’ll remove the curses, slap on the poultices on his back and stomach, then start as much pushing and probing as I can.  I’ll need your help getting them on, okay?”

“No prob,” he said softly.  “Shirt’s gotta go, huh?”

“Yeah, we can cut it off when we get the curses,” I said, cutting off half the tiny purple blooms and adding them to the mix.

“How wet do you want them?” Sean asked from the bathroom door.

“Just wring them out good.  Two will be fine,” I called over Peter.

“Oops,” he muttered and ran back into the bathroom.

The front door crashed open with the sound of five men running in.  Phillips had arrived.  “Sean?” he yelled.  “Darius?”

“In here, Mr. Phillips,” I called, handing the foul smelling mixture I made to Jimmy.  “First, would you heat this just a little?  If you can manage to, say, a hundred and five for four or five minutes that would be great.  Lay out one of the damp towels from Sean and pour it evenly about this far.”  I pointed at Darius’ abdomen and waved my hand in an oval over the affected area I wanted to cover.  Then started to pantomime folding the towel.  “Fold it like so to keep the poultice in place and have Sean bring some dry towels back with you.  Once I remove the curses, Pete and I will remove the bandages and place the poultice down, drop a dry towel in place, and roll him over again.  I’ll start working on him while Pete talks to Phillips.  I’ll need you to make the second poultice for his chest and to help me remove those bandages.

“Mr. Phillips, I’m a mite ticked at you,” I said without looking at him.  He stood in the door, arms spread wide to hold back the other four men.  Even forewarned, he was surprised I was there, even more surprised to see Peter and Jimmy, still unknown to them.  “It’s been a week and your crew has yet to learn how to control the wards?  I didn’t change them that much, Mr. Phillips.”

“Lord Daybreak, what are you doing here?” he asked.  “We weren’t expecting you.”

“I came to clear up our difficulty from the other day,” I said levelly.  “It seems I chose a good time to show up.  Would you mind terribly if I moved the wards off of this high alert to something less… dangerous?  I believe you’ll be able to work with them better that way.”

“God, yes!  Please, do,” Phillips said eagerly.  Apparently, they hadn’t been able to manage even that since yesterday morning.  Phillips fell back into the man on his left in relief as I dropped the power levels to the wards.

“I’m not going to explain again what I’m doing, Mr. Phillips,” I said, “except to say I’m about to take some very powerful curses off of his back that I believe you know a little about.  Then I will proceed to heal him as best I can.  He will need time to recuperate.  Not
his
type of recuperate, though.  So for Sean’s peace of mind, Darius, Sean, and you will be accompanying us back to Gilán for no less than three days where he will be doing nothing but resting and talking, but mostly resting.  You will also be resting, Mr. Phillips, because you need it as badly as he does.  If you doubt that, there’s a mirror in that bathroom.

“Once I get started, I’ll be indisposed for about an hour,” I told him.  “Peter will ask you about the attacks, then you’ll have the rest of that time to make arrangements for your absence.  And when you pack, casual clothes only.  I’ll shred anything with a tie.  And I don’t have electricity over there, so keep that in mind, too.”

Sean came in with glasses of cool water and handed one to both Peter and me.  I heard Jimmy rinsing the mortar and knew that was his prompting.  Sean wasn’t that levelheaded.  He could be, but he just hasn’t had the practice for it yet.

“Thanks, Sean,” I said, taking the glass and downing the water fast.  “Stick around now.  This is gonna look a lot worse than it really is.  I’m gonna have to stick a wicked looking knife in his back to take the curses out and then Peter and I will move really fast to take care of everything else.  I’d love for you to hold his hand while we work but you’d get in the way too badly.  It’ll be all right, though.  He’s going to make it out of this and be just fine.  I promise.”

He smiled weakly at me.  “Thank you, Seth, for everything,” he said, his eyes welling with tears.

“Don’t worry about it, man,” I said, smiling back.  “What’s the good of being this powerful if you can’t help your friends?  You ready, Pete?”

“Yep,” he answered, grinning at me.  “Let’s kick this mule.”

We gently rolled Darius onto his stomach, tossing pillows and blankets onto the floor behind me.  Throwing my senses into the foam of reality that formed Darius’ skin, I found the magic that was older than this universe attached to his skin, sucking in the energy around us slowly.  Peter was cutting the shirt away with a knife I didn’t know he had, revealing blood-soaked bandages covered in clear plastic tape to prevent seepage.  No matter, we were moving now.  I raised my hand up high and called for the Night Sword,
Hungry, my friend?  I have some snacks for you.
  The ebony blade scared the hell out of everyone but Peter and Jimmy.

The Palace was busy today, but mostly just the same work cataloging and mapping supply rooms and getting more staff settled in.  Jimmy was out visiting with the faery while I kicked back and waited to hear from the Pentagon and watched over the Fullers.  Ellorn did a good job fixing up the apartment for them, making it homier and more inviting.  Darius would still freak if he woke up alone.

Darius’ pain levels rose sharply after I removed the first curse, so I pushed on him as I dipped the Night’s tip in after the second curse and drove him into sleep, blocking the pain away from his conscious mind.  It made pulling the dried bandages from his back easier on me, and probably Sean, too, since Darius wasn’t screaming because of it.  Peter and I were as gentle as we could be, but we both cursed him and Phillips for doing this.  It was stupid and I was going to tell him.

Sean was still worried and scared for his father, even more so when he didn’t wake when we moved him.  My assurances weren’t enough, which I understood.  I taught him to see the flows of energy under Darius’ skin, to watch the healing energy work its magic.  This wasn’t High Faery magic, but well within his capabilities and it fascinated him to see.  And it brought him a lot of peace.  He saw that his father was going to be okay and he relaxed.

He stayed with his father so he wouldn’t wake up alone in a strange place.  When I last checked, Tony Bennett crooned familiar songs softly from a small battery-operated CD player.  Sean was playing to Darius’ tastes.  He was sitting in a chair beside the bed reading a paperback.  And Darius was sleeping peacefully and pain-free.

Phillips was in bed, naked and asleep within twenty minutes.  He needed the sleep, too.  His duty shift was about to end when the attack began.  Seward was his replacement.  The plan for his “rest” was far more permanent than Phillips wanted, though, and he was more than happy to see Seward on the ground with a bullet in his head. 

We were right about no one else making it past the wards from what Phillips told Peter.  The attack consisted of about a hundred men with automatic and semi-automatic weapons, totally mundane except for some kind of gemstones on chains.  That came from what little remained of the bodies and what could be seen in the wards.  The outside perimeter alarm shrieked and security scrambled.  Seward struck at Darius just as the shooting started.  As far as Phillips knew, Seward was there to protect him. 

Whatever the attackers expected out of their amulets, the wards literally fried them when they tried to cross over the ward line to fire more accurately on the guards.  Moving in tight units, light scarlet lightning bolts flashed in a field a yard deep for a full minute in the ward’s sight.  From what the guards said, it looked the same to them, from the relative safety of bulletproof shelters or barricades, which wouldn’t have offered complete security for them against that firepower. 

Fuller’s security men were afraid to approach the ward lines at every level change because of what they saw.  It took several hours to get everyone comfortable with moving around within the estate.  No one dared cross the outside line.  Darius’ father had a wicked defense that no one had seen activated before then.  Phillips couldn’t turn the wards off and Darius was afraid to try.

And all because I rewired his wards.  If Darius spent a few weeks studying here, he would know this himself.  For such a cautious man, it seemed pretty stupid to me.

Little Brother, have you heard anything yet?
Kieran asked from Ireland.

No,
I sent back through his link.  Looking through the diamond I put in the envelope that I gave to Harmond, I could see a group of about twenty uniformed or expensive-suited men gathering in a large conference room. 
But it looks like they’re about to.  They’re cuttin’ it a little close.  It’s only about forty minutes to dusk.

How many do you see?

About twenty, from the looks of it
, I answered.

We’ll be over in a minute
, he sent. 
Where are you?

In my office,
I answered and closed the link, then I called Jimmy in and told Ellorn that we’d be away for awhile.  Kieran and Ethan shifted over together looking as good as they did this morning.  Peter had changed before he left after getting poultice-stained and bloodstained with me helping Darius.  A tiny bit of violet flower turned the whole mixture bright purple. 

Once I was finished and fell onto the other side of the bed to rest for a few minutes, Jimmy started peeling the poultice on his chest away slowly to show angry red welts where brutal seeping scabs were before.  Sean watched with growing excitement as Jimmy rolled the now-black gelatinous gunk under and into the towel.  He literally ran from the room through his father’s security team hovering nervously around the door.  He grabbed a big pot from the kitchen and came back for hand towels from the bathroom, then knelt beside the bed and slowly started cleaning his dad off.  I knew that need well.

Jimmy shifted in, hopping on one foot as he fought to put a boot on and dripping water on my floor.  When he managed it and stepped into his puddle, he looked at me guiltily and grinned sheepishly.  “Sorry, Arwene was playful today.”

“He tossed you in the river?” Ethan asked laughing at him.

“No,” he answered, laughing with him.  “He tossed the river
at me
!  He might be only a few weeks old, but he’s strong!”  We all laughed at that.  We’d seen Arwene and Orlet pushing currents hard enough to form the channel for the other nymphs on the Great Claiming and they’d kept those going for miles away from a major water source. 

“We have contact,” I said and pushed a reduced image of what I was seeing through the diamond out onto the conference table so everyone could see.  The room was a standard auditorium room like at Dunstan’s, with several levels of fixed tables and another on a podium at the front.  Erasable white boards plastered the walls behind the podium and the room was filled with electronics that were currently and conspicuously powered down.  There were also several cameras and microphones that were inconspicuous and live.

Lord Daybreak?
Harmond said while nervously holding the diamond in his palm.

“Be right with you, General Harmond.  Just finishing something up,” I responded, then said to the others, “Why so many people?”

“Government never does anything small,” Peter commented.  “There’s always a committee involved.”

“Messner isn’t there,” Kieran noticed.

“Let’s go already!  I’m hungry,” Ethan whined, eliciting a few chuckles.

“Okay, okay,” I said standing up.  “General Harmond, would you mind stepping back a few feet?  We need a little more room.” 

Harmond looked down at his open palm where he held the diamond, confused, then took a few steps backward.  I shifted all of us over into the space between him and the table then sent the diamond back to the well.

“Good afternoon, General.  It’s good to see you, again,” I said, extending my hand as I fried the remaining cameras and microphones and sealed the doors with the foundation Stone.  Our exit was guaranteed, but there were three units of Marines with weapons ready just outside the doors that I didn’t want storming in on us.  That might be ugly.

“Lord Daybreak!” Harmond stuttered, surprised by our appearance.  “Welcome and thank you for coming so quickly.”

“Quite a gathering for a contract signing, General,” I commented, looking around the room.  “What’s happening here?”

“My superiors have a few questions to ask before signing, sir,” he said apologetically.

I looked at the rather large wall clock as it ticked past three forty-one.  “Not much time before the deadline for questions,” I said.  “And I don’t believe I offered to answer any.  Why should I?”

“You’re holding hostages, for God’s sake!” exclaimed another man in the front row, a two-star General named Perez.  At least this room was ethnically diverse.

I took a slow step to the right and looked at the man around Harmond’s stiffened body.  “Two points,” I said forcefully, brimming with anger.  “One, I will not review details so that idiots in the peanut gallery can catch up to reality.  And two, if I am insulted again, I will get very, very angry.”

Harmond didn’t know what to say when I slowly moved back.  “Time is growing shorter, General,” I prodded him.

“We are just worried that… they are being… unduly persuaded…” Harmond stammered and fought for words to say what he thought Perez was trying to say in a very uncouth manner.

“Yeah, I wondered the same thing myself,” I told him.  “Not being terribly well-educated in that realm, the only thing I could think of was possibly Stockholm Syndrome, but that really didn’t make any sense.  Their real problem seems to be abandonment and they all have that in spades.”

“We just want to get some specialists to talk to them before they… emigrate,” Harmond said, gaining some courage from my more cordial tone.

“No, I offered that to Agent Messner earlier, but he was satisfied with his inspection prior to my offer.  Otherwise it would have been part of the package.”

“So all you are offering to us is what was ours in the first place,” said another man, right side, second row in the middle.  A brass eagle adorned his shoulder, Lt. Colonel Martinez, a Caucasian man.

“I’m offering you more than you have at the moment,” I said calmly.  “And more than you can get against a fairly embarrassing public loss.  I didn’t come here to argue, gentlemen.  If you don’t wish to agree, don’t.  My attorneys will contact you at some point in the future with subpoenas in hand.  We can argue this in court properly.”

“So you have no interest in negotiating?” a man in a dark blue suit from the back row, far left side asked.

“And you are?” I asked, looking at him.

“An interested party,” was his response.  He had a perfect poker face.  Even his aura was calm, still telling but calm.

“A rather rude answer, Mr. Dominick,” I said, then wrapped portals around him and his chair, dropping him in front of me from a height of four feet.  He gawked up at me when he stopped bouncing.  “It borders on insulting.  I’ve already negotiated and made my best offer.  You now have seven minutes left to accept.”

“How do you expect this cooperative effort to root out this conspiracy to work?” Harmond asked me, sidling up at an angle to distract me from Dominick.  It was an able attempt with a valid question.

I chuckled a little and said, “We will have to talk about that and come to further agreements on what will be acceptable with each other.  You will try to have more restrictions than I will in all likelihood, because I am an incredible security risk for you.  And at the same time, I don’t care how much you spend on night vision goggles or whatever.  So, we’ll talk.”

I looked at the wall clock and felt Dominick follow my gaze.  My fingernails suddenly became tremendously interesting to me as I leaned back against the table on my left elbow.

“Is Darius still sleeping?” Peter asked innocently.

“Yes, but I’m going to wake him when we get back,” I said.  “He needs to eat and he’ll be hungry.  Are we having dinner together?  I can see what the brownies can do and have it in my room tonight.”

“Yeah!” Ethan said enthusiastically.  “Your floor is always fun.”

“I accept, too,” Kieran said, acting formally.  “As long as I get to play on the Road, too.”  He winked at me.

“We agree,” Dominick said, standing and straightening his tie.

“Sign the contract,” I said.  “You have two minutes left.  A verbal agreement is not legally binding in such cases and the written agreement disappears promptly at four.”

“My briefcase, now!” Dominick yelled as he ran for the stairs, pointing at his former seat.  Several men shuffled around on the floor looking for it.  The farthest found it and shoved it into the waiting arms of the nearest to the stairs who ran to meet Dominick halfway up.  He was still on the stairs as the clock started on the last ten seconds before four.  Harmond watched the clock while everyone else in the room watched Dominick slam the case down on the nearest table.

He noticed me watching him and met me, saw my tiny little smile start.  Back to the clock, the long red hand stayed on nine seconds till while the blue-suited man worried the locks on the case, forgetting his own combinations.  Harmond turned to watch Dominick after the snap of the locks.  The three contracts were scattered in the bottom.  He scrambled to gather then separate them on the table.

Harmond looked back at the clock.  Nine seconds till four, it read.  His eyes shot down to me, but he kept his face up, like he was watching the clock.  I met his eyes with the same small wry grin.  I wanted this to work, too, so yes, I held the clocks and I held the contracts and the treaty in place past the deadline.  It wasn’t too bad morally since I did have a verbal agreement.

Dominick signed the contracts one by one and I went behind him, signing and embossing them with Daybreak’s sigil.  Then I stacked them, brought them into my cavern, replicated the stack twice, and pushed the three stacks back out onto the table.  I picked up the first stack, the originals actually.  Nodding to Dominick, I turned back to my brothers.

“Pete, you coming?” I asked, smiling.

“You bet!” he answered.  “Can I invite my folks?”