Taliesin Ascendant (The Children and the Blood) (38 page)

“He calls her Lily,” Vivian told them.

Magic strengthened around the room. Internally, Cole swore.

“Hey!” he snapped, trying to pull their attention back to him. “I’m not here to talk to you about some kid!”

“How long has Merlin been working with the Blood, Cole?” the voice asked.

Ice hit his veins. “What? Merlin? Who said anything about–”

“How long have they been turning their royal children into monsters?”

“I don’t know what you’re–”

“The staff. The ‘human’ girl,” the voice continued implacably. “Princess Lily. She looks like the Merlin king. She has a weapon from their golden age. How long have you sided with them without our knowing, Cole? What did they offer you?”

Terrified, Lily twisted in the woman’s grasp, her panicked gaze finding Cole. Faint glints of light leaked from the staff in her hands.

“You’ll find it was a mistake to conspire with them,” the voice said.

The magic in the room surged.

Cole yanked against Stephen’s grip. “She’s not–”

A door flung open at the far end of the councilors’ seats. A short figure rushed in, making a beeline for the center of the row and paying no attention to the seething weight of magic hovering in the air.

The figure whispered to the central councilmember, who instantly rose.

“Security breach!” the councilor barked. He gestured sharply to Vivian and Stephen. “Take them to the service tunnel! The rest of you, escape routes! Now!”

Stephen and Vivian didn’t waste a second. Wrenching Cole around, the wizard muscled him toward the side of the room, with Vivian bringing Lily behind. Along the ledge, the councilors headed for the exit the smaller figure had used, while on the wall beneath the elevated seats, Stephen shoved one of the tall ebony panels, revealing a door to a blindingly white room.

Cries of confused alarm rang out. Frozen for a moment, a few councilors recovered themselves enough to bang on the locked door while others spun, abandoning the exit for the stairs nearby.

With a snarl, Stephen flung Cole around the doorway and into the white room. Scrambling up to his knees, Cole barely had time to turn before the wizard sent Lily stumbling after him. Grabbing her to stop her from hitting the ground, he winced as she clung to him, the staff squashed awkwardly between them.

He looked up from her tousled head. Through the massive window set to one side of the door, he could see the whole of the chamber, though from the opposite side, he’d been certain the space the window occupied had been nothing but wall. Councilors were running down the stairs and rushing toward them across the marble floor, while by the doorway, Stephen motioned for them to hurry. Across the room, Vivian punched a code into a keypad on the wall and then cursed vehemently when the numbers remained stolidly red.

The door to the council chamber exploded.

Ballistic chunks of wood and metal ripped through the center of the room, tearing down the councilors as it passed. The percussion drove the surviving wizards to the ground and left debris tumbling in its wake.

Stephen gasped, frozen by the sight of the wreckage and the writhing bodies within, and then he slammed the door. Eyes wide, he looked to Vivian. The woman was staring through the blood-splattered window in horror.

“Move!” he shouted.

The order broke her paralysis, and she whirled back to the wall, jabbing codes into the unresponsive panel with hysterical ferocity.

Shaking, Cole climbed the rest of the way to his feet, his gaze locked on the window and the bodies on the opposite side. In his arms, Lily began to turn, and he gripped her tighter, halting the little girl’s motion.

“Don’t,” he said.

Barely breathing, he watched the councilors. The survivors were trying to rise. Dust filled the room like smoke, obscuring the wizards on the far side, and the bright spotlight swung like a pendulum, revealing and then hiding the bodies on the floor.

Through the dust, a man stumbled into the room. Crashing to his knees on the marble, he stared at the bodies and then slowly began rocking back and forth, clutching his stomach with burnt and blistered arms.

Cole swallowed hard, barely recognizing Quinton through the blood covering him.

“Those sons of…” Stephen whispered.

Vivian turned at the words. A choked gasp escaped her and tears welled in her eyes. She spun back to the panel.

Still rocking, Quinton looked up, his gaze drifting over the chamber and then stopping on the window as though looking into the eyes of everyone inside the white room.

“Can he…?” Cole started.

“No,” Stephen said, his tone more cautious than confident. “This is an observation room for council aides. No one can see or hear anything from that – oh, hell.”

More wizards rushed into the chamber. Jabbing the keypad harder, Vivian whimpered and didn’t turn around. With methodical precision, the wizards swept the space, kicking over bodies and heading for the outer edges of the room.

“The door, Viv,” Stephen prompted, his gaze on the wizards. “Get the damn door.”

“It won’t–” the woman replied, choking on her tears. “All the overrides aren’t–”

Stephen tossed a sharp glance back. “Keep it together or take my place over here.”

The woman swallowed and shook her head, trying to focus. “No. No, I can get it.”

Growling a wordless encouragement, Stephen returned his attention to the other room.

Cole ignored them. At the outer reaches of the chamber, the wizards turned from their surveillance to form a perimeter, giving no sign they could hear the cries of the injured or Quinton’s sobs. Rigidly, they drew themselves to attention, their formality breaking only for the anticipatory grins he could see hovering around their lips.

He shivered, suddenly wanting to join Vivian on the opposite side of the room.

Two figures strode into the council chamber, dust curling around them as they moved. Silhouetted by the dim light, they appeared as little more than shadows.

Then the swinging spotlight caught them.

And everything became perfectly still.

Beneath the garish illumination, Victor Jamison paused, the light overhead nothing compared to the glow of Blood magic on his skin. His gaze dropped contemplatively to a quivering wizard splayed on the marble and swiftly, the scarred giant beside him kicked the wounded man over.

“Hello Terrence,” Victor said.

Cole’s gaze snapped from his father to the walls and back as the sound of Victor’s voice carried with crystalline clarity through the small room.

“It’s been a long time.”

On the floor, the wizard coughed, blood seeping from countless shrapnel wounds. Weakly, he tried to drag himself away and failed.

“Where is my son?”

Cole choked on his own air.

At the wizard’s silence, a thread of electricity whipped down, slicing the man’s chest to the bone.

“Where is my son?” Victor repeated in the same calm, controlled tone.

“You won’t… he’s gone… you can’t kill us…”

Victor regarded the gasping councilor. His face could have been made of ice.

And then his hand rose.

“That won’t work this time.”

Lightning lit the room.

Cringing from the blinding flashes, Cole heard Stephen curse as screams filled the council chamber. Her face buried in his side, Lily’s grip spasmed tighter. As the lightning faded, Cole straightened, one hand still averting Lily’s gaze.

Smoke clouded the air beyond the window. Within the ring of silently observing wizards, the councilors’ bodies lay scattered, their corpses reduced to smoldering bones and blackened flesh. Huddled at Jamison’s heels, Quinton stared around him, his mouth working like a fish on dry land.

And then he began to scream.

The giant lifted an eyebrow. Expressionless, Victor turned away.

Magic cracked down. Like a marionette robbed of its strings, Quinton hit the ground and didn’t move again.

Victor glanced back at the giant. “Cole’s here. Find him.”

The giant nodded and then strode for the door, motioning for a few wizards to follow. Ignoring them, Victor looked down at the charred bones. A heartbeat passed before his gaze rose to the remainder of the room.

Cole stared, his thoughts spinning circles down into insensibility. His dad was alive. He hadn’t been shot. He hadn’t died because of the council. He hadn’t died from the Blood wizards. His father…

Led them.

Was one of them.

His father…

A gasp escaped him. He couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t…

Vivian let out a cry as the keypad turned green. Reeling, Cole looked to her briefly before the sight of his father drew his gaze back again. Victor still stood there, the bodies around him. The bodies of the council members he’d killed.

Cole had wanted them dead too.

He’d wanted…

Shivers struck him and they wouldn’t stop. In his arms, Lily began to squirm. She needed air. He was crushing her against him.

Gasping again, he released the girl, blinking at her in dumbstruck shock as she began to turn. Cole’s hands moved of their own accord, blocking her view.

His father led the Blood.

His father was looking for him.

All these years, he’d never stopped. And the Blood who’d killed Edmund Vaughn had just… they’d really just…

Murdered Ashley. And Patrick. And every family member Lily had.

He couldn’t breathe.

The door locks released. “Dammit, come on!” Vivian shouted.

Stephen grabbed his arm, yanking him from the window. The motion jarred him and instinctively, he fought back.

“Leave him!” the woman yelled.

“Insurance!” Stephen snapped.

“Cole!”

Lily’s frightened cry startled him. Twisting in the wizard’s grasp, he looked down, realizing she’d been thrown to the ground in the struggle.

She was staring up at him. At the blood on the window. At the smoke curling beyond.

He drove an elbow into Stephen’s midsection. Choking, the wizard released his grip and staggered backward, regaining his footing a moment later with a pained glare.

Ignoring him, Cole reached down to the little girl. “Close your eyes,” he said.

Scooping her and the staff into his arms, he stood and looked back through the blood-splattered glass.

His father…

He…

Gripping Lily tightly, Cole stumbled away from the window and ran from the room.

*****

“Breathe, your highness,” Elias murmured.

In the center of the marble lobby, Ashe flicked her gaze to him before pinning it back on the infuriating young aide behind the front desk of Chaunessy Tower.

She drew a slow breath. “I am.”

He hesitated, and then returned his attention to the guards and security cameras lining the walls. “Just checking.”

“Sir, I told you,” the young man repeated to Brentworth tiredly. “I’ve been watching the monitors all morning. Everything is fine. And if the council
was
in this building somewhere, which I won’t confirm they are, I can assure you, they’d be completely fine too. The only threat right now is these… people… you felt compelled to bring here.”

“And
I
am telling
you
,” Brentworth replied, his cultured voice coming perilously close to a growl. “I am well aware that the council is here. I am also well aware of what these people are. And I am ordering you to stand aside and let them speak to the leaders of Taliesin, or so help me, I will personally–”

A dryly amused look flickered across the aide’s face. At his uncle’s side, Luke blanched and looked away.

“Do you have
any
idea who I am, young man?” Brentworth snapped.

The amused expression increased. “No, sir, to be honest, I don’t. But with all due respect, it doesn’t matter. There is no way a bunch of Merlin scum are ever going to be allowed near–”

“Enough,” Brentworth interrupted, his patience finally giving out. “You will call your superiors and tell them that Councilman Brentworth is here.”

“I will not–”

“
Now
.”

The aide paused. Drawing a breath, he tossed a glance to the black-clad guards arrayed along the walls, and then forced his face into a semblance of a smile.

“Very well,” he said tightly.

As the young man picked up the phone, Brentworth turned. Expressionless, Ashe met his gaze. He tried to give her a politely reassuring look, and when it failed, he sighed and looked back at the aide.

With ostentatious patience, the young man dialed a number and waited. Gritting her teeth, Ashe focused on the guards. Standing at military attention against the marble walls, the bulky wizards bore every resemblance to standard human security guards, down to the brass badges on their chests and the firearms strapped at precise angles on their sides. For every single second of the minutes Brentworth had been arguing with the aide, the Taliesin had watched them, the implicit threat in their eyes easy to read. All around her, Nathaniel and his own contingent had been returning the favor, leaving the tension in the cavernous lobby nearly enough to set the air on fire. A suggestion of magic hovered around both groups, as though to remind their opposing number with whom they were dealing, and the result left Crystal and Ghost wincing.

And yet, aside from the tension in the room, everything was disconcertingly still. The soft whir of the air conditioners could be heard from time to time, chilling the already refrigerated atmosphere. Sunlight streamed past the two-story high windows behind them, and through the dense glass, no whisper of traffic could be heard.

Compared to the firestorm they’d all known they could have been walking into, the silence was eerie. And a bit disturbing.

“Yes, that’s what I said, sir,” the aide repeated into the phone. “Seven Merlin and two cripples. They want to speak to the council and–” He cut off, obviously interrupted. “Six men and one girl. Yes, sir. Just a boy and a girl. They – no, I don’t think so. Well, Councilman Brentworth led them to the front door. Councilman
Brentworth
, sir. No, sir, I’m fairly certain he’s not. He– Their names? I didn’t ask but…” The aide paused and Ashe glanced back to see him studying them all. “Yes…” he allowed. “It’s possible. But there’s only the– oh. Are you sure you–” He cut off, blanching. “Yes, sir. Right away, sir. I–”