Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood)

by Megan Joel Peterson

  He felt like breaking something and his stomach wouldn’t stop churning. It didn’t matter. It couldn’t. That girl had been gone for a long time, if she’d ever existed at all.

  And the present was what they had to deal with now.

  “We have to save Lily,” he answered tightly, struggling to focus on the words and ignore the way his stomach kept trying to rise.

  His father nodded compassionately. “Whatever the cost.”

  Cole couldn’t respond.

  “If it helps,” Victor said. “I promise we won’t go into this trying to kill Ashley. We’ll do everything in our power to avoid it. After all, if we can separate Lily from her sister without Ashley’s death, having the girl with us will likely make the queen willing to listen to what we have to say. Perhaps even to cooperate with us, in the end. We want to negotiate for peace, Cole. Bloodshed has always been our last resort.”

  He swallowed, working to be comforted by the words.

  “Do you know how many people Ashley keeps around her?” his father continued.

  Cole drew a breath. This was part of it too. Just, thankfully, the one that was less hard.

  The people with her were bastards. At a minimum, they’d supported Ashe’s brutality. More likely, they’d taught it to her in the first place. If anyone was to blame for this, chances were it was them.

  He owed them nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Only three wizards, last time I saw,” he said. “Nathaniel, Elias and Cornelius. Nathaniel’s a big guy, some kind of bodyguard who could probably give Brogan a run for his money, and the other two used to be on the Merlin council. I can give you descriptions, if you want. There was a woman with them for a while. Katherine, Elias’ wife. Looks like some crazy schoolteacher. Whole bunch of guards and other wizards were running around as well, but those first three were the only ones Ashe kept close.”

  “Probably the ones who support what she’s become the most.”

  He gave a dry laugh at his father’s ability to read his mind.

  “We can get descriptions when our people are ready to head out,” Victor continued. “But in the meantime, do you know where they would have gone?”

  “No,” he admitted. “But I overheard Cornelius say he had some safe houses in the south, so they may stay in that area.”

  His father nodded. “Then we’ll start there.”

  Cole echoed the motion and then looked away, the resolution of the moment before fading into the cold reality of what might happen.

  Seconds drifted by.

  “I should go tell the others then,” Victor said, rising to his feet.

  Cole glanced up, and his stomach clenched at the pride in his father’s eyes.

  “For what it’s worth,” his dad said. “You’re doing the right thing. Unpleasant as the possibilities may be… this needs to come to an end.”

  He watched as his father climbed the short steps to the main living room floor.

  “And it’ll be good for her that you’re here,” Victor added optimistically. “Lily, I mean. We’ll do all we can to keep her from seeing if things go badly. But no matter what, even if you’re not her family or a wizard, you’re still a familiar face. You’ll be a tremendous help to her in understanding this as time goes on.”

  His father smiled and then left the room.

  The door closed.

  Cole didn’t leave the chair.

  And that was the other part. The one that couldn’t possibly be more hard.

  Lily’d know. The moment she got here… the moment she saw him in the company of the ‘bad men’ who’d just dragged her away from her sister…

  Her dead sister.

  His imagination tossed up images before he could stop it and his stomach lurched with the result.

  Lily would know.

  And she’d never forgive him.

  He shoved away from the couch, his feet carrying him around the glass table as though it would get him anywhere.

  There wasn’t another option. They had to go after Lily, and Ashe had chosen what she’d become. He couldn’t let her turn her sister into the same thing. And Ashe getting hurt wasn’t inevitable. His father said they wouldn’t go into this trying to kill her. They didn’t even want to kill her. Bloodshed was their last resort.

  Though it might be the only way…

  The white walls stared back at him, cold and unsympathetic, and everything around him suddenly felt so stupid when people only a few floors away were prepping for the possibility of being forced to kill a girl his own age. And he’d have to explain to her eight-year-old sister why. He’d have to help her understand the death of the only family she had left in the world.

  Because it’d been the only way.

  His feet hit the steps and then he was across the room, unable to stand the silence and the lack of distraction any longer. He didn’t have to like it. He didn’t even have to tolerate it. But they had to save Lily.

  Dear God, he wanted another way.

  The guards looked up in alarm as he threw open the door. He ignored them, heading down the hall without the least destination in mind. The elevator didn’t answer his call and after a few heartbeats, he abandoned it for the stairs.

  Motion helped. It kept him from thinking about what he was running from.

  He stopped at a random floor and bolted past the exit. People filled the hallway and stared at him in shock as he passed, and every one of their gazes seemed to ask him why.

  Why he’d agreed to this. Why he couldn’t have come up with something…

  Anything…

  He darted down a service stairway, escaping their scrutiny.

  The floor below was better. Quieter, although that swiftly began to lose its appeal. Noise was better than anything, though if it could have not had people in it, that would have been even nicer. But the empty, gray hallway was anything but distracting.

  A door opened behind him. He spun.

  “Oh, hey,” Harris said, pausing halfway out of what appeared to be a makeshift bedroom. “What’re you doing down here?”

  Cole froze, wanting to flee though there was nowhere to go.

  Harris’ brow furrowed at his silence. “Cole?”

  “Uh…” He glanced down the hall. Blank doors lined either side, and short of running from the man, there wasn’t anything to do but answer the question. “I needed some air.”

  Harris’ skepticism didn’t fade. “You alright?”

  An incredulous laugh threatened to escape him. Seeming to read the impulse, Harris paused and then shut the door behind him.

  “There’s some chairs around the corner,” he offered. “Nice view. Good place to think. I was just heading there, if you’d care to join me?”

  Cole eyed him, knowing the latter words had to be a lie. The man had been starting in the opposite direction when he’d come out the door. But he found himself turning to go back down the hall anyway.

  Two armchairs and a small pedestal table stood in an alcove at the end of the next hall, framed by plants so green they could only be artificial. Tall windows ran to the ceiling in front of them, looking out on the city and the bright blue sky.

  Grabbing the leftmost chair, Harris moved it for a better view and then sat down.

  Cole watched him, but the man never glanced his way. Warily, he took the opposite chair.

  Silence filled the hall. Outside the window, a flock of birds spun through the sky.

  “Not quite Monfort, is it?” Harris commented.

  Cole looked over at him. The man’s gaze remained on the window.

  “No,” he answered, returning to the view of the city.

  Seconds slid past, and the clouds and mirrored sides of the skyscrapers did nothing to help clear his mind.

  “You weren’t coming down here to think,” Cole said finally, the silence wearing thin.

  Harris glanced to him askance. “And this is the last place to look for much air.”

  Cole exhaled and pushed the chair back to leave.
He didn’t need this right now.

  “Does she have the little girl with her?” Harris asked, his voice hard.

  Halfway out of his seat, Cole paused. “What’s it to you?”

  Harris scoffed. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I don’t want to see one of the only innocents left in this situation get blown up in the crossfire.” He grimaced. “Listen, whatever your history is with Ashley, you still seemed to be looking out for her sister so, like it or not, you’ve got a responsibility to the kid now.”

  Cole didn’t move.

  Exasperation flickered over Harris’ face. “Come on, Cole. Help me help her, alright?”

  Carefully, he eased back into the chair, not taking his eyes from the detective. “What’re you going to do?”

  “Well, that’s partly up to you. Right now, you’re the best chance I’ve got at information, since besides you, me and Mud, everyone else who’s seen that girl is either on her side or dead.”

  “Mud?”

  “Little guy. Looks like a walking advertisement for the necessity of basic hygiene. Barely made it out of Ashley’s rampage against cripples and anyone else she felt like killing.”

  Cole swallowed, feeling shaken for all that Harris’ words didn’t confirm anything he hadn’t already been told. “Did Ashe really set your partner on fire?”

  Harris’ face hardened and Cole suddenly found himself stifling a shudder at the look in the man’s eyes. “Scott’s in physical therapy. He hopes he’ll get the okay for a part-time desk job with the department soon. If he’s lucky, that is, and the rest of the office thinks they can stand the sight of his scars.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  The words sounded ridiculously inane, but at them, Harris turned back to the window, his rage seeming to slowly sink back inside.

  “If there’s anything you know…” the man sighed, frustration mingled with a sort of exhausted desperation in his tone.

  Cole’s gaze fell to the ground, his eyes tracing the patterns on the tightly woven carpet tiles. “Brogan’s people are going after her,” he admitted. “I gave my dad all the information I had.”

  Harris appeared to relax a bit. “Is the little girl with her?”

  “Yeah.”

  At his tone, Harris glanced to him.

  “You think she’ll hurt the kid.”

  It was only partly a question, but at the words, Cole looked away.

  “Ah,” Harris said.

  Silence fell between them.

  “You know,” Harris said. “It took me almost six months to track that girl down after what she did to Scott. And I’ll tell you the truth. Every so often – even with everything I saw that she’d done – I still found myself wondering how it could be possible. She looks like a kid. Hell, she makes you think she is a kid. And she’s responsible for more deaths than most serial killers can claim.”

  Cole shifted uncomfortably in the stiff-backed chair.

  “It’s not always easy,” Harris continued. “Doing what you have to. Doing the right thing. Sometimes, it hurts like hell. But I can tell you… it’s worth it. For every life that girl doesn’t have the chance to take… it’s worth it.”

  Cole was silent, uncertain how to respond. He remembered the girl at the farmhouse; the white-faced kid running as her world burned. But he hadn’t witnessed the rest of it. The dead cripples or all the hell she’d wreaked in the months since. He’d only seen part of this.

  And so maybe he needed to trust the calls of those who had. It’d be hard – unbelievably hard – to explain this to Lily, given what might happen when Brogan’s men found her. But it wasn’t all on them. Or him. Ashe’d made her choices and she’d keep making them, and he couldn’t be responsible for that.

  He could only do whatever it took to get Lily to the end of this safely.

  “How’d you get involved with her, anyway?” Harris asked.

  The question jarred him from his thoughts. He scoffed. “Long story.”

  “Do I look like I’m going anywhere?”

  He glanced over. Harris raised an eyebrow.

  Cole grimaced. “I got in a fight with my… with Robert and Melissa. And when I left, I ran into Brogan’s men and overheard them say they’d found some guy and his girls. From their tones, I could pretty much guess what they planned to do. So I followed them. I was going to call the cops once I found out where they were headed, but instead, I got there too late. They’d already killed the guy. But I managed to get the girls into the car and drive the hell out of there.”

  He fell silent for a moment and then gave a small, humorless laugh. “And yeah. She just seemed like a kid. Just some scared kid.”

  A moment slid by. He looked to the man in the other chair.

  Harris was motionless, his gaze lost in thought, but at Cole’s glance, he appeared to unfreeze.

  “So then what was all that about a diary and her plan to kill her family?” the detective asked, his tone giving no sign of whatever he’d been thinking.

  “You mean the diary about how I was supposedly planning to sell a little kid for sex while getting her sister hopped up on drugs?” Cole replied, old anger threading through his tone.

  Harris waited.

  Cole drew a breath, letting it out slowly. “Brogan’s guys wanted to find those girls, so they spun the fact they’d just killed their dad into a story that’d be sure to make the whole world try to track us down.” He paused. “For all the good it did. But regardless, they fed the news a total crock. I’d never met Ashe or Lily before that night.”

  Harris returned his gaze to the window, saying nothing.

  The detective’s phone buzzed.

  Blinking, Harris drew himself from whatever thoughts he’d been having and tugged the phone out.

  “Harris,” he said.

  Cole watched, but the man gave no indication of what he was hearing.

  “There in a minute.” He thumbed the phone off and then returned it to his pocket. “Sorry to cut this short,” he said, rising to his feet, “but I’ve got to run.”

  Circling the chair, he paused briefly and then reached into his sports coat.

  “Listen,” he continued. “If you think of anything else or just need to get some more air sometime…” He extended a business card. “My cell’s on the back.”

  Cole took the card and Harris gave him a nod. “Good talking to you,” the man said.

  “Yeah,” Cole replied.

  The detective was already heading down the hall.

  Shifting around in the chair, Cole tucked the card into his pocket and then looked back out the window. White clouds drifted across the sky, forming shapes his imagination was too tired to name.

  Harris was right.

  He sighed, hating the thought despite knowing it was true. It sucked beyond words and made his skin crawl, but Harris was right. Whatever happened, whatever it took, saving Lily and bringing this whole nightmare to an end would be worth the price.

  Even if it meant Ashe might die.

  *****

  Harris reached the elevator before he remembered to breathe, and when he did, he felt his brain start buzzing like a bag of angry wasps.

  Jamison’s men had been at Ashley’s home. Jamison's men had destroyed the farm. Jamison’s men concocted the whole diary and its tales of Cole being her boyfriend, which meant they may well have fabricated the story of Ashley murdering her family too.

  And they’d never once mentioned it to him.

  He blinked, realizing he’d yet to summon the elevator car. Swiftly, he jabbed at the down arrow, and then had to hit it again when his fingers missed the first time.

  It didn’t make sense.

  Unless they deliberately wanted to mislead him.

  Or Cole was wrong.

  Harris cast a glance down the hall, but no one was coming. The boy had obviously decided to stay where he’d left him.

  There wasn’t any reason for Cole to say he’d seen them when he hadn’t. What could he gain by lyi
ng? But even if the Blood had been there, Cole could have misunderstood the situation. Or he’d missed part of it. He said himself that he’d only come in for the last few minutes, and he’d only assumed Jamison’s people killed everyone based on what he thought he’d overheard.

  But he could have misconstrued it. Jamison’s men must have known what they were heading into. Cole could easily have mistaken their preparedness for intent, and come to the conclusion the Blood were the ones planning to kill the whole family.

  Of course, that didn’t explain the diary.

  The elevator arrived and distractedly, he headed inside, scarcely sparing enough attention to find the button for the parking garage. He hadn’t given much thought to the diary in the past months; everything she’d done since had driven it mostly from his mind. But when they first met, Jamison corroborated the story that Ashley killed her family. He’d been foggy on how Cole was involved, but about the murders there’d been no doubt of the girl’s responsibility.

  So…

  Exhaling, Harris rubbed at his eyes as he worked to find stability amid the chaos inside his mind. Ashley could have imagined everything in the diary, though nothing he’d seen of her thus far seemed to indicate she was remotely delusional. A killer, yes. Cold as hell, absolutely. But delusional? Not so much.

  Though, now that he thought about it, that last bit directly conflicted with the diary, which seemed to point squarely to a girl approaching terminal velocity for psychosis.

  He dropped his hand back to his side. Cole had to be right. Jamison and his men made up the diary. But at the same time, the reasons may not have been quite what the boy thought. Ashley could have killed her family. Probably had, given everything else she’d done since that night. Meanwhile, Cole said he’d arrived late, so he had no evidence one way or the other as to what the Blood had found when they first arrived. And for their part, the Blood hadn’t known who grabbed the girls. They’d just been trying to cover their bases, with the goal of protecting as many people as possible.