“Oohh, not a good idea,” Peter said, grinning. “Do you know who they’re sending?”
“Deputy Director Harris and several of his men,” Barnett answered. “They were waiting for a flight out to Europe somewhere. Ireland, I think.”
“I have promised to kill him the next time I lay eyes on him, General Harmond,” I said, my demeanor unchanged. “I will follow through on that promise. I would suggest you make other arrangements very quickly.”
Ethan laughed suddenly. “That won’t be a problem,” Ethan snorted, still laughing. We all turned to look down the hallway he was looking down to see the backs of six blue-suited men running away from us. The back two kept glancing over their shoulders nervously. “Harris turned as green as me this morning and turned around so fast I bet he got whip-lashed!”
Barnett’s phone chirped. When he answered, we could hear Harris yell, “Why didn’t you tell me Daybreak was there?” Barnett had to pull the phone away from his ear.
“You didn’t ask and don’t yell at me,” Barnett said sternly. “Ever again.” Harmond wasn’t the only one with some bite. Harris backed down. “And show him his due respect in the future. Lord Daybreak just informed us of your difficulty. General Harmond and I can’t wait to hear the explanation for this.”
“I don’t answer to you, Colonel Barnett,” Harris countered. “Do keep that in mind.”
“Oh, but you do, Deputy Director Harris,” Colonel Barnett assured him. “The Pentagon pays for quite a bit of your department’s activities. That puts you very much under our scrutiny. Expect to be called for an accounting, Marshal. Now stay where you are and General Harmond and I will join you in a moment.” He snapped his phone shut and more cordially said to Harmond, “General, our… escort has arrived and is currently hiding a few hundred feet away.”
“What did he do that has convinced you to kill him?” Harmond asked alarmed, sliding the two-page treatise back into his briefcase.
“He has attempted to contravene my Constitutional rights and arrest me on several occasions,” I started ranting calmly but I knew it wouldn’t end calmly. “Attacked us at a major metropolitan hotel where he managed to nearly kill two of my brothers while they were in his custody. Attacked me again while I was removing them from their custody and saving their lives. Challenged me to single combat to the death while manipulating the Faery against me as well. Attacked us with fatal magic while on foreign soil and if it hadn’t been for my brother that would have resulted in the deaths of his men.
“And even after all of that,” I said, slowing down and pulling back on my growing anger, “we forgave him and worked with him and his agency, even going so far as removing several deadly curses from him and his men. But then he had the gall to lie to me and to stonewall me when I was asking for help for four hundred helpless men who needed food and water. Something that was completely within his authority and capacity to help me with and he disappears on me intentionally, to put me in a difficult position. I no longer trust anything about that man or anyone in his department.”
“That… is difficult to believe,” Harmond said, shocked at my vehemence.
“Root around for his embarrassment in Atlanta, General,” Peter chortled. “Seth learned a new trick that day.”
“I’m sure Lord Daybreak has learned many,” Harmond said.
“No, this was before Daybreak,” Kieran said, far more unperturbed by his near-death experience than I was. “When he was very much a lost kid looking for his parents and I had been away for a very long time and was unaware of the advances in modern science. Seth and Peter were nothing short of amazing.”
“Seeing as we are parting ways for the moment, General,” I said and reached across to pick up the envelope sitting on my desk on Gilán and handed it to him. “The deadline for this agreement is four o’clock today. If your people cannot agree by that time, another set of meetings must be arranged and the circumstances won’t come to such pleasant arrangements on your end. Follow the instructions in the envelope when you are ready to gain my signatures.”
“Thank you, Lord Daybreak,” Harmond said, smiling and bowing slightly, unsure. “You’ve been most obliging and kind to us.”
“I try not to make enemies, General Harmond,” I said congenially. “It makes life easier for everyone.” And held my hand out to shake his, something he was comfortable with. “Colonel Barnett, it’s been a pleasure, especially in the past few minutes.”
“Thank you, Lord Daybreak,” Barnett answered, confused for a moment, but shaking my hand as well. Both of them were feeling I was a little more human in the contact. “It’ll be my pleasure to take the insufferable prig down a few pegs. Remind him who he works for.”
“And that rather conveniently brings us to you, Colonel Morelli,” I said, turning to the third of our quartet. “Who exactly do you work for?”
Of course, the question gained everyone’s attention, especially Harmond’s and Barnett’s. Morelli was the most startled. His psychic blocks had seemed to hold up against the minor intrusions I’d made on him.
“What do you mean?” he stuttered the question. “I work for the Army, for General Harmond in the Pentagon as legal counsel.”
“And?” I asked. “Behind all those fancy little twists of magic in your mind, you’re hiding quite a few little secrets that don’t involve defending your country, Colonel. Most would say just the opposite. Though I doubt you would bring about the downfall of the country, you would definitely damage its foreign policy and relations with many as this unseen war continues.”
Morelli’s confusion at being caught cleared with each word I said, exchanged by desperation with shutting me up. He threw himself at me in a wild and angry attempt to kill me on the spot, but I didn’t move an inch in response. The Day Sword didn’t twitch, instead Gilán responded.
Before Morelli got within six inches of me, a solid white truncheon bathed in blue fire smashed straight down before me and onto the hands grasping out for me. The blow instantly shattered Morelli’s wrists. As he fell to his knees in a shout of pain, a second blow flew out and battered against the back of his shoulders and neck, driving him to the ground and Jimmy twisted himself so that he was between Morelli and me.
“Don’t… touch… him,” Jimmy snarled at Morelli. Harmond and Barnett stared at Jimmy, awed. He was on the far side of them, beside Ethan, when that began. He darted around them almost invisibly fast to intercept Morelli without the benefit of the Road. They hadn’t seen an elf move before, much less a Sidhe, and somehow, I’d put Jimmy pretty high on even that chart.
Messner was on Morelli, rolling him over and examining him. Murmuring consoling comments to the mewling man, Messner tried to gently pull Morelli’s arms away to see his hands.
“We’ve attracted attention,” Kieran said mildly, staring into the crowds around us. I glanced around and saw several security guards running toward us, hands on guns and shouting hurriedly into radios. Barnett moved to the outer edges of our circle holding his arms out to the first guard to approach.
“This is a National Security matter,” he called loudly. “Please stand clear.” Barnett sidestepped a man as he skidded to a halt, almost colliding with him.
“Perhaps you should withdraw now and let the FBI and the Marshals deal with this,” Harmond said quietly as he moved in beside me. “There are a number of cameras being pointed at us.”
“No worries there, General,” I said. “None of them will resolve to any of us, including you, while we’re here. Agent Messner, can you handle the cameras if we leave?”
He grunted. “Not this many, not reliably anyway,” he admitted quietly.
“Okay, we’ll keep the cameras under control then,” I said as Jimmy and my brothers formed a circle around me. I opened a portal into the Marshals’ hallway large enough to speak through. “Cliff, you cretin, someone decided to create a scene and we have to leave now. Harmond has need of you out here so you can come out of your hole now.”
“
Oh, to be a fly on the wall,” Peter chuckled.
“Thank god!” Harris said. “Denton! Look down there and watch for them to leave. We’ll go as soon as they start away.” I shut the portal.
“What a brave, little man,” I said sarcastically. “We’ll be off then. I hope to see you before the deadline, gentlemen. Thank you for your time.”
We were stopped almost immediately by the wall of security guards encircling us.
“Let them pass!” snapped Barnett harshly. It’s amazing how well a man with brass eagles on his shoulders and a hundred or so brightly colored bars on his chest controls men not even under his command. A large hole opened up in the circle, five men wide and three men deep, allowing us to pass through quite freely. A contingent still followed us as we headed for the doors, but that was reasonable.
“Are we going home now?” Jimmy asked, nearly whining.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said, glancing around at the nearest clock. “I’m sure Darius has had plenty of time to get plenty of news by now and I need to keep him busy for a while, so he can’t ‘advise’ them. But I don’t need everyone for that.”
“Good, because I promised Gordon some help today,” Kieran said. “And while I have no doubts of Jimmy’s intentions, he’s new to his abilities. I’d prefer either Ethan or Peter go with you.”
“Whadya say, Pete? We hadn’t hung out in a while?” I asked, grinning back at him. “Care for a trip to rural New York?”
“Are you sure?” Peter laughed. “Leaving these two by themselves leads to trouble, you know.” Ethan slugged him. “And one of them is violent.” He laughed harder, holding his arm where Ethan connected.
“Come along, little guardian,” Kieran said, putting his hand on Ethan’s neck and shoving him affectionately. “Let’s go work some of those muscles. Call if you need anything, guys.” They shifted to Gilán just as we turned out the doors and into the light of day. A quick shift to the Cahills followed.
As we walked along the crowded sidewalk, I opened a small portal to spy through along the road just outside the wards to Fuller’s mansion. The road was fairly empty with one or two cars traveling it, but the outer edges of the property didn’t have the security personnel lining it like the other night. Sending out a few feelers over the lip of the ward, I realized that they hadn’t yet re-instated it, instead keeping my changes in place. Good news for me since it would make it easier to slip inside unseen, but only easier.
“Y’all ready?” I asked needlessly.
“’Course,” Peter said. He reached through my hole, picked a place, then wrapped the three of us in portals and we disappeared from the sidewalk.
“Be careful, Peter,” I warned him as we kept walking along the road, side by side. “If I weren’t paying attention, you could have been hurt there.”
“Yeah, right,” he said laughing. “You, not paying attention. When does that happen?”
“Alternating Wednesdays in months with Zs and Qs,” Jimmy said smugly. “I got it in writing.” Peter laughed and slapped Jimmy on the back. “What’s that shimmer, there?” Peter’s eyebrows shot up as he looked in that direction.
“Very good, First,” I said, not bothering to look. “That’s the outer reach of the ward. I didn’t expect you to see that yet. Peter, they’ve been bad wardkeepers.”
“You’re kidding,” Peter said, taking my intent quickly. “It’s been, what, six days?”
“Seven, it was Saturday, wasn’t it?” I said as I reached for the entry point I had still locked into the wards in Fuller’s family homestead. Instantly, I locked into the security network around the big house and the hundreds of acres of beautifully manicured landscape. “Oh, maybe they were luckier that they didn’t.”
They had considerable damage on two sides of their property. A firefight of some kind, mostly of a physical nature it appeared. I pulled Peter up beside me, but Jimmy would have to be taught how to handle a ward this complex.
“Whoa,” Peter muttered. “Maybe they were.” He chose the opposite side from the one I searched. “It looks like the damage was contained to the warning lines, though. The wards fought off whatever attacked them.”
“Depending on who and what it was, it might not have,” I said, trying to gauge the time of the attack by the scoring on the ground. “This looks like maybe yesterday?”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Peter said. “Oh, God, look at the house. Somebody got in.”
Fuller’s office was ransacked, but that looked mostly cleaned up now. There were other rooms, though, that weren’t so lucky. His bedroom was demolished. Holes seared through the walls into an adjoining room and the hallway next to it. Most of the furniture was busted up and broken. Artifacts of a heated battle lay strewn on the floor and embedded in the walls, black burns marred the carpeting and floors, and huge pieces of furniture lay on their sides broken and cracked beyond repair.
Sean was in his room, which appeared undamaged completely and was sufficiently distant from his father’s that no collateral damage occurred. He sat on his bed flipping through CDs and moving to whatever music was playing through his stereo on the other side of the room. Encouraging since he was in a good mood.
Finding Darius took a little longer. He was in a guest house several hundred feet away from the house, directly back from the main house. Like Sean, he was calm and collected, sitting on a couch and talking on the phone, dressed in an expensive suit without the jacket.
“Darius seems unharmed,” Peter said. “Phillips is nearly exhausted, though, and it looks like it’s about time for his team to changeover.”
“Do you see Seward anywhere?” I asked, starting a search for the security teams on my own. They mostly roamed the property in random-seeming loops. Phillips was the only man in charge at the moment. I sighed. “Let’s go talk to Sean and see what happened.”
“Okay,” Peter answered. “I don’t see anybody in the wards but Phillips anyway.”
I wrapped us in portals to the hall outside Sean’s door. He was listening to some noxious, whiny, emo crap that even made Jimmy wince. I knocked on the door and waited, then knocked louder.
“I don’t want to go to the city today, Dad!” Sean shouted through the door. “Go a-way!”
I pushed the door open and stuck my head in. “Um, Sean?” I said over the music, “I’m not your dad and I don’t want to take you to the city.” He was halfway to his stereo with a new CD. I wished he made it there before I stopped him.
“Seth?” he said, staring at me in surprise. Then he came at me running, throwing his arms around my neck. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” He was crying by then and all I could do was offer comfort by hugging back. Part of me was overwhelmed by the emotional outburst that rushed out of him and into me, forcing me to see what upset him so greatly. Peter and Jimmy moved around us quietly. I told Jimmy what happened through our link as he changed the CD and lowered the volume. Peter caught my eye long enough for me to pull him into my cavern and show him, too.
“Oh, poor kid, that must have been awful,” he mumbled. We both knew younger kids who’d been through worse recently, Jimmy for instance, but luckily none of us had lost our compassion yet. He’d seen Seward attacking his father and winning the fight. I couldn’t tell exactly why Seward was winning. Darius must have been hobbled somehow. But he was a good father, at least a paranoid one. He taught Sean to use a gun. When the wards shot off at four twelve in the morning, waking everyone in the house to massive gunfire to the east and south sides, Sean grabbed the revolver from his bottom bureau drawer and ran down the hall to his father.
Darius’ bedroom was seriously trashed when he got there. A flare of violet light tossed his bleeding father out into the front room where Sean stood paralyzed in fear. Steward staggered out after Fuller, bleeding just as bad but in much better shape and better able to handle it. He had a six-inch steel combat knife held down in his right hand. Sean wasn’t confident in his magic enough not to hurt his father with anything he tried.
Seward dove at Darius, swinging down with the knife. Darius kicked him in the gut and shoved himself left, barely missing the oncoming steel.
Darius started coughing, spitting black fluids as he rolled. Seward, too, rolled then fought to remove the knife from the floor. Finally overcoming his paralysis, Sean ran to his father’s side. When he heard the ring of the tip of the knife clearing the floor, Sean’s fear centered entirely on Seward and his self-defense instincts kicked into high-gear. He quickly raised the gun to eye level and fired without reserve, twice, once to his chest and once to his forehead. Seward fell to the floor in a gut-wrenching, squishing thud.
“Sean?” Darius whispered.
“I’m here,” Sean gasped, tears streaming down his face as he looked down at his dad’s broken body.
“Oh, Lord, I’m sorry, sir,” Sean said pulling away from me and breaking contact. “I didn’t know you were here and your changes to the wards saved us yesterday. Dad was hurt so badly and all, but you really saved our butts.”
“No, no. That’s quite all right,” I said, keeping my hand on his shoulder. “From what you showed me, though, it looked like you were the hero of the day. Seward was trying to kill your father?”
“Oh. Yeah,” he said sadly. “That was really nasty, but I had to, ya know? He’s my dad.”
“And you, too,” I said. “Don’t make it sound like a bad thing, Sean. I’ve been there and I know it’s hard to accept at first, but look at the alternative. Seward chose to shorten your options to two: you or him. You made the obvious choice and on his terms. You didn’t do anything wrong. You have nothing to be ashamed of.”
“Dad said that, too,” Sean said, suspiciously. “Did he send you up here?”
“No, you’re the first person we’ve talked to,” I said. “Did you meet Peter the other night?”
“Only as you went through the portal in the lounge,” Sean said, perking up a little with the change in topic. “Crap, I embarrassed myself then, too.”
Sons (Book 2) Page 72
