Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  “This is why they called you ‘Archdruid’,” he said, turning to me. “You did something like canter in three registers, didn’t you? Then we watched you make this… this… What the fuck is this, anyway?”

  “A focus,” I said, simply. “You seemed to be lost without your control so I’m giving it back.”

  “I can’t hold this many circles closed to do any ceremonies—” Ryan began before my phone started chirping at me.

  “Silly man, you have that in your hand now. Excuse me a moment,” I said picking up my phone and checking the caller. “Yes, Cpt. Thorn?”

  “I have the information you requested, Mr. McClure,” Thorn said. “There’s just not much to it. The three men you inquired about are rather vanilla, not even an income tax form filed late.”

  “Hmm, discouraging news, Captain,” I said sighing. “They’re the same man, according to my other sources. I was hoping you could see a relationship investigating them separately. Now I wonder if I was lied to.” Jimmy contorted his face, considering the possibility Effram Frobisher lied. He didn’t think so either. “We’ll just have to proceed more carefully and consider it tarnished information, then. Thank you, Jensen.”

  “Who is this guy, anyway?” Thorn asked quickly.

  “Who, Muldoon?” I asked absently. “The Russian.” Then disconnected the call, not particularly certain he knew who that was. “Come on, Ryan, you’ll have to study it on your own for a while. We have to secure it and move along to other things. This day is getting quite busy.”

  “A chain, then, with the crystal embedded in a band to hold it,” Ryan said making his mind up quickly.

  “Then let’s move from this faery unfriendly cast-iron table to the steps where Braedon can help me,” I said and moved, paying attention to where Ellorn was. All the brownies were running around nervously semi-transparent. “Jacket and shirt off, please.”

  Ryan stripped to the waist and sat on the second step. His back and arms were covered in brilliantly colored, finely articulated tattoos. Each pictograph within the Celtic knotwork represented a binding to a rite of passage or another honor bestowed on him, another level achieved. The last time I saw this much ink in a man’s skin, he was desiccated from the waist down and moving by force of will alone. These were not the same soul-twisting, body-mangling blood spells, but there was still enough blood magic in it to taint the artistry for me.

  “This is beautiful work,” I said, admiring his arm and noting he was more lean and muscular than most lawyers his age and standing. “Whoever did it paid close attention to your musculature and lined everything up quite well. And not an ounce of fat on you, either, I see.”

  He smiled broadly. “My father placed most of them, especially the earliest of them, then his youngest brother when he got too old. Unfortunately, I didn’t learn to appreciate them until after he passed away. I just assumed it was a sadistic streak when I was younger.”

  “Yeah, I imagine this much color does hurt,” I admitted, shaking my head slightly. “Ellorn, why don’t you and Braedon show Ryan what he has available in chains. And bring the plate Braedon has. That will be perfect for the binding.”

  “Yes, Lord Daybreak,” Ellorn trilled from the patio railing then shifted to Gilán.

  “Do you have any?” Ryan asked. “Tattoos, I mean.”

  “No,” I answered. “I don’t much see the need for it. Thank you, Braedon.” The one-inch square of platinum the small sprite handed me would do nicely. Braedon was ready to leave the instant Ellorn arrived and they’d walked up quietly from behind. He had four options for Ryan to choose from, each one looked thick and ropy in his hands, but was fine filigree on the druid. In hushed tones, he conferred with the brownies and selected a chain of interconnecting squared-off circles with s-sides to lay flat. The smith put the remaining chains back into small pouches and gave me the length of chain along with a simple locking clasp.

  Examining the length of chain, I asked Braedon, “I see some apprentice work here, don’t I?”

  “Yes, Lord,” Braedon twittered nervously, wondering if he should have left this chain out now.

  “Looks like they’re coming along swiftly, Master Braedon, congratulations,” I said, smiling at him. His nervousness fled as the sun rose in his face with his smile, as tiny as it was. This is one of the true pleasures of my new life. That simple, honest compliment to the sprite lit up his face and his aura, creating a chain reaction of “warm fuzzies” throughout his family. In an unquantifiable way, this added up to stronger faery. Nice, but really girly sometimes.

  Ryan sat up straight when I draped the chain around his neck and started sizing it with the plate. It needed to be comfortable, unobtrusive, and fall easily into place. To me, it seemed the crystal fit best in the nook of his throat just below his Adam’s apple. As long as the stone was within his aura, he could control it so it really didn’t matter that much if it stayed in contact with him, but he’d worry about it right now. Fusing the ends of the chain to the plate loosely, leaving the excess hanging from one side, I reached around him, picked up the midpoint at his spine, and dropped it to watch how it fell. Removing a link in the chain into a teeny-tiny knowe, I let one slip out of the chain and pulled it away from him.

  “I’m going to have to use the whole plate for the weight, but the shape has to change,” I said. “Is there anything you’d like on the front? This isn’t something you can take down to your local jeweler to have engraved. They’d have to break my binding first, not that I’m saying that’s impossible, but even my brothers say it’s hard to do.” Shrugging was second nature now, doing it again. While he thought about it, I went to work on the necklace.

  Metalcrafting for the Fae is both difficult and dangerous. Metal in general reacts badly with magic. Faery magic reacts very badly with most metals and incredibly poorly with iron. So I didn’t use faery magic, though I did use Braedon’s knowledge, didn’t use druid magic either. Changing vapor points, even temporarily, wasn’t easy, but a moment later the platinum plate melted in my hand. Plucking the crystal from Ryan’s palm, I dropped it into the pool of metal and started forming the platinum around it and the chain. Then I called for his key and dropped that in as well. Slowly reverting the vapor point of the platinum changed its form from liquid back to solid in the shape I wanted and melded the chain directly to the plate, thicker but with less surface area. Same thing to set the clasp.

  “You’re thinking too hard about this, Ryan,” I said mildly. “You’re putting too much symbolism and convention into it. I’ve had very little training in any kind of magic especially druidism. Only found out about that yesterday. And I doubt you’ll find the binding I used in any almanac or grimoire.” Reaching around him, I clasped the necklace and let it drape loosely in place. I asked the brownies, “What do you think, guys? Too low?”

  “Only if Mr. Davis suggests it, Lord,” Ellorn said immediately, always intent on me. “The simple design complements his skin drawings nicely.”

  “Aye, milord,” Braeford trilled, beaming at us, ecstatic at being asked. “An’ he might need the extra room with age. Y’might brush the surface to make it easier t’veil.”

  “Good idea, Braedon, thank you,” I answered and raised an irregular fractal pattern on the surface to serve. That brought my mind close enough to his aura to feel the attention he was giving me, specifically the type of attention. If he was a faery, it would almost be a communion and that wasn’t far from his state of mind. Druids are priests, after all, and I just gave him a spyglass to god, if he can figure it out. “Ryan, now or never.”

  “I—, I—can’t think of anything appropriate, Seth,” Ryan stammered uncomfortably, flushing from embarrassment, knowing his man-crush was showing.

  “’Kay,” I muttered and began tempering the metal magically to strengthen it. Ryan felt my power moving swiftly through his aura when I bound the necklace to it. It was all he was getting from me, though. Anything else was too creepy. “Simple is not bad. All done. You
can get dressed now. And thank Master Braedon for his invaluable assistance. You would have gotten it with a string wrapped around it without him.” Stepping around Ellorn and Braedon, I touched each of them across the shoulders as I passed, providing them with exactly the communion with Daybreak that Ryan craved. The difference was they needed it to survive away from Gilán.

  There was a burst of activity in the Guard’s geas as Leonard Muldoon’s home in Eugene was located and isolated. They stayed out of sight and outside of conventional security systems as three-man teams were currently breaking into telephone, cable, and electrical systems from a safe distance. It was all happening at fantastically fast speeds as information was shared and re-sourced through the geas with teams in the Situation room in the Garrison. It was a fantastic collaboration. The men tapping the phone lines didn’t need to know what they were doing as long as the team in the Situation room did, almost a hive mind. It took over an hour to find the place, but less than five minutes to surround it.

  “Ryan, finish buying my house, please,” I said still watching the Guard work. “We’ll need an office in town next. Gimme a call when the paperwork is ready to sign.” Then I shoved him through a portal back to his hotel room. “First, time to go to Oregon.”

  “’Bout time,” Jimmy muttered and vaulted from the ground over the railing to the patio. “Can we change into our working clothes first? These are a little bright.”

  Gawking at him, I asked, “How is blue brighter than blue?”

  “It’s a principle,” he said, sticking his jaw out. I sputtered a laugh and dropped us through holes halfway around the world.

  ~ ~ ~

  Muldoon’s “house” wasn’t quite a house so much a deluxe apartment amid crap. Settled in the urban sprawl of the city, the apartment itself looked nice from a distance, hidden behind the stained windows of some sort of failed packing plant. A major trucking firm sat two blocks over, providing a close and constant shipping option and coverage for vehicles moving around him. And he was within a block of two banks and four major computer networks all connected directly to the Internet backbone. And that’s not mentioning the twelve satellite dishes on the roof of the four-story warehouse, all aimed in different directions and camouflaged from view of the neighboring buildings.

  “They learned a new trick,” Jimmy said quietly as I took in the information from the Situation room.

  “Yeah, once Tom and Brick figured it was possible, they were driven,” I replied. “They’re good enough to mess with the elves, I think.”

  The Guard managed to force the appearance of their uniforms into other forms, like the black “FirstGuard Security” jumpers that they wore at the London house. Those Guardsmen very adept at such manipulations could make adjustments fast enough and clever enough to be nearly as good as a brownie’s camouflage. Motion, like running, would likely show and the armor would, definitely.

  All right, guys, stealth for as long as possible. Keep killing to necessity only. Once we’re discovered, they will destroy computer equipment so move as quickly as possible. Lock down and call me immediately on anything that could be blood magic. We have three goals. Take the computer equipment. Detain and question Leonard Muldoon and his employees. Go home safe and sound.

  Jimmy grinned widely as the men shifted attitudes and excitement filled the geas. The men were entering their element again: the battlefield. The Guard wasn’t just out of basic training. To a man, they were battle-hardened, mostly terrorized in some way. They reveled in violence and this was their first chance at leveling any. And they were going in weaponless against armed guards. Ten men plus Jimmy and me against thirty-five, according to the computer team’s records on the building. That seemed oddly high to me. Forty men on support surrounding the building, ready to replace anyone as needed. And the Garrison itself was ready to pounce at a second’s notice.

  We started for the building to join our crew. Jimmy tugged on his aspect, disappearing just as Shrank did at the Arena, a perfect camouflage that he could maintain through any movement. He started running at the corner for the north end of the building as I headed for the main entrance. As soon as Jimmy left my side, two Guardsmen, nearly invisible, sidled up beside me, crouching low to the ground and constantly scanning the building front. The whirring of hydraulic camera adjustments echoed dimly inside the vast interior as we approached the doors. Another Guard hunkered nearby waiting, while two more on either side tried to peer through the dirty windows. I tried the door, but it was locked. Beating on it and yelling for somebody’s attention, I slowly sank my senses in behind the door, carefully searching for any equipment that magic might damage unintentionally. Just because I hadn’t fried the laptops or my cellphones yet didn’t mean everything was impervious to my magic. Care was indicated if I wanted the Russian’s computers.

  I found four security cameras off the lobby before my beating and yelling at the door was answered. Not the black and white, twenty-pictures-a-minute cameras either, these were high-speed, high-definition cameras with a wide angle of control that covered every aspect of the long, tall, but shallow lobby.

  “What!” a shadow barked behind the door.

  “Um, hi,” I shouted. “I’m looking for Ivan Petro—, Petr—, Petronovich. The owner of this building, please.” The name was one of Muldoon’s alias’ and I pronounced it poorly intentionally.

  “Fuck off, kid,” the man said and ambled away. Three more shadows moved behind the glass, not retreating.

  Banging on the door again, I yelled, “C’mon, mister! I just want to talk to the man about renting this place for a night!”

  “I said fuck off, kid!” he yelled from a distance.

  Playing for the cameras, I beat and kicked at the door angrily, shouting, “C’mon, man! It took us two months of sorting through city records to find out who owned this place! Just let me talk to him, damn it!” I kept kicking and beating as the man came back, mostly to cover the noise of my team’s snickers at my ‘temper tantrum.’ “Finally!” I said, stepping back when he started unlocking the door and making entirely too much noise doing it. He flung the door open wide when he was done.

  “I said fuck… off… kid,” the man growled, shoving a twelve-gauge shotgun at me. The Day Sword hummed lightly, drawing my attention to his trigger finger while the Crossbow thrummed and marked his three companions through the dirty glass. I choked and gurgled, staring at the end of the gun, wide-eyed.

  “Yes, sir,” I squeaked meekly and started backing off slowly. My men gave him sharp glares as they eased past him and into the lobby. My well-spoken opponent with a twelve-gauge was dressed in gray dress slacks and a wife-beater. The T-shirt showed his left arm was full-sleeve with Russian and Turkish prison tattoos. He was far too young and far too American to have gotten those honestly. I was halfway into the street before I turned and ran down the street with the man’s heady laughter at my back. With the hatred coming from behind him, I don’t think he’d live to see dusk. Maybe not even noon.

  Slowing, I shifted against the veil, rolling on it the same way Jimmy does, and stepped into the lobby silently, right behind the receding shotgun-toting, fake-Russian. Our environment was my first priority, so I looked south and started filling in the map officer in the Sit-room. The Crossbow thrummed and identified fourteen targets in addition to the four in front of us. I counted seventy-three cameras in the front half of this weirdly designed building. The front quarter was four stories of air. The back three-quarters were steel stairs, railings, and concrete, divided into various rooms for manufacture of unknown things well past commercial viability. The floor of the open-air area was littered with bones and carcasses of computers and other equipment that I couldn’t begin to recognize. It had obviously been collecting for some time, as one end had vacuum tubes, then slowly got smaller.

  Muldoon’s “house” was built into part of the second and third floors. It was a whole lot nicer than its surroundings, even the stairs up to it. It still had an industrial look and
feel, but it was cleaner with bright curtains on windows and patio furniture on the walkway to make really depressing balconies. Everything I could see from the ground was state of the art technologically, ultramodern stylistically, and, frankly, ugly. Individually excellent pieces but crudely put together. It just shouted, “I have a tiny dick and a lot of money.”

  From everything I saw, I was safe around all of this equipment, so I took a chance and pushed a mild sensing out, then fully opened the block up to us. This should be a cakewalk. Jimmy and his team jumped into action just as the power went out. The support crews cut the building off from the outside world. It was my turn.

  “C’mon, dude, I just wanna talk to ‘im,” I whined, trotting up behind them. In unison, all four men whirled around raising their weapons—an assortment of rifles and shotguns. There wasn’t any style to my defense, just speed, brute force, and the Day. With an amazingly bright flare of light as I shoved the Day into each of their guns, slicing through the firing mechanisms. The Day was home again before the first gun fell apart in their hands, throwing each man off-balance. Comically, the scene took on a Seventies’ martial arts movie feel for me. One man against four in darkened warehouse with them grunting and yelling in confusion and anger, that surreal second when they realize they’ve been had by something but they don’t have a clue what it is.

  Wife-beater tried to lunge forward and grab me. I was faster, taking his elbows and driving a knee into his solar plexus. Falling to the ground and rolling back, I threw him back over my shoulders, dislocating his arms from his shoulders as I squeezed in, then popped back up immediately. Taking a step forward, I popped Thing 1 and Thing 2 in the sternum hard, throwing them both backwards several yards, stealing their breath and snapping many of their ribs simultaneously. They fell in a heap. That left Thing 3. He saw the three seconds it took for this to occur, drew in a deep breath, his chest muscles taut with tension as he readied his shout for help. His shout turned to a brief whelp of muffled pain before he passed out and I extracted my fist, taking with me six bleeding front teeth.