“I knew this was too much like an action movie,” the Aussie muttered. “Did they explain their dastardly plan for world domination right after they captured you?”
“When did they capture us?” I leaned past the man to ask Peter.
“Who are you, then?” he asked.
“Ah, that really doesn’t matter, does it?” Peter asked.
“I’d like to know who I’m fighting,” he said, letting his accent lilt, picking something up in Peter that I just didn’t see. The man’s aura peaked with arousal, but thankfully even Peter was bothered by that.
“Dude, that’s just creepy,” Peter answered, shaking his head. “And the people you’re planning to attack aren’t given engraved announcements ahead of time, are they?”
“Why don’t I particularly feel like attacking either of you right now? That would be my natural inclination and training,” he asked calmly, still brandishing his knife but always pointing down.
“Our brother is being subtle,” Peter said, slyly adjusting his… position to our talkative non-captor. Shameless, my brother was shameless.
“We were wondering, Mr. Creely,” I started asking my question mostly to draw his attention away from Peter, but he proved to be an interesting diversion with Kieran’s fascination. “Why exactly are you here? Why are you part of this army?”
“Huh? We’re leading the mercenaries through magically-defended and even heavily-defended areas,” Creely explained distractedly, glancing over at me quickly. Kieran imbued quite a willingness to serve and Creely’s imagination supplied a huge fantasy with a little prompting. I’m pretty certain he wanted to try bondage for the first time. The brief image I got didn’t quite seem anatomically probable, but…
“That’s what you’re doing. I want to know why. Is it simply for the money, like the other mercenaries? Or is there some political statement that you’re making in helping this idiot?” I tried explaining. Peter just tilted his head ever so slightly and looked sternly at him. Creely spilled his guts then.
“Hard question to answer,” he said to me, nervously. “Some of us, it’s the money. Not many of us can hold down normal jobs. Just about everything involves equipment that tends to malfunction, even explode around us. Some of us feel that the people we’re attacking have done nothing through the years to alleviate this problem, even though they have the resources.”
“Oh, boo-hoo,” I snapped, startling Creely. “What have any of you done about it? What makes you think the people you’re attacking aren’t having the same problems? These are excuses that I’m not willing to accept, especially when it’s my family and friends that you’re attacking. What it comes down to is, every damn one of you has got a screw loose in some way, you’re thrill-seekers, and this is a convenient way get money while merging the two.”
“Yeah, that about covers it… Sir,” he said, cringing at the conflict between Lords Kieran and Daybreak. Pulling back on my influence, I looked at Peter for his opinion.
“Sad as it is, I agree with you,” Peter said. “And they knew the risks going into this. Just like we did.” He looked over his shoulder at the temple sadly.
The building itself was creepy enough to keep the human mercenaries away unless ordered to be there, like now. Kieran had them field stripping their weapons in pairs. The battle mages were playing a complex game of patty-cake in teams. Kieran walked up, grinning, with Dad and Ethan.
“This gets easier when you use it,” he said, his emerald eyes ablaze with wild energy. “Feel the burn.”
Grinning at his enthusiasm, I had no idea what “pushing” him in faery magic would do and I really didn’t want to wait an hour or more while these idiots figured out how to read Sondre’s spellbook. “Would y’all mind if I hurried things along?”
“As long as you don’t become involved,” Ethan murmured beside me.
Letting my attention rush into the wretched gray stone building, I started aligning their seals on the ethereal planes. The ceremony room was harder because they needed more space, so the angles were tighter and there were more of them. The priests had their sacrifices waiting in the smoky back room. The drugs and herbs wafting through the musty air already had their minds muddled. Chants from baffled side rooms committed more ambiance to the ceremony room. I imagine the drugs were the most important part for everyone but Marchand, considering he was the only one that was supposed to come out alive on the other side. The priests, low on Sondre’s totem pole since we’d devastated her “parish,” began consecrating the primaries for the ceremony. If they didn’t get out of that room soon, they’d be too stoned to stand up, too.
“Nobody seems to be trying too hard, do they?” Ethan asked quietly, watching the temple with me.
“You’re right. I wonder why that is…” I mumbled at his very good question. Maybe a change of perspective would help, I thought, and rose up over the cloud on the temple and looked down. Dark scratches scored the earth through the forest around us in a devious binding. Manufactured by the mercenaries using shovels and maps with care and precision, the battle mages were about to try a “Hail, Mary!” I couldn’t see who was directing them, or how they talked the mercenaries into helping out. Obviously, their relationship was different than I thought.
“Kieran, just put them to sleep,” I said loudly. “We’ve been caught in a snare, a pretty good one, too. Mr. Creely, who owns this property?”
“Mr. Murrik, I believe, is the owner, sir, though he allows Mr. Marchand free rein,” Creely answered as he gained confidence from the knowledge his comrades were fighting for them.
“Yeah, I figured he’d be the only one who could of pulled all this off,” I said grinning at him. “I can handle the trap, but it’s going to drain me momentarily and I’ll be wide open during the mercenaries’ rush. The Stone and the Day aren’t going to stand for that, which will strip protection from Dad.”
“What’s going to happen?” Kieran asked, sending sensings out and seeing the buildup of men with weaponry in the trees well beyond a normal staging range. “Full scale military attack? What’s the magical attack?”
“A ley bomb, more or less,” Ethan said. He pointed up the slope and continued, “They phase two spells around their conduits that tug on that cloud, only they don’t know that part. When they’re ready, they put all the energy they can spare into the conduits to fry us as much as they can.”
“Then the gunman come running in, overwhelming us,” Peter finished, looking out into the jungle. “All right, Kieran, what do you want us to do?”
“Ethan, protect Seth and watch Dad’s back,” Kieran said quickly and authoritatively. “Dad, yell and taunt the temple for anybody to come out, but don’t go in and stay close to us! Pete, you take that side and I’ll take this side. Seth… Be careful, little brother.”
“I’ll scream if I have problems. Shrilly and loudly, probably like a girl,” I said grinning. My only thought was to short circuit the energy and the only way I could do that was shorten the path it had to follow. Grabbing a sense of a decent volume of space around us, I added, “Just be ready for me to drop us out of reality for a moment or two.”
I started shifting the edges of the space apart from their natural realm to grab them in a hurry. Once again I was in the center with Kieran and Peter on either side of me with Ethan basically circling me. Dad was in front of me facing the temple and Creely paced off in the distance on Peter’s side.
We didn’t have too long to wait before the attack started. Two violent waves of clashing energy that couldn’t quite jump the gap of the path and the trees. Forty battle mages poured their reserves into this attack and when it hit the transforms in the forest, the resulting energy form would flood in and fry us all. I tied a much smaller volume of space to the edges of the one I’d just removed and we dropped out of reality for a moment. Playing games with chance and quantum entanglement was actually rather exciting. By definition, I really didn’t know the outcome; I just felt like this is how it should be. Then it
was.
The explosion was gigantic, a purple firestorm of violent jagged-edged energy flaring in the field around us. It burned hard and fast, but my patch held. Once the energy washed into the background again, I let the tiny twist of space return to its original position and released the rest of its trapped energy. The battle mages weren’t too happy with it since it caused a minor explosion of light and sound in their midst. I didn’t feel too badly since they’d just killed fifteen of their own men trying to get us.
We stood on the only plot of grass within a hundred yards. Their trap worked well to be so big. Holding such a large volume took a lot out of me. All I could do for a few moments was watch as the next wave of their plan took place. They timed it well, too, as the mercenaries with long-ranged weapons began a barrage of the field while others with more conventional weapons ran for the treeline, closer to our sensory limits—what they believed them to be, anyway. Peter and Kieran watched the sky and batted explosive rounds and incoming RPGs out of the air as fast as they appeared.
Ethan flared with energy and a thin webbing of shield energy appeared around all of us, then another and another. Fifteen levels of energetic protection, none of them strong enough by itself to stop a bullet, but woven together, it was magical kevlar and dense enough for a tank round. Dad was yelling at the temple and throwing thunderous hexes at the building to shake up everyone inside. Kieran and Peter had to change tactics then as the attack from the trees started. Bullets ricocheted off Ethan’s shield, eating at the scorched earth around us.
My energy and concentration levels were returning quickly now, so I checked the temple for survivors. Surprisingly the attack was surgically precise but Dad was doing more damage than the attack did. Almost everybody was alive. I found the one fatality—murder, really, but who was I to complain—in the back of the ceremony room. Marchand wasn’t supposed to end up with his guts on the floor in one place and his head hacked off into another. The priests and the chanters were huddled in the floor of the steam room, locked in and likely to suffocate soon. That left Murrik, Lucian, and their four buddies somewhere in the building. Two of the battle mages working in concert masked all of their auras while the other two worked to camouflage their physical appearance. Murrik dragged Lucian along at gunpoint and acted as lookout from the middle. They were nearing an outside exit door through a long, dark hallway that was made to be hard to see into. Well, well, Phil got pissed about being a murder victim and decided he’d finally had enough of Marchand. ‘Bout time.
This was an old trick: I just swapped the doors and where they opened up. It was funny to watch Dad shouting as the front door of the temple burst open and a pair of shrubs waddled out hurriedly. Slamming the door shut behind the six of them, I met Murrik’s eyes and gave him a congratulatory smile and that fake opera applause thing. He clung to Lucian and highlighted his Sig Sauer pushed hard under Lucian’s chin.
Thick as water from a fire hose, a jet of fire shot from Dad’s hands to greet the first of the shrubs before their camouflage failed. The fire glanced off the first man’s incomplete shield, but incinerated the second man with his nonexistent one. The still-burning body of the second fell into the first and flared as new fuel was added and the spell burst into action again. The man was burned to char and gristle within his own magic.
Murrik stared at the bodies, bug-eyed, as they fell. When he snapped out of it, he threw a much stronger shield in front of them and started a slow crab-walk to the right. The other two wizards gave up on the aura masquerade and surrounded them, augmenting Murrik’s shield and preparing offensive spells. Of the four of them, only Lucian wasn’t scared out of his mind, but that was drugs and the Pact Lock’s stupor. And for some reason, Murrik thought Lucian was a bargaining chip for getting out. I put up a wall of my own to block their way while shaking my head slowly.
Ethan shouted words of power into the cacophony playing out around us. Jagged lightning reached up from the earth and down from the sky and met at Murrik’s shield. Coruscating electricity arced and crackled against the shield as gigawatts were expended violently until the two battle mages were suddenly thrown back hard against the temple wall. Ethan dropped his spell as Murrik reeled within his much shrunken shield.
Lucian was fighting to stay on his feet, too, but that didn’t last too long. I looked back at Dad expectantly and saw him having conscience problems even with his previously murderous rage. Still in Ethan’s shield webbing, it was quiet enough for raised voices. “Dad,” I asked, baffling the space between us more to keep from shouting. “Do you want me to do it? This doesn’t have to be you, you know.”
“They were good people, Seth,” he said sadly, his voice catching on my name. I think he was talking about Lucian’s parents, but it could very well have been his sons and daughters, the aunts and uncles I never met. Or even all of them, the entire Guild.
“I know they were, Dad,” I said as comfortingly as possible in the middle of a battlefield. Rolling my shoulders, I turned back to Lucian and raised my arms, calling the Crossbow forward. With this magical tool, you didn’t need to aim for the Bolt to fatally hit its target, but I did. Before I could squeeze the trigger, a shaft of blue-white fire shot past me, forcing me to jump to the right.
“Don’t mean I can’t fry the psychotic freak that killed my kids!” Dad yelled maniacally. He’d managed about three seconds at that power level. The beam hit Lucian’s aura and obliterated him in a quarter of that time. Then hit the temple wall, blowing out a hole ten feet wide. The shrapnel of six-inch thick stone wall flew in all directions at once. Thousands of super-heated projectiles hit Murrik’s shield, throwing him hard to the left of the field. Neither battle mage survived the explosion and I wasn’t sure Murrik was getting up again.
Dad was my worry as he collapsed slowly to the ground. Ethan saw me turning to run and beat me to him, so Dad never face-planted, thankfully. I wouldn’t have been fast enough. When I looked into him, he was in shock. I didn’t know what to do; there didn’t seem to be a reason for it.
“He’s burning up,” Ethan commented, wiping the sweat from Dad’s face. Then he whispered a few words that built a flexible field of much cooler air around Dad. “What is wrong with him? I see nothing but damage.”
“I don’t know,” I muttered, already frustrated. Sinking my perceptions deeper, part of me entered the seat of his consciousness. He wasn’t there at the moment. His brain was doing loopy things, his energy reserves were nearly depleted, and a large number of his controlling paths were… charred? “Is it possible he channeled too much power and hurt himself that way? Sort of burned himself out?”
“Damn, that does sorta look like the beginning stages of every burnout I ever had,” he answered, a touch of hysteria in his voice. “But this isn’t a systemic failure. I think. Please tell me I’m not just hoping, Seth.”
“It isn’t systemic in the sense that everything is shut down,” I said nervously. “But how long until that happens? His brain is doing strange things. The interfaces are in chaos and I don’t know what to do about it.”
“Hope you know Queen Mab’s hotline, mate,” Creely called from a dozen yards away, digging uselessly at the grass with his knife. Our heads whipped in his direction. Creely was talking about Seelie, the Summer Queen.
“I do. Why is that helpful, Mr. Creely? Does Mab have some ability to help here?” I asked as politely as I could manage.
“Only way to pull his mind back is what I heard,” Creely answered. “I didn’t stick around to see what happened. You know, the crazy queen of faery.”
“You think the other one is sane?” Ethan asked as I turned back to Dad and sought out his conscious mind again.
“Shit, there’s two?” Creely asked, creeped out.
Not deeming his ignorance worth my time, I needed more: more information, more time, and more help. Mab, the Seelie Queen, was out of the question. She’d be more than willing to go digging around in Dad’s head if it weren’t for the Pact she more or le
ss knew he carried—and she’d love for me to owe her for something—but the Pact would block her every attempt at stealing his soul.
Brothers, Dad’s hurt. We need to end this, I sent to Peter and Kieran, standing stock-still and back-to-back a few yards away. Their battle was now hundreds of yards off and waged on many different fronts. Gestures and movements were wasteful and slow.
“We agree to a truce. Send your representatives down the temple path now to discuss terms for your surrender,” Peter said loudly, his voice echoing through the trees. Both Kieran and he held their positions for six seconds before whipping around and running to us. Ethan explained what we’d discovered so far while I slowly collected the parts of Dad’s consciousness that I could find in that storm of activity in his brain. I think I was able to slow the degradation down some, too, but the mind is a delicate place and sometimes very difficult to read and handle.
Dad’s consciousness formed in his mindscape, cracked and missing pieces, like a mannequin cut away with a jigsaw. “Seth?” he asked, looking at me lost and confused, his voice cracking and weak. “What’s happened?”
“Near as we can tell, you had a power burnout,” I told him. “Do you know what that means, Dad? What can I do about it?”
He stared at me, thinking through possibilities. After a moment, he said, “Tell your mother I love her. And know that I am proud of both my sons. I am happy to see you grown up into such a good man.” His consciousness shattered into thousands of pieces as if exploding from the inside.
“Oh, no you don’t!” I shouted in both realms and blazed with power. He knew something. I could feel it. Hunting every shard of thought that he sent flying, I seized his mind and found the thought and memory he didn’t want me to see. Dad felt it was a lost hope and it was. The idea was indeed one of the Queens sealing the victim’s mind together in a geas while he healed, but the Pact would defeat the geas in hours, long before healing could complete. If I tried, I would watch my father slowly going insane from the inside. “Damn, Dad, give me some credit for ingenuity!”
Sons (Book 2) Page 123
