Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  “Eighteen,” Ellorn said.

  “Triple it, at least for the time being,” I told him. “You can always reassign later. Quit trying to make everything perfect from the onset. We have plenty of time to massage out any kinks in the works in the coming months.”

  “I hadn’t thought in those terms, sir,” Ellorn said.

  “And take the rest of the night more slowly, more casually,” I said. “Enjoy yourself a little more tonight. You deserve it. Now let’s check in on that BBQ.”

  Ellorn and I wandered up the Promenade for another hour, talking about everything we saw. And we ate a delicious variety of food. I delayed any problem he brought up until tomorrow unless it was life threatening—none were. We decided that my valet staff would include Zed’s unchanged fourth cousins, Gibson and Guitar, and Ellorn would get Piano and Steinway. It made me wonder if they didn’t pick their English names for their comedic effect, but it was more like they found a thesaurus with lists of words and used that. By the end of the hour, we were both in much better moods and more relaxed.

  Interestingly, when we parted ways, Ellorn hugged me and said, “Thank you, Lord. You’ve been most helpful and understanding.” It was an odd thing for him to do, but I just attributed it to new hormones and shifted to the Garrison.

  “Evenin’, Ric, just checkin’ in,” I said quietly as I stepped up beside Velasquez at the Sit-room’s dispatch display table. He leaned against the table but studied the huge map on the wall that currently showed six different positions on Gilán where Guard troops were dispersed.

  “Good evening, Lord Daybreak,” Velasquez responded, snapping to attention but relaxing almost instantly. “It was a glorious day today!” He smiled nearly ear to ear.

  Grinning back at him, I asked, “I guess you went outside this morning?”

  “Yes, sir!” Velasquez said enthusiastically, still smiling. “First led us to meet Arwene and Orlet on the river on the way to the southern lake. He’s quite a wrestler, both on land and in the river, and a prankster!”

  “Just wait till he grows up,” I said. “He’s barely past puberty. He’s just a gangly teenager now.” This was what I was hoping for anyway. That he’d grow up strong enough to control the lake south of him with Orlet. And she was no lightweight by herself. Where Arwene was graceful power, Orlet was ferocious speed and elegant movement. They worked well together. I’m not certain why I “hoped” because they were almost certainly engineered for that purpose somehow.

  “But he’s huge now,” whispered my Guard Commander, visibly shocked at the thought. “Like over eight feet tall, huge.”

  “Damn, I hope he doesn’t get too big,” I muttered to myself, basically. “That’ll severely limit his playmates. Don’t want a grumpy nymph in charge of the lake.”

  “I second that,” Velasquez said under his breath, wide-eyed. “Lord, First setup this display for us but we can’t manipulate it. Now it doesn’t make much sense anymore.” He waved an arm at the screen on the wall with his shirtsleeve riding up to show a marked tan.

  “What am I supposed to be looking at?” I asked, taking control of the Worldgem links. I knew what I was looking at, now I needed to know why that should make sense.

  “It was originally six groups of four that has merged into four groups of six,” Velasquez explained. “They’re all currently heading for the Road, but I have no idea where that is relative to where they are.”

  Okay, I had to find twenty-three Ransé and Jimmy somewhere between here and the southern lake. It was mostly familiar territory and Jimmy’s aura was a blue bonfire in the distance as I pulled one frame back far enough to identify several people. His group, though, seemed to consist of eleven others. Jimmy walked a very natural path through the nighttime forest, but the others hadn’t quite gotten the knack for it yet. Twigs and branches snapped, boots scuffed on tree roots, and buttons and bows caught in shrubs.

  Dropping the links and clearing the screen, I showed an overview of Gilán using the lake and the Palace as borders. Finding the other two groups wasn’t hard since they were as noisy as Jimmy’s group. Looking at the people, it made sense—city boys and girls and big ones at that. Centering one screen on the northern group, Ted seemed to be doing pretty good moving through the forest, but others, not so much. The problem was they scared off the nocturnal creatures in droves.

  I set a screen for the final group with instructions to close the links to the Worldgem when everyone got in and released the map. “There ya go, Commander. I think that’ll do for tonight,” I said casually and glanced down at the table. Hundreds of tiny satellite pictures of the three camps from the Russian’s records littered the glowing desktop. First, are you planning on bringing that herd of elephant home this evening?

  That’s what’s wrong! I knew something was irritating me, Jimmy responded, his image halting on-screen. City boys, I should have realized. That explains why the forest is so empty. Time to scrub this, then. “Guys, Lord Daybreak has explained to me why we aren’t meeting anyone, so I’m scrubbing for tonight. We’ll do at another time when we can do it right.”

  Trusting Jimmy to handle that situation, I turned my attention to the satellite images on the tabletop. Many of these were new to me, especially the Midwest encampments. The areas of interest were no longer limited to Arizona apparently, but spread out into Utah and Nebraska. Serious overkill, unless they showed something suspicious.

  “Care to give me a quick rundown on this, Ric?” I asked, feeling Jimmy move his group to the Road. They waited, so I figured he was going to gather everyone. Velasquez explained the two smaller South of the Border installations first since we had little information from that satellite sweep. The Arizonza compound was indeed a complex array of smaller training camps spread out through the Midwest in what seemed to be a random pattern. According to my Guards’ second-in-command, these training camps where disguised and operated as businesses, private gunclubs and gyms or dojos, for instance. Some operated in metal warehouses with parking lots refilling in cycles while some of the gunclubs had some serious bunkers on their firing ranges out in the middle of the desert.

  “Current estimates of personnel just within the Arizona border sits at two thousand three hundred eighty,” concluded Velasquez.

  Picking out the base camp, I asked, “How many there?”

  “Six hundred, twenty,” he answered, adding, “With the possibility of another two hundred each from three nearby camps within twenty to forty minutes.”

  Jimmy and Byrnes burst energetically through the door to the Sit-room, both grinning stupidly. “It was the noise, wasn’t it?” Byrnes asked excitedly.

  “Yes, Ted,” Jimmy said, exasperated. “We were a herd of buffalo stampeding in the night and we trampled a trail a mile wide doing it. Now, pay attention. Boss is here.”

  Byrnes turned to me and grinned. “Evenin’, Boss. Hayseed, here, actually knows his way around the woods.” I chuckled while Jimmy glared at him.

  “Ain’t they funny when they’re being all culturally bigoted,” Jimmy muttered.

  “I guess I know something about the woods, too, then,” I said, grinning, joining the argument but looking at the pictures. “And maybe swamps, too. Then there’s the whole planetary ecosphere. Come to think of it, First, they do have a couple a’hicks in charge, don’t they?”

  “Yep, and proud ones,” Jimmy said and leaned over the table. “What are you considering? I thought you wanted to stay out of this?”

  “I do, but I’m feeling a bit stressed and look at how big they are,” I whined, waving my hand at the map. “They’re spread out to hide, but that makes them vulnerable in many ways. On the fringes, those businesses not involved will be easy to identify. Of course, I’d prefer to cut the head off the beast, then deal with the squirming body after, and let’s understand I’m being figurative this time. Hmm?”

  “Keep your options open, Lord,” Byrnes said seriously. “How many men are you taking with you?”

  “Well,
initially, I’ll go alone just because there’s no other way,” I answered, still studying the map. “First can home in on me within a second or two, but I won’t be in the middle of a viper pit to start. As to how many men I’m taking, none. Now, how many volunteers the First may bring with him is a different question and unfortunately I don’t think I can answer from hours old pictures. We’ll need more current espionage before we go in and really, we’ll need a goal. It’s not like I want to go in and slaughter a bunch of people. I just want to not so gently dissuade them from their current path if it’s the one we believe it to be.”

  “Can we disarm them?” Jimmy asked. “Not completely, I know, but maybe empty their armory and incapacitate the big guns?” Byrnes and Velasquez almost dismissed it out of hand.

  “Probably,” I answered, thinking about how well the ten men worked together earlier. “Especially if we can give them a big enough distraction. That does mean a bigger crowd to control at once, though. Oh, this could be fun!”

  Jimmy and I hunkered down and planned an attack that Byrnes and Velasquez laughed at.

  “That’ll never work!” Byrnes said. “Sentries have to report on interval. Alarms will be raised. You don’t have enough men and you should go in armed.”

  “Well, we’re not that far from weapons, really,” I said, seeking out my third commander through the geas. “Tom, if you’re not busy, could you join us in the Situation room, please?”

  “Yes, Lord?” Tom answered after a moment, shifting in from the back gardens. He was wearing loose, baggy, white shorts and a white wife-beater under a blue Hawaiian print. I explained my plan to him and pointed out several of his peers’ objections.

  “What do you think?” I asked, already knowing the answer percolating on his mind.

  “Can I go?” he asked, almost bouncing on the balls of his feet with excitement.

  Grinning, I said, “I’m not the one taking volunteers, but I wouldn’t say no. Well, Ted, looks like you’ve been out-voted. Let’s talk about what will make you feel better about the situation while Tom and First decide who will volunteer.” My mind really wasn’t in it though. I was already trying to figure out what to do as a distraction and I didn’t have a clue.

  Chapter 68

  My house was in transformer hell. Battery packs of all sorts and sizes were plugged into outlet multipliers then spread methodically over the floors in the den and living room. I knew they were charging batteries here. I just didn’t realize how extensive the project was when I shifted into the pitch-blackness and started cartwheeling into a fall.

  I stopped myself about a foot off the floor using the Stone while emitting the most girlish scream ever to come from my lips. Snorting as I pushed myself upright, my laugh caught in my throat when something in the dining room glowed. I should have already touched the ward…

  “Zero? What are you doing here?” I asked peering around the wall. He was staring up at the dining room lights, concentrating.

  “Trying to turn on the lights,” he muttered absently, then started, realizing to whom he was talking. “Lord Daybreak! I’m sorry, Lord! I was concentrating so hard on the lights that I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Oh, well, the lights are easy,” I said, reaching down and flipping the switch on the wall beside me. “There’s another set behind you beside the door. They toggle opposite each other. Now why are you here?”

  “Ellorn sent me, Lord, as part of my training,” Zero answered cheerfully. His eyes were the same double-iris as every Faery I saw, gleaming with the power of their geas, but his inner iris was so blue it was hard to see the difference. His hair was the color of Ellorn’s and matched his eyes. He parted it in the middle and showed a slight widow’s peak, brushed back over his ears. Zero looked so innocent, still. Even dressed in dull black from the neck down. Strapped to a brace on his thigh he had a pair of sticks similar to Jimmy’s. It was oddly comforting.

  “Training? What are you training for? I’m pretty certain ninjas died out a long time ago,” I asked, looking dubiously at his outfit.

  “Training as Ellorn’s assistant, Lord Daybreak,” Zero said, coming around the table to me. “As your assistant, in some cases.”

  “And what are you here to learn today?” I asked, still amused. “Certainly not to learn the ward.”

  “Oh, no, sir! I haven’t touched it! I brushed it like you showed us and that’s all. Human magic scares me. And all I’m supposed to do is follow and do anything you ask. First thought it was funny and Ellorn said it would be more difficult than I expect, probably dangerous.”

  “There’s no reason to be afraid of human magic,” I said, laughing lightly. “I gave you the ability to control it. Here, let me show you…” I reached through the geas, singling out Zero from the over a million minds chattering away their daily thoughts or dreaming their daily dreams, and I pushed ever so slightly on his conscious mind and joined the ward with him. Kieran crafted a family ward for his previous home, so the wardstones would hold thousands of names before a problem began. I logged Zero into the controlling functions, but warned him not to change anything without my brothers’ or my approval until we taught him a lot more.

  He was enthralled instantly. “What is that?”

  “I’m not certain. I don’t see the same way you do. You have to tell me what you’re looking at.” Physically, he was looking at the wall into the kitchen, so that was no help. “Here, quick course in seeing webs of energy against physical reality. This is called ‘buzzing the ward.’ I’m just applying a small amount of the right kind of energy signature to get it to react…” I buzzed every section of the ward from outside to inside, identifying it by name and function. Zero built his own internal map of the house and its surrounding land from the ward alone. It took us only about two minutes before he turned and gasped.

  “It’s you! Lord Daybreak, I can see you in the ward! You’re so bright!” he cried aloud, turning to me from the kitchen wall, wobbling a little, dizzy with the unusual attachment of the ward to his senses. He was grinning from ear to ear.

  “Yes, you can see a part of my aura in the ward here,” I admitted. “My brothers’, too. Let’s keep that among those allowed in the ward, please. It’s a family thing.”

  “Yes, Lord,” he said, bowing his head in obeisance. “Human magic is a wondrous thing. It has an elegance that counters the flow of faery magic, not that I am expert in either. Will you teach it to us, too?”

  “Too? I have to learn first. You’re guess is as good as mine, in most cases. That’s why I have tools. Now, are you sure you want to come?”

  “Yes, Lord!” Zero said immediately, detaching himself from the ward as if he’d practiced the transition. “Within ten minutes, I already learned so much from you. I am eager for more.” He rubbed his hands together briskly and bobbed up and down of the balls of his feet.

  “You do know that I’m going to start a fight with a bunch of people, right?” I asked, brows together and eyes bright. He didn’t know what he was getting into. As a brownie, I probably wouldn’t have thought twice about letting him tag along—he’d be an invisible menace—but as a huri he was barely two days old and looked like an skinny sixteen-year-old. Looks were definitely deceiving in his case, but still.

  “Really?” he said, awed and grinning up at me. “Can I help? Or at least watch?”

  “Not the reaction I was hoping for,” I grumbled. His grin widened a little sheepishly.

  “I can’t be a protector if I don’t learn to fight, Lord,” he said quietly.

  “That’s true, but Ellorn and First, along with the Guard, will see to a more correct training in that regard than I can provide. I’m still learning myself, after all.”

  “Then we can learn together, Lord,” Zero said mischievously.

  “Feeling a little aggressive?” I asked imperiously, barely touching Daybreak’s power. Zero shuddered back in response.

  “Not against you, Lord Daybreak, never!” Zero cried, raising his hands up
defensively. “But, yes, I do seem to be rather anxious lately.”

  Raging hormones have given me over six hundred men with the strength of pro football linebackers in the bodies of teenagers and accountants, all rapidly changing to match their fundamental age. The over six hundred women with equally raging hormones in similarly changing bodies were also going through difficult emotional changes. Trust me, I felt every bit of it. There was no balance between the sexes, by the way. And it no doubt added to the frustration I felt over my father.

  “Show me your shield and you can come with me,” I relented, thinking, hoping, he wouldn’t be able to do it. He did, grinning the whole time, a solid shield of blue polyhedron plates surrounded him in a cocoon eight to nine inches out from his body. “Is your view obfuscated at all within the shield? Can you make it clear?”

  “No, Lord, I can see perfectly through my shield,” Zero said, dropping his arms to his side and his shield with them. “And we hadn’t thought to change the form of our shields. I’ll work on that next, sir.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, sir, Ellorn selected all of us for training,” Zero said, beaming a pearly white smile across his pale complexion. “Zed, Nil, Naught, Zilch, and Nada.”

  “I haven’t met the girls, yet,” I muttered, drawing the images of Naught and Nada from my memory. They were both quite lovely young women. “All right, let’s get this show on the road, then, but if it starts to get too nasty, don’t be surprised if you turn up at the Palace suddenly. I won’t risk you when I’ve got half the Garrison waiting at my beck and call.” I threw my arm over his shoulder, wheeling him around as I spoke, feeling him tremble and tense. “We’ve got a long way to travel before the night’s over.”

  Zero never once lost either his enthusiasm for our unknown mission or his fear of me as I herded him toward the garage and my car. I let go and led the way at the door, grabbing my keys off the hook and subconsciously resetting the ward. Zero followed me, closing the garage door. Popping the locks with my keychain fob, I stopped with my hand on the door handle and looked at the huri beside me.