Remis looked at his brother. Then he raised his arm and pointed his finger at him. “You will be silent!”
Gregor opened his mouth, but no words emerged. His expression turned to rage, but he didn’t appear to be able to move, either. He just stood there, apparently aware and yet spell bound.
“You’ve been given words of truth, Gregor Fortuna, and a genuine chance to turn aside from your path.” Remis looked over at her and Logan and Cameron. “You’ve been given more honest chances than you deserve. But you won’t listen. You’ll never listen, and you’ll never change.”
Remis turned to Roman. “Words have never been enough for Gregor. Not from the time we were small children and he relished breaking all my favorite toys. Your father has always been evil, Roman. All those years ago, I could have defeated him, but I didn’t. I let him believe he’d taken my magic, and I threw myself on his mercy because I was afraid. I was afraid to kill him and make you, and your brothers, all hate me. And what has been my reward for my failure all these years later? To have lived without stress and worry, yes, but to also have lived without freedom or vitality as well. And my punishment, just recently, was knowing that my failure all those years ago cost the lives of four of my nephews.”
“Uncle Remis, I would never have hated you. If we’d had the truth about Father, we would have grieved over his death, but we would have moved on.”
“You see? My own self-delusions are just as unrealistic as Gregor’s. There is one more truth you need to know because my cowardice didn’t stop with that one act of obeisance to my twin on that fateful day.” Here he paused and pulled himself up so that he stood ramrod straight. “Roman Fortuna, you are blameless in the deaths of your brothers.”
Roman stared at his uncle. “But…I was there, on the deck of the cruise ship. I spoke the ancient words with Cheri Ambrose to protect the innocent, and when her men turned Vincent and Emilio into sea-snakes, I was so angry they wouldn’t stop, especially since they knew they couldn’t win…”
“That in your anger you thought it would be exactly what they deserved if they were eaten by a shark. Yes, I know. I was there, too, and I read your thought. But it wasn’t your power that called the shark and empowered it. It was mine.” He stepped closer to his nephew and laid a hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t your power that called the raptor, but mine. And it was not their fault—not Vincente or Emilio’s, not Mario’s or Pietro’s—that they wouldn’t stop, that they couldn’t stop. The truth is they were bound to behave as they did, and that was all on your father—and it was on me. He’d bound them to his will with malice aforethought. It was on me, because I didn’t kill him when I should have.” Remis shook his head. “He tried to bind Ricardo and Eduardo to his will, but that binding wasn’t very strong, and it was easily broken. I saw to that on the beach in Los Angeles.”
Holy shit.
Logan’s expletive nearly made Diana laugh, except she agreed with it completely. Around them, the air had thickened, and the sense of something pending was almost palatable.
Roman looked as shocked as Diana knew the rest of them felt. Remis had just confessed to having been the instrument of death for his own nephews. “And now, it is time for me to stop hiding behind your power and your willingness to do the hard thing. It’s time for me to fulfill my destiny.” He stepped back from Roman. “This was never your destiny, my dear Roman. It has always been mine. Please. Allow me to reclaim my dignity at last.”
Diana saw the struggle on Roman’s face. His need to protect his uncle clearly was warring with his reluctance to actually kill his own father. Roman was a good man. Focusing on him, she could see the colour of his magic, and it was silver, shot with blue. The sense of a different magic tickled her flesh, and Diana looked at Remis. He’d unveiled his power, and it was a pewter gray, more vibrant than his twin’s but still dark.
Well, now I understand why Cheri and Meghan had said the power of the “other” they’d sensed was neither good nor evil. It hadn’t been one other but two—Roman and Remis.
Roman met her gaze for a moment, and she could see in his eyes that it pained him to know that what was about to happen had been destined, and as strong as his magic clearly had become, in this situation at least, he was completely powerless to change the outcome.
Roman met his uncle’s gaze for a long moment. Then he nodded and stepped back toward the cottage. Diana couldn’t help but notice that Gregor, Roman, and her, with her men, formed an almost perfect triangle. Not a circle, not a place of protection or a channel to plea to Mother Earth to aid and assist. No, they were a triangle. Three sides, three spirits. And, in the triangle created by them all, Remis stood in the center. But if she looked at it another way, she knew they were six, forming two triangles.
Three sides, three spirits—and Diana understood in a heartbeat what was about to happen. Raw power would abut raw power, and all who were near, unless on guard and protected, could be harmed.
She joined hands with her men, and they moved in closer to her. “Don’t let go,” she whispered.
“Never.” Logan and Cameron spoke at the same time. They held fast to her hands and wrapped their other arms around her so she truly was secure and safe between them.
Diana had never experienced what happened next—being half in mind space and half in the moment—but she knew her sisters and their mates were there, aware but unseen. She felt their love and their strength. She also felt others there, though she could not see them, not even using her magic.
Then Remis stepped up to his brother. “It is time for us, Gregor. I helped create your madness. Now, I shall end it.”
He must have unbound his brother then, for Gregor moved. But rather than stepping back, or vanishing, he lunged for Remis. Clearly aiming to put his hands around his brother’s throat and choke him, he was thwarted by his twin. They each grasped the other’s arms between shoulder and elbow.
The sky darkened, and lightning flashed. The wind arose, blowing stronger and stronger with each passing moment. Before them, the two combatants seemed not to notice. Faces skewed in rage, arcs of red and white electricity shot out from one to the other. Flames formed a hellish aura around the struggling twins. Feet braced, bodies straining, the two continued their titanic struggle, each trying to subdue the other’s magic. It was a battle between equals, a battle that could have no winner. A battle that truly could have only one outcome, for twins they were now, but womb mates they had been, one creation split in two.
Diana could smell sulfur as the ground trembled with the raw fury of the power the two unleashed. Brother against brother, the magic backwash grew so that she could feel the heat of it and taste the hatred and determination of it overflowing from the two. Then black smoke began to billow out, an obsidian snake wending its way around and around the pair, rising as it began to encase them, a boa constrictor of malignant magic residue weaving them together, from feet, to ankles, to knees, and higher still.
Gregor screamed, and for one instant, Remis looked toward Roman. She couldn’t see what he mouthed to his nephew, so she opened her senses and immediately received the impression of one word.
Goodbye.
Lightning struck a jagged trail from the heavens, exploding over Gregor and Remis Fortuna, and the explosion rocked the earth and tossed her and her men to the ground. The brightness of the flash and the cacophony of the blast blinded them and deafened them for long, long seconds.
Then the clouds vanished, the wind died, and the sound and scent of the surf once more filled the air—as if nothing at all had happened.
Where the two warlocks had stood locked together in battle, a crater of a foot or so deep had been gouged out of the ground, and the grass around the edge of the hole lay singed and charred.
Roman, too, had been knocked off his feet but was the first to recover. Diana and her men stood back up but held back, allowing Roman his space.
He’s not only lost his biological father but also the uncle who had been as a father
to him. Sometimes the sacrifice demanded by destiny was a hard one, indeed. Diana could only cling all the more tightly to her men.
Roman looked to his right for a moment. He waved his hand, and Rick and Ed appeared. Their eyes were on their brother, and then they looked down at the hole.
Diana should have been surprised that her sisters and their men appeared, too, but she wasn’t.
The battle was over. It was now time to ask and answer questions, to take stock—and see just what came next.
Chapter 14
It was only right that his brothers, along with the other two triads of the prophecy, be aware of all that had happened, and that they be here, now, together. They had all been affected by the machinations of Gregor Fortuna. They all deserved to have a few answers.
He would share as much as he could, as much as he knew. Roman had believed, before today, that he’d been aware of everything and had been in control of everything. But in the last few minutes, he’d come to realize he really hadn’t been as knowledgeable or as in charge as he’d thought.
Roman was still trying to process everything that had happened in the last half-hour. In the aftermath of the magic storm, there was one thing he was supremely grateful for. Ricardo and Eduardo had seen everything as it had happened, and they didn’t judge him or blame him for any of it.
“We were pissed when we realized that we couldn’t leave that farm,” Ricardo said. “In fact, we were trash talking you until we were pulled into mind space and witnessed…that whole thing.” He pointed to the hole in the ground. “You did what you promised. You kept us safe from him. Thank you for that.”
There remained a slight stench of sulfur in the air—the scent of magic tainted with evil. Otherwise, this was a good place to be. He’d been drawn to purchase this cottage years before—the land had once belonged to his long-ago ancestors, the Fergus’s, He had added land all around it to make it into an estate, of sorts.
Now that the threat his father had posed was no more, it might be time to think about leaving Chicago. If he decided to stay here in Scotland, he’d hire men from the area to build a larger house.
That’s a strange thing for me to think about right now. With his next breath, he realized that it wasn’t so strange at all. It was just the way the human mind reacted while trying to deal with a stressful and unexpected event.
Damn it, Remis. I’m going to miss you. He didn’t feel the least bit guilty that he wouldn’t miss his father. Gregor Fortuna had been a monster.
“We’d like to thank you, too, Roman.”
Roman turned his attention to the three women who stood before him. Behind them their men—their mates—stood wary and on guard, but not hostile.
He sure as hell wouldn’t blame them if they were hostile.
“You’re welcome, though I really didn’t do much.” No, it had been his uncle who’d stepped in, in the end, and paid the ultimate price.
“We happen to disagree with you there. You helped to save those innocents on that cruise ship,” Cheri Ambrose said. “Even as I said the words, I didn’t know if I was strong enough to manifest the ancient spell.”
“And you helped me when I lost consciousness,” Meghan said. “You protected me until Ryan and Jeremy could arrive.”
“And you helped me to breathe after…” She cast a glance at his brothers, who looked more than a little shame faced. Then she turned back to him. “Well, after.”
Roman slipped his hands in his pockets. After a lifetime of living his life without notice, it was an interesting sensation, having all eyes, and all attention, focused on him.
“All told,” Logan Firth said, “that’s a hell of a lot you did do to help. So thank you, from all of us.”
Roman shrugged. “I couldn’t let the madness in my family interfere with your destinies.”
“So what happens now?” Ed looked at Roman. “I mean…what do we do now?” He looked toward the three triads. “I still can’t believe the prophecy was real. We thought the old man was completely crazy.” Ed stopped and cast a glance at the hole. Roman heard his thought as if he’s spoken it aloud—a mental assertion that Gregor had in fact been exactly that.
“But he didn’t really have any of the facts straight,” Roman said. “The Prophecy was never about taking magic away from those descended from the Chosen or the Scorned. It was about adding to their magic with an infusion of fresh blood—and the end of the Great Separation.”
“I don’t know how that affects us. We don’t have much magic, either one of us.” Rick cleared his throat. “Despite what we tried to do to you, Miss Reynolds, and, believe me, we are sorry for that.”
That was one point Roman could speak to with some authority. “You may find you have more now than you had before, simply because Father was suppressing your powers. You all were under different and various binding spells for most of your lives.”
“Not to mention the fact that you two can work together, if you need to. You can combine your powers. You don’t have to live with the fear and distrust of each other your brothers knew.”
Roman raised one eyebrow. He wasn’t surprised that Diana Reynolds knew that they’d been raised to turn brother against brother. What did give him pause was her willingness to help, despite everything.
“Huh. Well, we really don’t care, overly much.” Rick shrugged. “Using our powers hasn’t been a good experience for us so far, anyway.”
Roman could certainly understand their feelings. Power, or, rather, their father’s insatiable hunger for it, was behind everything negative they’d been through the last couple of months. “I can help you with that if you want me to. It’s up to you.”
The two younger men looked at each other for a long time. “We need to think about it. We need…time and space to figure out what we want to do, where we want to go from here.”
“Fair enough.” Roman gave a half-grin. “You know where I live, and you have my cell number. Call me, when you’re ready to talk.”
“Okay, thanks, we will,” Rick said. “Um, can you send us back, now, please?”
“Back to Chicago?”
“No, we’d like to go back to that farm. That is if Daphne is still there? And if, you know, we can leave that property now, go into town when we want to?”
“Yes, to both.” He didn’t tell them he’d be able to know what they were up to. Roman didn’t think they needed to know that, and he did want to keep an eye on them, at least until they’d processed everything themselves.
“Thanks, Roman.” Rick looked over at Diana. “I am really sorry we hurt you. We…” Rick shrugged. He couldn’t easily put it into words. Roman understood that.
“I accept your apology. It wasn’t your fault. You couldn’t have fought Gregor.” Diana’s words sounded heartfelt. Her men flanked her, not as a show of force against his brothers but because they must have known she needed them.
Roman knew quite a bit of the reasoning and thoughts shared by the members of all three triads. Hopefully they wouldn’t ever need to know how he’d slipped into their minds. It had been an invasion of their privacy, but a necessary one at the time.
He turned his attention back to his brothers. “I’ll come by in a couple of days. We can talk in private, then, about family matters.”
“Thanks, Roman.” Ed looked at Rick then back to him. “We’re ready to go.”
Roman sent them back to the farm. He took just a moment to look and knew that Daphne was, indeed, still there and, more, that she’d been waiting for them.
Then Roman turned to face the nine people who’d all been hurt, to some degree, by his father. He could see the questions in their eyes.
“You all have questions. I’m not sure I have all the answers.”
“We saw your surprise earlier, so we get that. Maybe we could just sit and talk?”
Roman figured it was the least he could do. But he didn’t want to keep looking at that blackened hole in the ground. It was just too much, at least for now. He turn
ed his gaze to his cottage. It would be a tight fit, but a single thought would make it just right. “Yes, we can sit and talk. Please, won’t you come inside?”
* * * *
Logan experienced a sense of déjà vu the moment he’d set eyes on the crofter’s cottage. It appeared to be nearly identical to one he’d inhabited in an earlier time, that first lifetime when he was Lagan and, with Camnon and Dina, had made a home, and a life, together.
Of course, he knew this wasn’t that cottage, but the comparison left him feeling a little more at ease when he stepped inside Roman’s house. He’d felt the tiny zing just before they entered, so he realized the man had made it just a tad bigger inside. He’d have to, to fit all of them.
There were three loveseats and an armchair situated in a semi-circle around the fireplace. At their host’s behest, they all made themselves comfortable. The guy wins points for knowing the men would want to flank their women.
What he’d witnessed earlier, the confrontation between first Gregor and his son, and then his twin, ran on a continuous loop through his mind. It didn’t take much human empathy to understand Roman had been in a difficult position from the beginning—wanting to protect their women from the threat posed by his family but, at the same time, having to watch his back with his own father and brothers.
As if he’d read his mind, Roman nodded. “If any of them had known I was Gifted, they’d have tried to kill me. At the very least, they would have warded themselves against me, and that I couldn’t allow because I needed to keep tabs on them all.” He shrugged. “Like you, I’m not immortal.”
“When the Concilium sent us here, they didn’t seem to have any idea that something else was also in play.” Diana leaned her head against Logan’s shoulder. He could feel her exhaustion, but it warred with her curiosity.
“No. I don’t know everything either, but I learned—about six years ago—that my birth was part of another prophecy, one foretold of before the Great Separation occurred and had somehow became lost, I guess, in those chaotic early days when the homeworld was created. My mother stayed with me until after I came into my powers. She helped me learn how to use them, in secret, of course. And she’s remained someone I can turn to when I need to—in mind space.”
The Gifted 3: Passions Ascended (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Page 13