Merlin's Children (The Children and the Blood)

by Megan Joel Peterson

  “What do you think is happening, you old fool?” Elias barked, causing several people to glance over at the noise.

  Ashe shook her head, not bothering to turn around.

  “He’s going to get himself killed,” Katherine murmured, coming up beside her.

  “Tell me something I don’t know,” she retorted. A heartbeat passed and she closed her eyes, regretting the sharp tone. “How’s it coming?”

  “The wounded should be ready in another few minutes. Ermengarde and I will stay with the worst injured, but the rest should be able to travel with friends, families… whoever remains.”

  Ashe glanced to her.

  “Most hope their relatives escaped through other portals,” the woman supplied. “And for those who know their loved ones did not…” She sighed. “They go on.”

  By the steps, the overweight councilman snarled something incoherent at Elias and then stormed away.

  “Guess that ends the debate,” Katherine commented.

  Ashe looked over, taken back by the closest thing to a joke she’d ever heard the woman say.

  The suggestion of a smile hovering on her lips, Katherine bowed her head. “Whenever you wish to leave, your majesty.”

  Turning, she headed for the injured.

  “Of all the stupid, incompetent…” Elias muttered, stalking across the yard.

  “So how’d that go?” Ashe asked dryly.

  An annoyed breath escaped him, degenerating into a scoff by the end. “They say they’ll run, though I’d not recommend putting them in any group that wants to stay away from Croftsburg for long.”

  She sighed.

  “Katherine got the others ready to travel?” he asked.

  “In a few minutes.”

  Elias nodded. “Then we need to decide what to do about…”

  He trailed off skeptically.

  She followed his gaze to Cole. “What?”

  “He presents an issue for transport,” Elias said carefully.

  “He still needs to come with us.”

  “Your highness–”

  “No, Elias,” she cut in, exasperation hitting her. “He’s coming with us.”

  The man grimaced.

  “You know why,” she said.

  “He’s a cripple.”

  “And we need his help to identify Blood wizards.”

  “So we bring him wherever you go. We can’t put you and Lily in danger by traveling slowly on his account.” He paused. “Your highness, the city was one thing. But we need to get you both as far from this part of the country as we can, and the time it would take–”

  “Is better than the possibility of going someplace and having no one to point out the Blood wizard waiting there.” She paused, the edge in her voice fading. “We stay together, Elias.”

  He looked away.

  “So you can get us a vehicle?”

  A moment passed and then he closed his eyes. “There’s a van in the garage that should give us enough room.”

  “Thank you.”

  He bowed slightly and then headed for the garage. She sighed as he walked away. Of its own volition, her gaze slid back to Lily and Cole.

  They needed him. With Crystal and Ghost dead, and Mud betraying them, Cole was the best shot they had at identifying the Blood. Everything she’d told Elias was true.

  To a point, anyway.

  She bit her lip, disquiet moving through her. Something was off about Cole. And it wasn’t just that he kept watching the wizards as though all the reassurances in the world of their trustworthiness wouldn’t make him relax. The look on his face the moment before she dragged him through the portal in the factory was nagging at her, leaving an increasingly uneasy feeling she couldn’t seem to shake.

  He hadn’t looked scared by the Blood wizards. Horrified at what was happening, yes. But that hadn’t been the only thing.

  Lost. That was the only word she could think of to describe it. Like someone had taken something from him. Or possibly had, anyway. Like, if he could have, he almost might’ve stayed to see if he could get it back again.

  Her brow drew down as she watched him. She wanted to ignore the way the memory of the look on his face made her feel. Whatever she thought she’d seen, Cole was on their side. He’d rescued them the night the Blood came to their farmhouse and he’d obviously been keeping Lily safe ever since. That should’ve been enough to end the discussion.

  Except she couldn’t quite let herself be that naïve anymore. Not after Darius and the council and the way she’d let herself believe them too. Fact was, she barely knew Cole. His actions on the night her dad had been killed notwithstanding, she’d only met him for a few minutes before she’d thought he and Lily died, and she had no idea what he’d even been doing at their farm in the first place. He’d helped Lily, sure. And for that she was incredibly grateful.

  It was just everything else that neither he nor her sister had yet explained.

  She couldn’t bring her discomfort up to the others, though. Since the factory, Nathaniel and Elias seemed to have fallen back on a view of her safety that shared a lot in common with a scorched-earth policy. Wary enough of Cole on their own, there was no telling what they’d do if she mentioned she had misgivings about the boy too. And then there was Lily, who clearly trusted Cole implicitly and wouldn’t take well to the idea that her sister didn’t feel quite the same.

  Though really, that was only one of the issues with the little girl.

  Never particularly comfortable around any wizard she’d seen since Ashe found her again, hearing that the portal could have killed Cole had left the girl practically glued to his side. For the past half hour, Lily had regarded every wizard on the property with near-rabid defensiveness, as though daring them to try to force either her or Cole to go anywhere near magic again.

  But that hadn’t stopped the Merlin’s interest. Curiosity about Lily was rampant, and nothing short of having Nathaniel stand guard over the girl had thwarted the wizards from trying to prod Lily for answers to the question plaguing them all. The girl looked human. And after seeing the equally human-looking Blood lay waste to the factory, no one was content to just idly wonder why.

  Her lip slipping from between her teeth, Ashe tensed as yet another group made good on her thoughts and started toward Lily again. Nathaniel shifted position warningly, bringing the wizards to a halt. The closest said something, at which Nathaniel’s face darkened, but after a moment’s consideration at his silence, the wizards scowled and then retreated.

  Ashe exhaled, trying to calm down as she watched them go. The whole mess was getting upsetting. More so, anyway. And that was without bringing into it the issue of the staff or why Lily’d had it when Ashe found her and Cole outside Chaunessy Tower, or even what the hell they’d been doing there at all. Between the two of them, they presented so many questions she didn’t know where to begin.

  Assuming she wanted to, anyway.

  From the grass, the little girl tugged out a peculiarly shaped leaf and showed it to Cole with a comment too quiet to be heard over the distance. At her words, the young man’s mouth twitched in a smile and Lily grinned.

  Ashe’s brow drew down.

  Cole glanced over, catching sight of her watching them. The little girl followed his gaze, and her face clouded with confusion at whatever she saw in her sister’s eyes.

  Quickly, Ashe turned away, cursing internally. She was slipping. Letting herself get distracted by everything that had happened over the past half hour, let alone the past half year, and it was showing.

  But she’d be damned if she allowed it to upset Lily.

  “Your highness?”

  The words broke into her thoughts and she looked over sharply. Across the yard, Katherine stood beside a group of guards, a few of the wounded already supported between them.

  “We’re ready,” Katherine called.

  Taking a breath, Ashe nodded. Pushing the thoughts aside, she strode over to help the woman, determined to at least address the
problems she knew how to solve.

  *****

  Cole watched as Ashe faltered and then hurried toward the wizard who looked like a schoolteacher from hell. Katherine, he thought Ashe’d called her. Yet another one to keep track of.

  He grimaced and then buried the expression, careful not to let Lily or Nathaniel see. The man was starting to remind him of Geoffrey Carnegean, his ostensible uncle back in Washington who’d tried to kill him, and the implicit threat that seemed to live on the wizard’s face wasn’t helping dispel the similarity.

  And Lily had enough worries for ten people. He didn’t need to go making her think there was reason for more.

  Exhaling, he looked over at the girl. Her black hair glistening in the fading sunlight, Lily was spinning a misshapen leaf between her fingers, the unease on her face deepening as she watched her sister walk away.

  “Hey,” he whispered to her, surreptitiously checking Nathaniel. The man had turned his gaze on a few wizards who, at the look in the guy’s eyes, immediately reconsidered walking anywhere nearby.

  “It does kind of look like a cat,” Cole said, nodding to the leaf.

  For a moment, a ghost of the little girl’s grin resurfaced. “Like that big one. Candle.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, though he couldn’t place the name among the innumerable cats roaming Ben and Sue Summers’ farm.

  Lily’s gaze dropped to the leaf, her smile fading. “Do you think we could go back there?”

  He hesitated. “It’s not really–”

  Nathaniel shifted behind him and Cole cut off, struggling not to scowl. He could anticipate the man’s expression. He didn’t even need to turn around.

  Her brow furrowing, Lily’s gaze twitched toward the wizard and then away. Slowly, she began spinning the leaf again.

  Safe, he finished silently. Not anymore.

  A headache flared briefly at the base of his skull. He glanced up in time to see a wizard run his hand down the doorframe of the mobile home.

  By his side, Lily made a small noise. “You don’t think they’re going to make us use those things again, do you?” she whispered, her gaze on the door and her hand frozen on the leaf.

  He didn’t answer, watching the doorway. Across the yard, Ashe crouched to help Katherine hoist a woman to her feet. Together, the two of them walked the wounded woman to the steps, where a man hurriedly took the woman’s weight from them and then headed through the door.

  The pair vanished. Slowly, Cole exhaled.

  “Cole?”

  “No,” he said without looking at her. “I…”

  He trailed off as the wizard atop the steps ran his hand over the doorframe again and then glanced back at Ashe a second time, saying something Cole couldn’t hear. The girl nodded and then motioned to the people gathering behind her. A half dozen more wizards hurried through the door and disappeared.

  “I don’t think so,” he finished.

  Lily nodded, her expression still troubled. Ignoring Nathaniel, she scooted closer to Cole and wrapped her arm around his own. Gently, she lay her head against him. In her fingers, the leaf began to spin slowly again.

  Cole swallowed. They wouldn’t send him through one, anyway. He couldn’t say anything about what they might try to do with her.

  Because portals killed his kind. Or, at least, they had until Ashe hauled him through one with the aid of a fiery staff that’d since disintegrated into dust. So if the wizards wanted to leave using those, it meant he wasn’t coming along.

  And maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Guilt rose at the thought, though it was tangled up with a bunch of other junk he couldn’t sort out. He didn’t want to abandon Lily, especially now, here, in the midst of a group of wizards who were probably as safe as rabid dogs. Ashe could be okay, but before today, every other wizard he’d seen made backstabbing Hollywood housewives look saintly by comparison.

  And when it came to Ashe…

  He shook his head, everything descending into insensibility again. There’d been this shell-shocked girl who, barely half a year before, he’d tried to save from a bunch of wizards hell-bent on killing her. And then there was this girl who, barely half an hour before, had decimated a bunch of wizards like they were nothing, in a display that rivaled the Fourth of July.

  And he couldn’t see a trace of the former in the latter, or figure out how the hell she’d so dramatically changed.

  Admittedly, what she did at the factory saved his life. Probably the lives of everyone here. But it also left God knew how many other wizards lying dead in her wake. And those wizards worked for his dad. His dad who Cole’d thought had been dead for eight years, and who had just brutally taken out over a dozen wizards of his own.

  Cole closed his eyes. His head hurt, and it had nothing to do with the portals opening and closing in the mobile home’s doorway. The people who worked for his dad had murdered Lily’s entire family, Ashe aside. For that matter, according to the Taliesin wizards, Victor Jamison had spent the better part of the past eight years killing a whole lot of people, including Lily’s grandparents, Cole’s wizard caretakers, and pretty much anyone else who’d gotten in the way of whatever it was he wanted.

  And Cole’s mom.

  He let out a breath, fighting to remain calm as he drove the thought back into the category of absolute bullshit he refused to believe. The rest of the confusion filling his head might be up for debate but, whatever the Taliesin said, nothing could’ve made his father hurt Clara. Nothing.

  Behind him, Nathaniel shifted again, and the pair of boys creeping along the length of the garage toward Lily paled and backpedaled swiftly.

  Cole watched them retreat, his expression darkening.

  He’d go, but he couldn’t leave Lily. He’d stay, but then he wouldn’t ever know what really happened with his dad.

  So for novelty’s sake, he’d just go insane.

  Scowling and unable to hide the expression, he looked away as the kids disappeared behind the garage. There had to be an answer to all this. Something he wasn’t seeing. Something that could explain who the hell was actually the bad guy in this situation.

  Something.

  The sound of the garage door opening pulled him from his thoughts. With a shuddering succession of clunks, the chains winched the door up, revealing a dusty brown van with cobwebs on its wheels. The muffler growled as the vehicle crept forward, and when Elias brought the van to a stop and shoved open the door, the hinges creaked loud enough to make Lily flinch.

  “Ready?” the man called.

  His wife nodded and then returned to directing the wizards who remained to carry the lame and wounded toward the portal. Shutting the door behind him, Elias headed over to help.

  Cole glanced to Ashe, but the girl wasn’t paying attention to the wounded anymore. Tracking her gaze, he spotted a tall wizard leaning on the side of the mobile home. As Elias strode away from the van, the man shrugged off the wall and began walking toward Lily. Immediately, Ashe descended the stairs to intercept him, while beside the little girl, Nathaniel turned, blocking the other man’s path.

  “Stay behind me,” Cole murmured, rising to his feet and drawing Lily with him. Dropping the leaf, she obeyed.

  “Cornelius,” Ashe called, jogging briefly to catch up to the man as he neared the little girl.

  The wizard looked over at her. Cole glanced between them cautiously, fairly certain he could cut the tension there with a knife.

  “You should go with Katherine,” Ashe said.

  “I am coming with you.”

  There wasn’t a request in the tone, and at the words, Nathaniel made a soft growl of disapproval.

  Cornelius’ gaze slid over, pinning the man with a look that spoke volumes, despite being utterly impassive.

  “Hey, Cornelius,” Elias called as he walked up, seemingly oblivious to the tension. “They’re ready to go.”

  “I will be traveling with her highness.”

  “Just decided that on your own, have you
?” Elias chuckled.

  Cornelius regarded him coldly. Elias met his gaze with a look whose edge probably could have cut steel, for all its apparent calm.

  “I am coming with you,” Cornelius repeated, turning back to Ashe as if the other man didn’t exist.

  The girl glanced between them. “Cornelius,” she said again, her quiet tone uncomfortable.

  She fell silent at the look in the wizard’s eyes, and for the life of him, Cole couldn’t read it. But after a heartbeat, Ashe dropped her gaze away.

  “Alright,” she agreed.

  Elias glanced to her in alarm, but Ashe didn’t take her eyes from the grass. For a moment, the man seemed to heavily consider arguing, but he wrestled the impulse back. Looking to his wife, he jerked his chin toward the doorway.

  Katherine’s eyebrow twitched up, but after a heartbeat, she nodded. Turning swiftly, she disappeared through the portal.

  The magic faded, taking Cole’s headache with it.

  “Let’s go then,” Elias said, the humor gone from his tone.

  “Where?” Ashe asked, still looking discomfited.

  “South.”

  The brief glance he gave Cornelius made it clear he wasn’t about to say more.

  Seeming distracted, Ashe ignored them. “Where’d you find the staff?”

  Cole froze, the question taking him by surprise for all that he’d known she’d ask eventually. Faltering, he fought to keep his gaze from darting to the other wizards.

  “Uh…” he started inanely.

  Internally, he cursed as she waited. He could tell her the truth. After all, she was probably trustworthy. But the others…

  And the fact it was his father they were fighting…

  And all the other potential weapons the Carnegeans might own…

  Not to mention the fact wizards were bastards as a rule…

  “Homeless guy out west.”

  Lily looked up at him. Silently, he begged her not to say a word.

  “He had this collection of junk,” he continued, making up the story as he went. “At least, we thought it was. But he seemed okay, and he let us stay with him for a while at this, um, abandoned gas station he lived in. And one day, Lily picked up the staff and…”