Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  “Nay, Seth didn’t say that,” Peter said, bouncing on his bed as he sat down. “He said you were the only one who treated him like a normal human. And he’s right, ya know. We’ve all been there recently, just give it some time and it’ll get easier.”

  “Are you guys connected in some way?” Sean asked, staring at Peter suspiciously again. “It’s like you know what the other guy is thinking about.”

  Peter smiled, knowingly. “Seth connects us sometimes, yes. It’s more difficult with my other two brothers but possible.”

  “Tight sound system,” Jimmy said, admiring Sean’s stereo equipment. “It’s one of the very few things I miss about living without electricity.”

  “Where do you live that doesn’t have electricity?” Sean asked nearly laughing.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, my fault,” I said, rushing in for introductions. “Sean, this is First of Gilán. He lives in the Palace with me, a dozen or so other people, and roughly four thousand brownies and sprites. First, this is Sean Fuller, son of Darius Fuller, president of the US Council of Magic.”

  “Is that your name or your title?” Sean asked Jimmy.

  “Both,” Jimmy said, smiling enigmatically.

  “Was anyone else hurt during the attack?” I asked. “It doesn’t look like anybody outside got through, but if Seward had help in the walls…”

  “I don’t think so,” Sean said, frustrated. “But Phillips wouldn’t tell me anything until Dad regained consciousness and then Dad didn’t want me involved. He said I was too young and it was too dangerous. He’s been really over-protective since Mom died.”

  “He was hurt pretty bad,” I said. “How’s he doing?”

  “He says he’s a lot better,” Sean said, falling onto the bed beside Peter. “He’s doing a damn good job of faking it. You didn’t see him.”

  “Actually, we did,” Peter said, patting Sean’s thigh. “Don’t forget who you were thanking a moment ago. You blasted him with the memory of that morning. He showed us bits and pieces of it, too.”

  Sean looked at Peter, horrified. “What?” he asked meekly, then looked at me. “Oh, crap, Seth, I’m sorry. I don’t want to remember that. I sure as hell didn’t mean to push it off on you, too.” Tears started down his face again.

  “No, Sean, don’t,” I said, moving to his side on the bed. I put my arm on his shoulder, pulling him into a hug. “Don’t do this to yourself, man. All you did was look for a little comfort from somebody who gave a damn about you. Pete and Jimmy needed to know, too, so I showed them. If I was normal, it wouldn’t have happened. You couldn’t have helped it. And trust me, we’ve all seen a lot worse.”

  “I killed him, Seth,” he whispered. “How am I gonna live with that?”

  Opening a portal into Darius’ bedroom, I said to Sean, “By realizing that you and your dad are alive and together because you did. Now, let’s go see how badly he’s hurt and see what we can do about it. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Sean mumbled.

  “Go wash up first,” Peter said. “You don’t want to show up red-faced and puffy.”

  Sean grunted and went to his bathroom. He was back a moment later, drying his face. “You know you scared the hell out of Dad on Tuesday,” he said, tossing the towel on his dresser. “I’ve never seen him scared of someone. It was kind of scary all by itself.”

  “Yeah, Seth can get that way, sometimes,” Jimmy said, chuckling. “He was pretty intense then, and it did piss him off.”

  “First,” I growled lightly.

  “What? I’m not complaining!” Jimmy said, chuckling. “Your intensity saved my life, Lord. Probably saved quite a few.”

  “I’ll say,” Peter said, seriously. “Dunstan’s, Grammand, Kieran and Ethan, twice. Shall I go on?”

  “No, I officially declare this chapter of the Seth McClure Fan Club disbanded,” I said gruffly. “The moon has been up there a very long time, ya know!” Peter laughed, but he was the only one of the three who was there for Shrank’s joke. “Sean, would you lead the way?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sean said, turning for the door. “It’s a bit of a walk. Dad’s staying out in the guesthouse since his room was demolished. It’s out back behind the garden.” He started out the door but I wrapped the four of us in portals and dropped us onto the walkway directly outside Darius’ door, startling and disorienting Sean. “Whoa! What just happened?”

  “Seth’s a little intense with his transportation, too,” Peter said laughing.

  Cringing at Peter, I waved at Sean, inviting him to knock. We were still invisible in the wards and no one knew we were there. Suddenly appearing would cause all sorts of problems. Heh. Sean knocked, but Fuller was on the phone and either didn’t hear or ignored it.

  I reached around Sean, knocked louder, and called, “Dad, can I talk to you for a few minutes?” Peter and Jimmy snickered, clutching at each other and threatening to fall to the ground. Sean’s jaw dropped as he turned to me seconds before he started snickering, but Darius turned to the door and excused himself from the phone. He stood slowly and walked stiffly to the door, taking a moment before opening the door.

  “Of course, Sean, come in,” he said, smiling and turning. He walked smoothly back to the couch and sat. This was seriously alarming. Darius hadn’t noticed three extra people outside his door. Even Sean noticed that.

  “Daybreak!” Fuller exclaimed, looking up and finally seeing me standing beside Sean. He stood quickly. Too quickly, staggering back and grabbing his right side, falling back onto the couch. I was already searching through him as he fell.

  “Damn, Darius, what did Seward do to you?” I asked as I walked over the coffee table to get to him. “Sean, call Phillips and get him in here. Tell him that Lord Daybreak is tending to Darius. I need him here as quickly as possible. First, I’m going to send you to my quarters to gather some plants for me. Then I need some things from Ellorn. He’ll meet you at my door. Pete, would you help me get him to the bed please?”

  “Yeah,” Peter said as he slipped around Sean and helped me gently lift Darius up from the couch. “Sean, we need Phillips,” he gently reminded him as we shuffled through the narrow aisle. Sean moved to the phone, punching a number just as we shouldered the doors open to the other room. The bathroom was on Peter’s side so I angled us in that direction and just walked over the bed, hunched over with him as level as I could manage.

  “Darius, where did you get those marks?” I asked as Peter tore his shirt loose. Even through the bandages, the wounds looked nasty and poorly doctored. Still, these weren’t the marks we needed to know about. Peter began with his trousers next. “Not quite how I expected you to be getting into a wealthy man’s pant, Pete.”

  He laughed. “It’s not the first time I’ve removed a rich man’s pants, either, Seth. Darius, we need to know what happened. We know you’re hurting, but we can’t help until we know some things. The marks on your lower back, where did you get them?”

  “Seward had some sort of scorpion,” Fuller gasped.

  “And it hit you twice?” I asked, helping Peter lower Fuller’s pants to just below his hips.

  “Yeah,” he grunted, then groaned. “Why are you here?”

  “I’m about to save your skinny ass,” I said softly. “I seem to be the only one who can take those curses off of people. It’s going to be painful at first. I’m going to have to take away your magic for a moment, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m feeding it, aren’t I?” Fuller asked fearfully.

  “Yes, but you’re a long way from causing a flare up,” I said calmly. Sean came to the door and stopped, hanging on the doorjamb. “But if I try to help you in any way, you wouldn’t last a second, so the curses must go first. The good news is that I think the rest of you can be healed fairly easily and quickly. My First will be here in a moment and I will begin.”

  Looking over at Sean, I saw the lonely, scared little boy in a strange hospital from four years ago. He was probably kept at arm’s length from his mother when she died
, watching from the door, too, but knowing all the same what was happening. Seeing dark bruises around ugly, broad bandages brought back the same sorts of memories. Sean took my look to mean I wanted a report.

  “Mr. Phillips will be here in a few minutes,” he said, his voice shaky. “I don’t think he believes you’re here, but he does believe that Dad’s had a relapse.”

  “Okay,” I responded, nodding. “Why don’t you come closer, Sean. It just looks scarier from a distance. We got here in time to help him, I think.”

  “No, please,” Fuller gasped, gulping hard. “Don’t let… him see me… like this…” He wheezed and fought to catch his breath. Whatever blocks he put in place for the pain were breaking down, tenuous anyway for the lack of proper medical care.

  “Darius,” I said sternly, leaning over to catch his light brown eyes, “The last time he saw you, you were bleeding out on the floor from eight places. Unless you are ashamed of what he did for you, you need to let him see you healing. You know, Darius, not dying.”

  “Never… ashamed…” Darius gasped. Sean had moved close enough to the bed to hear and stared at the thick bandages and severe bruises on his abdomen. His normally tanned skin looked like a catastrophe map to a tornado supercell outbreak.

  Jimmy shifted into the other room and immediately turned for the bedroom. “Here you are, Lord Daybreak,” he said, causing a slight breeze on Sean as he stopped at the end of the bed with my supplies. “As fast as I could find everything.”

  “Thanks, Jimmy,” I mumbled, taking the cutting board and mortar from him. “Sean, would you get several towels wet for me, please?”

  “What are you doing, Seth?” Peter asked as I pulled the Estelium from the mortar.

  “Darius is very weak right now and he can’t take the kind of magic that Kieran could,” I said, dropping several of the herbs that Jimmy brought into the mortar and grinding them with the pestle. I hadn’t really seen these things before but I was going on instinct. “As soon as I can make a poultice of this, I’ll remove the curses, slap on the poultices on his back and stomach, then start as much pushing and probing as I can. I’ll need your help getting them on, okay?”

  “No prob,” he said softly. “Shirt’s gotta go, huh?”

  “Yeah, we can cut it off when we get the curses,” I said, cutting off half the tiny purple blooms and adding them to the mix.

  “How wet do you want them?” Sean asked from the bathroom door.

  “Just wring them out good. Two will be fine,” I called over Peter.

  “Oops,” he muttered and ran back into the bathroom.

  The front door crashed open with the sound of five men running in. Phillips had arrived. “Sean?” he yelled. “Darius?”

  “In here, Mr. Phillips,” I called, handing the foul smelling mixture I made to Jimmy. “First, would you heat this just a little? If you can manage to, say, a hundred and five for four or five minutes that would be great. Lay out one of the damp towels from Sean and pour it evenly about this far.” I pointed at Darius’ abdomen and waved my hand in an oval over the affected area I wanted to cover. Then started to pantomime folding the towel. “Fold it like so to keep the poultice in place and have Sean bring some dry towels back with you. Once I remove the curses, Pete and I will remove the bandages and place the poultice down, drop a dry towel in place, and roll him over again. I’ll start working on him while Pete talks to Phillips. I’ll need you to make the second poultice for his chest and to help me remove those bandages.

  “Mr. Phillips, I’m a mite ticked at you,” I said without looking at him. He stood in the door, arms spread wide to hold back the other four men. Even forewarned, he was surprised I was there, even more surprised to see Peter and Jimmy, still unknown to them. “It’s been a week and your crew has yet to learn how to control the wards? I didn’t change them that much, Mr. Phillips.”

  “Lord Daybreak, what are you doing here?” he asked. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “I came to clear up our difficulty from the other day,” I said levelly. “It seems I chose a good time to show up. Would you mind terribly if I moved the wards off of this high alert to something less… dangerous? I believe you’ll be able to work with them better that way.”

  “God, yes! Please, do,” Phillips said eagerly. Apparently, they hadn’t been able to manage even that since yesterday morning. Phillips fell back into the man on his left in relief as I dropped the power levels to the wards.

  “I’m not going to explain again what I’m doing, Mr. Phillips,” I said, “except to say I’m about to take some very powerful curses off of his back that I believe you know a little about. Then I will proceed to heal him as best I can. He will need time to recuperate. Not his type of recuperate, though. So for Sean’s peace of mind, Darius, Sean, and you will be accompanying us back to Gilán for no less than three days where he will be doing nothing but resting and talking, but mostly resting. You will also be resting, Mr. Phillips, because you need it as badly as he does. If you doubt that, there’s a mirror in that bathroom.

  “Once I get started, I’ll be indisposed for about an hour,” I told him. “Peter will ask you about the attacks, then you’ll have the rest of that time to make arrangements for your absence. And when you pack, casual clothes only. I’ll shred anything with a tie. And I don’t have electricity over there, so keep that in mind, too.”

  Sean came in with glasses of cool water and handed one to both Peter and me. I heard Jimmy rinsing the mortar and knew that was his prompting. Sean wasn’t that levelheaded. He could be, but he just hasn’t had the practice for it yet.

  “Thanks, Sean,” I said, taking the glass and downing the water fast. “Stick around now. This is gonna look a lot worse than it really is. I’m gonna have to stick a wicked looking knife in his back to take the curses out and then Peter and I will move really fast to take care of everything else. I’d love for you to hold his hand while we work but you’d get in the way too badly. It’ll be all right, though. He’s going to make it out of this and be just fine. I promise.”

  He smiled weakly at me. “Thank you, Seth, for everything,” he said, his eyes welling with tears.

  “Don’t worry about it, man,” I said, smiling back. “What’s the good of being this powerful if you can’t help your friends? You ready, Pete?”

  “Yep,” he answered, grinning at me. “Let’s kick this mule.”

  We gently rolled Darius onto his stomach, tossing pillows and blankets onto the floor behind me. Throwing my senses into the foam of reality that formed Darius’ skin, I found the magic that was older than this universe attached to his skin, sucking in the energy around us slowly. Peter was cutting the shirt away with a knife I didn’t know he had, revealing blood-soaked bandages covered in clear plastic tape to prevent seepage. No matter, we were moving now. I raised my hand up high and called for the Night Sword, Hungry, my friend? I have some snacks for you. The ebony blade scared the hell out of everyone but Peter and Jimmy.

  Chapter 39

  The Palace was busy today, but mostly just the same work cataloging and mapping supply rooms and getting more staff settled in. Jimmy was out visiting with the faery while I kicked back and waited to hear from the Pentagon and watched over the Fullers. Ellorn did a good job fixing up the apartment for them, making it homier and more inviting. Darius would still freak if he woke up alone.

  Darius’ pain levels rose sharply after I removed the first curse, so I pushed on him as I dipped the Night’s tip in after the second curse and drove him into sleep, blocking the pain away from his conscious mind. It made pulling the dried bandages from his back easier on me, and probably Sean, too, since Darius wasn’t screaming because of it. Peter and I were as gentle as we could be, but we both cursed him and Phillips for doing this. It was stupid and I was going to tell him.

  Sean was still worried and scared for his father, even more so when he didn’t wake when we moved him. My assurances weren’t enough, which I understood. I taught him to see the flo
ws of energy under Darius’ skin, to watch the healing energy work its magic. This wasn’t High Faery magic, but well within his capabilities and it fascinated him to see. And it brought him a lot of peace. He saw that his father was going to be okay and he relaxed.

  He stayed with his father so he wouldn’t wake up alone in a strange place. When I last checked, Tony Bennett crooned familiar songs softly from a small battery-operated CD player. Sean was playing to Darius’ tastes. He was sitting in a chair beside the bed reading a paperback. And Darius was sleeping peacefully and pain-free.

  Phillips was in bed, naked and asleep within twenty minutes. He needed the sleep, too. His duty shift was about to end when the attack began. Seward was his replacement. The plan for his “rest” was far more permanent than Phillips wanted, though, and he was more than happy to see Seward on the ground with a bullet in his head.

  We were right about no one else making it past the wards from what Phillips told Peter. The attack consisted of about a hundred men with automatic and semi-automatic weapons, totally mundane except for some kind of gemstones on chains. That came from what little remained of the bodies and what could be seen in the wards. The outside perimeter alarm shrieked and security scrambled. Seward struck at Darius just as the shooting started. As far as Phillips knew, Seward was there to protect him.

  Whatever the attackers expected out of their amulets, the wards literally fried them when they tried to cross over the ward line to fire more accurately on the guards. Moving in tight units, light scarlet lightning bolts flashed in a field a yard deep for a full minute in the ward’s sight. From what the guards said, it looked the same to them, from the relative safety of bulletproof shelters or barricades, which wouldn’t have offered complete security for them against that firepower.

  Fuller’s security men were afraid to approach the ward lines at every level change because of what they saw. It took several hours to get everyone comfortable with moving around within the estate. No one dared cross the outside line. Darius’ father had a wicked defense that no one had seen activated before then. Phillips couldn’t turn the wards off and Darius was afraid to try.