Sons (Book 2)

by Scott V. Duff

  “All right, you win,” Darius agreed, smiling as he looked our way. “Looks like it’s time to go anyway.” Sean turned and tried his best not to look crestfallen.

  “Hi, guys. Time to go already?” he asked meekly, smiling.

  “Yeah, there’s no rest for the wicked,” I said, smiling back.

  “Oh, then it’s definitely past time to get Darius back,” Peter said, chortling.

  “Hey, now! That was uncalled for,” Phillips said, coming in from the kitchen with a glass of water. “Saturday would have been fine.” Sean stifled a snicker while Darius glowered at Phillips.

  “Your… strangeness has rubbed off on them,” Darius said to me, waggling his fingers at Phillips and his son. “And I’m not too sure I like it.”

  Smiling broadly, I said to Phillips and Sean, “Would you two check your rooms to make certain you’ve gotten everything and give me a moment with Darius, please? It won’t take but a few moments.”

  “Sure, Seth,” Sean said, getting up from the table. “I just want to thank you for bringing us here this weekend. I’ve had the time of my life. It’s been a blast! Really. Thank you.” Then he hugged me. Surprising me only because it’s not something a fifteen year old guy normally does to another his age, unless he runs along the same fence as Peter, which Sean didn’t, although he might be willing to mess around with the right person.

  “You are quite welcome, Sean, and don’t worry, it’s not your last trip to Gilán,” I told him.

  “Come on, kiddo. Let’s give them a few minutes to talk,” Phillips said, holding out his arm for Sean to slip underneath. It was a curious relationship developing. I sealed the room once they passed the entrance.

  “Did you talk to Sean?” I asked Darius as he very nervously collected the cards from whatever game they’d been playing. A consummate politician, on the outside, Darius appeared quite calm and controlled, but his aura told a very different story.

  “Yes, I did. We talked about it several times actually,” Darius said, sitting back in his chair, idly shuffling the cards. “All of them quite emotional. You were right, as I suppose you know well. We’re going to make a few changes in our lives that will make even Mark a little happier.”

  “Good, then this trip was successful and I didn’t break my ban without cause,” I said smiling warmly as I sat across from him. “Now, explain to me why you were ignoring me last week.”

  “Political pressure from the military,” he answered, his aura spiking into answer and regret. “I received a phone call from Col. Morelli from the Pentagon threatening several high level defense contracts as well as my continued association with the Pentagon if I didn’t ignore you until the military could extract itself from whatever situation they had gotten themselves into. He didn’t offer details and would not answer any questions, saying merely that it was very embarrassing to the government as a whole.

  “With the FBI and the Marshals also involved, I assumed that the matter was under control, so I agreed,” he said, meeting my eyes for the first time. He looked somewhat tired of politics. “You, on the other hand, I only knew by reputation and second-hand reports. And even now, after seeing you perform magic far beyond anything I will ever accomplish, you don’t look dangerous in the least, except perhaps to the father of a teen-aged daughter.”

  “Shut up, First,” I said quickly, before he had a chance to comment. I was barely in time. “All right, Darius, I can accept that. This time. I am, after all, very new in this arena, in more ways than one. But I don’t want my associations to be based on how dangerous I can be to my friends or enemies, I want it to be based on the benefits that we can bring to each other.

  “Right now you are in a unique position among your peers. On the one hand, you have some perspective on how my family and friends live and how my realm is beginning to progress. Insight on Daybreak himself, something that few people on Earth have. On the other, you missed the Emissaries Meeting and a great deal of information and I have no plans to fill in the gaps.” He nodded distastefully in acceptance, penitent. “But considering the magnitude of several occurrences, I can assure you that you’ll have little trouble in finding out what happened. At the very least, you could offer your presence at a meeting on Wednesday in exchange for information. Thomas Bishop is planning a conference in London on defensive strategies and since you’ve been the most successful, they’re hoping you’ll attend.”

  “How have I been successful?” he asked.

  “Yours was the only incursion to be completely defeated, Darius,” Peter answered. “Congratulations, by the way. From what Seth showed us, that is some impressive ward-crafting your father did. Now, I must be off. We’ve got a schedule to keep.”

  “Okay, Pete, see you in an hour,” I said as he shifted away. “And that was his not so subtle way of reminding me that I have a schedule, too. It’s almost seven in New York.”

  When we met up with Sean and Phillips, they were tossing a brownie high through the air several yards between them while he shrieked gleefully. The few gathered around each of them scattered as we approached, returning to whatever chore they’d abandoned to play and saddened they wouldn’t get a turn. Both Sean and Phillips looked like they’d been caught tossing babies around, but the brownies weren’t that delicate.

  Erecting a Stone shield around the five of us, I shifted to the Fuller’s foyer and waited for Phillips to work his way into the wards. Groups of armed security men hit the front doors behind us in moments and aides and secretaries flooded down the halls seconds after that. I thought they were interminably slow, but I was used to shifting and portals and brownie speeds now. Sean got a kick out of the pile of handguns I collected at Darius’ feet, confusing the guards terribly as they disappeared from their hands each time they aimed one at us.

  Dozens of people probed at us, trying to decipher his condition as well as Phillips’ and Sean’s. Security was attempting to push through my shield with the ward and separate Jimmy and me from them—unsuccessfully, of course. Stopped abruptly and surprisingly by the undetectable Stone shield, they started calling for Darius and Phillips, getting louder to be heard over each other. It was becoming riotous quickly.

  “Shut up! Everybody, just…shut… up!” Darius yelled, losing his temper. Everybody in the foyer froze. Apparently, he didn’t yell often and he didn’t stop there. “This is how my highly-trained and highly-paid staff acts just because I’ve been away for a weekend? This is very disappointing.” He lowered his volume as he went, turning in a half-circle and glaring at people. Had he been my boss, it would have scared me. “I have learned a good deal this weekend that has prompted me to make some changes here. Now I will have to consider other changes as well. Get back to your stations and conduct yourselves in a more orderly and professional manner.”

  Like all floods, the flow reversed itself slowly, following Darius’ demand. The guards were the most hesitant to leave, being bereft of their weapons. A man and a woman remained in the center of the foyer, each holding small portfolios and stacks of telephone message slips. I assumed these were his personal aides and this was their place and dismissed the shield.

  “I’m sorry you had to see that, Lord Daybreak,” Fuller said quietly, turning back to them.

  “No problem, President Fuller,” I said, choosing his title, too, and gaining a snicker from Sean in the bargain. “I was hoping to continue a more familiar relationship, though.”

  Darius smiled in relief. “I’d like that, Seth.”

  “Good, now if you’ll excuse us, we have some attorneys to see before our meeting at the Pentagon,” I said and shifted to New York.

  ~ ~ ~

  “’FirstGuard Security Company,’ simple and sweet, works for me,” Peter said then shoved the second half of the Danish in his mouth.

  “You named it after yourself?” Ethan asked Jimmy across the table as he finished the last of the two dozen banana muffins we’d demolished.

  “He disapproved the first thirty I picked!�
�� Jimmy whined.

  “I did not! It was ten, and ‘Gleaming Blue Meanies’ just wouldn’t have worked,” I retorted, grinning.

  “That was not one of mine!” he denied, laughing, but he knew he’d lost that battle already since I was walking away. He’d have to find another way to get me back.

  We were in a conference room in the Pentagon, waiting for General Harmond. They weren’t expecting us this early. Peter had sent a pair of Guards here by train first thing this morning, then sent them off to further points north so we had a few entry points into Washington, DC now. My “ten-ish” phone call to Harmond came at nine thirty from the lobby personnel and was a bit of a surprise to him. They were still rushing around to accommodate us.

  They didn’t actually ward the conference room we were in, but weak wards around the offices and computers popped up fairly quickly around us as we devastated their pastry table. I think even Messner could have rolled through these wards without working up a sweat. The Night refused to acknowledge them.

  “Children?” I muttered, as strong spikes of fear, suspicion, and longing moved into a nearby office. Centering my senses on them as everyone centered on me, I watched as a captain gently ushered the twelve- or fourteen-year-old boy, tightly clutching the five- or six-year-old little girl’s hand. They were both in a state of extended shock, suspending their epic emotional turmoil. How the boy, much less that tiny, little girl was managing it just astounded me.

  I realized I was crying when General Harmond and Colonel Barnett entered that room from an adjoining office with two aides. Barnett spoke with the captain briefly as I wiped my face with my handkerchief.

  “Bring the children with you, please, General Harmond,” I said through a portal into his office, my voice cracking and choked, startling everyone and scaring the children immensely. The boy pulled his sister to him protectively, huddling them closely together and staring at the walls and ceiling, searching for the strange voice from thin air. The captain knelt down beside them, comforting them and gently manipulating their auras. I hadn’t seen that part of her yet, but hers was a minor talent she barely recognized.

  “Seth? What’s going on?” Kieran asked, watching with me. As Barnett knelt and began explaining to the boy and girl what was about to happen, using phrases like “big and scary but very kind,” I started explaining to my brothers their sad story, gleamed from several minds.

  Their mother, herself a product of mixed heritage and a calculating, stone-hearted bitch, used the boy’s father to gain full citizenship and entry into the States. Then she ditched PFC Dawes on his second tour through a violent Afghanistan for a returning sergeant, beginning her climb through the ranks. She was a beautiful and alluring woman who knew very well how to use her charms on men and alternately used the boy and abandoned him to baby-sitters. This led through two more marriages and countless escapades, including two that involved molestation on the boy. Known or unknown to her, it didn’t matter now.

  Ultimately, it led to her marriage to Second Lieutenant Grimes and his daughter, Ana. They were happy for a while, before she got greedy again. The boy was very happy with his stepfather—to have a father. Grimes was a good man, too, far too good for her. The Marine Corps is a tightly knit group, so when word of her affairs reached him, he carefully gathered proof of her adultery then went further back in time and got proof of her as an unfit mother. The Sheriff’s office served her the divorce papers while he was signing the requisite hardship papers to stay in the States and care for the children as sole parent until his enlistment was up.

  Then two massively badly timed events occurred. Either through sheer bad luck or her vicious design, Lt. Grimes was ordered into a war zone. Having no other family, he hid the kids from her with friends while he tenaciously filed papers and pleaded along every recourse he could find. And he finally managed to do it, too. Then Fate played its nasty scissors trick on him just two days before he was to leave Iraq. It used a rocket-propelled grenade on the humvee he was in as they traveled back to base, propelling red-hot shrapnel through his brain. Not fair, but Fate never cares.

  Thinking herself free of responsibility, she signed the divorce papers uncontested, not realizing that it cut her off from her home and left her with only a small check. She burned through that money very quickly, thinking to dip into savings and college funds for the boy. Grimes smartly moved all those accounts around before he left. She sought refuge from her failed fourth marriage by speeding up her attempts at a fifth. Unfortunately for her, the two men she targeted were using her with equal adeptness, which she failed to catch. To them, she was a sex object, a willing toy to be discarded when used up.

  She didn’t like being thrown away like a tissue. Treated as she had treated so many men, she sought vengeance by blackmailing to regain funds so she could continue her climb. The first man apparently laughed at her and reported her attempt to the proper officials to protect his security clearances. The second man agreed to meet with her about her demands, intending to remove the problem himself, I assume, but there was a slight problem. The second man was actually a member of the military conspiracy I was here to root out. He was among the first to die during the pogroms that eliminated the links to my Guard last Friday morning and she was with him then. They found their corpses together, burnt to a crisp. Fate didn’t care.

  Grimes’ friends heard about his death the day after and took the children to the post Chaplain believing there had to be family somewhere who would want them. It was reasonable but wrong, given the mother’s fate. The Chaplain traced through the boy’s history, looking for family and hit on the mother’s previous marriages, which led him to her first, to our Sgt. Dawes. Searches on the military’s database for him red-flagged the Chaplain to the Pentagon and they brought the children here.

  “So we either intercede or let them enter state-run foster care and split them up, probably forever,” I said sadly, the tears still coming but more slowly now. Barnett and the female captain calmed the children enough to move them and the group started toward us.

  “Seth, we can’t help everyone,” Kieran said gently, taking my shoulder. “You know that.”

  “Yes, but they’ve been affected by our war twice,” I said turning to him. “And they’re the people we’re here to protect, Kieran, and they’re children. How can I not? Especially when it takes so little from us?” I must have been pleading. Those emerald eyes met mine for only a second before he gave in.

  “Of course, you’re right,” he said gently, turning to the door as it opened. Harmond and Barnett came in first, offering hellos but were instantly confused by me. I was the only one tear-stained and trying to peer around them, basically ignoring them while Kieran and Peter greeted them instead.

  Diplomatically pulling them and their aides aside, I knelt on the floor as the captain gently ushered the children forward, murmuring assurances. “He’s really quite nice and I’ll be right here. It’s all right, I promise.”

  “Hello, Donny, Ana, I’m Seth,” I said gently. “I’m very sorry to hear about your father. Barry Grimes was a wonderful man and I know he loved you both very much.”

  Folklore says that children are the purview of the fairy and I am a king of fairies. The children ran to me and jumped to cling to my neck, instinctively, I supposed. Their emotional walls collapsed and grief overcame both of them, first for their father and then for their mother. I pushed into their minds lightly and managed their grief a little so they wouldn’t become consumed totally as they sobbed into my chest.

  I glanced up at the captain through bleary eyes and saw her concerned but smiling. Sometimes it was good to be king.

  Chapter 45

  “Now don’t you worry,” I told them. “I’ll get you taken care of, at least as well as your father wanted and we’ll keep you both together.”

  “You’ll ‘take’ them?” Harmond asked in shock.

  “I don’t ‘take’ children, General Harmond,” I said acidly, glaring at him. “I will take
care of them. Or rather, see that they are taken care of.” Still holding little Ana in one arm and hugging Donny to me, I moved to a chair and sat down, sitting Ana on my knee. “Donny, would you like to sit down so we can talk? Captain, would you join us, please?”

  Cpt. Margaret Ann Pierce hurried up to us and fussed with Donny and Ana, wiping their faces and hands and cooing mildly, asking how they were doing. They were still entranced by me, but not magically so, I didn’t do that to them. The aides were getting impatient, fidgeting in their seats. Ethan whipped his head around and glared them into stillness.

  “Have they told you who I am?” I asked Donny. I’d misjudged both their ages by a little. He’s nine and she’s five, and both a quarter Filipino on their mother’s side.

  “No, sir,” Donny answered meekly, his dark, innocent eyes looking up at me as sweetly as Ellorn’s. Damn, I really shouldn’t date; I really am a sucker. “They only told us that you were a very powerful man and very nice and very young. And that you were in charge of my first father, the one I don’t know.”

  “A fairly accurate description, yes,” I said, smiling at the boy. “And I share something in common with you and your sister.” Tapping Ana lightly on the nose and hugging her tighter as I turned the chair to point to Kieran. “That man over there? The big one with the red hair and the bright green eyes? That’s my brother, Kieran. We have the same father, but different mothers. The man next to him is also my brother, Ethan. He has something in common with the both of you. In an odd sense, he’s lost his parents recently. And that handsome fellow next him is my brother, Peter.”

  “Did Peter lose his parents, too?” he asked.

  “No, my parents and his parents are still alive, but Ethan never had parents. He borrowed mine,” I explained quietly. “It’s a very complicated situation to explain, both to my parents and to you. But it’s just as sad because it’s not his fault—it just happened. And he has to act like it doesn’t bother him and we have to be all macho and act like we don’t notice he’s all torn up about it.”