“Your defenses are very good. It is rare to be able to protect yourself without concentrating, particularly from both physical and energy field attacks.”
“You know about energy fields?”
“Naturally. Now, it is unfortunate that your parents named such a technique a ‘shield,’ because, by the very use of that term, they have crippled your power. The word ‘shield’ limits your understanding of what you are doing. Because of that, it has never occurred to you to use your ability for another purpose.”
She paused, trying to gauge how to proceed. Since it was clear that Mercy was still trying to figure out what she had just said, she added patiently, “Let me explain. Or, even better, let me help you find the answer. What if your father had named the technique a ‘wall’? Tell me what you think a power wall would do?”
“I don’t know, let’s see. A power wall...would stand in the way of power attacks, protecting...but…” Then it came to her, like a spark of light in the dark. “Wait! I got it! A wall, like between two houses, keeps things from going from one side to another. It stops movement from both sides, not just from the outside. So...I could use my shield...can I use it to keep my own power in?”
“Yes. That is very, very good. You are going to be a quick learner under my tutelage.”
Mercy wanted to work even harder and earn more of Jaelyn’s approval. “I will try, right away.” She pulled up her shield. It rose out of her and snapped into place. Thick, overlapping petals closed over her. As usual, it didn’t do a thing to stop her strings.
She concentrated on strengthening the wall in the areas where her strings glided through. The string that was attached to her mother, who was in the back of the truck Jaelyn was driving, wavered and then strengthened again.
“Do not try to spot reinforce. Your funnels will just go around, like a river flowing around rocks. The whole wall must be sound. Rebuild it with that intention. Create a barrier that prevents the movement of power.”
Mercy let her shield drop, and then focused again. She formed a wall around herself, a sphere, really. It was very thin, and her power continued to poke through it in all directions.
“Hmmm. Your focus is not good enough yet. I will give you a strategy for improving that later. Again, we will have to work with what we can do now. Try to construct your wall like your funnel. Let it absorb your own energy as it tries to leave your body, and channel it back to you.”
“Oh, that’s a smart idea.” Why hadn’t she thought of these things? Mercy built a third wall, this time using different bricks. Right away she could see that it was going to be difficult, because her energy didn’t like to flow in that direction, and the sensation of soaking up her own power was irritating as well as unsatisfying. It was definitely unnatural. She ignored her body’s discomfort, chiding it for being so greedy in the first place. Several of the strings still made it through, but not as many as before. She couldn’t believe her luck!
She turned to Jaelyn and said with a huge smile, “I can do it! Thank you! You don’t know how much it means to me to know that I’m not doing that to people all the time.”
Jaelyn smiled, “Yes, it is a good start, but you have a very long way to go, yet. Start now, building the wall, reinforcing it, and then let it fall and start over again. The process of building will teach you how and where to strengthen it. Then, when it is fairly good, something I think you could manage by tonight, tomorrow at the latest, I want you to send your threads into it on purpose, trying to break through. This will be the most helpful. Later, you will do the same with your ribbons, until it is an incredibly formidable barrier. You will find that this activity will strengthen it from outside attacks as well, something which you hardly need, I will admit, as few people could get through it now. Actually, I would say only a handful of people even have the potential, and they are almost all in your family, so it hardly matters. After I finish with you, I doubt they will be able to stop you.” She blinked, and her eyes widened minutely.
“Stop me? Why would they want to stop me from making a shie...wall?”
“They wouldn’t, of course, because that is what is best for you and for others, right?” She gave Mercy a sincere look.
It sure was. There was no doubt in her mind. Mercy nodded and dropped her wall, then built it again, focusing diligently on the activity. She intended to practice constantly until she could be assured of not accidentally pulling on anyone’s power. She didn’t want to endanger any more lives with her carelessness.
Next to her, Jaelyn nodded with satisfaction and approval.
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Cord hit the break and the car stopped dead on the dirt road. He stared at the house in front of him. It looked the same as it always did, except for one small thing. His eyes took a turn around the surrounding area. There were a few people working out on the grounds, people that he recognized as the Kin who worked for Hap. He didn’t see anyone else, any of them, and he didn’t feel a speck of power anywhere.
He looked back at the house, and at the hole next to the back door that had been recently boarded up. He backed up the car, turned it around, and headed back down the road.
Forty-five minutes later, he sat in his car down the street from Ben’s apartment and sighed. Why was nothing easy? He looked back at Jonah, who sat in his carseat. He chewed contentedly on the squeaky toy that Cord had bought and stared back at the him. Drool was everywhere.
“Here, hand that over, kid,” Cord said, holding out his hand. Jonah looked at his hand and continued chewing. Cord wiggled his fingers, and then Jonah took his gooey, slimy frog-head out of his mouth and held it out. The drool-leash stretched out and then dripped down onto the seat.
“Ech. That is gross.” Cord took the toy and dumped it in the cooler bag he had on the seat next to him and selected one of the three others that were nestled in the ice. He held the duck out to the boy, who looked at Cord, then at the duck, then at the roof. He stuck his thumb in his mouth and sucked on it.
Cord shook the teether and said, “Hey, take the duck.” Jonah gazed at it for a second and then reached out and took it. He started gnawing on it immediately.
It looked like he wouldn’t need to get out that gel stuff and spread it all over his gums for a while. The woman at the pharmacy had said he should buy it, so he had and it had made the boy settle down when nothing else had. Other than that, the kid rarely fussed. He was a surprisingly happy baby for a bordertown orphan. Half the time they were drug babies or abused or neglected. This one had been a breeze since Cord had picked him up.
He got out of the car, opened the back door and pulled Jonah from his carseat. He went up to Ben’s apartment and waited. Several hours later, Ben came home and followed the sounds of canned laughter to the living room.
“You’re back. Thank heaven!”
“Where are they?” Cord flipped off the TV and put down the remote.
Ben dropped a bag of groceries on the counter and pulled over a chair from the table to sit on. His face was drawn and it looked like he hadn’t slept recently. He sat down for less than five seconds and then got up and started pacing back and forth in front of Cord. “I don’t know. They were found by the Scere. I have no idea how, but they were. The house was attacked a few days ago…”
“How many, exactly?”
“How many what?”
The man was really a mess. “Days, Ben. How many days ago?”
“Three...it was three days in the morning...the early morning, before dawn, I think...Anyway, the Scere hit the house and then somehow the Youngs fought them off, but Anora doesn’t really remember how.”
“Anora doesn’t remember?”
“Just pieces of things.”
“That’s weird.”
“I know, that’s why I’m glad you’re here, because this is...well...your area, right?”
Cord stared at him.
“Anyway, after they stopped the Scere, they left.”
“Who, the Youngs or the Scere?”
“They ran, but Anora didn’t go? Who ran, exactly?”
“Everyone. Well, everyone except the winery folk…and Anora. She stayed with her husband, but she doesn’t remember deciding that...”
“Okay, Ian would not take your son without telling you where he was going. Lena would, but Ian wouldn’t. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know! I just don’t understand any of it.” Ben plopped himself down in the chair dejectedly.
“You say the house is safe?”
“Yes, the Scere left right away.”
“Let’s go talk to Anora.”
Cord got up and went to collect a sleeping Jonah from the bedroom. When he came back, he stood in the doorway to the kitchen and watched Ben frantically dig through the grocery bag he was clutching for items to put in the refrigerator. Finally he growled in frustration and shoved the whole thing inside and slammed the door. He turned toward Cord, kicking the door closed a second time when it swung back from the overzealous slam, and eyed the bulky, light green bag Cord was carrying.
“Nice bag,” Ben joked.
Cord ignored him and headed for the door. That shut him up. Ben followed him out of the apartment and down the hall.
“Cord,” Ben said when they were halfway to the car.
“What?”
“There’s...something on your back.”
“A spider?”
“No, a baby.”
“Oh, yeah. It’s Mercy’s.”
“Really?”
“Why else would I have a baby?”
“I don’t have any idea. Mercy’s baby, holy moly. What the hell’s been going on at that school...Who is the father?”
“I am,” he said, just to get a reaction.
“No shit,” he said. It was one of the rare times Cord had heard him curse. Then he added somberly, “You are going to die.”
Cord grinned, but made sure it disappeared before Ben came alongside him as they crossed the street. Wisely, Ben stayed silent.
He secured Jonah in his seat, pulled one of his toys out of the bag and handed it to him. Then he took his place behind the wheel and started to head back to the place that made him itchy under his skin. He had planned to be long gone by now, but it didn’t look like it was going to work out that way.
After Mercy had stood in the way of her family so that he could leave like he wanted to, Cord thought it was probably the last time he would see them. He had repaid his life debt to Scythe, more than once, and the idea of returning to that restricted life after having some freedom was just not sitting right in his stomach. Besides, something about going back there had been bugging him during their trip home. Maybe he was sick of being sick of the place. Maybe he wanted to be someplace where he didn’t feel like he was the sick one, which was anywhere but there. Whatever it was, he knew it was time for him to make a break for it.
Then, as he was finally leaving it all behind, she had reached out and spoken to him with her power. Like her aunt, she scattered his mind with little seeds that took root and began to grow even days after he thought he had swept them all up and tossed them out: little whispers of things he knew were true, because he was touching her mind when she had said them.
She wanted to make sure that, even if he left, he’d never get away from them.
You are a member of this family, she had said, and then she had flashed more than a dozen images at him so fast that he hadn’t recognized them all. Over the next few days, they started popping up at the strangest times. Some of them he remembered, because he had been there. This time, however, he understood them differently, because he saw them from her perspective. She was always touching people, and she knew what they were feeling, sometimes even when they themselves didn’t.
Ian, who when he had said, “I’m pretty sure there’s a better use for that,” was thinking, That’s a good one. Wish I had thought of it. And, a little bit farther down, he proudly thought, He’s come a long way.
Lena, who sat with Faith at the kitchen table and told Mercy that Cord would be the one to escort her to school, had been thinking, It’s time for him to see. Mercy could tell that Lena knew already what was there, and although Mercy didn’t know what it was, she could tell that it was something good; Lena was practically purring about it.
Scythe...who did think of Cord as a...who had not lied when he said, “If I don’t come for you, it means I’m dead.”
Little bitch. She never could leave well enough alone.
Once they returned to the winery, Cord had to agree that Ben was right. There was no sign of the Scere. Everything was just as it should have been, with the exception of one large group of missing people. The absence of the Youngs and the others made the place seem hollow, even though there were plenty of people around, working and making repairs. It was hollow in that place in his head, and his eyes and ears and nose told him that something important was missing. It was just a place, now, like any other, not anything special. Despite the fact that he had been anxious to get away from it, finding the home transformed like it was disturbed him. It was one thing to choose to leave a place, and live your life away from it, and another to know that there was no special place to return to because it didn’t exist any more. While he didn’t think living in their little fantasy world was for him, he did believe that somewhere it should exist.
They found Anora and Hap at the house and sat down with them in the main family room.
“I don’t know where they went,” Anora said. “All I remember is that they stopped the Scere and then packed up and ran.”
“And the Scere just left?”
“Yes, which is ridiculous, so I know something is off.”
“I need to check your memories to see if they have been tampered with.”
“That is not…”
“Go on Anora,” Hap urged. “We all need to find out what happened to those babies, and we’ve got no other clues.”
“All right,” she said reluctantly.
However, when Cord checked her memories, they looked fine to him. There were no signs of damage. The only strange thing he noticed was a lot of gaps. Her memories had not been altered; they just weren’t there. There was clean space where the memories should have been.
“I can’t find anything,” he said finally.
No clues. No idea where to look. Nothing.
“When they find a place, I’m sure they’ll contact us,” Hap said. “They’re not the type to leave us after all these years and not let us know they’re all right.”
That was true, if they left willingly, but the fact that there were memories changed...no, removed, along with the Youngs' uncharacteristic treatment of Ben, convinced Cord that they must have been coerced somehow. And if all of them, including the impressive Lena and Ian, were forced or tricked, it had to have been someone really powerful. He definitely couldn’t go up against that alone.
Of course, he could just walk away. For a few moments, he seriously considered it. He could just leave Jonah there and let Hap’s family take care of him. He could just get in the car and head south, to do...whatever he wanted. That had been his plan for a while.
While he contemplated his choices, his gaze returned to the child on Hap’s lap. The boy was fussing a little, and Hap was taking his turn after Anora, Ben and Hap’s wife had all unsuccessfully tried to comfort him. Cord was waiting for one of them to figure out that the boy didn’t like to be jostled; he wanted to be held close. And if they applied a little pressure on the gums with their finger, he’d be happy as a clam in about three seconds. He knew eventually one of them would figure it out. After all, they were experienced parents; they didn’t need him telling them how to take care of a baby.
Any one of them would do a good job raising Jonah, easily as good as Mercy would have
done. He had said he wanted to give Jonah a good home, and here it was...so why was he stalling?
He didn’t have an answer for that question, so he let it go. He’d think about it later. Maybe.
He sighed. What the hell. This was kind of exciting. It reminded him a little of his old life, when Scythe had hunted him, and then he had hunted Scythe.
“Here, give him to me,” Cord said, surprising them by getting up and taking Jonah off Hap’s lap. The boy quieted immediately, but Cord held him tightly and worked on his gums anyway. “So, where do you think Scythe is?” he asked, and then waited while Anora went to get some things out of the study.
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Scythe wandered in his mind, but his body moved forward without hesitation, following the music. His hand activated the door that led to a passage beneath the rock, but he wasn’t the one who opened it. His feet walked below the earth, through the sculpted rock, past the dripping water in the caves, but he did not pass through there. When he walked in an area that wasn’t lit, his body continued as if it were on a track; he did not stumble, even in the pitch darkness. He traveled through a passage, a hall, many halls, many rooms, a city carved into the mountain, mostly shrouded in darkness and completely hollow. He never once saw a person, although it was clearly designed to hold hundreds...no, more. Finally he entered the last room.
Over a hundred columns were lined up in precise rows, stretching into the distance, and one of them was singing to him. His body went directly to it and his hand touched the cold stone.
Scythe stepped into the soft light and was surrounded by a gentle heat that soaked into him and swirled around inside his body, rushing past every sore nerve and wearing down each stiff muscle. The music that he had heard, that had led him to that place, was not only around him, it began to seep into him; the sweet, sweet notes rung in the air, causing his very skin to hum along.
Halfblood Legacy Page 48