by Scott Duff
Peter stepped in between us, gently taking my shoulders and leading me back away from Kieran a few steps. “Let’s all just calm down a little,” he said gently, looking at Kieran over his shoulder. “We’re all worried and emotionally charged. Seth, would you make those vortexes go away then tell us what happened.”
I looked over at the vortices blearily and wiped my eyes. I didn’t remember when I’d started crying, but I needed to get a hold on myself. Wearing my emotions on my sleeves takes away the advantage of a hidden aura, and if I keep crying like this, they’re gonna slap a little red dress, black patent-leather shoes and white ankle-high socks on me, and start calling me “Mary.” Slowing the energy, I sent the funnels away, sat down in the grass, and started telling what I knew from when we left them. It wasn’t a long story. When I was done, Kieran was calmer, less angry but no less frustrated.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you, Seth,” Kieran mumbled. “It’s just… Ethan is very badly hurt. Even with what you’re doing, he might not make it.” That explained the helplessness in his aura. I saw Peter’s aura crash into shock at the statement. I already knew how dire the damage was, somehow. I just didn’t know how somebody could have caused it. We’d both thought of Kieran and Ethan as invulnerable, which was actually kind of stupid considering we had to rescue them in Atlanta and they were both close to death then.
“There’s someone else here,” I said, suddenly feeling someone in the house. Whoever he was he was very weak, or she, I couldn’t tell much.
“Take us to ‘em, then,” Kieran said, anger building again.
“I don’t think this is an enemy, Kieran,” I said, but I still pushed us through the leys and into Lucian’s office. The three of us coalesced in front of the desk from which Kieran had removed the book. Lying on the floor beside the desk was a rail-thin man, barely breathing and trying desperately to not pull power from the leys. He had not one, but three different curses stamped on his body. The first time we’d seen more than one on someone.
“Hold still, sir,” I said as I called for the Night Sword and knelt down beside him. Once again, Kieran took position opposite me with Peter at the man’s head.
“Lucian,” Kieran said gently, “It’s Ehran McClure. Just be still and let Seth remove the curses from you, then we can work on your body, okay?”
Three made me nervous, so I didn’t go for subtlety. The first one was in his leg so I just shoved the tip of the Night in and sucked the curse up. If it left a mark, I wasn’t worried about it. The same for the one in his shoulder. I did take a more careful hand for the one on his forehead, though not so much for a mark as for proximity to his brain. I thanked the Night Sword for its help as I sent it home. While I was there, I checked on the feed to Ethan and the level of the battery feeding power to him. It had taken a significant drain but wasn’t near empty yet. I stood by while Kieran worked on Lucian. It might have been selfish, but I was the only one who could do anything for Ethan at the moment and I wanted to save everything I had for him.
“Where’d the smiley face go?” I asked looking around the room.
“That… was… me,” gasped Lucian as Peter and Kieran helped him up off the floor and into a desk chair.
“Just relax, Lucian, relax,” said Kieran. “Is anyone else here? We need to move the Home soon so we need everybody out.”
“Move the Home?” he asked weakly. “Yes, I suppose so. It has been compromised.” He sat back weakly, pulling in energy from the lines. He reached into the ward, trying to wrest control from me, but it was a very weak attempt. “Who has the ward?”
“I do,” I answered. “You can have it back when you’re better.”
“I must be more hurt than I know,” he said softly. “I can’t see any of you.”
“That’s not you,” Kieran said. “No one can see us. Seth has the ward because he’s the only Pactholder among us.”
“What?” asked Lucian, alarmed. “How did you get in, then? And what happened to your Pact, Ehran? You held the Primary.”
“That’s a long and complicated story,” answered Kieran. “The short answer is that Seth has my Pact now and Seth let us in. Now answer the question, is there anyone else here? Maybe in the libraries?”
“No,” he said, shutting his eyes tightly and swallowing hard. “They’re all dead. Everyone that was here is dead. Everyone I ever knew. Those insects killed everybody and damn near killed me, too.”
Peter said, “Let’s worry about a cross-examination later, okay, guys? Whatever beat Ethan to a pulp knows where we are. We should leave soon.”
Lucian shook his head. “No,” he said. “Daniel Sheen opened the passageway from here. He was the first to die. I saw to that, but I wasn’t fast enough to stop it.”
“Let’s worry about recriminations later,” I said. “Peter’s right. We need to move. I’m thinking it’s probably not a good idea to shift Lucian through the lines, right?”
“No, we’ll need to carry him,” answered Kieran.
“Seth, on the bookcase to your right, on the third shelf from the top,” directed Lucian, “There’s a switch. Pull the shelf out an inch then back in two inches. Then the bookcase will fall back to reveal a staircase. It leads to the doctors’ offices below. There should be an ori chair there.”
A wheelchair rolled into the room as he said this. I had it take a longer route but it had started much earlier. Had I known that the stairwell connected to this room, I would have waited and saved the energy. Oh, well, live and learn.
“So are there any tricks from here to the front door or the front gate?” I asked while Kieran and Peter settled him into his ori-chair, though I’d have just called it a wheelchair.
“Not really,” muttered Lucian. “These things are meant as a temporary measure. We can usually heal just about anything in time. Or Adrianne comes up with a prosthetic. She came up with this, anyway.”
“Let’s move out then,” I said and nudged the chair into motion. Lucian gave a less than half hearted effort to control the chair before giving up. I couldn’t blame him for being despondent and it was no effort for me to exert the will to push the chair into line with us. I didn’t even have to think about the stairs when the wheels changed shape into flexible treads and trundled down the steps without slowing or jarring Lucian. None of us broke from our private little hells until we stood before the gate.
“You know, I’m over a hundred years old and I’ve never been outside the Home,” muttered Lucian. “This is not how I pictured leaving.”
“You’ll come back, Lucian,” said Kieran, patting his shoulder. “We’ll need you to rebuild the Guild.”
“Where are we going to put it?” I asked, still staring at the huge warded iron gate. It was an awesome sight.
“For the time being, I thought we’d just loop the opening around the only Pact we know it likes,” said Kieran mildly. He cut eyes over at me quickly then back to the gate.
It took me a moment to figure out what he meant.
“What?” I said, nearly laughing. “Haven’t you stuck enough in my head already?”
“It’s only for a few days,” said Kieran. “Just until we can find a haven. Maybe in Alabama. Bankhead looked nice.”
“What difference does it make, how long?”
“Seth, it really doesn’t matter,” Kieran said, turning fully to face me and crossing his arms across his chest. He made a massive presence. “You are the only person here the ward will accept and we stand as much chance of moving the land without the ward’s approval as you moving me through the lines without my approval. You can begin trying at any time.”
“How am I supposed to put this much space in my head?” The concept fairly astounded me. “That’s not possible.”
“No, not the whole space, just the connection to it,” Kieran said. “It’s self-contained. It’s currently anchored near the Faery Crossroads. We need to link it somewhere else so that no one can find it. It’s not a matter of volume at all.”
“What do I need to do?” I whined. Yes, I actually whined. I was still a teenager—I was allowed. Okay, it was expected. And I wasn’t really liking the sound of this.
Kieran grinned a little, then changed to a scowl. “Peter, if you wouldn’t mind taking control of the chair, please? Now Seth, watch the ward as the ‘gate’ carefully. This is an amazingly complex ward that handles a number of tasks simultaneously. You want to isolate one particular part, shrink it, draw it into your cavern, and lock it in place. Sounds simple enough?”
“The translation matrix,” I muttered absently, staring into the tightly woven strands of magic-enforced reality.
“Yes,” Kieran said, softly, from beside me now. Pushing open the gate, everyone followed me through. I found the anteroom, of sorts, maybe a mudroom would be a better analogy. The portal lay just beyond. That’s what Kieran wanted, the portal. “Got it,” I said.
Kieran stepped through first with fire in his eyes and power ready in his aura. He would be watching, trying to protect me. Lucian was next. He stared at me the entire trip out. It was disconcerting.
“Don’t worry about Lucian just yet. He’s got a lot of grieving to do,” said Peter, then he hugged me tightly. “Just make this quick, okay?”
“Virtually instantaneous,” I said with a smile as I pulled away. It had to be that fast or it wouldn’t work. I didn’t tell him that part, but I’m sure he knew already. I had to pull the hole closed behind me as I passed through it just like Kieran described it to me. This didn’t worry me, though. If Harris could do this then so could I.
Pulling my awareness out of the ward and concentrating solely on the portal, then I stepped through. Time stopped when I stopped the transfer. I had to control which parts of me went in what order. Awareness of the ward and the hook into my cavern had to be last. I was pretty sure that this was going to feel… unpleasant. I re-started the transfer. As the portal transferred my body through to the Faery no-man’s-land, I touched the outer edges and started pushing them in around me. The transfer got faster and faster and I squeezed the portal around me faster until it was the size of a dime and my consciousness shot through like water down a drain, reconnecting with the rest of me. And I held the portal with imaginary hands on the energy plane. I could see it sitting there as a whirling disk of controlled power. I was still connected to the ward and it didn’t seem to want to let go of me. I pulled it into my cavern and set it next to the Pact atop the Stone’s foundation. Even in my mind, I couldn’t think of a safer place.
In my mind, it sat beside the Night Sword as an iron gate.
“You’re Robert’s son, right?” asked Lucian. “The Null?”
“Yes,” I answered him as he stared at the space where the gate to the Pacthome once stood.
“But hardly a null. Far from it, actually,” Peter added.
Lucian muttered, “Obviously not.”
Kieran searched our surroundings carefully, his eyes still tinged in red and his aura still alight with power. “Seth, do you have it?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, seems like,” I answered, dropping down into my cavern. “Actually it feels like I can even sense the ward from here.”
“Good. I didn’t think that would work,” Kieran said, then lifted us up and Faery disappeared from underneath us.
Chapter 36
Kieran dropped us right beside the drive of the castle, showing me that it was possible to have more control of the dimensional shifts. That might have been just on the exit. I’d look into that another time. I checked on my internal charges, Ethan and the Pacthome. No change on Ethan. The Pacthome felt like the icon it was, an iron gate, separating two very disparate things—and right now, they were two very disparate things. As we walked to the house, the adrenaline rush from the bug-fight finally wore off and I stumbled, seriously weak.
“Whoa, easy there, champ,” Peter said softly, slipping an arm under my shoulders to steady me. “You threw a lot of power around.”
Shaking my head didn’t help remove the confusion of that statement and only made me more light-headed. I hadn’t done anything that would make me feel this physically weak, but here I was, leaning onto Peter and letting him guide me toward the house like a drunk. Confusing.
John came out the front doors as we approached. Seeing us with Lucian and without Ethan caused him great concern, I could see that even from a distance. It was nice to see someone else show concern for us, too. He turned back to the door and called to someone. By the time, we got to the steps, two men and one of the physicians came bounding down the steps with John to meet us.
“This is Lucian,” Kieran said to the group. “He has been held within a realm in Faery for a long time and is quite unfamiliar with your ways. He was the last remaining member of the group we found and his experiences for the last year have been extraordinarily traumatic. Please respect his wishes while we try to find any remaining family so that he may work through his grief.”
“Thank you, Ehran,” mumbled Lucian.
“We’ll do what we can, Lucian,” said Kieran. “But when you are able, Robert’s wife is also in this infirmary suffering from a condition that you might be able to help.”
“Olivia?” he asked, looking up at Kieran who nodded in answer. “I’ve wanted to meet her for ages. Would have preferred better circumstances.” Then he sighed and fell silent again, morose and sullen. I nudged the chair forward up the steps as the two men reached for purchase. They fell back when the wheels changed shape again and trundled up the steps as easily as they went down them.
At the top of the steps, Kieran said, “Lucian, we need to go in a different direction. Can you control the chair?” Lucian nodded. “If you need anything, just ask. If you need one of us, tell someone and we’ll come. You know how to contact Seth anyway, right?”
Lucian’s face brightened for a moment. “I haven’t done that in fifty years,” he said quietly. Then I heard a bell ring in my head—not a little bell like you see on a deli counter, but a big bell like you see in a tower and I was the clapper. Once was more than enough to make me grab my head and reel back, disoriented. I know I yelled something but it couldn’t have been intelligible. Or polite.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” Lucian said sheepishly once I’d gotten some semblance of coordination back. “It’s been a long time.” He touched the bright yellow line coming through the front doors and started the chair forward, following the doctor and two orderlies.
We followed them into the main hallway and watched them ascend the stairs.
“Have you gentlemen eaten since breakfast?” asked John. When we all shook our heads, he said, “Then please, relax in the observatory while I arrange some dinner for you. There’s a bathroom in the back if you want to wash up.”
“John, you are a godsend,” said Kieran grasping John’s shoulder and patting his back as he brushed passed into the observatory. Peter and I said our thanks, too, as we followed Kieran. John probably already had steaks cooking for us the second he saw us on the drive. I bet it wouldn’t be over fifteen minutes before something was coming through the door. Kieran found the bathroom first. Peter steered me to the nearest couch and plopped down across from me, kicking back and waiting. We were both depressed and confused.
“When do I get to start asking what the hell’s going on here?” Peter asked.
“Yeah, I’m afraid I’m gonna hav’ta ask for an all-in for information before the day’s out, too,” I said, glancing around the room. I asked the Stone to put up a shield around us to block out our conversation, guaranteeing our privacy. “The Queens’ visit was all secret languages and innuendo. Scary as hell. I don’t know what any of that meant.” I stared up at the ceiling for a moment, exhausted and not knowing why.
“Then we went to the Pacthome,” I said with a sigh. I didn’t want to continue. “You know what happened there. Ethan left normal reality. This isn’t like shifting to another realm, like Faery or the Pacthome. I can’t begin to explain what his universe is like. It’s jus
t so terribly… alien, flat and contorted. And someone yanked him back in. Nearly killed him. Now here’s the kicker: my name was said before Ethan came through the tunnel.” I looked at Peter then, for emphasis or consolation, I wasn’t sure. “Why? I couldn’t tell if it was Ethan who said it or somebody else. And why would he come through the tunnel when it’s easier for him to manifest through the anchor? Right now, he can’t do much of anything. I mean, he really could die!” I bounced my head back on the couch a few times, nervously. “What do you see when you look at him?”
“At Ethan?” asked Peter, thinking. “I hadn’t thought about it, but your auras are extremely similar. His is shorter and he looks like he has this … I don’t know what to call it.”
“A shadow,” I suggested.
“Yeah, good a word as any, I suppose,” he said, nodding then waving towards the door. “Food’s here.”
Kieran came out of the bathroom wearing a white robe and drying his hair with a large white towel. At the other end of the room, Gordon Cahill and John came pushing carts of food and beverages. Peter dashed for the bathroom, so I just stood there drooling like an idiot. The lights of the house were just beginning to show through the windows, giving the room a warm yellow glow. John pushed his cart around to the side of the alcove we occupied, shoving a chair out of the way with his hip.
“Being unsure of your plans for the evening,” John started as he moved the chair more completely out of the way, “I went for food more solid and filling than delicacies. Will Ethan be joining you soon?” Both Kieran and I blanched at the question, even though we expected it soon.
“Ethan is indisposed for an undetermined period of time,” Kieran answered mechanically. I didn’t want anyone to know he was hurt either and I wasn’t really sure why. John had the good sense not to press the issue.