by Scott Duff
Des’Ra’El looked at me again then. All those rings centered on me, his mind and soul and power on me. Incomprehensible again. Impossibly strong. He imbued the Brother that would be Ethan with all of the Brothers’ energy, strength, and knowledge and sent him on Kieran’s trail. Ethan’s scream of denial at not wanting to leave his purpose was a banshee’s scream heard over a hurricane’s wind. But it was blessedly brief as the Brothers failed in their task as immovable objects. Entropy was an irresistible force. A universal decree.
Des’Ra’El held my rapt attention the entire time as his realm dissoluted into chaos, even when his body and mine began to ebb away into nothingness. It wasn’t painful, sort of like falling asleep. I didn’t want to die here, but this didn’t feel like dying. As if I knew.
As the last two rings of color in Des’Ra’El’s eyes began to fade into the blackness, I heard the first noise from the background. It was a word. His last word. The one he said to Kieran that sent him flying off through the universe somewhere. It was a simple word, filled with ideas of warmth and comfort, safety and companionship, love. Devastating when lost, but possible to have more than one. Ehran had found it here and had found Kir du’Ahn through it. And as I faded into nothing, I thought about that word.
Home.
Chapter 48
I rolled over in my bed, pulling the sheet up a little further. The air conditioning had the room a little chilly in the morning. Hugging my pillow closer, I snuggled in a little deeper to doze. I’d forgotten how good my bed felt after so long traveling. Traveling.
I bolted upright, finally taking in the problem. I wasn’t supposed to be at home. We were in Ireland, not Alabama. Those were two different continents, thousands of miles away. I linked into the ward and searched the property for any hint of problems, but it looked just like we’d left it. That left me safe and sound at the moment, but in a predicament. There was money here, but all of my identification was in Ireland, along with bank account numbers, phones, and phone numbers. Peter had put them in our phones for us. He was on his third backup phone and I had no idea what that number was or what Kieran’s second backup number was.
Throwing back the sheets to get up, I realized I would need clothes before I did much of anything. This was why I didn’t sleep buck naked—you never knew when you might have to leave the house in a hurry. Throwing on a shirt and shorts, I took stock of my internals. The Pact still stood proudly glowing on the Stone, surrounded by the Swords with the Quiver and the Crossbow lying at the base. The Pacthome stood there as the iron gate. The tiny black dot that represented Ethan’s anchor was still wedged in between the Pact and the Stone. The three batteries were still lined up nearby. Everything looked normal and right.
“Ethan? You all right in there?” I asked out loud, poking the spot on the Pact lightly. I wasn’t expecting the reaction I got from him.
He erupted out of me. From every pore in my skin, I felt him pass. Every hair on my body stood on end from the excitement he held in finding me. He erupted, the only word for it. Then he crushed the breath out of me as he took form, squeezing and hugging me, his arms tight around me.
“Where the hell have you been? They’ve been searching for two days!” he said, his voice muffled in my shoulder still. I felt a few tears fall on my neck and hugged him back.
“It’s good to have you back on this side, too,” I said. “Wait, what? Two days?”
“Kir du’Ahn, I have him,” Ethan said, putting power behind the words. He wasn’t talking to me. He looked around the room, barely pulling away from me but not releasing me. “We are in his bedroom at home.”
“What happened? Why have I been gone for two days?” I demanded to know.
“You’d have to tell me where you went first?” he said. “One second we were talking and the next you were gone! I had nothing to do with it.”
I gawked at him. It’s all I could do at that moment. I tried to say it was because of his trip down memory lane that I got me yanked out of his mind by a Twice-Dead god. When I tried to speak, though, I forgot. Not what I was going to say, but how to speak. That was interesting. I changed tracks after a moment, never having this kind of problem before.
“I was in your memories,” I said, blankly. Words came out, that was a start.
I felt a huge influx of energy coming, aiming for us along the ley lines. It veered off the nearest one, triggering the ward’s proximity alarms then relaxing them as the ward recognized Kieran. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that a jump of several thousand miles was possible. After all, I’d just jumped a few cosmological distances in two days.
“Little Brother!” he called from the living room. I was already moving in that direction, disentangling from Ethan. He kept a hand on my shoulder, walking quickly behind me to not lose distance. Kieran met me in the hallway with a crushing bear hug, reminding me once again of how big he was.
“…can’t… breathe…” I gasped. Barely.
“Where have you been?” he asked me angrily, holding me up by the shoulders. Off the ground by at least three inches, my feet dangled in the air. “Are you hurt?”
“You’re hurting me!” I griped at him. It took him a second but he came to his senses and set me on the floor and hugged me close again, briefly and not as hard this time.
“Now where have you been? We’ve been searching for two days for you!” he asked angrily. At least he tried to sound angry. It just wasn’t in him right then. The relief in finding me was too great and his aura showed it.
“I don’t really know,” I said. “One minute I was talking to Ethan like you asked, and the next…” I forgot how to talk again. “I don’t know. I guess I got lost in his memory somehow.”
“Physically?” Kieran asked, eyes squinted and brows knitted together, staring into me deeply and suspiciously. “You did not start your discussion with him physically, but I had no sense of when your body left the Cahill castle. I did however feel the magic around the binding spell you used to call Eth’anok’avel. For someone unschooled, you show an adept hand at some fairly complex principles.”
Kieran glanced at Ethan then and said, “It’s good to have you back on this side, too. And so much closer to your natural condition. This is good.”
“Huh?” asked Ethan, his eyes glazing over for a second. I looked at him, too, pushing back into his aura to that area that reached behind him and, surprise, he was huge again. Those dark, burnt, and twisted places weren’t there now, replaced instead with flowing and bright lines of energy, still twisted but there’s no fighting biology, er, physics. Metaphysics?
“What did you do?!” he yelled at me.
“Will you two quit yelling at me?” I yelled back. “All I did was what you asked then I woke up in my bed. That’s all I know. Now where’s Peter?”
“Peter! Oh, no,” Kieran exclaimed, turning for the living room. “I disappeared right in front of him without a word. There’s a phone here, right?”
“On the coffee table,” I said, walking in behind him. “You can let go, now, Ethan. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Says you. You disappeared on me before,” he said.
“Twice,” I muttered under my breath.
“What?”
I turned to tell him that Des’Ra’El pulled me out of his memory twice but all that came out was “Huh?” If this worked, it might come in handy. Coming off like I don’t know what I’m talking about instead of not being able to talk. Interesting side effect, if I can pull it off.
“Nothing,” he said, grinning, then lightly shoved me into the living room. Kieran was punching buttons on the phone carefully. It was still dark outside, so I was still working on Irish time.
“So, what did we talk about, Ethan?” I asked, falling into a chair and hoping Ethan would take the couch next to Kieran. “What could have been so traumatic for me that I would have lost two days and not remembered anything about it later?”
He started to answer, but stopped, confused. I sympathized.<
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“I don’t know,” he said meekly. Kieran turned quickly to look at him, alarmed. He was still waiting for a connection.
“What were we talking about, then?” I asked, leading him.
“Why I did not want to come back,” he answered.
“Okay, let’s start there,” I said. “Why didn’t you want to come back to this side of the anchor?”
“Peter is not near his phone,” said Kieran as he hung up. “I left a message. He should call shortly.” I nodded to acknowledge him and turned back to Ethan.
“I don’t remember,” Ethan said, frustrated. He didn’t show it nearly as much on this side of the anchor as he did on the other. I was watching both sides, now that I knew how to look.
“All right, then,” I said, calmly, “I can’t fault you for not remembering something I don’t remember either, so let’s just be calm and methodical about this. Do you remember what happened at the Pacthome? When you went into the conduit to close the far end of the tunnel?”
He leaned back on the couch, gathering his thoughts, then started, “I jumped into the hole the curse bugs were coming through. As you cut your end from the inside, I left the tunnel and started cutting the far end from the outside.”
Kieran held up a hand to stop him there. “You were in this form, correct?”
“Yes,” he answered. “But before I could complete the cut, I was jerked back into real space. That shouldn’t have been possible. At least, I didn’t think it was possible. He should not have been able to find me there.”
“Who?” I asked.
“MacNamara.”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. “I was pretty sure that’s what you were gonna say.”
“The elves at the school?” asked Kieran.
“They were his,” I said, nodding.
“I had assumed,” said Kieran.
The phone rang. Kieran snatched it up before it finished the first ring.
“Peter? Is Shrank with you?” I hated listening to phone conversations. “Felix or Gordon?” Unless you knew the context, you had no idea what was being said. “Tell them we’ll all be back in about an hour, okay?” Or why it’s being said. “Yes, I mean all five of us.” To me this sounded like Peter was coming here, for instance.
“I don’t know what he means,” Peter was suddenly telling my stereo. Then he turned around, still holding his cell phone to his ear. “Where the Hell have the two of you been!” He recovered quickly, snapping his phone shut.
Shrank slid off his shoulder, diving for me in a flutter of red and gold. “Master Seth!” he squealed happily.
“Hey, Shrank, Peter,” I said with a smile. “I’m sorry I can’t muster the enthusiasm and excitement y’all are, but as far as I know, I saw y’all a coupla hours ago.”
“We’re trying to get to the bottom of that now,” said Ethan.
“Right now,” Kieran said with a sly grin, “we’re listening to Ethan tell us how he got beat up by a mangy elf.”
“A very powerful elf,” said Ethan, thoughtfully. “He had something, a revenant.”
“Well, we know MacNamara’s elves were responsible for the Dunstan attack,” said Peter, sitting in the chair opposite me. I guessed that Dunstan was the actual name of the school.
“Yeah, we covered that just before you called,” I said. “We just don’t know why, yet. Or how he found Ethan.” I turned to Ethan and asked, “Did MacNamara himself pull you in?”
“I’m not sure,” he said hesitantly.
“Kieran, what happened to Lucian?” I asked. There had to be connections here to fit all the pieces.
“He was the victim of a Loa attack of a particular clan,” Kieran explained. “Shrank pointed out to me that he appeared to be marked by the worm prior to his arrival here. If he was right, it answered several questions, so I needed to let it play out.”
“And Lucian is what now?” I asked.
“Dead,” said Peter, sadly. “He passed away about ten hours ago.”
“I’m sorry, Kieran,” I said softly. Looking at him, his aura showed the loss, hidden behind his relief, but the sadness and sorrow were nicks in his armor compared to the chasm I saw last night. We’d seen a lot of death in the last few weeks, but this was more personal. He knew this man, but he was coping. Personally, I did what every seventeen-year-old would do, I pushed it away to deal with later—years later, with luck.
“This Loa attack, did it intersect with his Pact or the Lock at all?” I asked Kieran.
“I didn’t notice,” he answered. “Or rather, think to notice. Why?”
“I’ve been trying to put all the different pieces together,” I said. “But nothing seems to line up right. What about something controlling the Loa?”
Kieran glanced at Peter and asked, “What has he told you about the Pact?”
“He told me everything he knew about it in Atlanta,” Peter answered.
Kieran turned to look sideways at me with indignation. “I never made any promises,” I said defensively. “And he was risking his life for us. He deserved to know why, but he doesn’t know what’s in it or what the Queens said yet.”
“The McClure’s hold the Sacred Pact of the Geas,” said Kieran, giving in to reason and to the fact that he was no longer bound to the promise. “Usually, this is spread liberally throughout the entire Guild so there is little chance of it failing, but something is removing the Guild completely.”
“And what is the Sacred Pact of the Geas?” Peter asked.
“The entire history of the Fae from their beginning to their defeat at the hands of Man and the binding of the Fae to the Geas, constricting them all to two minds. It is important to keep the Pact alive because it holds our only clue to defeating the elves.” This was the whole of his explanation to Peter. I was disappointed; there was more.
“That’s it?” I asked. “The man stands in the front gardens of the Pacthome risking his life to these psychotic little bugs and that’s all the explanation you can give him?” I was standing by the end of my short tirade and the Southern Georgia in me was definitely coming out. But really, how did I get this accent? Neither of my parents had it.
“What else is there, Seth?” he asked calmly. “At the moment, you are the only Pactholder and yours is the only Pact extant. Any past politics are useless. Any magic is unavailable. The Pacthome is empty. What more is there?”
“How about who wrote it?” I asked, ticking the questions off on my hand, my own questions. “Where was it enacted? When was it enacted? Why is it invisible to everyone? What happens when the Pact fails? I can go on, Kir du’Ahn, but I know you see what I’m getting at. The half-truths have to stop, here and now.” My anger ran out of steam right about then. I fell back in the chair. “You’re gonna loose our trust if we keep catching you at it, Kieran.”
He held my glance, staring at me and sitting absolutely still. I stared back with equal intensity. Those weren’t the most imposing eyes I’d seen lately—those emerald eyes are a cakewalk compared to the concentric rings of Des’Ra’El. Ethan and Peter shifted uneasily in their places as the silence lengthened.
“All right, Seth,” he said softly, finally agreeing with me. “If you feel I’m being overly protective, I can pull back.”
My mistake. “You aren’t getting this. It’s not about being overly protective, Kieran. It’s about being manipulative. It’s about you trusting us like we’ve trusted you. It’s about you knowing more than you’re telling. That could get one of us killed and providing it’s not me, I couldn’t live with myself knowing that.
“Peter,” I said, turning slightly, “Call me if you need anything or when he decides to come clean, but I can’t stay around if he can’t trust me.”
I felt Kieran draw power to stop me from doing whatever I was going to do. Unusual because I don’t normally feel his draws. The transits through the lines must have taken his internal reserves out.
“Seth,” Kieran started calmly, looking away. He was used to people that relied
on reading auras, not body language, for their clues. He knew he was hiding things, being manipulative. That glance away told me more than he knew.
“No, Kieran,” I stopped him. “When you’re ready to be more open with me, come talk to me. Till then, you’re just too damned dangerous.”
Then I wrapped a portal around myself and jumped, first to the Pacthome, then back to Ireland. Kieran tried to stop me and he certainly had to power to do it. If I hadn’t been expecting it. I took precautions. First, he had to take the ward away from me. As long as I had the ward, I had control of the property. So while I did have it, I sort of rewired a few parts and when he moved to take it from me, I just rolled over and let him have it. Literally. I swapped the anchors for the ley lines. First thing he touched was flowing energy. It wouldn’t kill him, but it’d slow him down and he’d have a hellacious headache most of the day.
Second was the trip to the Pacthome. I was pretty sure that Kieran could track where I went if I took a direct route through the ley lines or an open portal. He didn’t get to know for certain. So I jumped inward first, through the door that was tied to me and me alone. If that created any dimensional paradox, the universe didn’t seem to mind. Then I jumped to Ireland, to the Cahill’s property, wrapping myself in the Stone’s powerful shielding specifically to block Kieran’s sight.
Stepping out onto the stone drive into the morning light, I started hearing the calls almost immediately. “Little Brother, this isn’t funny. Come back and talk to me!” and “Seth, you’re not being fair!” I ignored them. If I answered, he’d know where I was. He apparently needed time to reflect. Because he knew more than he was telling us. He knew more about the connections between my parents’ disappearance, the Pact, the Loa, the Elves, and this war. And they did all connect somehow.
The stone steps to the front door of the house were ice-cold on my bare feet as I jogged up them and let myself in. Cahill’s aura was barely visible through the walls in the observatory as I passed to go upstairs. There were a few others in the room I couldn’t discern, but I didn’t care at that moment. Just kept running quietly up the stairs, somehow missing everybody.