Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (12 page)

Colbert’s offices didn’t look like offices to
me; they looked like a mansion. A big ol’ Southern Gothic mansion
sitting on the top of a hill surrounded by big, old oak trees. The
lawn was well-manicured with a long brick path leading from the
front porch down to a small paved parking lot meant for maybe six
cars. Walking the path gave a magnificent view of the farmlands
below in crosshatch patterns, soy and early cotton. You wanted to
believe the house was hundreds of years old, but it just looked too
perfect.

Kieran and I were side by side when we hit
the wraparound porch. An elegant lady in a cream colored silk
blouse and a brown silk skirt stepped out of the glass entry door.
Her blond hair hung in loose curls around her face, accentuating
her light tan. When she smiled at me, it made her brown eyes warm
and inviting. She was a lovely woman.

“Mr. McClure?” she asked, looking at me.

“Yes?” answered Kieran, smiling back at her.
Her eyes darted quickly between us, then stayed on Kieran, never
losing her smile. She’d been expecting me, knew what I looked like
even though I’d never seen her before.

“Mr. Colbert is expecting you, but is on the
phone with a client at the moment,” she said. Her voice was even
and studied, but still had the cadence and melody of a Georgia
accent. “If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the parlor for a few
moments, I’ll inform him you are here.”

“Certainly, ma’am,” said Kieran, passing by
her through the door in the direction she indicated. Ethan and I
filed past her with polite nods, following Kieran. She walked down
the hallway past a desk and into another hall and disappeared, her
footsteps silenced almost immediately once she was out of
sight.

I’d never really known what a parlor actually
was, so this room was an education. A parlor is a place to
entertain, a place to talk. It was a big room with four discernible
areas, one big area in the center of the room and three smaller,
more private areas around it, pairs of chairs around small tables
in the smaller areas and couches and chairs in the center. There
were two sets of French doors leading to the wrap-around porch.
Plants, doilies, and frilly lampshades abounded. I expected to see
some blue-haired old ladies sipping tea in the corners. Or fat
judges in coattails. Maybe I’d watched Gone with the Wind one too
many times.

“Seth, step away from them, please,” a new
voice said.

I turned and looked up. Mr. Colbert stood at
the entrance to the room in his trademark grayish blue suit and
squared-off rose-colored glasses. This, I expected. The handgun, I
didn’t. I froze, centering on the gun. Then I heard the French
doors open and turned. A big man in a dark blue suit stood in each
doorway, dwarfing an automatic weapon aimed at the three of us. I
froze. Oh, yeah, I froze. I’d only seen this in movies. I’d never
even held a gun before much less had one pointed at me. Loaded.

“Seth,” Mr. Colbert said again, “Move away
from them. Now.”

Magic could move a car going at seventy. I
guess I was going to find out if it could move faster than a
speeding bullet, too.

“Artur,” Kieran said quietly and calmly,
“What are you doing?”

“Seth,” Colbert said through clenched teeth,
“This man is not who he seems. Step away from him, please.”

I needed to relieve this situation quickly,
scared to death or not. Somebody could get hurt. Magic or not,
there had to be a way. Magic or … Wait, that’s it.

“My father’s magic recognizes him,” I said
calmly, keeping my eyes on Colbert. He was in charge, not the
gorillas behind me. They were taking cues from him. His attention
snapped immediately to me.

“What?” he asked me.

“Dad’s magic recognizes him,” I said again.
“He got through the ward on the house without breaking it. He
opened an oubliette of Dad’s without breaking it, intended for him
alone. It had a picture album of Mom and me in it asking him to
help me. I watched him do it, Mr. Colbert. It was attached to the
same spell I opened the day before and again afterward. I am quite
certain of who he is.”

He stared at me for a long moment, letting
his gun hand slowly drop to his side. Then he turned to Kieran
again, looking intently at him.

“Ehran?” he said softly, “But… you look so
different.”

Kieran looked down at himself, holding out
his arms dramatically and grinning. “Yeah, I’m all growed up, now,”
he said. I couldn’t place the accent he was trying for.

“But why can’t I see… Oww!” Colbert
exclaimed. I turned away just in time to not see Kieran’s aura
flash. Apparently, it still took a conscious effort on his part to
show it and it still flared inhumanly brightly. The gunmen at the
doors tensed again at the exclamation from Mr. Colbert and another
one appeared at his side from the hallway, quiet as a mouse.

“You have changed,” he said, handing his gun
to the man and rubbing his temples roughly. “What happened to the…”
He let the subject of the question hang.

“Long story,” Kieran said, taking a seat on
one of the couches. “Seth has it.”

“That’s not possible,” said Colbert, turning
to me. He stared hard at me and I felt like I was falling down a
well for a moment. Then the Pact sigil flared into life. In my
mind, blue tendrils of power surrounded the cavern that it existed
in, pounding in my skull like a timpani, pushing back against
something invasive I couldn’t see. Just as quickly as it started it
was over.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” Colbert said,
looking to Kieran. “Those are tied to your soul forever. How did
you disentangle it? Damn, this could cause a war the likes of which
we haven’t seen in millennia.”

“What?!” I exclaimed. Yelled. Questioned
loudly. There were a lot of emotions in that one word.

Kieran chuckled at my reaction, leaning back
on the couch casually. “He doesn’t know what he carries, Artur,” he
said. “It has only been a few days since I dropped it on him, since
we met, really.”

“Who are you?” asked Colbert of Ethan.

“Ethan,” he said, simply.

Kieran added, “Ethan is an ally of
indisputable loyalty to Seth and me, but he is as ignorant of the
world and its politics as Seth and me, at least considering the
last forty years or so.”

“And his family?” Colbert inquired.

“I have none,” answered Ethan without
expression.

“Indisputable?” Colbert asked, looking at me.
I nodded. He was going to have to take Kieran for who he was—the
son of Robert McClure. I kept my word. My father kept his word.
Kieran will keep his. I wasn’t sure how he was going to deal with
the whole two-name thing, but I figured I could keep it straight
for the time being. It was sort of like having a nickname
anyway.

“Gentlemen,” said Colbert, standing and
addressing the men in suits holding guns, “Would you give me the
room, please.” He reached in his inside jacket pocket, pulled out a
white crystal pyramid about an inch to a side, and set it on the
small table to his right. Once his men had receded from the room,
he tapped the top of the pyramid lightly and it glowed with a very
pale blue.

I could feel the ward snap into place at the
edges of the room. It didn’t extend very far, just up to the French
doors, blocking the glass, and up to the hallway. Interesting
geometry to the field. I thought it’d be triangular considering the
crystal, but it wasn’t even regular in places. Who was I to
criticize, though?

“Ehran, where have you been?” asked Colbert,
sitting across from Kieran resting his elbows on his knees and his
chin on his laced fingers.

“In a place that does not have a name,”
Kieran said calmly, almost airily. “A place that no longer
exists.”

“That’s not much of an answer,” Colbert said,
a sneer fighting for control of his dark features.

“Unfortunately there is no more concise
answer to that question,” said Kieran. “Suffice it to say that it
has been a journey of experience and now I am here. Now that I am,
I find myself faced with a number of problems, not the least of
which is the one you just pointed out. That doesn’t have to leave
this room. My biggest problem right now is that my little brother’s
parents are missing. Quite frankly, those two problems are
currently the only ones occupying our agendas.”

“The one where people are trying to get Seth
isn’t bothering you at all?” Colbert asked, peering at Kieran over
his glasses. That question piqued my interest.

“I assumed they were connected,” answered
Kieran.

“To some extent, I’m sure they are,” said
Colbert, glancing at me quickly. “It appears that the Pacts are no
longer secret. Someone, some group, is targeting your family. It
all seems to center around Seth, now.”

“My precocious tot,” said Kieran, grinning at
me. “Yes, I saw the test scores.”

“About five years ago,” started Colbert,
“Pact members holding the Elven Seal started disappearing. Since
these are often familial inheritances, these people are your
cousins, nieces, nephews, uncles, aunts. I don’t know who these
people are or who is left since I’m not a Pact member. I only had
your father’s say on that. That is the seal he has now. That alone
may make him doubly a target.”

“He can hide that,” Kieran said.

“All right,” Colbert said, “What do you need
from me?”

“Any information leading up to the
disappearance of Seth’s parents,” Kieran said with a shrug. “An
idea of who is doing this? What we’re up against.”

Colbert stood and tapped the pyramid lightly.
It ceased glowing. He brushed his lips with his forefinger once,
then went to the desk and pressed a button on the phone.

He said, “Samantha, there is a box on my
desk. Would you bring it in, please?” Releasing the button, he
said, “None of those are simple questions to answer. The Fae are
involved, but we don’t know why exactly. Both of them, but there
are competing factions among them. The Marshals are involved for
some reason. Your father said it was political. Then there’s at
least three different magical groups including the Greater North
American Council and the United States Council.”

“Don’t those overlap?” I asked, naively.

“Yes, and they schedule their meetings for
the exact same time,” said Colbert. “Petty politics.”

Samantha chose that moment to enter the room,
carrying a small wooden box about three inches square and an inch
high. Colbert started to move around the couch to take the box but
froze when he saw her.

“Samantha,” he said, in a cool voice, like he
was talking to small child, “What have you got there?”

“Just the box you wanted, Mr. Colbert,” she
said, smiling.

“Samantha. Dear,” he asked gently modulating
into a deeper register. “That’s not the box that was on my desk.
Where did you get that?”

“From your desk, sir,” she looked at the box,
confused, then tried to hand it to Colbert again.

He sighed, obviously pained, and said,
“Samantha, dear, I am so sorry.” He made a gesture with his left
hand that looked like he was scratching her and mumbled something I
couldn’t hear and the elegant blond was entrapped in sheets of
amber energy. The sheets varied in size around the woman and
stacked vertically, defying gravity to stand out cantilevered with
her arm holding out the box. It would have been pretty if it wasn’t
disturbing.

“Mr. Higgins,” Colbert called out loudly. The
man from the hallway reentered the room. “We have uninvited guests
on the grounds. Please inform security to investigate.”

Higgins touched a place behind his ear, began
speaking in low tones as if to himself as he left the room. Through
the French doors, I saw the two blue suits snap to attention, their
heads beginning to rove in their range of vision at different
speeds. I felt like I was suddenly in a spy movie. When I looked
back, Kieran and Ethan both were at the woman’s side, staring at
her through the amber.

“That is vicious,” murmured Kieran shaking
his head somberly.

“Come, I doubt we have much time,” said
Colbert, turning and walking down the hallway past the desk. We
followed without speaking. I didn’t know for certain what happened,
but I had a guess: the box was a bomb of sorts intended for Mr.
Colbert. Samantha was the delivery system. Someone had gotten into
the house, placed an apparently nasty spell on her to get Mr.
Colbert to take the box, blinding her to that fact that what she
was holding was anything but what he wanted at that time. When he
took it, boom. I don’t even know how big a boom it would have
been.

We turned into a large room with a desk in
the center sitting caddie-corner, back to the walls. There was a
large file box in the center of the desk, obviously the one Colbert
referred to the first time. He waved Kieran toward it, then went to
a large safe set between two large bookcases and started working
the combination, tapping a corner of the door with each number he
stopped at. Once he’d opened the safe, he pulled another cardboard
box out and folded it together. Then he emptied the contents of the
safe into the box and handed it to me, closing the safe.

He stood up and looked at Kieran and me in
turn. He looked tired.

“Ehran,” he said, “this is the entirety of
the information I have on what has happened in the last five years.
It isn’t much. Most of our information sources have dried up the
past few years. Your father and Seth’s mother have been trying to
find out why, but without any luck. And with what has just
occurred, it looks like I will be of no further help to you. Seth
holds all his and his family’s accounts, including passwords, so
don’t lose it.” He pointed at the box I held.

The phone on his desk beeped loudly. “Mr.
Colbert?”

“Yes?” Colbert responded.

“I have a situation report when you’re
ready,” the voice said.