Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (21 page)

“Let’s see if it can be moved away from you,”
he said, looking up at me, reaching down and grabbing the newest
and least charged of the three. “Tell the Stone to be ready,
please.”

Kieran shot away from me at light speed with
the battery in both hands. I could feel the Stone answering to my
confusion, tightening around me in the darkness as I followed
Kieran out of my mind and onto the energy plane. I could see his
own shielding clamp into place as he left me and I watched as he
tossed the almost empty battery out away from both of us, veering
away as gravity took control of its path. Kieran removed his hands
from my thighs, breaking the physical connection to my body like a
mild electrical shock as he pulled back his energies. Something
landed on the bed a few feet from us with a thud. I think Kieran
was more surprised than I was, considering the way his head snapped
over.

Ethan was the first to get to it, pulling at
the blanket of the bed to raise it out of the fairly deep hole it
had dug. It was considerably smaller on the bed than in my head,
about two and a half inches across. It looked like a cut crystal in
shape with the faces in a fractal design similar to a nautilus and
a shade of orange that only existed for football teams. At least
you could look at this and not get a headache. Ethan poked at it
experimentally with a finger. When it didn’t bite back, he picked
it up, turning it over and over in his hands examining it
thoroughly.

“That’s how you move things from your mind
into reality?” Kieran asked. “I still don’t understand the
translation.” He quirked his head to the side, thinking hard about
what he witnessed as he watched Ethan. I hope he didn’t expect me
to explain it to him.

“Don’t know. I’ve never quite done it that
way. I thought that was you,” I said.

“It wasn’t me,” Kieran said. I couldn’t quite
place the look on his face, maybe whimsical? “I merely grabbed the
construct and exited your psyche. The construct did not exist
purely on the mental dimensions and I found your cavern a difficult
place to comprehend.”

With a grunt and a shrug, Ethan passed it to
Kieran, who sat on the bed and did the same. I felt him pull a
small amount of energy off the nearest line and push it into the
crystal. It accepted the energy without a problem and without
changing the crystal physically from what I could see. Then he
pulled from the crystal itself, again without a hitch. Then pulled
a little more than he put in, pushing the excess out to dissipate.
Again no change in the crystal. He passed it to Peter, who started
the process over again. I guess Peter was the litmus test of this
experiment, but I really hadn’t thought of that until I noticed
that Ethan was standing behind him with his hand on Peter’s
shoulder, watching intently.

“This is so cool,” Peter whispered as he
pushed and pulled energy through the battery. “It’s like a ley line
in the palm of my hand. What is it?”

“That’s one of the batteries Seth made,”
Ethan said, releasing Peter’s shoulder, apparently satisfied there
was no immediate danger.

“That is so awesome,” Peter said, smiling
while handing it back to me.

I waved him off, saying, “If you can use it,
keep it. I have two more.”

“Now hold on,” Kieran objected. “Not that I
object to you giving Peter gifts, but there are a number of things
to test before you start giving those out. Just because none of us
has seen this before doesn’t mean it’s new to the universe. There
could be known drawbacks to this that someone else could exploit,
putting all of us in danger.”

They gathered around Peter as he held the
crystal out. He was clearly disappointed that he wasn’t going to
get to keep it but he took it in stride. When it was obvious that
neither Ethan nor Kieran was going to take it from him, he just
held it out while they looked at it. While they were distracted by
their examination, I picked up a second battery and pushed it into
my hand like I would have one of the swords. It was heavier than I
thought it would be, traveling down my arm and coalescing in my
right hand. It was the same unnatural orange as the one Peter held,
the same fractal-driven shape, the same opaque faces. There was no
seeing deeply into these things.

“Well, it’s not associative,” said Ethan.
“There is no sense of Seth in its making.”

“There’s a sense to the energy in it, but not
how much it’s holding,” said Peter. “At least I’m not getting
any.”

“I’m not either,” said Kieran. “Which worries
me when it starts to get full. And what happens if it
overloads?”

“This one is more full than that one is,” I
said, “I don’t feel a difference here, but I do in my cavern.”

Kieran turned to look at the crystal I held,
then up at me. Shaking his head and grinning, he said, “You are
something else.”

“It’s no more associative to itself than a
piece of granite,” announced Ethan, beaming proudly at me. “Good
work, Seth.”

“Can you reabsorb it back into the astral?”
Kieran asked me.

I pulled the crystal back into my cavern from
my hand. It reformed into the weird milk can shape it had before,
losing the more natural form it had. And I had a name for the
energy plane now: astral. I think I liked mine better.

“Apparently,” I said.

“Peter, can you do that?” Kieran asked.

“I haven’t figured out what he’s doing yet,”
scoffed Peter. “Teach me that and I’ll try.”

Kieran smiled at that. “Hold on to it then.
Keep it safe and don’t try to put too much energy into it. Ethan
and I will build one and experiment on it later. And you play with
the energy you’re already holding. From what I saw, you have more
than enough. Tomorrow morning, Ethan and I will begin teaching you
self-defense.”

“Why not now?” I asked. The last few minutes
had left me feeling quite energetic.

“Even tomorrow is too soon, Seth,” said
Ethan. “Most people would still be unconscious.” Kieran nodded in
agreement.

“What you’re already doing is taxing enough,”
said Kieran.

“Speaking of that,” Ethan said, pausing and
moving past Kieran and around me to my left side. He started
tapping on my laptop, pulling up links until he had two pictures
onscreen: the giant check and Harris’ office. “This is the emblem
in common you saw, right?” Ethan pointed out a small trophy on
Harris’ shelf in the picture.

“Yeah,” I said, leaning to look at the blurry
image. “But that’s not where I saw it, I don’t think. Is that a
trophy?”

“Harris’ bio said he won in MacNamara’s in
thirty-eight,” offered Peter.

“What is MacNamara’s?” I asked, again. That
name was bandied about before Ethan noticed me holding the
lines.

“The fights,” said Kieran, falling back on
the bed hard. “Particularly nasty fights, too. Been around for
centuries. They are by invitation only so you have to know someone
or do something to gain MacNamara’s attention to get in.”

“Do we know anyone?” I asked, thinking first
of Peter.

“We’re looking for one now,” said Kieran,
proudly. “Father has won two team championships and one singles
championship at MacNamara’s in the seventeen hundreds.”

“Wow, Dad was a boxer,” I said, kind of awed
by that.

“No, he was a combat mage,” Kieran said,
sitting up on his elbows and smiling rather mischievously at me.
“The thing to know about MacNamara’s fights is that from the
winner’s standpoint is the bigger the trophy, the lesser the purse.
The bigger the purse, the bigger the contest. Do you follow
me?”

“I don’t recall ever seeing any trophies
bearing that emblem in my house before,” I said, thinking back
carefully through the Savannah house, at each room’s cabinets that
might be holding keepsakes I’d seen all my life. “That is
impressive, right? That he was capable of these three things? I
mean he was roughly your age now, right? Would you stand a chance
at MacNamara’s?”

“Ethan and I would stand a very good chance
of winning in the top class,” said Kieran with rancor. “But I don’t
see the need to compete at that level. It is too easy to kill and
be killed.”

“So the only way to win in these fights is to
kill your opponent?” I asked, disgusted by the thought of that and
associating it with my dad. Ugh.

“No,” corrected Kieran, “There are
submissions and knock-outs and technical knock-outs as well. Death
is allowed under the rules of submission. Lots of different rules
for different contests. Absolutely no rules in the biggest
contests. Those are the ones Father won in. They lost one of their
four-man team. Something ate the guy from what Father said.”

“Yeah,” said Peter. “That’s the way my Dad
told it, too.”

“Was your dad the one who babbled for a year
or the one who lost half a hand?” asked Kieran, smiling crookedly
at Peter.

“He did tend to babble when I was younger,”
Peter said, giggling a bit. “I’m just glad my dad wasn’t the one
that got eaten.”

“Your dad fought there, too?” I asked Peter,
duly impressed with Mr. Borland now. I didn’t know that they were
that close.

“He told me a little about it after we left
your house,” Peter said, nodding. “He wouldn’t say why, only that
they’d been coerced.”

“Wait,” I said, “I think I know where I saw
it.” It wasn’t on a trophy shelf; it was jewelry. I started back
through all the pictures I’d looked at today, looking for a common
thread or for the emblem itself. Jewelry meant rings, bracelets,
necklaces, brooches, and tiepins. Tiepins. That’s where I’d seen
that symbol, on a tiepin. The memory tied it all together. I needed
the picture of my mother and grandfather from August. So back I
went.

Opening the picture still hurt. To see Mom
and Dad so close and not that long ago. On Mom’s left stood my
grandfather, Uriah St. Croix, holding one corner of a draping red
ribbon. On Dad’s right, a tall, white man, in a white day suit with
tails and top hat, was holding the far right side of the ribbon.
The man’s pale blue tie was held in place by a pin made of silver
or platinum. This was the first place I’d seen the emblem: on this
tiepin.

“Here it is,” I said, triumphantly. “Who is
this?” I turned the screen for Kieran and Peter to see.

“That’s a Fae glamour,” said Kieran. “You
can’t judge from the picture exactly who it is, but from the
clothing and the emblem, I’d bet it was MacNamara.”

“Yeah,” agreed Peter. “They’re pretty
particular about their symbols. If somebody else tried to use
theirs, they’d go after ‘em.”

“So we have a connection between my parents,
my grandfather, Harris and this MacNamara all centering in August,
which is just before they disappeared.”

“Yes,” agreed Peter slowly, “But in all
fairness, Seth, you could tie MacNamara in with every person on the
list.”

“But he’s not on the list,” I countered.
“Why?”

“Because MacNamara’s only concern is for the
fights,” said Kieran, distastefully. “He has no interest in
anything else.”

“And yet,” I countered again, “we have two
examples of different behavior. Or at least apparently differing
behavior.”

Kieran tried to answer but couldn’t. “Perhaps
something has changed while I’ve been away,” he admitted.

I looked back and forth between Peter and
Kieran, trying to read them. “So, you’re telling me it makes sense
to want to talk to him, then?”

“It certainly makes sense,” said Peter
carefully. “But getting to talk to him is another story.”

“Getting him to talk is yet another story,”
said Kieran. “He is a very powerful elf. There is little doubt that
he could win the top levels in the fights if he ever chose to
compete.”

“Does that put him at a higher level than the
woman you faced the other day?” I asked.

“How much higher is ten million than nine
million, nine hundred thousand?” Kieran asked philosophically.

“How do I fit into the power scheme of
everyone then?” I asked.

“You are untested and untrained,” said
Kieran. “With the weapons you carry, you are fairly safe. That is
why I gave them to you in the first place, though admittedly I
didn’t expect you to take ownership so personally. Officially you
fit at the bottom of the scale.” He grinned, then added,
“Unofficially, you took out what amounts to three black belts in
karate and their master, so you tell me.”

“I’d prefer bystander with a baseball bat,”
mumbled Peter, tapping lightly on the keyboard.

“I vote for Peter’s idea,” I agreed. Ethan
was nodding his head as well.

“There are some people out there who are
taking that choice out of your hands,” said Kieran. He sighed
heavily. “Very well, I will seek information on the location of the
next tournament and see if we can corner MacNamara. It may take a
few days, though.”

“Arkansas,” said Peter. “In three days.
Ethan, would you hand me the phone?”

Kieran looked at Peter, surprised, while
Ethan turned to the bank of cell phones on the dresser just as one
started to chirp. He chuckled softly, picking it up and handing it
to Peter. He checked the incoming number, then answered in a
language I’d never heard. It was vaguely reminiscent of Latin and
Spanish, but definitely not either. The conversation lasted about
ten minutes, broken with a few heavy laughs. He closed the call
with “Bye, Dad. I love you, too.” He pulled the battery off the
phone and dropped both into a satchel near his feet.

“Dad confirmed the tournament starts in three
days in Arkansas,” Peter said. “He doesn’t know exactly where, but
he’ll try to find out and leave me a note at a drop site we
arranged. He also said that Harris is having a few problems with
the Marshals. Seems that they don’t take too kindly to losing
prisoners, especially in black ops. And somehow, word got out about
how, oh how did Dad put it… Pardon me here, Seth, these aren’t my
words—‘a snot-nosed whelp of an elf ass-kisser waltzed in and
kicked his ass personally and walked out with his prisoners.’ It
wouldn’t have been quite so bad for him if he hadn’t spent half the
morning bragging about how he’d stolen McClure’s kid right out from
under the Summer Princess. Harris is furious about the leak and has
been searching high and low for the origin of the rumor. Seems a
lot of details of the rumor concerned him and not much about
Seth.”