Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (3 page)

Tossing my clothes on the vanity, I jumped in
the shower, closed the glass doors, and turned the water on full
blast, slowly turning up the heat. It had to be ten minutes before
I remembered to pick up the soap and washcloth, just enjoying the
running water over my body. The hot water soothed aches I didn’t
know I had. Drying off, brushing my teeth, and combing the hair out
of my eyes was the extent of my grooming for the day.

As I walked through the hall to the den, I
heard plates rattle in the dining room. Someone was setting the
table. By the time I got there, whoever was back in the kitchen. I
took the seat to the side, turning it to see the kitchen doorway
and still see the backdoor, too. Whoever was in the kitchen was
planning to feed me so it figured the game of hide and seek was
pretty useless. Unless there was a third person, in which case they
can feed me or just get out of my house and buy their own damn
groceries.

“Good morning,” said Kieran smiling at me,
breezing into the room carrying a plate of biscuits in one hand and
one with sliced ham and bacon in the other. He’d cut his hair and
shaved since last night. Didn’t do too badly doing it himself,
either. His hair was reddish brown. Auburn, I guess is what it’s
called. His jaw had that ashy color of people who hadn’t shaved in
a long time. As he disappeared into the kitchen again, I noticed he
was wearing a jersey of mine that was baggy on me. It was tight on
him.

I snagged a biscuit and started in on it
while I waited for him to come back. It was good, too, and I didn’t
remember buying any biscuits or a mix. Kieran slid a plate with a
steaming omelet in front of me, and suddenly I was very hungry. I
was halfway through it before I realized I’d picked up a fork. That
made me pause. That was the second time today I’d acted on
autopilot.

“So,” I started, looking at Kieran at the
head of the table, “how did we get here?”

“I brought us here,” he said. He ate slower
than I did. “I had to carry you, so it took me a little time.”

“How did you know where I lived?” I asked,
stacking some bacon on top of the remaining omelet and crushing it
into the eggs. I couldn’t believe how hungry I still was.

“You told me,” he said, watching me and
grinning.

“I don’t remember telling you that,” I said,
taking a bite. This was goooood bacon. I’d have to get some more of
that brand.

“I’m certain there are a number of things you
don’t remember about that night,” he said, taking some bacon before
I got it all. His phrasing struck me as odd.

“’That night’?” I asked as he shoved a piece
of bacon in his mouth. He nodded as he chewed.

“You’ve slept for a day and two nights,” he
said.

“And you didn’t see anything wrong with
that?” I asked, incredulous, nearly yelling.

He smiled calmly, still chewing the
bacon.

“You were safe and sound,” he said,
swallowing. “Quite healthy.”

I didn’t know what to say to that. All I
could do was stare at him.

“What do you last remember about that night?”
he asked me, tearing a biscuit in half and dredging it through his
omelet.

That slowed me down a little. I sat back in
my chair and thought. The last few moments were a blur to me.
“After you threw the dog out of you,” I started, pausing to try and
find the right words. “It jumped at me. I remember thinking this is
gonna hurt.”

“Did it?” he asked, softly.

“I don’t remember,” I said.

He nodded sagely and said, “It did. You all
through?” He stood and started gathering plates from the table. I’d
eaten voraciously and quickly.

“What was that thing?” I asked, standing to
help clear.

“As it turns out,” he said, moving into the
kitchen with me a few steps behind, “it is a being that I am
familiar with. It was sent after me to protect me while I, well,
relearned a few things.” He seemed sheepish when he said that, even
ducking his head a little.

“Funny way of showing it. Who sent it after
you?” I asked, scraping the plates off into the trash. He’d already
washed the pans he cooked in, so we just had the plates we ate
from. Wish I could time meals like that.

“I don’t know if it was sent after me or if
the power of its creation caused it to follow when I left,” he
said. “It’s complicated.”

“What is it that you have to relearn?” I
asked. If it was complicated, we’ll come back to it. Right now, I
just wanted some of the big questions out of the way.

“This is going to difficult to explain,” he
said, stacking the clean plates on the drain board. “There are a
number of things that you will want to know before you get to that
point. Several you need to know sooner.” On the last part, he
turned and looked me in the eye meaningfully. He pulled the stopper
from the drain and started the water rinsing on the silverware.

All I did while this apparent ritual was
going on was watch him. Even the way he dried his hands seemed
familiar—He seemed familiar. Kieran reminded me of my father. Hmm.
So this is what maudlin is like.

“Come on,” he said, putting his arm on my
shoulder amicably. “Let’s take a walk. I have something for you to
see, someone for you to meet, and a few facts for you to
acknowledge. This is going to be an… interesting hour for both of
us.”

He led me out the back door and down the deck
stairs. The house sat on an incline on a big wooded lot. My
backyard is trees, trees, and more trees and I loved it. No yard to
cut and life all around. And the noise the wind makes during a
storm is beautiful. He was taking me down to the clearing about a
hundred twenty yards back. He picked his way carefully down the
path, avoiding several small sharp rocks on the path. I didn’t get
what the problem was since he didn’t have a problem on the gravel
the other night. He was still bare-footed while I was wearing
tennis shoes.

“There’s some flip-flops in my closet you can
wear until we can get you some clothes,” I offered. Crap, now I’m
takin’ in strays.

“Some what?” Kieran asked, tiptoeing through
a dense area of rocks a few feet long.

“Sorta like sandals without backs,” I said,
grinning at the undignified sight of six feet four inches and
probably three hundred pounds of lean muscle waving his arms around
like a little girl in the park as he stepped on a sharp rock.

We broke from the trees into the clearing and
the bright morning sun. It was a beautiful pastoral scene to me,
mostly because it was so different from what I grew up with in
Savannah. Not that Savannah isn’t beautiful, but I mean, there are
mountains and hills here! Savannah is wetlands and oceanside,
Spanish moss covered trees crossing dirt roads into dark and
threatening swamps. Beautiful in a completely different way.

Kieran steered to a vantage point that would
have been a nice place for the porch of a house, or a deck maybe.
He kicked around in the grass for a moment until he found a rock,
then cleared the grass away from it.

“Do you recognize this?” he asked me. I
looked at the stone. It looked like a square rock in the ground,
nothing special, to me.

“Nothing in particular, a foundation stone?”
I answered.

“Actually, you’re right. It is a foundation
stone,” he said, grinning. Then he put his hand on its center,
pushed and released. It took about three seconds for the script to
start showing on the stone in a neon greenish yellow color. I’m
sure a paint store had a name for it, but I didn’t know it. The
script looked like an invitation script that you couldn’t read. You
know the type, with so many loops and serifs that you can’t tell an
f from an s from a b. Except I could feel this writing as it flowed
out. It had a presence. It felt like my house, actually, and I turn
up the hill subconsciously, feeling a resonance there. It was
eerie.

“It is also a ward stone,” he said standing,
brushing his hands together and looking down at the script. “My
ward stone, specifically, and my foundation stone. No doubt you
felt the resonance when my ward was activated.” He paused long
enough for me to nod, then went on. “The only way they could do
that is if they were the exact same spell written the exact same
way. This is my mother’s. I’d know it anywhere. So is the one on
your house. Only my father could have put it there. He was the only
other person who knew this ward. My father’s name is Robert
McClure.” He exhaled slowly, thoughtfully.

“Seth, is this your father, too? Are you Seth
McClure?” Kieran asked me.

Talk about a shock. “Uh, yeah. Yes, it is,
Robert Eric McClure, of Savannah, Georgia,” I said. Is this guy for
real?

“Well then, you should know that I am your
older fraternal half-brother, Ehran McClure,” looking sad as he
said it, “and I have caused you a good deal of difficulty just
because of that relationship. I am sorry and I will do what I can
to fix these problems as quickly as possible.”

“What problems?” I asked warily.

“It would be easier to show you the first
one,” he said grinning, “and just so you don’t go into culture
shock, you should probably stay out of it for a while. Get to know
how people actually work. It’s a traumatic story.”

“What is?” I asked, impatiently.

“Look at your Pact sigil. It now encapsulates
what was my Pact.”

I looked in that newly discovered place in my
head. Yep, there it was, the Pact sigil, my dad’s family crest.
Sitting on top of it was a huge, and I do mean huge, sphere of
gyrating, undulating color. As I stared at it, brief images
appeared on the surface showing vistas of beautiful landscapes
definitely not on this planet. Nature here just didn’t have
lavender rivers and, patriotism aside, purple mountains majesty
just weren’t that purple.

“It is fascinating, isn’t it?” Kieran asked
quietly, smiling at me, bringing me back to the field of normal
green grass and blue sky.

“How did I get this?” I asked. As fascinating
and beautiful as it was, it didn’t belong to me and I wasn’t sure I
wanted it. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was. For all I knew, it
was a tumor.

“It sloughed off of me when I threw the beast
out,” he said, eyes cast down and shifting on his feet, almost like
he was ashamed of it. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’d only been
back a few hours and so much was going on…” He sighed and looked at
me with really big mournful green eyes. He looked like a little boy
right then. I barely succeeded in holding back the laughter. The
paradox of a three hundred-pound man looking like a lost little boy
was comical. And me, a seventeen-year old, having to act like the
parent here? I should be rolling on the ground, gasping for
breath.

“And I got it…?” I was right earlier—I did
have a nightmare and I was still in it.

“When the beast entered you,” he finished my
sentence. He stopped to let me absorb this, I suppose. Of course, I
was still back on the fraternal half-brother thing, so I guess I
did need the time.

“Wait,” I said, pinching the bridge of my
nose, getting royally confused, “First you said your name is Kieran
and now you say it’s Ehran. Which is it?” Yeah, that’s me. It’s the
little things, not the big things.

“Ehran is my given name,” he said, bobbing
his head. “Kieran is an approximation to the name I’ve been called
for… roughly four hundred years. It’s hard to tell. Time flows
differently in the lower realms. It is the name given to me by my
teacher and it is tremendously important to me.”

“Okay, Kieran it is.” That was simple to
accept. Sort of. “You’re over four hundred years old?”

He hesitated in answering, but said, “I have
experienced about four hundred and fifty years, yes, but I was born
in 1964. I believe that actually makes me forty-nine. You should
know, though, that our father was born sometime in the early
1400’s. We are a long-lived people.”

Okay, that one floored me. Dad was over six
hundred. He didn’t look sixty. He looked maybe the forty-nine
Kieran claimed. On a bad day. Kieran looked twenty-two. He’d
definitely get carded buying liquor. Wow, I’ve got a giant glowing
ball in my head now, and this is what I’m having a hard time
believing.

“Any more relatives I don’t know about?” I
asked sarcastically.

“Probably,” he said, nodding. “When I left, I
had at least two brothers and a sister still living, and I believe
they had children as well. And I believe there is at least a nephew
by a brother who was killed in the 1700’s still living. We would
have to ask father to be sure.”

Damn. Instant family. Just add a lake and
shake violently.

“Why haven’t I heard of any of this?” I
asked, frustrated.

Again, he hesitated. “I don’t know. Equally
important to that is why you haven’t been trained in the Arts. I
mean the Magical Arts. You were prepared to take the Pact, but
nothing else. There is much that father didn’t teach you and you
are well past the age that you should be taught. And it adds to our
troubles here. It’s very confusing.”

I sat down in the grass, cross-legged. This
was obviously going to take a while so I was going to get
comfortable. Kieran followed suit, sitting opposite me with his
legs out at an angle.

“All right,” I said, trying to collect my
thoughts in all this. “You said we’re a long lived people. Who are
we as a people?”

“Wizards, magicians, people of power,” he
said mildly. “We are a very small portion of the world who can see
and manipulate the powers in the universe that we call magic. For
us, it’s like using a muscle to move a rock or lighting a candle to
see in the dark. It’s a talent, mostly traveling down families.
Occasionally, a normal person will show up with some talent but not
often. And the talent does vary from person to person.”

“And this is called a Pact?” I asked.

“Oh, no,” he said. “The Pact is completely
different. The Pact belongs to our family and a few others and is
secret. Actually, it is several secrets. I don’t know how many
exactly, but there can’t be but, maybe three or four. The one you
hold now, for instance, shows the history of the Fae, down to their
defeat and expulsion from this plane by us. You should, by the way,
never try to open the Pact to anyone. It will react very badly to
that. That is its purpose: to keep that secret beyond coercion. You
know it’s there and you can use the information if you need to, but
you can’t pass the information around. It is very old and very
strong magic, written before the Fae even. No one has ever broken
it.”