Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (45 page)

Ethan took a step back once he put me at her
bedside. I did what any normal kid would do in this situation—I
cried. I just let go. I’d been holding my emotions in check for a
long time and I needed the outlet and I was safe here. And damn it,
I had reason. Then just like every time my emotions ran high, my
powers reacted and I dove into my mother’s body.

The first thing I noticed was that the three
at the table were doing more than leafing through books. They had
been softly coaxing my mother’s body into healing the smaller cuts
and contusions she had suffered. The larger issues had been dealt
with already but they needed her body to start working normally
again. I understood that. Massive healing can cause the body to
shut down, just like the trauma that made the need in the first
place. That’s why Kieran made Peter move earlier tonight, just a
little, even though he was exhausted. There wasn’t anything left to
do at that level. She would need time to recuperate.

I moved up to look at the joining of her body
and soul and stopped. I stopped crying and froze solid, staring at
it. The spell that Cahill and all of his doctors and healers
couldn’t see was totally and completely visible to me. It didn’t
surprise me that they couldn’t break it. That spell had been hiding
from them in plain sight for centuries. Even the Queens of Faery
had tried to break through it and failed, or so I’d heard from
Kieran.

My mother was trapped behind the Pact.

I stared down at the knot tied to my mother,
binding her mind too tightly together. That’s all it really was, a
big magical knot looped back and forth between her mind, body and
soul. Here it was woven more strongly between her mind and soul.
And regardless of the metaphor you chose to use—written, spoken,
sung, bent, twisted reality, coiling energy, whatever—the Pact is
succinct and powerful. It was no wonder the healers were so
confused by what they were seeing. The Pact would be invisible to
them. I was seeing it because of the resonance with my own.

“Ethan,” I whispered, jerking my head toward
me. “Can you see this?”

He stepped up beside me, looking down at the
bed. “Oh, wow,” he said as he leaned in over Mom to examine the
Pact closely. “There are some subtle differences.”

“You know what this is?” asked a new voice
from behind us. A woman, somewhere between fifty and a hundred,
roughly, stood just outside the veils staring at us. She wore what
I consider standard for hospital staff, you know, the green almost
sleeveless shirt and pants with the white lab coat and four
different color pens in the breast pocket. At least that’s what I
got from television lately. I’ve never been to a hospital and
didn’t watch television growing up.

“We’ve seen such as this before, yes,” Kieran
interjected.

“I would say the boy knows it intimately,”
she said to Kieran, pointing at me.

“And I would say that the boy can see it when
you cannot,” said Kieran. “There are several people in this room
that the boy can see that you cannot, I believe.” He had stressed
the boy both times, so his aggravation was pretty clear, even
without an aura to read. He turned to Cahill with more civility.
“Mr. Cahill, please excuse me while I have a discussion with my
brother.”

As he stepped through the veil curtain, a
solid wall of force rippled into existence on either side of him
and flowed along the edge of the curtain and meeting on the other
side. Everyone in the room gasped as Kieran ducked behind the newly
formed curtain. This was a freakin’ powerful wall and he hadn’t
touched a bit of outside power to throw it up. That was a lot of
power to have holding and ready to use. The wall cut us off from
the entire room.

Without saying anything, Kieran stepped up to
the far side of the table and peered down at Mom’s face, examining
the joining as we had. I watched him even as another part of me
followed the fibers of the spell on my mother through the confines
of her mind. I’d gotten good at truly multi-tasking during the last
few days, or at least bi-tasking.

“Yes, I see the differences,” he said
quietly. “They are not quite as subtle as you might think, though.
This is a personal cache. Very much the same as the Pact but
smaller, more compact. One of the many things you should have
learned at your father’s knee.” He stood up straight, looking at
me. There was a growing frustration in the statement, but it wasn’t
quite an accusation yet, and not directed at me.

“Can we remove it?” I asked. “Or at least
disentangle her mind?”

“This is usually self-actuated. I’ve never
seen it done any other way,” he said. “Not that my experience is
definitive, by any means, but if what Cahill said is true, finding
someone with more experience could be difficult.”

“Ethan?”

“I’d… be afraid to try anything, Seth,” he
said, softly. “Kir du’Ahn is far less destructive than I, far more
delicate with his touch. I could hurt her worse in one stroke.” He
hadn’t called Kieran that in some time. Obviously, he was trying to
impress his sincerity on me.

“So I give up?” I said, voice cracking. The
tears were rolling down my face again. “After all we’ve been
through? Leave her a vegetable? How can I do that?”

“No, Seth,” said Kieran. “We’ll try to find a
way around this. We’ll find Father; maybe he’ll know a way. Until
then…” He paused, sighing loudly, trying to think of something,
anything, that would be helpful. “Talk to her, Seth. Talk about
your childhood, good times that you had with her and Father. Paint
vivid pictures with words. She can hear you. If this is
self actualized, she might be the key to getting herself
out.”

They stepped away and behind the curtain
Kieran made. I don’t know how long they were gone, but all I could
do was look down and cry. Kieran came back sometime later and
gently put in a chair beside me, then put another on the other side
of the bed, sitting down there. He took her hand and smiled down at
her. I remember that smile, too. That was the Da Vinci smile,
beatific, an angel onto a mortal. He exuded his personal power, his
aura, like he was showing himself to her, like he had to me on the
night we met. I hoped it was more slowly and less shocking than
before.

“Hello, Olivia, I’m Ehran,” he said softly to
her. “I’m Robert’s youngest son, next to Seth. I’ve come home again
to see my father, to make peace with him. You have raised a
remarkable son, Olivia. You would be amazed at what he has
accomplished in a very short time. But the most important single
item that he has done, he did for you, Olivia. Just this afternoon,
he killed the Loa that destroyed your father, that destroyed your
family. Olivia, the Loa called St. Croix is no longer a threat to
you or Seth. You have the right to be proud of him. Even the Fae
are afraid of him.”

“Hello, Olivia, I’m Ethan,” Ethan said,
stepping up behind me. I hadn’t heard him pass through the curtain.
He stood on my right and grasped her hand lightly. He, too, pushed
his power out like Kieran had, showing himself to her. “You don’t
know me at all. I came back with Ehran and became a part of Seth’s
family quite by accident. I owe Seth my life and Ehran’s. You have
indeed raised a remarkable son. What he has accomplished in his
search for you and his father is truly amazing. I know you’re
afraid for him, Olivia. But now you need to turn that fear around.
Hope for him, Olivia. Come back and let us show you the man your
son is becoming.”

Ethan pressed my hand into hers. “Just talk
to her, Seth. Reminisce. Talk about walks through the woods in
Savannah with your dad, Venice in springtime four years ago,
learning how to drive. Talk about the last six months. She just
needs to know you’re here.”

I squeezed her hand as they slipped past the
curtain again. “So now you’ve met Ehran and Ethan. Didn’t even know
I had a brother. All sorts of secrets in the family, it seems.
They’re a heck of a cheering squad, aren’t they? You’d think I’d
single-handedly solved all of humanity’s problems to hear them
talk. All I did was what y’all taught me to do. And Ehran is just
like Dad. He faced down both the Queens of Faery for me, at the
same time. Told ‘em to go away and they did. And he thinks I’m
something special.”

I went on like that for a while, talking
about nothing and anything, just rambling. I didn’t break down
again, which was something, I suppose, but I was drained
emotionally anyway. Kieran came back, silently, after some time had
passed. It was hard to tell how much since there was no reference
behind the wall Kieran had created. He massaged my shoulders for a
few minutes.

“If you want to stay, I can come get you in
the morning,” he said.

I thought about the offer for a moment. “No,
I need to get some sleep if I’m going to be useful tomorrow,” I
said, sighing.

“Ethan and I can handle tomorrow, little
brother,” he answered.

“I got us into this, Kieran,” I said. “I’m
not walking away just because I got what I wanted out of it. That
would be wrong, but thanks for offering.”

“See, Olivia? You can be proud,” he said,
lightly brushing her forehead with his fingertips.

Kieran’s curtain dropped as soon as I touched
it and revealed the empty room. We left the room and walked down
the hallway. Kieran put his arm across my shoulders and I leaned
comfortably into him. I felt someone slip into Mom’s room behind
us, one of the healers from earlier checking on her. Martin was
asleep on a couch in the main room when we came in, looking much
scrawnier in a baggy T-shirt and surfer shorts, a paperback on the
cushions beside him. We passed through without waking him and went
to our own beds for the night.

~ ~ ~

I awoke the next morning with Shrank sitting
on my nose, staring down into my left eye. Startling, to say the
least.

“Ah!” I jumped, swatting at my face. “Shrank!
Don’t do that!”

“Good morning, Master Seth,” he said,
giggling, as he flew up and out of my reach. “Lord Kieran asked me
to wake you. He has news from Ambassador Cahill.”

That got me up in a hurry and into the main
room.

“Shrank, you could have told me that Mr.
Cahill was here so I could have gotten dressed first,” I snapped at
the pixie when I stopped three feet into the room. I was buck-naked
and Cahill was sitting on the couch with Martin, sans brown robe. I
felt the blood rush to my face and knew that there wasn’t a patch
of skin on my body that wasn’t bright red from embarrassment.

“And maybe next time you’ll think twice
before swatting at a pixie,” he squealed from the far side of the
room, giggling and flying loops in the corner. I pulled my uniform
on while the rest of the room let out their amusement at my
discomfort.

“I have some good news for you, Seth,” said
Cahill, still smiling. “Whatever you and your brother did last
night had a positive effect on your mother. The healers have
reported a small but significant reduction in whatever is
disrupting her mind. And most importantly, she said something, just
a whisper. Neil was too far away to understand, but he knew it was
a distinct word. Very encouraging. The healers want to know what
you did.”

I released the breath I didn’t know I was
holding. “We just talked to her. Rambled about things. After they
got me started, stuff just came out. It couldn’t be anything any
different than you and Martin talk about on long trips or once he’s
back from school.”

Cahill barked a laugh out and said, “You’d be
surprised how hard it is to get him to talk to me, but I suppose
that is more my fault than his. I’m not the most accessible man for
a fourteen-year-old.” Martin’s jaw dropped at the statement.

“Who are you and what have you done with my
father?” Martin asked, facetiously. Cahill laughed again, heartily.
I guess he wasn’t used to his son making jokes with him, because he
was genuinely surprised at the question.

“When does the final battle begin?” Cahill
asked Kieran, standing. Martin stood up quickly with him.

“MacNamara said noon, but I have no idea who
the competition is,” said Kieran, standing with them.

“They’re a mixed team of Americans and Brits.
Regardless of the outcome, we will be leaving soon afterward and of
course, Olivia will remain in our care until you deem it necessary
to change that. You will always be welcome in our home,” Cahill
said as he reached out his hand to Kieran.

“Mr. Cahill,” I said as they turned to leave.
“I’m sorry, I know this is in extremely bad taste, but I have to
know, why are you helping me like this? I mean, there’s no way I
can possibly repay you for what you’re doing…”

“Seth,” Cahill started, thoughtfully, seeming
to take no offense in the question. He strummed his fingers along
the couch at his side rhythmically as he considered what to say.
“Over the last decade, I was called upon a few times by your father
to look into the whereabouts of a few people, seemingly quite
casually. Something he was quite good at, really. And as I
continued to look into the histories of these people and, indeed,
your father’s as well, I noticed a number of… let’s call them
coincidences. And at least two of these coincidences involved
Robert risking himself and literally saving my life in the process.
Further, each of the persons he looked for had a similar history.
Quite the conspiracy of good will your father was a party to.

“It was quite… eye-opening,” Felix Cahill
said. The conviction of his words was strong in his aura as he said
this. “You see, Seth, it’s not you who is indebted here.” Cahill
led a confused Marty out while I processed his speech. I wasn’t
sure I agreed with him that this was on Dad’s dime, but I also
wasn’t in a position to argue.

I plopped back down on the couch beside
Peter, rubbing the remaining sleep out of my face then pushing both
hands through my shaggy hair.