Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (76 page)

I pulled back out to myself and touched the
Night sword tentatively to the side of the cage. It sparked lightly
against the Sword. I followed the trail of the spark back and
carved the sigil off the bar that started the current flow. Then I
followed the trail up to each occurrence of that sigil, again
carving off each instance of it until it was completely removed
from the brass bars. Ferrin sighed heavily in relief when I sliced
of the last one, breaking the connection between the cage and him.
There was a huge backwash of power from him as the cage lost its
ability to hold its energy within the cell. He’d been using all his
strength to push back against the cage and as it lost its cohesion,
the energy he was pushing had somewhere to go finally.

The door to the cage swung open on its own.
Ian was watching me, eagerly waiting for my permission to help his
brother. A quick nod from me and he was greased-lightning in
helping Ferrin to crawl out of the cage. I repeated the procedure
on the second cage to release the other man. He was in far worse
condition than Ferrin, barely alive and breathing.

I tapped my earpiece. “Peter?”

“Yeah?” he answered.

“I’m about to send you another survivor in
need of medical attention and the Ferrin brothers. Then I’m going
after the rest of them,” I said. “Can you handle it?”

“All I can do is stabilize them for a while
but yeah,” he said in my ear. “You sure you don’t want help?”

“I’d love some company,” I answered. “If you
think Gordon can handle that alone.”

“Well, funny you should mention that,” he
said. That sounded ominous enough for me to look out over the field
to see what was happening. Gordon was sitting on the grass next to
Martin, both facing away from the still active cell. Close by were
the five beaten boys I didn’t yet know, either laying back or
sitting up, interspersed with the boys I did know. They were
talking quietly to each other, waiting and fearing I wouldn’t come
back and something awful—more awful—was just around the corner.
What was wrong with the cell? The walls were still up and active,
containing the men, wait… None of them were alive.

“After you left, Gordon was making them
disarm. Had them pile their weapons in a corner, then he melted
them to slag. Rinse and repeat. Shortly after your last two, some
idiot yelled out something about us being hellspawn and tried to
lob two hand grenades over the walls of the cell. His neck was
snapped before the grenades bounced off the first wall. His friends
didn’t appreciate what he did in the least, seeing as they already
knew the walls were too high.”

“Huh,” was all I could say to that.
Twenty-one people were dead because of one idiot. “We tried.”

Two men turned down the hall coming to the
auditorium. I had less than a minute before they’d be in the room
with us. I had to get these three out of harm’s way.

“Up and at ‘em, boys. Time to leave,” I said,
slowly lifting the hurt teacher up off the floor. “Ian, help me out
here, please.” Ian scurried over and took the teacher’s other side
so we were able to get him to close to standing. “Ferrin, come take
his other side, so I can send you three out. Hurry, we’re running
short on time.”

“No,” he growled, “I can help you take these
fuckers.” He was weaving in place as he said this.

“Ferrin,” I said irritably, slamming the
doors closed on the men trying to come into the auditorium. “I know
you’re quite capable. We need you to help protect those less able
to protect themselves.”

“Protection isn’t my forte,” he grumbled.

“Maybe,” I said, looking pointedly at Ian,
“but there are nine kids out there that need it and your forte is
adapting, so adapt.”

He hobbled over to us quickly, grumbling the
entire way. “You are a bossy little cu…” I skipped the three of
them outside before he finished his statement and threw the
auditorium doors open, letting the two men banging on them in. One
fell over his own feet from the change in momentum, the other one
rushed in almost on top of him. I just stood at the edge of the
stage with my hands clasped behind my back, grinning at them.

“Take me to your leader,” I said, still
grinning when they finally got enough together to threaten me in
unison. They ogled the empty cages for a second, then waved their
guns back the way they came. One took the lead and one followed
me.

“Seth, I’ll be there in a minute,” Peter said
in my ear. “And Gordon’s got another cell set up for you. You don’t
even have to think about where it is. He’s got a chute rigged so
you can drop ‘em same place as before.”

“Cool,” I responded, then added with a
sing-song voice, “Incoming.” I skipped the guy in back over the
cell and watched outside as he fell from thirty feet in the air,
then hit an invisible slide at twenty and tumbled to the ground.
That had to hurt.

The leader whirled around, taking my warning
for him and took aim for my chest. I slid a portal around the
muzzle about three inches and cast the end pointing out into his
face, just like the others, but this time the effect only operated
when he aimed at me. It meant I’d have to keep track of him for a
bit, but, hey, he was pointing a lethal weapon at me.

“I’d suggest that you point that elsewhere,”
I told the man, cocking my head to the right to see past the
barrel, “you’ll only be hurting yourself.” The shield of the Stone
would hold up to a lot more energy than the bullets his weapon
would fire, even in this diluted form.

The man jerked his rifle down angrily.
“Whatya do wit’ Spense?” he growled.

I cocked my head again and with absolute
serenity said to the man, “Far less than you people did to the
groundskeepers, to little boys and to little girls. Now move
along.”

He looked startled, but turned on his heel
and led me down the hall, turning left to go up the stairs. Peter
opened the door for us at the top of the stairs, again startling
the soldier. I tripped the portal open into his face again.

“If you’d prefer,” I offered cheerfully, “we
could completely disarm you. That way you couldn’t hurt
yourself.”

“Oh, let me,” Peter interrupted with a
childish glee. “Gordon showed me a couple of really neat magnetics
I hadn’t seen before.”

The man’s head snapped back and forth between
us. “I’d like to see you try,” he said with as much bravado as he
could muster. He had confidence in himself but he didn’t understand
what he was up against and it showed. I wonder if there was a
wizard’s version of poker.

“The ferrous blends are the easiest and I
think we might be able to link in the portals you’re using,” Peter
said. As he spoke, he pushed a wave of energy over the man that he
more than likely wouldn’t feel as it resonated too low in our
spectral range for light and sound. It did, however, provide enough
differentiation to latch a spell to or to wrap a spell around, like
a portal. Blocks of metal hummed quite nicely for us and provided a
ghostly image of the object without too much fuss.

“Give it a try,” I said. “It sounds neat. And
the ultimate in pickpocket techniques should I ever have the need.
Well, if it works. Go ahead. Kick the mule.”

“Kick the mule?” the soldier asked. “What the
hell does that mean?”

“He means let’s get started. We pulled him
from the woods just recently,” said Peter smiling sympathetically.
“He has a different way of saying things. He is suggesting that I
go ahead and take this out of your hands and dispose of it.” Peter
was holding the man’s rifle up to him in example. He paled rapidly
as he realized he’d lost his grip on the weapon.

“Cool!” I said. “What about stuff like the
knife in his boot?”

“Give it a try,” suggested Peter as he pulled
the man’s pistol from the holster on his waist. I tugged on the
metal knife, slipping the dimensional portal spell over its cool,
slick surface and slipped it through space to my hand.

“Hm. I suppose with some practice I could get
the sheath, too,” I said, “but, that’s still pretty cool.” The
paramilitary man was backed against the door we’d just come through
and was beginning to come apart as we basically undressed him piece
by piece. I was familiar with the feeling, but I wasn’t going to
let him know that.

“Shall we continue?” I said to him, waving a
hand to the hall.

He was hesitant to move, but he decided we
weren’t going to give him much choice in the matter and led us to
the first floor conference room. Posted outside the room were two
guards that took notice instantly that our guide was weapon-less
and Peter was holding several rather loosely in his hands, as if he
wasn’t sure what to do with them. They raised their rifles, only to
find them pointing back at them between their eyes.

“Now that’s a neat trick!” exclaimed Peter.
“Excellent self-defense. Puts the onus totally on the enemy. I like
it!”

“I thought it had a certain elegance to it,”
I said, looking into the conference room. The outside walls of the
room were thick glass on three sides, giving it a nice view of the
campus on two sides and the hall on the other. In the center of the
room was a large table, capable of seating sixteen to twenty
people. At one end of the room stood a chalkboard with a terrain
map of the area attached with masking tape. A similar map was laid
out on the table with little red and blue boxes arranged on top.
There were six occupants in the room, five men and an elf. The elf
wore a complex glamour that I didn’t quite understand. I mean, I
didn’t understand what I was supposed to see. These men were
dressed differently than the others we’d encountered. They wore tan
uniforms, still lacking any national affiliations, but they did
have ranks: two lieutenants, two captains, a major, and a colonel.
The elf was one of the captains and he was trying to be
unobtrusive.

“Time to go bye-bye, guys,” I said to the
three men, knowing that they had no idea what I meant by that. Then
I sent them to Gordon’s new cell, leaving their rifles to fall on
the floor in front of us, for safety’s sake. With Peter and
Gordon’s new trick, that was possible now. Wish I’d thought of it.
Gordon would take care of their other weapons. Peter led the way
into the room, tossing our guide’s weapons in a nearby chair on the
way in.

“Gentlemen,” he called loudly, “If you would
be so kind as to cease and desist in your efforts to maim children,
we will cease in our efforts in shoving your balls down your
throats.”

All six of them stared hard at us for about
three seconds then broke out in raucous laughter. We glanced at
each other and let them have their moment of bravado. The elf
captain was the first to recover, but we knew he was faking it
anyway. The colonel was next. He sat on the table at the end of the
room, looking at us while the rest wound down. None of them went
for weapons believing they were in control of the situation
still.

“Boy, you couldn’t handle your own balls much
less mine,” the colonel growled at Peter.

Peter just shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. As
usual, I’m the lightweight here. I’ve only killed three of your men
today. Gordon’s got seventeen on his scorecard, but one of your own
men helped a lot there.” He leaned on the table and looked over his
shoulder to me and said, “What’s your total for the day?”

“Just here or total?” I asked as innocently
as possible.

“Just here,” he said, grinning.

“Let’s see,” I said and pantomimed moving
through the campus. “The one in the auditorium made twenty-three,
with one maiming.”

The colonel snorted. “You expect me to
believe that.”

“The captain knows I’m not joking,” I said,
“And your map could use updating.”

That startled the colonel. “What does he
mean?” he growled to the captain maintaining the map.

“Oh, not him,” I said. “The elf. He felt the
spikes in the ward when I fried the rapists.” I leaned across the
table to examine the map, then pointed out several things for the
captain. “You no longer have men in those areas. Oh, I forgot about
the sentries at the front gate. Make that twenty-five. Also, those
are out of place and that one and that one show too many people at
those locations.”

The colonel stared at me while the other
officers turned to the other captain, who was backing to the glass
wall, waving his hands before him frantically in denial and shaking
his head. “He’s lying! You know me! You’ve known me for years!”

“You’re not leaving this room, elf, so don’t
try it,” I warned him. I could feel him reaching to twist the power
for a jump to Faery, bailing out of his mission here. It wouldn’t
do him any good. The ward had a nice, tight Faery lock built into
it. As long as he didn’t know where the holes in the ward were,
he’d be stuck. He stopped against the thick glass wall, shaking.
The two lieutenants had pulled their pistols and faced him there,
pinning him to the wall. One of them had pulled out their handy
amulets to check the elf’s aura. It came up blank. The lieutenant
turned to glower back at us.

“What’s your point?” I asked. “It shows
nothing on us either and that’s obviously wrong.” I proved the
point by jerking the amulet out of his hand and across the room to
my hand.

“Colonel, you and your group are responsible
for attacks against this school that have resulted in injury and
deaths. Your uniforms show no credentials whatsoever. Am I to
presume you are waging war on a secondary school?” asked Peter.

“A terrorist school!” the colonel yelled.

“Says who?” asked Peter, then pointed to the
elf, “Him?”

“Our client,” said the colonel, more calmly
but still with plenty of anger.

“Ah,” said Peter sarcastically. “You’re
mercenaries. Must’ve cost a pretty penny to get eighty to ninety of
you together so fast, huh?”

“Boy, you’re not here to talk logistics,” the
major interrupted, turning away from the elf. “What do you
want?”