Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (78 page)

I opened the gate and waved them through. “I
was quite serious about taking the wards, Mr. Marchand. I will be
more than happy to hand over control so that I may go about my
business. But that person must be able to handle the wards and that
person has to ask. You know, simple courtesy.” Before either of
them could answer, I moved the car off the road by shoving a portal
around it, dropping it on the front end into the ditch across the
road. It made a nice, loud noise as it landed.

The timing couldn’t have been better as the
big diesel bus pulled into view, slowing noisily for the turn into
the school. It stopped just before the gate with me right at the
door. The door opened wide to show me the driver.

“John!” I called and bounded happily up the
steps. “Good to see you!” I extended my right hand to shake with
him because it was good to see a friendly face right then. Looking
back over the bus, there were about thirty men and women on board,
mostly those who worked the farms of the castle grounds but
certainly people I would want on my side of a fight.

“Good to see you, too, Seth,” he said,
shaking my hand briskly. “Is that Marchand steaming out there?”

“Yep,” I answered. “These our relief
crew?”

“Part of them, yes,” he said. “There are more
coming from other provinces. The headmaster of the school should be
back in a few hours with the head of Council Security.”

“Well, let’s get these guys settled in,
then,” I said cheerfully. “I’m sure Gordon and Martin are ready to
get home. It’s been a long, rough day for us and we’re all
exhausted.”

“I’m sure Marchand expects you all to stay
well into the night,” John said with a smirk.

“I guess it’s a good thing I wasn’t going to
ask him then, huh?” I responded. “You got two guys we can put on
the gate right off? Billy’s been up here for hours by himself. I
know he could use a break to eat, use a bathroom…”

“Too right,” he said, looking in the mirror
overhead and picking out two men, “Damon, Mark, you take gate duty
to start.” I ducked back out the door to see Marchand and Murrik
aiming for the bus.

“Billy,” I yelled. He was still standing in
the middle of the road, barely outside of the swing of the gates.
“You’re relieved!”

“Oh, thank God!” he yelled back, then took
off for the trees on the far side of bus at a run. “Gimme two
minutes.” Damon and Mark jumped off the bus to meet with me,
staring off into the woods after Billy with odd looks on their
faces. “Make that four minutes,” yelled Billy. They broke out
laughing when they realized what Billy was doing behind the trees.
That man must have had a bladder the size of Manhattan.

Marchand and Murrik climbed aboard the bus
while I connected Damon and Mark to the gate control structures.
After that, I leaned through the bus door and explained to John
where to go with the bus and where to meet up with the rest of
us.

“You’ll want to give the groundskeeper’s
house a wide berth, though,” I warned him. “It’s… unbelievably
gruesome.”

John stared hard at me. “I’ll do that,” he
said, but something about the way he said that meant he wouldn’t.
Maybe it was his newest passengers, who’d managed front row seats
and managed to clear the opposite side, presumably for Billy and
me.

“See ya there, John,” I said with a smile and
disappeared with Billy in tow.

We reappeared beside Peter. “That was the
smoothest ride I’ve ever felt,” said Billy, gruffly. Everything
Billy said sounded gruff.

“Is Marchand who he says he is?” I asked
Billy. Peter turned to us from watching the soldiers move around in
their cages, wide-eyed.

“Yeah, he is,” Billy said. “Total prick, too,
but you caught on t’that quick enough.”

“What’d he do?” Peter asked Billy cautiously.
I wasn’t sure exactly what he was asking, but Billy did.

“First he killed their car,” Billy said, the
hint of a grin starting on his face, “by driving one of his swords
into the engine block. Then, very politely mind you, threatened
their lives if they tried to take the wards from him again. Told
them to start minding their manners and dropped their dead car in a
ditch. All in about three minutes flat.”

“Well, they were rude to Billy and he didn’t
deserve it,” I said defensively. “And they were rude to me.”

Peter and Billy both started laughing at me,
attracting the attention of the Cahills and the Ferrins. On the
story’s third and final retelling the busload of people crested the
hill with John in the lead. Marchand and Murrik were lost in the
crowd somewhere, but all of them were disturbed in some manner.
Most were paled, clearly horrified by the experience. Others were
angry. John was difficult to read. I understood the spectrum of
emotions I saw, but I’d been there already, seen newer, fresher
horrors.

“I seem to have forgotten which side of the
road the groundskeeper’s house was on,” John said sedately as he
walked up. He took control of the situation quickly and quietly,
directing two of his men to Peter’s cell and two to Gordon’s. I
watched carefully as the four men slowly took control of the
interlocking fields of the soldiers’ cells and how they amended the
shapes into something they could control. I hadn’t realized that
Peter and Gordon were exerting that much effort until I watched
four men fight to maintain the same function.

“Are there any buildings that we should see
to first?” John asked me as Marchand stalked up behind him.

“Well,” I started, thinking, “I’ve only been
in the underclass dorms, which you walked past, so I assumed you
saw the bodies outside? There are more inside, on the third and
fifth floors. Then there’s a dead elf on the auditorium stage and
the remains of one in the conference room on the first floor of the
auditorium building. There’s a truckload of bombs in that room,
too.”

“Did you say elves?” Marchand asked,
brusquely, pushing his way into the conversation.

“Yes, two of them,” I said.

“Winter or Summer,” he asked.

“Neither,” I said.

“That can’t be. They have to be one or the
other,” Marchand asserted.

“And yet they weren’t,” said Peter. “There
are also some cages on the stage of the auditorium that should be
dismantled and destroyed immediately. Don’t even consider studying
them. They’re quite deadly.”

“You just don’t know what you’re talking
about,” snapped Marchand.

“How many times have you met with the Queens
of Faery, Mr. Marchand,” I asked him, moving directly in front of
him.

“What?”

“Hard of hearing? How many times have you met
with the Queens of Faery?” I asked again. “It’s not a difficult
question.”

“I’ve never had the distinction,” he
answered, drawing himself up tall.

“I have. Twice. It’s not something you
forget. As a result, I can safely say that these two elves did not
belong to either Queen of Faery. Am I making myself clear to you?”
I asked sternly. He nodded and remained silent. “Good,” I
continued, “Now let’s be preemptive in any further relations you
and I might have. You stop being a prick and I’ll stop putting you
in your place. How’s that sound?”

No, he wasn’t getting my point. He was
getting angry with me, the arrogant little snot. Billy and John
rescued me. Or him, depending on the point of view.

“They brought food,” said Billy from my
right, while John approached Marchand from his left, speaking
quietly to him in French. My attention to John and Marchand fell
away instantly as Billy played snake charmer to my cobra, leading
me up the terrace in the shade of the oak tree where a table was
set up with food and water. I sat down to eat in the grass between
Gordon and Ferrin, with Peter a couple of feet in front of me, and
watched John ordering his men about. It didn’t take long before the
four men holding the cells up and John were the only men left
outside the auditorium.

I was only listening vaguely to the women
talk and plan how they were going to cook and provide for the next
meal. These were Cahill’s people so I chimed into the conversation,
telling them which kitchens were untouched and usable, which
buildings weren’t horror-filled and could be used for bedding the
crews for the night. John was about to run them off but Gordon
interceded. I’d offered information, after all, and their questions
were innocuous. Calming, really, as they gave me something mundane
to think about. All too soon, the world would intrude again.

“Marchand is trying to decide who was still
here when the attacks started,” John told us. “To notify the
families of the deceased.”

“That’s good,” I said. “At least he’s trying
to be useful. There’s another busload of help coming through the
gate now. And… cattle trucks?” For a moment, I thought the wards
were malfunctioning. “Why cattle trucks?”

“We have to move ‘em somehow,” Billy said,
throwing a thumb over his shoulder at the cells.

“Where?” I asked.

“Not our problem,” muttered Gordon. John
chuckled at him.

The bus stopped beside the first and I felt a
slight tickle through the wards as someone touched them, seeking
the controller. Finally, someone was being polite.

“Be right back,” I said. Taking my empty bowl
for a refill of the stew the Angels from Heaven were serving us, I
walked up the hill to meet the bus. Cresting the top of the
terrace, I was treated instantly to a far more military bearing
from this group than John’s group of farmers. These men had driven
too close to the house, too, but they were steeled against it. They
used those feelings and images of horror to build higher walls. I
wished they were here hours ago.

The men followed one man in loose formation
around him. When he stopped, they spread out around us. It was kind
of eerie. The leader was a tall man, well built but his clothes hid
the fact. He, like the rest of his group, wore a uniform made of a
dull, black material that bore no insignia, though near the ground
the material did begin to take on the color of the grass slowly.
The uniforms bulged in a number of places that I assumed were
pockets.

“Mr. McClure?” he asked once we were close
enough. I nodded trying desperately to swallow. He smiled patiently
at me and waited a moment.

“Sorry,” I said, wiping my hand on my pants
then reaching out to shake. “I’ve only just had a chance to eat.
It’s been a long day already.”

“No problem,” he said mildly. “I am Thomas
Bishop, head security for the European Council. I’m here to take
some of the pressure off of you. From what Felix said, you’ve done
nearly miraculous rescue work here today.”

I mulled that over while taking another
spoonful of stew. “Gentlemen,” I said loudly, addressing the men
surrounding us, “Mr. Bishop and I will meet you at the prisoners’
cells at the bottom of the next hill.” I shifted us back to the
shadow of the Oak tree. Pointing to Ferrin, I said to Bishop, “That
man was here visiting his brother. At the start of the attack, he
hid three children from the Fae magic that collapsed the wards then
tried to take them on by himself. He survived a torture cage for
hours when he shouldn’t have survived minutes. That was
miraculous.” I pointed to Martin. “That fourteen-year-old boy
powered and held Ferrin’s veil while caught between two power
drains. The oscillations between the two amulets were frying his
brains, but he held that veil because he had his friend with him
and his friend was depending on him. That was miraculous. There are
five boys at a hospital someplace that were beaten within an inch
of their lives. They watched three of their classmates be raped,
and along with eight others, mutilated and dismembered. It will be
a miracle if they survive. And there are still bodies to find, Mr.
Bishop. If there are heroes in this, if there is any miracle here,
it’s the Ferrins, the Cahills, Jeff, and Jacob, not me. All I did
was kill a bunch of people.”

Bishop smiled ruefully at me. “Felix isn’t
one for exaggeration, but I thought in your case, he had. Would you
like for me to take the wards on now?”

“Very much so,” I said quickly, the relief of
the idea settling in fast. Peter made a quick hand signal behind
Bishop’s back and our group slowly began standing, stretching
nonchalantly, including the Ferrins. Bishop’s men streamed in
around us, heading first for the cages. Bishop quirked his head to
the side.

“I’m not sensing the controls,” he said to
me.

“Those were damaged,” I said, following his
power leads. “I assume by the initial Elven attack. Here…” I dumped
the wards on top of him, letting him have complete control
immediately. Then I sent everyone to the Cahill castle. Opened
portals for everyone right through the wards, easy as pie. The
wards didn’t see my power for some reason, though I suspected it
was because it didn’t see my aura, even when I was connected to it.
The relief of releasing the school’s wards was a tide of cold water
rushing over me.

Bishop was reeling. Literally flailing his
arms around trying to cope with the tremendous amount of
information the wards were giving him. I wondered briefly if the
“areas of interest” that I had kept in the forefront of the wards
would stay in the forefront with Bishop, but like Gordon said, “not
our problem.” He took a few minutes to get settled, then
concentrated on me again.

“Bombs?” he asked. “Marchand is here
already?” I nodded, grinning. He had the wards under control. “What
did you do to these wards, man? They’ve never been this strong.” I
just shrugged, still grinning. As far as I knew, they were the
same.

“If you don’t need me, I’m gonna go take a
nap. It’s been a long day,” I said.

“Oh, no, feel free,” he answered,
distracted.

I wondered idly if he felt me port out of the
campus. I also wondered if he knew I took the Colonel and the
captain with me… but not too hard.