Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God (89 page)

Both Peter and Dillon jumped in surprise.
“Seth, stop that!” Peter called out loudly, his hand shooting out
to my shoulder. Just as suddenly, he was laughing hard and falling
into a chair before he fell on the floor. Dillon was leaning on his
desk, pale and shocked at the display. He was also starting to be
afraid of us. Too much strangeness for him, I supposed.

“I had a dream like that once,” gasped Peter
as his laughter slowed. Dillon flashed him a look I couldn’t
decipher and his emotions were roiling too much for me to pin down
right then. “That is a good point, I guess,” Peter said.

“It looks like I won’t be meeting your other
friends tonight, Peter,” I said. “We need to figure out what’s
going on here and disarm the situation before someone gets hurt.”
Someone like your other friends. Dillon. Us.

“We need to know their intent,” Peter said.
“How many of them are there and what kind of collateral damage they
are willing to commit to get to their goal. How do we do that?”

“Your pigeon’s on the move,” Dillon said
quietly from the desk. We both turned to the monitors to see
Ferrin’s fuzzy-headed body slowly moving past the bar and around
toward the back side of the dance floor, away from the table of
four tails. Two of the four stood, splitting up and slowly flanking
each side of the gyrating, flashing madness.

“Dillon, can you bring up a floorplan of this
building on that monitor?” I asked, pointing at the big monitor
behind us.

“Somewhat,” he mumbled, looking down at his
remote in thought. He turned to the keyboard and hit several keys
upside down, then he went back to the remote for more. He brought
up five architectural design scans. Two floors melded together in
several places, creating one big area except where structurally
necessary. The building was converted and adjusted many times over.
The three of us huddled around the big monitor.

“We are here,” Dillon said, pointing to a
room on the third floor. His apartment took a third of the floor
space with the rest used as storage and access to equipment below,
like the lights. I didn’t see direct access from his apartment to
that area at all. “Ferrin is here and his tails roughly here and
here and here,” Dillon said. He was still disturbed as he pointed
out these positions for us but he was coping now.

“We need to see one of them,” muttered Peter
to himself. “Direct line of sight, without them seeing us first.
How do we do that?”

“People who do magic, mages or wizards or
whatever you call them, see the world differently than you do,” I
told Dillon. “When these people look at other people, they see an
aura around them, sort of like a thermographic image that shows a
lot of different aspects of that person. Depending on the
sensitivity of the mage, he can read that aura to tell things about
that person. Another mage’s aura, though, is obvious. It’s quite a
bit brighter, like comparing a candle to a hundred-watt light bulb.
That’s not saying the mage is better, mind you, just that moving
energy around increases the brightness considerably.

“Peter and I have the exact opposite
problem,” I continued to explain. “For whatever reason, what my
brother is teaching us is hiding our auras completely. We can hide
in a room full of furniture, but we stand out in a room full of
people. The mannequin problem.”

“How… odd,” was all Dillon could come up
with. I couldn’t disagree with the assessment. “Does Ferrin have
the same problem, then?”

“No,” replied Peter, “just the family.” I
found the comment intriguingly pleasing.

“But he should be able to tell if those four
are mages or not, right? And you need to know that?” he asked.
“Tell me what else you need from him and I’ll go ask.”

“No, you can’t get involved,” Peter objected.
“It could get dangerous.”

“The way you two are acting now says it’s
dangerous now,” he said, rising to his feet. “Is it? Or are you
just being a drama queen?”

Peter grimaced. “The last time somebody
followed one of us, it ended violently. They didn’t fare well
against Seth. A lot of people died.”

“Blame me!” I said defensively. “You and
Gordon took care of your share of the violence.”

“The lion cub roars,” Peter murmured with a
grin, then he sobered, looking at Dillon. “Okay, you’re right,
Dillon. It’s already dangerous, but let’s make this as danger free
as we can get it. Go change into something less… ‘you’ while Seth
and I decide what you need to find out from Ferrin.”

“Less ‘me’?” Dillon asked, incredulous.

“Just pretend your last trick is beating on
your door,” Peter said, snarkily.

“That’s what I pay Corey for,” Dillon replied
with equal cattiness, crossing his arms on his chest. I definitely
wasn’t understanding what they were actually talking about any
better than their relationship, because they both seemed to be
enjoying this. And I had no idea what a trick was or why it would
be knocking on Dillon’s door.

I tried one. “Go make yourself less hot,
Dillon.”

“Now he’s a good boy,” Dillon said. “That I
understand.” He strutted out of the room, turning slightly at the
door to angle his arms out so he didn’t have to relax his tensed
biceps. Peter watched him through the glass walls until he
disappeared into the closet in his bedroom.

I picked up the remote and studied it for a
minute. The interface was simple on the first glance. But certain
motions on the screen brought up different menu options that
quickly became confusing. I was able to control the positioning of
certain cameras, though, and that would do until Dillon came
back.

“You’re still carrying a torch for him,
aren’t you?” I asked quietly. I didn’t know how well Dillon could
hear into this room so I didn’t want my voice to carry far.

Peter’s attention snapped back to me gently
and he smiled. “Yeah, to some degree, I suppose I always will love
him,” he said. “Don’t tell him I said that. There just wasn’t
enough right to hold us together, is all.”

“Well, maybe someday,” I said
optimistically.

“Why Seth McClure,” he said with mock
surprise, falling into a chair. “A romantic? I would never have
imagined.”

I snickered. “So when do I get to meet some
of the stereotypes?”

“Damn, Seth, there are half a dozen of ‘em on
the screens right now,” he said, pointing at the middle row.

All I saw were a bunch a guys in leather. In
odd places. I knew there was some sort of fetish associated to it.
I think that at the moment, I had too many other things going on to
worry about someone else’s sexual appetites. “On to more concrete
issues then?”

Sitting up in his seat, he ticked off points
on his hand as we said them, “If he knows he’s being followed…”
One.

“Normal or magical…” I said. Two.

“How many does he know about…” He said.
Three.

“How many are outside…” I said. Four. “Wait,
who exactly are they after, anyway?”

“Well,” Peter said, cautiously, “if he knows
anything at all about them in the first place, it’s possible he’s
in with them, after all. I barely know him at all and you’ve had
two incidents with him that I wasn’t present for. One of those
times, he was trying to kidnap you. How much do you trust him?”

“This bloke tried to kidnap you?” Dillon
exclaimed from the doorway. “Let the wolves have at him, then!” We
both looked at him and were more surprised by his looks than his
reaction. He was very “un-Dillon” right then. He wore baggy jeans
that barely hung on his hips and showed a few inches of his dark
blue designer name boxers. He wore a light blue, nondescript work
shirt with the name “Bob” ironed on and peeking out behind the worn
silk jacket of what I assumed was a local sports team of some kind.
He finished his disguise with some dirty canvas trackers and a
ballcap for the same team as the jacket he wore. Somehow, he’d
manage to look like he’d gained twenty pounds and lost a couple of
inches of height, too. All in all, it looked like a pretty
effective disguise to me.

Peter, on the other hand, was drooling. I
elbowed him. “Um, yeah, Dillon, that’s perfect,” he said, trying
desperately to recover his grace.

“We may need to recognize, though, that we
might not find out anything at all here,” I said. “We may just have
to grab Ferrin and run.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. “It might be best for
everybody, but that would really suck for us.”

“Why? What’s wrong with that?” Dillon
asked.

“We don’t know what they’ll do here after we
leave, for one thing,” Peter said. “For another, we’re involved in
a war right now, Dillon, and they’re the enemy that we know nothing
about.”

“A war. Now you’re just blowin’ smoke up my
ass,” he said in disbelief.

“Close to three hundred people died in the
last week over this, Dillon,” Peter said. “Some of those people
were children. I couldn’t be more serious.” They stared at each
other for a long moment. Dillon gave in first.

“Aw’ight, then,” he said softly. “Can’t you
just magic the information out of them?”

“I don’t know of any way, but I’m sure they
exist,” Peter said slowly. Then he looked at me expectantly. I
didn’t know what he was getting at.

“What?”

“Well, you know my life’s story…” He let the
sentence hang there. And it hung there to appall me. My jaw dropped
and Dillon, who didn’t—couldn’t—understand what Peter meant, took a
step back and to the side. If Dillon couldn’t tell how mad that
made me, then Peter could. I certainly made no attempt to hide it,
or how badly it hurt. He was mentally backpedaling furiously,
trying to come up with the right thing to say to placate me. Tall
order, I thought. He hadn’t figured out why it ticked me off
yet.

“Go home, Peter,” I said, tightly. “Go home
and think about all the ways that thought is wrong.” I sent him
back to his room at the Cahill’s. If he objected, I didn’t feel it
and if the Cahill’s wards were up, I didn’t feel those either. I
was just too damn mad. How could he ask me to do that to someone
knowing how I felt when I had to do it to him? I turned and kicked
the wall behind me hard, at the same time yelling, “Damn it!” The
fake marble shattered, engulfing my foot at least three inches.
Dillon gasped behind me.

I just stood with my forehead against the
wall breathing heavily and trying to calm myself with my foot in
the wall for a few minutes before trying to extricate myself.
Dillon finally got up the nerve to ask, “What did you do to
Peter?”

“I sent him home,” I answered as calmly as
possible, still facing away from him. I didn’t want him to see the
tears running down my face, though I wasn’t sure how long I could
hide that.

“Is he coming back?”

“Not tonight,” I said. “Well, at least not
without help and even then it’ll take time. I still need to help
Ferrin.” I turned around and wiped the tears out of my eyes. I
needed to help Ferrin and if Dillon turned me out because I booted
Peter out then I’d just deal with it. “Are you still going to
help?”

“Um, yeah, I suppose,” he said cautiously.
“You gonna tell me what that was all about?”

I shook my head no. “Let Peter explain it,” I
said, hoarsely. “Maybe by that time, he’ll understand why it was so
reprehensible.”

“Ha, that’s my Pete,” he said with a small
smile. “He always did know just the wrong thing to say at times.
Hoof and mouth disease.” He caught sight of me on the monitors.
“You’re visible now.”

“Yeah, Peter was doing that. It’s a conscious
act, not something that just happens. I don’t know how to do it
yet. Hell, I don’t know how to do much of anything yet, but
fight.”

“Okay, well, the plan really hasn’t changed
that much, has it?” Dillon asked. “We’re just a man down. I go down
and find out if he knows he’s being followed. You watch. If it
looks like he’s in on it, you rescue me. You think you can do that?
Rescue me from him if he’s a bad apple?”

“I’ll do better than that,” I said with a
smile. Touching his chest with my fingertips, I coated him with a
thin shield then isolated the power feed in my mind and sent it out
to be continuously fed from a battery, like I’d done with Ethan.
“That should keep you safe until I can get to you.” The Stone
hummed in agreement.

“What is it? It feels like there’s something
crawling all over me suddenly,” he said, shifting nervously in
place.

“An energy shield,” I said. “It’ll help stop
most things. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t duck and run, though.” I
glanced back at the monitors. “Damn, he’s moved again.” Dillon took
the remote out of my hand and started scanning quickly with the
cameras. He was faster with it than I was.

“There he is,” he said. “We gotta do this now
before we lose the chance. I’m going down now. You run into my
closet and grab a cap and jacket like I’m wearing and come back
here. If he sees them and they’re magical, I’ll head for the back
rooms. If they’re not magical, I’ll head across the dance floor.
Sound good?”

“Sounds risky, but I don’t have a better
idea,” I said.

“I can’t have Peter saying I didn’t take care
of you, now can I,” he said then turned out the door and down the
hall purposefully. I crossed the hall just as he stepped into the
elevator. He was scared, that was easy to see, but determined.
Crossing his bedroom, I entered the… well, the clothing store he
called a closet. It was at least half the size of his bedroom and
had two full-length mirrors on either end. The most recently
rummaged area had a label on the shelf above it that actually read
“Grunge Sports.” This whole section was Grunge something. I grabbed
the same team Dillon wore and headed back. Didn’t want to create
some sort of issue with bystanders by supporting the wrong team in
the wrong city by accident. Sports fans can be rabid.

I got a good sense of where Dillon was in the
building with the shield I held around him. He had just stepped out
of the elevator into the hallway downstairs. I tapped at the remote
trying to get a shot of the double doors that he would come out of.
Ferrin had moved again while I was getting the jacket and it took a
few minutes to find him. He stood beside the dance floor again,
scanning the people. One of his tails had gotten closer. The two at
the table had kept their vantage point and were directly across
from him now. The fourth guy was moseying around the far side
toward the third, in no hurry. I still didn’t have faces on any of
the four and Ferrin’s was never again clear past that brief
glimpse.