Sons (Book 2)
Authors: Scott V. Duff
Copyright 2014 Scott Duff, all rights reserved
Cover design by Scott V. Duff
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Customs is a serious pain in the butt. You can exchange your own choice of expletives in there, so long as the intensity of aggravation goes up and not down. This was the third time Mike and Ian had been singled out for “special treatment” today. Come on, a twelve-year-old white, blond kid? What, is the
Sinn Fein
really active in the US now?
We passed through easily with the diplomatic passports that Marshall Harris had supplied us with last week, going through different gates with much shorter lines. The Ferrin brothers were a different matter. Ian’s passport had been used only once to get him into Ireland to Dunstan’s to go to school. After that, they traveled the more esoteric ways back to London when they went.
“Imagine what it’s gonna be like getting a work visa,” I grumbled behind him, wondering why the man to our left considered bathing a luxury he couldn’t afford. This was the second room we’d been moved to and they’d tried to separate us from the Ferrins. Each time, we followed their directions, leaving when told, then stepping through a portal to their side again once the Customs officer turned his back. We still didn’t want any of our people left alone, not until the war was over. I drew the New York duties. Worked for me. That left Kieran, Peter, and Ethan on luggage detail, loading up the car service’s van and waiting for us in the chilly November wind.
I lucked up. I may have been bored and frustrated, but at least I wasn’t bored, frustrated, and cold!
Two men entered the room, setting off the metal detector at the door, the first excitement in an hour. The first man wore blue slacks and a short-sleeved, white, starched shirt with a lanyard identification proudly proclaiming him a Customs officer. Two armed guards at the door attempted to detain the second man, but released him quickly, spotting the identification he held out and the Sig Sauer holstered on his left beneath his jacket. I recognized the ubiquitous blue suit as one of Harris’ men, Calhoun. His eyes glazed over for a moment as he scanned over the room, zeroing in on Mike. He started towards him, focusing, then paused a half-step when he saw me.
“Mr. Ferrin, Mr. McClure,” Calhoun called softly as if he didn’t have our attention already, “If you would come with me, I believe I can expedite your trip through Customs.” Calhoun nodded to me. We followed him to the door where the guards bristled into threatening poses again, one glaring at Calhoun and the second shifting back and forth to Mike and the other Customs man. Calhoun began emitting a low growl from the back of his throat. Apparently he had less patience with officious bureaucracy than we did.
“Daniel,” Calhoun called without turning around. I did. I wanted to see what Daniel was doing. The man who came in with him was arguing quietly with the counter man who was watching the room along with the guards. There were only four others outside of us, spaced around the small room waiting to be questioned. It was a good thing we didn’t have a connecting flight to get to. We’d have missed it by now. Calhoun’s impatience was catching.
“Not
a
secretary, you dumb ass!” we heard Daniel whisper hoarsely, exasperated. “
The
Secretary! Now let. Them. Go!” The first man’s eyes got wide then he waved the guards on the door off of us. Calhoun grunted at them and led us out, stopping just outside till Daniel met us with the Ferrins’ passports and visas, all appropriately stamped and sealed and crap. Daniel disappeared back inside the room and Calhoun led us on a merry chase through the warren of hallways.
“Mr. Calhoun, will Mr. Ferrin continue to have these issues
every
time he goes through Customs?” I asked as we entered a large open concourse of people. “It’s pretty annoying and it might become fairly regular once things settle down.”
“God, I hope not,” he muttered, stopping to get his bearings in the terminal before venturing out into the flow of people in JFK airport. Well, in
this
terminal of JFK. In a more normal voice, he said, “We’re removing him from the ‘No-Fly’ lists now. We weren’t aware that he was on them to start with or how he got there.” He started pushing through the crowd at the first gap that came up and we followed him all the way through the terminal to the curb outside.
Mike and Ian kept up with us only through Mike’s tenacity and tight grip on Ian’s hand. Ian was looking everywhere
but
at us, trusting that his brother would keep him in tow and spending his time seeing everything he could as fast as he could. This was his first trip to what he considered a foreign country and he was excited.
At the curb, it was obvious that my brothers weren’t there. They would have been fairly obvious against the normal auras of the travelers moving around, getting into cabs and shuttles. Kieran, Ethan, and Peter would shine like searchlights at midnight, even at noon. At least to me. Not to the Ferrin brothers or to Calhoun. To them, my brothers and I might as well have been walking houseplants. We called it the mannequin problem, even though most of the time it was a very convenient problem to have.
“Where are the guys?” I asked, mostly to myself, searching the sidewalk on the far side of the road, just in case I missed them somehow.
“They went ahead to the hotel,” Calhoun said as a long black limo with tinted windows pulled up in front of us. “I’m to drop you off there.”
I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and turned it on.
“Cool! A limousine!” Ian cried and started for the door Calhoun held open.
Mike jerked him back, scowling at him. “Aink,” he barked out the non-word. “We wait for Seth to check it out first.”
I smiled at them, waiting for the phone to boot up. Then I pushed on the anchoring spot in my head. Another of the new acquisitions of the past two months, the anchor was a single point caught behind a lock of magic as old as the world itself: the Pact. The Pact magic had fallen into place onto the lock my father had placed in my head as a baby and sat dormant for years. Until I met by brother in the forest of Alabama in the middle of the night two months ago, I didn’t even know it was there. I didn’t even know magic really existed until then. Well, I knew I could make a little noise and a little light
as if
by magic, but that was all. I didn’t know why or how. Till that night.
All I really remember about that night was the naked weirdo in the woods and the big black dog that attacked us. And hurting like hell!
When I woke up two days later, I had a brother and a huge glowing globe with little black dot on it. And something that looked
exactly
like me. This led to massive changes in my life over the next two months, involving a lot of traveling, a lot of learning, and a lot of killing.
My phone rang with Ethan’s name popping up on the display. Thumbing the answer button, I said, “You left us here?”
“It was cold!” Ethan cried in his defense. “Calhoun said it would take at least an hour to work his way through. You want me to come get you now?”
I nodded to Mike and they climbed in the limo. “Nah, I think Ian wants to see the city so we’ll just ride in.”
“Well, don’t let it take too long,” Ethan said, chuckling. “We’ve been pressed into dinner plans tonight and guess who’s the guest of honor?”
“Oh, Lord,” I grumbled. I didn’t like where this was leading.
“Hey, got it in one!” Ethan exclaimed, laughing at me.
“What?” I asked, confused, climbing into the limo behind the Ferrins and falling into the seat beside Mike. That gave Ian the right side windows even though he kept trying for the left side. He was used to London streets and left-lane driving. Calhoun sat facing us and closed the door.
“Not a cell phone conversation, Seth,” he said, still laughing. “See ya when you get here.” He disconnected, then I made the connection he was alluding to, the “Lord,” and I grimaced and shoved the cell phone into my pocket again. Another of the several strange acquisitions I’d made was a title: Lord Daybreak, the Liege-Killer. At least the last part of it was true. I had killed a king, an elf-king, nasty old bugger he was. Not on the face of him, but past the smooth as silk veneer, as nasty and vicious a beast as ever was born.
I was able to steal the Rat Bastard’s power source away from him, a huge, magnificent fountain of energy that shot up and fed the landscape for hundreds of miles around him. It was a humbling experience to stand in the fountain’s presence and watch the energy flow, a beautiful sight to behold. I capped it with a crippled realm that didn’t have enough energy to build itself and overnight it blossomed into a positively spectacular world. A world that called to me. I stood with my family at the very center of that world and watched the very first sunrise that world had ever seen. And it called to me by name: Daybreak. And I answered it.
We spent all of that first day exploring my new world, our exhaustion forgotten. Together and in pairs, we ventured through the Palace and the huge valley below exploring everything we could. We moved the doorway closer to the bridge I’d made, away from the Pacthome’s gate. Ethan and Peter jumped back to the Cahill’s and ferried more people through once we figured out the time difference. Not many people, mind you, but Gordon and the Cahill’s stayed for quite some time, then Billy and John in stages. We didn’t want to empty the castle, after all, just give everyone a nice place to be for a while.
The only thing we didn’t allow was questions. Only because we didn’t have any answers and we told everybody that from the beginning. We already had more questions than we had answers for. Like how the elves knew my new name. The brownies who came over with us, I understood. The land basically screamed my name until I got there and claimed it. Once I had, it calmed down and, well, we bonded. But how did the Queens know?
Within hours of my inheritance of the Rat Bastard’s power, they had emissaries on my doorstep announcing to the human world that I was suddenly a Faery King. Half of the human world already didn’t trust my brothers and me since they couldn’t see us and now the Queens were announcing that I was on
their
side. At least the emissaries were stupid enough to blow the first meeting. I tossed them off the Cahill’s property because they’d dropped spies off on the Cahills’ land, hurried along with an impressive display of ley magic from Cahill’s younger son, Marty.
The Queens would not be happy with them. I wondered idly about the punishments. If they’d gone against the Queens wishes, and I think they had, they’d be paying for it for a long time to come. Next Thursday should prove very interesting.
Saturday afternoon, though, was still weighing heavily on us. Transcontinental flights just weren’t fun, even with Ian’s exuberance. At least this time I had Ethan to help with the Faraday cage on the commercial flight. And it was considerably easier on me this time. I could actually maintain the field around the plane
and
remain aware of the cabin. With a little more practice, I might be able to talk instead of just look around.
I was glad I got this leg of the trip with Mike and Ian. I remembered my first trip to New York with my parents. Seeing the mile high buildings for the first time, it really did look like they were actually scraping at the sky to me. And standing at the top of the Empire State Building and looking out over the city sprawl, seeing the river and the huge ships in the harbor looking so small. It was fun watching Ian with the same eagerness that I had then.
And that was my first clue that something was wrong. The Empire State Building was on the wrong side of the limo. It should have been on Ian’s side, not mine. We weren’t headed for New York, but out into Queens. I looked at Calhoun, calmly sitting in front of me, staring out the window, relaxed. Was he aware we were going the wrong way? I pushed out further to the driver, looking at his aura. He seemed to be a perfectly normal forty-year-old man performing a perfectly normal daily job. His picture matched the ID for the car service license on the dashboard. Nothing looked wrong, except we were traveling in the wrong direction.
The only other idea I had was to look at the car, so as we traveled at seventy miles an hour down the Long Island Expressway, I pushed my senses out and around and looked at the long, black car. It was quite a shock to see the heavily scarred roof. I should have seen or felt the heavy magic seared onto the top, even if it was above the driver’s compartment. My conversation with Ethan must have really distracted me.
I stretched myself out while I pulled my senses back in, tapping Calhoun’s foot lightly to get his attention. He looked up, meeting my eyes. I looked at the driver and back to him, then left to New York and back to him. He straightened up in his seat, startled. I reached over and tapped Ian on the shoulder, motioning for them both to lean in when they turned.
“Ian,” I whispered loud enough for both to hear, “I need you to go stay with Marty for a couple of hours. We might have problem here.”
“Why?” they both asked at once.
“We’re going the wrong way,” I answered quietly. “And there’s some wicked looking sigils above the driver’s head I didn’t see earlier. I just don’t like how this is adding up and I want Mike to know you’re safe, okay? We need to let this happen and see if we can follow it.”
Ian was instantly afraid and I hated that. He didn’t deserve this; it was totally unfair to him, but life wasn’t fair. He threw his arms around Mike’s neck and squeezed. “You be careful, Michael!” he urged his brother.