Sons (Book 2) (21 page)

“Oh, um, yes, sir,” Springer managed to say, staring at the squared edges of the rectangular portal.  Messner studied the lines of the portal carefully without a word, mouth agape.  He stepped away from the hole and out of our line of sight, wheeling his arm at something.  The nose of a large, black step van appeared slowly through the portal, tires scraping the road and shocks groaning as the van crept over the uneven terrain of the rutted dirt road. 

The second van pulled through the hole just as we got to the car and the first van pulled up to the house.  I started to relax a little.  We would be done with this place soon.  Kieran, Ethan, and Mike would be coming home and we could get dinner and I could work on the keys and call it a night.  I was tired and did not want to keep thinking and dealing with this.

I’m young, though, and really don’t understand about bureaucracies.

We were still there four hours later.  My attitude had traveled decidedly downhill in that time, from tired and aggravated to simmering anger.  At least it was directed anger.  Messner and Springer gave that to us, to all of us.  I called a halt to their procedures when they told me to tell them what happened a third time.  A slight push into their memories told me that they would prod and push through the same events five and six times, changing the questions very little each time, as part of their “SOP.” 

I told them both in front of Peter that every time they asked us the same question that they’d be climbing down from the roof.  They didn’t understand the threat, but Peter grinned.  By the third time one of them had to jump off the house, I thought they had it, but no, it took twice more, and they tried to argue the last one.

It wasn’t a total waste of time, though.  The guys brought take-out from New York back when they came over.  Ethan shot through the anchor, appearing out of nowhere in front of Messner as he approached to annoy me again.  I’d barely felt his presence before he introduced himself to the FBI Agent.

“Hi, I’m Ethan,” I heard, turning to see Ethan blocking Messner’s path as he skidded slightly in the road.  “We’re having dinner now, so come back in an hour or so.”  Whatever Ethan put into that, I needed to bottle and sell, because Messner turned around and went back to the house without a word.  He turned around and grinned at me.  The portal back to my house formed like a wake in the air behind him as he walked into the grass to us.

Ian was perched on the chair backward eagerly watching the wall for the connection to take.  “He’s ready now!” Ian yelled off to his left to someone, then waved to us through the portal, grinning.

“Make yourself useful,” Mike said, appearing in front of the chair.  “Grab some cartons and help out, now.”  Mike walked through the portal and dropped a load of boxes down beside the road and headed back through.  Ian came through a second later carrying several bags of food that promised heavy amounts of garlic, basil, and oregano.  Kieran popped up carrying a cooler with more food on top.  Someone I didn’t know followed him with a load of folded chairs with Mike right behind him.  “That’s it, Ethan,” Mike called out and the portal slipped away behind them like ripples on the water.  Ethan was being dramatic.

“Introductions are in order,” Ethan said, raising his hand to the unknown man carrying the folding chairs.

“Helping is in order,” Kieran said.  “Introductions can wait or happen simultaneously.  You’re not getting out of work, little man.”

Peter and I snickered a bit, knowing Kieran was messing with him.  Ethan ignored him.  As the newcomer walked by with chairs, Ethan stopped him.

“This is David Henry,” Ethan said.  “He rather stupidly said yes when we asked if he’d like to be our assistant for a while.”

From that point we swarmed him for the chairs, having sat on the ground for a while, then moved on to general helter-skelter while our moods bettered with the promises delivered of civility, good food, and family.  David was introduced to everyone and vice versa.  He was a nice guy, about five-eleven, light brown hair and dark blue eyes.  His face was round and open, honest and out-going.  He’d been a physics major at UC-Berkeley until he couldn’t progress any further.  That machinery was far too sensitive for our particular group of people.  I’d definitely have to delve further into my previous experiences in atom smashing—I shouldn’t have been able to be there either, but I didn’t bring that up now.

There were only two downsides to our picnic.  The location and the recounting of the day’s experiences.  Peter and Richard told the majority of it, but there were parts that were all mine, like the apartment building and the blood spells.  And then there was Jimmy.  When I explained what happened with Jimmy, I used very bald terms, not sugar-coating anything.  The curious part of it all was that I seemed to be having the harder row to till there.  The closest to me was David and even he wasn’t having
that
much difficulty dealing with it, the concept of it.

“Why am I the only one here having a hard time with this?” I asked, incredulous.  “I’ve basically enslaved him and no one’s objecting.”

“What’s to worry about, Seth?” Peter said.  “We know you.  What are you going to make him do?  Whatever he wants?  Ooh, you slave driver, bad, mean, slave driver.  You’ve got a million more on Gilán and what did you have them do?  Go, live, play nice.  Oh, yeah, you’re evil.”

Ethan laughed.  “Give’m a year.  He might implement a time-out system for those that seriously misbehave…”

“It’s very calming,” Jimmy said quietly.  I may have been the only person to hear.

“Besides,” Kieran said, “We don’t know if it’s a permanent state yet.  Let’s just give it some time.”

After dinner and cleanup, we worked with the diamonds as keys to my kingdom.  Ian was enchanted with the images he found inside the key I’d made for him.  Once I keyed it to him, he said the images felt like they suddenly had space and his excitement increased.  I reached out gently to his mind and placed the phrase that would activate the passage to Gilán in his mind.  It had to be a gentle push, though, as Ian’s mind was a candle flicker of light compared to my daylight sun.  That scared me slightly, until I realized he was in a valley of his power, readying for the climb of puberty.  He’d be a searchlight of strength soon.  Mike would have his hands full then.

Ian was ecstatic the first few times he shifted through the diamond.  Even more interesting for me was that while he touched it, I could sense that contact and communicate with him.  Physical contact wasn’t necessary for the shifts, though. As long as his aura could connect, he could trigger the shift.  That meant as long as it was on his person, he had an escape route.  I keyed Mike into his diamond, then he and Ian went off by themselves and practiced shifting between the various points together and separately, talking and making plans.

I keyed another diamond to Richard and one to David, stamping only a few locations on either side until they’d decided on more.  Pretty soon half of our group was randomly popping in and out of existence as the sun sank, shining its last hazy light of the day through the pasture.  The diamonds were laid out on top of the pouch I’d kept them in all day in one hand.  Jimmy squatted at my knee, watching the proceeding, keenly interested.  I handed David his key and set the password in his mind, sending him to practice with Mike and Ian.  Jimmy interrupted me before I could put the diamonds away.

“May I?” he asked with a hand poised above the collection to pick one up.

“Sure,” I said.  I didn’t have the heart to tell him he couldn’t activate the keys, even knowing it was only moments away.

Jimmy picked the largest stone of the set, the one I’d been avoiding just for that reason.  The instant he touched it, though, we all got a surprise: just for that instant, I heard the call of Gilán and Jimmy disappeared.

Kieran and Ethan jumped up, surrounding me.  “What just happened?” Kieran demanded to know.  “Did you do that?”

I stared dumbly at the space Jimmy just vacated, shaking my head no slowly.  I hadn’t felt a shift, either, and I hadn’t keyed the diamond to any place so I had no clue as to where to search on Gilán, but I started at the lake.  Then I went to the door to the castle, the bridge over the river, the over-look, the front door, the Throne room, the family wing entrance, the Borland’s entrance, Peter’s entrance, I went every place I could think to go.

“Jimmy Morgan, where are you?” I said and push the thoughts out over Gilán.  There was no sense that something bad happened, even with Kieran and Ethan’s panic and worry spiking around me.

Here, Lord Daybreak.  At Gilán,
I heard Jimmy say, but not vocally and not in English.  That presented quite a few puzzles. Not “on Gilán,” but “At Gilán”?  He had only called me Daybreak once before when Richard asked him who I was to him.  But the absolute weirdest part was the language.  Jimmy only knew one language, that peculiar redneck English he used.  But I couldn’t exactly tell what language it was.  The ideas were just there.  And right along with those ideas was Jimmy.

“Huhn.  Wonder how he did that?” I said, seeming to stare out into space on one world but looking into Gilán, into the heart of my Palace.  Jimmy stood before the dark pool of glittering blue energy.  He was watching the globe above the pool turn slowly.  “Well, I found him.  I just don’t know how he got there or why he’s there or what he’s doing.  But if y’all excuse me, I’ll be right back.”

Scooping up the remaining diamonds, I made the shift in the middle of standing.  It was comfortable now, moving between worlds especially into Gilán.  I came up behind him, stopping a few yards out.  He had a slight glow in his aura now, a luminous blue added to the outer edges, almost a halo against the black marble backdrop. 

“So this is who you are,” he said softly.  “This is Gilán and you are its Daybreak.”

“Yes,” I answered just as softly, surprised he knew I was there.  “It’s a captivating view, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s quite beautiful,” Jimmy said and with an easy mental push from him the panels behind the globe lit up with scenes from the planet as it arced around the sun.  Vistas and mountain ranges of what I felt were unsurpassed beauty and definitely unblemished.  “Is this magic?” Jimmy asked, waving a hand at the walls.

“Uh-huh, Gilán’s magic,” I said, walking up beside him.  “From what I can tell, this is a real-time representation, too.  There’s something important about it being a planet that Kieran doesn’t want to get out yet.  I’m not certain why, but we’re keeping that a secret right now.”

He sighed.  “That’s too bad.  I’d love to shout this from the rooftops and show everyone.  My Lord’s realm is an entire world!  I bet even the Queens of Faery would be jealous of you.”

“I think that’s the problem,” I said, turning and sitting on the edge of the pool.  Thinking about the problem of Jimmy as I ran my fingers lightly through the water, I said, “Jimmy, do you know how you got here?”

“When I touched the gem, it sang the name of the world.  I answered it with your name and it accepted me with open arms,” he answered as he sat beside me.  “It brought me here.”

“Do you know where we are?”

“In your Palace and in your private room,” he said.  “The Palace is huge.”

Chortling, “Yeah, it is.  Wait, it’s dark here.  How did you see all of the Palace on the globe?”

“I didn’t have to,” Jimmy said.  “I am the First.  Everything about the Palace but this room is readily available to me.  I just have to think about it and there it is.”  He grinned at me like a kid with a new toy, which I guess, is exactly what he was.

“What is ‘the First’?” I asked.

“You’d have to tell me,” he said.  “I just know that it gives me a place here.  A place where I feel more at home than I did
at home
.”

“Jimmy, I’m not sure this is entirely healthy,” I warned.

“For whom?  You or me?” he asked, chuckling briefly.  Then he got more serious.  “I grieved for my family, Seth, and I’ll miss them.  My father wasn’t that much of a surprise.  I think I’ve been preparing myself for his death for a while now.  Momma and Cece were a … horrible, horrible shock.  And seeing all of them like that will haunt me for the rest of my life.  I’ve never wanted to kill something as badly as I want to kill the people who did this to them.

“But I felt all of that pain and horror and grief in one big momentous instant and it was pulling me away with it,” he said, meeting my eyes.  His irises were limned in a second blue now, just like the elves.  “Then you said, ‘No, he’s mine,’ and now I belong here.”

“Yeah, and if I hadn’t been so careless, you could have been a free man,” I mumbled.

“Give it a rest, Seth,” he said, standing up and stretching.  “I’m more free here with a Lord than I ever was on Earth without one.  Yuck, I stink.  Time for a bath.”

He walked down the path toward the giant stained-glass window, stopping at the juncture of the next path.  He turned right and disappeared down the Road.  He may have been jogging lightly but the Road was moving him considerably faster and he reached the left door in seconds.  Jimmy turned left and stopped at another doorway, still on my side of the wall.  Curious, I looked at the door and into the rooms behind it.

This was Jimmy’s room, the First’s.  The door was locked; it would take both of us to unlock it from this side as it was one of the few entrances to my room besides the two front doors and the one hidden in the domed front.  I haven’t had time to search for others.  The main entrance to his apartment was on the other side of the wall and was far more glamorous and elegant.  This one looked like a service entrance.

Little Brother, are you all right?  Do you need help?
  Kieran called across a link.

We’re fine, Kir du’Ahn.  We’ll be back in a few minutes.  Jimmy’s getting cleaned up and we’ll come back,
I sent back as I walked to the Road and jogged over to Jimmy.  The real-life door was no different than the mental image of it.  It still looked like a service entrance with no markings on or near the door.  A simple mental “Open” released the locking mechanism and it swung wide for us to reveal a corridor turning right.  Directly opposite the door was an emblematic representation of what Jimmy said he was, the First of Gilán.  It was written in several languages there, just like on the black marble behind the globe but more, with one language flaring to life in front of me and fading quickly.  That was the one that bothered me the most, too.  I’d only seen that language written once, in my name.