Authors: Scott V. Duff
“No, you haven’t said anything about that, either,” he said, stopping Dillon about fifteen feet from the end of the alley as we came out.
“More of a feeling than a fact. Felix and Marty can’t see into Gordon’s ring but they all get a strong sense of each other when they hold another’s key. Once we’re past the lock, we can see anything in the key. Well, excluding the Queens’ diamonds.
“I only see one building here,” I said about the valley we looked across. Rolling hills of green grasses and tall trees of various kinds.
“Good, more than one exit,” Peter murmured, then added, “But it is a big building.”
“Yep, lots of tunnels underground, too,” I said. “Whoever lives there has been there a long time.”
“I don’t see any offensive wards, though.”
“No, I don’t either. Doesn’t mean they’re not there. Too many layers of bindings for a cursory judgment on that. I’d have to know the concepts used to get a better idea. It’s not a faery magic, though it feels similar. Still, I don’t see anything to concern us, just a little weirdness.”
“Me, neither,” Peter said, sighing. “We’ll just have to wait and see. Let’s eat. If I’m hungry, I know that garbage disposal of an assistant of yours must be.”
“Some of us are still teen-agers, ya know,” I said, grinning at him as we moved out of the road and waved Dillon forward.
“Well?” Jimmy asked nervously as we climbed in the back seat.
“Looks safe enough to us,” I said casually.
“You can turn the car around, Dillon,” Peter said, closing the door. “Go back the way you came in.”
“That’s it?” he asked in surprise.
“Well, yes,” Peter said. “What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. More than that,” Dillon said, annoyed. “You picked up a building to get in here, for God’s sake, then all you do is look around? It’s… anti-climactic. I’ve never seen either of you actually
do
anything.”
I busted another gut—I couldn’t help it. In the same breath Dillon complained about Peter not showing him big magical abilities
and
picking up a building.
“Dude, seriously?” Jimmy asked slowly, grinning at him. “Besides, you don’t want to see it when he starts waving his swords around. It’s messy and gory and not at all like the movies.”
“And what do you think we’re doing every time we go back and forth between the Palace?” Peter asked, laughing.
“You know what I mean,” he said, annoyed and embarrassed. Throwing the car into reverse, he turned out to the rear, putting his arm on the seat and backing down the alley. His pride was hurt and it wasn’t funny anymore. He backed evenly and carefully down the alley, slowing his approach at the stores and into the street. Uncomfortable silence filled the car while Dillon headed back into London.
“Peter, why don’t you and Jimmy go change out of those suits into something more comfortable?” I suggested, watching him turn and look at me, questioning me. It wasn’t a terribly subtle request, after all.
“That would actually change our options on restaurants for the better,” Dillon said, cheering some.
“It would be nice to get out of this bulky jacket,” Peter said, convincingly but still looking at me in question. I just shrugged and shooed at him. “All right, we’ll go change. You’ll call us from the restaurant?”
“That would be simpler. I can change there,” I said with a small smile. He shifted. “Jimmy, I suspect that you should tone back on all that ‘sexy.’ You probably don’t want to attract too much attention.”
“Probably,” Dillon said, chuckling softly.
It wasn’t enough to distract Jimmy, though. “No, you keep telling everybody to stay in pairs,” he said calmly, but his fists were clenched. “It’s
your
rule. I’m not leaving you alone. You can still have a private conversation if I’m in the back seat.”
“It’s hard to argue when you’re right, First,” I said, leaning up between them and gripping his shoulder in a friendly manner. “But it’s just a short time and nobody knows where we are. And, really, am I ever alone?”
Dillon needs a friend more than I need a guardian, right now, Jimmy,
I sent through our link,
you remember what that feels like, don’t you?
He thought about it a moment, the shadows of the street lights ticking off the seconds. “Okay,” he relented, “but I’ll check back often and if you don’t answer immediately, I’ll bring all your brothers with me.” Then he shifted to his room in the Palace, but tried to keep his attention locked on the car. I lent him a link to my perspective that was keeping track of the same volume of space and he relaxed significantly. I slipped through a portal into the front seat.
Letting Dillon change roads, I gave him a few minutes to get used to the fact that he was alone with me. “This is the first time you’ve been without bodyguards, isn’t it?” Dillon asked quietly.
“Mmm, no, no more than you haven’t seen me perform any magic in front of you,” I said, watching the cars move around us. “I even lost my temper and showed my ass in your home as I recall.” Dillon snorted lightly, smiling slightly at the memory.
“You scared the shit out of me that night,” he whispered. “Both of you did.”
“So why are you in such a hurry to see it again?” I asked him. “I haven’t turned you into an adrenaline junkie, have I?”
“No,” he answered, chuckling and cutting his eyes over at me. “But you kept the dangerous stuff away from me, remember? I only heard about the fight on the roof from Trelaine and he’s not the talkative type. Then you, Peter, and Ferrin were whisked away in a helicopter that I could only hear and not see. It was all very mysterious and unearthly.”
“And depressing for you, I take it?” I prompted, trying to stay out of his mind, but the melancholy was floating near the top of his memory.
“Yeah,” he sighed. “I miss him.”
“Dillon, you didn’t expect that to work, did you?” I asked, thinking back on our first meeting.
“No!” he said, hurriedly. “Not at all. I just wanted to see him again, to talk to him. I was honest about that from the start and it’s worked out better than I thought it would. He’s still around, just not like I want him to be.”
“Really?” I said, truly surprised. “I would have sworn that was ‘afterglow’.”
“I wish,” Dillon said. “Peter’s exceptionally talented at—”
“Don’t!” I interrupted him, nearly shouting. “Even… think about it.” I had to clamp down on my senses to keep the visualizations in his mind from reaching me. Dillon would probably think I was repulsed by the idea of gay sex or something, but that wasn’t exactly the problem. I had the memories of thousands of blowjobs in my mind without ever having had one myself, from both sides of the equation. But I stayed out of Peter’s memories because I might respond to him and that scared me. Men don’t interest me sexually, but Peter was right when he told Jimmy sex scares me.
“He’s changed, matured,” Dillon said, the melancholy returning some. “I suppose he always was more mature than me and you and your brothers are a good influence on him. I guess that’s my problem, then. He’s outgrown me and I can’t let go. Two years ago, he was a hot little number on the dance floor and a week ago he cut me a check for a hundred thousand pounds. That house you bid on is worth more than I am, for Christ’s sake.”
“Yeah, so?” I asked, not quite seeing his problem the same way he did. “You do know that Peter and I have international driver’s licenses, right?” His forehead tightened and his eyebrows came down. He didn’t know. “We didn’t
need
you to drive us around, Dillon. Peter wanted to see you while we were in London. It’s that simple. He still cares for you, Dillon. I won’t speak for him as to where your relationship is going. You’ll have to talk to him about that. As long as he keeps seeking you out, you have a chance.”
“True,” he agreed. “And that’s helpful, Seth, really, but you guys are so far out of my league now that it’s not even funny. I can’t stand up with him on anything anymore.”
“Ooohhh,” I said, understanding finally dawning in me. “I get it now.”
“Then explain it to me, because I don’t,” Dillon snapped, annoyed as he pulled the car off onto an exit ramp.
“You’re threatened, Dillon,” I said gently, patting his thigh as he slowed for the traffic signal. “I should have seen it sooner. Peter probably already does, but he doesn’t know how to deal with you. He’s not very good at being close to people, as odd as that seems, but watch him sometimes. He’s very much a social butterfly.”
“He has quite a few friends,” Dillon said, confused. “He’s always had an easy time meeting people.”
“Maybe we’re operating under a different definition of ‘friend’,” I said. “Right now, he has five and four of them live with him. That’s not ‘quite a few’.”
Dillon glanced over at me through the turn. “More than I’ve got.”
“Not really,” I said, looking casually out the window. “You’ve got the same friends, Dillon. You just don’t know Kieran and Ethan as well.”
“But how is that threatening to me?” he asked, still confused. “I mean, I don’t claim to understand this brother thing you have going on, but you all seem to act like it, sometimes to the point of being children in a playground.”
That made me chuckle. “Yeah, well, none of us have had anyone we were that close to before and we really can’t hurt each other physically or magically, at least by accident. I mean, we
could
but,” I sighed, stopping for a second, “it’s hard to explain that relationship, Dillon, and it’s not the point here exactly. You’re only partly threatened by us and only because you want the same thing with Peter, the same unfettered happiness in his eyes when he’s with you that you see when he’s roughhousing with Ethan and Jimmy.
“Then there’s the powerful side of him,” I said as Dillon changed streets again, turning right onto a smaller, two-lane road. “We came in like gangbuster the first night, all thunder and fury. And Peter wasn’t very nice then, not that you expected him to be or that you were terribly nice in the first place. My second visit wasn’t much better.”
“But at least I got a better idea of why everyone is so afraid of you,” he mumbled.
“That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?” I asked. “You aren’t afraid of us, even after all the weird crap you’ve seen. You’ve gotten so inured to seeing us cavort around like little boys at the Palace and then we come here and act like businessmen and people like Gordon and Bishop are asking for our help and advice. You hear us talking about things like Pentagon generals and FBI agents and an RAF helicopter flew us away from your bar the other night. You know in your head that we
should
scare you, but we don’t. You actually like us too much to scare you.”
Dillon gave me a sheepish grin as he turned into the small restaurant. The marquee said “Laine’s” and the front was glass brick and neon lights. Several posted signs announced that Laine’s was a private establishment and seating was available by reservation only. There were a dozen or so cars parked around the lot, all large and capable of seating six or more.
“That’s why you want to see us ‘at work’, isn’t it?” I asked, more intent on him than the restaurant. “Both to prove to yourself that we aren’t the cute little boys we appear to be and to prove to Peter that you can handle seeing him be the nasty, mean, and vicious killer you’ve only heard vague innuendo about.” Dillon shut the engine off, slumping against the wheel slightly and thinking about what I’d said.
“You said a few minutes ago that you didn’t feel like you could stand up with Peter anymore,” I continued, leaning over and rubbing his back to console him. “I wish the truth was more pleasant for you, but in many ways you’re right, you can’t. That’s why I’m here, and Kieran and Ethan. Peter comes to you to feel human again, to feel like a man. That’s what you give to him that we can’t. And please don’t insult me by saying you don’t know how to make a man feel like a man.” He laughed a little, leaning back in the seat. I left my hand on his shoulder.
Seth’Dur’an o’an, are you ready?
I sent to Peter, pushing power into the thought to open a Named link.
Ages ago, Little Brother, what’s kept you?
Dillon and I have been talking, that’s all.
Which he already knew, so that wasn’t what he wanted to ask. I just didn’t want to tell him.
“Just be yourself and quit trying to match up to an impossible ideal,” I told him. “Come on, I’ll call them over and we can eat.” I opened the door and called Jimmy over as I stood up. He stared at me angrily while I watched for Dillon to stand up over the roof, then called Peter. He materialized a foot away from Dillon, just as he shoved the door shut. He flashed a dazzling smile at Dillon. I had to admit that he looked hot for a guy, muscles bulging out of his tan mid-thigh shorts, a striped brown leather vest over a very tight, low-cut, white T-shirt. It stretched across his pectorals and clung to his biceps in a very planned way.
Apparently it worked. Dillon latched onto him in a strong hug, head and one arm across Peter’s shoulders. Peter returned the hug while trying to look down at him at the same time. Dillon didn’t look inclined to let go anytime soon either. I decided to get dressed and give them a few minutes to do… whatever that was.