Sons (Book 2) (125 page)

“You got it, boss,” Mike said, grinning at the nickname.  Someone was telling stories over drinks, I supposed, but Mike had more access to my brothers than to Ted.

“Ryan, Mike is our main aide and among our best friends,” I said and introduced Steven, David, and Dad.  The others started breaking away from the table quietly to spread out in the living room.  “And you met Ted earlier as the man in charge of the security detail for the house.  He is Commander of the Palace Guard.”  Remembering what he said earlier, I grinned.  “Which, apparently, isn’t that impressive.”

“He did say that, didn’t he?” Ted asked, turning to Ryan.  “But if all he’s seen is two rooms of Peter’s apartment, that would make sense.  I had the benefit of the Throne room and the Road in the first five minutes.”

“Yeah, he got a look at the front door this morning, though, and I’m hoping at some point he’ll get tired of being spoken of in the third person like he’s a moron or something,” I said sweetly.

“I noticed we were doing that,” Ted said raising his voice high in a mocking tone.  “Come on, old man, take up for yourself, seriously.  You’ll get eaten alive by the people he hangs with if you don’t.”

“You do seem to be sleepwalking through this, Ryan,” I said calmly.  “What seems to be the problem?”

“Not sleepwalking, Seth, just trying to keep up,” Ryan answered just as calmly.  “You are a tempest in a teapot.  I’ve known you for two days—someone who should have been on my radar a year ago from what Bishop and Cahill describe—and I have seen more high level magic performed than in my lifetime.  I’ve met people who could snap me in half in a heartbeat, people whose auras I can’t see, people whose auras look normal one minute and elven the next.  I came with Bishop tonight because he said this would be a quiet dinner where I could gain some insight into how you people worked, how you thought.  It’s a circus in here.  I don’t know how you keep anything straight; there were four conversations going on at once in here.”

“This is a quiet dinner,” I said, nearly falling off the armrest laughing.  “We normally have our meals in the Garrison, but the brownies are spoiling us.  And if you think all I hear are four conversations at a time, then I invite you to take a few thousand for me.  But Ted’s right, it’s time to step up your game.  Surely an attorney of your reputation can think on his feet because that’s what I need right now.  You know more than I do about who is important in Europe.  You may have avoided the Faery but you cover a different venue than either Gordon or Thomas.  I need that knowledge, Ryan.  I have to play politics in a world that I am ruefully unprepared to play in and it doesn’t look like anyone is going to give me time to figure out who’s who.  I’ve already made mistakes and luckily, I’ve been able to sweep those under the rug fast enough that most people won’t see them, but sooner or later I’m gonna screw up so badly I can’t hide it.  I want to delay that as long as possible.”

“So this isn’t a charade?  This aspect you show?” he asked.

“Please don’t call him a ‘kid’,” whispered Ted, clamping his eyes shut and grimacing.  “He’s killed people for that.”

“I have not!” I said, whacking Ted on the shoulder.  “Well, that wasn’t the only reason, anyway.”

“If you’re asking why he looks like a nineteen-year-old, it’s because he’s seventeen,” Dad said.  “He’s grown in the past few weeks.  It makes him look a little older.”  I felt the focus around Ryan’s neck direct his attention to Dad.  If he was good enough, the focus would allow him to pierce some of Dad’s shielding and camouflage.  If he was very good, he might actually see Dad’s real aura, but I doubted it and the Pact was still invisible.

“Druid,” Dad said mildly, splaying the last three fingers of his left hand at him and saying in Gaelic, “My life is my own,” without any magic involved.  Ryan stiffened, redirecting his attention to me.  “Seth never learned any of those traditions.  Now it seems irrelevant.  Do you think he’s an Archdruid?  After only two days exposure?”

“As much as he is Lord Daybreak, yes,” Ryan said, turning to meet my father’s gaze confidently.  Dad smirked at him in return.  Intimidating him, the cocky bastard.  I pushed gently into Ryan’s focus and found him loosely around the same circle he controlled, driving a minor revelation spell through his vision.  The first thing I had to do was distract Dad.

“Oh, good, you know about druids,” I said, full of attitude.  “You can take care of checking on the Hilliards for me.  That’d really be helpful since I don’t know anything about them.”  I cut Ryan’s power output down to a hundredth of what he was using and jerked his attention back to his identity.  Focusing the nine circles on the energy systems that my father used, I forced the triad to refocus the circles’ output through a translation spell and into the identity form. 

“Not a chance!” Dad blustered, standing up from the table and shining in Ryan’s eyes like a theater spotlight.  “I had enough of them centuries ago.  You can handle them easily enough.”  He swaggered out of the dining room with Ryan following him to the head of the table.  Releasing my control on the focus, he glanced up at me when he lost sight of Dad’s aura.  At least the parts I was willing to show him, which were still formidable.

“I’ll do my best,” he told me, turning to Mike.  “When Seth talks to me through his key, he feels like he’s in the room with me talking.  I end up speaking aloud.  This isn’t necessary, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” Mike answered.  “And in most cases, it’s inadvisable…”  He started explaining how the diamond worked like he explained things to Ian, too metaphorically for a twelve-year-old but a little too simplistic for Ryan.

Jimmy shifted in from the London house to the head of the table, looking around the room.  I got up quietly to meet him with Ted a few steps behind me.  “Hungry?” I asked Jimmy when I got close enough.

“Enough to eat a horse,” he said grinning.

“Ellorn, can you fix…” I started to ask the brownie for what was already in his hands, a large plate of several samplings from tonight’s dinner for First.  Taking the plate from him, I said, “Thank you, Ellorn.  How about a—” When I looked, the brownie was holding out a beer for Jimmy and a snifter of brandy for me.  “Do I need to ask you for anything ever again?” I asked, chuckling and taking the beverages.

Of course, Lord, we love to hear your voice,
Ellorn sent as he disappeared into the kitchen, giggling with me.

Peter’s living room was a sprawl of men on couches and chairs and a half dozen brownies sitting along the fireplace lazily.  Sitting down beside my new assistants, I asked about their trips home and their families.  Just trying to get to know them better and put them at ease.  David enjoyed his trip for the most part, managing to keep his job mostly to his family.  Visited with bragging college friends to hear about their fabulous desk jobs doing some sort of venture capital investments while dating the next supermodel.  His female friend, singular, started an art studio and stylized a wolf pendant for him, setting his diamond as its third eye.

“It’s a lovely piece,” I said admiring the pendant he held out.  “But see Braedon to strengthen her bindings if you’re going to keep the diamond there.”

“’Her bindings’?  She isn’t a wizard,” David objected, confused.

“There are all sorts of magic, David, and all sorts of magical practitioners at different levels.  A look around the room will prove that.  What’s a ‘venture capital investment,’ anyway?”

“Somebody who looks for large projects of a riskier nature but with a very large payoff then tries to find investors for them.”

I turned to David with raised eyebrows.  “Right out of college?  From a desk?  How many drinks did they have before they expected you to buy into that?” 

“You should have seen the bleached-blondes and bottle-redheads they peddled as supermodels,” he said, snickering at first then busting out louder after a moment.  Steven grinned along with him, making barking noises of various types.

“What about you, Steve?  Less contentious than your last phone call, I hope,” I said.

“Less in relative terms, but yeah,” Steven said prosaically.  “My family thinks their Arizona home makes them safe and out of reach since most of the danger has occurred on the East Coast and Europe.”

“So somehow they missed the California, Michigan, Mexico, Panama, Columbia, and Venezuela attacks, huh?” I asked.

“What?  I wasn’t aware of those either,” Steven said, sitting up straighter.

“As far as we can tell,” Gordon interjected, “the attacks on our people have no geographical limits.  As we speak to more people, we’re finding more attacks in further places attributed to vandals or thieves.  The law of averages may catch up to them before too long.”

“Well, let’s hope the councils start getting their heads out of their asses soon and begin to work together to fight back,” I said, beginning my stance on staying out of this right now.  It wasn’t any different than what I said earlier today.

“You can’t blame people for being scared, Seth,” Thomas said forcefully.  “After Grammand, the first wave of attacks took out a third of those houses involved at that conference.  And there aren’t many men and women capable of battle magics.  Even normal self-defense can take a lot of strength from someone not practiced at it.  You’ve been spoiled by the people around you, Seth.  Most people can’t do the things we can do, like see through the charisma of Arthur.  Hell, not even every magician can bear the Authority of the Hospitality, covered or not.”

“That’s equally true of the Accords, Thomas,” Ethan replied.  “Not everyone covered by them can call on that Authority.  Take yourself as an example.”

“Wait, what do you mean by ‘practiced at it’?” I asked.  “I’ve had about twelve hours on any kind of martial training, not out of desire but necessity.  I’ve already logged more battle time, I think, all together.”

“Twelve?” Kieran snorted.  “Where’d you get
that
from?  More like four.  You don’t get to count the time with First and Mankiewicz as training
for
you, little brother.”

“Oohh,
master
speaks!” Peter said, causing a low chuckle through the room.

“That only helps my point, though,” I answered, grinning.  “You have ‘men in black’, Thomas.  Are they yours or the council’s?”

“Neither, during my off-time, I act as advisor to several divisions of a branch of the government in much the same way that Darius Fuller and Clifford Harris do,” Thomas said.  “They were agents of a bureau that supposedly doesn’t exist.”

“Why have different governments recognized the need for combat wizardry, but the councils themselves don’t?” I asked.  “Even into some police departments; we saw that with Mercer a few weeks ago.”

“Those are few and far between, Seth,” Thomas said.  “And most of them have popped into existence due to various wars, most notably World War II and the Cold War.  They are overseen by council members and information flow is kept as one-way as possible.”

“I’ll agree that they’re too few,” I said.  “But the Russian’s records show many more countries than councils to manage them.  Police departments in many large cities around the world have small departments dedicated to supernatural events without any oversight, thinking themselves unique in the world.”

Bishop hesitated a second.  “First off, you’re making a case for a worldwide network, which is what I’m trying to setup now.  Secondly, you found the Russian?”

“Yeah, he’s in FBI custody now,” I said, sipping the brandy and savoring the sweet, oak flavor.

“Did you find out anything from him?” Gordon asked, moving forward on the couch.  A brownie—I think his name is Seter but I wasn’t really paying attention, instead watching Ryan attempt low power aura readings on Gordon and Thomas—darted off the fireplace to ask Gordon if he wanted another beer and take away his empty bottle.

“Lots of interesting things from his computers,” I said.  “Several more interesting things from his staff and a few tidbits from him.  Commander, would you care to brief everyone on what we found?”  Ted stood up, quickly trying to find a way to explain what was so simple in his mind, but not so easily said.  “Pete, would you mind if I moved the furniture for a few minutes?”

“Not at all.  Will we need to move for you?” Peter asked.

“Nope.  Well, you guys will, if you want to watch,” I said, waving at Seter and his fellows on the fireplace.  Moving the coffee table straight up and over to the side, I moved the couches around smoothly with everyone in place, coincidentally giving me center seat.  Really, it was a coincidence.  I shifted the monitor from the Situation room and mounted it onto a stand made from the Stone’s power.  The crystalline structure worked like a computer monitor at a much higher definition and spectrum saturation. 

Ted took control of it immediately, asserting the usual topological world map of Earth onto the screen.  “This morning,” Ted started, strong and authoritative.  “Lord Daybreak left your meeting and went to the house he is intent on purchasing, also in London.”  He highlighted an area in England by flashing amber light where London should be.  I noted again a curious distinction as another map exploded onto the screen.  Ted wasn’t controlling it; he was talking to the Sit-room, to the Operations Officer.  That’s what his office door said, anyway.  He was the Mapkeeper, a level of abstraction that became heuristic through the geas.  It was fascinating to watch.  The Hilliard’s dale flashed far to the northwest while the house and surrounding property exploded from the south without exactly indicating an origin.

“Immediately upon his arrival, he’s confronted by an altercation between both neighbors and the land agent.  Seth subdued the neighbors, called us in to secure the premises, and sweet-talked the surveyors into returning, under guard for their protection.  The team would have stumbled on a plot of marijuana plants and a chemical lab hidden in the back of the property that the neighbors were responsible for.  He found the corresponding diplomatic department to handle the legal issues with the authorities and they arrived as lunch arrived, a curious gentleman named Jack Dunwoody and two elves going under the names Effram Frobisher and Isaac Beauchamp.  With their cooperation, the Russian was identified as Leonard Muldoon and placed in Eugene, Oregon in the US.”

“Excuse me, Ted,” Gordon stopped him.  “Before we get too far away, from what department did Jack Dunwoody come and who suggested him?  And why did he have two elves with him?”

“Seth contacted the Pentagon who contacted the British Foreign Office who sent Dunwoody with the elves as assistants.  Me and the boys had a lot of fun playing keep-away with them and family during lunch,” Ted answered.

“You should have seen the elves’ faces when the Guard just melted back to work after the guys left!” I said chortling.  Ellorn and I traded glasses, his full for my empty.

Eager to continue, Ted regained control.  “We are not suggesting that the confrontation with the neighbors was completely coincidental.  The manner they chose seemed designed to bring police scrutiny, but at whose expense?  We are deferring that question for further investigation.”  He triggered the screen, shifting the perspective to the US and highlighting Washington and Eugene briefly, then exploding a map of Eugene in the middle of the country.  “The Pentagon was unable to come up with any information on Leonard Muldoon or any of his aliases, so Lord Daybreak sent a small force of Guard to reconnoiter.  He and First then led two five-man teams with support crews into the compound and subdued the entire building in under seven minutes with one fatality.  That particular death occurred before we arrived.”

Ted had been showing the warehouse levels and each individual as he was taken down until First and I confronted the Russian himself.  “From here we began interrogating Muldoon and his associates on several fronts while the content of his computer system was systematically copied and verified, certain bank accounts seized and transferred, and viral trip-wires disarmed throughout the data network he and his computer analyst maintained.  What we discovered was this.”

Eighty-seven points of light blinked into life on the map in different basic geometric shapes and colors.  The lights in some places were far larger than the places they represented on the map.  Thin lines appeared showing relationships, basically supply lines with small icons showing what was supplied.

“Muldoon had a hell of a network,” Ted said with admiration.  “Not just with his product but with information as well.  He kept tabs on his employers, trying to discreetly learn their identities.  What he tracked most intensely are the three encampments in red that Seth mentioned earlier, in Turkey, southern Mexico, and mid-western United States.  There are equally remarkable encampments in Chihuahua, Brazil, Greenland and India.  Deciphering which of these meets our profiles definitively will take a little more time and investigation, however. 

“Here is the manpower and weaponry reportedly delivered to those three bases over the last four months.”  Ted displayed a generalized list for each base of mercenaries and support deployed, along with gross armament shipments.  “This is by no means an exhaustive list of their supplies.  For instance, there’s no mention of RPGs but they exist at two of three compounds.  In our assessment, they are seriously underarmed for their size and ammunition is low if their only supplier was Muldoon.  We can’t assume that to be true, but that is where we stand at the moment.

“Questions?” Ted finished, releasing the floor.

“That’s over ten thousand people!” Gordon exclaimed.  “Close to four thousand alone in the southwest US alone!  How is this missed by the authorities?”

“How is what missed, Gordon?” Ted asked.  “It’s not likely they came through customs wearing a bullet-proof vest and holding an AK-47, and from what we can see from satellite imagery, they’re not all there right now.”  Ted waved his hand back toward the screen and six satellite pictures from six different satellites, not all from the same country, flew up.  “From these images of the US encampment in Utah, we’re estimating six to eight hundred in training at this site currently.”

“What are you going to do about this, Seth?” Thomas asked quietly.

“Nothing,” I said, lazing my head back on the couch to see him.

“Nothing?  You can’t be serious!” he scoffed.  “In your own backyard?  They know roughly where your Alabama house is now, Seth.  You’ll be constantly harassed there if you allow this hate-mongering army to stand so close.”  He worded that to appeal to my sense of security.

“What do you expect me to do about it?” I asked with a wry smile.  “We don’t know if anything illegal is happening.  The Federal authorities in my country have the evidence and will investigate.  You can have what information that affects the European council, certainly.  Anything else is outside my purview.”

“Your ‘purview’?  You have a purview now?” Thomas asked.

“Yes, until I get done with this Pentagon Entity Accords thing, I have a purview,” I said.  “You can thank Clifford Harris for that one.  He gave us diplomatic passports and we’re on record with the Pentagon now.  Either one of those weren’t true and we’d be off the hook.  Politics, gotta love it.”

“Whoa, what?” Gordon stammered.

“What ‘Pentagon Entity Accords thing’?” Thomas asked, sitting forward on his couch.  “What does the Pentagon of the United States have to do with the Accords?”

“They signed on as an entity in ’51 without realizing the consequences of their actions,” I said tiredly.  “Or they were stupid.  Either way, they’re learning a hard lesson.  Hopefully they’ll be smart enough to petition for annulment.”

“The Accords, not Hospitality,” Gordon said, clarifying.

“Uh-huh.  They aren’t the only group on the planet, either, Gordon,” I said, stretching my legs out.  “Your own government has a department signed as an Entity.  I would have thought that something the European Council of Wizards would know about, maybe used to their advantage in some way.”