Sons (Book 2) (94 page)

Ultimately, it led to her marriage to Second Lieutenant Grimes and his daughter, Ana.  They were happy for a while, before she got greedy again.  The boy was very happy with his stepfather—to
have
a father.  Grimes was a good man, too, far too good for her.  The Marine Corps is a tightly knit group, so when word of her affairs reached him, he carefully gathered proof of her adultery then went further back in time and got proof of her as an unfit mother.  The Sheriff’s office served her the divorce papers while he was signing the requisite hardship papers to stay in the States and care for the children as sole parent until his enlistment was up.

Then two massively badly timed events occurred.  Either through sheer bad luck or her vicious design, Lt. Grimes was ordered into a war zone.  Having no other family, he hid the kids from her with friends while he tenaciously filed papers and pleaded along every recourse he could find.  And he finally managed to do it, too.  Then Fate played its nasty scissors trick on him just two days before he was to leave Iraq.  It used a rocket-propelled grenade on the humvee he was in as they traveled back to base, propelling red-hot shrapnel through his brain.  Not fair, but Fate never cares.

Thinking herself free of responsibility, she signed the divorce papers uncontested, not realizing that it cut her off from her home and left her with only a small check.  She burned through that money very quickly, thinking to dip into savings and college funds for the boy.  Grimes smartly moved all those accounts around before he left.  She sought refuge from her failed fourth marriage by speeding up her attempts at a fifth.  Unfortunately for her, the two men she targeted were using her with equal adeptness, which she failed to catch.  To them, she was a sex object, a willing toy to be discarded when used up.

She didn’t like being thrown away like a tissue.  Treated as she had treated so many men, she sought vengeance by blackmailing to regain funds so she could continue her climb.  The first man apparently laughed at her and reported her attempt to the proper officials to protect his security clearances.  The second man agreed to meet with her about her demands, intending to remove the problem himself, I assume, but there was a slight problem.  The second man was actually a member of the military conspiracy I was here to root out.  He was among the first to die during the pogroms that eliminated the links to my Guard last Friday morning and she was with him then.  They found their corpses together, burnt to a crisp.  Fate didn’t care.

Grimes’ friends heard about his death the day after and took the children to the post Chaplain believing there had to be family somewhere who would want them.  It was reasonable but wrong, given the mother’s fate.  The Chaplain traced through the boy’s history, looking for family and hit on the mother’s previous marriages, which led him to her first, to our Sgt. Dawes.  Searches on the military’s database for him red-flagged the Chaplain to the Pentagon and they brought the children here.

“So we either intercede or let them enter state-run foster care and split them up, probably forever,” I said sadly, the tears still coming but more slowly now.  Barnett and the female captain calmed the children enough to move them and the group started toward us.

“Seth, we can’t help everyone,” Kieran said gently, taking my shoulder.  “You know that.”

“Yes, but they’ve been affected by
our
war twice,” I said turning to him.  “And they’re the people we’re here to protect, Kieran, and they’re
children
.  How can I not?  Especially when it takes so little from us?”  I must have been pleading.  Those emerald eyes met mine for only a second before he gave in.

“Of course, you’re right,” he said gently, turning to the door as it opened.  Harmond and Barnett came in first, offering hellos but were instantly confused by me.  I was the only one tear-stained and trying to peer around them, basically ignoring them while Kieran and Peter greeted them instead.

Diplomatically pulling them and their aides aside, I knelt on the floor as the captain gently ushered the children forward, murmuring assurances.  “He’s really quite nice and I’ll be right here.  It’s all right, I promise.”

“Hello, Donny, Ana, I’m Seth,” I said gently.  “I’m very sorry to hear about your father.  Barry Grimes was a wonderful man and I know he loved you both very much.”

Folklore says that children are the purview of the fairy and I am a king of fairies.  The children ran to me and jumped to cling to my neck, instinctively, I supposed.  Their emotional walls collapsed and grief overcame both of them, first for their father and then for their mother.  I pushed into their minds lightly and managed their grief a little so they wouldn’t become consumed totally as they sobbed into my chest.

I glanced up at the captain through bleary eyes and saw her concerned but smiling.  Sometimes it was good to be king.

“Now don’t you worry,” I told them.  “I’ll get you taken care of, at least as well as your father wanted and we’ll keep you both together.”

“You’ll ‘take’ them?” Harmond asked in shock.

“I don’t ‘take’ children, General Harmond,” I said acidly, glaring at him.  “I will take care of them.  Or rather, see that they are taken care of.”  Still holding little Ana in one arm and hugging Donny to me, I moved to a chair and sat down, sitting Ana on my knee.  “Donny, would you like to sit down so we can talk?  Captain, would you join us, please?”

Cpt. Margaret Ann Pierce hurried up to us and fussed with Donny and Ana, wiping their faces and hands and cooing mildly, asking how they were doing.  They were still entranced by me, but not magically so, I didn’t do that to them.  The aides were getting impatient, fidgeting in their seats.  Ethan whipped his head around and glared them into stillness.

“Have they told you who I am?” I asked Donny.  I’d misjudged both their ages by a little.  He’s nine and she’s five, and both a quarter Filipino on their mother’s side.

“No, sir,” Donny answered meekly, his dark, innocent eyes looking up at me as sweetly as Ellorn’s.  Damn, I really shouldn’t date; I really am a sucker.  “They only told us that you were a very powerful man and very nice and very young.  And that you were in charge of my first father, the one I don’t know.”

“A fairly accurate description, yes,” I said, smiling at the boy.  “And I share something in common with you and your sister.”  Tapping Ana lightly on the nose and hugging her tighter as I turned the chair to point to Kieran.  “That man over there?  The big one with the red hair and the bright green eyes?  That’s my brother, Kieran.  We have the same father, but different mothers.  The man next to him is also my brother, Ethan.  He has something in common with the both of you.  In an odd sense, he’s lost his parents recently.  And that handsome fellow next him is my brother, Peter.”

“Did Peter lose his parents, too?” he asked.

“No, my parents and his parents are still alive, but Ethan never had parents.  He borrowed mine,” I explained quietly.  “It’s a very complicated situation to explain, both to my parents and to you.  But it’s just as sad because it’s not his fault—it just happened.  And he has to act like it doesn’t bother him and we have to be all macho and act like we don’t notice he’s all torn up about it.”

“That sounds awful,” Donny said slowly, peering sadly at Ethan.  Possibly the saddest frown I could image on a man’s face looked back across the table at us.

Aren’t you overacting?
I sent across the anchor, heavy on the disbelief and irony.

“It gets a little easier with time, believe me, and it’s best to be around people who want you and will love you as my brothers do me,” Ethan said and smiled as sweetly at Ana as she did at him.  Cpt. Pierce and the children ate it up so maybe it wasn’t as bad as I thought.

“You never met your first father, right, Donny?” I asked him, using the same phrase.  He shook his head, suddenly shy.  “Even though they taught you to say ‘first father’, let’s use his name.  Let’s call him ‘Mitch’ so that we won’t interfere with the memory of your Daddy, okay?”  That cheered them up considerably, knowing that they wouldn’t have to forget him.  “Mitch is a good guy.  He’s just made some mistakes in his life, like a lot of people do.  But he will try very hard and he will have a lot of help from a lot of people, including me.  But you have to know a secret before you meet him.  Can you keep a secret?”  Wide-eyed and excited, he nodded again, kicking his feet in the chair.  Cpt. Pierce stiffened in her chair, unsure of my direction and definitely uncomfortable with whatever it was.

“Do you believe in fairies?” I asked conspiratorially.  Ana giggled and clapped her hands together quickly.  I laughed at the delightful change and look of wonder in her eyes.

“That’s a cartoon, silly!” Donny said, giggling too, and falling back in the chair.

“That was, but would you like to see some real ones?” I asked him.

“There’s no such thing.  Dad said so,” Donny said almost fearfully.

“Your Dad was a very smart man, there’s no doubt,” I responded confidently.  “But even very smart men are wrong sometimes.  And most of the time, it’s not bad to be wrong.  This is one of those times.  Fairies are real, but they don’t come here very often.  Even the name ‘fairy’ is confusing.  There are really a few different kinds of fairies.  And if you change the spelling a little and the whole word becomes several different races and an entire land that looks totally different in places from this one.”

“Really?” Donny asked, canting his head in firm disbelief. 

Putting on a wide-eyed and innocent look, hopefully equal to his from earlier, I exaggeratedly said, “Really!  I should know.  I’m a king of faery!”

“You are not!” Donny giggled, kicking his short legs.

“Am, too!” I answered petulantly and pouting at him.  Cpt. Pierce was enjoying my interactions with them.  Most everyone was, with Daybreak loose in the room.  “I can prove it!  I’ll call two fairies, like in the cartoons, over from my kingdom.  They will greet me, then each of my brothers and then they will come talk to you.  Does that sound like fun?”

“Yes, please!” squealed Ana, clapping again.  Donny crossed his arms stubbornly.

I looked into Gilán for Deason and Deacon, two part-time wardens who flew in random patrols around the many clans spread out across the valley.  They were currently flying over a small field of pink, bell-shaped flowers, rimmed in purple and red.

“Deason, Deacon, are you busy?” I called both aloud and through the geas.

No, Lord Daybreak,
they responded together.

“Would you mind picking a few of those flowers there and letting me introduce you to a pair of children?  They need to meet the faery for the first time and I’d like you to be the first,” I explained to them.  They both dove for the flowers before I finished speaking.

Ready, Lord!
They squealed, bobbing up above the field again, barely able to hold the armloads of blooms.

“They picked too many flowers, so I’ll make them appear over the table.  That way the flowers won’t be crushed when they drop them, all right?” I said, reaching out with my free hand and gesturing at the space above the table.  “Now fairies are a magical creature who live in a magical land, right?  And if I’m their king, I must be magical, too.”  I created a box in that space and filled it with blue Gilán energy, visible to everyone in the room.  Shifting the Deas into the box, then dismissing the box completely, we now had two very enthusiastic fairies overloaded with flowers flying above the table.

True to my predictions, they dropped all but a few flowers almost immediately, looking totally embarrassed, then bobbed once in the air and squealed, “Greetings, Lord Daybreak!  A great pleasure to see you again!”  Then they proceeded along to my brothers and back to me to wait for introductions to the children.

“Donny, Ana, this is Deason and Deacon, two fairies from my kingdom,” I said, gesturing to each in turn.  “Boys, this is Donny and Ana Grimes.  They’ll be visiting with us for a short while until we can get them situated with a relative among the Guard.”

The Deas enchanted the Grimes children in truly the faintest of faery ways.  “Why don’t you four talk for a few minutes and give me a chance to chat with Cpt. Pierce and General Harmond.  Okay?  We’ll be right over there.”

Pierce pulled herself away to come with me.  “Their house is closed up, correct?” I asked Harmond as soon as I sat down again.

“Yes, sir, though it was searched thoroughly after Mericine Grimes’ body was found,” Harmond said.

“So it’s trashed,” I said, grimacing horribly.  “Great.  I’ll send someone anyway.  Maybe there’s something to be salvaged.  Cpt. Pierce, will you be able to stay with them for a couple of weeks?  At least until they can get situated?  They will need some commonality while we get them into counseling and deal with child services and probate courts.  And frankly, Mitchel Dawes will need all the help he can get.  Hell, he’ll need family counseling as well.  He’s never had to deal with children on a daily basis.”

“Yes, sir, my caseload has been cleared for you, Mr. McClure,” she said with a pleasant smile.

“Here ya go, Seth,” Peter said, sliding a piece of paper across the table as he snapped his cell phone shut.  “A reservation at the same hotel in New York City as we had last week.  That’s the confirmation number.  Three room suite.  I figured the kids would probably want to sleep together for awhile, for comfort’s sake.”

Ethan’s phone snapped shut.  “I’ve got them an appointment with our attorneys tomorrow at ten to setup the trust funds for them and to find an attorney in that state to handle the probate issues.  I wasn’t sure of which state, so Dawes will have to handle all of that.”

“And I’ve gotten preliminary appointments with two psychologists on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning,” Kieran said, sliding his phone into his breast pocket.  “Tuesday is a family counselor who, according to David, has an excellent reputation among mixed families.” 

The officers stared at my brothers, two in open-mouthed fascination.  They were paying attention to me and hadn’t heard my brothers speaking.  That, and they hadn’t expected their cell phones to work around the wards surrounding us.

“A good start then, thanks, guys,” I said, taking the two slips of paper off the table and standing again.  “Let’s get them introduced so we can move along to the reason we’re here.

“Are y’all ready to meet Mitch?” I called out gently as I moved back around to Donny and Ana.  The Deas had been busy with them.  They still fluttered around them, artfully placing flowers in their hair and clothing.  On Ana, it made her features more delicate and innocent and on Donny, he seemed more boyish and young.  It was charming.  Like I’ve said all along, too cute.

“We’d rather stay with you,” Donny said, hopefully.

“I know, but I’m a very busy man and I just don’t have time to take proper care of you,” I said sadly.  “But I’ll come to visit as often as I can and initially you’ll be staying in my house.  Would you like to see it?  My house?”

“Yes, please,” answered Ana quickly with Donny fast behind her, leaning forward in his seat.

Holding up my hand, I showed them my ring and the embossed design underneath the diamond.  “Can you see the picture under the diamond?  That’s where I live, in that big house.  Mitch lives there, too, along with my brothers and a lot of other people.”

“Is there any fairies there?” Ana asked.

“Well, there are faery there, but not any fairies like Deason and Deacon right now,” I said, trying to stress the words in the right way.  “They live out in the area around the Palace.  The faery in the Palace right now are mostly brownies and sprites.”

“Are those different?” Donny asked.

“Yes,” I said slowly, “there are a lot of different kinds of faery, remember?  A lot more than I have in my realm, actually.  Mine are the nice kind, but you still have to be careful around some of them.  They’re stronger than they look and sometimes they don’t realize just how strong they are, but that’s why I keep those away from the Palace.  I have a lot of humans there that don’t know and understand about the faery yet, just like you.  Mitch will help you and I have a lot a people watching to make sure nothing bad happens.  Now, are you ready to see another magic trick?”

They both nodded eagerly, speechless and shy again.

“Mitch is a member of my Guard.  Sort of like your Daddy was in the Marine Corps,” I explained.  “I’m going to make him appear there and his commander appear right beside him, there, but that blue box I showed you earlier isn’t necessary, so I won’t do that this time.  That was just to show you where the Deas brothers would show up.  Okay?”

“Okay,” Donny said, humoring me, I think.

“Cmd. Byrnes, Sgt. Dawes, front and center, please,” I called through the geas, not asking as I had with the fairies.

“Reporting as ordered, Lord Daybreak,” barked Dawes, standing at attention in front of me.

“Good morning, Lord Daybreak,” Byrnes said, nodding in greeting, much more relaxed.

“At ease, Sergeant,” I said gently and stepped out of his line of sight to the kids.

“Donny!” he exclaimed, nearly leaping at the boy to hug him tightly to his chest.

“Don’t crush the poor kid, Mitch,” Byrnes said, chuckling at him as I told him their story through the geas.  I let the children, both of them, feel the emotions roiling through Dawes’ mind, heavily tempered, of course.  He would have overwhelmed them terribly.

“Ana?” he whispered, pulling back from Donny, suddenly sensing her beside him.  “Ana!” he said excitedly, swinging around and grabbing her into their hug, too.  Then it occurred to him that something happened.  With a quick and easy toss, he threw Donny up and caught him under his butt.  Then he turned to me, holding both kids cradled in an arm.  “Lt. Grimes?”

“RPG in Iraq,” I said quietly, filling in the rest of the story through the geas, editing the unimportant parts out.

“No!” he said, aghast, squeezing the children again.  “I’m so sorry.”  I let them feel a little of his grief for them, too, but much more tempered than his love and joy at seeing them.  They needed to know he could empathize with them in some way.  “Lord Daybreak, may I please stay with them?  Act as their father?  I could adopt Ana.  They don’t have anyone else.  Barry Grimes didn’t have any other family and they’ll end up in foster care otherwise…”