Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God by Scott Duff Read Free Book Online Page A

double
stayed with me, patting my back gently. Most human thing it’d done.
Wiping my mouth on my sleeve, I rejoined Kieran who was on all
fours beside the white Toyota, peering underneath it.
    “Time to come out, little one,” he said in a
commanding voice, standing up.
    A fluttering ball of leaf green slowly
drifted out from under the car. It flew up timidly to Kieran’s head
height, leaving a small trail of glittering dust behind it and
taking a more solid form. It was a pixie, just a couple of inches
high with bright multicolored wings. He looked frightened out of
his mind. I couldn’t blame him one bit about that. His wings hummed
slightly as he hovered just out of Kieran’s reach.
    Kieran asked him, “What were you here for?”
The pixie started answering him in another language, but Kieran
stopped him. “In English.”
    “We were here to take the boy,” the pixie
squeaked. He knew English. Huh. I wondered if all the Fae knew my
language. Kieran cocked an eyebrow at the pixie. I wished I could
do that.
    “This was an assassin team,” said Kieran,
trying to lead the pixie.
    “Yes,” squealed the pixie in agreement,
brightening his glow to red. “A powerful one, too.” He didn’t take
the bait Kieran had offered.
    “What was your job in this?” Kieran
asked.
    “Fascinate the boy until the swap,” said the
pixie, squelching his colors into the blue ranges. “See to his
needs until the delivery.”
    “Delivery where?” Kieran kept probing.
    “I don’t know,” the pixie squeaked. His eyes
were huge compared to his body and had the deer-in-the-headlights
quality to them. “I’m the hired hand, not part of their group. They
told me nothing more than what I had to know to do the job. I
swear. And you don’t ask questions of the Black Hand.”
    “The Black Hand?” asked Kieran. “Are they of
Winter or of Summer?”
    “No one knows for sure. They both take
credit,” answered the pixie. “At least the rumors at the lower
levels do. The Royals never acknowledge them. That would be
uncouth.” He rolled in place then returned to hover quite steadily.
I guess that was his equivalent to rolling his eyes.
    “Was this the first of your attacks on Seth?”
Kieran asked.
    “This was the first contact,” the pixie said
in a high tremor. “We set out two nights ago to a lovely forest to
the west but something fouled the tracking and we came back
empty handed.”
    “Back to where?” Kieran asked, eyes narrowing
on the pixie searching for misdirection.
    “A cabin in the woods. I don’t know where it
is,” he squeaked and flew slightly away and pointed at the
elf-shaped forest of bolts. “That one could pierce the veil at
times. The cabin had a gem in it that he could sense. And there was
a man here tonight that had a similar stone, but he left before you
came out of the bazaar. He pierced the veil and we walked here.”
Bazaar, good word for a mall. There were definitely some bizarre
things going on in and around it. Especially tonight.
    “What did the man look like?” I asked him. He
buzzed down to my height, keeping the same distance from me before
answering.
    “I don’t know, sir,” he said, deferentially,
“I didn’t see him, but I felt the gem’s song. It was very close to
that of the cabin’s gem.” He flitted back up to face Kieran,
waiting for more questions.
    “Leave,” Kieran said, sighing. The pixie flew
past me at breakneck speed trailing gold and silver dust in his
wake. I followed him for a short way to pick up the bags we’d
dropped.
    “You did well, Eth’anok’avel,” I heard Kieran
say to my duplicate. Reality shuddered a little at the phrase, not
as bad like the first time when Kieran showed me how to see the
Elves. Just like before, though, I knew what it meant: Brother to
the Fires of Creation. How did I know this? What language was this?
I glanced up at the entrance of the garage and saw the pixie
darting back and forth indecisively. He drooped down on