Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God Read Online Free

I did while this apparent ritual was
going on was watch him. Even the way he dried his hands seemed
familiar—He seemed familiar. Kieran reminded me of my father. Hmm.
So this is what maudlin is like.
    “Come on,” he said, putting his arm on my
shoulder amicably. “Let’s take a walk. I have something for you to
see, someone for you to meet, and a few facts for you to
acknowledge. This is going to be an… interesting hour for both of
us.”
    He led me out the back door and down the deck
stairs. The house sat on an incline on a big wooded lot. My
backyard is trees, trees, and more trees and I loved it. No yard to
cut and life all around. And the noise the wind makes during a
storm is beautiful. He was taking me down to the clearing about a
hundred twenty yards back. He picked his way carefully down the
path, avoiding several small sharp rocks on the path. I didn’t get
what the problem was since he didn’t have a problem on the gravel
the other night. He was still bare-footed while I was wearing
tennis shoes.
    “There’s some flip-flops in my closet you can
wear until we can get you some clothes,” I offered. Crap, now I’m
takin’ in strays.
    “Some what?” Kieran asked, tiptoeing through
a dense area of rocks a few feet long.
    “Sorta like sandals without backs,” I said,
grinning at the undignified sight of six feet four inches and
probably three hundred pounds of lean muscle waving his arms around
like a little girl in the park as he stepped on a sharp rock.
    We broke from the trees into the clearing and
the bright morning sun. It was a beautiful pastoral scene to me,
mostly because it was so different from what I grew up with in
Savannah. Not that Savannah isn’t beautiful, but I mean, there are
mountains and hills here! Savannah is wetlands and oceanside,
Spanish moss covered trees crossing dirt roads into dark and
threatening swamps. Beautiful in a completely different way.
    Kieran steered to a vantage point that would
have been a nice place for the porch of a house, or a deck maybe.
He kicked around in the grass for a moment until he found a rock,
then cleared the grass away from it.
    “Do you recognize this?” he asked me. I
looked at the stone. It looked like a square rock in the ground,
nothing special, to me.
    “Nothing in particular, a foundation stone?”
I answered.
    “Actually, you’re right. It is a foundation
stone,” he said, grinning. Then he put his hand on its center,
pushed and released. It took about three seconds for the script to
start showing on the stone in a neon greenish yellow color. I’m
sure a paint store had a name for it, but I didn’t know it. The
script looked like an invitation script that you couldn’t read. You
know the type, with so many loops and serifs that you can’t tell an
f from an s from a b. Except I could feel this writing as it flowed
out. It had a presence. It felt like my house, actually, and I turn
up the hill subconsciously, feeling a resonance there. It was
eerie.
    “It is also a ward stone,” he said standing,
brushing his hands together and looking down at the script. “My
ward stone, specifically, and my foundation stone. No doubt you
felt the resonance when my ward was activated.” He paused long
enough for me to nod, then went on. “The only way they could do
that is if they were the exact same spell written the exact same
way. This is my mother’s. I’d know it anywhere. So is the one on
your house. Only my father could have put it there. He was the only
other person who knew this ward. My father’s name is Robert
McClure.” He exhaled slowly, thoughtfully.
    “Seth, is this your father, too? Are you Seth
McClure?” Kieran asked me.
    Talk about a shock. “Uh, yeah. Yes, it is,
Robert Eric McClure, of Savannah, Georgia,” I said. Is this guy for
real?
    “Well then, you should know that I am your
older fraternal half-brother, Ehran McClure,” looking sad as he
said it, “and I have caused you a good deal of difficulty