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

just
because of that relationship. I am sorry and I will do what I can
to fix these problems as quickly as possible.”
    “What problems?” I asked warily.
    “It would be easier to show you the first
one,” he said grinning, “and just so you don’t go into culture
shock, you should probably stay out of it for a while. Get to know
how people actually work. It’s a traumatic story.”
    “What is?” I asked, impatiently.
    “Look at your Pact sigil. It now encapsulates
what was my Pact.”
    I looked in that newly discovered place in my
head. Yep, there it was, the Pact sigil, my dad’s family crest.
Sitting on top of it was a huge, and I do mean huge, sphere of
gyrating, undulating color. As I stared at it, brief images
appeared on the surface showing vistas of beautiful landscapes
definitely not on this planet. Nature here just didn’t have
lavender rivers and, patriotism aside, purple mountains majesty
just weren’t that purple.
    “It is fascinating, isn’t it?” Kieran asked
quietly, smiling at me, bringing me back to the field of normal
green grass and blue sky.
    “How did I get this?” I asked. As fascinating
and beautiful as it was, it didn’t belong to me and I wasn’t sure I
wanted it. Hell, I didn’t even know what it was. For all I knew, it
was a tumor.
    “It sloughed off of me when I threw the beast
out,” he said, eyes cast down and shifting on his feet, almost like
he was ashamed of it. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’d only been
back a few hours and so much was going on…” He sighed and looked at
me with really big mournful green eyes. He looked like a little boy
right then. I barely succeeded in holding back the laughter. The
paradox of a three hundred-pound man looking like a lost little boy
was comical. And me, a seventeen-year old, having to act like the
parent here? I should be rolling on the ground, gasping for
breath.
    “And I got it…?” I was right earlier—I did
have a nightmare and I was still in it.
    “When the beast entered you,” he finished my
sentence. He stopped to let me absorb this, I suppose. Of course, I
was still back on the fraternal half-brother thing, so I guess I
did need the time.
    “Wait,” I said, pinching the bridge of my
nose, getting royally confused, “First you said your name is Kieran
and now you say it’s Ehran. Which is it?” Yeah, that’s me. It’s the
little things, not the big things.
    “Ehran is my given name,” he said, bobbing
his head. “Kieran is an approximation to the name I’ve been called
for… roughly four hundred years. It’s hard to tell. Time flows
differently in the lower realms. It is the name given to me by my
teacher and it is tremendously important to me.”
    “Okay, Kieran it is.” That was simple to
accept. Sort of. “You’re over four hundred years old?”
    He hesitated in answering, but said, “I have
experienced about four hundred and fifty years, yes, but I was born
in 1964. I believe that actually makes me forty-nine. You should
know, though, that our father was born sometime in the early
1400’s. We are a long-lived people.”
    Okay, that one floored me. Dad was over six
hundred. He didn’t look sixty. He looked maybe the forty-nine
Kieran claimed. On a bad day. Kieran looked twenty-two. He’d
definitely get carded buying liquor. Wow, I’ve got a giant glowing
ball in my head now, and this is what I’m having a hard time
believing.
    “Any more relatives I don’t know about?” I
asked sarcastically.
    “Probably,” he said, nodding. “When I left, I
had at least two brothers and a sister still living, and I believe
they had children as well. And I believe there is at least a nephew
by a brother who was killed in the 1700’s still living. We would
have to ask father to be sure.”
    Damn. Instant family. Just add a lake and
shake violently.
    “Why haven’t I heard of any of this?” I
asked, frustrated.
    Again, he hesitated. “I don’t know. Equally
important to that is why you