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When he was able to tear his eyes from Piper, he had to sit down on the floor. Piper asked him if he was all right.
“I don’t think so. She could have killed all those people. Didn’t she think what would happen?” Piper only shrugged. “What do you plan on doing to her?”
“I’m not. You are. That’s why I showed you what could have happened if Blaze hadn’t felt the men coming down the hall. There wasn’t any time to plan, so we simply took them out.” He nodded. “You’re going to have to do something about Dawn, Bryson. If yo
u don’t, then she’ll keep trying until a lot of people are dead.”
“Yes, I will. How do I go to her now?”
Suddenly he found himself in a room that he’d not been in before. He knew the things lying around—they were his sister’s. But the things on the wall scared him a great deal. Bryson looked at Piper when she whistled.
“She knew what she was all along, didn’t she?”
“I’d say that’s about right.”
The books on the shelves seemed to call to him. Picking up the first one that he saw, he read the title to himself. How to Conjure the Dead. “Did you know this before you brought me here?”
“I had an idea. She took us telling her that she was a witch too calmly. I was only just last night talking to Remi about it. So I made a few calls to the WC. They’ve not only stripped her of some of her magic, but they took her immortality too. She can be killed now. However, this…. No, we didn’t know about this.” Piper bent and pulled up a rug that lay in the middle of the room. There was a circled shape on the floor. “She’s well beyond just finding out that she could do this shit.”
“What do I do now?” Piper said that she wasn’t sure. “I’m not sure either. I mean, what else might she have done to manipulate things in her favor?”
“That is the big question now, isn’t it, little brother?” He looked at Dawn when she walked into the room with them. “It’s not like you to go snooping around where you’re not supposed to. Whatever am I going to do with you?”
“You could have killed a great many people today, Dawn. Why would you do that?” She just smiled at him. He could almost taste her insanity. “What else have you done? What other lives have you taken?”
“Well, it will include yours soon enough. Not to mention those birds. Christ, they’ve been a pain in my ass since they became involved with you. I saw the way that they were, and I thought I could do so much better. I think I did too. But keeping you out of trouble has been a full time job. Not that you were ever in serious trouble, little brother, but you were kind of nosey. I had to keep erasing your mind so you’d not know certain things. Then there were my parents. While Curt did kill my mother, I did dear old Dad in. That’s how I got all the magic. You see, the birds were partly right. Mom did give it away, but not to me. She gave it to Dad, just like I knew she would. So in order to get it all, I killed him for the power. And damn, but it was a real blast of power.” Bryson noticed that Piper was gone and he was all alone with Dawn. “You really shouldn’t block me from messing with your brain pan, Bryson. I need to fix you up so that I can start all over with Curt. I will hurt you.”
“No, you won’t. You can’t. And it has nothing to do with me blocking you, does it? You see, Piper went to the council about you. You’re no longer an immortal, Dawn.” She screamed at him and raised her hands above her head. “You can’t destroy me either. I know that for a fact.”
The small voice in his head, he didn’t know who it was, told him to raise his arms up too. To do what she was doing. He did that and felt power that he’d never felt before rise up his arms. Just as she lowered her hands, he did as well, and the voice told him to shove it at her.
Pushing his palms out, he shoved at her all the power that was racing over his body. Before he could begin to figure out what it was supposed to mean, Dawn slammed back against the wall behind her and a chair leg hit her in the stomach. The voice, again, told him to destroy her or he’d be too badly damaged to want to live. Raising his arms up, he did it again, shoving more magic at Dawn until he was weak with it.
The next time he opened his eyes, not even sure when he might have passed out, he looked at Blaze. She was talking to someone on the phone as he lay next to her in the bed. Sitting up, she told whoever she was talking to that she had to go. Blaze put the phone on the nightstand.
“You all right?” He said that he didn’t know, but he didn’t hurt. “That’s good. How much do you remember? Anything at all?”
“A voice told me that if I didn’t destroy Dawn, then I’d be badly damaged.” He turned to look at her. “I saw a picture of you with a baby in your arms, and that gave me the extra that I needed to kill her. Why? I mean, why did she turn on me?”
“I would imagine that in that moment she figured out that you were much more powerful than she was. I don’t think she cared for that.” Nodding, he pulled Blaze into his arms and held her as he laid back down. “She’s been manipulating a great many things we’ve only just figured out. Meeting me and the birds, that wasn’t a part of her plan.”
“She had a plan?” Blaze told him what she’d figured out. “So, she was working this around so that I’d have to depend on her for the rest of my life? Why would she even care?”
“Because you’re human. Or you were before meeting me. She could have had your child, and that’s what she needed to complete the circle of life that she needed. Beyond that, I’m not really sure what else she had in mind. But I do know that you wouldn’t have survived after she conceived.” He told her how he’d felt the insanity. “Yes, I’m sure that you could. But I think she’s been that way for a very long time. I believe that was why she had Curt kill her mother. So that she could get their magic.”
“Where is it now?” When Blaze didn’t answer him, he looked down at her. “You’re not telling me that it’s mine, are you? I don’t want more magic. I hope you understand that.”
“Too bad. You’ve gained a great many powers that I don’t have. Not to mention, the council has granted you all the money that Dawn, or whatever the fuck her name was, couldn’t have. They knew that she killed for it. It’s a considerable amount of money. Just over ten million dollars.”
Bryson laid back down and closed his eyes. He needed to think. Needed to do something that had nothing to do with magic, money, or family. There was just too much of everything going on in his head right now.
~*~
Paul loved the house. It was much larger than he thought they’d need, but he was happy that it was so close to the kids. He had to smile about that. Kids. He had a feeling that he’d been so far off the mark about calling Blaze or the rest of the women kids that he’d make himself nutty trying to think how old they might be.
“There is food in the pantry, Paul.” He looked to where Reba was standing. “And look here. There is a freezer too. You think that it’s full too?”
“I do. I don’t know why, but I think when they told us that they had us set up, they meant for everything.” He hugged his wife to him. “You all right with living to be thousands of years old?”
