The Cursed Blood, стр. 52
He paused and eyed the star speckled velvety cloudless sky as if the weight of them all was bearing down on him before he flicked his gaze back to me. “I take it you read about the Oldfable and the vendetta between Darkling and Vraad, am I correct?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak as I knew what was coming. Someone was finally going to explain things, and just the expectation of this was enough to set my hands to shaking and blood thundering in my ears.
“The First of your kind were nothing like what you see today,” he explained. “Forged of blood and enchantments the likes of which haven’t been wielded since. They were unique and powerful by design. Which predictably, made them into the stuff of nightmares to those of the magically endowed so inclined to fear what they don’t understand. Which, come to think of it is pretty much all of them then, and, even most of them now. Some things never seem to change…”
That said he fell silent and began rummaging about his pockets. He pulled a shiny cigar tube from his flannel’s breast pocket, a cutter and lighter from his jeans pocket, and began to settle in for a good smoke, untwisting the cap of the tube and plucking the cigar out, rolling it in his fingers and sniffing at it with deep anticipation.
A few minutes later the screen door banged open, shattering the silence and stirring Manx out his lazy slumber. He perked up his ears and lifted his shaggy head to watch as out stalked Gramps, just as the Master had neatly trimmed and lit his fine Cuban. He took a deep pull of the rich tobacco as he flicked closed his old brass lighter and stuffed it back in his pocket.
“What took you so long?” White Owl asked innocently as he blew out a hazy fog of cigar smoke. Gramps glowered at him, pulled over a chair that grated against the porch boards noisily, and plopped down to sit before us with an unhappy grunt. Manx’s head slumped down a heartbeat later with a grunt, droopy watery eyes fluttering closed with a low whine.
“So, you told him?” Gramps rumbled discontentedly as he scratched at his beard, fixing the Master with an irritable sideways look.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, not without you,” White Owl answered despondently as he eyed his old friend and took another deep pull that he blew out his nose before offering to share. Gramps eyed it, wrinkled his nose, and waved it away.
“How do you abide those barbaric things?”
“Asks the man with a corn cob pipe named Bessy?” White Owl retorted with a coyly arched brow as he shrugged and went back to enjoying the rejected cigar with a deeply contented sigh.
“It’s sentimental,” Gramps scoffed waspishly, looking quite offended and aggrieved at the insinuation in the Master’s retort. “At least I have some sense of style and don’t just stick any old rolled up heap of dry leaves into my mouth.”
Refusing to take the bait White Owl snorted and shook his head, giving his old friend a sideways look through the haze of tobacco smoke. “More importantly Artur, it’s time. I am going to tell him, now that you’re here, of course. Whether you like it or not.”
“Are you now?” Gramps growled.
“Indeed,” the Master advised. “As I was saying Ben, the First generation of Darklings were forged in an all but lost combination of blood and magic that made them seem to be a unique and dire threat to all of Feydom.”
Gramps eyed him as he spoke of the Forging. A deeply disturbed glimmer in his black eyes at the whole “mostly lost” bit, but he stayed silent, a resigned look on his exhaustion lined face as he settled back into his chair to await the inevitable.
“How were they different from me?” I asked. It seemed like a natural question, but I’d missed the obvious answer that was right there looking me in the face the whole time.
“From you, they weren’t so different, although even to them you would be considered unique,” White Owl answered with a dry humorless chuckle. “But from every single other one of the Darkling generations since them up to you, they were very, very different.” He gazed at me appraisingly between puffs and Gramps made an unhappy noise and cracked his knuckles.
“What does that mean though?” I asked frustratedly as I looked from one to the other confusedly when things failed to immediately make sense.
“It means, Ben, that you are special,” Gramps answered as he folded his arms against the night’s chill and fixed me with an unhappy, glowering, almost pitying glance.
“No, no, no. It doesn’t,” White Owl interjected softly. “It actually means three things. That you are dangerous. And like all dangerous things, you are a threat, and a deeply valuable commodity. Depending, of course, on who you ask.”
Chapter Ten
You can never really go home…
The “Full Council” was called to meet as it always was. With much argument and fuss over destinations (my aunt insisted on no boats), amenities, bickering over chefs and menus, finally White Owl (who utterly and confoundingly refused to attend, stating his presence would only complicate things further) told the whole insufferable lot to stuff it and just get on with it.
Fancy ribbon and wax sealed invitations were delivered by the Silent Ones, a mysterious and dangerous group of demons that have a rather simple creed: “We will deliver anything (and they mean ANYTHING) for the right price, and if you try to stop us we will make a memorable example of you by killing your whole line very, very painfully and publicly.” I know, it’s not quite the UPS’s old,