Brothers: Legacy of the Twice-Dead God by Scott Duff

wouldn’t
form the words against my palate. I veered out of my lane and
almost hit another car concentrating on trying. “Why can’t I say
it?”
    “Speaking the language takes training,”
Kieran said quietly. “It will be easier in time since you seem to
have an innate understanding of its meaning.”
    I grunted. “And until then?”
    “’Ethan’ is a decent Anglicization of it.
Will that work?” he asked. I looked back at the I-not-I in the
mirror. I didn’t look like an “Ethan” to me, but it wasn’t my
decision. I turned into a chain supermarket. Late on a Monday
evening, it was pretty empty so we parked near the front. We all
got out of the car. Locking the doors with the remote, I asked my
double, “Is ‘Ethan’ okay with you?”
    He hesitated, then said, “I believe Kir
du’Ahn has overestimated my abilities in comparison to
Eth’anok’avel.” There was a ripple in reality with each non-English
phrase he spoke. There was absolutely no doubt that Kir du’Ahn was
Kieran. It felt like the entire universe pointed to him with the
phrase.
    Kieran sidled up beside Ethan, putting his
arm around Ethan’s shoulder companionably, and said, “Have you seen
them?”
    “Who, sir?” he asked, and again, there was a
small inflection in his voice this time. Just a little like
mine.
    “The Fires of Creation,” he said, starting
them toward the door, smiling slightly.
    “No, sir,” said Ethan.
    “I have, Ethan,” Kieran said, patting him on
the shoulder and stepping forward a bit. Ethan ducked his head and
blushed. Good, he was developing a personality. I couldn’t tell if
he was using my personality though or if this was something else
burgeoning out of him. I wondered how much I would like myself
being around all the time. Probably not.
    I put the convoluted thought out of my head
as Kieran grabbed a cart out of the vestibule and pushed through
the double doors into the delicatessen section. I blanched at the
smell of roasted chicken as it turned in the rotisserie, seriously
overcooked. It emphasized the taste in my mouth and brought the
memory of the four dead faery back to the forefront. I almost ran
to the checkout line for gum and a soda. I didn’t want to even
think about food, though admittedly I remember about fifty horror
films that were gorier than what I saw today. The elves didn’t even
look real.
    Except there was a pixie sitting on my long
lost brother’s shoulder as he walked through a grocery store that I
drove them to. I need my dad. But until I could find him, all I had
were a couple of very strange men who killed to protect me. At
first, it was fun to be here all by myself, then boring, then
lonely. Now it’s scary. Assassins are trying to kidnap me.
Assassins? Why assassins? Why me? I don’t have any enemies. I don’t
know anybody, outside of a dozen or so tutors my parents brought in
over the years. I was acquainted with a few businessmen my parents
dealt with, but not the sort of business done. I’d never been
exposed to any kind of magic before I caught one of my tutors
teaching his son one day when my parents weren’t around. Now I’m
rolling in magic. And all I could do was make a little light and
noise. Kieran did things that ate people and Ethan ate people’s
magic. Damn, Dad, where are you? These aren’t the kinds of problems
I know how to handle.
    My more immediate problems are roaming the
store someplace. I paced the front of the store looking down each
aisle for them. They hadn’t made it past the first aisle.
Apparently, the bread confused them. I had limited room in the car
and limited patience in general. I grabbed two loaves of bread that
I liked and laid them in the kiddie seat of the cart. They were
relieved as I pulled the buggy back into the produce section. This
side of the shopping trip was definitely all mine, though the pixie
did flit onto my shoulder and ask meekly for some fruit. Twenty
minutes later, we left with enough food for three days and