Father (Blood Brotherhood 1)

Chapter Fifteen

Bryn

“All of this and you never host training anymore!”

Elvin is wandering about in the dungeon looking at all the various weapons with an expression reserved for happy psychopaths. I know he is imagining all the damage he could be doing to the human body with these tools.

Elvin is a youngster from Ireland. He has coal black hair, deep dark eyes, a rough Northern Irish accent, and the tact and diplomacy of a stick of dynamite in the arse. He’s about thirty now, the newest of our order, and technically everybody’s responsibility. I think we’ve been neglecting him. I know I have abdicated most of my responsibilities to the others lately.

“So I pins this demon,” he says, continuing the story he began to tell me the moment he saw me. “And I lift the crucifix so I can see it in both of its blazing hellish eyes, and it tries one last trick to confuse me. It takes the form of my dearly departed father, it does. Looked so real I couldn’t believe it. Trick didn’t work, though, because the demon didn’t know one important thing.”

“And what’s that?” I ask the question out of politeness.

“I hated my da, I did. More than I’d hate any demon. So I got the satisfaction of dispatching the old bastard twice.”

“There is something deeply wrong with you, Elvin.”

“Oh, I know.” He grins broadly, not ashamed at all.

“Bryn,” Thor puts his head in the doorway. “The brothers would like to have a meeting if it's not too great an inconvenience.”

“Sure.”

I knew when they all showed up that getting rid of them would be easier said than done. The topic up for debate at the meeting does not surprise me in the slightest. Thor speaks for them all.

“We are thinking it might be better for us all if the order was once more based in the abbey. We’ve been spread across the world for too long. We're losing touch with our roots, and we’re failing in our mission. This building was left to us all, but you are the most connected, Bryn, so we’d like your permission.”

“Your permission to move a dozen bastards into my house? And your wives? And presumably…offspring?” It takes real effort not to shudder at that last word.

“That’s our second policy change we’d like to table. Wives, angel blood mates, they’re what we live for. But any brother who conceives a babe needs to take retirement. Too dangerous for all involved.”

The idea is not a truly awful one. The abbey is large and made for many more to occupy than myself and Crichton alone. But the decision to move out was taken more than a decade ago, by many of the same men who now wish to move back.

“You all wanted your freedom, and now?”

“Now we want our home,” Thor says. “We need to stay together. Support each other. We need to be able to moderate one another, when we’re going too far…”

“You mean when we kill a vessel of the blood?”

“That’s one possible example, yes,” Thor says, ever the diplomat. He’s built like a Viking, but he has the silver tongue of a… whatever has a silver tongue. I have no bandwidth for florid metaphors right now.

“And this is what you all want?” I look around the table and see faces of old friends looking at me with a mixture of compassion, pity, and in some cases, hopefulness. I wonder how many of them have had a rough decade on their own, attempting to battle entities of evil in far flung parishes with no support from their brothers.

“It’s what I want,” Elvin says. “That training arena downstairs is everything. We’d be much improved if we worked out daily. Look at Michael. He's blown up like a balloon!”

Michael has always been a barrel-chested beast. “I will crush your skull, you little shit,” he says, though not without some affection.

“If you want to stay, you may stay,” I say simply. “How many of you have brought angel blood with you?”

There is nothing but silence. I didn’t expect a positive response to the question. It’s a rare commodity, and even if my brothers did have some in their possession, they would not likely make an announcement about it in front of all the others.

"And how many of you are going to move women in?

Again, silence.

“There are women here, aren’t there? I am sure I saw a woman.”

“Oh,” Steven says, as if he has just woken up. "That's Mrs Crocombe. My cook.”

There is a general cheer, for Mrs Crocombe is nothing short of legendary among our order. The woman can cook the way the good Lord can create a sunrise, spectacularly, regularly, and always with fresh divine inspiration.

I am going to have to break the news to Crichton.

“There is a woman in my kitchen, sir.”

I don’t get the chance to break the news to Crichton. Crichton finds me in the greatest distress I have witnessed in him for a long time. His brows are slightly raised, and there is a faint sneering motion about his nose. On the outside he seems calm, but I know him better than anybody. This is a man on the edge.