Ash shrugged. "Hope you don't take this the wrong way, but your gene pool is a little shallow when it comes to intelligence. The hallowed part of the Valley doesn't begin for another five miles in." He flashed a fanged grin at Ren. "Great place to set up camp, huh? I'd laugh at your brother's arrogant idiocy if it wasn't so pathetic. Anyway, I thought you were going in with the others, not detouring here. Had I known this was your plan, I'd have had your back all along. Sometimes, Ren, you have to remember that you do have friends now. And some of us have been around for a very long time. Like a permanent boil on your ass, I'm kind of attached to all of you."
Ren laughed. "I will remember that. Thank you."
Ash inclined his head respectfully. "I shall leave you and Beza to your fun. I'll take care of Choo Co La Tah for you, and continue holding the line against the vermin breaking though the barriers." He headed over to where Choo lay in an unconscious lump.
"Acheron?" Ren took care to use the true Atlantean pronunciation of his name with a hard C and audible H. "Herista." Thank you.
Ash tapped his heart twice with his fist, which was an Atlantean gesture for blood family. "Atee, mer, atee." Anytime, brother, anytime. Then, turning, he picked Choo up and vanished with him. As soon as Ash was gone, everyone returned to normal.
One day, Ash really needed to come clean about the full extent of his powers.
But that wouldn't be tonight.
Tonight, Ren had a gate to seal, and a rat to catch. One whose eyes were now widened by fear as Coyote realized he had eight Rens to fight now.
One of whom was severely pissed off and wanted his blood over the beating Coyote had ordered.
Ren left his duplicate army to fight the others while he headed straight for Coyote. As soon as his brother saw him coming for him, Coyote did what he did best.
He ran.
Ren picked up the pace as he ran down the shaft, after Coyote. Tired of chasing the jackrabbit, Ren teleported himself in front of Coyote.
Still looking behind him, he slammed into Ren's chest, then staggered back.
Ren gave him a pitiless glare as Coyote scurried backward on the ground, like a creepy contorted possessed human in a horror movie. Stand up and face me like the man you claim to be.... "I will never understand how our father was so blind to your true nature."
Finally discovering some semblance of a backbone, Coyote stood up and lifted his chin defiantly. "What are you going to do? Kill me?"
Ren pulled the hand forged knife from his boot, and glanced down at it. It was one of the very few items he'd managed to hang on to from his human life-one of the very few things he'd owned as a human. Simple and elegant, it had a crow etched down one side of the blade and a hummingbird on the other. A bit of whimsy he'd put there one night when he'd been unable to sleep. Too many bitter memories had often robbed him of his rest.
But he'd always had a strong affection for weaponry.
One of the things he'd learned as a boy was metallurgy. He'd watch the smiths smelt different compounds, taking mental notes on what they did so that he could duplicate it in private.
By the time he was twenty, he made all of his own weapons. His bow, arrows, war club, and knives. And he'd learned, courtesy of Coyote's "pranks," to sleep with his weapons so that if they were touched or tampered with, he'd know instantly.
There was no worse feeling than to entrust your life to a tool that malfunctioned or broke while you were under attack.
And he had the scars to prove it. As a human, his weapons had been the only thing he'd ever taken pride in. Unlike people, they didn't mock him. They didn't leave him, and they protected him when no one else would.
He still felt that way about them.
In fact, the garage at his house was a forge. Since he could fly and teleport, he had no use for a car. There was no need in wasting prime space when he could use it for the only thing that gave him real comfort.
"Say something," Coyote snarled.
"Sorry. I was lost in thought for a moment."
"Are you insane?"
Ren laughed. "Given our genes? It's a safe bet." He sobered and narrowed his gaze on Coyote. "Tell me something ... do you remember that time when I was nineteen and for my birthday, I made a matching set of knives as a gift for you and Father?"
"Yeah? So?"
"Do you remember what you did?"
"No. I don't even know what happened to them."
Of course he didn't. Why should he? "I remember it." With a clarity he would give anything to purge out of his memory. "I gave you yours first, and you convinced me that Father wouldn't take his from me. That he would criticize it as being inferior. So I allowed you to give it to him while I watched. He assumed you'd made it, and he embraced you for the gift."
"Father was bad that way."
"No, Anukuwaya, you were always bad that way. You're a shadow walker. A treacherous creature from the dark that pretends it's from the light. It's shimmery and beautiful, but it has no substance. No loyalty. When we were human, I never saw it in you, because I cherished you as my brother. I didn't want to see it. And Father, even after Buffalo told him I was the knife's creator, said it was the best one he'd ever seen. It was the only time in my life he looked at me with anything other than contempt. But you couldn't stand it. The jealousy ate at you. And you couldn't let me have those two minutes of his affection. Instead, you thermal-shocked the blade so that it would snap, and then showed it to Father, who thanked you for saving his life from my incompetence. Angry at me for having given him a defective knife, he threw it at me while I ate dinner alone in the kitchen."
Ren opened the front of his shirt so that Coyote could see the scar on his shoulder where the knife had hit him while he sat unaware of his father's rage. Their father had thrown the knife so forcefully, that it'd knocked him off his seat, and laid him out on the floor. Stunned, Ren had stared in horror as his father curled his lip and cursed him. "It was a fine weapon. It tore through my flesh and sinew and muscle like they were butter, and the tip embedded in my bone. If nothing else, you should remember that. It was over a year before I had full range of motion in my arm again." Though to be honest, there were still some things he couldn't do with that arm.