"Your children hurt him. He's gone home to mother to kiss it and make it all better. Your toy appears to be playing with my toy."
Fiona wrinkled her nose. Such a lovely nose it was, on such an interesting face. It was too bad she had this fixation on her younger brother. It wasn't so much the brother thing. Dougal didn't care if people mated with their dogs in the middle of the street. But there were others she could choose . . . .
"Why this Pendragon? What's so important about him?"
She smiled her malicious smile, the one that made her look for an instant like the peregrine. "He's pretty, love. I've wanted him ever since he was a baby, you know. Not like you, with your nose like the hawk upon your wrist and your eyes set too close together and your neck stolen from a scrawny rooster. Sometimes I pity this Maureen: you're nothing much to look at, Dougal, as a man. No muscles to speak of, except those between your ears."
Sean stirred, reacting to a glare from Dougal. "She's just having fun with you. Our Fiona has a nasty streak. There's more to Brian than a pretty face. How many fathers of the Blood have two fertile children, even with the aid of different mothers?"
Dougal had to think. "Damned few."
The dark pools of Fiona's eyes grew remote. "Precisely. It's one of the joys of our hybrid ancestry. The ability to use Power is a complex of recessive genes. You have to get them all from both parents in order for them to show. The problem is, the Old Blood has both Power and fertility linked with a lot of lethal genes."
Sean snickered. "Not exactly a survival trait."
"So far, love, those genes have paid us back more than they cost. But that's one reason why you can recognize the Old Blood at sight. We tend to look alike because we don't have that many viable gene combinations."
Dougal's head buzzed with Fiona's human words. "Why do I need to know this?"
"Sean and I have done a little research, love. That's why we were poking around on the coast of Maine. You've heard of the Jackson Labs? Genetics research, mutant mice, tracing the genealogy of inherited disease? Sean's a wonder, you know, in the half-world of the humans. He can even chase down grants."
Dougal grimaced at Sean. "Can you get her to stick to the point?"
Fiona dimpled, as if he'd just paid her a compliment. "Oh, we've done a little discrete gene-sequencing, love. Nothing that would allow another researcher to discover exactly what species we were studying. I'm afraid our notes are quite hopeless from a scientific point of view.
Sean shook his head. "What she's leading up to, in her nasty little way, is a mutation. She carries it, Brian carries it, I carry it but with a broken sequence and that stupid extra chromosome. Our father apparently was a most unusual man. Too bad he's dead."
Dougal sneered. "Too bad he got besotted with a woman of the Kamarei, you mean. It's hard to regenerate your way out of a stew-pot. What's that got to do with us?"
Fiona smiled, showing teeth that were nearly fangs. "So, love, you earlier mentioned breeding dogs. If one of your wolfhounds has a trait you want preserved, what do you do?"
"Breed to the same trait in another."
Her smile deepened. He really disliked being the target of her smiles, the way they added barbs to her venomed tongue. He knew his mind wasn't as quick as hers--but then, few were. That was a human trait. The Old Blood had other tools.
"So, love," she went on, "isn't the same tail or nose or set of good sharp teeth often found in the same litter? Don't you often breed brother to sister for the purity of the line? Inbreed and then cull?"
"Yes."
Dougal nodded to himself, beginning to understand where she was leading him. So. Little Fiona looked to start her own selective breeding program? Given what he knew of her and of Brian, there probably wouldn't be that many culls to drown.
"Besides," she said, "he's awfully cute, love. Those beautiful blue eyes, that curly blonde hair all across his arms and legs and chest. Those muscles. And he has some lovely scars. You should see him on a beach sometime."
Dougal thought Sean was going to pick up a hearthstone and chew on it, the way his jaw was working. Sooner or later he's going to slide a knife between his twin sister's pretty ribs. Maybe, Dougal thought, just maybe I'll supply it.
* * *
Sean swallowed bitter rage. Brian, Brian, Brian. It's always Brian with Fiona, he thought. She could get what she wanted elsewhere. All of it: the genes, the sex, the worshiping. No, she wanted Brian. Maybe it was because she couldn't get him.
Thou shalt have no other Goddesses before me.
At least she still played with her twin, kept him close. Every once in a while, when her other toys lost their appeal, she even invited him into her bed. Hope held him in a cage.
He might be sterile, but he wasn't impotent.
"We need a plan," she said, and he dropped those thoughts. The Goddess spoke.
"View it as a Hunt, Dougal," she went on, "apply your special talents. We have two specimens we want to capture, alive and in good condition. Breeding condition, if you will."
Dougal laughed. "Good condition? I could smell the blood all the way across the street. So much for working with your puppets."
She shrugged. "They forgot the rules. They'll regret it. For a short time."
Dougal's glance shifted from Fiona to Sean and back, as if sending some kind of message. "You'll enjoy that, won't you? You enjoy giving pain?"
"Pain is a tool, love. Terror is a tool." She waved a hand in dismissal. "Like wine, I can drink
