At eleven, Everett and Luke entered the mansion, and the boisterous nuisance turned their heads to the south hallway. The light seared the entrance of the poolroom while vile barks fumed the air. Will and Simon caroused by the pool table, turning the sanctuary into a cheap bar. Everett and Luke flounced to their older brothers, their moods as inflammable. Glaring at the intoxicating Watts boys, Luke slapped a piece of paper on the burgundy Simonis cloth.
Scowls burned Will's and Simon's faces.
"She's not our cousin, jackasses!" Luke bolted. He didn't even need a DNA test to debunk Simon's stupid theory. The kid concluded that Cyan wasn't related to Mary by looking at her blood type in the medical form.
"What's wrong with him?" Will swayed to grab another bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. He picked the one that Everett would drink.
Simon glanced at the paper on the pool table. "What the hell is this?" He plunked the glass down and picked up the medical form. In this condition, Simon wouldn't be able to read even if all of it were his own name.
"Luke thinks he's serious about Cyan." Everett snatched the bottle from Will and kept it aside. He understood Bill Watts's embarrassment better now.
Will said, "He's nineteen."
"She's seventeen," Everett retorted. "Do I have to remind both of you how old you are?"
Will and Simon laughed, Simon crashing against the pool table and Will the bar stool, flaunting foul jokes, wrinkling in stupidity. Everett pursed his lips and veered at the door.
"Show him," Will said.
Simon flew at Everett with a tight hug, mostly to keep himself upright. "Come." He chuckled and locked Everett's arm.
Will and Simon fumbled up the stairs. Their recklessness forced Everett to follow. The older boys cackled and fell on their knees. Everett yanked them to their feet to prevent them from rolling to the grand foyer.
On the third floor, Simon and Will sandwiched Everett, unable to stand straight, giggling like crazy children. And hanging on the cables in seven training strips were rubber baby dolls—fifty of them, at least.
"Stupid." Everett exhaled. Perhaps seventeen was too mature for his brothers.
Playing Mummy and Daddy all day, Will and Simon had installed the creepy chandeliers in the training hall. The dolls, freakier than the cherubs, smiled at Everett as they swung in the loops around their necks.
Will shuffled to the wall display and grabbed a saber. He jumped off his feet and hurled the blade at one plastic baby. Simon burst out in joy, shuddering against the wall with his hands around his stomach.
"Shush!" Everett covered Simon's mouth as the swishing and skidding sneaked through the ajar steel partition.
On the floor was a strip of light flickering in the rhythm of the rapid footwork. From the sound of it, two men were shredding each other on the latest piste. The problem was, at this time of the night, there were only five people in this house. Three of them were playing with dolls, one got annoyed, and another should have been in bed.
The Rose Room was an arena within the fencing facility in the Watts Mansion. Bill Watts himself trained Everett in this vault, but other coaches taught the rest of the Watts boys on their respective strips outside. Hector said this portion of the third floor was a greenhouse, but Bill Watts turned it into a quiet fight club on the day Crowley died.
On the piste was a man in a solo choreography of strength, advancing, lunging, and thrusting simultaneously. His epee pierced forward, and the air screeched. His form was poised and precise but the aggression more savage than the one in a Saber bout. The fencer flew, and the blade impaled the invisible man's throat. The sword even flexed and jerked backward as if the opponent were real and unyielding, as if the air could fence, and as if Hector was that air. The fencer lifted off his mask, his gold hair drenched.
Will gulped and kept the blade behind him. Simon rocked on his heels, and Everett clutched him to stand still.
Bill Watts tucked the mask under his sword arm and walked to the weapon rack. He pulled out two sabers and threw them in front of his boys. Three plastrons, three gloves, three jackets, three lamés, three masks, flopped on the floor. "Come at me," he said.
Bill Watts stepped away from the piste to the plane next to the steel partition. The thing about Bill Watts was: he taught the rules as he hurled you around the room. Currently, Everett understood that the man wanted to fence three Watts boys at once. Bill Watts fully dressing in the epee gear meant his whole body was a target. The brothers messily armored themselves waist-up with full sleeve lamés and sabers said Bill Watts would slap them around but expected no quarter. It was Bill Watts's kind of insult, but to be fair, two of the brats were useless right now.
Bill Watts, with heels together and body erect, pointed the tip of the blade at his sons. He saluted, slipped in the mask, and took the position. "En garde!" he roared.
Will and Simon, on the verge of vomiting in their masks, wobbled beside Everett.
"Pret! Allez!" Bill Watts's scream could resurrect Dawn Cathedral.
Like a bullet, Bill Watts came at Everett, his epee darting for a heart. Everett parried, but Bill Watts disengaged and lunged. A tip of the blade plunged on Everett's protected chest. The room flashed red even though they weren't wired.
Retreating, Everett swirled the saber while Will and Simon clumsily advanced. Bill Watts was unforgiving lightning, his blade striking three of his sons in the rhythmic tick of a speedy clock, the attacks undetectable even in the trained eyes.
"Bend your knees!" Bill Watts's persistence chased Will off his feet.
Will fell on his back and cursed at the ceiling.
With an advance-lunge, Everett swung his saber at Bill Watts's upper left arm, the King of Colt's foible, the spot Everett had carefully discovered after so many years of torturing and observing, but the epee stopped his saber mid-air.
"Your head, Everett!" Bill Watts yelled, disengaged, and struck the top of Everett's mask. He tilted back as Simon's blade was coming for him.
At the second Simon's recklessness became worthwhile, Everett flunged with Bill Watts's left arm as a target.
Bill Watts parried and reposted in a split second.
Together, Simon and Everett stormed their father, but Bill Watts's retreat was a balestra to Everett and the expulsion of Simon's blade.
Everett in frustration, Will on the quivering en garde, and Simon with the retrieved saber—three Watts boys, grunting, flew at their father like wild dogs, but none of them was able to make a single touch. Bill Watts elegantly thrust the epee into their chests again and again. And again.
Simon stumbled forward and crashed on his knees. The fun was enough for his body but seducing his nerve.
Needing to get his hand bloody, Will parried but failed to reposte. The drunken boys got in Everett's way rather than helped him. Right then, Bill Watts's blade glided down Will's and flicked upward.
Will shrilled as if the blade had gone under his skin. He flunged and hit nothing, letting Bill Watts's blade slam him to the floor.
Everett clenched his jaw and flew at Bill Watts with rage on his fingertips controlling the saber.
"Use your head, Everett!" Bill Watts parried, parried, reposted—touched. Touched! Touched! Touched!
Everett fumbled backward as Bill Watts blasted his lamé.
Bill Watts stomped his front foot, and Everett flinched. The epee slapped Everett's mask and shot his chest with the force beyond the law of fencing.
The stone floor numbed Everett's back, and Bill Watts was on one knee above him. The water hissed through the mesh of Bill Watts's mask, the tip of the epee on Everett's chest. Bill Watts yanked the mask off Everett's face, the son's rising chest swallowing the blade of the father.
"Father!" Simon cried out.
Everett gaped at the mask that continued to spill sweat on top of him. The blade dug farther into the layer of his gear. The pressure was meant to crack his bone into his heart. The distraught fall was salty while the reluctant footsteps sweetly pitied him. Through the mesh, Bill Watts's breath had never been so chaotic, his adamance never this soft, his intention never this shivering, anger never weaker than desperation.
The blade grazed away from Everett's chest. Bill Watts grabbed a fistful of the lamé to lift his son from failure. He backed away, drifting to the gear table, and freed himself from the mask and the glove. The partition slid wide open for the dolls to laugh at three of his pathetic sons who couldn't make one touch of the lone opponent.
"If you want children, stop running around the house like ones. Will, Simon—you two are old enough to give me grandchildren. But you're drunkards, wasting away in your little bar, consorting with tramps. Be men and find the ones who fit our bloodline. Find a Cyan Cooper!"
Bill Watts's lesson burned Everett's chest fiercer than the echo of the blade.
"And Everett, I don't care you want to fly away and ruin things anywhere. Don't take Colt's things out of Colt!"