Chapter Twenty-One

"Gordon was adamant. Someone has definitely been working behind the scenes trying to change the narrative about anything your father might have been working on before his death."

Dixon hadn't wanted to talk to Benedict about what Gordon had dug up for him. It was so late at night, it might just as well be morning, and after the emotional upheaval Benedict had gone through, and then the chat with Monica afterward, they all agreed to go and have a few more drinks. It was nearing dawn by the time they found a hotel that would take them. The name Lord Dule seemed to open doors a regular person might find closed.

Benedict hadn't wanted to travel by plane overnight claiming he'd like to show Dixon some of the highlights of Cornwall while they were there, although Dixon was so tired he was thinking a day in bed might be more useful. But as the meeting with the family had gone so badly, Dixon figured it might be his only chance to see anything of the quaint historic area, so he agreed.

But there was no way Dixon was going to sleep until he'd explained everything that Gordon had found. Benedict deserved to know. And Benedict seemed to agree, although his naked body curled up along Dixon's side was a distraction.

"Could Gordon find out what the original information was?"

"Whatever it was isn't clear." Dixon grabbed his phone off the nightstand. He'd made notes. "The initial information he found, from the Magical Council website suggested that Lord Dule senior was involved in a risky magical process that had something to do with cloning family heads. The notes Gordon unearthed suggested that the late Lord Dule had even conducted experiments using his own children, in particular his first six sons."

"Hmm. Interesting." Benedict sighed. "Were there any details? Like why anyone would want to do something like that? For example, what benefit would it have? Everyone knows from a scientific angle cloning is simply the duplication of genetics. It's not like if my father cloned himself, that person would be the same as my father as he grew up."

"You don't sound surprised?" Dixon looked at his mate.

"Humor me a minute." Twisting his head on Dixon's chest, Benedict glanced upward and grinned. "What did Gordon find?"

"There were mostly scanned notes from what Gordon could see. A bit like the information sent to Langley although without the water or smoke damage. The crux of it, the summation of what Gordon found, all boiled down to the fact that none of your brothers ever married or had even moved out of the family home, despite being well over the age to do so."

"My sisters didn't either, but then the Magical Council probably weren't concerned about them." Benedict chuckled. "Go on."

"The notetaker, whoever this person was - Gordon couldn't find a name on any of the stuff anywhere - but this person believed the reason why Lord Dule kept his family close, not allowing them to have relationships or father children of their own, was because they were all clones of himself, and he didn't want anyone to know what he was doing. Apparently the only reason you were the seventh son of a seventh son is because his father had been looking into something similar when he was alive, which is why your father came from a big family, too."

"So according to this anonymous notetaker, I'm the only one who isn't my father's clone?"

"Apparently." Dixon checked his notes again. Considering the information sounded like it came out of a huge conspiracy novel, he wanted to make sure he got the facts right. "The notes' author went one step further and suggested the only reason your father had six cloned sons was because he knew his seventh son would be a Necromancer, lending the creative notetaker to suggest you were only born because your father wanted a direct line to his dead father, since it was his experiments he was continuing."

"Very creative definitely, and if you think about it, it makes sense. My father was the seventh son of a third son, so he couldn't be a Necromancer. If what this person has reported was true, then it would be reasonable to assume my father would push the boundaries of his family to the point where he'd have a son who could be a Necromancer, although that's not always a guarantee. I mean, he had three daughters as well."

"They were barely mentioned in any of the information Gordon found about your family. The emphasis was on you and your brothers."

"In that dream I had, you remember the one?" Benedict met his eyes and Dixon nodded. He'd never seen his mate so shaken as when he woke up after that. His yell from the dream realm had woken Dixon up from a deep sleep at the time.

"Well, in the dream, that painting I told you about all depicted my brothers looking the same. I remembered thinking it was like they were all clones of my father."

"You said they all wore Council pins too, and none of them worked for the Magical Council, right?"

"Exactly, and all I could think at the time, or rather when I woke up, was that someone was sending me a message warning me about the Council."

"You were already wary about them anyway, but Gordon said in other information he found, the whole reason why the zombie army idea was floated by that Councilor Paxton, was it?" Dixon waited until Benedict nodded before continuing.

"Well that idea, according to this person who was a font of information but could never bother to add his name to anything, was because the cloning process was too slow, and not necessarily reliable in terms of getting magical soldiers. There were also issues raised that the process, if it became public, could be used by some magical hierarchy to try and take over the Council itself. Zombies were easier, in this person's words, to control in violent situations. They were essentially disposable, had a horror element attached to their existence which would magnify their effectiveness as soldiers, and they wouldn't ever have aspirations of increasing their political or social status."

Benedict laughed. "Honestly, it just goes to show that the people who run the Magical Council have lost touch with reality. I mean, how ridiculous is any of that?"

"Gordon had a good laugh about it, too. Although the intrepid note taker – Gordon said there were literally dozens of files with this sort of drivel in them – but the notetaker would be upset to hear that it was because so much of this information came across as rubbish, that's what got Gordon digging deeper. But what he did was move onto Paranormal Council records, rather than focusing on the Magical Council's."

"Smart move." Benedict yawned and stretched, before laying his arm across Dixon's waist, snuggling in. "Most people, if they were investigating my father, would rely on Magical Council records and not think to look any further, purely and simply because the Magical Council keep to themselves so much, at least in this country. I know that's not the case in the States."

"The Paranormal Council weren't much help, not for us, at least. There is mention that your father was a consultant for the Magical Council, but there's no indication in what capacity. There was one memorandum, written not long after you were born, that has been kept on file, where someone on the Paranormal Council wondered if it was worth approaching your father about your training in Necromancy, seeing as your branch of magic is so rare. But Gordon said it didn't look like that had ever been followed up."

"Hmm… There was talk in the nineteen fifties I think it was, that the Paranormal Council was looking at recruiting Necromancers as a means of closing cold cases, tapping into dead strategists in times of war and things like that, but I'm fairly sure that never came to much." Benedict yawned again. "So in other words, we really don't have anything new, except that someone is really determined to rewrite my father's history. But we still don't know why."

"If there was anything legitimately bad about your father, Gordon would've found it." Dixon reached over, popping his phone on the bedside cabinet. Then he tucked Benedict onto his chest and made himself comfortable. "So tomorrow or later today I should say, we are playing tourist, and then back to London for the meeting on Thursday. Is that the plan? What then?"

"The plane will be prepped and ready to take us back to the States from Thursday lunchtime onwards. As soon as the Council meeting is over, we are out of here."

As much as that's all Dixon wanted to do, he thought about what happened at Benedict's aunt's house and asked cautiously, "You don't think you want to go back to your estate before we leave?"

Benedict's eyes flicked up to his. "You think I should? I thought you wanted us on the other side of the ocean."

"Just think about it," Dixon suggested, because of course Benedict was going to pick up on his feelings. And it was true, the sooner their lives could go back to normal, the happier he'd be. But still, Benedict had history in England. A lot of history. "Your staff haven't seen you in so long, it is your family home…"

"A copy of my family home," Benedict corrected and then he yawned, his mouth open wide. "I'm sorry. You're probably right. We'll see. I just want to start building a future life with you, and I don't see that happening in England. At least not for another twenty years or so."

"We can worry about it later." Using his forefinger, Dixon gently coaxed Benedict's face up to meet his. They were both too tired for anything strenuous, but Dixon was going to get some kisses in before they caught up on their well-needed sleep.