Dark Legacies (Book Four in the Brenna Strachan Series)

by Hadena James

  “You might have matured over a year ago, Brenna Strachan, but you are finally an adult,” Sonnellion said.

  “Thanks,” I told him, “I feel like an adult, most of the time.”

  “About the protection spell,” Levi said.

  “It was true,” I sighed again, remembering what I had seen with the root of all evil. The witches making sacrifices to make the golems and protection spell strong enough that Pendragon couldn’t detect it. The magic of the earth becoming tainted by the bloodshed. Then came Spring-Heeled Jack, he stumbled across the magic, the things within it and somehow, in that damaged warped brain, he figured out how to make it permanent. He had been feeding the golems and the root of all evil to ensure that blood continued to fill the spell. Eventually, it had turned into a prison for all inside.

  Nefera had figured it out. She knew the only way to get anything in or out was with the use of innocence. She had written about how to release the horsemen in her spell book. The jars were given to the infants and they were made to crawl inside the circle, passing through the magic without resistance. The thing inside had eaten them, while the golems had been forced to watch, unable to do anything about it. My mother held the spell book.

  Despite what Vera had said, the coven hadn’t been able to break the protection once Jack had turned it into a prison. They couldn’t unleash him on the world. However, they thought a piece of Sonnellion’s soul would give the root of all evil the strength needed to break it.

  The wall was coming together quickly. Elders and the newly relocated witches were helping to build it. Jasmine was lying on the ground, still asleep. Cerebus had decided eating her was not a great idea.

  Pegasus relaxed in the sun, watching the construction. I didn’t know how I knew he was watching, I just did. Jack and the golems stood near Pegasus. One of the golems was holding the root of all evil.

  “Ani,” my mother looked at the Elder.

  “It goes too,” Anubis told her. “I may wear the jackal head, but I am no longer cursed.”

  The archway was put into the wall and bricks began to fill in the spaces. My sister was put into it next. Rachel walked over to the golem holding Ankhimet. She cast a spell and he fell asleep. The golem dropped him, almost as if he had thrown him onto the ground. A large demon picked him up and put him in the wall with my sister. The bricks covered them.

  All but a small hole was left in the archway. Into this hole, my mother slid the spell book of Nefera. The legacy would be trapped for eternity within the walls.

  The Second Elder War had not come to pass. The canopic jars were in my basement, where the house had indeed hidden them. The coven was destroyed, most of it housed in Pendragon’s prison while the Witches’ Council decided what to do with them. Leviathan, the Demon of Fertility, had not become a dealer of death and destruction. For the first time in over a year, all seemed right with the world.

  I sighed and rubbed my belly. The future would hold many unexpected things.

  Epilogue

  Why beings gave birth was beyond me. I had never been in such pain before. Levi had announced months ago that the child was healthy. However, Anubis and I had threatened to beat him to a pulp if he told us the sex. The stopping of time hadn’t really damaged our child. It was the tamer that Levi had kept referring to and as it grew inside me, Pegasus had come more and more often to bathe in the sunlight on our lawn. All the mythics had come around often, finding places of comfort near our house. I was told that mythics just liked being around tamers.

  Jack was becoming a regular visitor as well. The closer I came to giving birth, the less insane he seemed to be. Levi kept smiling, but wouldn’t tell me why. If it was a girl, I was pretty sure Jack was her mate. I wondered what she would think of that.

  “Push!” The Lycan that had delivered Hannah’s child urged me. Hannah was holding my hand and my mother was on the other side of me.

  “You push!” I shouted at her.

  “Calm down, Brenna,” my mother’s tone was soothing.

  “Really?” I tried not to squeeze her hand off. “This thing has horns!”

  “So did my children,” my mother said, “and I wasn’t a demon.”

  “She has a point,” Hannah rubbed a wet cloth over my forehead.

  “Damn it!” I pushed.

  “She’s here!” The Lycan announced. “I’ll go get Anubis.”

  My mother took the child from her. Elise’s face was bright, her smile so wide I thought her head would break in half. Hannah leaned over me and cooed at the baby.

  “May I at least see her?” I asked.

  “Sorry,” Hannah moved back, blushing as she did.

  “Its fine, I’m just cranky,” I told her.

  “You are always cranky,” my father walked in.

  “Hey, hey!” I started grabbing at the flimsy sheets. “I’m mostly naked here. Do you mind, Dad?”

  “Oh, sorry,” my father turned his back. “I’m just ready to see my newest grandchild.”

  “I’ll bring the baby out in a few minutes,” my mother told him. “Go wait outside. This should be a moment for Anubis and Brenna.”

  Hannah took the hint and left the room. Anubis stepped closer. My mother handed him the baby and left.

  “Well?” I asked.

  “I’m afraid to look,” Anubis handed her to me.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “What if she has my curse?” Ani looked at me sincerely.

  “What curse?” I asked him.

  “My face, my head,” Ani lowered his head, hiding his muzzle with his hands.

  “Then she has the face of a jackal,” I told him. “It isn’t a curse, it will just make her look a little less like a demon and everyone will know exactly who her father is and not mess with her.”

  “I don’t think it’s me they will have to worry about,” Anubis removed his hand and straightened his posture. Uncle Levi had grown very fond of talking to my belly over the last several months. He referred to the growing child as his savior.

  “I think the uncles will always be a problem for her,” I smiled and pulled the blanket back.

  The little girl was wrinkled, but I had expected that. She didn’t have a muzzle or fur on her face. She had a smattering of black hair on her scalp and thin eyebrows that looked as if they were drawn on. Her skin was pink; the exact color as my magical signature. I didn’t think that was a coincidence. She opened her mouth and yawned, revealing pointy teeth and small horns were visible above the black hair.

  “Well?” Anubis asked.

  “She’s perfect,” I held my hand out to him. He came to stand next to me.

  “She looks like your magic,” he said.

  “I noticed,” I smiled at him. She opened large blue eyes. The pupils were the same color as her skin and elliptical shaped. “She has our eyes and that’s going to be a little strange when she gets older.”

  “You’re right,” Anubis kissed my forehead. “She’s perfect. I’m thinking we name her Cailleach.”

  “No one on this planet born after the third century would be able to pronounce it,” I told him.

  “Yes, but since I believe she is Jack’s mate,” Anubis shrugged.

  “Cailleach,” I repeated the word, “Callie for short.”

  “Have you thought of a middle name?” Anubis asked.

  “Yes,” a tear slid down my cheek, “Cailleach Morgenstern.”

  “We could call her Morgan for short,” Anubis said.

  “No, Callie for short,” I told him.

  We stared at our infant girl for a while longer. The Elder world was changing. Mating no longer seemed restricted by genetics. I might have been the first, but witches all over the island were getting pregnant by Elders that weren’t their mates. I rubbed her horns gently. Anubis took her into his arms.

  He took the baby into the other room. I lay in the bed and closed my eyes. I was tired. The memory of the voice I had heard when Levi died drifted to me. It still gave me shivers. We had nev
er discovered where it had come from, but we theorized that turning Leviathan into the most powerful death demon had been the end game. The thought was terrifying, but we had prevented it. There was still much for me to learn. Fertility demons becoming death demons if they killed just the tip of the iceberg. Thankfully, I had centuries to explore the world of mysteries that surrounded me. I also had four overlords to help me, at least somewhat. With the realization that witches were now fully capable of breeding with Elders, there had been a run on the precious fertility boon. Ba’al had mated and was expecting, so was Gabriel. Hell, Gabriel had bedded down my sister Olivia, eliminating the loneliness they both felt.

  In addition, we had prevented an Elder war, but had started a human war. Witches were no longer welcome in the world of mortals. Neither were Elders.

  A few witches, the ones believed to be remnants of Jasmine’s coven, were still working for the humans as witch finders. When they found one, they killed it, usually at birth. The first witch born after the ban had been the start of a new Great House, The House of Morganstern. The witch finders had gone into the hospital and killed the infant as it slept. She had been only three hours old.

  Now, Rachel, some other witches, and some governments worked around the clock to track the birth of new witches and when one was born, they used Pendragon to get them there. The parents were given the option of coming to the island to raise their child or signing it over to Witches’ Council to be raised. In most countries, it was one or the other, but not all countries enforced the law. Countless witches had died and the island had become a refuge not just for Elders, but for those who weren’t quite human but also weren’t Elder.

  We had retreated. One day, in the distant future, the memories of the destructive coven would fade and the wounds would scar over. For now, we all called the island home.

  I had every intention of raising my daughter to understand what had happened, so that when that day came, she would not fear or hate humans.

  Also by Hadena James

  The Brenna Strachan Series (Urban Fantasy)

  Dark Cotillion (Book 1)

  Dark Illumination (Book 2)

  Dark Resurrections (Book 3)

  Dark Legacies (Book 4)

  The Dreams & Reality Series

  Tortured Dreams (Book 1)

  Elysium Dreams (Book 2)

  Mercurial Dreams (Book 3)

  The Dysfunctional Chronicles

  The Dysfunctional Affair (Book 1)

  The Dysfunctional Valentine (Book 2)

  The Dysfunctional Honeymoon (Book 3)

  The Dysfunctional Proposal (Book 4)

  Short Story Collection

  Tales to Read Before the End of the World

  About Me

  At some point, we all get tired of reading the standard author bio. I’ve gotten tired of writing it or rather, cutting and pasting it. So, expect this to be a non-standard bio.

  I’ve been writing for over two decades and before that, I was creating my own bedtime stories to tell myself. I penned my first short story at the ripe old age of 8. It was a fable about how the raccoon got its eye-mask and was roughly three pages of handwritten, 8 year old scrawl. My mother still has it and occasionally, I still dig it out and admire it.

  When I got my first computer, I took all my handwritten stories and typed them in. Afterwards, I tossed the originals. In my early twenties, I had a bit of a writer’s meltdown and deleted everything. So, with the exception of the story about the raccoon, I actually have none of my writings from before I was 23. Which is sad, because I had seven Aislinn Cain novels written along with a half dozen other novels and well over two hundred short stories. It has all been offered up to the computer and writing gods as a sacrifice and show of humility or some such nonsense that makes me feel less like an idiot about it.

  I have been offered contracts with publishing houses in the past and always turned them down. Now that I have experimented with being an Indie Author, I really like it and I’m really glad I turned them down. However, if you had asked me this in the early years of 2000, I would have told you that I was an idiot (and it was a huge contributing factor to my deleting all my work).

  Personally, I really do suffer from a severe anxiety disorder and migraines. I find both to be huge impediments to the life I would like to lead. I find solace in the fact that I have found a significant other that tries to understand my obsession with writing, wonderful family members who support my writing obsession and a best friend who understands and accepts me regardless of my quirks and idiosyncrasies (for the record, she is more like Alex from The Dysfunctional Chronicles than Nyleena).

  When I’m not writing, I play in a steel-tip dart league and enjoy going to dart tournaments. I enjoy renaissance festivals and sanitized pirates who sing sea shanties. My appetite for reading is ferocious and I consume two to three books a week as well as writing my own. Aside from introducing me to darts, my SO has introduced me to camping, which I, surprisingly, enjoy. We can often be found in the summer at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri, where his parents own a campground.

  I am a native of Columbia, Missouri, which I will probably call home for the rest of my life, but I love to travel. Day trips, week trips, vacations on other continents, wherever the path takes me is where I want to be and I’m hoping to be able to travel more in the future.

  And no, I don’t always write in complete sentences… I refuse to… It sounds stiff and formal when I do.

  Find Me!

  I’m available all over the web. You can find me or sign up for my newsletter using the links below!

  http://www.facebook.com/hadenajames

  hadenajames.wordpress.com

  @hadenajames

  Newsletter

  Thanks & Acknowledgements & Misc. Gratitude

  Huge thanks to my family who deal with me being a writer. Dealing with a writer isn’t always the easiest thing on the planet.

  Also, a huge thanks to all my friends, they were among my first “fans.” Even, Beth, who hates this series.

  I need to acknowledge the hard work of Frankie Rhodes for taking on the task of editing this series. Two books and 10,000 errors later, we have something worth reading!

  Now, for everyone that is going to be disappointed this series ended… I do apologize, but there are other paranormal works on the horizon for me. I hope you found the ending as fun and interesting as I did.