by Hadena James
“It would work for the Witches, but the rest of us…” I looked at my half-Elder siblings. Cloaking spells didn’t work on Elders. We couldn’t hide behind an illusion unless we were able to cloud minds. Since none of us had Djinn DNA or powers, we were essentially going to look like half-Demons.
“We could make the Witches look like the Overlords and walk out with them. If they are waiting for the Overlords to leave before attacking…” Samuel returned the shrug.
“That might work,” I thought about it.
We could make the Witches look like the Overlords. We could go to Alexanderplatz with them cloaked that way. If we made it, then we could drop the spell and let them watch as all of us walked through the portal.
Of course this was partially my plan and they never seemed to go quite accordingly. My Uncle Levi was right; it was good to expect the unexpected when I was involved. Time was beating that fact into me.
Humans were unaffected by portals. You had to be magical to see them. You had to be magical to use them. It was the only saving grace for opening one in Alexanderplatz. If anything stepped out of the portal that would be another story. Humans would definitely see the creature and be affected by it.
“Now for the real question, can anyone do this spell?” I asked after a few more moments of thought.
“Yes,” Prunella told me, “we just need something of the Overlords.”
“Can do,” I reached for my ingredient bag.
My ingredient bag is the black leather equivalent of Mary Poppins’s carpet bag. It seems to have no bottom. I have to load the stuff into it, but after that, I just need to think of what I want to get the ingredient out.
I did this now. I thought of Anubis as I reached my hand in. Out came a vial of blood that I had taken from him some time ago. I repeated the procedure with Fenrir and pulled out a vial that contained fur. I put it off to the side. I’m sure they didn’t want to be a werewolf as they walked down the street. The second vial was of his saliva. Better, but gross. I couldn’t remember why I had collected Fenrir’s saliva or when.
A bit of stone collected from Ba’al when he had shed it came out next. The final was a feather from Gabriel’s wings. I handed all the items to Prunella.
“Is that spit?” Eli asked.
“Yes and I don’t remember why I thought I needed werewolf spit, so don’t ask why I have it,” I told him.
Eli shook his head at me. Samuel had the grace to look horrified. I agreed.
Prunella got out a small pot and began mixing ingredients. She used Fenrir’s vial first. The liquid boiled up into a nice vibrant green. She poured it out and handed it to one of the men in her coven. I had a moment of nausea as he lifted the container. It passed when he poured it over his head instead of drinking it.
She was busy mixing the next batch when the first Witch changed. He could definitely pass as the Overlord, but there was just something wrong about him. Something that told me he wasn’t Fenrir. I wondered if the others would notice.
“Wow,” Samuel said after the second batch had been poured onto the head of another man. He changed into Ba’al. Again, my eyes told me he was Ba’al, but there was just something about him that screamed to my brain that he wasn’t.
When everyone was done, she mixed another batch of potion. It was much larger. My guess, it was the formula to change them back into their real forms.
“You’re frowning,” Daniel said to me.
“My eyes say I’m looking at the Overlords. My brain says I’m not,” I admitted.
“Of course it does, you spend a lot of time with the Overlords. Their emotions aren’t the same,” Daniel told me.
“I hadn’t considered that,” I looked around.
“We should call a taxi,” Eli told me.
“Good plan,” I looked at one of the Witches. He was already dialing a number.
He spoke very quick German. He almost reminded me of Anubis in voice as well as looks. The main difference was that he didn’t seem to have an attraction or connection to the city in the way that Anubis had. That missing emotion told me that no matter how much he looked like the Overlord, he wasn’t.
“They have someone near, we should have a cab in a few minutes,” he said after he hung up the phone.
“You don’t look all that confident,” Prunella commented.
“Ah well, I can give you an entire list of things that could go wrong,” I shrugged in return.
“My sister the optimist,” Eli grinned. “But she does have a point, when Brenna’s involved anything can happen.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence,” Prunella looked at me.
“I wouldn’t worry too much. When things backfire, they usually backfire in a good way,” Daniel reassured her.
A car horn honked outside. Eli got up and checked the window. He nodded to me. Our taxi was here, hurray.
Chapter Eighteen
The taxi dropped us about a block and a half from Alexanderplatz. Magic hung in the air around us. I ignored it as best I could.
The ride had been uncomfortable, too many people crammed into the space. If we had had luggage, it would have been a disaster. Luckily, the taxi had been a small van. That had helped, some.
The spell was beginning to wear off. Occasionally, one of the Witches would flicker ever so slightly. I caught the transition from the corner of my eye. The jig was about to be up, but at least I could see Alexanderplatz and the portal.
The portal looked like a heat mirage, shimmering and dancing over the concrete. The giant fountain was just in front of it, any closer and the water would have been flowing into the ether or it would have looked that way to the Humans.
That was the problem, Alexanderplatz was not deserted. The U-Bahn station that was connected to the plaza was bustling, despite the darkness. The food vendors were still open. Patrons were sitting, clustered around the imbiss stall tables. This was unfortunate.
In the distance, a glimmer of magic. I opened myself up to it and began to search for them. I knew they were watching the portal, but I didn’t know from where.
More magic became visible. A woman at the imbiss was a Witch. There were a few others huddled together on the other side of the fountain. I held my breath as we walked across the plaza.
The fountain containing Poseidon was awe-inspiring at night. If we had the time, I would have sat and stared into its watery depths. Unfortunately, we were losing time faster than I could track. The spell was still fading and it seemed to be fading faster. This meant Prunella was either very out of practice or was already starting to lose some of her abilities.
As we reached the fountain, the cloaking spell crashed down. No one had broken it. It had broken itself; it was always a tenuous spell anyway. We were maybe fifteen feet from the portal.
Shouting began. I grabbed hold of Prunella and yanked her forward. We had to get through the portal. A man stepped from behind the fountain. He blocked our way. I frowned at him. He began to form a spell. Eli ran at him, attacked him with his clawed fingers. He fell into the fountain. The water turned an ugly color of red. The lights in the fountain provided enough light to see the scene. It looked like a horror movie. Eli’s claws had gouged at the man’s face. It hadn’t just created deep gashes, parts of it were missing.
I turned away from the fountain. My other siblings seemed to be fighting the transformation. By definition, Demons do not shape-shift. However, their fingers elongate to become claws. Their clawed feet do the same. In some cases, the Demon may get bigger or their horns may grow longer. Eli was a horn grower. Our father got impressively larger.
Eli was dragging himself from the fountain. He dripped red-stained water onto the concrete. Here it looked almost black as it was absorbed by the porous material. I turned to the portal.
Portal travel is an odd experience. There’s a split second where you feel like your entire body is being torn apart. This is quickly followed by a feeling of euphoria. It ends with a bump as you exit the portal and feel like you have ve
rtigo.
Thankfully, the vertigo passes just as quickly as the portal travel. Prunella and I exited the portal and found ourselves in a lush green field with mountains rising up behind it. Gregorian sat, staring at us. As did a dragon.
The dragon raised his head, cocked it sideways, stared at us for a minute and put his head back down. Within seconds his eyes were closed and soft snoring sounds came from him. Prunella looked at me. This was new territory. I had been to the Island a few times, but I had never been in the wild parts, just the Prison. This was definitely one of the wild parts.
Daniel tumbled through the portal, pulling another Witch with him. He looked at the dragon for a moment, decided it wasn’t a threat and turned to look at the portal. It seemed to take an eternity for my group to gather on the other side. In reality, it was probably only a couple of seconds.
My siblings and Gregorian set about the task of getting the dragon to clear off. The scent of blood might rile him up. I stood, watching the portal. Nothing was coming through it.
As the dragon lumbered away to nap somewhere less irritating, my siblings rejoined me. We all stood there, silent, waiting. Still nothing.
“It’s been fifteen minutes,” Eli informed me.
“Why didn’t they follow?” Prunella asked.
“I haven’t a clue what they are doing. Volunteers to go back and check on them?” I asked.
“That would seem like a good way to walk into an ambush,” Eli responded.
“Maybe that’s why they aren’t coming through. It’s a good way to walk into an ambush,” I looked at him.
“So what do we do?” Nick asked.
“I’m not sure. I was betting they would follow. They didn’t and I’m at a loss. This is an Anubis problem, not a Brenna problem.”
“Except he isn’t here and you are,” Nick told me.
“Which just goes to prove how screwed we are.”
Since I wasn’t going to get volunteers to stick their heads through the portal, I moved forward. At least if they chopped my head off, it wouldn’t kill me. Of course, they could hit me with that “dust” spell that seemed so efficient.
“Stop,” a voice floated into my head.
“What Gregorian?”
“Let me, they won’t expect me.”
Gregorian began moving forward. In mythology, chimeras are half goat, half lion. This wasn’t the case though; he did have the head of a lion and big paws with retractable claws on them. He also had floppy ears, a long tail that occasionally wagged and a long, heavy body. He was brindle in color and his movements always seemed slightly awkward. The easiest description would be to imagine breeding a bloodhound with a dragon and then breeding that mix with a lion and increasing its size by at least 500%. His tongue was the same size as me.
Gregorian went through the portal. First just his head, then his massive body followed. I was pretty sure the people in Berlin were in the midst of mass hysteria.
After a couple of seconds, he came back through. There was blood on his head and an arrow sticking out of one of his ears. I rushed forward. He got on his belly and let me pull out the arrow.
“Bad, Demon, very bad.”
“What’s bad?” I asked him.
“The city,” Gregorian stood back up, he shook his massive head.
Since that didn’t tell me much, I moved around the chimera and stuck my own head through the portal. Nothing attacked me, but the city was definitely in panic mode. Humans, Witches and Elders were running around like chickens without heads. It took a moment for me to zero in on the cause; then I saw it.
A minotaur took aim with a bow and fired an arrow at the something. It missed and hit the wall of the imbiss. A pixie flew past my head. An alligator like creature was rolling over in the fountain, devouring the body of the Witch that had gone head to head with Eli. I stepped back onto the Island.
“Well?” Nick asked.
“Bad would be an understatement,” I considered our options. There was really only one, we would have to save the city of Berlin from a fate worse than death. I would have felt better with the Overlords and my father and my uncles. I didn’t have any of that. I had a broken coven and my siblings and Gregorian.
“Gregorian, can you gather the chimeras and get them to help?”
“Yes,” Gregorian shook his head again, flinging slobber everywhere, before he went to get the others.
“Ok, I saw pixies, minotaurs and something I don’t have a name for, but I’m sure there are more. The city is in chaos. We are going to have to go back,” I told everyone.
“Pixies,” Nick sneered. Pixies were violent little things, with razor sharp teeth in a mouth that opened in a circle. They could drill their way into a body with those teeth.
“Do we have a plan?” Eli asked.
“Don’t die,” I told him.
“That isn’t much of a plan,” Eli responded.
“Well, I don’t really know how to plan for stopping chaos and hysteria. I can assign you to sections I suppose or give you a specific creature to take care of, but in all actuality, it would be best if we stayed in a group and did what we could to defeat the mythics.”
“What about the Witches?” Nick asked.
“I don’t think they will be much of a problem,” I frowned. I was pretty sure mythics running amok wasn’t part of the plan and they were probably in the same situation we were.
“Lead the way,” Samuel pointed to the portal.
Chapter Nineteen
I stepped back through. The same sensations washing over me. I came out on the other side, staring at the fountain. The creature inside it had finished with its prize and was now trying to crawl out of the water. It had the head of a crocodile, but it wasn’t a crocodile. It had fur for a start and it didn’t have a tail.
“What the hell?” Eli came through behind me.
“Good question, I don’t know what to do about it, so I’m open to suggestions.”
“Think we can kill it?” Eli asked.
“Well, very few mythics are immortal, so I’m going to go with yes, we can kill it. Hopefully, it isn’t the last of its kind,” as I said this, Eli moved forward, grabbed hold of the beast and ripped it in half. I had a moment of sibling envy, realizing that he was significantly stronger than me and then it disappeared. The beast was thrown in different directions. It twitched but didn’t really move.
An arrow whizzed past my head. I turned to find a minotaur only a hundred yards or so from us. He had blood on his face and I was sure I had a score to settle. I moved towards it as it reloaded its bow. The second arrow hit my shoulder, but the tip was too dull to enter the tough skin and it barely nicked me as it fell to the ground. There was a moment of panic on the face of the minotaur as it hurried to reload for a third shot. I was within touching distance. I reached out, grabbed hold of it by the throat and felt my fingers dig into the soft flesh and fur. The other hand grabbed hold of the bow and jerked it from the minotaur. There was a minor struggle before it lost, its body going limp in my hands. I dropped the corpse and swatted a pixie that had come close to me.
The pixie fell to the ground and I stepped on it. Behind me there was shouting. I recognized Daniel’s voice. He was barking orders. For the first time, I felt like it could be done, we could win the battle without the Overlords or our father and our uncles.
My siblings began whatever spells they were planning. I felt them pull on my magic, drain some from me. I had plenty to spare.
Another of the crocodile-like creatures began to charge towards me. I stomped on him with my boot and watched my toes break through the leather. In many ways, all Elders undergo some transformation when they are angry. I was getting angry.
The crocodile thing stopped moving. I moved my eyes and found a new target. Another minotaur, the vile creature was chasing after a young Human girl. I ran towards it.
My movements caught its attention. It turned its massive shaggy head towards me and let out a sound that might have been a growl
or a scream. I wasn’t sure which, it didn’t matter anyway. It grabbed hold of me as I got within reach of it. I screamed back at it, feeling my fingers elongate. My claws dug into its flesh as I rammed the bottom of my head into its chin.
The minotaur let out a howl of pain, I jerked, breaking off one of my horns. Fire bathed its face, burnt the hair from it and shriveled the features. I smiled; satisfied that it wouldn’t get its prize.
Something grabbed hold of me, spinning me on my heels. I was face to face with Simona Illayanevna. Her eyes were wide and wild. Her skin was torn to shreds. She had been on the losing end of a battle with something.
“I didn’t want this,” she screamed at me.
“I’m not deaf,” I screamed back.
“What?” She continued to scream. I grabbed her head, jerked it to the side. Blood ran from her ears. I closed my eyes and did the best I could to heal her. I felt all the wounds she had sustained and knew that she had lost her battle to a minotaur. For a second, I felt sorry for her.
After a couple of seconds, her eardrums had repaired and the blood was flowing slower. I couldn’t do anymore though, her body wouldn’t take the repairs.
“How do we stop them?” She asked.
“We kill them,” I told her.
She nodded once, slowly, as if she didn’t think it was possible. To prove her wrong, I grabbed hold of the Strachan Sword, sheathed at my back. The blade glinted in the darkness, reflecting the fires of chaos.
A wyvern charged us. I had a flash of memory. I had fought one of these before and lost. I wouldn’t let another best me. I took stance and waited. The sword struck home as the wyvern dived at me. The blade hit bone, resisted for just a moment, and finished going through the breastplate of the wyvern. It fell to the ground, organs spilling out onto the concrete.
“What did you let lose?” I asked her sternly, shaking her to make sure I had her full attention.
“We just opened a portal, like we were told to do. They were supposed to focus on the Great Witches. We didn’t know they would do this,” she was visibly shaken by the creatures in the city.
