by Hadena James
“What’s that?” I asked her as she sat it down on the floor in front of her.
“A book of marks,” she told me. It was her that now refused to look at me. She opened the cover. I recognized the pages, sort of. Our book looked the same, swatches of skin attached to pages. I didn’t recognize the marks though.
“Elise,” Anubis frowned at her.
“Yes, yes, I know, I know. I got it several years ago; I was looking for a way to break your curse.” Elise dismissed Anubis with a wave of her hand.
The pieces fell into place. It was a dead Great House. I knew before she got to the page that one of the marks was missing and I knew which one.
“That’s why Gregorian said the two of you were tied together,” I looked at Anubis. His face was stoic.
“Damn,” my mother closed the book and flung it across the room.
“Mom,” Nick asked.
“Her mark is missing, Ani, I’m so sorry,” my mother gave a heavy sigh and followed it with a sob.
“So, not only does he have a Strachan mark, he has the mark from the Witch that cursed Anubis,” Eli closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Which is why we can’t seem to break Brenna’s curse.”
“That just means we are going to need a lot more magic to break it,” I reassured everyone. “It is a rare thing to bare two marks. His are fake, not as powerful as Magnus’s double marks.”
“Bren, you don’t understand,” my mother sobbed again. “The only one better than putting on curses than Strachans’ was the Witch that cursed Ani.”
“Oh, I get it, but I’ll be damned before I let this Witch curse me for eternity.” I told her, my voice rising with it.
“I know why Windsor,” Begor finally said.
“Oh good, let us in on it,” I snapped at him.
“Only if you promise to stop glowing,” Begor told me.
I sighed. I was getting angry. This didn’t happen before the Maturing. I wondered briefly if it was the same with my uncles, but I couldn’t ask, they wouldn’t know. They didn’t remember anything before Beezel, the oldest, had turned 136 years old and Sonnellion had turned 30. The anger drained some.
“Better,” Begor told me. “When Jasmine was a little girl, we, as in Jasmine, Maria, and myself went on a trip. It was just a day trip to see the country side. We went through Lexington then came down and around on some country road and ended up in Windsor. When we got there, we stopped, had lunch and walked around a bit. Some little kid began teasing Jasmine because she didn’t look like a Human. I didn’t think of it until now, but what if she still holds a grudge?”
“That sounds like Jasmine,” Eli told him. “She could hold a grudge for eternity, I think.”
“So, she holds a grudge against a little kid in some backwater town and forty years later, she sends us there to destroy it?” I frowned at them all.
“Makes sense,” Eli shrugged.
“Sadly, it does,” my mother was still crying softly.
“Ok, so we know the why and it didn’t help us in the least. Damn. Was anyone else with you?” I asked Begor.
“No, Maria and I didn’t have any little children at home at the time. We had some grandchildren and some great-grandchildren, but none of them were young either. That’s why we took Jasmine. We didn’t have any youngsters; your other siblings were in school. Jasmine was the only one not in school, so we took her.”
“Did she have friends?” I asked my father, ignoring my mother at the moment.
“She wasn’t in daycare,” he told me. My parents didn’t believe in daycare. They believed in raising your brood the old-fashioned way. We could have had nannies, but we didn’t. When my parents wanted a night out, they asked an Overlord to baby-sit.
“Damn, I had hoped that would be the key to identifying our Witch.” I took another deep breath. Back to square one, so to speak.
“Other questions?” Anubis asked.
“Why a troll? He had the ability to pull anything he wanted through that portal, he picked trolls. Why trolls? Why not dragons or wyverns or Cerebus in the first place?”
“Because trolls are easier to control,” Ba’al told me.
“But when the chips were down, he pulled through wyverns and Cerebus. Why not do that from the start? He definitely would have had all our attention.”
“Maybe he didn’t want all the attention. Maybe he wanted just the five of you; keep you from helping us when he attacked Demonnation.” Lucifer offered.
“Ok, so he didn’t expect my siblings or the Brothers. That was a game changer for him. So he pulled through wyverns and Cerebus when he realized he was in over his head.” I said it out loud.
“Yes,” Beezel agreed.
“But he has enough magic to curse me.” That didn’t make sense.
“So?” Abaddon asked.
“So, if he has enough magic to curse me, he shouldn’t have been in over his head with the addition of a couple of Witches and Demons.” I pointed out.
“It doesn’t work like that Brenna,” my mother told me. “Just because you have enough magic to curse someone doesn’t mean you can’t be in over your head with a few Demons and Witches. Especially if you are using someone else’s magic, just because you have mastered it, doesn’t mean that everyone has.”
“What do you mean?” I asked her.
“Ok, you take magic from everyone and use it. It becomes yours. However, I can’t take magic from everyone. If I do, the magic is too much for me. No one handles it like you. So yeah, I could see a Witch being in over his head facing this family plus your uncles. And you, you are always a wild card.”
“Nothing ever ends as expected with her,” Levi repeated.
“I still don’t know what that means.” I told him.
“We expect bloodshed from Cerebus, but the hell hound is thwarted by you tossing your donuts. In the history of Cerebus, no one has ever beaten Cerebus by throwing up. The very idea is ridiculous. You face zombies and chimeras; you make friends with the chimeras and then wake up a bunch of trees to eat the zombies. Who thinks of waking trees to eat zombies? Who knew chimeras were friendly? When you’re around, sometimes up stays up, but sometimes, up becomes down.”
“That makes no sense,” I told him.
“What your uncle is trying to say, is that when you are around, elevators seem to move sideways, not up and down, but still get you to the same place. Everything is questionable with you.” Ba’al tried to clarify.
“That makes no sense either. I admit, things are occasionally a little different around me, but they aren’t all that different.”
“Oh yes, yes it is Brenna, it always has been. You have enough magic to hide a dragon in this room and keep it from eating everyone, but you do not have the ability to toss a simple fire-ball,” my mother chided.
“And now that you’ve Matured, you throw magic tantrums, like dad and our uncles. I can’t do that,” Eli stated.
“Sure you can, you just have to get pissed off,” I told him.
“No, I can’t. None of us can,” Eli corrected.
“That is why I needed you, Bren,” Daniel touched my knee. “You are the evolutionary step up from dad and our uncles.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
I thought about yelling “bullshit” at that, but the more I thought about it, the more sense it made. I may not look much like my father or the other Demons, but I did have their personality quirks. Maybe I had some of their other quirks as well. At this point, anything was possible.
So, I sat, quietly and waited. I don’t know what I was waiting for. Someone to step in and start talking or perhaps to come up with another answer to my questions, either way, it didn’t happen.
“Now that she has been silenced temporarily, can we uncurse her?” Levi asked.
“Yes, but I don’t know where to begin,” Elise shrugged.
“What do you mean?” Begor chimed in.
“Well, I can’t do it. Rachel can’t do it. We can call for more Witches, but ev
en a double coven may not be able to do it. If it was Eli or Daniel or someone else, anyone else, we’d have Brenna do it. But a Witch can’t break a curse on themselves; they have to get the magic from somewhere else. So, I don’t know how to do it.”
“The curse is too strong for all of you?” Anubis raised an eyebrow.
“That is too simplistic a question to get an honest answer,” Elise looked at him. “The question is not how strong the curse is, but what magic is in it? That is where we run into problems.”
“Why?” Lucifer asked her.
“Because the magic that forged it, shouldn’t have been useable, let alone able to form a curse. We have pieces of magic from all over the place, including the Overlords,” Elise told them.
“The mark,” I frowned.
“Stop that,” my mother instantly scolded. I was never sure why she concerned herself with frown lines on my forehead; it wasn’t like I was going to become wrinkly in seventy years or so.
“Which is why I couldn’t break it,” Eli broke in. “If it had simply been a matter of Witch magic, I could have broken it, but it isn’t. There are all sorts of Elder magic in there. Elder magic in a curse, doesn’t work the way Witch magic does. If Bren had cast it, she’d be the only one capable of breaking it. And mom’s right, if it had been cast on one of us, we’d use Bren, ‘cause she’d be able to break it. But that isn’t the case and none of us use Elder magic like her.”
“Great, eternity healing like a mortal,” I groaned.
“Only for the moment,” my mother sounded confident. I knew she was lying.
“The Witch that cast it, probably can’t even break it,” I told her.
“That’s true, but we are more resilient than the Witch that cast it, we’ll get there, it will just take some time. I will need to go through all my spell books.” My mother stood.
“I thought you just poured raw magic into a curse to break it?” Anubis said.
“No, that’s how Brenna breaks them. The rest of us cannot break a curse that way. We can put magic into them, but that magic has to have some form or it just dissipates. Think of it this way, if all the Witches and Elders in this room, combined their magic and cast the exact same spell, Brenna would still have enough magic to make the spell do whatever she wanted.” My mother left the room.
“That’s where things get wishy-washy for me,” Gabriel admitted. “Understanding the expansion of the universe is actually easier.”
“Ok, we’ll use a visual for it,” Rachel stood up. She got a marker and cleared some things off the wall, I didn’t protest, but I considered it.
“This is an Elder, let’s say you, Gabriel,” she drew a circle about six inches in diameter.
“This is Lucifer,” she drew a circle three times the size.
“This is me,” she drew a figure eight that was roughly the same size as Gabriel’s single circle.
“This bottom half represents all my magic as a Witch and a Demon. The top half represents the amount of magic that I can ‘store up’ from others with magic.” She shaded it in.
“This is Elise,” she drew a much larger circle; it was larger than Lucifer’s even. She shaded the top part in.
“Brenna’s figure-eight won’t fit on that wall,” my mother said as she re-entered the room. “Not even the bottom half of it. Although, two walls would probably allow for the bottom half.”
“You mean Brenna has more magic than anyone? In the world?” Levi asked.
“Oh no, Magnus’s circle is even bigger than hers, but only the bottom section. That is where magic gets tricky, you can have a lot of your own and no ability to use others or you can have a bit of your own and some ability to use others or you can have a lot of your own and a huge ability to use others…” Elise stopped. “That just complicates it more.”
“Yes, yes it does,” Anubis told her.
“The circles didn’t help either,” Hannah sounded disappointed.
“Not really.” Begor admitted.
“How do you not understand magic?” Nick finally asked.
“What do you mean?” Begor asked.
“You have magic, but you don’t understand it.” Nick answered.
“Very true,” Begor admitted. “We understand magic as Demons use it. As other Elders use it, it gets more complicated when you are specifically talking about the Brothers, because we all have a touch of it that is definitely not Demon. Witches though are a complete mystery.”
“I don’t understand it and my kids are all half-Witches,” Lucifer gave him a smile.
Elise tossed some books onto the floor, “speaking of Witches, get to work, let’s see if we can find the right spell for your sister.”
My siblings all grabbed a book. Ezra coughed politely. We all turned to look at my spell book.
“The answer isn’t in any of those,” he said when he had our attention. “You want to break this curse; you’ll have to kill the Witch.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because the reason you all can’t break it, is because it is dark magic, it is tied to his soul.” Ezra said.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“Uh, yes that could be a problem,” Elise suddenly looked at me. “If the Witch is using dark magic than any curse they cast would have some soul tossed into it.”
“Anubis’s curse didn’t break when his Witch died,” I told Ezra.
“Smarter Witch, she tied it to his soul. All dark magic has to have soul in it, without it, it doesn’t work. Our Witch isn’t that smart or that good, he doesn’t know how to cast dark magic and use the soul of the one he is cursing because no one has done it in several hundred years or more.” Ezra told me.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because it is bad for the Witch,” Ezra frowned. “Don’t you know anything about dark magic?”
“I try not to, I know the forbidden spells that’s it,” I reminded him.
“Oh, yeah, well, if you aren’t practicing it, it really isn’t important to know. Besides, since the end of the Middle Ages, not many Witches have been brave enough or stupid enough to cast magic that requires pieces of soul.” Ezra had the grace to look sheepish.
“Kill the Witch,” my mother rolled it over her tongue, like she was exercising the words.
“Kill the Witch,” Ezra repeated with conviction.
“No offense, but I’m sort of done killing things,” I told them all.
“Brenna…” Lucifer started to speak.
“Nope, non-negotiable. I don’t think my own soul can take killing again.”
“You may not have a choice,” Ezra told me.
“Uh, yeah, I do. It’s my soul. I am still dealing with Chiron. I do not want another one.”
“The curse could become permanent.” Ezra reminded me.
“Then I’ll heal really really slow for eternity,” I told him.
“Don’t be daft,” Anubis spat at me. “You do not want to be cursed for eternity.”
“Daft?” I raised an eyebrow at him.
“Daft, idiotic, moronic, stupid, would you like me to continue?” He asked, his voice raising a notch.
“I know what it means, I just thought it was very British of you to use that term,” I soothed his ruffled ego.
“Oh,” he looked down at the ground for a moment.
“I have no desire to be cursed for eternity, but I am not comfortable with killing either.”
“No one is comfortable with killing,” Lucifer scolded me, “but we do what is necessary when it is necessary.”
“Well, that’s a lesson I have yet to learn.” I replied, defensively. It might be a necessity, but it didn’t mean I had to be okay with the idea. Other options had to be explored first.
“Don’t make this more difficult than it is,” Anubis scowled.
“Easy for you to say.” I took a moment, closed my eyes and thought about my life. It would be less complicated if I were Human. Sometimes, I have Human envy.
“Can we deal with one problem at
a time?” I finally asked.
“Which problem would that be?” Fenrir countered.
“We know why Jasmine picked Windsor, now. We know that she is communicating with this Witch, somehow. She pulled Eli and I into a communal dream, which was weird as hell. But who the hell is it? Who is this Witch? What is his next move? Is he going to go around conjuring dragons to burn down all the houses of all the Elders? Or just the Brothers? Is he trying to kill the Brothers? Their mates? Their offspring? I feel like we are missing something, something big. It isn’t just an elephant in the room, it’s a freaking’ dragon. But for the life of me, I can’t put my finger on what it is exactly. Anyone else feel this way?”
“You think we are so distracted by the details that we are missing the big picture?” Eli asked.
“Yes and every once in a while, I feel like it is there, just within my grasp and then it’s just gone again. And I can’t figure out which questions need to be asked and answered and which ones don’t. What part is distraction and what part is important?”
“I’m with you,” Daniel said.
“You feel it too, huh?” I was adapting quickly to this New Daniel. I was pretty sure I was going to like him.
“Yep,” he cocked his head sideways. “It’s like we are spinning in circles waiting for the next tree to fall, but we can’t see the trees falling because we are spinning in circles.”
“Odd, but it works,” I smiled at him.
“And what do we do about it?” Ba’al asked.
“That is a wonderful question and I don’t have a clue. I also don’t have a clue why everyone keeps asking me what to do or telling me to do something. I don’t have your collective years of wisdom and knowledge. I am mostly flying by the seat of my pants.”
“Because we all feel like you have the answers,” Eli told me.
“You are my older brother; you have 30 years on me. Why don’t you have a few of the answers?”
“Because I’m not you,” he smiled and waggled his ears at me like Alfalfa. I couldn’t help but grin back.
“Does any of this get us any closer to a solution?” Gabriel asked.
