Dark Illumination

by Hadena James

  I didn’t let go of her, I just moved my head. There was another light. It was coming towards us. I couldn’t see a figure holding it; all I could see was the light and the box. It was old, made of good solid wood, darkened with age and hand carved. Magnus and Pandora’s Box, Anubis’s trick had pulled it off. They were coming for us.

  I felt the spell slam into me. My flesh sizzled. In an instant I realized I was not the intended victim. I grabbed Rachel, folded her into me as much as I could and screamed for Ba’al. They were attacking Rachel to end the darkness.

  My anger began to boil into rage. In the dark, I could see my skin begin to glow with a pale lilac light. I felt another spell hit me.

  Ba’al was finally there. I handed him Rachel. He cocooned her into his arms, shielding her from the immediate danger. A spell hit him. He turned to stone, Gargoyle stone, Rachel safely tucked away inside his arms.

  I had no magic to hurl back at them. My feet hit the ground with deafening thumps as I took off running. I crossed the distance in only a few seconds. I slammed my entire body into Magnus.

  The box skittered from his hands. I grabbed hold of the Witch and held him at arm’s length. Another spell hit me. I felt it, but I didn’t feel any pain. I was too enraged to feel it.

  I hurled him away from me. His body seemed to hang in midair for a moment. He crashed through one of the windows I had been admiring earlier.

  Another Witch came at me. My fingers suddenly had claws. I grabbed the Witch with those clawed fingers, digging in until I could feel the blood flow over them. He gasped for air.

  “You picked the wrong Demon on the wrong day,” I whispered, pulling him close to me. I hurled him as well. He went through the same window as Magnus. Magnus let out a groan as the Witch landed on top of him.

  Anubis was suddenly with me. His fangs long and sharp, they glinted in the glow from my body. His eyes were completely red. His fingers were long claws that hooked at the ends. He pointed his muzzle skyward and let out a sound that no living being should be able to utter.

  He grabbed another Witch. I heard their neck snap. Anubis tossed them aside and reached for another.

  Gabriel suddenly appeared. He was glowing white, providing his own light. He grabbed the box and took off with it. Magnus struggled from the window.

  His movements caught my attention. I walked over to him, grabbed him by the throat. I could kill him. I could feel his pulse racing against my palms. His face paled. He knew I could kill him.

  “You should die, here and now,” I spat at him. “But you won’t, you’ll face the new Overlord and suffer their wrath.”

  I did the only thing I could think to do. I head butted him. He went slack in my hands. I carried him over to Leviathan.

  “Hold this,” I told my uncle.

  “Gladly,” Levi took hold of Magnus.

  I went back to the fray. Anubis was now on fire, but still fighting and winning. I picked the closest Witch, grabbed hold of them and broke their arm. When they screamed, I broke their leg. The injuries were severe enough that the Witch would be done. No more spells would fly from him. I gave him a toss. He landed on the sidewalk. He continued to scream, but didn’t move.

  There was a sound behind me. My blood ran cold. The sound of stone being torn apart. My eyes instantly found Ba’al.

  Both his wings lay on the ground. His arms too. My sister was dangling from the hands of the creature.

  The world stopped moving.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  “Gabriel, the box!” I shouted, running towards Rachel. She kicked worthlessly at the creature.

  If he could grab her, he had to have some form or magic. Wisps and smoke to do not grab hold of objects. They float through them or around them.

  Much to Rachel’s chagrin, I grabbed hold of her foot and climbed up her body. She moaned and groaned as I did it. When I reached her shoulders, she gave me a good punch in the arm. I probably deserved it.

  I smiled at her and shoved my hands into the wisps that held her. There is was. It wasn’t bone. It felt like tinsel or copper wire.

  My hands clutched around it. I looked at my sister.

  “Try to roll when you hit the ground,” I told her as I jerked on whatever it was that passed for a skeletal structure on the creature.

  He didn’t scream as it tore. He still made no sounds. He did let go, his hand twitching. Rachel grabbed hold of me.

  Our combined weight pulled the mesh I was holding out of the smoke. It looked like spider web or silk strands. It was thin and sinewy, but it wasn’t like any body part I had ever seen.

  I couldn’t move. Rachel’s weight, hanging around me like a drowning stone, prevented it. All I could do was hold on and hope it didn’t realize it had two hands.

  It did. The other grabbed hold of hair. I had about a millisecond to think this was really bad. My hair came off my scalp. Rachel gave a yelp. I frowned at her.

  “Do something other than dangle!” I yelled to her. She tried to move her enormous girth around and failed.

  “Never mind,” I sighed in defeat as all it did was remove some of the flesh from my neck. I realized I was rotting.

  “That’s so gross,” I heard my sister say a moment before she heaved up her stomach contents. Luckily, it hit the ground, not me. I gagged with her, but closed my eyes. If I could stand rotting, I could force myself not to throw up.

  Rachel touched me gently and let go. I looked down in time to see her fall into the arms of Azreal. I sighed in relief.

  Now, I could move. I used the sinewy silk strands to climb. Having found them, I could outline some sort of structure for the creature and maybe find a weakness.

  The sky was growing dark again. Rachel was glowing below me. Where the hell was Gabriel with that damned box?

  Depression began to sweep over me again. But I had a task to do now. I grabbed hold of the shoulder or what I thought was the shoulder and pulled. The arm tore free. I held it for a second before dropping it.

  The second arm grabbed me again. This time, it got a hold of my waist. It jerked on me, tugging as hard and frantic as it could. My skin came off in its hand. It let go of the me.

  It dropped me to the ground. Had I not been rotting, the mere 20 foot fall probably wouldn’t have done much. But I was.

  “Oh my…” I heard Rachel say before she began heaving again.

  “Good lord,” Elijah helped me to my feet. “We have got to get you fixed.”

  “No magic, no fix. Where’s the box and Gabriel?”

  “I don’t know, he took off and hasn’t returned.”

  I looked around. The box and Gabriel were both gone. My heart fell even further in my chest.

  “It has a skeletal system. We can at least dissemble it.” I told Eli.

  “On it.” My brother grabbed a few Demons and together they began tearing into the creature. I sank onto the curb and just sat.

  The sky began to lighten. I guessed Rachel couldn’t vomit and hold onto the depressing magic at the same time. My spirits didn’t lift though. Gabriel was missing, as was Pandora’s Box. The only consolation was that we had Magnus.

  “Brenna, do something, they have Gabriel and the box!” Anubis yelled at me.

  “Brenna, do something,” I retorted sarcastically.

  “I don’t know why I always have to be the one to do ‘something’. Why don’t you tell me what to do once in a while or better yet, just do it yourself. I’m tired of being given crappy instructions when you have eons of age and wisdom over me. Telling me to do ‘something’ isn’t helpful.”

  I felt my anger boiling up.

  “You know what, I will do something. You go get Gabriel and I’ll kill the creature.” I unsheathed the Strachan Sword and stomped my way towards it.

  The creature found me in no time, lifted me and tossed me into his mouth. I stuck the sword in, blade plunged into the roof. The jaws didn’t close any further. I sat in the mouth and got angrier.

  “Do something,” I
muttered. There was a collective inhale from the Demons.

  “Get back,” Eli shouted.

  “Always me. Always expect me to ‘do something’ to save the world. Why doesn’t anyone else have to save the damn world? Why can’t the eons old Overlords do something to save the damn world. I’m rotting for heaven’s sake. My body hurts everywhere. My brain hurts. My skin is falling off. I’m losing my hair. I’ve exploded like an overripe tomato twice and yet, it’s still me expected to do something.” The more I ranted, the angrier I became.

  The creature closed its mouth, burying my sword inside his head. My last ray of light died. My anger exploded.

  I wasn’t just hurled at the ground. It was like being catapulted at it. I slammed into the concrete. I felt several things break on impact. I didn’t seem to have any skin left; patches of it littered the ground. I found a large clump of my hair just to my side when I rolled my head.

  “Damn,” I sighed. The world exhaled.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  I awoke at home. My mother and sisters were staring at me in horror. My brothers with awe. My father with something almost akin to pride. I glared back at them.

  “Do you hurt?” Rachel asked after a few moments.

  “Yes,” I said curtly. I didn’t want to discuss it. “Gabriel? The Box?”

  “We didn’t recover either. But you did kill that thing,” Eli told me.

  “Ba’al?”

  “Being tended.” Levi answered.

  “The rest of the coven?” I asked.

  “About half escaped. They have Gabriel,” my father answered. Suddenly, no one would meet my eyes.

  “Magnus got away,” I made it a statement and shook my head.

  “Yes.” Levi admitted.

  “You had one task!” I shouted.

  “I was distracted by my niece exploding out of that thing and hitting the concrete with enough force to make a hole and break a water main!” Levi shouted in his defense.

  “Yes, I can see where that would be distracting.” I closed my eyes. “So I’m still stuck like this. Rotting.”

  “No, you’ve finished rotting,” Eli told me. “It doesn’t seem to be able to get past flesh and into the muscle and bone.”

  “But I have no skin, no hair, nothing, do I?”

  “That would be correct,” he gave me a small smile. “Good news is you’re ready for Halloween.”

  “Great, I always wanted to go as an anatomy dummy,” I told him.

  “Where’d they go?” I asked anyone.

  “Azreal and a few others followed them to an abandoned part of Old KC. They seem to be holed up in a warehouse. The problem, as we see it, we have no real magic to go up against them with. And you have no skin.” Anubis answered.

  “Sure we do, you just haven’t thought of it.” I struggled to sit up.

  “In a building, we use Daniel. They are Witches not Elders. We will just cook them if need be.”

  “Kagutsuchi may be able to help.” Anubis offered quietly.

  “He might. We should bring him along,” I agreed. This got me a horrified look from my father.

  “He’s a bigot, not a war-monger. So, he doesn’t like me because I’m a Witch-Demon half breed. I don’t like Leprechauns because they are short. We all have issues,” I reminded him.

  “We have amassed an even larger army.” Fenrir said. “We have every breed here now, with the exception of Pendragon who is trying to figure out a way to keep a tighter rein on Jasmine.”

  “Good, we’ll need them. Elementals and Djinn and Centaurs, oh my!”

  “Sometimes, I worry about your sanity,” Elise said to me.

  “Sometimes, so do I. But that is neither here nor there today. Today we rescue the Angel and get the box.”

  “You aren’t going,” my mother informed me.

  “Oh yes, yes I am. I have a score to settle.”

  “You have no skin.”

  “I can put on cloths; not having skin doesn’t preclude me from that. It isn’t like I’m running around without a head.”

  “Elise,” Lucifer said gently.

  “And if she gets even more injured and we don’t catch Magnus?” Elise gave Lucifer that look. Lucifer wilted under her stare.

  “Mom, I’m going, end of story.” I finally stood up. I looked at myself in the hall mirror. There was a tiny patch of skin still struggling to hang onto my forehead. I peeled it off and tossed it in the trash. It would grow back, eventually.

  I ignored the fact that my clothes were ripped and torn. Changing seemed like a waste of time. There was a better than average chance that I would get hit by a stray piece of fire or a spell from hell.

  “Brenna Nicheven Strachan, you better put your behind in a seat,” my mother suddenly took on that tone.

  I turned, looked at her. Her hands were on her hips. Her lips were pursed. Eli snickered quietly.

  “You can have a seat too, Elijah Thomas,” she looked around. “And Nicholas Asher.”

  My brother’s, fearing the wrath of my mother, sat down next to me on the couch. We all stared at her a bit wide eyed. Not that I could close my eyes, I had just peeled off my eyelids.

  “I don’t know who you children think you are, but you are certainly not going out looking like you got your clothes from a jumble sale held by Michael Myers. Your father says I can’t forbid you to go, just because you don’t have skin, but I will bring down this house before I let the three of you out in those.”

  I looked at my brothers. They were peeling too. So were a few of my uncles. I tried to frown, but without lips, the gesture really didn’t work.

  Their clothes looked just as bad as mine. Torn, tattered, covered in blood. We all stood up.

  “Why is everyone rotting?” I asked as we did.

  “Because it seems that whatever spell they cast to do it, is contagious. They actually hit Leviathan with it first, but since you had the least amount of skin to begin with,” Eli shrugged.

  I changed into a different outfit. It was black shirt with blue jeans. I put on fresh socks, a new bra and fresh underwear.

  Eli, Nick and I all reentered the hallway about the same time. I looked at them. They looked at me.

  “I hope you remembered to put on clean underwear,” I told them.

  “Why?” Nick asked.’

  “Because if we end up in the hospital, mom is liable to check.”

  Eli giggled. Nick ducked back into a room.

  “It does seem irrational to make us change clothes,” Eli said as we waited on Nick.

  “Yes, it does, but she’s pregnant and a mom, rational isn’t always her strong point.”

  “That’s very true.” Eli looked as Nick rejoined us.

  “Better?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Good then away we go, like the skinless crusaders.”

  “This would be an awesome Halloween costume.” Nick gave me a grin that was partially lopsided.

  “Mom would kill you.”

  “Yep, but it’d be worth it.”

  Chapter Fifty

  Even Anubis was starting to rot. I could see it slough off in the car. I had never seen a contagious spell before, but I had been assured by Eli it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. I took his word on it, since everyone seemed to be having some issues.

  It also made me understand why my father had decided we couldn’t be forced to sit at home just because we didn’t have skin. Even he was starting to lose little bits of himself.

  Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt. My brain kept telling me that it should. After all, my nerves were directly exposed to the air. Eli touched me gently in the car, turned out I wasn’t completely skinless. I seemed to have one layer left. But one layer was still see-through, even on a Demon.

  The car ride seemed to take forever. We talked little. There didn’t really seem to be much of a plan. Anubis was pretty sure some of the Witches would scatter just seeing us. We did look gruesome.

  Eli and I exchanged glan
ces in the back seat. Ba’al was still being fixed. I didn’t know anything about broken stone Gargoyles. I had been told it would be extremely painful. More so than being dropped from the sky. That seemed hard to believe, but in my world, anything was possible.

  We parked in an alley some ways away from the building. My group felt incomplete. It didn’t matter that I had extra Demons, my siblings and assorted others. Ba’al was at home and Gabriel was inside.

  As we moved closer to the building, I could feel Gabriel. I looked at Fenrir, he nodded, he could feel him too. I took that to be a good thing. If we could feel him, he was alive.

  Even Kagutsuchi was with us. Determined to make up for the misunderstanding that had helped lead to this mess. I had no delusions though, his guilt had nothing to do with the loss of my skin and everything to do with the fact that an Overlord was currently in the hands of Witches. Witches who would and could do anything, so long as it was evil.

  We surrounded the building. Daniel looked skyward. The sky darkened. Thunder began to rumble. Lightening began flashing.

  The fire fell. Not like rain, but in balls, like giant, fiery hail. The balls were about the size of a softball. They struck the building with small, hollow sounding thumps. The fire ran like water as it flowed over the roof. It began to drip onto the ground, in fire rivulets.

  I watched the fire move and waited. I waited for shouting to begin. Nothing, not a single sound out of place, except the fire.

  The roof caught. Flames leapt up suddenly. They drowned out the sound of the fiery hail.

  Shouting, finally. I couldn’t imagine what had taken them so long to notice. They couldn’t possibly have been unprepared for something.

  The door opened. A Witch rushed out the door. Fenrir dropped to all fours, the change washing over him quickly. Fur flowed as he ran, charging the Witch.

  He pounced, hitting the Witch in the gut. The Witch rolled to the ground, Fenrir still on top of him. Fenrir bayed. We moved.

  I went through the open door first. My tiny horns were still lilac, the only real identifier on me. My eyes scanned the room, found Gabriel. He was encased in a cage of magic. One wing was missing, but his light, normally deadly, couldn’t get through the cage. His face was upturned. His body completely white. Not being able to close my eyes to his brightness made them hurt and water. I looked away.