by Hadena James
“Wow,” one of the other Witch’s remarked.
“Are you looking at what I’m looking at?” I asked him.
“Sonnellion?” He countered.
“Yes,” I answered. “His magic is no longer sick looking.”
“The yellow is gone. It is green, not chartreuse.” He answered.
“Yes, yes it is.”
“Down to business,” Rachel stood up. “Since I don’t really want this, we are going to vote on how to punish Magnus and his Coven. As a matter of fact, you should all get used to voting on everything.”
“Ok,” I told her.
“Life or death for Magnus?” Rachel asked.
A couple of Witches instantly popped up with death, but I had to think about it. I didn’t want to sentence him to death. There were things more evil than Sonnellion and Magnus might be one of them.
“Life,” I finally said. Everyone turned to look at me.
“Are you sure that’s how you want to vote?” Rachel asked.
“Yes, I think we’ve had enough bloodshed and it doesn’t bring back the cursed items…”
“Kagutsuchi, you were after the vial of blood to kill Jasmine, but why did you steal all the cursed items and release them into the world?”
“I didn’t.” He gave me a blank look.
“Oh Magnus,” I sighed. “Why would you do that? You know the mayhem they can create.”
Daniel looked at me. His eyes filled with tears. He sighed.
“The Oath has been broken,” he said.
“Damn, damn, damn,” I muttered.
“Sure you still want to vote for life?” Rachel asked again.
“Yes, best put him in Pendragon’s prison, away from Jasmine.” I said.
“Why?” Another Witch asked.
“Because he will retain power. But he won’t be able to escape, not really, because while Pendragon can’t negate Witch powers, he’s immune to them.”
“Death,” Eli answered.
My vote for life lost out. I was the only one. I sighed as Pendragon walked up to Magnus and his Coven.
“We will do this on the Island.” Pendragon popped out of existence. I felt a jerk.
I was on the Island. There was a large fortress behind us. I was guessing it was the prison. Everyone from my house was in attendance.
“Do you have anything to say?” Pendragon asked.
“You forgot, I’m immortal,” Magnus answered.
“I didn’t forget,” Pendragon answered. He opened up a small box and pulled a feather from it.
“What is that?” I whispered to Eli.
“This is going to be bad,” Eli whispered back. “But I don’t know what it is or why.”
“Gabriel?” Pendragon asked.
“Here,” Gabriel walked forward. He was holding Pandora’s Box.
“Magnus, Witch of the Great…” I tuned him out. I wanted nothing to do with this. Fenrir offered his shoulder and I buried my face in it.
There was a sizzling sound. I turned back for a second. Magnus was gone.
“Shhhh,” Fenrir said to me, holding me into him. I felt tears begin to flow. Magnus had been my friend and now he was gone. He had betrayed us and he had paid the ultimate price for it.
One by one, I heard the sizzling sound over and over again. I waited several seconds after the last one. Fen finally kissed the top of my head and pulled me away.
Daniel’s head jerked skyward. He screamed. Something flowed from his mouth.
“The Replacement of a Horseman does not change the future. War still comes. The Horsemen still come. Death still comes. One dies and one is reborn.” The black smoke from Daniel’s mouth spoke. “The Prophet is healed. But there is still more to come.”
The smoke disappeared back inside Daniel. The screaming stopped. Daniel fell to the ground. Carefully, Sonnellion picked him up. He looked at Lucifer. Lucifer took the small body of my brother and held onto him.
“Is he…” I didn’t finish because I didn’t know how to finish.
“Fine, just tired,” Levi assured me. “Much like you, Brenna.”
“Time to go home?” I asked.
“Time to go home,” Fen answered.
Chapter Fifty-Three
“Ok, let’s get these curses broken,” my mother said as we reappeared in my living room.
“I don’t have the energy,” Olivia said as she fell onto the couch.
“Did anyone bother to get the Strachan Mark back?” I asked, suddenly remembering it.
“Yes,” my mother told me.
“Great,” I took a deep breath. “I’m not sure I have the energy to even allow you to break a curse on me. It has been a very rough week.”
“You have no skin and it isn’t growing back, we are breaking the curse on you,” my mother informed me.
“Elise, maybe you could let them all have a nap first. Maybe something to eat,” Lucifer suggested.
“They can eat, but we are going to break these curses before they take naps. It’s awful to have children without skin. I’ve kept my mouth shut about it, but look at them!” She nearly yelled the last part.
“Well, at least we get to eat,” I gave Eli and Daniel a goofy look that probably failed since I didn’t have skin.
“And stop making faces, Brenna. It’s disturbing without skin.” My mother started crying. My father wrapped his arms around her, pulled her into him.
“Elise, they are alive and well. Not having skin is really not that big a deal, honey. They could be a lot worse off.”
“And you, you big oaf, you are also rotting. Your ear fell off ten minutes ago. You’re dropping body parts like painters drop paint droplets. It’s awful, just awful,” she started crying even harder. Her body heaved with the sobbing.
“Elise, we’ll get them all sorted out,” one of the Witches said.
“Don’t patronize me, Prunella.” My mother chided her.
“I’m not. I’m just saying, Luc’s right, it isn’t that big a deal. They’re all alive. They even brought an uncle back and now he’s starting to rot. It could be a lot worse.”
With the reminder of Sonnellion, my mother stopped crying. She straightened herself up, walked over and slapped him across the face. We all stared at her open mouthed.
“I know you know what you did to your brother’s all those years ago. I just want to remind you that while we are all willing to forgive you for it, we are not willing to forget it. You do something that evil and stupid again, and you will have to face me. I will not live with my husband bemoaning his fate as Overlord or mourning your death again because he had to kill you for being a jackass.”’
“Of course, Elise. I hope to never bring pain or shame to them again.” Sonnellion looked at her.
My mother must have liked whatever she heard or saw in his eyes. She threw her arms around him and hugged him. Since she looked like she had been about to turn him into a toad, we all let out a breath we didn’t know we had been holding.
“Can we eat now?” Rachel asked. I was glad it was her and not me. My stomach growled.
“Fine, fine,” my mother got up.
“Mom?” Nick got her attention.
“Yes Nick?”
“Are you mad at me for what I did?”
“No Nick, I’m not mad at you. I’m happy for you. To have that power is amazing. And I’m sure Sonnel will be a valuable member of the family.”
“Ok, then you won’t get mad when I tell you that the food is already here and you don’t have to cook?” He asked, trying to raise an eyebrow. But like me, the skin from his forehead was gone.
“How’d that happen?” She looked at us.
“Some of the others went and got it.” Rachel stood up and opened the door.
A platoon of beings began carrying in food. There was take-out from just about everywhere within a 30-mile radius of the house. We all grabbed containers and ate where we sat.
“I’m stuffed,” Rachel pushed away her third box of Chinese.
“Do we have enough Witches to break this many curses?” I asked.
“I’m sure we do,” Prunella said to me.
“It’s a lot of curses and one is infectious. I won’t be of any value. Not sure any of my siblings will be either.”
“Don’t worry about it dear, we’ll get you all fixed up, good as new, in no time.”
“Oh good, can I sleep through it?” Daniel asked.
“No, you can’t sleep through it,” my mother scolded him.
“Please?” He begged.
“No, you have no eyelids. How are you going to sleep?” My mother began crying again.
“Wow, let’s get on with it, before she cries herself to sleep.” I pointed out.
“That is no way to speak about your mother,” she waggled her finger at me, tears still flowing.
“Maybe not, but you keep crying and you are going to be exhausted.” I reminded her.
“Whatever,” she walked into the other room and came out with my spell book.
“Ok, Witches, let’s get to work.”
Power began to ebb and flow in the room. They were chanting and mixing potions. I didn’t need all that ceremony to break a curse. I guess they did.
Someone tossed some very foul smelling goop on me. It stung, but I felt my skin begin to grow. It hurt more to grow than to not be there. They continued around the room, throwing the goop on everyone.
By the time they finished, my skin was starting to have color again. I had thin eyelids that I closed. They still let in light, but not nearly as much as they had.
“There’s one, let’s get the others,” Prunella sounded chipper and happy. I considered telling her how I felt about it, but there was no need to spoil her good mood.
Five hours of their chanting and I had a headache. I was covered in goop of all shades, smells and some I could even taste. I needed a shower. I needed my bed. I needed another helping of General Tao’s Chicken.
Instead, I got a box of rice and more goop poured onto me. Prunella and my mother both smiled. They were also smeared with a bit of this and that.
“All done,” Elise announced proudly. My skin was back. My body was healing. I could agree. We were all done.
“Find a room, sleep wherever,” I grabbed my box of rice and disappeared into my wing of the house. Once inside, I couldn’t hear any noise from the living room. The quiet was blissful.
“How long do you think you’ll be out?” Ba’al’s voice came from the darkness.
“A day, maybe two. I’ll wake up when I need to eat again.” I shoved the container of rice towards him. “It was the best I could get away with.”
He gave a gentle laugh. Ba’al stepped from the shadows. He looked almost as bad as I felt.
“Come on, Gargoyle, we’ll heal together.” I emptied the container of rice and entered my bedroom.
Ba’al gave a small stretch. He sat down on the floor, legs folded over each other. I grabbed a pillow and small blanket from my bed. I put the pillow on his chest, covered myself with the blanket and curled up in his lap.
Slowly, his breathing stopped. His heartbeat became very faint. I felt the stone cocoon around me.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“We need to talk,” Anubis’s voice came through the stone wings before I had fallen asleep.
“Ok, well, damn,” I touched the mark to my chest. Ba’al softened, leaving a fine coating of powder on my bedroom floor as he turned back into Ba’al.
Ba’al yawned and stretched, “I don’t feel any better.”
“That’s because it’s been about five minutes,” I told him, uncurling from his lap.
“Damn,” he yawned again. “I can’t do this a lot or I’ll have a lot of skin to replace .”
That brought my attention to the fine powdering of dust on my floor. I realized, for the first time, that it was Ba’al’s skin that turned to stone and when he woke, he shed it.
“Gross,” I sat down on the sofa.
“It’s about everything,” Gabriel said.
“Could we make it a bit narrower?” I frowned at him.
“Ok, it’s about Daniel and Sonnellion and the rest of your siblings and Magnus,” Fenrir answered.
“Oh and your family taking up residence, at least temporarily, in our house.” Gabriel added quickly.
“One problem at a time. Daniel?” I asked.
“You healed him,” Anubis answered.
“Yes.”
“How?” Anubis asked.
“I don’t know. That’s a Daniel question. He understands it more than me because I am not a True Prophet and have no idea what that does to your brain.”
“Fine. Why did you get so sick?” Gabriel asked.
“Magnus’s curse. It hurt when Magnus drained the magic. I didn’t think about it then, but when Eli or someone else does it, it isn’t pleasant, but it isn’t painful. However, since my Witch Premier was cursing me, it hurt. Once he did it, I got magic sickness. As Elise said, ‘fruit from the poison tree.’ Once he cursed me to suffer, my magic started to go haywire because my Premier had done it. Hindsight being what it is; it makes sense. At the time, I just knew that there was something wrong with me.”
“About Magnus,” Gabriel sighed.
“I know,” I sighed back. “But despite her protesting, I think Rachel will be a good Premier. She has good instincts, thinks for herself and is capable.”
“No, I mean, how do you feel about it?” Gabriel asked.
“Oh, that. I don’t know. He was my friend for a long time. I don’t think it has set in yet, not entirely. He helped me when no one else could and in the end, he was consumed by fear; which lead to a lot of bad decision making.”
“Fear usually does.” Anubis frowned.
“Yes, yes it does. Which brings about Sonnellion.”
“Didn’t he tell you when he was resurrected it would be worse?” Anubis answered.
“Yes, but that wasn’t exactly the resurrection we foresaw. The Double Soul spell probably would have made him worse. But it wasn’t the Double Soul, it was Pandora’s Box. The fact that Nick gave him a body, his body. He doesn’t seem worse. Actually, he seems…” I searched for the word.
“He seems what?” Gabriel asked.
“He seems overwhelmed. He didn’t expect it either. Now that it’s here, it’s like he has a new lease on life. I think he’ll be fine. I think for the first several days, weeks or months, he will be odd. But it will be an adjustment for all of us. It isn’t everyday a dead Demon comes back from the dead.”
“But…” Gabriel started.
“But then Sonnellion wasn’t dead in the same sense that most beings were dead. It was like he was only partially dead. I can’t explain it better than that.”
“His living now though, isn’t a bad thing?” Anubis asked.
“No, I don’t think it is. You heard Daniel, the changing of the horsemen doesn’t change the future, they will still come, but he did say the horsemen had changed. Magnus broke the oath when he stole all the cursed items from the basement. Nick threw in a curve ball by bringing Sonnellion back. Same story, just different characters now.”
“And Kagutsuchi? Your mother was talking about a puppet spell.” Fenrir shook his head.
“Kagutsuchi sounds like an Overlord problem. My mom is right though, he may not like me, but he wasn’t trying to kill me. He really was being controlled by Jasmine.”
“A Witch can control an Elder?” Fenrir asked.
“With the right combination of potions and spells, Witches can do a lot of things. I don’t think it would work on the more determined Elders, like the Brother’s. But on some of the less determined…”
“You mean stubborn and bull headed Elders,” Anubis smiled for the first time. The mood in the room seemed to lighten.
“Yep, that’s what I mean.” I smiled back. “It may take decades, centuries or millennia, but at some point, I will make all of you understand t
he powers of a Witch.”
“Now, your family.” Anubis answered.
“Well, they don’t really have anywhere to go at the moment. We could find them places, but it would take a while.” I shrugged.
“That isn’t what we meant.” Gabriel looked at Anubis and Fenrir.
“We think we should keep them close to us, just not in the same house. We own enough land here to build a dozen or so houses. We could also build an apartment building on it. Our thought was that the Brother’s could all get houses and we could shove cousins and siblings into the apartments.”
“You think my family is going to agree to it?” I raised an eyebrow.
“I think they won’t have a choice. The Council Chamber will be rebuilt here, your father has already said so. Your mother did some research and made a comment about the amount of magic that is already here.” Anubis answered.
“Magic already here?” I frowned.
“You and your siblings poured in so much magic that the very earth is alive beneath our feet.” Gabriel mimicked my frown.
“I know, the house fixes itself when it gets damaged,” I looked at the floor. “So sometimes, I get a little overzealous. I had lots of magic, more every day because of all the builders and supervisors, I just started pouring it in. My siblings realized it and did the same.”
“And you were going to tell us this when?” Gabriel asked.
“When it happened,” I shrugged. “I could have explained it before hand, but you would have done that weird eye-glazing thing you do every time I start talking about Witch magic.”
“Sorry,” they all had the grace to look embarrassed.
“Well, you know now. And the house is pretty unique.”
“I think that about covers it,” Gabriel sat down on the bed.
“About?”
“The three of us are moving in here. Ba’al’s already in here. I’ll take the couch, being the skinniest,” Gabriel answered.
“Does that mean I get to go back to sleep?”
“Yes,” Anubis answered, he pulled his shirt over his head. “Do you want to sleep inside the stone gargoyle or do you want to sleep in the bed with us?”
I looked at Fenrir and Anubis, both getting ready for bed. There was a flash of heat. I knew I was blushing.
