by Hadena James
Chapter Eight
“She’s awake,” Ba’al’s voice called down the hallway. I opened my eyes. He was standing in the doorway. Wings covered the opening to help deaden any sound from getting in or out.
“I’m alive,” I took a deep breath. My father was the first to come through the door. He seemed to fill the entire room.
“Well, you gave me a scare,” he scolded me as he picked me up, pulled me into his lap, and cuddled me. Considering the size difference, this wasn’t awkward except that we were doing it in a room full of people who were watching us. I felt a warm tear hit my forehead.
“I must have,” I whispered.
“No more learning experiences for a day or two. At least not ones that might be dangerous,” he said loudly. I wasn’t sure if he was talking to the others, or to me.
“Luc,” Anubis’s voice was normal again, “you know that we would not endanger her. Beal had her the entire time.”
“I know,” my father sighed heavily, resting his face on top of my head. “I know the Demon inside her did it. It just couldn’t stop itself from trying to heal. No more though, if someone is injured, she is not to touch them, at all.”
“Of course not, if we had known before she touched me that she was no longer in full control, it would not have been allowed,” Anubis responded. He was walking closer to us.
“Feeling better?” I asked.
“Much, it will take a good night’s sleep to get over all of the damage, but,” he made a guttural sound that indicated it was just another thing.
“My child, Das Wunderkind,” my father said almost laughing.
“Yes, yes indeed,” Ba’al responded. He too had moved closer. I couldn’t actually see anyone from my position, so I opened my mind. The room was filled with people. All the men from today, plus my father, and the doorman from the lobby, were in my room. I knew the doorman because he’s an Angel.
“Okay, I know what that means and I am not a wonder child.” I corrected my father.
“You didn’t die and that makes you pretty damn special.” Lucifer let go. “Another day or two and you probably would not have been so lucky.”
“Good to know,” I yawned. My stomach growled.
“We threw out your salad,” Fenrir told me. “It didn’t look very good anyway. However, Niko is willing to get you a sub or donuts, or both if you would like.”
“Food,” I said. “I want a foot long vegetarian on white with pickles, lettuce, jalapeños, and black olives, lots of onions, cucumber, and mayo. Oh, and I want both provolone and American cheese, double cheese. See if the bakery has any blackberry scones or muffins, they usually have them in August. If they don’t, I’ll just have a couple of cake donuts and some glazed donut holes.”
“I get the impression that putting you in a building with a sub sandwich shop and a bakery was not a good idea,” Lucifer told me.
“Well, I can’t usually afford the Italian food. It is incredibly expensive. More expensive than what it is worth.” I told him.
“Are you having financial issues?” My father seemed suddenly very concerned.
“Uh, no, and if I was, I certainly wouldn’t discuss it in front of everyone,” I told him.
“So you are, and you need to talk to us later about it,” he frowned, a deep furrow forming on his forehead. He reached for his back pocket on his jeans.
“Papa,” I shook my head at him, “stop, I’m not having financial trouble.”
I grabbed a bag from beside the bed. I pulled out my checkbook and handed it to him. While I wasn’t rich like my parents, I had enough to cover expenses if something happened for a year. He looked at it as if it were written in a foreign language for several minutes. His mouth stayed tight, his lips pursed, forehead furrowed. Finally, he handed it back to me. I went to put it away and found that he had slipped me several hundreds. I pulled them out and handed them back.
“I know you aren’t used to seeing numbers without several zeroes behind them, but it’s enough to get by if something happens to me.” I looked at him incredulously.
“I agree you could live on it if something happened, but it would be tight at times.”
“I’d have to eat less take out, which means I’d be coming home more, because I am not going to cook for myself.” I told him.
“And there is the silver lining,” my father stopped frowning and smiled.
“Uh, maybe,” I leaned back against the pillows. “How long do you think my food will take?”
“Considering he flew down from your balcony, not very long. It’s much faster than the elevator. We will have to redo the spell. It seems that after a few tries, you can brute force your way through it,” Gabriel told me.
“Really? That sucks, although it has some major rebounding power until then,” I remembered my father lying on the floor.
“Yes, it gave me a shock.”
“It worked. Who brute forced their way into the apartment?”
“Niko,” Anubis shrugged. “There was quite a commotion going on and your neighbors reported it. Given the fact that you are going through the Maturing, he thought it imperative to get in, regardless of the spell. He injured himself doing it.”
“Was he hurt very badly?”
“Let’s just say he was very determined.” Anubis looked at me. “Luc did an excellent job of healing him up.”
“So yes, he was hurt pretty badly and we just sent him out to get me a sandwich.” If I hadn’t been feeling guilty before, I was now, but then I was Catholic.
“He’s fine now, it’s been almost eight hours,” my father stroked my hair. “You’ve been out for a while.”
“So the bakery and the sub shop isn’t open.” I sighed.
“They are open 24 hours a day,” Gabriel reminded me.
“Oh yeah, that’s nice.” Most things were open 24 hours a day simply because Elders didn’t sleep like Humans and several had nocturnal habits. For some reason, I never expected fast food to be open all the time.
“Well, memory failure can be a side effect.” Lucifer responded, touching my shoulder.
“It’s not her memory, it’s her expectations,” Gabriel told my father. “She has some odd preconceived notions and she just expects the world to conform to those.”
“It’s a habit she has always had.” My father nodded a few times. “Okay, since she seems to be fine, I will go. You can re-enchant the doors and windows and booby-trap the house again, but it should wait until after she has eaten and possibly slept a bit more. I can always send Elise over to cast the spells.”
“Mom has enough to do with Daniel.” I told him.
“She isn’t going to neglect one child for another.” My father gave me that look. The one that told me this was not open for discussion; my mother would be joining us to redo the spells. I had a feeling this was more to put her at ease that I was all right. I guessed she had called and texted my father about a million times in the last several hours.
I went to get up.
“I know my way out and your food is here,” my father kissed me on the forehead. “You worry about food and sleep.”
“Bye, Papa,” I told him.
“Love you.”
“Love you, too.” His back was out the door as I answered his I love you. A couple more steps and he was gone. I heard the door shut as my food was whisked into the room. Someone had arranged it on a plate, a real plate. There was the sandwich, cut into six pieces, a blackberry muffin and a chocolate cake donut with chocolate icing and candy stars. I smiled at the food.
“So, how long was I out?” I asked as my room began to clear out. I was a little over half done with the sandwich. I was saving the other two items for desert. I was sure that I was hungry enough to eat all of it.
“Eight hours give or take an hour. There were some times of chaos,” Gabriel told me.
“Huh?” I looked up finally. Anubis was standing near
the bed. His eyes were healed, or at least there. They weren’t exactly the right color yet. His nose was also there, it too was discolored. No fur had grown in yet, but the skin looked healthy and pink. Most encouragingly, he had lips and ears.
“You do look considerably better.” I reached out, stopping myself before I touched his face.
“The new skin isn’t sore.”
“Wait, how can Gabriel feel the pain of having his wings cut off, if he can’t feel?”
“That is a mystery for the ages,” Gabriel took a deep breath. “Different pain receptors perhaps.”
“So what’s the plan?” I asked no one specific.
“Ba’al and Jonathan are going to take watch. Gabriel and I are going to go to bed, heal up. You are going to stay in bed. You have a laptop, some books, some movies, and some TV shows. Ba’al will be in the room to cater to your whims and fancies.”
“Why can’t I get up?”
Everyone suddenly looked at me very seriously. Ba’al had pulled in one of the chairs from my living room. He folded himself into it very carefully and sat perfectly still. The illusion was amazing; he did look like he was made of stone.
“Well, okie dokie then,” I frowned at them. “No answer is interesting. I guess that means good night to two of you.”
I opened the Sherlock Holmes book. However, try as I might, I couldn’t focus on the page. The words were just jumbled letters. What had the look meant?
I gave up, “I guess put in a movie or something.”
“What do you want to watch?”
“Um, Monty Python’s always good. How about a couple episodes of the Flying Circus?”
“Of course,” Ba’al got up, found my DVD stash, pulled out a disc and inserted it into the DVD player. As it spun up, he sat back down in the chair and handed me the remote.
“So, I take it, no one is going to tell me why I’m on forced bed rest. What happens if I have to pee?”
“I’ll escort you.”
“That’s weird.” I frowned at him.
“You died,” he frowned back. “Your heart stopped beating for almost a full five minutes. It started back on its own, but you were technically dead. Anubis and Jonathan both felt your soul. That only happens at death or bloodlettings. On top of it, you seemed to absorb all the injuries from the room very suddenly. That is something only your father can do. Heal at a distance I mean, all other Demons have to lay their hands upon you. You have always had to lay hands on to heal.”
“Oh,” I thought for a moment, “I don’t feel like I died.”
Ba’al shrugged.
“What else?”
“Gabriel’s light burned through Jonathan’s leg, destroyed the bone completely and cooked the flesh.” Ba’al pulled the covers back revealing my leg. “I’ve never seen any Demon actually manifest the injuries they heal.”
There was a hole in my leg. You could see the sheet under it. I touched it and it felt like the bone was gone. My leg felt spongy, soft, and grotesque.
“It doesn’t hurt. It should hurt,” I told Ba’al.
“It should, but it doesn’t because of magic and Lucifer. He started the healing process on it. By tomorrow morning, you should have bone back in your leg. Might take another day or two of Demon healing to get it perfect again, but it is nearly impossible for Demons to do a lot of healing on a Mortal at a single sitting.”
“I know.” I had tried healing Humans in the past. It had always been bad. It didn’t seem to work very well on them.
“Who did the magic?”
“A Witch in the building.” Ba’al finally looked me squarely in the eyes. “Don’t ever do it again.”
“Do what?” I asked, taking the defensive.
“Die, Brenna. Don’t ever die again. I don’t care if you have to sacrifice every Overlord in the room with you. You are never allowed to die again.”
“That’s bizarre.”
“We all felt you die. Not just your father. Not just the Vampires who could feel your soul. All of us felt it. All the Overlords in the room could feel it. Somehow, we are all linked together. You, me, Gabriel, Fenrir, Anubis,” he spread his arms wide. “I don’t know how or why, but we all felt it. It was the darkest feeling I have ever had.”
“I don’t know what to say to that, Ba’al.”
“Don’t say anything about it, just promise not to do it again.”
“How do I make that promise?”
“Same way you make any promise.” Ba’al moved closer to the bed. “You have some serious problems in your future. I didn’t understand it until tonight, but…”
“But what?” I touched his face. “What are you not telling me, Beal?”
“You wouldn’t understand,” he turned his face from me, moving out of my reach.
“Probably not, but you could try to explain it.”
“Love, Brenna.” Ba’al frowned again. “We all love you. When you were a child, we loved you as our own. You were ours to entertain, to amuse, and to protect. As a teenager, you were ours to protect, to educate, to offer companionship. Now, you are an adult, and none of us has been able to figure out what our relationship with you is, you are our friend. But a friend like no other. Tonight, four of us watched you die and four of us felt it and four of us felt our futures dying with it. That’s when it hit me that we love you. Not necessarily romantic, but love all the same. It flows from you. Did you know that before you were born, Anubis and I could hardly stand to be in the same room with each other? Both of us are overwhelmed with guilt, resentment, and desolation at what had happened between us. Somehow, your very birth healed that rift. I still feel guilt, but not resentment or desolation. Anubis feels the same. And I haven’t seen him smile in thousands of years, you can make him not just smile, but laugh. The hole that I never thought would be healed, is. It is an amazing thing. It might even affect Fenrir. He felt your death. It would make sense. All four of us have damaged souls. The one thing a Demon cannot heal is the soul, and yet, you seem to touch all of our souls, make us feel less…”
“Less what?”
“Alone. We walk through the world, unseeing, unfeeling, and uncaring… then you come along and all of that changes.”
“How is Fenrir damaged?”
“Three of his four sons were killed in the Elder War by him. Only Alex survives. Can you imagine killing your own child? Can you imagine being the only one that can do it? Being forced to do it? Chiron has always been an evil bastard. He is the one that pressed the death sentences for the main conspirators. All thirty of them, the Council acquiesced. The Executioners were all left with damaged souls.”
“I don’t know much about the war except that it divided the Elders and many died. It was a battle to save Humanity.”
“Huh,” Ba’al looked out at the wall. His eyes unfocused, the memory becoming the dominant part of his brain.
“It started some two thousand years before the actual battle. It started at a Council Meeting. Egypt was powerful, possibly the most powerful empire at the time. Amenemhet I was on the throne, and he had caught the attention of Lexa, Anubis’s mate. He was willing to participate in blood rituals because he thought she was a goddess. Lexa was one of the few Vampires that actively feed on Humans. She craved the emotions that came with their blood. More than that though, Vampires can feel souls, can control souls during a bloodletting, very few Vampires want such a thing. The soul is addictive. Lexa was a full out junkie. To her, Humans were cattle and nothing more, but she was only interested in the ones with power. The bloodletting is a sacred thing or should be. Perhaps she had feelings for him, but we all agree that it is unlikely. She convinced her son, Ammut, to join her in the bloodlettings. Not of her prize, but of another, the first wife of Amenemhet. Like his mother, Ammut became a junkie. But he was a lot younger and less able to control the need. He earned his curse. When a powerful Witch of the same bloo
dline that cursed Anubis cursed him, Lexa became infuriated. She demanded a sacrifice of Amenemhet, his first born son. Amenemhet refused. They went their separate ways, but Lexa came back and killed all three, Amenemhet, his first wife, and the oldest son.
“At that point, the conspiring began. She felt she had the power to eliminate the Humans. They were of no use to her anymore. Her son couldn’t feed in cursed form. He was wasting away, going mad. By the time Ramses II came to power, her revenge was pretty well planned out. She went to the Council and demanded retribution for Ammut. The Council refused, pointing out the curse was her fault. If she had not been teaching him to feed off the souls of Humans, he wouldn’t be cursed. Anubis tried to reason with her, but there was no reasoning. She seduced Ramses II, drove him mad. It wasn’t exactly hard either, he was a great general, but he was a little off his rocker before Lexa came into his life. After she began feeding, it became worse.
“The story of Moses is somewhat correct, except it wasn’t God sending plagues. It was Lexa and her cohorts. By then, she had a following that included all breeds. It was easy enough for them to do. The Council figured it out and Lexa was imprisoned. That was the beginning of the end. Her supporters had a cause to rally around, a call to free Lexa. For some reason, this was just one more thing they could blame on Humans. They didn’t succeed and around the turn of the century, she convinced the Council that she had changed. We believed her and freed her.
“Then the opportunity came that they had been waiting for. A Human Mate. The first in the history of the world. The Sidhe Fey in question went to her and they bore a child. Lexa and the others went to work. She convinced the child he was divine and Jesus Christ became powerful, very powerful. After convincing a following, that he was divine and the resurrection, Morgana had him locked away in the Prison. It was too late though. Lexa and the others had their foothold. She began to search out other Elders who had Human mates. When a second one was found, she killed the Human. The Council retaliated. Before Lexa could be locked away though…”
Ba’al stopped. He looked at me. His face was set in hard lines. His teeth were bared. Anger didn’t roll off of him, but it did embroil him.
“Sorry, I have not talked of this in many centuries.”
“Understandable. You do not have to finish telling me now.” I said as the door opened. Anubis walked in.
“Thought you were going to bed?” I asked him.
“Beal,” he took the Gargoyle’s face in his hand, “let me finish the story.”
“Ani, I started it.”
“Yes and you have done a good job of telling it.” Anubis knelt before him. “But it causes you great pain. Pain that I can feel, it burns through me. Crushes me.”
“Is it my pain?” Ba’al asked.
“My own pain,” Anubis dropped his hand. “My own pain is intertwined with yours. It is our story to tell. It is our mates, our bloodlines that died in the war.”
“Our pain,” Ba’al seemed to think of that. “I am sorry, Ani. I forget that it was your mate and child that started it.”
“And my shame to carry for eternity.”
Something mystical was happening between the men. To an outsider, it might look like lovers comforting each other. To me, it was something far deeper. Tears began to fall. The anger was gone, replaced by a hollow sadness that made me feel bleak and desolate. I felt alone in the world.
“No, Ani, not shame,” Beal looked at me, “never shame. It is not your fault, any more than it is mine or the other Council members. We did not, could not, know what she would do.”
“Lexa turned on the rest of Humanity.” Anubis sat down on the bed next to me. His finger wiped away a tear. “She unleashed hell upon them. It wasn’t just bloodletting anymore. It was sadistic, planned, genocide. They leveled two cities in two days, killing everyone inside of them. A third narrowly escaped destruction; it was left with more dead than living. Then they turned to Rome.”
“Rome,” Ba’al gave a small smile that seemed painful, not happy.
“She and her hoard descended upon the city and set it on fire. They began killing any Human they found and it wasn’t just death that she brought. It was pain, misery, and suffering. No death was quick. They ripped off limbs and watched the Humans die slowly as their blood ran through the streets. They forced children to watch as they raped and then tore apart their parents. They forced the children to march the streets, bound together, heading towards Lexa, and Lexa bathed in their blood.
“The Council and the rest of the Elders descended upon the city in two groups. One to rescue the Humans and save as many as possible, and one to battle the Elders. We called them The Hoarde. It seemed appropriate enough at the time. The Overlords went to battle with their lieutenants while the others went to save the Roman populace.” Anubis took a deep breath. His hands were shaking.
“We didn’t know that they had recruited some very powerful Witches. We have always coexisted with Witches, and in the back of our minds, we have always been slightly afraid of them. They can curse objects and us. The objects they curse, much like Excalibur, can cause us serious pain and damage. Pain and damage that it takes us months to heal. Because that wasn’t enough, they had also recruited some of the more intelligent animals from our island. Harpies, Wyverns, Dragons, Sirens, Goblins, Trolls, creatures whose instinct is for survival not civilization, despite how intelligent they seem. And they can be a dangerous lot. The Hoarde couldn’t kill us, they didn’t have any Overlords, but they could hurt us in ways we didn’t imagine.
“And they did. They unleashed their terror upon us with such ferocity that we were taken by surprise. An Overlord must touch the being they are killing. It was nearly impossible to get close enough to any Hoarde Member to kill them. The creatures that protected them, they could shred our skins, shred our bodies, and leave us in pieces on the battlefields. There weren’t enough Demons to heal us all and in most cases, the Demons were rather ineffective because of the wounds being inflicted. I spent six months in care, being treated for Dragon burns. Then they discovered Gargoyle Blood. They began to put it on their swords and arrows. The Gargoyles that had defected were willing to die for their cause. They were keeping it a secret that the Gargoyles were dying, and they were using their own defense mechanisms against us. Angels were purposely ripping off their wings when several Elders would get close to them. While we can heal from it quickly enough, it is almost as effective as a bomb, only the wings of a Gargoyle or Angel can shield the light, keep it from ripping through us.
“It took twelve very long years to kill enough of them that the rest surrendered. By then, we had no more beings in the Maturing stage. They had all been killed. An entire generation wiped out, and the battles were something to see. The ground looked as if it were bleeding after a week or so of us using it. Our blood was thick enough that it killed vast areas, rendered it unusable. Several animal species were killed almost to extinction. While the wounds healed, it left scars on our souls, on our psyches, damaging everyone that fought in it. We numbered eleven million beings when the war began, when it ended, there were less than six million of us. The Council and its supporters were outnumbered as it turned out. But they didn’t have the Overlords.
“Of course that worked in our favor, but each Overlord ended up killing so many of their own that for years after the war, we could hardly function. Every night, I would try to sleep and the faces of those I had killed would float through my brain. During the day, if I wasn’t busy, busy, busy, I would think of those same faces. Hundreds of them would flow through me, flow through my brain and make it hurt. I would relive their death, and if that wasn’t bad enough, I felt them when they died. The pain was still there.
“I remember one particularly,” Ba’al responded. “I grabbed a young Gargoyle, his name was Linus. I ripped him into two pieces, severed him at the waist. The pain from that d
eath doubled me over, made me scream out. For years, I could feel it. It nagged at me. I would try to sleep and feel myself being ripped apart again. I could feel the claws dig into my flesh at my neck and on one of my legs. Then the ripping feeling would begin and an unimaginable pain that burned as my body was torn into two halves.”
“Yes, I have a few of those as well,” Anubis looked haunted again. “But it still wasn’t over. The war had ended. The Council had won, but twenty of the original thirty conspirators were in the surrendering party. Chiron pushed us all to sentence them to death. He pointed out that Lexa had been imprisoned before and it had done nothing to temper her ferocity. He was right to suggest that they had to die, but he didn’t have to do the executions. The Centaurs that had been involved in The Hoarde had died in battle, and none were among the original conspirators. Lucifer, Gabriel, Ba’al, Morgan, Fenrir, and myself though, we all had members amongst the conspirators. It was one thing to kill them in battle, yet another to kill them in the Council Chamber. Fenrir went first. He had three sons as well as two Lycans amongst them. By the time he was done, he was a broken shamble. The Overlord that stands before you today is a shell of the Overlord he once was. He vowed to never mate again after that. Alex is comfort, but not comfort enough. For a while, he even banned the mating of any Lycan. He couldn’t take seeing one born or the thought that he might have to kill it later. Morgana and Gabriel handled the deaths better. They suffered, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t as brutal. Maybe because there were fewer of them. Maybe because they didn’t have children or mates involved. I don’t know. They just seemed to handle it better. After their death sentences were carried out, they managed to walk back to their seats. More than what could be said of Fenrir, as he had to be carried from the chamber.
“Lucifer went next. He cried as he executed six Demons. He was able to return to his chair, but he couldn’t look up at the faces of anyone there. He sobbed, shook, and finally smashed his horns against the table and that damn near killed us all. One of them broke at the base. And, well, you’ll see that another time. Ba’al went after Lucifer. He had a few Gargoyles to put to death. He did the deed and returned to his seat silently. Then it was my turn. As I stood to execute Lexa and Ammut as the first of those sentenced, Fenrir screamed to stop me. He said it was unlike anything we could imagine to kill your child. He wanted to spare me from the fate. The meeting was adjourned for the day. Pendragon took the last three conspirators, all Vampires, back to the Prison.”
“I went to visit Fenrir that night and found Ani, Luc, Anu, and Gabe already there. They were accompanied by several Demons and Djinn. The Djinn were trying to control Fenrir while the Demons healed him. He was uncontrollably shifting from Wolf to Lycan, with the shift never lasting more than a few minutes. His screams were deafening. Even Anu, with all his Djinn power couldn’t stop his mind, couldn’t stop him from shifting. He would be Lycan for a few minutes, then wolf, then Lycan, then wolf…” Ba’al shivered. “It was horrible.”
“The floor was covered with the remnants of his multiple shifts. We were afraid it would kill him. Shifting is painful enough without doing it as he was. We were all standing ankle deep in the goo, flesh, and fur that you saw today. The room smelled of decay, blood, and something worse.” Anubis looked at me. “You know, Anu is Vishnu’s informal name?”
I nodded once. I had heard it before. My father used it when we were at home.
“I decided then that Anubis could not execute Ammut and Lexa. We guessed that the executions were what caused Fenrir to lose control. What would happen if the Vampire lost control? Vamping out is not pleasant for anyone around. Vampires drink blood for their health, but they feed on souls. Each feeding that is done from an Elder or a Human give the Vampire a brush with their soul. It makes them more powerful. It’s like a drug. Since Gargoyle Blood had been used against us in the war, I spoke to Lucifer and the decision was made to execute the Vampires using Gargoyle blood.”
“We didn’t know,” Anubis hung his head, “never once suspected or even had a clue that it would happen.”
“Shhhh,” Ba’al put his hand on Anubis’s shoulder, “it was my decision. After I left Fenrir’s, I went to the Gargoyles and asked for blood donations. I explained to them Fenrir’s plight and how he was suffering, and they gave generously and unflinchingly. They wanted to help the Overlord as much as the rest of us. Marcus was only two years old at the time, too young to give. I have thanked the Divine for that every day since then.”
Ba’al stopped. His eyes were dark as tears fell from them. Anubis looked at him and began to cry as well. Tiny pink and green spots began to appear on my bed from the tears of the Overlords. I hugged both, pulling them into me as much as possible.
“We must finish,” Fenrir’s voice floated to me. I looked up. The only person doing what they were supposed to be doing was Jonathan, but that was an assumption, since I couldn’t see him. Fenrir was supposed to be home, Gabriel was supposed to be sleeping, and both of them stood in my bedroom.
“I was there,” Gabriel lowered his eyes, “I will finish, old friends. The following morning, Pendragon returned the prisoners to the Council Chambers. Ba’al came in with a chalice of Gargoyle’s blood.” His voice was detached. Fenrir stood next to him, immobile except for his face. His face seemed to be changing. Tiny micro-expressions, each betraying an emotion played upon it. I closed my mind, trying to ignore all the pain, anger, and sadness that filled the room.
“As a final touch, a touch of solidarity, Ba’al opened his wrist over the chalice and bled into it. Lexa laughed. She knew what we didn’t. Ammut tried to warn us. We didn’t listen. Lexa began screaming over him. In his last moments, Ammut tried to come back, tried to save the Gargoyles that had donated, tried to save Ba’al. That is probably the worst part. We forced the drink down Lexa first. I held the chalice, Morgan held her head, and Ba’al inserted his long claws into her shoulders, forcing her to open her mouth. I poured part of the blood into her mouth and forced it closed and forced her to swallow it. After it was done, she began laughing again. We went to Ammut next. He yelled at us, told us we didn’t understand what we were doing. Told us we would be killing more than just him if we continued. We thought he was lying, trying to save himself. We repeated the routine and moved to the last Vampire. He drank willingly and emptied the chalice. Said he had earned it. All the while, Ammut was screaming for Lucifer to do something, screaming for Lucifer to grab Ba’al. Screaming that we needed more Demons in the room. His last words were, ‘Save Ba’al, Lucifer. Save Ba’al, begin healing him now.’”
“There were seven Gargoyles in the room other than Ba’al; one was his mate, Cassandra. They were the first to start convulsing. They fell to the ground in a heap of shrieks and screams. It didn’t sound like anything that had ever been heard from a Gargoyle before. There were only about thirteen Demons in the room and Lucifer was one of them. The Demons rushed to the Gargoyles as Ba’al stood up. He got two steps before he gave one of those cries and fell to the ground. His body was flopping like a fish out of water. His wings began to curl at the edges. Lucifer stopped, pivoted, and rushed to him. When we realized that Ammut had been telling us the truth, he called for all the Demons to stop. He didn’t believe any of the Gargoyles could be saved, but if one could, he wanted it to be Ba’al. He called them all over. They formed a circle and began healing him. As they did, Vishnu entered his mind, and Anubis announced he was feeling Ba’al’s soul.
“They struggled for over an hour to keep Ba’al from dying. When they were done, another Demon had died and the rest were incredibly ill. Even Lucifer had to be carried from the Chamber. He spent a month in bed, too weak to get out. We had to place all the healing Demons and Ba’al in the same room with round the clock care. Every member of Demonnation was enlisted. They all stayed in the house and when one Demon, Lucifer, or Ba’al, looked
like they might be taking a turn for the worse, Demonnation rushed in and began healing them. Once Lucifer was well enough to begin moving, he was willing to risk all of Demonnation to save the few. He not only appealed to them, begging them to stay, but to take greater risks, to heal for longer, to heal more thoroughly than we had been letting them. Two months into the ordeal, Lucifer began trying to heal everyone. It was almost another disaster. It landed him back in a care bed. His heart stopped and only the collective efforts of the Demonnation got it going again. The rest of the Council forbade him from attempting to heal the wounded again. It didn’t stop him, but he was more careful about it.
“It took a year for Ba’al to get back on his feet. Much longer for the other Demons, eventually half of them died. John was among the survivors, as was Beezel, but one of Beezel’s daughters died. Only the strongest amongst them lived. We spent over a century cleaning up the mess. The Overlords could hardly look at each other or their gaggles. Council meetings were only called when it was truly something important. We retreated from Humanity and moved back into the shadows. Made up our minds to sit back and watch them unfold. It was a little hard to do with Witches and incredibly evil Humans walking around, but we did our best. Even now, almost two thousand years later, we still have some issues. Most of us are filled with guilt and sorrow. Some are haunted by their experiences. Some bear emotional or psychological scars that seem irreparable. Even the strongest of us, Lucifer, had serious scars right up to the point where he met your mother. That seemed to change the tide for him and for several others.” Gabriel looked at me.
“And your birth healed the rest of them,” Fenrir added quietly. “What Chiron forgets is that the Foretold Demon of his prophecy was envisioned by another Centaur and he had a much different view on the matter. For him, the Demon was to bring love and heal our sorrow.”
“It’s possible that Chiron did not forget, just chose to ignore,” Gabriel added.
The two Overlords were still leaning against me. I could feel their tears soaking into my clothes. I was sure they could feel my tears as they dripped onto their heads. It would have been a comical situation if it hadn’t been so sad and serious.
“And now you know everything that is bad in our world,” Fenrir sat down in the chair Ba’al had emptied.
“It is mostly good,” I told him looking down at the Overlords. “Look at all of us. When did you get here anyway?”
“I just knew when Beal started the story. I called Ani and he told me that Beal was indeed telling it. I turned around and came back. I stood outside for a while, listening as he and Ani told the beginning. I’m sure I’m not the only Overlord that knew.”
“Luc called me about it. The story itself has become something powerful and magic. So much pain tied to the words. It has gained its own life.” Gabriel moved another chair into the room. This one came from my computer room. One of the few rooms in the house I never used since getting my laptop. It was a graveyard for books and old electronics.
Anubis and Ba’al finally lifted their head. Anubis kissed me on the forehead. His eyes were still wet and glistening. My shirt was streaked with stains from trails of pink and green from the tear ducts of their respective owners.
“I am suddenly very uncomfortable,” I said aloud as I pulled the blankets over me. My shirt was flimsy and I wasn’t wearing any underclothing.
“Prude,” Gabriel shook his head. “Are you worried we are all going to fall upon you?”
“Well,” I cocked my head to the side. “No offense, but after the way Fenrir looked at me while in wolf form, the thought had crossed my mind.”
Fenrir threw back his head and let out a bellowing laugh. Anubis smiled, exposing all of his teeth. Ba’al did the same and Gabriel shook his head while chuckling softly. I wondered if Fenrir’s laugh was echoing through the building.
“While I admit the thought has crossed my mind on more than one occasion,” Fenrir stopped laughing, “it would have to wait until after the Maturing. Too risky during.”
“Uh…” I pulled the blanket closer.
“Brenna,” Anubis mimicked my head movement, cocking it to the side, and he narrowed his eyes slightly. “You are dealing with beings where age means very little. Furthermore, eternity really is a long time to be monogamous. While I realize you are horrified by the thought of sex, it will pass eventually and you will find yourself looking at eternity. The pool of potential sexual partners becomes narrower when you look at it from our end. While there isn’t an Elder in the world who would seriously entertain the notion of having sex with you before the Maturing, after the Maturing is a different story.”
“Anubis, just stop. I do not want to hear what you are going to say.”
“Perhaps not, but I’m going to tell you anyway. With the exception of your family and Gabriel, there isn’t a single Elder on the planet that isn’t going to contemplate having you as a sexual partner at some point or another. For one reason or another, most will not act upon it, but there are those that will.”
“Seriously, you’re going to creep me out.”
“Stop thinking like a Human,” Fenrir told me. I looked at him as if he had just slapped me in the face. In a way, he had. “Monogamy is for Humanity. Their lives are short enough to enjoy a single individual for its span. We are not Human and neither are you.”
“Blunt, but accurate,” Anubis responded. “Honestly, Brenna, you do not have the luxury of monogamy. It just doesn’t work among Elders. Hell, even with true love, it is hard to maintain a serious, monogamous relationship for more than a few centuries. The old adage that love does not know time is ridiculous. It does. Even true love drives you crazy after a few centuries and you need a break from it. I assure you that Fen is not the only one that has considered what it would be like to take you to bed. At some point, Beal, me, Fen, Jonathan, even Pendragon and Morgana will wonder about it.”
“Alex already has,” Fenrir said. “Again though, not until after the Maturing. After the Maturing, if you do not have a mate, they will be lining up at your door. I intend to be one of the first in line. You have the option to turn us down. Of course, that just means we’ll wait a century or two and try again.”
“Good, God!” I put my hands over my ears. Childish, I knew, but uncontrollable. These men were the ones that I grew up with and they remembered me in diapers. Now they were talking to me about having sex with me. It was surreal and disturbing.
“Human,” Ba’al said quietly.
“Yes, yes,” I shook my head and removed my hands. “Look guys, I love all of you, I really do. You guys are my touchstones, I come to you when I need help, guidance, support, and when I want to rebel against my father and his image. I just can’t imagine having sex with you. You remember me as a toddler, even younger. Most of you were there the day after I was born, or on the day, I was born. I realize that eternity is a really long time and I might one day get over it, but for the moment, I’m disturbed by the thought.”
“Understandable to a degree,” Anubis said.
“Understandable but childish,” Fenrir added. “This is why Elders do not have sex with other Elders until after they have both Matured.”
“Fenrir, really?” I pleaded with him with my eyes. “Could you not…”
“Not what?” He asked me. “Inform you about life? That is sort of my job.”
“No, no it isn’t.” I told him.
“It is all of our jobs,” Gabriel corrected. “The four of us are your guardians.”
“How did you get recruited for that job?” I asked sarcastically. “Did my father make you swear in blood to protect me for eternity?”
“No, you picked us,” Anubis said. I was smacked again.
“How do you figure?”
“You were two years old. We were gathered for the Maturing Party of one of your siblings and there was a group of about thirty of us, sitting in your livin
g room, plus both your parents. You walked in and said ‘I want to play a game. I want to play Princess. But I need knights.’ Several people volunteered, but you said, ‘no, I want Ani, Fen, Beal, and Gabe as my knights. They will be good knights.’ We all thought you were just being precocious and agreed to play. We all got up and went to the playroom. Lucifer came with us, as did your mother. When we got into the room, you turned and said ‘as knights, you have to promise to protect me and help me grow up and teach me things.’ We said we would and you said ‘no, you have to swear. I saw it on a movie. You all have to put your hands together and swear that you will be my knights.’ We put our hands together and swore to be your knights. Something happened when we did,” Ba’al told me.
“Something magical and unbreakable. Even your mother couldn’t do anything about it. We swore to protect you, to help you grow up, to teach you, and we have done that. Soon, all that will be left is to teach you.” Anubis looked at me. “We were bound before, bound by some invisible force, we knew from the moment your father told us your mother was pregnant that you would be important to all of us, but that oath… That oath was the seal on it. At two years old, you bound us even closer with a magical spell.”
“But one that we wanted to be bound to,” Fenrir added quickly. “That is why your mother could not break the enchantment.”
“Yes,” my mother said from the doorway. “The four musketeers there, bound in a spell cast by a two year old half-Demon.”
