Dark Cotillion (First in the Brenna Strachan Series)
Page 37
“That only leaves one,” King Linus said.
“Death seems to be the common thread,” Lucifer looked at Daniel. “We were discussing death when the first sign happened.”
“But in what order?” I asked. “We know eight of the nine signs, we know the order of four, but we don’t know the order of the other five. While it is nice to know what they are, it would be even more helpful to prevent them if we knew their order.”
“I cannot tell you the order, I only know the signs,” Daniel replied.
“Great, just great,” I threw my hands into the air. “Who speaks when the Prophet is talking? You called me Demon and my mother Witch. Those are not the labels that would be given to us by my brother.”
“A voice from Beyond,” Daniel answered.
“A voice that occupies his head but comes from the aether” Vishnu finally spoke. “An all knowing being. We do not know if it is God or the voice of the dead who know the future. It is knowledge that the Djinn cannot penetrate, it protects itself and the prophecy.”
“Fuck,” my mother cursed under her breath.
“Language,” I responded just as quietly. It dawned on me.
“Oh fuck,” I rolled my eyes, “the other sign. The Four Horsemen. War, Death, Conquest, and Famine. Someone or something has to bring them into existence.”
“That’s a lot of magic,” my mother responded. Magnus seconded her.
“Incorrect,” Daniel replied.
“Not incorrect, just on the wrong track,” Lucifer suddenly smiled. “All of them have been about death and revelation, the missing sign is about life. Someone or something has to be born with enough magic to raise the dead and actually bring back their souls, not just their bodies.”
“Wrong,” Daniel looked at Lucifer.
“Someone is strong enough to raise the dead?” I narrowed my eyes at Daniel. “No, not someone, and not something, but someones, as in multiple beings. The Nine have the power to return the soul to the body. They did it to me.”
“Not one of the signs.” Daniel looked at me as if he was bored.
“No, it isn’t, but whatever causes them to raise the dead is,” I responded. “For some reason, the Nine Brothers are going to raise the dead.”
“No,” Daniel yawned, “you should let someone smarter talk for a while.”
“Why would we resurrect the dead?” Mammon asked me.
“You did it to me,” I responded.
“Yes, but you are different,” Levi answered.
“I give up.” I threw my hands into the air again.
“The missing sign,” Nick spoke suddenly. We all seemed surprised, like he had just materialized from thin air. Vaguely, I remember him being there when I walked in, but just barely.
“The missing sign is the betrayal, someone will bring about the death of another because of their betrayal, and someone will break the Oath of Protection.”
“Correct.” Daniel smiled at him.
“The death of whom?” I asked Nick.
“I don’t think it matters, Bren,” Nick responded. “I think it is the act of breaking the Oath that is the sign. If everyone in the room has taken the same oath as you, they are bound in magic and blood to protect life on Earth, all life. Betraying that oath, breaking it, will take a great amount of will and strength. I imagine it will go very badly for whoever breaks it. That’s why it is a sign. The first of the conspirators will come to light if they aren’t strong enough to cover the fact that they have broken the Oath.”
“Oh, God.” I looked around. Someone in the room was strong enough to break the Oath. “If someone broke the Oath, what sort of magical ripple would that create?”
“It would be huge,” Magnus told me.
“Big enough to resurrect the dead?” I asked.
“I don’t know. The Oath has never been broken,” Magnus answered. “Theoretically, no, it wouldn’t work that way, but thousands of years of tamed, untamed, and Elder magic have gone into it. That tug you felt was the weight of all that magic, bound together, binding itself to you. In theory, once you take the Oath, you can use some of that magic to protect Life on Earth.”
“In theory?”
“It has never been used,” Lucifer admitted. “We didn’t start it until after the Elder War.”
“So in theory, if someone broke the Oath, they could use the magic for their own purposes.” I said instead of asked.
“No, it shouldn’t work that way. If you break the Oath, you can’t use the magic,” Magnus responded.
“Then how does someone resurrect the dead?” I reiterated the question.
“That answer is...” Lucifer looked at his brothers.
“Unfathomable,” Leviathan finished the sentence for him.
Acknowledgments
I must thank my family. They are continually supportive of my passion to write and even put up with my writer’s quirks. Over the years, they have nurtured my need to write and encouraged me to keep going even when I didn’t think I could.
Next, my new editor, Frankie Rhodes, for taking my manuscript of illegible thoughts and extraneous commas and making it a work of art.
Finally, the cover artist, who keeps me from having titles in funky colors with desert backgrounds.
Also by Hadena James
The Dreams & Reality Series
Tortured Dreams (Book 1)
Elysium Dreams (Book 2)
Mercurial Dreams (Book 3)
The Brenna Strachan Series (Urban Fantasy)
Dark Cotillion (Book 1)
Dark Illumination (Book 2)
Dark Resurrections (Book 3)
Dark Legacies (Book 4)
The Dysfunctional Chronicles
The Dysfunctional Affair (Book 1)
The Dysfunctional Valentine (Book 2)
The Dysfunctional Honeymoon (Book 3)
The Dysfunctional Proposal (Book 4)
Short Story Collection
Tales to Read Before the End of the World
About Me
At some point, we all get tired of reading the standard author bio. I’ve gotten tired of writing it or rather, cutting and pasting it. So, expect this to be a non-standard bio.
I’ve been writing for over two decades and before that, I was creating my own bedtime stories to tell myself. I penned my first short story at the ripe old age of 8. It was a fable about how the raccoon got its eye-mask and was roughly three pages of handwritten, 8 year old scrawl. My mother still has it and occasionally, I still dig it out and admire it.
When I got my first computer, I took all my handwritten stories and typed them in. Afterwards, I tossed the originals. In my early twenties, I had a bit of a writer’s meltdown and deleted everything. So, with the exception of the story about the raccoon, I actually have none of my writings from before I was 23. Which is sad, because I had seven Aislinn Cain novels written along with a half dozen other novels and well over two hundred short stories. It has all been offered up to the computer and writing gods as a sacrifice and show of humility or some such nonsense that makes me feel less like an idiot about it.
I have been offered contracts with publishing houses in the past and always turned them down. Now that I have experimented with being an Indie Author, I really like it and I’m really glad I turned them down. However, if you had asked me this in the early years of 2000, I would have told you that I was an idiot (and it was a huge contributing factor to my deleting all my work).
Personally, I really do suffer from a severe anxiety disorder and migraines. I find both to be huge impediments to the life I would like to lead. I find solace in the fact that I have found a significant other that tries to understand my obsession with writing, wonderful family members who support my writing obsession and a best friend who understands and accepts me regardless of my quirks and idiosyncrasies (for the record, she is more like Alex from The Dysfunctional Chronicles than Nyleena).
When I’m not writing, I play in a steel-tip dart league and enjoy going t
o dart tournaments. I enjoy renaissance festivals and sanitized pirates who sing sea shanties. My appetite for reading is ferocious and I consume two to three books a week as well as writing my own. Aside from introducing me to darts, my SO has introduced me to camping, which I, surprisingly, enjoy. We can often be found in the summer at Mark Twain Lake in Missouri, where his parents own a campground.
I am a native of Columbia, Missouri, which I will probably call home for the rest of my life, but I love to travel. Day trips, week trips, vacations on other continents, wherever the path takes me is where I want to be and I’m hoping to be able to travel more in the future.
And no, I don’t always write in complete sentences… I refuse to… It sounds stiff and formal when I do.
Find Me!
www.facebook.com/hadenajames
@hadenajames
http://hadenajames.wordpress.com
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