Dark Legacies (Book Four in the Brenna Strachan Series)

by Hadena James

  “Yes, Brenna,” my mother sounded exasperated.

  “Then maybe we aren’t looking for a really old Elder. Maybe we are looking for an immortal witch,” I said. “I don’t know how often you have to stop time to gain that power, but it’s a hell of a lot easier to conjure creatures of mixed DNA than build them in a lab.”

  “Over the centuries, Premiers would have known,” Elise reminded me.

  “Not necessarily,” Rachel pursed her lips together. “Some witches are too strong for me to read, unless they want me too. Like Brenna, she just lays open her soul for me to read all the time, but she’s an exception. Daniel and Jasmine only let me see what they want me to see. I don’t know when they cast spells unless they want me to know it.”

  I was becoming increasingly more convinced that witch power hierarchies were nonsense created to terrify young witches into following the rules.

  “And dark witches would be less forth coming,” my mother sighed. “Why didn’t I know that?”

  “Because none of us did,” Rachel said, looking at her. “There are lots of things that I’m discovering as I work through this wacky world as Premier. For example, I can’t read auras of those that don’t want me to read them, or that, anyone standing next to Cerebus has no aura. He completely hides it because his is so overwhelming. The one thing I have learned is that Brenna has almost no secrets and she doesn’t even try to hide anything in her magic. She might be the most powerful witch ever to walk the earth and she honestly can’t do a thing with it. I thought it was just because she didn’t practice, but I’ve seen her spells. Even the ones she is good at are faulty. It’s like watching someone with no sense of balance ride a bike. They may not wreck this time or the next, but they are going to crash into something eventually if they keep trying.”

  “Thanks,” I told her.

  “Well, it’s true. Even spells you are familiar with and cast often, look questionable when you cast them. The magic, when it goes through the air, changes shapes and colors and I think that’s why sometimes you conjure gerbils and cast dubious spells without meaning to do it,” Rachel said. “None of our magic looks like yours when we cast it. It’s the one thing being Premier has done. I can see spells as they are cast.”

  “I can see magic as its cast,” I told her.

  “Yes, but I see what it’s supposed to be, not just the magic,” Rachel told me. “And your spells are freaking scarily unstable.”

  “So, you saw the gerbil thing,” I changed the subject.

  “Yep,” she smiled. “It was a good change, because the spell was meant to set Jack on fire.”

  “Good to know,” I told her. Jack was standing terribly close to me. He giggled when Rachel said his name. His breath tickled my ear. It smelled like flowers, which was unexpected.

  “Well, the house seems to be holding the first horseman,” my mother said, bringing us back to the business at hand. “According to this, the second horseman carries a sword. However, what it is, I don’t know. It might say, but I can’t read the language well enough to figure it out.”

  “Let me see it,” Lucifer took the pages from her. They went up in flames at his touch. In less than a second, the entire stack was gone. The burnt cinders fell to the tabletop.

  “Really?” Elise glared at him.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Lucifer protested.

  “You set them on fire,” Elise’s voice raised in volume.

  “No, I didn’t!” Lucifer genuinely looked stunned at the ashes.

  “Mom, I don’t think Dad did anything.” Daniel said, as he pointed to one of the spell books. It was sitting in front of Anubis and smoldering nicely. Anubis was trying to put the flames out with his shirt. The flames jumped to it and his shirt was instantly engulfed. Eli grabbed him and helped him pull the tattered, flaming cotton from his body.

  “Maybe the Elders can’t touch them,” my mother said, trying to gather as much stuff as she could.

  “I touched them. Jack touched them,” I pointed out to her as another book began to smoke. “Maybe that’s why they were in the crypt. Maybe being in the light is doing it.”

  Ba’al jumped up and plunged us all into darkness. Jack giggled loudly next to me. He could see in the dark, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t sure I liked being this close to him.

  It didn’t help as another book began to glow. Ba’al flipped the lights back on and my siblings busied themselves trying to stop the books from combusting. The entire collection was going up in flames and we didn’t know why.

  Within moments, the lost books were lost again. So much for them being indestructible. I looked at my Uncle Levi.

  “Okay, what were you saying about there being a tamer in our midst and what is a tamer?” I asked him.

  “What about the books?” Elise asked.

  “I don’t know,” I shrugged. Jack took my bag off my shoulder. He handed me Ezra and then walked around the table, filling the bag with the ashes. When all the ashes were cleared, he handed the bag back to me with a giggle. I had no idea what I was supposed to do with a bag of ashes, but we’d get to it, eventually.

  “A tamer is someone that the mythics just seem instinctually to trust, like Jack. Cerebus even seems to enjoy his company. When Jack’s around, Cerebus is calmer. Tamers are rare. In fact, we’ve only had a handful over the eons. I was going to say that you...” Levi stopped. Wind began to move through the room. We all looked towards the door.

  “Something wicked this way comes,” I muttered under my breath, quoting from my favorite children’s book.

  Chapter Twenty

  I hated being right all the time. The door burst open, and Jack grabbed the bag from me and ran out the door. I wanted to give chase, but I wasn’t sure that was prudent. Lucifer stood, walked around the table and stepped outside.

  “Oh shit,” his voice was surprisingly calm for the words. I had to go see what he was looking at.

  Outside, coming up the stone pathway was an army of Elders. I guessed the prison was once again free. The beating of wings was causing the wind. Nymphs had joined the group and they were marching towards my house.

  “Are all the beings in the prison intent on destroying the world?” I asked.

  “No, most are not, actually.” Anubis was standing next to me when he spoke.

  “They’re enchanted,” Rachel said. “I don’t know if I can break the spell or not.”

  “We’ll do what we can,” I told her.

  We began building magic. I didn’t want to use harmful magic against a group of enchanted beings, because they wouldn’t defend themselves. They wouldn’t even try.

  “Hit the nymphs!” Pendragon’s voice came from somewhere behind the mob.

  My siblings took aim, as I fed them magic. They began taking down the nymphs. As the nymphs fell, a few beings began to wake up.

  With their waking, we were in a full-blown battle again. I guess Pegasus had just offered us a reprieve and not a finale. Fireballs began shooting past us. My mind felt like something was pressing against it. I pushed back, forcing whatever Djinn away. Vishnu had taught me to protect myself from Djinn and had put a protection spell on me. The Djinn’s prodding was easily repelled.

  Then it got worse. The nymphs suddenly gave flight, running away from the battle. The prisoners, now released from the enchantment, ramped up their attack, although most seemed confused by it. The first dragon ran past us.

  “Dragons don’t run!” Anubis shouted to me.

  “They do when the horsemen ride,” I answered. We both instinctively turned to look at our house. It was still a windowless, hollowed out block of obsidian, without doors.

  “Ah hell,” Rachel said as the prisoners turned tail and ran back to the prison. The change of tide was so unexpected that Pendragon stood alone in the middle of the road, looing confused.

  “You should get over here!” Eli shouted to him.

  Fire began to rain from the sky. The ground shook as the mythics again ran to the other side of t
he island. I was definitely putting it on my list to check out if I survived.

  “What’s behind the city?” I asked Pendragon as he ran towards us.

  “Pegasus,” Pendragon answered.

  “Okie dokie,” I remarked, even though that didn’t really answer my question exactly. I made a mental note to ask someone about Pegasus if any of us survived. The first horseman hadn’t been bad, but I had stopped time. I couldn’t do it a second time because I didn’t have enough power. We’d have to face it head on and hope that we didn’t lose.

  “Ready?” Rachel asked me.

  “Not in the least,” I answered. “I’d really like to run and hide in my house.” That brought a memory of Porlaine. He had said not to house the horsemen together. “We need to get away from my house. If it eats another one, I don’t know what will happen. However, the giant magical catfish said it would be bad. Since the first one is in my house now...” I didn’t finish the sentence. Everyone else was getting the message. They began rotating their attack stance so that the woods were behind them.

  I wondered for a moment if the horseman’s legs had given Cerebus indigestion. Then I realized that Cerebus couldn’t eat the second horseman.

  “That’s no good,” I told them, “Cerebus ate the bottom half of the first horseman.”

  “What?” Lucifer looked at me.

  “It was Jack’s idea,” I shrugged at my father.

  “After we defeat the horseman, we’ll talk about your new choice in friends,” my father said, giving me a glare. I shrugged again. Jack was so the least of my problems.

  “Should we gather the others?” Pendragon asked.

  “The other what?” Abaddon glared at him. “The other Overlords? We’ve lost two and Kagutsuchi is, well, he just is.”

  That pretty much summed up my feelings on the Elemental Overlord as well. He just was. I still hadn’t decided if he was on our side or theirs.

  “We really need those canopic jars.” I muttered.

  “Where are they?” Lucifer asked.

  “Well, they were in our basement,” I looked down the road and saw that it was still raining fire. Mythics were still running past us, but it seemed to be taking the horseman a long time to get here. “Now, who knows?”

  “Is it just me or does this seem strange to anyone else?” Eli got out of his fighting stance and put his hands on his hips. “I admit I wasn’t here for the first one, but don’t they come faster than this?”

  “The first one did. Maybe this one threw a shoe or something,” I mimicked his stance, putting my hands on my hips.

  “Supernatural horses do not throw shoes,” Beezel told me.

  “Then why isn’t he here yet?” Rachel asked.

  We were all at a loss for an answer. The mythics were gone, hiding with Pegasus and doing whatever mythics did when they hid with Pegasus. The thirty or so of us standing outside the council chamber looked very silly. Some of us had fireballs ready to throw, some had other spells out, my father was glowing, his brothers were glowing, and yet, we didn’t actually have a horseman to fight against. Maybe he had gotten lost.

  Cerebus gave a gruesome howl. The other horseman’s legs. I hit myself in the head.

  “That looked painful,” Anubis told me.

  “What if he got distracted? What if he is going after the other horseman’s legs?” I asked.

  “That seems…” Anubis cocked his head to one side. “I don’t know…unreasonable, but since the horsemen aren’t really beings like we think of them.”

  “What if they are like the musketeers?” Daniel asked.

  “The musketeers?” Ba’al raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah, all for one and one for all,” Daniel said. Cerebus gave another howl of pure agony.

  “We should go rescue the hellhound,” I said and took off running. My urge to get to Cerebus was like a primal need. As my feet wound through the dark forest, they avoided trees my eyes couldn’t see. My only thought was getting to Cerebus.

  The sight that greeted me was awe-inspiring. The horseman rode a red horse that glowed like my father. The mane and tail was actual flames that flickered and licked at the hands of the horseman. The horseman was dressed in red. Leathery wings spread out from its body in a vibrant crimson that made my eyes hurt. Orange streaks ran through the wings like veins.

  The hilt of his sword was gold. The blade was hot iron or steel and glowed with the same hellish light as his horse. If he had features, they were lost, because my brain couldn’t comprehend what it was seeing.

  Cerebus had been beheaded. All three of his heads lay on the ground, whimpering. His body was intact, but it jerked wildly. Above Cerebus, a white wispy thing floated. The legs of the first horseman stood next to the body.

  Jack saw me and giggled. The second horseman turned to look at the madman. The madman giggled harder. He didn’t run. He sprang at the horseman using his incredible jumping skills and landed on the horse. Instantly, he burst into flames, which made him giggle harder.

  I rushed to Cerebus. The horseman was busy with Jack. Cerebus’ soul, damaged and broken, was being pulled from his body by the horseman. I threw a protection spell around him, hoping to stop the horseman’s powers from working.

  The white cloud dissipated. Cerebus’ heads reattached to his body. The hound stood up and shook himself. He was angry.

  I had seen Cerebus eat beings in the past. I had seen him fight beings. I had fought him myself, but nothing prepared me for what the hellhound looked like when he was angry. He began to pace within the protective circle. His skin began to glow, smoke rose from his fur. His dark eyes became as crimson as the horse. His massive paws set the ground on fire beneath him. The fire raced across the grass and licked up the sides of my protection spell. He was safe from the horseman, but the horseman was also safe from him.

  However, I couldn’t bring myself to let Cerebus out. Instead, I turned my attention to the horseman. Jack was a ravaged wreck. His skin was gone and his skeleton was fighting with the horseman. The legs of the first horseman were trying to help, but failing as they jumped back whenever they got close to the fiery steed.

  I lunged forward. Arms grabbed me, yanking me backwards, tossing me to the ground. Leviathan frowned at me, his hand still on my shoulder.

  “You cannot attack him head on. He is too strong for that. You need to fight the urge to rescue the mythics for a while,” my uncle told me. “No matter how strong the call to do so is.”

  I had no idea what that meant, but my uncle didn’t have his normal jovial tone. He was being deathly serious. My father leapt at the horseman and his steed. His body instantly burst into flames, but they seemed to make Lucifer stronger, not weaker. Jack finally jumped from the horse.

  Sonnellion attacked next. He also burst into flames, and like Lucifer, they seemed to empower him. Neither was melting as Jack had. If anything, they seemed to grow larger, stronger.

  “Each horseman has a weakness. It is the same weakness that fuels their power,” Levi explained as he helped me stand. “A fiery horseman deserves to deal with fire.”

  “Daniel!” I shouted for my brother. “Make it rain fire, your fire.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  My first thought was “ouch.” My second thought was that I was an idiot. We were already being pelted by fiery rain. Daniel’s fiery rain hurt worse, fell faster, and the fireballs were larger.

  As Daniel made it rain harder, my Uncle Abaddon jumped at the horseman. I watched as his skin lit up, his eyes changed to a deep orange color and flames erupted from the tips of his horns.

  Once, as a child, I had been told that every Elder had a touch of raw power that allowed them to draw magic from certain things. No more had ever been said on the topic, but as I watched my father and two of his brothers tear at the flame-wielding horseman, I was guessing that they were fire demons, for lack of a better term.

  I looked at Daniel. If I had been a betting demon, I would have said he was a fire demon as well. I di
dn’t know what I was, but fire demon didn’t fit the bill. I didn’t know if there a specific type of demon that was clumsy, because if there was, I was that. If there wasn’t, it was still a mystery.

  Levi stood next to me; keeping me from joining the fight. Anubis, Ba’al, and Pendragon were dealing with the legs of the first horseman, while my other siblings were casting spells to help the Elders out.

  An idea began to form in my head. We had a serious problem. I took hold of Levi’s arm to get his attention and pulled him away from the melee. The other could probably handle the horseman without Levi and me. If they couldn’t, we wouldn’t be very far away.

  “We should be helping,” Levi told me as we moved further away.

  “How did he get here?” I asked my uncle.

  “What?”

  “How did the horseman get here? I’m willing to accept that the laws of the natural order probably do not apply to him, but I don’t believe he can portal travel without help. So, was he here or is Pendragon wrong and the portals can still be opened?”

  “I believe Pendragon when he says the portals can’t be opened.”

  “Okay, so why do the horsemen keep coming up the same route? I believe they have to be on the island already. Aside from Cerebus’ lair and the catacombs attached to it, how many places on the island are there where something evil can hide?”

  “Possibly with Pegasus, if it’s soulless. If it has a soul, hiding near Pegasus would be problematic. There are some areas behind the prison, but its best for Elders not to go there.”

  “Best for Elders not to go there,” I repeated the phrase. “But horsemen aren’t Elders. They are some sort of supernatural beings that defy all known laws. I’m also thinking that as supernatural beings that defy, I think they might be tied to their canopic jars.”

  The book had told us that time had to be stopped for the horsemen to become whatever it was that they were. Perhaps, the stopping of time allowed the horsemen to be freed of their jars. I still didn’t understand how the infants worked or why they were needed, because the books and pages had burned before we had gotten that far.