Dark Legacies (Book Four in the Brenna Strachan Series)

by Hadena James

  We were finally at the intersection. I spent a few minutes conjuring more wisps. They floated away in all directions. I felt like Dorothy searching for the yellow brick road.

  “Which way?” I asked Uther Pendragon.

  “To the left,” he pointed.

  There was something ominous about the left. More ominous than the things that we had already encountered. The magic that came to us was dark and it felt evil. I had never felt truly evil magic before. I stopped siphoning. Even the hellish creatures that haunted this hollow weren’t evil. They were just miserable monsters unintentionally malicious to those that dared trespass in their world.

  “What happens if I say no?” I asked, trying to peer into the dark. Even the wisps didn’t seem to want to go that direction.

  “We go home,” Lucifer told me.

  Those options sucked. The evil that lurked in front of us and possibly held the key to our death and survival or going home and sleeping in the prison indefinitely as my house contained the upper part of a horseman. Even Jack seemed reluctant to go that direction and he had built the thing.

  “I really wish he could talk,” I said and took the first step down the road to unknown evil.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  The wisps all floated away from us as we walked down the path. They moved at speeds I had never seen from them. Here, nothing was accidentally caught in their illumination. Even the creatures of the darkened forest refused to be near here.

  Jack became antsy. He moved around the circle like a sheep dog corralling his flock, trying to lead them. His nervousness made mine even worse.

  A billion wendigos wouldn’t have prepared me for the scene. The henge suddenly rose from the darkness. Strange light came directly from the rocks that formed an irregular circle. The ground was littered with bones of things that were unidentifiable.

  Running around the stone circle was a ring of magic. The blue filmy mist of magic created a barrier for whatever was inside the ring. My mouth went dry.

  The smell was horrid. Sulfur, herbs, and decay mixed with the scent of the flora from the area, creating a stench that assaulted the nose. The smell caused the sinuses to swell and close. The eyes watered and burned. The throat ached.

  We stopped. Though a watery haze obstructed my view, I could see something moving within the circle. I could also see the protection spell reached into the sky.

  The magic suddenly flared. The light briefly reflected on the face behind the blue haze. It looked perfectly human.

  The man behind the magic backed away from the protection spell. I raised an eyebrow. This was the last thing I expected. Also, aside from the protection spell and the magic of the circle, all I felt was hatred. The man inside the circle didn’t give off a magical signature.

  “He’s human,” Eli’s voice held the same astonishment I felt.

  “He’s humanesque,” our father corrected, “I don’t think he’s actually human.”

  “He doesn’t have any magic,” I pointed out.

  “That might be the purpose of the henge,” Pendragon informed me. “Jack built the henge long before humans came about.”

  “Who is he?” I changed tactics.

  “I don’t know,” Pendragon said, “nor do I know why or how Jack trapped him within the henge.”

  “Those were going to be my next questions,” I admitted.

  “This place feels evil, can we go?” Samuel asked.

  “It does feel evil,” Sonnellion spoke, “even I feel it.”

  “I don’t think the jars are in the henge,” Mammon said.

  “Can you think of a more perfect place to store them?” I turned to look at my uncle. All of them seemed pale. Frown lines creased their faces in deep canals that showed their true age, a feat for someone that didn’t get wrinkles or frown lines. The fire from their horns had grown smaller.

  The wisps I had been conjuring danced around the circle. They moved up and down the wall of magic. They zipped around, leaving light streaks in their wake. I had never seen wisps move like that. Earlier they had been fleeing the evil circle or the man inside. Now they mocked him with their display of acrobatic freedom.

  The man slammed his forearms against the wall again. The magic flared again, brightening for several moments in a dizzying display of flashes and sparks.

  “How would someone get inside?” Samuel asked me.

  “You don’t,” I pointed, “you let him open the jars.”

  “How do you get inside?” Anubis asked.

  That was a good question. If I was right and the jars were inside, I would need to be inside. However, the man-like being inside didn’t inspire me with courage. He didn’t seem to have any magic, but perhaps it was contained by the magical wall as well. It was like nothing I had ever seen before.

  “Think those are the bones of things that have tried to get inside or the bones of things he’s eaten and tossed out?” I asked.

  “I don’t think anything gets out,” Rachel said, “and I don’t think he can toss anything through that wall.”

  “I would prefer not to look like them,” I pointed at the piles.

  “Understandable,” Rachel said.

  “I was kind of hoping you’d offer a suggestion,” I told her.

  “I would, if I had one,” Rachel turned to face me. Her face was distressed.

  Moving with caution, I made my way around the circle. I kept my body about three feet from the magic. The man inside moved with me, trailing his fingers along the wall, sending sparks flying from it.

  After completing a circuit of the henge and the magical wall with the occupant acting like my shadow, I picked up a stick. I tossed it at the wall. It slid through the magic easily and fell at the man’s feet. He picked it up and tried to throw it back. It ricocheted and hit one of the stones. The stone shook violently. A gaping hole appeared in it and eyes opened.

  “Holy shit!” I jumped backwards. “Those aren’t stones.”

  “Those are golems,” Pendragon looked at Spring-Heeled Jack. “What were you doing?”

  If Jack understood, he didn’t acknowledge it. The creatures inside the circle transfixed him. His glowing red eyes moved from stone to stone and then the man inside. Once they landed on him, the gaze would shift again.

  “Could Vishnu read his mind?” I asked.

  “No one can read Stephen’s mind,” Lucifer told me.

  Watching a stone move was a bit creepy, even in my world. The stone golem stood, stretched and slowly walked around the circle. As he did, rustling noises came from the woods around us. My feet began walking towards the creature. Jack grabbed hold of one of my arms, Levi the other and my feet stopped moving.

  “They are animals, you’ll feel their call for a while,” Levi told me. I began questioning how much of Jack’s magic I was absorbing.

  The area was suddenly alive with all sorts of creatures, large and small. Something hopped past me, which appeared to be a rabbit with vampire teeth, cat-like teeth and eyes that matched Jack’s in color. Several creatures entered the circle.

  The man fell upon the rabbit-ish thing. The golem grabbed an animal roughly the size of a deer, tossed it into the air, caught it in its mouth, and swallowed without chewing. As he grabbed a second animal, I looked away from the horrifying sight.

  A few moments later, the call of the golem stopped. The animals, terrified by their proximity to the circle and to what was inside, began to run in the other direction. Within seconds, they had all disappeared again.

  “Well, we know how they feed now,” Anubis said.

  “Is that useful?” I asked.

  “Maybe we can wake a second golem and somehow put it to sleep,” Anubis answered.

  “It’s already asleep and they aren’t what feels like evil,” I pointed to the man. “He feels evil. I don’t know if he’s a man or something else, but it’s him that feels evil. Here’s my list of questions. One, why did Jack build this place? Two, who did the magic? Three, why is there an evil man in
it that you guys don’t know? Four, why are there golems in it? Five, are the jars in there? Six, what do we do next?”

  “You can’t see the jars?” Anubis asked.

  “No, but I can’t see into the center of the circle,” I told him. “I don’t have super special seeing through the dark magic powers.”

  “Oh, well, they’re in there,” Anubis answered.

  “One of six answered,” Eli quipped, “not a good average.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Levi said. He was staring at something. I tried to follow his gaze, but found nothing.

  “What?” I asked my uncle.

  “Do you think Rachel or one of your siblings can slip in there?” He asked.

  “Sure, but getting out would be the problem,” I said.

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Levi said. “I’ve seen you do protection spells. You could put it back in place once it was down.”

  “There’s more than just a protection spell on it,” I told him. “It isn’t like anything I’ve ever seen. There’s containment spells and protection spells and something else.”

  “Something else?” Anubis asked.

  “Something dark,” I corrected myself. I didn’t want to say the word out loud.

  “There’s been a sacrifice to put up the circle,” Eli said it for me. “They spilled blood to build the wall.”

  “What sort of sacrifice?” Lucifer was interested again.

  “Witch or human,” Rachel nearly whispered the words, “but most likely, a witch, and an unwilling one at that.”

  “Fucking witches,” I said. Some of the tension broke for a second as my siblings giggled. Even my mother didn’t get onto me for my use of the f-word. Jack didn’t giggle. It might have been a first.

  “Could it be Jasmine?” Mammon asked.

  “No,” I turned my back to the circle, “this is old magic, very old. It’s been seeping into the soil here for ages.” I left out the part where someone kept coming back and strengthening the magic. No need to point out that multiple sacrifices had been committed here.

  “What are the chances an Elder built this?” Lucifer asked.

  “Alone?” Rachel looked at him. “None. An Elder and a witch, now that’s possible, but unlikely.”

  “Why?” Lucifer asked.

  “Can you see an Elder agreeing to create this?” She spread her arms wide. “The circle came before the darkness.”

  “What?” My father looked at her.

  “At some point, this was just a wooded place. That thing and the circle is why it has become the place of nightmares. The multiple sacrifices, the evil that dwells within it, the magic has twisted the place,” Rachel told him.

  “There’s a lot of truth there,” I admitted. “It feels like the air is saturated with evil. I think the circle was built and that thing put in there. Only after that, did the monsters that dwell here come into being. It would explain why things like the wendigos just suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Somehow, they used Pendragon’s magic to help create it.”

  If I had dropped a nuclear warhead being ridden by a goblin into the center of our group, they couldn’t have looked more stunned. Pendragon looked the worst. His face paled, and he began to shake from head to toe and his mouth fell open.

  “I didn’t create this,” he stammered.

  “I don’t believe you did,” I told him. “Whoever, did though, used your magic and the magic that is in the island to do it.”

  “No one can use my magic,” Pendragon gained some of his composure back.

  “Not true,” Rachel said, “most of the Strachans can use it. Over the millennia, other witches probably have as well.”

  “I don’t power share,” Pendragon said.

  “Not willingly,” Rachel said, “but standing next to Brenna is power sharing. You may not feel it, but if you could see magic, you would see it moving towards her. She is constantly grabbing magic from other places. Daniel does as well. Hell, most of us do.”

  Pendragon took a few steps away.

  “Sorry,” I shrugged, “but you’d have to move a lot further away than that; like out of the woods away. Back to the problem at hand, we need those jars. Somehow, they were taken from our basement and put in there, so there has to be some way to get them out.”

  “Magic,” Daniel said.

  “Yes, but what sort of magic?” I asked.

  “The same type that pulls the Strachan Sword to you,” Daniel stated and then he began to glow. “Powerful magic, the sort that shouldn’t exist in the world but does.”

  “Am I talking to the prophet?” I asked. It didn’t sound like the prophet. It sounded like Daniel.

  “No,” he grabbed Nick and power surged into my other brother. He began to glow, getting brighter as Daniel filled him with magic. I watched in fascination.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Nick did what Nick does. The bones around me began to assemble themselves. Desiccated flesh moved onto the bones in places. The longer he stood there, pouring out magic, the more alive looking the things on the ground got.

  From the piles, a woman appeared. White hair flowed from her dry scalp, growing rapidly to cover her shoulders and then the middle of her back. Her fingers began to plump. The skin turned from a dry, desiccated brown, to a dry, desiccated pink. A second woman appeared, then a third, a fourth, and a fifth. They didn’t have souls, but they weren’t zombies.

  Daniel let go of Nick . Nick knew what to do. He began to move his lips. The women from the ground crossed into the circle and the man inside instantly attacked. He clawed at the closest one to him. His hands moved almost as fast as Jack’s did. However, the reanimated dead didn’t notice or care. The others continued forward.

  The resurrected animals didn’t bother me. I’d seen those before. Normally, they were mostly skinless walking bone structures. On a few occasions, they’d had scraps of skin. Tonight, it was at a completely new level. The animals were covered in skin. It didn’t look healthy, but they had skin. The beings were another story. They may not have had the amount of skin, but they were beings.

  One continued to distract the man in the circle. He was becoming more wildly violent. His hands tore at her. His fingers slashed through the dry skin. His teeth were bared and he was making strange growling noises. The malevolence gushed from him. The violent actions filled him with euphoria. I could feel all of them as he ripped into the reanimated body.

  The moment one of the dead women touched a jar, his attention shifted. He rushed at her, knocking her down into one of the stone golems. It shook like a dog covered in water. Dust rained down on both the man and the dead woman. The man screamed in her face and tore at the jar, trying to pry it from her. The golem stood, shifting his weight, causing both the man and woman to lose their footing. For a moment, the man seemed stunned, and then he went back to attacking her.

  The golem’s eyes were penetrating as they stared unblinkingly at the fighting pair. Another woman grabbed a jar and began moving back towards us. The man didn’t notice. As she placed her first foot outside the circle, he screamed and ran for her. It was too late. She stepped from the circle and walked to Nick. She handed him the canopic jar and returned to the circle.

  The man was now fighting with another woman. He had secured one jar; it was tucked under his arm. The first woman got off the ground, putting herself back together, and grabbed the jar from behind. The adversaries tugged against each other. The man was fighting a losing battle. The woman who had brought out the jar had returned and now grabbed another jar. He began tugging on the two of the three that were left.

  The fourth jar exited the circle. The top had a large cross on it. Nick handed the first one to Rachel as he took the fourth. The woman returned to the circle.

  They bumped another hunk of stone. A second golem stood. He moved next to the first and together they watched the melee. I wondered if they cared what happened or if they were just entertained.

  One of them reached down and took a jar from the
fighting group. He plucked it out of their hands as if they had been offering it to him. Against his hands, the jar looked tiny. I looked at the jars we had. The cross was on one of them, but I didn’t know what that meant. The other had a winged rider with a bow. Some part of me sank. The second rider had probably returned to his jar. That meant that the jar in the hands of the golem had a horseman in it. I didn’t know the requirements for conjuring them, but I had a terrible suspicion that the hard work had already been done. All that was left was the opening of the jar.

  The golem did just that. His giant fingers gave a twist and the lid popped off. He moved the jar to his large eye and peered into it. To my horror, he turned it upside down and shook it. Dust that I assumed was ashes, floated down to the ground.

  Nothing happened. I sighed in relief. Several others sighed with me. The last of the dust settled on the ground.

  The magic wall flashed, and I shielded my eyes from the intensity. When I raised my gaze back up, the wall was no longer blue, but a dark red. A stone archway appeared in it. The earth flowed like water around the puddle of dust. The legs of the horse became distinguishable.

  The man charged the archway. He hit it and rebounded, as if he had hit something solid. He screamed. The deafening sound made my head want to explode. I felt the pressure pressing against my skull as my brain began to hemorrhage. Gabriel fell to the ground, hands wrapped around his head, covering his ears. Blood flowed from his nose and eyes.

  “Help him!” I shouted to the nearest demon. Sonnellion, struggling with his own pain, grabbed hold of Gabriel. The pain brought my uncle to his knees. He wrapped his arms around the angel. The two men knelt and rocked on the ground. There was no way to help them and prepare for the horseman. Ba’al moved towards them. His nose was also bleeding, but he was faring better than Gabriel was. He cocooned both the angel and the demon within his wings. I didn’t know if it would help against the thing in the circle, but I hoped so.