by Hadena James
“Okie dokie,” I stood with a sigh.
“You are all requested,” Pendragon looked around.
“Why?” Anubis asked.
“Because you were,” Pendragon snapped at him. “Sorry, it’s been a rough couple of days. I have Sonnellion running around like a madman with no skin on. Ba’al looks exactly the same and is doing exactly the same. Lucifer is grouchy. Elise is pregnant. I have about fifty-five other Elders in various states of injury. The Demons can’t heal them, the handful of Witches in the hospital can’t seem to break the magical curse that is causing their skin to grow back very slowly. The Prison is in uproar all the time. A stupid gremlin got into the place somehow and we are rechecking all the entry and exit points. They were supposed to be gremlin and imp proof, obviously they are not…”
“Uther, take a breath,” Anubis instructed him.
“Wow, I’ve never heard you talk that much,” I smiled at the older Elder.
“I get talkative when I’m flustered.”
“I feel your pain,” I sympathized with Pendragon.
“The entire Island is having issues. There seems to be glitches in everything. The City lost its protection barrier sometime during the night. The chimeras have been nice enough to volunteer to patrol the city walls, but if Cerebus or something like that decided to enter, I’m not sure how well the chimeras would fare…”
“Pendragon, how much of the magic is your magic?” I asked pointedly.
“Most of it, hence the reason I’m on the verge of a meltdown.”
“Okie dokie, we don’t want you to meltdown. We’ll come to The Island and see what we can do to help,” I assured him.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I don’t think you’ll be much help.”
“Don’t worry, I feel the same way. I haven’t a clue what I think I can do, but we’ll have a go at it anyway.”
Pendragon grabbed hold of the three of us. His fingers dug into my wrist just a little. I closed my eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Two
While I had been to the Island a few times, I had never seen the City that was reported to be there. This was exactly where we ended our teleportation, in the middle of the City. I had been told there were roughly one and a half million Elders that lived within the metropolis. The place was bustling to be sure.
It was very compact. Narrow streets that were for pedestrian traffic only were made of old fashioned cobblestones. The Elders had built up instead of out, creating artificial shadows from tall buildings. There were restaurants and shops that sold all sorts of things. One window appeared to have items specifically for witchcraft and announced it was having a sale. Another storefront had books in the window.
The buildings seemed to be made of stone. However, each building didn’t seem to be made of the same stone. I recognized a few as being obsidian or marble or granite, but several were unknown to me. Then again, I wasn’t a stone expert.
Storefronts carried old fashioned signs in multiple languages. None had the full glass doors that I associated with stores. Instead, they looked like house front doors with large windows. Some were painted wood, some were stone, a few were very brightly colored.
The streets were filled with all kinds of beings. Even Humans and Witches walked the cobbled avenues. Some waved, some smiled, others seemed to be engaged in whatever they were doing. Several carried tote bags misshapen with whatever was contained within.
I felt like I had stepped into another universe.
“Sorry, you’ll have to gawk later,” Pendragon tugged at my wrist gently.
A Demon I knew, but couldn’t but a name on, waved and smiled as we walked past. Another Elder stopped Anubis for a quick word. No one stared at us.
We entered the heavy double doors of a building marked “hospital.” My father was instantly visible. He was shouting at another Demon. The Demon in question was listening to him with a slight smile on his face.
“Dad,” I interrupted the shouting. The other Demon gave me a slight nod and took the opportunity to escape.
“Brenna!” My father grabbed me in both arms and hugged me until I thought my eyeballs were going to explode out of their sockets.
“Why were you yelling at him?” I asked.
“Yelling at who?” Lucifer put me down.
“The Demon you were yelling at when I arrived.”
“Oh,” my father blushed. “It is just ‘grandfather’s anxiety’.”
“Okie dokie, so where is Hannah?”
“Upstairs, come on,” he motioned for all of us to follow him.
The stairs were a circular disaster. The steps were uneven and seemed to slant towards the outside. There was a moment of vertigo as I climbed them. I shook my head at the top of the stairs, trying to shake off the feeling.
“What?” Anubis asked.
“Nothing, everything just seems wonky. It happens,” I whispered to him.
“It takes time to get used to Elder construction,” he agreed.
Most of my family and most of their friends were sitting in a large waiting room. Half of them appeared to be in various states of skinlessness. I raised an eyebrow as Ba’al stood. Even his wings were transparent, showing the bone and muscle structure of them.
“You guys look hideous,” I said remembering not so long ago, I had looked like that.
“We could look worse,” Ba’al pointed to someone I didn’t know. He was chatting with Eli. The problem was not the chatting, but that he was holding his head in his hands.
“Ragnok, you’ve seen better days,” Fenrir said to the headless man, walking over to him.
“I’ve also seen worse,” the man shrugged. “They’ve reattached it twice and it keeps falling off. Elise and Olivia are working on something to make the muscles grow back so they can stop wasting stitching material.”
“I always knew you had a big head, I just didn’t realize it was also heavy,” Fenrir fell into easy conversation with Ragnok and I guessed he was also a Lycan. Eli extracted himself and came over to me.
“Well?” He asked.
“Well what?” I answered.
“Think you’ll be able to tell if my child has a soul when it’s born or not?”
“Probably, but I don’t see what good it will do.”
“Rachel, Olivia and Mom have come to the conclusion that Trent was not a fluke, but some sort of spell. So if Hannah gives birth here and it has a soul immediately, then it’ll provide them some more ideas.”
“Okie dokie,” I frowned, not understanding the logic behind the thought. But I was certainly not going to question my pregnant mother about it.
“You disagree.”
“One is a fluke. Two is a coincidence. Three is a trend and Hannah here may have different results than Hannah there, but we will never know because she’s here.”
“I’m not sure I understand any of that,” Eli told me.
“Me either,” I smiled at him.
“The doctor will come get you when she’s ready to deliver. She’s currently only about two-thirds of the way there,” Eli told me.
I took a seat in one of the chairs. The waiting room was painted in a pale blue. The furniture was a dusty pink. I got the symbolism but wasn’t sure the color scheme went together. There was no sign of my mother or sisters. As a matter of fact, everyone in the waiting room except me was male. My uncles were all there, pacing or talking. My father was pacing, his heavy footsteps could just barely be felt through the floor. Eli was sitting, looking anxious. Samuel, Nick and Daniel were playing some sort of board game that I had never seen before. Ba’al was leaving bloody fingerprints on the pages of a book. Anubis was talking to the Vampire that had greeted him in the street earlier. Fenrir was talking to Ragnok. And I was waiting for some doctor to come fetch me so I could see the horrid birthing process all over again.
The thought made me glad I was sterile. I didn’t know how the females in my family kept popping out children. Once would be enough to convince me I was done.
“She’s ready, who is coming in?” A female Lycan appeared at the door. Her eyes were bright and amber-yellow.
“She is,” three or four people pointed at me. I climbed from the comfortable chair and followed the Lycan back into the room.
Hannah was semi-reclining on an old fashioned looking bed. The room was brighter than the room at the Human hospital, but the bed looked surprisingly similar. Hannah did not look very happy. Sweat was rolling off her brow. Her jaws were hard set and I imagined I could hear her teeth grinding together if I listened closely. She looked pissed off.
“Hi,” I said walking over to her.
“Don’t touch her,” the Lycan warned me.
“Good to know,” I responded.
“If my baby is soulless, don’t tell me,” Hannah said through gritted teeth.
“Okie dokie,” I told my sister-in-law.
“Big push,” the Lycan instructed.
Hannah moved her upper body and grunted. I felt helpless; I couldn’t even offer her my hand. All this progress and technology and this was still the best we could come up with when it came to childbirth. She relaxed back into the bed.
“Doing great,” I told her, acting again like a cheerleader and feeling like a dork.
“I’m going to kill Eli,” Hannah told me.
“That’s fine,” I told her. I was aware that my mother had said something similar while giving birth to Daniel.
“You have no idea what it’s like to give birth to a Demonling,” Hannah moved again and ended her sentence with another grunt.
“I imagine it is painful as hell, especially if it has horns,” I assured her.
“I hadn’t thought about the horns,” Hannah relaxed. “And he can’t even hold my hand because he’s can’t control his Demon healing.”
“Yep, men suck.”
“Yes they do.”
“Where are your parents?” I asked.
“Dealing with my brother.”
“Is he having issues?”
“Maturing Madness, they have him confined in their house.”
“Oh, sorry.”
“It happens, this is the first in my immediate family,” she grunted again.
“One more push and you should be done,” the Lycan said in a sing-song voice.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” I said to Hannah.
“Do you enjoy this?” She asked.
“Enjoy what?”
“Being in here?”
“Not in the least, I can’t figure out why we keep breeding. It looks painful. And the hormones before you give birth are no picnic either. But I’m needed, so I’m here.”
“Thanks, Bren,” Hannah grunted again. I peered around her leg and saw a baby with horns that were going to rival Eli’s.
“It has big horns,” I told Hannah.
“You can touch her now,” the Lycan told me.
“Yeah right, it will hurt like hell. I don’t need to give birth by association. Sorry Hannah,” I told the Lycan.
“I understand,” Hannah gave me a smile.
The Lycan passed the infant, which turned out to be a girl once I could see the entire body, to Hannah. Her body was a stunning vibrant blue, almost electric blue. It reminded me of Morgana’s fairy wings. It was soulless. I kept my mouth shut.
“She’s gorgeous,” I said instead.
“Wow, I never imagined she would be blue,” replied Hannah.
The infant yawned and unfurled wings that were just as striking. The membrane was blue again, but the pattern inside the wings varied from a light purple to a dark purple with rich overtones of red and burgundy. I sometimes forgot that Hannah was a wingless Fairy.
I made faces at the baby. Hannah watched me interact with my new niece with studied interest. When I noticed her doing it, I stopped and looked back at her.
“What?” I asked.
“You seem so good with children.”
“Children drive me nuts, I like them when they are quiet or being cute. Once they start crying, it’s time to send them back to their parents. And speaking of parents, I’ll get Eli,” I made one more face at the baby girl and left the room.
“Well?” Several people asked as I exited the delivery room.
“Well, she’s electric blue with great horns and very cool wings. Hannah wants you,” I pointed at Eli.
Eli stood up, gave me an apprehensive look and walked into the delivery room. Once he was out of sight, I fell into a chair and dropped my head into my hands. Anubis walked over to me.
“Maybe it’s me,” I told him. “Maybe I’m the cause of the soulless children. I was at both births. Maybe it’s all that stored up Vampire power.”
“I doubt that,” Levi said.
“Why? How can you doubt it? I do not intend to be present at another birth,” I informed them all.
“Well, check this baby,” Levi pointed to another delivery room.
“What baby?” I asked.
“Ragnok just had his seventh child, she’s about two hours old, longer than you’ve been here,” Levi said.
“You’re welcome to check,” Ragnok stood up.
“Fine,” I sighed. Ragnok took me into a small room next to the delivery room. There was one infant sitting in a bassinet. There was a Demon in the room. She smiled at both of us.
The infant was sleeping. It was also swaddled in a blue blanket with a blue hat on. I was willing to bet it was a boy. I leaned over the sleeping figure and looked at it. It also did not have a soul. I turned and looked at Ragnok. He blinked at me.
“You already know,” I told him.
“I do,” he answered. “We’re hopeful. Freya doesn’t know. We’re keeping it a secret. She’s been sleeping for the last hour or so along with the child.”
“That’s why the Demon is here,” I pointed to the woman in the chair.
“Yes, she won’t know when he has a soul, but she’ll know if he passes.”
I followed Ragnok out into the waiting room and fell back into the chair. I looked at Levi. He looked at me.
“I get it, it isn’t me,” I told him.
“No, it isn’t and Rachel wasn’t the first. All the infants so far have developed souls, some taking as long as twelve hours,” Levi answered.
“How many?” I asked.
“With Hannah’s? Nine,” Levi told me.
“Isn’t that a lot of infants for Elders?”
“It is and we still have about twenty or so that are pregnant and expecting any day. The only link is that they were all at your Maturing Party,” Lucifer answered.
“Proving that everyone but me went home and had sex that night,” I quipped.
“Pretty much,” Ba’al shut the book. “I didn’t. Anubis didn’t. Fen did and his mate is pregnant. Gabriel isn’t mated, but he did.”
“Thanks for the info,” I told him glumly. I hadn’t actually wanted to know.
“Anytime,” he reopened his book.
“Where is Gabriel?”
“A couple floors above us, he’s in isolation,” Lucifer told me.
“Why is he isolated?”
“Because whatever these rotten spells are that they used on us is causing his wings to grow back dead. They don’t even have feathers, so the moment the skin opens to release the wings, he starts emanating his deadly light,” Ba’al said without looking up.
“Stay here long enough and you’ll hear him,” Ragnok said to me.
“I don’t want to hear him,” I told him.
“It’s bad,” Ba’al told me.
“Any way I can be out of here by then?” I asked.
“Sure, we have you a room booked at the hotel,” Levi pointed across the street. I hadn’t noticed the hotel before.
“Implying that I’m staying here for a while.”
&
nbsp; “That would be correct,” Levi smiled at me.
Ragnok adjusted his head. I looked at him.
“Have we met?” I asked.
“Briefly, I was at your Maturing Party, head attached.”
“Sorry, I’m bad with names and faces.”
“Not a big deal, it’s made worse by having to carry my head,” Ragnok assured me.
“Why aren’t you bleeding profusely?”
“Your mother stopped the bleeding,” Ragnok said.
“She is useful,” I found it unnerving to be talking to a head that was being held in the hands of its owner.
“You’re frowning,” Anubis told me.
“Well, I was just thinking,” I looked at him.
“And that makes you frown?” Anubis gave me a quick grin, knowing he had interrupted me before I could explain what I was thinking about.
“Shut up,” I told him. “Now, as I was saying, I was just thinking that maybe there was more than just Samuel going on at the party. What if, say a Witch, could cast a spell that inhibited the soul from immediately forming when an infant is born? And like this series of spells, the effects can last a long time. If no one knew about it, they wouldn’t be trying to reverse it and Ezra did say that this was magic that hadn’t been used in millennia.”
“Keep going,” Lucifer said, squinting at me.
“Well, Ezra said the magic hadn’t been seen since the Witch’s Council was formed, but that didn’t happen until after the First Elder War. He also said that this Coven may have found an old spell book. I’ve been thinking about that and it would require lots of magic. Even more importantly, it would require lots of dark magic. Which immediately brings Anubis to mind, what if the book they found belonged to the Witch that created his curse?”
“There’s a lot of ‘what if’ in that sentence,” Levi said to me.
“Well, there’s a lot of ‘what if’ in everything I do,” I shrugged at him. “I can’t do much better than…”
My thought was interrupted by someone or something crashing through the plate glass window in the waiting room. The creature stood up. His eyes were a strange orange that seemed to glow. His skin was almost translucent, having just enough pigment to keep his veins from showing. Instead of fingers he had claws that looked incredibly sharp. It hissed at us, snaking a forked tongue out of his mouth.