Dark Cotillion (First in the Brenna Strachan Series)

by Hadena James

  Chapter Two

  I waited until I could feel the delivery boy dropping off the standard half dozen cake donuts on my doorstep from the bakery below. Once that had been dropped and his energy had moved out of the hall and into an elevator, I climbed from bed. I should have been exhausted, nauseated, and anxious. I wasn’t. I was calm. Tonight, I would probably sleep like the dead, with a house full of bodyguards.

  As I exited the bedroom, I heard the front door close. Gabriel had fallen into a routine as well, picking up the unhealthy donuts and putting them on the table. He tried to balance it out by adding orange juice, bacon, and eggs to the mix. I stuck with the donuts and a glass of whole milk. If you can’t gain or lose weight, you might as well enjoy the food you toss into your gullet. Besides, as a Demonling, I needed about 4,000 calories a day, hard to get that from salad every meal.

  “Don’t forget, you have an exam after the Maturing,” Gabriel reminded me, as he had every morning for the past couple of days.

  “I haven’t forgotten and I still think it’s ridiculous,” I quipped.

  “Ridiculous or not, now that we do not all live in a small cluster with imaginary creatures, the exam is important. You never know when a dragon or some other beast is going to go rogue, leave the island, and start terrorizing the world.”

  “Yes, yes,” I selected a white cake donut with chocolate icing and crushed peanuts. “Sirens, harpies, dragons, trolls, and chupacabras, are just the tip of the iceberg for things that could cause havoc in the normal world.”

  “There is no such thing as a chupacabra.” Gabriel handed me a plate. I accepted it and set it off to the side. I had a napkin under the donut, no reason to dirty up a perfectly good plate.

  At some point during my adult life, my mother had decided I needed a set of fine dining china. She failed to realize that I did not own dinnerware as a general rule. I don’t cook. I don’t like to cook. I hate to eat what I cook. I have some issues, particularly with meat. If it isn’t a bagged salad with the salad dressing included, or microwave popcorn, I’m probably not going to cook it. Cooking is overrated for me. It’s hard to keep groceries when I might be called away to a crime at any time, in any part of the world. Food spoils. I keep soda, milk, a few munchies, and popcorn. My freezer is barren; I don’t even keep ice cube trays. If I am away for more than three or four days, my mother comes by and tosses out the milk. She’ll put a new gallon in there if she knows when I am returning.

  Besides, there are lots of facilities to fill my need for food. In New KC, there are places that go to other places, pick up food orders, and deliver them to your house. All you need is a phone or an internet connection. I have both. Some of them even offer reward programs. Hell, there are people who will deliver my groceries and pick up items like toothpaste, cigarettes, and anything else you might desire. The best part is that they are open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. The need to go to a store has been completely removed. If I’m feeling energetic, I go downstairs and get something from the Subway Sandwich shop, and that way, I can say I walked a few extra steps.

  Since I hate to shop almost as much as I hate to cook, I love the age of technology. Most Elders are sort of bothered by it; it takes a while to adjust, but me… I think it’s the greatest thing ever to happen. The internet is an amazing place where food comes at the click of a button. Most Elders have to adjust to the light and the constant hum of the world. I didn’t have their super-hearing, so I barely noticed it.

  Gabriel again tried to feed me a healthy, balanced breakfast, which I managed to ignore. Finishing three donuts and two glasses of whole milk in the time, it took him to eat his bacon, eggs, toast, and orange juice.

  I kept waiting for my stomach to sour. It didn’t. This meant that either I was in complete denial about the day ahead, or I had accepted my fate without realizing it. Since I wasn’t good at acceptance, I was guessing it was denial.

  We finished eating in silence. Gabriel’s magic rolling off of him, filling the room. He was not as calm as I was. This would have been a sign if I had been a Centaur, but I wasn’t. I was a Demon and Demons didn’t read signs or omens. They didn’t have the right mojo for it or something. Even when a Centaur was giving prophecy or revealing signs and deciphering omens, Demons tended to be skeptical.

  Gabriel opened his mouth, but before he could speak, there was a knock on the front door. I felt my brother, Elijah, on the other side. This got an eyebrow raise from me. That I felt like an outsider around my older siblings was no secret. Eli was the oldest, born in 1949, making him roughly 60 years old. He didn’t look a day over 30.

  I got up from the small kitchen table and went to the door. Eli smiled at me as I opened it.

  “Come in,” I offered my brother entrance to my condo by moving out of his way.

  Eli looks like our father in a lot of ways. His skin is reddish-brown. His eyes are brown with a red ring around the elliptical iris. He has no hair, and an impressive rack of horns that stand four feet or so from his scalp. However, he has our mother’s smile and a kindness in his eyes.

  “Brenna,” he nodded to me as he came into the condo, “it’s been a while.”

  “Mother’s Day,” I admitted.

  “How are you holding up?” He asked with genuine concern in his voice.

  “I’m doing fine, I don’t think it has actually set in that today could be one of the last days I walk on the planet.”

  “Hard to imagine death when the screamingly large print says you’re immortal,” he sat down in one of the recliners.

  “What can I do for you, Elijah?”

  “Not let Chiron get to you. Not give in and give up.” He finally frowned. “I think it would break dad.”

  “Are you worried that it is a possibility?”

  “Yes, I am. You are meant for something, Brenna. I don’t know what, but something. We all know it and feel it. We are all filled with dread today.”

  “I didn’t realize that there was so much concern.”

  “You think we want one of our siblings put to death for something this…” his face changed, “stupid.”

  “No, I don’t think any of us are that cruel, our parents are too good.” I sat down on the couch, facing him.

  “Bren,” he shrugged, “I don’t know why I’m here. I just felt the need to be here.”

  “I appreciate it, Eli. I’m not sure that you can do anything for me though.”

  “I don’t either. I just felt the need to come by. Maybe I should go.”

  “No, Eli. You should stay. We have breakfast if you haven’t eaten.”

  “Hannah made sure I ate before I came over.”

  “How is Hannah?”

  “Good. She is just as anxious as the rest of us over this.”

  “As she should be,” Gabriel finally joined us.

  “Gabriel,” Eli looked up at the Angel.

  “Elijah,” Gabriel took a seat in the other recliner that sits in my living room.

  “If Chiron should win the vote, preparations have been made. She will be a fugitive, but we can do little about that, at least until after the Maturing. Unfortunately, a contingency plan that started with only six conspirators now has eight. Leviathan and Pendragon joined in. I don’t know how they found out, but they did.”

  “We will all be fugitives, Leviathan and Pendragon included, but better that than losing her and four Overlords.” Gabriel gave a long sigh.

  “That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?” Eli asked the Overlord.

  “Oh, I believe it probably is about both. I’m sure Chiron’s hate for Brenna is very real, and he would like nothing more than to see her die. But it would weaken the Council for centuries, and I think that is just a bonus in Chiron’s twisted brain.”

  “A bonus?” Eli turned to look at me. “If her death were to do that, don’t you think the Centaurs would have told us?”

 
“You think the Centaurs tell us everything when they give us a prophecy?” Gabriel smiled. “I forget that you haven’t been around them much. They are quite good at holding things back. Once, long ago, they told Anubis that Ba’al would suffer greatly at the hands of a Witch, but he could change Ba’al’s fate, so he went to have a talk with the Witch. They forgot to tell him that she would curse him for eternity. Only after he came back, jackal head firmly in place, did they mention that part.”

  “Bastards,” I said the word without meaning to let it actually slip through my lips.

  “Indeed,” Gabriel looked at me as though I had just materialized from thin air. “I hope the Council will do the proper thing today, but if they don’t, we will need a distraction to get her away.”

  “Distraction taken care of. Leviathan plans on challenging Chiron to a duel if he wins the vote.”

  “Bold and risky, he could lose.” Gabriel seemed less like himself.

  “Well, one of the Overlords was going to do it, but that seemed even riskier. Levi volunteered. We accepted. The challenge will have to be accepted right there, or Chiron will lose more than just face. Especially since he just condemned another to die, and when the challenge has been accepted and the magic circle put into place, we spirit Brenna away. Aside from the eight of us, and her of course, no one will know where she is. After the Maturing, we bring her back, as long as she hasn’t gained mythical powers that can destroy the earth. If she has, we keep her hidden.”

  “Good enough,” Gabriel reached out a hand to me. “If you are sentenced to death, you will not die today. However, I cannot guarantee that it will not happen in the future.”

  I took his hand and looked at my brother.

  “You have done all this for me?” I asked Elijah.

  “You are my sister, Bren, I would die for you. I know you don’t do well with the emotional side of being part of this family, but we all love you, and to see you put to death will hurt all of us. We are not as close as our father and his brothers, one day though, I hope to change that. I hope you find it within you to become part of us.”

  “Thank you, Eli.”

  He stood. I stood. Butterflies kicked up in my stomach and I forced myself to calm down again. I knew what came next.