Dark Illumination Read online

  “You filled your ‘reservoir’?” Samuel made it sound like an insult.

  “Nope, not even half,” I admitted, “but that magic was a little different. I don’t think it was a good thing.”

  “Ok, then what?” Eli asked.

  “Oh, if I could explain I would, but I can’t. I just feel like I could blow up and kill everyone on the planet at the moment. Imagine being bloated after a good meal, only to find out that you got food poisoning.”

  “Interesting and unhelpful,” Nick said.

  “We can deal with that later. Let’s get everyone sorted out and then we can figure out all the magically hokey stuff.” I told them.

  “Take my hand, Bren,” it was Daniel’s voice. I felt a little stab of pain in my heart. Daniel was going to die during the Maturing. I hated that he had to be here for this.

  Daniel’s hand was warm and comforting in my own. His fingers seemed tiny. He was the most human of us all. He was smaller than me by at least half. He even had arm hair.

  “When you reach your max, pull away. I am about to give you a lot of magic. I mean a lot of it. So, don’t try to ironman it out.”

  “Yes, mother,” Nick said sarcastically.

  I knew that my eyes were burned in their sockets. My eyelids were crispy. I couldn’t see, but I closed my eyes anyway.

  For every Witch, there is a special “sight”. It has nothing to do with their eyes and everything to do with their magic receptors. Even blind, I could find the magic, see it swirl around me. I knew it was only in my mind, but it looked like the real thing.

  The magic swirled, it was mostly pink. My own magic, unique to me, it was technically called “cerise,” I had seen it once on a color wheel. I had never seen anything in the color before.

  Then I noticed two streaks that did not belong to me. The first was cerulean. The signature of our psycho Witch. The second was sickly-yellow, Sonnellion’s. I frowned.

  I stopped the magic, pulled it all back inside of myself. I sighed heavily. I pulled my hands from Daniel’s and Livi’s.

  “What? What’s wrong?” Livi asked.

  “My magic is tainted.” I told her.

  “How so?” Eli asked.

  “Sonnellion and the psycho Witch. He’s not just using Strachan magic. He is using the mark because it allows him to have the ability to pull magic from Elders.”

  “What are the colors?”

  “Cerulean and an odd yellow that reminds me of jaundice.”

  “We can avoid those,” Daniel said.

  “I’m not entirely sure you are old enough to even be in this circle.” I told him.

  “You might not think that, but I am.” He responded and took hold of my hand.

  “We will all open to the magic; see it before we pull from it. We know what yours looks like.” Eli told me as Daniel and Livi both grabbed my hands again.

  “Ok, but make sure you don’t touch the other stuff. It is dark and bad and it makes me cringe just thinking about it.”

  “We get it Bren,” Livi gave my hand a small squeeze.

  I tried to smile at her. I closed my eyes again. I shut out the noise around me.

  My heartbeat quickened this time as I started the process again. I tried to watch as my magic filled the room. Tried to watch as my siblings began to grab bits of it. The cerulean and the sickly-yellow continued to swirl. As it got close to one of them, I watched the magic stop entering them. They were being careful.

  Or I thought they were. I felt a tug. My mind’s eye opened wider. Daniel suddenly pulled all the dark magic into himself. He tore his hand from me. I grabbed hold of him.

  “Daniel!” I shouted as I grabbed him.

  “Brenna,” he retorted.

  “What do you think you are doing?”

  “I can handle it, they can’t. It will infect someone, might as well be me.” This was not the brother I was used to dealing with. My Daniel was quiet, shy, reserved. He didn’t talk back or argue. The Other Daniel, the part that was trapped in his brain because of his True Prophet status, was what I was dealing with now. I had no way to argue with him. He always knew.

  Nick grabbed my hand where Daniel had left the circle. I tried not to think about it. I filled the room with more magic.

  Chapter Nineteen

  It took less time than I had expected. Samuel pulled away shortly after Daniel. Surprisingly, Eli went after him and then Livi. Nick was the last one left, when he let go, I pulled all the magic back into me and found extra. It wasn’t Witch magic though. It belonged to the Overlords. Our magic session had pulled some out of them. I even found Levi’s magic in the mix.

  “Wait,” I told all of them. “I need a minute.”

  “Of course,” Eli responded.

  “Daniel, why did you do that?”

  “His magic is like a disease, Brenna. You and me, we are strong enough to ignore it. We are strong enough to use it. Eli too, if he wasn’t so weak right now. But the others, it would drive them mad. Sonnellion’s is infectious. The other Witch, his is just dark. Too many dark spells cast. I don’t think they can do anything with it. I can use it to help break your curse.”

  “Daniel, are you 100% sure about this?” I asked him.

  “Yes.”

  “Fine then,” I felt my way back to the bed, pushing away any hands that tried to help. I didn’t want or need to be touched. I was starting to feel nauseated. It was becoming a problem. I shook my head to clear the thought.

  “What?” Livi asked.

  “I think,” I sighed. “I don’t know. Something isn’t right. I keep getting sick, but I can still take on more power.”

  “How long has this been happening?” She asked, concern in her voice.

  “Since Magnus arrived. I don’t know what day that was. They’ve sort of become muddled. I just feel terrible. I feel nauseous and tired and just…” I searched for another descriptor and came up with none.

  “Levi?” Livi sounded even more concerned.

  “She isn’t pregnant,” he responded.

  “I could have told you that,” I told them. “It isn’t that sort of sickness. It is something else. Something magical maybe, like my magic has gone a bit haywire or something. It’s fine when I am doing something with it, but when I’m not, when I am just sitting, waiting, that’s when I start to get sick.”

  “You’ve had no other spells cast on you or at you?” Eli asked, now he sounded concerned.

  “No, just that one. Magnus couldn’t break it. I called you. I was throwing up magic.”

  “Ugh,” Samuel offered up. “That’s bad.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t throw up magic unless the magic I’ve pulled in is somehow incompatible or I’m pulling it in too fast. Just like when I broke Eli’s curse. I felt magic fill me, but it didn’t top off the glass, so to speak. Yet, I felt sick then too.”

  “Are you suffering from magic sickness?” Samuel asked.

  “I’ve never suffered from magic sickness except when we were fighting the chimeras and Zombies and I brought all the trees to life. Sort of different than that though.”

  “Different how, Bren? We need specifics.” Livi told me.

  “Then, I was drawing in too much power, too fast, and immediately pushing it back out without a purpose. I was drawing it from every being within a half mile radius of me to do it. It was a lot of magic going in and immediately being shoved back out. I made myself sick doing it. But this, this is like I am trying to rid myself of magic.”

  “Rid yourself of magic? That’s not possible.” Eli announced.

  “Yep, I know, thank you Captain Obvious,” I bit my lip. “Sorry Eli. I don’t know why I snapped at you.”

  I stopped and thought. How angry had I gotten when I had felt Eli’s blood on my hands? What else had I felt?

  “Oh my,” the thought suddenly hit me. “Who grabbed hold of me while I was trying to break Eli’s curse?”

  “Anubis, he’s in his room, recovering,” Levi told me.

 
“He was still vamped out, wasn’t he?”

  “Yes. Ba’al is with him.”

  “Blood,” As soon as I said the word, I threw my head skyward and screamed wordlessly. It wasn’t pain, it was pure rage. The mark was the answer to the question of why I was getting sick.

  “They have Jasmine’s mark, don’t they?” I already knew the answer.

  “No,” Livi told me. “Jasmine still has her mark. We couldn’t take it from her with her being alive, it was too painful.”

  “Then who’s?” I asked, confused. I had been sure it was hers.

  “Some ancient ancestor named Goderick. Mom says he was the first Strachan, but she doesn’t know why they took that mark.” Livi answered me.

  “Oh hell,” I knew. “That’s the answer. He was the first. Who better to make a Strachan than the first? If not for him where would the rest of us be?”

  “I don’t…” Livi stopped.

  “Levi, did you know him?” I asked.

  “I did,” Anubis’s voice was weak.

  “Ani, you should be in bed. My magic lashed out at you. It could have been very bad, probably was very bad.”

  “It wasn’t good,” he answered, trying to sound stoic. “You need answers though.”

  “I do.”

  “Goderick didn’t live very long; he died at 23, just long enough to produce two heirs.”

  “Why did he die so young?”

  “Do you really want that answer?”

  “I need that answer, regardless of whether I want it or not.”

  “Then you should know, it will not make you happy. Goderick was the first of the Strachan line. He was genetic fluke in the beginning. Born to Viking parents who wanted no part of him, he turned out to be useful to the Elders. We brought him to the island. He lived there until he was 20. He was a pleasant child, a petulant teenager and a rebel when he hit 20. He left the island intent on destroying his family for abandoning him.

  “It took me a year, but I found him. He had slaughtered his entire family; mother, father, siblings, cousins, uncles, aunts, grandparents, everyone who he shared blood with. It wasn’t pretty, he butchered them.

  “When I found him, he had just found a girl. They had settled into a nice small Celt tribe. He was happy and perhaps psychotic. I was glad he had found someone, but when she gave birth to their first child, the child bore the same mark as him. He cut it off. The infant died. He burned both the mark and the infant. They prepared to have a second. His wife was due to give birth any day. I was staying with them, watching over them. She went into labor and he lost it.

  “He slit her throat while she tried to give birth. I rescued the infant. I stole it, hid it away for a while. I went back for him. He had shacked up with another woman. She was pregnant. One night, I was checking in on them and he had her pinned to the wall, ready to kill her as well, for bearing him another cursed child.

  “That’s what he called them ‘cursed children’. I intervened. I was stronger than him physically with a bit of magic. I thought I could take him. He did what you do. He pushed magic into me. It found my curse. And when he found it, he tried to break it. I felt my soul being ripped from my body. I did the only thing I could do, I ripped out his throat.

  “I didn’t know about the marks, not really, until you showed me yours and told me all Great Houses have them. I thought he was raving mad when he told me his infant had borne the mark of the cursed. I took the pregnant woman and the other child and had Mammon help her. Once the children were old enough to go out on their own, they were all returned to the world of the Celts. She kept their secret.

  “It is how your bloodline began, what I don’t understand is how you got his mark?” Anubis finished with a heavy sigh, like he had revealed a bit of his soul.

  “Any Great House Witch would have sought out his descendents and told them to dig him up and take the mark. They can’t be destroyed by fire. I imagine his infant’s mark was recovered as well. Probably, that day, by a Great House Witch, we keep a close watch over them.”

  “Goderick hated that he was a Witch. Even more that he had started a bloodline. Does that help?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed, “everyone out. I need time to think without any magic around me.”

  There were shuffling feet. The room cleared. I felt them all leave and felt alone, but better. I would get to the bottom of it.

  Chapter Twenty

  Madness seemed to be a common trait in my family. Madness and hate. If I could read omens, I would have considered it a bad one. However, aside from Ezra, who was trapped in my spell book, I hadn’t met any of my mad ancestors.

  Except perhaps my sister. The thought brought a frown to my face. I knew she had stolen the mark. Somehow, she had planned this. She was crazy enough to do it.

  I remembered the dream. She had brought Eli and I both into a dream. A powerful spell. Just as powerful as the curse that blinded me and the potion that brought the trolls and dragons from the Island.

  Perhaps, we were looking at this wrong. Maybe the psycho Witch had to have the mark because he was using Strachan magic. Or maybe I was over complicating it. Sure, my sister gave him the mark. But maybe he was powerful without it and the mark was just letting him leech power off Sonnellion.

  That was another one. How did Sonnellion fit into it? The pieces suddenly fell into place. Sonnellion was my uncle. Goderick the beginning of my bloodline. Both consumed by hate. The Strachans were being targeted.

  “Come back,” I yelled. I knew the Elders would hear me even through the walls.

  “Daniel?” I asked as feet shuffled back into the room.

  “Yes,” Daniel answered. I sighed in relief.

  “I know what is going on, I think,” I added hastily.

  “What?” Lucifer asked.

  “I think they are trying to wipe out the rest of the bloodline. Use Strachan magic to kill the Witch and Sonnellion to kill the Demon. It sort of makes sense, until I say it out loud.” I felt myself frown even harder.

  “No, no, it does make sense.” Eli jumped in. “Strachan magic against Strachan magic, Demon magic against Demon magic and in the end, it is all bloodline related. But it is all corrupted bloodline magic. Goderick hated himself. Sonnellion hated everyone else. Maybe it enhances the dark magic.”

  “Ok, sounds like a good working theory. Why?” Livi asked.

  “To kill us off?” I offered.

  “No, that would be impossible, even with the magic.” Levi answered.

  “Oh my god,” I suddenly shuddered. “The Witch said he had other things to do. Mom. Hannah. Rachel. All pregnant. All alone.”

  “On it,” Gabriel said. I heard his wings flutter.

  “I’ll get Rachel. I’ll have Marcus pick up Hannah.” Ba’al was on the move as well.

  “We need to do this as quickly as possible.” I told my siblings. “Still have the magic?”

  “Might work faster with a potion.” Samuel offered.

  “Do you know a potion to fix this right off the top of your head?” I asked.

  “No,” he admitted.

  “Then we go back to using raw magic, we know it works.” I told them.

  “Bren, if there is another way that might be less painful,” Levi suggested.

  “Pain isn’t an issue at the moment.”

  “How do you want us to do this, Brenna?” Nick asked.

  “Well, I’m going to be used as a funnel so to speak. You will all push magic to me and I will focus it into her to break the curse,” Eli offered.

  “Ok, I’m ready.” I was still sitting on the bed. I closed my sightless eyes and opened my mind. I could see the first tendrils of magic.

  I was angry. The more I tried not to be, the angrier I got. I had a quick flash of how I had felt when I realized that my hands were bunched around Eli’s bloody shirt.

  I shook my head, the magic subsided. This wasn’t going to work. Magic is strong energy and anger is a strong emotion. If I was too pissed off, my magic wou
ld flare at my siblings. I didn’t want that. I could live with being blind first. After all, I was just starting to get to a point that we were more than just acquaintances.

  “What is it Bren?” Levi asked.

  “She’s pissed.” Eli answered for me. “It just came up. She was fine and then she wasn’t. We had to stop.”

  “Sorry,” I was sure I was blushing. My face turning from lilac to a deep purple. “I just keep thinking about the son of a bitch that did this. And I don’t just mean my eyes, although he’s done that twice now. I mean all of it. He stole my sword to use against us. I can’t get a read on him. He’s using trolls and dragons and dark magic against us. Who does he think he is?”

  “Oh, this is bad.” Anubis said.

  “Bren, you have got to calm down.” Fenrir put a hand on my shoulder as he did it.

  We had thought that my violent magic outbursts were because of the Maturing. However, that was another thing that had changed. They didn’t go away. They didn’t get worse; they just didn’t dissolve once I had reached full grown Demon status.

  It wasn’t anything particularly special. My father and uncles did it, but they glowed and had the innate ability to heal. I had the innate ability to do a lot more than heal. I was half Witch, after all. So when I lost my temper, any manner of things were possible. Like Daniel making it rain fish.

  One thing I knew for sure was that my life made me really angry sometimes. It wasn’t because of the mundane things. It was things like this. I could sit around and be annoyed for days without ever getting a bee in my bonnet. But to directly threaten my family, that was a good way to piss me off.

  And it was growing. I could feel myself getting angrier. Fenrir moved his hand from mine and touched my face.

  “It isn’t helping,” I told him. “See you fail to realize, some jack-wagon is threatening my family. It’s our job, so when it’s just me or just the five of us in harm’s way, I get irritated. When I have to start dragging in siblings or uncles or sending people to protect my loved ones, it becomes more than an irritation. That means that I become more than just irritated. I’m going with irate. But it could work its way up to rage really quickly.”