by D. N. Hoxa
***
I couldn’t hide this one from Elisa. When she came back from the hunt, she’d found me sprawled on the floor, my left hand covered in dried blood. She’d put me on the bed and conjured healing spells until I’d woken up.
She had no idea what to say. I didn’t, either. She could see the blood, probably knew that I was trying to get the dragon off me. I wished she hadn’t seen it, but she did. I couldn’t exactly hide it while unconscious.
“It’s the thing, isn’t it,” she said, but it wasn’t a question.
“I don’t know.” It was a lie. I did know, just like Trinity had.
“We’ve got to get that thing off you,” Elisa whispered.
“We’ve got to find the demons.”
Elisa met my eyes. “I’ve searched the whole city, Scarlet. I didn’t find any.” She hadn’t because they had no reason to goon a search anymore. Why would they, when they had who knew how many others like me to feed from?
“So we go to the hospital. They took us there. It’s reasonable to believe they took them there, too.”
"It is,” Elisa said with a nod. She’d come to the same conclusion, it seemed. “I saw one and followed him halfway there, but I’m not every sure it was a demon, because I lost him too quickly.”
My heart almost leaped out of my chest. Pushing the blanket away, I stood up on shaking legs. They shook because I’d barely eaten anything all day.
“We shouldn’t have wasted all this time. We should have gone there three days ago, dammit! We’re leaving right now.” I’d suspected it all along, but now that she’d seen one, I regretted not leaving for the hospital as soon as we ran out of the black market. And if the ECU could track me, we could take advantage of that. We could lead them right to the demons, and they’d help us get the kidnapped witches out. Maybe I was a monster for thinking it, but those people were far better with the ECU than the demons. I’d be much better off with the ECU than them.
“We didn’t know for sure, and even if we did, you wouldn’t have been awake most of the time! I mean, all those times I thought you were sleeping because everything caught up with you!” she shouted, frustrated.
“Doesn’t matter. Let’s go.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Elisa said, shaking her head. “That thing is really consuming you.” She looked at the dragon as if she was seeing it for the first time.
“You don’t know that. I don’t, either. We need to go, right now.”
“We do know it. Trinity was right,” Elisa said. “We’re not going anywhere until we get that off you.”
“Elisa, please.” The will to argue flew out the window now that she knew.
“How long has this been going on? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It began at the bookstore, I swear it.” That was no lie. Unless the dragon had done its thing on me when I was being held in the ECU facility. I hadn’t realized it, because I’d thought the ECU was putting me under on purpose. Holy cow…
“And how many times has it happened since?”
“This is the second.” A lie she didn’t believe. “Can we go now?”
“No! Scarlet, even if we do find them, chances are you’ll fall unconscious right in the middle of the fight!” I hated it that she was right.
“So why are we wasting time? The longer this is on me, the weaker I’ll get. I’m going to take advantage of whatever strength I have left to do this one thing!” She had to know how important this was to me. She had to see.
But she refused. Instead, she shook her head. “I’ll put you to sleep. I won’t let you get out of here.”
My instinct took over and I pushed her back with all my strength. She hit the windows, and raised her hands toward me, just like I’d done. My magic was at the tips of my fingers. Before she could chant her spells, I was going to blow her out the window three times.
“Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Scarlet,” she warned me.
Tears in my eyes. “I need to get to them, right now.”
“You need that thing off you first, otherwise all you’ll do is join them.”
“I still have to try.” Even if I failed. But…
“Nobody is going to save them, do you understand? Nobody. You are their only chance, and if you blow it, all of you are doomed.” Exactly my thoughts.
“They’re already doomed! You have no idea what it’s like to be sucked by them. Every time they drain us of our magic, they take pieces of our souls with. If we wait another day, there might be nothing left for us to save. Do you understand that?”
Grabbing her head in her hands, Elisa turned away from me. “I do. I understand. I want to save them just as much as you do, but this isn’t the way to go about this. You could fall on your face at any second.”
Something wet touched my nose. Blood. A terrible headache threatened to split my head into two. I wiped my nose with the back of my hand fast, before Elisa turned to me again.
“Scarlet, this isn’t going to be so easy. You said it yourself, they’ve grown smarter. They are able to hide better now, too. We have to be absolutely sure we can take them before going in.”
I sat down on the bed, terrified that I’d fall again, though I wasn’t feeling sick. I was feeling fine, if not a bit hungry, and with a headache—nothing unusual.
“How? I tried to take it off.” Just looking at it made me want to gouge my own eyes out. The dried blood covered my hand and half my fingers. The dragon was still there, unharmed. “It’s not working.”
“Do you want me to try it?”
“No!” I shouted. “Absolutely not.”
With a sigh, she sat on the bed next to me, analyzing the dragon. “This might sound a bit extreme, but how about cutting your hand off?”
I was back in the ECU room with Melinda and Adams all over again. “I would, but it’s not going to work.” I cursed the day I found that thing and put it on. I cursed the day I let the green-eyed man help me escape from the Academy. If it wasn’t for him, none of this would have happened.
“A clean cut should do it,” Elisa said in wonder.
I didn’t think twice. I put my hand on her lap. “Do it.” I’d rather lose my hand than my mind—or life.
“Walk me over this again. Are you sure it started hurting you at the bookstore? What does it feel like?” she asked.
“I’m not exactly sure. It could have started at the ECU facility, and I could’ve mistaken it for them putting me under. And it feels like…” Like a demon, only worse, I wanted to say, but she wouldn’t understand that. “It feels like my life energy shuts down completely and my body has no choice but to give up. And it hurts. My hand hurts a lot.” If she’d heard me screaming when I lost consciousness earlier, she’d know exactly how much pain was involved.
“So fucking strange. I’ve never heard of anything like it,” she whispered, then stood up. Getting one of the daggers out of her inside jacket pocket, she took my hand in hers. “Sit on the ground. It’ll be easier.”
My tears washed over my face when I did. I watched her take her position and look at the dagger’s blade, to see if it was sharp enough. I was crying because whatever happened, it was going to devastate me, change me forever. If she did manage to cut my hand off, I was never going to be able to fight again like I always did. I was never going to be able to do a lot of things. But if she didn’t, the dragon was going to eat at me, little by little, until there was nothing else left, just like the fairy said.
“I’ll heal you as soon as it’s off. You won’t die of blood loss, I promise,” Elisa tried to joke, but it did nothing to brighten my mood.
You have to do this, I said to myself, but knowing it didn’t make this any easier. It’s the right thing to do. I’d rather be handless than lifeless.
Did I?
I guessed I’d find out soon enough.
With Melinda back at the ECU, I’d wanted to watch her cut my hand off. I’d wanted to remember. But now, I couldn’t do that to myself. Squeezing my eyes s
hut, I turned my head the other way. Whatever happened, I welcomed it against my instincts, my very being. I squeezed my fists tightly to make sure I wouldn’t move my hand until she was done. If you’d have told me just a month ago that this is where I’d be today, I’d have laughed in your face, probably broken some of your teeth, too. Now, I cried and held my breath while Elisa let go of hers.
“Do it.”
Nine
She couldn’t.
I dragged myself across the room to where she’d fallen against the wall, racing to catch her breath. The dagger had slipped from her hands, which were now on her chest, her eyes wide as if she was in terrible pain. Broken ribs.
“I can’t heal you,” I whispered, touching her cold cheeks. “Chant. Heal yourself.”
My head had been turned the other way, so I had no idea if she’d even touched my hand with the dagger before being thrown off by the dragon. I certainly hadn’t felt a thing. My arm looked normal, my skin perfectly intact. The dragon still wrapped around my wrist and hand like a fucking mutant snake with wings.
It terrified me to watch Elisa panting, moving her lips slowly, chanting in a whisper. Minutes must have passed while she healed herself and I stood next to her, holding her hands. With both mine.
I was happy. For a long minute, I really was. My hand was still there. It wasn’t chopped off me, dragon or no dragon. I was selfish enough to be glad about it, knowing that thing was going to cost me my life. As if one hand was more important, but in that moment, it was.
Elisa was finally able to sit up. Filling her lungs with air, she no longer looked as terrified. No longer in pain.
“I’m sorry,” I said, sitting next to her, our backs against the wall.
“Not your fault.” She sounded tired. Exhausted.
“Yeah…” It was my fault. It was the green-eyed man’s fault, but I couldn’t tell her that.
“We need to find Trinity again.”
Just the sound of his name brought chills down my spine. “He’ll kill us.”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got.”
“No. It’s the only chance I’ve got.” Battling the fear to say what I said next was hard, but I pushed through it. “This has gone far enough, Elisa. I need you to go now. Go hide on your own. This isn’t your fight. You’re a Hedge witch.”
“You want me to leave?” She sounded surprised.
“I do.” Or at least I should have. But being alone now was terrifying for me. All my life, I’d been by myself, and I thought I was happy that way. The less people in my life, the less chance of getting hurt. But then Luca and the others found me. They made me fall in love with them by just being there. And Elisa…I knew next to nothing about her, yet the thought of never seeing her again hurt.
But it was the right thing to do. Whatever I was involved in here, with the dragon, the demons, the ECU—she didn’t need to take any part in it. It was only fair that she got to live her life, and no matter how much it sucked, I was going to continue this on my own.
“Well, I don’t,” she finally said. “What I do want is to get some sleep—far away from your left hand.” She held herself on the wall and stood up.
“Your life’s in danger every second you’re with me.”
For some reason, that made her laugh. “My life is not my own. I’m in danger every second I exist, so don’t worry about me.”
Like always, she completely lost me. “You make no sense to me.”
Falling on the bed, she toed her sneakers off and made herself comfortable. “You’re talking about sense? You just told me you wanted me to leave you alone when you don’t know the first thing about what the world really looks like, not to mention that you’re losing consciousness like it’s going out of style.”
“I do know what the world really looks like.” Or at least I was learning it the hard way.
“I’m not leaving, Scarlet. I have a debt to pay and this lifetime will probably not be enough, but saving those D—” she stopped herself, but I already heard. Dirts. She was going to say Dirts. “Saving those witches is going to be a start. It’s my fight as much as it is yours.”
“One of these days, you’re going to have to tell me what that means,” I said with a sigh. Having conversations with her was really tiring.
“One of these days,” she whispered, and barely a minute later, she began to snore.
***
Though I hadn’t slept at all, getting out of Mojo’s former brothel room was heaven. The air seemed lighter, the colors more vivid than I remembered. Too bad we had to get in a cab just as soon as my feet hit the asphalt. It was a human cabdriver because we couldn’t take any chances with paranormals. Elisa didn’t speak to him, simply handed him a piece of paper with the address on it.
The night before was one I’d die before forgetting. My own mind had worked against me like my worst enemy. It made it look so easy to walk away. To get up, walk out the door, run far away from New York—even the United States—and never look back. Find a place, a beautiful place to die in, in peace. So what if the dragon consumed me? Letting it was the easiest way out. I’d just die, and then…nothing.
It was almost too good to be true, the way I imagined it. So good, I almost managed to convince myself, but that last thing…that nothing pulled me back every time. If I walked away, if I accepted my fate that a weird bracelet of a dragon would be the death of me, that wasn’t all I’d be accepting. I’d also be letting everyone down, including the witches who were now in the hands of the demons because of me.
Sometime after sunrise, my resolve strengthened. Screw walking away and dying in a peaceful place. If the dragon was going to kill me, I was going to do everything in my power to make it worth its while.
So now, freshly spelled by Elisa and hiding my face as well as I could, I hopped in the cab next to her. We were headed to the closest fairy portal on Earth. It was close to Geraldine Street, a place full of paranormals who could spot us and turn us in, but it was a necessity. We had to get that fairy Trinity to tell us how to make the dragon stop consuming me.
During the night, it hadn’t attacked me, or maybe I just hadn’t noticed. My nose hadn’t bled again, either, and I felt perfectly fine, though I hadn’t shut my eyes at all. Elisa was nervous, but I felt…free. I was free of wondering, of second thoughts, of the doubt that had buried so deep into my bones I thought I’d never be able to dig it out. Now that I had, I could breathe easy. I felt more prepared for what was to come.
Right until the cab driver hit the brakes and nearly knocked us out the windshield.
“What the heck?” I breathed, straightening my cap so I could see. I wished I hadn’t.
“Motherfuckers!” Elisa whispered, and began to chant immediately. One of the daggers we had was already in my hand, and Elisa held the other. I grabbed the handle of the door and watched the black Mercedes with all my focus. Could have been just an accident, that the driver had lost control of the car and almost slammed into us, but too much had happened to me to believe in accidents anymore. Fear couldn’t break my focus, nor could the confused look of the driver. He was going to be okay, and not even remember any of this. We, on the other hand…
“I’ll attack and you stay behind and chant,” I said to Elisa. Her magic was worth much more than mine from a long distance.
“You could fall flat—”
I cut her off. “On three. One, two…” The doors of the Mercedes opened and two suited men walked out. Heart in my throat, I pushed my own door open and stepped outside. The city buzzed with life around me, but now, I no longer heard anything, or saw the vivid colors of my surroundings.
The men didn’t look like the usual ECU soldiers, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t them. The ECU had no shortage of men. They were both tall and muscular, their posture screamed bodyguard and their thin, black sunglasses did nothing to hide their hard faces. As far as I could see, they weren’t holding any weapons. They looked like wolves, but they could be witches, so I didn’t want
to take any chances. Reaching for the magic under my skin, I summoned it toward my fingers.
My heart was beating calmly, my muscles locked tight, ready for whatever they were going to throw at me. Elisa had been right. She said they’d find us as soon as we stepped out of Mojo’s, because she hadn’t been able to get her hands on her protective spell stones. Now that they were here, I guess I’d always known this was how it was going to end up.
It was only a matter of time before other soldiers arrived to take us in, and I wasn’t going to stand for that. I was going to take advantage of the situation while I still could. Through the corner of my eye, I saw Elisa, her hands forward, the dagger in the left. She was going to focus on her magic, and I, on hand-to-hand. Taking in a deep breath, I shot forward, my magic gathering the air around me. I felt light as a feather and though the dagger was still unfamiliar to my hand, it was going to cut through flesh just fine.
“Scarlet Jones?”
I hit confusion like it was an invisible wall right in front of my face. The guy on the left was barely two feet away from me, and he hadn’t moved an inch. He wasn’t protecting himself, or raising his weapons.
“Who’s asking?” My voice was dry, weaker than I’d have liked, but I was happy for the adrenaline that made me feel alive.
Suddenly, the man moved. He raised his hand toward me, and for a second, I thought he was going to charge me, so I pushed to the left. But he didn’t charge me.
In his hand was a phone. A miniature black thing with rubber buttons, looking like it had come right out of the stone age. Elisa had stopped chanting, too. People were gathering around us fast, but so far, nobody had attacked us. We were making a scene in the middle of the street, and we had to get the hell out of there fast, before the police showed up. But running and making them chase us would only cause a bigger scene.
Heart in my throat, I strode to the man and grabbed the phone from his hand. The line was connected. Somebody was waiting for me on the other end.
