Storm Power (Scarlet Jones Book 2)

by D. N. Hoxa

  Taking half a step toward us, Eddie shook his head. “You must explain it to me. Why do you need my men?”

  “Demons,” I said, rolling my eyes. “We’re going after the demons who kidnapped all the witches you held in that facility.”

  Realization flashed in his green eyes. “Then I’m afraid we have no deal. You will not make it out of there alive.”

  I forced a laugh that hurt my throat. “Have you heard about how we escaped in the first place?” I raised my left hand and showed him the dragon.

  “I’ve seen the footage, too,” Eddie said. Shoot. There was footage? And here I’d hoped the demons had ruined all the cameras in that place. “You cannot beat all of them. Judging by the number of witches they’ve taken, you won’t make it to the second minute.”

  My heart jumped. “How many were there?” I asked halfheartedly.

  Eddie grinned. “Twenty-seven.”

  The ground shook beneath my feet. “Twenty-seven?” My voice came off high pitched.

  “If you go there, assuming you even find them, you won’t make it back.” Eddie was extremely sure of his words, not even minding the anger that no doubt showed on my face. Twenty-seven witches! How the hell had that happened? Where had they kept all of them?

  “This has to be a mistake. I doubt there’s that many witches like them in total,” Elisa said, shaking her head.

  “No, there’s a lot more.” Eddie smiled. “I take it you haven’t seen the news lately?” I already knew whatever he said next was going to break me. Then, he put his hand on his head, pretending to just remember something. “Oh, that’s right. That isn’t public information. The ECU hasn’t ceased their search for you.”

  Not that I expected anything less, but the way he said it terrified me. “How many do they have?” The demons knew the way inside the facility now. If they went back to get even more witches out…

  “Four,” Eddie said with a sigh. “Bodies.”

  “Excuse me?” said Elisa, but I was too frozen to speak.

  “The ECU is no longer holding them. They’re killing the witches on sight,” Eddie said.

  Suddenly, my blood turned from ice to fire. “You’re lying.” We’d have heard. We’d have heard something!

  “And you don’t have to believe me,” he said. “But they’ll be coming for you, too, Scarlet. You’re of great interest to them now.” His eyes fell on my left hand, on the dragon. “I think the sooner you get the dragon off you, the safer you’ll be.”

  “I don’t care what you think,” I spit. “This is your deal. Take it or leave it.”

  Eddie froze for a second. My mind had no idea how to process this new information. The guy wasn’t lying. The ECU was very much capable of killing innocents on sight. They’d done it before when they couldn’t apprehend the witches like us easily—like the guy Luca and the others had seen getting killed, right before they first found me on the construction site. Now, I suspected Erick Adams had a lot to do with it. He needed to be stopped, right now. But I couldn’t stop him alone. My voice wouldn’t be strong enough.

  But that of twenty-seven other people?

  The world would have no choice but to hear our thunder. We’d bring a storm if we had to, because we were Storm witches. I didn’t care who’d said it: the green-eyed man, or even Adams himself. I was taking that name by the balls and making it mine, because I’d had enough of the ECU bullshit.

  Turning around slowly, Eddie began to walk toward the doors. I was a bit surprised, but I was eager to get on my way already. Elisa had other plans.

  “If you let us go, you both get what you want,” she said. “If she dies in that place, you’ll know where it is. You can collect the dragon from her dead body much easier than you can do it now. And if she does come back, you’ll have your chance to take it off her yourself.”

  But all the talk about death wasn’t what stopped me from walking out of there. It was that number.

  Twenty-seven.

  Getting twenty-seven people out of a place was going to take vehicles. Big, protected ones that could take them all far away in a location we didn’t have. I looked up at the concrete ceiling to keep the tears that had gathered in my eyes from falling. There was no question about it: this was what I needed to do. Even if Trinity could get the dragon off me, he’d never agree to help us with people and weapons and cars. All we could expect from the fairy with certainty was that he’d try to kill us, because there was nothing he needed from us.

  Unlike Eddie.

  “You probably have cars. Trucks. You probably also have a place to rent to me, somewhere secluded, extremely well protected, like this.” I raised my arms to indicate the concrete room. It was in the middle of Manhattan, and the ECU had no idea. That spoke of high quality Pretters, or very powerful witches. Eddie was going to start laughing, but I didn’t let him. “Here’s what I’ll offer in return. If I do make it out of there alive, and you can’t get the dragon off me, you can kill me. A bullet to my forehead, and then you can take this thing wherever you want to.”

  Eddie flinched, which surprised me. “Killing isn’t what I do here,” he said, and for whatever reason, I believed him.

  “You will if I give you permission, and I just did.”

  “I heard it, too, so count me as your eyewitness,” Elisa said. No idea why, but I felt a bit…disappointed by that.

  “You’re making me a very tempting offer.” Eddie grinned, his eyes shining with greed. He just told me that I wouldn’t make it back alive, yet he was seriously considering giving us four of his men on this mission. Not that we’d let anything happen to them, but still.

  “So accept. Accept and let’s be done with this,” I said. “I’d like to get on the way soon.”

  Another clap of his hands that made me jump. “You convinced me!” he said. “Let’s get you set for testing.”

  Just like that, the bad feeling in my gut returned.

  Ten

  Dizzy. The room spun, slowly. Elisa walked right by my side, but if I held onto her, she’d know that I wasn’t feeling well, and she’d stop me. I didn’t want to be stopped. I wanted to be let loose.

  Looking at the dragon on my hand didn’t help me see how it was sucking the power out of me. As we followed Eddie into the chrome-colored doors, I checked my nose for blood every few seconds, too.

  The other side wasn’t covered in concrete from top to bottom. It had walls painted in a faded army green color, with a light carpet covering every inch of the floor. There was a round table in the middle of the room, with an ice fountain on top of a mermaid sitting on a rock with a hand to her chest and spitting out water through her mouth. It wasn’t big, but it was beautiful. There were no windows, only paintings of landscapes and flowers, all four of them. Ahead, there was a corridor leading left, and a dark wooden door on the right. Eddie took us through the corridor. The air was colder in there, and the space felt narrow because of the four men walking right behind me and Elisa. I wasn’t close to getting comfortable, but my heart was no longer beating like crazy and adrenaline had long disappeared. Now, all I could focus on was taking the next step without falling, and praying for a chair.

  The details blurred into one another. I couldn’t see what was wall and what was door, but Eddie finally stopped walking. Knowing that I wouldn’t be able to hold myself up any longer, I put my hand on Elisa’s shoulder. When she saw my face, she paled because she knew what was happening. Her lips moved fast as she chanted a spell, a healing spell that wasn’t going to do shit to stop me from losing consciousness.

  Is a break too much to ask for? I asked my own body, but it didn’t respond. And Elisa’s spell didn’t work.

  Eddie began to speak but I couldn’t make out his words. In front of us were two figures, a male and a female, and they were in front of desks, U-shaped desks, much like the one I’d had in my apartment once. Back then, I’d thought life was boring. Now, I’d give anything to get back to that guiltless state of being.

  My eyelid
s grew really heavy suddenly and I fought to keep them open, focusing on the room. And the desk, which had transparent plastic boxes full of…scalps, scissors, needles…

  Suddenly, I was back in the ECU with the guy Patric trying to put a gag in my mouth, and then stabbing me on the neck when I wouldn’t cooperate. I’d known it all along that they’d traumatized me for good, but the fear that filled my chest surprised me. It was like I could smell the research facility, like I was cuffed to that bed again, and people were having their way with my body like they owned it. Taking a step back, I considered leaving whatever room Eddie had taken us to. I didn’t care what they wanted to do: scalpels and needles weren’t coming anywhere near me.

  “Scarlet?” I recognized Eddie’s voice. He’d turned to me and was waving his hand toward the man and woman in front of us, possibly introducing them. I didn’t care who they were. They would not…

  Wait.

  I heard him?

  “Take a seat, Scarlet,” Elisa said, nudging me to the left toward a red swivel chair by the two-foot-high blue vase.

  I could hear her, too.

  What the hell happened to the dizziness? To the fatigue, the loss of energy? I was feeling fine. Scared shitless, but fine.

  “Are we going to have a problem here, Scarlet?” Eddie asked, crossing his arms in front of him. “Doug and Tammy are going to do some tests on you—a vital part of our agreement.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, afraid to focus on my stomach. The feeling of falling could still be there.

  “Did you even listen to me?” Eddie squinted his eyes.

  “Go sit on the chair!” Elisa insisted, and grabbed me by the arm. She dragged me over to the chair and sat me down. The same second, the feeling of dizziness returned.

  At first, I couldn’t make sense of it, so I looked at the dragon again. Was it playing trick on me, or was this my own mind’s doing?

  But then I realized—it had been the fear. The adrenaline.

  Whenever I was running, terrified or excited—or both—I never felt like passing out. My strength never left me. My body never screamed at me to just give up.

  But when my heart calmed down…when I was calm, that’s when it attacked me. It’s why I’d passed out so many times while stuck in that room at Mojo’s. In the bookstore, it had hit me as soon as I’d calmed down, too.

  A smile stretched my lips widely as I looked at Elisa, who was both confused and scared.

  “Am I missing something?” Eddie said.

  Doug and Tammy were putting pale pink gloves on, and though they looked nothing like the latex ones of the workers in the ECU facility, I imagined them as such. They had vials on the table closest to me, thirteen of them lined in front of a transparent box full of cotton swabs and two spray bottles. The dizziness didn’t let go of me until Tammy, a young woman probably only a few years older than me with dark red hair tied into a loose braid behind her back, took out a pair of scissors and a scalpel.

  Melinda’s face stayed in front of me, chasing away the fatigue. I never thought I’d say this, but it felt good to think about her. If I’d just figured this out before, I wouldn’t have had to spend three days locked inside a room, dammit. I’d have gone hunting with Elisa.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked me. Eddie saw that we weren’t about to answer her, so he threw his hands in the air and sighed.

  “I need to leave. I’ll be back when the tests are done.” He started for the door with two of his suited men behind.

  “Hey, wait! What about the men and the weapons and—”

  “After the tests, Scarlet,” he called back, cutting me off.

  “What the hell is happening?” Elisa whispered to me, her eyes wide.

  “I need shots of adrenaline,” I said, a bit giddy, to be honest. It was like I’d uncovered the secret of the century. As long as my blood circulation was increased, I’d be perfectly fine.

  “You’ve lost it.” She looked terrified.

  I turned to Doug and Tammy. “Any chance you could pump me up with some adrenaline shots? You wouldn’t happen to have them close by, would you?”

  “No, we would not,” the woman said. “But even if we did, we need you to stand perfectly still for this.” She then nodded at the suited men waiting with us, and one of them immediately got behind my chair. I let the fear of an attack wash over me, but all he did was push my chair closer to the U-shaped desk. That way, I could see the tools much better, and make them much more terrifying in my mind.

  “I don’t know what tests you want to run on it, but it’s going to throw you off as soon as you touch it,” Elisa warned them. But it wouldn’t. Patrick the ECU worker had cleaned the dragon with his small cotton balls before. He’d gotten away with it without a hair missing from his head.

  Doug flinched. “If our calculations are correct, the weapon shouldn’t attack us because we’re not attacking it.” And he would be right.

  “Don’t look so upset,” I said to Elisa. “We’re going to be fine.” Now that I knew what would keep me from falling in the middle of a fight, I no longer worried. My body would be pumping with adrenaline at that point, and even if it didn’t, I’d make sure to have some on hand.

  Elisa shook her head but didn’t argue. She was trying not to worry, but it was hard. I was trying, too. Fortunately for me, this whole passing-out thing was making it very easy.

  “How much do you know about this thing?” I asked Tammy. She approached me and put on a pair of glasses, leaning over my left hand. I put it above the desk to help her get a better look at it.

  “Not much,” Doug said.

  “You must know enough if you can make calculations,” Elisa said, but I was more focused on Tammy now. With a swab in one hand and an empty vial in the other, she cleared her throat and leaned closer to the dragon again.

  “Yes,” Doug said. “Enough.” His way of saying he wasn’t going to tell us anything. Fine with me. I no longer needed to know what it was now that things had changed with Eddie in the picture.

  “How are you going to test it?” I asked, hoping they’d tell me something scary, because the cotton wasn’t doing it for me, and I was already starting to feel under.

  “Measure it. Figure out its nature. Its composition, and how to best dissolve it,” Tammy said, and Doug cleared his throat, as if to tell her to stop speaking.

  But they must have already known the composition, unless Eddie hadn’t heard about this being a real dragon from the ECU. If that was the case, I decided to keep that little secret until we got back from saving those twenty-seven witches. A new wave of energy had filled all my cells so suddenly. So many people together, it was going to be very hard to silence us. I just hoped to God we’d save all of them, and that I’d make it out alive.

  Eleven

  Doug and Tammy dipped their cotton swabs into about fifty different vials, then touched the dragon with them, only slightly, before putting the swabs into plastic bags labeled with numbers. I lost count after the twentieth. They said they were going to study the nature of the dragon, then find the appropriate kind of matter to attack it. That way, they were hoping it was going to let go of me.

  “We need four men, all the weapons we can carry, and probably three vans, or more. It’s going to be hard to get everyone out of there, assuming they’re still alive,” Elisa said, making my blood freeze.

  “They’re alive,” I said in a breath. “They’re definitely alive.” I refused to believe anything else.

  “We’ll need Pretters, too. Protective ones, as well as some healers for you. You feeling okay?” Elisa continued as if I hadn’t said a thing.

  “I’m fine!” The excitement of knowing what I was going to do next came and went, but I already knew how to make my heart beat faster: thoughts of death, thoughts of Melinda and Adams, of the pain from the dragon, of Ax… “And why are you telling me this? You’ll talk to Eddie, too. You can tell him directly what you need and save your breath.”

  Now that Doug and Ta
mmy were done getting everything they needed for the tests, two suited men took us outside their room and deeper into the main corridor.

  “He might not want to hear it from me. You have what he wants.”

  The suited men took us to the last door in the corridor, one reinforced with a thick steel deadbolt. Three more men stood in front of the door as guards. When they saw us approaching, the deadbolt was suddenly pushed to the side and the door hissed open. The same was on the inside, too. I couldn’t imagine why Eddie would bother to put that thing on the outside, too, unless it was a safety measure for if he ever got locked in his…

  Holy cow, his office was huge. I say office, but that room could be called a playroom, a dining room, a lounge room, and a freaking bedroom. That’s right, the guy had a king-sized bed to the far right corner, with a coffee table and leather furniture in front of it, a soccer table, a round dining table for two, a cherry wood desk, a small shelf full of books with a recliner in front of it and a screen to the side of it playing a video of a window looking out at a lake. It looked so real, I had to look twice to realize it was a paper-thin screen mounted on the wall exactly where a window would have been.

  Eddie himself sat at the small dining table with a tablet in front of him. He’d taken off his jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He seemed to be in deep thought when we entered, and when he realized we were there, he turned the tablet upside down to hide the screen from us, which made me really curious.

  “Tammy tells me you’re finished,” Eddie said, walking toward us. “Thank you, Scarlet.” He didn’t mean it.

  “Don’t thank me yet. If it’s okay with you, we’d like to get going as soon as possible.”

  “The ECU have the entire neighborhood surrounded,” Eddie said. He didn’t look happy about it, either. “I think we should wait until they’re gone.”