by D. N. Hoxa
If by some miracle that happened, then all we’d have to do was figure out how to get the demons off our backs, and life was going to be good.
Nineteen
The excitement faded away at the end of the day, and Elisa and Eddie refused to pump me up with adrenaline. I even had to tell Eddie what was going on with the dragon, how it was sucking away my energy…well, Elisa did. I fell unconscious before she finished speaking.
I seemed to have slept the entire night, because when I woke up, Elisa was in front of the laptop, and she claimed it was eight in the morning. After using the bathroom, I was hoping that the fear of falling in the dark again would keep me awake, at least for long enough to eat something. My stomach was growling.
“Any news?” I asked her while we waited for Eddie to bring us food. Since he wouldn’t allow us to leave that room except to go to the bathroom, we couldn’t exactly go make our own breakfast.
“A girl was killed last night,” Elisa said. My heart skipped a long beat, more so because she said it so calmly. Like she was talking about a thing, not a live being. A witch, just like me, who’d died at the hands of those who claimed to protect the paranormals on Earth. Why? Because she was different. Because they didn’t understand, and they didn’t even want to.
I wanted to ask about the details, but what was the point? It was going to hurt more if I knew anything else about the dead girl, so I shut my mouth and tried not to think about it.
“What about the others?”
“Nothing yet.”
That was starting to really concern me. I needed all four of them with me for when shit hit the fan at the Carnival. They had to be here to see it happen.
“Check this out,” Elisa said, grinning. She showed me the screen of the laptop, taken over by a picture of a brick wall spray painted in blue. The sign we’d designed for the witches to gather at the carnival looked even better now!
“Holy cow, is that real?” Heart in my throat, I moved on all fours closer to the laptop.
“Yep. Our very first sign.”
Wow, that made me so proud. “It’s going to work,” I whispered, both to myself and to her. “Everybody is going to recognize it.” Everybody who mattered.
“Let’s just hope that enough of them have courage to come out.” Elisa sounded worried, and so was I. Who could blame others for hesitating to come out in the open about what they were, when the ECU kept killing people like them on sight without asking questions? Nobody. They had the right to be afraid. I was afraid, too. But we had to stay positive, because there was no other way to stop this ridiculous hunt.
I made it through breakfast, a sandwich with barely any cheese in it. The unconsciousness claimed me after about an hour spent lying on the ground, looking at the concrete ceiling, doing nothing. It was like Mojo’s former brothel all over again.
After…who knew how much time had passed?
After a while, Elisa’s voice dragged me awake. She was calling my name, slapping my cheeks—and not gently. It didn’t take long to realize that we weren’t alone in the room. In fact, the room was pretty crowded.
Eddie with two of his suited men were in there, together with Doug, Tammy, and another guy I’d never seen before. He was taller than all of us, skinny except for the beer belly that threatened to tear the buttons of his pink shirt. Seriously, the poor things were barely holding on. His curly hair was a mess, and his stubble leaned toward a full grown beard. But his light brown eyes gave you a different impression. They were clear, focused, calculating. He took all of me in, in a millisecond, then showed me perfectly while, fake teeth.
“Miss Jones, my name’s Nick Ivory. So good to meet you.”
I turned to Elisa, but she only shrugged, then stood up with her crossed arms in front of her, looking at the stranger like she’d already decided she didn’t like him. I stood up, but when my knees shook, I sat down on one of the chairs. Better than to fall flat on my face in front of this guy.
“Glad you could join us, Scarlet,” Eddie said, a bit angrily. How long had they tried to wake me up? “Nick’s here to take a look at the dragon.”
Nick Ivory grinned again. Instinctively, I put my right hand over the dragon. This guy did not give me trustworthy vibes. At all.
“What about Doug and Tammy?” They were right there, too, looking at Nick curiously, as if they were waiting for some kind of a miracle from him. Not me, though. Definitely not.
“Just give him your hand, Scarlet,” Eddie said. Very angrily.
“Not without telling me who he is first.” For all I knew, he’d want to…I don’t know, cut my hand off or something. Not that I’d oppose, but…yeah, I’d oppose. Fuck, yeah.
“We do n—” Eddie started, but Ivory cut him off.
“It’s okay, Eddie.” Then, he turned to me and took a step forward. “I’m a weapon’s expert. A modern blacksmith, if you will. I make weapons for my clients, and Eddie has brought me here in hopes that I’d know something about the dragon around your hand.” He pointed at me. Greed gave his eyes a strange hue, but my instincts didn’t want me to start running already. This guy was a greedy bastard, sure, but he was no threat. He’d have no idea about the dragon, I already knew it, but if it made Eddie feel better…
With a sigh, I raised my left arm. In a heartbeat, Ivory was in front of me, kneeling to see the dragon better. His wide eyes were filled with awe now as he took in every inch of the bracelet, twice. I looked at it, too, because I understood the fascination he was experiencing—the same one I had when I first saw that thing. But now? Ivory wouldn’t feel in awe if he had the dragon attached to his hand.
Elisa was nervous. I could feel her energy, though I only saw her through the corner of my eye. I was watching Ivory closely, no matter what my instincts said.
But Ivory only looked. He looked at the dragon like he was reading some invisible letters on its skin that only he could see. He took his sweet time, too. My arm was beginning to grow numb. So long as I didn’t pass out, though, everything else was manageable.
“I saw that sign today,” he suddenly said, making us both jump. Elisa realized she’d left the laptop open with the tenth picture of the sign—this one yellow—a human had painted on the wall of the building. She ran to it and closed the lid furiously, but the damage had already been done. “I didn’t know it was you. Cool design,” Ivory continued. “What are you planning to do at the Carnival?” He asked the question so smoothly, you couldn’t even sense his curiosity.
“None of your business.” I looked at Eddie. Would he bring in there a man who’d spy on us to the ECU?
But Eddie shook his head. “Your secret is safe,” was all he said. Not very reassuring.
“I imagine it isn’t pleasant to have to constantly hide,” Ivory said. “Or to be hunted.”
“What do you know about hiding and being hunted?” Elisa said, coming even closer to the man now. He didn’t seem like he minded.
“I know what the good people at the ECU have been doing. I make weapons for them, sometimes. That’s not to say I agree with their choices.”
I looked at Elisa, but she shook her head.
“What kind of weapons can you make?” I asked instead.
“The kind you wouldn’t be able to afford.” Ivory laughed, taking his eyes off the dragon for a second to look at us. “It’s good what you’re doing. Trying to get people like you together,” he continued, nodding his head like he knew exactly what we were up to. Were we that obvious, or had Eddie already told him everything? Probably the latter. “Have you thought about how the whole thing is going to play out? Who is your leader?”
Leader?
The face of a witch, a Bone witch, came to my mind. Karim had been selling dark spells that could make someone’s nails come off. He’d also told me about the dream he had…about me. He spoke of someone who was impressed—the leader.
“What the hell do you know about a leader?” Heart in my throat, I took my hand back and stood up. He followed.
<
br /> “Nothing at all. That’s why I asked you,” he said, raising his hands in surrender.
“Scarlet,” Eddie warned, but I didn’t give a shit.
“Who are you, really? What exactly do you know about us?” I asked Ivory instead.
“I’m just a blacksmith, I swear it,” he said, smiling, completely at ease. It wasn’t reassuring that I didn’t intimidate him. At all. “I know nothing more than you do.” He pointed at my left hand. “May I?”
Having no other choice, I sat back down on the chair and raised my hand.
“What’s taking you so long?” He’d already seen the whole darn thing!
“Turn your hand over.” I did as he asked, rolling my eyes. “From your reaction, I take it you have no leader, which could be a little problematic.”
“Meaning?”
“You need someone to speak in your name, Miss Jones. Nobody is going to take you seriously if you all speak at once, I’m afraid. And while we’re at it, just how many of you are there?” There it was again, that invisible curiosity. He was very skilled in getting information out of people, it seemed.
“As many as we are,” I said through gritted teeth. “Are you done? My arm is numb.” Without waiting for his reply, I put my hand down on my lap.
Smiling sneakily, Ivory stood up. “Yes, I’m done. Thank you for your patience, Miss Jones.” Then, he turned to Eddie. “Let’s have that coffee you promised me, shall we?”
Thank God, they were leaving.
“We’ll be here in an hour or so,” Tammy said before she left with the others. “Try to stay awake, okay?”
If she only knew…
Elisa began to curse words nobody should hear as soon as the door closed. I let her get it out without interrupting.
“He’s right,” she finally said, walking toward the door and back as fast as she could without running. “Goddamn that asshole, but he’s right!”
I put my hands on my face, feeling tired already, when I’d just woken up. What the hell was that dragon doing to me?
“You’re going to do it, right?”
That nearly stopped my heart in place.
“Excuse me?” She wasn’t saying what I thought she was saying, right?
“You! You’re going to be the leader or whatever. You’re going to talk and all that shit.”
“Um…no. Absolutely not.” I was not good at talking to a crowd. Just ask the witches from my class at the Academy. They’ll tell you all about my stuttering and my tied tongue, and my sweating. And the ECU? I’d rather die than talk to Erick Adams again.
“Who else?” Elisa said.
“Nobody! Forget what that guy said. We have time to choose a leader. Right now, we’re going to make sure we stay alive, and then we can vote, or whatever.”
“Scarlet, you can’t be stubborn about this. You need someone who’ll speak for all of you at the Carnival.”
“No, we don’t. We’ll all speak for ourselves if we have to.” Biting my tongue, I tried to forget all about this, to just keep it to myself, but I couldn’t. To say Elisa and I didn’t think alike would be an understatement, so maybe she could get more out of what Karim had told me, than I could. “When we were at the black market, this Bone witch that sold dark spells started telling me about some weird dream he’d had of the world ending and stuff.” I could almost picture the witch’s face as if he were right in front of me. “He said he saw me in his dream, too, as well as someone else. A she. He called her the lost one and the leader.”
Elisa kept silent for a long second. “Who was he?”
“His name is Karim. I don’t know anything else,” I said with a shrug.
“What else did he say?”
“Just that she was the lost one, who had everything to learn and everything to teach. It was so weird, I could have remembered it wrongly.”
But Elisa wanted to know more. She sat on the chair next to me and waved for me to continue.
“Okay, okay.” I searched my brain for his exact words but in the end, I told her what I remembered, hoping I got it right. “He also said that she was raised away from our world, but will die in it, if the fates decide. And that I needed to find her before it was too late.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before, Scarlet?”
“Does it matter? He was a crazy witch who spoke to a complete stranger about a dream! Freaky, not to mention bullshit.”
“Well, what if he really dreamed of you? Bones can sometimes see the future, you know.”
“I do know, but this guy made no sense. Everything to learn and everything to teach? What does that even mean?” It had made no sense to me then, and it made no sense to me now.
“Maybe we should try to find him,” Elisa said, chewing on her lower lip.
“Look, we need to find Luca and the others, and we need to make sure that everyone knows about the Carnival. For now, that’s enough on our plate, don’t you think?”
With a sigh, Elisa nodded. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re right.”
She left me on the chair to go back to her laptop, and my mind went to the only place it could: what had Nick Ivory seen on the dragon? He certainly had something to tell Eddie, and I couldn’t wait to see Tammy and Doug to ask them, no matter that those acids they used on me burned my skin.
Twenty
Doug and Tammy came back. They had nothing to tell me about Nick Ivory, except that he’d promised Eddie he’d “look into it.” They also tried to remove the dragon with their acids again, this time using some Pretters as well.
It didn’t work that day.
And it didn’t work the next, either.
We had one hundred and twenty-eight signs all over the city—and counting. The last time I was awake before the dragon knocked me out, neither Elisa nor Eddie had any news about the others. It made me sick to worry about them. Were they alive? Were they captured? Were they together still?
It became so much, I was glad when unconsciousness took me.
But now, as I blinked rapidly to clear away the blur, the view in front of me didn’t change: Elisa was sitting right next to me on the mattress—something Eddie had finally thought to provide us with, though he hadn’t bothered with actual bed frames.
My heart jumped as I struggled to sit up. “What’s going on?”
Elisa grinned. My heart skipped a beat. “Ax.”
Holy cow, I knew it. That second, I knew she’d found them.
“Did you find him?”
“He emailed me.” So he’d found her.
“Show me,” I said, and grabbed the laptop from in front of her feet. Her email exchange with Ax filled the screen.
Who’s this? We’re two guys in SF, interested in your ad. The email: [email protected].
Elisa had replied a minute later: SF as in San Francisco? What would best describe your name?
“How did you know?” I asked Elisa.
“Because he said San Francisco. The ad specifically says New York and nobody wrote to me with their location before. And two guys? Pretty obvious,” she said proudly.
Weapon. Yours? the next email said. Holy cow, it was Ax!
Color, Elisa had replied. Much easier to describe my name with a word.
Where are you? Ax had asked in the same minute.
Follow the ad.
“That’s it?” Elisa had sent the last email two hours ago.
“More would give away too much if we fell on someone’s radar. They’re coming to New York and when they do, they’ll contact us,” she said. “And if we’re lucky, Luca and Fallon will see the ad, too!”
It was exactly what I’d wanted, what I’d prayed for, but somehow, I couldn’t allow myself to feel happy. If Ax and Grover were still alive in San Francisco, wouldn’t it be smart of them to stay there? I had no idea if the demons even existed in that place. It would be so much easier to hide without them.
By calling them back to New York, we were putting them in danger all over again. Yes, the plan had be
en to come back all along, but now that I knew they were safe, and relaxed enough to get on the internet and open email addresses, I just…wondered.
Elisa was over the moon, and I tried to cheer up for her sake, but the worry clouded my mind. I needed some fresh air desperately, but asking Eddie would be useless. We called for him and just the look on his face when we told him about the others said exactly how he felt about having more people to watch out for.
He insisted he couldn’t let them in. We insisted that he could. He made Elisa threaten to put a black magic spell on him, and me to escape his basement, before considering our request. But we’d do whatever we had to do to get to Ax and Grover, and he could see it in our eyes, in our excitement. In our fear. I doubted he’d refuse. As much as he was an asshole sometimes, he was a good guy in a weird kind of way. One of the very few people I knew who refused to kill, even for their—very profitable—job. In my time and situation, I had to respect that.
I didn’t pass out again until close to midnight. I kept myself busy looking at a map on the laptop, trying to guess which way Ax and Grover were taking to New York, and trying to guess when they’d be there. It was a two days’ drive—unless they took a plane, which I doubted. But if they didn’t, they’d never make it here on time. Still, that wasn’t enough to keep me wide awake all night, like I’d hoped. The night after the next was the Carnival night and while I could, I prayed with all my heart that we’d all be there to get the show going.
***
Elisa complained about having to waste half a bottle of water to wake me up. I complained for my soaking wet hair and shirt—not to mention the mattress.
Until she showed me what she’d woken me up for.
It was six in the morning and Ax and Grover were in New York. Their email said so. Now, they were waiting for a place to meet.
Getting Eddie to our room took us half an hour, and when he did come to see why we were screaming and shouting at six in the morning, his face was still swollen. He wasn’t happy, not in the least, but he was so desperate to probably go back to bed that he agreed to take his men to find Ax and Grover and bring them to his basement. We emailed them to tell them where to go—a donut shop a few blocks away from us.
