by D. N. Hoxa
“You have no place among us,” Erick Adams spit. “You were born out of darkness, and we’ll make sure you return there.” The same words he’d spoken to us. “You want to tell everyone about the monsters hunting you? Well, good! Let’s tell them all about it.” Suddenly, Adams turned to the crowd on his left. “They are demons, come from another realm, with powers beyond your comprehension. They’ve never been to our world before. Do you know why?” Then he turned to us again, an evil smile making his face even uglier than usual. “Because they weren’t here before. They fuel the demons! Their power is what keeps them alive, makes them stronger, and keeps them coming back to our home!”
The whispers grew stronger. Every person in that crowd was now shaking with fear. Hearing Sienna talk about monsters was one thing, but hearing it from their leader’s own lips? Now, shit just got real for all of them. And Adams was good at this. The best at convincing people—which was why he was an ECU leader for as long as he was.
“They are the reason this threat exists! But as long we are here, we will make sure that those monsters will never again have a reason to come back and haunt us,” he continued. The people cheered.
Through the corner of my eye, I could see Sienna shaking. “You got this,” I whispered to her, though I wasn’t sure she heard over the noise. Now, the people were shouting: kill them, kill them, kill them. Shit.
“You’re wrong.” Sienna’s voice made the shouting stop. “We are not born of darkness. The demons are not here because of us. We are here because of them. We are the only ones who can kill them.”
Complete silence fell on the street, before the people began to whisper again. More witches like us hopped on the trailer. I couldn’t see well because I was afraid of losing focus, but if I wasn’t mistaken, many more than fifty of them were there.
“Kill them? Pathetic!” the vampire said, the only woman among the ECU leaders. Her name was Pearl Hudson, and she was the chosen one of the vampires to lead them.
“Before we realized what they were,” Erick Adams continued, again looking at the crowd. “We tried to help them. We studied them. We offered them everything, but in the end, there was nothing we could do.”
“You kidnapped us!” Grover shouted behind us, making us all jump.
“You kept us chained to beds against our will.” I had to say it.
“You experimented on us!” someone else said.
“It’s true.” All eyes turned to a man in the crowd to our left. “You took my daughter. She was innocent. It wasn’t her fault.” His eyes were full of tears. “She didn’t choose how to be born. She was innocent!”
“Your misconception of our nature ends here. If we cannot change your mind, your people will,” Sienna said. “If you kill us all, the demons will come back. They will not stop, and you will not be able to stop them. Only we can.”
“Have you forgotten? We know what you are made of. We know your magic! You’re not only weak, but you’re barely out of your teens! How old are you, eighteen?” Adams shouted. He’d lost it. His eyes were red with anger. He threw his hands to the sides with every word he spoke. Cain was trying to calm him down by whispering in his ear, but Adams wouldn’t hear it. We’d made a fool out of him in front of the whole world. He was not taking it lightly.
Just when I thought Sienna was going to tell him how strong we were, she stepped back from the tripod.
“Sienna?” She wasn’t giving up, was she?
It didn’t look like it. She had her eyes closed as she stood between Elisa and me, and slowly, she raised her head to the sky.
“What’s going on?” Elisa whispered, but all I could do was shake my head.
Sienna rose her arms next, pointing her hands toward the sky. My heart stopped beating altogether. The energy that left her body tasted like my own magic, but also different. My mind couldn’t make sense of it at first. Her eyes opened wide as she looked at the dark sky. I did the same. Time no longer moved forward. It was stuck, waiting for whatever was going to happen. The change in the course of history. The storm we’d promised would come.
The sky groaned. Blue light flashed behind the grey clouds. Sienna moved her arms in front of her. People began to scream. Electricity shot from the inside of her right elbow, swirling itself around her arm and to her palm. From there, it shot to the sky.
The thunder shook the ground right after the lightning came down so fast, all we could see was a flash of light.
The sound of horses galloping fast broke my focus. The lightning had hit its mark. It had hit right between the carriage of the ECU leaders and the horses, breaking the wood and setting three horses free.
Making a hole too deep to see the bottom of in the asphalt in front of the carriage wheels.
I looked at Sienna again. This time, she was nothing like the girl I’d saved in the alley, or the one we’d found in a farm in Iowa. She was someone completely new as she stepped in front of the microphone again.
“Your hunt stops now. We’re here to stay,” she said, but Erick Adams and the others were still looking at the hole in front of them, completely terrified. “But if you think that killing us is still what you want to do, consider yourself warned: we will fight back.”
Something moved in the crowd. A scream pierced my ears. I turned to the left, my heart racing in my chest, and I saw a body hit the ground somewhere close to the end of the trailer.
The demon looked up and smiled when he met my eyes. With his, he promised death.
Twenty-three
“Take Sienna and get out of here!” I said to Ax and Elisa and pushed Sienna toward them. Elisa didn’t argue. She already knew that what Karim said was true. Sienna was our leader. She could create lightning. Call it out of the sky. Direct it wherever she pleased. With her, we’d just gotten a thousand times stronger.
But Ax stayed behind. Calling for his magic, he raised his arms and blew the demons off. I looked at the crowd, who were still watching, terrified.
“Go!” I shouted, no longer interested in the ECU soldiers. They’d be gone soon, too. “Leave, right now! Go home!” But only a few people began to run. The rest wouldn’t budge.
“Fuck!” I shouted with all my heart before turning to the two demons who’d already made it on the trailer. More were on the sides, preying on the others who’d gathered there with us.
Just when I thought it was over…
I looked at the ECU leaders. Were they going to help us? Why weren’t the soldiers shooting still?
But Erick Adams’s face said it all as he jumped off the carriage. He wasn’t going to lift a finger to help us. On the contrary. He was wishing with all his heart that those demons killed us all. Even worse—five more demons were coming from the crowd to us, too, or through it. The demons pushed the people back, threw them off, hit them with all they had until everybody moved away and let them all run to us. I just hoped they hadn’t killed any of the people they threw back.
It wasn’t even a decision anymore. The dragon around my hand was alive or real or whatever. But it was useless until I was a second away from losing consciousness. I had no idea how many of them there were, but I’d fight until I couldn’t anymore. Pushing Ax and Grover to the side, I stepped in front of the five who’d already made it to us and dropped my knives. Another joined his friends, and no longer interested in sucking on Cade—Franky was already down—they all turned to me.
I felt it the second they began to draw from me. My energy, my life force, my magic. This time, though, I knew exactly what to do. I pushed my magic toward my hands and unleashed all of it to the very last drop. In my mind, I pictured the sword, long and strong, made of electricity charges, a lightning bolt in my hand. Screams behind me, to my sides, everywhere.
It could have been my imagination, but the demons stopped sucking on me much faster than last time. When I opened my eyes again, my lightning sword had graced me with its presence.
There was no time to feel relief. I jumped forward, aiming the long sword for t
heir faces—or anything else it would catch, it was all the same. Because it was so long, I had no trouble turning three demons into charcoal on the second try.
“Truck!” I shouted at Ax before jumping off it. He already knew the way to the monastery. More demons were preying on others like us, leaving a trail of unconscious bodies behind. “On the trailer! Don’t leave anyone behind! Get on the trailer, now!”
From then on, the real show began. I charged like a mad woman after every demon I could see. Five of them in my line of vision, and possibly more on the other side of the trailer. They fought against me better than they ever had before. I tried to push them away from the trailer so the witches still standing could get the unconscious ones up. There was no place for fear in my body. Elisa was going to take care of Sienna, take her to the monastery all by herself, far away from the demons, and Ax and Grover could drive everyone else there on that trailer. That massive thing was the only vehicle that could fit everyone.
That was enough to give me boost after boost of energy and will to fight, even when the demons caught me, threw me against the ground, against the buildings, even the trailer’s huge wheels. I got up and fought again. Soon, a rain of fire began to pour on their heads. It was better than fireworks. From the trailer, witches, probably ones we’d gotten out of that abandoned hospital, were throwing clothes on fire at the demons.
It didn’t kill them, but they didn’t like it. So they backed away. I followed. If you asked me how many I turned to charcoal, I’d have to make up a number. Too much excitement and fear for the details to register, but I was never going to forget the rain of fire.
Gunshots pierced the air. At first, I was pretty sure the ECU soldiers were aiming at me, but then one of the seven demons in front of me backed off and looked down at his stomach. Red blood dripped from his wound. Two more jumped at me at once, and though I managed to stab one with my sword, the other put his hands on my chest and pushed me back. Crouching forward, I put the tip of the sword against the ground to keep my balance. Sparks flew as my feet continued to slide backward, and the sword quickly stopped me. The back of the trailer was in front of me now, and I couldn’t believe how many people were on it. Definitely more than a hundred, and half of them were in their underwear, still throwing clothes on fire at the demons coming for me.
To my horror, other witches from the crowd were attacking the demons with their magic—and there were werewolves and vampires there, too.
“No!” I shouted, but it was too late. More than six demons—I lost count—turned to them, and threw them back within a minute. I wanted nothing more than to pause time so I could tell everyone to get the fuck out of there again, but there was no pause button to reality. I just had to suck it up and believe that nobody else was going to try to stop them again. Even the ECU had stopped shooting at this point, realizing they were wasting their bullets. Holes in their bodies didn’t stop those demons. They barely slowed them down.
I’d never fought with more heart in my life. The demons had nearly beat me at the hospital, but now, my resolve had strengthened a thousand times over. I saw everything differently—felt it and smelled it like I was a new witch. I gave all of me against those demons, and though they hurt me, they could no longer suck my powers. They hurt, but I killed. My sword turned them to charcoal one after the other, until there were only eight left. The clothes on fire didn’t stop coming, distracting the demons so I could finish them off. I was still turning from having killed one when another caught me with his fists on my face—four times before I fell back and hit the ground. My spine paralyzed with the impact for a second, and I expected him to come at me again. The crowd cheered. Gunshots fired again. I sat up in time to see the face of the demon in front of me completely destroyed by bullets. He fell to his knees two feet away from me. Dragging myself forward, I ran my sword over his chest.
Seven more.
I barely made it to my shaking feet, expecting to be attacked again. The gunshots had stopped. The clothes on fire were no longer coming down on them. But just like the demons in the ECU room before we’d run away, they looked back at what was left of their friend, and decided they didn’t want to die that night.
Too bad I’d already decided that at least one more of them would.
When they began to run, I begged my body to hold on for just a minute longer. I ran after the last one and called on my magic, my newest, favorite trick. The mini tornado spun around me and I jumped. Just like when I was fighting the ECU soldiers, the wind held me up, slowed my fall, and took me forward more than a normal jump could. I swung my arm with all my strength, aiming for the demon’s neck.
He stopped running. The second my feet hit the ground, his head made of charcoal fell from his body.
My knees shook. Using my magic when the dragon was turned into a lightning sword apparently wasn’t a good idea. It took so much energy out of me to do a simple trick I’d done a thousand times before. I just hoped that I wouldn’t fall on the ground just yet.
That’s when I realized that almost half the initial crowd of people was still there.
So were the soldiers, and the ECU leaders.
Rain began to pour down, suddenly, heavily. They all watched me like I was a three-headed alien, come to invade the Earth. I returned the favor, no longer afraid of any of them. We’d shown them who we were. We’d shown them that we were not going to back down. If they wanted to shoot me now, so be it.
But they didn’t.
“Scarlet!” someone called. The truck’s engine was roaring, but Ax wasn’t driving away. The people on the trailer were waving for me to go to them.
I looked back at Erick Adams. His eyes were wide, his lips parted, the hole Sienna had made with her lighting strike in the ground separating me from him. He didn’t move, but I did. There was no point in waiting. I turned around and ran to the trailer.
Hands grabbed me, pulled me and pushed me forward. I couldn’t see a thing, except my sword that was now half its normal size. My body screamed in protest. My legs were shaking, but we were on the move. Ax was driving. So many strange faces around me, but some familiar, too. I couldn’t bring myself to speak or to even smile.
All I could do was let unconsciousness take me.
***
When I woke up, we were inside somewhere.
The room was huge, made of stone and lots of archways and pillars. Broken wood lined three rows of benches on each side. The only light was coming from the three candles a few feet away, illuminating the colorful glass, triangle-shaped windows on the side. It smelled of dirt and garbage in there, but at least I was alive—though wet to my core. Possibly by the rain. Elisa was by my side. So were Ax and Grover. And Sienna was coming to me.
My throat was dry but that didn’t stop me from trying to sit up. Had we made it? Were we safe? Had the ECU followed us?
What about the demons?
“What happened?” Sienna said when she kneeled by my side.
“It’s the dragon,” Elisa whispered reluctantly. She put her hand on my chest and chanted her Hedge healing spell, for which I was thankful. I really needed to go out and see if we’d been followed.
“Where are we?” I asked, my voice a mess.
“At the monastery,” Ax said. “Can you sit up?” He grabbed my hand and pulled me up. The high ceiling spun for a second.
“What is it doing?” Sienna said, still looking at the dragon.
“Consuming her. Her energy.” Elisa shook her head. “We don’t really know.”
Suddenly, Sienna reached out her hand for the dragon. It was so unexpected, my heart almost gave up on me. “No, no, no, don’t touch it!”
She touched it.
She wasn’t thrown across the room.
Instead, she held the dragon in front of her face and analyzed it.
My hand wasn’t attached to it, if you can believe it. No, my hand was on my lap. The dragon was no longer around it. It was with Sienna.
A cry escaped my lips as I wat
ched her take in every inch of the dragon. My brain couldn’t come to terms with it. How was this possible? My hand felt so light. What I was seeing and feeling made no sense. All that fuss about the dragon, the ECU trying to remove it, Eddie, Elisa…
“It needs your energy to do its job,” Sienna said. We were all frozen in place as we watched her. “It needs a source of energy. So powerful,” she whispered.
It was too good to be true, but it was happening. Nothing else existed but her and the dragon that was no longer attached to my skin.
“People have been trying to get it off me from the beginning. How did you…how did you just…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence. My voice didn’t sound like my own. For a second, I considered that I was dreaming. For so long, that thing had been my doom, the reason I couldn’t trust my own body. Relief didn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling.
“Dragons are creatures of power. They recognize power, are guided by it,” Sienna said. She had created lightning with her hands in front of the whole world, and now she’d just taken the dragon from my hand. Just like that. “This dragon belongs to you. It was yours from the moment it was born.”
It could be mine or someone else’s—I didn’t want it.
“That dragon was killing me.” The shock ripped through me, even stronger now than before. I understood what she was saying, but I frankly couldn’t have cared less. “I don’t know how you did this.” A thousand blinks later, the dragon was still in her hands. Holy cow, this was real. Another cry escaped my lips and my eyes filled with tears. “God, Sienna! I’m so glad you took it off me. If you hadn’t, I would have died!” She had no idea how much this meant to me. After everything, at exactly the right time, she’d done the impossible and set me free.
Sienna smiled. “The dragon isn’t killing you. It just needs a source of power.”
Whatever it needed, I was more than happy to let it need it off me. But Sienna proceeded to close her eyes with the dragon still in her hands. I looked at Elisa. A dumbfounded smile had taken over her pale face.
