by D. N. Hoxa
“Those people are…” Dammit, I didn’t even know how to explain this without sounding like a lunatic. “They’re…different. They seem normal, other than they’re all guys, have cats’ eyes, and never seem to make a single sound.” He’d seen this all with his own eyes the night before. “They’ve been hunting me down for about two years.”
“Hunting you down?” he said, his brows almost touching his hairline.
“Yeah,” I whispered, rubbing the back of my neck. “They hunt me because of my magic. They sucked it off me four times, just like they did to you last night.”
Luca stayed silent for a second. “But…why?” It was a question I’d asked myself for a long time.
“I think they grow stronger on it. It’s their food or something, but I’m not sure.” It was just my opening, but nothing else I could ever come up with made more sense than this.
Confused out of words, Luca opened his mouth and closed it a few times before he spoke. “What are they?”
“No clue. I’d never seen them before I came to Manhattan, and I never could find anything on them.” Not that I had too much access to the ECU files, but something like them should have been public knowledge, if others knew. Or they just didn’t want to know. Many times I thought about going to the ECU. I thought about meeting with them and telling them about the mindless creatures, but if I did, they’d want to question me. Test me. And if they realized that those creatures sucked my magic, they’d never let me out of their sight.
So instead, I sent them anonymous letters. Three times. I was careful in explaining everything I knew, and I made sure the letters were delivered each time. Nothing happened.
“So they just…they just suck your magic?” When I nodded, Luca shook his head. “You must have gotten it wrong. That’s not possible.”
Welcome to my world. My life was full of it’s not possible, and it had started when I was eight years old. But it was. It was all possible.
“This is what I’ve been able to gather so far. They find me if I’m not shutting down my magic, no matter where I go. I have no idea why you were never attacked, but you need to learn how to do that asap.” It was the only thing that kept me alive so far.
“Shut down my magic?” Luca asked in a whisper. “I don’t understand. This…this shouldn’t be possible. Have you spoken to someone? Have you told the ECU?”
Flinching, I lowered my head. “I tried. I sent them letters, three times. Told them what to look for, where to find them. So far, they’ve never come.”
“This is bad,” he said, shaking his head. “Are you absolutely sure about this, Scarlet?” He was terrified when he said my name.
“I am,” I said reluctantly. “I’m sorry, but it’s the truth. Whoever they are, wherever they came from, they suck my magic, and they sucked yours, too. I normally stay down for a whole day, but last night, it was one of them, and he took from all four of you. Maybe he didn’t…like, empty you completely or something. Your guess is as good as mine.” And this just showed how little I knew about the mindless thingies, and that made me want to piss my pants and hide under the blanket forever.
“We have to find the others,” Luca said. “Right now. If they can find you in Manhattan, we have to find them, now.”
I didn’t need to be told twice. I stood up and went to take his handcuffs off. If he tried anything, I still had my knives in my pocket, but I doubted he would. And when he was finally free, all he did was jump to his feet and run for the door.
“You’re not going to like this,” I whispered to myself. Whatever came next, I was pretty sure I was going to hate it, but running away was no longer an option. So I grabbed all my weapons and followed him out.
Three
The girl—Fallon—was the closest to us. When we found her, she was still asleep, but a couple slaps from Luca later, and her eyes opened wide. Her dark hair fell in waves all the way to her waist. Her big dark eyes and ivory skin made her look like a doll. She wasn’t happy to see me, especially when she kissed Luca right on the mouth, then saw me standing by the door, pretending to look at anything but them. I’d had my fair share of romance—a witch, two werewolves, and even a vampire once—but I’d decided I was better off on my own. Any kind of distraction could cost me my life. If my control slipped, my magic would be there for the mindless thingies to sense, and you can’t really keep a lid on your powers when you’re diving into Pleasure Sea head first. It was why working jobs wasn’t for me, either. I tried hosting once. It worked out well for a few days, until I saw a mindless thingie across the street from the bar. I ran away faster than I ever had before, and I never tried again. For me, socializing didn’t mean the same thing as it did for everyone else. I grew up alone and now, I preferred it because I never knew another way of being.
Which was why my brain couldn’t seem to wrap around the fact that I was with two strangers in their car, which Luca insisted on picking up across the street from the construction site we were in the night before. And we were about to go get more strangers. Checking the place to see if the mindless thingies had somehow healed and reattached themselves to their heads was impossible. The place was packed with humans.
The third stranger was a guy named Grover. He was the newest addition to their group, Luca said. He had broad shoulders, built more like a werewolf than a witch, but in front of the mindless thingies, he’d never even had the chance to throw a punch. When we got to his hostel room, he was trying to rip the bed apart. I’d cuffed him to the frame because there was nothing else in the room I could use. He kept spitting words that would make a good girl blush the entire time I unlocked his cuffs. I’d put two on him, just to be sure.
While Luca filled in Fallon and Grover on everything I told him, I kept silent. The car, a Santa Fe, was pretty comfortable so I took some time to rest in the backseat. I couldn’t feel the others’ energy, but I was pretty sure that it was all over the place. Three people right next to each other? It must have been blood in the water for the assholes, who probably did nothing except walk around the city sniffing for a scent all day long.
By the time we arrived at the third hostel, I was growing really anxious. My neck hurt from turning to look on all four sides every few seconds. I kept expecting the thingies to appear out of thin air, right in front of us. My weapons were in their places. My dark red leather jacket hid them all perfectly, especially Butter and Fly under the sleeves. Though it was June, we were in Manhattan and you could never be too hot with a jacket.
I wished I at least had Pretters while we walked up the stairs to the third floor of the building. Pretters are small stones, black with white stripes, that are able to contain spells inside them for a long time. You could activate them with a simple charge of magic, and whatever spell they held would go off. It was like having a witch with you at all times. The high quality ones, stirred by the best Pretter masters out there, were as good as conjuring a spell out of thin air. They cost a lot of money, but money wasn’t an issue. My parents were filthy rich and they compensated for their nonexistent love and affection with dollar bills. Who was I to argue? I could make my own money, but I knew just how important that stuff was to them, so why not take whatever chance I could to hurt them?
But, like I said, to use a Pretter, you needed to charge it with magic. Even werewolves had enough in them to activate a spell stone. Not me, though. If I used my magic, there was always a chance that a mindless thingie was waiting around the corner to empty me of my magic. So no Pretters for Scarlet.
The guy, whose name was Axel, was awake and sitting on the bed when we walked in. He wasn’t surprised to see his friends, but he sure as hell was shocked to see me walking in.
And I was shocked to see him sitting there, too.
Not that I knew him or anything, but fuck, he was gorgeous. How had I not noticed this while I dragged him up the stairs and into that room? His chestnut brown hair was streaked with gold here and there. It gave you the impression that he had missed a few barber appoi
ntments, and on purpose. His eyes were made of ice—blue, but a colorless blue. They pierced right through mine, and I actually looked away as I approached him with the keys to uncuff him. Nobody said a single thing and the tension in the air grew. Maybe it was just me?
I didn’t need to, but I touched his arm while I took the cuffs off because his tan skin looked so smooth. It was. It really was. Putting the cuffs in my jacket, I leaned back, but not before noticing how intently he was analyzing my face—especially my lips. Oh, oh. My stomach rolled in warning. This guy was trouble, and so were his cherry-colored lips with a perfect outline. Jeez, it was like he was wearing a lip liner.
Clearing my throat, I looked down at my feet and waited for Luca to speak.
“Somebody wanna tell me what the hell happened last night?” Axel asked, his voice thick and deep, sending shivers down my back.
“Ax, this is Scarlet,” Luca said. Through the corner of my eye, I could see him looking at me but I didn’t dare meet his eyes. “She’s the one we were looking for, and she saved us.”
“Okay,” Ax said. “So why was I cuffed to the bed?” Silence. I folded my arms and continued to stare at the dark green carpet under my feet, expecting Luca to continue. “Why was I cuffed to the bed, Scarlet?”
I almost called the ECU myself to imprison this guy. The way he said my name was a damn crime.
“For your own safety,” I said, but my words were slurred together so I wasn’t sure if he heard me. I needed to get it together, and fast.
“Those people we found with her in that building last night,” Luca started, making me sigh in relief. “It looks like they’re after her. She was fighting them when we found her, and so they turned to us.”
“Yes, I remember,” Ax said. “What were they? Witches? I don’t remember much after I looked the guy in the face.” He stood up and moved his neck around. Now I felt guilty for cuffing them to the rooms.
“They sucked our powers, dude,” Grover said, the four piercings lining the left side of his bottom lip clinking together with every word he spoke. “They’re some sort of vampires, except they’re not after blood.”
Another second of silence. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“It’s the truth,” Luca said reluctantly. “It’s why Scarlet hid us away from each other, so that they wouldn’t be able to sense our energy.”
“Hold on a sec,” Ax said. “You realize how this sounds, right? Sense our energy? Are you out of your mind?”
“I’m talking about some pretty freaky dudes who’ll be here any second now, if we don’t leave.” Neither of them truly realized what they were up against and it felt like they needed the reminder. Every second we spent out there in the open was a risk.
“And go where?” Fallon said, her voice slightly shaking.
That’s when I realized what I’d been thinking, and it hit me like a fist on my nose. Had I really been ready to take these guys back home? It was reckless, not to mention stupid. I was fine on my own. I’d taught myself how to survive and maybe it wasn’t a stellar life, but I had time. I was just twenty-one. I could figure shit out later. For now, I was okay, and these people were clearly not. It was bad enough that I wasn’t alone, the only freak of nature in the world, like I’d always thought.
But looking at their faces, they were hopeless. Completely clueless to what was going on—even worse than me. So the better question was, could I leave them on their own and get back to my life like the night before had never happened?
“Wherever you came from,” I said, but my heart wasn’t into it. I still owed it to myself to try. “They never came after you before. Just go back to doing whatever you were doing before you found me.” Maybe they’d prefer it that way.
But Luca narrowed his brows. “We can’t just go back after last night. We need to know more.”
“You don’t. Not really. You were safe before. Just keep doing what you did, and you’ll be fine.” It was the honest to God truth. Having the mindless thingies in one’s life wasn’t easy, and they were all better off without them.
“Scarlet, there’s no point in hiding if there are others like us out there. And if those men are roaming around the city, waiting to find people like us so they can suck them dry, we need to do something about it.”
It almost made me laugh. “I tried, remember? I notified the ECU. They didn’t care. Maybe living in hiding isn’t the best way to live, but—”
He cut me off. “No, no, you don’t understand. We came together with the purpose to find others like us.”
“And I’m telling you that it’s dangerous. Those people are not going to stop and trust me when I tell you that you’re not prepared to deal with them.”
“So teach us,” Grover said, raising his chin. “If what you’re saying is true, than teach us how to do what you’re doing.”
Heat rose to my cheeks and I cleared my throat. “Why would you want to learn when you can just walk away? They never attacked you before. So why stay here and wait for them?”
“Why do you?” Ax’s words hung on the air for a few seconds before they even made sense to me.
Why did I stay in Manhattan?
It was a good question. I could walk away, too. I’d never been attacked in any other place, only here. So why didn’t I?
In all honesty, I thought about it a lot, especially in the beginning. The truth that I never wanted to admit to myself was that I stayed because here, I had a purpose. I had something to do. And learning how to defend myself first, then kill those sons of bitches after was so much better than living a quiet life and letting depression eat at my soul little by little, until I was an old lady with ten cats and a bag of regrets pushing down on my shoulders.
But that was just me. It was a stupid reason for most, and I would never argue about it. These people were different. They had an out. They had each other.
“Because I want to. It’s what I do. This life suits me, but that doesn’t mean that it will suit you.” It was sad, but the truth was like that, most times.
“I still don’t understand half of what’s going on,” Ax said with a sigh. “Can you please start from the beginning?”
“And don’t tell us to walk away, not until we’ve heard it all,” Luca added, as if he’d read my mind and knew that that was exactly what I was about to do.
Was this what I wanted? To take a chance with four strangers who could very well be ECU agents sent to gather intel on me?
But they weren’t. The mindless thingies had sucked their magic—I’d seen it with my own eyes. There’s no way they could have faked that. And we’d already wasted more than enough time. I never worked well under pressure. I ended up caving, and this time was no different.
“Follow me.”
I was taking them back home to my apartment, the only place where I could free my senses and magic and not feel threatened.
Half of me wanted them to change their minds, to tell me that they didn’t trust me enough to follow me to some unknown place just because I claimed to know all the answers. I sure as hell wouldn’t have taken my word for it.
But the other half was saying something about a new purpose. Hiding and trying to learn how to hunt the mindless thingies was fun, but what if I could help others out, too? Maybe this was just what I needed and had no idea I did. Maybe it was meant to be for us to meet the night before. Whatever it was, I’d already taken the leap, and though I searched for a string of regret somewhere in my body, I found none.
Four
I saw him the second we stepped out of the three story building. He was standing across the street, hands in his pockets, his slit pupils visible from thirty feet away. Before I knew it, my swords were in my hands and adrenaline took over my body. At first, I was surprised that he’d found me. I’d kept my focus on shielding my magic perfectly, never allowed myself a second’s slip. But then I remembered the other four people standing behind me. If I had any doubts about their nature before, now they were gone.
“Get back inside,” I said to them, slowly stepping forward to show that mindless thingie that it wasn’t going to be easy for him to do what he was there to do. In response, the guy smiled. His pale skin looked white under the sun and freaked me out more than I liked to admit.
“What is it?” Luca asked, looking up and down the street.
“Him.” I nodded across the street. “Get back inside the building and wait for me there.”
This was exactly what I meant when I said I was fine on my own. Now, to lure the mindless thingie, I was going to have to show him my magic and drag him into the closest alley, away from the public eye. But doing so could potentially attract more of his kind. And if I left the others all alone…dammit.
“Change of plans. Get in the car, now,” I said to Luca and watched the mindless thingie step onto the street. He didn’t seem to mind the cars honking and almost hitting him with every step he took. He just kept on coming. “Go!”
“I’m staying,” Ax said, and my head almost exploded. I let my control slip just a little so the thingie could sense my magic.
“Leave, right now,” I shouted. Through the corner of my eye, I could see that Luca, Fallon and Grover were gone, but Ax wouldn’t budge. “Just go, please! You’re going to die!”
Putting one of my swords under my sleeves again, I reached for my throwing knives from my back pocket and threw them at the mindless thingie, now barely five feet away from me. In times like these, you couldn’t allow yourself to get concerned about the location. Screw people watching. It was a matter of life or death.
Pushing Ax to the side when I saw Luca’s black car coming, I threw another two of my knives at the mindless thingie. They buried in his chest but he didn’t give a shit—he just kept coming.
Lucky for me, Ax had gotten in the car, and the tires screeched as Luca tried to hit the thingie coming for me, but he was fast. Faster than they’d anticipated, and he jumped much higher than normal, only to land on the sidewalk. Luca didn’t stop. He drove down the street.
