Storm Witch

by D. N. Hoxa

  Oscar took a step forward. “I did the best I could. They’re here, just like you asked, with no way of escaping.” He sounded desperate now, too. I couldn’t even come up with offensive enough words to describe him.

  “You’re lucky I’m in a good mood tonight,” Adams said, and walked over to the others, who were just two feet away from me. He analyzed them like they were objects on display, not beings, just like him.

  “I did my part,” Oscar said, his voice breaking. “Now bring me my daughter.”

  Sonovabitch. He hadn’t lied. He wasn’t working for the ECU. He was working with them. He’d just delivered us right to their lair to get his daughter back.

  Adams turned to him furiously. “Don’t order me, wolf,” he spit, and I almost expected him to start chanting. He was a Green witch, one of the most powerful witches of his kind, and when the women with the skirts took a step forward, their arms slightly raised, I realized they were his freaking bodyguards. But then Adams turned to the door behind me. “Go.”

  Two soldiers stepped around me and nodded at Oscar, who had the decency to look at us with tears in his eyes. As if he was sorry he’d done this. Even if he were, it didn’t matter. If I ever got out of this place alive, I was going to find him, and I was going to make sure he paid. Not only for me, but for the others. They’d trusted him blindly, given their lives to “help” him get his daughter out. And this was how he’d repaid us.

  For now, he and his werewolves followed the soldiers deeper into the hallway, until I could no longer see them. Now, I felt even more hopeless. More alone.

  “Take their weapons and prepare them,” Adams said, walking back to his colleague. Cain smiled like this was the best night of his life as he watched four soldiers walk over to the others, and begin to touch them everywhere looking for weapons. The fifth kneeled in front of me. He took my gun, took the sword from my hand, emptied my pockets of all my knives and hearts, then proceeded to search my legs, ankles, and even bra. If I could feel it, my fist would be itching to meet with his face.

  When he was sure that nothing else was on my clothes, he proceeded to the dragon bracelet around my hand. I could only see it because my arm was right in front of my face. The soldier tried to take it off, but it slipped from his fingers. So he grabbed it by the wings again, and pulled.

  Suddenly, I could feel again.

  Pain like nothing I’d ever experienced before drilled into my bones. It set my heart on fire and fried my brains in less than a second. It spread into my flesh and skin, giving me the feeling that flames were eating at me, little by little.

  “What the fuck?” the solider said, and grabbed the bracelet with his other hand, too. The pain wrapped itself around me tighter. A scream gathered in my throat but it couldn’t come out. Air left me and my eyes were wide open, begging whoever was looking to just make it stop. But it didn’t. Not for a few more seconds that felt like an eternity to me while the pain gnawed at my every organ, my every cell, until it consumed me completely.

  But then, just as fast as it started, the pain began to fade. Noise reached my ears, something heavy falling against the wall.

  It was the soldier. One second he was kneeling in front of my hand, and the next, he was sliding down the wall by my feet, his eyes closed. Was that me? Had I somehow used my magic to throw him off me?

  Silence filled my ears. Adams took a step closer to me, looking at my hand. He narrowed his brows in confusion.

  “Get that off her, right now,” he said, pointing his finger at the dragon bracelet, and another soldier stepped in front of me. When he kneeled, he was still looking back to his colleague, who hadn’t moved a single inch. Was he dead? How had I done that? I couldn’t even feel my magic, or my body, and not for lack of trying.

  The soldier’s face glistened with sweat and his fingers shook as he reached out for the dragon bracelet.

  No, no, no, no. Please, don’t touch it! I shouted with my whole heart, but no sound came out of me. My jaw was locked, my vocal cords broken, and all I could do was watch in horror. This time, the pain began as nothing but a pressing against my skin. Moving extremely slowly, the solider put two fingers around it, and began to pull. My eyes must have rolled in their sockets because for a second, I blacked out. Begging for unconsciousness wasn’t working. The pain was too strong to let go of my mind, and it kept on filling every part of my body like I was in a bathtub soaking in it.

  My hand was bleeding heavily, my skin was torn everywhere the dragon touched it. I felt every drop that hit the floor and my wide eyes pleaded with the soldier to let go of me. Please, please, please, stop!

  He did—but not because he wanted to. Something happened and a wave of energy hit him straight in the chest. I saw the impact from the vest he wore. He went flying a foot into the air before he landed with his back on top of his colleague, screaming. Others rushed in to help him. Three soldiers grabbed him by the arms and laid him on the floor. He kept on moaning, though his limbs seemed to have been frozen in place.

  Holy cow. It wasn’t me who’d done that. It was the bracelet.

  The pain was fading quickly, allowing me to breathe again. My body went back to numb, as if it didn’t exist without the pain. Adams walked over to me and squatted in front of my hand, his face white, his thin lips pressed tightly together. He inspected the dragon around my hand and the blood still dripping from around it. I saw the second his breath caught in his throat, and realization flashed in his eyes.

  “Filthy fairy,” he whispered angrily. When he looked at me, a world of hatred was drawn in the brown of his eyes. He stood up, cursing under his breath, and barked at the soldiers: “Take her.”

  Booted feet in front of me again. This time, when the soldier kicked me in the face, I was gone.

  Fifteen

  The first thing I noticed when I came to was that I could feel my body again. My fingers moved at my command, and so did my toes. There was no pain in my right hand anymore, but there was that feeling of having been beaten lingering in my muscles, screaming at me to get moving.

  But when I tried, I couldn’t.

  Panic wrapped its fingers around my throat and my eyes shot open. I was in a room somewhere, with grey walls and blue LED lights at the corners of the ceiling. I was lying on a white leather bed, and there were cuffs all over me. Thick cuffs made of fucking steel. One was around my left wrist, one around my arm, a big one around my waist, right below my breasts, and four more on my thighs and ankles. Let’s not forget the collar around my neck. My right arm was farther away from my body, held in place by four leather belts around my shoulder and elbow. No cuffs. Perfect. Reaching for my magic was something I’d been doing since I was a kid, so it was a perfectly natural process.

  Until now.

  My magic was there. I could feel it, blowing against the darkness of my mind, swirling around my thoughts, slithering under my skin—the same as ever. But it was focusing in my chest, and when I tried to spread it down my arms and to my fingers, it wouldn’t move. What the heck?

  I tried again. Thunder raged inside my head. My magic rushed toward my hands, but it met resistance. There was something in my arm, right under my skin, that stopped it. It wouldn’t let it flow the way it always did, almost like my arms and hands weren’t there at all. My heartbeat tripled as I tried again, and again, and again…

  Accepting that I couldn’t use my magic was hard. I’d chosen to keep it hidden all my life, and to never use it because of the demons, but now that it was taken from me? It stripped me of the will to live.

  My magic was as good as gone, but the dragon bracelet was still there. No more blood on my skin. My hand felt numb, and the bracelet looked so damn innocent. It didn’t make sense to me at all. How had that thing caused so much pain? How had it thrown grown men across the room?

  And more importantly, what had Adams meant when he said filthy fairy?

  The others were all to my left, lying in white beds, cuffed all the way, just like me. They were all unc
onscious, but they were breathing. They were cleaned of blood, too. Waking them up with a shout was the first thing I was going to do, when the door by the last bed with Luca on it opened with a loud noise.

  My heart almost leaped out of my chest. Five people walked in, all dressed nicely in pressed white shirts and black pants, each dragging some sort of a metal stand on wheels behind them. The first man walked over to my bed and stopped to my left. I couldn’t see what he had on that stand very well, but I did see a plastic white bowl with something pink and steaming in there.

  “What are you doing?” I asked the guy as he put on some blue latex gloves and a mask on his face. My voice was hoarse and my tongue still a bit numb, but I didn’t let that stop me. “What the hell are you doing to us?”

  Each of his friends had stopped by a bed, and they were all putting on their gloves and masks, too, moving in unison as if they’d rehearsed this a thousand times already.

  “No need to be rude. We’re just getting your measurements,” the guy by my bed said. His black brows rose as he analyzed my face, then took some sort of a metal cylinder from his stand, and began to mix the pink stuff in the bowl.

  “Don’t get that thing close to me! You have no right to keep us here, asshole! Let us go, now!” It was useless to freak out on him because he certainly didn’t look like anyone who called the shots around here, but I was scared of that thing touching me. It was still steaming!

  “If you cooperate, this will be over very quickly,” he said, winking at me like he was my friend.

  “Fuck you!” I spit, trying to move my body, but the cuffs were too tightly locked around me. I was hopeless and the realization hit me like a kick in the gut.

  Raising a brow, he put the bowl back on the stand. “Suit yourself,” he said and leaned down to look for something else. I almost thought he was going to really back away. When he came up, he was holding an ugly thing made of metal that looked terribly similar to a gag. Dentists were a nightmare, but their tools looked like heaven compared to this. It looked like a tool designed for freaking torture.

  “No!” I shouted when he brought it close to my mouth.

  “I told you, if you’d cooperated…” His voice trailed off as I moved my head from one side to the other as fast as I could. There was no way I’d let him put that thing on me. No. Way.

  “You fucking a—” That was as far as I got. My head stopped moving when he put something in my mouth that made me regret having ever opened it. It was a piece of wood. Bile rose up my throat when my tongue slid over it. It felt wet, as if it had been in somebody else’s mouth just now. I thought to try and push it away a second too late. The guy was fast. He placed the metal holders around the corners of my mouth. Something clicked into place, and he took the piece of wood out. By then, I could no longer close my jaw without passing out from pain.

  I shouted with all my strength, but he didn’t seem to mind. He’d put the gag on me, secured it tightly, and no amount of pressure from my jaws was going to release it. He took the bowl in his hands, mixed it with the cylinder, then put his hand in it. That made me feel a bit better. If he could touch it, it meant it wasn’t as hot as it looked.

  He poured the pink stuff on the palm of his hand. It had turned sticky now, and it was no longer steaming. Dropping the bowl, he proceeded to roll between his hands what now looked as innocent as pink gum.

  “Where did you get that thing?” he said, and I caught him staring at my right hand, and the dragon around it. “It’s not my department or anything, but I heard it’s from the fairies. Must have cost a fortune.” His greedy eyes sized the bracelet like it was a treasure, until he was done rolling and massaging the pink thing. He then brought it to my mouth.

  It wasn’t hot, or even disgusting. It felt exactly like gum without any taste. I shouted again, but the guy continued to press it against my lower jaw with all his strength. I wasted no time at all, and the more he pushed, the faster I moved my tongue against it.

  “Hey, knock it off,” he complained. “Stop, or I’ll make you.”

  Fuck you, I said in my mind and continued to move my tongue as fast as possible, to get that thing off my teeth.

  With a loud sigh, he turned back to his stand on wheels to get something else. The something was a syringe with clear liquid inside, and a very sharp needle. He didn’t even give me the chance to scream before he thrust that thing on the inside of my left arm, and emptied it in one movement. Cold spread up my veins, chasing away my blood, freezing my body in mere seconds. The guy put his mask down and smiled as he watched me slowly slip into unconsciousness. Good for him. The asshole had really made me stop.

  ***

  I woke up with a jolt. Trying to sit up resulted in a lot of pain. I’d forgotten about all the metal pinning me to the bed, that had now dug into my skin, knocking the breath out of me. Fear and panic crashed into my chest as everything came back to me in a rush. Sequences of what had happened ever since that night I’d invited the mindless thingies in that construction site flashed before my eyes so fast, they made me dizzy. I ran my tongue over my teeth to see if any of the pink gum that guy had put in my mouth was still there, but there was nothing.

  We were in a different room now, long and narrow, with grey walls and those damn blue LED lights in the corners. Two screens were on either side of the room—one on top of the door to my left, and the other hanging from the ceiling. Fallon’s bed was the first, right by the door, followed by Ax. I was in the middle, with Luca and Grover to my right. They were all waking up, too. The beds were raised, putting us in a half seated position now. Across from us, the wall was made of a distorted mirror. It made us look strange, disproportioned. Luckily, it was too far away to see any details of my face. Not that it mattered how bad I looked.

  “Is everybody okay?” I whispered, feeling naked all of the sudden because I knew that people were on the other side of that mirror, looking at us. Was it Adams? Cain? Other ECU members?

  “We’re fucked,” Grover spit. The sound of him trying to break his cuffs was painful. “We’re fucking chained to beds! Get us out of here!”

  “Grover, calm down,” Luca whispered, but Grover didn’t care. I couldn’t see him very well, but he was just as terrified as the rest of us.

  “Shouting isn’t going to get us anywhere,” Ax said. “Just take it easy, man.”

  “Take it easy? We’re never getting out of here. Not ever!” With one last try and scream, Grover fell against the bed, breathing heavily. “They even took off my piercings, fucking twats!” I wished I had the strength to do what he’d done, to just take some of the weight off my shoulders by screaming and moving, but fear had the opposite effect on me. I froze more often than not, and my body refused to cooperate.

  “Can anyone use your magic?” I asked reluctantly, already knowing the answer.

  Silence for a second, while they all tried to reach for their powers, but failed. Squeezing my eyes shut, I sighed.

  “Shit,” Ax whispered. “This is bad. This is really bad.” It was worse.

  “Anybody heard anything? How long have we been here? Did they move us?” Luca asked, his voice a panicked whisper. I wanted to tell him that they had—the last time I was awake, we’d been in a different place—but before I could speak, the door to our left opened.

  Sylvester Cain walked in, with Adams, the two women wearing pencil skirts, and the guy with the frameless glasses we’d met in the elevator going into the building. Chills washed down my back, filling my skin with goosebumps. These people were worse than the devil, in my opinion, and they had us cuffed to beds. They could do anything they wanted to us, and nobody was going to stop them.

  Cain and Adams stopped in front of us, while the women and the man stayed close to the door. They all watched us, analyzed us in detail as if we were the most curious things they’d ever seen. Like we were any different from them, when we weren’t. And then Adams spoke.

  “Good evening, everyone. We’re glad to have you here.” His
voice sent shivers down my back. His fake smile made him look even more evil than he already was.

  “You’re keeping us here without right,” Luca said. He probably knew who was in front of us, too. “We’ve done nothing wrong.”

  “We’re going to have to disagree on that, Mr. Clarke,” Adams said, shaking his index at him like a reproaching parent. All blood left Luca’s face, and Adams noticed. His smile grew bigger. “Yes, I know who all of you are. Luca Clarke, son of Flora and George Clarke, Green witches from Florida. You walked away from home when you were seventeen years old, your mother said. She never heard from you again.” Luca tried to break free from his cuffs, and when that didn’t work, he shouted at Adams with all he had. But Adams didn’t care. He kept on smiling. “What kind of a son does that to a mother?” The hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention. I wanted nothing more than to spit in his face. I didn’t know Luca, and he didn’t, either. We had no idea what had made him walk away from home, but I suspected it was for the same reason I did.

  Adams walked over to Grover’s bed next. “Grover Burnett. I’m afraid I have no idea who your parents are. You were found in the street by a Blood witch here in Manhattan, who took you in until you were five. She then decided to leave you right where she found you, and you’ve lived in the streets ever since, haven’t you.” It wasn’t even a question. Adams had guessed, and the look on Grover’s face, so full of pain and desperation, confirmed it. My heart broke for him into a thousand pieces. Just imagining being all alone in the world at five years old made me want to fall on my knees and weep. It was a miracle he’d turned out the way he had. Anyone else—me—would either be a thief, a murderer, all of the above, or dead.

  Grover didn’t have it in him to even scream anymore. He said nothing but lowered his head. I held my breath when Adams walked back toward me, but he didn’t stop by my bed. He went all the way to Fallon’s. “Fallon Lucinda Meyer from Wisconsin. You were quite the troublemaker, weren’t you?” Adams laughed. “Your parents, Abigail and John Meyer, didn’t want you when they found out about your nature, so you grandfather raised you all by himself. And you ran away from him without word on the night of your eighteenth birthday. Not very nice, Ms. Meyer. The man was heartbroken.”