by D. N. Hoxa
“Good evening, Miss,” the fairy said with a curt nod, surprising me even more. I didn’t want to be rude, but I didn’t know the guy, and for all I knew, he was there to cause me even more pain than Melinda had. So I kept my mouth shut.
“This is it, Mr. Gerin,” Adams said impatiently. He apparently didn’t want me and the fairy chatting.
“Yes, I see,” the fairy said, his eyes moving to my dragon bracelet. He slowly approached my bed and walked around it, closer to my right hand. Leaning closer with his hands folded behind him, he analyzed it.
I watched his violet eyes closely for any reaction. They moved fast from one end of the dragon to the other, focusing on the wings the most. I felt naked again, as if he were looking right into my soul, and seeing all my deepest, darkest secrets. I noticed the second his lips turned downward, and the muscles of his face froze. The fairy didn’t blink for the longest second, the color in his eyes swirling like my magic did around me to protect me from bullets. That alone told me that whatever he was seeing wasn’t good. It was far from it.
“Well, Mr. Gerin?” Adams asked, tapping his foot against the floor impatiently. “Do you know what it is?”
Gerin leaned away from my hand and stepped back. He took in a shaky breath before meeting my eyes. “It’s a dragon,” he whispered, but the way he said it, it was like I was hearing this for the first time. My instincts were shouting at me to look away, to run away before he could say more, my own mind forgetting that I was cuffed to that damn bed.
“Yes, I realize that. What I mean is, what kind of weapon is it?” Adams said, annoyed now.
The fairy raised a blond brow. “It is a dragon, Mr. Adams. One of the rarest kinds in the realm. A Storm dragon, made of skin and bones.”
My breath caught in my throat and my eyes moved to my hand. What the heck?
Adams chuckled. “You mean…you mean like, a real dragon?” he said, as if what the fairy was implying was ridiculous.
“Yes,” Gerin said without missing a beat. “This is ancient magic, considered forgotten long before our time. Fairy, but witch magic as well.” I’d known it wasn’t going to be anything good, but this? It was so bad, I still didn’t even understand it.
“How is she using it? We can’t get it off her,” Adams said, as if I weren’t even there. But I was. Right there, and this close to pissing my pants.
“She’s not, I don’t think,” Gerin said, raising his chin. “It’s the dragon.”
The dragon. As in, the dragon was alive and could do magic all by itself. A dry laugh escaped me. This guy was crazy! It was a bracelet, for fuck’s sake, a knuckle—whatever, just not a real dragon. No way.
But the fairy didn’t laugh with me. He didn’t tell me he was kidding. The expression on his face didn’t change. Was I in a dream? Because it didn’t make sense for him to mean this.
He means it, my instincts said. My instincts were little assholes, but most of the time, they were right.
It hit me like a freaking hammer on my head as I looked at the bracelet again. Oh, God. It was a dragon. A real dragon. I needed to get it off of me, right now!
“It’s made of dragon skin, probably bone, too. It’s a perfect imitation in every way….” The fairy met my eyes again. “Where did you get this, girl?”
“You have to take it off of me,” I said instead. My skin crawled as I imagined the bracelet coming to life and gnawing at my flesh. No, no, no, just…no. “Please, just take it off.”
“What does it do? And where does it come from?” Adams asked, no longer annoyed, but very, very concerned.
Gerin turned to him. “I believe that’s a matter better discussed behind closed doors, Mr. Adams.”
“No!” I shouted. “Listen, you’re a fairy. You can get it off me, right? Just get it off, right now!”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Miss,” Gerin said. “Nobody can.” I could be mistaken, but his violet eyes were now filled with sorry. He pitied me, and what was worse than to be pitied by a fairy?
“Mr. Gerin?” Adams said, waving for the door, and the fairy didn’t hesitate. He turned his back on me without so much as a nod, and he disappeared out the door before I could come to terms with what he said. Nobody can. There was a live dragon around my hand and nobody could get it off me.
I laughed again. Crying just didn’t seem like a good enough fit for the situation. I laughed like I wasn’t cuffed to a bed in an ECU building, with a dragon around my hand that threw people off me when they touched it. A dragon that was never going to come off. Why had Oscar done this to me? Wasn’t it enough that he’d served us to the ECU on a silver platter? Better yet, was this dragon really Oscar’s doing? The words the fairy said rushed through my mind. Ancient magic, long forgotten. Somehow, those words didn’t fit Oscar’s profile. But if he hadn’t given this to me—at least knowingly—who had?
***
I must have dozed off at some point, because when I woke up, my head was pounding and my body felt like it was stuck in quicksand. It kept dragging me down, though I could see that I was still lying on the same bed, cuffed by the same cuffs, looking at the same distorted image of myself in the mirror, thinking the same thoughts. The ECU, the fairy, the dragon around my hand. Every time I looked at it, a new wave of fear crashed onto me, suffocating me. I’d never been more scared of anything before, not even the demons. Not even my mother. But this thing I’d thought was made of plastic, and at one point thought it to be pretty, was what made me want to break the cuffs with my teeth, and run away to another universe.
The noise coming from my right made me realize that we weren’t alone in the room. Four workers were there with us, and they’d laid the beds of the others all the way—except mine. I was still half sitting, and my numb buttocks said I hadn’t moved from that position in a long time.
The workers had their stands right behind them, like always. I searched for Patrick, but he wasn’t there. It looked like whatever they were doing, they weren’t going to do the same to me.
“How long have we been in here?” I asked, my voice a scratchy mess. The workers, moving almost at the same time, were unlocking the cuffs around the others’ hands. My heart fell all the way to my heels. Holy cow…“Hey!” I shouted with all my voice. “How long have we been in here?”
I shouted because I needed to wake the others. If any of them came to, they’d find their hands were free, and they could knock the workers out easily. They could grab their tablets or their keys, or whatever they could, and they could get us out of here.
“Five days,” the man next to Fallon’s bed said, but that no longer mattered.
“Hey! Wake up!” I shouted again while they proceeded to flip the others’ hands. “Wake up!” Their hands were free! They could…they could…
The workers put the cuffs back on, and tightened them in seconds. Dammit.
None of them looked at me as they turned to their stands. They all had identical silver bags in their hands, and placed them on the chests of the others. With their gloves and masks on, they unzipped the bags and took out something that looked like very long, very thin needles, with small crystal balls attached to the top.
Then, they proceeded to thrust the needles into the others’ palms without so much as a blink. My own skin itched, imagining what it would feel like to be pricked that way. When each had five needles on both palms, the workers stepped back, and took out their tablets from their pockets. It was freaky how they moved, as if someone was pulling their strings at the same time.
“What are you doing to them?” And why weren’t they doing it to me? I suspected the dragon on my right hand had something to do with it. “Answer me! What are you doing to them?” I said, raising my voice with every word. Focused on their tablets, none of the workers looked at me, but when they were done pressing buttons, they put the devices away and looked at the others, as if waiting for something to happen.
“We’re measuring,” Fallon’s worker said, and the others gave him a pointy
look. “We’re measuring the speed and intensity of the magic that leaves their hands.”
“How can you do that?” I asked halfheartedly, unsure if I even wanted to know. Those needles looked so innocent, like they were toys instead of something to tell the speed and intensity of magic.
But the worker didn’t answer me. I shouted at the top of my voice, but he never opened his mouth again, and a few minutes later, once they were satisfied with whatever they saw on the screens of their tablets, they took the needles off the others’ palms, and put them back in the silver bags. They then released the cuffs around the others’ hands, flipped them over, and tightened them again, before raising their beds into a half seated position. The sound of the wheels of their stands was forever imprinted in my memories. They’d be part of my nightmares at some point, I was sure of it.
Once they left, I got back to shouting for the others to wake up, until finally, they began to move. Being alone freaked me out now that I knew that the dragon bracelet wasn’t a bracelet at all. Or a brass knuckle.
“Hey, hey, what’s going on?” Luca said in panic, looking at my hand to see if there was any blood.
“My hands are sore,” Fallon whispered.
“Mine, too,” said Ax.
“The workers were just here,” I said, relieved to be talking to them. “They put needles in your palms to measure the speed and intensity of your magic while it leaves your hands.” I hated to be the bearer of bad news, but they had the right to know what was being done to us while we were unconscious.
“What?” Grover shouted. “They touched me while I was asleep?” He sounded terrified.
“Fuck!” Ax spit. “Has this happened before?”
“It has. They took samples of our teeth, too.” I could still feel the strange pink gum against my tongue, and the gag Patrick had put in my mouth.
“Motherf—”
“They measured our magic, too,” Fallon cut Ax off.
“What?” Dammit, I thought I’d woken up every time they’d touched me!
“I woke up a while ago to find patches attached to our chests and stomachs. The worker said he was measuring our magic,” Fallon said in a shaky whisper. “I saw his tablet for a second.”
“What did it say?” I wanted to know, if they measured our magic, how much of it did we have?
But Fallon sighed. “I didn’t see any numbers, just the shape of a body, and a pulsating blue light in the chest. It looked a lot like lightning strikes mashed together, but I could’ve seen wrong.”
Silence fell in the room as we tried to imagine what else they’d done to us while we were out cold. Had they stripped us all? Had they seen everything in our bodies?
“Scarlet, you have to get us out of here,” Luca said, his words a slap to my face.
“Use the Pretters, Scarlet. Fill them. You can get us out,” Fallon said, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she sounded like she was crying.
“I don’t…” I don’t know if I can, was what I wanted to say, but that was a lie. I was pretty sure I couldn’t.
“Just try it. Come on, you can do it,” Ax said. “Just focus your mind and your magic. Their spells or whatever is stopping us have to have cracks.” But that was just wishful thinking. The ECU never did anything halfway.
“You still have the Pretters, right?” asked Grover.
“Yes, they’re here.” Nobody had taken them so far. “There’s more. A fairy was in here.”
“A fairy?” they all said in unison.
Swallowing hard, I cleared my throat. “They brought him to identify the dragon around my hand.” The dragon that could literally wake up and eat my hand any second. Fuck, that shit was scarier than a spider. “He said it was a real dragon, or made of dragon skin and bone. That it had its own magic and that nobody could take it off me.”
“A real dragon?” Fallon asked.
“What can it do?” said Ax.
“He didn’t want to say in front of me.” Now, Erick Adams probably knew what this thing could do, and if it was as bad as I’d feared, it was just going to make him extra cautious about me. With every passing second, more doors were slamming shut in my face. No more options were left on the table. Except one.
“So why are you so freaked out?” Fallon said. Now, she was smiling. “Scarlet, it’s a real dragon with magic of its own!”
“Holy hell,” Luca whispered.
“The Pretters,” Ax said. “You can fill the Pretters with the dragon.”
I could?
“Stop sulking and get to work!” Fallon demanded.
“This could actually work,” Luca said, smiling, too. “I don’t know a lot about dragon magic, but I know that it’s strong. Maybe it’s strong enough to fill a spell stone?” He’d apparently forgotten that it was a spell stone. Yes, I hadn’t wanted to hear it the first time he shouted it—I’d been too excited at the prospect of getting out of there—but that was before I’d known what I had attached to my body.
“Come on, Scarlet. Try it!” Grover urged.
Trying it meant actually accepting that there was a real dragon on my hand, and that it had magic. Listening to it was a whole other story, but admitting it? It left a bad taste on my tongue. But accepting it or not, it was there, and the truth was, I’d never know if it could work unless I tried it. What else was there to do, anyway?
“Okay,” I said halfheartedly. “Okay, I’ll try it.”
The others cheered me, told me I could do it, and their words nearly brought me to tears. All their hopes were on me, and they really believed that I could save them.
Me? I thought the same words my father had said to me before sending me off to the academy in Washington: I’m good for nothing but trouble.
Eighteen
Waking up by being stabbed in the neck with a needle was not fun. Opening your eyes to Melinda’s face in front of you was a sure way to start a bad day, in my opinion. Especially seeing that she had her dark red bag with her.
I almost didn’t recognize her, at first. Her makeup was gone. So were her stilettos and pressed suit. Instead, she wore a white tank top, jeans, and sneakers. Her hair was the same, though—a mess of curls tied behind her head.
Behind her was Adams, resting against the mirror, his arms folded in front of him. He looked bored out of his mind, as if he really believed that this was a waste of his time. Not Melinda, though. She was focused as she checked out the miniature dragon around my hand. She was there with a purpose.
Just like I suspected, the others were all unconscious. I preferred it that way. I didn’t want them to hear me scream. Because there would be screams. If Melinda did to me what she did last time, there’d be a lot of screams coming from me. And a lot of pain, too. I was so not looking forward to that.
“You’re wasting your time,” I said, trying to appeal to Adams, who obviously didn’t want to be there. He was the one who called the shots, wasn’t he? If he didn’t want something done, it wouldn’t be. “You’re going to end up against the mirror again.”
Melinda pretended I didn’t exist. She pretended nothing existed except the dragon on my hand. When she approached the bed, I realized she was much shorter than she’d looked in those stilettos. Now, she barely reached my shoulder while she put spell stones on my arms. She lined three of them neatly, the last one very close to the dragon’s tail. Her hands shook slightly, but that didn’t stop her from putting another five spell stones on the bed, around my hand. She was taking no chances this time, and the magic she used to activate the stones was cold as ice against my skin. Slowly, the tips of my fingers began to grown numb, but I already expected this. If only the Pretters could numb the pain as well…
“What if it doesn’t work?” Adams asked when Melinda was done with the stones, and she turned back to her bag. Giving Adams a perfect view of her ass in jeans for a change, she took out her gloves, and this time, she had some sort of a mask in her hands, too. It was square and transparent, and she looked like a construction worker with it on.
“Like I said before,” she said, and reached down for the bag again, to bring out that ugly pincer with the huge, uneven jaws. Just the site of it brought me pain all by itself. “If this doesn’t do it, we’ll cut the skin under the dragon, and if even that doesn’t work, we’ll chop her hand off. There’s no way that can’t work. Fuck what the fairy said.”
Cut the skin? Chop her hand off? I almost passed out.
“Just be careful,” Adams said and stepped aside when Melinda came close to the bed. With her tongue sticking out, she brought the jaws of the pincer to the dragon’s wings.
“No, please. You’re just going to hurt yourself. Stop it! It won’t work!” The pain that was about to invade my body made my words ring perfectly true.
Just like always, Melinda didn’t give a shit about what I said. The jaws locked around the wings. She put all her strength in it, too. I could see her muscles shaking. When she began chanting, an invisible hand wrapped around my throat. The collar seemed like an accessory in comparison.
Then, she began to pull. Because of the eight Pretters and her conjuring, I suspected, it didn’t start slow at first. It didn’t warn me. The pain grabbed me furiously, spreading to my every cell in a split second. In those moments, I was willing to accept anything just to make it stop, death being at the top of my list. Melinda’s chanting grew louder the more she pulled, and it felt like she was trying to detach the skin of my entire body from my flesh. Fire and ice washed over me, making me forget my own name in the process. And it lasted for a very long time.
In the midst of it all, it occurred to me that maybe she could do it. Maybe Melinda could really take the dragon off me. Would that be worth all this pain?
Yes, it would.
But luck wasn’t on my side, not recently. Not a second after the seed of hope was planted in my heart, most of the pain just stopped abruptly, and Melinda flew two feet into the air. She landed with her back against the mirror, and her head slamming on the ceiling, before she fell to the floor. The noise made me jump, as if I had any reason to be afraid any longer. Her pincer was no longer in her hand, and the mask was not on her head anymore.
