Storm Power

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Miss Jones, so glad to finally find you. I’m afraid we have no time for chit-chat, but I’ve got something to offer you.”

  The man at the end of the line sounded…lighthearted, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

  “Who are you?” I asked and risked a glance at Elisa. The worry in her eyes told me to hurry. Too many people could see us.

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that over the phone, but I can tell you something else. The dragon you have on your hand.” My heart stopped beating for a second. “I want it. I want to remove it from you, and I think I know how.”

  “How?” Suddenly aware of the dragon on the hand holding the phone, I pictured life without it. It was a good life.

  “Get in the car with my men, Miss Jones. I promise no harm will come to you. All I want to do is talk.”

  “Do it.”

  I jumped to the side again, hitting the car with my hip. The driver screamed. Elisa had been right behind me, and I hadn’t even felt her.

  “Get in, Scarlet,” she said.

  “I don’t know who this is!” I said angrily, both to her and the man on the phone.

  “They’ll be here any second. If we don’t leave now…”

  Without finishing her sentence, Elisa put her dagger away and rushed to the Mercedes, where the men now were holding both the backdoors open.

  There were at least fifteen people watching us. Watching us, which meant they weren’t human. The cap wasn’t going to shield my face forever, and two of those people were holding cameras in their hands. Cursing under my breath, I put the dagger away, too. These strangers weren’t going to attack us, apparently. They were just going to drive us to whomever was on the phone.

  “If this is a trap, I swear to you—”

  “It’s not. The ECU is very close, Miss Jones. The choice is yours.” The line went dead.

  My stomach rolled. Oscar the werewolf materialized in front of my eyes. He’d offered us help once, too. And he’d taken us right to the ECU.

  But the ECU was on their way to us. I could hear tires screeching, coming from the East, and waiting for them there meant surrendering. Even if I did kill a few, there’d be too much of them, and they’d keep coming.

  “Scarlet!” Elisa shouted. The men had already gotten inside the car, and only the right back door remained opened.

  “Screw it,” I whispered to myself, and ran to it.

  The car moved before I even shut the door properly. The guys were in a hurry.

  Elisa was chanting furiously under her breath, but the guys in the front didn’t seem to mind. They had guns on their laps, big ones, heavy looking, and if they were going to use those on us, there was no way we’d get out of there alive. But they weren’t interested in us. They both pulled the windows down and each put a gunned hand outside. I put my knees on the backseat and turned to the back window. My arms were raised, my fingers outstretched. As soon as I saw the SUVs, I was going to blow them away with all my strength.

  The driver turned a corner and I slammed into Elisa so hard she stopped chanting. I was going to tell the guy to take it easy, but taking it easy wasn’t going to save us from the ECU, so I clamped my mouth shut and took my position again.

  Both to my surprise, and to my horror, there was no SUV behind us. I looked around us, too, but no car was coming in our direction. The driver kept his foot on the gas, going through red lights and honking his horn every time people were on the street, and he didn’t stop for anything.

  I risked a glance at Elisa, who seemed just as confused as I was. “They’re not coming after us,” she said.

  “This could be a trap.”

  “How well is this car protected?” Elisa asked the guys in the front.

  “Very,” one of them said, but we couldn’t tell which because neither seemed to even move.

  Putting her hand on my wrist, Elisa nodded. “I feel the energy. We’re fine for now.”

  I tossed the phone on the lap of the guy in the passenger seat. “Who was that? Give me a name.”

  “We’ll get there in a second,” the man said.

  “Where is there?” We were heading toward the Upper East Side if I weren’t mistaken, and the driver didn’t give a shit about traffic. I lost count of how many times we were almost hit a car, until I decided that my sanity was safer just looking away from the windshield altogether.

  Neither of them replied. They didn’t seem to think much of us, either, because they weren’t protecting themselves from us. We were right behind their backs, yet their guns were on their laps and both were focused on the road ahead. I looked at Elisa again and tried to communicate my thoughts through my eyes. These guys were either really just there to take us to talk to their boss, or they thought us extremely weak to not bother to defend themselves from us. The latter couldn’t be the case if they were with the ECU. Every time they came after us, they did so with lots of people, and they shot bullets. Besides, the guy on the phone hadn’t sounded like Erick Adams at all.

  “For now, let’s listen,” I whispered to Elisa, and she nodded.

  “Try to use it.” She looked sick when she said it, and her eyes moved to the dragon on my hand. “If they attack.”

  I’d tell her I would to indulge her, but the truth was, I wasn’t going to try to use the dragon, because it was going to cost me time and focus—something I could put to much better use with my magic and dagger.

  “Are you…” her voice trailed off as she searched my face, and I realized exactly what she meant.

  “I’m fine,” I reassured her. There was nothing in me that made me think I was going to lose consciousness right now. On the contrary, I still felt alive with adrenaline, and the rush wasn’t going to stop until I was face to face with the caller. I used this to look calm in front of Elisa, because I didn’t want her to worry the way I did. The caller’s idea of taking the dragon off me could be to kill me and be done with it. In fact, that’s probably exactly what he had in mind. But. There was a but. There had to be. No matter what the fairies said, there had to be a way to get this thing off me, preferably before it drained me completely. I was taking chances here, but honestly, there wasn’t much I had left to lose, since my life was already in danger. The only thing I wanted to live for was to save those witches.

  We were definitely in the Upper East, and the driver took us to a fancy looking building almost entirely made of glass. The pointy structures looked like they meant to pierce the sky and the sunlight gave them an orange hue, making it look like the building was about to be engulfed in flames. The car drove around the building, where a garage door was already open. Inside, I couldn’t see a thing. A look back said that nobody was following us into the alley. A second later, the garage door fell closed and we could only see the headlights of the car. The room was wide, possibly the size of the entire building, and the driver took us to the end of it, where another door was open, very narrow and dark, that led us down. Heart in my throat, I didn’t even dare breathe. Elisa had frozen by my side, too. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into, and suddenly, it felt like we’d made a terrible, terrible mistake. We were driving downward still, in a circle if I wasn’t mistaken, and walls of concrete were all we could see right outside the windows.

  Until the car stopped. My hands were sweaty, my magic just begging me to release it already. My nerves were a mess and when the guys opened their doors, I almost blew my magic at them. Ahead, a LED light turned on. The room was entirely made of concrete, and we weren’t the only ones in there. Five other people, dressed in suites like the ones in the car with us, stood by a set of chrome double doors, their hands folded in front of them.

  “I can take them all myself,” Elisa whispered, just loud enough for the guys in the front to hear before they stepped out of the car.

  “If they attack, don’t try to fight. Run.” We knew where we’d come from. That’s the way we’d take to get out.

  “Let’s go,” Elisa said with a nod. Her fingers
were wide open, seemingly frozen that way, in case she needed to conjure right away. She hadn’t bothered with the dagger, but I held onto mine tightly.

  Two of the men standing by the double doors opened the one on the left, then turned to us. Another set of doors?

  “No, thanks. We can talk to whoever called us right here,” I said. Going in deeper under the building would only make it harder to leave.

  “He’s expecting you,” the guy who’d driven us there barked, suddenly mad.

  “And I’ll expect him right here.” We were in front of the car, and Elisa stayed extra close to the driver’s door. Maybe she thought we could steal the car and escape that way, if it came to it? I liked the idea.

  “We need you to—” the driver said again, taking a step toward us, when he was cut off.

  “There’s no need for theatrics, Ryan.” The voice came from the other side of the half-open door. Shivers washed down my back and I watched the man step outside with a smile on his face.

  I almost passed the heck out. I must have been high or something, because what I was seeing couldn’t be possible.

  When we “broke into” the ECU facility with Oscar and his werewolves, we saw a guy in the elevator, who dragged himself out the hallway on all fours at the sight of us. That same guy came in and out of the room where they held us cuffed to beds, and always looked like a scared little boy, about to piss his pants.

  That same guy was now standing right in front of us.

  “Eddie?” It’s what Cain and Adams had called him. The last time I saw him, he wore a short-sleeved button-down with small squares all over, and khaki colored pants. He’d had glasses, too, and he’d gone to fetch the medical team to clean up my vomit when I threw up from the pain.

  Eddie smiled, but he was no longer the man I’d met in the ECU. Far from it. Now, he wore a fitted suit with indigo stripes and a silver tie. His hair was spiked, strings pointing at every direction, and his glasses were gone, leaving way for wide, intelligent looking eyes.

  “You remembered me, Scarlet,” he said, clapping his hands once. “It’s good to see you. In one piece.”

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” This was the Eddie? How had this happened?

  “Don’t look so surprised,” the man said, waving me off. The suited dudes had gathered around his back, looking at us, analyzing, but even if I’d wanted to attack, I was too shocked to make my body move. “Admit that I’m a spectacular actor, so we can get to business.”

  Spectacular actor? Absolutely. He could have fooled the whole world.

  No, he did fool the whole world. I was willing to bet all my money that nobody even suspected him to be the double agent. Eddie made damn sure of that.

  “How long have you played them? Who do you work for?” I asked in a breath. “Why?”

  I was crazy curious to know his reasons. He went to great lengths to establish the image of Eddie with glasses, of a guy who you felt was so unimportant, you’d spill all your secrets with him in the room because it would never even cross your mind that he could be listening, or using what you were saying against you. You’d show him everything without really realizing it, because your mind was made up that he didn’t matter, that he was weak, unable to hurt you in any way.

  Eddie seemed surprised by my questions. “Why? Because of information.”

  “You were there,” I said, when the shock began to retreat. Everything began to make more sense. This guy standing right in front of me had been there and had watched us chained to beds like animals. He’d been part of the group of people who’d held us there. Now was probably not the best time to get angry, but I couldn’t help it. He’d had the means to help me escape all along—obviously—and he never even tried. Not me, not all the other witches that were now in the hands of the demons. “You were there and you did nothing.” I took a step forward and put all the suited men behind Eddie on edge. “Why didn’t you help us?”

  That made Eddie laugh. “Oh, dear, you really mean that,” he said, then cleared his throat. “If you’re done, we can talk about the dragon on your hand because I don’t have time to waste, Scarlet Jones.” He spoke like his words were a warning.

  “I’m not talking about anything with you.”

  I spun around and headed back to the doors, pissed off. Fighting him would have been nice, but he had people around him, probably more hiding behind the doors he came out of, and I didn’t want to start something I didn’t know I could win. Not when there was so much at stake.

  “You want it gone, Scarlet,” Eddie called, freezing me in place. Dammit.

  When I turned to face him, I saw that Elisa hadn’t moved from her place. She hadn’t followed me, which meant she thought we needed to listen to this guy. Maybe Trinity had scared her more than I realized. “If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have gotten into the car. You’d have left on your own.”

  “I got in the car to get away from the ECU.” He knew it was a lie already.

  “I can take it off you, you know. It’ll take me some time, but I can do it.”

  “You?” I mocked. I had no idea how strong he was, but if Elisa couldn’t even touch the dragon without getting thrown back against the wall, I doubted Eddie could, very much.

  “My people,” Eddie said, clenching his jaw. “And all I’d ask for in return is that you leave the dragon with me.”

  Interesting. “Why?” I asked, and when he opened his mouth to speak, I stopped him. “If you’re going to tell me that it’s none of my business, save your breath. I’m not talking about this for a second longer without knowing what you get from it.”

  His tightlipped smile did nothing to hide his anger. He clenched his jaw so hard, I could practically hear his teeth clinking from six feet away.

  “I have a client who is interested in purchasing it,” he said in an angry whisper.

  “You sell to collectors,” Elisa said, nodding her head as if she suddenly understood everything Eddie was about.

  “I do this and that,” said Eddie with a shrug. “And I did mean it when I said I have no time.”

  “How would you get this off me? You saw what happened to Melinda when she touched it. Nobody can come close to it without being thrown back.” He’d been there the last time Melinda came to the room, determined to peel my skin off, or cut my hand.

  “I’d tell you, but I’m not sure myself. My people will need to do some tests first before determining the best way,” Eddie said.

  “You are not chopping my hand off.” Just in case he was getting funny ideas into his head. I’d let Elisa try because I’d been an emotional mess, but the joy that had taken over me when she failed told me exactly how much I loved my hand attached to the rest of me. If it came to it, I’d cut it off myself, but right now, this wasn’t our last resort. We still had an option—the fairy Trinity.

  “I didn’t say I would. Magic would probably be involved in this—not weapons. I’ve already seen everything the ECU tried, and everything they were planning. I will not be doing the same things,” Eddie said, looking a bit offended. “Like I said, if you let us try, the worst that can happen is that we won’t be able to get it off you.”

  “Try the pain,” I said under my breath. Nobody could imagine the pain that dragon put me through.

  “If we do take it off, then we’ll get it off your hands for good. That’s all we want in return,” Eddie said with a nod.

  “What if we want something else?” This came from Elisa, who looked at Eddie like she was counting the pores on his skin.

  “Like what?” Eddie said, raising his thin brows, slightly annoyed. I looked at him and still couldn’t believe that this was the same guy from the ECU facility. Holy cow, he really was a spectacular actor. The way he’d run out that elevator…he deserved a freaking Oscar.

  “Your men. Weapons. Spell stones,” Elisa said. I already knew what she was going to ask, but I wasn’t so sure it was the right thing to do. If this guy, whoever he really was, wanted my dragon, we could take advanta
ge of it and use him to go find the other witches. We could use him for a fighting chance against the demons. But that would require us to trust him, which I didn’t. In fact, if someone asked me whether I trusted him or Oscar the werewolf who’d led us into the trap, I’d pick Oscar.

  “I don’t understand,” Eddie said. “You’re on the run. No men, weapons or spell stones are going to save you from the ECU. If you kill ten, twenty more will come.”

  “You don’t have to understand,” Elisa said.

  “Unless someone else is the boss around here.” If it were him, why would he have bothered to do all the work himself? He could have just sent someone else undercover in the ECU.

  “Oh, trust me, you’re speaking to the right person,” Eddie said with a grin. A couple of his men behind him chuckled.

  “Do you have a name people know you by?” Elisa asked. “I know most sellers around here, and I must have heard of you, too.”

  “Irrelevant.” Eddie dismissed her with a wave of his hand, then turned to me. “So, Scarlet? What will it be?”

  “If I say no?” I asked, just to test the waters.

  Eddie smiled coldly. “Then you can let yourselves out.”

  Fair enough. His men didn’t make any attempts to reach for weapons they probably had hidden under their jackets. I looked at Elisa. Did she really think we needed to use Eddie? I doubted she trusted him any more than I did. For all we knew, he could lead us right into the ECU again, just like Oscar had done, but if it was us calling the shots?

  “Four men. Four men, weapons and Pretters,” she said, both to me and to Eddie.

  “He isn’t trustworthy,” I warned her. If she thought we needed this, I was going to agree. My instincts told me to follow her lead when it came to the demons—she knew what she was doing much better than I did.

  “He doesn’t need to be,” Elisa whispered. Her blue eyes shone.

  I turned to Eddie again, mind made up. “I’ll take four of your men, a lot of weapons and Pretters, and then you can do your tests on me. But you will not get to try to remove the dragon before I’m done.” It was the only way I knew how to make sure that he wouldn’t screw us over, because he would. The second he had an opening.