Storm Power

by D. N. Hoxa

  “Hurrying isn’t going to benefit anyone,” Eddie said.

  “Look, give us four men. Guns, knives, swords—anything you have.”

  Shaking his head, he sighed. “That won’t be an issue, Scarlet. But getting caught by the ECU will.”

  “Let us deal with that issue. In the meantime, we’ll have to borrow vehicles, big ones that fit a lot of people.”

  “You’re not going to make it out alive,” Eddie warned me again.

  “So why are you saying it like it’s a bad thing? If I die, everything will be so much easier for you.” I tried to sound cheerful but I didn’t think I fooled anyone. “All you’ll have to do is take those people and Elisa someplace safe.”

  “It was our deal, and I’ll honor it, but I will ask you again to think about it,” Eddie said, bathing me in relief. He was going to do it. He was going to help us.

  “I’ve thought about it more than you can imagine. Thanks for the concern, Eddie, but we’re going to do this with or without you.” He wasn’t concerned for me by any means, but I already knew he wasn’t going to let the dragon on anybody else’s hand.

  “As you wish,” Eddie said after a loud sigh.

  Oh, the joy of finally having an advantage. Eddie had found us at exactly the right time. I could kiss the guy for almost hitting our cab that morning. If it wasn’t for him, I’d have had no idea just how many witches would be waiting for me with the demons.

  Eddie’s tablet shone under the lights, piquing my curiosity. Casually, I went to the table and dragged out the chair. It couldn’t hurt to see what he’d been looking at, could it? That was exactly what I was going to do.

  But as soon as I sat down, the room began to spit. Oh, shoot. I’d forgotten to think!

  Demons.

  ECU.

  Erick Adams.

  Melinda.

  The dragon…

  Holy cow it wasn’t working!

  “Adrenaline,” I whispered, but Elisa and Eddie were still talking, and they didn’t hear me. The tablet forgotten, my body behaved as if there was a demon nearby, sucking all my energy, so much so that I actually tried to search the room for catlike eyes. I don’t know if I found any, because with the word adrenaline on my lips, I passed out.

  I must have come to quickly, because when my eyes opened, I was looking at Eddie and Elisa from the ground. They were saying something, but I couldn’t make out their words. Just this weird sound in my ears, and…the pain.

  It sprung out to me like a fucking ghost in horror movies, setting my skin on fire. It spread so fast up my arm that for a second, I really would have preferred for that thing to turn into a real dragon and eat me. Anything at all would have been better than what I was feeling.

  The darkness came for me again, laughing at my face while it consumed me. It told me that it let go of me just so I could feel the pain again before taking me.

  The next time I woke up, I was no longer lying on the ground.

  ***

  I was in the recliner, thrown against it like a sack of potatoes. What the hell? My neck was killing me because my head had been hanging forward, cheek pressed tightly against my chest. Even my jaw hurt.

  “She’s up.” I recognized Elisa’s voice and that made me open my eyes a bit faster. The fear of noticing the room spinning around left me breathless, until I saw Eddie’s annoyed face.

  “You lied,” he said, as soon as my eyes met his. The room wasn’t spinning around. At least not yet.

  “I didn’t.” My mouth was dry, my stomach rolling.

  “The dragon is making you sick,” he said. “You didn’t tell me that.”

  “But I didn’t lie. I didn’t tell you that the dragon wasn’t making me sick.” I’d just…withheld the information.

  “This makes everything much more complicated,” Eddie said. I attempted to stand up, and Elisa came by my side to hold my hand. My legs were shaking but I felt stronger by the second. The dragon was done with me for now.

  “It isn’t. I just need shots of adrenaline on my person.” I should have asked him for them before. “As long as I’m pumped, this won’t happen again.”

  “Shots of adrenaline?” Eddie forced out a laugh. “You can’t go in a fight like this!”

  “Sure I can. Remember what we talked about. You need the dragon, not me. Whether I live or die is irrelevant.” It was exactly what he wanted to hear.

  “This is absurd!”

  “Take it easy, man. We’re getting out of here one way or another,” Elisa said, her tone a warning.

  “It’s okay, Eddie. Just give us what we need and send us on our way. I’m not that easy to kill,” I said with a wink, though he could probably smell the bullshit.

  Eddie grabbed his hips and straightened his shoulders. He was positively pissed off. “I can’t just conjure a place for you to go to with all those witches.” My heart sank.

  “We don’t need anything fancy, just protected, and for just a few days.” The kidnapped witches were going to need some time to get back on their feet. “I’ll pay you. Name your price.”

  “I don’t have a place like that!” he shouted, furious.

  Oh, no. With twenty-seven people, we might as well just surrender to the ECU right away. It would be impossible to hide on our own.

  “Do you have ravenstone?” Elisa asked.

  “What?” What the heck was a ravenstone?

  “I don’t,” Eddie said. Apparently he knew.

  “What’s a ravenstone?” Maybe I’d heard about it, but at the moment, I couldn’t remember shit.

  “A portal opener. A rare stone from the fairy realm that can transport you through already connected realms if you know exactly where you’re going,” Elisa said in a breath, leaving me in awe. Then she turned to Eddie. “Do you know where we can find some?”

  “No. I don’t work with fairies,” he said as if just the thought offended him. I couldn’t believe this guy. There was a stone that could transport you to places like a portal? I wanted me a big piece of it right now!

  “We can’t do this without a place to go,” Elisa said in a whisper.

  “Yes, we can. Anywhere else is going to be better for those people.” Even the ECU. “You said you’d help me. I told you we’d need a place and you didn’t say anything about not having where to take us. You broke the deal,” I said to Eddie.

  “You didn’t exactly leave me a choice,” he spit. “This is getting out of hand, fast.”

  I stepped closer to him, ignoring the three suited men behind him, who stepped forward, too. “We need a place to hide, Eddie. A couple of days.” Surprise and confusion flashed in his green eyes. They reminded me of the green-eyed man, though Eddie’s were considerably dimmer. “C’mon, Eddie. I know you can help us. I just know it.”

  He had connections. He sold illegal stuff to collectors. He must have had friends in high places.

  “I can’t.” Was it just me, or did he sound like he didn’t mean it?

  I stepped away. “Then I’m afraid I won’t be giving you the dragon, dead or alive.”

  All blood left his face. “You’ve already agreed to it.”

  “Now I’m disagreeing.” Anger was good. Anger was going to keep me from falling down, but the fear of really having to walk out of there on our own, emptyhanded, made it really hard to breathe easy.

  “Just think,” Elisa said to him. “You must know a place. Somewhere we won’t be found.”

  “Somewhere close,” I added. With that many people, assuming we’d even be able to get them out, we couldn’t risk being on the road for too long.

  Eddie turned his back at us and walked over to the desk. He filled one of the two empty glasses at the corner with the bottle of whiskey. My mouth watered, but the man didn’t feel like sharing. Instead, he kept cursing under his breath. I wanted to tell him to make up his mind already, but Elisa nudged me with her elbow. She put her finger in front of her lips to tell me to keep quiet. Eddie was still thinking about it.

 
The recliner was right behind me, but I didn’t want to sit down from fear of passing out. Instead, I thought of Ax. It was ridiculous, but the image of his face, his golden hair and his ice-colored eyes, made my heart beat faster than even Erick Adams. I didn’t wonder, or ask myself questions. For now, I rolled with it.

  “There is a place.”

  Eddie’s voice filled the room, making shivers wash down my back. I tried to stifle a smile but couldn’t. There was a place!

  “All I can give you is information on where to find it, but if you decide to go to it, you will decide on your own, and at your own risk.”

  “Where?” I asked halfheartedly, the smile no longer stretching my lips.

  “It’s a house in North Hills,” Eddie said. “A private house.”

  “Let me guess. It belongs to one of your collectors,” Elisa said.

  “The house is close enough, spacious, very well protected, and I just so happen to know the way around the spells,” Eddie continued.

  “Can I guess, too? You sold the spells to him.” Again, he refused to answer.

  “If you decide to go to this house, you’d be trespassing into the property of a very powerful witch, and if you get caught, you will be killed on sight,” he said.

  “Who?” Elisa and I asked at the same time.

  “It is a secluded house, set on half an acre of land, and with a particularly big summer house that could potentially fit in a lot of people. It would be up to you to break the spells, and to face the dangers of getting caught. To not leave any trails behind, and to make sure everything is in place when you leave.” A layer of sweat covered his face. Eddie was really upset. “The house is empty at this time of the year, but that doesn’t mean that nobody will be there. I can’t find out for certain.”

  “It’s a chance we’ll have to take,” Elisa said.

  “But how would we get there? And from where?” I asked her. As far as I knew, North Hills was in Hempstead.

  “The hospital,” she whispered, making my heart skip a beat. That abandoned hospital was a nightmare in the making still. Elisa had said it was in the Bronx, which made North Hills a thirty-minute car ride.

  “It’s too far. Thirty minutes is a long time.” It would give the ECU more than enough time to catch us.

  “We’ll be protected,” Elisa said. “Right, Eddie? You’ll protect your vehicles like you did the car we drove in on the way here?”

  She was right, of course. The ECU might have been able to pinpoint the neighborhood we disappeared in, but they had certainly not been able to track Eddie’s car all the way.

  “You’re asking to employ my most expensive items,” he said. The poor guy hadn’t calmed down at all.

  “But it’ll be worth it, in the end. Once you get this dragon, it’s going to pay for everything and more.” I had to be right. This thing was worth a lot of money to someone. It’s why Eddie had bothered to even speak to us. That’s what I was counting on.

  “If he finds out that I gave you this information—”

  “He won’t,” I reassured him, but he continued.

  “If he finds out, you’ll wish the ECU finds you,” he said. “We all will.”

  The fear in his eyes erased every doubt in my mind. Eddie was a liar, a cheater, a double agent and a “spectacular actor”, who’d go to great lengths for money, but death was something he didn’t want to have anything to do with. Killing concerned him, but that was why he had all those suited men to guard him, right?

  “Nobody is going to know anything because we won’t get caught. Just give us the address and the vans,” I promised him. Even if we got caught, by the ECU or the owner of that house, I would never tell anyone about Eddie. I just hoped the fates wouldn’t want me to prove how well I could keep a secret.

  With a loud sigh, Eddie wiped the sweat on his forehead with the back of both hands. His shirt was ruined by the sweat stains around his underarms. “I have a feeling we won’t ever meet again, Scarlet.” He didn’t sound happy about that.

  “I have a feeling that we will.” Maybe I really did, and maybe I didn’t—I didn’t try to find out. All I focused on were scary thoughts and then scarier thoughts involving Ax. Everything else could wait.

  “We’re really doing this,” Elisa whispered. She wasn’t afraid, but she was confused.

  “Yes, we are.” If I got to save even one of those witches before dying, I’d die a happy witch.

  Twelve

  It was like traveling with the others to Inwood with Oscar and his wolves all over again. Elisa and I were in one of the three vans, big enough to fit ten people each, driving fast toward Renington Heights. Eddie had made good on his word: we were armed, had four Pretters each, had the address to the North Hills house in the GPS, and I had two plastic syringes that said Epinephrine on the sides. Turned out, Tammy did find them, though she couldn’t help but give me a lecture about the percentage of people who experience serious brain damage as a side effect of an adrenaline shot. I listened to indulge her, and to fuel the rising fear in my chest. As soon as I felt like passing out, all I’d have to do was stab myself with the small needle in the arm or thigh, and I’d be good as new. Two of the four Pretters we had on the vests Eddie loaned us were protectives. Elisa wasn’t very happy when Eddie showed her the spell they used—Blood magic. She wasn’t happy but she still doubted the ECU would find us, simply because they hadn’t been able to even track Eddie’s car properly. One of the stones was a healing spell for emergency, and the other an exploding spell. I absolutely loved those.

  Eddie didn’t discuss whether I’d be using the dragon again or not. He acted like he didn’t even want to know. He was right, it was none of his business. As for me? I wondered. I sure wondered.

  “Using it could knock you out cold on the spot,” Elisa said while she followed the other two blue vans in the front with four of Eddie’s men in them. It was as if she’d read my mind. “Not using it could get you killed by the demons before we even see the witches.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” I mumbled.

  “Let’s make sure of what awaits us on the other side first,” said Elisa. “Scarlet, that thing is your only chance. Our only chance. With twenty-seven witches to feed from, there could be more than fifty demons!” She didn’t even try to hide the fear.

  “I tried it. You saw me. I tried and it didn’t work.” But before, my whole heart hadn’t been into it. Now, it would be.

  Night had fallen and we were just a few minutes away from our destination. I couldn’t focus on anything but the open, starless sky. I looked at it like it had all the answers, but I just couldn’t read them yet.

  “We won’t be able to save them,” Elisa said, cursing under her breath.

  “What’s the plan? Why did you only need four men?” I asked to switch topics. If we were going to doubt everything from the get-go, there was no way we’d actually win.

  Elisa took a deep breath. “Distraction. We’ll sneak in through the back door, just like last time, right after these guys shoot at the front of the building. It will give us time to check where they’re keeping the witches, and to figure how to get them out.”

  “Leaving the vans where you left your car last time might be risky. If those witches are anything like we were, they won’t be able to run in the woods.” We’d been exhausted.

  “They’re going to have to. Going in the front will be too obvious.”

  “They’ve gotten smarter, Elisa. They could make it really hard for us to get inside.”

  She laughed. “You’re just now realizing how stupid this idea is?!”

  “Oh, no. I knew all along.” Ever since I woke up in her house and we decided to go our separate ways to avoid getting caught. It’s why I’d lied to Luca and the others. I hadn’t wanted them dead. I hadn’t wanted them to be part of this stupid idea.

  “If you die, I’m leaving,” Elisa said, her voice drowned in sadness.

  “But if you can get anybody out, do it.�
�� That was what we were doing all of this for.

  “So I just let Eddie’s men take the dragon off your body?” How strange was it to talk about your own death and not feel anything?

  I nodded. “It’s what I promised him.” And I didn’t intend to break that promise.

  “Well, you know what they say.” She turned the van left, and suddenly, all the lights disappeared. Trees on both sides. It looked very similar to the road where Elisa had had her Range Rover parked that night she saved us from the demons. We were almost there.

  “I don’t, actually. What do they say?” The seat beneath me disappeared. I felt light as air and able to float in space.

  “Break a leg,” Elisa said with a grin. At least now she was pretending not to worry.

  “You’re strong, right? You’re a Hedge witch and it’s nighttime.”

  “I like to think so, yeah,” said Elisa. “I’m going to use all my powers to get us out of there.”

  That hadn’t been what I’d meant. “I don’t doubt that.”

  “Hedge magic isn’t the only magic I can do. I know some dark magic spells, too.”

  “Really?” Why wasn’t that surprising? “Who taught you?”

  Elisa didn’t speak for a long moment. “A person I once idolized.” Her whisper was heartbreaking. “I swore off those things for good, but if it gets us out of here, I’ll use it.”

  “What’s the difference?” I asked, my eyes stuck on her profile, too afraid to look at the road and see we’d already arrived. “Between dark magic and other kinds.”

  “Dark magic is brutal. It takes life so easily. Twice as potent. And it consumes you, too. Little by little. You don’t even notice it.”

  “It sounds like you used it for a long time.” Which would have made no sense to anybody else, considering how young she looked. But I knew her. To me, it was pretty normal to have this conversation with Elisa.