by D. N. Hoxa
“Is it for people, or for places?” I asked Elisa. The place we’d find, wherever that was, it needed to be big, which meant we’d need spells that could stretch wide. It’s why I’d thought to ask Eddie.
“Let’s find a place, first. I’ve never used it, so I don’t know what to expect, but we should, soon enough,” Elisa said, suddenly sounding like she didn’t want to talk about this anymore. Strange, since she’d been the one to bring it up. “So how did you do it? How did you release the dragon?”
Release the dragon. What a bad combination of words.
“I just…I let them have it.”
Elisa didn’t get it. “You let them have it?”
“My magic. I pushed it to the demons while they did their thing. I thought, here, have it all, if you want it. I didn’t try to hold it back. I just let it all go.” I didn’t know how else to explain it.
She was silent for a long second. “Do you think the others can do it, too?”
A chill washed down my back though the water was very hot, just how I liked it. “I don’t know.” Turning the water off, I stepped out to search for a towel. I no longer minded being naked in front of Elisa. She’d seen all there was to see already.
“Maybe I should do a healing spell on you. You look…” She couldn’t finish. That’s how bad my body looked, and it was why I continued to avoid the mirror.
“Maybe.” But the air had gotten really thin in there. Could have been the steam, but my limbs felt a bit heavy, too. Good thing I had enough bad images to pull from my brain. All those demons surrounding me, holding me back by the arms, taking all of my energy, my life force away…it was enough to make my heart beat like crazy again.
The clothes Elisa had gotten me were perfect. The jeans fit me exactly right, and the dark red, short sleeved shirt was one of my favorite colors. The sneakers would take some getting used to, but by the time I was dressed and used my fingers to untangle my messy hair, I felt like a different person. My hair had turned orange where it had once been red, but it looked okay—at least while my hair was wet. Some of the bruises were pretty obvious on my arms, but I was just going to have to live with that for now. And the dragon looked brand new, too.
“We need to clean this place up before leaving,” I reminded myself when I dropped the towel on the ground and began to wipe the water from the tiles with it. I was going to throw it away, so why bother to find something else to clean with?
“Yep. I told everyone not to touch anything they didn’t need to, and to not leave anything they used behind,” Elisa said. “We could still be tracked, though.”
“Hopefully by that time, we’ll be far away.” Whoever the owner of this place was, he couldn’t be more dangerous than the demons, or the ECU.
As soon as we left the bathroom, we heard the piano. Rushing our steps, we practically ran down the stairs, though somebody playing the piano didn’t necessarily mean anything bad.
It didn’t.
A short girl with corn-colored hair falling in waves all the way to her hips was sitting in front of the piano in the living room, her fingers flying over the keys like they had a mind of their own. Her name was Julie, if I wasn’t mistaken, and she was one of the witches who’d left her home willingly. Maddy and Cade sat on the ground next to the piano and listened to the heartbreaking melody Julie was playing. It gave the whole house life, that melody. It turned it into a magical place.
When she saw us approaching, though, she stopped, taking away all the warmth.
“No, no, no, don’t stop!”
“Sorry,” Julia whispered, her cheeks bright red. “It’s just been so long since I last played a piano. Since I last saw one, really.”
“How long?” Elisa asked, sitting on the ground next to Maddy and Cade. I did the same.
“Four years,” Julie whispered. “I was sixteen when I left.”
“Did they find out about your magic?” I asked halfheartedly.
But Julie shook her head. “I didn’t leave just because of my magic. I was perfectly capable of hiding it, but my stepmother, she…” Her voice trailed off and she took a deep breath. “Anyway, my dad was mostly away with work, and I just needed to be free from that life. So I ran.”
“Do you regret it?” Elisa asked.
“Not really, no. I regret being caught by the ECU, though. I was fine on my own before that.”
I was fine on my own. Those words struck a nerve. It felt like I was hearing myself speak. I thought I’d been fine on my own, too.
“Play something else for us,” Elisa said. “You’re amazing at it.”
And Julie did. The music touched my very core and brought back memories I’d hidden away for so long. Being rejected. Being strange. Being alone.
But I hadn’t been. Julie had been with me, though in a different place. We’d been alone together, even if we didn’t know it then. She and a lot of other people had had to go through the same things I had.
Suddenly, those memories no longer hurt me as badly. Some of the weight lifted from my shoulders. My head was already leaning against Elisa. Unconsciousness was coming for me, but I let it. I let that dragon drag me under because to think of something else now meant to stop listening to Julie play the piano.
And that would have been a sin.
Fifteen
A weird sound of something spinning really fast pulled me awake. I sat up with a jolt, expecting to find the demons in front of me. Or the ECU?
One of them, at least.
Instead, I found Elisa, Tammy, Doug, and three of Eddie’s men standing in front of the bed, in a room I hadn’t been in before. The bed was big and comfortable, but the sound didn’t stop. It was coming from the drill in Doug’s hand. He was putting something together, something ugly and made of iron. My experience with things like that said that whatever he was doing, it was going to hurt like hell.
“What the hell is going on?” I asked Elisa, my throat so dry, it screamed for some water.
“I called them. We need that thing off you, right now.” She was half angry, but half afraid.
“Is Eddie here?” I looked at Doug. “What’s that for?”
“Not for you,” Tammy said. “It’s for holding the dragon once it’s off you.” Oh, thank God.
“I still need to talk to Eddie first before you go on.” For all I knew, I could end up dead in the process, and I wanted to make sure Elisa had a way to protect the witches.
“Scarlet, you’ve been out for more than three hours. That thing is coming off you, right now,” said Elisa, and she was dead serious.
Three hours? “Where is Eddie?”
“Not here. Don’t worry, we don’t need him for this,” said Doug when he finally turned that drill off. My ears were still whistling.
“I need him! I need to talk to him, right now! Elisa, are the others okay?”
“They’re fine. Just lie down. Tammy says this will be over soon.”
“Give me the phone. I need to talk to Eddie first.”
“Not gonna happen,” Elisa said. “Just sit back, Scarlet.”
“Give me the damn phone,” I spit and stood up, ignoring the spinning room. “I won’t do it before I speak to him.”
Slamming her hands on her thighs, Elisa sighed. “I did. He’s not going to do it.”
“Yes, he is. I won’t let him take the dragon.” The suited men behind her and Tammy straightened their shoulders, but if they thought I was afraid of them after what happened two nights ago, they were dead wrong.
“He’s at work, Scarlet. As in, in the ECU. He won’t be able to answer you, and he already said no. A deal’s a deal, were his words.”
Cursing under my breath, I sat down on the bed again. If Eddie was in the ECU, there was no way he’d answer my call. After everything, I couldn’t believe he was still bothering to play this game!
“I can’t let you do this,” I said to Tammy. “Not without making sure that the others will be okay.”
“You can do that after you
stop passing out every second,” Elisa said. “If you make me, I’ll put you to sleep, I swear it.”
“Don’t you dare.” It was a threat and I hoped she heard it. Nobody was touching me while I was unconscious. I wouldn’t have a sleeping spell when I woke up—it would be a very cool spell to have, though—but I could throw her against the walls until all the bones in her body were broken.
“So don’t make me. Scarlet, this can’t go on. How can you even plan to get out of here like this?”
“Adrenaline shots.” She’d seen it herself—it had worked.
Elisa put her hands on her hips. “And where are you going to get those shots?”
Dammit. “I’ll buy them off eBay if I have to.”
“You’re being unreasonable.”
“I need to see those people safe.” Otherwise all we’d done would have been for nothing in my mind.
“We already know where we’re going. We’ve got money to buy protective spells.”
“You had money to buy spells before, too. You couldn’t find them,” I reminded her. In Manhattan, she’d kept me inside for three days while she hunted for the demons, and she hadn’t been able to find the protective stones in all that time.
“I’ll be enough until we do.” Walking around the bed, she hopped on it from the other side and sat beside me. “Just do this. You’re going to feel so much better after.”
Her blue eyes reflected my face in detail. She was speaking from the heart. Almost like…like she truly cared about me. Which shouldn't have come as such a surprise to me, but it did. I sat against the wall behind the bed.
“You have to have someone you can call. Maybe Noah can help?” He obviously cared for her. A lot.
“I’ll give him a call, but not before you try this.” She rested against the wall, right by my side. My eyes moved to her black shirt that went up an inch when she got herself comfortable. I could see her hip—the raw meat that should have been smooth skin. My heart skipped a long beat. I must have stared for too long because she realized it and pulled the hem down.
“What’s that?” It wasn’t just bruises, like what I had. It was a wound, as big as my pinky, that hadn’t even closed properly yet.
“Nothing.”
“That’s not nothing. What is it? Are you okay?” She looked fine, if not a bit paler than usual.
“I’m fine. It’s just the dark magic. It takes away a lot of energy, but I’ll be okay.”
“Are you sure? Absolutely sure?” She’d gone in there with me to save those people. If something happened to her because of it, I’d never forgive myself.
“Yes! Scarlet, I’m fine! Stop making me uncomfortable!” she hissed.
“If you two are done, we’d like to get started,” Tammy said, coming at me with a syringe in hand. I cringed.
“What are you going to do to me?”
She smiled. “This is going to cool down your arm,” she said, looking at the very sharp needle. I rubbed my left arm. “It’s going to sort of turn it to…dead meat for a while.”
“What?” Was she crazy?
“Don’t worry, it won’t last longer than a few minutes,” Tammy said. “I promise. Just relax. We need to expel your energy because we suspect that’s what it’s connected to. Not your actual skin.”
“You suspect? Haven’t you run your tests?”
Doug was putting together the lid he’d drilled holes into, above a metal box, just as ugly and dirty. It was big enough to fit the dragon. I guessed they didn’t want to touch it, and I didn’t blame them. “We did run our tests. It’s why we know how to do this,” he said.
“All you’ll feel is a pinch. We’re going to spell your arm afterward, but you won’t feel it,” Tammy explained.
“It won’t work. People have tried it before. Spells don’t work on it.” Melinda had had lots of Pretters around my hand, and two witches constantly chanting over my head, and the dragon had still thrown her off me.
“The spells are to protect you. We’re not going to remove the dragon with magic. We’ve turned to science for this one,” Tammy said. “We’re going to use some acids to break the dragon’s connection to your skin.”
“Acids?” Oh, this sounded so bad.
Tammy shrugged. “Your skin might get burned, but only a little bit. A good spell afterward, and it won’t even leave a scar.”
“You’ve got this,” Elisa said. “Just relax, let her do her job.”
“You’ll call Noah, right? You’ll get those people safe.” Tammy grabbed my hand and laid it on the bed, palm up. The needle pierced my skin and went into my vein, cold as ice.
“I will, I promise.”
I believed her. Squeezing my eyes shut, I welcomed the pain the dragon was going to put me through when Doug and Tammy began to work on it. They were all right. That thing needed to get off me, even if it killed me in the process.
Sixteen
Still alive here.
Doug and Tammy were packing up their things after cleaning up the mess on the beige carped under the bed.
It had been an hour, and I was sweating like a pig. The dragon was still around my hand, the skin around it burned, still bright pink in color. But I was beginning to feel my hand again.
“I told you we’d need more lithium,” Doug was saying to Tammy. They’d used the swabs to put seventeen kinds of gel-like matters on my hand, on the dragon and around it, and they’d waited and waited until they had to turn my arm to dead meat again. The process was repeated three times, and the dragon hadn’t fallen off my hand. And when Doug had touched it with his shaking finger, he said it had electrocuted him. Needless to say, neither of them planned to touch it again.
Now, they were leaving to run more tests and then try again, whereas I was still being consumed by the dragon.
“It’s the carborane,” said Tammy. “But too much could melt her hand away completely.”
“Can you guys not talk about this while I’m here? I can hear everything you say.” I was doing just fine without imagining my hand melting away, thank you.
“Sure,” Tammy said, zipping her case. She’d put all the vials and the needles and the cotton swabs in there, and she was ready to leave. I hadn’t decided whether I was glad for that, or not.
“We’ll be back again. Keep in touch with Eddie,” Doug said, and with a nod, he strode toward the door, with Tammy and the two other men in tow.
“Thank you! Tell Eddie to call me, okay?” They slammed the door shut.
“This is bad,” Elisa whispered. She’d gone to the wall on my right and was gently slamming her forehead to it.
“It’s fine. I’ll be fine. Let’s go find the others.” I needed to get my mind off my burning skin somehow.
“Scarlet, this isn’t safe. If you keep this up—”
“I’ll get me some adrenaline shots, don’t worry.”
Elisa laughed. “Then they are going to kill you. There won’t be any need for demons or the ECU!”
“Let’s go, Elisa. We’re wasting time here.” I strode for the door without waiting for a reply. I was more than ready to find a place of our own.
***
Cade, Tanya, and another girl named Crystal presented their idea to me. They were terribly excited to do it, too, which confused me, but I didn’t comment.
The place they wanted to go to was not one building—it was a neighborhood.
“I grew up here. My family is the only paranormal family in town. It’s very quiet, and it has two motels that rent rooms for a few bucks after the recession,” Crystal said. She was talking about a town called Gavery in Newark.
“It’s too close to Manhattan.” We could easily be found by both the demons and the ECU.
“It’s the best we’ve got,” Elisa said. “We’ve gone through all the options, but unless we want to separate into more than two places, this is our only chance.”
“The motels have about eight rooms each. We can share, no problem, and my dad would pay them,” Crystal said. The eag
erness to see her family again was clearly written all over her face.
“The money isn’t an issue, Crystal. How far apart are the motels?”
“Just across from one another, barely thirty feet away,” she said in a heartbeat.
“Not too much distance to cover with spells. Ten Pretters should cover the whole area, and my protective spells,” Elisa said.
“The trouble is, how do we get there?” said Franky.
“When I went to buy things this morning, I saw a trailer parked in the back of the grocery store,” Elisa said. “It wasn’t big, but maybe we’ll all fit in the back.”
“So we’re just going to steal it?” Maddy asked, her wide eyes sparkling.
“No we’ll just…borrow it.” She knew it was a lie. That’s why she grinned.
“How fast can a trailer go? We’re talking about more than an hour’s drive here. Plenty of time for the ECU to locate us without protection spells.”
Elisa flinched. “The best we have are my spells,” she whispered, but judging by the wound I’d seen on her left hip, I doubted she’d be able to conjure much without losing all her energy.
“How come we don’t have any spells?” a man asked. He sat close to the oak tree, away from everyone else. “It makes no sense. We have magic. Where are the spells? Who has them?”
“If somebody does, we don’t know about it,” I said reluctantly. I wasn’t sure how much he knew about the making of spells, but that conversation would have to wait for another day.
“How far is the grocery store?” I asked Elisa.
“Ten minutes’ walk. I can get the trailer and come back in twenty.” I could have kissed her for being such a huge help. I honestly had no idea what I’d have done without her. Whatever debt she thought she had to the world, she was more than making up for it by helping us.
“I’ll come with. I can block my magic and I can hotwire a car in forty seconds,” Franky said.
