Storm Witch

by D. N. Hoxa

  Who were these people? Why had the mindless thingies attacked them? Was it really possible that they were like me?

  In my world, there are four kinds of witches—well, three. Blood, Bone and Green. Hedge witches used to exist, too, but they were notorious for being power hungry assholes, and they drove themselves to extinction a couple decades ago. I was born and raised in a Blood family full of powerful witches. My mommy and daddy, rich bastards who couldn’t stand the sight of me, took me to a special school in Washington for troubled witches because dealing with me required effort.

  That, and they really hoped that the academy was going to awaken a little magic in me before the ritual.

  Witches had magic from birth. Some more than others—depended on luck, really. It had nothing to do with genes. But we only got our powers at the age of eighteen, from our parents, through a ritual. It sounds much fancier than it really is. Daughters unlocked their magic’s full potential from their mothers, and sons from their fathers. After that, you were considered a witch.

  The source of magic for Blood witches is blood. For Bones, bone. For Greens, Earth—hence the names. Hedges were strongest at nightfall, but weaklings when the sun took over the sky. It’s why people managed to kill them off so quickly.

  When my family prepared me for the ritual that would ignite the magic in my blood, they were happy. I was terrified. Terrified because I knew it wasn’t going to work, while they hoped it would.

  Needless to say, I was right and they were wrong.

  I remember the first time I tried to do magic as a kid, and I couldn’t. My brother and sister had been playing with their dolls—we were all only a year apart, I being the eldest—and they could make sparks appear out of thin air to pass for fireworks, and they could make flowers bloom rapidly, the usual stuff all witches at the age of eight could do. But not me. I tried my damn hardest and then cried a week because of it.

  My parents noticed but they didn’t want to accept it. They reprimanded me for being too weak-willed and for not trying hard enough. They locked me in my room and refused to speak to me. They held grudges with an eight year old, for God’s sake. Seriously, people should be forced to take tests before being allowed to have children because my parents were not good parents.

  It was right around that time that I started getting into trouble. I broke things, stole things, fought my siblings every chance I got, and basically isolated myself from the world. I was jealous, hurt, confused, like most kids would be, but I had nobody to talk to about it.

  I never stopped trying to do magic, though.

  The first time I noticed something strange, I was sitting by the pool back home. It was two in the morning and everybody was asleep. I was trying to make sparks—which everyone said was the easiest thing to do—and soon enough, I got angry. I refused to go inside even when it began to rain and the wind nearly threw me back on the ground. The harder I tried, the angrier I got, and the heavier it rained.

  Call me crazy, but it’s the truth. I proved it to myself by doing the same thing every single night for three months in a row. It was me. I was making it rain and making all that wind, and sometimes, there’d be lightning in the distance, too.

  Ten years later, lightning struck from my own hand, but that’s a story for later.

  At thirteen, I could feel magic under my skin. It was nothing like the other kids said it was, or what my father’s books described, but it was something. I was proud of it, and I tried my hardest to make those damn sparks, but while I could blow wind whichever way I pleased, the sparks just never happened.

  At eighteen, I performed the ritual with my mother, who barely spoke to me by then. After the failure, I decided to move to Manhattan by myself. My family was okay with it—even happy. As long as I didn’t go on visits, they were going to continue sending me money and pretending I didn’t exist.

  I took what I could get and I was fine with it. Until now.

  The guy sleeping in front of me looked pretty normal. His shoulders were wide, but not wide enough for a werewolf. They were known for being large. Definitely not a vampire. Or a fairy. Fairies had violet eyes and pointy ears, and this guy’s ears were pretty round.

  So he was a witch.

  What kind?

  As if reading my thoughts, he moved his hand. My pizza got stuck in my throat. Nine hours had passed since he’d been sucked dry. I’d never woken up earlier than twenty-four hours. I thought maybe he was just moving his hand in his sleep, but then, he turned his head the other way. Slowly, I left the pizza slice back in the box and stood up. My weapons were on the tiny desk by the door. I walked over to them slowly and took two throwing knives in my hands, just in case. I had no idea what was going to happen so it was best to be prepared.

  Holding my breath, I looked at the steady rise and fall of his chest, at his moving hand…until he turned his face toward me again, and his eyes were open.

  I had a smile in place but I wasn’t feeling it. The throwing knives in my hand slipped a bit because my fingers were sweaty. His brows shot up as he took me in, wet hair and all, then looked down at himself. It took him a second to realize he was handcuffed to the window bars. Oops.

  “What…what’s going on?” he said, his voice hoarse. His messy light brown hair was in all directions, his face still full of dust from the construction site. I’d meant to clean that after I ate, but he woke up too early.

  “Calm down,” I said, clearing my throat. “You’re safe here.” But I wasn’t sure we were, now that he was awake.

  “Safe?” he tried in vain to pull the chains of the handcuffs off, then met my eyes. “You locked me to a window.” He wasn’t mad, in fact. He was just confused.

  I nodded. “Security measure. I don’t know you, and it’s in my nature to assume the worse.” No shame there.

  His brown eyes scrolled up and down my body again, slower this time. Then, he turned to the room to see what he could use against me, probably. The desk was by the door, and there was literally nothing else in there except an old armchair. I’d made sure of that.

  “Okay,” he whispered, then nodded his head as he dragged himself to sit up straight. The color had returned to his cheeks by now, and he looked perfectly normal. Healthy. Very handsome. “Okay, I understand. My name is Luca. I’d love it if you told me what happened when…” He looked out the window and saw the sun shining in the sky. “Last night?”

  “Hi, Luca. I’m Scarlet. Good to meet ya.” Feeling a bit more relaxed, I hid the knives in the back pocket of my jeans and stepped closer to the bed. “Why don’t you tell me what you are so I can explain what happened last night?” I had no idea how I was going to do that with the limited knowledge, but I’d sure as hell try if he was honest with me.

  Narrowing his brows, he shrugged. “I’m a witch.”

  I smiled. “What kind of witch?”

  Did the blood leave his cheeks, or was it just my imagination? “Green.”

  “Lie.” If he’d been a Blood witch, the mindless thingies wouldn’t have sucked him dry. I’d seen them behave around Blood witches with my own eyes: they pretended the witches weren’t even there.

  “Who are you to ask me, Scarlet? What are you?” Luca asked.

  My stomach growled with hunger. I looked down at the pizza. “Want some?” But the guy shook his head. Too bad. I sat down on the ground again. I couldn’t go long without food without getting all wonky, so I ate in the strangest of situations. It was a necessity, so I didn’t bother feeling weird about it. “Let’s start by telling me why you were in that building last night.”

  Trying to push the thin blanket away, he cleared his throat. “We were looking for someone.”

  I raised my brows. “Someone?” It was a construction site, a building basically in its pillars and floors. It was why I’d chosen the location—because it was empty and nobody was there at night.

  “You, I suspect.”

  I stopped chewing and swallowed hard. “Me?” That didn’t sound good. />
  “Yes, you,” Luca said. “We were looking for someone like us.”

  “And how’s that?” It sounded like my worse fear and greatest revelation of my life together.

  “A witch,” he said, frowning. “A new witch.”

  So, he was…

  Nope. I couldn’t make sense of it. “You lost me.”

  “A new kind of witch,” he clarified, clearing his throat. “Listen, Scarlet, if you could get this off me, I’d be much more comfortable. And you need to bring my friends here, too. Together, we can tell you our story better.”

  I flinched. “I think you should just try and tell me yourself.”

  A new kind of witch. Was he delusional? Because that was my first thought. There were no old or new kinds of witches. Were there?

  Silence for a second. “Where are they?” The fear made his voice high pitched.

  “Safe,” I reassured him, but he shook his head.

  “Where are they?”

  “Well, they’re not here.” I was getting a little scared, too. If they all woke up this early, the mindless thingies could find them, and…

  “Tell me where you took them,” Luca spit angrily, trying to free himself from the cuffs again.

  “They’re all over the city in rooms similar to this.” I waved my hand around. “It’s for your own protection, trust me.”

  “What protection? Why divide us?” he shouted.

  “I don’t appreciate you raising your voice at me, Luca,” I said calmly, trying not to lose my temper. When I was afraid, I lost it pretty quickly, but now was not a good time. “I saved you last night, as you apparently remember, and if I tell you that I put you as far away from each other as possible for your own safety, you need to trust me.”

  “I don’t know you!” He did have a point.

  “And I don’t know you. Yet, I’m still here, helping you.”

  Clamping his mouth shut, Luca lowered his head and sighed loudly. “At least tell me why,” he said in a desperate whisper.

  “Because of the people who attacked you last night.” It was all I was willing to share for the moment. “And if you tell me everything, I’ll tell you all I know, I promise.”

  Luca became even paler at the mentioning of the attack. He swallowed so hard, I heard it all the way across the room. He was scared, and he was right to be. Maybe now he’d tell me what he meant by a new kind of witch.

  “The others and I have been keeping a low profile for a few months since we got together. Our magic has never fit into the normal, and we believe that it’s a new kind of magic, something unheard of before.”

  Holy cow. It was like hearing him tell the story of my life. No longer interested in the pizza, I pushed the box away and pulled my hands into fists so he wouldn’t see my fingers shaking. “Have you tested this? There are odd witches everywhere.” No, there weren’t. I just told myself that.

  “No, no, we’re all the same. Our powers come from the same source.” My instincts took his words for it. He sounded so sure of every word he spoke.

  “Which is?” My voice had gone completely dry, my heart beat even faster than when I was fighting the mindless thingies.

  “The weather.”

  Now, I wished I hadn’t eaten the pizza. My stomach rolled like there was a thunder inside me.

  “How sure are you?” I asked halfheartedly.

  I couldn’t put my finger on it. Was I happy? Terrified?

  Probably both. What I wasn’t was alone. Holy hell!

  But…I wasn’t alone. Which meant the mindless thingies could feed from others as well.

  “Very,” Luca said with a determined nod. “I don’t have any doubts about this. I’ve spoken to people from every coven, old ones and young ones. I’ve read everything I could get my hands on. This isn’t odd. It’s new.”

  The room kept spinning, but his face never moved. I heard him speak long after he stopped, his words bouncing around in my mind, making a mess of me.

  “So it was you,” he said with a nod, after I refused to say anything for a while.

  “It was me, what?” I cleared my throat and tried to do the same with my head, but it was harder. I needed to focus and refrain from jumping to conclusions. It was best I heard the rest of the story first.

  “The one we were looking for,” he said, then flinched. “Well, the second one.”

  “The second?” I hated that he made me ask. Just spill out the entire story!

  “When the weather changed, I felt him. We live two hours away from Manhattan, so I knew we’d be late.” Lowering his head, Luca sighed. “They killed him in the middle of Geraldine Street.”

  Goosebumps raised on my arms. “Who?”

  “Another one. Like us,” he said. “He’d lost control of his powers and was making a mess out of the weather. The ECU were already there when we arrived. The street was packed with people and they didn’t care. The kid didn’t know how to stop, so they killed him.”

  Bile rose up my throat, and it tasted like pizza. The bathroom was outside in the hallway, so there was no way I’d get there on time. I had to push it back down. The image of a witch who could make it rain like I could when I was a little girl, getting shot for simply not knowing what was going on, stayed in front of my eyes.

  “But the people…” They had to have said something. Geraldine Street was the most famous street in Manhattan. Almost every resident on it was a paranormal. It was the place to be for anyone who didn’t live in New York. The people would have seen.

  “Nobody dared say anything. They came, shot him, took the body and left,” Luca said, his voice bitter. “We were on our way back when I felt you.”

  “Wait, felt me?” That wasn’t something I’d heard before.

  “It isn’t exactly a feeling,” Luca said with a sigh. “It’s more like this noise in my head. I saw the lightning strike and we came running.”

  The lightning strike. Yes, I’d heard the thunder. But like I said, I hadn’t been able to do something like that since I was eight or nine years old.

  I was going to say so, except why would he lie to me? Or how would he have found me?

  “You know, I’m very good at killing people,” I said, because no matter how honest he seemed, I still needed to make sure I wasn’t being lured into a trap. “If you’re with the ECU, I’m telling you right now, you’re going to have a bad ending.”

  The Executive Control Unit, was the highest and only authority for paranormals on Earth. They ruled supreme over every species, and they did things the way they wanted them done. No questions asked or answered. They were tough assholes with top of the line equipment and highly trained soldiers—the best out there. They’d been that way since forever, and though they claimed there was a new system in place now, with newly elected members to represent each paranormal kind, I still had to see the changes to believe it. And the fact that they’d killed that witch without asking questions proved my point.

  If Luca was with them, an undercover agent or something, I was going to kill him. I’d never actually killed anyone before—though I really hoped the guys I’d left in that building headless would never wake up—but it was called bluffing and I was good at it. Luca had no way to know that it was a lie.

  “I’m not with the ECU,” he spit, as if he was offended. “They’re the reason we’re living in hiding. Their fear blinds them.”

  “No, whoever threatens their position in the world blinds them.” It was a personal unpopular opinion of mine.

  “They killed that kid because they didn’t understand him. Because they’d never seen anything like it. It’s why I kept away from the public eye all my life.”

  Yeah, well, I’d done the same. I never told anyone about my secrets, mainly because I thought I was just a freak of nature. A one of a kind type of thing, but now?

  Now, everything was about to change, if what Luca was saying was the truth.

  “So you live together, the four of you?” My fear intensified. If the others were
really like him and they woke up, they’d be alone, handcuffed to small rooms with no way out. They were practically dinner served on a silver platter for the mindless thingies. Dinner served by me.

  “We do. I found all of them through lightning and the noise in my head. We’ve stuck together since, and we keep an eye out for others who need our help.” So very noble of them.

  “Why?” In all honesty, I didn’t understand it. I was raised with people who didn’t give a shit about others. It was strange for me to meet someone like Luca, who didn’t appear to have a reason for helping those other people other than that they needed help.

  Luca shrugged, narrowing his brows as if he didn’t get my question. “Because they’re alone. I’ve been alone. We’re stronger together.”

  Reluctantly, I shook my head. “You’re not.” Together, they were a bigger threat than ever, if they didn’t shut their magic down.

  “We’re not?”

  “How many times have you encountered people like the ones who attacked you last night?” I got a little excited. Maybe he knew of ways to kill those things for good. Maybe he knew spells. Oh, that would be so, so good.

  “Never,” Luca whispered.

  “Excuse me?”

  “We’ve never come across people like them,” he repeated. “Who were they?”

  It wasn’t the right time, but I laughed. “I’m sorry. That’s just not possible.” Since I’d come to Manhattan, they’d found me four times in all kinds of places, until I’d learned to shut down my magic. These people? Four of them together gave off a four times stronger signal than I did. The mindless thingies should have found them at least ten times by now.

  “I’m not lying to you, Scarlet,” Luca said, shaking his head. His brown eyes were clear and full of hope. It left me speechless for a long moment and I just stared at him. Trying to figure out how he was lying to me so shamelessly wasn’t working because all my instincts were ready to bet my life that he wasn’t. My mind was a bloody mess but deciding to sort of roll with it and see where it took me, put me a bit at ease.