Storm Witch

by D. N. Hoxa

  “You best be careful, Melinda,” Adams said, no longer interested to see if I wanted to answer his question—which I didn’t.

  “Don’t worry. I’ve seen much worse than this, and I’m still here,” she said with a huge smile, then put a string of hair behind her ear. The leather of the glove smeared her red lipstick all over her cheek in the process. “Just need to…” She leaned down again, her ass right in front of Adams, who shamelessly stared and smiled at himself like I wasn’t even there.

  Melinda stepped close to the bed and my hand, and put two spell stones on either side of it. My skin covered in goosebumps when it felt the cold energy of her magic, charging the stones to activate them. I expected the pain to start immediately, but it didn’t. Instead, my fingers turned somewhat numb. What kind of a spell had she done on me?

  But she wasn’t finished. Moving back to her bag and giving Adams another perfect view of her ass, she came up with a…you’ve got to be kidding me! Was that a pincer?

  “No, no, no, no,” I whispered, shaking my head.

  The pincer in her hands was as long as her arms, black metal with really huge jaws that didn’t close well because of the metal that had dripped on the inside, and had dried that way. She tried it, moving the jaws up and down a few times. I almost passed out when she stepped closer to me, smiling like a lunatic, her light blue eyes turning darker. This woman was not kidding around, and she wasn’t there to waste any time, either.

  “Here we go,” she whispered to herself, and sticking her tongue out, she slowly brought the jaws of her pincer to the dragon bracelet on my hand.

  “It’s not going to work. You’re just going to hurt yourself,” I said, trying to move my hand away, but whatever spell those Pretters had put on me, didn’t let me move even my pinkie. Sweat dripped down my forehead and my body shook violently as I watched her pretend she hadn’t heard me. The jaws of the pincer touched the dragon’s wings, the only parts of the bracelet that wasn’t directly touching my skin.

  The anticipation made my stomach turn and when the pain began with a light pressing on my skin, there was a sliver of hope inside me that I was just imagining it. But Melinda closed the jaws of the pincer around the wings, and the pressure on my hand grew. It came from the inside, rather than the surface. She pulled, and my bones felt like they shattered before the pain echoed through my flesh and skin, quickly climbing up my arm and spreading on my chest. I bit my tongue to keep from screaming and the blood I drew made bile rise up my throat.

  Melinda continued to pull, completely focused on the pincer, her tongue sticking out, her foundation starting to melt with her sweat. When she pulled again, my soul nearly left my body, and the scream that tore from my throat was impossible to stop. It did nothing to ease the pain that was all over me now, all the way down to my toes. My throat hurt a bit more, and drawing in air made it even worse. Blood oozed from my skin the harder Melinda pulled the dragon. It seemed to be one with me, buried deep inside me, touching my bones. The feeling lasted for a lifetime, and I was completely convinced now that it was never going to stop. I was going to live the rest of my life in this agony, and knowing that made everything hurt even more.

  But then, Melinda was gone.

  A deafening noise reached my ears. The pain began to retreat, allowing air back into my lungs. Melinda had fallen against the mirror, right next to Adams, who looked down at her in disappointment. Breathing heavily, I tried to move but couldn’t. The pain had left me completely spent, even though now it was as good as gone.

  “Motherfucking dragon piece of shit,” Melinda whispered as she held onto the mirror to get back to her feet. The pincer was no longer in her hand, and blood dripped down her nostrils. Breathing heavily, she looked at the dragon bracelet like it was the devil itself. Anger flashed in her red eyes and she clenched her jaw so tightly, I heard her teeth crack as if I were inside her mouth. “This isn’t over,” she said, her voice shaking.

  I watched her grab the pincer, haul it over her arm, and take her bag in her hand before she strode out of the room. Adams lowered his shaking head and smiled before he followed her. The memory of the pain still held my body prisoner, and no amount of deep breaths was making it better. It’s over, I said to myself. You’re okay. She’s gone.

  Melinda was gone, but that wasn’t even the best part. She’d left the two spell stones on my bed behind.

  ***

  “Wake up!” I shouted for the fourth time with all my strength. The Pretters were still there on my bed, right next to my hand. The spells they held had already faded, allowing me to move my fingers normally again. The wounds on my skin, all around the dragon bracelet were healed, it seemed. No blood came out of me any longer.

  “Scarlet?” Luca whispered, his eyes still half closed. It took me a good ten minutes to get them to wake up because I was exhausted, and gathering strength to shout at the top of my voice was no easy feat.

  “Wake up, Luca. Come on, wake up!” I begged. They had to know about the spell stones Melinda had left behind. Maybe one of them knew what to do with them.

  “What’s going on?” said Ax. He and Fallon had opened their eyes, too. So had Grover.

  “What the hell?” Luca whispered when he saw my hand, covered in blood. “What did they do to you?”

  “It’s nothing,” I whispered, trying not to think about the pincer and the woman carrying it. The others had no idea about what the dragon bracelet could do. They didn’t know that it had thrown two soldiers off me when the ECU first caught us, and that it did the same thing to another witch just now.

  “That’s not nothing. Scarlet, you’ve lost a lot of blood,” he said. He was right, the pool of blood under my hand had reached my right hip already.

  “They were trying to get it off,” I said reluctantly.

  “So why didn’t they?” asked Ax.

  As much as I didn’t want to talk about this, I had to tell them. There was no reason to keep this a secret, especially when I knew that the next time Melinda came for me, they could be awake. It would be much harder to explain it to them then. So taking in a deep breath, I spilled the beans.

  “It won’t come off for some reason. The night we came here, they took our weapons when they spelled us, but two soldiers ended up thrown against the wall when they touched it.” I looked at the dragon bracelet again. The green scales and the wings, they all looked as innocent as plastic. How could something so small and ordinary looking be so dangerous?

  “You mean like…” Ax whispered, his voice trailing off.

  “This thing threw them off me in seconds. It…I don’t know, it seems to attack whoever touches it. Adams was here with a woman a few minutes ago. She tried to take it off me with a pincer but it didn’t work,” I said in a rush, trying to block the memories from painting pictures in front of my eyes.

  “What the hell? Where did you get it?” Fallon asked as she tried to see better but the collar around her neck wouldn’t let her.

  “I found it in one of Oscar’s bags when he brought us the weapons. I thought it was a brass knuckle. A fucking brass knuckle, so I put it on.” And now, it wouldn’t come off. Serves me for messing with things I didn’t know the nature of. One thing was certain, though: I was never going close to things I didn’t recognize again, pretty or not.

  “So fucking weird,” Grover whispered. “What is it?”

  “Maybe Oscar is trying to screw us over one more time?” Fallon suggested.

  “It looks so ordinary,” Ax whispered, shaking his head.

  It didn’t slip my notice that none of them doubted my words. Why? I would have. If someone told me they just found a dragon bracelet that turned out to be this weird thing nobody could even touch without getting knocked against walls, I’d have had my doubts. Lots of them. But they took my word for it. They trusted me. Which made me feel…strange.

  “I don’t know what it is, but the woman put two spell stones next to my hand before she tried to remove it. And when she left, she didn�
��t take them.” I was trying to keep my voice low, just in case somebody was listening to our conversation, or was watching us from behind the mirror.

  “What the…” Luca’s eyes grew wide as he noticed the two Pretters covered in my blood. He was the only one who could see them, being right next to my arm.

  “Pretters? Are you kidding?” Fallon whispered.

  “Not at all.” They were right there, so close I could touch them. Really. If I tried hard enough, I could.

  “We can use them,” Ax said. “We can use them to break these cuffs.” His words were coated with excitement.

  “That’s what I thought. If we can fill one with enough magic, it’s going to get us out of this bed.” At least one of us.

  “Did she use them?” Fallon asked halfheartedly. I flinched.

  “She did.” I’d felt their energy and they’d numbed my entire arm while they were active.

  “You’re forgetting that these are spell stones,” Luca said, but Ax wouldn’t hear it.

  “Can you reach them? You need to hide them for when they come back,” he said. I tried to move my fingers, but the pain coming from the leather belts around my shoulder and arm wouldn’t let me.

  “Guys, we can’t use our magic, remember?” Luca said. “And they’re spell stones. They’re supposed to be filled with spells, not raw magic.”

  “Does anybody know if you can refill a used Pretter?” I asked as I tried to ignore the pain the best I could. My thumb was close to one of the stones. If I could just nudge it a bit, it would slide right under me. Nobody would be able to see it.

  “You can,” Fallon said. “It’s hard, and the residue from the former spell can mess up the new one, but it’s doable.”

  “You’re not listening to me! We can’t use our magic and we don’t have any spells!” Luca shouted.

  But we did. At least I knew a few. I’d grown up in a family of strong Blood witches. Every once in a while, my mother stirred spells and filled Pretters just to brag about it to her friends. I knew the procedure, and I’d seen my father do it once without stirring. He simply chanted and the spell stuck. Maybe filling it with raw magic wasn’t possible, but I was trying every Blood spell I knew until it stuck. Because it had to.

  “Stop being so negative,” Fallon hissed at Luca, just as I touched the spell stone with my thumb. The pain paralyzed my shoulder for a second, but the blood on the bed enabled the stone to slide smoothly all the way to my waist. Now, I’d just have to move a little to the right, and fall on top of it. Easy enough, if I wasn’t cuffed to the damn bed.

  “I’m not being ne—”

  “Did you get it? Are you touching it?” Ax cut Luca off.

  “I got one. Now…” The other, close to my pinky. The plan was to reach it and slide it under my hand. The blood was going to help. Unfortunately, my pinky was refusing to cooperate, my body too aware of the pain coming from the leather belts.

  Sweat covered me from head to toe. Somebody could come in the room any second now, and if they found the stone, they were going to take both away. I couldn’t let that happen, not now.

  “You can do it, Scarlet,” Fallon said, surprising me a bit. “If my grandfather could fill a used Pretter, so can you.”

  “Of course she can,” Grover said. “And we’ll be out of here in no time.” It sounded like he spoke more to himself than to us.

  “Just focus,” Ax said.

  Dammit, they were making it so much harder for me. The hope in their voices was perfectly clear, hope I’d put there. And what if I couldn’t do it? What if I couldn’t fill the spell stones, or if the ECU workers found them? The pressure wasn’t helping at all.

  “Did you get it?” they kept asking every other second, making me sick. My pinky was a hair away from the second Pretter when we heard footsteps on the other side of the door. Adrenaline shot up my veins, filling my blood, and my body jolted in fear. My pinky touched the spell stone. I have no idea how I managed to pull it all the way under my hand, but I pressed my palm against it, and the pain took care in paralyzing my entire arm. My eyes were full of tears and I was breathing heavily when the door opened, and five ECU workers came inside.

  They were surprised to see us looking back at them, and the guy who’d put the gag on me before raised a brow.

  “You’re not supposed to be awake,” he said under his breath, and looked down at the tablet in his hand.

  “You fucking assholes! I’ll show you when I get out of here. I’ll show you!” Fallon shouted, but it was already done. Whatever he pressed on the tablet, it worked like a fucking spell. My eyes closed and my heartbeat slowed down to a crawl. Before unconsciousness took me, I prayed with all my heart to whoever would listen that those workers didn’t find the spell stones under me.

  Seventeen

  The spell stones were the first thing on my mind when I woke up again. Forgetting to even breathe, I pressed my palm against the bed. When my skin touched the smooth surface of the stone, I almost cried out in relief. It was there. The stone was still there, and…so was the other under my hip. I could feel it under me, just barely.

  It was so silent in the room that when I opened my eyes and saw a man staring down at me, a scream left my lips.

  “You…you…” I was going to curse him so bad he’d have nightmares all week, but the words were stuck in my throat, my body still trying to come to terms with the change. No danger. I repeat, no immediate danger in sight.

  “Good morning, sleeping beauty,” he said. He was the same guy who’d put us to sleep with his tablet the last time. I was beginning to think he was appointed to me. And the workers…there were no other workers in the room, and we were the only two people in there awake.

  It occurred to me… “What’s your name?” I asked halfheartedly. Making friends with him could potentially be beneficial for when we broke free of the cuffs and had to find a way out of the building. The city. The country. The fucking planet.

  “Patrick,” he said cheerfully, wearing his latex gloves. The stand on wheels was right behind him. He had two metal bowls on top of it, and a couple chrome tools I couldn’t identify. “You can call me Pat.”

  “Well, Pat, do you mind telling me what you’re going to do to me now?” I asked and watched him reach down for something in the stand. It was a plastic bag full of white cotton balls. He put it on my stomach, and cleared his throat.

  “I’m just here to clean you up,” he said with a wink, but when he looked at the dragon bracelet on my hand, he flinched. Putting on his mask, he then grabbed one of the chrome tools—a pincer, only much, much smaller in size than that of Melinda. He grabbed a cotton ball from the bag on my stomach, and dipped it into the bowl full of water. “Please don’t move.” Patrick sounded really nervous.

  “I’d advise you not to touch my hand. At all. If you do…” I let my voice trail off because he’d said it himself: he’d heard about the dragon bracelet, and what it could do. It was why he was so nervous to begin with. And I really needed him to not move my hand. If he did, he’d see the Pretter hiding below it.

  “Just hold very still,” Patrick whispered, then slowly brought the cotton ball to the dragon. He started to clean the edges of it, where the bracelet was attached to my skin. The cotton turned bright red in seconds, and he threw it in the empty bowl before taking another.

  “Do you mind me asking how you’re feeding us?” I asked. I didn’t expect an answer, but he surprised me.

  “We have our ways,” he mumbled under his breath. His finger shook while he discarded yet another cotton ball, and went in with the third.

  “Okay, well, do they keep others like us cuffed to beds like this?” I asked next, and his eyes met mine for a second. His mind worked and he tried to decide if this was safe to tell me.

  “Just the newbies,” he finally said, and got back to work. “Don’t worry. You’ll soon have your own room.”

  Chills washed down my back. “You know what you’re doing here is illegal, right?” It w
as useless to try to appeal to Patrick, who was nothing but a worker charged with cleaning my wounds, but I was desperate. In desperate need to tell anyone, the whole world, that they were the biggest asshole out there.

  But Patrick didn’t respond. He kept on cleaning my skin, and then the dragon bracelet, by slowly tapping the cotton balls to its surface, until he was done. With a used, wet rag, he wiped the dried blood off the leather bed around my hand, but he never moved my fingers, too afraid to touch me. I thought I was saved when he finally took his gloves and mask off. I thought I’d have time to focus on breaking those invisible barriers inside me and releasing my magic into the stones. I was going to chant until my teeth fell off, if that’s what it took, but fate had other plans in store for me.

  Before Patrick was even at the door, dragging his stand behind him, it opened, and Erick Adams came in—the face of all my nightmares. His dull eyes skipped over Patrick like he wasn’t even there. But that wasn’t what took my breath away. It was the person walking in after Adams.

  It was a fairy.

  He was tall, with blond hair cut close to his head, his pointy ears clearly visible, looking like he’d put the points on them intentionally, and if someone removed them, he’d have smooth, round ears underneath, just like the rest of us. His piercing violet eyes met mine and held them. I wanted to look away so badly, but I stood my ground. There was no point in showing weakness now. I’d seen fairies before, even spoke to a few of them in bars with a few drinks in my belly, but not ones like this guy. His shoulders were rigid, his clothes definitely not from around here. His grey pants and white jacket were made of shiny velvet, with flared sleeves and a golden belt around his middle. The collar of his grey silk shirt was tied into a pretty ribbon around his neck, and there were four golden rings on his fingers, each more beautiful than the last. It was obvious that he wasn’t from Earth, which meant he was from the fairy realm. Adams had brought a fairy from the fairy realm into the ECU.