by D. N. Hoxa
“If any of you make a single movement, no matter how small, you’re dead,” the solider holding the gun to my head said. “We’re going to put handcuffs on all of you, and you’re going to cooperate. Understood?”
Ax shook his head at me. We can’t let them take us, he said. Or maybe I was thinking that.
Either way, it didn’t matter what any of us thought. It was only a matter of time before others showed up. Yes, five of the soldiers were down, but the ECU had many, many more, and they were probably on their way.
How had this happened? In twenty-four hours, my whole life had turned upside down. I went from living on my own, in hiding, safe from the rest of the world, to finding others like me and getting taken by the ECU in the same day.
That wasn’t something I could allow. The fear of the unknown had me shaking. I had no idea how the ECU was going to treat me. What they’d do to me. Killing me wasn’t what they wanted, or I’d have been dead by now. No, they wanted something else, and I couldn’t let them have it.
My swords were on the ground and I could reach them if I moved just a bit. If I moved and then attacked in the same second. If I killed the guy, so be it, and if he killed me, I’d welcome it.
I didn’t give myself a chance to think twice. I pushed myself forward and grabbed my swords, then fell on the ground on my shoulder—the one with the knife still in it, but I welcomed the pain now—and swung my arms as fast as I could.
The gunshot rang in my ears, and I expected the bullet with open arms, but it never reached me, even though my swords hadn’t caught the solider anywhere, like I’d hoped.
But the bullet hadn’t reached me because the soldier’s arm was suddenly pointing at the sky. He fired his gun again before two hands wrapped around his face and pulled it to the side. One quick movement, and the solider fell to the ground, and in front of me was the mindless thingie that had escaped from the construction site the night before.
His wide-set eyes took all of me in, as if he was assessing me for damage. He was more alert than I’d ever seen any of them. Locking my magic took focus, and focus was what I didn’t have when I could barely keep my eyes open. This time, when he sucked me dry, I wasn’t going to survive.
But…he didn’t.
When the gunshots fired, my arms wrapped around my head on instinct. My mind was a mess—I couldn’t decide if I wanted the ECU soldiers to win against the mindless thingie, who suddenly didn’t look so mindless anymore. All that power he’d sucked from the others the night before had sure left its mark on him.
Somebody screamed, and it sounded a lot like Fallon. Despite the pain and the fatigue, I spun around and tried to stand up, but I couldn’t. The two ECU soldiers were on the ground, and…three mindless thingies were around the others.
“No!” I shouted and I dragged myself on all fours closer to them, as if I had any hope of helping them. But before I could even get close enough to see them all, someone grabbed me by the hair and didn’t even give me a chance to see who it was. The fist on my nose felt like it went straight through my brain, and unconsciousness sucked me in.
Six
Drip, drip, drip.
Something dripped on the top of my head, the sound of it like the tick-tock on a clock bomb, just seconds away from exploding. I couldn’t feel my arms. They were up above my head. For a second, I had a feeling I was hanging upside down, but then I couldn’t feel my ass, either. I was sitting on something hard. The dripping continued and eventually, I opened my eyes.
At first, all I could see was an emergency light above what looked like a large window, and even that was blurry. My head began to pound, the rhythm in sync with the dripping, which was quickly driving me nuts. My nose hurt. My jaw hurt, too. My shoulder and my leg…
As if I was thrown back in time, the image of the fighting came alive in front of my eyes. I saw the ECU soldiers as if they were in front of me, and I tried to move back as they attacked, but there was nowhere to go. I hit a wall with the back of my head and a cry escaped my lips. The images disappeared and I was back in the darkness, remembering the face of the mindless thingie and his friends who’d killed the ECU soldiers. It didn’t add up to me. For as long as I’d been watching them, they never attacked in public. They didn’t look like they wanted to be seen by anyone other than their victim—in this case, me.
So what had changed?
“Scarlet?”
Ax’s voice sent a jolt of energy up my body. I looked around, terrified to remember that they’d all been with me, too. That they’d all been attacked by the ECU, and then the mindless thingies, in the middle of Manhattan.
The room we were in was set in white tiles, both the floor and the side walls. It was a narrow, long room with a door to the right, only five feet away from me, three large windows on one side, and us on the other, tied with thick pieces of wet rope to a steel railing mounted on the wall. The smell said it all—we were in a hospital somewhere. Or what used to be a hospital.
The lighting didn’t work, except for two emergency LED lights on top of the windows that showed an empty hallway instead of the outside. Fear made my stomach growl, especially when I strained my neck to see the others, tied to the wall just like me. We were each a foot away from one another, impossible to touch with our arms above our heads, almost completely numb.
At least we were all conscious.
“Is everybody okay?” I asked, though I could see that they were all breathing steadily.
“We’re fine,” Luca said. “Any idea where we are?”
“Hospital,” I whispered. The room we were in was empty, save for my weapons thrown at the other corner, very far from any of us. The hallway outside the windows had two doors that we could see, both closed. There was only one sign on the right, which said Exit, but nothing else. “Are there any abandoned hospitals in Manhattan?” Not that I knew of.
“No idea,” Ax said. “But we need to get the hell out of here before they come back.”
“How many are there?” Luca asked, his voice breaking.
“Were any of you conscious while we got here? How did we get here?” Was it by car? Or had they just carried us like freaking purses on their shoulders?
“No, we were all out,” Ax said. “Your weapons are over there.” He nodded at the corner of the room. “If we can get the ropes off—”
“How are we going to do that?” Grover asked, and it sounded like he was crying.
“Magic,” Ax said.
“No!” I whispered, terrified at the thought of it. “If we use magic, they’re going to be here in seconds.”
They moved fast, and chances were, they’d fed off our magic while we were unconscious. It was why my nose was still hurting so badly. Paranormals healed much faster than humans, but even we couldn’t go far without a healing spell. I didn’t know one that worked with my magic, so all I had to rely on was my natural healing speed, which had slowed to a crawl judging by the wound on my thigh. It still hadn’t even closed.
“It’s the only chance we have,” Ax said. “Unless you have a better idea.”
Did I?
I tried to move my hands, to see if there was any hope of untying the rope, but my fingers were too numb to even move properly. And that damned water kept dripping on my head!
“Dammit!” I hissed, needing to shout the frustration off. “Do any of you have any weapons on your person?”
“Even if we did, there’s no way we could reach them,” Luca said.
“We’re wasting time,” said Ax, suddenly pissed off. “We need to use our magic, right now, before they come back.”
“They’re going to come running if we do this,” I said, desperate because I knew he was right. There was no other way out of this, and in the end, I’d rather do something than wait and see what the mindless thingies had planned for us.
“Whoever frees themselves first, get Scarlet’s weapons and cut the rest loose, okay?” Ax said. I squeezed my eyes shut because I knew how wrong this was, and I had
no idea how to stop it.
“On three…”
My magic was weak at first, almost as if it had been asleep for a long time. It left no doubt in my mind that those thingies had sucked on me while I’d been out of it, but the more I focused, the faster my power grew. I’d never tried to untie rope like this before. My magic wasn’t good for many things, just like the raw magic of any other witch was unstable without the words of a spell to guide it. To shape it. Since I knew no spells that worked, the best I could do was guide my magic with my mind and hope for the best, but even then, I could create wind around me as a shield, and I could push others off with a burst of energy—but that was about it. My magic was stubborn, and no matter how hard I tried to basically blow the rope around my wrist to pieces, it wasn’t working.
The water dripping on the top of my head didn’t stop and half my mind was focused on it. Moving my head wasn’t working—it just kept dripping somewhere else, getting me even more pissed off. Angry and scared was not a good combination, and as a result, what magic I had left wasn’t working for shit.
“It’s not—” I started, but the words got stuck in my throat when a figure suddenly appeared on the other side of the window in front of me. It was a mindless thingie, and I could argue with myself that I simply hadn’t seen him until he’d stopped, but I’d be a damn liar. Even vampires could be seen while they moved. It made me wonder what else could they do that I didn’t know about…
“Faster!” Luca shouted, but it was too late.
It was too late to try and block my magic, too. The mindless thingie disappeared from behind the window just as fast as he’d appeared, and he walked into the door to my right. If I wasn’t embarrassed, I’d have admitted that I nearly pissed my pants when I met his eyes. This wasn’t a guy I’d seen before. He was taller than most, and skinnier. His black shirt hung loosely on his boney shoulders, but you’d be a fool to think of him as weak. He was anything but.
And he wasn’t alone.
The second guy coming in had a smile on his face, a bloodthirsty one, almost as if he could see big, juicy steaks instead of our bodies. Fallon began to scream at the top of her voice when they all stopped in front of us, hands neatly folded in front of them. It was useless, but I tried to kick the second guy in the knees with all I had. The rope around my wrists bit into my skin, going deeper, and holding me back.
The mindless thingies didn’t care that we tried to break free, that the others were probably still using their magic while they tried to kick them helplessly. Eventually, it ended the way I always knew it would: they sucked our powers by taking in a deep breath, and by the time they were done, Fallon was no longer screaming. We were no longer kicking. We simply slipped into unconscious as if it was our sanctuary.
***
I’d been up for an hour, if I was calculating the time right. By then, I’d become best friends with the dripping on the top of my head, which had slowed down considerably. It kept me company while the others slept.
I hadn’t made a single sound for fear I’d wake them, because I needed time to think. I needed time to prepare. To find a solution. If they woke up, the mindless thingies would know. They couldn’t block their magic like I could. My weapons remained at the corner, and as I watched them and went over my plan once more, bile rose up to my throat. My stomach was a mess, my whole body trying to stop me from what I was about to do. Which was to use my magic to blow a knife toward me.
I’d never done something like that before. My magic worked the other way around: I released it, and it charged forward. I had no idea if I was going to be able to send it to the other side of the room, then get it to return. It was a crazy idea, especially since I knew that the mindless thingies would be back, and they’d suck me dry again, just like the first time. That was why my body was fighting me.
But what other choice did I have? Those guys didn’t look like they even knew what was going on, that we needed to eat to survive. That we needed to use the fucking bathroom. Something told me that their brilliant plan was to keep us tied in that room and feed off us whenever they pleased, not taking into account that we were going to die if they kept at it.
There’s no other way, I said to myself, trying to rid of some of the fear that was paralyzing me. My magic was weak—I was still recharging, if that even made sense. Good thing it didn’t need to. Sense could wait until we all got out of there. Allowing myself to close my eyes was not an option, though I needed to, to focus better. If they came, I needed to see. So with a deep breath and my eyes wide open, I began.
It was a strange thing, my magic. It was like air on a cold November night, right after it had rained. It was everywhere, like a shadow, slithering under my skin, just waiting to make its presence known to the world. I never thought I’d live the day in which everyone would see it. Everyone would know the real me, the girl I spent my whole life hiding. And now that it had happened, now that the ECU had forced us to put on a show for the people, it was only a matter of time before my parents found out. Before they gave up on me for good.
But all that could wait until after we were free.
My magic was still weak, but strong enough to blow a couple throwing knives my way. I sent it forward and hit the wall, before it slipped my fingers and I lost control of it.
“Come on!” I whispered, sending another charge forward. If they caught me now, I had no idea when I’d wake up again, so I had to make it work. The second time was a miss, so I tried again, without wasting time. If I could just keep control of my magic after it hit the wall, I could get it to turn around. It just had to attack me. Easy.
Unfortunately, it was not. It took ten shots for me to even get the magic to my weapons, and by the time I began to learn how to pull it back toward me, the door opened.
I didn’t dare look, though. I was so, so close and if I saw them, all of it would disappear. But they weren’t going to give me time. When they begin to suck my magic—I couldn’t tell if it was one or two people—I screamed so hard, my throat hurt. My mind shut down and my body collapsed. Just before my eyes closed, I saw one of my swords move.
Seven
“Wake up!” I shouted with everything I had. First, because I doubted those assholes minded the sound—they were looking for magic—and second, because I didn’t care if they heard.
As soon as I’d woken up, I realized that the others were still out. They’d probably woken up at some point, and got sucked dry again, but it didn’t matter. They needed to wake up now, because one of my swords, Fly if I wasn’t mistaken, was right in front of Luca’s feet. Ax and Grover were between Luca and I, so there was no way I could reach it, but he could. He could just kick the sword my way, and we’d be out of there in the blink of an eye.
“Wake up, dammit!”
It had worked. I’d sent my magic across the room then turned it back to me, together with my weapons. A couple of throwing knives were close to the sword, but I wouldn’t need them for now. The sword was going to do just fine.
“Scarlet?” Ax said, blinking away the blur as he woke up.
“My sword,” I said in a rush. “It’s in front of Luca’s feet. He needs to wake up, right now.”
Ax’s eyes moved to the sword, and without missing a beat, he began to kick Grover on the legs. “Wake up! Wake Luca up!”
It took a couple minutes for Grover to come to his senses then barely kick Luca on the side of his leg, until he came to.
But Luca couldn’t reach the sword with his feet.
“Try harder,” I urged him, because from where I was sitting, it looked so close! It was right in front of his feet, but when he moved as much as the rope would let him, I realized, it was farther away.
“It’s too far. I can’t even touch it,” said Luca, alarmed.
“Use your magic,” Ax said, and I was about to tell him to stop being stupid, that the mindless thingies would be there in no time, but I realized he was right.
I was exhausted, starving, in desperate need to
use the bathroom, and my magic was all but gone. How many times would they have to dry me before it stopped coming back? Not something I wanted to know, but for now, Luca could use his magic and just blow the sword closer to me.
“Bring it close to me. I can grab it with my feet and get it close to your hands,” Ax said.
It was a good plan. Or it would have been, if I could actually feel any of my fingers. The ropes were extremely tight around my wrists.
“My magic isn’t working,” said Luca.
“Luca, we need this,” Grover said. “Just focus.”
But I couldn’t wait for Luca to focus. The thingies had probably already sensed the magic and were on their way, so I tried it myself, and so did Ax. Fallon and Sienna were still out as far as I could tell, so all four of us focused our damn hardest in that sword, until, by some miracle it moved.
I could have cried in joy if I wasn’t so scared. Ax toed his sneakers off, then his socks, and moved away from the wall until his arms looked like they were going to tear off his shoulders—but it worked. He reached the handle of the sword with the tip of his toe, and was able to drag it closer. Wrapping his toes around the extended crossguard, he pulled his knee up. My sword was so close to me, I could taste it.
“Give it to me,” I rushed him, but I knew it would take him a while, and probably a lot of pain, to move a bit to the side, then raise his leg close to my hands.
My blood had turned to ice and my heart beat like a drum in my head. I didn’t dare look at the windows from fear of what I might see, and told Ax that he could do it every few seconds instead. He was sweating by the time he first raised his leg, the sword securely around his toes, until it fell to the ground with a loud clinging. He grabbed it again, this time on the blade because there was no time to waste. Blood dripped from where the sword cut him, but he didn’t let the pain stop him. Ax’s face was covered in sweat as he tried to move farther away from me, so he could reach my hands with his leg. As numb as they were, my fingers were outstretched, and just waiting for the handle of the sword. Freedom never tasted sweeter.