Storm Witch (Scarlet Jones Book 1)
Page 22
“These people are hurt. If they don’t get help soon—” Luca tried again, but Cain stopped him with a shake of his head.
“Listen to me.” He met my eyes, and in them, I saw just how scared he was. “You can kill them. I saw you. You…” But he shook his head as he looked at my sword, to say that it made no more sense to him than it made to me. “He’ll never believe it. Not for a second.”
“I’m sure there are cameras in here,” I said halfheartedly. Not that I wanted to stay there, but Luca was right. The people there needed help, and it was my fault that the demons had found us. I’d been the one to call the green-eyed man. Because this was his doing, I was sure of it. And I should have seen it coming. His version of help had been to set an entire school on fire once. Now, it was to bring demons to the ECU facility, just so he could make me use the dragon he’d given me. I had no doubt in my mind that he’d done it. The guilt had yet to catch up with me because I was still in shock, but even now, I regretted having turned to him for help with all my heart. All the people in there, the workers, the others like us, innocent lives…how many had the demons taken?
“He won’t care!” Cain shouted, then shivered when he looked at Adams again. He was afraid he’d wake up. “You need to leave, right now.”
“We’re taking the others with us,” Ax said, raising his chin to dare him to argue. But Cain didn’t. He just nodded.
“Go left from here. You’ll find the dorm area. Take whoever you want. The staff entrance is on the right. It’ll take you out the back, where you’ll find supply vehicles,” he said in a rush, looking at Adams with every other word.
“Let’s go,” I said to Luca, who was the only one to still need convincing. Fallon grabbed his hand and pulled him to the door. “Go!” Cain shouted, waving us away. “Find more ways to kill them.” He looked at the sword in my hand once more. “Just kill them all.”
But for now, all I could promise was to try and make it out alive.
Twenty-one
The others ran to the door but my feet froze at the sight of what was left of the demon who’d sucked on me before I…before the sword. I couldn’t even begin to understand how that had happened, but the sight of the human shape with some parts of it still burning orange made my stomach turn. I took in every detail, down to the grey ash around it that had once been the demon’s clothes, and then I followed the others into the hallway.
Out there, it looked like the aftermath of a war. Solider and worker bodies covered every inch of the floor. We barely had space to put our feet as we moved left, as fast as we could, in the dimly lit hallway. There were three doors at the end of it, but the others had already turned to the one in the middle—the only door open.
We found ourselves in the same room we’d been in, right where we first found out that Oscar had tricked us, and where the ECU soldiers took us. The hallway was completely empty now, with thirteen doors to the sides, all of them open. Nobody made a single sound as we walked by them and looked inside. They were rooms, mostly the same, with beds, shelves, drawers, and some of them even had TVs in them. Some had pictures glued to the walls. Most were empty. We found three ECU worker bodies in the first seven rooms, only one of them still breathing.
“They’re gone,” Luca whispered.
“The demons took them,” said Ax, as if reading my mind. The demons had taken all the others who’d lived down there, prisoners of the ECU. And it was all my fault.
We kept going, looking into the rooms, until we reached the end of the hallway. The door through which we’d come in was broken, too. Had the demons done all of this? Or had the green-eyed man gifted them the way in, just like he’d gifted me the plane ticket home—and the dragon?
“In here,” Luca said, nodding at the door to the right, but in the last room across from it, there were two bodies on the floor. It was useless to check—even if they were alive, there was nothing we could do for them, but I did so anyway. The sword was still in my hand, but it seemed to me like the light had faded a bit, and it wasn’t as long as in the beginning.
“Holy cow,” Grover said, rushing to the bodies in front of the twin bed, sprawled on the floor. I didn’t get what he meant, at first, until he turned the smaller body over, and I saw her face. It was Elisa.
Heart in my throat, I kneeled in front of her. They’d killed her, too. I’d almost forgotten that she was the biggest part of the reason I’d agreed to go in this place, and now that I’d found her…I pressed my fingers to her neck. Her skin was cold against mine. Those fuc—
“She’s breathing,” Grover said, bringing his ear to Elisa’s mouth. “She’s breathing!”
I put my hand on her chest, and sure enough, it moved. She was barely breathing, but she was alive. I’d take it. Excitement gave me an energy boost. I grabbed her arm to pull her up but Grover pushed me to the side and put her in his arms. Elisa had a thin frame, and Grover seemed to think she weighed nothing at all as he ran back to the door with her over his shoulder.
Now, we just had to get out of there alive.
My muscles screamed with every step I took. The light of the sword had almost completely faded by now. Ax used his magic to knock the door from its hinges—the last door on the right. Behind it was a stairway. I almost tripped and fell a million times before we reached the top. My view was blurry and blood dripped from my nostrils, more with each step I took, but I followed the others as fast as I could. I trusted them to lead the way because I couldn’t see anything. We dragged our feet for a million years before Luca pointed right, at a big, green Exit sign.
That sign, a promise of freedom, propelled me to move faster. Night air touched my skin. It was warm but it was outside, and it brought tears to my eyes. It was dark and we couldn’t see much. The silence was deafening. Nobody was there yet. No demons and no ECU soldiers.
“Wait here,” Luca said and shot forward, disappearing into the darkness. Following the others’ eyes, I saw where he was headed. There was a small light in the distance, or maybe it looked farther than it actually was to me. Five or six cars were parked right under it, and I could barely make out Luca’s silhouette as he ran to them, as fast as his body would let him.
Worrying now was useless. At any second, the demons could come back, or the ECU could be there. The front of the building was probably packed by now. How long would it take them to get to the back?
It seemed we wouldn’t find out. The car drove toward us at full speed with the headlights turned off. We all believed it was Luca, because we couldn’t handle the thought of getting caught again.
It really was him, and the car was a minivan. We rushed to it, and Ax opened the back doors. We threw ourselves inside like we were falling on a mattress instead of iron. I didn’t even feel pain, if there was any. It smelled like meat in there, but nobody was complaining. Only when Luca put the car into drive again did I realize that there was no more light. The sword was gone, and the green dragon around my hand was back. My fingers itched to touch it, but I didn’t dare. Dying now seemed pretty pointless, didn’t it? No, I wouldn’t tempt the fates, so for now, I left my bloody hand and the dragon around it alone.
“Is everybody okay?” Fallon asked from the front. She’d sat in the passenger seat, next to Luca, and the rest of us were squeezed in the back. Elisa was next to me, her hand in mine. I squeezed her fingers, promising to never let her go now.
“We’re fine,” Grover said, then drew in a shaky breath we all could hear. “What was that, Scarlet?”
Chills washed down my back and I lowered my head. Looking through the windshield wasn’t something I wanted to do. I didn’t care where we were or where we were going—I trusted Luca to know the way.
“I don’t know.” Was it a lie? I wasn’t sure. I wasn’t sure if anything I knew was real or fake anymore. The thought of telling them about the green-eyed man who’d brought those demons into the facility suffocated me. For now, I’d keep that little detail to myself.
“Where to?” Luca as
ked. The road was bumpy and we slammed against each other every other second, but we were driving. Nobody was stopping us, and that was all that mattered.
“Detroit,” said Ax. “We’re going to Detroit.”
We’d planned to go to Detroit from the very beginning, but now, not even another world sounded safe enough.
“We’ll be all right,” Fallon said. Though I couldn’t see her, I could swear she had a smile on her face.
To my surprise, I believed her. We were hurt, exhausted, terrified and probably traumatized for life, but we were alive. We were together. There was so much we still needed to learn, so many fights until we made our place in the world. But for the first time in my life, I felt like I belonged in their midst, like I’d found a family in these strangers. Together, we had a chance, no matter how we were given it, and we were going to take advantage of it in the best possible way. This was only the beginning of our journey into the unknown.
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Thank you for reading Storm Witch! I hope you enjoyed it. Book 2 will be published on June 28th, and book three another week after that! You can check them all out here:
Storm Power (Scarlet Jones #2)
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