by D. N. Hoxa
“Fuck, this is so weird. So weird. I love it,” she whispered. Exactly my thoughts. Ax and Grover just watched, shaking their heads every few seconds. Couldn’t blame them. They’d been there, had seen Doug and Tammy burn my skin to get that thing off me, and now, here we were.
But then Sienna opened her eyes again, and offered the dragon to me.
Suddenly terrified, I dragged my ass away and shook my head. “No, thanks. I’m perfectly fine without it.” My skin was still burned with acid where Doug and Tammy had experimented, but now at least I had a reason to do a beauty spell on it. Even if I couldn’t make the scars disappear, it didn’t matter. The dragon was no longer attached to me, and it was going to stay that way for the rest of eternity.
“I’ve created a rechargeable energy source for it. It will no longer need your magic. It has its own.” She could have very well been speaking Elvish for all I cared to understand.
“You created?” Elisa asked. “Mind telling me how you did that?”
But Sienna shook her head. “I wouldn’t know how.”
“So you’re like the chosen one or something, who can do things nobody else can?” Grover asked. Sienna’s cheeks turned a light red.
“I can only do what needs doing, and Scarlet’s dragon needed energy,” she said.
I swallowed loudly. “Sienna, that thing is the reason I almost died more than a few times. I’m grateful that you took it off, but I’m not going to touch it again. Not ever.” It was as clear as I could make it. “If you could just put it in a box or something. I need to get this to someone.” Eddie was going to flip when I sent him the dragon. He was going to forget all about my running away and he was going to be glad he’d helped me the way he did.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible. Nobody but you can carry this dragon, now that it found you. It’s connected to you, and you to it.” Sienna made another attempt to put the dragon on my lap.
Pulling myself back, I managed to stand up. “You’re carrying the dragon. It’s in your hands right now! I don’t care if it’s connected to me. I’m not going anywhere near that thing again.” See if she’d insist if she felt the way I did when the thing knocked me out cold, or when people tried to take it off me.
“Without it, you’re doomed. We all are. This dragon is our only hope against the demons. It’s the only thing that can teach you how to channel your energy to kill them, so you can teach the rest of us.” Sienna took a step closer to me, still offering me the dragon. Maybe she didn’t understand what it meant when someone backed away from you and shook her head. “It was made for you for a reason, Scarlet. Your destiny isn’t complete without it.”
“Destiny? Come on!” I shouted. So much talk about destiny lately and I definitely didn’t like it. I liked to think my actions determined the world’s reactions, not destiny. I turned to Elisa, Ax and Grover. “Guys, help me out here. You’ve seen what it did to me.” They’d all seen what the ECU had put me through because of it.
But the others looked away from me. Were they for real?
“When you came to find me last night, claiming I was to be your leader, I believed you. Tonight, I’m telling you that you are our protector. With this,” she held the dragon up, “you can give us a chance.”
My knees shook. Protector. That’s what Karim had said, too.
I shook my head because I refused to accept it. “You’re wrong. What you did back there, the lightning that broke the fucking asphalt, I can’t do that! The last time I could…” Was at the Academy. “The last time I could do that, I was just a kid, and mine was nowhere near as powerful as yours. You can hold the dragon. Keep it.”
“It’s the only thing that can kill the demons,” Elisa suddenly whispered. “Scarlet, Trinity said it, too. Everybody said it. The dragon only connects with one person.”
“And that person is you,” said Sienna.
“Come on, Jones,” Grover said. “You got this.” The worst thing he could have said.
“You don’t even know where I got it.” My voice broke. They had no idea that the green-eyed man had given the dragon to me. They had no idea who he was, or about his power, or that he was evil. If he gave me the dragon, it couldn’t possibly be because of anything good.
“It doesn’t matter where it came from. It matters that it found you when it was supposed to. It’s yours, Scarlet. The dragon, and the choice.” Sienna spoke so calmly, which made matters even worse.
“If it isn’t going to hurt you again, why do you hesitate?” Ax said, his deep voice echoing in the half-broken room. “It’s the best defense you have against everyone, demon or paranormal. Why won’t you accept it?”
Like always, he hit the spot exactly right. Maybe because he doubted everything I did, or maybe because he knew me better than was reasonable, but he always saw right through me.
“Take it, Scar,” said Elisa. This was the first time she’d called me Scar. Elena used to call me Scar. I’d missed hearing the nickname.
The dragon left Sienna’s hand. It rose in the air, just like that, like it was attached to invisible strings and someone was pulling it up. There was no magic that I could smell. There was no wind. Sienna wasn’t doing it. The dragon floated toward me. My skin began to itch. Stepping back was inevitable. I couldn’t stop myself if I tried. Tears streamed down my eyes but I refused to make a sound. I just backed away as fast as the dragon floated.
Their words haunted me. Destiny, protector, magic, pain. For some reason, I thought of my father. I thought of his face, his wide eyes, full of disappointment. What would he say if he heard what they were telling me? What would he think when he saw the video of us at the Carnival? Would he be proud?
Does it matter? a voice in my head said.
All my life, I’d tried to do everything in my power to get his attention. I’d been good, I’d been bad, I’d been everything in between. But my lack of power meant too much for him to see past it. To see me.
My back hit something hard. There was nowhere else for me to go, just like when I got back from the Academy. There had been nowhere else to go but leave. Get away from my family. Start my own life.
The dragon continued to float toward me. I put my hand over my heart and closed my eyes. Then, I’d been all alone, clueless to the world around me, drenched in blissful ignorance.
But now, I knew too much. What we’d done tonight, what we would still do, was much more important than me and what I wanted. It was much more important than what my father thought of me.
No, it doesn’t matter, I said to myself. It didn’t, because at least now, I wasn’t alone.
I felt the cold skin of the dragon the second it touched mine. Like a cloak falling over my shoulders, it wrapped around my hand magically. My legs gave up and I slid down the wall until my ass hit the floor. I expected pain, I expected fatigue, nausea—everything the dragon had made me feel before.
Instead, I got clarity.
The dragon was different to me now. It was more…present. I felt the energy buzzing inside it, and for once, I really felt it connected to my skin. Not glued, or stuck, or buried in it, but connected to it, not only physically, but in a much deeper level. Maybe Sienna was right. Maybe the dragon wasn’t going to hurt me anymore. Maybe it really was my destiny.
When I opened my eyes, I found all four of them looking at me. Pain reflected on their faces. They hurt for me. But there was also determination. There was no other way.
And Eddie…how was I going to let him try to take the dragon from me now?
“We need to find Luca and Fallon,” I said, my voice surprisingly strong. I didn’t want them to continue to look at me that way, because what was done was done. It was over. The dragon was mine—so be it. It was time to move on and figure out what to make with what we’d already done. My legs were still shaking and I didn’t trust them to hold me upright, so I stayed seated for a little while longer.
“I have a feeling they’ll find us now,” Ax said with a flinch. “So can others.”
“We can send out a call,” Grover said. “We can let everybody know that we’re here and that they’re welcome, if they are like us and in need of shelter.”
“How many does this place fit?” I asked. I hadn’t seen the entire building, but the room we were in would easily fifty people to sleep in. It was a praying room, judging by the now empty wall where the statue of Jesus had been, but it had left its mark on the stone. And the benches made it pretty clear, too.
They all smiled. “Easily three hundred,” Elisa said. “You’ve seen nothing yet.”
Three hundred? My own lips stretched into a smile.
“We already have one hundred and eight with us,” Ax said, shocking me all over again.
“Holy cow…”
“Imagine how many more of us there are in the world,” he said excitingly. But if all of them came to us?
“How are we going to protect them? Dress them, feed them…we need resources.”
“And we’ll figure it all out, just as soon as we all get some rest,” Sienna said. “For now, we don’t need to plan for further ahead than tomorrow.”
“Did the ECU follow us?” I asked halfheartedly.
“Not yet, no. I’ve put some spells on the monastery grounds, but we’re going to need more. A lot more,” Elisa said. Which meant she was staying. That relieved me much more than she’d ever know. She was my rock—she kept me grounded. Not to mention that she had spells that worked.
“Now that we got this out of the way, can you tell me how in the world you did that thing?” Grover said to Sienna, making us laugh. “No, seriously. I’ve never seen anything like it! You’ve got to teach me. Right now, if you don’t mind.”
“I’d love to, Grover, but I can’t. I don’t know how. I’m still learning myself,” Sienna said again.
“But how? How did you know you could do that? How did you know what to say?” She’d spoken words I would have never thought of and I’d seen everything she spoke of—the demons, the ECU killing innocents because they were like us. She’d sounded so determined, no matter that she’d been shaking all along.
“Karim told me more than he told you, it seems. Most of it makes no sense to me yet, but it will, in time.”
Oh, I wanted to go meet Karim again, so badly.
Finally, I trusted my body enough to hold me upright, and I stood to go to them.
“What do you think the ECU will do? How will they respond to what we did tonight?” Ax asked all of us.
“I don’t think they’ll attack right away. They’re going to make sure to come up with the perfect plan. Now that the whole world knows, and probably YouTube is full of videos, they’re going to want to be extra careful,” Elisa said.
“I doubt they’ll suddenly see us as anything more than Dirts,” Grover spit.
“Elisa is right. They’re going to be very careful about how to proceed, and we need to do exactly the same. All the ECU knows about us is what they were able to gather through experiments. Now, the tables have turned. They’ll want to learn more about us.”
“Learn what? What are they going to find?” Ax asked.
“What we show them,” I said. It was what my father used to say to my siblings and I only heard him by eavesdropping. People can only see what you show them, nothing more. “That’s all they’ll see.” It was something I’d lived by my whole life—or tried to. People often accused me of having multiple personalities. They thought I acted differently with everyone, but I never acted differently. I acted accordingly.
“And we’ll show them that we’re strong. That we will not back down. That we demand to be treated equally,” Sienna said.
“But we also need to be prepared. It’s in the ECU’s style to act secretly. If I were to guess, what they’re planning is a way to wipe us all off the face of the Earth without making a single sound,” Ax said.
We all nodded. “We need weapons. We need Pretters. We need to train the people who can fight.”
“How about all of them?” Ax said. “Don’t know if any of you noticed, but we’re all young. In our twenties young.”
Ugh, that feeling again. “Sienna, how old are you?” Since she was now officially the leader of our little group here, it made sense that she’d be the oldest. The first.
“Twenty one, in two months.” The blood dried from my face. She was younger than me.
“We need to record everything. Names, age, family—we need to record it all about the people who are here with us.”
“And we need to learn how to protect ourselves from the demons,” Elisa said, and they all turned to me.
“Right.” The dragon, that, by the way, hadn’t knocked me unconscious yet, though I was definitely tired, and not very excited. “With so many of us in one place…” Dammit.
“Looks like we have a lot to do before the next nightfall,” Grover said with a sigh, and Sienna nodded.
“We’ll start with the demons. They are the biggest threat to our people.”
Our people. The way she said it made goosebumps break on my skin. One day, we’d been a bunch of youngsters, trying to survive in hiding, and now, we were making plans about our people, as if we had the means. Or the right.
But who gave people right? How had the biggest revolutions the world had ever seen come to pass? Had they all begun in a half ruined monastery with five twenty-year-olds with no idea what to expect from the next day?
“You already said it. The dragon girl is going to have to learn how her dragon does what it does, and teach us.” Grover grinned. Dragon girl. That sounded so weird, and let’s not even go to the weight of all that responsibility settling on my shoulders.
“What we need are spells. Do you, by any chance, known any? Did Karim tell you something?” I asked Sienna. Weapons were fun, but our enemies had means to protect themselves from bullets, just like we did. They had spells, which we didn’t, and that put us in a very bad position.
“No, he didn’t tell me about spells.”
“A Bone witch can’t make spells. Karim is no Spellmaker,” Ax said, shaking his head. “What about dark magic?” He looked at Elisa, who was looking at the ground in silence. Probably to say that it wasn’t going to work.
“Let’s find a damn Spellmaker then. Let’s make one. Can that be done?” Grover said, making me laugh.
“No, Grover. We can’t make a Spellmaker. They’re born—or used to exist. The world hasn’t heard of one in more than a hundred years.” His eyes wide with confusion, he shook his head. “Long story short, we’re screwed.”
“There has to be a way,” Sienna whispered.
“Without spells, we’re way too vulnerable. Most of the people here have never truly used their magic before,” Ax said. “It’s going to take a long time to teach them—and ourselves.”
“But now that we’re no longer hiding, it’s going to be easier. I can’t wait to do what Sienna did,” Grover said.
“Everyone has spells,” she said. “There has to be a way to find them.”
“They’re not found. They’re made,” Ax said. That’s what I knew, too. All grimoires were made by Spellmakers. New ones could be made by very strong and very smart elders, but even they could make new spells for only their kind of magic.
“So we have no spells. What else?” said Grover. The muscles were slowly beginning to convulse. I was in desperate need to lie down and rest.
“Weapons, but we can find them. We just need to find money first,” Ax said.
“And spell stones.” Lots of them. “We can get freaky ones at the black market.”
“Maybe we can buy a Spellmaker at the black market, too?” Grover laughed. I loved it that he still had it in him to joke.
“There’s no Spellmaker, man. Get over it,” Ax teased.
“There is.”
Someone sucked the sound and the air from the room in a split second. Slowly, we all turned to Elisa. She’d backed away a few steps, refusing to meet our eyes. Her skin was pale, her hands slightly shakin
g.
“Elisa?” Ax asked. I was surprised he could still speak.
“I said, there is a Spellmaker.” So my ears hadn’t played tricks on me.
Suddenly, I felt betrayed.
“There is a Spellmaker?” Sienna asked, her voice a whisper.
“And you knew it all along?” It was no use to doubt Elisa’s words. I’d learned that she never spoke without knowing something a hundred percent. Right now, I was still stuck on the fact that she hadn’t told me.
“He’s just a kid,” Elisa whispered.
“Are you sure about this, Elisa?” Ax asked. “A Spellmaker? A real, born Spellmaker?”
“Yes, I’m sure. I saw him myself. But he’s just a kid. Barely a teenager. I don’t think he’s ready to make spells yet. It’s why I didn’t say anything.”
“Who is he?” I asked halfheartedly. Though it sucked to know she’d lied to me, maybe I would have, too, if I knew what she did. “And how do you know him? Where have you seen him?”
Elisa sighed loudly. “He’s a Bone witch. I saw him only once, very briefly. I don’t know where he is, only that he is very well protected by all the covens. And, like I said, he’s just a kid.”
“We need to find him,” Sienna said.
“Looks like we have our top priority set out in front of us,” Grover whispered.
“Will you help us?” Ax asked Elisa.
Elisa looked at me, completely lost. She didn’t want to help us with this particular thing. She hadn’t even wanted to tell us about the Spellmaker kid. But she already knew the position we were in. Without spells, we had no hopes of fighting against the world, if a fight was brought to our doorstep. We needed spells. We always had, and always would.
I held her eyes without daring to blink because I needed to remind her how desperate we were. Her spells alone weren’t going to cut it. Pretters were fine, but what if we needed to move? We couldn’t take them with us if we had to leave this place tomorrow, or the day after that.
“I will,” Elisa finally whispered, taking some of the weight off my shoulders. I let go of a long breath I’d had no idea I’d been holding.
“Then we’ll all be forever in your debt,” I said with a nod.