Storm Secrets, page 12
part #4 of Scarlet Jones Series
“We’ve never tried dark magic before.”
“So none of you knows any dark spells. Can the team learn?”
Wilder sighed. “Against the rules.”
“Fuck the rules,” I spit. “The demons aren’t playing by them, and I sure as hell won’t be following any.”
“Dark magic can’t just be taught in a day,” he said. “We need time. Training…”
“We don’t have time. But we have someone who’ll help.” Just the thought of her face made my skin raise in goose bumps. “I need to find Elisa Dunham. Right now.”
“The Hedge witch?”
“Her dark spells do more against demons than anything else your witches know. Trust me, I need her.”
“No, you don’t. She’s trouble. More trouble than the team is equipped to handle.”
“Then I’ll go in alone! With Elisa. You’re welcome to sit back and watch,” I exploded.
“Do you know who she is?” Wilder said through clenched teeth.
“I do.” I might have not known everything about Elisa’s past, but I knew her now. I knew she put her life on the line more than a few times for me. For us. She helped us when nobody else would, and for that, she had my trust and loyalty to the very end.
“She’s Jane Dunham’s sister. Do you know who she was?”
Icy fear washed down my back. “Yes.”
“Yes?” he said, forcing a laugh.
“Did you see the gates at the monastery?” I asked and that cut off his laugh. “Yeah, Jane Dunham came to look for Elisa. Almost tore the entire fence down, and when she couldn’t find her, she let in demons. We lost twenty-one people, Wilder. Twenty-one. Trust me, I know who Jane Dunham is.”
Sorrow reflected in his wide eyes, turning their darkness to light for a fleeting second. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “But Jane Dunham is dead.”
It was my turn to force a laugh. “She’s not. She’s very much alive.”
Wilder’s skin glistened with sweat in less than three seconds. I watched the beads form on his forehead, close to his hairline, and only then I realized that maybe I didn’t really know who Elisa’s sister was. Maybe she was more than just another evil witch.
“Tell me,” I said when Wilder wouldn’t speak.
He continued to keep silent, but he went to the living room and came back with a laptop in his hands. He sat on a stool next to me and opened it.
“When you told me about her, I researched it. They were born in the 1940s, executed for use of dark magic, and thought dead until a year ago,” Wilder said in a breath.
“Did you hit your head somewhere and I missed it? You said 1940s.”
Elisa was most definitely not a vampire, which was the only way she could have lived that long looking the way she did.
“I’m not fucking around, Dirt,” said Wilder, already out of patience. “Somehow, when they were executed back then, they switched bodies, meaning their spirits inhabited different bodies, and they’ve been doing it all this time. Jane, Elisa, and their brother.”
“David.” The word slipped before I could control it. The memory came before my eyes of a man on the roof, talking to Elisa, telling her that she was dead…and that she was Jane Dunham. Their sister.
“David Dunham,” Wilder said with a nod.
He opened something on the laptop and a picture of a blonde filled the screen. A dead blonde woman, her skin completely grey by the time the picture was taken.
“That’s Jane in the body they discovered her in a year ago. She was killed but took on a different body. She did it a couple more times before they killed her for good. She’s dead. The entire department got the notice.”
I shook my head.
“She’s not.”
Elisa had known it. Somehow, when her brother David had told her, she’d said Jane was still alive. And she was. I’d seen her with my own eyes, though the woman I saw looked nothing like the dead blonde in the picture. Then, Wilder pressed a button.
“This is David.”
A different David, too. Not at all like the man I’d seen on that rooftop, threatening to fight Elisa.
“But if they changed bodies, how do you know it’s them?” I shook my head to try to get rid of the confusion. It didn’t work. “And are there really spells that can take your spirit out of your body and into another? That’s…that’s…ridiculous.”
Impossible. Magic was magic, but it had limits, too.
“When they take on new bodies, they alter the DNA somehow, make it their own. They keep their powers and the ones from the body they possess, which is why they are so powerful. So dangerous. David and Elisa have been at the top of the list ever since they killed Jane Dunham. I haven’t seen the official reports, but I’ve heard rumors that they’re wearing human bodies.”
“Wearing?” A lump formed in my throat. “You’ve lost your mind.” Just the thought of Elisa wearing someone else’s body…
Words she said before clawed their way to the front of my mind.
I have a debt to pay and this lifetime will probably not be enough…
My life is not my own…
No.
Wilder slammed the laptop shut. “You’re in no condition to think, apparently.” He stood up and slid the laptop on the counter away from me. “The guest room is the second door on the left. Get some rest.”
I jumped to my feet. “I don’t need rest. We need to go after the demons.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” said Wilder.
I showed him all of my teeth. “Stop me.”
He returned the smile. “I don’t know what you’re used to with your own people, and frankly, I don’t care. I’m in charge here, Scarlet. Like it or not, you can’t do shit without my say so.”
“You’re not the boss of me, Captain Asshole. I don’t need your permission. I’m leaving, and if you try to stop me, I guarantee that you won’t like it.” He’d already seen the way I fought, but he had yet to taste my magic. I could set him on fire by simply chanting a spell now. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know about Ezra. That nobody knew we could conjure now. I’d blow that secret up—and him with it. What the hell did I have to lose?
He laughed in my face. “You want to go after the demons alone?”
“Laugh all you like. I don’t need you, Wilder.” I turned for the door, the anger shaking me to my core.
“So why did you call me?”
I stopped in my tracks. My eyes squeezed shut at the memory. I’d only known him for two days, and he’d been the first person I’d called when I found the monastery empty. He’d been the first person I could call—and the last.
“Don’t kid yourself, Dirt. You need me and you know it. So sit the fuck down.”
He began to open and slam cabinets, and when I turned, I found him pouring milk in a large glass, and putting toast on a plate before he turned to the fridge. Ham, cheese, pickles…Wilder was making me a sandwich.
He practically threw the milk and plate on the counter and pointed at the stool where I’d been sitting. His eyes were hard, he was pissed off, but he was also…I don’t know, kind of soft.
I swallowed hard. Nobody had ever made me a sandwich before. Dragging my feet, I walked back to the counter, feeling weak but also kind of nice. The man had given me food and I’d caved right away. Ugh. Pathetic. Maybe he was right. Maybe I really was in no condition to think clearly.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to rest—” I opened my half-filled mouth to object, but he didn’t let me. “You’re going to rest for two hours. I don’t care what you do, but you’re not leaving this house. After that, you’re coming to the office so we can put together a strategy.”
“We need to find them,” I said, swallowing hard, in case he forgot.
A deep sigh later, he nodded. “We’re going to. Tonight.”
My heart skipped a long beat. “Thank you.”
Wilder looked surprised for half a second. “Eat,” he said and turned around and left the house.
Thirteen
First, I tried to log into Wilder’s laptop. He’d left it there, on the counter, so it was impossible to resist.
After seventeen failed attempts at guessing the password, I gave up. I went back to the living room with the intent of finding out more about him. Unfortunately, as soon as I saw the couch and that soft, white blanket Wilder had given me, I caved. Two hours. I could lie down for two hours. No better way to make them disappear faster.
I slept.
When I woke up, panic choked me. How much time had passed? Were the others back at the monastery? The need to go and find out almost drove me crazy in less than a minute, but when I checked the time on my phone, I saw that I’d slept for an hour and forty minutes only. No missed calls. No texts.
Walking to the bathroom, I dialed Jimmy’s number again. No answer, but that didn’t stop me from trying another ten times, just in case.
Wilder’s house was surprisingly warm and homey, considering he seemed to live there by himself. Men didn’t care about what they put in a house, but this certainly didn’t look like a bachelor pad. The bathroom was all blues and warm browns, and the white towels soft, smelling of citrus. I used his toothpaste and washed my teeth with my fingers as well as I could, and when I was done, I called the number he’d added to my contact list.
“It’s not two hours yet,” he said when he answered.
“Come pick me up,” I said instead.
“What the hell do I look like to you, a chauffeur?” he spit.
“I don’t have a car, Wilder,” I said, rolling my eyes at myself. “My bike is at the monastery.”
“No, it’s not.”
I stopped by the front door. “It’s not?”
It wasn’t. My bike was parked in his driveway. “I had someone bring it back. Don’t break your neck on your way.”
The call disconnected.
Putting the phone in my pocket, I tried not to be impressed. He hadn’t said anything about locking the door, so I just closed it, looking around for keys, and when I found none, I made my way to the bike. Its key was in the ignition.
The neighborhood where Wilder lived was quiet and full of greenery. Houses of all sizes lined the wide street. A few houses down, I could hear the sound of kids playing. It had been a while. It was a very peaceful sound. Nobody watched me get onto my bike, except for the brown poodle in the yard of the house next door, who’d stuck his furry head through the wooden fence, his big, black eyes following my every movement. My hand itched to pet him, to scratch his chin, but I had no idea who lived in that house. Probably another wolf, though I’d love to meet one who owned a dog.
I turned the bike on, the loud sound of the engine disrupting the peace and quiet of the neighborhood. Locking down my powers within me, I hit the gas, hoping I’d figure out where the hell I was so I wouldn’t need to call Wilder again to tell me how to get to Inwood.
Fifteen minutes later, I killed the engine of the bike inside the large gates of the ECU research facility. Wilder lived close, in Kingsbridge, probably on purpose. I’d have gotten to the facility faster, but I had to drive slowly and look for road signs. By the time I made it inside and saw the guards, the familiar sense of fearing for my life returned—until I realized that the guards weren’t going to attack me. I was on their side now. I worked with them. I was no longer the enemy—at least not openly. It was important that I remembered that that could change at any given second, so I didn’t allow myself to relax as I walked among them, up the stairs to the second floor.
Everybody was in the office. As soon as I pushed the door open, Wilder said: “You’re late.” He didn’t even look up from his computer screen.
“Traffic,” I murmured, then cleared my throat. “Can I talk to you outside?”
“No,” the asshole said without missing a beat. “They already know, and we’re all on it.”
Wick winked at me. “We almost got her.”
Screw giving Wilder a piece of my mind for telling the others about Elisa. If they could find her, I’d take it. Rushing to Wick’s computer, I found a screen full of squares in front of me. The squares were showing footage. Live footage of the city, but they changed too fast for me to figure out which screen was showing which place. To the side, yellow letters changed so fast on a thin, black screen, just looking at them made me dizzy. I wanted to ask what they were comparing the pictures they were scanning to, but then I remembered that Elisa had been locked in that same facility, just like we had been chained to beds. They had pictures of her. They probably ran all those awful tests on her, too.
“Thirteen minutes,” Stacey called.
“Thirteen minutes?”
“Before we have to log out. We’re hacking the US government,” said Archie, his face flushed with excitement.
“And they’ll catch you in thirteen minutes?”
Stacey looked like I’d slapped her. “Catch me? Please. No human can catch me, but the ECU can. And what we’re doing is illegal.”
She pushed the last word, turning to look at Wilder’s back for a fleeting second.
“You’re doing great, Stacey. Keep at it,” Wilder called back without turning, his voice dull.
“If they send me to prison for this, I’m going to kill all of you,” she spit.
“Nobody’s going to prison,” Wick said. “We’ll be out before they can track us. Relax.”
“See if you could relax if you designed the virus,” Stacey mumbled.
“For what it’s worth, thanks for doing this, Stacey,” I said. She had a right to be scared.
“If I had any other choice, I’d be out of here by now,” she said to me, not even meeting my eyes.
“Focus, guys. We’ve got to find the girl,” Wilder called again. I walked over to his desk and watched his screen—a copy of Wick’s.
“Don’t be an ass,” I whispered. Those people were putting their careers on the line to find Elisa because he was making them. I was thankful for it, really, but he didn’t need to be a dick about it.
Raising his head, Wilder met my eyes. “Go take your place, Dirt.” His voice was all formal, nothing at all like the man from his house I’d talked to just that morning. “And don’t come to my desk without an invitation again.”
He turned back to his screen.
Biting my tongue to keep from speaking, I dragged my feet to my desk. Served me right to think we’re freaking buddies now that I’d slept on his couch. He was an ass, and I was in need of him and his team. That was it. No friends. No buddies. Just acquaintances out of necessity.
“Where’s Miss Vera?” I asked nobody in particular when I realized that the witch wasn’t at her desk.
“At the lab,” said Wick. “Doing tests.” Marble test. Right. Hopefully she’d come up with something useful soon.
Vera didn’t come back to the office the whole day, but I did have to go to the research wing and let those people “examine” my dragon again. Wilder had gotten me a few hours, but he couldn’t cancel that appointment altogether, unfortunately. This time around, I had no brain cells to spare on what the three people were doing to my hand or the dragon. All I could think about was the Storms at the monastery, so the couple hours passed quickly.
By then, I at least hoped the team had found Elisa. But the cameras hadn’t caught anything. We had to log out of the program and couldn’t go back in for another three hours. The cameras didn’t find her the second time, either. Not surprising. Elisa was hiding from her sister—if Jane hadn’t found her already—and she was smart enough not to walk out in public. That was okay. Tomorrow morning, I knew exactly who to go ask.
For now, I focused on the hunt.
The horde of demons we were going to attack was based in Fort George. They were staying in a subway station, and Wilder believed they’d taken over the old restrooms, which had been replaced when the government allowed retail space to be rented in the station. We had a map and Archie had already sent the request to another department within the ECU, stating that they needed the station shut down and completely empty from nine to ten pm. One hour. It was the most we could ask for, but Wilder believed that if things went south, the ECU wouldn’t let humans back into that place under any circumstances. So he knew how to bend the rules, too. Good, because we were going to need to play things by ear once we got there.
When the others went out for dinner, I stayed behind. Food didn’t sound good to my stomach now that I was a couple hours from possibly finding the others, or at least some of them. To my surprise, Wilder stayed back, too. He kept silent even after we were all alone in the office, all the planning done, and with nothing else left to talk about. I preferred it that way. He could be an asshole tomorrow.
Time seemed to halt, as if to spite me, until the others returned. Wilder didn’t look back at me, not once, and a few times, I found myself wanting to talk to him. To ask him what he was thinking. Luckily, I was able to control it. I was able to keep the precious silence.
The others had brought us thai food on their way back. I thanked them but didn’t touch the bag while Wilder dug into it. Just the smell had my stomach rolling.
“This is exciting,” Wick said, his smile huge.
“Have you ever fought a demon before?” He hadn’t, if he thought this was exciting.
“Nope,” he said. “But I’m ready for it.” Nobody was ever ready to fight those creatures, but I didn’t say that out loud.
“Fire,” I said instead. “Use fire. It’s the best chance you’ve got.”
“I’m stronger than I look, Scarlet.” He raised his brows at me as if to challenge me to say otherwise.
“I’m not saying you’re weak. Just that they’re strong.” Stronger than he could imagine.
“I’ve seen the footage. I know how they move,” Wick said, stretching his arms wide.
“We all have,” Archie said with a nod.
“You’re the one they want,” said Stacey, tying her thick hair behind her head in a braid without breaking a sweat. I was envious. “All we have to do is make sure they don’t get you.”
