Storm Secrets, page 18
part #4 of Scarlet Jones Series
“So what would a wolf in survival mode do?” I asked.
“Whatever they’d need. Separate, stand together.”
“But they have never left Manhattan before.” It just made no sense. For more than two years, they’d stuck to the City. Why the sudden change? Why would they leave now?
“Because they didn’t need to. The more Storms, the more energy they suck, the smarter they get, and they’ll leave the City—even if the rest of the country is brand new territory to them—to lower their chances of getting caught. Survival mode,” said Wilder.
“I don’t know…”
Something didn’t feel right. A voice in my head kept telling me that I was missing something, that there was more to the bigger picture than I was seeing.
“Maybe the demons didn’t take them at all?” Vera suggested, making my heart skip a beat.
My first suspect had been the ECU, but I’d trusted Wilder because I thought he had no reason to lie to me. We were on the same side, anyway. But after hearing Adams’s speech? Maybe he had ordered the wolf to lie to me, too. Why wouldn’t he? It would be easy. Take the others out of the picture until they figured out a way to get my dragon, and then they could get rid of me, too.
Except there were a hundred and nine Storms at the monastery. No matter how many soldiers the ECU would send, at least one of them would have gotten away. They all knew where I was. They’d have found a way to get in touch with me.
“If you saw Scarlet in action, you’d know that Dirts aren’t helpless,” said Stacey.
That name falling from her lips made me much angrier than when Wilder said it, which was wrong all in itself, but I refrained from commenting. The world knew us as Dirts, but it was just a name. It didn’t matter.
“I don’t think anyone other than the demons have the strength to just take a hundred people from one place.”
“If they took them, they have to be somewhere,” said Vera, biting on her lower lip. “They couldn’t have just disappeared into thin air. There have to be clues, ways to trace them.”
“I smelled them. Almost smelled them, but the smell doesn’t leave the monastery grounds,” said Wilder.
“So where are they?” asked Stacey, sounding terrified.
“They’re here somewhere,” said Wick, looking at his own map on his desktop. “They have to be. They can’t just walk through walls and disappear. It’s just a matter of time before we find them.”
“Any new theories about the marble, Miss Vera?” asked Wilder.
The witch replied. I didn’t hear it.
They can’t just walk through walls.
Colors exploded in front of my eyes. My mind opened, expanded, like a rubber band—then came back together in less than a split second.
Then, the colors disappeared. The room became dark. Everything stopped, including my ability to breathe. Searing pain took over my head. My eyes squeezed shut, and I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming.
Something was wrong. Of course something was wrong. Everything was wrong.
Because Storms couldn’t walk through walls. Nobody could walk through walls—except one man.
Sound crashed onto me, chasing away the momentary headache. Air filled my lungs like I’d just come out of water.
“It was you,” I whispered to myself, in awe of my own stupidity. Give me a freaking medal, people.
“Scarlet?” Wilder said, kneeling at my side, but I couldn’t see him.
I couldn’t see anyone. All I could do was laugh my heart out.
“You son of a bitch, it was you!”
The ECU didn’t take the Storms from the monastery,
The demons didn’t do it, either.
It was that sonovabitch Arius.
***
The overhead lights flickered. The room fell into darkness and brightened up again. Wilder, Vera, Wick, Stacey—they were all gone. Only one other person was in there with me.
“You bastard,” I breathed, and even my whisper broke as I looked into Arius’s eyes.
He sat in Wilder’s chair across the room, turned to me, one leg over the other, his hands resting comfortably over his stomach. His smile was made of snakes, his green eyes brighter than the sun, two separate universes. My body shook as I stood up, my mind made up to just kill him right then and there, even though some part of me knew it wasn’t possible. Some part of me knew he wasn’t really here, just like he hadn’t really been there when I asked for his help. When I asked him to free me from the beds the ECU had chained me to, and he sent in the demons.
“Look who finally figured it out,” Arius said, his voice dripping amusement. “You’re full of surprises, Scarlet. I can’t get enough of both your bravery and your stupidity.”
I reached for a knife behind my back and threw it at his face. Anger brought my blood to a boiling point. My muscles twitched, barely holding me up. My knife went right through Arius’s face and into the wall behind Wilder’s computer. His smile widened.
“If you’re done, I’d like to talk about what you’re going to do for me.”
“Fuck you!” I shouted, feeling like the weight of the world was lifted from my shoulders. “You took them! It was you! You…you…” My mouth didn’t function properly, but it didn’t need to. It all made sense now.
“I did no such thing,” said Arius, bringing a hand to his chest. His thick brows rose as he shrugged. “I never took anyone.”
“Yes, you did.” The laugh scratched my throat. “You said you’d give me time. That you’d give me what I need!”
I remembered the conversation we’d had that morning in my apartment when he’d visited me, wanting me to repay him for one of the favors I owed him. I’d refused. Of course I’d refused. The man was a lunatic who thought helping me was setting my school on fire or bringing demons into a facility filled with innocent Storm witches they could feed on. I’d promised myself never to think of him again, and that promise, at least, I’d kept.
Yet, here he was, sitting in Wilder’s chair, completely at ease like he belonged there, looking at me like he…like he owned me. The fear of his stare was unlike any I’d ever experienced.
“Didn’t I?” Arius asked, arching his brows. “I gave you exactly what you needed. I gave you a taste.”
Tears welled in my eyes. Another knife left my hand before I realized it, went through his face, and buried in the wall right next to the first.
“I gave you a taste of what it’s like to disobey me, Scarlet. Don’t be so surprised. You knew what you were getting yourself into.”
“I was a kid!”
“What you tell yourself is none of my business,” he said with a wave of his hand. “Now, are you ready to talk?”
He continued to keep his calm though I was sobbing and barely felt myself doing it.
“Where did you take them? What did you do to them, you sick sonovabitch?!”
Arius forced a smile. “I already told you. I never took anyone from anywhere, Scarlet.”
Never took anyone from anywhere.
Suddenly, Sienna’s ghost came before my eyes. She sat in that chair behind the desk at the chapel, calling for me. My dragon hissed, burning my skin underneath it. Alerting me, just like it had the first time. Alerting me that the witch who’d given it strength was close.
She had been right there for real!
Someone called my name, but it wasn’t Sienna. I couldn’t focus. I was falling and falling down a hole with no end, trying to grasp what had happened. The time I’d wasted. Arius’s power. Jeanne Dubois.
A cold slap to my face stopped my fall. My eyes opened to a different world, to a face both familiar and foreign, its image piercing right through my heart.
“Can you hear me?” Wilder asked, his wide eyes dark, not a speck of light in them.
I blinked the darkness and the blur away, and focused on my body. I was lying on something hard. My face was wet. So was some of my hair. The ceiling of the office loomed over me, then someone pulled me by the hands. Four concerned faces around me. My heart had forgotten how to beat normally.
“I need to…to…” Another pull and I was on my feet, standing only because Wilder held me by one arm and Stacey by the other. They lowered me slowly until I sat on my chair, reminding me to breathe deeply. To calm down.
I did. I had to. Everything had changed now. Everything was clear. Wilder’s chair was empty. Arius was gone, and I knew exactly where I was going to find him next.
Seventeen
“You’re not going anywhere.”
It was the third time Wilder said it as he sat next to me on Stacey’s chair. He looked more than scared and worried. He looked terrified. Ten minutes had passed since my meeting with Arius. Wick said I’d gotten up, thrown two knives at the empty wall for no reason, then collapsed on the floor, shaking, all in a span of ten seconds. It had felt longer to me. A lot longer.
I’d refused a visit to the healer, but now Wilder didn’t want to let me out of his sight. And I needed to leave that place. I needed to go back to the monastery.
Taking a deep breath, I rose to my feet. I’d feared I wouldn’t be able to stand, that my legs wouldn’t hold me, but they were surprisingly strong. My mind was clear, too, my thoughts in perfect order. Nobody was stopping me now.
Except Wilder and his huge body in front of me.
“Get out of my way.”
Wilder clenched his teeth. “No.”
It was a moment’s decision. Words took too long to be spoken but kicking him took barely a second. I spun with all my strength and raised my leg until my foot hit his jaw, giving me a very satisfying sound.
The office stood still, save for a sharp intake of breath from Stacey. She hadn’t expected it. She hadn’t expected Wilder to fall over on her chair, where he’d dragged it to sit next to me. There. My way was clear now. The door was just a few feet away, and that’s where I would have gone, had a strong hand not grabbed me from behind.
“Leave us.” Wilder’s voice had changed yet again, and he was now the Captain of the demon team, nothing more.
The others didn’t need to be told twice. With their heads down, they rushed to the door without even getting their things,and disappeared. Wilder let go of me. I closed my eyes and begged for my heart to keep calm. I was getting out of here one way or the other, even if I had to hurt Wilder.
He circled me once before he stopped in front of me, wiping the blood from his lower lip. My kick had made a clean cut, but it was small and already healing. He seemed amused as much as alert as he watched me.
“So this is the way you want to do this,” he said.
“I’ll ask you one more time to get out of my way.”
“Not without telling me what the hell is going on.”
“I need to leave. Right now.”
He pressed his lips into a tight smile. “Where?”
“None of your business. It’s personal.”
I couldn’t tell him about Arius. I couldn’t tell anyone about Arius. I’d die and take that secret to my grave, simply because I was too ashamed of my choices.
“I want to know,” he said solemnly.
That made me laugh, and it wasn’t a nice sound.
“So you can go tell Adams all about it? What will he do, pat you on the back and feed you a treat?”
His hands pulled up in fists. The muscles in his arms stretched. I expected him to attack me, but he didn’t.
“Adams has nothing to do with this. Nobody has anything to do with you and me.”
You and me? How cute.
“I might have even believed you, except I heard the little speech he gave you guys today.”
Surprise widened his eyes, and Wilder took half a step back.
“That’s right. I heard all about how you’re supposed to make me feel good. Make me feel at home. Orders don’t get much clearer than that, so don’t you dare tell me you haven’t told your bosses everything about me already.”
It stung, the betrayal. It stung more than was reasonable, and though I hated myself for wasting time to say this, as I looked into his eyes, I realized it needed to be said. It needed to be said because I needed him to stop pretending.
“Slam your head against the wall, Dirt.”
My turn to be surprised.
“What?”
Had he lost his mind?
“Come on. I’m your boss, and I’m telling you to slam your head against the wall, right now. So do it.”
“You’re an asshole, Wilder.”
“Do it!” His hand wrapped around the back of my neck, his face an inch away from mine. “Go ahead, Scarlet. Slam it because I ordered you. Because I’m your boss!”
I knew what he was doing. He was trying to say that, just because Adams had ordered him to do something, didn’t mean he’d do it. It was bullshit. He was a werewolf, born to follow orders. I didn’t plan on falling for that, no matter how hard he yelled in my face.
He realized that, too, when I kneed him in the groin. He doubled over instantly, letting go of me. Perfect timing, too. He didn’t catch the tear that slipped from my eye. Spinning around again, I delivered another kick to the side of his head, and when he fell against the wall, I ran for the door.
My fingers had just grazed the door handle when Wilder wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me up. My feet didn’t touch the ground.
“Stop it, Scarlet. Stop it!” he whispered in my ear.
I put my feet on the door and pushed back as hard as I could. He stumbled back, almost knocking us both over. His hold was incredible, his fingers impossible to pry from the side of my waist. He held onto me as tightly as lovers do, his other hand snaking up my neck to pin me in place.
“Calm down,” he breathed against my hair. “Calm down.”
“Let me go.”
I was tired of this. Tired of myself, and it was his fault. He made me feel things I didn’t want to feel. He made the betrayal of an ECU werewolf mean something, when it shouldn’t have because that was the way of the world. That’s exactly what would happen in a normal world: a werewolf would betray me, just like Oscar had.
“I want to help you. Don’t do this,” Wilder said, but if he sounded genuine or not, I didn’t allow myself to analyze.
“I don’t trust you.”
I shouldn’t have trusted him before, either. His hold against me loosened just a bit. I lowered my head, preparing to attack.
“I’m sorry,” he said, before the back of my head slammed against his nose.
He let me go all the way then, but I’d be damned if I let him stop me again. I was angry, at myself, at him, at the whole world. It’s why I hit him with my right fist, with the dragon wings in front of my knuckles, and Wilder flew back, landing hard on his back in the middle of the office. I considered grabbing Vera’s computer screen from the desk and throwing it at his face, but Wilder just looked at me. He made no attempt to stop me. The door was right behind me. I slipped out without bothering to say goodbye.
Wick, Vera and Stacey were waiting in the hallway. They’d heard everything but weren’t sure what to do. After all, they had their orders, too. Keep me happy. Make me feel at home. So they didn’t dare stop me when I made my way to the stairway. Nobody did.
The road to the monastery had never seemed longer, even on the bike. I rode through red lights and nearly hit two cars in the first five minutes, but calming down was not an option. I kept on going until I rode out of Manhattan. The wind wiped my tears away just fine. When I entered the woods that would lead me to the monastery gates, I dropped the bike on the ground and began to run, no longer patient enough to ride it.
The monastery stood tall, proud of its many years of existence, as empty as the last time I’d been there.
But it had never been empty. Not really.
Jeanne Dubois had been locked inside a house in the woods close to a river by a Hedge spell, cursed to never see or hear anyone on the outside, and nobody on the outside could see or hear her.
Arius had done a similar thing to the Storms in the castle. He’d put a shield on them, hid them from the eyes of the world, locked them in there without a way out. I should have known. I should have known the second we attacked the first demon horde and didn’t find any of the Storms. I should have known when Wilder couldn’t smell any scent anywhere outside the monastery grounds.
But now I knew. As I stood in the front yard, looking at the three buildings in front of me, at all the people I couldn’t see, I knew.
And I had the spell to make all of this go away.
When Ezra came up with the Storm spell, he was terrified because it was the first dark magic spell he’d come up with. It could break things. Ground, buildings…shields. I’d intended to use that spell to break Jeanne Dubois free.
Now, I would use it to break whatever spell Arius had put on the monastery to pieces.
The words materialized in front of my eyes, writing themselves in red, luring my tongue to say them, to speak them out loud. I hadn’t bothered to block my magic on the way there. If the demons wanted me, they could come and get me, but after everybody was back.
My magic roamed free, wandering to every part of my body, until it heard my call and rushed forward.
I’d done this before. I’d conjured spells, all the spells that Ezra made for us, but this one was different. I knew it when I said the first word. A cross between pure bliss and incredible pain grabbed me by the throat, momentarily disabling me from speaking, but I pushed through. This was dark magic. It was going to feel different, but it didn’t matter. I recited the words Ezra had written in our grimoire of ten spells, and I put my magic behind them. I felt it take shape, become one with every letter, and spill from my hands.
A dark veil fell in front of my eyes. Something tickled my nose. My eyes squeezed shut against the blinding headache, and when I opened them again, I heard the tapping of every drop of blood that fell from my nose to my sneaker.
The monastery was still empty.
I filled my lungs with air and tried again, my arms outstretched, fingers reaching for the monastery to better guide my magic. The words flowed easier this time, as if my mouth had already grown used to them. I pushed my magic forward without limitation, much like I did when attacked by demons. The dragon around my hand responded, setting my skin on fire. As soon as the last word of the spell left my lips, it felt like my bones shattered under my flesh. At the same time, satisfaction I’d never known before brought me to my knees.
