Storm secrets, p.5
Storm Secrets, page 5
part #4 of Scarlet Jones Series
I flinched. Shit, that was close. Too close to what my father had said to me. It pissed me off, no matter how much I tried to not take his words close to my heart.
“I’m doing the best I can. If I can give these people their freedom, I’m going to do it, no questions asked. We can’t live here all our lives, dammit!”
“Do you realize that if you work for them, you’ll be them? They won’t just ask you to fight for them. They’ll make you theirs,” he spit.
My head throbbed with pain, my body begging me to let go. “That’s what you don’t get. I’m not going to fight for them. I’m going to fight for us.” With all my strength, as long as there was life left in me. The demons were our enemies, first and foremost. Every one I’d kill, with or without the ECU, I’d destroy one more chance for them to hurt one of us. That was enough for me.
But it wasn’t enough for Ax.
“You’re going to do what you want, no matter what I say. But don’t count on finding everything the same way you left it, if you ever decide to come back.” He made for the door.
“Ax, please. Don’t leave like this!”
“You won’t listen to me. Why should I care?” And he slammed the door shut.
***
After all that rain the day before, I thought I’d find the same angry sky when I looked out the window, but no. The sun was shining, not a cloud in sight, as if the world had already forgotten about what had happened. About all the death this place had seen in such a short time. It made me sick to my stomach, and if I’d had something in it, I’d have probably thrown up.
But eating was the last thing on my mind. I had mysteriously changed into a pair of yoga pants and a loose white shirt, and the door to Ezra’s room was open. Probably Sienna or Fallon, but they weren’t there when I woke up.
Ezra was still asleep. I walked to his bed and smiled at his calm face. This was how he was supposed to look like at all times. Just a ten-year-old kid without the weight of the world on his shoulders. In silence, I promised him again that I’d come back for him. I’d keep him safe, even if I had to stand against an army to do it. Waking him up seemed cruel so I didn’t. I left him to rest a little more.
Outside, the SUVs behind the gates were right where I’d last seen them, waiting for me. It was a little after seven in the morning, and I’d have just enough time to talk to everyone again, to promise them that I would be back as many times as I could, to promise them that I’d send everything I had their way. Pretters, weapons, information—whatever fell in my hands. None of them was happy, but they all saw me to the gates. Except Ax. I wanted to go find him when he didn’t join the crowd, but Luca insisted that I let him be, that he needed time. So I had to leave with him still mad at me. It made me feel worse about this whole thing, if that was even possible.
Before I knew it, like in a dream, I was in the backseat of an SUV with two soldiers in the front, driving down the hill.
I didn’t know what to feel or what to think. I had nothing with me except a knife. I’d left everything behind for the others. They needed weapons more than I did. Most importantly, I didn’t know what to expect. The worry of having left everyone behind was making me sick with every passing second.
We arrived much faster than was reasonable to my mind, which had slowed down considerably. My hands were shaking, palms wet with cold sweat. They took me to Inwood, that goddamned place where they’d held me prisoner, chained to a bed. Where they’d performed their experiments on me.
Now, I walked in there again with the worst feeling in history settling in my gut and not enough air going to my lungs. Everything still looked so surreal: the cars, the soldiers, the open doors. Nobody said anything to me, not a single word. They didn’t call me Dirt, they didn’t insult me in any way. They just looked at me and waved their hands to guide me inside.
I remembered the hallway all too clearly. There, we’d fought twelve soldiers when Oscar and his werewolf had led us into a trap. I’d bought all of it. I hadn’t noticed that his werewolves were fighting the soldiers just for show. Like a fool, I’d fallen into the trap with both my feet and my eyes closed.
But it made no difference, did it? Now, I knew this was some kind of a trap. It had to be. In some way, the ECU was planning to use me to get whatever they wanted, but I was still walking into their midst of my own free will.
The door Oscar had melted down when we “broke in” that night was intact now, replaced by a new one, an identical copy of the last. That’s not where the soldiers led me. The stairway was steep and wide, but with five soldiers around me at all times, it felt like the walls were closing in on me. I could barely see anything until we arrived on the third floor. It was empty, save for three other soldiers keeping guard in front of the three doors. The ones with me led me to the door in the middle. The screen on the panel to the side blinked green when they ran a card over it, and a click later, the soldier turned the handle and pushed the door open.
Cold air rushed over me and the lights overhead turned on. The corridor was narrow, short, with only one door at the other end of it, this one without a panel. The soldier opened it for me and stepped aside to reveal three people in there: Erick Adams, Andrew Brigham, and my father.
My knees buckled at the sight of them, but I tried to keep my chin raised. At least this time my hands were free, and I wasn’t being held at gunpoint. Whatever they had in store for me, I was prepared for it. I was prepared to either agree or fight my way out in whatever way I could. No matter how many guns in the room, no bullet and no spell was going to keep me from going back to Ezra and the others.
The three men were drinking coffee when I walked in, all standing close to the only window on the wall across from the door, looking out the side of the building. It was some sort of a meeting room, with leather armchairs and low coffee tables, small, one for each of the six chairs. And in the middle was the desk with a tall stack of papers in the very middle. When they saw me walking in, none of them was surprised. They’d been expecting me.
“Good morning, Scarlet,” Erick Adams said, and my father only smiled.
“Morning,” I mumbled despite myself. There was nothing I hated more than that man, but I had to play nice now that I was standing before him. I was willing to make changes, even if it cost me my pride.
“Please, have a seat. Would you care for a coffee?” said Adams and waved the soldiers behind me out.
“I’m good,” I said, for both the sitting and the coffee. I’d rather just stand.
But the men sat down on their chairs across from me anyway. “As you wish,” Adams said with a nod. I looked at my father and realized just how detached from him I felt and he to me. He looked at me not as a daughter, but as someone who would earn him credit from the ECU. I looked at him not as a father, but as the asshole who was probably looking for even more to gain for having brought me here. His blood might run in my veins, but I thanked my lucky stars that I was nothing like him.
“I imagine your father has already told you about our offer. We’re glad you’re here, Scarlet. You made the right choice,” Andrew Brigham said. His wide eyes had a hint of yellow in them.
“Before we go any further, I’d like to have the written statement my father promised.” I said my father the same way I’d have said Adams or Brigham. Isn’t it sad?
“Of course,” said Brigham, and standing from his armchair, he went to the pile of documents on the desk behind him and took the first sheet. His eyes skimmed over it quickly before he handed it to me.
My heart slammed against my ribs as I quickly read through the two paragraphs. It was exactly what my father had promised. Exactly what we’d wanted.
Which scared me more than it should have. I wasn’t used to the ECU giving others what they wanted. Just what kind of a game were they playing? They officially announced that starting today, negotiations with the Storm witches of the United States were open, and that no Storm witch would be hunted down, persecuted, killed or harmed in any way by the ECU or the people it governed. That we were all free in the eyes of the authorities and equal to other paranormals in the eyes of the constitution.
“Is everything as it should be?” Erick Adams asked when I put the document signed by all five ECU leaders behind my back.
“It is,” I said with a nod. It was everything I hadn’t dared to dream of. A shaky breath left my lips. Now, it would really begin. “But there’s one more thing I need from you.”
A bit surprised, Andrew Brigham nodded for me to continue.
“If I’m going to work for you, I want at least a dozen soldiers guarding the monastery at all times. I want to be the first to know if there are any demons nearby. You have devices—tools that can see them coming from far away. Use them.”
‘That’s a bit much, Scarlet,” said my father through gritted teeth.
I wanted nothing more than to cower back, say: yes, father, and sit down like a good little puppy. I resisted the urge.
“It’s part of my deal. Non-negotiable,” I said, keeping my eyes on Brigham’s face. He seemed the most approachable of all of them.
“I believe we can arrange for that to happen,” he said, looking at Adams, as if they weren’t equals. As if Brigham still worked for that witch, though they were both leading members of the ECU.
It cost him a lot, but Adams finally nodded. “Yes, certainly. Let’s accommodate Miss Jones’s request, shall we?”
Without needing to be told, one of the soldiers in the room stepped out immediately. Relief covered me from head to toe. I risked a glance at my father, but he wasn’t angry anymore. No, now, he was smiling, probably thinking about how he was going to tell this story to others, how he was going to brag about a Jones making demands to the ECU, and how the ECU had immediately agreed to it.
It didn’t matter, I told myself. I got what I wanted. Now, they could do with me whatever they pleased.
“Thank you,” I said, despite the protest in my head. They would never tell me thank you, no matter what I did.
But I’m not them, I reminded myself. I was nothing like any of them, and I was perfectly fine with it.
“Perfect! Now, let’s talk about you, my dear,” Adams continued. Maybe it had something to do with my father’s presence, or the fact that I’d actually agreed to work for him, but he sounded nothing like the man I knew. He didn’t look at me like he despised me anymore. Maybe he really needed those demons killed more than I’d imagined.
“I’m all ears,” I said and decided now was the time to get comfortable, so I sat down across from them. I had the feeling it was going to be a long conversation.
Six
Acid burned my throat coming up. It had been two hours, and I was finally leaving my father, Adams and Brigham behind in the office, with the official statement signed by the five ECU leaders in my shaking hands. It was impossible to get my shit together because they’d given me everything I didn’t know I wanted and needed.
I had my apartment back.
I had a decent salary to send back to the monastery every week.
I had unlimited resources to hunt down demons.
Something had to give.
So what was it?
“In there,” said the soldier who was following me down the stairs to the second floor. The square hallway was empty. There were five doors, and he was pointing me at the second to my left. Swallowing hard, I turned to look at the soldier, who’d stepped back.
“Aren’t you coming with me?” There was a question I hadn’t thought to ask Adams and Brigham. Were soldiers going to follow me now, twenty-four seven? There were probably a million others I hadn’t remembered, but once they began to explain to me what my “new life” would look like, I completely lost track of my own thoughts.
“No, Miss.”
Miss. I was no longer Dirt. I was Miss.
So their soldiers weren’t going to follow me around all the time.
What the hell would I find behind the plain, white wooden door? I dragged my feet to it, wondering if I should just turn around and make a run for it while I still had the chance. Adams and Brigham did tell me that I’d be working together with a team, specialized in keeping track of demons. Was that team behind the door?
I found out soon enough.
Half hoping the door was locked, I pushed it open and nearly fell on my face inside the room. It was a wide space with six computers on small, square desks, large windows on the opposite wall looking out the left side of the building at neatly cut grass and large trees that hid the buildings across the road perfectly. There was a water cooler in the right corner of the room next to two printers, a few paper packs on the ground around them. The dark green carpet covering the floor looked freshly vacuumed, like nobody had stepped on it that morning, although four people were already in the room.
The two men were huddled together in front of the third computer to my right, in front of the printers, watching something funny, their faces red as they tried to stifle their laughs. The women, one close to my age, the other probably in her fifties, were each at their computers, completely uninterested in what the guys were watching.
When I walked in, silence fell in the room and all eyes turned to me.
“Who are you?” one of the men said, standing up, and his friend elbowed him in the gut. They looked so similar, both with dark blonde hair falling over their foreheads, broad shoulders and dark grey suits. They could easily pass for brothers, though one had dark eyes, and the other blue.
“She’s the Storm witch,” the younger of the two women said. With her blonde brow arched, she stood up and slowly folded her arms in front of her, her silver shirt shining in the process. The glasses on her nose suited her perfectly and her straight hair reached below her shoulders.
“Scarlet Jones,” said the man who’d elbowed his friend a second ago. He even attempted to give me a smile. “Welcome.”
“I’m Archer,” said the other. “This is Wick, Stacey, and Miss Vera.” He pointed at each person in the room.
“I need a scanner and a computer.” The sooner I sent the statement back to the monastery, the faster they could make it public, and everybody could be free.
“Didn’t peg you for the needy type,” said Archer with a flinch, his dark eyes scrolling up and down my body shamelessly.
God, they looked so…so…incompetent. Not that I was judging them by their looks, but…yeah. I was judging them by their looks. If this was the ECU’s best against the demons, then I wasn’t surprised they hadn’t managed to find a way to wipe them off the face of our world yet. Unfortunately.
“The scanner?” I asked again. I could see the printers perfectly, but I didn’t want to be rude and show myself around without asking. So I waited for Archie to grin widely first, then point me in their direction.
There was a sort of deadness in that office, no matter that we could see the bright blue skies outside. Every step I took made noise as if a giant was walking instead of me, and I could hear the movements of everyone in the office as they slowly turned toward me while I made my way to the printers. Ignoring them and the freaky silence, I chose the first one to help me out and put it to use.
The computer nearest the printers was the only one facing the wall on one side, and a window on the other. The only one nobody could see the screen of. I decided that computer was going to be mine. I didn’t ask whether the printer was connected or if the computer was already claimed by someone else—I just sat on the blue chair and moved the mouse. No password required. The ECU logo filled the desktop. It made me flinch before I opened a folder to search for their scanning program. I could always ask, but the way those people were looking at me, I’d rather just figure it out myself.
My sweaty palms left prints on the light colored desk while I waited for the program to load, and then scan the statement in the printer. I’d keep the original in my pocket until I could go to the monastery myself later on. While I waited, I searched for a different wallpaper so I wouldn’t have to stare at the ECU logo every time I was in front of the computer and chose a picture of a baby koala instead. Much better.
There was no doubt that the ECU was monitoring everything I did on that computer, but that was okay. I wasn’t hiding anymore. I typed Jimmy’s email in the field and filled in the subject box: ECU’s Official Statement for Storm witches.
My hand shook terribly as the arrow hovered over the Send button. In less than an hour, the whole world would have read that statement, and the doors of the monastery would be wide open for everyone who pleased to come and go. It was what we’d been fighting for since all of this madness began, and now, to actually have this in my hands, it was more exciting than anything I’d ever felt before.
Email sent, the grey box on top of the screen said. The statement was gone.
Logging out of my email, I closed the browser, took the original from the printer, and I slowly moved for the door. For now, I was done with the office and in a crazy need to go see my apartment. With my first paycheck, I’d spend what I’d need on a car, and the rest would go to the monastery. I didn’t want Calvin’s father to be the only one providing for us, but I also needed a car because I needed to get Ezra out of there as soon as possible.
“Okay, so…” I waved my hand awkwardly while I backed away, unable to meet any of their eyes. Tomorrow, when I came back here, I was going to have a serious talk with all four of them. Today, I was done.
“You’re not leaving, are you?” Stacey said, pushing her elegant glasses up the bridge of her nose with a perfectly manicured finger.
“Is she supposed to?” Wick asked Archie.
“I’ll be back in the morning,” I said halfheartedly.
“If the boss told her she could leave…” The woman Vera, sitting closest to the door, said with a shrug and returned to her screen like she couldn’t have cared less about what happened to me. It was really hard for me to imagine them capable of hunting down demons.
