Any Port in a Storm (4 page)

That's a depressing thought.

I hear Nana Bunny in my room, and I get up to let her out. The leather sofa creaks under my movement. After a moment, Carrick gets up too.

Nana hops out of her corral and immediately hurries into the living room to check out the smells, ears twitching. If the scent of so
 
many predators bothers her, she doesn't let on, only makes a frenzied circuit of the living room before coming to rest by my feet where I stand in the doorway to my room. I take a knee to scratch between her felty ears, glad for her little bunny existence.
 

Standing back up takes more effort than I like, and I give Carrick a wave. "Tomorrow night. Are they coming here, or are we meeting them somewhere?"

"Gregor said to meet at the Opry at midnight." Whenever Carrick says
Opry
, he gives it an ironic sort of eye roll as if it lowers his social class to even say the word.
 

I ignore his classier-than-thou attitude and nod. The Opry may smell like the inner sanctum of a fart from all the hot springs that have burbled up around it, but it's as good a place as any to see how the shades are doing without training wheels.
 

Tomorrow I plan to spend the day with a Die Hard marathon and bunny snuggles, and then I'll take a bunch of half-demons to kill full demons around a good ole country music landmark.

My life is weird.

CHAPTER FOUR

I'll never get used to having shades simply materialize around me.

Okay, so it's not like they poof out of thin air or anything, but they move silently on their bare feet, and even the ones who are so pale their skin is incandescent somehow manage to blend into the night as well as the shades whose skin is dark.

We have seventeen of them working with us, and they surround us with Gregor, Carrick and I at the center. The sulfur smell of the Opry's hot springs isn't as bad as it is in the height of summer, but I still have to fight the urge to wrinkle my nose. Clouds hang heavy over the city, and autumn has taken to a sharp bite, the first real snap in the air I've felt this year.

Usually there are a whole gaggle of snorbits here. A snorbit is what you'd get if you bred Popeye with Andre the Giant. Seven feet tall, forearms like they do nothing but pound spinach, and they lack any endearing qualities whatsoever. They also love sulfur. They're usually a sure thing up around these parts in the middle of the night, and after the Opry burned down and the hot springs bubbled up, there's usually not a norm in Nashville who'd risk their existence to be here. Especially since the mall flooded a couple years back and never reopened. Back when it was open, the occasional skittles-blasted shopper or deeply unintelligent adolescent would be found by Mediators after they ventured too close. Nowadays, the snorbits have their run of the place.

Though with seventeen shades — eighteen counting Carrick — and two Mediators, I'm not entirely surprised that we don't have company. Even a pair of seven-foot-tall monsters will avoid a crowd like us.

Gregor is built like a stump and has a face like a monster truck himself. He's not particularly fast, but he's surprisingly agile, and he's one of the Summit leaders here in Nashville. He's also the reason I live with Carrick and deal with naked butts in my apartment on a weekly basis. This whole "train the shades into a force for good" thing was his plan.
 

In fact, it's mostly his fault that I'm in this mess in general. He's the one who sicced me on the mystery that turned into the shades in the first place.

Right now, I'm the last thing on his mind. Gregor surveys the parking lot, pacing back and forth. His feet trample a few sprigs of weeds growing up through the asphalt.
 

"I want to split up," he says. "One group with Carrick to skirt the mall, one with me to circle around the Opryland, and Ayala, you head straight to the east hot springs. If nothing's there, come back around the television joint and meet us by Dave and Busted's."

Since the mall got waterlogged, that's what everyone calls the old arcade.
 

Gregor barks out a few names and takes off to the north, where the Opryland sprawls out in a decayed shell of its former glory. Carrick and his group disappear to the southwest, and I'm left with Miles and Jax and three other shades. Miles nods toward the sound of traffic on Briley Parkway, and we set off to the east.
 

They had to build a heavy wall on the west side of the parkway because of the demon activity around the Opry. It didn't used to be this bad, but it's the only way I've known it. A little worm of thought wriggles into me as we walk, and I think about Mississippi and Alabama to the south. Mississippi is one big Hellkin Hot Springs, and Alabama's not much better. No one lives down there now. Just the demons. It makes me wonder how much Nashville has changed and if we're really keeping things at bay — or if we just think we are. Do the Mediators in Alabama know how bad they've got it? We can't travel to each other's territories, so I guess there's no real way to know. The Summit leaders talk to each other in video calls and online hangouts, but for the rest of us, it's just a guessing game.

The stench of the hot springs grows stronger as we walk, and the burr of traffic continues like a muted buzz. Jax falls into step beside me. His dark hair is a mass of curls atop his head, and though he says nothing, he turns to give me a shy smile.

Shyness was never something I expected from shades.
 

One of the others — Bri, I think his name is — joins us on my other side. He's white, one of those shades almost as pale as me, and his hair is that downy light blond that most kids lose as they get older. Miles and the others bring up the rear, and together we make our way to the east toward the smell of the springs.

Snorbits are large and seldom quiet, and though as we get closer to the hot springs I hear the blubbing of the bog-like spring, I don't hear the usual scuffles and mucky splashes that would indicate hellkin presence. I keep my eyes open for any sign of other demons — a couple jeelings could be a problem even with six of us. No matter how competent they are barehanded, I would feel more comfortable if the shades were open to carrying some sort of weapon. None of them will, though.
 

They're pretty much walking weapons as is, but going into battle with hellkin butt nekkid doesn't strike me as the wisest course of action. If they want to risk taking a rakath's projectile spines to the junkular region, I suppose that's their prerogative.
 

The springs appear, fetid and as appealing as week old roadkill in July. A few scraggly brown grasses grow around them, and the springs are lit peripherally by the lights on Briley Parkway that only just crest the wall that keeps cars safe from rampaging snorbits.
 

Occasional quiet nights used to bring me relief. Not to encounter anything too big for me to handle used to be something to celebrate with a nice glass of sake when I returned home, but this week the silence of the usually-teeming demonic presence in my city unnerves me more than if we had walked up here to find a horde.

A sudden squelch in the hot bubbling ooze of the spring makes me spin, unsheathing my swords with a muttered, "Oh, thank gods."

The snorbit rushes me like a gorilla, giant arms swinging pendulums, and I sprint toward it, the shades springing into action with me. They're faster than I, but they follow my lead, and I smell a hot rush of rotten breath along with a spray of spittle just before my swords make contact. I stab left with my short sword while swinging my saber in an arc that slices through most of the snorbit's left arm, lodging in the beast's humerus. The snorbit screams, sending another spray of spit at me. I throw myself to the side, yanking my sword from the snorbit's arm.
 

Its massive left appendage hangs
 
at its side, and the right one is bleeding from where I stabbed it. Miles hits the snorbit from the side, and Jax and Beex come at it from the other. I don't see the other two shades until Miles grabs hold of the snorbit's arm and jerks. The arm detaches and lands in the spring, splashing Miles and the remaining, pissed off chunk of snorbit with rotten egg water and mud.
 

The other two shades seem to fall from the sky.

It takes me a second to realize they must have scaled the breakwall, and their combined weight sends the snorbit to the asphalt.
 

Its end comes fast. Beex and Jax take hold of its ankles, and one of the others snaps the snorbit's neck. After a moment, he thoughtfully rips off the demon's head.

I don't know what else to do, so I clean my swords and resheath them. Nothing else moves. I'll have to call for a body pickup later, but for now, I think we've found all we're going to find here.

The smell abates as we circle around a closed down media store, though probably not as much as I think it does. The quietness of the night unsettles me. Snorbits are almost always in pairs.

If it were just one thing, light patrols or a fleeing jeeling or a lone snorbit at one of their big watering holes — that would be okay. But all of it together makes me nervous, like I'm wearing a barbed wire thong and trying to walk.

It's almost a relief to hear screaming.

The shades and I take off toward the source of it, a patch of land between the Opry and the Opryland. The night is moonless dark, but I see well enough.

Gregor's group found the snorbit's buddies.

Eight of them.

I put two fingers in my mouth and whistle as loudly as I can. If Carrick can hear me, he'll come running. As is, thirteen of us against eight snorbits. My heart gives a thud of fear. I tighten my grip on my sword hilts, not wanting to think about what we'd have found if we'd been later.

I take off at a run, my footsteps lost in the sound of the snorbits' guttural growls and the barked snarls of the shades.

The hellkin don't really see us coming, and I stab one snorbit through the base of its spine, dropping it to the ground. Rade, the shade who'd been fighting it, gives me a grateful look and falls upon the demon, snapping its neck and crushing its skull with two quick stomps.
 

A screech sounds from behind me, and I spin just in time to see a trio of rakaths barreling toward me, all spines and scrabbly claws.

Fuck me.

I hear a bellow of another snorbit going down, but these rakaths will turn us all into pincushions if I don't stop them.

One of the rakaths is closer than the others, close enough now that I can see its small, slimy mouth of razor sharp teeth. The spines along its shoulders and back spring to attention, and it starts to curl forward.

Hells.

I leap forward, feinting left in a desperate attempt to keep it from balling up. My erratic movement catches it off guard just enough, and I bury my short sword in its neck, the curved saber in my right hand coming down hard to sever the rakath's clavicle. The bone snaps with a sharp sound like brittle metal, and the ridge of spines along its shoulders goes slack.

I pull back and lob off its head.
 

Fire explodes at the side of my neck. "Fuck!"

One movement tells me I missed one of the remaining two rakaths circling around me. It's like a sea urchin, balled up and ready to launch more spines my way. The third is busy flinging its quills at shades.

The spines in my neck — at the base of my shoulder — feel like arrows more than quills. I scream as loud as I want to, and it helps steel me enough to move. I drop my short sword and pull a knife from my belt. The nearest rakath is mostly balled up, but I've taken on these inside out knife blocks before.

I drop my other blade and throw the knife with my right hand as hard as I can.

For a moment, I think I've missed, but then the demon-ball flops over and uncurls, dead. I crouch to retrieve my swords and run at the rakath, severing its clavicle as well. If I don't, the body pickup will get a face full of spines. They reflexively spike people even in death.

The fight still rages, and I can see five snorbits still kicking. Or rather, swinging about with their enormous forearms. Sometime during my fight with the rakaths, a few slummoths arrived. And a frahlig? This far from the river?