Any Port in a Storm (5 page)

The slummoths are dying quickly, and arcs of their slime fly through the air.
 

Where the fuck is Carrick?

It's as if he heard me. He descends on the battle with five shades.

I've never been happier to see his ass pointed in my direction.

The third rakath is still alive, but two shades fall on it and somehow one of them puts a fist through its collarbone. My shoulder feels like I've taken a cheese grater to it, but this fight ain't over, and I ain't stopping till we've done Loretta Lynn proud in her Opry's back yard.

I favor my right arm, keeping low and quiet. I meet Miles' eyes, and he kicks a slummoth toward me, his foot making a squelchy splat in the demon's mucus.

One heavy swipe of my blade, and the slummoth's head is on the ground. I take a step and stumble, turning to the left in time to see a snorbit's Popeye arms close around Carrick's neck, ten yards away from me.

My vision blurs, but I lurch forward, and somehow my windmilling legs propel me into a sprint. Even with the rakath venom surging through my veins, my aim doesn't suck.

My saber slips right under the snorbit's armpit, an inch from Carrick's carotid.

I fling my sword upward with as much force as I can muster. It doesn't take the arm off, but close. Carrick bursts out of the snorbit's grip like a super-powered chick from its eggshell. He snatches my short sword from my dangling left hand and stabs the demon through the chest. My knees tremble, but I take a step forward and jam my saber point-first under the demon's chin.

At seven feet tall with arms like tree trunks, I don't want this ox falling on my head. I throw my weight to the side, and it feels like I leave my head behind. My stomach clenches, turns, and bile rises in my throat.

The snorbit tumbles to the ground with a thud barely audible over the shrieks and snarls behind me.

The world looks like I'm seeing it through an oil slick. Even in the dim light of the overgrown parking lot, everything I see is mostly red.

I hear a yell, and the yell sounds wrong in my ears.

It takes four labored heartbeats to discover why.

Clothed people. Mediators. Not shades. Flashes of steel in the dark.

They're attacking the shades.

Somehow the fight got away from us. Carrick growls beside me, his nude body spattered with red blood and slummoth slime. Some of the blood is slummoth green, and Carrick'll have blisters from that.

I'm not thinking clearly. My entire left shoulder is numb, tingles twitching around its edges.

Mediators.

Here.

Where the fuck is Gregor?

Somehow, somehow, I shake off the lassitude of the rakath venom, just in time to see a shade's head detach from his body.
 

Rade.

No.

I scream as loud as I can. "Stop!"

My voice sounds like it's been put through a wood chipper and dipped in desperation.

And it doesn't work.

"Carrick!" I gasp.

The world presses in on me, tight like two walls shoved together with me in the middle.

I start running.

Everything slants sideways, but I manage to stay upright, racing death to save them.

I run right into the middle of the Mediators.
 

My shoulder's numbness is gone again, and pain washes over me in the sickly yellow light of the lamps.
 

"Stop," my voice rasps, sounding like it belongs to someone else.

My knees give out, and I fall forward. The leather of my loose pants saves my legs from encountering the gore and gravel.

I look up into the eyes of a Mediator I know, but whose name escapes me. Behind him, visible in my periphery, Rade's head is turned toward me.

"Friendlies," is all can say.

Gregor's angry voice intrudes, urgent and hot like molten steel, and I fall.

CHAPTER FIVE

It's Miles and Jax who catch me.

I know because Carrick tells me later.

When I come to, I'm in Gregor's living room.

It's modern and sleek and not at all like Gregor himself. The accent colors are bold jewel tones.

They laid me on my right side and haven't taken the rakath spines out yet. Thankfully, my Mediator resistance has burned off the venom.

"How long was I out?"

Gregor's house is quiet, and I can tell it's just the three of us here, even though I can't see Gregor. I don't know where the others are, but I hope they're okay. Rade isn't okay.

"An hour," Carrick says finally.

I sit up, my vision still adjusting. My bladder is full, adding one mundane discomfort to the rest of my body's aches. I look down. I'm in my bra and a pair of shorts that aren't mine. They've got happy faces on them. What the fuck, Gregor?

I'm not pissed they undressed me; they probably had to make sure I wasn't bleeding internally. I'm pissed about the gods damned happy faces.
 

I need these spines out of my skin, or I'll heal around them. When I say so, Carrick nods.
 

"I have to pee first." I get up and move to the bathroom. Gregor's bathroom is in disarray, antiseptics and various first aid supplies strewn over the counter. I do my business and avoid looking in the mirror until I've washed my hands, which itch from demon blood.

I don't like what I see when I look up. They must have cut away my shirt from around the spines, and how they managed that without waking me up, I will never know. I expected a patch of spines on my neck, but I seem to have taken half a rakath. They spread down my left shoulder almost past my deltoid and cover half the shoulder blade. I count thirty before I give up. This is going to suck. I can barely move my left arm. Continuing to fight must have dug them in deeper.

I've got a bite mark on my left arm I don't remember getting, and too many claw marks on my legs to count. They're barely scratches — thanks to my loose leathers — but they all itch like my hands.

I haven't been this beaten up in months.

Pulling out these spines is gonna be a bitch.

"Where's Gregor?" I ask when I return.

"Asleep." Carrick's cranked the lights up, and the living room is flooded with brightness. It hurts my eyes. Now that my head's cleared a bit, I can see I'm not the only one who met the pointy sides of a rakath tonight. Carrick's got a chunk of them on his side. He got off easy.

It smells like Ikea and demon blood in here.

I'd so much rather it just be Ikea. I've never been to one. I hear they're magical.

What we're about to do is less magical.

I snag supplies from the bathroom and sit back on the couch with Carrick, looking him over. His spines are what I expected mine to be, a small patch along the right side of his ribcage that's gonna hurt like a kitten in a cockfight to get out.
 

Either Gregor or Carrick already got out the forceps. Long and grey, they're way stronger than the average eyebrow tweezer.

Rakath spines are barbed like a porcupine full. The plus side is that the barb is semi-retractable. Grasp the spine and pinch the center, and the barb will at least partially disengage.
 

Still hurts like a motherfucker, though.

"You first," I say to Carrick.

He shrugs — his favorite response to anything — but I see the puffiness around his eyes and the way his arm quivers just a bit when he picks up the forceps from Gregor's faux stainless steel coffee table. Carrick's indigo eyes are bloodshot, and the thin red blood vessels look like cracks.

Gregor's got a reclining sofa, and Carrick kicks out the foot rest on his end, rolling onto his left side to give me access to the right. I gather the bottle of antiseptic, a carefully hand labelled homemade salve of witch hazel, and a stack of folded linen swatches.

I pull over an ottoman and sit. My own spines feel like they're nestling in deeper into my flesh with every movement, like they don't want to leave, and a wave of pain almost makes me want to ask Carrick to get mine out first.

But I don't.

I lay a thick black cloth on the arm of the sofa, tucking it around Carrick and the steely needles protruding from him. My fingers press the skin around the spines, gently feeling for swelling. There's some, and his skin is hot. Far hotter than the skin of his hand.

I grasp the first spine with the forceps, squeezing until I feel a pop like you get from cracking a glow stick to activate it.
 

The skin around the quill isn't bleeding.

"This is going to hurt like the dickens," I say. "Your skin's healing around it already."

Carrick doesn't answer, so I make sure my grip is solid and yank.

"Pah!" he spits, the muscles in his neck contorting.

"Told you. Eight to go."

I grit my teeth, my jaw locking on the knowledge that I'm next.

Gods damn it.

With three to go and a pile of spines gathering like a macabre game of pick up sticks on Gregor's table, Carrick looks up at me.
 

"You saved my life tonight," he says softly.

Just because I know it'll infuriate him, I shrug.

He scowls. His auburn bun is a mess, and sweat has glued flyaway to his neck. He must have really been working hard tonight — takes a lot for a shade to work up that kind of lather.

"I'm trying to give you a compliment." He grunts as I pull out another spine.

"I thought you were just stating the obvious." I grin at him then and jerk out the next spine.

He stares at me for a minute, then smiles back. It even crinkles his eyes. His smile fades as I pull the last quill. I soak a scrap of linen in antiseptic and carefully dab at the nine little punctures in his side.

Carrick grimaces. "I mean it, Ayala."

He never says my name.
 

"Mean what?" I switch to the salve, my fingers smearing a thick layer over his injuries. His skin ripples with goosebumps. I pat a square of fabric over it. It'll stick there for the next few hours and peel off on its own.

"You saved my life, and you fought well tonight. Better than anyone else, that's for damn sure."

I snort. "Don't tell Gregor that. He'll beat your nekkid ass bloody."

"I think he'd be proud. Is proud. He chose the right person."

I don't think I've ever seen Carrick this serious. Motioning him to get up, I take his place on the couch.

"I can handle myself all right," I say, positioning my body so Carrick can reach me.

Three spines come out before he speaks again, and my face is buried in the black cloth so I don't yell.

"You did a lot more than simply handle yourself."

For a time, I lose myself in the rhythm of his work, the slight crack of the spine in the forceps, the strangely cold pain of the quill leaving my flesh, the dab of antiseptic, the coolness of his breath drying over the evaporating alcohol.

"We lost three shades," he says.

My body grows tense, and I don't even remember relaxing. How many spines has he removed so far?

"Rade and who else?" I ask, my mind begging not to hear Beex or Miles or Jax on the list.

"Thom and Sez," he tells me.

I hate that the names relax me again, but they do. I breathe deeply, the sharp antiseptic smell glinting in my nose as Carrick pulls out two more spines.

Thom's "mother" was Thomas Derry, a man from the cesspool of Chattanooga who seems to have gone mad and turned to hells worship. Sez never mentioned his mother. Host.
 

As Carrick pulls out the last spine, he says, "Forty-seven. You killed at least three demons with forty-seven rakath spines in your body."

Four total. Somehow that isn't enough. It never is.

I remember when taking on three demons at once would have made me shit my britches. The more I think about the night's events, the more disconcerted I am.

On one hand, apparently I'll race into a fray with multiple hellkin and come out only poked full of some holes and clawed up a bit these days. On the other, is this just my life now?

Three months ago, I worked by myself, did my patrols, bagged the baddies, and trotted home to some silk and sake and Schwarzenegger.

Part of my mind whispers that I've gotten better, that I'm more formidable, but the rest of me feels the same as I ever did three months back.