Eye of the Storm (15 page)

She's got a point, though with social media everyone knows. To an outside observer, it might look like we're all going quietly into the night, but I know I don't speak for only myself when I say that we're all strapped up with pipe bombs ready to blow up in the night's gods damned face. Like the refugees at Vandy, people all over the world are forming resistance groups.
 

At ten in the morning, I meet Alamea in her office again, where she's cleared off one side of her desk and has a map of Nashville spread out over it. The points of the outer warning system are all marked around the I-440 to I-24 loop, and she has the Vanderbilt campus and the Summit's safe zone marked off as well.
 

Together, we formulate a plan. We'll work out in circles from where we are, expanding not just the demon-free zones but the stronger wards the witches have layered on over the clear areas.
 

"Hardy says some of the norms who have proven half-decent with blades can help hold the inner areas," Alamea says once we have the borders all noted on the map. She looks a bit bewildered when she says it. "I don't know how useful they'd be in the case of a full on attack like the other cities faced, but more armed people should be good."

"They want to live too," I say. "We're so used to being the protectors that we forget other people live here too. They might be the reason we exist, but they might also end up being the reason we keep getting to."

Alamea gives me a shrewd look. "You have more wisdom in that thick skull than I gave you credit for." She pauses. "Lex told me what happened when you found Saturn."

At first I don't know what she's talking about. "What?"

"You exchanged energy with him. Channeled it."

Heat rises in my cheeks, and I lean back in my chair, trying to look more casual than I feel. "I guess."

"Not you guess, Storme. Don't play a fool." Alamea tosses her locs over one shoulder and narrows her eyes at me. "That's powerful magic. You really are their alpha."

"I wish I knew what it meant."

"I think you do."

That's the second time in as many days that she's left me at a loss for words.
 

She takes a swig of her orange juice. "I wasn't sure if I should tell you, but the other Summits where the new shades appeared have eliminated them."

I freeze where I sit. My heart gives an unwelcome
thub
. "Eliminated."

She nods, and I think I detect the tiniest hint of sadness in the way her brow creases momentarily before smoothing out again into a plane of perfect dark brown. "They weren't like the ones who you've found, Storme," she says softly, and now I know her sadness is real. "They were completely feral."

"We lost Sanj," I say suddenly. There aren't many shades left at all, then. Just mine. It makes pain tremor through me, and I feel it echo in the others.
 

"I know."

There's a long moment of silence that splays out through the room. I forget Alamea as it continues, feeling only the residual sadness through the threads that connect me to the shades in the building here. I've spent so much time protecting them, and I know even I'm not enough if we can't keep our foothold on our own planet. They belong here as much as I do.

Alamea clears her throat, and I look up, startled.
 

"There are many Mediators in this world," she says. "We've all been here a long time, and we're all used to watching people we love die, sometimes horribly." The anguish in her face I know has to be on account of Eldron and Suzie and the countless others lost in the past two days. "There are many I've been honored to know, but very few I'd be proud to die beside. You're one of them, Ayala Storme."

Then she gets up from her chair and leaves her own office, with me sitting and staring after her, not sure if I heard her correctly.

That might be the closest thing to an
I love you
anyone's ever heard from Alamea.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Ripper finds me there not long after, just as I'm stealing a swig from Alamea's giant bottle of orange juice.

"What are you doing, Storme?" He asks the question from the doorway, leaning against the frame. His blond ponytail is neat, bound by its usual leather tie. His eyes, Mediator violet, are ever so slightly crinkled at the edges.

Glad I've amused him. I haven't seen him since the night we took down Gregor. It's been hard to keep track of people ever since. Even so, I'm never surprised that he skips pleasantries. "I was going over some tactics with the boss."

He raises an eyebrow, but nods. "I heard what you want to do. I was wondering if you'd maybe want to burn off a little steam."

I lean back in my chair and steeple my fingers. "I'm intrigued."

"Few blocks from here there's a bunch of norms holed up in a tornado cellar. One of them managed to get signal and call a friend who's at the Vandy camp, but most of the other Mediators are tied up, and I don't want to send Mittens just in case there's trouble." Ripper rolls his right shoulder a little, and I hear a pop. His voice sounds strange, detached even for him. "You in?"

I nod, unable to avoid thinking about why his shoulder's popping. Long as I've known him, Ripper's best friend was Ben Wheedle, a man every ounce as annoying as his surname. Ben spent about ten years trying to get in my pants — even though Ripper was always on my side in that — and I'm not sure if Ben's unrequited snookums-feelings for me are what eroded his questionable reserves of sense or if he was always delusional, but he got it into his head that Alamea and I were going to destroy the Summit. He was so sure we were the reason things were going to shit that he and a bunch of other rogue Mediators jumped Ripper and almost killed him.
 

I set Ripper's shoulder back into the socket myself, with him passed out in my arms. Bunch of broken ribs, blood everywhere — how Ripper managed to drive all the way to Kentucky like that, I will never know. The man is made of grit. I think he spits gravel.

Looking down at the floor, I imagine Ben occupying a holding cell in the honeycomb of doom and resist the urge to wave through however many stories of Summit and underground that separate us. Asshole.

"What's the risk level? Alamea has this whole idea that I could get dead and it would ruin everything." I take another drink from her bottle. "I'm happy to help, but I should probably try not to die."

"Low risk. Just a quick retrieval." Ripper scuffs his boot on the carpet. "Gotta pass the time somehow."

"Let me just tell the others where I'm going," I say.

Mira and Carrick both want to come along, but I ask them to stay. Sol has taken up residence at Mira's side, and he keeps speaking to her in halting Spanish. For some reason, the sound of them talking quietly alleviates a bit of my nerves about these new shades. Luna spoke English when he had to, but maybe Sol's been silent because he knew he wouldn't be understood. I never thought about that before, that shades born to non-English-speaking mothers might seem nonverbal when in reality they just speak a different language. It's too late to know if any of the 2.0 generation shades in the other cities had that issue. They're reluctant to speak as is; adding in the language barrier and even I assumed they were less human.

I think of what Alamea said about the other new shades being eliminated. Completely feral. Were they?

It's a troubling observation, and it's one that fills me with discomfort.
 

Armed and ready to leave with Ripper, Jax catches my eye. He's sitting on the floor next to Nana's cage, feeding her a baby carrot through the wire.
 

"If you need us, we'll know," is all he says.

I give him a smile that makes my face feel stretched and tight.

"You're one creepy bitch these days, Storme," Ripper says as we walk out of the Summit into the strange un-light of the perpetual clouds.
 

"Don't you forget it," I mutter. "So where are we going?"

"Murphy Road, right around McCabe Park." The Summit parking lot has been mostly cleared of cars, with Mediator vehicles all parked along one side and the rest left open to give us a clear view of any approaching hordes. Ripper walks straight to a Harley parked on the sidewalk just in front of the entrance. There are two helmets on it.
 

"How do you expect us to bring back a bunch of norms on a single hog?" I ask. "You got a Honey I Shrunk the Survivors ray somewhere you're not telling me about?"

"They've got a car there. There're only four of them." He tosses me a helmet. "They've just got a few slummoths camped out on their lawn eating the neighbor. Miracle they're alive."

I don't know what to say to that.

I used to ride motorcycles when I was a Mitten, but sitting behind Ripper with our leather-clad bodies locked together with my arms, it takes some getting used to as he maneuvers us through the stalled out traffic on West End. In my mind, I can feel the shades receding, and I wonder if what Jax said was true. How far is too far for them to sense me in danger, and how fast could they even get to me if I were about to get splatted?

The noise of the Harley draws a few roars and demon shrieks from the distance, but we're faster and by the time we cross under I-440, none have appeared around us.
 

Nashville looks like something snatched up all the people and replaced them with a bunch of airlifted angry bears. Garbage is strewn all over the streets and lawns we pass, and between the blood splatters and the corpses, it looks more like a video game setting than the city where I've always lived. Even though Ripper's not much of the conversationalist and the noise of the Harley would drown me out, I want to remark on it. Instead, I just grab Ripper's waist a little tighter and lean into the turn as he makes a left on Murphy Road.

"I don't see any slummoths," I say as we pull up to a small beige ranch house. McCabe Park is visible just over the street, and I take one look before turning away from the sight of a small body dangling from the monkey bars of the playground.
 

"Funny thing about demons is that they occasionally move around," Ripper says.
 

"No shit." I've got a weird feeling, and I survey the house. There's no body on the lawn that could have belonged to these survivors' neighbor, but there is a dark brown stain and what looks like a jaw bone.
 

"They said they're in the tornado cellar round back." Ripper leads the way, opening a wooden gate to the fenced back yard. "Watch your step."

I narrowly avoid a pile of dog poop, following Ripper around to the back of the house. The storm cellar is an old one, like the one Aunt Em hid out in when Dorothy was getting spun to Oz.
 

Ripper raps on the door. "We're Mediators," he calls. "It's Ripper."

I keep my back to the entrance, listening for any sign of hellkin that might be waiting to snack on emerging refugees. It's quiet. Maybe the hordes have moved on to a more fruitful part of the city.

My ears pick up a rattling sound and a low murmur from behind the door.

"I feel like a fucking pizza delivery guy," I say. I give the door a kick.
 

It jiggles, then pushes open from the inside. A woman peers out, her hair greasy and lank.
 

"Oh, thank the gods." She shoves the door the rest of the way open, then clambers out and throws her arms around Ripper's neck, then pulls back to kiss him full on the mouth before latching back on in a suction-cup level hug.

To my surprise, he hugs her back so tight I see the tendons in his arms stand out.
 

Her hair's covering most of his face, but when he finally pulls away, he looks the other direction, just a tad too late. His eyes have a distinctive shine.

The woman's eyes are leaking, but she sniffs and turns to me, sticking out her hand. "Jocelyn," she says.

"Ayala Storme."

"I saw you on the news."

"You and the rest of the world, I think." Why this woman kissed Ripper, I don't know. Maybe simple gratitude, but I don't think so. I nudge my head toward the cellar. "Ripper said there were three of you."

She nods, and Ripper steps down into the cellar first. "Bart's hurt bad. He's not conscious."

Ripper doesn't respond, but I see his shoulders tense.

Who in the hells are these people to him? I didn't know he had any friends besides Ben, and these folks are certainly not Mediators.

"Bart got hurt on the way in. We managed to shut the door. One of the neighbor kids got in with us. He's only seventeen. Alison hit a demon in the head with her lacrosse stick just in time to save him." She gestures at me to follow her down into the basement. "His name's Nick."

I don't know if I'm going to remember any of their names, but I nod and follow her down.

We shut the door behind us, which I don't like. It seems to be the only exit, but the up side is that there's only one entrance, too.
 

At the bottom of the stairs, Ripper's bent over a man I can only assume is Bart. His face is so pale it's almost grey, and his shirt is soaked through and crusted into a shell of blood.