Eye of the Storm (16 page)

Most of it's his, but there's some green there too. Fuck. Demon blood is corrosive at best, toxic no matter what, and fatal given enough time. Ripper meets my eyes, and I know he's thinking the same thing I am. Bart's a dead man breathing.

Bart's barely managing to hold Ripper's hand. In the corner, there's a teenage girl with a golden tan and muscles impressive enough that I wonder the demon survived getting clocked by her lacrosse stick. I don't see Nick for a moment, but he emerges from behind the washing machine in the corner, looking like he could play linebacker for the Titans even though he's only seventeen. What are they feeding these kids, five steroid-injected servings of veggies per day?

"We need to get Bart out of here," I say to Jocelyn. He's not going to make it — that's almost a guarantee — but if he dies here, I'm not sure we'll be able to get his grieving wife and daughter to safety. His grieving wife who just kissed Ripper. "Ripper said you have a car? You got the keys?"

"They're in the kitchen on a hook," she says.
 

"I'll go get them. You all stay in here." I head back up the stairs, shooting another look at Ripper, who returns it blandly.

He's going to owe me an explanation, but now's not the time.

The back door is askew, half off one hinge, and I'm a little surprised no one's looted the house. The door leads right into the kitchen, and sure enough, the key ring hangs from a hook by the door. It's got about fourteen keys on it, but at least the car keys are easy to pick out. I tuck the whole thing in my pocket, where it bulges like a tennis ball.

I make my way back to the storm cellar, and tromp down the stairs. Ripper's bent over Bart's still form, his shoulder blades visibly raised even through his leather jacket.
 

Jocelyn is talking to Alison, a fact I only dimly register before I see Nick pull a glowing metal disc from the waistband of his shorts.
 

"Ripper!" I shout.

It's all I manage to get out before the disc flashes with blinding white light.

When it fades, the cellar is packed with hellkin, a hells-hole snapping shut in the corner.
 

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

My eyes pulse with dark purple afterimages from the flash of the disc, but my swords fly from their sheathes, the hilts tight in my grip. Decapitating the nearest slummoth sends a spray of kryptonite green blood arcing over Jocelyn's chest.
 

"Get behind me!"

I don't know if that'll help. The demons block the stairs, fill the area behind the washer and dryer. Ripper's on his feet to my side. We're all cornered by the horde. In my mind, I feel the shades stirring to life, alarm filtering through our bond. They know there's trouble, but they might be too late.

Nick the Teenage Linebacker wears a look of triumph for a split second before a jeeling claw cuts the look — and his face — in half.

Such is the repayment of demons for the services rendered by norms.

The pink glow of the jeeling melds with the fading afterimages in front of my eyes. A small swarm of harkasts come my way, and I start stabbing into them. To the side, Ripper's cutting his way through slummoths. With a slight shock, I see that he's handed a long dagger to Alison, the lacrosse star. She fumbles her first stab, but with her second hits a harkast right in the throat, and it goes down with a gurgle.

Won't kill it, but it's not going to be too dangerous now.

Behind me, I'm aware of Jocelyn guarding Bart's body with the lacrosse stick. Spinning through a hodge podge of slummoths and harkasts, the hellkin corpses around me begin to pile up. The jeeling hangs back, too surrounded by slummoths for me to get to easily. I don't know why it's not joining the fray.
 

I'm used to having shades on my side when I take them down these days. I don't know how Ripper'll handle this many demons.
 

He's holding his own just now, though. I try to ignore the sheer numbers of demons around us. I've faced this many before, but not with four people to protect.

Alison manages to lob a harkast's head off, and I see two slummoths part the harkast ranks to come at her. Ripper's there in an instant. The cement floor of the cellar grows slick with demon blood. I can feel the shades moving in our direction, but they aren't going to be here fast enough.

My sword points find the eye sockets of two slummoths at once, and I jerk the swords back and plunge them into harkast skulls as quickly as I can. The jeeling still hasn't moved; it's hanging back, still protected by at least ten harkasts and slummoths.
 

Its inactivity is making my blood pressure go up.

I try to count the remaining hellkin, but the harkasts are so short that I can't see them well when the taller slummoths block my view.
 

A moment later, their numbers cease to matter because they all lurch forward toward us at once.
 

My heart makes a bid for escape through my ribs. The shades are still a mile away, and these demons are about a foot.

I spin like a bladed tornado, taking down three harkasts in one swoop. I can't see Ripper or Alison. Or Jocelyn or Bart.
 

The jeeling is moving, but not toward us. Instead, it's headed back toward the corner where the hells-hole opened before. I can feel my face drain of color. If it brings more hellkin, we'll all be splats before the shades get here.
 

Behind me I hear a yell, and I plant my heel in a harkast's face to give myself the time to turn. Alison's got her blade stuck in a slummoth's breastbone and is trying to yank it out. Fuckity fuck fuck.

Ripper's there. "Hold onto the hilt!"

Alison grips it tight as he slams a side kick into the slummoth's chest. To the girl's additional credit, she stumbles backward but manages to keep her bearing enough to dodge an incoming harkast. Ripper dispatches it, and I slice off a slummoth's head.

A muffled grunt sounds to my left, and I intercept a slummoth heading for Jocelyn and Bart. Too late. Three more slummoths skirt around the falling corpse and sink their claws in Bart's leg before I can leap over the demon bodies between us. Jocelyn screams, her hand jerking a pocket knife from her jeans and fumbling to open it. I close the distance between us, leaving two more dead harkasts in my wake, but it's too late.

Bart's left leg flies past my head, and I hear a snarl from a slummoth behind me. One of the slummoths at his body grabs Jocelyn's arm. I slice the demon's hand off at the wrist, and Jocelyn crumples to the floor, Bart's blood pooling from his severed femoral artery.

Grim, I behead the other two slummoths and turn.
 

Alison cries out, and at first I think she's gone too, but when I look, she's staring at her father in horror. More demon snarls drown out her cries, and I turn back to the diminishing horde, methodically killing harkast after slummoth after harkast.

I'm faster than Ripper, stronger. I see him fighting out of the corner of my eye.

The jeeling is in the corner of the room, not facing me. It looks like the gods damned dude at the end of Blair Witch instead of a demon, and the air in front of it ripples over the exposed copper piping in the cellar. I cut my way toward it. I have to stop it, or at least get to the hells-hole to stem the incoming tide of monsters.

But they don't come. The jeeling looks at me once over its shoulder, then it vanishes into the shimmer in the air, which gives way to solid concrete wall again.

The shades are close now, less than a minute out. I feel their worry, their bloodlust.
 

The fight in here is almost over, though. Launching myself off the body of a harkast, I take down two more slummoths, then put my short sword through a harkast skull.
 

I hear a muffled cry behind me just as the last harkast goes down.
 

Spinning on my heel, I see Alison's strong arms, covered in blood, supporting a collapsing Ripper.

My swords fall from my hands.

I don't care that Bart has by now bled out or that Jocelyn may very well be dead too.

I'm at Ripper's side so fast that Alison shrieks and is so startled I have no trouble lifting him away from her. There's no clear place to lay him out down here anymore. The concrete floor is double deep in corpses and gore. I scoop Ripper in my arms and tell Alison to check on her mother. Stepping on slummoth and harkast bodies, I pick my way toward the stairs. The cellar door above clanks open, and instead of fear of more demons, I feel only a blossom of relief because I know it's the shades. It's Carrick.

He helps me get Ripper up the stairs and out onto the dying grass in the back yard. The other shades are all here, but I don't see Mira or my brother anywhere.
 

"She and Evis stayed behind. Alamea needed Mira."

I file that away to think about later, nodding at Carrick.
 

Ripper's breathing is rough, ragged.
 

I'm aware of other shades going into the cellar to look for survivors. Right now I can't care whether the sight of them is shocking to Alison or not. She's probably seen a bare dick before, and if she hasn't, well, she'll get over it.

"Storme," Ripper says. His voice is barely a whisper.

"You're okay," I tell him, even though I know it's a lie. I don't know what makes me say it. Comforting lies are a luxury we don't get as Mediators.

He looks at me like the gesture has touched him, though, and his hand gives mine a weak squeeze.

My eyes feel hot. I ignore them.

"Jocelyn," he says.

I look up at Carrick, who shrugs.
 

"I don't know," I tell Ripper softly. "Bart is dead."

Who are these people to him?
 

Footsteps on the stairs sound behind me, but I don't turn. Bare legs appear in front of me, and I recognize Mason's and Saturn's and Jax's. I think I see Sol and Luna in the distance.
 

And another pair, yoga pants drenched in green blood. Alison.
 

She lands on her knees on the other side of Ripper.
 

"Dad," she says.
 

Something more painful than a thousand claw wounds crosses Ripper's face, and he wrenches his gaze from mine, looking up at Alison.

My heart has stopped beating. The grass tilts beneath me, and I almost fall to the side.
 

Ripper's only a few years older than I am. Thirty-five? I thought. Maybe. I don't even know.
 

He doesn't seem to be able to speak anymore.
 

My cheeks cool with the streams of tears falling over them. I can't process what I'm seeing and hearing.

"I'm sorry," Alison says.
 

Ripper can't speak, but he does manage to shake his head as if to say,
no, don't be.

And then he's gone, and I see the light leave the violet of his eyes, and I watch his chest fall with his final exhale, and I hear a gurgle in his stomach, and no one around me moves.

Somehow we all make it back to the Summit. Jocelyn is still alive, and she made it to the top of the stairs moments after Ripper breathed his last, and I will hear the rending keen that tore itself from her throat until the day that I die.

Carrick drives us back, and Alamea meets us in the lobby. I'm carrying Ripper's body because I don't want anyone else to. Except maybe Alison, and strong as she is, she can't lift him.
 

I don't care that there are tear tracks on my cheeks as I stride into the domed cavern of the Summit.
 

Alamea looks at me, looks at Ripper, and looks at Alison and Jocelyn behind me. I know she knows. She doesn't ask how it happened, though I know later she will.
 

There are Mediators and Mittens frozen around us. Through the crowd, I see Mira and wonder why she doesn't rush over.

A second later, I see why. She's got a handcuffed and gagged Ben Wheedle by the upper arm. So this was why Alamea needed her. I'm glad it was her. And I'm glad I'm the one carrying Ripper right now, because if I didn't have a beloved friend in my arms stiffening from death, I would probably have Ben's head detached from his body.