Eye of the Storm (18 page)

"The teams?"

"The demons."

Asher looks up at that, her eyes narrowed. The other Mediators and Mittens around us shift their weight, and the two other witches exchange a long look.
 

"Let's just finish up," I say.

We finish the trudge to I-440, and it's there I notice the flaw in my plan. With this section of the map as ours — the shortest gap between the Summit and the edge — we have nothing to do but wait until the other teams make the near-double trek to the Cumberland and I-24 respectively.
 

Three in the morning becomes four, then five. Slowly calls filter in from other teams letting us know they've reached their border, and we all pick up on the snapping hum that twangs around six-thirty, letting us know that we've succeeded in building our bubble around our city's center.
 

"So that's it," Mira says. "That's all we're doing out here."

Sol and Luna look troubled, and I feel their agitation in my mind. I share it with them.
 

Something is happening; just not here.

"Are we clear to go back?" I ask.
 

Mira nods. "The last teams are finished. Nashville is ours. For now."

Nashville is ours. At least this part of it. It may be the first time before sunup in the history of civilization that an entire area of a city has been completely cleared of demons. This is a monumental triumph. And yet we all know that it could just be a loogie in the face of the monster breathing down our necks.

We all step to it a bit faster on the way back. Anxiety pounds in my blood like I can feel each of my red cells quivering. Asher's huffing and puffing for the first time since I've known her, and she shifts her weight awkwardly as she walks, keeping up with us. I meet her eyes, and she gives me what passes for a reassuring smile. Halfway back, Mira's phone starts to squawk.

She snatches it up, and I hurry to her side to eavesdrop.

"Gonzales," she says. "You under attack, Mittens?"

There's a heavy sob on the other end of the line before the Mitten can stammer, "N-n-no. But Little Rock and Charlotte and Lexington are gone."

Sol and Luna both snarl, and I feel a sound wrench itself from my throat before I can stop it from joining theirs. Asher starts, her eyes hard on me even in my periphery.
 

That's it, then. That's it.
 

We are now the southernmost remaining Summit, and the only city in the southeastern United States.
 

We are out of time.

That they took out three cities tonight tells me several things.

First, they needed every single demon they had to do it. That's why we encountered so few, and it also explains why those the other Mediators saw fled.
 

Second, they want us to feel isolated here. Lexington is to the north. We are now almost surrounded, with only Cincinnati as an escape route — not that most of the Mediators could take it if they tried.

Third, Cincinnati is the obvious next target, but something tells me they won't go for obvious.
 

I remember the jeeling in the cellar where Ripper was dealt his death blows as he tried to protect his daughter and the woman he'd secretly loved his whole life. I remember the way the jeeling hung back and watched the other demons die, the way it left when it became apparent that it would die too. Maybe it was only trying to conserve resources. One jeeling in battle is worth at least five harkasts and a slummoth or two. They're some of the more dangerous demons, because along with their eleven-foot height, they are smarter and more unpredictable than their more bloodlust-prone underlings.
 

A tense line of norms with swords meets us in the Summit parking lot.
 

"We heard," says a man who steps forward to greet us. "We heard about the other cities."

Alamea's not here, and I seem to be the only ranking Mediator around, so I step up to meet him. "We finished our mission tonight," I say, ignoring what he said. "Wards stretch from the Cumberland to I-440. We're as safe as we can be here."

"We know," he says, surprising me.
 

I blink at him. I'm still half-expecting him to turn hysterical and lead the line of norms in a pointy-edged mob against us.

"We wanted to say thank you." The norms behind this man all nod at us. They look tired, bedraggled, but alive.
 

"What?" The word sounds stupid when it trips off my tongue.

"Thank you. It doesn't look like any of those other cities stood a chance, Ayala Storme. Thanks for giving us one."

I'll be damned.
 

A murmur of
thank you
sweeps through the crowd, and for the umpteenth time in the past few weeks, I have a dry, lumpy throat and eyes more wet than I want to admit.

"I'm not alone," I manage to get out.

Mira looks at me, something like pride flashing across her face. I remember her telling me just that. She's perhaps the only person who has ever convinced me that it's true. I'm not alone, thanks to her.
 

"None of us are, thanks to you."

The norms pull back to let us pass through them, and there's something like reverence on their faces as we walk through them toward the Summit.
 

Mira, Sol, and Luna all go upstairs when we get inside, but I stay in the lobby.
 

For a while I pitch in with the Mittens who are still stacking supplies. They seem startled at first to see me doing grunt work, but after a while they let me disappear into their midst, handing me boxes or pointing out where things are supposed to go. It feels good to lend my strength to a simple task, one I know will do some good.
 

Or at the very least, it's something I can do.

Slowly, the other teams filter in from the night as day breaks grey over the city. For a great victory, everyone is subdued. We can all feel the heavy, ponderous ticking of time. None of us know how much we have.

It takes me a while to figure out why I stayed down here besides the busywork of moving boxes.

I want to see Mediator faces as they come back in. We didn't lose anyone tonight. But I need to see my people alive.

Billy Bob and Sal come in first. Lex was the witch with their team, and I give them all a salute and a nod. Jax is also with them. He goes right downstairs to check on Nana after a touch of my shoulder. I resist the urge to hug him.

Harkan and Holden come in next with a team of Mediators I don't know well. The two shades also touch my shoulders. I know neither of them as well as I would like, but the way they both emanate respect makes my throat tighten up in spite of it all.
 

A few more groups trickle in, the shades coming to my side to greet me, the Mediators passing by with curious eyes and nods as I continue to carry equipment around between arrivals. I feel like I haven't seen my brother in days, and when he comes through the door at Alamea's side, a flat-faced Ben Wheedle behind him, I ignore Ben's presence and go to Evis. Him I do hug, my arms circling his shoulders.
 

Alamea passes right by us, but Ben holds back.

I pull away from Evis enough to see that Ben's watching us. Not with disgust, but with thoughts warring on his face like his cheeks are a battlefield.
 

"What, Ben?" Whatever he wants to say, I want it over with so I can go on with the rest of my day.
 

"You were with Ripper. When he died."

I try to swallow and can't. My throat freezes, at once hollow and full of lumps of emotions that try to choke me. I nod.

"I should have been there," Ben says, more to himself than to me.

It takes everything in me to keep my tone measured. "You should have been there for the times that came before. The times when he was fighting hard. The times when he was doing the right thing and you were too chicken shit to listen to him."

Okay, maybe my words should have been measured too. Can't win 'em all.

"I know," Ben says.

He starts to open his mouth, but Alamea cuts him off with a curt gesture as if to say now is not the time for his recriminations.

Ben turns to follow her upstairs.

"Ripper was a good man," I say. But what I hear in those words out of my own mouth — and what I know Ben hears too — is
it should have been you
.

"I know," he says. And I know he's agreeing with me.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

As exhausted as I am, I can't quiet my brain enough to even try to sleep. Every time I so much as blink, I see Nashville overrun with hellkin behind my eyes.

For a short while, I wander the halls, feeling the web of shades around me. I'm close to Harkan and Holden, but they're sleeping. I'm tempted to go to them anyway, to sit with them and talk. Ask them how they're doing with all this. I can't bring myself to wake them, though.

I go the one place that makes me feel somewhat hopeful that we're still fighting, knowing that I'll find the person I seek wide awake and toiling away. I'm right.

Gryfflet Asberry is indeed awake, papers and parchments and Carrick's big book o' magic spread out around him on the conference room table. The room stinks of spell ingredients, mostly herbs and various types of dirt, but some aromatic spices and oils too. Most witches only bust out that sort of thing for the big honking magics, the kind that needs more of a focus than a human mind, and that's exactly what Gryfflet's doing here. His dad's the heir and owner of one of the foremost security companies in the country. I wonder if Gryffin Asberry knows that his son's trying to save the world. I wonder if he'd be proud. When I met Gryfflet, he was working sound down at a local dive.

It takes all kinds, I suppose.

The witch looks up at me when I enter the room. His face is drawn and pale, and a lot less mushy than it used to be. His eyes are cloudy grey-blue, and they're as bloodshot as they'd be if he'd spent the entire night smoking skunk weed.

"Good job tonight," he says absently.

"Wasn't much to do. Apparently the party was elsewhere."

"We'll get our turn."

He doesn't seem to want to talk, but I plunk down in a chair at the far end of the table anyway. For a while I just watch him work.
 

Gryfflet flits between open texts, occasionally rustling under piles of parchment, pulling something out, reading it, scowling, and putting it back. He works with a feverish desperation. I wonder when he last slept. Probably, like me, he thinks the world just might end if he closes his eyes for too long.

On the far wall, he's got a bunch of scribbles drawn right onto the paint. I don't think Alamea would care, but it seems an inefficient way to go about things. What if he has to erase something?

He looks up long enough to see where my eyes are pointed.

"I need to be able to see everything out in the open, or I'll lose track of what I've discovered," he says.

I hold my hands up. "I'm not judging. You do your thing."

"I just wish I knew if it would help."

"Hells, Gryfflet. You could come up with a new soap recipe and I'd probably applaud you for keeping yourself occupied at this point."