Eye of the Storm (29 page)

"You didn't do this," I say to them. "None of this is your fault."

I'm saying it to them, but I also feel like I'm saying it to the others. And myself.
 

"Just about every house is abandoned," Saturn says. "We can go to one, stay there a night or two, move on."

"That seems like the smartest plan." I nod my approval, and Mira walks over to Saturn and nestles under his arm, her own around his waist. I know what she's thinking.
 

Carrick's face tells me he already knew the big news, which doesn't surprise me since he's been working so closely with Gryfflet. "And what about you, pet?"

"I have to be here." My gut twists. I'm not sure he's ever called me pet before. His tone is so warm that it makes my throat catch. Carrick is family.

"We won't be able to get to you quickly," he says.
 

All their eyes are on me again.
 

"What, you motherfuckers think I've never seen the pointy end of a sword before? I've got this." Mira's bravado is a welcome break. I meet her gaze, knowing it's just words.

"I don't like this," says Jax. "I don't want us separated."

"I don't either," I tell him. "But you're all outnumbered here."

I look at the others. Mason won't look back at me now.

"Can you get out of here without being seen?"

Saturn nods. "I've learned every exit. We can get out."

"Don't tell me where you're going. I'll be able to feel you out if I need to," I say. I don't know if I've cried myself out in the recent weeks or if I'm running on pure necessity right now, but I don't feel tears. My eyes are dry even though my chest feels crushed.
 

They all touch my shoulder as they go, and their sorrow almost doubles me over.
 

None of us say goodbye.
 

Mira doesn't know what to say. I can tell by the way she grips my hand as we stand in the corridor outside the conference room. There isn't anything to be said. The conversation with Gryfflet and seeing the shades scatter without looking back — both hang over us like a cloud.
 

There's a point where the fog in my mind slowly begins to clear. There is nothing I can do but move forward. I dig my phone from my pocket without disentangling my fingers from Mira's, managing to get Alamea's number pulled up with my left thumb.

Mira watching me, I hit the green send button on the screen.

"What is it, Storme?" Alamea sounds like she needs another half day of sleep after dealing with the Mediators for the afternoon.
 

"Have you spoken to Gryfflet?" I ask. If not, this could get awkward. She should have been the first to know.

"Yes," she says. And that's all she says.

"Can we meet?" I don't want to talk about this in the corridor, and after what happened in the conference room with Gryfflet, I want to make extra sure that we take precautions.

"I'm in my office," says Alamea as she hangs up on me.

Mira and I go straight there. The halls of the Summit are eerily empty, and the bustle of the past few days has faded into a hush that I don't like. It feels like the proverbial calm before a tornado falls on your head.
 

In Alamea's office, we find her in front of her desk instead of sitting at it, brushing her fingers absently over a pile of books that look old enough to call the United States an uppity whippersnapper.
 

I close the door, taking the proffered sack of dust she hands me. Never used this shit before this fall, and now it's become near-necessity. I coat the door carefully, and when my ears give a pop and equalize with the odd shift in pressure, the discomfort brings with it a sense of relief. Mira plops down in a chair next to Alamea, her chest and stomach almost still. She's tense enough to be holding her breath.
 

"What did Gryfflet tell you?" I ask Alamea. I want to know if he left anything out.

She eyes me carefully, seeing through the question as clearly as if I'd made it out of glass.

"He told me the shades have become the link the hellkin are using to keep this firm a grip on our world, and that their bond with you has both enabled that grip and made you part of it." She watches me with a smooth face, offering no value judgement on the words she's speaking, her tone even and calculated. "He also told me the spell behaved strangely when he finished and that he needs to look into it. And he told me that in his haste, he failed to secure this information from possible prying ears."

Huh. So Gryfflet did come to me first. I try to school my face so as not to show my surprise. "The shades are gone," I tell her.
 

"I figured as much. If I were them, I wouldn't want to stay either. Not after what befell Harkan and Holden." She leans against the edge of her desk and looks back and forth between me and Mira. "What are you two going to do? When word of this gets out, and it will, you're going to have a bit of a target on your head, Storme."

I resist the urge to snort. "Probably shouldn't tell them that Mira and I figured out the demons have probably spared Nashville so far because they want me alive then."

Alamea's head swivels from Mira to me so fast that for a moment I'm concerned for her cervical vertebrae. "Talk. Now."

As quickly and dispassionately as I can, I tell her what Mira and I discussed in the training room, leaving out the shower bit. I try to repress the urge I have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The demons want me alive. The Mediators will probably want me dead. And I still have no real idea of how to save this sorry planet short of killing most of the people I love.

For once, I don't think Alamea knows what to say. Maybe her mind's running the same track as mine is, round and round in circles. Maybe it's a humming blank of exhaustion. Maybe she's plotting to kill me. Maybe she has to take a shit. I don't know.

The silence is broken by a dull, reverberating thud that quivers the floor beneath our feet.
 

"The fuck was that?" Mira's hands grip the armrests on the chair.
 

I realize that again, my reaction has been to go totally still. I shift my weight on purpose, but the reaction feels unnatural, and that more than anything sends nervousness skittering through me even though the building just shook.

Alamea goes to the door and opens it, breaking the sound-warding spell. Immediately the sound of shouting pierces through the air. "Nothing good," she says.
 

Mira's on her feet, and we all hurry out into the hall toward the stairwell, where the shouts get louder.
 

It doesn't sound like
oh shit, demons
sort of shouting.
 

For some reason, that makes me feel immediately worse.
 

Mira looks at me, her eyes full of the same anxiety I feel.
 

"Stay here," Alamea barks, loping down the stairs. How she does that in heels, I will never know.

I obey, and it gives me a tiny tendril of relief. With my hearing enhancement from the tattoo on my back, if I concentrate, I should be able to understand some of what's happening downstairs.

At first I just hear the din of too many people trying to be heard. Then I'm able to unthread voices like pulling stitches from fabric.
 

"If they're the link, they have to die —"

"— All this time we've been — "

"I fucking told you. I told you. I've been saying it all along, and no one would fucking listen to me. No one ever listens to me. Those fucking hell-bastards have to die."

I feel like I've been dunked in scalding water. My fingers close around Mira's hand, and I grip it tightly enough that after a moment she squirms with discomfort and I make myself release her fingers a bit. I don't need to crush her knuckles.
 

It sounds like a few voices are speaking up for the shades, or at least indirectly advocating level heads and waiting until we have more information, but whoever lit this powder keg wasn't going for levelheadedness. When I hear Alamea break into the chaos, she barks at the group to focus on the threat at hand, pointing them toward the target of which we are the gods damned bullseye. Her words don't dispel the murmurs, but they do quiet the shouting. There's no way people are going to listen to that. They're just going to take it elsewhere and discuss it whispers instead of shouts. I almost want to go down there myself and instigate more shouting, but I could legitimately end up with a gaggle of swords through my heart the second they see me. When I hear movement on the stairs above us, I instinctively scramble back into the hallway, keeping out of sight of whoever's on the stairs.
 

"And we're back in the car again," Mira mutters.

"The Summit all aiming in one direction was nice while it lasted," I agree.
 

"Maybe you should have gone with the shades." She looks at me, her eyes big and violet. When I look at her, I feel an almost painful wistfulness. My eyes should match hers, and they don't anymore. I hate that they don't. Mine are now shade indigo, while hers are that ever-present Mediator violet.
 

Just a reminder of how Other I am now.

"We need to get you somewhere out of sight," she says.

"I could go live with Nana." I'm only half-joking. Nana doesn't have it too bad down there. And she's got movies and lots of pillows.

"No cell service," says Mira, deadpan. "Come on."

I let her lead me away from the main stairway, not even caring where we're going. When I'm with her, the world feels a little less terrifying.

Except we don't make it five steps before I hear the words below us, crystalline.

"Then kill Ayala Storme with the rest of those mutant scum."

Mira doesn't hear it, and for that I'm thankful. When I skid to a halt on the carpet, she stops too.
 

I turn, heading for the stairs.

"What are you doing?" For the first time in days, I hear an actual note of panic in her voice.

"I have to go down there."

She looks closer at me. "You heard something."

I nod.

"I'm going with you."

I nod again.

Walking down those stairs, the voices get louder. The shouting has started up again in earnest, and I can't help wondering what little seven-year-old Ayala would think about this as she stood proudly over her first killed harkast demon. I wonder how she'd feel knowing that the beaming faces around her with violet eyes would be shouting about killing her twenty years later. Little seven-year-old Ayala thought there were only two sides in this war. Us and them. Norms and hellkin. Mediators versus demons. Earth versus hells.
 

As we descend, I hear a few others repeat the call, and Mira's shoulders seem to turn to stone as she walks.

"You're sure?" That's all she says as we round the last curve that will bring us into view of the lobby.

"Nothing else to be done. Let them say it to my face." For once.

My appearance does something Alamea couldn't manage. It casts a net of silence across the entire lobby of the Summit.
 

There are enough Mediators gathered that I can't even see the inlaid yin and yang on the floor. They all seem to have come out of the woodwork, like on the training yard as Mittens when someone yelled "Fight!" to bring everybody running. Maybe none of us ever grow up.

I don't say anything as we stop halfway down the last flight of stairs. I don't know that I have anything to say to these people anymore.

A few have the decency to look abashed. Alamea still stands among them, more regal than a queen and out-talling everyone here. Her face when she looks at me is mostly blank, but by now I know her well enough to discern respect in her gaze before she looks away.

"Whoever decided to spread rumors in this Summit needs to ask what our priority is," Alamea says grimly. "Sharing information without context often quickly becomes sharing misinformation, and when I'm hearing people in my Summit calling for the death of a Mediator who has risked more than her life to prevent our enemy from overrunning us, it's clear to me that misinformation is what is being shared."

"If she's the actual link allowing them to gain this kind of ground on us, we should be talking about it." The man who steps forward is someone I was in training with. He's maybe a year younger than me. Terry. "Especially if the gods damned demons want her alive, seems we ought to want the opposite."

He doesn't look at me. Coward.

"By that logic, Terry Whitehall, because demons want to eat, we should all starve," Alamea says, and thankfully, a ripple of nervous laughter goes through the crowd.
 

"Maybe the real question we should be asking is if the hellkin want Storme alive, why?"
 

Well, blow me over with a sneeze. It's Ben Wheedle talking. And he's not finished.

"We're the only city left in the south," he says. "We're surrounded. And we've got something the demons want. Information or misinformation with the rest of this, that's something correct, right? Storme's been in the shit for the last few months —"