Eye of the Storm (40 page)

What do these demons want from me?

My mind races through the possibilities as the enormous city looms ahead of us. The jeeling has longer legs than me, but it's noticeably slowing its strides so I can keep up. I feel off balance. The weight I used to feel pressing on my chest has been replaced with the weight of the world on my shoulders, but following a demon through a path to a ruined city in hell is making me feel inexplicably buoyant, like my atoms might fly apart at any moment and float away into this garishly white sky.

Hellkin are smart. Far smarter than we've given them credit for. If this jeeling is showing me kindness or deference, it has a reason. I tighten my grasp on my swords. If nothing else, maybe I can hold any attackers off long enough to smash the vial.
 

It takes almost an hour of walking to reach the outlying area of the city. As we get closer, I can't stop the wonder that wells up in me. Who built these soaring towers? The remnants of a gigantic stone arch reach up on either side of me. The jeeling walks between the giant curves of stonework as if it doesn't even see. Maybe it's seen them enough that it doesn't notice anymore.
 

The city sprawls out around us. It feels like a tomb in its stillness. It feels like a ghost in its magnitude.
 

Who lived here? Who built this place?
 

My feet falter on the paving stones, fitted so carefully that they have survived whatever war killed the city and however many years have since passed. Whoever built this place, whatever life lived here in this city where the pats of my bare feet echo through ancient streets — they were killed by the thing that guides me. By it and others like it. This and five other worlds before it.
 

Soon, the sound of my footsteps and the jeeling's are not the only noises I hear.
 

The wind whistles somewhat through the ruins. Here and there a building has actually crumbled, but in the depths of this ghastly memory, the sounds of life reach my ears.
 

Or the sounds of hellkin, anyway. The first appear as the jeeling turns onto a wide boulevard. Down the street's center is a wide avenue that looks like it once held a canal or a garden. As I walk, I peer over the edge. Where there once was water, now I can see the culverts that directed it under the cross streets to funnel up back on the other side. I see no evidence of vehicles around me. These streets are wide enough for modern Nashville traffic, with cars and trucks and buses. What were they built for?

There are no rusted shells of cars that I can see, or anything that looks like wheels. Maybe the demons cleared everything from the city after they took over. Maybe the people who lived here drove carriages pulled by some sort of animal. No one but the hellkin will ever know now.
 

I let myself lose track of the way we came, clutching the vial. If the vial doesn't work, there's no way I'm escaping this place alive. Even I can't outrun an entire city of hellkin. Who knows what others exist here, beyond the types I'm used to.
 

The sound of growling and rasping words reaches my ears. I've heard demon languages before, but not like this. The jeeling turns another corner, and I follow. Lining the sides of the next street are demons.
 

Some I recognize, all the normal run-of-the-hunt monsters I've seen my whole life. Others I don't, like the strange bull-like demon that stares at me as we pass. They all stare at me. None make a move to fight. Whatever conversations they were having die the moment they catch sight of me.
 

The street opens into a plaza with fountain at its center that could hold the entire Nashville Summit. Sitting at the edge of the fountain is a slummoth.

I say it's a slummoth because it looks like one. Same dark grey metallic skin. Same slime that oozes off the creases. Same hungry mouth and clawed fingers. But this slummoth is at least four times the size of any slummoth I've ever seen, towering even over the jeeling that guides me.
 

When it sees me, it moves. Its hands clasp one another in front of its stomach, and it tilts its head to look at me. I'm suddenly aware of my nudity, of the other demons crowding into the square behind me and cutting off my retreat.
 

Ayala Storme
.

The demon's voice sounds in my mind like he's tasting it, turning it over on his tongue like a new flavor.
 

"Yeah, that's me." I wonder if the others can understand me, or if they know this slummoth is speaking to me.
 

This is unexpected.

"Well, you know. Never got to see my world, so I thought I'd see yours before I kick the proverbial bucket."

The slummoth seems amused by that. It seems to understand me. I can't tell about the others.
 

I look at it. I have a chance to do something no other Mediator has ever done. Talk to the gods damned demons.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, trying to take over my world?"

This time I'm sure the hellkin around me understand, because I hear the ripple of their language that spreads out through the crowd. I'm now the focal point of several hundred demons. And this time, if I piss myself, everybody's gonna know.

There is nothing left for us here.

"Yeah, I got that, but we've got plenty of immigrants where I come from, and they usually settle for starting a small business, not annihilating the populace." My words are flippant, but I don't know what else to do. I'm not going to grovel, and I'm also not planning on picking a fight. I think that'd be more of a comedy show for these demons than anything, anyway. I could take some of them, but a twenty foot slummoth is going to cause me some angst.

The slummoth doesn't answer that.
What is it that brought you here?

"Why don't you just kill me?"

The slummoth's face is slime and creases of metallic skin, but its lips pull back and my spine tightens as a smile appears on its face, sharp teeth glistening with spittle.
 

Do you kill every mouse you see?

Well, fuck you, too. I manage to keep myself from saying that aloud.
 

My stomach sinks as the slummoth's words absorb into my brain. Either killing me is utterly pointless because I'm vermin to these creatures or they want me alive for some other reason. Or it's both.
 

"Why my home? Isn't there some other compatible place you could have chosen to chomp on? Somewhere that hasn't evolved intelligent life yet or something?" I hate myself as soon as I say it, the thought coming unbidden to my mind that any compatible world would be home to some kind of life. Nothing deserves to be killed like that.
 

We were invited.

"I'm sorry, but a bunch of zealots thinking you're the secret to mystical fulfillment doesn't count as a planetary welcome mat." My tongue suddenly cleaves to the roof of my mouth as I put something together. The hells-zealots. What if the demons revealed their intelligence, their culture, their
plight
of a dying home world to susceptible norms on my world? Played the martyr?
 

I feel sick. I know I'm right.
 

No wonder the zealots believed. No fucking wonder they did what they did. If a lonely person is met with an alien being that begs for help and offers connection and fulfillment in exchange, a chance to play the hero?
 

And humanity has never been accused of being brilliant en masse. Our lowest common denominator isn't a rarity.
 

The slummoth is watching me. It must see the emotions on my face, because I'm not trying to hide them. It hasn't responded, almost as if it's waiting for me.
 

"No," I say softly. "It wasn't the hells-worshippers you're talking about."

You did.

No.

You witches did it.

Wait. What?

"I'm not a witch." My feet seem to freeze to the paving stones of the plaza. I must be going crazy, because the wind suddenly sounds like whispers of the thousands upon thousands of dead this city once housed. "I'm a Mediator, not a witch."

It was the same then, it's the same now. We were invited.

Asher. Asher is the key to all this; I know that to my absolute core.
 

"You're saying witches and Mediators are the same? And they invited you in way back when they were busy living in caves?"

Around me there is a swirl of movement. It pulses. The demons shift, almost as one.
 

Not caves. Cities.
This time the slummoth's words bring with them a sense of dusty streets and aqueducts, of linens and centurions and an enormous Coliseum.
 

Rome. "The Mediators have been around much longer than Rome —"

No
.

Why is this slummoth telling me all this? Isn't it afraid I'm going to figure out how to beat them?

"The Mediators began in Rome? With the witches?"

The Mediators are witches.
The slummoth sounds almost irritated, as if I'm a particularly thickheaded child.
 

But the Mediators aren't witches.
 

I close my eyes for a five count, trying to think. Mediators aren't witches…but I just saw a Mediator baby born to one. To a shade father.
 

"How did you get in to my world? The first time."

We were invited.

By witches. This slummoth believes that witches invited the demons in.
 

They invited us. But then they changed their minds. They thought their children could make us leave, children they stole from us.

The shades.
 

"The witches opened a door and made the first shades."

Around me, the demons are stirring. I feel the pulse of their movement. It reminds me of something.
 

It reminds me of Lena Saturn in that clearing, the day Saturn was born. I have to get out of here. But I need to know one more thing first.

"The shades were the witches' attempt to fight you off." It comes out almost as a whisper. The jeeling that led me here takes a step toward me. "The witches had children with them. They were the first Mediators."

The slummoth really is smiling now.
They helped us stay
.
They invited us. We come now.

The jeeling moves closer to me, and I take two steps back. I can feel the heat from the bodies of the hellkin surrounding me.
 

Gryfflet was right. There was more to the imbalance than just the shades.
 

It's us. The Mediators themselves. They're the link.

The demons around me advance with the slow, deliberate pace of creatures that know there is no need to hurry.
 

I don't have time to smash the vial with a rock. I squeeze the borosilicate glass vial against the metal of my sword hilt as hard as I can. For a moment I think it's not enough.

Then I hear a crunch.
 

Two drops of red-brown liquid fall on the grey-white paving stones of the plaza. A concussive blast knocks the demons back from me, a flash nearly blinds me.
 

Nearly.

I see the hells-hole open. I don't care if Gryfflet got this part right or not. I don't care if I end up in Kenya.
 

I dive through.
 

The last thing I hear is the slummoth's parting words.

We come. You are too late.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The flash of pain surprises me even the second time, but I barely even notice it. My naked shoulder hits damp grass. Grass. Life. It might be dying, but it's more alive than that ghost city I just left.
 

Not damp. The grass is…wet.

New pain blossoms across my shoulder. I swipe at my shoulder with my hand. It comes away green.
 

Slummoth blood.
 

"Ayala?"

I look up to see Gryfflet. He's got a sword in his hand — my sword? — and he's covered in grime. His nose isn't bloody, though I guess in a couple hours he could have cleaned it.
 

"Ayala," he says gently. Someone shouts, and he looks over his shoulder with an epithet.
 

Gryfflet almost never says fuck.

"We have to move. You need to get up." Gryfflet grabs my wrist and yanks me to my feet.
 

My hand stings. My whole body stings from the now-doubled network of welts across my skin. "Where are they?"

He knows damn well who I'm talking about.
 

"We've got to go. I'm only out here for a minute to check a ward. We need to get inside the Summit and…probably get you some clothes."

Something's not making sense. "Are they all still at the park? What happened after I left?"

"Bunch of Mediators showed up. We managed to convince them that you got pulled into hell and that the only reason we didn't get pulled in with you was because you closed the hole behind you. I told them I'd be trying to get you back, but when you didn't come back —"