Eye of the Storm (41 page)

"I am back, asshat." I know where we are now. We're in the back of the Summit, where there's a lawn and a garden and a bunch of trees. They look like bones right now. It's light outside, but it looks like the sun's getting ready to rise. Which isn't right.

Gryfflet stops me from stepping up onto the Summit stairs, clasping my arm in his hand. "You've been gone for three days, Storme."

"Bullshit." My ears ring, and I try to pop them. The air feels so much wetter here.
 

Gryfflet swallows.

My shoulder's burning. I need to get this slummoth blood off me.
 

Slummoth blood.
 

My mind is starting to clear. There's slummoth blood on the grass. Fresh slummoth blood. And we're ten feet from the Summit's back door. "Gryfflet," I start, alarmed.

"The city's been under attack since a couple hours after you left."

My windpipe tries to detach from my lungs. "Mira," I say. "Where's my brother?"

Gryfflet bites his lip.
 

I slap him. I don't know if I've ever slapped someone with an open palm before. I forget sometimes these days how much stronger I am, because the blow snaps Gryfflet's head to the side. He cries out.
 

"Oh gods, I'm sorry." I gasp. "I'm so sorry. Please, just tell me where they are."

Gryfflet massages his cheek, opening his mouth and wiggling his jaw. "Mira's on the western ward line with Devon and Sal and some of the others. The south end is pretty well taken care of. Alamea got the US Military to carpet bomb what was left of Alabama and Mississippi, and it looks like they pretty well wiped out whatever demonic force was camped out there ready to crush us."

My breath comes faster as I try to adjust to the lost time. The slummoth just kept talking to me. It had no need to hurry. It fully expected to kill me there, and if it didn't manage, it must have known the time difference. It must have known that its armies were taking chunks out of Nashville while I had a chit chat with it. If these armies even belong to that slummoth. For all I know, I was talking to the mayor of some random Demonville, not the president of the United Nations of Hell.

"The norms are fighting hard," Gryfflet says quietly. He steps to the door of the Summit and opens it for me. "You need to rest."

"My brother, Gryfflet." I can rest when we're all dead soon. "Where is Evis?"
 

I can't bring myself to ask about the other shades. I can feel…someone. I can't tell who I can feel. My mind feels muddled and warped.
 

"Ayala," he says, "you're shaking. You look like you have hypothermia. We're doing okay. We've already lasted longer than any other cities so far. Get clothes. Get warm."

"Tell me where my brother is!" I shout it this time, and I hear a commotion from up ahead. Several Mediator faces appear around the corner of the corridor.
 

My shoulder itches and burns, and my whole body hurts. My feet are battered and bleeding. Gryfflet's right about the shaking, too. Now that I'm inside — how did I get inside? — I can feel my body trying to acclimate to the warmth.
 

I can feel a vague pull to the north. I can't tell how far away. "I'm going to find them."

Panic crosses Gryfflet's face. "Ayala, no!"

"What is it? Why can't I go find them?" I don't care that the Mediators down the hall are staring. Whether it's my nudity or my near-hysteria or just the fact that they probably know I came back from hell, I don't give a fuck.
 

"Because they might be dead by now, and you don't need to see that!"

That's all I need to hear. I bolt down the hall toward the Mediators. They scatter like bowling pins. In the Summit antechamber, I grab swords as I run by, ignoring the gasps and shouts behind me. I run out the door. My feet scream at me. I ignore them and run as fast as I can.
 

Nothing. It was all for nothing.

The words repeat over and over again with the beat of my feet against the pavement. I went to hell and came back and nothing I found out is going to help us.

The strange pull I feel intensifies as I sprint across Broadway. The park is littered with bodies. Demon, Mediator, norm. I run as fast I can, trying not to step on any stray blades. Sweat drips down my back and stings at the welts on my skin.
 

The Parthenon is gone.

Where three days ago an enormous columned replica of that ancient Greek monument once stood, now there is…a maelstrom.
 

It's the only way I can describe it. Grass and dirt and rock and wood swirl at tornado speeds in the ground, crackling with energy. It looks like a hells-hole got blown up and set horizontal. It must have swallowed up the Parthenon.
 

I feel a flicker of a familiar mind. "Evis!" I scream his name into the whirling chaos.

And then he's there, and his arms wrap around me. Carrick is there too. My chest heaves a sob as shade hands find my shoulders. I reach out to touch them back, dropping my swords.
 

"What happened here?" I have to shout it over the din.
 

"The demons opened it!" Carrick shouts back. "It's eating away at the park, and it's tripled in size since yesterday!"

They're all here. Mason, Carrick, Jax, Sol, Luna. Evis. My brother's yellow-orange hair is matted with blood on one side, but he's alive. They're all alive. Somehow they're all alive.
 

"Gryfflet said you might be dead by now," I say, and somehow they hear me even though my voice is quiet.

Moments pass with only the raging maelstrom's howl as a backdrop.
 

It dawns on me like the gradual lightening of the morning sky above my head. "No. You can't do it."

I look from my brother's face into the maelstrom. I know what they came here to do. They all know what Gryfflet found out. And Gryfflet know exactly what they were planning to do.

"No," I say. Even as I say it, my voice breaks. I know why they want to.
 

"It might give you all a chance," Carrick says to me.
 

"You being alive gives us a chance," I say. Someone's holding my hand, and I don't know who. I turn to see Mason, tears in his eyes. And Jax, who's holding Mason's hand. Evis hasn't let go of my shoulder. Sol and Luna are watching each other, their minds as raging a tempest as the maelstrom in front of us. "I found out the source of the imbalance, Carrick. It's the Mediators themselves. As a whole. There are too many of them to — to just kill."

"But we're the bulk of it." Carrick takes a step forward and touches my face. "None of us want to live in a world that hates us. And I've lived here quite long enough."
 

For a moment, his eyes show every year of his life. I can see his weariness, his bone-trembling exhaustion.
 

And something rips through my resolve and my ability to fight him. He's right.
 

"If you go, I should too," I say to him, and then Sol and Luna throw themselves at the maelstrom.
 

Jax lets out a guttural yell as they vanish into the gaping hole. I feel their minds, feel some level of absolute and total triumph that lights me up like a flare, and then it winks out.
 

I scream too, as their minds cut off from me. A bell-tone resonates through the air, audible even over the sound of the hole that just swallowed Sol and Luna.
 

Demons pour out of a hells-hole not a hundred feet away.
 

They're not in formation now. They scatter and clump in seeming disarray, but I know better now. I know better.
 

The demons rush at us. I'm naked and injured, and my hand aches where I smashed the glass vial against my palm, cuts pressing now against the hilt of the sword I just swiped from the Summit. My family, my shades — they form a phalanx around me. At least if we all go now, there won't be any shades left alive to tip the scales in the demons' favor.
 

The sun breaks through the clouds.

The hellkin scream.
 

I've never in my life witnessed what happens when full grown demons get hit by direct sunlight. Imps sizzle. From the sun in the hell I visited, it only stands to reason that ours is too bright, too hot. Too something.
 

The demons roar as the rays hit them. They stop trying to rush us and turn, falling over themselves and each other to clamber back through the hells-hole they just came from. Slummoths screech as their metallic skin bursts into blisters and spits slime that sparkles in the dawn's light. A jeeling trips over a harkast and falls, lesions spreading across its back. They fumble their way back to the hells-hole, and when the last one is through, the portal vanishes.

The sun.

I forget about the demons.
 

Sunlight streams over the grass. It's December, and it's still cold, but the sun is warm, warm, warm.
 

It's not the frigid white light of that barren hellscape, but the buttery yellow of my world. My home.
 

Behind me, the maelstrom still ravens.

"Sol and Luna. They brought back the sun."
 

I turn, expecting to see jubilation on the shades' faces. They are bleak.
 

Whatever warmth the sun gave me drains away and leaves me cold. "Carrick!"

As one, Carrick, Mason, and Jax run for the maelstrom. Only Evis hangs back. I lurch after them, but something holds me fast. My brother.
 

"Jax!
Mason!"
Their names tear my throat raw. Carrick and Jax don't look back. I see their strong legs bunch beneath them as they fling themselves into the maelstrom's howling maw.
 

Mason stops on the edge and looks back once. His mouth moves, and I don't have to hear it to know what he says.

You taught me love.
 

I feel it, a swell of love like a tsunami that hits me even as Mason throws himself over the edge.
 

The swell of love vanishes. The ground quakes beneath me, and Evis scoops me off my feet. I can't help the wail that escapes me, and for a moment all I feel is relief. Evis will jump into the maelstrom with me in his arms, and it will all be over. It will all be over.

But my brother leaps forward, and we both hit the grass hard, rolling into a pile of demon bodies. The ground rumbles and jerks under us, the shaking terrible and awesome.

When it stops, the maelstrom is closed.

Carrick and Jax and Mason. Sol and Luna.
 

They're gone. They're gone. They're gone.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Evis is shaking in the sunlight.
 

The world seems too quiet. My mind feels…lost. Empty. It's just me and Evis in here now.
 

I feel his pain like I feel my own, and our grief molds together until I don't know if I'm feeling his or mine.

Gryfflet and Mira find us like that, surrounded by the dead, yet with no bodies of our loved ones to lay to rest.

I hardly even register that people are approaching until Mira's arms land around my neck and I smell the vanilla of her hair. I collapse into her arms.

Gryfflet looks at Evis, who shakes his head. The witch's mouth goes straight and tight, but he nods.
 

"I tried," Mira murmurs into my ear. "I tried to come with you."

"I know."

"The sun," says Gryfflet. "Did it happen when…" He doesn't finish his sentence.
 

"Sol and Luna," Evis says.
 

All this time they tried to help me. They fought beside me. Could their very names have been a message? Were they trying all this time to let me know, or did they really just name themselves after the sun and the moon because they knew the clouds brought me pain?

I'll never know now.
 

"How…the city?" I can barely make words. Evis and Mira help me to my feet, which sends shooting pains up my legs. Mira takes my hand and holds it like she never plans to let go. I squeeze her hand in mine. Even though it's the cut one, and it hurts, I don't care.