Eye of the Storm (42 page)

"Everything went as well as it possibly could," Mira says. "The wards worked perfectly, and Alamea calling in that airstrike was a stroke of brilliance. We have you to thank for that, too. You're the one who figured out that they probably had reserves there. You were right. It probably saved us."

The sun shines down on us. The clouds above are slowly fading, drifting across the sky like they always did. The sun has granted us a reprieve. Sol and Luna bought us time. They may have even saved us.
 

Mira's hair is bright black in the light of the sun, and her eyes the color of a dewdrop on a violet petal. She'd kill me for saying so, but it's true. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I squeeze her hand again. She looks at me and squeezes back. I swallow the lump in my throat. This isn't over. I have to do something with what I learned, even if it's futile.

"I have to see Alamea," I say. Then I stop walking, remembering her gag spell. Even if she was able to get around it to talk to the Summit about the territories, what I learned from that slummoth in hell surpasses anything as menial as territories. Asher might not be any help either.
 

I tell Gryfflet and Mira and Evis everything. I'm still naked and standing in the December sun in a battlefield of corpses. Every part of me, inside and out, aches. I tell them what the slummoth said and what I put together.
 

"Witches opened the first hells-holes. They were probably searching for some kind of power source. They found the sixth hell instead. The demons are powerful and organized and intelligent. They live peacefully on their own planet, but they live by consuming everything and moving on. I wonder if at first the witches tried to talk with them, to learn from them, only to realize that the demons didn't want to leave once they were here." I can almost see it happening, the hellkin turning on the witches and spreading out across the land. "I think the witches captured demons and created shades to try and stop them. But the shades were probably difficult to control. They give back violence for violence, but —"

"The shades return love for love," Mira says softly. "So some of the witches loved them. And the first Mediators were born."

"And that gave the demons a link to this world. The shades and Mediators were born here, belonged here. And were part demon." Gryfflet nods and swallows. "I can see how that would allow the hellkin to open hells-holes here, as the balance tipped in their favor. Sol and Luna must have been enough demon that their presence here literally began to shape our Earth to suit them. The cloud cover was only here in America and Canada and northern Mexico — not Nahua, not anywhere farther south, not other continents."

They invited us
.

"Why don't we know any of this?" Mira murmurs.
 

"I don't know." I look over my shoulder at the scorched, churned crater where the maelstrom was. There's no sign of bodies. Just earth. Mira's question is a good one. "I guess it's not exactly good PR. 'Hey, hey, we're the Mediators! We fight demons and are also sort of the reason they're here in the first place!'"

"So the only way to break the link is to kill every Mediator on Earth," says Mira. "And then the norms will all be safe. No demons could get in."

The thought sends ice tendrils to snake through my vertebrae. I think of tiny Eve.

"I should have jumped in the hole with them," says Evis.
 

I look at him. I don't know what to say. Maybe the world would be better off if all of us did.
 

"It's not the only way," says Gryfflet.
 

We all look at him.
 

Somewhere along the line, I got to a point where I sincerely trust Alamea.
 

We go straight to the Summit, ignoring the Mediators who gape at me in my birthday suit, which isn't many of them because most everyone is outside, staring up at the sun like they've never seen it before. The sun lights the faceted dome in the Summit antechamber, covering the mud-tracked floor with light that glitters against all the stacked sword hilts and blades that have inched out of their scabbards. There are no Mittens at the front desk, just people, including some norms, standing around and staring upward.
 

We find Alamea in her office, but even she's got a window open, even though her windows face south and the sun isn't coming in.
 

Her eyes close for a moment when she sees me, and her chest rises once and falls with a sigh. "Storme." She looks me over, unperturbed by my nakedness, and a crease forms in her dark brown skin between her eyes. Standing, Alamea opens her office closet and digs through it for a moment until she finds a sparring uniform. She tosses it to me. "I wouldn't put that on until you wash, but you can at least partially cover yourself if you want."

There's a moment of silence while Mira sits down and Gryfflet leans against the far wall.
 

"I'm going to get Asher and Eve," my brother says.
 

I nod at him, but I don't make a move to sit. I'm afraid if I do, I'll never get up. The sun is back, but this isn't over. Not yet. I shake the folded sparring uniform out, dropping the pants onto a chair and holding the jacket up over my front, more out of a need for warmth than modesty.
 

The anti-eavesdropping dust is sitting on the edge of the desk, and both Gryfflet and I look at it. There's a strange buzzing in my mind. I can't place it. I try to blink it away.
 

"You went to hell, Ayala Storme." Alamea looks at me with something akin to awe on her face.
 

"I don't recommend it," I tell her. My voice comes out thick instead of dry, and I find myself blinking back tears again. "I found out some things. They're not good. I hope you'll do the right thing with this information."

Evis comes through the door with Asher, who is cradling Eve in her arms. Asher takes one look at me, and her face twitches into a mask of pity. Gryfflet gets up and coats the door with dust. My ears pop again. It doesn't help anything.
 

Again, I relate everything I learned. Again, I see that satisfaction and pride in Asher's eyes, even though she doesn't lend anything to the conversation. We will likely never know everything she does, but I just hope to all the gods that what we do know is enough.

Even though I know what Gryfflet has to say, it still shocks me.
 

"There are Mediators all over the world," Gryfflet says. "However this happened, however this knowledge got lost or suppressed or hidden away, it doesn't matter. We have to fix it. There are two ways that I can see for that to happen. The first option is that every Mediator and remaining shade on Earth dies."

Alamea's face turns to stone, and I don't blame her. I don't know what the second option is, but Gryfflet and Asher exchange a long look, and Asher bends down to kiss Eve's forehead.

"The other way is if we break the spell that creates new Mediators."
 

I can almost feel every muscle in my body stop working, and in her chair, Mira's hands give a violent twitch.
 

"What the fuck did you just say, witch?" Mira's voice sounds deadly calm.
 

Alamea gives away no hint of expression. Asher's eyes are trained on the Summit Leader.
 

"What spell, Gryfflet?" I've never heard of such a thing. "How do you know there's a spell?"

Alamea's not talking, and neither is Asher. I'm starting to see why gag spells are illegal.
 

Gryfflet looks back and forth between them. "What you told us, Ayala. If the first Mediators were born, which Asher went well out of her way to clue us in on, then something must have happened because the world isn't overrun with shades. Your mother wasn't a witch. Was she?"

Asher shakes her head. "Eve was your average non-magic human." She looks down at baby Eve and smiles.

"If this whole thing started with a group of witches, they probably immediately saw the problem with making more shades. They had to find a way to make Mediators without shade parents. Half demon DNA mixed with human makes a shade. Shade plus witch equals Mediator. So Mediators have DNA that is a quarter demon. Sort of. I'm sure the biology is more complex than that, but that's the basic gist." Gryfflet looks so proud of himself that I worry he might burst.
 

"All Mediators are quarter demon," says Alamea faintly. Faintly, but clearly.
 

"You didn't know that," I say.
 

Gryfflet looks at me, then at Alamea.
 

"For fuck's sake," says Mira. Then she turns to Asher. "But you knew. You know this."

Asher doesn't have to confirm it.
 

"It would have to be a spell," says Gryfflet. "Demons can't even mate with humans naturally. That's why Hazel Lottie was involved, back when Gregor was helping her make new shades."

"The demons must have figured all this out too," says Mira.

"They did," I said. "They told me we invited them. Gave them a way to stay. Can't blame them for tampering with our masterpiece and trying to make their own shades."
 

It explains Sol and Luna, the Shade 2.0 version. More demon than human, rather than half and half. The telepathy, the intense pack loyalty.
 

"How do we even attack this?" I ask. "It has to be a worldwide spell, something that reaches every Summit. Most of us are stuck here. How do we even try?"

I remember the spell Gryfflet tried, to pinpoint the source of the imbalance. How it went wonky.
 

How it went wonky at the yin and yang in the antechamber floor.

"The symbol," I breathe. "They're in every Summit, at the center of where we work. We walk over it every day."

Alamea's eyes open wider. "And they're sent to us. When a new Summit is opened, the yin and yang is delivered from the World Summit. And they're said to be unbreakable."

"This is good, this is good." Gryfflet sounds almost giddy. "That's it."

"Sure, just break an unbreakable seal and voila, world saved." Mira kicks Alamea's desk. "How are you going to get all the Summits to even try? Have you noticed that the sun is back? For all intents and purposes, people are going to think the apocalypse is averted."

"And it's not," I say quietly. "All we did was hold it off for a little while. Weeks, maybe. Days, possibly. They had to have some sort of contingency plan in place in case Sol and Luna died. More shades like them to be born."

"We have to do something fast, whatever we do." Alamea watches Asher intently.
 

Asher looks almost overcome with emotion. Her eyes are tightly closed, and she rocks Eve back and forth with tears dripping down her cheeks.
 

I wonder how she must feel, to carry something so heavy and be able to talk to no one, only to one day hear people figure it out so she doesn't have to tell them. I make my way to her chair and kneel by it. The jacket droops, exposing more of my skin than I meant to, but whatever. At this point, we're all friends here.
 

"Thank you," I tell Asher. "Thank you. You've done more for us than anyone may ever know."
 

She opens her eyes and meets mine. She shakes her head as if to say that she doesn't deserve my gratitude.
 

"How do you break an unbreakable seal?" Mira says. "And all of them?"

"It shouldn't take all of them." This time, Gryfflet's watching Asher. "Am I right?"

I feel like we've been using her gag spell as a sort of polygraph, watching her twitch and react to the things we say to gauge whether or not we're on the right track.
 

Asher's face doesn't change, but she lets out a breath that sounds like relief.
 

"Listen," Gryfflet says. "When I worked for my dad's security company, a lot of the spells we'd work up had multiple components that had to be in working order for the spell to continue working. Any disruption of energy would set off a chain of events or —"