Storm in a Teacup (13 page)

Alice pops a bubble. "Sorry, Ayala. Couldn't stop her."

"No, she's right. I've been gone a lot. Sorry if she took it out on you."

Alice grins, a spot of bubblegum pink lipstick bright against the whiteness of her front tooth. "Already over it. Probably better to think of a creative excuse next time. Like a root canal."

She's right. I can't even ask Alamea for a note.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

I stay until ten instead of nine out of guilt. I even get ahead in my work. Laura's been understanding about everything else, and I like my apartment. Especially my silk robe, which is on my bed waiting for me to fill it when I get home.

But before that, there's patrol.

I don't have a supervisor as a Mediator. I do what I do, and as long as I don't try to visit New Orleans or Columbus, I don't experience any major repercussions. The only other thing I can't really do is skip patrols. This one doesn't cause any fainting spells or the sense that my insides have been smushed by a giant fist. I know some Mediators who only patrol once a week. I have to do it every night.
 

I know what I'm doing makes a difference. Some people go their whole lives without knowing that. I have a purpose. It may have come along with being born, but I have one. If I try to wonder about all the might-have-beens, I'll drive myself mad and end up in a slummoth's belly in bits.

This time I head out to the train tracks west of downtown. There are some old warehouses out here that demons like to inhabit. Sometimes they bring homeless folks here to eat. A couple years back a bunch of pissed off morphs and witches decided that wasn't balanced and started a coalition to get people off the streets. Now I don't see as many drunkards and homeless half-eaten by the tracks, but it still happens.

Tonight I see three bodies before I get to the first warehouse.

It's enough to stop me. The first two corpses are clearly homeless, with tattered layers of cloth hanging to severed bits. The necks have been ravaged, as well as the thighs and biceps. The rest is leftover. It's the same with both, same parts missing, same condition.

The third looks more like a frat boy. The kid was wearing khakis and a pink polo, and only scraggly bits of ragged cotton dangle from a missing stump of an arm. These aren't splats; these are what we call scraps. Usually leftovers of a slummoth.

The train tracks stand deserted and rusted over. Years ago they used to be in use, and I remember hearing the whistles of the trains as I'd patrol downtown with the other MITs. But then witches invented a new fuel and now all freight is done by roadway in specialized vans that run themselves.

It's quiet here now.

Except for a scraping sound.

It starts just as I'm admiring the silence, and it gets louder as I step carefully over the tracks and the scrap of frat boy. Empty freight cars litter the area between the tracks and the warehouse, which leaves plenty of cover for me, but also for anything else that goes bump in the night.

The scraping is coming from behind the nearest car. The sound reminds me of a wooden spoon on cast iron.

I don't think what I'm hearing is a granny with a gravy pan.

I stop moving forward and listen. The sound is steady, rhythmic. Methodical.

The freight car has a gap beneath, and I crouch and tilt my head to look under, bracing myself on the ground.

Bare feet.
 

Hopping back to standing, I take a step backward and wait. The sound continues, undisturbed.

The car is only five yards from me. My heart is jumping around in my chest so much I think I must sound like a maraca. I edge toward it, taking a diagonal path to stay out of sight.

My lungs pull in a deep breath, and I hold my sword with the point low, leaning around the corner.

There's a flash of orange as two eyes shine back at me. My back hits the ground. My breath poomfs out of my chest, and my sword slides away with a grating hiss. It's on me. I smell it. Skin and dirt and death.

I slam my palm into its nose, and it jerks back. Not enough. Its arm crosses my mouth, and I bite down into skin that feels too human, too soft. I taste blood, and that doesn't taste human. It tastes like metal and fire.

The creature falls off me as I land a kick in its sternum, and I get my first real look at it under the single light.

I snatch my sword and roll away, rising into an even stance, one leg back supporting my weight, one leg forward to kick.
 

It looks like a man. It has all the man parts, and it's naked as a newly whelped pig. Its face is smeared with blood. I finally see the source of the scraping sound — a snapped femur lies in the dirt not far from me, long tooth marks up the side. The sight sends a new shock of adrenaline into me.
 

The creature stands back, assessing.
 

Not for long.

I have the tiniest moment of notice this time. A single twitch of its leg.
 

I raise my sword at the last moment, and the creature lands right on the pointy end. It lets loose a snarl that sounds like a jeeling's warning. To hear that sound out of such a human-looking mouth — I almost teeter.
 

Catching my balance, I yank my sword from the creature's chest, pull back, and swing.

Its head rolls away.

Well, at least I know how to kill them now.
 

I lean against the rusty freight car, the eroded steel rough against my hair. There's nothing to be done about this now; the creature is dead.
 

I just can't see past the humanoid body unmoving on the ground.
 

The smell of skin and warmth as the creature attacked me.

Yes. It attacked me. Teeth first. That thing wanted to eat me. I look over to the tooth-gouged femur not far from where I stand. It's still there. I didn't imagine it.
 

Both times the creature came at me, I had almost no warning. The first time it completely had me blindsided. Just a flash of orange eye-shine and then it knocked me to the ground.
 

These things are fast. They're strong. My back feels sore, and my breath wheezes through my trachea as I inhale. If there had been more than one of them, I would be halfway to the small intestines by now. Assuming they have intestines.
 

It looks...human.
 

I can't look at its face. But its body — that I can look at. Naked and muscular, its limbs are splayed out in a truncated star on the ground. The muscles correspond to human anatomy, as far as I can see. More pronounced. There's an immediacy to the body in front of me that cuts through all the human bullshit. No fat or wasted space. That's it. The body in front of me is pure efficiency.

Efficient at the kill.
 

This was made to be a killer.

The thought douses me in somberness. I've come across three bodies tonight, all pre-rigor.
 

In the Mediator world, you learn a lot about the stages of death.

This thing took down three people in a short amount of time. I would have been the fourth. My leg gives a little twitch when my gaze lights on the femur again.

I walk around the body and force myself to look at the face.

Clean lines like a classical statue. If he were human, he would be handsome.
 

It's a departure from the rakaths with their spikes and slime, that's for damn sure.
 

I stop in the middle of deciding if he looks more like the bouncer at the gay bar down the street from my apartment building or this morph who makes a living as a sideshow at a circus.
 

It's the face. He looks like a person.

But he acted like hellkin.

No thought but killing. Less hesitation than any demon I've ever seen. And his eyes, that flash of orange. Eyeshine like an animal. His eyes now are dark, glazed, half open. Maybe he didn't know about Mediators. Maybe he didn't know about anything.
 

I stop myself again, wondering when I switched from thinking of the creature as "it" to "he."

It. It. It. If I look at these things and see people, I'll hesitate like it didn't. And I'll get dead faster than femur-less frat boy back there.

Now would be the time to call Gregor and Alamea. Now would be the time to confess that I've been a bit of an idiot. But something doesn't feel quite right, and my fingers stick to my phone when I try to dial. They didn't want me involved in this, and I have no idea why. Before that, Gregor got dodgy about what he was looking into. My fingers dance away from the touch screen. I can't make them hit the send button.

Could this have been my mother's spawn?

I need to find out more.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I make it home before three and plunge into a peach-scented bubble bath. My body aches from getting knocked to the ground by the demonoid wrecking ball, and the soapy water smooths my skin without soothing the kinks. I turn on the hot water three times to reheat the bath, staying in until my muscles turn from knots to Jell-O.

My robe feels even better against my skin after that fight.

I want to go back to the warehouse zone in daylight, see if I can find where the creature was nesting. It could have just been on the move, but it was feasting. The only times I've seen feasting behavior in hellkin was near a nest. They don't often nest topside, but it happens. If they can hole up away from the sun, sometimes they'll do it. It's never occurred to me before now to ask why.

I fall asleep with the television on and wake up with the first rays of morning sunshine dribbling over the threshold of my bedroom. The aches in my muscles don't complain as much when I stand and stretch, and I pat my mattress. So what if it can't feel my affection? It's cheaper than a chiropractor in the long term.

The desire to find the creature's hideout almost convinces me to blow off work, but Laura will fire my ass if I do. And the rest of me. I go to work and spend the day dredging up articles on a casino opening in Crossville for a client, but my mind is glued to the warehouses.

The newspapers today are filled with a crime spike. Armed robberies, assaults – I've seen this once before, in Little Rock. When the surrounding area was overrun by hellkin. The balance. It's a real and literal thing. It can tip, and it's tipping against Nashville.
 

At eight on the button, I rush from the office. "Bye, Alice!" I holler over my shoulder. She doesn't respond. Or maybe she does, but I'm already out the door.

The sun will still be up for another half hour. If I hurry, I will still have a little daylight to look around without the fear of any demon helpers showing up to get pissed about me slaughtering their spawn.

I don't make it to the train tracks.

Just when I reach Old Demonbreun — an oddly named street that actually has nothing to do with any of the six and a half hells — I run into a roadblock. The cars in front of me aren't moving, and I can't tell why.

I roll down my window and stick my head out into the damp Nashville air, peering around the line of cars between me and the roadblock. Three cop cars divide us from an overturned SUV. Even from here I can see the blood splashed on it.