Storm in a Teacup (15 page)

But I never do those things. I don't have friends. I just do what I do.

Hey now. This ain't no pity party. Don't go feeling sorry for me. I'm fine. I don't like people much, and the hours most norms spend going out to the honkytonks are the same hours I'm usually stabbing hellkin with pointy objects.

The two come down on the side of mutually exclusive.

Maybe I should get a cat, but I come home with demon blood on me often enough that the cat would probably lick the wrong thing and die like that wealthy dude's dog in Forest Hills. Besides, that'd be admitting that I'm lonely.

Instead of any impulse pet purchases, I get Thai food on my way home and curl up on the couch in front of the television.

There are three new members of our security team, two witches and a morph who are all staring each other down from opposite sides of my building's revolving door.

As long as they do their jobs, I don't care how much they stare.
 

The incident I stumbled upon has already made breaking news. And they didn't wait for the eleven o'clock hour. Every local channel has been taken over by it. I switch it off. I was there; I don't need a sensationalized recap. Or maybe I just don't want to see the owner of the bared penis and find out he has a family and a fuzzy little shih-tzu.
 

I wait until one in the morning to gather my weapons and go out. This time I bring a second sword, slinging a specially made harness over my arms like a backpack. It houses each of them.
 

Next my armguards. I don't wear those much either, but they each hold an eight-inch dagger, and tonight one of those could be important. I also add knives to my inner boot sheaths and two in a belt holster I altered from one that was originally designed for guns. That should keep me in blades if I run into trouble.

I go for thicker leather tonight, too. I don't know the comparative strength of these creatures' jaws, but if they can bite through tendon and muscle, they might be able to get through the normal soft leather I wear. I seldom armor myself up like this, and I move around in my living room until I feel confident of my range of motion.

This time I park closer to the warehouses and stash my car in an alley facing out. No new mutilated corpses greet me as I cross the tracks, which makes me wonder if it was only the one creature hanging out in this area. That's what I'm here to find out.

The area is pretty optimal for these creatures. It's close enough to a populated area for easy hunting, but it's secluded enough to escape notice. If that was the only creature in the area, it is still a logical guess to think another could find it and sublet.

It's a muggy night, and my leather chafes the insides of my legs as I walk. I hate Nashville humidity. That's one of the biggest bummers of being a Mediator. If you don't like the weather in your area, you're shit out of luck.

It's also a quiet night. I can hear the watery rushing of the Cumberland River not far from here, but I don't hear any scraping or growling.
 

There are three warehouses in a row. The first is locked up tight and has a grody security system sticker on one of the windows. Someone would have noticed if they had a squatter. On second glance, though, one of its other windows is broken. Not the best area to vandalize right now So far these creatures aren't super keen on subtlety, and there's a smear of blood down the side of the building. Break in, get eaten.
 

The second seems undisturbed, but the third is the most dilapidated of the three. In places, corrugated metal siding has been pulled back, bolts studding the freed edges at foot-long intervals. It's still not a way in. I skirt the edges of the building, looking for a structural weakness large enough to admit a human-sized critter. I find it just as I'm about back to where I started after circling the entire building. It's about eight inches off the ground and the size of an armchair. I'll have to duck to get through it, but it's not sealed off.

Rule one of Mediator training is to always have a way out. There appears to be one way at all on this warehouse, and it points in.
 

I climb through the gap, hoping I'll climb back out.

I allow my eyes to adjust, breathing as deeply and slowly as I can.
 

Breathing at all is a mistake.
 

The smell hits me like I've been dropped into a vat of decomposing flesh.
 

My eyes aren't good enough to see. The warehouse is dark, an oily black that blots out my vision. Outside with a waxing moon I can see almost as well as I can in the day. Inside there is no patch of glow.

Which is almost reassuring, because it means there are no ten-foot jeeling demons hiding in here.

I need some form of light. First I listen to my surroundings, counting sixty breaths. There's a steady dripping, maybe a loose pipe or condensation from the humidity. A small whistle that ebbs and flows with the wind outside — a hole or gap on the windward side of the building. Nothing else.
 

Then I listen to myself. Some people call it trusting your gut, others call it instinct. I call it don't get dead. My body has been built to fight the scariest motherfuckers on and below the planet. Its rhythms change when there's danger — my hair rising to attention, my fingertips going numb, yes, but also my breath gets constricted as if that heavy weight of the tipping scale is crushing my lungs.

I feel none of that – or at least nothing more than the usual. For that reason alone, I pull out my phone and start the flashlight app. I close my eyes to protect my night vision.

The light flashes on, and I turn it outward so not to blind myself.
 

I open my eyes.

My feet turn to wooden blocks. The leather that houses my body is suddenly restrictive as a corset, stiff like a plaster cast.
 

If The Righteous Dark's apartment was a human smoothie, I think I found the blender.

It starts only a foot in front of me. The floor is a mass of blood and squished entrails. Human body parts in varying stages of decomp decorate the floor like a macabre multi-media piece. Arms, hands, feet, some of the bones scraped clean with teeth, others in a pile like they're being saved for later.
 

There is no way — no way — one creature did all of this.
 

The warehouse is half the size of a football field.

I stumble back out the opening and heave all the Thai food from earlier onto the ground. It splashes onto my feet, but I don't care. If something comes along now, it can just kill me.

This is not what demons do. This is worse.

But is it?
An unhelpful little voice in my head asks.
Or is it just the worst you've seen?

It is. It is the worst I've seen.

This is unbalanced.
 

What are these things?

I have to call Gregor this time. I can't unsee this. These things. They have to be stopped. Alamea and Gregor have to know this. All the Mediators have to know this.

I stagger toward my car, fiddling with the screen on my phone.
 

The beam of light catches two points of orange. Twenty feet away.
 

I drop my phone and yank both swords from their sheaths on my back in one motion. I wait for it to rush me. It doesn't. So I rush it.

I throw myself toward where I saw those two orange shimmers. Something meets me halfway. This time I don't get a stab in before it hits. It clotheslines me, and I hit the ground on my right side. I see movement toward me and reverse my grip on the sword in my left hand. The weight of the creature hits the sword. Its momentum carries it into my hand. I roll into a crouch, pulling the sword back out as I go.
 

The creature is standing still, one hand on its naked side.
 

I use my crouch to launch myself forward, spinning my left sword back into position. At the last second, I cross my forearms. Each blade lands on either side of the creature's neck like a giant pair of scissors. I don't let them stop there.

I snip off the creature's head as I uncross my arms.
 

I don't stop to check out the carcass this time. Chucking my left sword into my right hand, I snag my still-glowing phone and sprint for my car.

I don't stop until I get home.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Gregor is surprisingly nimble when he's in a hurry, and he works himself into a big hurry when I call him to confess my involvement.

He shows up at my door so quickly, I start to wonder if he's been hiding out in my parking garage. His blocky face looks like a crunched tin can when he shoulders the door open almost before I can undo the slide bar lock.
 

He doesn't bother to take off his shoes.
 

I cringe at every step his boots make on my pristine carpet. At least he's not wearing my boots, which are covered in blood-mud and gravel. He stumps to my easy chair and wallops the seat with his body.
 

"You," he says. "Talk."

I start with what he already knows — Lena's death and the spawning of the creature in the dewy sunlight — and I finish with what he doesn't. The warehouse.
 

I still don't want to think about the warehouse. Or any of it. If I never come within five miles of that place again, it'll be too soon.

Gregor's usually silent for a bit after he gets bad news. Not this time. "What were you thinking, Storme? That you could just poke around into something like this and be fine? These things are faster than you, stronger than you, and they're not dumb either."
 

Charitable of him not to continue his pattern and say they're smarter than me. After a beat, I realize he's waiting for me to respond.

"I can't drop this, Gregor. You should know why."

"Your mother."

It's the first time anyone's said those two words together to me since I was seven or eight. It makes me feel like he's stripped twenty years from my age, and my eyes grow wide. I try to control my face, hold my lips in a firm line.
 

"She could have spawned one of these things, and you know it. I can't drop it."

"We don't know that, Storme. And you have to drop it. They've been tied to no less than thirty deaths in middle Tennessee in the last week, and you've been off rummaging in one of their nests? Are you insane? One of these things could have you for lunch, and I actually mean that literally."

"But I've killed three of them."

"You what?"

I guess I left that part out. "I killed three of them. I tracked one through the train tracks a couple nights ago. Followed a trail of half-eaten bodies. That was the first one, and it nearly got me. Then yesterday —" I pause, deliberating if I should tell him I was the one at the scene yesterday. I decide not to. "— I came across another one and took that one down. Then tonight when I found the nest, I was leaving and ran into one on the way out."

Gregor sits forward in the chair, fingers digging into his knees. "You took down three."

"I just said that."

Now Gregor is silent. He doesn't speak for so long that I go into the kitchen and pour myself a glass of water. When I return, he's standing, and he takes a step toward the door.

"Where are you going?"

"Home."

"That's it? You're not going to tell me I'm a moron or put me on desk duty?" His silence is somehow more terrifying than what I saw in the warehouse.

"That's it." He assesses my face, his violet eyes boring into mine. "You are not to breathe a word of this to Alamea. Not a single word. And try not to go looking for more of these creatures. Stick to your normal patrols. Let us deal with it."

"How many have you all killed?"

"I said drop it." He mutters something about the balance, but I don't catch it.

He's out the door. I forgot to tell him about what Doctor Martha Birkberry found. He wouldn't answer how many they'd killed. And the way he spoke to me before I told him about my three — have they not managed to kill any of these monsters?
 

I sit down on the couch, sipping my water, trying to figure out how much my world has changed.