Taken By Storm (11 page)

The mullet bedecked prince of hells wannabe disappears into the butcher shop, and Carrick pulls the car around to the side of the shop itself, stopping it about twenty feet from me.
 

My foot taps on the parking lot, and I'm not sure of the source of my jitters. This is good. We found the guy. Now we just need to follow him to Nik "Dead Meat" Edison's once and future kindred.
 

He seems to be inside for a long time, long enough that I start to nurse some concern that Bonnie the Butcher took my money and then turned around to warn this guy. But when the woman herself emerges from the side door behind my car's rear bumper, she starts at the sight of me and then points inside with one hand, untying her white apron with the other.

"I'm off shift now," she says. "But your man's in there. He's buying more than the usual today, but he was just paying."

"Thank you," I tell her. When she shrugs it off, I look her directly in the eye. "You've saved lives. Really."

A blush peeks through the genuinely tanned skin of her cheeks, and she gives me a slow nod. "Well, I sure hope you're right." Looking at me a bit closer, she hesitates before speaking again. "Ain't your eyes the wrong color for a Mediator?"

"Contacts," I lie. "Trying a new look. If I meet one of those hells-worshippers, I don't want them to know what I am."

Bonnie nods seriously. "Be careful."

Bless her heart.

She makes her way to an old Volvo parked at the side of the building and drives off. No sooner has she turned onto the main road than our mark emerges from the butcher shop, triceps defined and ropey from the weight of the two enormous bags of meat he's carrying in each hand.

I wonder if he's stocking up. I duck out of sight and hop in the front seat of the car. A moment later, the back doors open and shut as Jax and Evis join us.
 

Let the low speed car chase begin.
 

CHAPTER TEN

Either this guy is only outwardly twitchy, or he really doesn't care if anyone's following him. He makes no sudden turns, uses his signals properly, and doesn't speed. We follow him easily through town past the northern edge of the city limits and up a road called Billy Goat Hill.
 

The name of the road makes Jax mutter something unflattering about goats from the back seat.

I get a feeling he'd be happy to eat mutton the rest of his life.

At the end of the road, his van stops at a modular home. Carrick parks my car on a dead end road that forks off to the northeast, and we get out to go the rest of the way on foot. It's broad daylight, so there should be no hellkin activity around this place, but even so, the nervous sloshing in my stomach makes me feel like I took a hypo of caffeine straight to the heart.

I realize why on the way up the road to the house.
 

We're going into this place to kill a person.
 

Granted, this person is already dead, but we're going to be the ones to take his life.
 

Not we. Me. I have to be the one to do it.

The road is gravel, newly graded. The hells-zealot's van is parked askew in the driveway. For as careful a driver as he was on the roads, apparently his field of fucks ends at his own property. If this is even his.
 

It's an old model double wide, a skylight in the roof grimy and half-covered in mold. The roof needs replacing, and the siding — a droll gray — probably wouldn't improve even with a power washing. Judging from the foundation of the place, there's a basement. If the shades are right, that's where we're headed. One look at Jax and he trots out ahead of us, making a quick and surreptitious circuit of the place.

"They're in the basement," he confirms. "No way in except through the front door or back door, unless you want to squeeze through a window about this high."
 

He holds out his hands about a foot apart.
 

"I think I'd like to avoid giving them the chance to slice at my feet." I look at Carrick and Evis. "Front door, guns blazing?"

"We don't have any guns," says Evis.

"Figure of speech," Carrick says, but his tone is fond rather than snarky.
 

The man's going soft on me.

For a super secret demon-worshipper hideout, they're pretty lax with security. The front door's unlocked, the screen detached and leaning in a corner of the porch. The whole place looks like it should be on that reality home show that's like What Not to Wear for real estate.

The living room is empty of people, but from the pizza boxes stacked on the coffee table and the line of beer cans behind them, this is the primo hangout spot for Hells-Zealot McMullet.
 

There's a porno mag on the couch advertising morphs in various stages of shifting, all nude, nude, nude.

I think I need steel wool for my eyeballs. For a moment. Then I wonder if Wane likes morph porn like that, and I feel somewhat abashed as we walk on soft feet through the room.

I don't reckon she'd be thrilled to know I found this in a demon-worshipper's house, whatever morph culture and custom has to say about porn and shifting.

We stop in the entry to the kitchen, and I listen. The refrigerator motor sounds like it's seen better years, but beyond that I can hear at least three distinct voices.
 

"Guns blazing," Evis says.
 

Guess so. "Try not to kill the others. We'll turn them over to the Summit. The other one's my job."

They nod, though Carrick gives me a long look. I remember on one of our team missions with Gregor, seeing him decapitate a shade who was begging for his life. He did what I couldn't, then. Maybe he expected this would be the same.
 

Things change.

The basement door is open, and I don't bother to be quiet as I tromp down the stairs. "Hello, the hells-worshipping house!"

"Fuckin' hells, who the fuck are you?"

"Ayala Storme, at your service." I reach the bottom of the stairs and bow to McMullet. There are three other people down here. One looks like an advertisement for the Meth, Not Even Once campaign, another is wearing a tweed suit and distinctly out of place, and the third is the person I'm here to kill.

The three non-spawning folks scrabble to stand and face me, but they seem to know they're outnumbered and outmatched. They'd be outmatched even if I were alone.
 

I turn my attention to the fourth person, who lies on a nest of foam padding and blankets in the far corner, fingers and face reddened from his meal and a bit of beef still stuck to one cheek.

Even seeing Lena Saturn splatted from the inside out hasn't desensitized me to the sight in front of me.

The man's stomach is grossly distended even after only a week or so of pregnancy. Nude and wearing the same euphoric expression I saw on Lena's face, his pale stomach undulates rhythmically.
 

McMullet regains a bit of nerve, and he stays where he is, but he drops his weight from one foot to another, almost dancing with fervor. "You ain't gonna stop it. You ain't gonna stop shit."

I pull my sword from its sheathe with a hiss and point it at the man in the corner, who neither seems to know nor care that I'm about to kill him. "I'm about to stop that."

"Ain't matter. You ain't gon' do nothin' to stop what's comin'." McMullet's flat brown eyes start to sparkle, and a spot of spittle clings to his lip.
 

The others, to give them some credit, seem to have a bit of fear. Methamphetamine the Cautionary Tale backs up against the wall, her nose twitching faster than Nana's.
 

"Steve," she says. "I think that there's one of them Mediators."

"Merciful Zeus, do you people live under rocks? Of course I'm a gods damned Mediator." I jerk my head behind me. "And they are the end result of that."
 

I point to the man in the corner, who lets out a hysterical giggle followed by a wet fart.

"The brain cells of these two speak for themselves," I tell Tweed Suit, who has her back to the wall now alongside Cautionary Tale. "But you seem to have at least enough to practice some personal hygiene. I'm going to ask you once: what fucking possesses you people to pull this bullshit?"

"They are the future!" McMullet screeches this at the top of his lungs, spit flying from his mouth.
 

"I didn't ask you," I say mildly.
 

Carrick stalks past me and stands face to face with McMullet, considering just a moment before slamming his fist into McMullet's face.
 

I make eye contact with Tweed Suit. She's about forty, well-groomed, intelligent enough to button her fly, which now that McMullet is sprawled out sideways on the floor, I can see he isn't.

"All things tend toward chaos and entropy. This world is no different."

"Thank you for that bit of nihilistic hooey."
 

Carrick gives me a questioning glance, and I nod. His fist flicks out twice more, and Tweed Suit and Cautionary Tale join McMullet on the floor.
 

I doubt his punches knocked any sense into any of them, but a concussion is the least they have to worry about.

The pregnant man in the corner isn't even watching us, but staring joyously at the wall. It's only then I notice a table almost buried by blankets, covered in foil and glass pipes and multicolored dust.

"Didn't anybody tell these people that drugs and pregnancy don't mix?" I mutter.
 

I'm stalling. I know it. I feel like throwing up.
 

Jax and Evis are still hanging back at the foot of the stairs, and I can smell their pity from here.
 

I know what they see.

"Carrick," I say. "Will you go upstairs with Jax and Evis?"

He gives me a strange look, and Evis looks about ready to protest, but Jax pulls him up the stairs.
 

Carrick hesitates part way, but I don't look at him, and after a moment his footsteps begin again.
 

Then it's quiet, and I'm alone with the man I'm about to kill.
 

Murder is a strangely intimate thing.

All the times I've said I was going to kill Gregor — and meant it — this is somehow worse. Gross stupidity shouldn't be punishable by death, even though this person signed his own warrant.
 

I offer no words of explanation, and the host-mother offers no resistance.
 

Grabbing his hair at the top of his head, I position my blade at his throat.

My swords are sharp. My fingers, twined in greasy hair against a greasier scalp, hold fourteen pounds of human head. I drop it in the blankets. The man's belly still moves.

I think of last night, facing off with that new shade in Hopkinsville. Of the scores of people dead here and in Seattle. Of the scores more that will die if I cannot do this.
 

My swords are sharp, but this time it takes me three tries.
 

I don't meet Carrick's eyes when I walk out of the house, cleaning the blade of my sword with a filthy blanket from the basement.
 

McMullet and the others we leave tied up in the living room, gagged with torn out centerfolds from the porno magazine on the couch. I use McMullet's landline to call the Hopkinsville branch of the Summit.

When a Mittens on duty answers, I get straight to the point. "This is former Mediator Ayala Storme of the Nashville Summit." I rattle off the address of the house I'm at. "Send a team with some experienced Mediators. You'll find three tied-up hells-zealots and a dead shade host. You're welcome."

I hang up on the squawking Mittens without further explanation. Let the Summit put that in their bubble pipe and smoke it.

As we hurry out of there, I realize I never asked Carrick the man's name.

I don't want to know.

I need a distraction. The shades are quiet as I drive us home, and I call Mira, putting the phone on speaker.
 

"You guys been working on the territory problem?" I ask without preamble when she answers.