Taken By Storm (3 page)

The three of them go out to take care of the deer, and I pick one of the bedrooms at random, mulling over what Carrick said. The other Mediators will keep coming. I remember how I felt when I first discovered the shades, and for most of the Mediators, the shades being half-human won't matter. It's only the hells blood in their veins that makes them monsters, and for Mediators that's all they need. Us versus them. I've become the them.
 

The bedroom I entered contains a queen bed with a clean — albeit musty — green and red plaid flannel comforter and more pillows than even I need. The pillow shams are the same pattern, and when I peel back the comforter, the sheets are too. That's some dedicated matching. The carpet is a neutral brown, old enough to show some track marks where people made their paths through the room enough times, but not so old that it looks like it holds more nightmares than a hellshole at midnight.
 

On the far wall, there's a large framed map of the United States. It's not even a particularly nice map, nor a particularly nice frame, but I walk over to it.
 

I don't look at maps like this very often. Local maps, sure. But I don't like the reminder of how big the world is when I can't go out into it. The map is old. The state lines of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana are still there, and the Gulf hadn't yet encroached into the Louisiana bayous. And Florida was a little bit more phallic and a little less crescent-like.
 

Raising my finger to the glass, I trace the southern border of Tennessee, up through the eastern mountains, cutting off a strip at the end, skirting the northern border of the state before curving up into Kentucky, farther westward brushing into the southernmost part of Ohio, then plunging back down into Tennessee due north of Memphis.

My territory, my cage. The map's too small to get a clear view of where we are, but I make a guess. It's far closer to the edge of my range than I like. Not for the first time, I feel claustrophobia threaten at the edges of my consciousness. Even with the chunk of the south taken out of the country, North America is still a big place. My territory is not so much.

If the Mediators keep coming for us and ignoring the bigger evil out there, how far could we really run before we ran out of places to go? The shades don't have to stay here. They're not like me and bound to a specific geographical space. Many of the shades Gregor used to murder norms did just that — up and left. Pulled a Mason. I don't blame them.
 

If it comes down to it, I could send Evis away. Try to make him leave and go somewhere safer. Except even outside this territory, there's no safe place on this planet for the shades. There are Mediators in every state, every country. Even Antarctica, because there are some cold-loving demons who would take over the whole continent were it not for the Summit's presence there.

The truth is, Evis is probably safest with me.

And that's not saying much.

Mira calls me again while I'm in the middle of cooking dinner, which is to say, taking a once-frozen pizza out of the oven.
 

"Saturn told me he has news. He wants to see you, and I'm coming too because that asshat wouldn't tell me what it was." From the sound of it, Mira's having a bad day.

"You could all come up to the cabin." My pizza steams on top of the stove, and I resist the urge to pull a piece free and eat it now.

"Not in my range. You'll have to come south."

Startled, I forget the pizza. "Not in your range? I thought our range was the same."

Silence on Mira's end of the line. "I guess it's not. I just know that mine ends about thirty miles south of you."

"I'll meet you on the Tennessee border, then," I say, watching the curlicues of steam waft up from my pizza. "I'll be there in an hour and a half."

We pick a rest stop near the highway, and I inhale my pizza as fast as I can. I don't know what Saturn found out, but usually he tells Mira everything. Maybe he just doesn't want to repeat himself.

Jax elects to stay at the cabin, and he convinces Evis to stay as well. It crunches something inside me to leave Evis, but I can't babysit him all the time, and we'll only be gone a few hours.
 

"If any Mediators show up, run," I tell them.

Carrick and I pile in the car and head south as the sun dips beneath the horizon. Winter's coming on, and we might even get some snow where we're living if we can stay alive long enough to see it.

We pull into the rest stop at half past seven, and Mira's car is already there. She, Saturn, and Miles are gathered around it, watching us pull in. My heart gives a hop to see them, followed immediately by the ache I know by now to expect. It's only been a couple weeks, but I miss them so much it makes me want to tackle them. I don't. Instead, I exchange shoulder touches with Miles and Saturn, and Mira hugs me tight enough to crack a rib. She smells like vanilla and leather.

"Where's Jax?" Miles asks. They were always close, and the reminder makes me question why Jax chose to stay home.
 

"He stayed at the cabin," I say, but Miles is looking over my shoulder at Carrick.
 

When he looks back at me, he meets my eyes directly, his own indigo eyes wide. This is the first time any of them have seen me since the tattoo. Miles reaches out with one dark brown hand and touches the side of my face.
 

"What did you do?"

"A spell." Carrick's voice is as sharp as a glass shard, and Miles doesn't pry any more.
 

Mira already knew — I told her — but even so, she's peering at me.
 

"I'm not a gods damned science experiment," I say.
 

"Nope, just a freak." Mira grins at me, and Saturn grins at her.
 

Glad to see her calling him an asshat hasn't damaged their friendship.
 

We're not here to look at Ayala the Freakazoid, though. Saturn sees my look and nods.
 

I saw Saturn come into this world after being sent to find his missing mother. It hasn't really affected our bond much, but it's not something anyone could easily forget.
 

"We found Gregor," he says. "He is in Washington. The state one."

That gets all our attention, and I'm no longer the freak.

"Saturn," Mira murmurs more gently than I'm used to hearing from her, "I wish you'd told me before we drove up here. That's impossible."

Carrick stares at Saturn, his eyes as hard as lapis lazuli.
 

Miles turns, revealing a bag that he's been leaning against. "It's true. There are pictures."
 

He pulls out a folder with photographs. The blocky man in the photos is instantly recognizable. Mira's breath hisses in.

Gregor in a car with Washington plates. Gregor on a street where there's a view of the ocean. Gregor at a supermarket.
 

"He's not even hiding." I can't keep the incredulity from my voice.
 

Next to me, Mira leans up against my shoulder, the touch somehow a comfort. "Motherfucker," she says.

Somehow her swearing is a comfort too.

The obvious question is whether the images have been doctored, but I know without asking that they haven't. That glimpse of ocean behind Gregor is real. He's been close enough to the sea to smell it, touch it. A surge of jealousy catches me off guard, even though it's not the point.

Gregor is in Washington, and we're all stuck in Tennessee.
 

"What the fuck are we going to do?" The question tumbles out of my mouth, and all the calcified rage from weeks of knowing Gregor was a traitor, from seeing what he did to Evis, from seeing him violate every sacred corner of our calling — it comes back to life with blood seeping through it, surging around it. My fingers and toes feel hard on the ends, and my breath lives in my throat.
 

"We can track him," Saturn says, motioning at the pictures. "He can't stop us."

It's probably irrational that I hate that idea. I want to be the one to find Gregor, and the sense of stagnant impotence I feel listening to Saturn go on about the shades who managed to follow Gregor thus far feels like welling magma, and there are cracks in my surface.

A light touch on my shoulder makes me turn, expecting Miles or Carrick — but it's Mira. Her eyes burn like backlit amethyst, and I know she feels what I do.
 

"You're thinking about this wrong," she says. She's not talking directly to me or even Saturn, but he shuts up and looks at her.

"What do you mean?" Carrick sidles up to us, taking the pictures from Miles and flipping through them, disgust twisting his sensual lips into a sneer.

"I mean that you're all thinking about how to find this hellslime fucker when the question you should be asking is why he can leave our territory and we can't."

Everyone's looking at Mira, but she's still looking at me.
 

"I don't know about y'all," she says, "but I sure as all six and a half hells want to know."

I think of her home, covered in pictures of places we'll never go. Aztec ruins and shining beaches.

My gaze locks with hers. I nod.
 

CHAPTER THREE

The first step to figuring out how Gregor got to Washington is a control. We all drive north together as an experiment, and sure enough, not ten miles north of the border, Mira hits the hazards on her car and pulls over. I get out of my car to check on her, and she's got a sheen of sweat covering her face, turning the brown of her skin to wan gray and the remaining pink scars from markat spittle to pearly pink. We've hit the edge of her territory, but I'm still fine. It feels like a slick worm wriggling inside my stomach, this strange difference when up until today I thought all the Mediators in my territory shared the same boundaries. There has to be a reason beyond the obvious one — I've been able to come this far north here for ages. Mira was so sure she couldn't. When Mira, Saturn, and Miles leave us, it's with a promise that they'll start mapping their territories together. Mira plans to get Ripper and Devon to come along to see if there are any variations between the three of them, and since it's the easiest way to see if I'm the anomaly, I agree.

I don't like the idea of all three of them going off together. They're all known to be my friends, and all three of them have been dealing with varying degrees of hassle since I got blackballed.
 

Though to be truthful, Ripper and Mira teaching Mittens how to hold a sword should be on YouTube.

We get back to the cabin a bit after ten, and Evis and Jax are watching a game show. It's a bit eerie to see them guess the correct answers to pop culture questions relevant decades ago when they're only a few months old, knowing the knowledge comes from memories that aren't theirs.

"Phoenix feather!" Evis blurts out as I sit down next to him on the sofa, responding to a question about wizard wand cores. I'm not sure what startles me more — the fervent glee on his face or the seeming fact that our mother was a Harry Potter fan.

The ding on the television marks the contestant, and Evis, as correct. He beams at me, then focuses on me. "What did Saturn say?"

He asks the question with careful diction. Saturn still makes him nervous, I think. As one of the older shades, Saturn is something of a leader in their hierarchy, but I don't think that's the reason Evis is afraid of him.

I tell him what Miles and Saturn shared with us and our plan.
 

"Can I help?"
 

Jax growls at the television after getting an answer wrong, but I tune him out.

"I'm going to start mapping my territory again," I tell him. "If you want to come, you can. Though you'll probably have to wear clothes. Some of it I need to do in daylight."

Evis's nose gives a distasteful twitch that reminds me of Nana when faced with the wrong kind of treats. "I can do that."

"We'll go tomorrow," I say. "I want to start to the south and work our way back up and around."

I get up from the sofa, restlessness niggling at me. I don't want to wait until tomorrow to do something.