Taken By Storm (31 page)

Evis's eyes are wide next to me, and his fingers are so tight against the rubber seam on the window now that he might break the glass. I don't even care.

"Oh, my gods. Where are you?" It's twilight now. Even if the world weren't sliding sideways into hell, this would be demon hour.
 

"Driving down. I have to see it."

"I'll meet you there."

It's foolhardy, knowing that Gregor will certainly have eyes on the place, but I know there's no stopping Mira right now. I understand. I'll be there to fight beside her if anything happens.

The fire department is there when we arrive, just one water truck, and the blaze is still roaring. Yellow flames lick up from the roof, and through the windows we can see only fire. Mira's not here yet. There's nothing I can do but wait for her. I belt on my swords and tuck my knives in my boots. They feel ten times as heavy as they usually do.

One of the neighbors has ventured out of his house, but the rest are all inside, peeking out windows if they dare.
 

"Only reason they'd send a truck is because it was a Mediator's house." He gives my face a long look. "And I think it's 'cause she was on the TV with you. You're on the news again."

I don't really care about that part right now, but if emergency services are being selective about their response, we're looking at a Nashville that's awfully similar to the Seattle we left not long ago.

The heat from the fire bakes my cheeks. No rain falls from the cloud-covered sky, but when the wind picks up, mist from the fire hose lights on my face until the direction changes and the inferno evaporates it before it can reach us.

Mira pulls up a few minutes later, parking sideways in the middle of the street and staggering out of the driver's side. Tears are streaming down her face in steady rivulets, and she falls to her knees in the parking strip, watching her house burn.
 

I go to her. I don't know what to do. Gregor blew up my stuff, but not my apartment. I can empathize to an extent, but this place was hers. She bought it, cared for it. Tended the garden and mowed the lawn. She power washed the siding and cleaned the rain gutters. All of her things, everything she picked out to be hers and hers alone — gone.
 

When you live in a cage, the nest you make is all you have.
 

I stretch out one hand and put it on her shoulder. She tenses beneath my touch.
 

"Ayala, please."

I don't know what she's begging for. Moving my hand away, I sit crosslegged beside her, scabbards scraping against the asphalt. Evis keeps watch on the surroundings, and I hear him quietly suggest that the neighbor go inside and lock himself in his house with a radio. Whether the neighbor listens or not, I don't know.

"That's my home." Mira's voice is full of disbelief.
 

"I know."

"Everything I own is in there."

"I know."

"It's
mine
."

"I know." My own tears spill over. I want to comfort her and can't. We both are well aware that one house on fire is not the biggest thing we're facing, but somehow it is the biggest thing we're facing. Slummoths in Charlotte Avenue and houses on fire. This is the beginning of an end we don't know if we can stop.

"How do you do it?" she asks. Her eyes are still fixated on the flames that won't seem to give way to the sprays of water. One truck isn't enough.
 

"Do what?"

"How do you look into the face of that and not just throw yourself on it when everything you have is burning away?"

"Because it's not everything I have." I look over my shoulder at Evis, then at her. "There's more left to fight for than memories, Mira."

Her shoulders bow and shake with sobs. I hold out my arms. It's a question, and for a long moment I think she's going to stay as she is, huddled and alone.
 

But then she collapses against me, her body heaving with a crashing grief I know too well. It's a grief that goes through you, lives inside you, throws its weight from one side of you to another where it's made a hole big enough to swallow you from the inside out.

I wrap my arms around her as if they can hold her together, as if they can hold me together. Us together. A moment later, Evis joins us and envelops us both in his arms.
 

I've told her we have more left to fight for, and this is it. Arms that hold you when the grief threatens to capsize you, that pull you back up when you're drowning in fire and slime and blood.

Houses can be rebuilt. People can't.

I don't know if we'll win, but I will fight for them until my last breath rattles out of my lungs.

Evis's body convulses and hot pain slices into my side.

He screams, and we all three jump apart. My eyes are blurry with tears and burn from crying and the heat of the flames. Something cut my side. Blood oozes down my torso. Mira doesn't ask, just grabs my short sword right out of the scabbard at my hip.

Evis is on the ground on his side, an arrow protruding from his chest.
 

I ignore the cut the arrowhead made on me and hit my knees next to him.
 

Mira lopes away. I don't have to tell her to check our perimeter — she knows.

"This is going to hurt, Evis. I have to get the arrow out before you start to heal around it. Okay?"

He nods, his bottom lip bit hard between his teeth.
 

The arrow must have been shot from a decent distance, because if it had been traveling faster, it would have gone all the way into me and gotten the point stuck there. It's a broadhead arrow, and if that had embedded in my ribs, I'd be fucked six ways till Sunday. As it is, Evis had it go all the way through, and at least it went through clean.
 

I talk to him as I work, ears and eyes hyper alert to any threats that might materialize out of the darkness. "I have to push it through a little more so I can snap the head off and get the shaft out."

As I say it, I do it, and Evis yells, spitting through his teeth. I toss the arrow tip aside, thankful the shaft was aluminum and not carbon.
 

"I'm going to pull the shaft out. On three." I count. "One. Two. Three."

I yank out the shaft. This time Evis gasps but doesn't scream. He'll heal quickly. The section of the arrow that was at his back has scratches on it. They scrape against my palm when I pull.
 

"Mira!" I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight app.

"It's all clear!" Her return call is hoarse and furious. "Whoever the fuck did it is gone."

"Who the fuck do you think did it?" I say. The shaft of the arrow says,
Hello, Ayala.

"Motherfucker." Mira sounds ready to bite the arrow in half when I hand it to her to read.
 

The area was clear. No demons, no Mediators, no one but the firefighters, who didn't even hear Evis scream over the sound of the blaze and beams crashing.

After some quick discussion, we split up, agreeing to take separate paths back to the cabin just in case Gregor has someone here to tail us. Wards or no wards, that's not a risk I'm willing to take right now.
 

It takes us two and a half hours to get home, because I take the time to make absolutely certain there's no one following my car. Evis is stretched out next to me with his seat reclined, his breathing shallow, but steady. The arrow narrowly missed his lung, and though it wouldn't have killed him even if it had, the writing on the arrow was the least of the message.
 

Gregor will sadistically hurt my brother just to poke at me. That I already knew. But he's also going for the low hanging fruit. I don't like that he almost certainly burned down Mira's house just to lure us there. Irrationally, a small part of me is thankful that arrow was meant for Evis and not for Mira. She would probably be fine if it hit her where it hit him, but an arrow through the heart or lung when the possibility of emergency care is slim to none would most likely do her in.
 

Either Gregor doesn't know how much she means to me or Evis was just the clearer target.
 

It doesn't really matter. This game of cat and mouse is getting old.

"It's good we went with Mira," Evis says, breaking the silence in the car. "Even though this hurts."

I know he means it. "I'm glad she wasn't alone."

"I mean it's good you were there."

He raises himself up on one elbow to look at me.
 

"What do you mean, Evis?"

"Because she loves you."

"I know she loves me. I love her too."

He scowls. "The other kind of love. Not you and me love. The kind of love that made Mason sad when I told him he couldn't sleep in your room."

My face feels hot all of the sudden, and it's not residual heat from the burning house.

Somehow my brother has managed to notice what I've been too stupid to see.

I swallow, my throat as parched as a rock in the desert.
 

Mira is in love with me? I'd figured out that she seemed to have some feelings in my direction, but not like that. We've been sharing a — platonic — bed for days. I never even thought about it. Everything in my core feels confused. I try to unravel the feelings I have for her, the trust we've built over our whole lives growing up together that has leaped exponentially in the past few months, the way I know we always have each other's backs, the way she is more often than not these days the first person I want to call when something happens.

Of course I love her. There's no question of whether or not I love her.
 

My memory flashes back to that conversation on my bed, with both of us lying on the comforter with Nana against me, talking about what ifs and maybes and what we'll do if we get a future. I remember the way she pushed my hair back from my face, the wistful look on hers, and the way she immediately got up and left the room when Mason called and broke the moment.

The thought of Mason ties my stomach into knots and glues the ends together.
 

When I had to leave Nashville, I was desperate to see him. Talking to him on the phone shortly before that was confusing, painful, strange. Maybe he regrets leaving, but that doesn't change the fact that he left.

Evis settles back down on the seat, but he's still looking at me expectantly as if he wants me to explain to him what's going on in my head.

He's my brother. If I can't talk to him about this, who am I going to go to, Carrick? He'd probably make some smart ass remark that would annoy me enough not to want to even continue. And then he'd chuck a romance novel at my head.

"I don't know what to do, Evis." I admit it out loud, and it doesn't help the mix of emotions I feel one bit.

"You didn't know that she loved you. But now you do." He says it as if that makes all the difference.
 

"Everything's complicated right now." Understatement of the eon award winner, me. I'm going to put it on a plaque.

"What would make it not?"

Again with the insight. Would saving the world make this any less confusing? I don't think so. Even without the impending apocalypse, there'd still be an ex, a maybe-lover, and me fumbling our way through what-the-fuck-do-we-do.

"Good point," I say.

The rest of the drive passes in silence.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY

We make it home before Mira does, and when she still hasn't arrived a half hour later, I try calling her. She doesn't answer.

Carrick and Mason have a long checklist of items they need for their Gregor-hunting spell, and to my surprise it's about three-quarters checked off. Looks like Alamea's contacts have paid off.

I try calling Mira again when I get her voicemail for the second time, and this time I leave a message.

"It's me. I'm worried. Check in, please."

Mason looks up from the table, his deep, dark blue eyes questioning. I should explain what happened, but Evis wants to show off his puncture wound, so I leave the kitchen with a baloney sandwich and go into my room to see Nana.