Taken By Storm (34 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Gryfflet arrives just after sundown, though you'd never know because no one on this continent has seen the sun in weeks. He sits down at the table with Carrick, and together they lay out all the ingredients for the spell, murmuring for what seems like an hour over how things are going to work.
 

I'm more concerned with
if
things are going to work at all, but that's their job.
 

The rest of us get ready to move. In Nashville, Alamea is coordinating with her people at the Summit as well as the rest of the shades Saturn's managed to round up. In addition to those who have been with me for the past several weeks, only Harkan and Sanj of our group are still alive.
 

Once we have Gregor's location, contingents from as many allied groups as we have are going to converge on him. There's us up here in Kentucky, Alamea herself and Riley, the shades, the Summit, a witch coven from East Nashville, and a pack of morphs from down by Murfreesboro.
 

Enough is in motion to tip the scales well and firmly away from us that this operation may simply be a very well strategized exercise in futility, but every single one of us have reason to hate Gregor.

Moonrise happens at 8:21 PM.

Gryfflet refuses to let anyone but Carrick watch, and I think he only allows Carrick in the room with him because he knows it's the only way I'll trust him to do this right.
 

Minutes turn to hours.
 

Evis and Jax sit as still as stones in the living room, and Mira and I are the exact opposite, packing the cars with all our gear and attempting to go through contingency strategies and tactics even though we have no idea if we'll find Gregor in an empty field or in a secret lair at the bottom of the Cumberland.

Every minute that passes feels to me like an hourglass that drips blood instead of sand, and the blood in it is Mason's.

My conversation with Mira notwithstanding, I have to get him back. He needs to know that I still care, even if it's not in the way he wants me to. I only hope he's not already dead, and that when — I try to cling to Mira's uncharacteristic optimism in this — we find him, he's still a functional person with his sanity intact.

It's almost one in the morning when the door to the guest room finally opens, sending a gust of sickly-smelling smoke out into the cabin. The single smoke detector goes off within seconds, and I climb up on a chair to turn it off.

Gryfflet's face is triumphant, and Carrick wears a satisfied half-smile when he looks at me.

"We've got it," he says.

"Hit the phone tree," says Mira. "Somebody start a stopwatch so we can record for posterity exactly how long Gregor managed to live after we found him."

There's a low chuckle from the shades, and I see Jax poke at his phone.
 

It probably makes me a sick human being to say that his taking her literally gives me some much-needed glee.

It takes another hour for everyone to respond that they're ready to move. If Gregor's location changes, we'll know. Gryfflet is a tech-savvy witch — his father owns the biggest witch security company in Nashville — and he's gotten the spell to react to the mapping app on his phone, which immediately syncs with the point person in each of our contingents.
 

I hope to every god in existence that each of those people is trustworthy. If someone fucks this up, their bones are going to be the needles I use to make Gregor into a pincushion.

We leave the house at two. The location we're headed to is about an hour from Nashville, east out of town on I-40. While we drive, Alamea feeds us information about the coordinates, but none of it is particularly useful. It looks like he's at an old farmhouse on the grounds of a plantation. There's a good chance we'll have to fight our way in if he's got any demon backup.

The farmhouse is exactly where we think it's going to be.
 

My group approaches from the west, and there's a clear view of the house itself from where we enter the property. It's dark enough that unless someone's got night vision goggles, they probably won't see us. The clouds above obscure the full moon until it's only a dim glow to the east.
 

My stomach has been empty for the past two days, and it churns with bile. I wish I'd been able to eat something, but there's nothing I can do about it now. I'm watching the dot on my phone twitch. It looks like Gregor's pacing back and forth, wherever he is.
 

The farmhouse appears to be dark, but even from where we are it looks pretty clear that all the windows are shuttered and probably painted over from the inside. The house itself is in good repair, and the surrounding yard is neatly trimmed even though it's winter.
 

Evis, Jax, and Mira are with me at the front, with Carrick and Gryfflet bringing up the rear.
 

I can't see the other groups, but they're each a different-colored dot on my phone, and they're all in position. The green dot is Alamea, the blue one the other shades.
 

The woods around us are sparse, with stumps scattered around that bear tell of recent tree-thinning.
 

Waiting for the time to click over to go time is the most interminable wait of my life.
 

Hold on, Mason
.
 

If ever I've wished for telepathy, now would be that time.
 

Gregor's got the house warded, which is one of the big reasons we brought along the coven of witches. Liza's leading them, and she's the one who dictated where we would stop and wait while they pick the lock on the magics cloaking the house.

The wards are at least as strong as what we have up around the cabin, and I'm not sure if the fact that Liza can dismantle Gregor's makes me feel better or worse about ours. I choose to feel better, since she's one of the people who made ours.
 

The biggest surprise so far is that the woods around us are not silent. I can hear a couple crickets, and an owl flies overhead while we wait. Instead of being a comfort, though, it makes me even more apprehensive about what could be inside the house.

The last thing any of us need is to get cocky now.

Gryfflet clucks his tongue behind me, and I turn to look at him.
 

"It's time," he says.
 

The house has three doors on the ground floor, and what looks like a bricked up storm cellar at the back. We creep up on the house as a group, and as we emerge from the woods, I see the rest of our little army appear.
 

Gryfflet and the other witches are also keeping their third eyes peeled for any booby traps that might be awaiting us, but it doesn't appear they set any. Again, instead of relief, I feel more anxious. Getting into this place feels too easy considering what Gregor's laid out for me in the past.
 

I want to throw up, but the only thing that would come up is stomach acid.

We meet up with Alamea's group at the side door. She's with Riley and two people I don't know, both not Mediators.

"Psychics," she says by way of explanation.
 

Of course. I feel a pang, thinking of Jaryn Trident.
 

He's one on a long list of people I plan to avenge tonight.

We discard stealth at the doors. Evis kicks down the side door, and I simultaneously hear two other doors smashing open around the house, along with a chuffing growl that has to come from one of the morphs. By my count, there are thirty-three of us. I hope it's enough.

The entire main floor of the house is empty. Inside, the morphs do a quick recon upstairs and report back that it's empty as well.

"He's here," Gryfflet says. "That spell worked."

I want to believe him, but there's no one to be seen here. We're right on top of the dot that is Gregor on my phone.

Right on top.
 

"There's a basement," I say.
 

Somehow I don't think it's going to be the same as the basements in which I found the hosts hiding out what feels like eons ago.
 

I'm proven right when Alamea finds the elevator.

"No stairs?" Carrick asks.

"No stairs."
 

I don't like enclosed spaces much as it is, but squeezing into the elevator with eleven other people feels like a death trap on a pulley.

"Are you going to be able to still track him underground?" I ask Gryfflet.

"With this spell, I could track him in a black hole." Gryfflet's eyes are cloudy with power, and he exudes none of the fluttering anxiety that he did the first time I went on a mission with him.
 

The first group to go down is mine, plus Alamea. Saturn and the other shades stay upstairs — Harkan and Sanj both make sure to greet me before I get into the elevator — and the morphs are patrolling the house for any signs of trouble.
 

There's only one level down, but when we press the button and start moving, the downward momentum stretches out, feeling impossibly long.

"How far down are we going?" My voice sounds hollow, and I can hear and smell too much breath in this tiny box.

No one answers.

A loud boom sounds from above us.

"Shit!" Mira's not the only one to yell an expletive.

The elevator doesn't seem to be damaged, but something's happening upstairs.
 

Riley and the two other psychics — a short black man and a white woman who looks like a stereotypical librarian — look uneasy.
 

"Demons," says Riley.

"Fuck." I look up, as if it'll make any difference in what's happening up there.
 

Mira takes my hand for a brief moment, but doesn't say anything.

The elevator stops.
 

I half expect Gregor to be there with a submachine gun when the door slides open, but all there is in front of us is an empty corridor.
 

Gryfflet doesn't say anything, only points diagonally to the right.
 

Several other halls branch off from the main corridor, but we don't pass a door until we turn the first corner. There's no window in it, but the male psychic flinches away from it when we pass.
 

I don't ask. I can't.

Instead, I look at Riley. "If I give you my hand and try and project the image of a person, would you be able to tell us if he's close?"

She nods, holding out her hand.

I swallow and take it, filling my mind with images of Mason.
 

Mason the first time we met, when he scooped me out of that hells-den by the Cumberland. Mason on my sofa, bare-ass naked and treating me like a skittish stallion. Mason in the morning with a sleepy smile. Mason making smalltalk with Ben Wheedle, telling him we met at a buffet. Mason a few days ago, face stricken, looking at me.

Riley closes her eyes, but doesn't stop walking. We walk hand in hand with the rest of the group. There's nothing for me to concentrate on in this corridor. The walls are white. The light is white. There are no distinguishing characteristics on anything. It's like Gregor modeled it after the grey honeycomb of doom beneath the Summit, wanting to make people feel lost just existing here.

There's an end to the corridor ahead where it becomes a T, and Gryfflet points to the right. We turn. Riley drops my hand.
 

"He's with Gregor," she says.

"It's probably best to prepare yourself for the worst." Alamea looks at me with genuine pity etched across her face. I wonder if she's thinking about me jumping between her blade and Mason to save his life.

She almost took off my arm that day. Only her reflexes kept that from happening. I still have a scar, and it takes a lot to scar a Mediator. Cutting almost to the humerus will do it.

"There." Gryfflet points at a door. "He almost certainly knows we're here."

"Getting in was probably the easy part," says Carrick.
 

 
I step out ahead of everyone. Alamea lets me, even though she has to feel more betrayed by Gregor than anyone else here. They were Mittens together. Hells, a couple things in the past tweaked and he'd be Summit Leader instead of her. Now there's a disgusting thought.
 

"There's nothing easy about any of this," I say, and I kick down the door.