Any Port in a Storm (35 page)

A slummoth rushes me, and my swords make fast work of it, slicing through its gut with one hand and severing its spine with the other. Beside me, Hux and Hayn split up and flank one of the markats targeting the blows of their fists and feet to the creature's neck, pummeling it to keep it from spewing toxic spittle over the entire fight.
 

The twenty-five yard line becomes the line of scrimmage in a game with no ball and death the only mark of the losers. I leap over Rex's corpse and take a pair of harkasts out with two quick movements. There's a fucking hells-hole open on the five. Here. A new one. That hole wasn't on any of Alamea's maps.

I don't have much time to be flabbergasted.
 

The second jeeling is coming right at me.
 

Carrick appears at my side, and his side kick takes the jeeling in the knee. The jeeling's long arms snake out, its claws seeking Carrick's stomach. The demon misses, with Carrick circumventing the attack by almost flying to the side. I dart in and manage to slice the jeeling's side open, spilling hot blood and exposing the demon's innards.

Together, Carrick and I tag team the eleven foot monster. I feint while he flanks the beast, raining blows on its back and wrenching its left shoulder spike like a lever. The jeeling screams like tearing steel. I jam my saber up under its ribs and yank my blade to the side and out.
 

The demon's back breaks as Carrick puts a fist through its spine.
 

Around us, Harkan and Sanj have taken a splash of markat spit to the chest, both of them bearing sizzling splashes across their skin, but they take down one markat, then the other, their fingers finding space between demon muscles and pulling them apart like they're untangling unruly wires.
 

Out of the hells-hole, more harkasts swarm. Been and Boyne take them down, practically punting them like stumpy footballs.

One by one, the hellkin fall, and when the hells-hole finally vanishes from sight, we hunt through the bodies to find Rex's, pulling him to the side.
 

The shades have no funeral rites, no ceremony of mourning, but as I watch them, I think I see one incepted.

One by one, they kneel next to Rex, their hands covered in blood and slime. They touch his chest, just over his heart, and their fingers leave marks.

I'm last, and my hand shakes as it finds his chest. I can't look at the severed stump of his neck.

Beex takes guard duty, watching where the hells-hole opened to make sure it doesn't start spawning more demons, and the rest of us gather down the field. I call the Summit for a body pickup, making sure to report that the hellkin came to attack the shades. The Summit needs to know that these shades are a target.
 

As Carrick speaks to them in low tones, I try and reconcile what I know of them with what happened at the plantation. Gregor and Carrick and I, we taught them to follow orders. We taught them to trust us. Maybe that's it. They just want to breathe freely as people, to exist as living beings who have as much of a right to be here as anyone else.

I think of Miles and Saturn, holed up in their little safe house. I think of Mason, half a world away. And I think of Alamea, sitting in her Jeep while the Belle Meade country club guards give us the stink eye, telling me that she's not done here yet. That she wants to live.
 

She and the shades want the same thing. I want the same thing.
 

I wonder if the shades will ever be able to just be part of society, to roll up to a diner off I-40 or in downtown Nashville and order a burger so rare it's mooing, have a laugh with their server, and eat raw beef with a fork. Pay for it with money they earn doing something. As security, as hunters — hell, for all the romance novels Carrick reads, maybe they could try their hands at writing some.
 

Until they find a way to become a part of the world, they will exist apart from it.
 

And while they exist apart from it, they can be exploited.

If they were Mediators, they'd probably all go to a bar and drink away their problems. Maybe get blitzed on skittles. Maybe sing bad karaoke. But instead, they sit here, ass naked in an overgrown field, spattered with markat spittle and blood and slummoth slime, which they try to rub off with handfuls of grass.

Carrick comes to sit beside me. "What are you thinking?"
 

I give him an ironic smile. "You really do read too many romance novels."

"They're peaceful."

"I guess they are that."

He's quiet for a moment. "It's not going to stop, you know."

"I know."

"I don't think you really do."

I look at him. "I'm a Mediator, Carrick. It never stops."

"I don't mean the hellkin in general. I mean what happened here tonight. They're not going to stop coming for us."

"The demons."

"Yes, the demons." He plucks some browning blades of grass and starts weaving them with nimble fingers. I've seen Saturn do the same thing. "I've been around for a while. I wasn't part of the first batch of shades, and they —" he gestures to the others, "— aren't part of the last. There will be more. The demons will try and breed more of them, and when they don't turn out the way the hellkin hierarchy wants, they will send the hordes to dispatch them."

I hear real pain in his voice, and I wonder about the others of his generation, how he survived. If he wishes he didn't. I wonder what he thinks he's helping, working with Gregor.
 

"What happened at the plantation was a nightmare," he says.

His words shock me like I've just been touched between the shoulder blades with a live current.
 

I go very still, choosing my words very carefully. "I wish I'd been there to help. Maybe I could have helped save some of them."

Those hells-worshippers — they may have been stupid, but they didn't deserve to be massacred. The shades don't deserve to be massacred. The only creatures who deserve a massacre are the gods damned demons who keep invading my world.
 

Carrick's eyes go distant, and I actually see him swallow. It's such a human stress reaction that I don't know what to do.
 

"Yes, well. For what it's worth, I'm very glad you weren't there to see it."

If only he knew.

"Why?" I ask. I don't mean why he wishes that, and I think he knows that.

"There are some people you cannot help," he says sadly.
 

The simple proclamation ricochets through the air, and the murmur of talking amongst the other shades goes silent.
 

In Carrick's words, a thought germinates in me. Suddenly, I'm certain he had no knowledge of the money or why they were told to kill those hells-zealots. Perhaps Carrick's just an Oscar-worthy actor, but I don't think so. He sounds like he means what he's saying, like he's stating a simple truth. That those hells-worshippers were beyond salvation.

Looking across the way at Udo's face — his arm is around Carus's shoulders, which shake softly although Carus's eyes are dry — I try to imagine myself in their place. If perhaps they saw their own mothers in those hells-worshippers. If perhaps they thought what they were doing would spare those people the misguided choice to bring more of themselves into the world. The shades come into being by killing their hosts. They are born in brutality and blood. There are no arms to hold them, no warm body to comfort them or teach them. For them, their lives are beyond kill or be killed; for them it's not either-or, but too often both.

And I understand. I understand how Gregor got them to do it. He appealed to their vulnerability, to their inborn guilt. To their desire not to see more shades born into a world that hates them, and into one where they have no place of their own.

The revelation steals my breath as I look at all their faces, full of grief and confusion. They asked for none of this. This is not their fault. Even the shades who are terrorizing the people of Nashville — they have their own story, and whatever it is, they will likely die for it. Likely at my own hands.
 

There is too much blood on my hands as it is.
 

"Would you ever kill for money?" I ask quietly, pitching my voice low enough so even the other shades can't hear me. Only Carrick hears my bare breath of voice, and he looks me in the eyes.

"Why would I need money for death? I have many skills far more valuable."

It's all the answer I need. I hear the sound of tires on gravel, and I know it's the Mittens arriving on splat duty to clean up the pile of demon bodies. The shades hear it too, and they all rise to their feet without looking in the direction of the vehicles. They disperse without a word, though they each meet my eyes before they run into the night. One of the Mediator vans is blasting hard rock loud enough to make one of the distant houses call in a noise complaint. I'm going to have to tell them to shut the heck up.

Carrick touches my shoulder gently. "I'm going to go with the others. I'll be home later."

It's already almost four in the morning. I nod at him and turn to meet the Mittens.

"You know why we like the romance novels?" Carrick says from behind me. "They have happy endings."

In the time it takes me to turn around and face him, he's already gone.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

I sleep until noon Friday and wake up because my phone has taken it upon itself to be a one-device parade. Bleary-eyed, I reach over and grab it. "Yello."

"Storme, I need you at the Summit."

It's Alamea, and I'm suddenly wide awake. "I'll be right there. I need to make a full report on last night."

"We've got a lot to discuss. Double time, Storme."

I take a three minute shower mostly because I sweat in my sleep; I washed off all the demon grime before getting into bed. Carrick is on the couch reading when I leave my room, and though I'm now sure that even he isn't a full party to Gregor's plans, I don't trust him quite enough to tell him everything that's going on. It makes me wonder how Saturn and Miles found out. And Jax.

It's no novel Carrick's reading, but a leather bound book the size of an atlas. It's not mine, and I definitely don't have time to ask about it. I can smell the dust on its pages when I walk by. Carrick gives me a smile, but doesn't speak, and I hurry out the door to get to the Summit.

In Alamea's office, she coats the edges of the door again with the same shimmery black powder, and again my ears pop with the pressure shift. I tell her everything, from the plan I hatched with Mira and the others to expose Gregor at the Summit's Samhain gala next week to the full story on the shades and how I think Gregor's managed to play them like they were strings tuned just for his fingers.

She listens, face grave, as I tell her about the hells-hole that opened on the football field, even though I reported it last night to the cleanup crew. Alamea pulls up the map on her computer again just to show me that five new hells-holes have opened in middle Tennessee since the summer. It doesn't bode well for anything.

"What do you need from me?" she asks when I finish going over the Samhain plan.
 

"Do you have a good idea of which Mediators will support Gregor when this happens? Or at least who will rush to defend him on principle?" If it's a large number, things will get messy, and even though the Samhain gala is pretty much the only day of the year where we put aside our leathers for fancy dress and canapés, we're always armed. Always.
 

Alamea nods, and she leans back, putting her feet up on the corner of her desk. Her locs are coiled atop her head today, towering like a crown. She's wearing a straight cut shirt of mottled grey linen and black trousers of the same material, and her feet on the desk are wrapped by black leather strappy wedges. Even when the world's going to shit, she's got style.

"I'll make sure the people I have know to be prepared for resistance." She drums her fingers on her desk. "You know this isn't going to be easy. It's going to cut deep and leave people raw."