Eye of the Storm (31 page)

I'm not sure I've ever given Alamea proper credit for being a public speaker, but I have to admire how she managed to whip up a speech in a short amount of time. She begins just how Mira suggested, by speaking to the gathered Mediators like she's confiding in them. Her voice is low and vulnerable, the cadence of her words rising and falling like the swells of waves. A shiver goes through me when she gets to the part about how the Summit has drugged us all for years. A murmur of rage goes through the crowd, punctuated by the sound of sloshing tea and the shattering of ceramic mugs when a few Mediators throw their drinks on the floor. I hear Alamea's voice joining it, agreeing, sympathizing. Cracks in her words betray tears.
 

I go back and mentally give her acting credits as well as rhetoric points.
 

Then again, maybe she's not acting at all.
 

"All our lives, we've been used as an armed force against the hordes of the hells," Alamea says quietly. "We've been brought up to believe and behave in a very specific way. Right now, here, with our city surrounded and no escape for any of us, we have a choice. We can continue to entertain fractious in-fighting and do the job of the demons for them, or we can fight for a better world than we had before. One in which we have the freedom to exist as whole citizens. To see this world we fight for, to truly make a home. It will take years to rebuild what we've lost, to retake the lands that have been claimed by hell. But if we survive this, everything we know will change."

There is no raucous applause, no shouts of allegiance or sounds of swords leaving scabbards to salute. There is only the stark, dark silence of shock.

I look at Mira, my skin cold. I mouth the words
good idea
at her, and she gives me a tight-lipped grin in response. It's an appeal to selfishness, this plan. Tapping into a sense of shared betrayal and the hope of getting something long-denied. I only hope the Mediators are human enough to take it.
 

Mira and I stay in the anteroom until we're given the go-ahead to go back to my room, where Hardy has retaken his post. When we approach, his grey face gives away his reaction to the news.
 

"You knew," he says to me.
 

"I found out the hard way. Gregor took a field trip to Seattle," I say.

"Seattle."
 

I know how that must sound to someone who's been stuck in Tennessee their whole life, because that's how I reacted to it as well.
 

"I stopped drinking coffee and tea after Gryfflet poisoned me with a brew of another territory's making to capture me for Alamea this summer," I tell him blandly. "Worked to my advantage when I had to go chasing Gregor. I should thank Gryfflet for that."

Hardy's face looks like someone's deleted the data from his expression-making app. "The fuck do you trust anyone, Storme?"

I shrug at him, opening the door to my Summit-issued bedroom-slash-protection cell. "I could always change my mind and tell the lot of you to fuck right off."

"I wouldn't blame you." Hardy looks at Mira, then back at me. "But I'm glad you're sticking around."

"Thanks." That's one more name on a relatively short list.

I look at the clock when I get into the room and close the door. Since the sun vanished behind the soup of clouds, I haven't been able to keep any kind of handle on the time outside
day
or
night
. It's currently right between day and night, the window outside darkening because it's almost seven.
 

For weeks I've felt like the city was a pot at a simmer about to boil, but today looking out that window I feel like someone turned off the heat while we weren't looking, though at any time they could crank it up on turbo and insta-boil us all.
 

Mira and I watch movies until one in the morning and finally curl up to sleep. Without the bodies of the shades filling the room, I'm too cold, and even with Mira in my arms, both of us shiver, unable to keep warm.

I wake skidding across the floor when something slams into me.

Rolling away, I grab for my swords, but they're not where I left them by my head.
 

"Mira!" I shout. It's dark in the room, and my eyes pick her up, lying in a heap on the floor where we were sleeping.
 

A shadow hits me, and I catch it with my arm flashing out. A
whoomph
greets my ears and I feel a gust of stale breath hit my face with a puff of air. A crash tells me there's at least one other person in the room. Whoever I'm fighting doesn't see as well in the dark as I do. I grab hold of the snaky shadow of an arm and fling the attacker to the side. He or she crashes into the wall. Mira still doesn't stir, and nauseating panic fills my stomach. The only light in the room is by the door, and I need to get to it. My eyes will adjust faster than my attackers', and blinding them momentarily will allow me to take them out.

Either they killed the lights in the entire corridor or the door's shut. Turning that way, I can see the door handle, paler against the wood. I leap for it, my side clipping the second attacker as I barrel into the door. I hit the light switch.
 

The fluorescents blaze on, humming too loud in the middle-of-the-night quiet. Two Mediators, young ones. The one closest to me blinks, and I slam my fist into her face.

The other is slumped against the wall, clearly seeing stars. I threw him pretty hard. Mira's not moving.

I'm at her side in an instant, my fingers finding the soft, thin flesh at the hollow beneath her jaw. Her pulse beats there, steady enough to tell me she's only knocked unconscious. I push her hair back from her forehead, where blood seeps from a gash at her temple. She'll heal quick, but she's probably concussed.
 

I'm about to do worse than that to these two Mediators.

I pick up the kid — really he's an adult, at least early twenties — I flung into the wall and wrench him up against it, holding him up by the neck. His feet dangle an inch from the floor, and his pale face turns red, then purple. Spidery red capillaries stand out in his eyes. I look at him as calmly as I can.
 

"Coward's move," I say to him. "My guard alive?"

I think it's still Hardy, and my heart gives a flutter of fear, but I don't let myself show it. Instead I allow my body to cease twitching, staring unblinking at this young Mediator who just tried to kill me.

I lower him to the ground and release his throat only enough to allow him to gasp a breath. It's not the same Mediator guy I lectured in the cafeteria, and if this is a trend among the young'uns, I could be in trouble. The older, more experienced Mediators seem to be more apt to listen. Or at least not to go tearing off sword first.
 

He doesn't answer my question, but he's also still sucking in air.
 

The young woman is still knocked out. She might not wake up for a while. I need to check on Hardy. I yank the Mediator kid forward by the neck and spin him around and scruff him.

"One sudden move and I'll snap your fucking neck," I tell him. "And that's fair, since you tried to kill me in my sleep."

He doesn't respond again. I wonder if I smushed his vocal chords.

Shoving him forward to step over his friend, I yank open the door. It clocks her in the shoulder, but I don't feel any particular remorse for that.

Hardy's lying in a pool of blood in the brightly-lit corridor.
 

I hold the guy's head so he can't turn away. He tries to shut his eyes, and I use my free hand to box his ear. He yells then.

"Good. Your vocal chords are fine. Look what you did." I'm talking to him like he's a fucking puppy who made a mess on the carpet. "Hardy was a good man and one of the stronger fighters we have in this gods damned Summit, you stupid, reckless spawn."

My voice comes out so quietly it almost frightens me. My fingers close tighter around the younger Mediator's neck, and I feel them becoming a claw, feel how easily his spine could snap under my grip. His pulse beats frantically against my fingertips. I shove the kid away from me before I can kill him.

He slams into the doorjamb, hands flying to his throat.
 

"Move and I'll break it for real." My phone's in my pocket, and I yank it out, dialing Alamea. She can't be in her office or she'd be here already. They must have planned this for a time she was out doing something else.
 

Fucking foolish of us to think one guard would be enough if someone really wanted me dead.

"Couple punk-ass fuckers who shouldn't have been let off splat duty just tried to kill me," I say as soon as she picks up. "Hardy's dead. Mira's unconscious."

"I'm on my way."

I snap a picture of the guy with my phone, then lean around the doorjamb to take a picture of the other one too. I send them both to Alamea.

The guy doesn't say anything to me. If I expected to see hatred in his eyes, it's not what I get. Only fear and anger and a tic at the corner of his right eye. His face slowly returns to a more normal shade of Caucasian instead of tomato.

I hear a groan from inside the room. Mira.

"I'm out here," I call to her. "I'm alive."

She stumbles out a moment later, her fingers red with her own blood, which has smeared down her left cheek.
 

"Motherfuckers," she says. She looks down at the young woman she just stepped over, then at the guy leaning against the wall. "Josie and Terrence. You fucking little twats."

"You know them?"

"Alamea had me training Mittens for a bit last month, and some of the younger Mediators were on training duty as well. They were two of them."
 

Terrence flinches back from her stare, even though her golden brown skin has an ashy tone and her blinking is owlish from the concussion. Even from where I'm standing, I can tell her pupils are two different sizes. And yet she's on her feet, sounding coherent.
 

"Who the fuck put you up to this, slimeball?" Mira takes a step toward Terrence, and he bites his lip, leaning into the wall as if he'll disappear into it if he puts his back into it.

He shakes his head. "It was just me and Josie, I swear. We thought…"

"You thought murdering another Mediator would help anything on the eve of a fucking apocalypse? Exactly how many times did you get bashed in the head in your Mitten days?" Mira spits at him. Actually spits.

The glob of loogie that hits his face has specks of red in it from blood that's dripped over her lip. He doesn't reach up to wipe it away.

"This is why we're all going to fucking die," she says.
 

Then she looks around him, and her gaze falls on Hardy for the first time. I see the wave of grief hit her, and I have my arm around her even as she reels backward.
 

"You gods damned bastards," she says. "You worthless fucking pieces of shit. Look what you did. Look what you did!"

She uses the same words I did, and her volume is something terrible. Terrence bursts into tears.

Footsteps behind me make me spin, still half-supporting Mira. Alamea. She takes in the entire scene at a glance, her lips showing a pale line around them as she squeezes them together. She looks as though she could fly apart into a million different pieces at any moment.

Asher and Lux are a few steps behind with Devon, the two witches meeting the sight of Hardy's dead body with blank eyes and grim mouths. The deep scar on Devon's face stands out as his skin flushes. He comes to me and Mira, his hand touching my shoulder gently before putting his arms around both of us.

Mira slumps in my embrace, and I sink to the floor with her. I hear Alamea barking orders. She doesn't say a word directly to Terrence. Asher and Lux both take advance on Terrence with magic-clouded eyes that make him flinch even through his sobs.

How did we get to this? In my mind I try to imagine myself taking a more gentle approach with my would-be assassins, killing them with kindness or whatever the fuck. But right now all I can hear is Hardy's question to me from a few hours ago.
The fuck do you trust anyone, Storme?

He was one on a too-short list. And now he's past tense.

I don't watch as the witches take Terrence and Josie away.