Eye of the Storm (9 page)

He looks at me, face blank. His lips slacken like he doesn't remember.
 

His nose appears to be the only broken bone he has, and I scoop him up, wedging my arm under his to haul him to his feet. He cries out when he puts weight on his gnawed leg, but I don't have time to coddle him.
 

"I'm Ayala Storme," I say. "We're going to the Summit, and you can come too. You'll be safe there."

Safer, anyway. In theory.

At least he won't be actively lunch unless disaster strikes.

"You were on the news." He coughs, and I nod at the others to start moving again.
 

"Sure was," I say as amiably as I can. I'm glad for my added strength, because even though he's talking, he's almost dead weight.
 

Mason and Mira flank us, with Jax at our backs and Evis taking point. Asher is still murmuring, and the man seems to relax. Whatever she's doing, I think it's helping. I wish I had a plan beyond getting to the Summit. At least there we can regroup, but there's no guarantee anything we do will be useful right now.
 

I hate the feeling that worms around in my gut that saving this man was only delaying the inevitable.
 

"What's your name?" I ask him again.

"Ray," he says.
 

"Nice to meet you, Ray. How come you didn't get your ass out of the city when everybody else did?"

"You think it would have been better if I did?" He tries to take on more of the walking and stumbles. I catch him.

"Touché. It kind of sucks everywhere."

"Thank you," he says.

"For what?" It's a stupid question, and I feel the flat smile on my face even as it leaves my mouth.

But his answer surprises me.

"For not pretending anywhere's safer than here."

I give a jerky nod, aware that Mason and Mira's mouths have both set themselves into masks.
 

Truth is, I don't know what the relative safety of anywhere is right now. The cities have been the first big places of attacks, but the rural areas of the country are a gamble. The demons outside the cities are sporadic, but they rove in hordes, and if you get a few hundred hellkin descending on a refugee enclave, you're just as unlucky as Ray. More.

He shivers against my side. He's in shock. I mean, of course he is. I would be too if I had become a live lunch. Asher's spell seems to be calming him, marginally at least.
 

We're almost to campus, and in spite of my half-carrying Ray up Division Street, we're making decent time.

I tense when I hear a yell up ahead.

"More trouble?" Mira says. But Evis shakes his head.

He points. "Mediators."

It's yet another mark of the past few months that his proclamation doesn't fill me with relief. Not yet.

I can see them now, at the end of the street where curves to the right around a half-finished building. There's a crowd of them, swords drawn. I wish that made me feel better.

"Hardy," Mira says, and her voice is tinged with relief.

The name makes me inhale sharply. "Oh, thank gods."

Hardy is a Mediator I never particularly liked, but Mira's formed a relationship with him enough to think of him as reliable. He's coming toward us, his dark face smudged with dirt and blood drying across one shoulder where it looks like he got hit with arterial spray.

"Gonzo," he says. Then he nods to me. "Storme."

"You let him call you Gonzo?" I mutter.

Mira ignores me. "You all have the campus secured?"

"If you want to call it that," he says, snorting. He motions behind him at the other Mediators. Most of them I know on sight, but their names elude me. I should have gone to more Summit events. This is what I get for being that loser loner.
 

Two of them, a tall white woman and a white dude almost as short as a harkast demon, come and carefully take Ray from me.
 

"We've got an infirmary set up over by the university hospital," she says.

Which means the hospital and the Summit infirmary are either closed or full. Probably a little of both.

I nod at her. Ray looks over his shoulder, but he doesn't say anything.

Asher catches the short man's eye. "Tell them to set his nose quickly, and if you have a witch there, tell them I boosted his serotonin with a spell, but it'll wear off within an hour and he's going to be in shock. Stabilize him as fast as you can."

The Mediators look a bit startled, but they nod at Asher.

Hardy gives the shades with us a once-over, blinking at the sight of Jax carrying Nana. "You brought a rabbit."

"She's mine," I say.
 

That seems to be all the explanation Hardy needs. I guess when you've been the Summit black sheep for as long as I have, quirks like wandering through Nashville with a bunny in a cage while demons are eating people in roundabouts are a little less remarkable. Hardy glances at Asher, but doesn't ask.

"This is my brother, Evis," I tell Hardy. "And Mason, and the one with the bunny is Jax. The bunny is Nana. The witch is Asher. She's been…a help."

Hardy doesn't seem to catch the hitch in my voice. His face is full of unvoiced thoughts.

To my utter surprise, Hardy steps forward and lightly touches Evis on his bare shoulder, repeating the gesture with Mason and Jax. And me. The brief contact of his fingers on my own shoulder is enough to flummox me. I can't help my mouth dropping open. I don't know if I'm more shocked that he greeted the shades with their own
you're safe with me
signal or that he included me in it.
 

I snap my mouth shut and give him a slightly less than gentle tap on the shoulder back. "Good to see you, Hardy," I say. I mean it.

He leads us the remaining block to the Vanderbilt campus, and as soon as we are off the street, I see why they've taken such pains to secure the area.

The entire campus is littered with people. Tents have sprung up on every available grassy area, and norms mill around, some talking to each other, some staring vacant-eyed out at the city as if they've woken up in a war movie and don't quite believe it's not a nightmare.

Vanderbilt University has become a gods damned refugee camp.

Most of the people I see aren't students, though there are a good number of folks who do fit that description.
 
Guess most of the kids were already out for Solstice Break when the apocalypse hit. Someone's fixed a massive tarpaulin to the side of a residence hall, and there's a fire burning underneath it where people are gathered to warm themselves. Someone's even passing around marshmallows, though there's no sense of Kumbaya in anyone who takes one.

"The halls are all packed with people," Hardy says. "Five or six to a dorm room, mostly kids. The adults are all out here. Power's still on for now, and we've got some Mediators at the plant along with a cadre of witches trying to keep it that way. Bathrooms are done in shifts. You can piss whenever you need to, but bathing each day is by last name. A through G from midnight till six, H through M from six till noon, N through S till six at night, and the rest of the alphabet after that. Seems to be working okay. For now."

For now.

I don't even know what to say. I nod along. All this in a week.
 

"What the fuck is that?" Mira stops short, and I almost run into her.

I follow her gaze, and again my mouth drops open.
 

There's a battalion of norms in the middle of a quad, each of them with a practice sword and their faces set in determination. Some of them hold the swords competently, but most are clumsy. White people, black people, brown people. Tall, small, fat, thin. There's someone with forearm crutches, leaning on one crutch and wielding the practice sword in the other hand. Someone else in a wheelchair, who's holding the blade with more certainty than many of the others. Some look old enough to have great-grandchildren, others look like puberty is still a distant wish. Most are somewhere in the middle of the age range, with a hefty number of Vanderbilt students.
 

People. Regular people.
 

There's at least a couple hundred of them, and moving between them, adjusting stances and sword grips, are Mediators.
 

A couple of the Mediators look up at us when we get close, and one nods to Hardy.
 

"They don't want to feel helpless," Hardy says softly.
 

My eyes sting at the sight, and his words don't help.

"Are there enough blades to give them?" I ask. "Real ones?"

He nods. "If there's anything the Summit has, it's swords."

I don't know what this feeling is, this rising tangle in my chest. In the group of norms, I can identify a few who have to be morphs by the fluidity of their movement. Most of them will have at least a chance, especially if their animal is a big predator. There also have to be some witches in there, and some of the average
homo sapiens sapiens
who make up the rest of the population.
 

My throat feels hollow and dry, and I can't make myself speak.
 

When we pass them, I feel their eyes on me. I know I'm a recognizable figure, and the shades are ass-nekkid, so they're hard to miss.
 

They watch us, points of their practice swords dipping. I see a few startled faces, a few flickers of fear, but I see something else, too.

These people want to live. And they're willing to fight.

CHAPTER EIGHT

We make the rest of the trek to the Summit in silence.
 

I knew the world was changing this week. But walking through my city today, seeing the people of Nashville wielding swords against the idea of horrors they always thought we'd face for them — well.
 

I don't have words for it.
 

I wish I knew if it'd be enough.

"Hardy," I say as we cross the Summit parking lot.

"Yep." He hangs back and looks at me sideways.
 

"What they're doing, training the norms?"
 

"Yep."

"Is that happening all over? In other cities? Because it should be."

He looks at me for a long moment, and so do Mira and Evis. Mason fidgets with a lock of hair in his face. Asher watches me, eyes considering and unreadable.
 

"I don't reckon it is, but you're probably right, Storme. I'll talk to some of the others, see if we can activate the Summit phone tree." He pauses, foot scuffing the concrete. "Even if it doesn't do much good, it at least gives their spirits a boost."

"My thought exactly." We step up onto the curb and move to the doors of the Summit. Morale is powerful, and considering the shitstorm we're all facing, it's probably the most gods damned precious commodity on this planet.

The cavernous antechamber is full of Mediators. No one is aimlessly wandering; for the first time in a long time, maybe ever, the entire Summit seems to be united with a purpose. We've always had one, but this is different. Immediate. Someone's stacking training swords against a far wall, and on the other side of them are heaps of standard sword belts and harnesses. Most Mediators get their own swords after they finish training, but the Summit always has a veritable arsenal of the things. A group of Mittens led by an older Mediator I remember from my training way back is hauling medical supplies from the direction of the infirmary. Enough Mediators are on the wide staircase that there are a steady stream of people, upstairs on the right side, downstairs folks on the left.
 

Beneath our feet, the enormous yin and yang is muddied with foot prints, but it still lends me a little hope to see it. I'm dangerously short on hope lately. I'll take what I can get. In an odd way, the sight of it covered in dirt and scuff marks in the midst of all the Mediators here makes it better, not worse. It looks suddenly like less of a symbol and more like a badge of war. The mud and bits of grass and marks from hundreds of feet says we're fighting.

The Mitten at the front desk — one of the three, anyway — looks up when she sees us. "Alamea's in her office, Mediator Storme." She looks behind me, startled at the sight of the cage. "Aw! Bunny!"

"That's Nana. I'm going to try and find a safe place for her." It's at once strange and an affirmation to hear the honorific in front of my name again. I give her a grateful look she can have no way of knowing is as much for the address as the directive. We pass by the front desk, and one of the other Mittens mutters something about my eyes. I look at him directly. He takes a full step back. I smile at him, a wry smile. I don't have the time to scare the wee Mediators today.

We hurry up the stairs, Nana's cage clanking with each step Jax takes. Alamea's office door is open when we get there, and the corridor is filled with weapons and boxes of magic supplies. A familiar face greets us just before we reach the door, emerging from Alamea's office with a crate of candles and sweetgrass. Black hair still in the same severe bun as the first time I saw her, Riley Evans clutches the edge of the crate with callused brown fingers and gives me a relieved look.