Storm in a Teacup (20 page)

Nothing's attacking me yet. I gather my feet beneath me. I have no light. No flashlight. And I'll be damned if I'm going to drop a sword to get my phone out of my pocket.
 

There's the sound of quiet squishing and a muffled cry of pain.

Devon.
 

Close and to my left. I leap in the direction of the cry, hoping for accuracy in my blindness. "Devon!"

They already know I'm here. No use being sneaky.

He screams. Five feet to my left. I try to land a flying kick to whatever is making him scream, but my foot slips in the gore, and I go down. Something grabs my foot, and I strike out with my sword. A roar rewards me, and the fingers stop grasping. I've cut an arm off.
 

My blood is on fire. I jump to my feet and keep my balance this time, sheathing my left sword in one motion. My left hand encounters warm, clothed solidity. Devon. Why haven't the others attacked me yet? I scoop my arm around him and drag him. His leather is slick with blood, but labored breathing tells me he's alive. His feet struggle to help me move him.

I can see the dimness of the exit. I have to get to it. Why haven't they attacked me yet? Why haven't they?

Something dark passes in front of the dim light. A choked
guh
escapes my throat. "Devon," I whisper. "When I say go, get to the opening."
 

He doesn't answer, but I feel the movement of his head against my shoulder. I shove him toward the opening — and whatever's blocking it. "Go!"

As fast as his body's warmth vanishes from my side, I throw myself at the dark swathe, yanking my left sword back from its scabbard. The right I bring down hard, but not fast enough.
 

But it gets the shade away from the hole. Devon's crawling, crawling, scrambling. He's almost out.

I swing my left sword in a large arc, and I feel it make contact with flesh. Hard flesh. Chest, not stomach. Bone underneath.
 

Devon's out. He's out. His foot vanishes out the hole. Someone please get him before hitting the detonators. Please get him.

Now I'm alone and blind in a too-quiet warehouse of death.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I can't get a full breath. I don't even want to; every inhalation of cloying decay is a reminder of what I'm going to be in a matter of minutes.

Except nothing's happening. It's just my short gasps of breath and nothing attacking me.

It's got to be time. It's got to be time for this place to blow by now.
 

A wrecking ball slams into me.

I hit the ground in a splatter of shit I don't want to think about. Shouldn't be thinking about, not with this place about to be blown to smithereens. I've never seen death up close before.

Not this close.

It's on top of me, and I can't get it off. The muscles holding me down feel like the steel girders holding the roof of this place up. Wetness soaks through my hair, smears the back of my neck. I lost one sword when I went down, but I have my forearm knives loaded. I spring it and jam it into the body on top of me. Then again. And again. I feel the blade perforating the flesh and hack with my remaining sword, stabbing with the knife.
 

It's not helping. I might as well be armed with styrofoam. A gurgle falls from my lips.
 

I'm going to die here.

Something hits the shade holding me down. I scramble backward.

Snarls and roars. Noise. Four distinct voices. Now five. Eight.

Fuckity fuck fuck. I can't see the hole. I can't tell the time. There are seconds between me and smithereens, and I don't know how many.
 

Light floods the warehouse.

At first all I can think is,
this is it
. This is death, this is the end. Light then heat then nothing, blissful nothing and darkness away from these smells and fear and pain.
 

It's not the explosives.

It's floodlights.

In the split second it's been, I see the flash of what looks like a hundred pinpricks of orange.

One moment. One picture. One image of shades surrounding me. It plants my feet in inch-deep human goo, and I can't move. I can't look away. Twenty? Fifty? They're crouched on rafters, clinging to girders. Up high, down low. So many. How did there get to be so many?
 

The one whose arm I chopped off is huddled twenty feet away, snarling at me but not moving.

Then they all move at once, and my bladder releases a flood of warmth down my legs.

They're all coming right at me.

My feet leave the ground. Not down this time. Up. Why up? Something clutches the back of my leather jacket. A crane? A hand?

The lights snuff out, and the warehouse is flooded in darkness again.

I've got myself back, and I struggle in midair. The odor of the place fills my nostrils, coats them. I'm still moving up with fits and jerks. It's climbing. Whatever has me is climbing, and fast.
 

The snarls below haven't faded. Are they fighting each other? I smack out at whatever has me and get only a growl in return. For a moment, the movement stops.

Something slams into my head.

It's the boom that wakes me.

It starts as a rumble, a flash of heat. My eyes snap open in time to see the warehouse erupt in a volcano of fire. I feel the heat from it, and shrapnel starts raining down around me.

I'm up high. I'm on the roof of a neighboring warehouse.
 

And there's a shade next to me, watching.

I spring my remaining forearm knife, lunging at the creature. My brain whirls in my skull, sloshing against bone like wet macaroni, and the shade grabs both wrists. It hits a pressure point in my right, and the knife clatters to the metal roof and hisses off the side.

"Stop."

The word hits me like a slap, and I freeze, stunned. It sounds like a voice that hasn't been used in ten years, like a coma patient trying to speak for the first time since waking. The shade is looking at me with eyes that are deep indigo, almost black.

It's still holding my wrists, not letting go. "Get off me."
 

The early morning air feels crisp after the inner sanctum of the warehouse. I breathe it in, getting whiffs of the rotten smell and the tang of urine from my pants. It's not embarrassment that has me struggling against his grip.

You'd have pissed yourself too, and you're shitting yourself right now if you think otherwise.

I'm still not totally convinced I won't again. It's holding me steady, only twelve inches from its face.
 

And its face looks confused, as if it doesn't know what it's doing. Trying to steal a snack, maybe. Fuck this. I throw my leg toward it, a sloppy attempt at a kick. The shade flips me on my side and bears down on me. It hasn't spoken again. Did I imagine it?

"Don't fight."

Guess not.

"Fuck you. You'd fight if you were about to get eaten."

"I'm not going to eat you."

I somehow don't find that reassuring.

It watches me, still leaning on my arms, still pinning me to the roof. I think of Gregor. And Devon. I swallow hard and immediately regret it. The stink of the warehouse has coated the membranes of my mouth and throat, and I feel like I've swallowed a two-week-old corpse.
 

I hope Devon got out. Shit, I hope. I hope. I hope.
 

The creature speaks again. "If I take you down there, will you let me live?"

My mouth opens involuntarily. I don't think I could take down a kitten right now. I'm at the shade's mercy, and it should know it.

"Will you let me live if I return you to your friends?"

My lungs fill with air, and I let it out in a gust. "Yes. I'll let you live."

The fog in my brain clears slowly, dissipating like morning mist. The aftermath of adrenaline leaves crystalline sharpness behind. This shade saved my life. Why?

"You took me out of there."

"They were going to tear you apart." He pauses. "Well. Some of them."

I don't know what he means.
 

"Why did you do that?" I hate the way the question leaves my mouth. It's tinny and wan. It sounds like I feel. Tinny and wan.

"You saved your friend."

It's not enough explanation for me. "Did I? Did he get away?" Now it's my voice that sounds like a just-woken coma patient. Devon's going to have more scars.
 

The shade points down past the billowing cloud of smoke. "There. He was there when the building exploded."

"You can talk." I'm nearing a stupor. "Can you all talk?"

"Some more than others." He releases my arms and cradles me toward him. My whole body quakes. He could just throw me off. Make me go BLAT on the gravel like a human water balloon.

But he doesn't. He jumps off.
 

With me against his chest.

My stomach drops faster than we do, and it seems to bounce back against my head when his feet hit the ground. His knees bend almost all the way, absorbing the impact of the nearly two-story drop. The hard grip of his arms release, and rocks poke into my legs.

He's gone.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

My phone still works.
 

My fingers are covered in gore and slime, and they leave streaks on the screen guard when I dial Gregor's number. My eyes zero in on it, just now noticing it, just now seeing that I look like I've been dumped in a vat of once-upon-a-human.

I stammer something. I don't know what. What seems like seconds later, Gregor's here, and Mira and Ben and Ripper are not far behind him.

"Ayala. What happened?"
 

Mira cups my chin in her hand. "Her pupils are different sizes. She's got a concussion."

That would explain the fuzz in my head.

"Can we move her to the Summit infirmary?" Ben's staring down at me like he's never seen me before. "Is she okay?"

I go to push Mira's hand aside, and she flinches away from the goo covering my skin. "I'm okay." I push myself onto wobbly legs, feeling like I've just been birthed by a zombie.

I know. Zombies aren't real. But human afterbirth doesn't smell this shitty.

"What happened?" Gregor asks again. Ripper's standing to the side, eyes warily searching the ground. For what, I don't know.

"Devon. A shade had him. I cut off its arm, got him to the door. Then..." I see it all again in my head. The shade overshadowing the door. I feel its hands pinning me again, holding me down as I stab it over and over. "It — one of them — got me down on my back. I stabbed it. I guess I stabbed it enough times."

How can I tell them that a shade rescued me? I can't even process it. I don't know what happened, what I saw, what pulled me out of there. All I remember is the lights flickering on, the flash of orange from so many eyes.
 

The morning cools the wetness of my thighs.
 

"We saw you go in. One of the witches tripped the circuits for the warehouse. Did the lights go on?"

A tremor washes over me, and all four of the faces watching me flicker with concern. Ripper's and Mira's only for a fraction of a second, but I see it.