Taken By Storm (13 page)

"Do you know if all the Summits are in on this?" I ask. My voice comes out fairly even, which surprises me.

"I checked with Mira while you were gone. She said none of the others have jurisdiction, and since they don't even know you can leave their territory, it wouldn't make sense for them to advertise the possibility."
 

That makes me feel surly all over again. "Still, it's probably safe to say that the Summit leaders are in on the whole territory thing. I'd be stupid to assume the other Summits wouldn't ship me back to Nashville in an extra-tight box." I sit down on the edge of the kitchen chair, giving Jax — who is also now awake — a tight smile. "I guess this means it's time for me to skip town for a while."

"We're going to Seattle?" Jax sits up, eyes aflame.
 

I hesitate for a moment. Until he spoke, I didn't realize I already knew what had to happen. "No," I say slowly, meeting Carrick's eyes. "I'm going to Seattle."

Carrick opens his mouth to protest, and Evis's face goes stony with what I can only guess is shade panic.

"Evis can come with me. But Carrick, I need you here. You and Saturn. Between the two of you, you can figure out what to do about these new shades. See if you can keep the Mediators from finding out I left the territory, though I don't think any of them would make that logic jump just because they can't find me for a few weeks. We're the only ones who know Gregor's in Washington." I look at Jax. "You're good at staying unnoticed. You can help Carrick track down any of the new shade hosts and take care of them."

"Take care of them," he says. I know he knows what I mean, but I think the figure of speech bothers him. "Not eat them, though, right?"

"Probably a good idea not to eat them, however terrible of people they are," I agree.

He looks resigned to never being able to eat things lately, so I look at him with a smile.

"If you guys can stop the shades from eating all of Hopkinsville, I'll buy that lady's goat for you, and you can eat him."
 

I know. I'm terrible. But that goat is a dick.

Jax's smile makes my questionable morality less painful.

CHAPTER TWELVE

As much as I know I need a good night of sleep, it doesn't happen. I spent four hours in bed, fitfully punching my pillows, and finally I give up. Evis is snoozing in the other bedroom, but he wakes as soon as I rap on the door.
 

"Ready to go?" I ask him softly. Jax is asleep next to him, one brown arm slung across Evis's pale chest.
 

Jax stirs when Evis gets up, blinking at me. "You're leaving now?"

"Couldn't sleep."

A warm hand on my back makes me turn. Carrick.

"I packed a cooler of food for you and Evis," he says. "A case of Coke and some ham sandwiches for you, the rest of the filets and enough venison for him. You should make it to Seattle fine."

Just once, I wish one of us would lie. Say that we know we'll see each other again. But I know that cooler of food is as much of a lie as I'm going to get, and it's as much a goodbye as it is a gesture of love.

Jax hugs me tight and quick, like he's not sure how. But Carrick folds me into his arms, putting my face right in his auburn hair, which smells like shampoo. He's always had good hygiene. I take a deep breath, wanting to remember it. Now that I'm faced with the one thing I've always been too afraid to let myself want, I don't know how to even cope with the idea of getting it. I can't yet process that I'm about to get in my car with my shade of a brother and drive across half the country.

That I'll get to see Kansas and make stupid Wizard of Oz jokes and get to tell Evis how the morph who played the Cowardly Lion once got drunk and got stuck in his in-between stage for four days until they ended up having to film the entire movie with him half-lion and half human. In a ridiculous wig.
 

We'll see the Rocky Mountains. We'll see deserts. We'll see the ocean when we get there.

And yet, I don't think I can enjoy any of it. Not with the world about to crash down upon my ears.
 

Gregor clearly has connections, has people he can rely on to keep him mostly hidden. He may have found a way to control these new shades the same way he controlled Evis and Migs and Kelby. And me.
 

I can't forget that.
 

I won't forget that.

I might die in Seattle, but I will take that motherfucking cunt nugget with me, to borrow one of Mira's more colorful terms.

Thinking of Mira gives me another pang, and as I force my arms to release Carrick's waist, I wonder if I should call her. She's probably asleep. Of all the friends I have, she's the one I wish I could bring with me and Evis.

I can't help it. I hug Carrick again, and he goes still in his surprise. He strokes my hair, just like Evis did when I broke down out back. They're the only two people on this planet I think I'd let get away with that. Evis because he's my brother, and Carrick because he's four hundred years old. And because he's been a friend when he didn't have to.
 

On second thought, Mira could stroke my hair too.

Ripper'd sooner arm wrestle me. And lose.

The thought of kicking Ripper's ass at arm wrestling perks me up and gives me enough strength to let go of Carrick for good this time. Jax and Evis carry the cooler out to the car, putting it in the back seat. I have one backpack full of clothes, and Evis just throws his three pairs of shorts and t-shirts in the back seat. I guess that's what laundromats are for.

As we pull out of the cabin's driveway, Carrick and Jax growing smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, Evis asks the question the rest of us couldn't.

"Do you think we'll see them again?"

"I don't know," I tell him. "I hope so."

He's quiet for the first hour, studying the atlas we pick up at a convenience store when I gas up the car before hopping on I-40 West.
 

The first hours go by with him quizzing me on state capitals (embarrassingly, he knows them from our mother's memories better than I do from stubbornly resisting learning places I could never go) and him fiddling with the radio until he finds an oldies station and starts to sing along.

I didn't know he could sing.
 

Until we pass through Arkansas, I listen to my brother sing songs he should have no way to know the words to, matching his voice to Elvis and Frank Sinatra alike. I shouldn't be surprised at the tears that well up in my eyes — lately this is anything but a rarity — but I am.

When Evis notices, he stops. "Am I making you sad?"

I shake my head, blinking the tears back. I reach over and take his hand. "No. You're making me happy I have you."

He doesn't stop singing after that.
 

Seattle is wet.
 

The sky was cloudy for most of our twenty-four hours of driving, but it only rained once in Kansas and once outside Salt Lake City, which reeks of sulfur and is about as attractive.
 

But Seattle is doing what I've always heard it does best: rain.

I pick a motel on the north side of the city, a mile away from a big chain that's cheap at twice the price. The motel I choose doesn't ask any questions when I pay for two weeks in advance in cash, and everything looks clean and rustic. The motel's called Suquamish Sleeps, and the word feels foreign in my mouth. I was always crap at history, but I do remember that when white settlers landed in the east, they slowly pushed the native folks westward, and thousands of native people died of smallpox before the witches among them figured out how to cure it. Even the eastern tribes like the Iroquois ended up moving west after they helped us win the Revolution in the 1650s — it didn't hurt that England at the time was getting slammed with demons and the shades history managed to gloss over, so the redcoats were a little distracted and needed more at home than here.
 

I vaguely remember that Chinookan and Salish are taught in schools here, just as other states with heavily native populations often have dual language curricula.

I'm not sure if it's simple curiosity that makes me want to take up reading history books now or if it's just that now I can actually visit these places. As a kid, I hated learning it because I couldn't see how it applied to me. Now I wish I'd paid attention.

Our room has two queen beds and is decorated more tastefully than I would expect from a motel. The bedspreads are patterned with stylized bears, and each of them is on a carved bedstead. The picture hanging between the beds is of Mount Rainier. Evis puts his pile of clothes in the carved chest of drawers under the television and sits down at the foot of the bed on the right, closest to the door.

"What now?" At least I can always trust my brother to ask the blunt question.

"I wish I knew." Udo, one of the shades from Nashville, is here. He's been trying to trail Gregor, but Gregor must have realized he's being hunted, because Udo hasn't seen him in days according to Saturn. "We'll meet up with Udo tomorrow."
 

Exhaustion thrums at the edges of my awareness. Twenty-four hours of straight driving is something I've never done before, just the latest on a very long list of new things for Ayala.
 

Evis points to the bed he left for me. "You need more sleep than I do. You should sleep."

I don't think it's worth fighting him on.
 

I kick off my shoes and change into a pair of shorts and a tank, crawling into the bed. It smells different here. Everything smells different here. The smell of salt is in my nose. It's just the Puget Sound and not the open ocean, but I still couldn't bring myself to go look at it. I caught a glimpse out the window of the car, but it felt too real.
 

I wish Mira was here with me to see it.

Sleep takes me, and I dream of drowning under endless waves.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

We meet Udo on a side street not far from our motel. He's wearing sweats and a t-shirt and could pass for a jogger if he were wearing shoes.

Short and black haired with brown skin, he always reminds me of a young Jackie Chan. Makes me wonder which of them would win.

He looks at me and touches my shoulder, a quick touch, but from the look in his eyes he's happy to see me. Udo hesitates with Evis, but Evis doesn't, reaching out to touch Udo's shoulder as if to remind him that he doesn't plan to hurt anyone. Udo returns the touch immediately, and I let out a breath I'd been storing in my lungs.

"Your eyes," says Udo. "They're like ours."

I fill him in on the tattoo Carrick gave me, and Udo shrugs as if he doesn't care where my eyes came from. His shoulders relax, though, as if seeing this physical representation of my connection to his kind puts him at ease. He and I were never particularly close, but he formed tight bonds with some of the other shades, Miles and Carus included. The memory of Udo's arm around Carus's shaking shoulders intrudes — that night Carus lost his best friend.
 

These shades have all been baptized in pain.

"Any news on Gregor?" I ask.