Taken By Storm (25 page)

"I thought I might teach him a few of the lessons he taught me."

We go straight home to the cabin, where one of Wane's witch friends has shown up to shore up our wards.
 

While she's working with Carrick and he's explaining what all he did, Mira and I go into the living room. It's quiet — Ripper and Devon have gone out to bring back pizza and the shades are off hunting — so we turn on the Summit radio to listen to the fallout of my little speech.
 

The first message is a general PSA about splat crews returning beacons instead of leaving them at the sites, which every Mitten has heard about ten thousand times. The second message makes me sit up straight.

"Attention. This message is a repeated message. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of Summit Leader Alamea Virgili, report immediately to Sal Owens. Leader Virgili was last seen at 1700 hours on Thursday. Any information about her disappearance should be reported immediately. This message will repeat on the hour."

"That was right after we left," Mira breathes. "She was on the stairs the whole time you were talking."

"She never responded to my text, but half the time she doesn't anyway." I pick up my phone and look at it. I can't tell if she read the message or not, since she has her read receipts turned off.
 

"Try calling." Mira gets up and starts pacing.

"That's the plan." I hit the green button. It goes straight to voicemail. "I'm sure they've tried this already. Straight to voicemail."

Mira grabs her own phone.
 

"What are you doing?"

"Texting Ripper."

A half hour later, a very troubled Ripper and Devon show up with three boxes of pizza and a case of beer.

"You're all over the news," says Ripper. "We barely managed to pick up the pies without getting recognized."

"That was the plan," I say, echoing my statement to Mira.

We eat quickly, discussing options for next steps without coming up with anything earth shattering. I'm folding up empty pizza boxes when the front door crashes open.

At first I think Jax is dead. His head lolls over Evis's arm, and he's spurting blood onto the floor. I grab a dish towel and rush to his side.

"Put him down," I say.
 

Jax's neck is torn all the way from his ear to his Adam's apple. Claw marks. It's then I notice that Evis's entire torso is cut up. I press the towel down on the side of Jax's neck. His eyes are wild, and he kicks.
 

"I know it hurts, love. I know. I have to put pressure on it to try and stop the bleeding." I'm going to have to do it carefully unless I want his neck to heal around the towel.

"What the fuck happened?"

"Demons."
 

"Where'd they come from?"

"There was a hells-hole. It opened right as we killed a deer. They came right for us. Miles and Saturn got separated."

My heart drops, and I hear a clatter as Mira drops a plate in the sink.
 

"Did you see them run away?" I ask Evis.
 

He shakes his head. "We killed a lot of them, but there were too many. A jeeling did that. I killed it, but there were more."

"Did they track you back here?" Ripper asks. I know he's really asking if we need to get armed, fast.

"They stopped at the wards and turned back."

Devon takes a deep breath by the table. "We should probably be ready just in case. Is Carrick still out there with Liza?"

"He hasn't come back in. Call him. He should have his phone. If anyone crosses the wards, we'll hear it."

My hands are covered in blood, so Mira tries.

I can feel Jax's pulse under the towel. I don't think I've ever felt such a beautiful thing, even though it's weak. It's steady. He'll live.
 

"You're going to be okay," I say to him. I picture waking with his face an inch away from mine, the little weirdo. He'll live to be a weirdo another day.

His hand jerks up to my arm, clasping my wrist. At first I think he's trying to tell me something, but then I realize he just wants comfort. Someone to hold on to. I lean over and kiss the back of his hand.
 

"Carrick's fine. He and Liza are done. She left a little bit ago. He's going to try and track Miles and Saturn." Mira has a thin sheen of sweat on her forehead, and she's pushed her hair behind her ears like she does when she's tired or stressed and can't deal with it in her face. It always makes her look so young.

Several minutes pass, and the bleeding slows enough for me to remove the towel. Mira brings me a basin with hot, soapy water and a clean cloth. I bathe the wound, and even though it stings, Jax just clings to my hand.
 

"I think the jeeling missed his voice box," I say. "That means you can still yell at the screen when you're shooting zombies."

I smile down at him, and he just swallows.
 

A hollow tone rings out through the cabin.

The wards.

"Fuck." I look at Mira, then down at Jax's neck.
 

"I can do it," Evis says. He reaches out, taking the cloth from my hand. "Jax is my friend too."

Before I get off the floor, I bend down to kiss Jax on the forehead.
 

I look at Evis. "We'll be back as soon as we can," I say.
 

We leave my phone with Evis and tell him to call Carrick if we're not back in thirty minutes or haven't called to check in.

The four of us Mediators grab our gear and throw it on as fast as we can. The tone came from the road, up the driveway. We head that direction on foot. After fifteen minutes of walking through the fog, I see a vehicle up ahead. I hold up my hand, and the others stop.

"That's Alamea's Jeep." I run up to it, but she's not in it.

"It could be a trap," Mira yells.
 

This time I don't think so. Alamea's not in it, but there's blood all over the seat. "If this was a trap, I think for once it wasn't for us. She's bleeding, wherever she is."

It is her blood I smell, and I take a deep breath, aware that a few months ago I'd find what I'm doing inherently creeptastic.
 

The blood trail leads away from the Jeep on the other side, which explains why we didn't cross it. I would have smelled it if we'd walked right by drops of blood on the path.
 

The night air is clammy, like the chills were personified into the winter dimness. There should be snow right now, but all we've gotten is more and more rain. We follow the path, and pretty soon even without my nose as a guide, any of the Mediators would be able to follow the trail. There are drag marks in the mud, along with single footprints. Bare footprints. She's walking with an injured leg, probably a sprain.
 

She's zigzagging back and forth, toward the wards and then away. I wonder if it's because Carrick beefed them up with Liza or if she's that out of it. She managed to drive here.

"There." Devon points.
 

I've been looking down and not ahead, and we hurry to her side. She's unconscious.

She's over six feet tall without her normal heels, but I'm the strongest person here. If she was walking, she probably doesn't have any spinal injuries. I carefully move her until I can lift her in a fireman's carry. The others stand back.
 

Even with my new strength, I'm sweating before we get back to the Jeep. Her keys are still in the ignition, and Ripper opens the back and puts the seats flat so we can put her down there. He climbs in to sit beside her and make sure the drive doesn't jostle her too much. Mira calls Evis to tell him we're on our way back.
 

When I carry Alamea through the door, having to step over Jax who's still on the welcome mat, I'm met by Carrick. Saturn and Miles are in the kitchen, yanking rakath spines out of each other, but thankfully alive. Evis is still at Jax's side, holding his hand.

We put Alamea down on the couch, and she still doesn't stir.
 

"What do we do?" Devon asks. "Call the Summit?"

"I think that's probably the worst idea you've ever had," Mira says. "We should probably wait till she wakes up and tells us who did this to her before we call any of the suspects to let them know they didn't finish the job and that she's injured."

"Thank you for your insight, Gonzales," Alamea says. She groans and tries to sit up, and Carrick fetches an extra pillow to put behind her. "Hello, Storme."

"Welcome back to the land of the living," I say cheerfully. "Welcome to my cabin in the woods. We've got monsters and magic and no deaths yet today."

"That's very reassuring, thank you." Even though she sounds fine, her eyes flutter closed, and her hand is shaking. "I think my ankle is broken."

I ratchet my opinion of her badassery up a notch for her managing to do the zombie shuffle a quarter of a mile on a broken ankle.
 

"I'm going to get you some water," I tell her.
 

The only clean cup has a cartoon frog on it, but I don't think Alamea will be too picky for that. I fill it with ice and top it off with water, bringing it back to her.
 

If any more people show up at this cabin, we're going to have to build an addition on the back. I'm not sure how the landlord'll feel about that. Or the blood on the floorboards, for that matter.
 

I hand the water cup to Alamea, which she takes carefully with both hands, closing her eyes again the moment it touches her lips.
 

"How much of this is my fault?" I ask her.

She opens her eyes again. One of her pupils is bigger than the other. I add another point to her badassery level. Driving with broken right foot and a concussion, followed by a quarter mile shuffle.

"None," she says, coughing. "This was all Gregor. You were right. He retaliated."

"Shit. Then it is my fault."

She manages to give me that old disdainful look in spite of the concussion and different-sized pupils. "Storme, I should be thanking you. I was able to finally find out who Gregor's people are at the Summit. By now they're taken care of."
 

The way she says that, I know she means it the same way I meant it when I was referring to the Seattle shades.

The Summit radio is still on, a buzzing drone in the background. I look at it on the coffee table. "That message…"

"I arranged for it."
 

"And you were able to make it up here. No territory sickness."

All of us look at her. If I expected her to cringe or show any other sign of chagrin, she doesn't.

"I don't drink tea, Storme."

And then she passes out, sloshing her water all over her muddy designer linen shirt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

How any of us sleep that night after we set Alamea's ankle and splint it, I don't know. Five Mediators, five shades, one tiny cabin. I count myself with the Mediators, but more and more I feel apart from them. Carrick volunteers to wake Alamea every couple hours to make sure she doesn't sleep forever, and the rest of us get into beds and sleeping bags. The two injured — well, most injured, anyway — get the couch, with Carrick hanging out at the dining room table. Devon and Ripper take the guest room, and Evis sleeps on the kitchen floor with Miles and Saturn, who seem perfectly comfortable on linoleum.
 

Mira and I get the main bedroom. At first I think I'm the only one who can't sleep with Nana's snuffling around, but then Mira pokes me in the shoulder after forty-five minutes. "You're awake."

"Yep."

"Think Gregor will take the bait?"

"I don't think he'll possibly do anything else. He'll slip up." Our plan was to go quiet for a few days, and having injured people fits right in with that schedule. Once he feels safe, we're going to hit him with Stage Three.

Mira's breathing is shallow, like she's nervous.
 

"You okay?"

"Huh? Yeah. Fine."

"Bullshit. What's wrong?" It's pitch dark in here since I pinned a quilt up over the window, but I can see her fine. "Fine is never fine. Fine means you don't want to answer. Which is okay, I guess, but you can tell me, whatever it is."