Eye of the Storm (10 page)

"Glad you made it," she says without preamble. She's a psychic, but I reckon even if they can sense what's going to happen, visual confirmation is probably nice. Riley looks at Hardy, whose face goes stony.
 

Nobody really likes psychics, and I used to hate them. But one of them saved my skin a few times even though I was always thinking asshole-ish things about him, and after I saw him ripped to pieces in the Summit lobby not long ago, I kind of have a guilt-inflicted soft spot for them.
 

Riley turns her gaze on me, and I twitch.
 

"Jaryn would be pleased to know you miss him," she says simply.
 

See, this is why people don't like them. Most of us prefer to control who gets a window into our brains. My eyes start to sting again, and I blink. "Uh, yeah. Sure."

Evis's face crumples, and I know what he's thinking. It was his friends who dismembered Jaryn, and my memory helpfully reminds me that that first time I met my brother, he whispered in my ear that he was going to do the same to me.

My life is complicated.

Riley sees Evis's face — or maybe just hears the gong of his pain in her head — and for the barest flicker of a moment, mortification tightens her face. She greets him with a touch on the shoulder and a reassuring smile, but I notice she doesn't meet his eyes.

She starts to walk away after greeting Jax and Mason the same way, but glances over her shoulder at me. "You could probably keep Nana in the holding cells. I doubt any demons would get in there. She'd be safe."

Put my bunny in the grey-walled honeycomb of doom. Now there's a thought.

I nod at her, ignoring the little hackles-raise I get with the knowledge that I've never told Riley my bunny's name.
 

"Are you going to stand out there all day, or did you plan to come in at any point?" Alamea's voice is like a tightrope cable of tension. Can't say I blame her.
 

Her office isn't that big, so only Mira and I go in, each pulling up a chair. Out of the corner of my eye, I see Jax put Nana's cage down by a box that's labeled
SAND
.

"I'd say shut the door, but at this point, nothing stays secret long." Alamea has her feet propped up on the side of the desk, which to a newcomer might look a little insensitively nonchalant, but I happen to know that's just how she works. I see her notice Asher through the open door, and she gives me a questioning look, but her silence is the
now's not the time to ask
I don't need her to to voice.

The keyboard to her computer is balanced on her quadriceps, and she drains the last gulp from a giant glass of orange juice.
 

"I've spent the whole day on the line with other Summit leaders," she says. "All the major cities are in a similar holding pattern. Everywhere but Albuquerque and Ottawa here in North America have managed to keep a solid perimeter around the Summit buildings for refugees, and there's been a little bit of a stall out on norm casualties since yesterday."

I don't like the way she says that, and I've been trying not to think about norm deaths. I know there's been a lot.
 

"What do you mean, a stall out?" Mira asks.

"I mean most people have gotten wherever they're going to get for now. The cities' evacuations weren't as successful as we'd like, but most people are utilizing whatever secure areas they can find. Tornado cellars, old bomb shelters, prisons, anything that can be locked down or made defensible. It's natural that the highest death tolls yet would be in the initial panic." Alamea manages to keep her tone even, but the muscle in her right thigh is twitching, making the keyboard wobble.

Highest death tolls yet.
Yet
being the operative word.
 

"We're doing okay, all things considered," she says softly.
 

At that moment, her computer squawks like someone's hit the same key on twelve different pianos just slightly out of time. Alamea jumps, her elbow hitting the empty juice glass. She catches it as it tips off the edge of the table and drops her feet to the floor, sliding the keyboard onto the desk.

Mira and I both freeze, looking at each other. I know what Mira's thinking. Should have fucking knocked on some wood. Lots of wood. Like a redwood forest of wood.

Even that wouldn't be enough.

Alamea hits a few keystrokes, and her monitor blinks into the face of a Mediator who's talking frantically to someone off screen. Other icons pop up across the bottom of the screen, and I think I see the Seattle leader's face in the bottom right corner. Tamar, who I consider an friend. Or at least an ally.
 

These are the Summit leaders. Not just from America, either.
 

The Mediator whose face is dominating the screen is a brown-skinned man with shaggy black hair that falls to his collarbone. There's a Tennessee state flag behind him, almost all the way off screen. He turns away from whoever he's talking to and faces the camera, his skin ashen.
 

"This is Eldron Lamott of Chattanooga," he introduces himself, mechanical. "This will be my final report."

I hadn't realized that there was a buzz of talking in the background, but Eldron Lamott's words cut off every background sound.

"I'm not sure how much time I have. At approximately 1700 hours, our Mediators reported hells-holes opening in seventeen locations around the city simultaneously. Since then, we have lost communication with all field leaders and subordinates outside of the Summit proper. This transmission is only possible due to Summit backup generators. At this point, the Summit itself has not been breached, but as most Mediators were defending locations outside the building itself, it is unknown how many casualties exist right now or the strength of our defenses when such a breach occurs." His violet eyes are glassy and full of tears, but none fall. "I suspect, though I cannot confirm, that the tactics employed by the enemies here were experimental considering the relative size of our city and the resources we possess. I am told that power to the city was lost fourteen minutes after the hells-holes were opened, which suggests that the hellkin targeted our power plants."

No one says anything, not even Alamea. Her face is slack; for once she's not hiding her emotion. Two wet lines shine against the dark brown of her skin. She has to know him. She has to know him well. Our territories overlap. He's her peer, in age as well as position.
 

We might be about to watch him die.

Before I can process it, Eldron is going on.

"It is not my intent to broadcast the final moments of this battle to you. I will be joining the other remaining Mediators shortly. The purpose of this message is simply to inform you all that Chattanooga has fallen. May the strength and the grace of all the gods be with you." His tears do fall now, and he looks directly into the camera for a moment before his eyes fall. "May your swords be sharp and swift. Long may you defend your lands."
 

"Eldron," Alamea says, and her voice breaks. Even in the thumbnails of the multitude of leaders' faces at the bottom of the screen, I can see pain writ across every one. And fear.
 

He doesn't acknowledge Alamea, but somehow I know when he looks into the camera once more, he's looking at her.

"I had hoped," he says, "to see the sun one last time."

He stands, turning again to nod at someone off camera. He looks back once.
 

"Take these fuckers down."

His screen goes blank.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see something burning in Asher's face where she leans against the door jamb. It looks like rage.

At first I think it's over. My own cheeks are wet, and I don't remember the tears falling. Mira reaches out, takes my hand. I can't look at her.

Another face takes Eldron Lamott's place, a white woman with bleached blonde hair and a nose too big for the rest of her dainty face. I've seen her face before. She's the Atlanta leader.
 

"Suzie Connor," she says. "Atlanta. I've just received word that we are under attack."

This time there is a collective breath from the speakers of Alamea's computer, and from the corridor, I hear others. I don't look out, but I can feel the press of bodies outside the office. People have gathered. This news will spread like the spark on a lit fuse.

"I would like to say that we will fare better than those in Chattanooga." Suzie Connor's lips are tight as she speaks, and while I can read her determination in the set of her shoulders, it is not the determination of someone who expects to live to see another day dawn. "But I think y'all know as well as I do that things are fixing to get rough today. Eldron said it better than I could. Get yourselves ready. Jacksonville," she says. "Y'all are the only Summit south of us now. Prepare."

She hits the button before the tears in her eyes can fall.
 

We sit in Alamea's office, stunned. Dimly, I hear Hardy's voice in the hall as he pushes past whoever's out there to come in. He goes around to Alamea and tells her to have the Mediators arm as many people in the general populace who can and will wield a sword. The other Summit leaders on screen nod. There's so many of them — every major city in the world has a Summit. We're everywhere.
 

When the ping of the disconnecting call resonates through Alamea's office, I sit back in my chair, trying to make the world stop spinning.
 

"Why those two cities?" I ask, my eyes on the ceiling.
 

Chattanooga was almost lost already, but Atlanta is thriving. Was.
 

And Jacksonville, one of the only cities left in the Florida crescent. I think we can consider it lost as well.
 

"They already have Mississippi," Mira says. Her voice sounds like it's been shot with novocaine. "Tactics."

We all know what that means for Nashville.

We're next.
 

CHAPTER NINE

We can't stay in Alamea's office. She calls an emergency meeting in the Summit amphitheater, only requiring those currently in the Summit building to attend. We can't risk pulling anyone in from the city, and the first thing she does is set up a streaming feed at the front of the room.
 

I'm sitting in a row at the front with Mira and the shades, Nana in her cage at our feet. Asher's in the row behind me, after a very truncated explanation to Alamea about who she is and how she found me. I guess Alamea decided she had bigger fish to batter and fry than a strange pregnant witch getting a front row seat for the end of the world. Nana is curled up and asleep. For a bunny, she's taking all of this very well. I should follow Riley's advice and put her down in the holding cells, but I want to keep her with me for as long as I can. I see Mason watching her, and he and I exchange a tense smile.

While everyone's setting up, I look over to see Carrick coming through the door.
 

"Thank the gods." I leap to my feet and run for him. My blood soars through my veins as my hands touch Carrick's skin. He sweeps me from the ground as I tackle him. His hair smells like death, and he's got a healing claw mark on one shoulder, but he's otherwise uninjured.
 

"I heard," is all he says.

I'm not surprised by the tears that well up in my eyes, though a few weeks ago I would have been. A single sob shakes my chest against Carrick's, and he pulls me tighter into his arms.
 

How did I go through all of my life without him, without them? Over Carrick's shoulder, I see Miles approaching, tailed by the two new shades who still have no names. And I don't just see them. I feel them coming my way, new shades' thoughts still wild and uncertain, but trusting. They calm at the sight of me, and before I know what I'm doing, I reach out tiny tendrils of my mind to touch them in greeting.
 

I don't know how it happened, but I have a family.

The one thing Mediators aren't supposed to get.

I release Carrick and touch the shoulders of the two new shades, then greet Miles behind them. I feel them all buzzing in my brain, like the strands of a web I can feel no matter which way I turn. But there are only the four of them.