Eye of the Storm (11 page)

Together we return to our seats, and for the next hour, we listen to Alamea instigate reaction plans for the city, from comms lines to defense strategies to external contacts in case anything happens to her. I know as well as every other Mediator in the room that when this battle comes, she'll be on the front lines.
 

She pulls up a map of the city on a projector and shows it divided into sections. She has the city center marked as the top priority, from the I-440 loop to Interstate 24. It's a defensible territory for our numbers, and as much as I don't want to sound overly optimistic, we might even have a chance at holding it. Maybe.

If they pull a blitz like they did in Chattanooga, though, I don't know how much of a chance it would be. Especially now that we're on the clock twenty-four hours a day.

Alamea's idea is ambitious, to say the least, but that woman has steel for bones and a hide thicker than a cured ox, so if anyone can pull off clearing this city of hellkin when they're actively invading, she can.

The biggest relief is that the other Mediators seem to have put aside their bullshit and are willing to follow her. Not just listen. Looking around the room, I don't see anyone scoffing or scowling at her. I guess all it took was a couple cities worth of people to bite it and they're all ears.

Fucking fickle people.

What I want to know is why the hellkin are waiting and what they're waiting for.

The air of unease in the amphitheater feels like we're sitting in electrified Jell-O and not half as delicious.

When Alamea finally finishes, Carrick takes my hand absently and holds it. "Gryfflet says he's getting close. He's got about fifteen different tracking spells set up in a conference room upstairs, and he's been pulling elements from each of them that will help him make some sort of daft super-spell. You brought the book, right?"

I nod. "It's in my backpack."
 

Next to me, Mira and Miles are speaking in low tones, and the rest of the shades sit quietly around us, though Jax and Evis seem to be discussing combat tactics with Billy Bob, a tough-as-old-jerky Mediator with markat venom scars almost worse than the ones that dot Mira's upper body. I can smell him from here.

"How close is close?" I ask Carrick. "If we pull a Chattanooga overnight, close ain't going to cut it."

"I don't know." I always appreciate Carrick's honesty.
 

Alamea comes over to us, a couple cables wound around one arm. "It's not the best plan, but we might just have a chance."

"It's a plan, which is better than what Chattanooga and Atlanta had." I don't like knowing that apart from North Carolina's cities and Memphis, we're the only Summits left in the South, or we will be as soon as Jacksonville falls.
 

"What I want to know is why they're biting off chunks instead of launching a full scale invasion." Alamea looks out over the Mediators and shades in the room, her eyes hooded.
 

It's been bothering me too. If they hit us all simultaneously, we wouldn't stand a snowball's chance in the Sahara. "What if they can't?"
 

Alamea looks at me, lips pursed and small lines forming around her eyes. "Talk, Storme."

"Well, if they are that set on taking us over and had the ability to just do it, why haven't they? Eldron and Suzie seemed to think Chattanooga and Atlanta were a testing ground, but what if that's only half-true? They could be testing out tactics, but then why only hit one more city after the first? They took Chattanooga in about forty minutes. It was just after 1730 when Eldron called everyone. Those are small cities. They didn't start with New York or DC or any of the other big ones. They started with the South where they have a foothold and are taking out smaller targets." I pause for a breath, realizing that not only are my people listening to me, but Billy Bob has stopped his conversation, and Hardy and Sal — a weathered old black woman with nails for bones and hair the color of old steel — have come over to listen. I follow my train of thought down the tracks, trying to grasp at something.
 

That's it
. "They can't," I say. "They can't hit all of us at once."

"What're you saying, girl?" Billy Bob asks. He stumps over, slapping Sal on the back.
 

An almost foreign bubbly feeling starts in my chest, and I lock eyes with Alamea, squeezing Carrick's hand hard.
 

"Why would they want to leave their hells?" I ask. "It's dangerous for them here. We take out a lot of them."

Mira gets it before anyone else does, and she punches my shoulder with a whoop. "They have to."

Alamea shoots her a look. Hardy's grin turns outright evil.

"They're outnumbered here," I say. "They don't have enough numbers. But something's making them desperate."

I look at the two shades who don't have names. They're hovering off to the side, Miles next to them. I watched the two of them come out of a hells-hole in the labyrinth beneath Gregor's House of Pain. Dropping Carrick's hand and standing, I walk over to them. They both smile at me, and I shove away the instinct to call them Thing 1 and Thing 2.
 

They're not things.

I take their hands in mine, and the touch brings our connection closer. I hadn't noticed consciously with Carrick — maybe because he's been around for four hundred years and has more control over his mind — but with these two it's like the difference between eye contact from across a football field and pressing your forehead against someone else's to look into their eyes.

It doesn't take much. I ask a silent question; they answer.

Immediately images flood my mind.

I've never seen the hells before.

I think I always assumed they'd be dark. The demons in our world can't bear the sun, and they weren't able to come out during the day until weeks of clouds blotted it out. But their world is bright, almost unbearably so. Jagged rocks form the bulk of the land I can see, and the sky is white, flashing sporadically with what looks like lightning. The rocks are spattered with slime and blood, which shouldn't surprise me. No vegetation, no life forms I can see except the hellkin gathered in the distance. This isn't the present; this is only a memory. But it confirms what I thought.
 

Letting go of their hands, I murmur a thank you.
 

I look back at the others. "I think they used up their world."

And one of the shades I've just broken contact with shocks me into silence.

He speaks. His voice feels like those jagged rocks.

"Is what they do."

Six and a half hells.
 

My entire life, that saying was thrown around like a joke, but none of us were really in on it. Six and a half hells. We are the half, this little blue dot we call Earth. I never stopped to think about what happened to hells one through six.

According to these shades who have been to Hell Number Six, the others don't exist anymore.
 

I always assumed that there were six hells overflowing with demons ready to do us in. And I'm not the only one; Alamea and the others look as shellshocked as I feel when my new shade friend explains — half in broken, halting English and half through images he shows me — that we've been wrong all along.
 

Then something hits me, and I can't help but laugh.

By now a crowd has gathered around us, and Alamea's made no move to keep any guise of secrecy to this conversation. The freedom is somewhat exhilarating, unbinding. About twenty pairs of eyes are all focused on me and my inappropriate guffaws.

"The way they're attacking," I say, trying to keep the helpless, angry mirth from spilling over and taking me with it. "It's our fault. We gave them the key to defeating us."

"What the fuck do you mean?" Mira asks.

But Alamea knows. She looks like her knees have been turned to rubber. "The territories."

"The Summits wanted to keep us all in cages, and those cages turned into platters." When the words leave my mouth, I don't want to laugh anymore. I think of the Mediators in Mississippi, and I know Alamea's remembering. She was there. She and the Nashville Mediators tried to help them. Some of them even fought through the sickness until they collapsed and found the claws of hellkin ready to greet them. They all watched while refugees and Mediators alike fell to a line of demons they couldn't reach to kill. This time I don't have to even catch a glimpse of Asher to feel her anger. It ticks behind me like the hissing of a pressure cooker. She is not surprised by this turn of events.
 

I look at Alamea, laughter now reduced to a simmering fury. Not at her. She didn't do this.
 

"This is going to change. If we live through this, it's got to change." Of all those with us, only Mira and the shades really understand what's passing between me and Alamea.
 

The other Mediators don't realize that the territories aren't inborn, that they're imposed. By the Summit. Our whole lives we're conditioned to Summit culture, drinking Summit-supplied tea and coffee at every meeting from the time we're toddlers. Iced tea while we're kids, then tea and coffee as soon as we take to it. We get it for free — it's presented like a perk. Risk your life, get a lifetime supply of tea and coffee. I've never heard of a single Mediator who doesn't guzzle the stuff. Wouldn't surprise me if they made it mildly addictive. The caffeine's bad enough for that.

I only found out all this a few weeks ago.
 

I can see looks of confusion passing between Hardy and Sal and Billy Bob and the other Mediators around us, but they don't question.
 

Alamea just nods. "I don't know how. But we will change it."

Hardy doesn't really get what's going on, but he does get to the bit that's immediately relevant. "If we weren't limited by our territories, we'd be able to help the others."

"Yep," I say. Of course, we can't teleport, so there would still be limits, but nothing stomps on an opponent's ability to fight back like cutting off their means of reinforcements.

"I'll speak to the others," is all Alamea says.

CHAPTER TEN

It's Carrick's idea to use the interstates as a sort of early warning system. We can't ward all of downtown unless it's clear, and there are enough demons already inside the perimeter that it wouldn't do anything right now. But we can set something up so any influx of five or more hellkin beasties will alert the Summit. Hardy and I divide up the oblong border like a pie, assigning pieces to twelve groups of Mediators and witches and shades.
 

I think some of the Mediators are uneasy about the idea of bringing shades with them, but they can go eat their own toenails.
 

My own group — which consists of me, Evis, the two new shades, and Asher, who in her bulging state looks like she ought to be sprawled out with someone massaging her feet instead of venturing into demon-infested cityscapes — is set to take the slice of the pie between West End Avenue and Charlotte Pike. I suggested to Alamea that we take the far side of town, but she told me bluntly that I wasn't expendable and she wanted to keep me close.

I'm not sure how I feel about the implication that any of the other teams of Mediators are expendable, but I let it lie.

Mira and her group have the piece just to the north of us, and while she and I exchange a long glance before she sets off, we don't say anything mushy. If we live through all of this, we'll have time for that later. Until then, anything mushy is just going to sound like goodbye.

We're the last to leave. Carrick is upstairs with Gryfflet working on spells, and Alamea has shuttered herself in her office with enough maps and data tables to wallpaper Mount Chomolungma.

Walking out into the Nashville night feels familiar. The threat of demons at this time of day is something I've always lived with. It's like slipping into an old pair of jeans and finding they still cup your ass just right.

"Stay close," I say to the others. Evis nods, and the two shades beam at me. Asher is looking around, but the small twitch of her left hand says she heard me. She's wearing a large backpack of supplies that she wouldn't let me carry.