Eye of the Storm (24 page)

I make it all the way to my backpack to change clothes without anyone else stopping me. Evis tells me that the other shades are all gathered on the fourth floor together, and that they're changing rooms every few hours so they're not always in one spot. Smart. Though I don't know exactly of how much use that'll be if someone really decides they want the shades dead.
 

Evis goes to join them, and I tell him I'll be along as soon as I get my clothing situation squared away.

There's a Mitten at the front desk who's in charge of laundry duty, and I give him my leathers with an order to get them cleaned and back to me as soon as possible. I don't like the idea of shit hitting the fan when I'm in jeans and a threadbare t-shirt. If my bra shows through, the other Mediators don't seem to care, and at least I'm still armed as usual. I wish I had a spare pair of boots.

I hear raised voices outside and turn to see a commotion in the parking lot. Norms, from the look of it. Worried, I head for the door.
 

Billy Bob and Sal are out there, both of them barking orders at the norms, which seems to be about as helpful as telling a hurricane to sit and stay.

Alison and Jocelyn are among the norms. When they see me, Alison makes a bee-line, slipping between Sal and Billy Bob before either of them think to stop her.

They both must be getting tired.
 

"Ayala," Alison says. "They won't let us into the Summit."

"Why do you need into the Summit?" I look at the crowd of people. There are about fifty of them, all of them armed, which suddenly seems like more of a mark in the con column than the pro column.

"We want to know what's going on, and no one will tell us."

That's a recipe for harmony.

Ignorance, bliss, and mutiny. Or something.

"Well, ask and I'll see if I can tell you."

"We heard about Cincinnati," says Jocelyn, who has also slipped past Billy Bob and Sal. "It was on the radio."

At this rate, the other fifty-odd norms are going to think that looks like a good idea and come sit at my feet for macabre story time. Or just run me over on the way to Alamea.
 

"You heard about it on the radio?" The Summit must not be telling them anything. No wonder they're miffed.

Apparently it takes approximately two and a half days to go from gratitude to pitchforks. I think of the small army that greeted me the other day and wish we'd made an effort to keep some of that goodwill going.

Maybe I can play damage control.
 

The others have definitely noticed me talking to Jocelyn and Alison, but so far they're not making any moves. I know they recognize my face. I'm probably one of the more famous Mediators alive right now.
 

I quickly tell Alison and her mother as much as I can about what happened to the other cities and how the rest of the world is preparing. The latter I don't know much about, but I do tell her that the other cities are following our lead and arming the general populace, throwing in some nods to the bravery of the norm population in Nashville. Nothing like a little flattery to boost morale.

It doesn't seem to prevent their eyes from widening like frisbees, though. I can't say I blame them. I've had some time to get used to this idea; they haven't. I briefly weigh the possibility of mass hysteria against the likelihood of enforced ignorance leading a few thousand armed Nashvillains to wreak clumsy havoc on the Mediator population in the Summit headquarters and come down on the side of risking mass hysteria. What are they going to do, run out of town? At least this way they have the ability to prepare for what's coming. The other cities didn't have that advantage.

Alison's face gets progressively more grim, and Jocelyn's looks like it's made of concrete by the time I'm done. I'm glad neither of them are facing the crowd still arguing with Billy Bob and Sal, because the two women just about broadcast terror.
 

"Can you remember all that?" I ask them. "Just the facts, no embellishing."

Billy Bob looks over at me with consternation dragging a frown onto his face, but he doesn't turn all the way away from the crowd. I walk over to him and Sal, and the two women trail behind me.
 

"Storme, we've got this handled," says Sal, her voice like motor oil over gravel.

"Oh, I know," I say glibly. All eyes are now on me, and I hear a murmur through the crowd about me being on TV.
 

Eight-year-old Ayala would have gotten a kick out of that.
 

Billy Bob and Sal are going to skin me alive.

"The rumors are true!" I say. "We're the last bastion of humanity in the south. If you want to keep it that way, listen to these two lovely Mediators here and don't rush the Summit with pointy objects. I'll make sure we send someone over to the Vandy camp with news every day, effective tomorrow. Until then, try to remember who the enemy is."

Both Sal and Billy Bob are already eviscerating me with their eyes, and Billy Bob looks like he just took a sip from a spittoon.

I give them both a tight lipped smile, counting backward in my head from ten.
 

When I hit three, one of the norms in the crowd pipes up.

"How do we know we're getting the truth?"

Ah, the infamous truth. "You don't," I tell him bluntly. "But if you have somewhere else you'd rather be than Nashville, by all means, go there. Bon voyage."

A shocked ripple goes through the crowd, and I go on. Billy Bob at least now has a tinge of respect on his face for me. I think for me.

"Look, I'm not going to pretend this situation is anything but shitty. It's shitty. But we're all in the same sinking boat here. Try to keep bailing water instead of pouring more in? Or start rowing. Just don't hurry the sinking along." I'm not sure I like my own metaphor, but it at least seems to placate the crowd of norms.
 

They grumble a bit, but they start to disperse, and I can see Alison and Jocelyn talking to people, repeating what I've said. Hopefully they'll stir up some pride, some hope, or at least some Tennessee grit.

Sal gives me a long once over when they're all off the edge of the parking lot, headed back to Vanderbilt.
 

"Alamea didn't want them to know all that," she says.
 

"Well, they didn't start screaming and stabbing each other." I give both the older Mediators the most deadpan look I can muster. "Or themselves. So I count it a win."
 

I tell them what I told Alison and Jocelyn about the other cities prepping the norms and modeling their training after what we did here.
 

That seems to work to bring both Billy Bob and Sal onto my patch of turf.
 

"Morale's a good thing," Billy Bob says approvingly. "Somebody ought to have some."

I let that slide. When I turn to go back inside, Sal catches my arm.

"You're a good kid, Storme. You should know people ain't saying the same about your brother and his ilk, though."

"I know," I tell her. "But they're on our side."

"We know that." Billy Bob pulls out a pocket knife and starts cleaning his nails. He flicks some grime from the point of his knife onto the asphalt. "But a lot of them other Mediators ain't keen on anything half-demon."

"Apparently those Mediators are okay with getting splatted, then," I say. I feel the early kindling of fury beginning again in my gut, and that tightness in my shoulders from before returns full force.

"Easy there," Billy Bob says, peering at me. "They're just trying to do best, best way they know how. Some of us get a bit stuck in our ways."

It sounds so much like what Mason was saying that I bite the inside of my lip. "You're saying I should side against my brother? And what, put them in holding cells? Let the other Mediators decide what happens to them?"

"You know I ain't saying that, and Sal ain't saying that neither," says Billy Bob, and Sal nods along. For the first time, I wonder if the two of these old coots are more than just comrades.
 

"All we're saying is that you and your friends ought to keep your eyes wide open till all this blows over." Sal gives my arm another squeeze. "We'll try to watch your back, but there're more backs to watch right now than chiggers in a Mississippi July."

She seems to realize what she said the moment the word
Mississippi
is out of her mouth, and she swallows.
 

As we all walk back into the Summit lobby together, I wonder if the demons will be the real downfall of Nashville — or if the Mediators will.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

I'm jostled awake at four in the morning by a frantic Evis. I sit up, accidentally smushing Mira's hand with my palm. Saturn's on the other side of her, and he growls something indecipherable.
 

My mind immediately reaches out for the shades. They're all accounted for, and even Mason's in the room with us, even though his mind feels a bit like a dark cloud.

"What is it, Evis?" I rub a bit of crusted sleep from my eye and blink into the darkness of the conference room. We've pushed the table all the way against one wall, and all the other shades are stirring, their bodies and minds groggy.
 

"San Diego," he says.

The name of the city chases the last vestiges of sleepiness from me.
 

Mira sits bolt upright, and even in the darkness I can see the horror on her face. I'm already moving toward the door, following Evis. We rush through the halls, Mira only a few steps behind. Alamea's in her office with Billy Bob and Asher, and she puts up a hand to silence me before she even makes eye contact. I don't stop to wonder how Asher has been so fully accepted into the inner circle here.

I can hear the report coming through the computer speakers.

"…Third wave began approximately four hours after the first, at which point the Mediators suffered heavy losses. With the fourth wave, they were overwhelmed and the city fell at 0112 this morning, Pacific Standard Time."

Four hours. I feel a strange, dissonant sense of relief that at least the amount of time it's taking for cities to fall seems to be increasing. They hit the first few so quickly that there was little time to prepare, but San Diego's been trying. All the cities have been trying. San Diego is also the first city that shares a land border with another country.
 

The reports go on for another ten minutes, but I barely hear them. Four hours. Is that all it's going to take to destroy Nashville? Probably less, but then I don't know.
 

When Alamea finally hits the button to turn off the connection to the other Summits, she looks up at me, saying nothing.
 

"Why San Diego?" I say.
 

They're almost as far away from us as they can get in the continental United States. Only Seattle might be farther, distance-wise.
 

"The only thing I can think is to test our defenses," she says. Her skin looks at once tight and somehow saggy, like exhaustion wants to pull it downward but there's so much tension beneath the surface that it's holding her together. "They have to know we've been preparing, and San Diego is a clean sample."

"Also the best thing you can do in a war is keep your enemy off balance," Billy Bob says.
 

Asher nods her agreement. "We expect them here. They'll want to keep us guessing about what their intentions are until we become complacent, and then they'll strike."

I think about the threats within the Summit and the already tense refugee camp only a couple blocks away. "Or they'll wait until we're busy fighting each other."

Alamea looks for a moment like she wants to just go down into the holding cell with Nana and stay there. Her lips turn downward, her shoulders curl downward, her muscles seem to go slack all over her body. It's one of the first times I've ever seen her look truly hopeless, and the sight strikes more fear into me than the fact that the demons just took out another American city two thousand miles away.
 

"We need to do something that will unify the people we have," Mira says from behind me. She's leaning against the wall, her own face a picture of the same fear I feel. "If they start going after the rest of the shades or the refugees decide to storm the castle, we're all fucked."

To their credit, no one points out that we're probably fucked anyway.

"What did San Diego have in place that allowed them to last four hours? Do we know what happened there?" I ask.

Alamea nods. "They actually lasted six. There was a two hour gap between the third wave and the final wave. They communicated well; the Summit set up information relays to make sure word got out. All the major cities have been doing that."

"Are we?" I haven't heard anything of the sort. "And why didn't you wake me sooner?"

"I woke you as soon as there was definitive news. And yes, we have set up information relays like the other cities." How she's even awake in the face of all she's been orchestrating, I do not know. Then again, she forgot to mention it to me, so maybe she's not as on top of it as I thought.