Eye of the Storm (26 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

I don't know if it's the smoke I inhaled or the fact that I just literally rescued children from a burning building that had nothing to do with demons when we're facing utter species annihilation, but halfway back to the Summit, I start laughing, and I can't stop.

I have to stop walking because my diaphragm is contracting so much that it's giving me stomach cramps, and the laughter spills out of my mouth from so deep inside me it's like it's escaping a compactor.
 

There's a good chance that by springtime, we will all be dead.
 

And we just almost lost a few hundred kids due to some college student's against-university regulation incense.
 

Tears roll down my cheeks, cooling in the night air. I hiccup. It hurts. My eyes burn. My abdominal muscles feel like I've just done a thousand crunches without stopping and then tried to fetch something from the highest shelf. Nothing about this laughter feels good.

But it's necessary. Oh gods, is it necessary.
 

If I don't laugh right now, I'll collapse in a puddle of tears and die.

Mira, to her infinite credit, says nothing. She doesn't laugh with me, only places one hand in the center of my back. I think it's the only thing that keeps me upright.
 

When I finally can stop, I gasp a breath. The air smells unclean, touched by smoke and the scent of wet ash and burnt wood and insulation and plastic. Beneath that, the normal night air smells unclean too, trapped by the constant cloud cover and heavy as the weight of the oncoming battle.

But it's breath, and it's in my lungs, and I'm still alive.

They say fire is purifying, but I don't think I ever believed it until now.

My mind feels somehow clearer, even though that marrow-deep weariness and the crunchy feeling of now-absent adrenaline war for dominance in my body.
 

When I was a kid in the earliest days of my training, sometimes we'd have bonfires. Until they made me stop, I'd stand at the side with a stick and hold it in the flames until it caught fire. I'd watch the stick burn, then put it out by blowing on it. When the end was red with embers, I would twirl it through the air in my sword forms, watching how the cherry color of the glowing wood left a trail. It was one of my favorite things to do. I liked how the fire took a stick and made it art. It made it warm, made it glow, made it leave a trail like a comet in its wake.
 

I feel like that stick now, like my body was on fire and bursting out of the doors of that dormitory is what put me out, and wherever I go now I will leave a glowing trail.
 

I will go wherever I need to go, if it will save this earth.
 

Again I hear Mira and my mirrored confessions that we don't want to die.

San Diego lasted six hours under siege. If I have to fight the hordes of the hells singlehandedly and gut every last slummoth, harkast, rakath, markat, frahlig, jeeling, and whatever the fuck demons exist that I don't have a name for, I will.
 

Whatever it takes.

The earth is a burning building, and I'll be damned if I let it collapse into hell.
 

Powdered eggs taste like the nectar of the gods after even a few minutes inside a flaming dormitory. Mira and I both scarf down two plates, and they're hot and delicious and we both cover them in pepper and hot sauce. The cafeteria is only starting to fill up with Mediators, whoever's on first shift of whatever Alamea's assigned them to do. Everyone looks surly and tired — as a group, we tend toward late nights and late mornings — and they look at Mira and me with no small amount of interest.
 

A couple swing by our table to ask why we smell like we've spent the night on a bunk bed over a bonfire, and we explain what happened at the refugee camp. I can see through Sol and Luna that Alamea is still asleep.
 

I'm sopping up the last bit of egg with a piece of dry toast when the energy level in the room goes from groggy to alarmed.
 

Mira's eyes are on a group of Mediators who just came in, and even from where we're sitting, I can hear the word "wards" repeating throughout the cafeteria.

I clamber out from the table, every movement making puffs of smoke smell drift off my clothes. One of the Mediators who just came in is Devon.
 

His eyes meet mine, and he puts his hand on the shoulder of one of the others, murmuring something even I can't hear. He meets me partway through the room.

"What happened to Alamea?" he asks.

"She needed to sleep or she was going to pass out and never wake up," I tell him. "What's happening?"

"We don't know. There's a disturbance at the southwest ward line. They pinged like there was an entire horde there, but the crew on patrol couldn't get a visual of more than one or two. They're not calling full alert yet. Or they weren't, but it just happened again in the southeast by the river." Devon's dressed like he's been out on patrol, and he probably has. He sniffs curiously at me, but doesn't remark on the smell.
 

It's then I realize that most of the people in the room are looking at me, expectation on their faces.
 

Those who aren't are talking amongst themselves, looking around with worried eyes.
 

I know what everyone is wondering. Is this it? Is this the attack we've been waiting for?

"I don't want to wake Alamea until we're sure of what's happening," I tell Devon, purposely pitching my voice loud enough that most of the room can hear me.
 

"Waiting might kill us all." Someone says it from the other side of the room, and I can't see who said it.

"Get this information out to all the teams currently patrolling the perimeter," I order, ignoring the outburst.
 

"They already know," says Devon.

"Good." I try to think fast. "This isn't like the other cities. If they were opening hells-holes to attack us, we'd know by now. They're trying to unbalance us."

It's probably more than that. First attacking a city far away from their other targets, now feinting at our perimeter.
 

"Southwest just pinged again," someone says from behind Devon. "Same spot."

"Exact same spot?" I ask.

The Mediator nods. She's got tanned skin that's fake-n-baked from a starting shade probably close to mine and short-cropped hair and looks like she could win a pull-up competition against the Hulk. I think her name is Rory.
 

"What demons have they got visual on?" Now every eye in the room is on me, and all I can hear is the sound of clanking and roaring steam from the kitchen's industrial dishwasher.
 

"Couple slummoths is all." Rory looks uncomfortable with the amount of attention directed at us.
 

"What are they doing?" Mira mutters.
 

It has to be a distraction technique, but what are they distracting us from?

"What should we do?" Devon asks me.
 

Everyone else waits, and I realize with Alamea down for the count, I'm the one who's going to have to make a decision. If Gregor were, you know, not a dead traitor, he'd be second-in-command. I'm sure there's a hierarchy below that I don't know about. The mere fact I don't know about it shows just how much Alamea has always taken on for herself.
 

I'll let that woman sleep for a week if I can.

"Set up in the amphitheater," I say to Devon. "Get a map pulled up on the projector and mark every pinged spot on the wards as they happen."

Rory opens her mouth as if to object, I hold up a hand.

"It's Rory, right?" I say to her. She nods. "Get the next shift of patrols out there now. I want more people ready to move if something gives. But make sure they stay back from the ward lines. Don't make it look like we changed anything. Get them out there and ready, but keep them out of sight of any demons who might approach the borders."

She seems satisfied with that, and I see more than a few Mediators in the cafeteria start shoving food in their faces double time or standing up with grim looks on their faces to throw their plates away and get ready.
 

Devon turns to leave, and I point to one of the others with him. "You. Find Hardy. Last I heard he was at Vandy. There was a fire there a couple hours ago, and the camp'll be disorganized. Make sure someone communicates to the norms that we just went to orange alert and they need to be ready. Right now they'll be anything but."

The Mediator nods and scurries away.

"What gives you the right to give orders?" It's the same voice from earlier, and I turn to see a red-faced Mediator probably in his early twenties. He's standing up at a table halfway across the room, and I feel Mira tense beside me.
 

The rest of the Mediators still in the room go about their business, but I can feel their expectation of an answer through the way their movements suddenly become very deliberate, mechanical. I can almost hear the click as their focus shifts to me.

"Would you like to personally wake Alamea and ask her?" I say sweetly.
 

He's walking toward me, and I turn the full force of my indigo eyes on him. Some days lately I forget they're different, but right now, I know.
 

It's probably the wrong decision. He gives me a look of disgust, like I'm not quite human. And he's right.
 

"She should be awake, leading us," he says.
 

I look at his young, fresh face and his clean, tidy clothes. He's not dressed in leathers. He's not about to head out on patrol. He's probably on admin duty, and he's only lightly armed. He's got a knife not so hidden down the back of his shirt, one belt knife, and I can see the bulge of one more in his boot, pooching his jeans.
 

His eyes are bright and the whites are exactly that. His pores are smooth and his face has the stillness of someone who just got a full night's rest.
 

"Sleep well?" I ask him, my tone conversational.

"Great, actually," he says. He sounds like a petulant teen.

"Full six hours?"

He nods, wary of my line of questioning, but most of the room is back to unabashed staring at me now, and I think this kid just realized who he was challenging.

"Watched a friend die yet?" I ask.

The hush that goes over the room makes the previous silence seem loud.
 

The kid swallows, hard, and I wonder if he enjoyed his breakfast, because I'm about to spoil it for him. This might not endear me to the rest of the people in the room, but at this moment, I don't care.
 

"No," he says.

"I have," I tell him softly. "Just a couple days ago. And a few days before that. I've watched friends take markat venom to the neck, watched friends have their heads chopped off or torn off. I've looked at the bodies of people I loved and felt them while they were still warm. I've gone days without sleep because I have to run from fight to fight, each time knowing that a mere harkast could one day get a lucky strike in and it could be my head on the ground. I've gone through my days knowing that every person in this room would try to capture me on sight."

At that, I feel the tension in the room ratchet up a few notches.
 

"I've gone after enemies — real enemies — when I was one of the only people who believed they were trying to watch the Summit burn to the ground." Again I think of Gregor, how the only reason people accepted his being a turncoat is because we had it on video. "I've been betrayed by my oldest mentors, the people I trained with, and the very place that raised me. So you, dew-drop, you're going to fall in line while I try and save this sorry city, and if you have a problem with that, don't let the wards hit your ass on the way out and look both ways before you cross the interstate."

The kid swallows again. His throat keeps moving, like his eggs want to come back up.
 

I look around the rest of the room, knowing that the older Mediators know exactly what I'm talking about because most of them have lived it to a lesser degree. The younger ones are flushed with shame, and if the older ones won't quite meet my eyes, I know it's because they understand a bit too well.
 

"Does anyone else have any fucking ridiculous questions? Or would you like to try and make sure we're not about to have to all fight for our lives?"

No one answers.

I turn on my heel and stalk out of the cafeteria, my wake of disturbed air ripe with the smell of smoke.