Eye of the Storm (44 page)

I try not to think too much about the implications of all of this. It is, of course, a massive gamble. Breaking the spell could kill all living Mediators, even though I don't think it will. I've known from the beginning that Asher had her own agenda. I only hope that I've judged all of this correctly and that her agenda is what I think it is.

Telling the Summit goes better than I expected. There are a lot of empty seats around the amphitheater. With Evis by my side, I get the slight vindictive pleasure of informing the Mediators that Sol and Luna and most of the rest of the shades sacrificed themselves and brought back the sun. It's a good segue into what we're proposing. Alamea stands by my side, flanked by the witches of the Summit. I don't think all of the Summit's witches are "old, old friends" of Asher's — in fact, I think only Colette is in whatever top secret club Asher's a part of.
 

There's an expected ripple through the Summit's remaining Mediators when I tell them about breaking the spell.
 

"It's a risk," I tell them bluntly. "There's a chance it could kill us. But if we're not brave enough to die for the world, then we've been kidding ourselves with our hero bit this whole time. If there's even a chance that we are the link that allows the hellkin to get a foothold here, we owe it to this sorry world to fix it. And there's more than a chance, since I heard it from the horse's slimy mouth in hell."

"We didn't ask for this," someone says from the back of the room.

I point at my brother. "Yeah, neither did he, and half you assholes were calling for his murder to right the balance. Word of this is going to get out, and you better believe there will be people out there who will think the same should be done to you and the rest of us Mediators, for the greater good. So shut the fuck up."

To my utter surprise, he does.

"They'll still need us," I tell the room in a less dickish tone. "Breaking the spell and having no new Mediators born throughout the world won't stop the demon threat. We're going to have to fight hard to keep this world. But we'll know what to do now."

When I leave the amphitheater to meet Candy, most of the Mediators follow. Even though the sun's back, the norms who evacuated the city have still been advised to stay where they are for now. The refugees at Vanderbilt crowd into the Summit parking lot, drawn by the news van that has to be one of the first possible signs of life as they know it since the fire truck brought to the dorm.
 

Alamea has a laptop with her, and she's sitting at the front desk of the Summit, having displaced a few Mittens to type furiously on the keyboard. She's making sure as many Summit leaders as possible are watching.
 
Gryfflet doesn't know how many seals it'll take to crumble the spell, but he thinks we'll know when it goes.
 

The plan — which no one but Mira, Evis, Alamea, the witches, and I know — is to break Nashville's seal on live television.
 

We've sent a pair of trusted Mittens down to the holding cell where Nana is to babysit Eve. Babies and bunnies. Watching them go, the boy with Eve in his arms cooing at her, I have to wonder: if we succeed, could these Mediators have a life that's more about bunnies and babies than swords and slime?

I hope so.

Before I know it, there's a light glaring in my face and a camera trained on me. Candy stands next to me with a microphone. One of the norms from Vanderbilt is holding the camera, and another is working on a computer behind the camera to add graphics to the broadcast. Very specific graphics. Before we got set up, she showed me, and Alamea and I double and triple checked to make sure she had everything ready, down to the order she would add each one. I can see it play out, which is what I wanted when we reviewed it several times in a row. I don't want any surprises.
 

Ready. I don't know if I am. I take a deep breath.

"I'm in Nashville with Ayala Storme once more," Candy says. Her hair is carefully tucked into a French twist to disguise that she hasn't washed it, and her makeup looks flawless, though her cheeks are hollow and her eyes look haunted. "Please listen to what she has to say."

Again, I'm standing in the antechamber, but this time the seal is beside me. Evis and Mira stand to my right. Asher and Gryfflet and Colette stand on the other side of it, on camera. The other Summit witches are with them, faces grim. The rest of the room is packed with Mediators and norms who made their way in, and out of the corner of my eye, Alamea gives me a nod to tell me that the Summit feed is patching into what we're broadcasting. I take a deep breath, marveling that the smell of the air has started to shift with the sun's return.
 

I didn't know it because I've lost track of days, but sun came back on the Winter Solstice.

"When you last saw me, I was surrounded by shades. They were my family. And now most of them are dead." I pause, knowing that the woman with the computer is making it so people's television and computer screens show images of the shades. "Four days ago, I went through a hells-hole into the sixth hell. I won't go into everything I learned and saw there, but I will say this: everything we've been taught about demons is wrong. They are intelligent. They are structured. They have a society. And they've spent hundreds of years — maybe thousands — trying to convince us that they are mindless beasts. What we've seen in the past few weeks has been nothing but a strategically implemented invasion plan. Their biggest weapon, the new shades we've seen born across the country who recently tore chunks out of Kentucky and Seattle, were a hybrid beyond what my brother and his like were. The demons used their ties here, the human blood and the majority demon, to alter the very weather of our world. The sun is back because the final remaining shades of that generation, Sol and Luna, who were my friends and allies, sacrificed themselves. And they're not the only ones."

I don't need to see the pictures that flash across the screen to see their faces in my mind. Mason, Jax, Carrick — maybe they didn't have to die. Maybe they could have stayed.
 

"Here's the part where you all make a choice." I look directly into the camera. "For two thousand years, Mediators have been born and raised to fight the hellkin and keep the rest of humanity safe. In the past weeks, though, the rest of humanity has stepped up to help. You've all fought to keep our world ours."

There's little background noise, and I wish I could tell what people's reactions were, mostly because of what I'm about to say.

"This week, a witch here at the Summit gave birth to a shade's baby. The baby was a Mediator." This time a ripple goes through the crowd around me, though I know that news had already spread. "What we are facing right now is the new knowledge that we, the Mediators who have been fighting the hellkin our whole lives, are in fact part demon ourselves."

No one's talking now. It's as silent as can possibly be. The sun shines down through the dome above my head, warming my skin.
 

Candy is breathing hard and not even trying to hide it.

"Whatever secrets the Summit has kept go deeper than I could find out. I don't know everything. But I do know that we have a way we could eventually be free of the demon threat forever. We could shut them in the dying hell where I saw them, and we could shut the gates to our world." Now I'm breathing hard. The air in the room feels as heavy as the gravity of the sun, and I can't help but dart a glance at Mira. "We're going to do this. What happens next is up to the rest of you."
 

A shattering concussion shakes the room, and I almost fall. Gryfflet and the witches have all bound hands around the seal, and Asher is at its center with a vial of blood held daintily between thumb and forefinger. I make myself ignore them.
 

The camera holder rights himself, shooting a wild-eyed look at Candy.
 

"The seal at each Summit is part of a worldwide spell that pulls Mediators from the general populace. I don't know how it pulls demon magic into seemingly-random babies, but it does. Shades are born with that same demon magic funneled through a human person. Mediators can be bred — or made. The symbol you see behind me is the focus for this area's spell. When we break it, no new Mediators will be born in Tennessee. And if enough of you out there do the same in your cities, the spell-web worldwide will shrivel. And we Mediators will grow old. We will keep fighting for you, with you — but we will need your help. We will grow old, and we will all eventually die, and when we do, Earth will be free." The room is full of fear. The rest of the world could very well declare open season on Mediators to try and speed things along. "We at the Nashville Summit will help train anyone who wants to learn to fight hellkin. They are still our enemy, and they won't stop. They know how to make the sun vanish again. Our weapons against them will be knowledge. I will share everything I learned of them in hell, and together, for the first time as a planet, we can work together to make sure our Earth doesn't become their hell."

Behind me, the witches crackle with power. Some of them look terrified; Asher and Colette look relieved and exhausted, as if they've been carrying a weight for a thousand years and are nearly to the finish line.
 

"The shades who sacrificed their lives for this world didn't ask to be born, and neither did we as Mediators. None of us, not even the Summit leaders, know the truth of all this. We've risked our lives for you since we could hold swords. We're asking you to risk yours now, and to let us keep ours and live them out in as much peace as we can find." I look into the camera, knowing that the web of red welts across my body must mark me to everyone watching. "These scars are my souvenir from hell. Trust me when I say you don't want our world to suffer the same fate as that one."

I hand Candy my mic, and I go to stand beside the witches. Candy looks shellshocked, and I don't blame her. She doesn't say anything into the camera. I'm not sure she can right now.

I want to ask Gryfflet how I can help. I'm conscious of the camera, of the eyes watching us in fear. I'm also conscious of the piles of swords in the room, in easy reach of anyone who tries to stop Gryfflet.
 

Sal and Billy Bob are near the stairs, watching with wary eyes.
 

Gryfflet and the witches are all sweating.
 

"How do you break an unbreakable seal?" Mira murmurs.
 

The crackling of energy swirling around the yin yang on the floor is loud, but somehow Asher turns.
 

"You use diamond to cut diamond," says Asher. She pulls the stopper from the vial of blood and upturns it on the seal.
 

For a moment nothing happens.
 

The crackles of energy swoop to the floor and vanish into the seal. Asher and the others jump back.
 

The symbol begins to glow, the black stone like a blacklight and the white that swirls into it like the cold, harsh sun of hell. The mud and grass that people have tracked over it for days vanishes. The juncture between the black and white begins to glow brighter than the stone around it, and a deafening crack sounds through the air.
 

The black and white cracks right down the curved, sinuous line at its middle. Then the entire circle cracks like safety glass and seems to crumble in on itself.
 

A pulse surges through the air of the antechamber as if someone has struck an enormous drum beneath our feet.
 

I lose consciousness.

Waking up is the first surprise.
 

The second is that someone has set up a projector in the antechamber that's showing a live feed of Summits around the world destroying their seals.
 

The third is someone who I feel on my periphery, a presence I never thought I would feel again. The presence comes closer as I regain consciousness, blinking at the people around me who are sitting crosslegged on the floor, watching as the Mediator order crumbles into ash, to be reborn into something new.
 

I struggle to my feet, catching the attention of Evis and Mira, who are sitting next to one another, talking quietly.
 

"We thought we'd let you sleep, after we made sure you weren't dead," Mira says. She takes my hand, and I squeeze it, pulling it to my lips to kiss. "It worked. Gryfflet says it has to be enough by now."

My feet seem better, the cuts healed. Apparently even conking out on the floor in a pile of other passed out people counts as rest.
 

The welts on my body are healing too, and I can tell Colette was right. They're going to scar.
 

Gryfflet and Asher come over with Eve. One of the Mittens trails behind them, carrying Nana's cage. The sight reminds me of Jax, and of Mason, and I don't even try to fight the sting in my eyes.
 

"Diamonds, eh?" Mira says to Asher.

"Something more precious," Asher murmurs, kissing Eve's head. I doubt anyone is going to try and take Eve from Asher. Brave new world, a Mediator who gets to be raised by her mother.