Taken By Storm (15 page)

I pick up the pace again, knowing it'll take Frank a second to make up the gap. "Be ready," I say to Evis and Udo.
 

Around the next corner, the newborn shade has just snapped a man's spine.
 

Evis and Udo flank him immediately, and I run to meet the shade head on. He looks at me, head cocked to the side like a confused puppy.
 

"You don't need to do that," I say to him. The shade snarls in response.
 

The Nashville shades killed a lot, but they dragged their kills back to their nasty-ass den to feast. They didn't leave a trail of twenty-nine bodies through the city without taking a bite.
 

This one looks past me, and a split second later, streaks past me.
 

At Frank.
 

I attack the shade like I would a jeeling, slicing him across the back of his leg. It works; he jerks sideways and goes down.
 

Almost.
 

This shade is fast enough that it looks like I missed the tendon. Frank's sword is out, but he's not fast enough.

Luckily, Udo is. Udo slams the shade from the side, the two of them flying into a parked car. The side window breaks, and I smell fresh blood. Not Udo's.

The alarm goes off, blaring its
wee-oo-wee-oo
through the air as if it's crying for help for us. The feral shade yowls, and throws Udo off him only to be met by Evis, who lands a kick right in the gash on the back of the shade's leg. This time the shade goes down, but before I can get to him, Frank runs past me.
 

His sword lands a glancing blow off the shade's stomach, but it only serves to distract Evis and Udo enough for him to dart away. I sprint after him. He's slower now that he's almost hamstrung, but he's panicking, and his will to live has taken over.
 

I sheathe my short sword even at a run and jerk one of my knives from my ankle. Even left handed, my aim is dead on. It catches the shade between the shoulder blades and drops him.
 

If he were uninjured, I doubt it would stop him, but he falls to his knees.
 

Sprinting to catch him before he can get up again, I hear sirens in the distance. Ambulances, probably. All too late.
 

The shade throws out an arm against me, but I kick it out of the way and jab my saber at him, aiming for another maiming wound until I can get a clear swipe at his neck. I nick his bicep and shoulder, but he throws himself out of the way.
 

I hear arguing behind me. I ignore it.

The shade aims a kick at me, and I dance back. My knife is still lodged between his shoulders. I leap forward with a front kick and hit him in the sternum. He falls backward onto the street, landing right on the hilt of the knife. He squawks in pain, and for a moment I can't help but pity him.
 

There's a chance these shades could learn like my friends did. But nothing in him reads as human. I make it quick, taking his head off with one firm swipe.

Retrieving my knife, I look up as Evis trots up to me.
 

"That Mediator's mad," he says.
 

Shit.

I pull out the bandana I stuffed in my belt before we left — in case I needed to hide my hair again — and I use it to clean my blades as we walk back.
 

"Frank," I holler.
 

The arguing voices stop, and Frank's and Udo's faces turn toward me.

"You got a problem with my friend Udo here?"
 

Frank backs away a step when I reach them. "Look, I don't know where you're from or how you got here, but you're not any Mediator-type that I know."

I stop advancing and carefully polish one last bit of blood away from my saber, returning it to its sheathe.
 

I motion to the dead shade up the street. "We're on your side. Maybe that's all you need to know. And I am a Mediator."

"Yeah, and I'm a jeeling." Frank spits again, and this time I think it is aimed at me, because it almost hits my boot. "You ran up that whole street without getting winded. There's no way I could have taken on that thing, and even the three of you had trouble with it. You're not a Mediator."

I take a quick calculation of the risks and decide to gamble. "I was. I'm a bit on the outs with the Summit, but let's just say I still agree with the basic mission statement."

"Which is?"

"Demons need to die."

He points to the dead shade. "That's a demon."

"That's a half demon. There's usually a difference."

Frank Chickaman isn't stupid. He looks at me, then looks at Udo and Evis, who are standing on either side of me and one step back like they're my bodyguards or something.
 

"Usually a difference," he repeats.

"Until a few weeks ago, there was. Now it looks like someone went and changed the rules again."

"You can say that again." Frank may be agreeing with me, but his eyes are darting back and forth like he's gotten a pinball stuck between two bouncers and is seeing how long before gravity wins.
 

"None of us are going to hurt you, Frank," I say. "And we're not going to leave a trail of dead norms, either."

"You have a southern accent," he says suddenly. "It's faint, but it's there."

I stop talking. Evis and Udo go very still behind me. I can almost feel them stop moving.

"Not possible." Frank takes another step backward. "You can't be a Mediator."

"I wasn't lying to you. I was born, taken away from my mother, and raised at the compound, just like you were."

"But not Sammamish." He's totally wild-eyed now, and I can hear the sirens getting closer. Fuck.

"Not Sammamish," I say as gently as I can. "Murfreesboro. In Tennessee."

"Not possible." He says it as if saying it again will make me vanish in a puff of smoke.

"Look, Frank." I hold up my hands, palm up. "I don't have time to go into all this. Tell the Summit here that Gregor Gaskin is in town. He was the deputy leader of the Nashville Summit. I tracked him here because he killed a whole fuckton of people, including some very close friends of mine. Tell them he is incredibly dangerous, and tell them that Alamea Virgili in Nashville can provide you with a photograph of him."

Frank starts to nod, then stops and stares at me. "Two of you."

Impatient, I gesture to the bodies around me. "He's behind this. Make sure they know."

"Two of you from Nashville ended up in Seattle. If I were to go inland as far as Coeur d'Alene, I'd be comatose within minutes."

"I know."

Frank's eyes almost bulge out of his head. "Then how in the name of all the gods are you here?"

"I can't tell you that. When all this is over, I'll make sure it gets out. But until then we have bigger problems."

I don't know what's going through the man's head. He looks at me as if I've lit a terrifying hope in him, and I probably have. I remember how I felt when we found out Gregor was here.
 

A few breaths later, Frank turns on his heel and runs.

"Fuck," I say.
 

"Should we chase him?" Evis steps up beside me and leans against my shoulder.
 

"I don't think so." From this short glimpse of Frank Chickaman, my first impression is that he's a by-the-books sort of guy. I'd put money on it that he's running to the Summit right now. Hopefully he'll tell them what I said, but I'm almost certain he'll tell someone about me not being from here.
 

I only hope they don't believe him.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Udo leaves us at the car, but he does remember to fill us in on some of what I asked earlier.

"Mavis is my Mediator friend," he says. "She said that the Summit here are taking these new shades seriously, and she was willing to listen to me because I can talk and they can't."

Something sinks in my stomach at Udo's words, and I realize it's because until now, I've held onto a dim hope that maybe these new shades could be saved. I think Evis feels it too. He comes closer to me and stands with his shoulder touching mine.
 

"So the Summit here has managed to get their heads out of their asses." It's a start.

"No," says Udo.
 

I blink.

"Mavis thinks the Summit leader is in danger. But she wouldn't say why."

"That's not good." I lean up against my car. "Let us know if you find anything else out that might be helpful. Are the Mediators here tracking the hosts?"

Udo nods. "Mavis said she'd tell me if she gets any information. She said I can smell better than they can."

"She's right about that," I say. As Udo walks away, I fight a nervous tic in my eyelid. I just hope this Mavis the Mediator doesn't decide to turn Udo over to her Summit as soon as she thinks he's outlived his usefulness.
 

Evis and I make our way back to the motel, and I order fish and chips from the motel restaurant — which is open until two in the morning, thankfully — and bring it back to the room.
 

"Your dinner smells like the ocean," says Evis.
 

I ignore him and dump more vinegar on my fries. Our room's going to reek, but I don't care.

I've kept Evis's meat stocked up with ice from the machine around the corner, and he joins me to eat, but neither of us seem to feel like talking much. He turns on the television and finds an old Jean Claude van Damme movie. I give him an approving nod, and we settle in to watch van Damme kick his way through a few platoons of enemies before the movie ends and is immediately replaced by Rambo.

"I want to learn to fight like that." Evis's eyes are glued to the screen.

"With guns?" Rambo's currently unloading a submachine gun into the bad guys.

"He's so sure he's going to win."

I look at my brother. "So far you always seem to win."

"But I'm scared all the time." Evis tears his eyes away from the screen to meet my gaze. "You're never scared. And you always win. You fight like him."

"Evis," I say gently. "I'm always scared."

The front door of our motel room explodes.

My half-eaten fish and chips flies out of my lap and lands on the floor, vinegar seeping into the carpet. There's a motherfucking jeeling in my doorway.

It's only because it's a solid four feet taller than the doorjamb and seemingly hasn't figured out how in the hells to bend down that I'm able to get to my sword in time. Around the jeeling's glowing pink legs swarm a phalanx of harkasts, short and stumpy. They jostle each other to get into the room between the jeeling's knees, bubbling over the threshold like a pot boiling over.

My sword is at the foot of my bed, and I roll to it, using the carved bedpost to swing myself around at the first harkast. I kick it away from me and grab the hilt of my blade, whipping the scabbard off the saber instead of the other way around. It clocks another harkast in the face. The next one I stab through the head. Evis has already dismantled two of them, and the sound of gunfire from the television fills the room.

It's then I understand why the jeeling hasn't moved. The motel room is filling fast with demons, and that door is our only way out.

Harkasts are small and shaped like turds, but they're sturdy little fuckers and if you get hit by enough of them, they'll swarm you. Four of them fall on Evis as I jerk my blade out of one blocky head.
 

If Gregor were a demon, he'd be a shit-stain harkast.
 

There are at least twenty of them in the room already, crawling over one another to get to me, filling the space on the floor. I hop up onto the bed and stab downward, aiming at their stubby heads.
 

"Evis, get on the bed!"
 

He leaps backward, flipping over in a reverse somersault on the mattress. The harkasts can't really climb, so they grasp at the edge of the comforter, trying to yank it out from under him.
 

I stab three harkasts at the foot of my bed in quick succession. There's a roar in the distance, and screaming. These harkasts aren't the only things coming at me, and if we don't take care of them before the roaring hellkin arrive, Evis and I are pulp.

I've cleared a space at the foot of my bed, and I use the tip of my saber to hook my short sword's scabbard up to the bed. I yank it free and grab it by the blade.
 

"Take this," I tell Evis. "You can kill them faster if you just stab down from the bed."

He grabs the sword, and though I know it's foreign to him, he holds it like I'm holding my saber and stabs two harkasts quick. They're still pouring through the door. On one hand, this way they only have one entry point. On the other, we have no exit point.

I work my way around the edge of my bed — some of the demons have wedged themselves between the wall and my bed on the far side, and I kill them in order. It's like playing a really macabre game of whack-a-mole. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Evis imitating me. The bodies pile up around us, and they stink. I never realized how much these things reek until now. I guess I'm used to killing them out in the open.