Authors: Emmie Mears

Taken By Storm (37 page)

He opens his eyes again. His cheeks will bear those scars for a long time, maybe forever. "Gregor said you'd never loved me."

"Gregor was a walking piece of donkey shit, and you know it."

That earns me another smile, but I think smiling pulls at Mason's scars, so he stops. "It wasn't, you know."

"What wasn't what?"

"Your angry words. They weren't the last words I heard you say." He swallows again, looking up at me. A glimmer of tears hovers in his eyes. "I heard you talking to Mira."

Shit. I was pretty sure he could hear me, but the confirmation doesn't feel great.

"I want you to know that I'm okay. And that you were right. She stayed when I didn't. You deserve someone who will fight by your side, not someone so selfish he thinks a vacation is more important than being there for the person they love."

Tears fill my eyes now, spilling over before I can blink them back. "I'm sorry, Mason."

"You never need to apologize to me. I'm the one who owes you an apology. You needed me, and I deserted you. You were right. That's not love. You loved me the way a person should, but I didn't love you back the way you deserved. I was hoping I'd get another chance to try, but I think it's better this way."

My heart can't take much more of this. Because he's right. We're both right. Whatever chance we had is gone. You can't press rewind on emotions.

"If you let me, I'd like to prove to you that I can be a friend. A real one. Like Carrick and Jax have been for you. And Saturn." I see pain in Mason's face when he mentions Saturn, who had been his best friend besides me. I wasn't the only person Mason deserted when he left.

I nod slowly, still stroking Mason's hair.

"I'd like that. And we could use your help."

I tell him what he missed when he was unconscious, and as I talk about the other shades, the sense of them grows stronger. Mason looks at me, incredulous, as if processing what he's feeling.

"I can feel you," he says. "That's
you
I feel. Like a cold wind, but good. Powerful."

It terrifies me that he says that. And even more when he senses my terror.

"What's wrong?"

"This thing. This connection. I don't know who or what I am anymore." This whole time I've been wrestling with it. Mediator, shade, human, person. I don't know where I fit in this world, though really that's secondary to having a world to fit into at all.

"Ayala," says Mason. "If there's one thing I know about you, it's that your last name is more than a convenient source of puns."

He looks at me, then raises his right hand to gesture around at the cabin. Or maybe he means more than the cabin. He winces with the movement, but his gaze is steady.

"Gregor kept saying that a storm is coming, and I think he thought it was a funny joke. He'd talk about it while he was cutting me. Laugh about it."

"He always had a shit sense of humor."

"Listen to me, Ayala. Whatever he was talking about? It'll happen. It will. I know it, and you know it, and all of us know it. But what he didn't take into account was you." Mason looks at me. "You are the oncoming storm."

His words ring through me for the rest of the day.

Again the cabin is full to bursting with people. Again my living room is full of naked butts.

But then, what else is new?

I'm not ready. I don't think I'll ever be ready. People buzz around me like I'm the queen bee in a hive, and after last night, I sort of am.

I never wanted to be the queen of anything. It sounds stupid to even think. I need Mira to order up a Terminator marathon and more pizza than we can possibly eat, but with martial law enacted nationwide as of today, ain't no pizza places still serving unless we make it ourselves, and I'm not the best cook.

Gryfflet insists that he's getting close on his spell, that soon he'll be able to pinpoint the source of the imbalance so we can target it. I hope he's right more than believe it, but right now if he found an ice cream truck and told me that driving it into a hells-hole would stop the end of the world, I'd probably try it.

Gregor's gone, but he kicked the bowling ball down the hill, and it's only started scattering pins just now. It's got a long way to go. We've all got a long way to go before we can rest.

I find Mira in our room, watching Die Hard on her laptop. She pats the bed beside her, and I climb up with her. I sit close enough to feel the heat of her body, but not close enough to touch.

"That's you," she says, pointing at Bruce Willis. "Yippee ki-yay, motherfucker."

"I'm flattered. Bruce is a badass."

She turns to look at me, the fight scene reflected in her eyes. "You're a badass."

"Yeah, well, takes one to know one."

That earns me a grin, and I can't help but return it even if it's wobbly on my lips.

You are the oncoming storm
, I hear Mason say again. I nestle down into the pillows, moving close enough now that my shoulder brushes Mira's. She doesn't move away.

I don't know if he's right.

I feel change coming like an old Appalachian coot watching the weather with her bones.

If there will be a world to stand on at the end of this, I don't know. What it will look like is another question entirely. I can feel the shades out in the living room. It looks like Jax and Evis are teaching the newbies to play Call of Duty.

They still don't have names.

About the other 2.0 version shades in other cities, I don't know if they can be saved. Who's to say why these two flipped to me exactly? I can feel their trust even against the tempest that is their minds, but others might not cave to me. And even if they did, the other Summits are going to beat me to most of them since I can't leave here now.

The first waves have hit shore, and what we saw last night was barely a skirmish compared to what's coming.

I have to be here when it hits.

I don't know if Mason's right, that I am the oncoming storm.

But whatever comes, I will be at its center.

I will be there to look it right in the eye.

About the Author

Emmie Mears is an author, actor, and person of fannish pursuits. She knows enough Polish to impress locals with tongue twisters and enough German to tell you her anteater is sick. She's lived in Scotland, Poland, and currently makes her writing cave in Frederick, Maryland. Emmie is open to bribery in the form of sushi and bubble tea.

She may or may not secretly be a car.

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