Storm in a Teacup (40 page)

Ben stares at me. I don't give him time to respond.

"The night I saved Devon? I was fighting in the dark and about to get seriously pulped. And one of the shades yanked me out of there, away from the building before it exploded." I'm shouting now, and I know the Mediators can hear me, because they're standing like they've been turned to stone. "If our basic tenet is not to kill the innocent, we've failed it. They can choose, just like we can."

A flying head interrupts my speech.

It lands in the crater. Its indigo eyes blink once.
 

Shades materialize around me in a circle, all of their collective gaze fixed on the head.
 

Mason takes my free hand. "We should —"

I don't get a chance to find out what we should do. Ben's sword flicks out of its scabbard and plunges it into the shade behind him. He jerks it out and swings it in a wide arc. A second shade's head hits the ground.

My ribcage contracts.

"Ayala, run!" Ben screams it at me.
 

Oh, fuck no.

The pounding of feet reaches my ears.
 

The Mediators are running toward us.

In one instant, my mind takes a picture. Every shade's head swivels toward the rush of swords aimed their way.

Behind the assault of Mediators, one hangs back. Mira. She steps backward, shaking her head. Her sword disappears back into its sheath.
 

I hear the first screams.

The Mediator who held the blade at my throat loses an arm. It sails through the air and lands at my feet, the fingers clenching reflexively as the impact triggers the tendons.

Mason throws his back up against mine. I feel his defensive stance, the plant of his feet in the churned grass.

I don't know what to do.

I can't kill Mediators.

I can't.

But I also can't kill shades.

It's almost full dark now, but with a gibbous moon shining down, the naked, whirling forms of the shades stand out in stark contrast. Pale white skin, light brown, dark chocolate — all moving through the field like deadly cyclones.

Except not deadly.

The shades aren't killing the Mediators. Hurting, yes. Maiming, yes. Not killing.

The tumult will reach me in seconds. My feet won't budge from the ground.
 

A Mediator's sword swings and takes a shade's head with it. The shades aren't on the offensive; they're only defending. But not for long if their numbers keep getting killed.

"Stop." The word leaves my lips, helpless like I'm watching a volcano erupt.

No one hears me.

Blood sprays my face, and I jerk back into Mason's solid form. I don't know who the blood belongs to. It doesn't matter. I pull my sword from the ground, waiting for someone to come hurtling at me.

The fight ebbs and eddies around Mason and me. It's like no one wants to engage us, and I can't figure out why.

Bright light shines through a clod of dirt at my feet.

The talisman.
 

"Mason," I reach back with my free hand and grab his arm. "The disc is glowing."

A screeching shriek of pain rends the sounds of the battle. My head swivels to the right, seeking out the source.

A slummoth has Saturn by the shoulder.
 

We're surrounded.
 

Miller's Field is a sea of demons with a battle raging at its center.

"Demons!" I scream the word as loud as I can. My voice booms from my lungs, and I burst into a sprint toward Saturn.

Two rakath leap in front of me. I drop to one knee and roll to the side, coming up behind the first. My sword flicks out, right through its eye. I kick the head of the rakath off my sword and use its back as a springboard, launching myself at the slummoth.

The slummoth's claws dig into Saturn's neck, dangling him a foot off the ground. My sword comes down on the slummoth's elbow, severing it in a slop of green blood and slime. The blade isn't as keen as I keep my weapons. It leaves a ragged edge, but it does the job. Saturn falls to the grass. He clutches at the deep claw wounds in his neck, but his eyes meet mine in shock.

A pinkish glow fills the field with a hazy light. It illuminates bodies and darkness-blackened blood in pools and spurts across the ground.

Mediators fight shades, somehow still oblivious to the demons around them. Even if they all changed targets now, we'd be outnumbered.

There's no sign of Alice. Last time they encircled Lena, brought her through her horrendous birth in a pulse of stomping feet and primal ritual.

I clasp Saturn's arm and help him to his feet.
 

"Where is Mason?" he asks.

I spin, eyes scanning through the horde of people and demons. "I don't know."

Then I see him. He's on the ground, hands up, a pleading look on his face.

And Alamea raises her sword.

No. This can't happen. Beyond Mason, three rakaths pull a shade apart by the arms.
 

I can't worry about that now. My feet propel me forward, and then they leave the ground entirely. Arms encircle my waist. Saturn.
 

"I'm faster," is all he says as he puts me down. Then he's gone, into a symphony of screams.

"Alamea! Don't you dare kill him!" I hold my sword point low.
 

"He's a monster, Storme. You won't stop me."

"Are you fucking blind? Look around you! We're all surrounded by a shitstorm of demons. And they're not attacking Mediators. They're killing shades. Maybe you should ask why you're helping them."

It works. She hesitates, looking around. Mason's face is grim like a funeral dirge, watching his friends die. He doesn't make a move to defend himself.

I step closer to Alamea. I'm only three feet away now. "If you don't stop fighting shades and start doing what you're meant to do and killing some gods-damned demons, none of us are making it off this field."

Something hardens in her eyes, turning them to agates. "Then we will die doing what is right."

Her arm swings downward.

I fling myself at Mason and land on top of him. Something bites into my shoulder like ice and fire.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Blood, hot and sticky, runs down my arm.
 

I'm not wearing my leathers. Nothing but flimsy, pointless cotton.
 

Alamea's almost chopped my left arm off.
 

In those first few moments after her sword bites into the flesh of my deltoid, my nerves don't register the pain. Or anything else. I stare at the blood that wells in the deep cut, then raise my eyes to meet Alamea's.

White shows all around her pupils.

Goody for me; I've surprised her.

If she had any shittier reflexes, my arm would be in my lap right about now.

Claws close around Alamea's throat.
 

Another slummoth. It lifts her off the ground, and her eyes bulge, muscles in her neck straining and cording.

Just as suddenly, it drops her. A shower of green blood splatters me, Mason, the ground around us. It melds with the red cascading down my arm like a sick holiday parody.

Mira.

She wipes her arm across her face, leaving a smear of anti-freeze green like a rainbow over her cheek and forehead. She's joined the fight after all.

Mira reaches down and yanks Alamea to her feet. Alamea stands a full six inches taller than her, but just now Mira somehow dominates the pair. "No more of this. You're wrong to kill the shades. Your fucking useless pride is about to get a hundred people killed, if it hasn't already."

Mason helps me up, touching my bleeding arm lightly. His fingers come away bright red.

Alamea looks around us.
 

I don't need to look. I hear the sounds of ripping, bleeding, dying.

She says nothing. Instead, she wipes my blood from her sword onto her pant leg and sprints away.
 

"You need to get out of here," Mira says. "You're bleeding bad."

I shake my head. Then I shake it again.
 

Something is wrong. Wrong-er than a bunch of demons slaughtering shades and Mediators.

The sounds have stopped. The cracking, screaming, ripping.
 

"What's going on?"

The demons have encircled the survivors. Which means me. And Mason. And Mira.

It's too dark to see anyone else.
 

I can sense the demons like they've piled stones on my chest. It's like it was before with Lena.

Their low-throated roar starts as a buzz and grows to a rumble that vibrates every breath I draw.

"What's happening?" Mira whispers.

"I don't know." I can't say. There's no sign of Alice still, but this first stage of the ritual looks the same, except we're the bullseye in this target.

The demons have closed ranks. There are so many of them. Only the pink hellish glow of the jeelings lights the circle inside. My arm throbs. I stab my sword into the ground and press my right hand over the wound. I should have thought of it earlier. The pressure makes my teeth grind together.

"Here." Mira rips the bottom two inches from her shirt and ties it around my wound, just below my armpit.

The fabric chafes, and the blood soaks through instantly, but it's something.

Mason is still silent, surveying the circle around us.

My eyes adjust enough to pick out familiar faces. Ripper and Ben are there. Ben. He started this shitshow when he chopped off that shade's head. Actually when he lured Mason into getting captured.
 

And he's still alive. I guess I'm glad.

I can't see Gregor anywhere, and my gaze drops to the bodies littering the field. Is he one of them? Alamea is twenty feet away, dripping blood, one foot on top of a jeeling just beginning to lose its glow. She meets my gaze and nods.

That's probably the closest thing to an apology I'll ever get from her.

I turn to Mason. "Do you know what's happening?"

"The demons want to take us out."

"By us you mean the shades."

He nods, and Mira turns her head to listen.
 

"Why would they do that?" She scoffs. "They created you."

"They got something they weren't expecting out of it."

I know what he means. I give Mason a wry smile. To Mira, I try to explain. "The demons wanted to create a new species that would serve their purposes, but be able to walk in the sunlight. Shades have free will. And as you can see, they can make their own choices. I'm thinking that didn't sit too well with the kings of the hells."

"And all of us?" Mira gestures to the Mediators. Now that I look again, I see Ben limping toward Alamea. He shakes off Ripper's arm, and I turn back to Mira.

"Collateral damage," Mason murmurs.

"Excuse me?" I think Mira finds that insulting. Mediators are the first and last line of defense against all six and a half hells. To think that we're just in the way — I find it a little ruffling too.

I shrug at her. "Doesn't really matter why we're here, Mira. We're all fucked right now, so we might as well concentrate on not watering the grass with our blood any more than we already are." I wince at my shoulder.
 

Thrum.

The ground beneath my feet vibrates.

"What the fuck is that?" Mira draws her sword.
 

I nod at the circle of demons around us. "Watch."

They lift their feet and stomp again.

Thrum.

This. This is what Lena would have seen, but closer.

That's when I see it.
 

The circle of demons parts.

Hazel Lottie. Her face is set. Any trace of frailness has deserted her, and her hands are holding something with a grip like the jaws of a T-rex.

She drags a stumbling Alice into the ring.