Storm in a Teacup (41 page)

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Alice.

I take an involuntary step toward her.

She's clothed only in yoga pants and a sports bra, and her torso is slicked with sweat that glimmers pink.
 

If I didn't know any better, I'd think she just left a Bikram class.

With Lena, the sky was beginning to lighten. With Lena, her body bulged and writhed. With Lena, I knew she had chosen where she was.

Not Alice. Her stomach has no lumps, just smooth flesh and a concave belly. Her ribs show through her skin.

A chill goes through me.

This isn't a birth.

I remember what Saturn said. Magic. Already-fertilized demon eggs. Host. Presto, one make-a-shade.

I'll eat an entire jeeling if I let that happen.

Is this what my mother did? Did Hazel drag her into a ring of hellkin to be impregnated with their spawn? Demons lay eggs like reptiles.
 

They've figured out a way to hatch them inside a human host.

My mother's dead by now. But Alice isn't.

Hazel drags Alice further into the circle and drops her in a heap. Hazel hasn't seen me, and I move to the side, behind Mason's shoulder. If she doesn't know I'm here, maybe I can surprise her.

She raises her arms over Alice's huddled body. I can't hear her words, but I hear the buzzing hum of her chanting. Chanting. Hazel is a witch, and I had no idea. Most witches aren't dumb enough to work with demons, and Hazel isn't dumb at all. I don't know her reasoning, and I don't want to.

There's a commotion in the demon ranks. Instead of continuing their shifting stomps and roars, the energy dies to a low murmur. Hazel's voice rises to a deep timbre, resonant like the crashing of a waterfall.
 

The disquiet among the demons settles into silence.

Ben shambles toward Alice.

Hazel doesn't look up. She gives no indication that she's seen Ben as he edges closer and closer to Alice.

Alice's body contorts with the rhythm of Hazel's chanting. Her blonde hair is far from its normal teased order. As she writhes on the ground, it is peppered with grass and dirt.
 

I look back to Ben just in time to see him fly backward as if he's been hit with a wrecking ball.

Hazel never looks up from Alice.
 

The hellkin resume their movement. The stomping shakes the ground, and Alice screams.

No one is touching her, but her body snaps like a tent flap in the wind with each contortion of pain.

I have to do something.

Mason stands in front of me. His warmth is suffocating in the humid night, but I cling to it. I have to be able to distract Hazel enough to get Alice away. I have to stop her. I owe it to Alice to try.

Hazel lets out a loud cry, and Alice's body contracts into a ball. Then her limbs fling outward until she lies spread-eagled on the ground in front of Hazel.
 

Dirt turns to mud on her bared torso.

I shuffle to the left, circling wide. Mason follows a step at a time. Whether Mira comes, I can't tell. My focus is on Alice and the witch who's about to sign her death warrant.

I'm fifteen feet from her when Hazel pauses. Her head cocks to the side, and she turns.

"Ayala Storme." Her smile rots my insides like gangrene. "I was wondering if you'd be here for this. I heard your own people were about to skin you alive."

Good. Everyone knows. That's me. Demon-hunter-pariah-woman.
 

"You're not going to do this to Alice." There. When in doubt, ignore the goading.

"Like you care. Lawdy, you've never paid any attention to her before. Why start now? She'll mother a better race." Hazel's tone might have changed, but her voice is still that of a southern granny. Her eyes narrow at Mason. "Better than that."

I'm not going to find out what she means. I leap for her.

And land flat on my back. Another gush of blood flows from my shoulder with the impact. My sword is two feet away, and I snatch it up.
Please, Mason
.
Know what to do
. I roll onto my right side.

"Throw me around as much as you want, Hazel. I'm not going to let you turn Alice into a human incubator."

Hazel chuckles. "Honey, she was born one of those when she popped out of her mama without a dongle between her legs."

"Bullshit." I pull myself to my knees and then to standing position. "I won't let you do this to her."

"Oh, she agreed. She consented to this." The old woman pulls a tattered bit of folded paper from her shirt and waves it at me. I can't make out any of the writing, only that it's a dull black color.
 

It doesn't take a particularly quick person to know it's blood.

"She signed this right and proper. It's magically binding. You should know that."

How should I know that? I'm not a witch. If I'm not dead in the morning, I'll start learning more about witches.

Alice's mouth moves where she lies on the ground. At first I hear nothing, then a loud, hoarse whisper. "Lena. Thought I could find Lena. She was my friend."

Alice's words bury themselves deep in my soul. Her friend. Maybe Alice's only friend.

What was my mother's reason?

I inch closer to Hazel as she looks down to replace the folded paper in her shirt. I have to keep her distracted. Anything to delay this ritual. The demons seem not to notice what's going on inside their circle. Maybe they're not concerned with Hazel's follow-through. After all, she's done it eighty-two times before.

Eighty-two.

Alice isn't going to be number eighty-three.

"I've figured out what I done wrong before, honey. I won't make that mistake again. This one will be different." Hazel bends and caresses Alice's cheek. Alice flinches away, lips pursed. She lets loose a howl, and spit flies from her lips.

Poor Alice. So fascinated with the reports Gregor would send.
 

Here she's become one.

I edge three feet closer, regaining my place from before Hazel sent me flying.

"No closer." Hazel's voice cracks through the air.
 

I stop.

There's nothing around me that can help me. I have one sword. I catch Mason's eye, but his face is so impassive I don't know what to expect from him. Ben's unconscious thirty feet on the opposite side of Hazel and Alice, and Alamea is somewhere in between to my right.

I can't risk Hazel being right, bringing truly evil shades into the world. The ground is splattered with dark puddles of blood, black in the pink jeeling glow. A Mediator's body lies to my left, only a couple feet away. I take a chance and shuffle in that direction.

Hazel doesn't notice. Her eyes are back trained on Alice, and she beings chanting again.

Alice's body stretches, taut like she's been strapped to a rack.

I kneel by the corpse, pretending to put pressure on my shoulder. With my left hand, I grapple at the knife sheath that hangs on its — her — belt. My arm protests with every small movement of my fingers, but I keep my uninjured hand pressed down on my wound until I free the small dagger.

On both knees, I shift my right hand down to the ground and switch the knife into it.

I've never been a perfect shot with a knife.

I have to try.

I clench the hilt in my hand, then relax.

And throw the knife at her back.

My first thought is that I've killed her.
 

Hazel drops to the ground, her body still. I've never killed a norm. Even a really, really shitty one who tries to destroy humanity.

The knife protrudes from her left shoulder, mirroring my own wound.
 

It would. I always throw to the left.

Her body jerks so violently that I fall backward onto my ass.
 

Hazel's left arm twists back behind her, impossibly far, and plucks the dagger from her own shoulder blade. She rolls to one side in the dirt and hikes her weight up onto all fours.
 

Her head turns to look at me, and her eyes burn like embers.

She rushes me without standing, hands and feet clawing the ground.

Now, Mason!
 

Hazel knocks me onto my back. Her hand digs into my sliced shoulder, and I scream.

The strength of the woman shocks me. I can't get her off me. I feel blood pouring from my arm. A kick to her groin does nothing. Her arm presses down on my neck, cutting off my air.

I draw my right arm back and punch her in the ear. Hazel's head snaps to the side, and she yells. Her grip on my neck loosens for an instant.

I shove her off me with both hands and holler right along with her at the pain that shoots through my arm. My hand searches the ground for the hilt of my borrowed sword. Fingers touch metal.

It's mine. It's here.
 

Rolling to the side, I lurch to my feet. Hazel spits at me.
 

"You're hurt. You can't beat me."

I can't see Alice. Mason must have gotten her. I give Hazel a small smile and sigh, shifting my weight onto my left foot, allowing my right hand to dangle at my side.

Hazel jumps at me.

I spin the sword up and across.

It severs her head from her body.

Hazel Lottie's face lands in the dirt.

I fall to my knees next to her.

I've killed a norm. I've violated the first tenet of the Mediators.
 

Fuck my life.

Hazel's earlobe was sliced off with the blade of the sword, and a drop of blood falls from the raw flesh to the dirt.

My own intact ears turn the surrounding noise to a hushed buzz.

"Ayala!"

I should respond. That's my name. I haven't forgotten it; I just don't want to be connected with it. Almost every remaining Mediator in Nashville just witnessed me hacking up an old lady. It doesn't matter what she was about to do.

She was a person.

And I killed her.

"Ayala." Hands grip my shoulders and pull me backward. Even the pain of the still-bleeding gash doesn't touch me. Mason. I can't look at him.

I killed her.

"Ayala."

This voice makes my head turn, forces me to look into the blue eyes. Not Mediator violet. Not shade indigo. Blue like cornflowers in a sunlit field.

Alice.

"Ayala, thank you." Her dirt-crusted hand touches my face, clutches the side of my neck. There's no lipstick on her teeth now. She collapses against me, sobbing.

The sounds of fighting intrude over Alice's sobbing. A loud boom shakes the air. Grenades. They've gotten out the grenades again.

The sky has lightened to a dull blue, like cadet blue, that boring crayon I never wanted to use as a child.

Except when drawing slummoth demons. It's almost the right shade for their slime.

When did morning get here?

I wrap both arms around Alice's dirt-caked body, ignoring the spasms of my shoulder.
 

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

I wake in the hospital.

I've never been in a hospital before. Never in my life.

The only thing that keeps me from leaping out of the bed is the warmth of the hand holding mine.

Mason's. He's here with me.
 

I'm alive. He's alive. A bunch of people seem to share that designation, because the tiny room is overflowing with them. Saturn, dressed awkwardly in what is obviously Mason's clothing. Mira I rather expected. Devon I didn't. He's out of traction and in a wheelchair, his arm still bearing a lot more bandaging than mine.
 

And Alamea is here, with Ben and Ripper behind her and to the side like. Behind them I see a cabbage-y face, and I scowl. No Gregor. Maybe he didn't make it.

Too many people.

My heart monitor speeds up, and I scoot back against the pillows of my bed. Tubes. There are fucking tubes in my nose. I swat at them with my free hand, which happens to be the left one. It causes a pulsing pain in my shoulder, but I ignore it.

I toss the tubes over the edge of the bed and squeeze Mason's hand once before tugging my fingers from his grip and smooth the sweat from my palm on the nubbly hospital blanket.

"You're awake." Alamea isn't usually one for stating the obvious, but I guess for me she can make an exception.