Taken By Storm (19 page)

It's three against one now, and I can't figure out why this behemoth of a shade isn't attacking.

He may have disarmed me, but I'm not helpless. Darting in, I land a kick in his shin. He takes a swing at me, moving faster than anyone that size should move. He's fast, but I'm smaller and faster, even if the latter isn't by much.
 

The side door I lit is now smoking from the inside, and the floorboards behind me smolder with a thick blue-black smoke rising to fill the room. Another advantage to me, because I'm down lower than this guy.

We circle each other. Though I know Evis and Udo are back there, neither of them make a move to help.

It's then I realize the cold in my mind is gone. I dodge another punch and snap out my fist, hitting him directly where his fist hit mine. On a norm, a hit like that would have broken bones easily. On him, he barely reacts.

His movement gives me almost no warning. The alpha shade's fist flicks out, and I leap out of the way only a millisecond too late. The full force of his punch misses me, but even the glancing blow against my chest makes my heart stutter and my lungs seize. My blades are out of reach on the other side of him.
 

I remember the alpha in Hopkinsville, how he treated me. How he learned my movements and left. He was studying me.

Like this shade is doing now.
 

He knows he's stronger, and he knows I'm faster. If he tires me out, he wins. He may have gotten my swords away from me, but he sure didn't get my bestie Lucy.
 

I go very still.
 

Heartbeats thump by, with the two of us just staring at each other. I wait, counting out breaths, my arms in a simple tai chi formation even though my feet are out of whack for the pose. Right hand with no flamethrower to point, fist. Left hand open, palm down.

This time I see the twitch in his left leg. He lunges right, and I aim myself right at him, hitting the valve on Lucy's tube and sending a rainbow of fire right at the alpha shade's head. His hair catches and goes up with a
woof
, and I take that moment to dart around him and grab the hilt of my saber, rolling out of the way and hitting him in the back with the flamethrower. The alpha makes no sound, but I can see the flesh burning on his back, melting away to show raw muscle beneath it. I jam my saber up the left side of his spine, into the base of his neck. He spasms, and his massive weight convulses. I almost lose my grip on the hilt of the saber.
 

I jerk it back out and stab him where his kidney should be. The alpha goes down, hitting the smoldering floor hard enough to crack the board. Evis and Udo are frozen, their faces blank.
 

"You two! Get out of here!"
 

It's as if my voice slaps them awake. They each make eye contact with me, and then look at the burning building we're in.
 

"Go!" I yell it at them, and they obey, running out of the building.
 

I face the alpha, blade at the ready. He's rolled over on his side, looking at me. Half his hair has burnt off, and blood dribbles from his mouth.
 

There's a strange look in his eyes I can't place.
 

"You," he says, then smacks himself in the chest, right over his heart.
 

Speechless, I tighten my grip on my sword, ready to unleash Lucy on him again, but he doesn't get up. He points to me, then to himself. There's that look again, and a smile that is shockingly sweet.

"Greg-or say is hell oh." The alpha's throat convulses once, and I can't take it. I take a step forward and raise my sword above my head.
 

Through the swirling smoke and over the sharp tang of blood, when the alpha says his name, I can smell Gregor's stupid cologne.

The shade's eyes close as the blade comes down.
 

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

"I couldn't move," Evis says. His voice is hoarse from standing there inhaling smoke, and it makes him sound even more miserable than he is, which is saying something.

"It's okay, brother," I tell him. He doesn't seem to believe me.

Both he and Udo have been guilt-stricken since I left the outbuilding. No sirens, no fire trucks, nothing came to greet us. Only the ghost of a city where the people are actually listening to the lockdown orders. I guess the threat of being twisted around like Gumby and thrown in the middle of the street is enough of an incentive to follow directions even with the tantalizing option of looting the abandoned stores. Guess stolen electronics are only fun if you're alive to to use them.

I make Udo call Mavis to give him some sort of distraction from his guilt, and he does so gratefully. If the Summit can keep a lid on the hosts as they pop up, they might actually be able to keep ahead of things.

For once lately, I actually feel like I've made a difference.
 

So why do I feel so gods damned shitty?

The alpha's final gesture is stuck in my craw like a popcorn kernel. He pointed to me, then to himself. He wasn't trying to get me to kill him; he knew I was going to do that anyway. He didn't even try to go after Evis and Udo.

It strikes me all at once what he meant.

Pointing to me, then pointing to himself. He was acknowledging me…as an equal.
 

Evis is staring out into space and Udo is still on the phone with Mavis, but I can't hear what he's saying over the rushing in my ears.

When Gregor was revealed to be the putrid little corpuscle that he is, the shades turned to me. It's with perfect clarity I can see them on my Nashville balcony, all of them smushed between the railings after climbing up seven stories to my apartment to help me move when no mover in the city would come near me. They protect me, work with me, listen to me.

And that shade saw it.

He saw me as their alpha.

Holy motherfucking hells.

Suddenly the behavior of the Hopkinsville shade clicks into place. He wasn't ready to challenge me for dominance. He was scoping out the competition.

I turn my back to Udo and Evis, turning to face the Sound and its waves past the wharf.
 

I don't want to think about the alpha speaking, but I have to. Because he spoke. He did. They can learn.
 

All the shades I know were able to speak in full sentences, not that broken hodgepodge of words. The alpha confirmed everything I already knew, that this is all Gregor's fault.
 

It's almost too much for me to think of what I've done because of him. Burned creatures alive. Killed norms. Stepped over scores of bodies. There's a part of me that I always thought was hardened, but now I'm finding out it was as soft as Nana's fur, until now. Now it's growing a shell over it, a shell that locks it away where nothing can touch it.
 

What has Gregor made me into?

If I wanted to, I could try and blame the tattoo on my back, but I know that's not true. Everything I've done out of seeming necessity has been something that was inside of me to do all along. Admitting it even to myself is uncomfortable. I don't like it. But not liking it doesn't make it any less true.

The alpha knew Gregor. Somehow.
 

I hate that the mere mention of Gregor's name made me smell his cologne.
 

Unless it wasn't psychological.

"Evis." I spin on my heel and turn to my brother. "In the building, did you smell anything besides shades and smoke and wood? Anything that seemed out of place?"

"There was a smell like chemicals. Like those magazines in the bathroom at the cabin."

The magazines had perfume samples in it.

My heart gives a thud.

I wasn't imagining it.

That shade had been with Gregor, and recently. And I have the alpha's scent. We can track him, and from there, we might be able to track Gregor.

Unlike the alpha in Hopkinsville, this alpha didn't try too hard to disguise his scent. We follow the trail south along the waterfront, into the Industrial District.

At first, my mouth sours with the predictability of it, thinking of the shades in Nashville who holed up in an abandoned warehouse near the now defunct industrial area there. But as we approach the first yard of shipping containers, the trail veers west, back toward the water. It continues south toward the airport, where the sound of planes overhead makes Udo and Evis keep shooting glances upward.

The path leads us under Interstate 5 and into a residential neighborhood. It cuts through back yards, and we follow, with the trail finally dead ending at an auto shop that's clean but old and in a bit of disrepair.

There's a motorcycle out in front.

My heart leaps at the sight of it. I know it's the one Gregor was on the other day when I saw him. I can smell him all over the leather seat even from twenty feet away. This is it. We're going to find that hells-sucking piece of slummoth shit and make him pay for what he did.

The door of the shop is open, and again we're greeted with the smell of blood and axle grease.

I'd give just about anything to walk into a place and smell cookies.

If Gregor came in here and killed a bunch of mechanics — or fed them to his pet shades — I'm going to hand him over to a group of them and let them beat him with tire irons before I kill him.

My list of punishments for Gregor is getting longer by the day.
 

There seems to be no one here, but Evis points to a splatter of blood on the counter and a smear leading away. I open the half door at the end of the counter and we pass through. The blood leads out into the garage, blending with the smell of rubber and grease and metal.
 

A person lies splayed out, half under a beat up Chevy.
 

Udo beats me to him. "He's alive."

Sure enough, a cough filters up from under the Chevy. Udo helps roll him on out — he's on a skid — and I hurry over, kneeling on the ground next to him.
 

"You're one of them," he spits.
 

"I'm a Mediator."

"That's what
he
said."

There's no question of who
he
is. "What did he do here?"

The man tries to raise his hand to wipe away the bloody froth from the corner of his mouth, but he can't. Udo pulls the dangling handkerchief from the man's pocket and wipes away the foam. The man flinches, but lets him.

He doesn't answer my question.

"Help me," I say. The mechanic looks up at me, something very close to hatred in his eyes. "If you tell me where Gregor went, I promise you I'll make him pay."

At that, a glint appears in the man's eyes, and he gives me a long lock before nodding. "He's got a place in Tacoma, a real nice one. Leather furniture, all that."

Fuck Gregor. I used to have leather furniture.

"Where in Tacoma? I can't go knocking on every door in the city until I find him."
 

The man coughs again, more froth bubbling over his lips. Fuck, he's got a collapsed lung.
 

"Udo, call 911." I don't know if any ambulance will answer, but it's worth a try. Udo nods and walks a short distance away.

Pointing over to the workbench across the garage, the man mutters something I can't hear. I lean down, close enough to smell the man's sweat and piss. He's got a long gash down the right side of his body that I couldn't see before, because the red of his blood blended in with the plaid flannel he's wearing.
 

"In the book." His eyes are bloodshot, and his breath smells of death. "Name's Greg Smith. There's an address there."

Evis goes over to get it.

"Thank you." I look over the man's shoulder at Udo, who just shakes his head at me. No ambulance is coming.
 

The mechanic takes a deep breath in, the rattle in his chest telling me that even if an ambulance did come, it'd come too late.

"Go get what you came for," he rasps.
 

I start to protest, but the mechanic silences me with a stare.

"Go on."

We go.