Taken By Storm (33 page)

"I think we're well past flag-sticking. We don't need an advantage. We need a Hail Mary."

"Fine, so we get rid of Gregor and all die anyway, but at least we take that son-bitch out with us." I take the last bite of my burrito and lick my fingers.
 

We both sit straight up when the wards bell sounds through the room.
 

Mira comes bursting out of the bedroom in her pajamas, hair tousled and eyes still swollen, but alert. "Wards?"

I nod, already moving for my stuff.
 

"Two minutes," she says.
 

My leathers are in the bathroom, and I throw them on as quick as I can. I'm lacing up my boots when Mira comes out, ready to go. I tug my laces and stand up. "Let's go."

The woods are shrouded in what feels like a perpetual fog these days. Carrick points the way, and we run, him ranging out ahead while I stay back with Mira.
 

"Remember when I used to kick your ass at the compound's footraces?" she mutters.

"Consider this payback."

I don't let myself think about what could have happened to Evis and Jax and Mason. They're all supposed to only hunt well-within the wards, but that doesn't matter if something passes the boundary to get them. I have no idea if the hellkin will turn back now that they're walking in daylight the way they shied away from the boundary before.
 

Carrick almost vanishes in a burst of speed, and his sudden rush makes me turn to Mira, agonized.

"Go," she says. "I'll catch up."

I pour my body into the fastest sprint I can. The trees flash by me, grey-brown and touched with silvery white. My face dampens in the mist. It smells like winter finally, cold and dusty and damp bark.

Carrick's stopped over a huddled shape on the ground. I see a tuft of yellow-orange hair. Evis.

My legs push me so fast I think I might break the sound barrier. I land on my knees in the dirt beside him, leaving a gouge of displaced mulch and topsoil. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Nobody should have been hunting at all.
 

I don't smell blood, or at least not much of it.
 

Carrick's got a small dart in his hand, a little metal thing with a purple plume. "Tranquilizer," he says. "Heavy duty. He's still breathing. He'll live."

I cradle Evis's head in my hands.

It'd have to be heavy duty, to knock out a shade like that.
 

"How'd they get him like this?" I ask tersely. "Did they come inside the wards?"

"I don't know." Carrick points through the trees. "The line's about a thousand feet that way. They could have hit him if they had a scope, without going through the wards at all."

"Where are Mason and Jax?" I brush Evis's hair back from his forehead, the sick slime of terror worming in my stomach.

If the last time I ever speak to Mason turns out to be last night, I'll never forgive myself.

"Jax is over here!" Mira hollers through the woods. "He's breathing!"

Evis's eyes open, and he looks up at me. "They took him."

I stop breathing myself. "What?"

"They took Mason."

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Once Evis and Jax are fully awake, they tell us that three people shot at them from outside the wards. Mason was only about fifty feet from the border, tracking a whitetail deer, and two of the people crossed the wards to get him, which is when we heard the tone go off.

Jax and Evis were far enough inside that the attackers couldn't get to them. The new spells Liza and Carrick layered on top of the wards compound the closer to the cabin people get. The shades were running back to warn us when the tranqs knocked them out.

We get back to the cabin, having to half-support Jax and Evis. Every day seems to come with a reminder that none of us are safe.
 

"Looks like Gregor knows where we are now," Mira says. Her lips show a thin line of white around them.

"You think he followed us back last night?" I ask.

She shakes her head. "I think he probably had a tracking spell on Mason."

Fuck. Fuckity fuck fuck fuckles. She's got to be right. There would have been Mason hair on my furniture that Gregor could have used to do it, and we didn't give Mason the haircut and salt bath spa treatment when he turned up.

Carrick looks as chagrined as I feel. "I'm going to go see if I can catch the trail."

Panic rises in me. "They had cars. It's not going to go far."

"I'll be careful."

I hate this. But I can't stop him, and even though there's probably nothing we can learn from the tire tracks or scents, Carrick's the best candidate to go. If he lived through four hundred years of a changing world, he can live for thirty minutes more.

He vanishes out the door.

The twenty-seven minutes it takes him to return are some of the longest of my life. He comes back with a grim face and no real news except that he was able to confirm that none of the people outside of the van were actually Gregor.

Mira stands close behind my chair, close enough that I can feel her warmth. It gives me a small amount of comfort, but nothing right now will help me shake the fear I feel.
 

There's no way Gregor will kill Mason outright. This isn't a match to the death for him. He wants me to hurt, and bringing back Mason's head in a box wouldn't be good enough for Gregor. He's going to do to me what I did to him a few days ago — go silent and let my imagination do the work.

"Carrick," I say. "Tell me what you need for that spell."

Mira and I spend the rest of the day securing as many of the final components for the spell as we can. Some Alamea has gathered, like his DNA sample from the Summit, an old photograph of him from when he was a child (even as a kid bedecked in overalls, he was solemn and stocky), a few rare gems, and a box of personal items from his desk. I'm not used to spellcraft, and most witches' everyday work requires none of this, only their focused energy and the power to tap it. But this is big magic.

Gryfflet's going to bring the two or three remaining items to the cabin when he comes to work the spell in two days. As much as I want it to happen now, Gryfflet says we have to at least wait until the first night of the full moon.
 

We're secluded at the cabin, but Jax and Evis keep the TV on the news instead of playing video games, and what few glances I make myself direct at it are enough to make me immediately look away.

So far new shades have popped up in twelve major North American cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Mexico City, New York, San Francisco, and Dallas.

More are reporting daytime demon sightings, and I think there would be riots if people weren't scared shitless they'd get eaten mid-march. Most houses have at least cursory anti-hellkin protection spells — newer building codes require it — but the witches of the continent have to be working at least as hard as the Mediators right now.

We pass the next two days in feverish activity, double and triple checking all the items on the spell list and all of us trying to avoid saying anything to each other that could possibly be construed as a goodbye whenever we have to leave the house.
 

I wish I had some sort of gift of foresight, but at the very least, there's enough to do to keep me occupied.

Everyone tries to feed me, but no matter what I attempt to eat, I can't keep it down.

Not when I know Mason's being tortured.
 

If I thought it would help me find him faster, I would run up and down the streets of Nashville until my kneecaps popped off, but Gregor's had a lot more time to prepare for all of this than I have. He won't be found until we beat him at his own game.

I only hope Mason holds on long enough to see Gregor pay for what he's done.

His stack of crimes ain't getting any smaller.

The only good news that comes is from Alamea, whose contacts at the Summit are keeping things focused on the problems at hand. They've lost three Mediators in the past week, and about twenty civilians have died, but the Mediators are working around the clock to keep the streets as safe as they possibly can. I don't know how long that will last — probably not very — but knowing the Summit's fighting hellkin instead of itself is a big improvement over the last few months of infighting.

I finally go out on the back porch to get a breath of foggy air, the morning Gryfflet's supposed to arrive to do the spell.
 

Mira comes with me, and for a while we just sit on the steps, our knees touching.
 

"We'll get him back," she says.
 

"You're not usually one to lie." I give her what I can feel is a lopsided smile.

"I'm not lying. We're going to get him back."

"Have you developed a prophetic gift in the past day?" I try to swallow around the lump that's been lodged in my throat for two days, but my mouth is so dry and sticky that I almost gag.
 

"I just know
 
you."

Her confidence in me is a beautiful thing, but I don't share it.

"I feel like I got thrown into a tsunami with a lifesaver and a paddle and everyone expects me to stop the wave," I say suddenly. The analogy feels particularly apt.
 

"What flavor?"

"What?"

"What flavor of Lifesaver? I hope it's butter rum, because if not then we need to sort out your priorities." This time it's her grin that's crooked.
 

"I think that's the only flavor of that candy I've ever had, so obviously it's the best." I pause, looking out into the trees. A dove of some kind gives a haunting hoot-coo sort of sound. The fog seems to emulsify the sound until it comes from everywhere around us at once.

"Sorry for the bad joke. I know how you feel though, this sense of helplessness. This is fucking big. Bigger than what we were brought up for." Mira shakes her head. "They never told us this was a possibility. Isn't that bizarre? Plucked away from our mothers before we so much as got our lips around a tit for our first meal, sword shoved into our hands as soon as we could lift it, and put up against monsters when most norm kids still think a monster is the boogeyman under their beds."

"I feel like I've been tossed about for weeks, and I don't have anything I can do to fix it."

"What the shit are you talking about, Storme? You're doing every fucking thing you can to fix it." Mira points inside. "Those people in there, they're your real sword. And you know how to swing it."

"What if Mason dies and the last thing I did is break his heart?" The question sounds so small and at once bigger than anything.

Mira falls silent, and I feel like an ass for saying it. I open my mouth to apologize, but she cuts me off before I can speak.

"First of all, we're not going to let that happen. Second, he knows you care about him. He does." Her voice breaks a little on that. She looks into my eyes. "I want you to know that you can feel safe talking to me about it. I'm not going to go batshit when you mention him."

I open my mouth, but she rushes on again.

"I know I acted a little weird when he got here. I just…" she flounders. "I felt like we were getting closer, you and me. And he came out of left field after being your first real serious partner. But. There's a but. Whatever this is between you and me, whatever happens now or after, you don't owe me anything. You're allowed to still love him. I'm a big girl. I can handle my feelings."

"Been practicing that speech long?" I put my elbows on my knees and bury my face in my hands. My breath is coming faster, and I'm afraid I'm going to hyperventilate. "Mira, whatever happens — both on this planet and in my love life — it's over between me and Mason."

"Well," she says. "We better save his ass so he can find somebody who's available then."

My life is fucked up.