Any Port in a Storm (40 page)

I can be a real dick.

I stride into the lobby, back itching and head held as high as I can. "I know what you did."

My voice rings out through the cavernous space, and every pair of eyes finds me.

Gregor smirks and turns to Alamea as if he's just won a bet.

He doesn't realize I was talking to him.

"Gregor Gaskin," I say. "I'm speaking to you."

Gregor turns, his face incredulous. "What are you talking about, Storme? Wheedle told me he told you what happened, what Alamea's trying to do."

"Yeah, well, Wheedle's so full of shit he's overflowing." Even from across the lobby, my voice carries clearly, and the Mitten at the front desk looks positively terrified. He's the same MIT I saw a few weeks ago. Connor. No, Conroy.
 

"Storme," Gregor says. He takes a step in my direction, but stops when he sees my hand go to my hilt.

He may have the years of experience on me, but he's outnumbered and he knows it.

"Don't
Storme
me," I say. To my surprise, my voice falls an octave. Now, face to face with the man who set up to blackmail me, who's lied to me for month, who's used me, used the people I love, who's violated every single gods damned thing I stand for — I can't speak further. I feel as though words like
fury
and
rage
fall away when I look at this man. I have no words for what he's done, or for how I feel when I look at him.

My hand finds the hilt of my sword, and with it, my tongue finds my words.

"You lied to Carrick." I start with the easy thing. "You told him Miles was dead, with his head ripped off by a jeeling."

"Miles is dead," Gregor insists. "I saw him die. Storme, listen to me. Whatever Alamea's told you is wrong."

Alamea herself is strangely silent.

"Alamea?" I say. "Alamea hasn't told me shit. And sure, Miles is dead as a doornail. I'll be sure to tell him that when I see him again today."

Gregor's face goes white.
 

"You sold my friends to some rich sonofabitch and made them murder for you. You manipulated them into doing the one thing I worked with them so hard to teach them that they could live without. They know it is wrong, and you pulled their strings because you knew their guilt. You, Gregor Gaskin, are responsible for the murder of at least twenty norms who you told me we were charged to protect. Hells-worshippers or not, we were meant to protect them. And you took money to kill them."
 

I can see Jaryn's face, see in his eyes that he's looking into my memories and that he knows it's true. Gregor puts his hand in his pocket, nonchalantly leaning to the side.
 

"Is that what Miles told you?"
 

"I saw their bodies with my own eyes!"

Gregor chuckles.

For a moment, I doubt myself. I look behind him at Alamea, and fear snakes through me. What if I'm wrong? What if he's laughing at the absurdity of it? What if it really is Alamea behind this?

"You weren't supposed to see that, Ayala. For that, I'm sorry."

Jaryn's eyes widen, and his mouth drops open.
 

Too late.

A momentous crash shakes the air.
 

It takes a heartbeat for me to process what it was.
 

"Everybody take cover!" I yell the warning as loud as I can, diving back into the hallway just before the skylight from seven stories above us sends a rain of deadly glass shards plummeting down at us.

The glass hits the marble floor of the lobby with the sound of ten thousand champagne flutes crashing to the ground. Pieces hit and ricochet, some of them the size of my forearm even after they shatter.
 

Frantic, I look for Alamea and Jaryn. They were at the foot of the stairs, and somehow seem to have somersaulted over the railing to take cover beneath it. Gregor, it seems, knew exactly where to stand where the glass wouldn't reach him.
 

"Conroy, are you okay?" I can't see the Mitten, but I hear a thump from under the desk.
 

"I'm fine!"

"Stay the fuck down!"

Another sound reaches my ears, and I look up.

Three shades are swinging down story by story. Each of them is wearing a hat.

It's the shades who have been murdering people around the city. The shades who killed Grace's favorite regular. The ones who murdered the late night workers at Walden's Puddle. They've left bodies all over my city, my home, threatened people I care about.

Gregor did this. Gregor. The man who trained me since I was a child. Carrick and the others couldn't catch them because they were following Gregor's information, and Gregor didn't want his shades caught.

My breath hisses out between my teeth.

None of them are wearing shoes, but they ignore the glass on the floor when the first two hit. I recognize one of them, but he doesn't look at me.

I unsheathe my sword.

"Now, now, Ayala. Is that any way to greet your brother?"

My world becomes a tunnel.

Brother.

The third of the shades touches down in the center of the floor, just past the yin yang symbol. Everything around him blurs, but he is in perfect focus. He pulls off his hat.

Underneath it, his hair is bright yellow-orange.
 

Just like mine.

I look at his face, and I see my face. My nose. My ears, with their strange little cartilaginous nub at the top of the conch. His chin isn't quite the same, but the shape of his eyes is just like mine. Same pale skin. Same stance, even.
 

My breath is a shudder and a sob in one.

"Hello, Ayala," my shade half-brother says. "I'm Evis. I think I'll kill you now."

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

"Migs, Kelby," Gregor motions to Alamea and Jaryn under the stairs, and I lurch forward.

Evis clucks at me and wags his finger. "No, no."
 

Somewhere behind me, I hear another crash, but it doesn't register.
 

Under the stairs, I can see Alamea's grey slacks are stained with blood. A shard of glass protrudes from her leg. One of the shades — Migs or Kelby, I don't know — kicks her once in the head. Her eyes roll back, and she slumps over. They grab Jaryn by the arms.

I know psychics. They are empaths as much as they are telescopes into the minds of others. When the shades touch him, Jaryn screams.
 

Somehow his scream is louder than the sound of the breaking glass from the domed skylight above.

"Jaryn!" I scream his name and throw myself forward, but Evis intercepts me, his arms snapping into place around me, pinning mine to my side.
 

Every kill, every look of fear, every final, terrified release of bowels — I can almost see it flicker across Jaryn's face as if it's in my own mind. My entire body is shaking. Evis holds me against his chest, facing forward so I can't look anywhere else.

They rip Jaryn's arms off.

I can't help the primordial sound that reverberates through me. Tears and snot and spit meld on my face as I feel a cool splatter of blood across my cheeks.
 

They take his legs next.
 

All I can see is blood and broken glass.

When Migs and Kelby cradle Jaryn's head in their hands, Evis presses his cheek against my hair. "You can't kill me now. I win. This is what I'm going to do to you."

The heat of his body pinning me to him cannot stop the freezing chill that cascades over me.

Jaryn's head leaves his body.

Something hits me hard from behind.

A snarl cuts through the sound of distant screaming — Conroy — and I get one glimpse of Gregor's self-satisfied smirk vanishing before I hit the ground sideways.
 

I slide away on a bed of glass shards, released from the straitjacket of Evis's grip. My hand is still clenched so tightly around my sword that I don't think I could drop it if I wanted to. The back of my hand is bleeding from a dozen cuts, but I scramble to my feet.
 

Wane is a lion, and her jaws are clamped tight on Evis's hip.
 

"I told you," Gregor bellows from the stairs. "I told you she would never love you. I told you she would want you dead!"

Gregor looks at me, and I see him clearly for the first time. He is more hideous than a golgoth demon, more putrid than anything that has ever climbed out of the holes of hells. He meets my eyes as hatred and rage burn out every nerve ending in my body. I am going to kill him. He will feel the bite of my blade against his throat before I take off his head, and I will hold it by the hair and make him look me in the eyes with the last flutter of his eyelids.

Gregor looks at me and flinches.

Just for a moment. Just the tiniest flicker of movement. But he knows.

Dimly, I'm aware that the others are here. Saturn, Miles, and Carrick fall on Migs and Kelby, and I don't watch.
 

Mira pulls Alamea out from under the stairs.

"Wane, stop!" I come back to myself. Evis is fighting her back, but weakly. He's already lost a lot of blood.

Wane isn't listening to me.

"Wane!" I shriek her name and throw myself at her, kicking her off of Evis's body.
 

His fist catches me in the face. I drop my sword, but I don't care.

"Evis," I say. "I don't want you dead."

He punches me again, and my head shudders with the pain.
 

"I don't want you dead! I never wanted you dead!" I yell it at him. His face is anger, but I know what Gregor did.
 

I know how Gregor made him kill.

I know why he targeted places and people who mattered to me. Because they mattered to me, and Gregor told him he didn't.

I know what I need to do.

"Evis." I reach out and touch his shoulder with the tips of my fingers. "Gregor lied. I never wanted you dead."

"Ayala," Mira says, her voice troubled.
 

Evis and I are surrounded.

I can't see Gregor, and right now I don't care. Mira, Saturn, Ripper, Devon, Wane, Carrick — they form a ring around me and my brother.

My brother.

I reach out again, and I touch his shoulders one by one.
 

He watches me, his eyes assessing my every move. Again I feel myself held immobile against his chest, feel the heat of his body and the warmth of his breath as he tells me he's going to kill me before I can kill him.

Fear still crawls under my skin, seeps through our joined gaze.

But I don't care.

"You're safe with me," I tell him.
 

Evis is staring at me now, his own eyes full of fear, the anger vanishing into terror.

"I don't hate you. I don't want you dead. I didn't know you were here and wasn't even sure you existed. I should have looked for you. I should have tried harder. You shouldn't have had to meet me this way." I can't stop the tears from rolling down my cheeks now. "I never would have asked you to kill like that. I never would have lied to you like he did."

My own anger tries to boil back up, but I force it back to a simmer. I can't let Evis see it.

I toss my other sword away. It skates between Carrick and Ripper's legs.
 

"I don't hate you, Evis. Give me a chance to love you." I'm aware of Wane and Mira side by side, of the bond they have. They are family. I've never had one. A yearning comes over me, and I don't know what to do. All I know is that this is my brother, and if he can be saved, I will save him.

My cheek throbs, and I can feel it swelling even now. My lip is puffy and fat.
 

"Please," I say. I don't even know what words are about to come out. "Please don't let him take our family away from us."

Looking into Evis's eyes, I have no way of knowing what he sees. I never knew our mother, but he has her memories.
 

Looking into Evis's eyes, I feel him like a buzz of a horsefly next to my skin. I will him to see that I mean it.

"She wanted me," he says, as if he can tell what I'm thinking.
 

"I'm sure she did," I say, because for whatever the fuck reason hells-zealots sign up for this, that's for sure.
 

"She wanted me to find you," says Evis.

"What did you say?"

Did my mother want him to kill me? Confusion swirls in my head, and I can't think. Could she have been so ashamed of birthing a Mediator that she volunteered to die to give a shade life just to find me and end mine?

But Evis is shaking his head, again as if he knows what's in mine. "She missed you."

He reaches out a hand, tentative and slow.

His fingers touch my shoulder.