Servants of the Storm

by Delilah S. Dawson

  “Demon rules suck. It’s like you’re making them up as you go along.”

  “It’s not my fault you keep doing increasingly stupid things. Half of these rules—I never thought I’d need them. But you’re damned lucky I have a good memory. Now shut up and burn it.”

  I stand over the bowl that holds Mr. Hathaway’s pinkie. It looks like a movie prop or a gag gift, just rattling around in my nana’s best china bowl in a puddle of black blood. It doesn’t even look real.

  “Now I just burn it? And then that old asshat can’t come back?”

  “Supposedly.”

  I light a match and drop it in, and the flame hits the porcelain and fizzes out. The next match does too. The third one I hold to the thick, gray nail, and it catches. The scent of charred, rotten meat and sulfur fills the dining room, and I want to gag. Isaac takes the bowl from me and swirls it around until the old man’s finger bursts into hot, green flames, which I’m guessing a human finger wouldn’t do. We watch it burn, and within moments there’s nothing left but smoldering ash.

  “Now you have to spread the ashes,” Isaac says.

  I take the bowl to the kitchen, dump the ashes down the disposal, turn on the water, and flick the switch. A puff of gray smoke makes me cough, and I run the faucet harder to force it down into the Savannah sewers. I think of my nana’s stories about how people would flush baby alligators and snakes down their toilets, and then they would grow huge on rats in the sewers and come up as man-eaters. Maybe that wasn’t the best place for demon ashes, after all. Who knows what might crawl back up one day? But it’s too late now. The disposal gurgles innocently, and I turn it off.

  I head back to the dining room. My mom is snoring away on the table. Mr. Hathaway is sinking into himself like a rotting watermelon. There’s a loud crunch from the bathroom, and I imagine demon Grendel finally breaking through the linen closet and getting to work on the bathroom door.

  “Good job on Hathaway, by the way,” Isaac says, voice shaky. He plunks down into a chair like he’s the one who had to do all the dirty work. I stay standing, adrenaline and energy shooting through me. I guess those pills were aspirin after all.

  “We’ve got to get out of here before Grendel gets out,” I say.

  “With Hathaway gone, the dog’s pretty much useless. There’s time. This is your show. You tell me what’s next. Did you get the necklace?”

  I undo the scrunchie and unwind the chain from my ponytail. It gets stuck, and I pull out a few hairs, grunting in frustration and trying to tug it free.

  “Let me help,” Isaac says.

  I turn my back to him, and he stands up and steps close. I feel his fingers in my hair, soft and gentle.

  “It’s tangled. Hold on.”

  While he messes around with my hair, I focus on the family portrait hanging on the dining room wall. Isaac’s bad shot took down the one from when I was in third grade, but the one from eighth grade is still there, chronicling my braces and awkward, poufy hair for eternity. My parents stand on either side of me like bookends. Or chess pieces. One dark, one light, both smiling. It’s hard to believe that I wasn’t a product of their love so much as the plotting and magic of demons. But I don’t feel evil. I don’t feel any sort of kinship with Mr. Hathaway and Grendel, and especially not with Kitty and Josephine. And I sure as hell don’t want to end up like Crane.

  “There,” Isaac says, and I sigh as he pulls the necklace free. He hands it to me but stays behind me, and after a moment I feel his fingers back in my hair, massaging the place where the chain was caught.

  “What are you doing?” I pull away. I’m freaked out, and my heart is hammering. My hands are still speckled with black blood. An old door is the only thing between us and a demon dog. A head massage isn’t what I need right now.

  “I know what it’s like to have a ponytail in too long,” he says sympathetically. “You need to relax, Dovey. It’s over for now. Be still. Be calm.”

  His words, spoken near my ear, unlock something in me. I exhale and relax into his hands. It’s been a long couple of days, filled with confusion and fear and discomfort. It feels good to be touched.

  His fingers slide down my scalp to my neck, and I let my shoulders drop and my eyes close. For a moment I forget about Kitty and feel that same closeness I felt in the car outside Crane’s trailer, the comfort and giddy freedom of camaraderie, of being cared for. Part of me wants to turn around and face him, this close, and see what his eyes say, whether they’ll be blue or black. Whether he’ll kiss me again, and if it would feel more real or less. But I don’t want to open my eyes and see what’s really there. I don’t want to think about how close the demon dog is to escaping. I don’t want reality to come crashing down yet.

  Without meaning to I let out a little moan as he works out the tension between my shoulders. I can almost hear him smile.

  I’m a heartbeat away from leaning back and tipping my head over his shoulder, eyes closed, right into kissing range, when the house phone rings. The old-fashioned bleating screams over Grendel’s frantic scratching and growling, and the moment is over.

  “Don’t get that,” Isaac murmurs into my ear, but I’m back to business.

  “Didn’t plan on it,” I say, stepping away to face him, face red with anger. “And while we’re at it, what the hell do you think you’re doing to me?”

  But I know exactly what he was doing. He was using those sneaky-ass cambion powers on me. Persuading me. Taking away my fire. Touching me with hands that touched Kitty.

  “I was trying to help you calm down,” he says.

  “I don’t need to calm down. I just killed my first demon, and it’s perfectly normal for a girl to freak out after that. Don’t you ever use your magic swoony powers on me again, you hear me?”

  “I just wanted to . . .” He looks down, runs a hand through his hair. He looks conflicted. “Hell, Dovey. I don’t know what I wanted. I don’t even know why I did that.” His head cocks a little. “Wait. Were you using your powers on me?”

  “What do you think?”

  He holds one hand out like he wants to touch me, and I bare my teeth like I might snap his other pinkie right off myself. Then he looks at my face.

  “Dovey, your eyes . . .”

  “Yeah, they’re black! You were right, okay? Are you happy?”

  “Of course I’m not. . . . I mean . . .” He trails off and gestures around the room, to the dead, mushy demon and the ravaged walls and the table of decaying food where my mom is snoring. “Do you think I want this for you? Any of this?”

  “What do you want for me?” I ask, wary and hungry for something I can’t quite place.

  The phone rings and rings and rings. My heart twists. I don’t know who it is, but it’s not Carly.

  Isaac looks at me, his face more eloquent than words. His eyes shift from black, seeping into blue, as crystal clear as the ocean I’ve always dreamed of seeing. The ocean around Savannah is gray and thick and polluted and cold, but his eyes are warm and transparent and boundless. It’s the kind of blue where you don’t sink and get lost. You’re buoyed, and you float, and the sky meets the water with a kiss. Despite my anger I find myself smiling back at him.

  “That’s better,” he murmurs, and I slap him, hard. His eyes turn black again.

  I lock glares with him, focus on him like I can draw out the secrets of the universe with my eyelashes. Reflected in his black pupils, I see my own irises melt into crystal blue. “What do you really want, Isaac?”

  The question is really a thousand questions, and he’s going to answer it honestly. What does he want from me, for me? What does he want to do about Kitty, about Josephine, about our dark and rotting city? What will he do with himself if we can’t find his distal? And what will he do if we can find it?

  “Freedom,” he whispers, but it comes out unwillingly.

  Something inside me withers at his willingness to settle. He just wants to be free from servitude, but I want more. I want my city back. My life
back. I want to know that the people I love are safe, that Carly can’t be used anymore. I want Kitty and Josephine gone, forever. I can’t save myself without saving all the things that I love too.

  He shakes his head and narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t do that to me again, Dovey.”

  “Fine,” I snap. I step back from him and unclench my fist to hold my half of the necklace up to the light. “Then help me figure this out.”

  It’s the same shiny gold as the day Gigi gave it to me, when it was nestled in a little blue box just like Carly’s. Carly helped me put mine on, fastening the tricky clasp behind my neck. And I helped her with hers.

  “Y’all got to take care of each other,” Gigi said. “You’re sisters now, and don’t you forget it.”

  My nana nodded along at Gigi’s side. “Y’all forget it, we’ll remind you.”

  That was the day we sliced our thumbs open and rubbed the blood together, the day we promised we would be there for each other, no matter what the world threw at us.

  “Unless there are spiders,” Carly added.

  “No spiders,” I promised. They were the only thing that scared her more than water, and I knew better than to tease her about it unless I wanted to end up in a wicked game of Mercy.

  The necklace itself is simple. “Friends” is engraved across the front in Victorian script. Nothing new there. But there’s some engraving I never noticed on the back, tiny and curved around the edge of the heart. I hold it up to Isaac.

  “Can you read that?” I have to yell to be heard over the ringing phone.

  “Dovey, about earlier. I didn’t mean—”

  “Can you read it, yes or no?”

  He leans in close, his head almost touching mine.

  “ ‘Stanford Engravers,’ ” he says. “I think.”

  “I’ve never heard of it.”

  He takes the pendant from me and inspects the chain and clasp before typing furiously into his phone. I look at my dad’s gun, still sitting on the table, and ache to stop the ringing with one easy shot. Funny, how we fired off three shots, but the police aren’t here yet. Probably more demon magic at work, but it makes me want to hurry.

  After a few minutes of fiddling with his phone, Isaac says, “Okay, I’ve got an address.”

  We pause, standing there, close enough to touch. The kitchen phone rings and rings and rings. Voice mail should have already picked up, but it hasn’t.

  “So . . . do we just go?” I yell. “Do we need an arsenal, or a holy ritual or something?”

  “How the hell should I know?” he says, looking down at Mr. Hathaway. As ever, I can’t quite read all the emotions passing over Isaac’s face, but I know I see frustration. And determination. “I always thought I would fight them with books and incantations. Magic. Or religion. A gun and a knife just never occurred to me. But I’m with you. Let’s do it.” Grendel bays, and claws scrape on wood, and Isaac adds, “But let’s do it quick. He may be dumb, but Grendel’s dangerous, and word travels fast.”

  “Give me a minute,” I say, hoping we have that long.

  I go to my room, close the door, and do a quick change into new undies and my favorite jeans and boots and a clean shirt, topped off with an oversized navy blue peacoat. If I’m going to die and be a demon zombie, I’m by God doing it in clean underwear. I run a hand through my hair, making it stand up and crackle with frizz. My head still tingles from Isaac’s touch. I settle for a ponytail, knowing that I can’t fight demons with hair in my eyes.

  My last stop is my dad’s study. The .38 lives over the door, but his sawed-off double-barrel shotgun lives in the corner of the closet. I grab it and shove a box of shells and a handful of bullets into the pocket of my peacoat. To be honest, it’s pretty empowering. I feel totally badass, and as bored as I used to get going to the range with my dad, I’m glad I know my way around his guns.

  “You ready?” I ask before I round the corner this time.

  Isaac looks up with a grin, and I realize the phone has stopped ringing. He holds up a bouquet of cut wires. “Now I am.”

  “You ever shot one of these?” I ask, holding up the shotgun.

  “No, but I’ve shot one of those twice.” He points to the .38.

  I pick it up, eject the spent casings, and reload before handing it back to him.

  “Take it,” I say. “But don’t stick it in your pants again.”

  As we leave the dining room, I take one last look back at the carnage. This used to be a comfortable, if annoyingly old-fashioned, room where a happy family ate their favorite Sunday meal. I haven’t seen my dad in days, and I’m terrified that the demons have him, like Mr. Hathaway had my mom. She’s still asleep at the table, surrounded by buzzing flies, and I know I can’t leave her behind. I’m about to pick her up when a demonic howl of triumph fills the air. The bathroom door hits the floor, and I hold up the shotgun and wait for Grendel to come at me. Instead I hear claws scramble in the opposite direction on the wood floors, followed by shattering glass. So much for the window in my room.

  “He’s going to Kitty. We’ve got to hurry,” Isaac says. When I don’t move, he puts a firm hand on my shoulder. “Your mom will be fine. If they wanted to hurt her, they already would have. Come on.”

  I turn my back on the scene, knowing I’ve lost something forever. Now that I know I’m a cambion, and now that I suspect that the demons murdered my grandmother, even the good memories of this room are tainted.

  As for now, it’s time to get revenge.

  25

  WE RUN FOR MY CAR and hop inside like we’ve done this a thousand times, Isaac in the driver’s seat and me in the passenger seat. I hand him the keys without complaint and look out the window for more demons, gun in hand, as he struggles to get the stubborn engine to turn over. The sun is watery in a white sky, the wind shaking the trees and rattling the leaves. Normally I love days like this. Normally I would be at school, sleepwalking, looking forward to opening night.

  But not now. Even the play has become part of the demon’s darkness. The memorial, staging The Tempest—it’s all just another part of their plan.

  And when I glance in the backseat, I notice that Caliban himself is stretched out back there under his dad’s army coat, asleep.

  “Baker?” I splutter as Isaac guns the engine and squeals off down the street.

  “There you are,” Baker says, sitting up and rubbing his head. “I was just about to go inside. But the car was unlocked, and I felt so sleepy.”

  Isaac chuckles bitterly and says, “Oh, Scrappy-Doo. I knew we should have checked for stowaways.”

  I swat Isaac’s shoulder and turn to inspect my friend. Baker looks a little dopey. He shouldn’t be here. And any friend who hears gunshots inside your house should be calling the police and freaking out, not taking a snooze in the back of your sedan.

  “You okay, dude?” I ask.

  “I had really weird dreams.” He shrugs. “Snakes and stuff.”

  “Riverfest slushie,” Isaac murmurs to me. “Hard-core magic. We’re taking him home to sleep it off.”

  “Baker, you need to go home and go back to sleep.”

  “No way. I woke up thinking I wanted to hang out with you, and here I am. There’s something bugging me. Something I need to do. And I can’t remember what it is. Something about Carly. And you. I can’t let anything happen to you. Can’t let the snakes get you. Something about a gator.”

  Isaac pulls the car up in front of Baker’s house, and I lean forward to put my hands on Baker’s shoulders and stare into his blueberry-shiny eyes. I concentrate hard, pouring every bit of charm and power I have into my words, hoping that the same cambion magic that worked on Isaac will now work on Baker.

  “Baker, get out of the car and go home.”

  He puts a hand on the door handle and shakes his head like he’s trying to get a fly off his nose. Then he turns back to me with his trademark grin and says, “You’re pretty, but the answer is still no. I’m not letting you out of my sight
.”

  He’s so adamant, and it breaks my heart. He’s a goddamn hero. He’s been drugged, again and again, and I’m trying to use my supposed powers on him right now. But he keeps fighting it as hard as he can. For Carly, and for me. He deserves to know the truth. And he deserves a chance to fight, if he wants the chance.

  “You look sleepy,” I say to Baker. “I’ve got some Red Bull in the trunk.”

  Isaac shakes his head at me, but I flick him off behind my back.

  “Red Bull? Awesome,” Baker says. I grab the bag from the backseat and reach across Isaac to release the trunk so we’ll have some privacy. We both get out of the car, and Baker follows me to the trunk, slinging an arm around my neck. “You’re the best, Dovey. No wonder I’ve loved you for, like, ever.”

  For once I’m glad the boy’s dopey, because even if his words make my stomach flop over, I have no idea how to respond. Of course I love him as a friend. I always have. But his feelings are deeper than that, so strong that he can resist anything that stands against him. And after last night’s confusing kisses, I haven’t figured out yet how I feel about him. I need to get past the demons first to make the world safe for that kind of sweetness.

  I hand him the bottle of red stuff from Isaac’s fridge. Isaac rolls down his window just a crack and yells, “Are you sure about this? What if he’s only doing this because he has a crush on you?”

  “What the hell is so wrong with having a crush on me?” I yell back. “He wants in. He’s fighting it. He cared about Carly, too. And we can’t leave him like this.”

  I look at Baker hard, taking in his baggy jeans and plaid flannel and puffer vest. Despite the dopey smile and wide eyes, there’s a determined set to Baker’s jaw and a vertical line between his eyebrows. He was like this when Carly and I decided to join drama club without him, thinking he wasn’t interested. But he insisted on joining too. And he surprised the hell out of us when our shy, goofy friend took to the stage like he’d been born there.

  “Is there anything that boy can’t do?” Carly said at the time, watching him doing his first monologue, and I wondered, just for a minute, if she was starting to crush on him.