Free Taken By Storm by Emmie Mears

dying. Not while I can do something.  
    I need to kill some motherfucking monsters.
    I spend the day going through my forms, moving the furniture in the dining room out of the way while Evis and Jax shoot onscreen zombies on the television. My careful movements are punctuated by headshots and screams. Sweat drips down my body, and I don't even notice at first that Carrick has joined me. The forms are old to me and new to him, and they flow through so many traditions of martial arts from all over the world that I couldn't tell someone where one leaves off and another begins. There's the quiet harnessing of power from judo, the explosive expression of karate, the barely-bottled fury of muay thai, the vertical space of tae kwon do. Krav maga. Brazilian jiu jitsu. Boxing. Street fighting. The Summits have melded the best qualities of human fighting and turned it against the hellkin.  
    When I was in training, it was that funnel, that distillation of thousands of years of body training that made me most connected with the mysticism of being a Mediator. We are the vanguard of humanity, of the four — now five — species of homo sapiens. Homo sapiens sapiens, magus, morphus, libra. And homo sapiens infernus.  
    My body moves through forms that have been perfected by all those who came before me. I am the funnel for all that concerted knowledge, the fist with which we punch back at those who would destroy us and the world we know.
    With Carrick by my side, I can stem the rising panic again. The fear of my own futility. He imitates my movements so easily, his body only a split second behind mine. When the heavy sun falls below the horizon, I gather my weapons, kiss each of the shades on the cheek, and leave the house.  
    None of them try to stop me, though Evis holds my hand for a moment before I turn to the door.  
    I go straight to Hopkinsville. If I encounter a Mediator, I'm not sure what I'll do. Run, probably.  
    I'm out for demon blood tonight.
    The hours I spent poring over the maps of Hopkinsville have given me a dreamlike knowledge of the town. At first I wander the streets, tracing our path from the other day when we followed Nik "Dead Meat" Edison's offspring through the town. When I come to the place we lost the scent, a side street dotted with dilapidated houses and cracked sidewalks, I keep going, listening to the crickets around me.  
    A bat flaps overhead, swooping low for a moment to catch a late season mosquito and then winging away northward.  
    From the map, I know that the Hopkinsville Summit sits in the elbow bend of the North Fork Little River to the east of me. I give it a wide berth even though I know Mediators are capable of moving around and could be a block away on patrols.  
    Half a mile north, I realize the town has gone silent. No crickets. No flapping bats.  
    I'm in a residential neighborhood, but there are no cars in any driveways, just one in a side cul-de-sac up on blocks. Several of the homes are boarded up, and the street is dotted with for sale signs that look like no real estate agent has been by to replace in months. I inhale deeply, smelling wood rot and unraked leaves, damp concrete and oil and rust from the junked car.  
    And beneath it, so faint I wonder if it's only a memory, a whiff of something warm and familiar.  
    The shade.  
    It's then I realize that's why I've been walking this way, how I got here. I'm not used to following my nose on a conscious level, but that's what I've been doing without realizing.  
    I have a split second of warning, long enough to jerk my swords from their scabbards, before he rushes me.  
    His weight is heavy and as momentous as a wrecking ball. His shoulder clips me as I leap out of the way, instinctively positioning my body and blades as one. I smell a bright burst of blood when my sword finds his pectoral.  
    I turn to face him, circling, his blood dripping from my blade.
    "There's another way," I say to him.  
    It's dark, and there are