Free Any Port in a Storm by Emmie Mears Page A

blood at my stomach. It tickles, dribbling down to pool at the waistline of my pants. I'm not sure I'm okay.
    The man in the closet has gone very quiet, and I realize it's probably because he thinks I'm dead.
    "It's okay. You can come out now, I think."
    "You think?"
    I grimace, taking a couple steps to lean on the man's bedpost. It's hard to get a breath around the ball of pain at my center. "Well, these demons ain't getting any deader."
    The closet door creaks open, and a bearded white man wearing only a set of black boxers with light sabers on them steps out. He promptly keels over and vomits on one of the slummoth heads. I don't really blame him, but the smell of bile threatens to make me join him in his pastime.  
    A thump from the broken window breaks my urge to puke.  
    I raise my sword again, hoping to every star in the sky that it's not another pack of slummoths coming through.
    It's Miles.
    "Hey," he says. "You should come down."
    I nod, taking a painful three steps to retrieve my short sword. "You get Carrick."
    The house's owner rises to his feet, knees shaking and a wet streak visible across the back of his hand. "You're hurt."
    "Part of the job. You dead?"
    "What? No."
    "Then I did my job." I look at the window, watching Miles scoop up Carrick with a graceful attention to Carrick's wounds. He somehow gets out the window without adding more scrapes to the unconscious shade.
    Sorry, but I ain't going out that way.  
    I start for the stairs, and the man follows. "Can I at least help you get downstairs?"
    That makes me speed up, though it doesn't do much. I'm still moving at about the speed of a walrus in mud. He catches up, and reaches for me. To his credit, when I shake my head, he backs off.
    "It's not as bad as it looks. It's just inconveniently located." Yeah, Ayala. Sure. I turn downstairs at the landing, stepping over the lamp again. Lifting my leg like that pulls at the claw wounds on my stomach, and I fight the urge to swear. Instead, I talk to light saber britches. "If you contact the Office of Norm Casualties at the Summit, they'll walk you through filing a claim."
    "I don't have demon insurance."
    I snort a laugh, which also pulls at the gouges in my middle. "No one does. We have an endowment for it."
    I can almost hear the man blink. We reach the living room, and I can see a crowd gathered on the lawn. A mostly nude crowd, and one blocky shape that's very, very welcome.  
    "What's your name?" the man asks.
    This isn't the first time someone I've rescued has asked me that, and it probably won't be the last unless I get myself dead in the near future. I'm not sure why I hesitate to answer. After a long pause, I say, "Ayala Storme."
    I can't tell by the man's face if he recognizes the name or not, but I don't really care. I shuffle past him and out the door, where a shade named Sanj greets me with a touch on my shoulder. I move my short sword into my right hand, almost dropping it to return the gesture. A patter of footsteps sounds behind me, and I feel something soft hit my shoulder. It smells like fake grass and flowers. Turning my head to look, my cheek encounters terrycloth.  
    "It's raggedy, but it's clean," says the man. "You can use it to clean your swords. Or stop the bleeding."
    I meet his eyes for the first time, and I give him a wry smile. He sussed out my priorities pretty well. "Thanks."
    "Least I could do."
    Sanj helps me get down the front steps — by which I mean he walks in front of me so if I pitch forward, my nose will hit his back instead of the slates of the footpath.
    Gregor beckons me, his gaze dipping to my stomach, then returning to meet my eyes. Somehow, his backlit form exudes relief.  
    The not-dead inhabitant of the house calls out my name as I walk toward Gregor. "Ayala."
    I turn my head to look back at him. "Yeah?"
    "Thank you."
    Some nights, killing things in the woods and having the Mittens Brigade pick up the pieces makes me forget the human face of what I do. For a