Eye of the Storm by Emmie Mears

world's going to end or not.  
    Maybe it ended already.
    We're about to find out.

CHAPTER SIX

    Two Mediators, three shades, a witch, and a bunny walk into a bar.
    Mira Gonzales kicks over a slime-covered bar stool, scowling at a smashed bottle of vodka that's turned into a sticky puddle on the bar itself. "What a waste."
    I nod in agreement. All the other bottles behind the bar are smashed as well. Liquor, liquor everywhere, and not a drop to get drunk with. Evis and Mason check the door behind us, scattering some foul-smelling dust Asher gave us at the threshold to activate a makeshift ward, and Jax holds Nana's cage out in front of him almost reverently.  
    Nana herself, her little velveteen red ears swiveling and nose twitching away, looks the least perturbed of anyone. Jax sets her cage on the top of the bar and turns to face me.
    "We need to find her a safe place," he says, his voice very serious.  
    I couldn't agree more. I give him a terse smile.  
    It's been only days since we killed Gregor and returned triumphantly — sort of — to the Nashville Summit. She stomped everyone into submission — sort of — and now we've made it to Nashville. Sort of.
    If you call hiding out from day-walking demons in a ransacked bar on Honky Tonk row ready.  
    Mira's poking around behind the bar, her phone charger dangling from her hand. "Power looks like it's still working. Bulbs out here are just smashed."
    A small amount of light from the cloudy sky filters in through a grimy window, and Evis comes to stand by my side. I toss Mira my phone and charger, and she plugs it in.
    She starts talking in announcer voice. "In a world where demon hunters have become dependent on modern comforts, two Mediators hide in a shit hole bar to hover over their charging phones in a desperate hope to save the world — if they can only reach someone who knows what the fuck's going on."
    "You missed your calling," I tell her.
    "Fucking right," she agrees.
    Mason peers out the window, ignoring our banter. "I can smell the blood from here."
    I look at him, troubled by the fact that I can too.
    It was all over the streets on the walk in. We all pushed hard to get here at all, picking through the debris and corpse-riddled pavement and piecing together snippets of what happened to our city.
    I can't think about that right now. I can't entertain the increasingly-confirmed knowledge that people have spent the whole of the last week dying by the thousands. I can't think about the probability that every major city looks like this one — or soon will. I can't think about the very real possibility that we're already losing.  
    The blood smell, everything from the fresh tang of warm copper to the dried whiffs of old rust — it permeates everything where we are. It's not just my enhanced sense of smell that allows me to know it. I never thought I'd smell the end of the world coming.
    "And we wait," says Mira, eyeing her phone's dead screen.
    After a moment, I hear both our phones ping on, thankful the power's working for now.  
    Jax and Evis stand by the end of the bar, both looking as uneasy as I feel. Evis meets my eyes.
    "What if we still can't call Alamea?" Even after the past weeks, seeing how much my brother's face resembles my own still gives me a little bit of a shock.
    "Then we go to the Summit and hope it's still there." My voice sounds more grim than I mean it to. Nana clangs at her cage, and I walk over to her. "I'm sorry, Bun. We'll find you a safe place if I have to build barricades out of the rubble."
    I ponder leaving her here, but if I let her loose, a demon would get her, and this bar might not even be there when we get back. If we ever get back.
    Nope. I prefer to have my loved ones close right now.
    "Carrick called," Mira says, holding out my phone across the bar. "Three hours ago, it looks like. And yesterday."
    Speaking of loved ones. The surge of relief I feel almost washes away my exhaustion. Almost. Everyone looks relieved, even