Eye of the Storm by Emmie Mears Page B

as I could fit. I don't really want to try and save the world with constant swamp ass.
    I wish I could have brought Lucy. My flamethrower would come in handy.  
    Evis takes point, leading us through the bar's storage rooms and small kitchen that smells like old grease and rotting garbage. Sure enough, there's a door leading out. He starts to nudge the bar with his hip.
    "Wait," I say. The door says in big peeling block letters FIRE EXIT: ALARM WILL SOUND . "Let's not have a screaming siren let all the demons know we're here."
    It's alarmed, and we already know the power's still on.  
    "There should be a button or something that keeps the alarm from going off," I say. "A switch that stays engaged when the door's shut. We had a couple exits like that in my office building." I just hope whatever it is doesn't require a key.
    Evis nods, bending to peer at the crack between the door and the jamb. "I can see it, I think. Here." He points about six inches above the door's latch.
    The door opens out, and all of us crowd around. Evis pushes the bar on the door, edging it open, his hand pressed against the jamb with every millimeter the door gives way. I'm not the only one who lets out a breath when his thumb catches the alarm trigger before it pops out of the jamb. Mason and Mira go first, then Asher, with Jax hanging back with Evis. I give Jax a grateful look as I squeeze past my brother. Jax, the bunny whisperer. If we live through this, someone should buy the movie rights and write a rom com tearjerker out of that.
    The alley behind the bar is clear of demons, but it reeks of trash and urine and worse.  
    Jax follows me out when I signal. Evis, keeping his thumb against the alarm switch, angles around until he's outside in the alley, letting the door ease shut against his foot, which he wedges into the threshold.  
    Mira points southwest. "If we follow the alley to Demonbreun, we ought to be able to take that down to Music Square and cut through Vandy to the Summit."
    It's over a mile to the Summit from here, another mile after walking over twenty-five, and if we can just get to the Vanderbilt campus, we might just be okay. The Mediators have kept a clear radius around the Summit, according to Alamea.  
    "Let's give it a shot," I say.  
    Evis is still inching the door shut. There's a cardboard box, half squished, lying off to the side by an overflowing dumpster. I tear off a chunk.  
    "Here." I press it down above Evis's thumb, and he slowly moves his hand away until the cardboard is holding the trigger and the door clicks shut.  
    I feel jumpy, like even with the door shut an alarm is going to wail through the alley and bring down an entire horde on our heads.
    The alley's still clear, and though I can hear demons off in the distance, they're not fighting, just moving around.
    Before the summer, that alone would have been enough to set my hackles up. Before the summer, I never saw two different demons in one place without them fighting each other and me both.  
    Funny how quickly a new normal can happen.
    We move to the end of the alley, Jax somehow managing to keep the clanging of Nana's cage to a minimum.
    A scream cuts through the air.  
    I freeze, hands on the hilts of my swords. "How far, four blocks?"
    Mason nods, and Mira's face turns bleak.
    "They're already dead," she says.
    I look at her, and I see in her eyes what I know is in mine too.
    I hear Asher's small sigh and know she's seeing the dead kid whose death throes we heard.
    If we don't get to the Summit, screams like that are going to be the music that serenades us as our Earth sinks into hell.

CHAPTER SEVEN

    We hear more screams as we move up Demonbreun toward the university, some closer than others. It makes me feel sick, wrong, helpless. I keep swallowing as we walk, as if the action will keep the bile from churning in my stomach with each voice we hear. The problem is, by the time we hear the scream it's already too late. They're echoes of lives