by Sarah Fine
I froze when I heard clonking footsteps on the stairs to the second floor. The ceiling above me creaked, and then came soft, hooting laughter. Maybe the Mazikin had gone upstairs to join his brothers and sisters. Luckily for me—it meant I wouldn’t have to find a way to kill him quietly before I rescued the boy. After a few moments, the laughter quieted and the creaking stopped. I continued my slow progression toward the front of the house.
I tiptoed my way up the hall, careful not to touch the walls, some of which dripped with what I was pretty sure were various bodily fluids, viscous and cloudy, drying in raised beads and thin smears. A row of holes had been punched in the plaster, and at the end of the hall lay a clump of brown, curly hair, held together by a black-crusted, shriveled hunk of flesh. I swallowed my disgust and turned the corner to the parlor.
My stomach dropped.
There, illuminated by the light filtering in through tattered lacy curtains from one of the unboarded windows, sat a low, heavy table.
Four pots full of ashy, smoking incense surrounded it. To each of its legs was tied a length of rope. The frayed ends of each rope were stained reddish brown. This was their altar, the place where they tied their victims to perform their possession ritual. “My God,” I muttered.
“Who are you?” someone whispered.
He was close. I blinked, venturing past the stairs that led to the second floor. My knife at the ready, I glanced up to see nothing but darkness at the top of the steps, and so I returned my attention to the parlor. Crouched by the window, his hands tied to the radiator, was the boy, maybe a year or so younger than me. He was trembling, stripped to a filthy, formerly white T-shirt in the cold air of the unheated house. His arms were covered in claw marks, nasty, oozing red gashes. His bright-green eyes, round with terror, peeked out from under matted dark-blond hair. Tears streamed down his cheeks and cut narrow paths through the grime on his face.
A voice from my past echoed in my ears: Ana, a Guard in the dark city, telling me how she knew Nadia hadn’t been possessed by the Mazikin yet: Nadia had been crying.
“I won’t hurt you,” I mouthed, and then put my finger to my lips. I slowly moved forward, conscious of the tiniest groan in the floorboards that would alert the Mazikin upstairs to my presence. Squatting next to the boy, who reeked of piss and sweat, I used my knife to carefully cut through the ropes binding his wrists, which were bloody from his frantic attempts to free himself. The boy fixed his attention on the stairs. We both knew that was where the threat would come from if we were discovered. While I worked, I noticed his arms were covered in more than claw marks … they were covered in track marks, too. Recent bruises and scabs in the crooks of his elbows and down his inner arms. This kid was so young, but he was already an addict.
“They told me they had some good stuff here,” he whispered when he saw me looking at them.
I put my finger to my lips again and shook my head. He could tell me all about it after we were safe. But my insides knotted with anger. So that’s how these Mazikin were recruiting. They were luring messed-up kids into this house … and sending their souls straight to hell.
With one final slice of my knife, the ropes fell away from the boy’s wrists. I caught him as he collapsed onto the spongy, damp carpet. He cradled his raw, torn wrists and sank into me, his shoulders shaking and his face twisted with pain. I wrapped my arms around him, whispering as quietly as I could, “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
As much as I didn’t like being close to most people, I wanted to comfort this kid. I knew how he felt, and I wanted to make him promises. I wanted to tell him that he wasn’t disposable, that better things were ahead, that he wasn’t alone. I could have been just like him if not for Diane. So I held him like the mother he needed in that moment and silently fought my own memories of being broken and having no one to do this for me.
He finally pulled himself together and swiped his hands across his face, smearing tears across his dirty cheeks. He looked up at me from underneath his mop of greasy blond hair, cautious and shy. “My name’s Nick,” he said.
I shook my head, pinched his lips together, and then tried to smile in a reassuring way. He nodded, smiling back even though I was holding his mouth closed. It was the sweetest, most hopeful little smile, and I was determined to earn it. I put my face close to his dirt-rimmed ear. “Can you walk? We need to get you out of this place.”
He nodded, and I pulled him up and held him by the arm as he steadied himself. I pointed toward the hallway that led to the basement. Together, we inched past the staircase, through a few beams of light piercing through the cracks in the boards, revealing the swirling dust in the entryway.
The floor over our heads squeaked. Nick trembled against me. I took his hand, holding it firmly as I tugged him into the hallway. We tiptoed past the kitchen. Past the living room. From above came a growl, followed by a series of grunts. Someone was awake. Another series of snarls and coughs followed. “What are they doing up there?” Nick breathed in my ear.
I was pretty sure the Mazikin were talking to each other, but I was afraid that would scare him, so I shrugged and pulled him to the basement door as the ceiling began to groan and squeak. Someone was moving. Fast. They’d heard us.
We’d just made it onto the rickety basement steps when Nick cried, “Oh, God!” His panic nearly drowned out the sound of heavy footfalls nearby. A harsh curse from the parlor told me we had only seconds before we were caught. Before I could get him in front of me to protect him, Nick shoved me hard, trying to get past. I crashed down the steps, off balance and out of control, smashing my elbow and knee. The side of my head collided with the handrail, and I landed on my stomach on the cold cement floor. Nick was right behind me, so I pushed myself up and lunged for the basement door.
It flew open. A form stood silhouetted in the light, and I recognized the shape immediately. “Malachi,” I gasped.
The next few seconds split apart into disconnected sounds and sights, a moment torn at the seams. Malachi’s dark eyes narrowed. A roar from the top of the steps jolted my heart. The tips of Nick’s fingers brushed my back as we ran toward my Lieutenant.
Malachi’s knives flashed as he drew them from beneath his shirt. His face was fierce as he cocked his arms and let the blades fly. The knives spun past me, lifting a few strands of my hair as they flashed within inches of my temples.
They hit home with the solid thunk of metal penetrating flesh.
I spun around to see Nick fall back, Malachi’s blades buried to the hilt in his chest. Nick’s gaze met mine, pleading, questioning. His fingers spread wide, reaching for me as he sank to the floor. His mouth opened, but he never made a sound.
NINE
BY THE TIME NICK landed, his glazed eyes told me his soul was already headed to its next stop … wherever that was. I stared into them, willing him to come back, to be okay. I had promised him he’d be okay. Without thinking of the danger, I dove for him, disbelief making me stupid and slow.
Malachi jumped forward and wrenched the knives from Nick’s body in time to bury them both in the stomach of an oncoming Mazikin—the guy I’d followed to this house. With a groan, the Mazikin dropped to the ground, curled in on himself. Malachi sheathed the bloody weapons, grabbed my arm, and wrenched me away from Nick. “Go. Henry’s out front with the car.”
I was still glued to Nick’s empty eyes. “But he was—”
“Go!” Malachi shouted in my face, spinning me around and shoving me toward the door.
My eyes stinging, my chest aching, I stumbled out of the house. “We have to—”
“We have to get out of here,” said Malachi as he dragged me toward the street.
I forced myself not to look back as we climbed into the back of the gray sedan. Henry took off immediately, steering competently through the maze of the run-down neighborhood. “That was the nest,” I said between breaths.
“And you went in without waiting for me. For us,” said Malachi in a hard voice.
“You failed to follow your own protocol.”
“Those Mazikin will know someone was there,” said Henry. “They might clear out.”
“We can go back tonight and burn it out,” Malachi replied, looking me over. “A daytime assault is inadvisable now, considering we’re one Guard short and our Captain is wounded.”
The injuries from my fall down the steps jabbed splinters of pain up my arm and down my leg. The side of my head throbbed. I buried it in my hands, wishing I could erase Nick’s face from my mind. “We have to be more careful,” I murmured to no one in particular.
“We?” snapped Malachi. He pulled me to him, clearly past caring whether Henry noticed that we were a little more than Captain and Lieutenant. He tipped my chin up and made me look at him. “How badly are you hurt?”
“I fell down the steps. I’ll be okay.” Honestly, I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t seem to matter right now.
“You shouldn’t have gone in alone.” His words barely made it out from between his clenched teeth. “That was reckless.”
A tiny whisper of anger coiled in my belly, but I tried to keep my voice calm. “I texted you. Then called you.”
His cheeks darkened. “I didn’t hear the ring. The shelter was too loud. Tegan felt her phone vibrate in her pocket, and she alerted me. That was my mistake. But it doesn’t excuse yours.”
I swallowed, but it did nothing to remove the lump in my throat. “There was a kid in there, Malachi. They were hurting him.”
Malachi shook his head. “They don’t hurt their recruits. Not unless—”
“This isn’t like the dark city where their prisoners are passive and cooperative! The kid wouldn’t be quiet, and he was trying to escape. They’d scratched him.” Tears burned my eyes. “I saw a chance to get him out. I couldn’t leave him there.”
Confusion softened Malachi’s steely glare as Henry called out, “You freed a prisoner? Where is he now?”
I have no idea. I bit my lip as a tear leaked from the corner of my eye. Malachi cupped my face in his hands, and I shuddered as I noticed a smear of blood on his fingers. When he spoke again, his voice was soft. “Is he still trapped in there?”
I shook my head, the dread suffocating me. Malachi searched my expression for clues. “Did he escape before I arrived?”
I shook my head again. “He was right behind me.”
Malachi went utterly still as the color drained from his face. “No. No, that was a Mazikin,” he stammered. “He was chasing you—trying—he was trying to grab you. I had to … to protect you.”
“You did,” I choked out. “The other man was a Mazikin.”
“But the boy—”
“Wasn’t.”
Malachi’s hands shook as they fell away from me. He stared down at them and finally seemed to notice the blood on his fingers. “Are you sure?” he whispered.
Before I had a chance to respond, he was already wiping his bloody hands on his pants with desperate movements. But the smears had dried, so he started to rub them fiercely and scrape at them with his short, blunt fingernails. In seconds, his skin was red from the friction, and I reached over to stop him. He ripped his hands away from me and folded them beneath his arms. I sat back, completely at a loss. He looked like he was about to explode, and I had no idea how to defuse this kind of bomb. We lapsed into an uncomfortable silence.
As Henry got onto the highway, I realized I’d forgotten all about Tegan. I reached for my phone so that I could text her. But it wasn’t in my pocket. I patted myself down and realized that, somewhere along the line, I’d dropped not only the phone, but also my knife. Sucking in a breath, I touched Malachi’s arm. “Can I borrow your phone?”
He dropped it into my hand without looking at me. Pretending to be Malachi, I texted Tegan, telling her he’d found me and asking her if she could get a ride home from Ian. I got an answer immediately:
Where the hell did Lela go?!
So I responded: Had to deal with something
Tell her shes on my shitlist
I sighed. If you insist
I nudged Malachi’s arm. He quietly took the phone back and tucked it into his pocket; then he returned to rubbing at his skin. The blood had fallen away in dry flecks, but his hands were raw. I sat very still and watched my Lieutenant, who I ached for … who’d just killed a boy. An innocent one. One I’d promised to save.
Sorrow swelled in my chest, crushing me from the inside out, filling my lungs and lodging in my throat. Was Nick in the Countryside now? Or had he gone somewhere like the Blinding City? Jim had said it was a place for addicts. But Nick had seemed so young. So in need of gentleness and mercy. I wanted to believe that’s what he would get, but I’d seen enough to know it might not turn out that way. It made me want to scream with grief, even though I’d only known him for a few minutes. It had been long enough to feel him tremble in my arms, to see how hurt he was, and to have his hopeful, shy smile burned into my memory.
He was the reason we had to succeed against the Mazikin. They were taking the homeless, the street kids, the ones no one noticed or cared about. They were using people who had already suffered so much, and they were condemning them to hell.
“Henry,” I said, “I need you to drop us off at the Station, and then go back to the nest and watch it. If they try to clear out, you have to let us know. We’ll hit it tonight, but you’re right—they could move before then if they know we’re after them.” And considering how we’d left two corpses in the basement—along with my phone and my knife—it seemed like a distinct possibility. Especially if that female Mazikin had reported to Sil that we chased her last night. Like an idiot, Jim had actually asked her if she was a Mazikin. Which meant that at this point, they probably knew that the Guards of the Shadowlands had followed them to the land of the living.
“I can go with Henry,” Malachi said as he stared at his hands. He’d stopped rubbing them, but was now grasping his knees so tightly that his knuckles had turned as pale as his face.
“No, you can’t,” I replied. It was the easiest decision I’d made all day.
Malachi closed his eyes. The sorrow inside of me expanded, and I couldn’t stop myself from reaching for him. I knew we’d have to deal with this, have to talk about what he had done, have to make sure it didn’t ever happen again. But Malachi was obviously devastated, and seeing him this way hurt me almost as much as Nick’s death. My fingers skimmed along his brow, an offer of warmth, of myself. Not as his Captain, but as his girlfriend.
Henry pulled into the driveway of the Guard house. “Do you need a minute before I leave?” he asked, watching in the rearview mirror as I waited for Malachi to lean into me like he sometimes did, to seek more from me like I knew he needed.
“Yes,” I said at the same time that Malachi said, “No,” and then flung open the car door and bolted. My hand was still hovering where his head had been when he disappeared into the house.
I swallowed, my throat aching. “Henry, do you have what you need? You understand what I want you to do?”
He nodded, regarding me in the mirror.
“All right. See you later, then. Be careful.”
I got out of the car and trudged into the Guard house. It was slowgoing because every step sent crunching, vicious pain from my ankle to my knee. Clinging to the railing, I climbed the stairs to the second floor and heard the shower already running. By the time I got to the top, steam was billowing out from under the door of the bathroom. I rested my head against the wall and stared at the swirling cloud. Malachi was trying to wash himself clean. I’d done that a few times before. Maybe more than a few times. I knew how it felt to sit under scalding water and wish it were enough.
Knowing I needed to give him time, I carefully descended the steps.
And found Jim sitting in the parlor. Like he was waiting for me to find him there. His shirt was ripped, and his blond hair was a mess, but he looked sober enough as he watched me sink into the nearest chair.
I rested my elbows o
n my knees and let my head hang. Every part of me hurt. “So. You decided to come back.”
“Raphael found me and brought me in a little while ago. He said I needed to decide what I was going to do and to let you know.”
“And what are you deciding?”
“Whether I’m going to stay.”
I raised my head. “And?”
Jim’s face twisted with pain. “I’m not … I’m not a very good Guard.”
No kidding. “Then why did you get assigned to this field unit?” I asked, working hard to keep my voice gentle rather than accusatory. “Did you mess up or something? Is this, like, a second chance?”
“More like a last chance,” he said, rising abruptly to pace.
“What do you mean?”
“It was here or the Wasteland,” he mumbled.
Thinking of how Henry described the place, I said, “Are you telling me that if you choose not to be part of this field unit, the Wasteland is your alternative? Dude, why would you quit if that’s where you’d go?”
He crossed his arms over his chest and held onto his biceps. “Because I realized Henry was right last night. You guys are depending on me. And that …” He set his shoulders and turned to me. “I’m not good at keeping my Guard partners alive.”
I stared up into his deep-blue eyes and saw the pain there. The guilt. The regret. “Tell me?”
He grimaced and shook his head.
“Consider that an order.”
He closed his eyes. “His name was Bomani. He’s dead because of me. That’s why I’m here.”
I waited to speak until he was looking at me again. “So maybe this is your chance to redeem yourself.”
“I don’t deserve a chance,” he blurted. “You really don’t understand. Bomani was a good Guard. A great one. He was about to be released into the Countryside. He’d gotten rid of all his possessions and lived on simple rations, bread and water and nothing else. In the Blinding City, where everyone’s addicted to something, where everyone’s trying to get stuff so that they can have more than everyone else, where everyone’s chasing a high, that’s the sign you’re ready to get out. We all knew Bomani was about to go.
