by Fine, Sarah
“Bugger. I would’ve made more of an effort if you’d brought her to see me yesterday. Inspiration, you know.”
Malachi started to make that growling noise but caught himself and cleared his throat. “Please, we’re in a bit of a hurry this morning.” He looked around for Ana, perhaps for support, but she had wandered off to caress a particularly pointy set of knives a few aisles away.
Michael gestured emphatically with the now-black strip of metal. “Keep your hair on, you useless wazzack. I just made your fifth staff and reforged your scimitar for the sixth time this month. And your eighth set of knives—how do you manage to keep bending ’em that way? You throw ’em way too hard. And I just waxed your third set of armor—you ever think of bleeding a little less? Inconsiderate git. So don’t rush me, and let me appreciate the scenery. I get tired of looking at your sorry face.”
I bit my tongue to keep from cracking up and stepped around Malachi, hoping maybe a feminine touch would speed things along. “Michael, it’s nice to meet you. Your skill and productivity—wow. You must never stop.”
Michael shot me his gray-toothed smile as he pointed the scimitar-in-progress in my direction. “Finally, someone who appreciates me. You’re right, love, I go all day. And all night.” He made a rather disturbing movement that may have been meant as a hip thrust but looked more like the swell of ocean waves. It was kind of hypnotic. Probably not in the way he intended, though.
From the corner of my eye, I saw the muscle in Malachi’s jaw start to jump. He’d clearly interpreted Michael’s movement as it had been intended after all—and seemed rather tense about it. But as long as Michael kept himself, and all his tools, at a respectful distance, I figured I could indulge him—provided he gave us what we came for.
“You don’t say.” I lifted an eyebrow, further experimenting with my skills as a seductress. This guy was kind of an easy target. “Well then, I can’t wait to see what you have for me. Want to show it off?”
The muscle in Malachi’s jaw had stopped jumping because now his mouth was hanging open. I spared him a glance but had to look away quickly to keep from giggling.
Michael, too, seemed a little off balance. “Uh. Bloody hell. Um, it’s over here. Close your mouth, you nancy,” he snapped, noticing Malachi’s dumbfounded expression. “Miss Lela, step into my office,” Michael said, newly charming, as he gestured toward a row of armor racks.
“I asked Michael to modify the frame he uses for Ana,” Malachi said quietly.
“And you weren’t kidding. Impressive,” Michael crooned, his eyes skating over my body.
With wide eyes I looked at Malachi, who dropped his head into his hands. If his hair weren’t so short, I was sure he would have been ripping it out.
My stomach muscles ached with suppressed laughter. “All right, Michael, shall we see how accurately Malachi described my chest size?”
Malachi made a strangled noise as he followed me and Michael to a set of black armor draped over a rack in the corner. I took a moment to stare at all the leather and metal buckles.
And now I begin my career as a dominatrix.
Michael pulled the breastplate off the rack. “Twelve ounces per square foot of pure feminine beauty,” he purred, stroking the front of the thing in a way that made me want to bathe in a vat of bleach. I panicked for a moment when he unbuckled the sides and waddled in my direction. Fortunately, Malachi stepped forward and snatched it from his hands.
Michael muttered something that sounded like “Arsehole” but didn’t resist.
“It’ll be stiff at first,” Malachi explained as he met my eyes and held it up, seeking permission to help me. I lifted my braid from my neck, allowing him to position the leather over my chest and back. Malachi’s experienced fingers made quick work of the small buckles that connected front to back along each of my sides. The vest extended down to my hips, where it ended in a delicate flare to give me ease of movement. The whole thing reminded me of a corset, though it wasn’t too tight. In fact, it fit perfectly, and that made my cheeks very hot for a few moments.
“I guess you were pretty accurate,” I mumbled. “Good job.”
“It will deflect most knife and scimitar strikes,” he mumbled back. Was I imagining that slight tinge of pink in his cheeks?
Something black flew across the room and hit Malachi in the head. He froze for a moment, eyes wide, looking completely stunned.
“Keep your head in the game, plonker,” shouted Michael.
“Whoa,” laughed Ana, skipping down the aisle with three new knives swinging from her hands. “Someone got the drop on Malachi. I think it’s been a few decades since that happened.”
Malachi successfully dodged the next black projectile and caught the two after that. They were my leg and arm protection—greaves and bracers. He ignored the taunts and gave me another questioning look before helping me put them on.
“How do I look?” I posed, flexing my biceps and wiggling my eyebrows. I was glad there was no mirror around, as I was fairly sure I looked like a prat. Or a nutter. Or a git. Yep, one of those.
“You’re missing something,” Ana replied, holding up a belt. She fastened it around my hips and hooked a baton onto it. “Now you look beautiful. Doesn’t she look beautiful, boys?”
Malachi had already turned his attention to his own assorted weapons and did not look up. I didn’t know whether to feel disappointed or relieved.
“Ah, there’s none so fair as thee, sweet Ana, but she’ll do,” sang Michael in a rumbling bass, but it took him a few seconds to peel his eyes from me. When he did, he saw Ana’s new treasures. “I suppose you want to take those knives with you?”
“Girls like shiny things, Michael,” she said, shaking her hips at him. She sheathed the knives with lethal efficiency. Michael actually shivered, shaking the floor like a small earthquake.
“Michael, thank you for your work,” Malachi said formally. “As always, it’s excellent.” He had put on his own armor and looped the satchel over his chest again. He looked…Ah, it was just not fair. I swallowed hard. He looked amazing, and I looked like a plonker.
Michael apparently did not share my admiration. “Try not to cock it all up this time, will ya? Bring some of it back in one piece.”
“We always do our best,” said Malachi, “but we wouldn’t want you to get bored. You know what they say about idle hands.”
Michael held up his hands and wiggled his fingers at me. He winked. “Don’t you worry about my idle hands, boy.”
Huh. The few times I’d been to church in my life, I’d never heard anyone describe St. Michael as a morbidly obese guy with a foul mouth and an eye for the ladies. Still, the guy was hilarious. I winked back at him just to be obnoxious.
Malachi grabbed my hand and dragged me down the aisle. “Don’t encourage him, please,” he muttered.
SEVENTEEN
WE WOULD REACH THE center of the city by midday, or so Malachi informed me. I couldn’t tell what time it was. As always, it was dark, just block after block of mismatched buildings and sorrowful faces.
Guards patrolled in pairs, their glowing eyes sweeping the crowds, searching for unusual behavior. Whenever we passed them, they snapped to attention and waited for Malachi to acknowledge them. They all looked the same to me, but he knew each of their names. He would nod or give a few instructions before sending them on their way. One of them leered at me and said to Malachi, “Finally taking one downtown, Captain?”
The expression on Malachi’s face made the Guard step back and jerk to attention again. I glanced at Ana for clues, but she was staring at the Guard with the same violent intensity.
When I asked why we couldn’t have brought a few Guards with us, Ana answered. “Because this isn’t an official mission. Right, Captain?”
Malachi ignored her and kept walking.
I tried to kill both time and the tension by asking all the questions that had built up in my brain over the last few days. “So how come you guys don’t have phon
es and stuff?”
“They have not been given to us,” Malachi replied. “Guards are outfitted by Michael and supplied with essentials by Raphael. We have not been supplied with a telephone.”
I smiled at the thought of him trying to figure out a cell.
“But you said people can grow entire buildings here—so why can’t you grow one tiny little phone?” I considered giving it a try, just to see if I could do it.
“Guards don’t grow anything,” Ana said. “It would be considered a dereliction of duty. We have certain privileges, like being able to enter occupied apartments, but we also have rules.”
“But haven’t you ever been tempted to try?”
Malachi made a strained sound in his throat. “It’s an easy decision, if the choice is between a telephone and being released into the Countryside sooner.” He stopped and turned to me. “When it’s time for you to leave this city, I’d like you to be free to go.”
“Seriously? I’m not talking about a luxury pimp palace. I’m talking about a phone. Wouldn’t it make life easier?”
Ana bumped my shoulder with hers. “If you think anything here is supposed to be easy, girl, maybe you aren’t ready to leave after all.”
“That’s enough, Ana,” Malachi said as he pivoted on his heel and resumed the hike. “And Lela, a phone would be completely possible, if a resident of this city ever decided to communicate with another person. But even if they did, who would they call?”
I couldn’t really think of a response to that as we trudged past an endless stream of people, all with glazed eyes fixed on the ground. One lady sat on a curb surrounded by piles of shoes. As I watched, a slimy pair of stilettos grew over her previously bare feet. She took them off, added them to a pile, and bent over to stare at her feet again.
I shook my head. “What about cars? Computers? TV?”
“Oh, we have TVs. They’re in all the apartments,” said Ana. “People gorge on television just like they gorge on food. I myself have been known to indulge at times. Not much else to do. I mean, the
BOOK stores in this place suck. The print’s too small, and I hate vampires.”
Malachi nodded. “As for cars…I guess they don’t seem important here. People do wander when they first get here, like your friend did, but once they settle in, they tend to stay in one place. Everything they could want is within a block or two, anyway. Some of them never leave their apartments. Besides the Guards, the only creatures who move around this city regularly are the Mazikin, but because they don’t actually belong in the city, nothing will grow for them, thank God. And, please forgive me, what is a computer?”
Ana laughed and gave Malachi a playful shove. “They’re like these enormous calculators, old man.” She gave me an amused look. “Why would anyone want one of those? Oh, I guess maybe an accountant might…and I think we have a lot of those here. But no—I think we’d notice if someone’s apartment was taken up entirely with circuit boards.”
Malachi’s smile told me he’d figured something out—and it also made my heart skip a beat or two. “Something tells me times have changed, Ana.”
“Yeah,” I replied, still staring at his mouth. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you run into that kind of thing in the near future. If you think people gorge on TV, wait until you see the Internet.”
Ana shrugged. “All right, but whatever that is, it probably wouldn’t work that well, anyway. Nothing here does.”
As we entered the downtown area, I craned my neck to see where the buildings ended. I could almost feel them breathing, decaying, and yet growing, fueled by the desires and wishes of people who didn’t know what they needed. My plan to grow my own iPod just for fun kind of evaporated at that point.
In the downtown section of the city resided those who had absolutely no desire to see beyond what they wanted. Some of them had been here for centuries, the buildings growing and evolving around them, scar tissue over festering wounds. Ana told stories of patrolling these streets, witnessing people lugging massive amounts of garbage into the high-rises. The residents here were willing to defend their precious treasures to the end. They collected junk until they were trapped in their apartments, buried in all their wishes, in all the things they’d collected to fill the emptiness that made them kill themselves in the first place. I wondered what Nadia might have been seeking when she decided to escape her life. What did Nadia think would fill her empty space?
We had been walking in silence for almost an hour, surrounded by high-rises so tall they seemed to join together at the top, closing us in. On the sidewalk, the lamps that provided us with our only light grew weaker and farther apart.
I stumbled a few times in the murk, unable to see the uneven pavement at my feet. “Jeez, can you guys see at all? Aren’t you afraid some Mazikin could sneak up on us?”
Ana laughed. “First, thanks for underestimating us like that. And second, no. Mazikin avoid downtown like the plague. It’s too much, even for them. Especially for them.”
I squinted and tried to see what lay ahead of us, but it was completely black. “They don’t seem like the types to be afraid of the dark.”
Malachi held his arm out to keep me from walking farther. “It’s not the dark, Lela. It’s this. Right in front of us. The dark tower. Put your arm out.”
I obeyed and then yanked my hand back immediately. I couldn’t really say why it felt so bad, but touching that building felt profoundly, overwhelmingly, instinctually wrong. I looked up at Malachi for an explanation, and even in the darkness I could read the regret on his face.
“We have to go through it,” he explained. “It’s not something we can go around. We’ve tried. The other Guards have no problem going through it, but for us, for humans, it’s…harder.”
I stared at him blankly. I didn’t understand what he was talking about—we couldn’t go around it? We’d been walking around buildings all day.
“But…” I pointed to the corner where the building seemed to end. Malachi nodded for me to try it. I did, walking along the edge of the building, but it somehow expanded and contorted to prevent me from going around it.
I returned to his side. “How come it does this?”
Malachi sighed. “This tower is right at the center of the city. It’s probably been here since this place was created. It stands in the middle of all of this misery, all these lost people. And if buildings can grow out of people’s wishes and desires, why can’t one grow out of their fears? It’s some sort of vortex for feelings and memories—”
“Malachi, say it plain and simple,” snapped Ana. “Walking through here will make you feel bad, Lela. Really bad. But you just keep walking, and do not stop, all right? No matter what you’re feeling, or what you remember, don’t stop walking. It’s not that far. Keep your mind on your feet.”
My eyes bounced back and forth between Ana and Malachi. I should have noticed this change stealing over the two of them during the last hour. Ana looked mad, almost grimly determined. And Malachi looked sick. He was already sweating.
I wanted to take his hand and reassure him. I felt stupid even thinking about it as I watched him square his shoulders and lift his chin, setting his eyes on the low, square entryway, the only way to get to the other side. Yeah, I wanted to reassure him, but I also wanted him to pick me up and carry me through this awful place.
He turned to me. “We could go back and circumvent all of downtown, but it would take two extra days to get to Harag. It’s why we came this way. But we could go back if you want. We don’t have to go through. I should have told you. I just didn’t—”
“I didn’t want to frighten you,” mocked Ana, mimicking his accent with devastating accuracy. Malachi snapped his mouth shut and gave her a withering look, but she didn’t back down. “Malachi, you have got to get your eye on the ball here. She is not a little girl. She is—”
“Standing right here,” I interrupted angrily, “and will see you guys on the other side.” I marched into the dark tower, wanting to
get it over with before the dread could bubble up and suffocate me.
The last thing I heard as the door of the building slammed shut behind me was Malachi calling my name.
EIGHTEEN
I HAD THOUGHT THE city was silent, but I didn’t understand silence until that moment. As I took my first few steps into the soaring lobby, I imagined this was what it felt like to be completely deaf. My boots faltered noiselessly, and I knelt quickly to brace myself.
And immediately had to suppress the urge to barf.
When my fingers hit the floor, I realized why it was so difficult to keep my balance: it was soft and slick, a living thing. I stood up quickly, fighting my gag reflex as I wiped my hand against my pants.
Remembering Ana’s advice, I took careful steps deeper into the cavernous mouth of the building. I thought about turning back to wait for Malachi and Ana, but as I looked toward the door, all I saw was a smooth wall.
It was pulsing, thrumming gently.
Just a thousand more miles of weird. Keep moving forward. Don’t stop, and don’t freak out.
The air was saturated, wet and warm. It settled into my skin and onto my tongue, sour and rank.
Then I recognized the smell.
I bowed my head and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to keep it together as my heart rate accelerated painfully. The air was full of Rick. His breath: beer and cigarettes. His scent: stale sweat and gasoline.
Keep moving forward, Lela, it’s not real. My fingernails bit deeply into my palms as I stumbled onward, no longer trying to fight the helpless retching that doubled me over every few steps.
When I felt his hands on me, I spun around, lost my balance, and ended up on my back. And when I looked down, my armor and boots were gone. I was wearing that too-tight, too-short nightgown Rick always made me put on before I went to bed. He was here. He would hurt me again. I screamed with noiseless terror.
No no no, I argued silently with myself. This is not real.
