by Sarah Fine
“I looked for Takeshi for a while, and then I realized . . . he wasn’t in the Countryside,” said Ana. “And the moment I understood that, the Wasteland appeared before me.”
“What?” I rose up on one elbow, trying to marshal enough strength to get out of bed. I remembered what Henry had said about the Wasteland. Full of killers. The worst of the worst. Definitely not where I expected Takeshi to be.
Ana looked haunted as she recalled the place. “It’s like this wide canyon, full of crazy barbarians. Hunchbacks and traders who take advantage of the vulnerable. Wolves and vultures who pick off the weak and scavenge the dead. I think people stay there forever, dying over and over in horrible ways, becoming less and less human every time.” She paused, looking regretful. “Well, most of them, at least. Anyway, the Mazikin city is there, way out in a desert. Under a dome.”
Just like the Judge had shown me.
“Somehow, I knew he was there,” Ana continued. “I mean, why else would that place appear right in front of me when no one else seemed able to see it? So I went.” She laughed and shook her head. “I was convinced I was just going to go in there and get him out.”
“And it didn’t go as planned . . .”
“I couldn’t get through the dome. But I could see through it, to the other side.” Her eyes met mine. “And what I saw was Malachi.” Her tone had regained its edge.
I sat up all the way. “Was he okay?”
Her knife suddenly stopped twirling, with the tip pointed right at my face. “What did you do, Lela? I was standing right there when he fell out of a black hole at the edge of the sky. He hit the ground hard, right in front of the Mazikin city gates. He was naked. Dazed. Totally defenseless. And they were waiting. A whole crowd of them.” Her voice shook—but she held the knife steady.
I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes to keep the tears from falling. “Of course they were,” I said hoarsely. “They had it all planned.”
“But in seventy years, Malachi never even got close to being taken.” Ana’s voice dripped with accusation. “So what I want to know is how it happened—and what you had to do with it.”
At least now I knew why she’d hurled the knife. “You think it’s my fault.”
Her gaze slid along the edge of her blade, and I wondered if she was considering stabbing me again. “If it’s not, you tell me how one of the best Guards who ever served is now at the mercy of the creatures he dominated for decades.”
I swung my legs over the side of the bed. “If you want to blame me, go ahead. He was trying to free prisoners who he thought were human, not realizing the whole thing had been set up to capture him. He thought the Mazikin wanted me, but they didn’t. He was too busy protecting me to realize it.”
We stared at each other for a moment. “I could have predicted that,” she said quietly. “I think I knew he was in love with you before he did.”
I impatiently wiped a tear from my cheek. “I love him, too, Ana.” I cleared my throat. “And I’m going to get him. I’ve already met with the Judge, and she gave me my mission.”
Ana threw her arms up and groaned. “I should have known she would do something like this.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She told me I could go on an official mission into the Mazikin city. She said I’d have a chance to get Takeshi out. And then she told me I’d have a new Lieutenant. I assumed it would be an actual Guard.”
“Ana, I am a Guard.”
Her eyebrows rose. “What?”
“She didn’t tell you? Malachi and I were back in the land of the living for the last few months.” I gave her the two-minute rundown, leaving out all the angsty drama between Malachi and me. We’d gotten through it, and that was what mattered.
“Huh,” she said, eyeing me up and down once I’d finished. “I could not have predicted that.”
“Me neither. And I’m sorry about Takeshi. I really hoped you guys would get to be together after all those years apart.”
“Me too,” she murmured. “But it’s going to happen. That’s why I’m here.”
Looking at her, so fierce and strong, it suddenly felt possible. She and I would face the Mazikin together, and there was no one else I would have rather had as my Captain as I tried to rescue Malachi. “Did she tell you the other stuff we have to do?”
Ana nodded, then seemed to realize something. “Hey, I was thinking you came from the dark city, but you said you were back in the land of the living. As in, alive. How did you get here?”
“I . . . I kind of lost it when Malachi got taken. I jumped off a cliff.”
“You committed suicide?”
“Kind of? I had a feeling Raphael would stop me. It seemed like the quickest way to get to the Judge. I couldn’t let the Mazikin take me. I mean, it would have gotten me to the Mazikin city, but then there would have been a possessed Lela running around in Rhode Island, and she would have hurt people I care about.”
Ana finally sheathed her knife and gave me a hard assessing look. “But you would have let them take you? If it was the only way?”
I stood up. “I would have done anything. I will do anything.”
She sighed. “All right. I’m sorry for throwing a knife at you. It was just . . . seeing Malachi like that sent me over the edge.”
My throat tightened up. “Do I want to know what they did to him?”
“It wasn’t what they did. They just picked him up and carried him into the city as he tried to fight them. It was how he looked.” She winced and scrubbed her hand over her face.
“Tell me,” I said, the tension knotting along my spine until I felt like it was about to snap.
She shifted restlessly, looking down at the floor. “He looked scared, Lela. He looked really scared.”
I walked toward the door, unable to stand still any longer. “Can we go, Captain?”
Ana got to her feet. “Are you ready for this?”
“Absolutely.” I sounded more confident than I felt.
“You better keep up with me.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If we’re going to succeed, I can’t take care of you.”
Which was what she’d done in the dark city. “You won’t have to.” I swallowed my tears. “Malachi taught me a lot. I can hold my own now.”
“You’d better. We’re going to a place that makes hell look like a picnic.” She stalked past me and out into the hall. “So we’re going to go in armed. Let’s go see Michael.”
I followed Ana down a hallway covered with brightly flowered wallpaper. “Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought Michael’s workshop was at the Guard Station in the dark city.”
She shrugged. “He’s wherever we need him to be.”
Considering he’d appeared in the basement of the Guard house in Warwick back home, I supposed she was right. As we neared the end of the ridiculously long corridor, the wallpaper changed to a dark burgundy, our path lit by elaborate lanterns dangling from silver chains. At the end of the hall was an intricately carved wooden door, in front of which one of the enormous Guards stood at attention. When we reached him, he saluted us, then pulled the door wide, allowing a wave of sound to flow out, all sharp clangs and roared curses.
We entered the workshop and walked down aisles with shelves of blades, bows, staffs, and other weaponry rising nearly two stories above us. As we turned a corner, Michael looked up from his forge, holding his heavy iron hammer high. Thick folds of fat wobbled beneath his arms.
“You’re late!” he shouted, his jowls trembling as he slammed his hammer down. His cheeks were bright red, but the rest of his complexion was gray.
I gave Ana a sidelong glance. “Sorry. We got held up.”
He pursed his lips as his gaze settled on Ana. “Ah. Yes. Raphael told me you got temperamental. I’ve half a mind to leave you unarmed.”
Ana lifted her chin defiantly but didn’t make any excuses. Michael gestured impatiently at us, throwing off shimmering drops of sweat that hit the forge with a sizzle. “Get over here. No time to waste.”
I stared at him. Usually, he was telling us to keep our hair on, to let him work. But today . . . no insults, no flirting, no cursing in his chosen language of the month. Just action. He already had a fresh set of knives waiting for me, their narrow forward-curving blades reflecting the fire of his forge. Unlike Ana, I rarely threw my knives, preferring to use them in direct hand-to-hand combat to slash and stab. As I picked them up, I found them to be nicely balanced and deceptively heavy. Michael also supplied me with a belt and sheaths for my thighs and ankles.
“How did those gloves work out for you?” he asked. “The ones for the dance?”
Ana’s brow furrowed. “You got to go to a dance?”
I looked over at Michael, expecting him to say something about my dress or my breasts or . . . something. But he was simply looking at me expectantly, waiting for an answer. “They were awesome,” I said. “I punched through a thick plastic barrier without a problem.”
He nodded briskly. “Made you a pair for this mission.” He held up a set of long gloves, but instead of silvery satin, these seemed made out of leather. They were the same shade as my own skin.
While I slid them on and tried them out, swinging my fists to adjust to the weight of the steel shot sewn into small pockets over each of my knuckles, Michael provided Ana with a set of double-edged throwing knives. “I’d give you batons, but they’d be easier to detect than the blades and instantly recognizable as Guard weapons,” he said. “I’ll give you something else, though.” He reached under his worktable and brought out a box filled with small black spheres. They were the size of golf balls, but they were smooth, except for a single concave button on each of their round faces. He nodded down at them. “Just hold that button down, and you have ten seconds,” he said. “Boom.”
Ana blinked. “Boom,” she echoed softly, probably remembering her last encounter with one of these grenades. She hadn’t lived through it.
“Who gets these?” he asked.
“I do,” said Ana, somewhat hoarsely. “I have more experience with them.”
“Thanks,” I said, watching Michael slide eight of the grenades into a thickly padded strip of leather.
He held it out to her. “You’ll be able to fight without triggering them. The buttons are recessed, and you really have to push with some strength. They won’t go off until you want them to. But remember—you only have ten seconds after you press that button. Get clear as fast as you can.”
Ana positioned the thick strip of deadly grenades diagonally over her chest, looking like she’d rather wear a poisonous snake. She adjusted it and straightened her shoulders. “Can you tell us more about the city?”
He shook his head, sending more drops of sweat onto the forge. “No. I can only tell you what they started with, not what they have now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Everything has a beginning, even Mazikin. And theirs wasn’t in that city, under that dome.”
“Well, tell us what you do know,” said Ana. “Anything might help.”
Michael nodded. “They weren’t always imprisoned. It wasn’t until they tried to take over the Sanctum. They wanted to rule. And the Judge, he let ’em.” The Judge could take on any appearance, and apparently, to Michael, the Judge was male.
I held up my hand. “Wait, what? The Judge let them take over?”
Michael snorted. “Not here. He gave them their own place, and enough resources to be self-sufficient.”
I gaped at him. “Why would the Judge do that?”
Michael gave me a strange look. “Because he loved them, Lela. He was the one who created them in the first place.”
THREE
“SHE FORGOT TO MENTION that,” Ana and I said at the same time. My hands became fists. We were being sent in to clean up a mess the all-knowing Judge had made.
“It wasn’t necessary for your mission,” said a voice coming from behind us. I looked over my shoulder to see Raphael standing next to a neatly stacked set of crossbows.
Michael picked up his hammer. “I don’t come into your quarters and interrupt your conversations.”
“Don’t be peevish, Michael. Are they ready?” Raphael walked forward. He was carrying several garments, which appeared to be made of different shades of brown leather, stitched together haphazardly.
“Nearly,” Michael grumbled.
While he finished arming Ana, I walked over to Raphael. “Knowing the Judge created the Mazikin may not fall under ‘need to know,’ but the more we understand about them now, the better equipped we’ll be,” I said to him. “What’s their city like? How did they get ahold of the portal she’s sending us in to destroy?”
“The Judge only gave them what they needed to survive. She never intended them to escape. They have access to water and other natural resources. She gave them a herd of prey animals as a food source. Goats, actually. As for the portal . . .” He and Michael looked at each other for a moment, then Raphael gave him a brief nod and continued. “The Mazikin were the animal companions of the Judge.”
“The Judge’s idea of the perfect pet is a horde of crazy hyenas?”
“In the beginning there were only two.” Raphael gave me a beautifully enigmatic smile. “She has a soft spot for animals.”
“Apparently. But these can’t be ordinary animals.”
He shook his head. “Far from it. They are nearly as intelligent as humans, or the first two were, anyway. And the pair of them had the run of the Sanctum.” He made a mildly disapproving face, and I suddenly pictured him following after a large dog, carrying a baggy full of poop. “Unfortunately, by the time they rebelled, they had learned some of its secrets, and when they were banished, they stole the material needed to make a portal. Then they used their knowledge of the boundaries between the realms to make one for themselves. We found this out later, when it was discovered the Mazikin were possessing human bodies within the dark city.”
“Why the dark city?” Ana asked, coming over to join us. “Taking over the bodies and minds of people who chose to end their lives cannot be a fun experience. Seems like they’d have done better almost anywhere else.”
“But the people in the dark city are far more passive,” said Raphael. “And, as you discovered in the land of the living, Lela, Mazikin like the dark.”
“How long ago did they escape their city?”
“It has been a very long time since the Mazikin were contained under the dome. We think they found a way out only about eight hundred years ago.”
“Only.” I suddenly wondered how old Raphael himself was. Even though he looked about thirty, for all I knew, he might have existed since the beginning of time. So few people I’d met in the afterlife looked their age. Malachi looked about eighteen, but . . .
Thinking of him was like being stabbed in the chest, and I crossed my arms in front of me and looked away. It was too late, though. His face loomed large in my mind, the heat of him, the sensual, earthy scent of his skin, the sound of his voice as he whispered fiercely in my ear: You will kill whoever comes at you. You will do whatever it takes . . .
I drew in a shuddering breath. That was exactly what I would do. Whatever it took to get him back. “When can we leave?”
“As soon as you change,” said Raphael.
I raised my eyebrows.
“We’re going into a self-contained city, Lieutenant,” Ana said.
Raphael nodded. “If you go clothed in materials that cannot be found in the city, they will spot you immediately.” He eyed my hair. “Which is already a possibility, mind you. But it would be best not to make it too easy for them.” He held up the garments folded over his arms. “Goatskin.”
He handed me
a pair of pants, a smock with a thin strip of leather lacing up the front, and a cloak. “I have boots for you as well. The material is durable and will help you withstand conditions under the dome, which are likely to be extreme.”
I walked into one of the aisles to get a little privacy. A second later Ana joined me. Apparently, she wasn’t too keen on getting naked in front of Raphael and Michael, either. Barely looking at each other, lost in our own mental preparations, we stripped off our clothes and put on the surprisingly supple goatskin.
“It will double as armor,” Raphael called. “I created it so that Mazikin teeth and claws won’t penetrate it, unlike the garments you would find within the city. Metal blades are a different matter, though. Be careful.”
I strapped the sheaths for my knives over my thighs and pulled the cloak around me, then glanced at Ana, who was adjusting the row of grenades beneath her smock. “What happens if they find us with those?”
“My guess is we’ll be strung up next to Malachi,” she said in a low voice. “But we won’t go down without taking a few of them with us.”
I nodded. “How about a lot of them?”
She gave me a grim smile. “I’ll do my part if you do yours.”
“You got it, Captain.” I pulled up the hood of my cloak. It smelled sharp and sour, and I wrinkled my nose.
“What in the hell is taking so long?” Michael roared.
My cloak fluttering around my ankles, I emerged from the aisle to see Michael staring at us with red-faced fury. Raphael held out a pair of leather boots to me as he said calmly to Michael, “Stop rushing them.”
Michael exhaled through his flared nostrils, like a bull about to charge. His skin began to give off the same glow as Raphael’s did when he was really pissed. And that’s when it occurred to me: Michael was upset about Malachi, too. Whenever they were together, Michael had always given Malachi a really hard time, calling him names and hollering at him to stop mistreating his weapons. But looking at Michael now, it seemed like he was ready to go into the Mazikin city himself. And the Mazikin probably wouldn’t stand a chance if he did.
