by Sarah Fine
“What is it?”
“They’re calling all citizens to the square at the black hour,” she translated.
“It’s the coldest hour of the darkness,” Takeshi said. “Think of it as midnight.”
“For the lottery?” I asked.
“No.” Ana reached for my hand, and I let her take it in hers. It seemed less like an affectionate gesture and more like an attempt to hold me in place. “The Queen is playing host to the newest resident of the city,” she said in a hollow voice.
I focused on the pressure of her fingers to keep from screaming, from flying apart. As the growling speech went on, Ana’s grip steadily tightened until she was nearly crushing my hand, but she didn’t translate any more for me. I was about to ask her when the voice cut off with a blast of screeching feedback, allowing me to hear the noises of the street, the sounds coming from the buildings around us. Since we’d arrived in the city, it had been mostly quiet, save for the distant industrial noise coming from the factories. But now, all around me, the Mazikin hooted and snarled. Engines roared. Metal rattled and clanged.
Humans screamed and moaned.
In the gray twilight, the electric lights began to wink on, just enough to show the way. Shadows danced on the black pavement, silhouettes of snouts and rounded ears, of barrel chests and clawed hands. And more human shapes, too, hunched backs, trembling shoulders. The Mazikin and their slaves.
“There are more humans in the city than Mazikin.” Takeshi patted my head as he spoke, as if I were his mute and devoted dog. “About twice as many.”
“If they outnumber the Mazikin, why are they slaves?”
“I’d start with the fact that nearly all of them came from the dark city,” said Ana. “It’s not as if they were in fighting form when they got here. They were already hopeless enough to have taken their own lives.”
“And those who fight are punished in terrible ways,” added Takeshi. “In a place where there can be no escape, where you go on and on, and so does your suffering, that’s a terrifying prospect.”
“But not all of them have given up,” I said, thinking of that woman in the cart, chained and on the way to the meat factory, looking at me like I might save her. I hadn’t come here for that woman, and she wasn’t part of my mission, but I couldn’t help wanting to be worthy of that hope in her eyes.
Takeshi assessed me coolly and tugged my leash as we crossed the street. I shivered as chilled air crept under my cloak; now that the sun had fallen below the skyline, the temperature was dropping as rapidly as it had risen. I pulled my gloves from my waistband and slipped them on.
From behind us came a grunt, and Takeshi responded with a fierce growl and a wave of his clawed hand. The streets were growing crowded as the Mazikin came out to play. The pungent musk of their fur and the deeper scent of human misery—sweat and blood—wafted over me as I bumped shoulders with other leashed slaves and shied meekly away from the cloaked Mazikin who strode down the middle of the sidewalk. I could almost tell which ones had occupied human bodies. Some of them bounded up the street on all fours while others walked upright. Some wore jewelry and had styled the tufts of hair on their furry heads, and others wore no adornment at all—but all of them wore some kind of clothing. And with their humanlike hands and ability to speak, with the eerily intelligent gleam in their eyes, there was no mistaking them for ordinary animals.
“Aren’t there Mazikin cubs somewhere?” Ana asked. We hadn’t seen a single one since we’d entered the city. “Do they keep them underground or something?”
Takeshi made a disgusted noise. “No, the cubs are kept in a single nursery until they’re released into the city.” He barked and lunged at a Mazikin who came up to sniff at Ana, and the creature yelped and scurried away. “Now’s the time to be quiet,” he muttered. “Too crowded here.”
As we hiked north, Takeshi played his part with authority, stepping aside for no one. His cloak concealed most of his face, but his mask was arranged in a vicious snarl that made him seem like a bad choice if someone was looking for a fight. Which was good—because others weren’t so lucky. Scuffles broke out every few blocks. We passed by one Mazikin lying in a heap against the wall, holding a torn leash and bleeding from a gash across its chest. Its rapid, shallow breaths puffed in red-tinged clouds. Someone had wanted its slave and had taken the human by force, leaving the loser to drown in its own blood. Takeshi shortened the lead on our leashes, and through the collar I felt his tension vibrating.
Mechanized carts, trucks, and cars, their enormous clunky engines exposed and sputtering, their exhaust pipes belching oily black fumes, rumbled up and down the potholed roads, occasionally scraping against each other as they tried to pass on the rocky, crumbling terrain. The technology in the city looked to be about a hundred years behind Rhode Island, nothing sleek, nothing quiet. It was all clamor and stink, loud and brutal. Exactly like the Mazikin themselves. There didn’t seem to be any separation between public and private. More than once, we passed by pairs or groups of Mazikin, up against cars or walls or lying on the sidewalk, engaging in acts that turned my stomach. Sex. Death. Pain. Pleasure. All right there, all hideous.
These were the creatures holding Malachi prisoner.
And somewhere, in all of this, they had a few of my classmates, too, the ones unlucky enough to cross the paths of the Mazikin who had invaded my hometown. Somewhere out there, Aden the baseball star and Evan the drug dealer were enslaved and suffering. Some of the people I had met in the homeless camp in Providence were here, too. And, somewhere in this seething hell, my mother was lost and in pain. Even if I freed Malachi and completed this mission, what would it be like to escape the city knowing they were still trapped?
“Only a few more blocks,” Takeshi said in a low voice, steering us through the massing crowd. It was slowgoing now, because the streets were packed with creatures and humans. Most of them, though, were headed in the same direction we were. Toward the square.
Takeshi halted abruptly, and I bonked my head on his back. “This way,” he hissed, yanking my leash to the side, hard enough to make me stumble. Then he growled and barked at something beside me. I raised my head to see a big black-spotted Mazikin with a torn ear standing a few feet away. It had a fistful of Ana’s hood and was eyeing her with greedy eagerness. Ana was standing very still, her mouth set in a thin gray line. Her hands weren’t visible—they were hidden beneath her cloak—she probably had already grabbed knives, ready to defend herself.
With an earsplitting burst of feedback, the PA system flared to life again, and the deep grunts of the Mazikin announcer echoed off the cement buildings. As Takeshi continued to argue with the torn-eared Mazikin, the crowd drifted toward an open square up ahead illuminated by high stadium lights. The entrance to the square was only a few car-lengths away, and bodies were flowing into it, their heads upturned, their gazes focused on something above street level. Mazikin stood atop the buildings, too, looking down on the square, while those in the streets pressed forward, trying to get a view. I took a few steps and realized Takeshi was so absorbed in the discussion with the other Mazikin that he’d let go of my leash. I toppled forward as three leashed women with sunken faces tried to press by, and I had to stutter-step to avoid getting trampled.
Then I heard it, amidst the growling over the public announcement system, one word in English, wedged between hoots and whines. One word that made my heart seize up.
Captain.
Barely breathing, I let the crowd carry me, oblivious to everyone else, human and Mazikin alike.
A few dozen steps were all it took to make it to the square.
A few seconds was all it took to shatter me.
At the opposite end of the plaza, on a tiered platform, his arms outstretched, shackles around his ankles, wrists, and throat, the cement wall behind him splotched with reddish-brown stains, clothed only in his own blood, was Malachi.
I lunged forward, a desperate, soul-wrenching cry exploding up from the center of me. But then a clawed hand closed over my shoulder, and a furry limb snaked around my neck, cutting off my scream before it escaped my throat.
EIGHT
I LIFTED MY FEET off the ground and tucked my neck against my body, trying to wriggle away, but the Mazikin wrapped its arm around my waist and lurched backward until I could no longer see Malachi. Not that it mattered. The image was stamped on my brain. His eyes had been closed, but his face . . .
My heels scraped against the sidewalk as the Mazikin dragged me back the way I had come. No one in the crowd seemed interested in us; their eyes were all riveted on the spectacle in the square. And if no one cared, maybe they wouldn’t notice if I slit this Mazikin’s throat. I was reaching for my knives when the thing hurled me to the pavement. I hit hard, knees and elbows first. Above me, my Mazikin captor stood astride me and jabbed its clawed finger into Takeshi’s chest. With a knee-high leather boot, it kicked me lightly in the side and stepped over me, wedging itself between Takeshi, whose hood was pulled low over his Mazikin mask, and the torn-eared Mazikin he’d been arguing with. The Mazikin who’d grabbed me was shorter than Takeshi, but its claws were long, curved, and gleaming—and painted hot pink. Snarls came from deep within its barrel chest as it swiped those claws in front of the torn-eared creature’s face, and though bigger, Torn-Ear actually stepped back. A second later, Ana thumped to the pavement next to me.
“Are you okay?” she asked as soon as she saw my face. “You look like you’ve seen . . .” She grimaced. “We’ll get him, Lela. But first Takeshi has to convince Ugly up there that I shouldn’t be his new slave.” She jerked her chin at Torn-Ear, who had taken another wary step back from Takeshi and the small pink-clawed Mazikin that had hauled me away from the square.
I should have been trying to figure out how to help, but I was numb to anything except the memory of Malachi, the livid ruby scars that streaked his legs and ribs, the bite marks on his calves and hips and arms. And his face . . . “Malachi,” I breathed, trying not to pass out.
“Stay with me, Lela.” Ana edged up close, speaking right in my ear, somehow penetrating the swirl of panic. “I don’t know why, but that small Mazikin who grabbed you is claiming Takeshi is her mate. She’s insisting we all go with her, because she’s exercising her blood right.”
“Her what?”
“I think she means we’re all her property,” Ana said quickly, right as Takeshi grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her up. The small pink-clawed Mazikin did the same to me, and before I could draw my knives, I caught the barest shake of the head from Ana. So I let the creature practically carry me back along the block, down an alley that stank of raw sewage, and then through a narrow space between two buildings. I glanced up at the creature who had taken control of us. She had a crescent-moon-shaped scar next to her eye, which gave the sense that she had fought and survived on more than one occasion. Her grunts vibrated against my back as she wrestled me through a doorway and then through a maze of rooms that reeked of wet fur.
I stumbled up a few flights of concrete steps, the toes of my boots catching as I tried to keep up, my thoughts painted red with visions of Malachi. The Mazikin reached a metal door and wrenched it open, revealing a shallow room with three windows opening onto the street below. The pink-clawed Mazikin slammed the metal door, threw the dead bolt, and looked down at me, her fangs only a few inches from my face. “Lela,” she growled. “Lela . . . girl.”
My breath caught in my throat as I stared into her black eyes.
Takeshi ripped his mask from his face and let it fall to the floor, then stepped up next to us. “Lela, this is Zip.”
“What . . . what . . .” I stuttered, trying to figure out why Takeshi had been talking to this creature, and why she knew my name.
Zip turned to Takeshi and spoke in her snarl-hoot-grunt staccato, and Takeshi nodded before giving me a careful look. “She says she knew you. In the land of the living. When she . . .”
He glanced at Ana with a worried expression, and Ana walked over to me and leaned so all I could see was her face. “She says she’s the Mazikin who possessed your mother.”
The Mazikin released me, and my knees gave out. I hit the floor in a boneless sprawl of limbs, unable to decode all the images and words and thoughts in my head. I looked up at Zip, the Mazikin who had taken my mother. “You—”
“Tu mamá te ama a tí, Lela,” she said softly.
“Have you seen her?” I asked, peering into the dark corners of the room as if I’d find her there.
Zip and Takeshi exchanged words, then he knelt by my side. “She’s in a safe place. Not here. You’ll see her soon.”
“Safe place?” My laughter was hoarse and broken, my voice cracking on each word as I rolled to my hands and knees. There was no such thing as a safe place in this city. I fixed Takeshi with a hard stare. “Why is she here? Why are we here? Malachi’s out there. I just saw him.”
“And there’s nothing you can do about it right now,” Takeshi said. “That square is teeming with Mazikin, and unless you want to be chained next to him, we have to wait for a better time.”
I drew a deep breath. The damp concrete floor cooled my blood and slowed my heart, uncramping my muscles and allowing me to stand. “I still don’t get why this Mazikin’s acting like she’s our friend. She’s the reason my mom is here in the first place. Why would she care about her safety? Or ours, for that matter?”
“I’m not entirely sure.” Takeshi’s gaze wandered over to Zip, who was staring at me with total focus. “Is there something unusual about your mother, Lela? Something—”
“Nothing apart from the fact that she’s completely insane,” I said bitterly.
He nodded. “Ah. Well, Zip here is a young Mazikin, and your mother was probably the first and only human body she possessed. I think she probably got a bit lost in your mother’s head.”
“That’s what Sil told me,” I murmured, remembering the moments right before he cut my mother’s throat.
A rumbling growl rolled from Zip’s throat. “Sil.” She bared her teeth. Her curved claws clicked together.
“She still seems a little confused,” said Ana, eyeing Zip. “She has strong feelings for you and your mother, as if she’s part of your family.” Ana’s hands had disappeared beneath her cloak again, and I had no doubt she was ready and willing to put Zip down if she needed to.
“My mother’s not really my family,” I said, hugging myself. I wanted to be numb, truly numb, so nothing else would hurt. But as much as I’d tried to forget her, Rita Santos was an open wound, hurting me from the inside out. My mother had deserted me when I was only four years old. She’d let the system take me, chew me up, and spit me out. I edged away from Zip as a shout went up from the crowd. Zip whined quietly, then turned to Takeshi and began to speak again.
“She’s taking care of your mother,” Takeshi said when she was finished. “When Zip was returned to the city, she was determined to find her. She saved your mother from a meat cart and took her as a slave. I get the sense she treats her more like a pet, though. It’s a better fate than many here have.”
“Well, thanks,” I whispered, not wanting to think of how many times my mother had taken a ride on the meat cart before Zip rescued her. I got up and walked to the window.
Like a punch to the gut, the sight hit me hard—we were right over the square, near the top floor of one of the surrounding buildings. Maybe a story below, and only yards to my right, Malachi was chained to the bloody platform.
My hands clutched at the rough cement of the windowsill as I took in the blood, the gruesome, barely healed wound just beneath his rib cage, the heavy manacles pinning him against the concrete wall behind him. My fingers curled into shaking fists as I gazed at his harshly beautiful face. They’d tried to ruin it. Or half of it, at least. His right che
ek was a maze of claw marks, but the left appeared untouched. What hurt the most, though, was seeing his eyes. They were open, and the agony in their black-brown depths was miles deep. He gazed up at the black haze hanging above the stadium lights, like I’d seen him do in the dark city, when he’d stared at the wild forest beyond the city wall. He was escaping in the only way he could.
A shrieking blat of music split the frigid night air, and the crowd roared, the Mazikin’s black-clawed hands waving. The humans in the square cheered, too, like they were just as bloodthirsty. What the hell? Malachi had spent years protecting the inhabitants of the dark city . . . but of course, these were the people he’d failed, and he didn’t have any power here. The Mazikin were the masters. Takeshi’s claim that the Resistance was a myth made perfect sense as human shouts mingled with the snarls and hoots of the Mazikin. But then a flurry of movement to my left caught my attention, and I leaned from the window and looked down at the alley beside our building. I glimpsed pale-blond hair blown by a chill wind, a flash of milk-white skin as a hand pulled a hood forward, a dark-cloaked human sinking back into the shadows. Then the figure was gone, and the crowd near the alley reshaped around the person who had been there.
All eyes in the square were now focused on an archway of enormous cement blocks, which had been stamped with the image of a Mazikin, a grinning, fanged face keeping watch over the square. The archway was to the side of the platform where Malachi was chained, and through it loomed a dark, vast building, partially obscured by the haze. As the music screeched, discordant and earsplitting, it was joined by the rumble of a powerful engine. The mob parted as a mechanized cart rolled beneath the archway, the exposed coils of its engine gleaming under the stadium lights. Its driver wore a black leather cap with holes cut out for his ears, which twitched as he steered the vehicle into the center of the square. The rear of it became visible; the cart had a long, open back, like a stretch limousine without a hardtop.
