by Sarah Fine
I rubbed my shoulder and forced myself to look at him. “I’m fine.”
His eyes searched my face. “You don’t look like yourself. At all. What happened to you?”
It was similar to what Tegan had said. You look . . . different. Like the defeat was written across my forehead. “Rough week. But I’m all right.”
“Bullshit,” he said softly, then ran a hand through his chestnut-brown hair. “But I’ve sort of given up on trying to understand. I just didn’t want you to be dead, and I got my wish.”
“Are you okay?” I looked up and down the hall. If any of my classmates were Mazikin, or if Juri was watching, talking to Ian would only put him in more danger.
He followed my gaze and narrowed his eyes in understanding. “It’s not over, is it?”
“It is for you. You need to stay away from me,” I said in a low voice, sidestepping him and heading up the hall.
“What the fuck, Lela? Are you kidding me?” He caught up and hooked his fingers around my arm. “I care about you. A bunch of my friends are dead or hurt, and you’re obviously still wrapped up in something. And I thought we—”
“You thought what?” asked a painfully familiar voice. Juri stepped from a side hallway and put an arm around me, tugging me away from Ian. I froze at the feel of Malachi’s hands on my body. He even smelled like Malachi, earth and leather. He was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, revealing a few of the scars along his forearms, as well as the number tattoo on his left arm. His hand slid down to my waist, and words escaped me, especially when I looked up into his eyes, so dark they were almost black. “Hi,” he said, and it was so gentle and so Malachi that it made my eyes sting with tears.
“You’re back too, then,” Ian said in a flat voice.
“I am,” Juri replied, “and I would be interested in hearing why you put your hands on my girlfriend a minute ago.”
“I’m not your girlfriend,” I tried to say, but I only mouthed it. I couldn’t get any sound to come out. Too much. It was way too much.
Juri looped one of my curls around his finger as he held me close.
“Lela, if you don’t want him to—” Ian began, then flinched as Juri leaned forward.
“She is mine,” Juri said, almost a growl.
He sounded nothing like Malachi, and I wrenched myself away from him, my heart hammering, my tears barely contained. He didn’t try to keep ahold of me. He merely chuckled and put his hands up in surrender. “Even when we’re disagreeing,” he added.
“Lela, are you really okay?” Ian asked as the bell rang.
I wanted to tell him the truth. I was the furthest thing from okay anyone had ever been. But if I did, he’d only want to help. He’d want to be my friend. Ian was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. He was good. And if I let him in, Juri would slaughter him. I sucked in a breath. “I’m fine. You’d better get to class.”
Ian’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head. “Whatever.”
As soon as he disappeared around a corner, I shoved Juri hard enough to send any normal person crashing into the lockers. But he wasn’t a normal person, and he absorbed the blow without even stepping back.
“Leave Ian alone,” I snapped.
Juri snorted. “I don’t like him. Malachi didn’t like him, either. If he touches you again, I’m going to peel his skin off while he’s still alive. And if you let him touch you, I’ll make you watch.”
“Why are you even here?”
He raised his arms, his eyes growing wider. “Where else should I be?”
“I’m going to kill you,” I said in a low voice.
His fingers were in my pocket before I could move, and I felt them close around the hilt of my knife. “No, you’re not,” he said softly.
I tensed, preparing to feel that blade in my stomach, but instead his fingertips stroked at the hollow of my hipbone beneath the fabric of my clothes. I tried to step away, but his other hand curved around the back of my neck. He set his forehead on mine. “No, you’re not,” he repeated, still stroking, making my stomach churn. “Come to me tonight.”
“No fucking way.” I jerked my fist up to slam it into his throat.
He caught it easily in a firm grip, then ran his thumb over my knuckles. “Your heart’s not in this, Lela. It was a terrible thing for the Judge to do, to send one girl to stop me and mine.”
“I’ve done all right so far. At least, that’s what your Queen probably thought, right before she died.” I hadn’t actually killed her, but I was willing to take credit just to get him to let me go.
He only held me tighter. “I don’t know exactly what you’ve done, but I’m going to make you pay for all of it.” His words were at odds with his voice, which was low and caressing, a seductive version of Malachi I’d only seen a few times.
“By talking me to death?”
He laughed. “Maybe. I’m never myself when I’m around you.”
I put my hands on his waist, trying to push him away. But not trying very hard, because it felt so good. And so horrible. He was reminding me of everything I’d lost.
“Really, I should kill you slowly,” he continued, “and I should allow all my family to participate. I should eat your heart and send you back to the Judge, broken and useless.”
“You can try,” I whispered, but they were only words. I knew the truth: I was already broken and useless.
“Oh, I think I will. But not yet.”
“Why?” A terrible, shameful part of me wanted him to kill me now, to have it over with.
Juri tapped the side of his head. “Maybe it’s him. All that passion.” He closed his eyes, savoring. “Maybe I want what he never got to have. Maybe I want the satisfaction of knowing how much it would hurt him to know that I’d claimed you.” His fingers slid down my cheek. “Or maybe, when you add him and me, this is what you get. Come to me tonight, or else I will kill the ones you care about, one by one. You know I can do it. And you know that a new basement lock will do nothing to protect Diane. Just like you know that Mr. Murray’s advanced perimeter security system could never keep Tegan truly safe. Don’t test me, Lela.”
He pressed me up against a locker and bowed his head, grazing his nose along my throat, whispering an address while chills rolled over me. “I want you there alone,” he murmured against my ear. “If I so much as smell anyone else, Diane will be dead by morning.” My hands pushed against his chest. I gritted my teeth to hold in the sob.
“Hey, guys, cut it out unless you want in-school suspension,” called one of the hall monitors as she turned the corner. “Get to class or I’m making the call.”
Juri chuckled. “I’ll see you later, then,” he said. He kissed my cheek and walked quickly down the hall, leaving me to stagger to my next class.
TWENTY-EIGHT
JURI DIDN’T SHOW UP at lunch. I stuck around long enough to register his absence and then spent the rest of the break in a bathroom stall, trying to pull myself together. I’d known it would be hard to face him again, but I’d had no idea what it would actually feel like. I’d thought I would see only the monster inside.
But that wasn’t what had happened. Instead, I saw the boy I missed more than anything else, the one I wanted by my side, the one I’d journeyed into hell to get back. And as much as I hated it, when Juri touched me gently, when he moved close and spoke softly, it felt like an echo of Malachi.
I knew it wasn’t him. Juri couldn’t fool me.
But I could fool myself.
It was the most deadly, destructive kind of pretend, and I knew that giving in to it was as good as surrendering. “He’s gone. For good,” I whispered to myself. “Stop wanting him.” I said it over and over again, as if the repetition would make it happen.
I zombie-walked through my afternoon classes, silently chanting. When I walked out of school, Raphael was waiting at the curb in his nondescript gray se
dan. My eyes were drawn straight to it like he’d called my name. The door opened as I approached. I sank onto the seat. “I thought I’d see you before now.”
He pulled away from the curb. “Though it may seem like it, I actually can’t be in more than one place at the same time.”
“Why has a week passed?” I asked. “Last time, it was only a few hours or something, wasn’t it?”
He tilted his head. “But this time, the Mazikin are here, making connections with other realms that should never be made, and tying their timelines to each other as well. While you were in the Mazikin realm and before you destroyed the portal, Juri brought several of his family into the land of the living.”
A hard chill went through me. Who had he gotten ahold of? I tried to think back, remembering the sea of frightened faces as the humans swarmed out of the Mazikin city, but none of them stood out. I’d been so focused on looking for one face in particular that I hadn’t seen much else. “The Judge said there were eleven in total.”
“Then that is what’s true.”
I rolled my eyes. Eleven didn’t seem like much, but it was a pretty high body count if I thought about what the headlines might say. Especially considering the number of casualties so far. Homeless killings, vigilante turf wars, an explosion at an abandoned club . . . Rhode Island had itself a deadly crime wave. “Okay, so what now? We have no house, no weapons, and only two Guards, one of whom is suffering from some major smoke inhalation.” And one of whom would love to curl into a little ball and disappear.
He gave me a sharp sidelong glance. “I’ve already healed Henry. I also brought weapons from Michael. He sends his regards. I have acquired you a small house to use as a base. Henry is settled in now and awaiting orders.”
I watched the scenery go by for a few minutes, once again struck by the deceptive ordinariness of each house, each car, each lady pushing a stroller down the sidewalk. None of it seemed real to me now. “So, was the Mazikin city destroyed for good?”
“The city disappeared into the sand, but the dome is still in place. Some of them may have survived, of course. They have proven themselves to be hardy creatures.”
I sat up a little straighter. “Hang on. So some of them might have survived, and the blue goo stuff can’t be destroyed. What’s stopping them from digging up the Mazikin who were inside the portal? What’s stopping them rebuilding it?”
“You are.”
“I have to go back there?” It felt like someone had stuffed my stomach full of splinters.
“There is no reason for you to go back. But there is every reason for you to eliminate all the Mazikin here. Even if the Mazikin in the city could rebuild the portal, it wouldn’t matter as long as there was no one on the other side.”
“It’s happened at least once before,” I said in a flat voice. “How did they get out in the first place?”
“If I am to believe Ana and Takeshi, who gave us a full report before they were released into the Countryside, Sil is dead, Ibram is dead, and so is the Queen. Nero, the father of nearly all the Mazikin and the one who escaped initially, was imprisoned in the tower many years ago. That leaves only one Mazikin capable of masterminding reconstruction of the portal.”
“Juri.”
“Correct. He only needs assistants on the other side.”
I covered my face with my hands, my fingers curling into my hair. “He can see them. He can communicate with them using that blue goo stuff. I’ve seen it happen.”
“But if you kill him here before they rescue his body there, he might never have the chance. I suggest you complete your mission as efficiently as possible,” he said as he pulled into the driveway of a plain white cottage at the very end of a cul-de-sac, set apart from the other houses and surrounded by high hedges.
I looked at his freckled face. Can you hear my thoughts? Do you know what this is like for me?
And did he know how messed up I was inside?
“As I said, perhaps you should complete your mission efficiently,” he said gently, “for the benefit of all.” His gray eyes were full of too much knowledge, and it did nothing to ease the pain in my stomach. Would he think I was a traitor because I let Juri touch me, because I let him walk away without even trying to fight? Would he tell the Judge how pathetic and tired I was? What would—? “Lela, maybe you should get out of the car now.”
I blinked. “Right. Yes. Right.” I threw open the door and lunged for the driveway, stumbling as my toe caught on a fissure in the crumbling blacktop. “Thanks for the ride,” I called without turning around, making as quickly as I could for the house.
Henry was inside, sitting at a white-painted wooden table in the eat-in kitchen. Lace curtains fluttered at the window. Like someone’s grandma had done the decorating. Henry’s crossbow lay disassembled across the tabletop, and he was using some kind of stone to sharpen the tips. “We going hunting tonight?” he asked casually.
“I am.”
He set the bolt down and met my eyes. “Alone?”
I nodded. I knew that Juri would unleash hell if Henry picked off his Mazikin while I was with him. “We need to figure out exactly who the other ten are. I know two by sight—Juri and the one who possessed Evan Crociere.”
Henry looked thoughtful. “You want to make sure we know all the players.”
I sat down at the table. “Yeah. Then we’ll know when we’ve gotten all of them. We can track their movements even if they try to run.”
“What about the ones we do know?” He ran his thumb over the edge of one of his bolts.
“If we kill Juri first, the rest will probably scatter. Who knows where they’d go. The Judge said she wanted them dead.”
His eyes narrowed. “But Juri’s the one giving orders. He’s the most dangerous.”
Especially because he was the one with knowledge of how to rebuild the portal. My heart beat faster. “He is, and we’ll take him on. But I’m going to do reconnaissance tonight. I want you to protect my friends. And if I’m not back by morning, I want you to stake out Diane’s and make sure she’s okay. Can you do that?”
We stared at each other for a few seconds. “You’re the Captain,” he finally muttered, gathering the pieces of his bow and stashing them in a satchel at his feet. I kept my eyes on the tabletop as he packed the rest of his gear, slung his pack over his shoulder, and headed for the door. He paused at the threshold. “Be careful tonight. He’s more dangerous to you than anyone.”
I bit the inside of my cheek and did not look up. A moment later, the door clicked shut, and he was gone.
I went home and ate dinner with Diane. She’d talked to one of her cop friends, who’d promised to do a few extra patrols in the neighborhood. She’d also replaced the basement lock, though I knew full well it didn’t mean much. I watched the news with her, my stomach tight as the reporters showed images of the suspected arson in Warwick, the charred ruin of our Victorian Guard house, though the anchor said it had been abandoned for some time. Authorities were speculating that the incident was evidence that the crime wave might be spreading to our town, since the accelerant had been the same as that used in the club fire. Then the news anchor listed the people identified as having been in the abandoned club when it burned to the ground, and stated that a significant number of them had lived in Warwick before disappearing.
With relief and dread, I waved good-bye to Diane as she pulled down the drive, heading for her job at the prison. It was time for me to go, too.
My old Corolla was parked at the curb, but Raphael had left us his gray sedan, and I decided to take that to Juri’s. The last thing I needed was to have my car traced to a crime scene.
The address Juri had given me was in Coventry, past the Flat River Reservoir. Rhode Island might be a small state, but it was capable of serious boonies. It took me nearly an hour to get there, and every minute that went by left me more nervous. What the he
ll was Juri doing out here, and how stupid was I to come alone? As I tooled along the narrow road, woods on either side, I called Henry and described where I was. I told him that if he didn’t hear from me in two hours, he should come with his bow and do his worst.
He was happy enough to make that promise. He let me know that Ian was in for the night and said he was headed to Tegan’s property. Once again, he lingered at the end of the call, told me to be careful, then hung up. In the silence afterward, I promised myself I wouldn’t let him down. I’d show him I could do this—I’d go there, look around, identify the Mazikin so we could go after them later, and fight my way out if I had to.
I was still trying to psych myself up when I reached a long, winding drive with a mailbox that matched the number Juri had given me. At the end of it was a rickety old ranch house in a clearing, with several cars parked out front. One of them had a “Warwick High Honor Student” bumper sticker. I made sure my knives were securely strapped to all my favorite places and got out of the car. My head spun as I inhaled the scent that hung in the yard like a heavy curtain—it wasn’t incense. It was acrid and subtly sweet. Chemical fumes burned my nose.
A house in the middle of nowhere. A chemical stench. A horrible certainty welled up inside me.
Juri appeared in the doorway and sauntered onto the porch, looking unfairly gorgeous in Malachi’s skin. He gave me a wicked smile as he descended the creaking wooden steps to the yard. “I was starting to get worried that I might have to come after you. Although . . . that might have been fun.” His hungry eyes slid from my toes to my face, taking in every inch.
My hands crept toward the knives strapped to my waist. “Did you buy yourself a house in the last week, Juri?”
He looked back at the peeling siding, the dingy windows, the gutters packed with rotting leaves. “Oh, no. It turns out I’m related to the owners.” His grin was so sinister it made me shiver. But so did the realization of what he’d done—it was so calculated. He’d come out here, found the place he wanted, and . . .
