In the City of the Nightmare King

by V. S. Santoni

  Alison popped into sight and reached down. “Johnny, come on, get up!” She helped me up, and I hobbled alongside her into the forest. I looked back: a hole in the church’s foundation hung over a dirt slope leading down to the tree line. We sprinted deep into the forest then hid behind an outcropping near a stream to catch our breath.

  “How’d you get away?” I asked Alison between gasps.

  “I followed you—just, you know, a little more gracefully.” She looked at my wound. “Ouch.”

  The cut burned, but there was so much pain all over my body it registered as little more than a whisper in the noise. I slid down the rock face until I sat on the ground. Alison checked around our hiding spot for Žižek, then she crouched next to me.

  “Don’t die on me, J,” Alison said.

  Although the cut didn’t look that bad, my head still swam, hinting at heavy blood loss. My discomfort grew when an uncharacteristic cold settled over me. The warm spring temperature didn’t warrant any sudden chills. Fifteen minutes later, Blake and Hunter showed up. Hunter saw my injury and the blanched, sweaty look on my face and commenced drawing a healing circle in the dirt.

  “Don’t worry, J,” he said with reassuring cheer. “We’ll get you fixed up real quick.”

  Alison recounted our adventure to Blake. “Did you guys find Maleeka?” she asked once she’d finished.

  “Not yet.”

  Hunter completed the circle then helped me into it. Within seconds the wound had healed, the soreness disappeared, and my body temperature regulated. The blood loss still left me feeling weak, but I could power through it.

  Blake pointed westward, over the treetops. “Aquila’s car is that way. I can still see the light beacon. Let’s get going before that Smith or those witch-hunters find us.”

  Aquila’s car was abandoned on the roadside. We checked it for signs pointing to where she’d gone, but we didn’t find anything. Frustrated, we trekked back into the woods and kept looking for Maleeka. My weak body demanded food and my throat yearned for a drink. It was nearing late afternoon, maybe four, and we all desperately needed a break and some nourishment. Hunter’s headache kept him quiet.

  In a clearing near an underused stretch of road, we found a derelict barn with parts of its roof caving in. Blake suggested we hunker down inside and rest. No one felt strong enough to argue back. He pulled on the ratty barn door, dragging it across the dirt and revealing two people already hiding inside—a girl our age, with black and copper box braids, a sharp angular face, and a tawny complexion, and a guy, androgynous, with messy black hair and broad, sturdy shoulders.

  The girl saw Blake and her mouth fell open. “Blake?”

  “Maleeka!” Blake ran to her. The other person, clearly Maleeka’s ally, Penn, kept a safe distance, studying Blake warily. Penn wore a dusty leather jacket scraped all over.

  “Jode, man, close that door before you get us killed.” Maleeka hurried us into the barn and slid the door shut.

  “Not really very safe you know,” Alison said, “leaving the door unlocked like that.”

  Maleeka gave Alison a sassy look then turned her attention back to Blake. “What are you doing out here? I thought you were still at the Institute?”

  “We were trying to find you. Heard some witch-hunters were looking for you.”

  “You got us a way out of here?”

  “No, we were hiding out for a minute. We haven’t had anything to eat or drink in hours.”

  Maleeka nodded to Penn. “Hey, do we have any extra supplies?”

  Penn approached two tactical backpacks lying in a corner. If the only supplies that survived their run-in with the witch-hunters nested in those two bags, Sanctuary’s thinning supplies were about to get a lot thinner. Penn retrieved four water bottles and some vegetarian jerky, and passed it all around.

  “Who’re your friends?” Maleeka asked Blake while we ate.

  “That’s my girlfriend, Alison”—Blake pointed to Alison—“and these are my friends, Hunter and Johnny.”

  Maleeka didn’t care about Hunter or me. She set her razor-sharp gaze on Alison, starting at her shoes then working her way up. “Hmph. She looks like your type.”

  “What? Drop-dead gorgeous?” Alison said.

  Maleeka smiled. “A smart ass.”

  “Who says you can’t have it all.”

  Maleeka turned her umber eyes to Hunter and me. “You two are cute. How did you find us?”

  “We were at Sanctuary,” Blake said. “Johnny was snooping around when he overheard that some witch-hunters had chased you and Penn down. When I found out you were out here, I had to come look.”

  “Where’s Linh?”

  “I didn’t tell her we were coming. I was afraid she might tell Nephelie.”

  “So you came out here without their permission?”

  “I couldn’t leave you alone out here with those witch-hunters.”

  “What were you two doing?” I asked Maleeka.

  “We were working with a Defector cell in Chicago called Threnody. Nothing dangerous, though. Estaban made us run supplies to other Defector cells in the area. Our main job, though, was making sure Sanctuary was stocked while it was here. We’d never had problems on any of the supply routes before, but this time, those witch-hunter pendejos found us in Menominee and didn’t stop chasing us.”

  “Who’s Estaban?”

  “He’s the leader of Threnody, one of the most important Defector cells in the country. Anyway, there’s a storehouse in Chicago where we keep all our supplies, and we do shipments once a month to all the local cells.”

  “How does Threnody get more supplies for the storehouse?”

  “Lie, cheat, steal, whatever. I don’t deal with that side of things, so I don’t know anything about it.”

  Maleeka knew a lot about the Defectors, and she didn’t mind sharing it. She told us she met Penn at Sanctuary, and that Penn didn’t say much because his violent extraction left him so traumatized he stopped speaking. Penn didn’t hang around the Institute long before he’d hitched a ride on a delivery truck and escaped. He made it to North Carolina before two Smiths almost caught him, but Nephelie and Maleeka saved him and brought him to Sanctuary. Penn’s loyalty to the Defectors burned as hot as his hatred for the Institute.

  “What do you know about Aquila and Nephelie?” I asked, thinking back to the picture in Nephelie’s office.

  “Not much. Nephelie used to be in the Legacy of the Crowns, then she fell in love with Aquila, who was non-Lineage. Somehow, they found out about the kill curse. Nephelie helped Aquila escape the Institute, and they joined the Defectors. Together with Threnody’s leader, Estaban, they established Sanctuary. Nephelie’s almost as quiet as ol’ Penn here. Almost.”

  Maleeka told us that before Pollux and Castor left Sanctuary, Nephelie offered them a job running supplies. They refused, so she appointed Maleeka and Penn instead. Even though such responsibilities rarely found themselves allocated to such young Defectors, they hungered to prove themselves. The Defectors depleted their manpower in operations against the Institute, and that forced Maleeka and Penn to work as the only supply runners for a long time. Other Defector cells in the area relied on them exclusively for supplies, so when the witch-hunters helped the Institute destroy the supply lines, they found themselves susceptible. Sanctuary’s role as a children’s shelter made it especially vulnerable. If the Institute had uncovered Maleeka and Penn’s roles as supply runners, then surely Threnody’s storehouse—no, all of Threnody, lay open for attack. The Institute severing the Defectors’ supply lines made dealing with the individual cells much easier. Sanctuary, however, proved trickier because of its ability to move around. But if Threnody now lay in ruins, Sanctuary’s diminishing resources promised a short-lived resistance.

  “Why didn’t you tell Aquila you were here?” Blake asked.

  “W
e did. She was coming to get us, but she ran into those witch-hunters. She told us to stay put until she came.”

  Tires rolled onto the rocky dirt outside and squealed when they stopped. Aquila returning right then seemed fortuitous. Hunter approached a wall and peered between the planks.

  He turned back, a frenzied look on his face. “It’s those witch-hunters!”

  Car doors slammed shut. The barn’s front doors were the only way in and out.

  We were trapped.

  “Move to the wall back there,” Penn told us.

  “We can’t fight them, Penn,” Maleeka said. “They’re—”

  “All of you!” Penn said. “Get back!” Penn’s demands confused us, but fear trumped my desire for debate. Alison, Hunter, and I all backed into the corner with the two backpacks. Blake and Maleeka didn’t move, though.

  “Penn what’re you going to do?” Maleeka asked.

  “I said get back!” Penn swung his arm and a gust pushed Maleeka and Blake off their feet and into the corner with us. Penn turned his attention on the barn doors, widened his stance, and shaped his hands into claws, holding them perpendicular at his side. Cogs and gears gathered between his hands. The wheels melded together like molten gold, and the blob expanded and contracted until it became a more intricate machine: a ball of wind. But Penn didn’t stop there. The new machine’s spinning pieces moved faster, heating up, going from a bronzy-gold color to reddish orange before transforming into a more convoluted machine: a fireball. Sweat beaded on Penn’s brow, his face filled with uncertainty. He quickly moved his fingers around the new machine, but he didn’t understand the sequences to make it work, nor did he know how to control its mass, its heat. The new machine’s complexity doubled with its size, and its parts whirled furiously, teetering and shaking erratically—the fireball turned haywire.

  “Penn, what the hell are you doing?” Maleeka screamed. “Stop it!”

  The barn doors creaked open, and horror washed across the faces of the witch-hunters when they walked in and saw Penn standing there with a haywire fireball in his hands.

  “Get down!” Maleeka yelled.

  We hit the ground and covered our heads. Penn’s fireball grew into a blazing supernova, so bright and so hot it provoked us to shield our eyes. The spell exploded with a monstrous volcanic roar, its heat lashing out and spreading throughout the barn. For a minute, the bolide threatened to consume everything, but the fires didn’t reach us. My ears rang after the blast, but after several seconds the ringing died. Sputtering flames spat and hissed all around me, and the fire’s menacing heat stroked my skin in waves. Too close for comfort.

  Maleeka knelt and cried near Penn’s mangled body. The explosion had ripped off the barn’s front and flung the cross-faced man through the Impala’s windshield, his body covered in repulsive, oozing burns. Likewise, his allies lay burned to death in the grass outside. A light rain started—a cleansing shower to quell the fires.

  Aquila’s car pulled up roadside. She emerged and ran to the barn. The devastation stunned her, but still she reacted with haste. “Grab their bags and go put them in the trunk. Then get inside and wait for me,” she said to Hunter and I. Aquila’s had to deal with similar situations before, that much was certain. She handed us her car keys, and we left to gather the backpacks. After collecting them, we stuffed the bags in the trunk and waited for Aquila to return. Alison and Blake joined us first, and then we all awkwardly crammed together in the backseat. Aquila came out of the barn then, holding Maleeka’s hand. Maleeka looked back, surely not wanting to leave Penn’s body behind. Besides costing Penn his life, the poorly planned magical outburst threatened to summon Žižek, if not the Institute.

  To any non-wizards investigating the scene, it resembled a gas explosion. The Impala lacked tags and probably other paperwork. The severe burns on Penn’s body also made him unidentifiable. He would become a nameless casualty at the bottom of a filing cabinet in a police station. Fight ’til you die. That same harrowing fate awaited all Defectors, including us.

  The windshield wipers squeaked loudly, drowning Maleeka’s quiet sobs. The time on the radio read 5:30. Blake pressed his forehead against her chair and rubbed her shoulder with one hand. She didn’t move an inch, not even her violent crying evoked a spasm. Hunter sank down and leaned against me. It looked like his headache was getting worse. Aquila sped us back to Sanctuary.

  Upon walking in, Nephelie gave us a nasty look, but her anger subsided when she saw Maleeka in tears. “What happened?’ Nephelie asked.

  “Penn cast a fireball, and killed the witch-hunters and himself in the process,” Aquila said.

  “What?”

  “The Institute’s going to be here before long. We have to move Sanctuary.”

  Nephelie didn’t waste time asking questions. We followed as she walked into her office and dragged the Persian rug off a hidden magic circle scored into the floor. In the vivit apparatus, a boiler-sized engine floated down as if through the ceiling, hovering a few feet above the seal. Nephelie operated the machine, and a low hum filled the air as the symbol flashed blue and glowed, sparkling glimmers dancing around it. The tiny halos etched all over the house—into the bottom baluster on the staircase, on the high beams in the dining room—all shined the same color, and the light grew until it painted everything in azure. Not knowing Sanctuary’s next location filled me with dread—they’d not gotten the supplies they needed to care for everyone. The Institute’s plan to uproot us and leave us flailing in the dark had worked. When the ring in Nephelie’s office stopped glowing, so too did all the smaller circles. Nephelie slowly lowered her hands and the machine vanished, her face awash in concern.

  “Where’d you move Sanctuary?” Aquila asked.

  Nephelie left the office and headed through the antechamber. She flung open the front doors, ushering in an arid wind. Outside was a vast desert, covered in scrub grass and cactuses, with a few fold mountains on the horizon. Disbelief hit me like a battering ram. Everyone else looked uneasy about Sanctuary’s new location too. “The Sonoran Desert,” Nephelie said. “A few miles north of Blythe, California.”

  Alison stepped outside and spun around, scanning the barren landscape. “You put us in the middle of a desert?” It certainly didn’t seem like the best idea, especially considering our diminished supplies.

  “We couldn’t stay around Chicago.”

  “So you moved us to a desert?”

  “Sanctuary is climate controlled. Treat it like a camping trip.”

  “We’re running out of supplies, Neph,” Aquila said quietly, like she didn’t want us to hear.

  “There’re a few Defector cells out here we can collaborate with.”

  A few children trickled out of the reading room, curious. Linh slowly made her way down the staircase toward the foyer. Maleeka’s dour mood brightened when she saw Linh. She ran past us to join her.

  “The circles in the book room were glowing, Mrs. Nephelie,” a boy said. “Did we move again?”

  “Go back in the reading room, James,” Nephelie replied gently. “The rest of you go in there, too, except Maleeka.”

  “No way,” Alison said, storming back inside. “We have a right to know what’s going on.”

  “Just like you had a right to go out there and almost get yourselves killed?”

  “We found Maleeka didn’t we?”

  A tense silence developed. “James, go back into the reading room with the other children.”

  James grumbled and did as he was told.

  With the children gone, Nephelie said, “I’ve tried contacting Estaban, but I’m not getting a response. I’ve also contacted six other Defector leaders in the Chicago area. Every time, nothing.”

  “I think those witch-hunters chasing us down are part of some big Institute scheme,” Maleeka said. “The Institute cut off the supply lines—they’ve probably made moves a
gainst the smaller cells too.”

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  “What do you think happened to Estaban?” Aquila asked, voice hushed, like she was afraid to hear Nephelie’s answer.

  “I don’t want to make too many assumptions. In the meantime, I’ll contact our Defector allies in this region and see if we can’t get a supply convoy out here. We have enough food and other supplies to last us a week—two if we stretch them—but we’ll need more resources soon.”

  With the Defector cells in Chicago and the surrounding areas most likely destroyed, Maleeka craved answers. Hell, everyone did. But Nephelie and Aquila locked themselves in the office to wait for Luther, whose investigations in the City at the End of the World kept him away. Hunter got another strange headache and headed upstairs to lie down. I joined him, wanting to keep close. Everyone else gathered in the bedroom too.

  Maleeka leaned against Blake’s bunk while he perched on top of it, next to Alison. Linh leaned up against my bunk on the floor next to me. Hunter lay on the bed behind us, softly groaning in pain.

  “I just want to know how any of this happened,” Maleeka said.

  “Didn’t you join a Legacy, Blake?” Linh asked.

  Maleeka’s eyes turned sharply to Blake. “You joined a Legacy and you didn’t tell me?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” Blake said.

  “You could be working with the Institute,” Linh said.

  “That doesn’t even make any sense,” Alison said in a viciously defensive tone. “Blake didn’t know anything about Maleeka, or the Defectors in Chicago, or any of this shit. If you’re trying to say Blake is a traitor, I think you’d better mull that over a little more.”

  Everyone got quiet. Linh and Maleeka saved their rebuttal. Nothing prevented the Institute from attacking us, and that made everyone nervous—a few times, I caught myself staring at the door, waiting for Smiths to burst in. Everyone’s anxiety unavoidably led to a spike in tension. Our desperate search for answers in such a dire situation inclined us to a few dust-ups. People blame each other when answers run low, and we didn’t know anything.