by Sarah Fine
He rewarded me with a sexy smile. “Because I’ve got you to show me around. Speaking of—where are we going?”
My grip tightened on the steering wheel. “To the East Side of Providence. The camera that caught the Mazikin on video was north of the Brown University campus, and the two people who saw it were students.” If anything happened to a Brown student, it would be national news, so the police would be out in force. It made our job that much harder.
Malachi nodded. “It’s a densely populated area?”
“Providence is more urban than Warwick, but not as crowded as the dark city. You’ve seen that the land of the living is different, though. People notice things—and each other. They don’t wander around with their heads down, absorbed completely with themselves.” My gaze drifted to the sidewalk, where several people were walking along, faces lit from the glow of their cell phones. “Okay; they do sometimes, but not all the time.”
The light turned green, and I accelerated again, this time a bit more slowly, and turned onto the ramp to I-95 North. “It’s strange,” Malachi said as he watched the scenery go by, “that this is the exact place you lived before, and it happens to be where the Mazikin arrived.”
“No kidding. Figures that the portal from hell would open up in Rhode Island.” I hesitated, and then decided to say aloud what had been bugging me. “I think the Judge knew where they would pop out once they went through the wall next to the Sanctum. I think she might have …” I stopped, feeling stupid and paranoid.
“You think the Judge intentionally lured you to the dark city, to be pressed into service.” He didn’t sound like he thought it was a ridiculous idea.
“Yeah. If it’s true, she has funny ideas about what makes a good Guard.”
Malachi chuckled. “You sell yourself short, Lela.”
“Let’s hope so,” I muttered as the lights of Providence came into view.
I exited the highway and headed up Wickenden, past the tattoo parlor where I’d gotten Nadia’s face inked onto my skin as a memorial. I made my way up the narrow street and turned left, onto the road that would take us deep into the East Side. Malachi squinted out the window, inspecting the shadows. I found a place to park off the main road, beneath the low-hanging branches of a tree and out of the glow of the streetlights. Malachi immediately pulled the pack into his lap.
“We’re going to have to talk about this weapons thing,” I said.
He gave me a puzzled look.
“You can’t stroll down the street with a couple of grenades strapped to your chest. Besides … I’m not so keen on carrying that stuff.”
Malachi nodded. “Because you’re not comfortable with them yet. You will be, once you’re properly trained.”
“I know, but—”
He reached into the pack and pulled out a familiar-looking belt. It was part of the set of armor, black leather and badass, that Michael had made for me when I was behind the Suicide Gates.
“Wear this, and take one knife.” He held one to the light. It had a subtle curve instead of a straight edge. “This one isn’t meant for throwing,” he explained. “It has a forward drop, better for slicing than a straight blade, but not curved enough to interfere with stabbing. I had Michael make it for you.”
“Um, thank you.” I took the belt but eyed the knife in his hand. I could just as easily stab myself as anyone else. “But we might not find anyone—”
“There is no reason not to be cautious.” He clipped the knife, complete with a sheath, onto the belt, and then tipped my chin up with his fingers. “If the Mazikin ever did catch you, it would be quite a prize for them. Even before Sil and Juri knew how much you mean to me, even before you were appointed our Captain, they wanted you. And I don’t want to think about how they might celebrate if they did get you. Please.”
Without further argument, I wrapped the belt around my waist, pulled my fleece jacket over it, and got out of the car to join Malachi on the sidewalk. “So …” Now that the moment had arrived, I didn’t have any idea how to actually patrol.
Malachi swung the backpack onto his shoulders. His attention was already traveling up and down the street; his body was already tense with awareness. “It’s all right, Lela. In the dark city, we often had to roam the streets, looking for suspicious activity. Sometimes we went days without seeing anything. This is as good a lead as any.”
“Should we split up?” I knew he’d often patrolled by himself, and I didn’t want to be deadweight.
Malachi sighed. “As Captain, you will make this decision. We could cover more ground separately. However,” he said, stepping close enough to touch, close enough to make my heart speed, “I’d feel much better if you let me stay with you.” He kissed my forehead, the feel of his lips on my skin causing heavy warmth to curl low in my belly. “And as your suitor, I’d appreciate being able to keep my promise to your foster mother.”
“My … suitor?” I couldn’t hold back a giggle.
Malachi looked really confused and kind of embarrassed. “I’m sorry. I know I’m your Lieutenant, but I—I just thought we were—”
“No! No. That’s not what I meant. Malachi, are you saying you want to be my boyfriend?” I’d never had one before. But … I kind of liked the idea.
“Boyfriend?” His WTF look only intensified. “I would never presume … but we haven’t … I wouldn’t want people to think you were a …” He cleared his throat and stared at the sidewalk, and I realized we might be having a bit of a translation problem. Or a growing-up-in-different-centuries problem.
“That I’m a what? I don’t know what you’re thinking, but ‘boyfriend’ just means we’re …” Crap. This was like the blind leading the blind. “It means we’re together. That we’re, um, going out. With each other. And … not anyone else. But not seriously,” I added quickly, my cheeks hot.
Malachi gave me a smile laced with uncertainty. “You can call me anything you’d like, as long as it means I can touch you.” He brushed my cheek with the backs of his fingers.
“Okay.” I had to tear my eyes away from his mouth. Focus, Lela. This is your job now. “The sightings were about six blocks that way,” I blurted, pointing toward Hope Street. My body temperature dropped to a slow burn.
“So what do the Mazikin want?” I asked Malachi as we set out. “If we know that, we might be able to predict what they’ll do here, right?”
“I don’t think their desires are very complicated,” he replied. “In my interrogations of the Mazikin we captured in the dark city, they all said the same thing: they wanted out of their realm. All of them. They consider their homeland a prison.”
“You think they’re trying to relocate their entire population?” The shudder that rolled through me wasn’t caused by the cold, but I hugged myself anyway. “How many of them do you think there are, in all?”
“I asked Raphael once. He said that there were originally only two, so it’s clear they are breeding, and by now there could be hundreds of thousands of them. Maybe a million. And that was many years ago. He wouldn’t tell me much else.”
“Huh. He’s usually so forthcoming.”
“Indeed,” Malachi said with a laugh. He gave me a sidelong glance as his smile fell away. “Lela, in the dark city they were still enclosed by the city walls. But here—”
“They have the whole world,” I said, the idea sitting in my stomach like a boulder. “They could split up and go anywhere. The only thing stopping them from stealing the bodies of a million living humans … is us.”
Malachi took my hand as we walked by a group of guys coming out of the Brown athletic facility. As he stroked his thumb over my fingers, I had to force myself to focus on his words instead of on his touch.
“We may have a bit of time,” he said. “Mazikin are like pack animals. They like to stay together. Only once during my time in the dark city were there two nests at the same moment, and that was because their population had gotten so large. At all other times, they chose one location, one b
ase, and operated from there. It’s likely they’ll do that here while they figure out the quickest way to grow their numbers. Like me, they have much to learn.”
I squeezed his hand and hoped they didn’t learn as quickly as he did. “What do you think is the quickest way to grow their numbers, then?”
“I don’t know yet, but Sil came through the wall in the dark city, so he’ll be in charge of their decisions here. And he is, unfortunately, the smartest Mazikin I’ve ever encountered. There is a reason he is their leader. Ibram and Juri are also likely to be brought in, to function as enforcers. As a group, they’ll need food and shelter and a safe place to possess their victims. They will try to establish a nest right away.”
“If there are so many of them, how do they decide who to bring in to possess the humans they capture? Did you ever figure that out?”
“I think they actually have some kind of system.” He shook his head in disbelief. “The strongest Mazikin, and especially their leaders, have cycled through several human bodies and are quite good at acting human. Some of them even develop preferences—you’ll remember that Juri prefers Eastern European males, for example.” He scowled, and his grip on my hand tightened. His conflict with Juri went beyond Guard versus Mazikin. It was personal, and after what Juri had tried to do to me in the dark city, I suspected Malachi was looking forward to fighting him again.
“So some of them have preferences,” I said, eager to move the conversation away from Juri. “What about the others?”
“A Mazikin inhabiting its first human body is likely to act more like an animal, and the weaker or older the body, the more likely it is to move like a Mazikin in its true form.”
“Ana said she thought they were more animal than human.”
He nodded. “It takes practice and intention for them to behave like humans.”
That’s why they were getting noticed. In addition to surveillance camera footage, at least one cell phone video had popped up on YouTube. “I guess it’s good for us that they aren’t practiced yet, and that some of them are acting weird.” We both paused as a guy ran across the street, carrying a girl on his back. His hands were curled around her knees, and her arms were around his neck. She kissed his cheek and let out a shriek, laughing as her scarf unfurled like a banner behind them.
Malachi stared at the couple. “Yes,” he said quietly. “Weird.”
We walked along, discussing ideas, covering block after block, passing by the party houses and bars, hiking up the crowded main drag and down narrow residential streets. I counted the times the city and campus police cruised by, wondering what they thought they were looking for, knowing they had no idea what it really was, wishing I could leave them to it and actually head off to a movie with Malachi.
My Guard partner did not seem burdened with such petty thoughts. He nailed every passerby with a look so fierce that some of them pressed themselves closer to the edge of the sidewalk as they walked by. He was the perfect Guard, ready for anything, utterly professional. I tried to do my part and stay vigilant, but as the hours dragged on, a late March chill descended on us with silent brutality. My toes got numb, and I started to stumble over the broken, uneven brick sidewalks on the west side of campus. When I rubbed my hands together and blew on them in an attempt to drive away the cold, Malachi’s hand closed around mine, and he tucked it into the pocket of his hoodie.
“We should have brought gloves,” he said, flattening my palm against his body. “Your fingers are like little icicles.”
I closed my eyes for a second, savoring this strange, unfamiliar sensation, this tender touch and what it meant: that he worried about me. And when I opened them, he was watching me so intensely that it sent electric bolts of heat along my skin. “I … should have planned ahead,” I stammered. Suddenly, I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be at a movie, either. I wanted to be somewhere private and cozy with Malachi, where I could explore this crazy hunger, where I could maybe get control of it.
Because right now, I wasn’t in control. Malachi’s eyebrows rose, questioning, as I pulled my hand out of his pocket, and then his eyes grew wide as I slid my fingers up under his shirt instead. Both of us exhaled sharply as skin met skin. He bowed his head and closed his eyes. “Your hand is so cold,” he whispered, curling his hand around the back of my neck and pulling me close.
“I’m sorry.” I wasn’t really, but I started to pull my hand out.
“Don’t stop.” He laid his forehead on mine.
“Malachi …” My heart was beating so fast that I was having trouble catching my breath.
“Lela.” He looped an arm around my waist. “It’s late, and it’s very cold out here. We have school tomorrow, and we haven’t seen any suspicious activity. Maybe we could go back, and …”
He trailed off, and we both stepped aside, getting out of the way of two guys in puffy coats and backward baseball caps trudging up the sidewalk toward us. I heard snatches of their animated conversation about the Red Sox as I turned back to Malachi. “Go back … and what?” I asked, staring at his parted lips. An inch or two from mine. Not close enough.
His fingers burrowed into my hair, as mine flexed over his back, under his shirt, where I could feel the striping scars made long ago by Juri’s jagged claws. They were hot beneath my fingertips. Malachi groaned softly and—
He raised his head abruptly, jaw tensed.
“On your knees, shithead. Now.” The voice came from behind him. From one of the two guys in puffy coats. I wanted to kick myself for not staying alert to all the dangers of the street, not just rampaging Mazikin.
Malachi stood very still for a moment, his eyes never leaving my face. The second guy took a step to the side, watching me with a smug half smile that sent a jolt of pure adrenaline through my body. I took a step back, and he shook his head. “No, no, don’t move,” he said to me, waving a knife in my direction. “We’ll get to you in a second.”
Malachi’s nostrils flared. “We’ll give you whatever you want.” His voice was shaky and high, saturated with fear that didn’t show in the smooth, steady arc of his hands as he raised them in the air. “Whatever you want. Just don’t hurt—”
He spun, looping one of his arms under his attacker’s, revealing the gun the guy had been holding to his back. With the guy’s arm locked tight against his chest, Malachi jerked to the side so that the weapon pointed away from me. He wedged his elbow against the guy’s throat and then kneed him in the balls, belly, and thigh before head-butting him. Wet squeals and whimpers punctuated every heavy thud. The second guy jumped on Malachi’s back but instantly went careening backward as Malachi drove the kid’s lungs through his spine with an elbow, and then crushed cartilage and bone with a devastating kick to his knee.
It was all over in less than five seconds.
Malachi snatched the gun from the thug’s limp hand. The guy was crumpled on the sidewalk, his nose gushing blood. The guy’s friend scrambled up on his good leg, clutching at his abdomen, wheezy sobs bursting from his throat. He hopped-ran-hobbled away, all crooked and broken and panicked, like a cockroach that had been sprayed.
With a look of absolute disgust and hatred, Malachi tossed the gun into an alley next to us and drew one of the knives from beneath his shirt. I managed to recover from my shock quickly enough to grab him as he cocked his arm to throw it.
“No, Malachi, let him go!”
“He threatened you,” he said sharply, his muscles tensing as he prepared to let the blade fly.
“No! You can’t do that here! It’s murder!”
Malachi paused, his face a rigid mask of rage. He lowered his arm and watched the guy running up the street, leaving his bleeding friend behind. Still holding the knife, Malachi sank to his knees next to the mugger, who was really just a skinny kid, probably a banger, trying to be a big man, lost and stupid and scared. But that wasn’t how Malachi was looking at him. His eyes were blank, like a shark’s, as he grabbed the kid by the hair and wrenched his head ba
ck.
“Oh shit, man, I wasn’t going to hurt you. I fuckin’ swear,” the kid babbled, all nasal and snotty, refusing to look Malachi in the eye. I couldn’t blame him for that.
I put my hand on Malachi’s arm. “You have to let him go, too. He won’t call the police—he doesn’t want to draw their attention.” I tried to keep my voice even, but it was hard. I’d never seen Malachi look so predatory.
He leaned down slowly, speaking directly in the kid’s face. “If I see you again, you will not live long enough to regret it.” He held his victim in a punishing grip until the kid’s eyes darted up to meet his and widened when they registered the absolute raw truth in those words. Then he let the now sobbing kid slump back onto the pavement. “Run,” he whispered, baring his teeth.
The kid hesitated, like he thought Malachi might take him down as soon as his back was turned, which did appear to be a distinct possibility.
“Dude, you need to go,” I snapped at the thug, keeping a firm grip on Malachi’s arm as he knelt beside me. “Do as he says.”
The kid looked at me with terror in his eyes, but he lurched to his feet and took off, his feet clunking unevenly against the sidewalk, his arms pumping. Malachi watched him go, and judging by the tick in his jaw, it was taking a lot of effort for him not to nail that kid with a knife to the back. After a few seconds that felt like an eternity, the kid turned a corner and disappeared. Malachi bowed his head. He put his hand over mine, holding it to his arm, like he needed the contact as badly as I did.
“Are you all right?” I asked, my voice trembling. Malachi hated guns, having watched as Nazis shot and killed his brother, Heshel. It was one of the many reasons I wasn’t even going to suggest that Michael supply them for us to defend against the Mazikin.
Malachi nodded. “I’m all right.”
I stared at the dark smear of blood where the kid had been. “We need to get out of here.”
Silently, Malachi rose to his feet and sheathed his knife.