Stories From the Shadowlands

by Sarah Fine

  I’m not by her side, I wanted to shout. Because I have ruined everything

  “I will do my best to help her,” I said.

  Raphael smiled. “I know.” He disappeared.

  I have spent the afternoon trying not to call her. The phone was gripped in my hand when Laney called me. I let her go on and on about the party she went to on Friday and how Lela and Ian weren’t there and she thinks they were together and thinks Ian is crazy about Lela and wouldn’t it be cute if they got together and have I thought about going to the prom because wouldn’t that be fun?

  For some reason, I felt rather ill. I said I hadn’t been able to talk to my host father yet and would try to get back to her, and then I hung up. Normally, I do enjoy listening to her voice; it is sweet and she has simple, happy things to talk about. She seems to be a good person. She likes me and wants my company. And I keep hoping, the more I talk to her, the more I will see, and know, that my feelings for Lela could be transplanted to any girl.

  Because I was wrong, it was not Lela; she is not special. It was me being lonely and wanting someone to love, who would love me. That is all it was. That is all it was.

  And Lela has found someone else now, so it is clear that is all I was to her.

  Henry and I are leaving for patrol shortly. I sincerely hope we encounter some Mazikin. It would be quite satisfying to kill something right now.

  Day 18

  How could I have been so wrong, for so long?

  I went with Lela to meet the Mazikin at a government building called DCYF. The Mazikin who had possessed her mother speaks only Spanish, so I translated, because Lela cannot speak or understand it herself.

  The Mazikin made it clear that Sil and his minions are after Lela. They want her body to house the spirit of their Queen. It makes perfect sense. They are willing to hurt our classmates to get to her, which is the best possible way to draw Lela out.

  The Mazikin inside Rita Santos appeared to be young. Easily confused. Rather guileless. She revealed that when I kill a possessed body and send a Mazikin back to its homeland, it does not liberate the human soul from the Mazikin land.

  They are trapped there forever. I don’t want to believe it.

  I think I believe it.

  I have believed a lie for years. It was a convenient one for them—I rarely put Mazikin in the tower. I singlehandedly ended the practice. As a result, countless Mazikin have escaped permanent death and countless human souls have been imprisoned forever in that place of fire and death.

  Takeshi is one of them. Abandoned all these years.

  And Ana—where did she go? What happened when she walked into the Countryside and realized he wasn’t waiting for her?

  This is too painful to write about.

  Day 19

  While Lela patrolled with Jim and took Henry to begin his mission to infiltrate the Mazikin nest, I spent yesterday evening with Laney. I have seldom felt so petty and uselessIt was my evening off.

  We did our homework. We ate dinner.

  She tried to kiss me. I wanted to let her. But so many things were twisting around inside my head that I pushed her away as gently as I could.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  “I’m not ready for this,” I replied. I might never be ready for this, I thought.

  “You’re… not ready?” She looked very confused. And slightly amused. Then her brow furrowed. “It’s because of Lela, isn’t it?”

  I shook my head.

  “You’re not over her,” she said. Apparently I am not a good liar when it comes to these things.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me,” Laney said quietly. “It must be hard seeing her with Ian.”

  I wish she would stop mentioning that.

  “Lela and I are friends,” I said. “That is all she is to me.”

  Laney rolled her eyes and kissed me on the cheek. “You and I are friends now. And you can’t fool me.”

  She looked distinctly sad as she drove me home, but that sadness turned to frustration when she pulled into the driveway of the Guard house to find none other than Lela Santos herself sitting on the porch swing. “What’s she doing here?”

  “No idea,” I said, though my heart was already beating faster. Lela’s knees were pulled to her chest and her posture was tense. I could tell she was in pain. Something had happened to her. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “She drove over to your house and is sitting on your porch for nothing?” Suddenly she sounded much less understanding. And a lot more suspicious. I got out of the vehicle, and so did Laney, just as Lela’s eyes went wide and her gaze darted to the Guard sedan in front of Laney’s car.

  “Hey, Lela. Fancy meeting you here,” Laney called.

  Lela smiled, tight and fake. “I had to ask Malachi a question. He’s ace at pre-calc.”

  I walked around the front of the car to intercept Laney. “Thank you for tonight,” I said quietly.

  “Should I make her jealous?” Laney asked.

  “Please don’t.”

  She squeezed my arm. “You deserve more, Malachi,” she whispered. “You deserve so much more.”

  She got in her car and drove away, with me thinking how incredibly wrong she was.

  There was a dead Mazikin in the sedan. Jim had killed it, and they brought it here to get rid of the body. Jim was badly hurt, but is healed, and Lela was scratched, and is downstairs having her turn under Raphael’s hands.

  And I wonder—if I had not been so stupid, if I had not believed Jof’s lie all those years ago, would any of them be here right now? Or would we have ended the Mazikin plague long before any of this touched them? Who would have been saved if I had not given in to my need to believe I was doing good, that I was saving people? Who could have been spared endless pain if I hadn’t been so gullible?

  I must atone for this. I have to atone. I have caused so much suffering that I don’t know if it is possible, but I must try, even if it takes me the rest of my existence.

  Day 20

  This morning I was stabbed with a ballpoint pen in the cafeteria before school—by a Mazikin. They have possessed Evan Crociere, a young man who bore animosity toward both me and Lela before he was taken.

  I was slow and inattentive. If it hadn’t been for Lela, my injuries might have been much more severe. But she landed on the table like the force of nature she is, and incapacitated him with only a lunch tray and her bare hands.

  He was still able to speak. Enough to threaten her, to taunt me. I wanted so badly to slaughter him.

  I am patrolling with Lela later this evening, and Laney just stopped by to bring me a meal and let me know how worried she has been. She also brought news: apparently Lela and Ian will be going to prom together. And then Laney asked again if I would like to go. So I said yes, because if the Mazikin are after Lela, and they are now possessing our classmates, the prom would be an ideal place to ambush her.

  None of this is fair to Laney, who seemed quite excited that I accepted her offer and immediately told me that she has a beautiful dress picked out and she will let me know exactly what kind of corsage she needs.

  I need to find out what a corsage is.

  I need to focus on my job. I know I do. Right now it is hard to get past the weight of condemnation that has settled on my back, though, the combined heft of all the years I have spent without guilt, believing in what I was doing while I doomed so many. Now it is suffocating me.

  Day 21

  Last night Lela and I were ambushed and barely escaped. We hid in an alley. For a few minutes we were so close to each other and I wanted to lean on her, to fall into her, to forget everything that is happening and just

  When we had our chance, we slipped away from the warehouse where we had left numerous Mazikin dead. I had called Henry right before we went in, because I knew he was in the area, and he arrived in time to help us clean up. And then he chased a Mazikin down and captured it—and it turned out to be Clarence, the known
recruiter. New body, same habit of filing his teeth.

  Lela questioned him in our basement. She is quite good at it. Witty and tough. So self-possessed. Far more so than I was—I cut off his ear with a throwing knife as he taunted me. Lela was not happy.

  She had a more effective way of threatening him. She had me summon Raphael to take Clarence to the tower in the dark city. She fooled the old Mazikin into telling us that they will indeed be attacking the prom. He told her again that she was going to be taken, that she would house the spirit of the Queen. She is calm about it. Determined. She is a very good Captain, though I’m not sure she believes that herself.

  Day 27

  The Mazikin have gone quiet. We patrol the streets and watch over our classmates, but there is no sign of the creatures. We know they are plotting something, though.

  This afternoon Lela and I trained. Jim was with Tegan and a group of her friends, watching over them, and Henry is still trying to find the nest, posing as a homeless person, so Lela and I were alone in the basement.

  We did not speak, but we did communicate. She shows me her pain with her fists and knees and elbows. I show her mine the same way. It was the most honest conversation we have had in a very long time. Both of us came away bleeding, and I wanted more of it. I wanted to taste her sweat and have her beneath me. I wanted her to scrape my skin with her fingernails. I wanted to feel her teeth in my flesh. I wanted her to punish me for loving her. I wanted her to beat it out of me. But even she is not strong enough for that.

  Day 29

  I speak with Henry sometimes, brief periods on the telephone. It’s not just to gather information; I want him to know we have not forgotten him, that we appreciate what he is doing.

  I told him it had been quiet. That Lela and I trained hard yesterday.

  He laughed. “That must have been a relief, to work some of that tension out.”

  It only made me want more, though. “We were professional, as always.”

  “As always,” he said wryly. “How badly did you hurt each other?”

  Not as badly as I needed. “Enough.” Never enough.

  “You ever wonder if you’re punishing yourself?”

  Lela has said the same thing to me. “No, I don’t wonder.” Because I know. Of course that’s what I’m doing. And I’m letting Lela help because she does it better than anyone. “And you? Tell me about what you’ve seen.”

  “A lot of human misery. Nothing like the Wasteland, though.” He sighed. “But I’m a loner again.”

  He misses this man who was his partner. Sascha. He has only mentioned him once, but I can tell what they had was intimate. “This won’t last forever,” I told him. “We’ll stop the Mazikin, and then you will…”

  He chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t know how to complete that sentence either. Hey. Good talking to you. Stay safe.”

  Then he was gone.

  Day 36

  It is the first of May. And it is Friday. These things are meaningful to other people, who go around commenting on how they can’t believe the school year is almost over, how soon it will be summer, how soon it will be prom, how soon we will take exams.

  Tonight I am going to a party to watch over our friends. Laney is very happy that I will be there. I have tried to keep things platonic between us, but I know she hopes for more, that she has not given up.

  Lela will be there. With Ian. It is her night off, but Laney was kind enough to tell me that they would be there together. Funny how sometimes kindness feels more like the twist of a knife.

  Yesterday Lela and I trained together again and we both ended up so bloody and bruised that we had to call Raphael to heal us. He was exasperated. “This is a poor use of my time,” he said.

  “We can’t look like this when we walk into school,” said Lela, who was holding a cloth to her mouth. I had split her lip with my knee. “Trust me. We’d get hauled into the office. My probation officer would be there in a heartbeat. Diane would freak out, too.”

  Raphael arched his eyebrow. “Perhaps the solution is to find another way to resolve what is between you.”

  “There is nothing between us,” I said quickly. My head was pounding and blood from my broken nose was soaking through the tissue I had crammed into my nostrils.

  “The human capacity for self-delusion is truly limitless,” he muttered. “Which of you will go first?”

  “She will,” I said before she could point at me. She was swaying where she stood. I’d hit her so hard. I hadn’t held back. But she was still standing. I think it is impossible to break her.

  She didn’t argue, and I was glad. Not because I was worried about her. Because I wanted to feel the pain of what she had done to me for a little longer. I wanted to sink into it and let it claw its way along my bones. For a little while, it overrode the pain of not being able to reach her.

  Day 43

  Michael came to arm us for the prom today. When I went down to the basement, Lela was there.

  I have seen her barely clothed body a time or two, but on those occasions she was severely injured and on the brink of death. Today, though, she was very much alive and dangerous and wearing a garment that accentuated parts of her that I have fantasized about touching on more than one occasion.

  Her dress is a liability. Her shoes are even worse. I spoke my thoughts aloud. She responded with violence, proving definitively that she is quite capable of lethality even while wearing a short skirt and high heels. She has become so, so strong. She had me pressed up against the wall, blades pressed against my soft spots, and I had no desire to fend her off.

  I hadn’t thought I could want her more, but every time I think that, I am proven wrong.

  I recovered my composure quickly. Her reminder that I am going to this dance with Laney was helpful. We will train over the next week so the Captain can fight in those shoes without breaking her ankles.

  Day 45

  Raphael appeared to me today, ostensibly to provide me with money to pay for the tuxedo I had to rent. But he gave me an amused look that I have seen far too often. “Say what you have to say,” I told him.

  “Merely wondering something.”

  I rolled my eyes. With all the tension, all the waiting, all the frustration of the last few weeks, it was all I could do not to shout at him. “Go ahead.”

  “Has there ever been a time when a lie made you stronger?”

  I thought about it, because at least it relieved the churning of my thoughts for a moment. “Lies can be like shields. They can protect. It depends on the lie, and the intent behind it.”

  “That kind of shield is flimsy at best. It’s an illusion. Besides, what does it really protect you from?”

  “Pain.”

  His eyebrows rose. “And truth.”

  “What is your point?”

  “My point was my original question. A lie. Has it ever made you stronger, Malachi?”

  I hated the way he was looking at me. Detached, amused. He patted my shoulder. “I just wanted to ask.” He disappeared.

  Sometimes I hate Raphael.

  Day 46

  Raphael was wrong. I am not lying to myself. I have accepted the truth of my mistake, that I condemned innocents to avoid feeling helpless. And apart from that, there are no lies here.

  I love her. That is the truth.

  Day 47

  Today I watched Lela and Ian walk out of the cafeteria. She was smiling as he told her a story about baseball, his hands animated and waving, fingers wrapped around a sandwich and a bottle of chocolate milk. They eat their lunch together, in some private spot, nearly every day. What does she tell him, I wonder? Does she let him see who she is beneath the armor? Or is she something completely different with him, something carefree and happy and normal and good? That is what she should have been all along. Perhaps it is right that she is with him. Perhaps he lifts the burden off her back for a few minutes each day.

  I could have done that for her. Or at least I could have tried.

  I am old
er than all these people around me. They have had only seventeen or eighteen years of existence, and I have had so much more than that. But my days have been filled with darkness, and nothing good grows there. I do not know how to love her and be with her and still do what I have to do. I do not know if I ever could have made her happy.

  Sometimes being willing to kill for someone, being willing to die for her, is not what she needs most. And maybe it was all I had to offer.

  Ian is unburdened by decades of mistakes and slaughter. He does not carry the weight of countless damned souls on his back. He is so much better for her than I am.

  I shouldn’t hate him, but I do.

  It is a hate that comes from pure envy, though, that he can make her smile and laugh, and the only thing I do is make her angry, make her sad, make her bleed.

  I love her, though. I am more in love with her now that I was in the dark city, more in awe, too. That I ever thought I could turn that off or rip it out is one of the more serious mistakes I have made, and it has dulled me. It has made me weak. If I had simply faced it, admitted it, instead of trying to pretend I could make it go away, that would have been the braver choice.

  Perhaps I should make that choice now. Perhaps there is no other choice to be made.

  It changes nothing. I must atone for what I’ve done. And she is with another man. She has so many other things to worry about. But she is strong and unbreakable, and perhaps she’ll let me lay this at her feet, knowing I expect nothing from her except her acknowledgement that it’s there, and that she’s heard how sorry I am for what I did to her.

  I have to tell Laney. I cannot pretend anymore, though I believe she already knows, that she has known for weeks. She has been a patient and gentle friend to me. She deserves better, too.

  Day 48

  Lela called me just as Laney was dropping me off at the Guard house. We’d had lunch together, and I had confessed to Laney the truth, and she was hurt and tearful and called me names but then said I’d better take her to prom tonight anyway because I owed it to her. She was very angry when she discovered it was Lela calling me.