Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, Book 1)

by Sarah Fine

  My hand fell into my lap. “Ana told me. So I guess it’s important to find Nadia as soon as possible, for both of us.”

  He opened his eyes, and I sank into his gaze, totally lost in those dark brown depths.

  “For both of us,” he repeated, as if he was trying out the sound of it.

  In that moment I could picture it: journeying outside the city with him, Nadia beside us, exploring that beautiful Countryside. Together.

  TWENTY-TWO

  I SANK DOWN ON the steps outside the apartment building, exhausted and discouraged. We’d been looking all day. Seventeen high-rises. Nothing.

  At every door, Malachi or Ana pounded and entered. Every apartment contained a single resident. All were unresponsive to inquiries about Nadia and unable to look at my arm for more than a moment. They were too busy staring at the television. Sitting motionless at a table. Crying in the living room. Gorging in the kitchen. Shooting up in the bathroom.

  One chunky middle-aged dude was in the bedroom, writhing on top of what appeared to be a headless body. Judging from the telltale stringy slime that hung over the edge of the cot and jiggled with each of his movements, he had grown the body himself. I had to wait in the hallway, gagging at the sight and at my own memories. After that, Malachi said we’d be more efficient if we stopped questioning people—so now, once we saw that the person inside an apartment wasn’t Nadia, we immediately moved on.

  Although I’d been aware that it would be a long, painful process, I hadn’t really been prepared for it emotionally. A crest of anticipation carried me past each threshold, followed a few seconds later by a crash of disappointment. It sucked the hope right out of me.

  Malachi touched my shoulder. “Are you ready to go? I was hoping to get through another five buildings today.”

  Ana came out of the apartment building shaking her head. “We have to keep moving, guys, or this is going to take years.”

  I got to my feet slowly. “Lead the way.”

  Malachi’s brows drew together. “We might be at this for days. You understand that, right?”

  “I do. I just…I didn’t know how it would feel.”

  “Lela, I thought you were some kind of tough girl, but now I’m starting to wonder,” Ana barked. “This was always a long shot. You’ve got to prepare yourself—we might not find her.”

  “That’s not helpful,” warned Malachi.

  She put her hands on her hips and took a step toward him. “What do you want me to say? I’m not willing to soften the truth for her like you are. I’m starting to wonder why I need to be here. I mean—you and I should be patrolling, searching for the nest. Instead, we’re here, looking for one person in a city of millions.”

  “Go then,” he replied in a flat voice. “If that’s what you—” His attention was suddenly drawn to something above us. I tilted my head up to follow the line of his gaze, but then my face collided with the front of his breastplate as he grabbed me and staggered back. A few feet behind us, Ana cursed fluently.

  “What—” I slapped my palms against his chest in protest. Despite my attempts to shove away, he wouldn’t let me go. Then I heard it: an awful, splattering crunch. I froze in Malachi’s arms. He was breathing hard, hugging me tight. His hand came to rest on the back of my head, pressing my cheek to the engraved surface of his armor.

  “I never get used to that.” Ana sounded like she was about to be sick.

  Malachi laid his hand on the side of my face, lifting my chin so I could meet his eyes. They were dark with sadness. “We’re going to turn around and head down a different block, all right?”

  “Malachi,” I said, pushing against him, “let me go. What just happened?”

  He didn’t release me, either unwilling or unable to let go. “A suicide.”

  My eyes went wide and I stopped fighting him. I swallowed hard. “Are you telling me someone just jumped from one of these buildings and landed right next to us?” My voice sounded very small.

  Malachi nodded slowly, not taking his eyes off mine.

  “Malachi, Lela, get a move on.”

  He looked over his shoulder and nodded before turning back to me. “I’m going to let you go.” It was more like he was asking me than telling.

  “I’m fine. You don’t have to protect me like this.” I hoped he wouldn’t notice the clamminess creeping across my exposed skin.

  He smiled, but it looked a little painful. “I’m sorry. It was reflex. I’ll try to keep my hands to myself next time.” He let his arms fall to his sides.

  “That’s not what I meant,” I mumbled.

  Disoriented, I turned in exactly the wrong direction. The wreckage of a human body lay scattered in front of me. After that first second I could barely see it because all I could picture was my own body plunging from the cliff, hitting something hard. I’d hit something hard.

  No sound made it past the roaring in my ears, no words made it past my screams, no thoughts made it past the memory that had finally caught up with me: my last memory of my life on Earth.

  I awoke on a cot.

  Narrowing my eyes in the dim light, I saw our supplies organized against the wall. I was in the bedroom of the high-rise apartment where we’d stayed the night before. I lay still for a few moments, trying to recall what had happened after Malachi’s arms fell away from me, but was distracted by the voices coming from beyond the closed door of the bedroom.

  “—doing your job. I swear, what has gotten into you? Just over a week ago, finding it was all you cared about, and that made sense to me. And now?”

  “Now I have an additional objective.” I had to strain to hear Malachi’s considerably lower, considerably calmer voice. I sat up slowly, trying not to make a sound.

  “That’s a pretty convenient way of describing her. Lets you off the hook, doesn’t it? Malachi, have you counted your mistakes in the last few days? The number of times you sacrificed duty and practicality to protect her? More than you’ve made in the last seven decades, I bet.”

  I winced at Ana’s words. She was probably right, and I felt guiltier by the second for pulling Malachi away from his responsibilities.

  “Helping her is the right thing to do. And she is strong, she—”

  “Strong? Did you not witness her fall apart after that guy hit the pavement? Did you not just carry her unconscious body for several blocks? Did you not—”

  “Tell me what your first week in the city was like,” he snapped. “Or shall I tell you about mine? Here is what I know: neither you nor I were as put together as she is. You are comparing her to us as we are now.”

  “That’s who she needs to be if she’s going to accomplish the ridiculous task she’s set for herself,” Ana countered.

  “She is special—you can see that. It’s why you agreed to help me in the first place. She had visions of her friend—she either had this ability within her or she was chosen to have it. Either way, that makes her exceptional. And then, on top of all that—she knew what this place was like. She wandered here in her dreams. She suffered here, Ana. She was terrified of having to return. But she came anyway. She was willing to give up her own eternal comfort, happiness, and safety in order to try to find her friend.”

  “And that’s the only reason you’re helping her?”

  My ears strained in the silence that followed. I was dying to know the answer to that question myself. He must have made some response, because Ana continued speaking a moment later. “You aren’t fooling me. You of all people should know better than to play with fire like this. And regardless of how special she is, the two of you cannot continue on like this forever. She will fade away soon. What are you going to do if she’s not willing to give up? Are you going to hog-tie her and drag her to the Sanctum? How far will you go to save her? How much will you sacrifice before this is over?”

  I wrapped my fingers around the edges of the cot to keep myself in place while I fought the urge to press my ear against the door.

  “Whatever,” said Ana afte
r several seconds. “I have to get out of here. I’m going to patrol to the northwest, so at least one of us is doing the job we’re pledged to do.”

  The door slammed. I lay back on the cot and turned to the wall, heart hammering. I pulled my knees to my chest and squeezed my eyes shut.

  Ana had not made any secret of her impatience with Malachi, but I hadn’t known the extent of her frustration. She obviously thought he was making a huge mistake by helping me find Nadia.

  The bedroom door squeaked open. Soft footsteps approached. Malachi’s movements were almost silent as he knelt beside my cot. I held my breath as he sat there, wondering if he would touch me. Wanting him to touch me. And then he sighed, like he had lost some battle inside his own head. His hand brushed my back and his fingers found the tip of my braid where the loose ends looped and coiled. He stroked my hair gently. I allowed myself a tiny breath as I stayed perfectly still, face to the wall, smiling and fighting tears at the same time. When I finally lifted my hand to wipe my eyes, he withdrew abruptly. I turned over and looked at him.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked warily.

  “Embarrassed. I’m so sorry I freaked out like that.” I put my hands to my eyes to block out the flash of memory that jolted my brain.

  Through my fingers, I watched Malachi’s hands rise from his knees and drop again, fists clenched. He seemed afraid to touch me without express invitation.

  I reached out shakily and took his hand. I uncurled his fingers and laid his palm against mine. The contact was real and warm. It slowed my heartbeat to a manageable pace. I wanted more. I wanted to crawl inside him and hide.

  “I fell off a cliff,” I whispered, then looked into his eyes. “I landed on the rocks. I remembered it when I saw that guy, how he…”

  I leaned forward, breathing hard, burying my forehead against his knees and our hands. He put his arm around me, gathering me to him, then shifted and snaked his other arm under my knees. He carried me into the living room, holding me curled against his chest.

  He sat down on the couch with me in his lap. I pressed my face against his neck, slowing my breathing by pacing it with his and focusing on the warmth of his hand as he laced his fingers with mine.

  As the panic cleared, I laid my head on his shoulder and memorized the stark angles of his face, the high bridge of his nose, the ridge of his brow, the cut of his jaw. Without thinking too much about it, I skimmed my fingers over them. As soon as my skin made contact with his, he closed his eyes and leaned into my hand.

  “Malachi, what happened to the guy who jumped? You said you never know where you’ll end up if you die….”

  He tilted his head and let my fingers slide through his hair. “I have no doubt he appeared back at the Suicide Gates. Suicide is never the escape it seems. If you kill yourself, you will appear at the entrance to the city and be led right back in. There are a few citizens who are chronically recycled, who are so absorbed in their issues that they don’t notice they never end up anyplace new; the Gate Guards recognize them as they shuffle through. They have to start all over again.”

  “Ana told me the Mazikin get a chance to start over, too, when you kill them. There’s no way to get rid of them permanently?”

  Malachi took my other hand and placed it on his neck, over the scar from his last battle with Juri. “I don’t think it will happen on my watch. The only way to keep them all away permanently is to make sure not a single one of them is left in the city. As long as one remains, they can bring others in. We have set fire to dozens of Mazikin nests in the last several decades, but at least one of the Mazikin always seems to escape.” His quiet laugh was saturated with sadness. “Maybe they’ve figured out all my tricks.”

  I wrapped my arm over his chest and squeezed. He’d fought so hard for so many years. And after all that, he felt like he had failed. Like he was leaving the job unfinished. But that wasn’t fair. Obviously Mazikin had been in the city for a very long time, possessing the bodies of suicides. Easy victims, Ana had called them. But then a thought occurred to me. “Hey, you said Mazikin never make it through the dark tower. How come you don’t just dump them in there?”

  He pressed my hand to his side, like he needed me closer. “That’s exactly what the Guards did for years. Until, many years ago, I was interrogating a Mazikin, and she admitted to me that killing the possessed body frees the human soul from the Mazikin realm. So what if trapping the Mazikin forever in the dark tower also traps the human soul in the Mazikin realm? Damned to slavery and suffering for eternity? I couldn’t imagine allowing that when there was a way to stop it. Not everyone agreed, though. I argued about it with Takeshi for years, but he would not stop the practice. But after he…died…I was in charge. I forbade the Guards to send Mazikin to the tower.”

  He gave me a wry look. “They still do, of course. I punish them if I catch them, but I cannot be everywhere at once. But that’s why I never leave a Mazikin alive. What if I can release that human soul to go wherever it needs to go next?”

  “Wouldn’t that mean the soul just comes back here?”

  He shook his head. “Not always. It depends on the person, on the progress they’ve made wherever they are.” He paused, and when he spoke again, it was in a dry, strangled voice. “Lela, if you don’t go before the Judge soon, you will die. Do you understand that?”

  “Where will I go then?”

  “You might end up back at the Suicide Gates if you let yourself die, but you wouldn’t be the same as you are now. You would belong to the city—you would be one of the suicides. I suppose you could end up in the Countryside. Or you could go somewhere else. There is no way of knowing.”

  I don’t want to go somewhere else. I want to stay with you.

  The thought was so startling in its strength and truth that I jerked in surprise.

  “What is it?” He looked like he thought he had crossed another line and widened the span of his arms, releasing me.

  “Don’t.” I pulled his arms back around me. His eyes asked question after question, begging for answers. I didn’t have any. I only had questions of my own. “Will you force me out of the city?”

  He shook his head firmly. “I will never force you to do anything, I promise. I won’t make that mistake again. But short of that, I will do whatever I can to get you out safely. Whatever is necessary.”

  “Ana thinks you’re neglecting your other duties.”

  His expression hardened. “Ana and I work together very well, and I respect her immensely, but we do not always agree.”

  “I don’t feel good about pulling you away from whatever you should be doing.”

  He grazed my cheek with the backs of his fingers. “Then don’t worry. This is what I should be doing.”

  I shivered at his touch and laughed. “This is what you should be doing? Right now?”

  Uncertainty drew his hand back, but then he read my playful look. “Yes. And maybe this.” He skimmed a finger from my temple to the base of my neck. He smiled as I shivered again, and his eyes lit on my mouth.

  Control be damned. I wanted to kiss him. I wanted to drown in him, forget about everything, and never resurface.

  Malachi looked into my eyes, checking in with me. He took a breath and moved closer, until his lips were just over mine. “And also, thi—”

  The apartment door burst open, and both of us jumped to our feet. Malachi instinctively dove for a weapon. I crouched low, startled out of my mind, nerves jangling. We didn’t have time to relax when we saw it was Ana, because she immediately started barking at us.

  “Malachi, you are not going to believe this. I’m pretty damn sure I just found the Mazikin nest, and it’s only six blocks to the northwest.”

  Malachi jammed his half-drawn scimitar back into its sheath. “How can you be certain?”

  Ana cocked her head at him. “Boy, I have been around for a while. How many of these things have we cleared out? The building looks abandoned, but there’s activity in the basement. I hid in a Dumpster,
” she said, narrowing her eyes at Malachi, “so Michael’s going to have to make me some new armor because that smell never comes out. You will back me up on that one. Anyway, I watched the building. This is it, baby. I saw a whole group go in—one of them had a Guard scimitar at his belt. And there was an old one with them.”

  I shuddered at the memory of Doris and her creepy four-legged lope.

  Malachi stepped forward, totally focused on Ana. “Did you see Ibram or Sil?”

  “No. And they weren’t inside, either. I could see in through one of the windows.”

  “Do you know how many are in there?”

  “A few dozen, but—” Ana gave me a very strange look. “Lela, would you excuse us?”

  “What? Oh. Sure.” I headed for the bedroom, still completely short-circuited by Malachi’s almost-kiss.

  He held out his hand to stop me. “Hold on. Ana, you can say whatever you have to say in front of Lela. This is her mission, too.”

  Ana clenched her teeth as she glared at Malachi. “Fine. But you’re going to be sorry you said that.” She turned to me and pointed to my tattoo. “I think I found your girl.”

  My jaw dropped. Hope and overwhelming fear swamped all my thought processes.

  “Where?” I could barely get the word out.

  Ana looked back at Malachi. “I’m pretty sure she was in the group of recruits I saw enter the building.”

  “You mean she’s been possessed?” Tears welled in my eyes. This could not be happening. Not after all my hard work to reach her.

  “No, not yet. She was crying. Mazikin are usually freakishly cheerful unless they’re under attack, so she’s obviously still herself.”

  Malachi and Ana stared at each other. “Options,” said Malachi.

  “Full frontal assault,” Ana replied. “We’ll draw a platoon of Guards from the nearest outpost and go in hard.”

  Malachi shook his head sharply. “Two problems with that. First, the nearest outpost is thirty blocks to the north. We don’t have time to go there, summon them, wait for them to gear up, and bring them back. That would take all night. And second: direct assault is too dangerous for Nadia. If she’s killed, she’ll probably come back through the Suicide Gates, but we wouldn’t have time to get word to the Gate Guards—they’re at least two days away. She’d get lost in the city and we’d never find her again. Other options.”