Sanctum

by Sarah Fine

  I crammed the letter into my pocket and stomped across the manicured lawn, wishing I had something heavy to throw at the wide, crystal clear bay windows. My panic had short-circuited me—the one thing I’d had to hang on to was falling apart. I sucked in a few breaths as I reached my car, trying to calm down enough to drive. She would be better tomorrow. I’d show her the letter then.

  I never got the chance, though. Tegan called the next morning. I barely made out the words through her hysterical sobbing, but after a few repetitions, they finally sank in.

  Mrs. Vetter had discovered her daughter on the floor of the bathroom, an empty pill bottle next to her.

  Nadia was dead.

  THREE

  MY GAZE TRACED THE zombie’s oozing features as the sharp whine of the tattoo gun burrowed into my ears. The undead creature was forceful and intimidating, saturated with color and menace. I watched Dunn, the zombie’s owner, wondering what it said about him, that he had decided to carry this monster on his flesh. As I eyed his wiry little body, I decided he’d probably been bullied as a child. He was certainly compensating for something. I kept searching for more clues, grateful for distraction from the throb and sting radiating across my skin. And from the guilt eating away at my heart.

  Dunn’s face twisted in concentration as he deftly maneuvered the needles. I bit back a shiver at the pain, forcing myself into stillness, afraid the tiniest move would ruin the portrait taking shape on my arm.

  “Halfway there,” Dunn commented. “You need a break?”

  I shook my head. “Keep going.”

  “You look pale.”

  “I’m fine,” I replied through gritted teeth.

  Dunn grunted and bent to his task again. He had some mad skills. Even through the blood and the swelling, Nadia’s delicate face was instantly recognizable. It had only taken him a few days from the first time he saw the photograph to sketch her face and map where it would lie on my forearm. It was sort of hilarious that, for all my bad-girl rep, the only thing I’d ever used my fake ID for was to get this tattoo. Dunn had even given me a discount. It still ate a chunk out of my pathetic college fund, but that wasn’t a problem now. I’d gotten a scholarship, after all.

  I looked out the window of the shop, watching cars thread their way along Wickenden Street’s narrow lanes. Maybe this tattoo would do it. The school memorial hadn’t—I’d stared at Nadia’s glossy, poster-size photo from the back row of the bleachers, watching all her other friends cry and hug each other in the front row, and it still hadn’t chased her ghost out of my head. The wake hadn’t done it either—after seeing her lying there, pale and perfect, the dreams still haunted me. The funeral had failed me, too—even after gutting my way through the priest’s promises that she was in a better place, the nightly visions of her trapped in that dark city, the very same place I’d carried in my head for the past two years, remained. Now she was there. And it was my fault.

  Diane said I needed to find my own way to say good-bye. She promised it would make me feel better. So here it was, my personal memorial to Nadia. I’d wear her solemn, haunted expression on my skin forever: a reminder of what I’d had, what I’d missed, what I’d lost.

  Someone came out from the back of the shop, and the door’s hinges creaked in protest. I gasped as the Suicide Gates appeared in front of me, reaching for me, trying to swallow me. I’d walked through them with Nadia that night just a week ago, over ground I knew well, screaming at her to get back, to turn around. Begging her not to go through. But she’d just looked up at the city beyond the Gates, crying and terrified. She was all alone, even though she was surrounded by hundreds of people mumbling in a bunch of different languages. Those enormous, armored Guards stood on either side of the Gates, wielding their curved swords as they herded the crowd into a vast, dark city. One of the monsters had laughed at Nadia when she’d begged for his help. Welcome to the Suicide Gates, he’d shouted.

  I’d jerked awake, so relieved it was just a dream, unaware that she was already dead.

  “You okay?” Dunn pulled his tattoo gun back, and by his expression, I knew I’d just done something spastic.

  I cleared my throat. “Fine. Why?”

  “You were, uh…moaning? Not that I minded…” The twist of his lips made me seriously consider taking to my former ways and stabbing him with his tattoo gun.

  “Sorry. It hurts. Go ahead.” I stared out the window, trying desperately not to think of what I’d seen in those dreams.

  The needles fell silent again. “Finished,” announced Dunn, squeezing my hand. “What do you think?”

  I looked down at the inside of my right forearm. Nadia’s face looked back at me. “She’s perfect,” I murmured. “Thank you.”

  He bandaged me up and I headed home, hoping this would put an end to the nightmares of Nadia. Every night since she died, I’d walked with her deeper into that infinite, dark city. She was surrounded by strangers wandering the streets, all wearing glassy-eyed looks of sorrow and torment. Except for the enormous Guards who patrolled the streets, nearly everyone in the city looked completely miserable. Nadia wanted to ask for help, but no one would look at her. She couldn’t hear me calling her name. I was just a ghost hovering by her side. I woke up every morning, my grief fresh, my heart aching. Maybe now she would rest in peace and let me get back to my regularly scheduled nightmares. Anything was better than seeing her suffer.

  Diane’s car was in the driveway when I pulled in. I tugged at my sleeve as I walked through the door. Diane would be curious if she saw the bandage, not to mention pissed if she saw the tattoo.

  “What happened to you, baby?” She trundled out of the kitchen, serving spoon in hand.

  “Nothing. Hanging out with, um, Tegan.”

  Diane’s eyebrows shot up. “Tegan just called to see if you were going to the vigil tomorrow night.”

  Great. Tegan had decided to be a decent human being at exactly the wrong moment. I sank into a chair at the kitchen table. “I needed some time to myself. I went for a drive.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Is more alone time really what you need?”

  I closed my eyes so she couldn’t see me rolling them. “I don’t know what I need, Diane. I’m not sure it matters, either.”

  “It would matter to Nadia.”

  I winced. When I had dreamed of Nadia, the only thing that had mattered to her was escaping from her pain. Just as I’d warned her, it hadn’t ended when she killed herself. “You don’t know that.”

  Diane’s arms rose from her sides. She wanted to hug me, but she knew better than to try. She crossed her arms over her chest instead. “You were important to her, and don’t pretend you don’t know that.” Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been having nightmares again, haven’t you? They’re just dreams, baby. Bad dreams, I know, but still just dreams.”

  I turned my back to her, opening the cabinet and staring sightlessly at the plates and glasses. They didn’t feel like dreams. In last night’s nightmare, a cackling old lady had tried to drag Nadia away—like some type of animal. Perfect, she’d said to Nadia. You’re perfect. It was a different voice than the one that had whispered to me in so many of my own nightmares, but she’d said the same ominous words. When Nadia had run, the evil animal granny chased her—on all fours, palms and feet slapping the cobblestone street. I’d lurched awake before I got to see what happened to her.

  “You think you could have saved her. You feel guilty,” Diane commented as she reached around me and grabbed two plates.

  “Of course I do,” I snapped hoarsely, swiping a sleeve across my leaking eyes. “You should have heard the stuff I said to her that night. What if I drove her to it?”

  She shook her head and made this disapproving mm-mm-mm sound in her throat. “Do you think Nadia would want you to feel this way? That girl was pure good. I wish she’d loved herself as much as she loved everyone else. She left a lasting mark on this world, and on you. When you came to me a year ago, I was afraid you’d end up right back i
n the RITS, but instead, here you are—going to college!”

  Yeah, Nadia was the reason I had that kind of future. And what had I done for her? She’d said I was the one who kept her grounded, the one who saw past the trivial stuff. She said she needed me because I was real. Strong. Funny. Good. I’d actually started to believe that stuff about myself, to believe I had something to give her in return for everything she’d given me. Then I’d walked away from her right when she needed me most.

  I pressed my hand over the bandage and let the pain bleed through my whole body. I deserved this hurt. A flash of panic rushed through me as the dark city flashed in front of my eyes. I yanked my hand away from the tattoo like it had burned me, and the real world returned.

  Diane offered me a plate. “You want to talk about it while we eat?”

  God, no. “I’m sorry, Diane. Dinner looks great, but I’m going to go do some homework and then go to bed.”

  She gave me a sad smile. “I’m here if you need me, baby.”

  I went back to my room and scattered my pictures of Nadia across the floor. In almost all of them, Nadia wore that I-rule-the-world smile. I flipped through the snapshots, wondering how someone so confident, so alive, could ever want to hurt herself. Then I got to one of the photos I’d taken of her as we sat in the bleachers watching the boys’ baseball practice.

  In that picture she stared into space, eyes dull and haunted. That was the face of a person who could down enough pills to kill herself many times over. That was the face on my arm. That was how she looked when she thought no one else was watching. At first I’d thought it was a fluke. None of my other prints held any hint of this sad, desperate Nadia. But then I’d remembered all the other photos on my camera, the ones I hadn’t thought worthy of printing out. Sure enough—there weren’t many, but they were there, stretching as far back as last summer. Pictures of Nadia caught in honest moments, too distracted or exhausted to ratchet that breathtaking smile onto her face.

  My vision blurred beneath the weight of my tears. How could I have let her slip away? I gathered all the photos, the best moments of my life with the only friend I’d ever had. I carried them to the backyard and fired up Diane’s little charcoal grill.

  FOUR

  THE FLAMES LICKED AT the edges of the pictures and then hungrily gobbled Nadia’s fake smiles. I inhaled the bitter smoke. My eyes watered as I watched the last image of her face catch fire. “Are you really there, Nadia? Or am I just crazy?”

  As soon as her image disappeared, I was already missing her. I peeled the bandage off and looked down at her face on my still-aching arm. Her eyes caught me, made me feel like I was falling. Heavy, tingling prickles raced up my legs, and my breath quickened. The bricks on the patio rounded, transforming into cobblestones. Diane’s hanging plants drew their tendrils up and became gas lamps hanging from thick posts, giving off a greenish glow in the darkness. Nadia’s arms pumped in front of me as she ran along the uneven street, high-rises hemming her in on either side.

  I was with Nadia. I was Nadia. Somehow, I was in her head, seeing things through her eyes as she fled through the dark city. My stomach heaved with her fear. Her heart—my heart—was beating so hard, and I realized I was no longer in Diane’s backyard. Was something chasing us—her—again? That evil animal granny who’d tried to take her away?

  I felt a dull pain in my shoulder as we dove behind a Dumpster. We whipped around to see if the danger was near, just in time to see a man’s body land in a heap a few feet away. She craned her neck and immediately shrank behind the metal wall again, but not before we caught a glimpse.

  The guy’s neck was laid open to the spine.

  My mind lit up, trying to process what I was seeing. I thought this was the afterlife, that these people were already dead. But this guy had just been killed, and he didn’t look like he was going to rise any time soon.

  My horrified thoughts fell silent at the sharp crash of metal on metal. Nadia peeked out from behind the Dumpster, wondering frantically how to escape. She knew enough from her encounter with the animal old lady to realize folks here were dangerous. She didn’t want to step into plain sight or make enough noise to draw attention to herself, so she was stuck until these people went away. I would have told her that was a good plan, but I knew she was deaf to me, even though I could hear her thoughts like they were my own.

  In front of us, two men and one woman advanced on their prey, wielding curved swords that looked exactly like the ones carried by the Guards who patrolled the city. The man in the center was tan with raven hair and wore dingy white robes, like some sheik from the Middle East. The man to his left was tall and blond, like a modern Viking. On the right stood a middle-aged woman wearing a tracksuit and running shoes. Suburban housewife. The group looked exactly like all the other poor, oblivious suicides who roamed the streets of the city, except these folks were the opposite of aimless. They had a purpose: kill somebody.

  As the sheik took a single step forward, the others took two, creating a V formation around their adversary. Their faces carried identical expressions of hatred mixed with anticipation. I recognized the look. I’d seen it on the detention officers in the RITS—they thought they were going to win, but they didn’t expect it to be easy.

  Nadia shifted, finally giving me a view of the opposing side. Which consisted of…one guy. He was sort of dressed like one of those giant Guards but didn’t look anything like them. He was fairly tall, but not bulky and huge like the others. His chest was covered not with metal armor but with molded leather, buckled together at the shoulders and sides like a medieval bulletproof vest, with a ridged collar that was higher at the back. The same kind of leather covered his forearms and surrounded his legs below the knees. He didn’t wear a helmet or visor like the other Guards did, so I could see that he was young, not much older than I was. He had olive skin and closely cut black hair, and the hint of a killer smile played at the corners of his lips while his dark eyes swept back and forth, assessing.

  “You Mazikin have been busy lately, Ibram. I just wanted to ask you some questions about it,” said the Guard in a clipped, hard sort of accent. He sounded so calm for a guy who wasn’t even holding a weapon. The sheath at his hip was empty, and his sword lay several feet away. Then my gaze drifted down to the twin circles of leather surrounding his thighs—each one held two double-edged knives, and he had a police baton clipped to his belt. Didn’t seem like much against three people armed with swords, though.

  The sheik, Ibram, laughed. “If all you wanted to do was talk, you wouldn’t have killed Frank.” He glanced over at the dead man. “Good thing I brought plenty of backup.”

  “And more stolen scimitars.” The Guard took a few more steps back, moving with complete precision and control. There was no hesitation in his movements, but no rush, either.

  Ibram eyed the elegant curve of the blade in his hand, then gave the Guard a meaningful once-over. A grin lit his golden face. “Yes, the only things worth keeping in this city. Beautiful and effective.” His teeth flashed sharp and white under the light of a streetlamp. “A nice extension of our natural weaponry, don’t you think?”

  The Guard didn’t answer. A muscle in his jaw jumped rhythmically. His backtracking had brought him into a pool of lamplight, and with a shock I noticed he was bleeding; the fabric of his fitted shirt gaped at the shoulder, showing just how effective the scimitar was. The gash was so deep I swear I saw muscle and bone. Blood fell in steady drops from the fingertips of his left hand. I suddenly felt sympathy for the guy. As much as I despised those enormous Guards at the Gates, I didn’t want to watch this one die.

  I got totally distracted looking at him, but then I heard Nadia wondering hysterically if she was about to watch this outnumbered, injured guy get slaughtered right in front of her. At first glance he did seem trapped and hopelessly overmatched. But as he shifted his weight to his rear leg and drew the police baton from his hip in a smooth, unhurried motion, I knew he wasn’t. I could see how dange
rous he was.

  The housewife and the Viking lunged forward, attacking from both sides. The Guard was in motion instantly. His baton extended, tripling in length to become a long, narrow staff. Before it reached its full length, it arced in a blurring motion. The Guard was the axis, the eye of the storm, as the staff rocketed around and struck the blade from the housewife’s hands, then reversed its motion and crunched into the Viking’s face. The Guard pulled the staff back and jabbed it into the neck of the Viking, who crumpled to the ground. A millisecond later, the housewife was on the ground, too, clutching at her throat.

  The Guard’s dark gaze returned to Ibram, who smiled and shrugged. “They were new” was all Ibram said before he attacked. He was forced to a halt as he blocked two throwing knives with the whirling motion of his sword. I hadn’t even seen the Guard throw them. Ibram blocked the other two just as easily. The Guard was out of throwing knives.

  “Damn,” the Guard said as he shifted the staff to his right hand. “You’ve been practicing.”

  Ibram darted forward, taking full advantage of his opponent’s wound, which obviously slowed him down. The Guard looked like he was fighting purely in self-defense, using the staff to create a circle of protection to prevent the wicked blade from finding its mark. Twice Ibram almost got him, striping the Guard’s breastplate with deep gashes. But the Guard wasted no opportunity, and the first time Ibram left himself open, the staff smashed into the side of the sheik’s face. Ibram slashed his sword down sharply, splintering the staff. Both men stumbled back.

  The Guard’s eyes scanned the street, mapping the distance to every weapon in the area. Then he was running, but not toward any of the blades I could see. He ran straight toward Ibram, hurling the remnant of his broken staff at the sheik’s blade arm and forcing him to raise his weapon to block it. Ibram recovered instantly and swung the blade back toward his attacker, but the Guard was too close and too fast. He jabbed the edge of his hand against Ibram’s wrist, sending the weapon clattering to the ground, then shot a vicious punch to Ibram’s groin before nailing him with a final elbow strike. Ibram fell to the ground like a sack of cement. I was glad Nadia couldn’t hear my thoughts at that moment…because I couldn’t help but admire the Guard’s style.