THREE
MALACHI DREW A KNIFE and shoved me behind the solid wall of his body.
“I’m pretty sure we’re on the same side,” said the voice. The porch light above us clicked on. “Put that away.”
I jerked myself away from Malachi and stepped around him. Standing in the doorway was a guy about our age. He had messy pale-blond hair and dark-blue, slightly bloodshot eyes. His face was masculine but kind of rounded at the edges, like he was just growing into his looks. But his body was already there—I could see through his T-shirt that he was packing a hell of a lot of muscle. He seemed completely relaxed about the fact that Malachi had a knife pointed at his throat.
“Tell me who you are and what you’re doing in my house, please,” said Malachi. He always sounded so calm when he was about to hurt someone.
The blond guy leaned away from the knife and held out his hand. “Jim. I’ve been assigned to this unit. You are?”
Malachi lowered the knife but did not shake Jim’s hand. “Malachi.”
Jim looked down at his palm and then wiped it on his jeans. “You in command?”
“No.” Malachi looked down at me. “She is.”
Jim’s gaze moved from my head to my toes, lingering on all the places you might expect. I wanted to punch him. He grinned and held out his hand. “Okay. Captain … ?”
“Lela Santos.” I shook his hand, which was kind of clammy. “Where did you come from?”
Jim’s leer melted. “The Blinding City.”
“The … Blinding … City? Who ends up there?” I knew there were other hellish realms in the Shadowlands where the dead were sent; that it wasn’t just the dark city, the realm for people who had committed suicide, and the Countryside, which I understood as heaven.
Jim gave me a rueful glance. “The insatiably greedy, I guess you could say. The addicts, the gamblers, the cons, and the thieves.”
“Which are you?” Malachi asked.
“Now, that’s kind of a personal question, isn’t it?” Jim raised an arm and leaned on the doorframe, either not recognizing or not caring about the waves of danger still rolling off my Lieutenant.
I made a mental note to watch Jim very carefully. “How did the city get its name?”
“Brightest place you’ve ever seen,” he said, but he didn’t sound like he missed it. “So much light, it hurts. Spotlights and streetlights and signs and sun, all on at the same time. Hard to hide anything in that kind of light.” He winked. “Not that it stops people from trying.”
“And you were a Guard there? For how long?”
“I try not to think about it. Where are you from, then?”
I thought about that for a second. “Here.”
“Ah.” He nodded, and then frowned. “Huh?”
“It’s a long story,” Malachi and I said in unison.
Jim shrugged. “Yes, ma’am.” He leaned back into the house. “Hey! Henry! Come meet our new leader. You’ll love this.” He stepped onto the porch, making way.
A lean, stooped man appeared in the entryway. He had a pouchy, grizzled face and the saddest eyes I’d ever seen, weighed down by dark circles and a lifetime of tragedy. Then again, if he was a Guard, that was pretty much a given.
Jim gestured at me. “Captain Lela Santos, meet Corporal Henry Travis.”
Henry nodded solemnly at us. Jim was standing there like he expected a big reaction, but Henry didn’t look surprised or disappointed or angry. Just resigned.
“Where are you from, Henry?” I asked, trying to sound friendly.
He didn’t answer for several uncomfortable seconds, and then, his lips barely moving, he said, “The Wasteland.”
I don’t know whether it was the hopeless look in his eyes or the desolate sound of his voice, but I decided that, for the moment, I didn’t really want to know what kind of person ended up in a place like that.
I looked up at Malachi. “Why didn’t you tell me there would be others?”
“Because I didn’t know.”
Jim smirked. “I guess the Judge thought you needed some help. What are we up to here? What’s the mission?”
“Mazikin found a way to breach the wall of the dark city and enter the land of the living,” I began.
“Wait. Who’s Mazikin?” Jim asked.
Malachi’s brows shot up. “You … do not know what a Mazikin is?”
Jim shook his head. “Never heard of it.”
“Me neither,” said Henry, taking in Malachi’s expression. “Maybe the two of you should come in.”
I touched Malachi’s back gently because the stiffness in his shoulders told me exactly what he thought of being invited into his own Station by a newcomer. The old wooden floors creaked beneath our boots as we followed Henry and Jim into the parlor, which contained a few mismatched easy chairs and a couch covered in embroidered flowers. Henry sat on the arm of the couch, looking a bit like a praying mantis. I sat in a carved wooden chair, and Malachi stood next to me. I almost reached up to take his hand, but then remembered I was the Captain—of all these guys—and I needed to act like it. “How were you two chosen for this mission?” I asked.
Jim, who’d settled himself in a leather recliner, looked down, suddenly fascinated by his own feet. Henry turned his dust-colored eyes to me. “We were called to the Sanctum, and the Judge offered it to us.”
“But she didn’t say why?”
“He didn’t.” I guess the Judge appeared to him as a male, but the Judge I’d seen was a woman. Apparently, she could appear however she wanted to. “He told us we would be joining a new field unit, and that we would get everything we needed when we arrived.”
“But you have never faced a Mazikin.” Malachi’s voice was flat with anger.
Jim rubbed his hand down his face. “Maybe you should give us the benefit of your wisdom.”
Malachi’s jaw clenched. I could almost read his mind—he was pissed that we had been given this tiny misfit army and was wondering if we might have been better off on our own. I was wondering the same thing.
“Mazikin are not human,” I explained. “They’re spirits, and they can possess people. Inhabit their bodies. Access their memories and skills.”
“The Mazikin infest the dark city where I was a Guard,” Malachi said. “I find it hard to believe they did not inhabit your cities as well.”
“I don’t,” said Henry. “The Wasteland is a place where no one would choose to go.” He looked thoughtful for a second. “You know, part of the Wasteland is taken up by a huge desert, and there’s a domed city at its far edge. Rumor is that it’s full of monsters.”
A hard chill rode straight down my spine. “Malachi, could that be their realm?”
“It’s possible,” he replied, “but if they’re not in the Wasteland, there must be something preventing them from escaping their city, except through possession of bodies in other places.”
“You said they described it as a prison.”
He nodded. “One of them told me that his home was a place of fire and death.”
“If they’re under the sun in the Wasteland’s desert that sounds about right,” said Henry. Listening to his desolate voice was like walking through a cemetery. “Not many residents of the Wasteland journey into the desert. The climate is too extreme.”
“Wait,” I said, “Jim, you told us the Blinding City was full of light, too, right?”
“Yeah.”
I turned back to Malachi. “I wonder if the Mazikin prefer the dark.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s possible. That may be one of the reasons they were so fond of my city.” His shoulders relaxed slightly. “Maybe they’ll be more active at night.”
“Active like how?” asked Jim.
“They’ll be recruiting,” answered Malachi. “In the dark city, they snatched people off the street, sometimes out of apartment buildings. They tie their victims to a table and perform a ritual where they burn incense and chant in their language. It calls up a Mazikin spirit from their realm to inhabit the body.”
Henry grimaced. “You mean, like demon possession or something? I’ve heard of that. Can they be exorcised, then? Is that what we’re supposed to do?” The expression on his stubbly face showed how uneasy he was with that idea.
Malachi shook his head. “There’s no going back once a Mazikin spirit takes hold. The body must be killed. It’s the only way to deal with them.”
“Not the only way,” I said quietly, remembering how Mazikin could be imprisoned in the dark tower. It forced all trespassers to relive their worst memories, and Mazikin got a double dose of that, having to endure both their own traumatic recollections and those of their human hosts.
“Killing them is the only way,” Malachi snapped. “Unless you want to leave human souls trapped in that place of fire and suffering.” He had been told by a Mazikin that killing the host body sent the Mazikin back to its homeland and liberated the human soul that had been exiled there by the possession.
I put up my hands to show I wasn’t going to argue with him. “Fortunately, it’s not as simple as grabbing someone off the streets here,” I said to Jim and Henry. “Most people would be missed by their families and reported to the police, which means the search would be on for them, making it more likely that the Mazikin will be found and exposed. But at this point, they must have possessed a few because every night there are more sightings.”
“At least a few?” Henry asked. “How many of these things are there?”
“A lot,” I said. “Maybe one of them for every person in this state.”
Henry blinked. “And what’s stopping them from taking over right now?”
Malachi shifted next to me. “It’s not that easy. It requires some coordination with Mazikin in their home realm, which is why they collect victims and possess them in batches, though they must perform the ritual with one person at a time. And based on what I have witnessed, it is a lengthy and painful process. The ones who are here now will be preparing to accommodate more, and they’re possibly gathering a specific type of victim in some cases.” He glanced at me, and I knew he was thinking of Juri.
“Between that and the fact that they need to be careful to avoid getting caught,” I added, “as well as the likelihood that people will fight back, we have some time before there are too many of them to stop.” But probably not much.
“They’ll create a nest for themselves,” said Malachi. “A secluded place where they’ll take their victims and perform the ritual, where they’ll live. We have to find and destroy it.”
“And from what you’re saying, the nest could be anywhere.” Jim sat back again, looking skeptical.
“Hang on,” said Henry, getting up and walking over to a large pile of newspapers. He shuffled through the stack, finally finding the section he wanted, and then flipped through a few pages with black-tipped fingers. “It’s been a while since I was on Earth. Not since the fifties. I asked that Raphael guy to get me something to catch me up.” He handed the folded paper to me. “You said they’d recruit. Gather victims. This kind of thing unusual around here?”
I read the headline: “Homeless Fight to Keep Winter Shelters Open.” It was buried deep in one of the back pages.
Homeless advocates are asking the city to postpone the April 1 closing date of Providence’s four emergency winter shelters, but not because of the weather. Police have received several complaints in the last week about attacks on the city’s two largest homeless camps. “They come through quick and take our food, our supplies. A couple guys got beaten up bad,” said Orián Velasquez, a resident of one of the camps currently seeking refuge in the shelters, scheduled to close next Friday. “We’re not criminals. The city owes us some protection.” City officials responded today by saying police are investigating the disturbances, but that it is unlikely the city will extend the deadline for closure due to deep budget cuts in the past year.
“You could be right,” I said to Henry. I handed the paper to Malachi. “Do you think the Mazikin could be responsible?”
He took a moment to scan the article. “It’s possible. Though I would expect them to kidnap people, not beat them up.”
“How do you know they didn’t try?” I asked. “The people in those camps probably fought back. They wouldn’t just take it like the citizens in the dark city. We should check this out.”
“So how do you fight a Mazikin?” Jim asked.
“Like anyone else,” said Malachi. “But you must be careful of their teeth, as their venom is deadly. And of their fingernails, which the Mazikin allow to grow long until they resemble claws. If you are scratched, it will kill you more slowly but just as effectively, if you do not have access to Raphael.”
He glared at me for a moment. I had three slashing scars across my stomach, a reminder of how deadly Mazikin claws could be. They’d come courtesy of Sil, the Mazikin leader who had successfully breached the walls of the dark city to overrun the land of the living. From the look in Malachi’s eyes, he was once again worrying about what Sil would do if he got ahold of me.
“Tooth and claw. No problem,” said Jim.
Malachi’s face twisted with contempt. “Some of them are very skilled fighters. And all of them are vicious. Do not underestimate your enemy.”
Jim rolled his eyes. “Wouldn’t dream of it. So what do we do, just kill them all?”
This time I answered because it looked like Malachi wanted to punch Jim for being so casual. I couldn’t blame him; that attitude could get a Guard killed. “We have to terminate every single one of them, yes. Because as long as there’s one Mazikin here on Earth, it can bring in others. We won’t be done until we eliminate them completely.”
“We have to find them first,” added Henry, reminding me of how I’d failed so far.
“We’re going to patrol tomorrow tonight, starting with the area where the latest sightings have been, because the nest might be nearby. Then maybe we can check out those homeless camps,” I said. “Also, Malachi and I have school tomorrow. I have to go or else my …” Or else Nancy, my PO, would cheerfully cart me back to juvie for violating my probation, but I didn’t feel like explaining that. I turned to Jim. “Are you coming to school with us?” There was no way Henry would pass as a student, but Jim looked like a teenager.
Jim stretched and yawned in this exaggerated way. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to sleep in.”
Malachi’s eyes narrowed.
We sat there in silence until I remembered that I was supposed to be in charge. I drew my shoulders up and tried unsuccessfully to ignore the burning in my cheeks as I pretended to know what I was doing. “Rest up, then. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night.”
Henry nodded as I rose from my chair, and Jim’s eyes bounced between my face and my chest. Malachi glared at him and stepped between us, blocking Jim from sight. My Lieutenant kept a respectful distance between us but gave me a lingering look, full of wish and want. It took everything I had not to touch him. With Henry and Jim there, though, it wouldn’t be very Captain-like of me to fling myself into Malachi’s arms.
So I headed home.
I let myself into the house as quietly as possible, but as soon as I closed the front door, I could hear the heavy, even breaths that told me Diane was deeply asleep, as Raphael had promised. I padded down the hall to my room and closed the door. My books and papers lay scattered across my desk. My backpack was propped against my chair, my camera tucked into one of its side pockets. A pile of dirty clothes in the corner, a pair of sneakers under the bed.
Life as it had been.
I lifted my fleece jacket and looked down at my waist, at the black leather belt and sheathed knife.
Life as it was now: a weird intersection of normal and crazy, of life and beyond-life, afterlife, undead, whatever. I put my hand to my heart and felt it beating, remembered feeling Malachi’s pounding through his shirt as he kissed me. Were we alive? Were we here on borrowed time? Did we have a right to live or only to serve as Guards? Did we have a future, or were we headed back to the dark city when we were done? Did anything we did here, apart from eliminating the Mazikin, matter? Could we keep anything for ourselves? I hadn’t exactly signed a contract that spelled that out for me.
Raphael had told me I should finish high school, that I should “go be a normal American teenager.” But this wasn’t the dark city, where all the Guards had a Station, a base from which they patrolled. Where they had authority. Where they could get things done.
Nope, this was freaking Rhode Island. And I was freaking Lela Santos. I was stuck in this house with my overprotective foster mother—the department of child welfare had custody of me for another three months and sixteen days. I had to attend school so that my probation officer didn’t come calling, and so that I could stay away from an all-expenses-paid trip back to the Rhode Island Training School, or the RITS, the state’s glorious juvenile facility. I had to keep my grades up so that I could stay eligible for that scholarship to the University of Rhode Island. If we could get rid of all the Mazikin, maybe the Judge would let me have that chance. Maybe she would let me have a future.
“And in the meantime, I have to save the world and be home by ten,” I whispered.
The Judge had said this would be hard. From where I was sitting, it looked impossible.