Fractured (20 page)

“I go out,” I protested. Not really. I had followed Nadia to parties and driven her home.

He raised his hands in surrender. “Okay. I didn’t mean to give you a hard time about it. I was just—thought maybe you might want to hang out sometime?”

All the blood in my head drained to my feet. Ian Moseley, jock extraordinaire, wanted to
hang out
. I looked up at him, and his lips twisted up into this rueful half smile. Only one dimple showing.

“Hey, I didn’t want to make it a big deal,” he said. “With everything that’s going on, I thought …” He scratched at his chin and let out a quiet laugh. “I don’t know what I was thinking, actually. You just seem cool. Bullshit-free, if that makes sense.”

I rubbed my clammy hands on my jeans. “I guess it does.”

If I got to know him better, I could make sure he was protected from the Mazikin, who would almost certainly come after him. Young guy. Strong. With resources. Embedded deeply in Aden’s memories. The Mazikin probably knew
all
about Ian.

I smiled at him. “And yeah, we can hang out. I’d like that.” And this time, I realized, I
wasn’t
lying.

We exchanged numbers but didn’t make any plans. I told him I would be at the wake and the funeral, and he gave me a brave smile and said he’d see me there.

I drove to the Guard house in a fog. The sleep deprivation was catching up with me. I couldn’t go on like this forever, and neither could the other Guards. We were all human, after all, and our bodies were frail. None of us would be able to make good decisions or fight well if we tried to subsist on two hours of sleep a night. The only time I got any rest these days was when Raphael put me under so that he could heal me.

I didn’t bother knocking when I got to the Guard house, just walked in, only to find all three of them waiting for me in the entryway, their arms crossed over their chests. I laughed. “Hey guys. Is this an intervention? Do you have a therapist tucked away in the corner?”

Identical looks of puzzlement crossed their very different facial features. “You said you would brief us,” Malachi said solemnly.

Henry’s eyes were locked on my boots as he spoke. “I wanted to give you a chance to explain yourself before I took my concerns elsewhere.”

I stalked into the parlor and sat down. “You mean before you call Raphael in here. What do you think he’s going to do? Demote me? At this moment, Henry, that sounds fucking awesome.”

Henry took a seat across from me. “Last night. You were
talking
to the wild-haired Mazikin. It didn’t look like you were trying to capture her.”

“Sorry, my arm was kind of shattered at the time,” I snapped.

“Which was why I shot at her,” growled Henry. “I was trying to protect you.”

I looked away from him, and my gaze landed on Jim, who was still in the entryway, watching us warily. “See, Jim?” I called. “I’m a screwup, too. We should start a club.”

He gave me a small smile but said nothing. Henry glanced at Malachi and then leaned forward, recapturing my attention. “This isn’t funny, Captain. We need to know why you jumped in front of my bolt to save that Mazikin.” His expression changed, like a mask falling away, and in that instant, he allowed me to see the true effect of whatever horror and tragedy he carried inside his head. “I could have
killed
you. Do you know what that would have been like for me?”

“I understand,” I said calmly, determined not to take this out on him and make his suffering worse. I got to my feet, needing to move. “You don’t know me, Henry. So I get why you might be confused, why you might think I’d protect the creatures we’ve come here to exterminate.” I glared at Malachi. “But you know me better than that.”

Malachi didn’t flinch. “Did you think she was human? Because then—”

I shook my head. “I knew she was a Mazikin.”

His dark eyes bored into mine. “You could have told Henry to stand down.”

“There wasn’t time. Henry can verify that.”

Malachi rubbed the back of his neck. “Then you could have captured a different one. Unless perhaps you thought this Mazikin had special knowledge about Sil and his plans?”

“No. I had no reason to believe the female Mazikin had special knowledge of their strategy.” In fact, I’d had every reason to believe she had special knowledge about
me
, and still I’d risked my life to keep her alive.

Malachi’s fists clenched. “You took an arrow to the
chest
for this creature, Lela! And I don’t—” He stopped short, some realization dawning, and swept the other Guards with an authoritative glance. “I will talk to the Captain alone.”

Jim shrugged. “Fine with me. I’ve got homework.” He turned and walked up the stairs.

Henry stood up slowly, looking me over. I could tell that whatever fragile trust he’d had in me was shattered the moment I’d forced him to shoot me, and it would take a while to rebuild, if that was even possible. But it was clear by the way he looked at Malachi that he trusted
him
. After a few seconds, he turned on his heel and headed for the basement.

“Why didn’t you just tell us you knew her?” Malachi asked quietly as soon as the basement door clicked shut. He closed the distance between us slowly. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Of course he’d figured it out. I shouldn’t have expected anything different. “I didn’t want to talk about it. I
still
don’t want to talk about it.” I crumpled onto the couch and bowed my head, letting my hair fall around my face as my misery finally bubbled up to drown me. “In fact, I almost wish that bolt had hit me a few inches to the right. Then you wouldn’t have to deal with me, and I wouldn’t have to deal with this.”

Malachi sank to his knees in front of me like someone had punched the air out of his lungs. “Don’t say that, Lela,” he whispered. His hands moved forward, reaching for me.

I jerked backward and slid sideways along the couch, away from him. I couldn’t take him halfway. I had to have it all—or nothing. “Don’t touch me. You’re the one who wanted distance.”

My boots hit the floor, and I was up. Rage singed me on the inside, turning all my edges black and brittle. With my fists balled up tight against my sides, I whipped around, ready to loose some of my fury on him—because the alternative was to collapse on the floor and cry, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop once it started.

Malachi was still on his knees in front of the couch, his head bowed, like he was comforting the ghost of me.

I spoke to his back, hurling words like knives. “I’ll tell you the deal, and then you can decide if you’d like to request my removal as your Captain. Are you ready for this? Because the irony here is beautiful. That Mazikin was my
mother
.”

Malachi raised his head.

“Yeah. You see now. My mom must have been living on the streets. And they got her.” It was so much easier to do this when I couldn’t see his eyes, when I didn’t have to deal with what they might reflect. “Think how you would feel if you hadn’t seen your mother since you were a small child. If you were too young when she left you, too young to remember her face, too young to remember if she really cared for you. But when she shows up, when she looks at you with your own eyes, it all comes back. The way she sang to you and loved you once, before she couldn’t do it anymore. All of those memories, buried deep in your head. For years. Waiting to ambush you.”

My fingers had crept into my hair and were tugging at it. My voice had thinned, small and high again, the voice of me from a long time ago. “I wish I could rip those images from my mind. I wish I could dig them out. For years, I assumed I didn’t have them. That would have been so much easier. But when she was right there in front of me, all of a sudden, so were all those memories. All at once. When Henry took aim at her, I didn’t think about it. I acted.”

Malachi stood up slowly, but did not turn around.

“Yes!” I shouted, anticipating what he might say before he had a chance to open his mouth. “I know what you believe! I know you think I missed my chance to liberate my mother’s soul, all because I protected her body! I get it now. I see how hard it is to kill a Mazikin when it’s wearing the skin of a person you care about. I
get
it. You must love that.”

“Of course I don’t,” he said, so softly I almost missed it.

I tore my fingers through my hair and headed for the door. “Now they’re using her to get to us. They’ve set up a meeting, using the pretense that my long-lost mother wants to see me again. You’re coming with me. To translate. See, I can’t even understand what she says.” Bitterness broke my voice, leaving it hoarse. “I assume you can, though. You couldn’t have spent all those years with Ana without learning some Spanish.”

“You’re right,” he said, finally turning to me, his eyes ebony pools of sorrow. I almost screamed at him to stop looking at me that way. It wasn’t fair, and I needed to get away before I made a fool of myself by collapsing into his arms and begging him to never let me go.

I groped for the doorknob, desperate for my escape. “I’ll let you know when it’s all set up. It should be great fun.” I welcomed the cool air on my burning skin as I swung the door open. “I’ll be back tonight. We have less than a week before the city’s emergency shelters close for the season. We need to locate the new Mazikin nest, and Sil in particular, before they start picking off those folks—as well as our friends—one by one. So study your maps, and tell the others to get ready. We’ll be patrolling heavily, but probably in shifts from now on. The objective is still to find a Mazikin and track it back to the nest or capture one and force it to tell us where they are. Does that sound like an acceptable plan to you?”

His eyes lingered on my face, and he opened his mouth to say something. But then he swallowed whatever it was and drew himself up straight. “Yes, Captain.”

NINETEEN

WE DIDN
’
T FIND THE
nest by the end of the week, but not for lack of trying. I mapped out routes, including all four of the shelters, to be patrolled by two Guards each night. The third Guard on duty was assigned to monitor Facebook and connect with our friends in an effort to keep tabs and make sure they weren’t doing anything crazy. The fourth Guard on the rotating schedule was under strict orders to rest. I designed the schedule so that the guys would have every third night off, with the instruction that they use that time to get at least eight hours of sleep. I … did not give myself the same kind of break. I couldn’t.

I could barely sleep at all.

Every time I closed my eyes, I saw her beckoning to me.
Ven conmigo
, she whispered.
Come
.

I couldn’t figure out why she’d said it. Had that been the Mazikin speaking, trying to capture me, or had she said it because, deep inside her, my mother’s memories were so strong that the Mazikin
felt
something for me? I didn’t know what I wanted the answer to be, but the question dogged me.

The woman hospitalized after the Mazikin attack on the camp died a few days after the incident, never having regained consciousness. She was identified as Marie Clement, a thirty-nine-year-old unemployed waitress from West Warwick. Cause of death was still being determined, but I knew how it had happened. The Mazikin inside my mother had bitten her, and the venom had paralyzed and slowly killed her.

Her death fueled the enthusiasm of the media. The death of one homeless person might not get much attention, but at this point several had been found dead in local parks, and now five people had been slaughtered in a single night. Rumors about how they died were swirling. Homeless advocates were up in arms, demanding justice. It was becoming more difficult to stay under the radar for Guards and Mazikin alike.

I was a Guard and nothing else. I ate mechanically. Did minimal homework on autopilot, enough to keep out of trouble. Stared my way through classes while my brain whirled with patrol strategies and what-ifs. I trained with the other Guards for hours every day after school, turning off all my emotions and facing Malachi down on the mat with fists and knives. He kicked my ass repeatedly, and sometimes I think he enjoyed it a little. I know I did. I needed a place to vent my frustration, and that was it. I couldn’t blame him if he did the same thing.

On Friday, the day after Aden’s funeral, I arrived at school to find Malachi sitting on the half wall at the front entrance. As soon as I pulled into a spot, he was up and walking toward me. I groaned and leaned my head back against the seat. He knocked on the window.

“Good morning,” he said briskly when I opened the door. “I take it your patrol was quiet.”

I nodded, savoring the bitterness. “Jim and I caught a scent outside the Broad Street shelter, but we couldn’t trace it. I feel like we’re so close, but we’re missing something. Maybe tonight we’ll catch a break.”

“All our friends here are accounted for. Greg has decided he would like to be my new best friend and wants to ‘party.’ Other than that, no unusual activity last night.”

“Good. And tonight you’re off.”

“No, Captain.” He leaned down. “Lela, I think you’re punishing yourself with this schedule.”

“Punishing myself? Look who’s talking,” I snapped. “I hear you’re up at all hours, training when you should be resting.”

Malachi’s expression hardened. “What I do with my time off is none of your concern. I’m following your orders. I’m doing my job.”

Again, it would have been less painful if he’d punched me. “I never said you weren’t,” I muttered hoarsely.

He stepped around the door and squatted in front of me. “Take tonight off. Rest. I’ll take your place. We need our Captain to have a clear head. You’ve earned Jim’s trust, and you’re just starting to regain Henry’s after what happened on Monday—do not let them down.”

His eyes showed his concern … and nothing else. This was how he would have talked to Ana or Takeshi, his Captain from long ago. I should have been happy that his feelings for me weren’t interfering, but it hurt like hell.

“All right. I’ll take it under advisement. But the shelters close tonight—”