Fractured (25 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said as I approached her. “My friend thought that was someone he knew.”

She backed up several steps as I approached. I held up my hands, not wanting to freak her out. “Hey,” I said. “We don’t mean any harm.”

She snorted. By the look of her, she had a lot of years of experience with people more menacing than me. The Mazikin scent still hung in the air, so I said, “You smell that? That kind of incense smell? Don’t ever get in a car if you smell it. Warn your friends, too.”

The woman inhaled. “I don’t smell anything.”

“Captain—” Jim called out, eyeing the prostitute as he approached her from the other direction.

She whirled around to face him, and as she did, the breeze carried the overwhelming stench of body odor, perfume, and incense to me. “Pretty clever,” I said, drawing her attention back to me. “You nearly had that guy.” I pushed my hood away from my face.

Her eyes went wide, like maybe she recognized me.

Jim met my gaze, and I nodded. He stepped up right next to her. “Hi, sweetheart,” he said as she flinched in surprise. She’d been so fixated on me that she’d forgotten he was there. “Sorry I chased off your date. Can I make it up to you?”

The Mazikin’s eyes darted back and forth between me and Jim. A low hiss came from her mouth. Jim had one arm around her and a hand covering her mouth before she could make another sound. With abrupt and brutal efficiency, he hustled her into the adjacent alleyway. I looked around quickly, but no one seemed to have seen us. “Under control?” I asked the entwined dark shadows in the alley.

“Get the car,” Jim said.

I took off, both terrified and exhilarated. Finally, a Mazikin to interrogate, one who might be the key to helping us locate the nest. I reached my car, yanked the orange parking ticket from the windshield, and pulled onto the street, forcing myself not to speed as I drove the five blocks to where Jim was waiting with our prisoner. I pulled into the alley, rolling to a stop a few feet from Jim and the struggling blonde Mazikin. Jim’s expression was rigid and cold as he shoved her forward. He’d ripped her shirt and tied one of her sleeves over her mouth. His fingers were a bloody, mangled mess.

She’d bitten him. Our clock was ticking.

I popped the locks, and he wrenched the door open and pushed her inside, holding his injured hand over her mouth and using the other to hold her arms behind her back. “Malachi put some rope in my pack,” I said, reaching for it, thinking I would need to ask Raphael for some zip ties.

The Mazikin growled, the sound muffled by the fabric and Jim’s hand but no less creepy for it.

I leaned between the seats, the rope in my hand. “Hold her tight.”

Jim moved his hand from her mouth to further secure her arms, but the Mazikin bucked in his grip and lunged at me, slamming her forehead into mine. With my ears ringing and vision blurred, and Jim’s curses and the Mazikin’s screeches filling my head, I fell back against the steering wheel. Her hands were around my throat in the next instant, sharp fingernails digging in. The horn beeped as we struggled, sending the needle on my panic gauge into the red zone. We’d be lucky if someone didn’t call the cops.

The Mazikin jerked back as Jim got an arm around her waist, her stiletto heels narrowly missing my face as she kicked and clawed. I grabbed for her legs but couldn’t get a grip as Jim wrestled with her. He was trying to flip her over on her stomach, but now her hands were free, red claws slashing through the air. Jim grunted in pain as a few drops of blood splattered on the window next to his face.

“Control her!” I shouted.

“Trying!” He kicked her hard against the closed door as she threw herself back at him, a ball of animal fury. “Dammit!”

From beneath his shirt, he drew a knife.

He meant to threaten her, I had no doubt, but the Mazikin’s eyes lit up as the silhouette of the blade came into view. I opened my mouth to scream at him, to tell him to put it away, but it was too late.

The Mazikin flashed a surprisingly beautiful smile at me. And then she threw herself at Jim and impaled herself on his knife.

TWENTY-THREE

THE MAZIKIN GRUNTED AS
the knife plunged in at an upward angle, just below her ribs. Jim shouted in surprise and jerked back, ripping it from her body in a way that probably did more damage than good. She gave a gurgling sigh and slumped over while blood poured over the backseat.

“Put pressure on that wound!” I shouted, turning around to start the car.

Jim felt for a pulse. “I think she’s dead. I’m sorry, Captain.”

I exhaled a sharp breath through my nose. Now we had a dead hooker in our car. Awesome. For a few seconds I debated dumping her, but the physical evidence … our skin was under her fingernails. Our fingerprints were all over her. And mine, at least, were on record. “Take off your sweatshirt and cover her,” I ordered. “Get her on the floor. We’re going back to the Guard house.”

Jim obeyed wordlessly, blood oozing lazily from the claw marks on the left side of his handsome face. I stripped off my own sweatshirt and handed it back to him. “Cover that wound on your face, at least while we drive through the city. And pray we don’t get stopped by the cops.”

We made it back to the Guard house less than twenty minutes later. Raphael was waiting for us. He looked entirely undisturbed as Jim slowly and clumsily climbed out of the backseat, his shirt and pants soaked and sticky with the Mazikin’s blood.

“Go inside, Jim,” he said. “Get washed up quickly, and then I’ll heal you. The scarring won’t be bad if we do it soon.”

Jim walked into the house while Raphael peered into the backseat. “Why did you bring it back here?” he asked casually.

“Because it died in the car. And I was afraid there would be too much evidence if we left it behind. You might be able to protect me from indictment for something I didn’t do, but I don’t see how you can protect me if they find my skin under her fingernails.”

Raphael shrugged. “I can dispose of bodies.” He stood up and closed the car door, like the dead woman in the backseat was of as much concern as a bag of dirty laundry. “You need healing.” He nodded toward my neck.

“Jim goes first. His hand is pretty mangled, and he’s already feeling the effects of the venom.”

I followed Raphael into the house. The sound of the pipes told me that Jim was taking a shower, so I went to the kitchen and got myself a drink of water, and then joined Raphael in the parlor. “So … we met with a Mazikin this afternoon. She had some interesting things to say.”

Raphael gave me a small yet dazzling smile. “What a lovely way of putting it.”

“Was she telling the truth?”

“Only what you need, Lela.”

My fists clenched. “I’m not asking because
I
need it,” I blurted.

Raphael’s gray eyes met mine. “Malachi has not asked me for this information. Ever. He has had over seventy years to question me about what happens when a human is possessed by Mazikin. Why do you think he hasn’t?”

He was giving me such a knowing look, and I wanted to run from it. Or maybe punch it off his face. But it was a damn good question. “Maybe he knew you’d give him that bullshit not-what-you-want-only-what-you-need line.”

The smile didn’t leave his face. “But you said you thought he did need the answer. If that’s true, I would give him the information he needs. But only if he asks.”

Suddenly tired, I sank into the chair in front of the computer. “I don’t know why he hasn’t asked. I think it’s because … because he wanted to believe he was saving people. In his life here on Earth, he was powerless as everyone around him suffered and died, as his brother was killed in front of him. When he became a Guard, it gave him the chance to protect others. Even the ones taken by Mazikin. Even though they were lost and far away, he wanted to reach them. Do something for them. Help them.”

Raphael nodded. “Yes, I believe that’s what he
wanted
.”

Jim leaned in the doorway, his wounds standing out stark and grisly against his pale skin. “The human capacity for self-delusion is limitless,” he said softly.

Raphael turned to him. “Isn’t it, though?”

I went out to the front porch and sat on the swing to wait for my turn to be healed. Self-delusion. Jim was saying that Malachi had closed his eyes to the truth. My Lieutenant had chosen to trust in a lie to allow himself the luxurious belief that he was rescuing people.

That way, he didn’t have to face the alternative, which was that he was helpless in the face of all that evil.

It was a costly mistake. By killing the bodies Mazikin inhabited, he was giving them second chances. And third and fourth and fifth chances. If he’d only imprisoned them in the dark tower, or even in a cell at the Guard Station, he could have saved a few people. Maybe. The Mazikin would have sent more, but it still would have prevented their most powerful spirits from returning. Like Sil, Ibram, Juri. All of whom were either already here or had a chance to be, in part because Malachi hadn’t imprisoned them when he had the chance.

I scuffed my boots against the wooden slats of the porch, ignoring the throbbing sting radiating up and down the sides of my neck. Headlights turned into the driveway, and I recognized Laney’s car. She pulled to a stop behind the Taurus.

The one containing the dead hooker in the backseat.

I started to get up, but then looked down at the blood smeared across my sweatshirt. I pulled my knees to my chest and stayed where I was. This could get very bad very quickly.

It was dark inside her car, but I could see that their heads were close together. Too close. He didn’t emerge from the car for a full minute.

I knew, because I silently counted the seconds, my heart beating a sick, hard rhythm against my ribs. Malachi finally opened the passenger door and got out, his questioning gaze landing on mine immediately. I shot a fierce glance at the Guard car and shook my head, my eyes growing wide as Laney got out of her car.

I gritted my teeth and didn’t move. She was less than fifteen feet from where the dead woman was poorly hidden, where dark-red stains covered the backseat. Laney tossed her long hair over her shoulder and glared at me. “Hey, Lela,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”

“I had to ask Malachi a question,” I answered in the friendliest voice I could muster. “He’s ace at pre-calc.”

Laney made a deeply skeptical noise in her throat as Malachi walked swiftly around the front of her car and met her before she could step forward. He stood close and bowed his head, speaking soft words meant only for her, and it hurt me more than the Mazikin claw marks on my neck. After a few minutes, Laney reached out and touched his arm, and he let her. Then she got back in her car and pulled out of the driveway, stopping long enough to wave to him and blow a kiss.

Malachi watched her go and then turned slowly to me. As he walked past the Guard car, he paused to look inside. With no discernible change of expression, he took the steps and sat down next to me on the swing.

“Who is she?”

“We caught a Mazikin. Tried to bring her back to interrogate her. It didn’t quite work out.”

He hooked an ankle over his knee and leaned back, staring out at the yard. “You were injured. How bad is it?”

“Just a scratch.”

“You’ve said that to me before.”

“This time it’s true. Most of this blood is hers. Jim was worse. Raphael is healing him now. How was your night?” I shouldn’t have asked, but some masochistic part of me needed to know.

“Pleasant,” he said, his voice giving nothing away.

“She likes you a lot.” I cleared my throat. Why did my voice have to shake like that?

“She also believes my heart belongs to another.”

He let the words fall like bombs into the space between us. My heart, already thumping hard, now beat double-time. I turned to look at him, his severe profile—a hard, dangerous kind of beauty. I waited for him to say more, but he didn’t. He sat in silence, his gaze on the budding trees in front of us, and I hung on to those words with everything I had, wondering if what Laney believed was actually true. Was he trying to tell me it was? Was this an invitation, a hint, or just a report of the facts?

And could I be any more selfish, thinking about dumb high school stuff when everything Malachi believed might be crashing down around him? “We haven’t talked about what that Mazikin inside my mom told us today,” I said quietly.

“What is there to say?” he replied. His gaze was unfocused again, far away. It filled me with a savage ache, so much worse than the stupid jealousy that had been there before, especially as he added, “I have made yet another foolish, disastrous error, and in doing so have condemned countless innocents to eternal suffering.” The muscles of his shoulders were tight, shaking with tension and emotion. “At least the Mazikin that possessed your mother was too addled or ignorant to keep up the ruse. I’m quite sure Sil will be furious at her when he discovers that she’s corrected my idiotic misconceptions. Now,” he said as he stood up abruptly, “we should retrieve that body from the car.”

He rose and went into the house, and then emerged a moment later with a tarp. Together we tugged the body of the blonde prostitute out of the car and laid her on the starchy plastic. As we did, a small change purse fell from beneath her blouse. I picked it up and opened it.

Among a few neatly folded bills was her driver’s license. “Her name was Andrea,” I murmured, looking down at her beautiful smile in the picture, lit up by the sliver of moon above us, and then down at her white, bloodless face. Her eyes were still half-open. Her lipstick was smeared and smudged around her parted lips. I’d never taken the chance to really look at a person I had killed, too busy fighting or fleeing. Andrea. Did she have a family? A daughter? Had someone loved her? Was someone missing her right now?

“Malachi? What’s that thing you say over their bodies? You know, after you’ve killed one of them?”

He gave me a wary look. “It’s
El Male Rachamim
. A prayer for the dead.”

I bit my lip and knelt by Andrea’s head. With the tips of my fingers, I closed her eyes. I wiped her lipstick with the cuff of my sleeve. “Can you say it?” Maybe this would be what both of us needed.