Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, Book 1) (15 page)

I turned to go, completely torn. Nadia was my reason for being here. The only reason. And yet I also wanted to stay. Not in that hellish city, and not to go to the Sanctum, whatever it held for me. I wanted to stay with Malachi. I didn’t feel safe with him, and yet I knew he would keep me safe. I had no idea who he was or where he came from, but in some crazy way it seemed like we understood each other. And although I was frightened by the idea of him touching me, I desperately wanted to touch him just one more time.

Out of control. It all felt out of control. With him awake and getting stronger by the minute, there was no more reason to stay and every reason to go. My hand was on the door of the apartment before he spoke again.

“Lela, wait. I’ll help you. I’ll help you find her.” I didn’t turn around, but tensed as I felt the heat of his body and realized
how close he was. “I know this city better than anyone. I understand its dangers. I could protect you. I’ll help you find her. I’ll help you get out.”

“Why?”

He chuckled. “Because it’s obviously the only way to get you out of my beautiful city. Will you let me help you?”

I turned back to him. Usually, I could tell when someone was lying or when they were hiding something. His expression was open and serious and, as far as I could tell, completely sincere. I couldn’t help it—I got hopeful. With him on my side, I might actually have a chance.

“Really?”

“Really. But you have to do as I say. If we’re together in this, you must follow my instructions or you’ll put us both in danger. You’ll have to trust me. Can you do that?”

There was always a catch. If only he knew what he was asking. I smiled sadly as I shook my head. “Every time I’ve trusted someone, it’s come back to bite me.”

His brows lifted and his jaw tensed. “Lela, who did this to you?” The question seemed to burst from him involuntarily; he took a step back and looked down at the floor, waving the words away. “Never mind. You don’t have to promise. Just tell me you’ll try.”

I could live with that. “I’ll try.”

I HIKED ALONG THE
road carrying Malachi’s arm and shin guards. He walked next to me, carrying his leather vest and wearing the most ridiculous outfit I’d ever seen. The striped pants he’d found in the apartment sagged on his narrow hips, held up only by his belt, but the pant legs still didn’t make it all the way to his ankles. His shirt was too tight on his shoulders but ballooned over his belly. It had been the only one with sleeves long enough to reach to his wrists, and that had seemed important to him.

A shaggy-haired young man walked by, clutching what appeared to be a full key of coke to his chest. His nose was bleeding.

“Holy crap. Is that what I think it is?”

Malachi watched the guy absently wipe his dripping nose with a spotty sleeve and scramble up the steps of an apartment building with his prize. “If you think that is a man who has acquired a kilogram of cocaine for his personal use, then yes.”

“Aren’t you the cops around here? Shouldn’t you bust him?”

“For what? He’s not committing a crime. Or, more accurately, he already has, and now he’s serving his sentence.”

“He’s going to kill himself with that stuff.”

Malachi gave me a sidelong glance. “It’s possible. It won’t help him get out of here, though. And I wouldn’t worry about him too much, because I suspect those drugs aren’t very potent. It won’t give him much relief. Nothing will.”

I thought of Nadia and those pills she couldn’t wait to take. I wondered if there were
DRUG
stores here, like the
Food
stores, where you could just walk in and take as much as you wanted. “Then how come it’s all so available?”

“People can have
whatever
they want here. As much food. As much pornography.” He nodded toward the building the young man had just disappeared into. “As many drugs. As many apartments. Whatever they want, whatever they imagine. None of it will help, though. You can’t get out until you let all that go. Until you go in search of what you need rather than what you want.”

“That’s all you have to do?”

He let out a bark of laughter. “It’s harder than it sounds. It is impossible to fool the Judge.”

“I don’t get this place. The only way out is through the Sanctum, but what if you die?”

“If you die, you appear at the Gates of whatever place you belong, and you’re ushered in.” He raised his eyebrow. “This is the place for the suicides, but there are other places, I have heard. For people with other…problems.”

I mused for a moment about the kind of horrific place a person like Rick would wind up. It made me feel better to think he’d get what he deserved. “I guess that makes sense. And the Countryside is…”

“Just another place. A place where most of us would like to end up.” His gaze rose and drifted beyond the distant city wall to the dim outline of snowcapped peaks rising above the beautiful landscape. “When we’re judged ready.”

“So why don’t you just, I don’t know, let one of those Mazikin people kill you? Why didn’t you let yourself die after Juri bit you? Not that I’d ever root for that guy, but it would have been kind of a heroic death. Wouldn’t it have earned you some points?”

He shrugged. “I really don’t know, and I don’t want to take the chance. If you die before you’re ready to get out, you have to start over. At least, that’s what I’ve been told.” His face reflected a secret pain. “And I’d like to get out of here as soon as I can.”

A warm, unfamiliar feeling filled my chest. He’d known there might be terrible consequences if he died, but he’d been willing to risk it to keep me safe. I glanced up at the swirling scar on his neck, remembering the moments my fingers had been running over the otherwise smooth skin. My face got hot at the memory, and at the knowledge that I’d done it without his permission. And yet the whimsical quirk of his mouth and the searching curiosity in his eyes as he stared down at me told me he might have given me permission if I’d asked.

I quickened my pace, shaking my thoughts back into the right order. “Are you going to let me in on your plan for finding my friend?”

“Sure,” he replied, lengthening his strides and hitching up his pants for the fiftieth time. “We’re going back to the Station to change into something acceptable. We’re going to look at a map. And we’re going to get you some gear.”

“Can’t I just wait outside while you go in?”

He stopped and turned to me, scowling. “What did they do to you when you went to get Raphael?”

“Nothing. Well, nothing that bad. I just…I think most of them probably hate me.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Did I ask the wrong question? Should I have asked what you did to them?”

“Look,” I said defensively, “they weren’t listening to me. You were in serious trouble, and they were just standing around. I may have…punched Hani in a very sensitive place.”

He laughed and shook his head. “You’re incredible.” He gave me a wry smile when he read the puzzlement in my expression. “I mean that in the most complimentary way, Lela. Thank you for being willing to go back to the Station after everything that happened to you there. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have survived.”

“I owed it to you.”

“You owed me
nothing
.”

I looked away from the intensity of his gaze and started walking again. “I guess we’ll have to agree to differ on that one. But if you want to show me how thankful you are, just make them keep their hands to themselves.”

“Done.”

I was behind him as we entered the Station. Four Guards, Hani included, stepped from the darkest corners of the room and closed in quickly. Their glowing eyes were focused on me. I took a few steps back, preparing to bolt.

“We’ll escort her to a cell, Captain,” Hani said. His hand was inches from my arm when Malachi’s voice, cool, clipped, and precise, froze him in place.

“She’s with me.”

It was instantly obvious that whatever they thought of him, they were totally afraid to say it to his face—despite the fact that they were all twice his size. They backed off quickly and cautiously. Without another word, Malachi turned to me and gestured down the hall. Then he stepped in behind me, putting
himself between me and the Guards. I walked down that hallway slowly, wondering if his eyes were on me, trying to decipher the skipping, unsteady rhythm of my heart.

Malachi’s quarters had no windows, no decorations. His room was just like everything else about him—nothing unnecessary, nothing wasted. His narrow cot rested in a corner, right next to something that looked like a hat rack. He walked straight to it and hung his bloody, stained armor over it. A small desk stood across from the rack, but the only things that sat upon it were a fountain pen and a single book, like some kind of journal. Neatly stacked in a corner rose a tower of identical books as tall as I was.
A lot
of journals. Two of the walls were lined with a small arsenal of blades and staffs of varying length, and a giant map covered most of the far wall.

I watched him move silently around his room. Once on his feet, he had recovered quickly from his injuries. He walked over to a trunk at the foot of his cot and started pulling out clothes. I forced my eyes away from him and turned to the map.

It was the city, hand-drawn in painstaking detail, with tiny notations scribbled all over it in some sort of foreign alphabet. I knelt, finding the spot at the southern edge of the map where the Suicide Gates were drawn. My fingers hovered over the worn surface as I tried to trace the path I’d taken, but my eyes quickly got tangled in the labyrinth. Even as a map, this city was
impossible. I was so absorbed that when Malachi’s hand closed around my elbow, I jerked away reflexively.

“Sorry.” He held up his hand to show he meant no harm. Now dressed in fatigue pants and a form-fitting dark shirt that had me staring at his chest a few seconds longer than necessary, Malachi focused his attention on the map. He put his finger on a small, rectangular unit at the level of my waist. “That’s the Station.” His finger moved down and to the right. “That’s where you were when Amid found you.” He jabbed his finger at a spot west of the center of the city. “And that’s where Sil had you when Ana and I caught up.”

“Where were they taking me?”

“Probably to their nest.”

“Where’s that?”

“I’m not entirely sure. That’s something I’m supposed to figure out.” His brows pinched together as his gaze dropped to the floor.

I looked at the map, not wanting to pry. “You drew this?”

“Yes. But it changes. It grows. The city is walled, but it expands like a living thing. I try to keep track of it.”

“Where are we going to look for Nadia?”

“That’s going to be up to you,” he said as his eyes wandered over the map. “Can you describe your dreams to me? The ones you had
after
she died, I mean.”

“I think I only have to describe one. You’ve seen her, Malachi. You talked to her.”

His eyes widened. He reached out to pull my arm into view but stopped short. He looked at me carefully. “Could you hold your arm up for me?”

I obliged. As he stared at it, I explained. “I saw you through her eyes. You fought a guy named Ibram.”

Malachi touched his left shoulder and looked at me in surprise. “You saw me?” He closed his eyes in memory. “That’s why you didn’t want to tell me why you were here. Why you were so ready to believe I was going to kill you. Why you thought I might go after Nadia. You saw what happened, but you didn’t understand it. You thought I was killing innocents, but they were all Mazikin.”

I raised an eyebrow. “It’s not like you were Mr. Sweet-and-Friendly when we met in person. You did threaten to cut off a sizable chunk of my arm.”

His gaze dropped to the floor again. “I never would have done it, but it had to be a good bluff because you were not easily intimidated. I was surprised you believed me so quickly, but I guess it makes sense now.”

“Nadia thought you were going to kill her. We both did.”

He nodded. “The girl in the alley. I’m sorry I didn’t recognize her before. The girl bore a resemblance to the face on your arm…but she looked…different.” He read my expression
and shook his head. “Nothing drastic, but she was…well, she looked like all the people here do. They don’t take very good care of themselves. But when I first saw her, I thought she might be Mazikin, because she was so close to the fight.”

“How did you know she wasn’t?”

“Mazikin have a particular smell,” he explained, returning his attention to my arm.

“Incense. And something rotten.” I shuddered, remembering Sil’s face so close to my neck.

Malachi nodded as he eyed my spastic fidgeting. “I’m sorry they got close enough for you to discover that.” He stepped around me and pointed at a scribbled notation in the upper left quadrant of the map. “It was here. The Harag zone. I’m afraid your friend wandered into a very bad part of town. The Mazikin have been massing there lately. We think their newest nest might be in that area.”

When he saw my how wide my eyes had gotten, he said, “If she got into an apartment unit, she would be safe as long as she stayed there.”

“I saw her—she did go into an apartment. There was someone stalking her, though. I think it was a Mazikin.” My heart rate kicked up, thinking of that cackling laugh just behind her.

“It probably was. They roam the halls of those buildings sometimes, looking for recruits. But as soon as Nadia crossed the threshold, they couldn’t have followed her in.”

“And if she leaves?”

The look on his face said everything. It made my chest hurt. “The apartment building had orange walls and pink doors. Could that help us find her?”

He shook his head. “All the buildings in that zone do. That just confirms she was in Harag.” He walked to his desk, opened the book, and flipped through it until he found the page he was looking for. His eyes scanned the incomprehensible writing, and then he pointed to one entry. “I fought Ibram only seven days ago,” he said. “You must have seen this right before you…”

“It happened the night I died.” I swallowed the lump in my throat. Had I really been here that long? Those freaky nightmares and visions had been my only real link to Nadia, but I hadn’t been inside her head for a whole week. As frustrating and crazy-making as it had been, I would have given a lot to have that connection back. It took me several seconds to blink back the tears and get control of myself. When I succeeded, I looked up to see Malachi watching me with a tenderness that made me swear he wanted to reach out to me, to touch me. I was startled to feel a twinge of disappointment as I glanced down at his hands and saw they were fisted at his sides.