Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, Book 1) (17 page)

Ana ate quickly and wordlessly. She seemed subdued after our conversation about eating, and I wondered if she was wishing she had less of an appetite. The room quieted when Ana got up to throw her leftovers away. She acted like she didn’t notice. As soon as we stepped into the hall, newly relaxed laughter and teasing filled the room and shook the walls.

I glanced over at Ana. “Is it that you make them nervous or that they think you’re hot?”

“Both. There were others before me, but I’ve been the only woman here for a long time. Long enough for most of these guys to try something and regret it very badly afterward. At first, though, Takeshi and Malachi had to protect me. They never let me go anywhere without them. But it wasn’t until I learned to take care of myself that the other Guards really left me alone.”

“Had you ever trained before you came here?”

Ana looked me up and down. “You know, I think I was probably like you. I mean, I don’t know you, but you have that look. A strong girl. A fierce girl.” She gave me a smile that managed to be both sly and sad. “A damaged girl.”

I looked away and ground my teeth. Was it that obvious? Like
NOT FIT FOR NORMAL SOCIETY
was stamped across my forehead.

Only Nadia had made me feel differently. She made me feel like I was good enough, like all I needed to do was read the code and speak the language of that normal world instead of changing myself to fit into it. She once told me that everybody carried their secret savages beneath their skin, and some people just covered them better than others.

I’d wanted to be like Nadia, fitting in but not caring rather than the other way around. But if Nadia had really known what was important and real, why had she bothered to put on that happy face when she was obviously so miserable? Why had she kept herself drugged out on painkillers? And why the hell had she chosen to leave me?

If Malachi and Ana were as good as they seemed, maybe I would have a chance to ask her.

Ana led me down a set of stone steps, the light from the gas lamps flickering in the darkness. The temperature dropped as we descended. Heavy thuds and sharp cracks echoed against the stones. It sounded like there was a fight going on. We reached the door at the base of the stairs.

“He’s warming up,” Ana said casually as she pushed open the door. The room inside fell silent.

I stepped into a long, rectangular chamber with a high ceiling. Modified gas lamps lined the room, all of them covered with sturdy wire mesh—to keep them from being broken by flying objects, no doubt. Malachi stood at the far side of the room, pulling a shirt on over those amazing abs of his.

“How’s Michael?” Ana asked as she approached him.

Malachi rolled his eyes and wiped a sleeve across his sweaty face. “His usual, eloquent self. But he’ll have armor for Lela by tomorrow morning.”

I looked back and forth between them. Over the last few years, I’d become really proud of my ability to protect myself, my ability to intimidate others into leaving me alone. But right then, gazing at two
actual
warriors, I felt like a stupid high school kid.

The next few hours were brutal. It started out slow enough, with Malachi teaching me to use the staff. He demonstrated the various grips I could use to strike and block basic attacks. He had me practice forward and backward blocks, upward and downward strikes. Over and over again, with increasing speed. By the time he was satisfied that I’d developed a basic comfort with it and was no longer in danger of thwacking myself in the head at inopportune moments, all my muscles were shaking and I was breathing so hard I was certain my lungs were about to explode.

“Time to defend yourself,” Ana sang, skipping forward with a scimitar. I panted out a curse and staggered back a few steps.

“Just observe first,” said Malachi, taking the scimitar from Ana and handing her a staff. Ana winked at Malachi and spun the staff with dizzying speed. Malachi gave her a stern look. “She just needs the basics. Stop overwhelming her.”

Ana stuck out her tongue at him and held the staff still.

I wished I was imagining the graceless, exaggeratedly heavy steps Ana took as she stomped around, but then I noticed that muscle in Malachi’s jaw ticking away in annoyance.

Yep, she was making fun of me.

Before I could turn to bolt, Malachi refocused me. “Not all Mazikin are armed, but recently they’ve been stealing and hoarding Guard weapons. We know of two who are competent with scimitars, and you’ve met one of them. Oh, and you’ve seen the other. Sil and Ibram. There were three, but alas, Juri is no longer with us.” I heard the grim satisfaction in his voice as he said it and smiled to myself for the same reason. “Anyway, if you see either of them, run. Just run. Get around a corner as quickly as you can and keep going. But with the others, your goal is to disarm if possible and defend yourself if nothing else.”

He turned back to Ana and ran straight at her, blade raised. In a blur of movement, Ana met his attack and twisted the weapon from his arms.

“Didn’t quite catch that,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said, stepping back into his starting position. “We’ll slow it down for you.”

They demonstrated several more times, step by step, how to meet and disarm a relatively inexperienced person wielding a scimitar.

These are the things they don’t teach you in high school.

Malachi offered me the staff again. After what felt like hundreds of attempts, I succeeded in completing the series of movements at a normal speed. I even learned a few variations of the same maneuver.

Finally he announced I’d endured enough of the staff. I collapsed to the floor in happiness, ready for a rest and fantasizing about a hot shower. But when I opened my eyes, he was standing over me. He held out his hand tentatively, offering to pull me to my feet, almost as though he was afraid I wouldn’t want to take his hand. I reached up and let his long fingers wrap around mine as he tugged me up to stand beside him.

He gave me what I could only interpret as a shy smile. “How do you feel about knives?”

I laughed. “Do you even have to ask? Love them. Love. Them.”

He chuckled and handed me one. “These are throwing knives. Notice the double edge? Different from the hunting knife. These will be easier for you to control.”

“So next time I can hit something vital?”

He cocked his arm and set his eyes on a cloth mannequin several yards away. “Only as a last resort, Lela, if you have nothing else. But that’s the idea.” A fraction of a second later, the poor mannequin was dead.

Ana was at least as good as Malachi and seemed to enjoy showing off, spinning around the room while she adorned the
mannequin with a necklace of knives. I cracked up when she landed a cluster of knives right in the mannequin’s crotch. Malachi’s olive skin turned ashen.

“Remind me to be nicer to you,” he muttered.

Malachi would not allow me to stop practicing until I got the right form. “You’re throwing it like a baseball.” He laughed. “Who do you think you are, Lefty Grove?”

He seemed to think he was hilarious, but I just stared. Who the heck was Lefty Grove? Ana sidled up to him and leaned in to whisper, “You’re dating yourself,
old man
.…”

His face instantly became serious. “Never mind. Back to work.”

About a thousand throws later, I was jealous of the knife-riddled mannequin and wishing someone would have as much mercy on me. My right arm burned from shoulder to fingertips. My neck and back were knotted and aching. But I knew how to throw a knife. Yet another practical skill they never bothered to teach in high school.

When Malachi finally relented and started to put away the knives, I sank to the floor, massaging my dead right arm. I looked around the room at their odd assortment of weapons. Scimitar. Staff. Throwing knives. I wasn’t exactly an expert—my knowledge came entirely from movies—but they didn’t all seem to fit together into a single fighting style.

“Why these weapons? I’m telling you, a rocket launcher and a few AK-47s would do you guys loads of good.”

Malachi and Ana looked at each other, and he obviously read something on her face, because he nodded at her.

“I’m done,” she said, turning away to pick up a few staffs from the floor and set them in a wall rack. “I need to go get some water and take a shower. And I have to gear up. Lela, you did a good job tonight. I’ll see you later.”

Ana gave Malachi a playful swat on the ass and bounced from the room. She looked no more tired than when she’d walked in, which made me seriously jealous. That feeling only intensified as I thought about the way she touched Malachi, like she’d earned the right over years. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants and wished away the foreign ache in my chest.

“To answer your question,” said Malachi, slipping several knives into a large cloth pouch, “it’s built up over centuries. Some of us bring knowledge of weapons or fighting styles from our lives on Earth and train the others. It gets passed from Guard to Guard, each new person learning from the older ones.” He heaved a sigh, like a memory was pressing in on him. “Michael develops new weapons to fit the human Guards’ preferences. I imagine it will only be a matter of time before we get a new Guard whose expertise is guns, but I hope I will be gone by then.”

He stretched, and it looked like he was pushing his memories back, returning to the present. “I don’t know where the scimitar came from. That has been a Guard weapon for a millennium as far as I know, like a tradition. All Guards are trained to use
them. The throwing knives—that was an American, actually. He was from the South, during your Civil War, and he left here soon after I became a Guard. Anyway, not everyone carries those because not everyone throws well enough to do anything but give the enemy a weapon. Which is why you should only use yours as a last resort. Oh, and don’t bother trying it on Ibram.”

“Yeah, I saw.”

He nodded. “Now, the staff—that was Takeshi. He could stop anything with it. He was the one who got Michael to modify the batons. It would be hard to tote a full-length staff around the city. The other Guards’ batons are just that: they’re for crowd control and mostly for threat. But as you’ve seen, mine and Ana’s extend to become staffs. It’s better for us because we don’t wear the heavy armor. We can fight more opponents at once and keep their teeth away from our lovely, fragile skin.”

I busied myself retying the lace on my boot to keep him from seeing my face as I thought about his lovely, fragile skin. “So Takeshi was here before you.”

“Yes, he was the one who taught Ana and me.”

I handed my knives to Malachi. “She’s still grieving for him, isn’t she?”

He looked startled. “Yes. It’s been years, but I don’t think it feels that long to her.”

I wanted to ask what had happened, but the look on his face warned me away. Like Ana had when we touched on the topic of Takeshi, Malachi was suddenly deeply absorbed in meticulous,
needless activity, positioning and rearranging the knives within that cloth pouch. As he folded it and put it away, I got up and headed to the door, once again dreaming of a hot shower.

“We’re not quite done, Lela. If you can’t keep attackers at a distance, you’d better be able to fight back when they get close. Hand-to-hand is next.”

I froze midstep. “And who was the sadist who brought
that
particular style with him?”

He tilted his head and grinned. “Me.”

TAKESHI MIGHT HAVE TAUGHT
Malachi how to use a staff and throw a knife, but Malachi’s merciless efficiency was apparently something he’d learned during his short, brutal life on Earth. As lethal as he was with the scimitar, his body was obviously his weapon of choice. It was something we had in common. The weapons just felt awkward to me, like I might be at more risk for hurting myself than hurting someone else. I was more at home with up-close fighting, and I was pretty good at it. But Malachi made me better.

“When you’re fighting, there aren’t any rules. You must defend yourself and neutralize your opponent quickly. No fancy moves—you want every encounter to be as brief as possible.
Do whatever is necessary to take down your attacker, no matter how cruel it seems. Kind of like what you did to Hani.” He gave me a wicked smile. “That was perfect. Except you should have made sure he was down before you ran.”

I rolled my eyes. “If I’d done that, six of his buddies would’ve pinned me to the floor a few seconds later.”

He frowned. “Good point. Run faster next time.”

“Yes, sir.” I grinned and shot him a mock salute.

“Next, use any available object as a weapon. I think you understand this one well. I saw what you were going to do with that beer bottle. It would have been excellent if your attackers weren’t wielding swords. If that happens again, just throw it at them and, like I said, run faster.”

“Wow, this is helpful. When do I get to hit you?”

He snorted. “You seem so eager. All right then, if it will make you happy.”

He beckoned with his hands, inviting me to attack. I stepped forward and aimed a punch at his groin. Hell, it had worked with Hani.

Malachi laughed as he blocked me. “Excellent strategy, Lela, but don’t be too predictable.”

And then I was on the floor, my arm bent up behind me.

“Stop waiting for the next thing to happen,” he instructed. “
Make
the next thing happen. Up.”

I jumped to my feet and tried to punch him in the face, but he ducked and yanked my legs out from under me. My breath huffed from my lungs as I hit the floor.

He smiled down at me, his hands curled around my ankles, resting them on the sides of his thighs. “If you had actually hit me, your hand would probably hurt more than my face. Don’t forget your elbows. Up.”

When I obeyed, he showed me just how useful elbows could be. I was on the floor again within a few seconds, wheezing.

I laid my forehead on the mat and rubbed at the twin aches in my chest, one where he had hit me, one that went deeper. I could tell he was holding back in a major way. He wasn’t going easy on me, but he obviously didn’t want to hurt me. Every time he knocked me to the floor, his hands lingered a bit longer as he helped me up, and the look in his eyes was warmer. And I liked it. More than I ever expected to.