Sanctum (Guards of the Shadowlands, Book 1) (3 page)

No matter which way I twisted, the Gates were in front of me, sucking me in, hungry for me
.

Rick’s voice closed around me like a net. “Wake up, you little bitch
.”

My head jerked to the side with his slap. Beneath my cheek I felt the grubby nubs of my yellow bedroom rug. The belt was no longer around my neck. It hung from the broad hand of my foster father, who was waving it in front of my face as he crouched over me
.

“
What the fuck were you trying to do? Get a little attention? Don’t I give you enough?” He pinched my hip and lowered himself on top of me, crushing my body with his, huffing his beer-soaked breath into my face. I was too stunned and disoriented to even try to get away this time
.

I reached for my throat and winced as my fingers hit raw, swollen welts. My eyes darted to Rick’s face. It was twisted with rage and fear—but also lit up with a glint of excitement that turned my stomach and told me exactly what was coming next
.

The voices of those monster Guards still rang in the buzzing space between my ears as Rick tossed me onto my bed. His thick fingers closed around the back of my neck, pulling at my sweaty, tangled hair, pressing my face into the sheets. “I won’t let anything happen to you, baby.” His voice was gentler now, which filled me with dread
.

As his throaty words hit my ears, telling me how lucky I was that he’d found me in time, that he wouldn’t let me end up in the psych ward or on the streets, that he wouldn’t tell if I wouldn’t, that no one would believe me anyway, that I’d never had it so good…I stared at the wall. But all I saw was the Suicide Gates opening for me, calling me back. It hurt more than he did. Because now I knew death was no escape
.

I blinked as my mind finally brought me back to the now. The faucet was still running, the cup in my hands overflowing. “Trust me,” I said to Nadia as I turned off the water. “There’s no better, happy place you go to. Running away from it doesn’t fix anything. Turning yourself into a zombie doesn’t either. Deal with your shit here, Nadia. And do it sober.”

“It’s easy for you to say, since you never drink or take anything. You’re strong. And I can’t even stand up to my own mother.” Her voice was raspy, like she was trying not to cry.

I looked down at her. I wasn’t strong. The only reason I didn’t take drugs was because I was scared of losing control,
of not being able to protect myself. And my mind was a scary enough place as it was. If I were strong, I would have been able to get over all of it and move on. It had been two years since I tried to die. My life had gotten so much better. But every night that dark city sucked me in, like it hadn’t quite let me go when I’d returned to the land of the living. Other times, too, that horrible place appeared around me, like it was waiting for me to come back. That dark, deep voice whispered to me, urging me to stay there.
Perfect
, the unseen monster always said, his rank breath hot on the back of my neck.
You’re perfect
. Each time, I gasped myself awake or rubbed my eyes until the real world appeared again, and wondered why it wouldn’t leave me alone. I had things to live for now. I was never going back.

I put the cup back and leaned against the sink. “You’re stronger than you think. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been able to tolerate being my friend.” I was reaching for humor, anything to chase away the memories clamoring in my skull.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You don’t make it easy.” Her playful tone lowered my heart rate. She almost sounded like herself.

It made me brave. I scooped the pill bottle from the floor and handed it to her. “And I never will. Flush them.”

She took the bottle from me and examined it. I could tell she wanted to argue, but then she looked up at me and nodded. With slow, heavy movements that told me she’d already taken
enough to make her dizzy and loose, Nadia dumped the pills into the toilet and flushed, blinking as the green tablets swirled and disappeared. I sighed with relief. “If you feel like this again, will you talk to me?
Before
you talk to a dealer?”

Her cheeks got pink. “Sure. I’m fine, though. Really.” Her pale blue eyes met mine. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s just stress.” Seeing my uncertain look, she laughed. “Come on, Lela. A cheesy old movie is all the escape I need. Van Wilder is calling our names.”

I shook my head and chuckled, my mood rising quickly as a heavy weight lifted from my shoulders. “The things I do for friendship.”

FOR A FEW WEEKS
after our sleepover, Nadia stayed unusually busy. She seemed better, though, mostly back to her old self. But I started to wonder if she was avoiding me. I finally caught up with her after school and asked her if she wanted to hang out, but she said she had some stuff to do and needed to get home. Again.

When I pulled into my own driveway, Diane was standing on the front porch, jiggling with excitement. “Baby, it’s here,” she hollered as soon as I opened the car door. She hurried down the cement steps, waving a thick envelope. “I’ve been waiting. Don’t make me wait any longer.”

Diane thrust the envelope at me and bounced up and down while I ripped it open with shaking hands. I’d started to wonder
if they’d just laughed and chucked my application as soon as they received it.

A huge smile stretched my face as I read the acceptance letter. The delinquent girl had turned it around. I was university-bound.

I read the letter quickly and then flipped to the next page, expecting an enrollment form or something. “Oh my God,” I whispered as I read a second letter tucked behind the acceptance. “They’re giving me a scholarsh—”

Diane crushed me to her before I had a chance to duck away. My head was pressed to her breast as she jumped up and down, whooping and crying. I was suffocating and wanted to pull away, but this was her moment, too. She’d taken me in when no other foster parent was willing risk it. And her gamble had paid off.

I let her squeeze me for a few seconds and then held up the letter to distract her. She released me and grabbed it. I stepped back, took my cell from my pocket, and hit send on Nadia’s number. She didn’t pick up.

“I’ll make anything you want for dinner tonight, baby,” Diane said, wiping her eyes. “Anything.”

“Can I take a rain check on that? I want to show this to Nadia.” Whatever she had going on, I knew she’d be excited.

Diane nodded and handed me the letter. “Go ahead. Tell her thank you for me.” She wagged her finger at me. “And be nice when she says ‘I told you so’.”

I laid the letter flat on my passenger seat and reread it at every stoplight until I turned onto Nadia’s waterfront street. I knocked at her front door a few times, but no one answered. Letter in hand, I jogged along the side of the house toward the back terrace. The cool, humid wind off the bay lifted my hair, bringing my curls to life. I pushed the strands back impatiently. “Nadia? Are you here?”

She was in her usual spot on the rear patio, looking out at the water from her chaise lounge, knees pulled to her chest. I skipped onto the elaborate brickwork, waiting for her to turn her head. I touched her shoulder. “Hey, you didn’t answer your phone.”

She looked up at me. Her eyes were so pale, her pupils tiny pinpoints. I muscled past a twist of anxiety and squinted, hoping it was a trick of the early-evening light. Nope.

“I couldn’t…find it,” she said.

She was numbed up and high once again.

I drew a long breath through my nose. I didn’t want to get into another argument with her tonight. Not when we had so much to be happy about. “I got the letter today. It’s official. And guess what?”

I waved the paper in front of her, wanting her to perk up and reach for it. She didn’t, so I laid it on the chaise next to her pedicured toes. She was still looking up at me, a vague smile on her face. “You’re happy. It’s good to see you happy.”

“We did it!” I laughed. “We’re going! We can fill out that housing form now.”

Her smile guttered and faded. “
You
did it,” she whispered. She took a deep breath and sat up straighter. “I’m so proud of you. You’re going to have such a good time.”

“What?” I asked as the door to the breakfast room slid open.

“Nadia,” sighed Mrs. Vetter, a wineglass in her heavily jeweled hand. As usual, she didn’t even acknowledge me. “John is picking me up in a few minutes.”

For a moment I was struck by the resemblance between mother and daughter, which had grown more apparent over the last few months as we neared the finish line for graduation. Both of them were rail thin, well dressed, pale and beautiful…and had tiny pupils.

Nadia waved her hand absently.

“Good,” Mrs. Vetter said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” The door slid shut, and her presence was forgotten, like a raindrop hitting the surface of the ocean.

“So,” I prompted, pushing my scholarship letter toward Nadia again. “Read it! See what your hard work and constant nagging accomplished.”

Nadia’s eyes had returned to the choppy gray waters of the Narragansett Bay. Deep in my belly, anger coiled. This was the shining moment, the one where I proved I was worth the time she’d spent on me. I needed her to see it. I needed her to say it.

I needed her to be all right.

I stood up and waved my hand in front of her face. “How much did you take this time?”

She leaned back and grinned. Her arms splayed out, open and helpless. “No idea.”

“Do you know how fucking pathetic that sounds?” I blurted, unable to hold back my frustration any longer. I snatched the now-creased letter from the lounge, crushing it in my fist.

She closed her eyes. “It feels fucking
good
, though.”

I had to step back to keep from kicking her chair over in a desperate attempt to snap her out of her trance, to bring back the Nadia who gave a shit. “Maybe I
don’t
want to room with you. I’ll actually be at URI to accomplish something, not just to hang out between fixes.”

I wanted her to wince. To tell me what a bitch I was. To show me I meant enough to her to be able to reach her.

Instead, she smiled again, a special smile, a devastating smile. The ultimate brush-off smile. In the time we’d been friends, I’d seen her do it to other people, this slow, fake-indulgent quirk of the lips that killed conversations, withering girls and boys alike with its confident chill. It was a smile that said
No matter what you say, you can’t make me care
. I’d seen her give it to her worthless ex-boyfriend Greg a thousand times. Her mom, too. I’d even seen her give it to Tegan once. And now she was aiming it at me for the first time. “Go home, Lela. You’re kind of a buzz kill.”

“Okay,” I said, voice shaking. “You’ve turned into a real bitch, you know that?”

Her hand rose slowly, trembling slightly as she raised her middle finger.

In my head, the world was caving in. This was the thing I’d feared ever since I’d let myself get close to her—that like everyone else, she would turn her back on me. I felt like such an idiot having all these dreams of being away at college with my best friend. I had started to trust it. And I should have known better. No one could possibly feel that way about me.

That cold smile hadn’t left her face, and I wanted to smack her. I wanted to shake her. Anything to get a reaction, to get some response that showed I mattered to her, that she was as afraid of losing me as I was of losing her. I stood there, waiting for the slightest change in her expression, the slightest twitch of her fingers.

Nothing.

Tears stung my eyes, but the heat of my anger burned them away. “You’re gonna be just like your mom, Nadia. Congratulations. Thanks for saving me from having to watch.”

I crammed the letter into my pocket and stomped across the manicured lawn, wishing I had something heavy to throw at the wide, crystal clear bay windows. My panic had short-circuited me—the
one
thing I’d had to hang on to was falling apart. I sucked in a few breaths as I reached my car, trying to
calm down enough to drive. She would be better tomorrow. I’d show her the letter then.

I never got the chance, though. Tegan called the next morning. I barely made out the words through her hysterical sobbing, but after a few repetitions, they finally sank in.

Mrs. Vetter had discovered her daughter on the floor of the bathroom, an empty pill bottle next to her.

Nadia was dead.

MY GAZE TRACED THE
zombie’s oozing features as the sharp whine of the tattoo gun burrowed into my ears. The undead creature was forceful and intimidating, saturated with color and menace. I watched Dunn, the zombie’s owner, wondering what it said about him, that he had decided to carry this monster on his flesh. As I eyed his wiry little body, I decided he’d probably been bullied as a child. He was certainly compensating for
something
. I kept searching for more clues, grateful for distraction from the throb and sting radiating across my skin. And from the guilt eating away at my heart.

Dunn’s face twisted in concentration as he deftly maneuvered the needles. I bit back a shiver at the pain, forcing myself
into stillness, afraid the tiniest move would ruin the portrait taking shape on my arm.

“Halfway there,” Dunn commented. “You need a break?”

I shook my head. “Keep going.”

“You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” I replied through gritted teeth.

Dunn grunted and bent to his task again. He had some mad skills. Even through the blood and the swelling, Nadia’s delicate face was instantly recognizable. It had only taken him a few days from the first time he saw the photograph to sketch her face and map where it would lie on my forearm. It was sort of hilarious that, for all my bad-girl rep, the only thing I’d ever used my fake ID for was to get this tattoo. Dunn had even given me a discount. It still ate a chunk out of my pathetic college fund, but that wasn’t a problem now. I’d gotten a scholarship, after all.

I looked out the window of the shop, watching cars thread their way along Wickenden Street’s narrow lanes. Maybe this tattoo would do it. The school memorial hadn’t—I’d stared at Nadia’s glossy, poster-size photo from the back row of the bleachers, watching all her other friends cry and hug each other in the front row, and it still hadn’t chased her ghost out of my head. The wake hadn’t done it either—after seeing her lying there, pale and perfect, the dreams still haunted me. The funeral had failed me, too—even after gutting my way through the priest’s promises that she was in a better place, the nightly
visions of her trapped in that dark city, the very same place I’d carried in my head for the past two years, remained. Now she was there. And it was my fault.