Chaos (3 page)

I held up my hand. “Wait, what? The Judge
let
them take over?”

Michael snorted. “Not here. He gave them their own place, and enough resources to be self-sufficient.”

I gaped at him. “Why would the Judge do that?”

Michael gave me a strange look. “Because he loved them, Lela. He was the one who created them in the first place.”

THREE

“S
HE FORGOT TO MENTION
that,” Ana and I said at the same time. My hands became fists. We were being sent in to clean up a mess the all-knowing Judge had made.

“It wasn’t necessary for your mission,” said a voice coming from behind us. I looked over my shoulder to see Raphael standing next to a neatly stacked set of crossbows.

Michael picked up his hammer. “I don’t come into your quarters and interrupt your conversations.”

“Don’t be peevish, Michael. Are they ready?” Raphael walked forward. He was carrying several garments, which appeared to be made of different shades of brown leather, stitched together haphazardly.

“Nearly,” Michael grumbled.

While he finished arming Ana, I walked over to Raphael. “Knowing the Judge created the Mazikin may not fall under ‘need to know,’ but the more we understand about them now, the better equipped we’ll be,” I said to him. “What’s their city like? How did they get ahold of the portal she’s sending us in to destroy?”

“The Judge only gave them what they needed to survive. She never intended them to escape. They have access to water and other natural resources. She gave them a herd of prey animals as a food source. Goats, actually. As for the porta
l . . .
” He and Michael looked at each other for a moment, then Raphael gave him a brief nod and continued. “The Mazikin were the animal companions of the Judge.”

“The Judge’s idea of the perfect pet is a horde of crazy hyenas?”

“In the beginning there were only two.” Raphael gave me a beautifully enigmatic smile. “She has a soft spot for animals.”

“Apparently. But these can’t be ordinary animals.”

He shook his head. “Far from it. They are nearly as intelligent as humans, or the first two were, anyway. And the pair of them had the run of the Sanctum.” He made a mildly disapproving face, and I suddenly pictured him following after a large dog, carrying a baggy full of poop. “Unfortunately, by the time they rebelled, they had learned some of its secrets, and when they were banished, they stole the material needed to make a portal. Then they used their knowledge of the boundaries between the realms to make one for themselves. We found this out later, when it was discovered the Mazikin were possessing human bodies within the dark city.”

“Why the dark city?” Ana asked, coming over to join us. “Taking over the bodies and minds of people who chose to end their lives cannot be a fun experience. Seems like they’d have done better almost anywhere else.”

“But the people in the dark city are far more passive,” said Raphael. “And, as you discovered in the land of the living, Lela, Mazikin like the dark.”

“How long ago did they escape their city?”

“It has been a very long time since the Mazikin were contained under the dome. We think they found a way out only about eight hundred years ago.”

“Only.” I suddenly wondered how old Raphael himself was. Even though he looked about thirty, for all I knew, he might have existed since the beginning of time. So few people I’d met in the afterlife looked their age. Malachi looked about eighteen, bu
t . . .

Thinking of him was like being stabbed in the chest, and I crossed my arms in front of me and looked away. It was too late, though. His face loomed large in my mind, the heat of him, the sensual, earthy scent of his skin, the sound of his voice as he whispered fiercely in my ear:
You will kill whoever comes at you. You will do whatever it take
s . . .

I drew in a shuddering breath. That was exactly what I would do. Whatever it took to get him back. “When can we leave?”

“As soon as you change,” said Raphael.

I raised my eyebrows.

“We’re going into a self-contained city, Lieutenant,” Ana said.

Raphael nodded. “If you go clothed in materials that cannot be found in the city, they will spot you immediately.” He eyed my hair. “Which is already a possibility, mind you. But it would be best not to make it too easy for them.” He held up the garments folded over his arms. “Goatskin.”

He handed me a pair of pants, a smock with a thin strip of leather lacing up the front, and a cloak. “I have boots for you as well. The material is durable and will help you withstand conditions under the dome, which are likely to be extreme.”

I walked into one of the aisles to get a little privacy. A second later Ana joined me. Apparently, she wasn’t too keen on getting naked in front of Raphael and Michael, either. Barely looking at each other, lost in our own mental preparations, we stripped off our clothes and put on the surprisingly supple goatskin.

“It will double as armor,” Raphael called. “I created it so that Mazikin teeth and claws won’t penetrate it, unlike the garments you would find within the city. Metal blades are a different matter, though. Be careful.”

I strapped the sheaths for my knives over my thighs and pulled the cloak around me, then glanced at Ana, who was adjusting the row of grenades beneath her smock. “What happens if they find us with those?”

“My guess is we’ll be strung up next to Malachi,” she said in a low voice. “But we won’t go down without taking a few of them with us.”

I nodded. “How about a lot of them?”

She gave me a grim smile. “I’ll do my part if you do yours.”

“You got it, Captain.” I pulled up the hood of my cloak. It smelled sharp and sour, and I wrinkled my nose.

“What in the hell is taking so long?” Michael roared.

My cloak fluttering around my ankles, I emerged from the aisle to see Michael staring at us with red-faced fury. Raphael held out a pair of leather boots to me as he said calmly to Michael, “Stop rushing them.”

Michael exhaled through his flared nostrils, like a bull about to charge. His skin began to give off the same glow as Raphael’s did when he was really pissed. And that’s when it occurred to me: Michael was upset about Malachi, too. Whenever they were together, Michael had always given Malachi a really hard time, calling him names and hollering at him to stop mistreating his weapons. But looking at Michael now, it seemed like he was ready to go into the Mazikin city himself. And the Mazikin probably wouldn’t stand a chance if he did.

“Are you sure you can’t come with us?” I asked.

Michael opened his mouth to answer, but Raphael interrupted. “He can’t. Neither of us can. The Judge’s promises are never broken.”

“Doesn’t mean we wouldn’t like to,” Michael growled, gripping the handle of his hammer with his meaty fingers. He glared at me with red-rimmed eyes. “You get him out, you understand me? He doesn’t deserve this.”

“This isn’t about deserving,” Raphael said. His voice was gentle, though. “You know that.”

Ana emerged from the aisle, her hood pulled back from her face. “If it was, Takeshi wouldn’t have been there in the first place.”

“Too right,” Michael said, shaking his head.

Raphael held out a pair of boots to her and watched as both of us pulled our footgear on. “You will not need to eat while you are inside. You don’t belong there, and nothing in the city will nourish you.”

“But does that mean—?”

He nodded as he met my eyes. “Like your time in the dark city, you will grow weaker the longer you are inside. You won’t die, but you won’t be as strong as you are now. And if they kill you, you will become part of the city, and it will be easier for them to control you. Do not allow this to happen.”

“Work fast and don’t die,” Ana summed up. “Generally good advice.”

“Are you ready?” Raphael asked.

I looked over at Ana, my new Captain. Her determination was written on her face, blazing and fierce. She had the same reason I did for walking into that hell, and that love would drive her as far as she needed to go. “We’re ready,” she said.

Raphael placed his burning hands on the backs of our necks. Right before we disappeared, I saw Michael’s fury fall away like a mask, and in that moment I knew the truth, and it sliced through my body with icy dread.

He didn’t think we were coming back.

My boots hit the ground, and I stumbled, crashing into a hard surface and bouncing off. Crouching, I ripped my hood away from my face, my hair flying out around me in crazy, flyaway curls. Dull orange light reflected off the wall in front of me, and I blinked as my eyes adjusted to the dim twilight. In front of me was a smooth surface, like a bubble with thick, hard skin that swirled lazily with an oily prism of colors. In it, my own face was reflected, my amber-brown eyes wide and haunted, my dark hair bouncing around my face. The cloak flapped around me as I pressed my hands to the dome, which emerged from the sand and rose so high I could barely make out the curve as it arced over the city. Even through my gloves, I could feel it pulsing with the misery inside, and I closed my eyes for a moment and absorbed it. Malachi was in there. I was closer to him now, and that thought was enough to raise the tiny hairs on the back of my neck. Somewhere in this walled city, the Mazikin had him. Naked, Ana had said, and scared. Furious, I slammed both my fists against the dome with all my strength. The impact shuddered up my arms and knocked the breath out of me. The steel shot in my gloves protected my knuckles from splitting, but the barrier hadn’t dented or cracked.

“It’s to keep them inside,” Raphael said. He stood behind us, looking small and insignificant, one man surrounded by a sea of sand bounded by two mountain ranges, with the orange glow of the morning horizon behind him. “I will create an opening when you’re ready to go inside, and I’ll be waiting to let you out.”

“
If
we complete the mission, you mean,” Ana said. She had her face mashed against the dome, peering inside.

“That’s correct,” Raphael answered. “If you succeed. You have to make it back to the gates and out of the city. I can’t come in to get you.”

I watched him for a moment, looking for some flicker of feeling in his light-gray eyes, some hint as to whether he thought we’d actually make it out. But as emotional as Michael had been, Raphael was the opposite. He stared steadily back at me with what appeared to be only mild curiosity. I turned from him and squinted, trying to see through the dome. Beyond its thick barrier were dark, pitted bricks, black mortar binding them together.

“Like many of the realms within the Shadowlands, it’s a walled city,” Raphael said.

“Why the wall, if they have an impenetrable dome?”

“So they can control the entrance to the city.” Ana tugged at my sleeve and began to walk along the edge of the dome like she knew where she was going. Cold sweat prickled over my scalp as I followed, my soft-soled boots sinking in the loose sand. A stiff gust of wind sent the diamond-hard grains pelting against my cloak and the side of my face.

Raphael pointed to the dome. “We’re next to the gates.”

“There they are,” Ana whispered as she pushed her face close to the dome’s reflective surface again.

I cupped my hands around my eyes and leaned in. In front of us were high, heavy gates, twisted metal with jagged spikes jutting out at odd angles.

They were open. Two creatures stood on either side of them, upright but definitely not human. They were clothed in what looked like the same leather we were wearing, including cloaks with hoods. The tan material hung over their powerful bodies, broad barrel chests, and thick necks. They had humanlike hands and booted feet instead of paws, but in place of fingernails, curled black claws sprouted from each fingertip. Their faces were covered in short, dusky brown fur, and their eyes were solid black marbles, round and shining with an eager, cruel sort of mischief. They had rounded ears on the tops of their heads, and blunt black snouts. Their mouths were ridged with gleaming fangs, and threads of saliva stretched thin as they grinned.

The two of them paced back and forth on all fours, then rose to their hind legs, their ears twitching as they looked at the surface of the dome and conversed. It was all wrong—they were too human to be animals and too animal to be people. They looked like hyena-human hybrids.

“The Mazikin,” I whispered. These were the things that forced themselves inside human bodies, that took them over. This was what Juri, Malachi’s sworn enemy and the being who had haunted me for the longest time, looked like in his true form. I’d always pictured him as human, despite the fact that he behaved like a depraved animal, but now it was clear that was exactly what he was.

“That’s them,” Ana said, impatience creeping into her voice. “But look.” She jabbed her finger into the unyielding surface of the dome.

In front of the gates, people kept appearing out of nowhere, sprawled in the sand on hands and knees, naked and trembling. One woman was curled into a ball, her head tucked against her knees, like she was trying to avoid acknowledging where she was before the inevitable caught up with her. A Mazikin guard grabbed a leather garment from a large pile by the gates and tossed it at her. When it hit her, she frantically pulled it on, but as soon as she did, the Mazikin grasped a handful of her hair and yanked her head up. Then it leaned into her face and said something. The woman, her eyes open and helpless, her face slack, nodded in this pathetic, defeated way, then got to her feet and trudged toward the gates. Two other naked humans appeared out of thin air a second later, shaking and blinking.

I turned to Ana. “These people are materializing, like new arrivals at the Suicide Gates. You said Malachi fell out of a hole in the sky.”

“He did.”

“Those people died inside the Mazikin city,” Raphael said. “They aren’t recently possessed.”

“So if you die, you end up back at their gates. Just like in the dark city. Except you’re naked.” The anger twisted inside of me. It was like this place had been designed to humiliate. To oppress. I hated the looks on those people’s faces and had to turn away to keep myself from punching the dome again.

Raphael’s eyes were also on the hunched bare backs of the humans inside the dome. “Yes.”

So there was no escape. Ever. My chest aching, I watched as a few more people appeared in front of the gates and were herded back inside. The Mazikin cheerfully shoved the humans over the threshold of the city, some of them to the left, some to the right, like they knew exactly which way each person should go.