Stories From the Shadowlands (27 page)

I need to find out what a corsage is.

I need to focus on my job. I know I do. Right now it is hard to get past the weight of condemnation that has settled on my back, though, the combined heft of all the years I have spent without guilt, believing in what I was doing while I doomed so many. Now it is suffocating me.

Day 21

Last night Lela and I were ambushed and barely escaped. We hid in an alley.
For a few minutes we were so close to each other and I wanted to lean on her, to fall into her, to forget everything that is happening and just

When we had our chance, we slipped away from the warehouse where we had left numerous Mazikin dead. I had called Henry right before we went in, because I knew he was in the area, and he arrived in time to help us clean up. And then he chased a Mazikin down and captured it—and it turned out to be Clarence, the known recruiter. New body, same habit of filing his teeth.

Lela questioned him in our basement. She is quite good at it. Witty and tough. So self-possessed. Far more so than I was—I cut off his ear with a throwing knife as he taunted me. Lela was not happy.

She had a more effective way of threatening him. She had me summon Raphael to take Clarence to the tower in the dark city. She fooled the old Mazikin into telling us that they will indeed be attacking the prom. He told her again that she was going to be taken, that she would house the spirit of the Queen. She is calm about it. Determined. She is a very good Captain, though I’m not sure she believes that herself.

Day 27

The Mazikin have gone quiet. We patrol the streets and watch over our classmates, but there is no sign of the creatures. We know they are plotting something, though.

This afternoon Lela and I trained. Jim was with Tegan and a group of her friends, watching over them, and Henry is still trying to find the nest, posing as a homeless person, so Lela and I were alone in the basement.

We did not speak, but we did communicate. She shows me her pain with her fists and knees and elbows. I show her mine the same way. It was the most honest conversation we have had in a very long time. Both of us came away bleeding
, and I wanted more of it. I wanted to taste her sweat and have her beneath me. I wanted her to scrape my skin with her fingernails. I wanted to feel her teeth in my flesh. I wanted her to punish me for loving her. I wanted her to beat it out of me. But even she is not strong enough for that
.

Day 29

I speak with Henry sometimes, brief periods on the telephone. It’s not just to gather information; I want him to know we have not forgotten him, that we appreciate what he is doing.

I told him it had been quiet. That Lela and I trained hard yesterday.

He laughed. “That must have been a relief, to work some of that tension out.”

It only made me want more, though. “We were professional, as always.”

“As always,” he said wryly. “How badly did you hurt each other?”

Not as badly as I needed. “Enough.” Never enough.

“You ever wonder if you’re punishing yourself?”

Lela has said the same thing to me. “No, I don’t wonder.” Because I know. Of course that’s what I’m doing. And I’m letting Lela help because she does it better than anyone. “And you? Tell me about what you’ve seen.”

“A lot of human misery. Nothing like the Wasteland, though.” He sighed. “But I’m a loner again.”

He misses this man who was his partner. Sascha. He has only mentioned him once, but I can tell what they had was intimate. “This won’t last forever,” I told him. “We’ll stop the Mazikin, and then you will…”

He chuckled. “Yeah, I don’t know how to complete that sentence either. Hey. Good talking to you. Stay safe.”

Then he was gone.

Day 36

It is the first of May. And it is Friday. These things are meaningful to other people, who go around commenting on how they can’t believe the school year is almost over, how soon it will be summer, how soon it will be prom, how soon we will take exams.

Tonight I am going to a party to watch over our friends. Laney is very happy that I will be there. I have tried to keep things platonic between us, but I know she hopes for more, that she has not given up.

Lela will be there. With Ian. It is her night off, but Laney was kind enough to tell me that they would be there together. Funny how sometimes kindness feels more like the twist of a knife.

Yesterday Lela and I trained together again and we both ended up so bloody and bruised that we had to call Raphael to heal us. He was exasperated. “This is a poor use of my time,” he said.

“We can’t look like this when we walk into school,” said Lela, who was holding a cloth to her mouth. I had split her lip with my knee. “Trust me. We’d get hauled into the office. My probation officer would be there in a heartbeat. Diane would freak out, too.”

Raphael arched his eyebrow. “Perhaps the solution is to find another way to resolve what is between you.”

“There is nothing between us,” I said quickly. My head was pounding and blood from my broken nose was soaking through the tissue I had crammed into my nostrils.

“The human capacity for self-delusion is truly limitless,” he muttered. “Which of you will go first?”

“She will,” I said before she could point at me. She was swaying where she stood. I’d hit her so hard. I hadn’t held back. But she was still standing. I think it is impossible to break her.

She didn’t argue, and I was glad.
Not because I was worried about her. Because I wanted to feel the pain of what she had done to me for a little longer. I wanted to sink into it and let it claw its way along my bones. For a little while, it overrode the pain of not being able to reach her
.

Day 43

Michael came to arm us for the prom today. When I went down to the basement, Lela was there.

I have seen her barely clothed body a time or two, but on those occasions she was severely injured and on the brink of death. Today, though, she was very much alive and dangerous and wearing a garment that accentuated parts of her that I have fantasized about touching on more than one occasion
.

Her dress is a liability. Her shoes are even worse. I spoke my thoughts aloud. She responded with violence, proving definitively that she is quite capable of lethality even while wearing a short skirt and high heels. She has become so, so strong. She had me pressed up against the wall, blades pressed against my soft spots
, and I had no desire to fend her off
.

I hadn’t thought I could want her more, but every time I think that, I am proven wrong
.

I recovered my composure quickly. Her reminder that I am going to this dance with Laney was helpful. We will train over the next week so the Captain can fight in those shoes without breaking her ankles.

Day 45

Raphael appeared to me today, ostensibly to provide me with money to pay for the tuxedo I had to rent. But he gave me an amused look that I have seen far too often. “Say what you have to say,” I told him.

“Merely wondering something.”

I rolled my eyes. With all the tension, all the waiting, all the frustration of the last few weeks, it was all I could do not to shout at him. “Go ahead.”

“Has there ever been a time when a lie made you stronger?”

I thought about it, because at least it relieved the churning of my thoughts for a moment. “Lies can be like shields. They can protect. It depends on the lie, and the intent behind it.”

“That kind of shield is flimsy at best. It’s an illusion. Besides, what does it really protect you from?”

“Pain.”

His eyebrows rose. “And truth.”

“What is your point?”

“My point was my original question. A lie. Has it ever made you stronger, Malachi?”

I hated the way he was looking at me. Detached, amused. He patted my shoulder. “I just wanted to ask.” He disappeared.

Sometimes I hate Raphael.

Day 46

Raphael was wrong. I am not lying to myself. I have accepted the truth of my mistake, that I condemned innocents to avoid feeling helpless. And apart from that, there are no lies here
.

I love her. That is the truth.

Day 47

Today I watched Lela and Ian walk out of the cafeteria. She was smiling as he told her a story about baseball, his hands animated and waving, fingers wrapped around a sandwich and a bottle of chocolate milk. They eat their lunch together, in some private spot, nearly every day. What does she tell him, I wonder? Does she let him see who she is beneath the armor? Or is she something completely different with him, something carefree and happy and normal and good? That is what she should have been all along. Perhaps it is right that she is with him. Perhaps he lifts the burden off her back for a few minutes each day.

I could have done that for her. Or at least I could have tried.

I am older than all these people around me. They have had only seventeen or eighteen years of existence, and I have had so much more than that. But my days have been filled with darkness, and nothing good grows there. I do not know how to love her and be with her and still do what I have to do. I do not know if I ever could have made her happy.

Sometimes being willing to kill for someone, being willing to die for her, is not what she needs most. And maybe it was all I had to offer.

Ian is unburdened by decades of mistakes and slaughter. He does not carry the weight of countless damned souls on his back. He is so much better for her than I am.

I shouldn’t hate him, but I do.

It is a hate that comes from pure envy, though, that he can make her smile and laugh, and the only thing I do is make her angry, make her sad, make her bleed.

I love her, though. I am more in love with her now that I was in the dark city, more in awe, too. That I ever thought I could turn that off or rip it out is one of the more serious mistakes I have made, and it has dulled me. It has made me weak. If I had simply faced it, admitted it, instead of trying to pretend I could make it go away, that would have been the braver choice.

Perhaps I should make that choice now. Perhaps there is no other choice to be made.

It changes nothing. I must atone for what I’ve done. And she is with another man. She has so many other things to worry about. But she is strong and unbreakable, and perhaps she’ll let me lay this at her feet, knowing I expect nothing from her except her acknowledgement that it’s there, and that she’s heard how sorry I am for what I did to her.

I have to tell Laney. I cannot pretend anymore, though I believe she already knows, that she has known for weeks. She has been a patient and gentle friend to me. She deserves better, too.

Day 48

Lela called me just as Laney was dropping me off at the Guard house. We’d had lunch together, and I had confessed to Laney the truth, and she was hurt and tearful and called me names but then said I’d better take her to prom tonight anyway because I owed it to her. She was very angry when she discovered it was Lela calling me.

She had no idea what was really going on.

“Henry’s hurt,” Lela said, and her voice was choked off, like she was trying not to cry.

I waved to Laney as she pulled out of the driveway, such a strange combination of friendly gesture paired with dire thoughts. “Is he with you?”

“No. I don’t know where he is. Sil sent me a text and a picture. They hurt him so bad, Malachi.” Her voice broke over my name.

“Where are you?”

“Ian’s. I’m about to leave. Can you summon Raphael?”

“I will.”

“The message from Sil—”

“What was it?”

“It said, ‘tonight we won’t be so gentle.’”

There it was, confirmation that the Mazikin are coming for her tonight, ready to leave a wide swath of damage in their wake. “They won’t touch you.”

“I’m not worried about me.”

Of course she wasn’t. She never is. “Get over here. I’ll tell Jim to get ready.”

“On my way.”

I summoned Raphael, and he went to find Henry. He told me Henry is alive; he has not appeared in the Shadowlands. So at least I know that.

Now I am waiting for Lela to arrive. My weapons are ready, and I am ready. They won’t take her. I won’t let it happen.

If this is the only way I get to love her, so be it.

Destroying a Nest is Simpler

Two months after the events of
Chaos
. Warwick, Rhode Island.

Malachi stood at the CVS photo counter as the scrawny young clerk pawed through the envelopes until he found the 8x10 marked “Sokol.” He handed it to Malachi, who opened it and peeked inside. There they were. He hoped he’d chosen the right ones.

“Thank you,” he said, offering up his debit card. As the clerk accepted it, Malachi could not help the tiny, irrational surge of pride he always felt when he’d done something so normal and
modern
. Of course, it was all thanks to Raphael, who, as a parting gift, perhaps, had made sure Malachi had a birth certificate, a bank account, a deed to the Guard house—everything he could possibly need to begin a normal life in the land of the living. Smiling, he tucked the envelope into his pack, which he swung onto his back as he walked out of the store. The sun was beating down on the asphalt. He strode into the parking lot and turned his face up to the light, closing his eyes and absorbing the July heat.

He unlocked his little car and got in. It was a used Hyundai—Ian had graciously asked his father, who owned a dealership, to get Malachi a good deal. Malachi wondered if Lela had had anything to do with it. She’d also spent many hours patiently coaching him from the passenger seat. He smiled at the way she would laugh at his mistakes, not with contempt, but with genuine fondness, which helped him take himself less seriously. She had helped him in so many ways.

He hoped he was helping her now. He glanced down at his phone. Ten minutes until the meeting, or as Tegan had called it, the “summit.” She had warned him that his input would be crucial. He set his pack with its precious cargo in the backseat and drove to the appointed meeting place.

Tegan had staked out a table in the diner. Her short brown hair was stylishly messy, and she was wearing a strapless shirt that revealed her boney shoulders. Her crutches were propped against the back of the booth. Her ankle had been badly broken when Juri had kidnapped her, Ian, and Diane back in May. She’d only gotten the cast off a few weeks ago, but still needed the crutches. From what Malachi could tell, it hadn’t slowed her down at all. She was frowning as she jabbed at the screen of her phone, but she looked up as he slid into the booth across from her. “Ian and Laney are on their way,” she said. “So. Do you have your plan? Your cover story?”