Fractured (17 page)

“We?” I met his gaze. “You had a partner.”

“I did,” he said in a strained voice. “And we were good together. I didn’t want to leave him.”

The way he said it, the pain in his eyes … I could tell the partnership was more than professional. “Did you have a choice? To come here, I mean.”

Henry bowed his head. “There’s always a choice, I suppose, but it seemed like a chance I shouldn’t turn down. When I’m done here, though, I’m going back for him.”

“You want to go back to the Wasteland?”

“If I have to. I guess I hoped that doing good on this mission would give me some credit with the Judge, maybe enough to get Sascha out, even if it means I have to stay.” He gave me a sheepish look. “That probably sounds dumb to you.”

“Not at all. It makes total sense.” I spoke past the lump in my throat. “Let’s get this done so that you can find him again.”

His flickering smile whispered his gratitude. He tugged his ski mask down over his face, tucked the crossbow against his body, and pulled the blanket around him like a cape. “You can rest. I won’t be far.”

I tucked the smelly sleeping bag around me, leaving it unzipped in case I needed to get out in a hurry. I switched off the flashlight and lay there in the dark, thinking about Henry. His situation reminded me of Ana and Takeshi, who had dared to fall in love in the dark city, and who had been separated tragically when Takeshi had been possessed by a Mazikin. Hopefully, Ana was in the Countryside now, and they’d found each other again, but I knew well enough now that giving one’s heart to another Guard was just asking to have it crushed.

To get my mind back on track, I practiced drawing the knives from their sheaths and striking at an invisible attacker. This afternoon, I hadn’t been wearing gloves, so it took me awhile to get used to the feel of my fingers being thicker and less sensitive, protected but not as nimble. As I worked, I couldn’t help the little spark of pride as I thought about what I’d learned, and how fast I’d learned it.

I rolled over, wincing at the feel of gravel through our thin, moldy pad, still fingering the handles of the knives holstered against my body. I flinched at a distant sound, sudden and high. A shout? Or was that just more traffic noise? Before I figured it out, a hooting laugh only a few feet from the tent brought me out of the sleeping bag. I crouched low in the inky darkness, sniffing at the air, straining to hear anything but the white noise of traffic. A few seconds later, I heard it again.

And then someone screamed.

Suddenly, the camp was full of screeches and clangs and heavy thuds and ripping fabric. I shot out of the tent and into the night, knife in one hand and flashlight in the other, and was immediately tackled by a hissing ball of rags reeking of incense. I hit the ground, rolled, and kicked the thing toward the water. I shoved myself to my feet. The camp was a battleground, sheer chaos. Someone was shouting to call 911. Someone else was sobbing. I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on because it was all bobbing flashlights and running, screaming people.

A figure on all fours ran into the beam of my flashlight and looked in my direction. It had white, scraggly hair, broad shoulders, and shockingly long arms. The Mazikin rose up on its feet and came toward me on bowed legs. It had a severe underbite, revealing chipped and broken bottom teeth. “Perfect!” it snarled, and then leaped at me.

I knocked its jagged fingernails away with my coat sleeve and bashed it across the face with my flashlight. Its head tilted to the side with the impact, but then it steadied itself with its thick legs. It lunged toward me with a low growl, and in that moment I realized how hard it was going to be to actually capture one of these things. I pivoted around and plunged the knife into its side, driving it through bone and muscle as an animalistic cry rolled from my throat. As the creature doubled over, its face met my waiting knee with a wet crunch. The Mazikin’s eyes bugged out and a string of bloody saliva flew from its mouth as it fell to the ground.

Another Mazikin jumped on my back, making me gag with the stench. It bit my shoulder, but its teeth didn’t penetrate all the layers of clothing. I bent over sharply, and it flew off my back and hit the gravel. Before it could get up, I landed on its chest with both my knees and cut its throat; then I scrambled up, grateful I’d dropped my flashlight and couldn’t see what I’d done. Grateful I couldn’t see the blood soaking my new gloves.

As I was turning to get my bearings, a shock of pain blasted my upper arm, and I couldn’t hold the scream inside. White-red pinpricks glittered in front of my eyes as I fell to my side and used my legs to push my attacker away from me, straight into the light from the highway lamps.

“You can’t have my camp,” the bat-wielding, white-haired woman screeched. Sister Harriet to the rescue.

“I don’t want your camp, lady!” I clutched at my left arm, which was pulsing with agony and felt like it had already swelled to the approximate size and weight of a baby hippo. I turned on my stomach and retched from the pain. “I’m trying to protect it!”

Gravel shrapnel hit the embankment over my head, and Harriet the nun let out a shriek and stumbled back, which kept her from swinging at me again. One of the street boys screamed in pain or fear, and he sounded so much like Nick that I actually called out his name. But my voice was only one among many, drowned in the chaos. Where was Henry? Had they already gotten him?

Through a haze of pain, I staggered to my feet and drew another knife, letting my broken left arm dangle uselessly at my side. I pointed the blade at Harriet, and the look on my face made her hug the bat to her chest. “If it smells like incense, hit it hard,” I ordered, “and don’t let them drag you away, no matter what.”

Her face was as white as her hair. She nodded.

“Now get your back against a wall!” I did the same as I squinted into the darkness. Harriet pressed her stout little body to the concrete embankment behind us, and I scooted to give her a wider berth for fear of getting smacked upside the head. A movement in the grass and a low moan near the water drew my attention. Keeping my shoulder to the wall and Harriet at my back, I crept toward it.

Footsteps pounded and skidded in the darkness a few feet away, and I whirled around to meet the attack, adrenaline numbing my white-hot arm. Before it reached me, the oncoming Mazikin let out an airless yip and fell at my feet, a crossbow bolt protruding from the center of its back. Relief flowed through me. Henry was here. He was shooting in the dark.

And I couldn’t argue with the results. Now if only we could corner one and take it alive.

Eager and unhinged laughter to my left drew my eyes back toward the waterfront. It was coming from the bundle of hair and rags that had tackled me when I first came from the tent. It was a woman, with a wild mass of dark curls tangled every which way around her. Her hair must have been at least two feet long, full of braids and beads and leaves and twigs. The light from the high moon revealed she was trying to drag the skinny waitress along the narrow patch of grass by the water.

“Hey there.” I stepped out from the darkness of the overpass, shoving the pain from my arm into the deep recesses of my mind. “Let her go, and you can have me.”

The waitress, whose neck was bleeding all over her pink flannel shirt, whimpered and struggled, but the small female Mazikin jerked her close.

“
No, ella es perfecta
,” the thing snapped, her hair obscuring her face and making her seem more animal than human.

“She’s kinda skinny,” I commented, stalking closer. Behind me, Harriet grunted, and someone’s growl turned into a shriek as the bat hit its mark. The female Mazikin’s head shot up, looking toward the sound. I ran for her, hoping this would be a short fight. She dropped the waitress and stood up straight, revealing she was actually about as tall as I was. With long, broken fingernails, she clawed her hair away from her face and met my eyes.

I stopped dead, swaying in place, and stared at her.

She did the same. Her expression melted, from bared teeth to parted lips, from eyes full of fury to full of tears.

“
Tú has crecido,
” she said, her voice trembling and high. She took a step closer to me and blinked, sending tears spilling down her face. “
Oh oh oh.
So … pretty.”

I took a step back, stomach twisting, skull caving in, vision sparking. “No.” I raised the knife. She flinched but kept moving, closing the distance between us with tiny, shuffling steps.

“
Mija,
” she crooned, reaching for me with those filthy, jagged nails grasping.

I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed with pain from inside and out, making me see red and black and soft hands and curly hair and sad smile and golden-brown eyes now dull with someone else’s soul.

“No, nononono,” I babbled, stumbling back.

“
Lela
,” the Mazikin whispered.

“No!” I screamed, leaping at her. “You don’t know me!”

I hit her hard, but I was desperate and off-balance. She shoved me to the side, and I crashed into the trunk of a tree, crying out as my broken arm caught my weight. The knife fell from my hands as my whole body spasmed with pain. Hunched over, I pivoted around to see her backing up quickly, looking behind her, toward her escape route.

She beckoned to me. “Come,” she said. “
Come
.
Ven conmigo
.
Lela
.”

A gust of wind lifted her hair from her face again, revealing hollow cheeks, skin wrinkled and sagging, tired and used. But those golden-brown eyes … I knew them.

I saw them every day. Whenever I looked in the mirror.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw another figure step onto the grass, lit up by the bright moon.

Henry raised his crossbow and took aim.

At my mother.

SIXTEEN

IT ALL HAPPENED SO
fast, but it felt like forever. Set to an old movie in my head, memories dredged up from the well of time: She pressed a blue teddy bear to my chest and tucked a frayed blanket around me. She sang a song too raspy to make me sleep. She let tears fall down her face in the dark, and they landed hot on my cheeks and made me think it was raining.

I moved with instinct, all impulse and no thought, throwing myself in front of her. The Mazikin inside her watched with wide amber eyes, mouth open, hands flying up to shield herself. The bolt went through me like I was made of nothing, puncturing me like a balloon of skin. The ground caught me. In my sideways world, I watched her sprint away on two legs, and then pitch forward and dive into a four-legged gallop that carried her up a hill and out of sight.

I closed my eyes, drowning in the acid pain, inhaling sick lungfuls of it.

“Captain! Goddammit,” Henry blurted as he reached me. “
Goddammit
.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, my voice high and small. I sounded like a child.

“I had that Mazikin dead to rights. And now you’re—” He let out a long string of curses.

“Are there any alive? Any we can take?” I let out a shivery breath, feeling sleepy and stupid. Half of me was on fire, but the other half was encased in ice.

“Are you crazy?” he shouted. “Forget taking a prisoner, Captain. I have to get you out of here before the police arrive!”

A siren split the night, jerking me into action. “Then get your bolts, Henry. And my knife—by the tree. Don’t leave a single one. Finish any Mazikin that are wounded, but make sure by the smell before you cut. Go.”

Henry disappeared from my side for what seemed like forever, leaving me in a sea of shock, surrounded by destruction. Then he was back. He leaned over me and folded my broken left arm over my stomach, wrenching a groan from between my clenched teeth. The crossbow bolt stuck out of my chest below my left shoulder. “Can you pull it out?” I gasped. I was certain all the pain would end if he pulled the arrow out. “Get it out. Please.”

He didn’t answer, just threw a blanket over me and scooped me from the ground, surprisingly strong for such a thin man. He clutched me close to his chest as he carried me away from the camp. In the distance the sirens wailed closer. Henry began to run, making me certain I was going to die with every step.

A million years later, a car door opened, and I was laid across the backseat of our Taurus, which smelled of animal crackers and juice. “Lean forward and keep still,” commanded Henry, flipping me onto my side. “I’m strapping you down.”

“Excellent,” I mumbled as he coiled the seat belts around my body. “Call Malachi and—”

“Already have, Captain,” he replied, making me wonder at what point along the way I’d blacked out, and leaving me hoping that I could do it again. Like, right now …

Strong, warm hands lifted me, and somehow, it didn’t hurt, even though I was still at sea with no boat. “We have to remove the bolt,” said Raphael. “I’m assuming you’d like to sleep through that part.”

“Right you are,” I answered, finding myself on my side again, this time on a bed. I turned my head and inhaled hopefully.

No. Not Malachi’s bed. “Where is he?” I whispered before I could stop myself.

Raphael ran his blazing hands over my neck. “He is aware that you are injured and requested to be pulled from the field. Henry is leaving shortly to retrieve him.”

“No. Tell Henry to call him. He and Jim should finish their patrol.” I wanted him so badly, but if he was my Lieutenant and nothing else, that meant he shouldn’t come running when I was injured. So I wouldn’t ask him to.

Raphael gave me a questioning look, but nodded.

“I really messed up. Henry doesn’t feel bad, does he?”

Raphael unbuckled my leather holster and slid it off my arm, pausing every few moments to allow me to catch my breath. “He is unhappy you got in the way of his bolt. He is happy it didn’t kill you.”

“Me too.”

“He still wants to know why. He said it looked like you were protecting a Mazikin.”

Her face flashed in my mind. Her eyes. My eyes.
Lela
, she said.
Ven conmigo
.