Chaos (8 page)

“Only a few more blocks,” Takeshi said in a low voice, steering us through the massing crowd. It was slowgoing now, because the streets were packed with creatures and humans. Most of them, though, were headed in the same direction we were. Toward the square.

Takeshi halted abruptly, and I bonked my head on his back. “This way,” he hissed, yanking my leash to the side, hard enough to make me stumble. Then he growled and barked at something beside me. I raised my head to see a big black-spotted Mazikin with a torn ear standing a few feet away. It had a fistful of Ana’s hood and was eyeing her with greedy eagerness. Ana was standing very still, her mouth set in a thin gray line. Her hands weren’t visible—they were hidden beneath her cloak—she probably had already grabbed knives, ready to defend herself.

With an earsplitting burst of feedback, the PA system flared to life again, and the deep grunts of the Mazikin announcer echoed off the cement buildings. As Takeshi continued to argue with the torn-eared Mazikin, the crowd drifted toward an open square up ahead illuminated by high stadium lights. The entrance to the square was only a few car-lengths away, and bodies were flowing into it, their heads upturned, their gazes focused on something above street level. Mazikin stood atop the buildings, too, looking down on the square, while those in the streets pressed forward, trying to get a view. I took a few steps and realized Takeshi was so absorbed in the discussion with the other Mazikin that he’d let go of my leash. I toppled forward as three leashed women with sunken faces tried to press by, and I had to stutter-step to avoid getting trampled.

Then I heard it, amidst the growling over the public announcement system, one word in English, wedged between hoots and whines. One word that made my heart seize up.

Captain.

Barely breathing, I let the crowd carry me, oblivious to everyone else, human and Mazikin alike.

A few dozen steps were all it took to make it to the square.

A few seconds was all it took to shatter me.

At the opposite end of the plaza, on a tiered platform, his arms outstretched, shackles around his ankles, wrists, and throat, the cement wall behind him splotched with reddish-brown stains, clothed only in his own blood, was Malachi.

I lunged forward, a desperate, soul-wrenching cry exploding up from the center of me. But then a clawed hand closed over my shoulder, and a furry limb snaked around my neck, cutting off my scream before it escaped my throat.

EIGHT

I
LIFTED MY FEET
off the ground and tucked my neck against my body, trying to wriggle away, but the Mazikin wrapped its arm around my waist and lurched backward until I could no longer see Malachi. Not that it mattered. The image was stamped on my brain. His eyes had been closed, but his face . . .

My heels scraped against the sidewalk as the Mazikin dragged me back the way I had come. No one in the crowd seemed interested in us; their eyes were all riveted on the spectacle in the square. And if no one cared, maybe they wouldn’t notice if I slit this Mazikin’s throat. I was reaching for my knives when the thing hurled me to the pavement. I hit hard, knees and elbows first. Above me, my Mazikin captor stood astride me and jabbed its clawed finger into Takeshi’s chest. With a knee-high leather boot, it kicked me lightly in the side and stepped over me, wedging itself between Takeshi, whose hood was pulled low over his Mazikin mask, and the torn-eared Mazikin he’d been arguing with. The Mazikin who’d grabbed me was shorter than Takeshi, but its claws were long, curved, and gleaming—and painted hot pink. Snarls came from deep within its barrel chest as it swiped those claws in front of the torn-eared creature’s face, and though bigger, Torn-Ear actually stepped back. A second later, Ana thumped to the pavement next to me.

“Are you okay?” she asked as soon as she saw my face. “You look like you’ve see
n . . .
” She grimaced. “We’ll get him, Lela. But first Takeshi has to convince Ugly up there that I shouldn’t be his new slave.” She jerked her chin at Torn-Ear, who had taken another wary step back from Takeshi and the small pink-clawed Mazikin that had hauled me away from the square.

I should have been trying to figure out how to help, but I was numb to anything except the memory of Malachi, the livid ruby scars that streaked his legs and ribs, the bite marks on his calves and hips and arms. And his fac
e . . .
“Malachi,” I breathed, trying not to pass out.

“Stay with me, Lela.” Ana edged up close, speaking right in my ear, somehow penetrating the swirl of panic. “I don’t know why, but that small Mazikin who grabbed you is claiming Takeshi is her mate. She’s insisting we all go with her, because she’s exercising her blood right.”

“Her
what
?”

“I think she means we’re all her property,” Ana said quickly, right as Takeshi grabbed her by the shoulders and wrenched her up. The small pink-clawed Mazikin did the same to me, and before I could draw my knives, I caught the barest shake of the head from Ana. So I let the creature practically carry me back along the block, down an alley that stank of raw sewage, and then through a narrow space between two buildings. I glanced up at the creature who had taken control of us. She had a crescent-moon-shaped scar next to her eye, which gave the sense that she had fought and survived on more than one occasion. Her grunts vibrated against my back as she wrestled me through a doorway and then through a maze of rooms that reeked of wet fur.

I stumbled up a few flights of concrete steps, the toes of my boots catching as I tried to keep up, my thoughts painted red with visions of Malachi. The Mazikin reached a metal door and wrenched it open, revealing a shallow room with three windows opening onto the street below. The pink-clawed Mazikin slammed the metal door, threw the dead bolt, and looked down at me, her fangs only a few inches from my face. “Lela,” she growled. “Lel
a . . .
girl.”

My breath caught in my throat as I stared into her black eyes.

Takeshi ripped his mask from his face and let it fall to the floor, then stepped up next to us. “Lela, this is Zip.”

“Wha
t . . .
wha
t . . .
” I stuttered, trying to figure out why Takeshi had been talking to this creature, and why she knew my name.

Zip turned to Takeshi and spoke in her snarl-hoot-grunt staccato, and Takeshi nodded before giving me a careful look. “She says she knew you. In the land of the living. When sh
e . . .
”

He glanced at Ana with a worried expression, and Ana walked over to me and leaned so all I could see was her face. “She says she’s the Mazikin who possessed your mother.”

The Mazikin released me, and my knees gave out. I hit the floor in a boneless sprawl of limbs, unable to decode all the images and words and thoughts in my head. I looked up at Zip, the Mazikin who had taken my mother. “You—”

“Tu mamá te ama a t
í
, Lela,”
she said softly.

“Have you seen her?” I asked, peering into the dark corners of the room as if I’d find her there.

Zip and Takeshi exchanged words, then he knelt by my side. “She’s in a safe place. Not here. You’ll see her soon.”

“Safe place?” My laughter was hoarse and broken, my voice cracking on each word as I rolled to my hands and knees. There was no such thing as a safe place in this city. I fixed Takeshi with a hard stare. “Why is she here? Why are
we
here? Malachi’s out there. I just saw him.”

“And there’s nothing you can do about it right now,” Takeshi said. “That square is teeming with Mazikin, and unless you want to be chained next to him, we have to wait for a better time.”

I drew a deep breath. The damp concrete floor cooled my blood and slowed my heart, uncramping my muscles and allowing me to stand. “I still don’t get why this Mazikin’s acting like she’s our friend. She’s the reason my mom is here in the first place. Why would she care about her safety? Or ours, for that matter?”

“I’m not entirely sure.” Takeshi’s gaze wandered over to Zip, who was staring at me with total focus. “Is there something unusual about your mother, Lela? Something—”

“Nothing apart from the fact that she’s completely insane,” I said bitterly.

He nodded. “Ah. Well, Zip here is a young Mazikin, and your mother was probably the first and only human body she possessed. I think she probably got a bit lost in your mother’s head.”

“That’s what Sil told me,” I murmured, remembering the moments right before he cut my mother’s throat.

A rumbling growl rolled from Zip’s throat. “Sil.” She bared her teeth. Her curved claws clicked together.

“She still seems a little confused,” said Ana, eyeing Zip. “She has strong feelings for you and your mother, as if she’s part of your family.” Ana’s hands had disappeared beneath her cloak again, and I had no doubt she was ready and willing to put Zip down if she needed to.

“My mother’s not really my family,” I said, hugging myself. I wanted to be numb, truly numb, so nothing else would hurt. But as much as I’d tried to forget her, Rita Santos was an open wound, hurting me from the inside out. My mother had deserted me when I was only four years old. She’d let the system take me, chew me up, and spit me out. I edged away from Zip as a shout went up from the crowd. Zip whined quietly, then turned to Takeshi and began to speak again.

“She’s taking care of your mother,” Takeshi said when she was finished. “When Zip was returned to the city, she was determined to find her. She saved your mother from a meat cart and took her as a slave. I get the sense she treats her more like a pet, though. It’s a better fate than many here have.”

“Well, thanks,” I whispered, not wanting to think of how many times my mother had taken a ride on the meat cart before Zip rescued her. I got up and walked to the window.

Like a punch to the gut, the sight hit me hard—we were right over the square, near the top floor of one of the surrounding buildings. Maybe a story below, and only yards to my right, Malachi was chained to the bloody platform.

My hands clutched at the rough cement of the windowsill as I took in the blood, the gruesome, barely healed wound just beneath his rib cage, the heavy manacles pinning him against the concrete wall behind him. My fingers curled into shaking fists as I gazed at his harshly beautiful face. They’d tried to ruin it. Or half of it, at least. His right cheek was a maze of claw marks, but the left appeared untouched. What hurt the most, though, was seeing his eyes. They were open, and the agony in their black-brown depths was miles deep. He gazed up at the black haze hanging above the stadium lights, like I’d seen him do in the dark city, when he’d stared at the wild forest beyond the city wall. He was escaping in the only way he could.

A shrieking blat of music split the frigid night air, and the crowd roared, the Mazikin’s black-clawed hands waving. The humans in the square cheered, too, like they were just as bloodthirsty. What the hell? Malachi had spent years protecting the inhabitants of the dark cit
y . . .
but of course, these were the people he’d failed, and he didn’t have any power here. The Mazikin were the masters. Takeshi’s claim that the Resistance was a myth made perfect sense as human shouts mingled with the snarls and hoots of the Mazikin. But then a flurry of movement to my left caught my attention, and I leaned from the window and looked down at the alley beside our building. I glimpsed pale-blond hair blown by a chill wind, a flash of milk-white skin as a hand pulled a hood forward, a dark-cloaked human sinking back into the shadows. Then the figure was gone, and the crowd near the alley reshaped around the person who had been there.

All eyes in the square were now focused on an archway of enormous cement blocks, which had been stamped with the image of a Mazikin, a grinning, fanged face keeping watch over the square. The archway was to the side of the platform where Malachi was chained, and through it loomed a dark, vast building, partially obscured by the haze. As the music screeched, discordant and earsplitting, it was joined by the rumble of a powerful engine. The mob parted as a mechanized cart rolled beneath the archway, the exposed coils of its engine gleaming under the stadium lights. Its driver wore a black leather cap with holes cut out for his ears, which twitched as he steered the vehicle into the center of the square. The rear of it became visible; the cart had a long, open back, like a stretch limousine without a hardtop.

And lying in the back of the shining silver cart, on a broad, intricately welded wrought iron throne, was a coppery-furred Mazikin. It was propped on its elbows with its head up, like a dog on a bed, wearing a flowing black leather gown and a crown of creamy ivor
y . . .
No, there were no elephants in the cit
y . . .
It was bone. Had to be. The creature was wearing a crown of bone.

The Mazikin Queen.

Her black eyes swept over the square as she pushed herself up to sit. She raised her hand into the air, revealing long, straight claws that looked like they had been dipped in silver. They gave off a steely glint as she waved to the crowd, who cheered, mouths gaping, tongues lolling, teeth flashing. Behind the Queen stood two large black-spotted Mazikin with curving ebony claws. Slick leathery cloaks marked with black triangles hung from their broad shoulders, and their blunt snouts peeked out from under wide hoods.

As the cart rumbled and bumped over the rough pavement, their cloaks flapped and swayed, revealing the daggers tucked into their belts. “Sil and Ibram,” Takeshi said from behind me. “When he inhabits his own body, Juri has a place in the Queen’s entourage as well. He’s one of her favorite companions.”

I stared at the two Mazikin. The one on the right eyed the crowd with a cold, haughty indifference, but the one on the left, with a deep scar denting the top of his snout, had darting, cautious eyes that never stopped flitting over the crowd. The tip of his nose twitched and trembled, like it was picking up scents in the air. As the cart approached the raised platform, he inhaled deeply, and a wide, malevolent grin split his ugly, spotted face. His gaze swung smoothly up the cement steps and landed on Malachi. I was willing to bet almost anything that the Mazikin with the scarred snout was Sil. His expression was so similar to looks he’d given me when in his human body—when he knew he was winning, even when I hadn’t figured it out yet.

The driver of the cart pulled to a stop in front of the steps. Slowly, the Queen edged herself off her throne and rose on her hind legs. She pointed a razor-tipped finger at the sky, and the crowd abruptly fell silent.

Halfway up the wide cement steps leading to Malachi’s platform stood a Mazikin at a podium—the announcer. Heavy silver loops hung in a row from each of its ears. Its teeth were stained a vibrant red, as were its claws. Its furry arms were brown, but its face was a bleached white. It grunted into the microphone, then let out a hooting growl and gestured at the Queen.

The crowd—including the human slaves—clapped and cheered as the Queen stepped ponderously from the cart, assisted by Sil and Ibram. The folds of her dress stretched tight against her oddly swollen belly. She put a hand to it as she stepped onto the stairs leading up to the platform. With Sil and Ibram close by her sides, she approached the announcer, who bowed low and moved aside to allow her to take its place. The announcer dropped onto all fours to straighten the Queen’s skirts, spreading the black leather material in a neat circle around her feet. For a moment, the Queen’s gaze slid up the front of our building, and I quickly shrank back into the shadows as an iron-edged chill rippled through my body.

Sil, Ibram, and the announcer descended the steps, leaving the Queen alone at the podium. A few steps above her, Malachi stood chained on the platform. His dark eyes were still directed at the sky, like he was unaware of his surroundings. His expression hadn’t changed at all. I wanted to scream for him. I wanted to leap from the window and free him. The dread was nearly strangling me.

The Queen began to speak into the microphone, her deep, rumbling voice rolling over the crowd. Takeshi leaned close and spoke in my ear, translating. “Citizens, you know of my devotion to you. I am your provider, the one who paves the way. I am your lover, the one who gives you young.”

I shuddered at the sound of her voice and his, the growl and the whisper, and the way she patted her belly as she continued to speak while Takeshi translated. “I am your mother, and a mother protects her cubs. I am your Queen, and a Queen destroys her enemies.”