SEVEN
THE FLOOR BENEATH ME was cold. I tensed against the shivers, trying to remain still while I figured out where the hell I was.
Oh yeah. Hell.
I kept my eyes closed and listened. Nearby, deep voices conversed in accented English. The scuffs of their boots against stone, the clank and creak of their armor, the huffs and grunts of their breaths and laughter…there were at least two of them. This was very bad.
I cracked open an eye—a cell. Stone on all sides except the front, which was barred. The Guards were just on the other side. Slowly, carefully, I turned my head. It was more difficult than I expected. First, because my skull felt like it had been turned inside out. The knot on my temple ached fiercely. Second, because something was wrapped around the lower half of my face.
Oh. God. I was wearing a freaking muzzle.
I tried to lift my shaking hands to tug at it. But my hands…they were covered with leather mittens strapped tightly to my arms. Panic snaked straight up my back and into my brain. I sat up quickly.
I regretted it an instant later. My vision blurred and my head throbbed. I leaned over and dry heaved. Fortunately for my muzzled self, my stomach was empty. I curled into a ball on my side and pretended to sink back into unconsciousness, shielding my face with mittened hands but leaving a sliver of space through which I could observe the Guards. They sat at a rough wooden table in the middle of a large room, surrounded on three sides by cells like mine. Some were empty, others occupied; shadows slithered behind the bars. Gas lanterns hung from the walls and ceiling, weakly lighting the windowless space. Three wooden doors marked the rear wall.
One of the Guards noticed my movements. He shot a meaty elbow at his pal and turned to me.
The two of them approached my cage. They looked like twins. Their features were thick and bulbous, with jutting square jaws, bald scalps, and prominent foreheads that hung over glowing, jewel-colored eyes. And they both looked very interested in me.
“I think it’s quite cute, Bilal. Are we sure it’s a Mazikin?” said the one with sapphire-blue eyes. “It doesn’t smell like one.”
“Well, Hani,” answered Bilal, “this one stuck Amid pretty good, which in my estimation makes it less cute and more likely to be a Mazikin.”
“We’ll certainly know once Malachi’s done with it,” Hani mused.
Bilal looked concerned. “Does Amid know it’s awake?”
Hani looked back over his shoulder. “Not yet. I was hoping it would stay down until Malachi got here so he could deal with it.”
All three of us jumped as one of the doors at the back of the room crashed open. Another Guard—the one I’d stabbed. “I was told Malachi has been summoned,” he boomed.
“Amid, it’s procedure to summon the Captain when we capture a live Mazikin,” Bilal said apologetically.
“I will question it myself,” snarled Amid. He pulled a set of skeleton keys from a peg on the wall and fingered them. When he found the right one, he jammed it into the keyhole at the door of my cell.
Bilal laid a hand on Amid’s arm. “Remain in control of yourself.”
Amid jerked his arm away. “I will question it. I bet I can get it to spill its secrets before Malachi steps over our humble threshold. Then he will see who’s in control.”
Hani looked at Bilal and shook his head. “Let’s go get something to eat.”
Bilal looked disgusted, but all he said was “Malachi will not be happy.”
My heart sank as I watched them disappear through the door on the far left side of the room.
Amid wrenched open the door of my cell and took a few cautious steps inside. I lay still but could not completely conceal my helpless, terrified tremors.
“Oh good,” Amid chortled evilly, “you’re awake.” He nearly took one of my arms out of its socket as he dragged me to my feet. “Let’s go someplace where we can talk, just you and me.”
Amid yanked me out of the cell and shoved me in front of him. It was all I could do to put one foot in front of the other. My head was killing me.
He clamped his enormous hands around my arms from behind. The hot tar of memory started to bubble up from the caverns of my mind. I shook my head to try to stay in the moment, knowing I’d need every bit of wit and cunning I had to make it out of this situation alive. I immediately found out shaking your head after you’ve just gotten a concussion is a really stupid idea, though, and was almost carried away by the waves of nausea that crashed over me.
Amid guided me roughly toward the door on our left and locked an arm around my neck as he tugged it open. Some of those thick, sticky memory bubbles popped, and I thrashed as he edged up hard behind me. Then he kicked me right at the base of my spine. I landed on my side on the rough cement floor and scrambled to my feet, but it felt like my vertebrae were in pieces, and I couldn’t quite stand up straight. The floor suddenly looked very inviting.
I backed against the rear wall as Amid advanced. “I said I just wanted to talk,” he explained as he reached out. “I’m going to take off your muzzle and mitts, and you’re going to be a nice little monster, all right? Relax, Mazikin—I’m going to give you something you want.”
I stood still as he unbuckled my restraints. As soon as they were loose, I scooted away. “Thanks,” I said as I put as much distance between us as possible. The room was large, but not nearly large enough for my liking.
“How’s your leg?” I asked as my gaze streaked along the walls. The only way out was the door we’d just come through. Amid grunted by way of an answer and watched me with an expression that was a nauseating combination of amusement and hatred. “By the way,” I added as I edged a few inches closer to the door, “just to clear things up, my name’s not Mazikin. It’s Lela.”
His sea-green eyes narrowed, and he knelt to pull his hunting knife from its sheath. “You can call yourself whatever you want.” His gaze bored into mine as he sent the knife sliding across the floor toward me. “Now—try to cut me again.”
Well, shit.
Because I had no choice, I scooped the knife from the floor. I wondered whether it was going to be plunged into my flesh sometime in the next few minutes. It seemed highly likely.
“I thought we were going to talk,” I said in what I hoped was a friendly voice. “I really am sorry about your leg. You kind of caught me by surprise. Survival instinct, you know. Nothing personal.”
I shuffled sideways, trying to find a path to the door that kept me out of his reach. He grunted again and stalked toward me. Crap. This guy was going to slaughter me, and I had no idea why, apart from the fact that I’d escaped the first time he’d tried. It seemed like a case of mistaken identity—he kept calling me a Mazikin, and I had nothing to do with those sword-wielding folks the other Guard had killed. I crouched low (in part because I couldn’t actually stand up straight) and realized I had nowhere to go. He was now between me and the door.
For a crazy moment I pondered whether there might be an afterlife after my afterlife. When he killed me, where would I go? I was already dead. Wasn’t dying once enough? For me, it definitely was. Desperate to postpone my seemingly inevitable second death just a few moments longer, I cocked my arm and threw the knife with all the strength I had.
Amid had obviously not expected me to do something so ballsy. He looked down, stupidly surprised, at the knife sticking out of his gut.
It took me less than a second to see it wasn’t deep enough to slow the freaking rhino down, and I was limping along the edge of the wall before he’d pulled the blade from his belly. Although I expected to feel it between my ribs any moment, I just couldn’t kick the habit of survival.
He laughed. “That was a good trick, Mazikin. But I hope you have something better than that.”
I scuttled like a pathetic crab around the edge of the room. “Nope. Any chance you’d believe me if I told you again that I’m not a Mazikin?”
“Nope,” he mimicked. He blocked my path to the door with two long strides as he threw the knife into the farthest corner of the room. “Care to try again?”
“No.” I shrank back, trapped.
“Too bad.” He punched me sharply in the side, sending me straight to the floor. I collapsed in on myself, all my smart words gone, unable to breathe, wondering absently if the ribs he’d shattered had punctured a lung. Amid grabbed my ankle and jerked me toward him. “Stand up, Mazikin.”
I actually tried to comply, anything to keep him from hitting me again. But I didn’t move fast enough for him. He grabbed my hair and wrenched me to my feet, then pressed me back into the corner, bending over me. The fog of his breath coiled around me, dragging me back in time.
On my belly in the dark and the weight of his body presses me into pink sheets.
No. Not again. This will not happen again. My fist shot up and connected with Amid’s nose as I reached for his baton with my other hand. I tore it free as he stumbled back, transferring it to my left hand because I couldn’t raise my right arm above my shoulder. I took a desperate, running leap and smacked him across the face with the baton. The crunch of it vibrated up my arm. He bellowed in pain. I threw myself toward the door and reached it just as he charged.
I managed to bang and scream for help only once before he grabbed me again. He slammed my head into the door and whipped me back, sending me crashing into another wall. I tried to swing the baton at him, but I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t see. I just flailed, helpless. I heard the snap of the bones in my wrist as he twisted my arm away from his weapon, but the pain did not hit me fully until he pinned me against the wall again, holding my arms above my head.
I screamed for help, for mercy, for vengeance, face and hips and knees pressed against the cinder blocks, drowning in panicked memories. I was there but not there. Despite my crazed struggling, my mind was unforgiving—it easily registered the sickening pressure of Amid’s body as he crushed me against the wall. No. No.
I kicked but couldn’t hit anything. Streaks of light and dark blazed across my vision. His thick fingers curled into the hair at my scalp as he lurched my head back and bounced it off the wall again. And then I couldn’t see anything at all. Grunts and whimpers flew from my mouth until I ran out of air. Amid was too close behind me to allow me to draw a breath. Facedown in the pink sheets, suffocating. No one will hear my screams.
Then several things happened at once, and I was only able to sort it out later. The door of the room splintered and fell open. A voice shook the walls with fury as it roared, “No.” The weight at my back lifted. The cement of the floor greeted me like a long-lost friend. Metal hit flesh with smacking thuds punctuated by Amid’s grunts of pain. Voices argued in an incomprehensible language. It might have been English, but I was past understanding.
I was too busy dying. Again.