The Marked Girl (11 page)

T
he red-haired man who had tried to grab Liv now lay on the ground, writhing in pain. A jagged, yellowish piece of bone stuck out through the span of skin just below his elbow. But it was his eyes Liv couldn't stop staring at. They were all-black, shiny and empty, just like those of the man who'd attacked her in this very alley the night before.

The
wrath
. The word bounced to Liv's mind easily, but she pushed it away just as quickly.

Cedric rolled away from where he had landed on top of the man and got to his feet again. “Run, Liv! Go!”

Liv whirled around and sprinted toward the grate. She was halfway there before she stopped to look behind her. Her heart flipped as she realized how outnumbered they were.

With shaking fingers, she reached down into her purse and pulled out her cell phone, then punched in three buttons.

“Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

“I need help. My friend is being attacked by a group of, um . . . bad men. They're really strong—I think they may be on
drugs or something . . .”

“I need you to tell me exactly where you are.”

“The natural history museum, downtown. They're in the alley on the right-hand side of the building.”

Liv could hear clicking noises as the woman typed into a keyboard on the other end of the line. She reached the grate in the alley wall and bent down to swing herself through it. A tinny voice echoed out through her phone.

“Sorry, what was that?” Liv asked, sliding ungracefully into the tunnel. It was completely dark in there, with only a bit of afternoon light filtering in from the alley. Liv made her way through the tunnel slowly—it was much more difficult without Cedric to guide the way.

The woman's voice came through insistent and firm. “Can you tell me if any of the attackers have weapons?”

“I . . . I don't know. But there's a lot of them. Please hurry.”

“Dispatch is on the way. Tell me what's—”

The woman's voice cut out, leaving only a buzzy silence in Liv's ear. She looked down at the phone as she continued walking. No reception.

Liv clicked on the flashlight app, and a bright beam of light flickered over the walls of the concrete tunnel. Securing her phone in her right hand, she started to run.

Eventually, she saw a warm glow of light coming from around the corner, and she sprinted toward it. She rounded the corner and found herself at the entrance of a wide, dimly lit room filled with wooden crates and blankets.

A teenage girl jumped up from where she'd been sitting at
the edge of the room, assuming a fighting stance as she did so. It was the girl from under the bridge. Kat.

Liv's flashlight app lit up the strange girl's features. Even though Kat's face was contorted with confusion and she wore what looked like a loose nightgown over a grimy pair of jeans, she was still one of the most beautiful girls Liv had ever seen, outside of a movie screen. Her dark eyes scanned Liv's face as she approached.

“Who are you?” Kat asked, her voice high and forceful.

“Cedric sent me,” Liv choked out.

“Cedric?” Kat moved forward, closer to Liv. Her eyes narrowed. “Wait, I remember you . . .”

“Cedric's in trouble,” Liv breathed out. “He's right outside fighting this group of men. Of . . . um, wraths. There's so many of them . . .”

Understanding dawned on Kat's face. In a movement almost too quick for Liv's eyes to follow, she dropped to the floor and picked up something shiny. It was the sword that had sat in Liv's room for two months—Cedric must have reclaimed it from the Acquisitions Department. Kat gripped the hilt and pushed her way past Liv without a second glance.

“I'll just, uh . . . follow you, then,” Liv called after her, weakly.

Kat's footsteps were already fading away through the tunnel.

When Liv finally made her way back to the grate and crawled back into the alley, the first thing she noticed was that the fight had gotten closer. The men had pressed in toward the recesses of the alley, blocking off the view of the street.

Someone yelled out in pain.

“Cedric,” Liv whispered, then took off toward the fight. The logical part of Liv's brain screamed out at her to stop, but she ignored it, running faster and faster down the concrete alleyway. It was only when she finally reached the tight circle of fighting that she halted abruptly, her shoes screeching against the pavement. Instead of jumping in to help, she could only stare in amazement at what unfolded around her, bright and strange as a movie sequence.

The alley was only about ten feet across from wall to wall, and nearly the entire width of the space was filled with the sights and sounds of fighting. Liv saw Kat toss Cedric the sword through the air. He caught it in one hand midwhirl, and somehow seemed more balanced with the large blade than without it.

Kat squared off against a burly, blond man in a torn Metallica T-shirt. Just like the others, he had jet-black eyes and a pointy grimace. He slashed out with one of his hands, aiming for the smooth skin of Kat's right cheek with fingernails that were sharpened to pointed bits, almost like claws.

Kat held up her hand to ward off the blow, then ducked under the man's grasp. Clenching his arm in her own small hands, she wrenched it downward, snapping it over her knee. Physically, it shouldn't have been possible. For someone as slight as Kat to get that kind of leverage over her attacker and to exert enough force to break his arm . . . it went against the laws of nature. Liv wouldn't have believed it had she not heard the crack of bone from where she stood.

Against one wall, Cedric and Merek were fighting more of the wraths. One of the black-eyed men charged at Merek, and before the two collided, Merek swerved to his left, grabbed the man from behind, and used his momentum to throw him against the side of the museum. When the man's head hit the wall, the bricks behind him cracked and crumbled, falling in pieces to the ground. Again, it shouldn't have been possible. It shouldn't have happened. But it had.

And Cedric, he was all speed. He moved so fast between two of the hulking men that Liv could barely see him, aside from a kick here or a whirled blade there. The two attackers grunted in frustration as their fists missed their target, again and again. Cedric moved with precision and accuracy, but also with a kind of grace. And his face . . . though his expression was set in determination, Liv could swear he was almost smiling. He leaped off the ground—higher than Liv thought a person should be able to leap—and kicked a man in the jaw. Then he landed on his own feet with hardly a grunt and kept fighting.

Liv sucked in a breath as her eyes bounced from Cedric to the others, watching them break the laws of physics as they fought. They looked like, well, like superheroes, fighting off the bad guys in the third act of the movie.

Except this wasn't a movie. This was real.

Everything in the world seemed to shift slightly. Liv couldn't argue with what she was seeing happen with her own eyes. But none of it made sense, either. It didn't fit into the real world that she knew, the world that she'd always known. Was she going crazy? Or was it that . . . was it that Cedric wasn't lying? That
everything he'd told her was true?

And if that was the case, then . . .

Liv struggled to think straight. Cedric said he'd come through a portal from another world. That he'd been raised to fight monsters with all-black eyes and superstrength. Liv looked at the disfigured men around her, letting the truth sink in. They weren't on drugs; they weren't part of a strange cult or a group of Anne Rice fan boys. They weren't human at all.

“Holy. Shit.”

The whispered words were barely out of Liv's mouth before something knocked into her from behind. Liv fell face-first to the ground and hit it, hard. She tried and failed to cry out, unable to pull in a breath. Craning her neck, Liv saw one of the wraths perched over her, knee pressed into her back. It was the black-haired wrath who had attacked her the night before.

“I've got her!” The wrath called out in a rough voice.

“Hold her there,” another low voice responded.

Liv looked to the others, but they were all still busy fighting. No one had noticed her go down.

The second wrath approached. A large one, with a shock of white-gray hair. The man who'd stared at her on the bus. He looked down at Liv with hungry eyes, then to the black-haired wrath. “Well?”

Liv pushed up off the ground with all her might, but the black-haired wrath still had his knee located firmly in her back, and one hand clutching tightly at the back of her jacket. He pushed her back down to the pavement, and Liv heard her jacket tearing. She looked back again and saw the wrath staring
down at her exposed skin. His black eyes narrowed, his features contorting into something that might be construed as a smile.

“Well done, Varl,” the wrath from the bus said. “You were ri—”

The wrath's head whipped around at a sound in the distance—sirens. In the instant he was distracted, Cedric appeared and slammed his entire body into the black-haired wrath, Varl, knocking him off Liv in one ungraceful yet effective movement.

Liv scrambled to her feet, just in time to jump away from the grasp of the white-haired wrath. His grin revealed a row of overcrowded, pointy teeth. Liv screamed.

“Kat!” Cedric called out, still fighting with Varl on the ground. “Help!”

The white-haired wrath grabbed for Liv again, his smile contorting into a snarl. The sirens grew louder. Liv curled her hands into fists, hoping she could keep the advancing wrath at bay until the police arrived.

Kat got there first.

She jumped into the white-haired man's path and aimed a roundhouse kick that he quickly dodged. Kat pursued, throwing punch after punch until one landed on the wrath's jaw.

Kat stopped punching when red and blue lights fell over the brick and concrete. Liv looked up to see two squad cars pulling up to the mouth of the alley.

“Finally,” she muttered.

The wraths noticed the police, too. Many of them stopped fighting, instead looking from the cop cars to one another, as if
deciding what to do. Cedric disentangled himself from Varl and jumped up.

“We must leave,” he said. “Now.”

The white-haired wrath whipped his head back in Cedric's direction. He'd made his decision. Turning his back on the cops, he squared off to face Cedric and his friends. The other wraths quickly followed suit.

“You're not going anywhere,” he said.

“Chath, what about—” Varl said, gesturing toward the cops.

The white-haired wrath, Chath, snorted. “They cannot hurt us. And neither can the royals. If they had silver, they would have used it by now.” Chath grinned. “But we can hurt them.”

Chath nodded his head in Liv's direction, and Varl leaped out toward her.

This time, Liv didn't wait for Cedric or Kat to jump in the way of the charging wrath. She ran. She dodged around Varl and nearly collided with the alley wall. Instead, she pushed herself off it and kept racing ahead, straight toward the cops.

“Help!”

“Liv, no!” Cedric was running right behind her.

Liv turned around in surprise as Cedric caught up to her easily, grabbing her wrist.

“Everybody stay where you are!” a gruff voice called out. Two officers jogged toward them from the mouth of the alley. One talked into his walkie-talkie as he ran.

“Liv,” Cedric said, his voice low and urgent. His eyes darted between the cops and Kat, who was once again fighting with the wraths nearest to her. “Those men cannot help us. We must run.”

“But . . . ,” Liv sputtered. She looked up and saw Kat getting knocked to the ground by a hulking wrath.

“Trust me. Please,” Cedric said. His eyes raked over hers, intense. He didn't seem to notice that he was still gripping her arm.

Liv looked back at the police as they took formation along the alley.

“He's got a weapon.”

Liv's chest seized as the officers nearest to her pulled out their guns. They were looking at Cedric, who still held the long sword in one hand. His eyes were on her, begging. She nodded.

Cedric lifted Liv off the ground and sprinted backward before she could say another word. They moved so fast that the shapes passing by Liv condensed into one unfocused blur. In just a few seconds, they were standing back with the others, who continued to grapple with the wraths.

“Move out, now!” Cedric screamed. His voice blended into the commands being shouted by the police officers. Chath was also screaming orders, but Liv couldn't pick one voice from another in the chaos. She saw Kat free Merek from the grip of a wrath. Varl stood frozen, eyes bouncing between Cedric and the officer who was quickly approaching him. He charged the officer, knocking his gun down and throwing him back against the brick wall in a fraction of a second. The officer smashed into the wall and crumpled to the ground, motionless.

Liv let out an involuntary gasp, her breath catching in her throat.

And then they were running, racing toward the back of the alley, away from the cops and the wraths both. Liv knew
they were running in the opposite direction of her car, but she couldn't get her mind to work right to say something. It was stuck on the image of the police officer's head hitting the brick wall. She heard one gunshot, then another, but refused to look back.

Cedric still carried Liv, tight against his side, as they finally reached the back of the alley. He turned left just before the fence, running down a second alley that butted up against the rear of the park. Another turn, this one toward the massive USC Coliseum, and soon the sounds of the fight faded behind them. Liv could only hear the labored sound of Cedric's breathing, the racing of his heart, the paces of his friends as they ran and ran and ran.

They finally made it to a large parking lot, and Liv found herself breathing normally. Her thoughts were less muddled by fear. “Cedric,” she said, turning her head to face his. “Cedric, stop,” she said.