Free Vigilante by Sarah Fine Page A

turned away, but he caught her wrist. “We’re not finished.”
    She whirled to punch him, but his hand closed around her other wrist, gently holding her captive. With quick steps, he backed her against the wall, pressing too close to allow her to knee him or kick him, pinning her arms over her head. The rage bloomed in her gut and wrenched the words from her throat, everything she’d been holding back. “I shouldn’t be a Guard! Let them kill me! I don’t care.” She twisted and writhed, but he didn’t loosen his grip, even when she screamed, “Give up, Takeshi! I’m not worth this.”
    “Look at me.”
    “I did that already.” And it had ruined her.
    He chuckled. “Do it again.” And then the humor left his voice completely. “That’s an order, Corporal,” he barked.
    His tone startled her into obedience. He lowered his head until their noses nearly touched. “I will never give up, Ana.”
    It had taken years for her to believe him.
    But the Countryside was a vast place. Maybe even infinite. He could be anywhere in this paradise, and that was why, at first, she’d searched for him. She had no idea how long she’d wandered through the pine-scented forest, the fragrant meadows. She had no idea how many nights she’d spent staring up at the glittering stars. She had no idea how many faces she’d searched, how many young Asian men she’d run up to, hope singing in her chest, only to stumble back as soon as she got close, as soon as they turned their heads. None of them had his grace. None of them looked at her the way he did. None of them had the electric energy, the restless brilliance that crackled and sparked in the air around him. None of them were him.
    He wasn’t here.
    The dawning certainty coiled in her belly like a snake, shifting her insides, squeezing her heart. And then it struck.
    The gray and desolate desert unfurled in front of her like a curtain of ugliness, blotting out the midday sun. Ana blinked. From her perch on the rock, she looked around. No one else in the meadow seemed to see it, even though the sand was oozing its way across the grass. Her heart thundered in her chest as she rose to her feet.
    The desert, lit by a boiling sun hanging in a faintly green sky, was bounded on two sides by jagged peaks that jutted up from the ground and stabbed at the wispy brown clouds above. The mountains were arrayed like teeth in the mouth of a crocodile, forming a long, wide canyon, a path dotted with knots of gnarled trees and craggy low hills. And in the far distance, where the mountains sank into the earth, was a city. It was miles and miles away, but she could see it clearly, its smokestacks belching black smog. A splintery, cold fear prickled along her skin and grew like ice crystals in her brain, poking at her thoughts.
    She could be wrong. Deluded. Driven crazy with the grief, with the desperation of her love for a man she hadn’t seen in a decade but who still owned every beat of her heart. Her feet acted before her brain caught up, carrying her off the rock and through the meadow. The grass tugged at her feet and ankles, but it wasn’t enough to slow her down. Her thoughts whirled with something Lela had mentioned once—how she’d been in the Countryside but hadn’t seen the dark city until she was reminded of her friend Nadia. What if this was the same thing? The moment she’d realized Takeshi wasn’t in the Countryside, this miserable, desolate place had appeared in front of her. With a cruel, evil-looking city in the distance.
    “Please don’t let that be it,” she whispered to herself. “Don’t let him be there.”
    When the Mazikin possessed a body, the soul was imprisoned in their hellish realm. She knew that much. What happened after that had been a matter of disagreement and tension between Takeshi and Malachi, one that lasted until Takeshi died. Takeshi had believed the souls were imprisoned indefinitely, that there was no way out, because the Mazikin were not under