A light flickered on in a hallway at the far side of the space, revealing a few people standing in a corridor, huddled in the archway leading to the long warehouse room where we stood. One of them was the girl I’d been trying to protect, the one who’d been running from the Mazikin. She grinned at me as she twirled her hair around her fingers.

I had led us into a trap. “Malachi, I’m sor—”

“Shhhh.” His hand found mine. I absorbed the warm pressure of his fingers through my skin and drew my strength from it. “Focus.”

We were going to have to fight our way out of here, and I was his only backup.

I held my breath and tuned in to the tiniest of sounds around me, the barest wheeze, the lightest footfall. Malachi extended his baton, and I drew a knife. If we walked into the center of the room in an effort to get to that hallway, we would be surrounded. It was probably what they were waiting for. A chance to come at us from all sides. A memory echoed in my head, from my time in the dark city. Ana, talking to me about how the Mazikin were afraid of Malachi. How they’d never attack him unless they had him greatly outnumbered. I grabbed his sleeve and pulled us back against the door.

Malachi didn’t resist. With our backs against the wall, I slid to the side, out of the intermittent light coming from the far hall. I closed my eyes, picturing this building as I had seen it from the outside. It was a two-story, not huge. Probably not the nest, since it was right in the middle of a neighborhood that was pretty busy during the day. That hallway light provided the only illumination, but I remembered seeing windows as I approached the building. They were probably painted from the inside, but they hadn’t been boarded. There were three of them, located to our right along the wall.

Skin slapped concrete, the sound of a Mazikin charging—from three sides at once. In the thick, oppressive darkness, we only had our ears and the stirrings in the air around us to tell us from where they were coming. I squatted low as Malachi pivoted and stepped backward, and then we were back to back, with the wall of the building blocking their access to my right flank and his left.

“We’ll have to get to the hallway,” he said over his shoulder.