Since then, Melanie and I had been on the run with the rest of Anathema, armed with the dangerous knowledge that the all-powerful Unified Church, which claimed to have saved humanity from the invading demon horde a century before, actually was the demon horde, disguised with human faces and authorial robes.
Minutes after piling into the car, we raced down the main drag of what was once a tiny town called Palmersville, which boasted a grand total of four mostly paved streets. Devi turned right onto one of them, and behind us Reese parked the SUV sideways across the entire two-lane road.
Finn got out of the car with his rifle and took a quick look around the derelict town. He pointed at a crumbling storefront across the street. Ill be in there. Center window, bottom floor.
Be careful. I pulled him close for an adrenaline-fueled kiss, and when we let the moment linger, Devi grabbed the tail of my shirt and hauled me backward.
Priorities, she snapped as Finn grinned at me, then turned to jog across the street.
Well take out the escort vehicle first. Reese towered over the rest of us, in a group too varied in height to form a true huddle. Then Nina and I will take the first supply truck and you two take the second one.
Maddock and Devi nodded, then headed into an alley across the way while Reese and I hid behind an industrial trash bin half-eaten with rust on our side of the street.
Seconds later we heard engines.
Our haphazardly parked SUV was dusty and dented enough to pass for abandoned, and I knew for certain that the ploy had worked when the caravans escort vehicle, a police car, stopped ten feet away. The police car bore the stylized emblem of the Unified Churchfour intertwined columns of flamesand the men who got out of it wore the long navy cassocks of police officers.
Even from a distance I could see the white embroidery on their full, bell-shaped sleeves. They were both consecrated Church leaders.
Which meant they were possessed.
A jolt of excitement shot up my spine, anticipation laced with an edge of fear, and I felt Reese tense beside me. He was as eager to fight as I was.
The cops were already headed toward our SUV, obviously intending to push it off the road, when a passenger got out of the second cargo truck and shouted, Whats the holdup? He wore civilian clothesa green jacket bearing the logo of the shipping company that owned the truck.
Abandoned car, the first cop shouted over his shoulder. Well have it out of the way in a minute.
We came through here last week and there was nothing in the road, the civilian called, and both cops turned to eye our vehicle warily.
A gunshot thundered from Finns hiding place as the civilian was climbing back into his truck. One of its tires exploded, and shouts erupted from both trucks.
The cops dove for cover behind their open car doors, pulling pistols from their holsters while they scanned the storefront for the source of the gunfire. Finn took two more shots in rapid succession, and one of them hit a second tire, effectively disabling the second cargo truck and trapping the two vehicles in front of it.
My pulse raced, my left fist clenching and unclenching in anticipation.
Maddock and Devi burst from their hiding place and crossed the distance quickly and quietly.
Reese and I came at the lead vehicle from the opposite direction, running crouched over, and the driver got out of the car when he saw us coming. Even if his robes hadnt been embroidered, Id have known he was possessed from the way he moved, inhumanly quick and impossibly nimble. Daylight hid the demonic shine in his eyesvisible only to exorcists and fellow demonsbut I saw recognition in his expression when he skidded to a stop in front of me, already reaching for the gun at his waist. He knew me.
But then, everyone knew Nina Kane. I was public enemy number one.
I lunged forward and pressed my left hand to his chest before he could pull his weapon. Light burst between us, and the demon screamed as he was burned from his human host while the body dangled from the fire kindled in my palm, weightless beneath the power of exorcism.
On my right, Maddock grunted. A form flew past me and crashed to the ground, unmoving. The light from my hand faded and the body suspended from it crumpled to the cracked pavement. I turned and found Maddy fighting a second possessed police officer, but before I could get to them, I was suddenly yanked from the ground and thrown backward through the air.
I screamed and flailed in flight, then crashed onto a patch of grass ten feet from the road. Before I could stand, another navy-robed demon sprang at me with an odd, squarish gun in his hand. I rolled out of the way, and the demon shoved the weapon into the ground where Id been an instant earlier.
The weapon buzzed, and I realized it was a stun gun. Theyd come armed not to kill, but to capture.
The Church still wanted us alive.
Watch out! Stun guns! I shouted as I rolled over and leapt to my feet.
The demon was on me in an instant. I tried to kick the weapon from his grip but missed his hand entirely. He was too fast. Too strong. After fighting only mutated and relatively weak degenerates in the badlands, I was out of practice battling demons in their prime, and the number of pained grunts bursting from my fellow exorcists said I was not alone.
Time to step up my game.
The demon cop lunged again and I blocked his gun arm, then kicked him in the chest as hard as I could. Breath exploded from his mouth and the demon flew backward several feet. I was on him before he could stand, my palm already alight with the force that would scorch him from his stolen body and eject him from the human world. For just a second, as I pressed that living flame to his chest and listened to his flesh sizzle, I felt . . . peaceful.
Useful.
I was born for this.
Behind me, the grunts and thumps were winding down, and when the body beneath my hand fell limp, I turned to see that we had won the fight.
It wasnt even close, really. I counted six men in white-embroidered navy police cassocks, each now sporting a scorched and smoldering hole in his chest. The two survivors were the human deliverymen whod been driving the cargo. Both now stood with their backs against the first of the two green supply trucks with their hands in the air, while Finn aimed his rifle at them.
Whats the plan for these two? he asked, his aim unwavering.
Maddock considered the question for a moment. Cuff em and leave em in the escort vehicle.
Im on it. Devi squatted next to one of the dead cops, then stood with his handcuffs. While she and Finn restrained the civilians, Maddock searched the bodies until he found the keys to the cargo compartments. He unlocked the rear of the first truck and rolled the door up to reveal the shipment.
Relief eased the most immediate of my fears. Our famine was over, at least for a while.
Reese rounded the back of the vehicle. Holy hellfire. The truck was stacked full of boxes, floor to ceiling, front to back. Even if the second vehicle was emptyand it wouldnt bewed found way more than we could carry.
Each box was clearly labeled, and at a glance I noticed crates of canned and dry goods, boxes of clothing bound for department stores, cleaning supplies, textbooks, and more toiletries than Id ever seen in my life.
They put all their eggs in one basket, Maddock said, his voice hollow with surprise. They must have thought we wouldnt attack an armed caravan.
They put all their eggs in one basket, Maddock said, his voice hollow with surprise. They must have thought we wouldnt attack an armed caravan.
Or they were hoping we would, I guessed. They came armed with stun guns, prepared to capture, not kill.
Well, too bad for them. Devi stepped in front of me and pulled a clipboard from a hook on the wall of the cargo area. The inventory was several pages long.
Itll be easier to drive this back than to try to unload it, Reese said, and no one argued. We took turns siphoning the gasoline from the truck we wouldnt be taking, and then Maddock and Devi drove off in the other cargo truck. Reese followed them in our SUV, which left Finn and me to drive the shot-out car wed stolen from a sympathetic cop back in New Temperance. As we passed the police vehicle on the way to our car, one of the cargo truck drivers stuck his head out of the backseat window.
Carter? he called, leaning at an odd angle because his hands were bound behind his back. The other civilian sat in the front seat, his left wrist handcuffed to the steering wheel. Neither man could get out of the car, but they would be able to drive it to the nearest city. You used to be Heath Carter, right? the man in the backseat repeated, staring at Finn. I knew I recognized you.
Wed ditched Carters ID along with his unembroidered church cassock months ago, because even when Finn eventually released his body, returning to New Temperance would be a death sentence for the real Carterhe would know things the Church wouldnt want him to share.
Hes not possessed, I said. He just switched sides once he learned the truth. Telling my little lie was much easier than trying to explain that Carter actually was possessed, but not by a demon. Beyond that, we didnt want the Church to know about Finn and his ability to inhabit any human body not already occupied by a demon. He was as close to a secret weapon as we had.
What truth? What the hell happened out there? the man cuffed to the steering wheel demanded, and I followed his gaze to where wed lined up the scorched corpses on the grass. What did you bastards do to them?
The drivers didnt recognize us as exorcists because their only exposure to the practice had come from the Churchs army of fake exorcists, who marched around in dramatic black robes, wearing crosses and chanting nonsense in Latin for show.
Those cops were possessed, I said. We exorcised them.
Nina, Finn whispered, warning me to shush, because just like with Carter, the more these civilians knew, the more danger theyd be in from the Church. But theyd already seen enough to get themselves killed, so my explanation might actually save their lives.
You expect us to believe youre exorcists and the cops were demons? the man in the backseat spat. Bullshit. He leaned forward, appealing to his coworker in the front. Demons are pathological liars. You cant believe a word she says.
If were possessed, why would we let you live?
Backseat Man lifted his eyebrows at me in challenge. If they were possessedhe nodded at the bodies lined up on the groundwhy were they going to let you live?
So they could deliver us to the Church. I shrugged. That should have been obvious.
Deliver you . . . ? Front Seat Man stared up at me, surprised. Where exactly were they going to put you?
I frowned, considering the question. The backs of both cargo trucks were full of goods, and most of the available seats had been filled by the cops and drivers. They wouldnt have had room to bring more than two of us back.
So why had they come armed with nonlethal weapons?
Before I could come up with any reasonable theories, Backseat Man made a show of glancing around what he could see of the ghost town. Wheres your sister? She lose that baby yet?
Finn held me back when I took an instinctive, aggressive step toward him. Melanie and her unlicensed, underage pregnancy, which constituted multiple prosecutable sins, had risen to infamy when the Church publicly questioned her humanity and broadcast her boyfriends immolationdeath by fireto the entire country.
For once, Finns hand on my shoulder failed to calm me. Shes not going to lose the baby, I growled through clenched teeth. Making sure of that had become my mission in life since escaping New Temperance. Mellies unborn child was the only family she and I had left in the worldthanks to routine sterilization by the Church, I could never have one of my own.
Oh, we both know thats not true, Backseat Man taunted. Even if its born breathing, how long will it live? The well is empty, and you have no donor. Without a soul, that baby will die out here in the dirt, and therell be nothing you or your sister or your gang of flame-wielding assassins can do about it.
Assassins? My heart thumped harder. Only demons called exorcists assassins.
I squinted against the sunlight for a better look at Backseat Man, and that time when I stepped toward him, Finn didnt try to stop me. Hed heard it too. The Church had sent one of its demons in disguise as a deliverymanno official cassock, no telltale embroidery.
Melanies baby will live. I held my left hand out so he could see the flame cradled in my palm. His eyes widened, and he tried to retreat across the bench seat but was trapped by the seat belt. I will find a soul for it. I shoved my fiery hand through the open window, and the demon screeched, an inhuman sound of agony, as the flame met his flesh. And if I cant find a soul for my sisters baby, I whispered so softly that no one else could hear me above the crackle of crisping skin, I will damn well give that kid my own.
TWO
We caught up with the other two vehicles on the way back to Ashland, and Finn must have known something was wrong, because he didnt tease me about my lead foot. Try not to let them get to you, he said, plucking my right hand from the wheel so he could intertwine his fingers with mine. Theyre demons. They live to cause us pain.
But I wasnt upset about what the backseat demon had saidI was upset because he was almost certainly right. The well of souls was empty. It had been quietly drained over the past millennia by demons secretly living among us. The soaring infant mortality rate at the end of the previous century had finally clued humanity in, leading to the war against the unclean, which had decimated two-thirds of the worlds population.
Now pregnancies were licensed and regulated by the Church. People who were declared unfit to reproduce were sterilized at age fifteen, as Id been because I was slightly nearsighted and prone to seasonal allergies. To make sure that every baby conceived would actually live, elderly citizens were expected to give up their souls in simultaneous birth/death events carefully orchestrated by city officials. What the rest of the world didnt know was that the Church only wanted those babies to live so they could be possessed and fed from as adults.
Escaping New Temperance had spared Melanies babyand the rest of usfrom that fate. Theoretically, at least. Unfortunately, our escape had also drastically lowered the chances of finding a soul for the baby. Without one, the youngest and most vulnerable of my two remaining family members would die within hours of his or her birth. Wed all known that from the beginning.