What I hadnt told the rest of Anathema was that I was fully prepared to make the necessary sacrifice myself if I couldnt find a willing donor before the birth.
Itll work out, Nina. Finn squeezed my hand as I pressed on the brake to keep from rear-ending the cargo truck in front of us. One way or another, itll all work out.
But I knew better. Nothing in my life had ever just worked out. Good things never happened unless I made them happen, and five months spent wandering through the badlands hadnt changed that.
Before wed even pulled to a stop in front of the library, Grayson James burst through the cracked glass doors and raced down the crumbling steps without so much as a precautionary glance in either direction. I groaned as I shifted into park. One of these days her enthusiasm was going to get her killed. Or worsepossessed.
Reese got out of the SUV and pulled her into his massive embrace, then lifted her for a long, deep kiss. For a moment I was caught off guard by their demonstrative affectiona transgression worthy of arrest had we still been in New Temperance, or any other city. If Finn and I had become comfortable with our relationship, free from the enforced modesty of the Church, Reese and Grayson had grown bold.
Maddock and Devis connection had already been scandalous when Id met them.
Grace, you cant just keep throwing yourself into unknown situations. Reese set her on her feet on the crumbling concrete, and her head barely reached his shoulder. Until you transition, youre vulnerable.
Wed seen an increase in degenerate activity over the past month as her seventeenth birthday approached, bringing with it the emergence of her exorcist abilitiesa genetic inevitability because her brother and both of their parents had also been exorcists.
I knew it was you, Grayson insisted. I didnt hear any monsters.
Degenerates could sense an exorcist in transition, like a cat scenting a mouse. Albeit, a mouse that would soon be able to burn the cat alive with a single touch. Grayson could hear degenerates in her mind, in the same way she could hear Finn talking even when he had no physical form. We didnt understand her ability, but we couldnt deny its existence.
Devi scowled, her dark brows drawing low over expressive black eyes that only seemed to venture beyond skepticism and disapproval when she was looking at Maddock. Degenerates arent the only threat out here.
I was right, wasnt I? Grayson demanded.
Reese closed the SUVs drivers-side door. Thats not the point.
That is the point. Im not a civilian, she whispered fiercely, trailing him around the vehicle as Melanie and Anabelle finally followed her out of the library now that they knew we werent under attack. In a couple of weeks, Ill be as strong and fast as the rest of you.
And we welcome the day, he said. But its not here yet. Reese would willingly throw his own overgrown frame in front of her as both shield and weapon, but he worried that Grayson was vulnerable when he wasnt around. I had the same concerns for my sister. And for Anabelle. Fortunately, neither of them was eager to start battling demons.
Its never too early to start training. Devi shrugged. Maybe if she knew what she was doing, she wouldnt throw herself into unknown situations.
That was one of the few things Devi and I agreed on, but Reese was afraid that training would encourage Grayson to put herself in danger.
Maddock unlocked the back of the cargo truck and rolled the door up as the last two members of our outlaw band made their way down the crumbling library steps. Anabelle had one arm around Mellie to help steady her. Every day Melanies stomach grew larger while the rest of her appeared to shrink, and the unborn child seemed determined to upset my fifteen-year-old sisters balance. And to keep her up all night. And to make her feet swell, her ribs ache, and the circles beneath her eyes grow darker with every day spent on the run with inconsistent nutrition and nonexistent prenatal care.
Anabelle let go of Mellie on the bottom step. Thats quite a haul!
This is only half, I said, scanning the labels on the top row of boxes. Cross your fingers that theres a crate of vitamins in here, or well have to go back for the other truck.
Devi groanedreturning to the scene of the crime would be a huge risk for the groupbut she didnt argue. Id made it clear since our escape from New Temperance that the health of my sister and her unborn child came first.
We cant carry all that. Melanie stared with huge brown eyes up at the stack of crates.
Finn shrugged, and I could practically hear gears turning as he considered the problem. We can if we ditch the shot-up car for this truck.
You want to drive across the badlands in a marked Church cargo truck? My brows rose. I guess that would be faster than actually painting targets on our backs.
Maddock chuckled as he scanned the inventory, and I glanced from face to face. By the way, am I the only one who didnt know were heading south?
Its news to me, Anabelle said, but that was no surprise. Id known her since I was a kid, but the others didnt trust her like they trusted me, because I was a fellow exorcist, and they didnt like her like they liked Melanie, because everyone liked Melanie. My sisters giftand her cursewas charisma. Which was how shed wound up in love with and pregnant by a sweet but ultimately doomed boy two years her senior.
The oldest of our group by several years, Anabelle was a former ordained Church teacher whod had to follow us into the badlands because knowing the truth about her superiors was as good as having a noose around her neck. Shed lost everything and everyone shed ever had, just like the rest of us. But like Mellie, she was largely defenseless against the dangers of the badlands, and she was eager to earn her place in the group any way she could.
First things first. Finn pulled the collapsible stairs from a hidden shelf beneath the cargo hold, then stepped up into the truck. Food. Well decide everything else once our brains are fueled.
While Maddock, Devi, and I stood watch, Reese and Finn began pulling boxes from the truck and stacking them on the ground. Mellie and Anabelle made notes on the inventory sheet until they came to a crate of canned goods, and the chore was suspended in favor of lunch in the librarys vestibule, from which we could watch over our haul through tempered glass walls that appeared to have shattered, yet remained in place.
Finn and I sat down with a jar of peaches and a can of unidentifiable processed meat apiece. Next to us on the granite floor, Anabelle and Melanie shared cans of twisty pasta shapes in red sauce and a box of cheese-flavored crackers.
The remaining four members of Anathema paired off on the other side of the vestibule so that they could see the road leading into Ashland from the larger American wasteland.
Melanie tugged her bag closer and pulled out one of the books shed scavenged from the library, then flipped through the yellowed pages while she chewed.
How are your feet? I asked around a bite of peach.
Still kind of swollen, but they dont hurt, she answered, without looking up from the book. My hips ache, though.
What about that mark on your back? At first wed thought it was a bruisea small spot at the base of her backbone, slightly darker than the rest of her pale skin. But then it had started to stretch along her spine like the inverse of a skunks stripe.
How are your feet? I asked around a bite of peach.
Still kind of swollen, but they dont hurt, she answered, without looking up from the book. My hips ache, though.
What about that mark on your back? At first wed thought it was a bruisea small spot at the base of her backbone, slightly darker than the rest of her pale skin. But then it had started to stretch along her spine like the inverse of a skunks stripe.
Melanie shrugged, and sun-bleached blond hair fell over her shoulder. I cant feel it, and all the pregnancy books say some skin discoloration is normal. Itll fade after the babys born. When she found her place in the book, her pale brows furrowed and she settled in for the read.
Whats she learning now? Finn asked, eyeing Mellie with a brotherly affection that made me smile.
I tilted my sisters book up so I could read the title. Um . . . Hunting and Gathering for the Modern Paleo. Another in her small collection of survivalist literature, rescued from multiple crumbling libraries across the small stretch of badlands wed explored.
Mellie shrugged and held the book up so we could get a better look. Plants are starting to grow, and we need to know which ones are edible. She and Anabelle had already taught us to fish, to set basic traps for small game, to start a fire without matches, and to cook our meat evenly on a homemade spit. Soon well be able to spot wild-growing roots, tubers, and nuts to supplement all this aluminum-flavored cuisine. She tapped the side of her pasta can and smiled. Then her gaze dropped to the page.
And with that, I lost Mellie to her book. Again.
* * *
In the end, we decided to leave the rusted, shot-up car in favor of the cargo truck.
It took nearly two hours to unload the boxes and set aside the ones we couldnt usemostly household cleaners and clothing that fit no onethen divide the food and usable supplies between the truck and the back of the SUV in case we got separated.
None of our previous raids had yielded as much as this latest haul, but the new goods wouldnt last forever. Wed need the hunting and foraging techniques Ana and Mellie were learning in order to make it through the summer.
But what we needed even worse was fuel. The SUV and truck both guzzled gas at a rate we could not sustain, and the Church had crippled us by cutting off access to their fuel depots. Reese siphoned all the gas from the car we were abandoning while Mellie and Anabelle stocked backpacks full of up front supplies. Then Finn and I squeezed into the cab of the cargo truck with Ana and my sister, and we took off into the badlands again on yet another fractured strip of highway, this time headed south, with the descending sun on our right.
I sat as close to Finn as I could get, both to give Melanie more room and because touching him, even casually, still made my head spin and my stomach flip, like when Id played on the swings as a kid. At first Id thought that was because touching a boy I wasnt related to, for any reason other than medical necessity, was strictly forbidden by the Church. But even as the thrill of rebellion had faded, the rush I felt every time Finn looked at me had only grown.
Wed been on the road for about an hour, his arm stretched across the back of the seat so he could play with my hair, when Ana looked up from her book and sucked in a startled breath.
Holy Reformation . . . ! she swore, and as Finn pressed on the brake I followed her gaze to a car parked on the side of the road a few hundred feet ahead. The windshield was generously splattered with mud, but I couldnt see any obvious damage to the vehicle. It had probably run out of gas, like dozens of other abandoned cars wed come across in the badlands.
Is that?
Static crackled from the handheld radio on my lap before I could finish the question, and I picked it up as Reese spoke into a matching radio from the SUV behind us. You guys see it? he asked, and Mellie nodded, though he couldnt see her.
Yeah, I said into the handset.
Its a long shot, but lets pull over and check the tank for gas, he said, and that was when I realized that those in the SUV couldnt see the detail that had drawn the exclamation from Anabelle. The detail that had captured my attention and Mellies heart, and led Finn to put his right blinker on, even though there was no other traffic to warn of his intent to pull over.
Theres a kid, I said into the radio, holding down the button with my thumb. The boy standing in the dirt beside the car was small, with dark skin and long, tightly curled hair. His navy pants might have been part of a uniform, but his arms were crossed over a faded, striped short-sleeved shirt instead of the white button-down required for school. Hes six or seven years old. Appears to be alone.
Stunned silence dominated the radio channel.
He cant have been there long, Anabelle whispered, as if the child might overhear her through glass and steel from a good hundred feet away. Where on earth are his parents?
In the car. Finn pulled onto the side of the road several yards from the blue sedan. Look closer.
I squinted, and chills popped up all over my skin when I saw two forms slumped over in the front seat. What Id mistaken for mud sprayed across the outside of the windshield turned out to be blood splattered across the inside.
It was too dark to be anything else.
Oh no . . . If the kids parents were in that car, they were either dead or dying.
Stay here. Finn shifted the truck into park and opened his door, then pulled his rifle from behind the bench seat on his way out of the vehicle. He tried to close the door, but I stopped its swing with my foot.
Stay here. I passed his instruction on to Mellie and Anabelle as I climbed down from the truck after Finn.
Seconds later Anabelles door squealed open at my back; shed ignored my instruction as readily as Id ignored Finns.
Dont aim that thing, I whispered when I caught up with him. Hes probably terrified already, and if there were still anything dangerous nearby, he would be dead.
We stared at the car for one long moment, but the splatters were too thick to reveal anything except vague shapes behind the blood.
This isnt right, Nina, Finn murmured, and I knew he wasnt just talking about the gory windshield. Excursions beyond city walls were rare and discouraged, but they werent actually prohibited by the Church as long as the proper permits were secured in advance. But . . . If his parents are dead in that car, howd they die? Demons in their prime dont pull people apart. Thatd be wasting potential hosts. And degenerates wouldnt have left the boy alive.
I shrugged. Maybe he hid.
Finn lowered the rifle but didnt engage the safety. And maybe whatever killed his parents is still around.
His words still hung in the air when Anabelle jogged past us, her blond curls flying, her jeans hanging low on her newly narrow hips. Are you okay? she called to the child, and I grabbed for her arm but missed.
Finn followed her to the car, the rifle aimed at the ground, and he peeked through the windows while Ana knelt in front of the boy without checking under or behind the vehicle.
I groaned on the inside. Why were the members of our group who were the least able to defend themselves always the most likely to put themselves in danger?