“It’s the horde. While you’re transitioning, they can feel you and you can feel them.”
“Yeah, well, I feel like they’re getting closer. Really close.” I picked my bag up and tugged on his arm. “Let’s go.”
He pulled his hand from mine, and I would have been disappointed if I weren’t too scared to focus on anything but the burning in my muscles, urging me to run. “Devi and Reese are on their way, and we’ll be stronger in a larger group. Especially considering you’ve never really fought a degenerate.”
But my instincts weren’t telling me to fight. They were telling me to flee. Right then. As fast as I could. “I have to go.” I settled my satchel higher on my shoulder, and he let go of me with obvious reluctance. “Come with me, Finn. We’ll go to your safe house and meet the others there.” My legs felt like tightened coils about to explode from the tension. My feet ached to run. My head was alive with thoughts that had no form or meaning, like the fuzz on the TV during a rare news outage.
“Nina, look at me.” He put one hand around each of my arms, and his green-eyed gaze searched mine. Only it felt more like an assessment of my mental state. “Calm down. Ride it out. You want to run because your body knows you can’t fight them all on your own. But you’re not on your own, and if we’re not here when Devi gets here, she’ll kill me.” Shadows hid most of his face, but the determination in his voice was very clear.
Screw Devi! Finn was an exorcist. He’d been through what I was going through, right? So why couldn’t he understand that my body was giving me a command I had no choice but to follow? I couldn’t stand still for one more minute, with my muscles burning and my—
His mouth met mine, and I almost choked on surprise. Then his hand slid behind my neck and his head tilted, and I had a second to decide whether to bite his tongue off or kiss him back.
I’m not sure why I kissed him back.
Maybe because he was the only person I’d spoken to in the past twelve hours, other than my sister, who hadn’t tried to kill me, possess me, grope me, or arrest me. Maybe because I’d never been kissed by someone who wasn’t clumsy and hurried, or ashamed of what he wanted, or using me for an entirely different reason than I was using him. Maybe because kissing Finn felt good when I needed to feel something that wasn’t scary and dangerous and terrifyingly uncertain.
What I do know is that I committed to that kiss like I’d committed to little else in life. My fingers brushed over short stubble at the back of his jaw on their way into his hair. He sucked my lower lip into his mouth and I let him have it, then I gave him more. I lived in that moment, fighting panic and urgency with the boldest, most breathtaking and brazenly immodest human contact I’d ever felt.
Then something caught the back of my shirt and I screamed as I was ripped away from Finn, reaching for him, my fingers grasping. I twisted, my heart pounding, ready to scratch and claw at the degenerate who’d snuck into our sanctuary, surely the first of dozens ready to chew me to death and slurp up my insides.
My feet met the floor and someone swung me around by one arm.
A girl’s face came into focus in the dark, and she was definitely not a degenerate, though she did look mad enough to rip my arms off. Before I could truly process the fact that I’d just been caught in carnal contact—yet another sin on top of the charges already leveled against me—she said my name.
“You’re Nina?” Her dark eyes narrowed as she studied me, though she couldn’t have seen much in the shadows. Her grip on my arm bruised, and my heart kept racing, even though she was human, thus unlikely to eat my face off or devour my soul.
I nodded, too surprised to ask the questions rapidly coalescing from the chaos in my head.
“Well, Nina, we’ll get along just fine if you remember to keep your mouth off my boyfriend.”
“I’m not her boyfriend.” Finn stepped into sight on my left, carrying my satchel with his duffel over one shoulder. “Let her go, Devi.”
I jerked my arm from her grip and took my bag when Finn held it out. “Who’s her boyfriend?”
“Maddock. We look a lot alike, in a certain light.” He turned to Devi. “She hasn’t met him yet.”
“But he’s okay?” Fear resonated in her voice, beneath an obvious strength and hostility.
“Like I’d let him get hurt.”
Devi looked far from mollified. “I want to talk to him.”
“So do I. We’ll both have to wait until we get to the safe house. Where’s Reese?”
“Keeping watch in the alley,” she said, and when Finn strode past her, headed for the back door, she grabbed his arm, and I realized she talked as much with her hands as with her mouth. “Finn. I want. To talk. To Maddock.”
That was when I decided I didn’t like Devi.
“We don’t have time for this. Come on.”
“Where’s Maddock?” I jogged to catch up with Finn, stepping over trash and dodging broken, oily machine parts while my satchel bounced on my back.
“You didn’t tell her?” Devi called, stomping after us.
“Tell me what?”
“I haven’t had a chance to explain everything yet.” Finn shot me an apologetic glance. “We’re kind of a complicated team, in case that isn’t obvious.” He pulled the door open and gestured for me to step into the alley. “You’ll meet Maddy and Grayson when we get there. For now we all need to concentrate on surviving the trip. Stick close to me, and if I say run, you run. Got it?”
“Finn!” Devi snapped softly.
Finn followed me into the alley. He never even glanced at her.
Though she was still clearly furious, Devi got quiet as soon as the door opened, obviously hyperaware that we weren’t the only ones who could hear her now.
“How do you feel? Are they any closer?” Finn whispered, and it took me a second to realize he was talking to me. And that he was using my transitional state like a radar gun for degenerates.
I closed my eyes and discovered that that panicky sense of urgency was still there. I’d just been too distracted by Devi—and kissing Finn—to think about it for the past two minutes.
“Don’t do that,” Devi whispered, so close to my ear that I jumped. I opened my eyes to find her frowning at me from the doorway, her long, thick, dark ponytail trailing over her shoulder.
“Don’t do what?”
“Don’t close your eyes. You can’t fight what you can’t see.”
“How close are they?” Finn asked, and I tensed when footsteps reverberated from the darkness at the other end of the alley.
“Close.” Those footsteps set me even more on edge, but Finn and Devi didn’t look scared, so I was assuming I shouldn’t be either.
But then, maybe they never looked scared. Maybe fighting degenerates was so routine for them that they didn’t even remember what fear felt like. I wasn’t sure whether to envy them that or feel sorry for them.
The shadows shifted and a man stepped into the moonlight several feet from us. He was huge. At least half a foot taller than Finn, and nearly as broad as the back door of the warehouse. But when he came closer, I realized he wasn’t any older than the rest of us. He was just…big.
“Nina? Hey. I’m Reese.” He reached out to shake my hand, and his nearly swallowed mine.
“Hey.” In spite of the sizable new addition to our forces, it took every bit of my self-control to keep from bolting down the alley and into the street, then racing in whatever direction my legs chose.
Reese turned to Finn. “She looks antsy. She’s been triggered?”
He nodded. “About eight hours ago.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t take her to our local base,” Devi said. “As long as they can sense her, they’ll hunt for her, which will lead them straight to us.”
“You want to leave me?” Panic rang in my voice. I’d never successfully fought off a degenerate, and I could feel the horde getting closer, like I could feel the rush of my own pulse. But I couldn’t outrun them all.
“We??
?re not leaving her,” Finn said.
Devi’s dark eyes glistened in the moonlight when she rolled them. “Of course not. We need her, whether I like her or not. But maybe we should stash her somewhere until she finishes transitioning. Somewhere they can’t get to her, obviously.”
“And where might that be?” Reese crossed thick arms over an even thicker chest.
“I don’t know, but it seems stupid to point a big flashing arrow at our home. Right? You want to lead them to Grayson?”
Reese looked startled by the thought, and then he frowned, considering. “Wherever you put her, degenerates will circle her like sharks around blood, and a bunch of monsters clawing up the outside of a building would definitely draw the Church’s attention. It’d have to be outside of town. So maybe one of the ghost towns?”
My heart dropped into my stomach.
There were thousands of ghost towns in the United States alone—entire communities wiped out nearly a century ago during the war. Most of the smaller ones had been completely swallowed by the demon horde right at the beginning, every single citizen either killed or possessed. Some towns had been razed, burned to the ground by the occupying horde or by the army fighting it.
Most of the towns that were still standing at the end of the war had been abandoned in favor of cities and larger towns, which had managed to build strong walls and post armed guards to keep out the remaining, roving degenerates. Now those “ghost towns” dotted the vast expanse of the badlands, in what used to be the heart of America.
There were four ghost towns within an hour of New Temperance by bus. We’d been to two of them—one razed, one standing abandoned—on school field trips, and they were beyond creepy. The only thing scarier than living in a town ruled by the Church would be living in a town not ruled—thus not protected—by the Church.
“Seriously?” My pulse raced and my legs ached to move. “You’re just going to abandon me in a ghost town?”
“No.” Reese smiled at me in the dark, and moonlight shone on his teeth. He had a friendly smile. “I’ll stay with you. You’ve only got eight or ten more hours of transition, and after that we’ll meet everyone else at home base.”
Finn took my hand. “Stash her if you want, but I’m staying with her.”
“Damn it, Finn,” Devi whispered. “You are not taking Maddock with you.”
“Wait. What’s the point of stashing me if we’re going to have to kill any degenerates that surround the place anyway? Can’t we just kill them now and not get followed anywhere?”
Devi’s brows rose, and she seemed to be reassessing me. “You up for that? Have you ever faced a degenerate?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged, and a can from my satchel poked my spine. “It didn’t go so well, but if anyone has a spare gun, I’m sure I can point and shoot.”
“No guns,” Reese whispered. “Even if the noise wasn’t a problem, you can’t shoot degenerates. Well, you can, but that only releases them to find a new host in our world. You have to exorcise demons to send them back to their world.”
Oh yeah. “Then why does Finn have a gun?”
“Because you can’t exorcise regular people.” Devi’s grim focus narrowed on me. “Answer the question. Are you ready for this?”
The brain-rattling squeal of stressed steel ripped through the night, a block over at the most, followed by a familiar screechy roar. That burning sensation in my legs flared, and my hands began to flex as if they wanted a weapon. “No choice,” I mumbled, and the three of them were instantly on alert. They headed for the east end of the alley at a jog, though no one had so much as pointed in that direction. I trailed behind, as close to Finn as I could get without stepping on his heels.
“How many?” he asked, and Reese cocked his head, moving silently on concrete even in heavy boots.
“Three within a block. Maybe three times that trailing behind, in the main wave.”
“I thought only exorcists in transition could feel degenerates.” I tugged my satchel strap higher on my shoulder and tried to make my feet as quiet as theirs, but my sneakers seemed to crunch on every loose bit of asphalt.
“He’s not sensing them.” Devi paused at the end of the alley to glance both ways. “He’s hearing them. Reese’s ears are like a cat’s.” When she saw no traffic—or demons—she waved for us to follow her across the dark street and into the next alley, where the stench of rotten food emanated from a restaurant’s trash bin. “I used to think he was brain damaged because he was always staring off into space, but it turns out he was just listening to stuff we can’t hear. Handy in moments like this. Not so much when you want privacy.”
Fascinated, I glanced up at him as we ran, which only made it harder for me to keep up. “Cat ears?”
A monstrous screech-roar rang out from behind us, bouncing off buildings and concrete, and my legs began to itch and burn again. Any early risers in the area would have heard that. Fortunately, the nearest neighborhood was more than half a mile away.
“Shouldn’t we move faster?” Our pace had slowed, and my body wanted to run.
“We want the ones in front to catch up with us so we can kill them. Then we’ll draw the rest to a location of our choosing. Someplace away from the residential areas where people might hear the commotion and call the cops.” Devi glanced at Finn without missing a step as she jogged. “There’s a junkyard on the north edge of town, about a mile from here. Industrial district. Should be pretty deserted this time of the morning.”
Finn gestured for us to take a right on the next street. “I saw it yesterday while I was scouting out the town.” While I was in school, presumably. “We’ll have to climb the fence, but that should work.”
The junkyard owner, Mr. Johns, had bought my mom’s car for parts a year before. A few months later, he’d bought an old stereo and our rollaway dishwasher for probably twice what they were worth because he could see that I needed the cash. But even the nicest man in the world would call the police if he saw degenerates swarming his business.
Fortunately, the junkyard didn’t open until nine. Mr. Johns was probably still asleep in his bed. On the other side of town.
“How’s this?” Finn stopped jogging and the others stopped with him as I huffed to a graceless halt several feet past them, my full satchel bouncing on my back. I wondered if I was missing some kind of silent signal. Or maybe my transitional brain wasn’t yet tuned to the exorcist mental frequency.
Reese and Devi glanced around the broad alley we’d stopped in, assessing its usefulness. The path was wide enough for a garbage truck to drive through, and it was scattered with industrial trash bins. The wall on my left was brick, and the one on my right was chipped concrete. There were no windows, and the only light was what shone in from streetlights on either end and what moonlight filtered through the shifting clouds overhead.
If we had to make a stand in town, this was the place.
“Looks good,” Devi said, and while her whisper still hung on the air, Reese tensed and turned to face the way we’d come.
“Three, closing in.”
I could feel them. They were hungry. Ravenous. Their muscles burned from the chase, but they didn’t seem to notice. Their blood pumped, and I could feel the synchronized throb of their pulses inside me, like a second heartbeat. And as I set down my satchel and mimicked Finn’s fighting stance—feet spread for balance, arms bent, hands empty and ready—I realized that the degenerates’ heartbeats weren’t just in sync with one another’s. They were in sync with mine.
They could feel me, just like I could feel them.
“They’re close,” I whispered, and Reese nodded in confirmation. “What’s the plan?” Three degenerates. Four exorcists. I might not get a chance to kill one.
I wasn’t sure whether to be frustrated or relieved by that thought.
Devi laughed, and the sound bounced off the walls around us. The degenerates heard her, and their pulses tripped faster, triggering an increase in my own heart rate. “The plan is to
send the bastards back to hell, then dance on their corpses.”
“She’s kidding about the dance.” Reese’s gaze was focused on the end of the alley, his eyes narrowed in concentration as he listened.
Finn stepped up to my side. “No, she’s not.”
Before I could decide which of them to believe, another screeching roar speared my brain. Claws scraped concrete at the end of the alley. My pulse jumped, and a degenerate leapt out of the shadows. He landed in a squat on all fours, bony knees bent, long, wiry muscles standing out under the pale skin exposed beneath his filthy, shredded pants.
His shirt hung in tatters, one sleeve completely missing, and his shoes were long gone.
His eyes gleamed and he looked right at me, his bald head crusted with dried blood in places and shiny enough to reflect moonlight in others. His mouth gaped wider than should have been possible, saliva gathering at the corners. He threw his head back and screeched, and chills skittered up my spine.
I tried to suck in a breath, but my throat closed in terror. The degenerate leapt for me, and I shoved my left hand forward, trying to call up the fire that had burned the demon from my mother’s wasted body. But my fingers trembled and remained dark as the monster soared toward me in the air, and time seemed to slow around me.
My heart lurched into my throat and as I dove to the right—my backup plan—Reese’s left hand shot up and out. He snagged the scraps of the degenerate’s shirt as it flew over him, then plucked the demon from the air like picking an apple from a low-hanging branch.
Reese slammed the monster into the concrete, and the degenerate and I hit the ground at the same time. My palms skidded on loose asphalt. I heard a violent explosion of air as collision with both Reese and the ground drove breath from the demon’s lungs.
Finn pulled me up by one arm, and I had an instant to realize Devi was laughing at me before a bright glow lit the alley. Squinting, I turned to see that Reese had the degenerate pinned on its back, his hand glowing against the monster’s chest as the demon kicked and bucked and clawed beneath him.
Reese made it look easy. Maybe it was easy for him, considering his size and obvious strength. I watched him in awe, but I couldn’t imagine ever doing what he’d just done—snatching one of hell’s natives from the air, then driving the demon back to hell before it had even caught its breath.