“Hey!” the boy shouted, and a thud told me he’d landed on my side of the fence, just feet away. His arm blurred through the shadows, and the degenerate snarled as it was hauled off me.
I scrambled backward, and the seat of my jeans dragged on the ground until my spine hit the trash bin again. My hands shook. My back burned, the flesh scraped raw by the concrete.
A bright flash of light half blinded me, and when my vision returned a second later, I could see only shadows in dark relief against the even darker alley. One of those shadows stood over the other, malformed shape, his hand against her bony sternum, both glowing with the last of that strange light.
What the hell…?
An exorcist.
An exorcist in a hoodie. Where were his long black cassock, his cross, and his holy water? Where were his formal silence and grave demeanor?
As I watched, stunned, that light faded, and slowly, slowly, the rest of the alley came into focus.
The boy stood and wiped his hands on his pants, his hood still hiding half his face. The degenerate lay unmoving on the ground, no less gruesome in death than she’d been in life, and now that the violent flash had receded from my vision, I realized the alley was growing lighter. The sun was rising.
I pushed myself to my feet while the boy watched me with eyes I couldn’t see in the shadow of his hood. “I…I…,” I stammered, but nothing intelligent followed.
“Holy hellfire!”
We turned to see the Grab-n-Go night clerk standing at the end of the alley, backlit by the parking lot lights, staring at us both. In the distance, a siren wailed, and I realized three things at once.
One: The clerk had reported the disturbance, and the Church was on its way.
Two: He hadn’t realized this was more than a scuffle in an alley until he saw the dead degenerate.
Three: I was still in possession of borrowed/stolen clothes, and since I was the victim of the first degenerate attack in New Temperance in the last decade, the Church would want to talk to my mom.
I couldn’t let that happen.
“Is that…?” the night clerk stared at the degenerate, taking in her elongated limbs and deformed jaw. His gaze rose to my face and he squinted into the shadows. He couldn’t see me clearly but was obviously too scared to come any closer. His focus shifted to the boy standing over the degenerate, and his eyes narrowed even more. “Are you…?”
“Run.” The boy didn’t shout. He didn’t make any threatening gestures. He just gave an order in a firm voice lent authority by the fact that he was standing over the corpse of a degenerate.
The clerk blinked. Then he turned and fled.
“You okay?” The boy shoved his hands into the pockets of his black hoodie. And he was a boy. My age. Maybe a little older. I still couldn’t see his eyes, but I could see his cheek. It was smooth and unscarred. No Church brand. No sacred flames.
What kind of exorcist has smooth cheeks and wears a hoodie?
“That’s a degenerate,” I said, and it only vaguely occurred to me that I was stating the obvious. I was just attacked by a demon. I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. How had it gotten into town?
“Yeah. Is there any way I can convince you to maybe…not tell anyone what I did?”
I frowned. Why wouldn’t he want credit for killing a degenerate? How could he be an exorcist—obviously trained by the Church—yet bear no brand and wear no cassock?
“Please. Just…don’t mention me in your statement, okay?” He glanced to the east, and shadows receded from his jaw, which was square and kind of stubbly. The sirens were getting louder. I could see the flash of their lights in the distance, and the sky seemed to get lighter with every second.
I had to go.
“Not a problem.” I grabbed the chain-link and started hauling myself up the fence. I could not afford a home visit from the Church. Fortunately, the night clerk—Billy, the manager’s nephew—hadn’t recognized me. “I’m not making a statement.”
“You’re not?”
I could hear the question in his voice, but I couldn’t see his face because I was already halfway up the fence. “Thanks for that.” I let go of the chain-link with one hand to gesture at the degenerate below. Then I climbed faster and threw one leg over the top.
“Wait!” he said as I lowered myself from link to link on the other side of the fence. “Who are you?”
“Who am I?” The rogue teenage exorcist wanted to know who I was? “Who are you?”
“I’m…just trying to help. Why was it following you?”
Following me? The goose bumps on my arms had nothing to do with the predawn cold.
“I guess my soul smelled yummy.” Or, more likely, I would have been a meal of convenience—few people were out and about so early in the morning.
Two feet from the ground, I let go of the fence and dropped onto the concrete. When I stood, I found him watching me, both hands curled around the chain-link between us.
The sirens were wailing now, and the sun was almost up. I needed to go. But first, I had to see…
I stuck my hand through the fence—it barely fit—and reached for his hood. He let go of the chain-link and stepped back, startled. Then he came closer again. I pushed the hood off his head, and my gaze caught on thick brown waves as my fingers brushed them.
Then I saw his eyes. Deep green, with a dark ring around the outside and paler flecks throughout. For just a second, I stared at them. I’d never seen eyes like that. They were beautiful.
Then the wail of the siren sliced through my thoughts with a new and intrusive volume as the wall of the alley was painted with strobes of red and blue. The Church had arrived.
“Gotta go.” I pulled my arm through the fence too fast, and metal scraped the length of my thumb.
“Wait! We need to talk.”
“Sorry. No time. Thanks again for…you know. The demon slaying.” I bent to grab the bag of clothes. Then I ran.
At the mouth of the alley, I looked back, but the boy was gone.
The Grab-n-Go parking lot was alive with flashing lights and crawling with cops in ankle-length navy Church cassocks and stiff-brimmed hats. Billy, the night clerk, stood in the middle of the chaos, gesturing emphatically toward the alley while three different officers tried to take his statement. A second later, two of the three pocketed their notebooks and headed into the alley, slicing through the last of the predawn shadows with bright beams from their flashlights.
One squatted next to the dead degenerate while the other aimed his flashlight down the alley. I ducked around the corner in time to avoid the beam, and for a moment I just stood there, clutching the paper bag to my chest, trying to wrap my mind around everything that had just happened.
A degenerate in New Temperance.
A rogue exorcist with beautiful green eyes.
A parking lot full of cops.
And they were all looking for me.
Dawn had officially arrived by the time I crossed my crcked patio and stepped into the kitchen, though the sun had yet to rise over the east side of the town wall. My heart was still pounding. A siren wailed from several blocks away. When I closed my eyes, I saw the monster looming over me, snapping inhuman jaws inches from my nose. I shut the back door softly, then dropped the bulging paper bag next to a duffel full of our own dirty laundry.
The clerk couldn’t identify me. The rogue exorcist didn’t know my name. The Church would not come knocking.
I repeated it silently but still had trouble believing it.
The clock over the stove read 6:14. School started in an hour and a quarter.
On my way through the kitchen, I noticed my mom’s purse on the table. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or pissed off that she’d returned home while I was fighting a degenerate in the alley behind the Grab-n-Go. I glanced into the living room, empty except for the scarred coffee table, worn sofa, and two mismatched armchairs. For the first time in weeks, she hadn’t passed out on the couch.
In the short, narrow hallway, I pushed her door open slowly to keep it from creaking, then sighed with relief. She’d made it to the bed this time. Mostly. Her arm and her bare right leg hung off the mattress. Her left leg was bare too, of course, but somehow she’d gotten her pants off without removing that one shoe.
Her legs were getting thinner—too thin—and so was her hair. Her kneecaps stood out like bony mesas growing beneath her skin, and her eyebrows were practically nonexistent. She’d been drawing them on for most of the past year, until she’d given up makeup entirely a few weeks ago. She didn’t go out during the day, anyway; she “worked” all night now, then stumbled home at dawn.
There was a spot of blood on her pillow, and more of it crusted on her upper lip. Another nosebleed. She was killing herself. Slowly. Painfully, from the looks of it.
“One more year, Mom,” I whispered as I pulled her door shut softly. “I just need one more year from you.”
In the room I shared with Melanie, our radio alarm had already gone off, and as usual, my little sister hadn’t noticed. I swear, a demon horde could march right through our house and she’d sleep through the whole thing.
“…and I, for one, am looking forward to a little sun!” the DJ said as I dropped my oversized coat on the floor. It thumped against the carpet, which is when I remembered the pilfered cans of stew I’d meant to leave in the kitchen. “In other news, Church officials in New Temperance are expected to announce their choice for headmaster of the New Temperance Day School today, a job vacated just last month when Brother Phillip Reynolds accepted a position in Solace….”
I listened for a couple of minutes, waiting to see if they’d announce a degenerate attack in New Temperance and the mysterious boy and girl spotted in the alley. When that didn’t happen, I poked the alarm button, relieved that I hadn’t yet made the news, and the DJ’s voice faded into blessed silence.
That alarm radio was the only thing on my scratched, scuffed nightstand. It was the last thing I saw before I fell asleep and the first thing I saw every morning. The clock divided my days into strict segments devoted to sleep, school, homework, housework, and real work. I had little time for anything else.
My sister’s nightstand was covered in books. Not textbooks or the Church-approved histories and biographies available in the school library. Mellie had old, thick hardcover volumes, some with nothing but black-and-white print stories, others with brightly colored strip illustrations of people with ridiculous powers, speaking in dialogue bubbles over the characters’ heads. She borrowed them from Adam Yung’s dad, who had a secret collection of prewar stuff in his basement.
The Church hadn’t officially outlawed secular fiction, but they had a way of making things like that unavailable to the general public. Right after the war against the Unclean, they’d recycled entire public library collections to reuse the materials. And after they’d brought down all cellular transmission towers—to keep demons from communicating with one another en masse—people had no use for their portable phones and communication devices, so there were recycling drives for those too.
Collections like Mr. Yung’s were rare. When we were kids, I’d read his stories with Melanie, curled up in our bed, dreaming of eras and technologies that were long past by the time we were born.
Then I grew up and realized that was all those stories ever were. Dreams. I lived in the real world, where Mellie was only a part-time citizen.
“Time to get up, Mel.” Standing, I gave my sister’s shoulder a shove. She groaned, and I grabbed the towel hanging over the footboard of the bed, then trudged into the hall.
My shower was cold—the pilot light on the hot water heater had gone out again—and we were out of soap, so I had to use shampoo all over. The suds burned the fresh scrapes on my lower back, a vivid reminder of my near death in the alley, and when I got back to the bedroom, shivering in my towel, my sister was still sound asleep in the full-size bed we shared.
“Melanie. Get up.” I nudged the mattress with my foot, and she rolled onto her stomach.
“Go away, Nina.” She buried her face in the pillow without even opening her eyes.
“Up!” I tossed the blanket off her, holding my towel in place with one hand, and my sister finally sat up to glare at me.
“I’m not going. I’m sick.” She swiped at yesterday’s mascara and eyeliner, already smeared across both her pale cheek and her pillow.
I felt her forehead with the back of one hand while new goose bumps popped up on my arms, still damp from the shower. “You’re not hot. Get up. Or would you really rather be here with Mom all day?”
Melanie mumbled something profane under her breath, but then she stumbled into the hall. Even half-asleep, she remembered to tiptoe over the creaky floorboard in front of Mom’s room on her way to the bathroom.
When we let our mother sleep, we were rewarded with benign neglect. The alternative was much less pleasant.
I was buttoning my school uniform shirt when Melanie came back from the bathroom, pulling a brush through her long, pale hair still dripping from the shower. She looked her age, with her face scrubbed and shiny. Fifteen and fresh. Innocent. Without the eyeliner she’d taken from the Grab-n-Go and the lipstick our mother had forgotten she even owned, Mellie looked just like all the other schoolgirls in our white blouses and navy pants—shining beacons of purity in world that had nearly been devoured by darkness a century ago.
We were living proof that the Church knew best. That the faithful only prosper under the proper spiritual guidance. And about a dozen other similar lines of bullshit the sisters made us memorize in kindergarten.
“Today’s the day,” I said when she handed me the brush. I pulled it through my own thicker, darker hair. “I’m really going to do it.” I’d almost forgotten what today was, thanks to the demon in the alley, but cold showers have a way of bringing reality into crisp focus.
“Do what? Admit that you’re a hopeless stick-in-the-mud who never lets herself have any fun?” She tugged the last pair of school pants from a hanger in the closet and shoved her foot through the right leg. Thank goodness we wore the same size, because we never could have afforded two sets of uniforms on our own, and if the Church found out our mother wasn’t working, they’d take us away.
Melanie wouldn’t make it in the children’s home. The sisters were too watchful, and she had become mischievous and careless under what the Church would characterize as neglect on our mother’s part.
I’d characterize it like that too. But I’d say it with a smile.
“I think you’re having enough fun for both of us, Mel.” Sometimes it didn’t feel possible that we were only a year and a half apart. It’s not that Melanie didn’t pull her own weight; it’s that she had to be reminded to help out. Constantly. If I didn’t beg her to take the towels to the laundry on Saturdays, we’d have to air dry all week long.
“So, what’s so great about today?”
I didn’t get eaten in the alley behind the Grab-n-Go. But there were only so many secrets my sister could keep at one time, and our mother took up most of those spots all on her own.
I took a deep breath. Then I spat the words out. “I’m going to pledge.”
Melanie froze, her pants still half buttoned. “To the Church?”
“Of course to the Church.” I tucked in my blouse, then pulled hers off its hanger. “We talked about this, Mellie.”
“I thought you were joking.” She grabbed a bra from the top drawer and took the shirt I held out by the neatly starched collar.
“I don’t have time for jokes. Why else would I spend all my free time working in the nursery?”
“For the money.” As she buttoned her blouse I brushed sections from the front of her hair to be braided in the back. She hated the half braid, but it made her look modest and conventional, and sometimes that demure disguise was the only thing standing between my mischievous sister and the back of the teacher’s hand. “The same reason I watch Mrs. Mercer’s brats after sc
hool and tutor Adam Yung on Saturdays.”
I glanced at her in the mirror with eyebrows raised. “You get credit for the babysitting.” The Mercer kids really were brats, and she wouldn’t have gone near them without a cash reward. “But we both know why you tutor Adam, and it’s not for the money.” He didn’t even pay her in cash—Adam usually came bearing a couple of pounds of ground beef or, in warmer weather, a paper bag of fruits and vegetables from his mom’s garden. Which we’d learned to ration throughout the week.
He’d never said anything, but I always got the impression that his mother sent payment in the form of perishables to make sure our mother couldn’t spend Mellie’s wages on her “medicine.” And to make sure we ate.
“Stop changing the subject.” She scratched her scalp with one finger, loosening a strand I’d pulled too tight. “You want to pledge to the Church just so you can teach?”
I didn’t want to pledge to the Church for any reason. But…“That’s the way it’s done, Mellie.” All schools were run by the Church, and all teachers were either ordained Church pledges or fully consecrated senior members. Same for doctors, police, soldiers, reporters, and any other profession committed to serving the community.
Adam’s dad said they used to be called civil servants—back when there was civil government.
Melanie took the end of her braid from me. “Don’t you think the world has enough teachers?”
“No, as a matter of fact—”
“You know what the world really needs?” She turned to watch me through eyes wide with excitement as she wound the rubber band around the end of her hair. “More exorcists. I mean, if you’re determined to damn yourself to a life of servitude, communal living, and celibacy, wouldn’t you rather be slaying demons than wiping noses on kids that aren’t even yours? You’re gonna need some way to work off all that sexual frustration.”