“Bullshit!” Devi grabbed my arm, trying to haul me forward at her pace while she yelled at me, but my legs couldn’t go any faster. I jerked free from her grip and Finn moved between us in the tight space. He shot a warning glance at her, but he couldn’t stop her mouth from moving even faster than her feet. “They were trying to take us alive—”
“They were…shooting…at us!” My words were disjointed, punctuated with short gasps for air. My lungs burned.
“They would have shot to wound,” she insisted as one alley faded into the next, broken only by short sprints across deserted streets. “To slow us down. They took Carey alive, and he wasn’t the first exorcist they’ve plucked off the street, which seems to suggest that they wanted us alive too. At least, they did until you tried to tell two dozen civilians that their exorcists are fake and we’re the real thing. To the Church, the truth is like a disease—they can’t let you infect anyone else. You practically dared them to kill us!”
“It was worth it,” I said as Reese finally slowed when the town wall came into view. We were approaching the apartment complex from the back and couldn’t afford to draw attention, so I lowered my voice to an angry, huffing whisper. “We got away, and now two dozen people know the truth. Or at least they know the Church is lying about us.” I sucked in another cold breath, trying to put out the fire in my chest, but oxygen seemed to feed the flames. “If the truth is like a disease, let’s hope it spreads.”
Devi glanced at Finn while I bent with my hands on my knees, trying to catch my breath. “Can she really be that stupid?”
He scowled at her with Maddock’s furrowed brow. “She’s not stupid.”
“Colossally naive, maybe.” Reese stared down the length of the town wall in one direction, looking for police or exorcists or whoever the Church had patrolling for us. “Recklessly optimistic, definitely. But not stupid.” He turned in the other direction, and I saw the sweep of several broad flashlight beams just as he did.
My heart jumped into my throat. They were so close. Too close. But they seemed to think we’d made it over the wall.
Reese held out both arms, herding us toward the seized apartment while Devi warned us to be quiet with one finger pressed to her lips. As if we needed a reminder.
Finn let us in with Maddock’s key, in Maddock’s hand, and the moment Grayson saw us, she threw herself at Reese. He shushed her even as he caught her in both arms.
“I saw the news until everything went crazy and the picture cut out! I was afraid they got you!”
“We’re fine, but they’re close,” he said while I closed and locked the door.
“Thanks to Nina. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say she was working for the other side.” Devi grabbed a bottle of water from the stack Grayson had been packing, then tossed one to Finn. “Don’t let Maddock dehydrate.”
“Hey, I’m not the one who exposed us.” I grabbed a bottle for myself and opened it with so much force I nearly cracked the plastic. “We all did that, because our only other option was to let degenerates shred those poor people like beef through a grinder.”
Devi wagged one pointed finger at me, scolding me like a naughty child. “It’s your fault we’re still in this miserable little town, and it’s your fault we were at the courthouse, and—”
“And if we hadn’t been, instead of losing ten or twelve lives, New Temperance could have lost fifty. A hundred, maybe. Who knows how long it would have taken the fake exorcists and their stupid guns to do what we did in minutes?”
Devi stomped closer, speaking through clenched teeth, her nose inches from mine when I refused to back away. “I don’t care how many people your backward-ass town would have lost. I don’t care about anyone but the people in this room, and you keep dragging them all into serious trouble, which means I care less and less about your well-being with every passing second.”
“Fighting each other is doing their work for them.” Finn pulled her away from me before my temper could snap or hers could boil over. “Don’t do their work. Do our work.”
Devi didn’t even glance at him. She was too busy glaring at me.
“I’m done apologizing for my existence, Devi. I’m not sorry that I’m here, and I’m not sorry that I’m one of you, and I’m not sorry that we saved hundreds of innocent people today. Hell, you saved way more than I did.”
She looked only slightly mollified by my admission. “Those ‘innocent people’ were chanting for them to burn your friend alive. What century is this, anyway?” Devi slammed her bottle down on the table and water sloshed over her hand. “That was barbaric. Beyond that, it’s asinine. Souls have no physical form—Finn’s proof of that—but fire is the physical expense of energy, right? So why on earth would fire have any effect whatsoever on a soul? That wouldn’t make sense even if your friend was possessed.”
“And they know that.” I tried not to think about what I’d seen. About the friend I’d just lost. About the horrifying stench of burning flesh still clinging to our clothes. Look forward, Nina. Focus on what can still be dealt with. “Which brings me back to my original question. Did anyone else see their eyes?”
“I saw them,” Finn said with Maddock’s voice. “That’s what I was coming back to tell you.”
Ohhh. The problem he’d mentioned hadn’t been the incoming degenerates. He’d been talking about the demons in Church robes.
“Whose eyes?” Reese twisted the cap from his own bottle of water and accepted a cellophane-wrapped muffin from Grayson with his other hand.
“All of them.” I glanced at Finn, and he held up one finger, asking for me to wait. Then he closed his eyes, and when they opened again, Maddock looked out at me from his own body. He stiffened and blinked in momentary confusion, then relaxed a little when he saw the familiar surroundings and faces he knew.
When his gaze lost focus, I realized Finn was filling Maddock in on the parts he’d missed. Then Maddock frowned at me. “They were demons? All of them?”
“All of who?” Devi said.
“The Church.” Grayson sank into her chair, stunned by what she’d obviously heard from Finn.
I nodded. “Every single cassock-wearing son of a bitch out there chasing us today had shiny demon eyes. The cops. The deacon. The fake exorcists. Even the cameramen. They were all possessed.”
“All of them?” Reese froze in the middle of unwrapping his muffin. “Are you sure?”
I shrugged. “All the ones I saw.”
“Finn says, ‘Me too.’ ” Grayson relayed the information in a flat, shocked voice. “That’s why he couldn’t get Melanie out. He couldn’t get inside anyone with the authority to unlock her cell, because everyone who qualified was already possessed.”
“Of course they were.” Devi glared at me, hands propped on the generous curves of her hips. “Naturally, Nina’s the product of a town being run by demons!”
“That’s a recent development. It has to be.” Didn’t it? I couldn’t possibly have been living in demon central my whole life without knowing about it.
But then, how was I supposed to know? How was anyone supposed to know? Only exorcists could see the demonic gleam in a possessed person’s eyes, and I’d only transitioned a day ago. There was no way I could have known about the deacon and the school officials and…
How many were there? How many had I seen every day of my life, and spoken to and been taught by?
Anabelle.
Anabelle was an ordained Church pledge. But she wasn’t possessed. She couldn’t be. I’d known her all my life, and she was still the same kind, friendly girl she’d always been. Anabelle wasn’t a demon. Surely they weren’t all demons. Right?
I sank onto the couch, half-crushed by the enormity of the possibilities coming into focus in my head. My lungs wouldn’t expand. The truth was heavier than the air I needed, and it filled me, leaving no room for me to draw breath.
I shivered. I shook so hard the room seemed to tremble around me. The truth was cold and sharp like the
October wind, and bitter like ashes on my tongue.
The truth…made no sense.
“It can’t be all the Church members in my town, and it can’t be just my town.” I wasn’t sure whether to hope I was right or pray that I was wrong about that last part. “Sister Pamela isn’t from here. Neither are the cameramen. But they’re all possessed.”
“Could they have gotten possessed since coming to town?” Reese asked, and they all turned to Maddock for the answer, presumably because he’d seen more of the country than the rest of us.
He shrugged and seemed to be listening to something we couldn’t hear—Finn, of course. “Anything’s possible, but I haven’t noticed any higher percentage of demons among the private citizens here than in half the towns we’ve been in this year. Finn agrees. In fact, there’s a lower percentage in New Temperance than in some of the bigger cities, like Constance and Verity.”
“So, are those cities run by demons too? I mean, it can’t be just New Temperance and the TV people the news station sent, can it?” Reese said. “That’s too much of a coincidence, and my dad always said that coincidence is just conspiracy dressed up for show.”
Devi huffed. “Your dad was a heretic and an idiot. There’s no way two of the largest postwar cities in the world are being run by demons.”
“My dad was a patriot and an advocate for free access to the true history of the world.” Reese clutched his muffin so tightly it crumbled between his fingers. “And at least I know who my dad was.”
I was surprised by such a juvenile, spiteful jab from Reese until I saw his face and understood the truth behind his words—he was still mourning his father.
Devi’s eyes narrowed, and I spoke before she could return fire. “But if it was the whole Church, wouldn’t you guys already know that? I mean, you’ve been all over the country looking for other exorcists, right?”
No one seemed to have an answer. Finally, Maddock shrugged. “We’ve been around, and I’ve seen the occasional demon wearing a police cassock or hospital whites, but I never really thought about it because I’ve never seen them in large numbers.”
“Most of the cassocks we see these days are on TV,” Devi added. “And that demonic eye gleam obviously doesn’t show through the camera.”
And, of course, they’d had to leave their own homes as soon as their exorcist skills—including the ability to identify demons—manifested, just as I would have if not for Melanie.
“Okay, so New Temperance probably isn’t the only town being run by the Unclean.” Maddock sat on the arm of the couch, from which he could see the rest of us. Except Finn. “So, we have several unanswered questions. First, how many of New Temperance’s Church officials have been possessed? Second”—he ticked his points off on the fingers of his left hand—“how many other cities and towns are being run by demons?”
“Third, how the hell did this happen?” Devi interrupted. “How can a town’s entire governing body—even one as small as this civil infection of a settlement—get possessed without anyone noticing? I mean, it had to start somewhere, right? With one teacher or cop or doctor? I get how Nina didn’t notice her mother was a demon, because she’d been a demon all along, but the deacon? Are we seriously supposed to believe no one noticed that the deacon of New Temperance was suddenly evil one day?”
Grayson shrugged. “Maybe there wasn’t much of a change to notice. Demons killed Nina’s mom, and the Church killed Reese’s dad. Demons hunted all of us, and now the Church is hunting us. If you think about it, demons and the Church are kind of like matching bookends. They’re both cruel and evil and homicidal, and stuck in between them you have—”
“Us,” Reese finished for her. “Both us, exorcists, and us, the general public.”
Devi looked more bewildered than angry. “So, what do you have when the demons are the Church?”
They stared at one another, at the table, and at the ceiling, trying to come up with an answer, but all I could think about was my mother. The demon I’d known all my life, yet had learned nothing from. Even after I’d found out she was Unclean, my mother had spoken in riddles and nonsense, and I could hardly tell one from the other….
And suddenly the answer was there, staring me in the face. Laughing in my face.
“New Temperance. That’s what you have when the demons are the Church.”
“What?” Reese frowned.
“Finn’s making weird noises,” Grayson said. “He’s kind of…groaning.”
Because he’d figured out what I finally understood. What none of the rest of them could see yet.
“You get New Temperance,” I repeated. “And Verity. And Constance. And Solace. And Caridad. And every other town that survived the war, if I’m even close to right about this. My mom told me, but I didn’t listen. I couldn’t understand.”
“She told you what?” Maddock’s brows were furrowed in confusion.
I’d said, The war is over. We won.
Yes, we did, she’d answered, and I could still see her smug expression in my mind.
I turned to Devi. “There was no first postwar possession in New Temperance, or anywhere else. No one noticed Church officials suddenly getting possessed, because they didn’t suddenly get possessed. The demons have been here all along, just like my mom, only on a larger scale. That’s why they’re hunting us. That’s why their exorcists are fake.”
“What the hell is she talking about?” Devi said to Maddock, who was still frowning, and I wondered if Finn was explaining it to him at the same time.
“I’m talking about the war.” I stood. I couldn’t sit still anymore. “It didn’t happen like they say it did. They’ve been lying all this time, and we’ve been eating it up like gravy because they look like us and they sound like us and they act like us—at least when people are watching—but they’re not us. They never were. We were just too stupid to see it.”
Devi glanced around the room in exaggerated frustration. “Can someone please translate? I don’t speak lunatic.”
“Okay.” I cleared my throat. “It sounds crazy because it is crazy, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. Demons didn’t lose the war; they just stopped fighting where we could see them. They became the people we trusted most—the Church—and told us they could save us. And we believed them. We were scared and desperate and facing the extinction of our species, so we gave them everything we had. We gave them our money, our service, our government, our children, and our freedom, and when the war was ‘over,’ we celebrated, like fools! We praised the Church and pledged our loyalty, and we were grateful to be alive, but the joke was on us.”
They stared at me, stunned, and I was dimly aware that my voice was gradually rising with every word, but I couldn’t make it stop. The dam had broken and the words would flow. “The joke is still on us. We didn’t win the war; we gave away the victory. The Church didn’t save us. It enslaved us.” I gestured frantically to each one of them. To Anathema as a whole. “And they’re going to hunt every single one of us down and burn us alive, because we’re the only ones who know the truth.”
“I have to get to Melanie.” I stood, and Reese stood with me, reaching for a half-packed bag.
“Nina, we have to get out of here,” he said as Maddock turned on the television, then muted Brother Jonathan’s voice. “With that as the goal, walking into a building full of demons sounds a little counterproductive.”
“Oh shit!” Maddock said, and we all turned to see what he was staring at. “According to the headlines, the Church is blaming thirty-eight civilian casualties on us!”
But the degenerates hadn’t killed anywhere near that many.
Devi was right. The Church had executed the survivors who’d heard my plea. I’d singlehandedly raised the death toll by at least sixteen.
“Your sister doesn’t know the Church is being run by demons, so she’s safer than any of us,” Reese said gently.
“They just burned Melanie’s boyfriend alive. She is not safe,” I insisted.
/>
“I have to agree with Spawn on this one,” Devi said, and I glanced at her in surprise. “They burned the boyfriend for a reason.”
“Yeah. He embarrassed the entire town by getting a fifteen-year-old pregnant. Not the kind of press the deacon wanted.”
Devi rolled her eyes at Reese. “Seriously? They’ve just told the world there are demons on the loose, yet they have nothing better to do with the national spotlight than punish a teenager for making a baby without a license?”
“Enlighten us,” Maddock said, and I turned to find Finn’s green eyes staring out of his best friend’s face once again. “We’re not all gifted with your insight into the world’s spiritual authority.”
“What?” I glanced from Finn to Devi, but neither elaborated.
“Devi was raised as an ecclesiastical dedication. Her parents gave her to the Church,” Grayson said finally, accepting the packed bag Reese handed her.
“Really?” Other than a soulless death, my worst fear for Melanie’s baby was that the Church’s price for providing the infant’s soul would be both Mellie’s and her child’s service, for life.
“Yeah, well, the joke was on them.” Devi threw her long black braid over one shoulder and sat straighter on the edge of the coffee table, her dark eyes glistening. “I was conceived in sin and chose to honor the lifestyle. But what my unfortunate upbringing has taught me is that the Church does nothing without a reason. They burned Adam to send a message. To Nina. And that message was…?” She turned to me expectantly.
“They’re willing to kill people I care about. People who have nothing to do with my being an exorcist. Including Melanie.” I sank onto the couch again, weighed down by the grim understanding. “If I don’t turn myself in, they’ll douse my sister in gasoline and burn her alive on national television.”
Reese set his bag next to his feet. “How long do you think she has?”
Devi shrugged. “Another day or so. They have no way of knowing whether or not Nina understood their message—she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer—so I’d guess they’ll replay the footage a few times or torch another one of her friends before they trot out the pregnant sister.”