The Stars Never Rise

by Rachel Vincent

  After a couple of seconds, the degenerate stopped snapping and struggling, and the glow from Reese’s hand faded. He stood and brushed his palm on the front of his shirt, then turned a broad grin on the rest of us. “First kill. Again.” He focused on Devi. “What’s in the pot?”

  She scowled. “Only three. Finn hasn’t chipped in yet.” She pulled a small wad of bills from her back pocket and handed them to Reese while Finn added a dollar of his own to the pile. “Neither has Nina,” Devi pointed out, watching me expectantly while more scrapes and animalistic hissing echoed from two different directions.

  “She doesn’t have to.” Finn turned to me, and my skin crawled as the other degenerates closed in on us, but my new friends didn’t seem worried, and after seeing Reese in action, I was starting to see why. “You don’t have to,” Finn repeated, to me this time.

  “I’m in.” I dug a dollar from my pocket—part of my remaining laundry money—and handed it to Reese, who winked at me. Normally, I wouldn’t have voluntarily parted with a single dime of my hard-earned pay, but considering that the exorcists had fed me, protected me, and saved my life twice in less than a day, a dollar seemed like the least I owed them.

  Reese caught my gaze as he stuffed the crumpled bills into his front left pocket. “Your turn. You ready?”

  I frowned. “Do I have to…?” I mimed snatching a demon from the air overhead, and Devi laughed again.

  “If you ever get that good, I’ll eat my own underwear.”

  “Make it Reese’s shorts, and you’ve got a bet.” Finn slid his arm around my waist, and warmth grew in my cheeks in spite of chills both from the cold and from the sound of the degenerates bearing down on us.

  “Heads up!” Reese shouted before Devi could reply, and by the time I swung my gaze skyward, Finn was already pulling me out of the way.

  Another degenerate landed where I’d stood an instant earlier, catlike on stretched limbs and clawlike fingers. Her bare feet were too long, and what remained of her hair hung in her face, half hiding mad eyes too murky to be any color other than black. Her skin had once been dark, and maybe smooth, but now it was ashen and mottled, and it clung to her mutated bones.

  And this one smelled. Sweat and dirt and foul fluids matted the filthy dress to her torso, and I was glad to see the cloth was mostly intact.

  Then I was horrified to see that her dress was actually a Church cassock, maybe originally pale blue. This demon had once been a teacher.

  So much for faith protecting the faithful.

  She snarled at me, and Devi shoved me forward. I stumbled to within three feet of the monster, and Finn cursed Devi behind me, but this time he didn’t pull me back. They were going to let me take this one. Or maybe they were going to let this one take me.

  “Breathe,” Finn whispered. “Your body knows what to do.”

  Yeah, well, my head didn’t. My special exorcist hand didn’t seem to be in the know either.

  The degenerate crawled toward me on her hands and feet, each motion eerily smooth in spite of limbs that no longer seemed to fit her body and joints that cracked with every movement.

  Devi heaved a dramatic huff. “Just do it alr—” Then something hit the pavement behind me, and I heard her and Finn struggling with what was hopefully the third and last degenerate in the advance wave.

  “They’re fine,” Reese said from my degenerate’s other side. “You focus on this one.”

  And I would have. Except that this time when the degenerate opened her mouth, instead of hissing at me again, she pounced.

  The monster’s clawed hands slammed into my chest and the alley tilted. My backside hit the ground an instant before my head, and the crack of my skull against concrete was enough to stun me. I tried to suck in a breath, but my lungs wouldn’t expand. A heartbeat later I realized why—the degenerate was perched on my chest.

  She lunged for my throat. I threw my right arm up and braced my forearm against her neck, holding her snapping jaw inches from my face. She roared in fury, and my ears rang while her finger-claws tore at my coat. I forced my left hand between us, and when no light appeared in my palm, I groaned in frustration, then shoved her with every bit of strength I had. I didn’t expect much from the effort, and I didn’t get much from it. But I got enough.

  The degenerate fell backward onto the concrete and I scrambled to my knees. An instant after that, I dropped my full weight on her, as I’d just seen Reese do.

  She snapped and tried to throw me off, but I clenched her waist between my knees and her throat in my right hand, then held on tight while she bucked and sputtered beneath me. And finally my left hand was tingling.

  “Hold…still…you filthy…bitch!” But she didn’t hold still, and I couldn’t make her, so I slammed my palm down on her sternum as hard as I could and shoved that heat building inside me into my hand.

  The glow was weak but immediate.

  She bucked harder and tried to screech, so I squeezed her neck with my other hand, and something crunched beneath my fingers. Her trachea?

  Transitional strength. It had to be.

  “No!” Reese shouted. “Don’t kill her. Exorcise her.”

  “What does it look…like I’m…doing?” I demanded, riding out another desperate thrash while the degenerate clawed at the arms of my coat, reaching for my face.

  “It looks like you’re riding a half-dead dog,” Devi said, and my temper spiked. And with that pulse of anger, the glow beneath my palm exploded in light so bright I could hardly stand to look at it. The degenerate gave one more weak twitch beneath me, then fell still. I didn’t get up until the glow was completely gone, leaving me half blind while my eyes readjusted to the shadows.

  “Nice,” Finn said as I stood on shaky legs and wiped my hands on my jeans. I understood why they did that now—degenerates were filthy.

  “It was adequate,” Devi said, while I stared in awe at the demon I’d just exorcised. “But slow. Let’s go before the rest of them are on us.” She glanced at Reese, brows raised in silent inquiry.

  “They’re closing in,” he confirmed, and I could feel them coming as I picked up my satchel. Too many of them. Devi was right. I was too slow.

  “Come on.” Finn picked up his duffel, then grabbed my hand, and when I turned to follow him, I had to step over the degenerate he and Devi had dispatched—a big one, bald, but not quite as long and angular as the former woman I’d fought.

  We took off into the dark again, and this time I was in the lead with Devi because I knew the way. We raced across roads and through dark parking lots, avoiding streetlights as much as possible, in case anyone was up early enough to see four teens being chased through New Temperance by a mini horde of degenerates.

  By the time we got to the junkyard, I was panting. I’d run my required laps in school, and I’d certainly done my share of running away from things—mostly people—but those were sprints. I’d never run as far or as fast as I did that morning, drawing the demons to the north side of town, away from houses and businesses, and carrying at least twenty pounds of canned goods.

  Relief washed over me when I spotted the six-foot chain-link fence, its gate chained closed and locked. But that relief was followed by a bolt of dread and fear. The junkyard wasn’t our safe haven.

  It was our battleground.

  I was the last one over Mr. Johns’s fence. The clinking rattle of chain-link and the cold metal jerking and swaying in my hands with every new foothold from my fellow exorcists would forever be associated with the memory of that night. With my mother’s death and my sister’s arrest. With the confusion in my head, the ache in my heart, and the fire in my palm. I threw one leg over the top of the fence, my satchel bouncing on my back, and dropped to the dirt from four feet up. By the time my feet hit the ground, I could hear the degenerates.

  Seconds later, as we receded into the junkyard, mostly shielded from both moonlight and streetlights, the monsters came into view through the fence. My heartbeat stuttered and my eyes st
rained to filter the forms of monsters from the darkness. I could feel them—the rush of their pulses blending with my own—but I couldn’t distinguish their individual shapes until they crept into the glow of a string of streetlights across from the fence.

  For a moment, I couldn’t breathe.

  Mutated and emaciated, they formed a rough line facing ours. I counted ten. Some stood, too tall and angular, as if they’d somehow been stretched. Others squatted, a complication of limbs and joints that seemed to be put together all wrong, from mismatched human parts.

  At first, they only watched us, some growling, others scenting the air as if to confirm what they already knew from the internal connection we shared. That I was there. That I wasn’t running. That my soul—the only one they could sense, thanks to my transitional state—was up for grabs.

  Then one of them lurched forward and his movement triggered the rest. The demons launched into motion almost as one, and I stood steady between Finn and Reese, determined—if not truly prepared—to face the wave of violence about to crash over us.

  “Keep track of your stats, people,” Reese called as the monsters ran, leapt, and raced on all fours, barreling through the glow of the streetlights, bearing down on us so fast they looked like a storm of shadows closing in. “He with the highest body count claims the first shower.”

  “Or she,” Devi said from his right. “Don’t get cocky.”

  “It’s only cocky if you talk a better game than you play.”

  “My point exactly,” she shot back, but Reese only laughed, and I realized this was their routine—a way to make light of the death and violence that defined their existence.

  The first degenerate hit the fence with the crashclink of chain-link, and my nerves crested in a burst of destructive energy like nothing I’d ever felt. Finn let go of my hand and moved over to give us more room. Reese charged forward with a growl of his own as the first monster landed on our side of the fence in an impossibly deep squat, and in my peripheral vision, Devi tensed, silently preparing for battle.

  Reese grabbed that first degenerate by her ripped shirt, and while they struggled, the second and third demons launched themselves at the fence. The second cleared the metal entirely and landed on the ground in front of Devi. The third perched near the top of the fence, his long, bare toes curled around metal wire while his deformed and knobby hands gripped the metal rod defining the top edge.

  Finn lunged forward and I followed, my pulse racing so hard I could near nothing as loud as my own heartbeat. He grabbed the degenerate’s wrist and pulled with a low grunt. The monster screeched and fell end over end to land on his back in the dirt. Finn was on him in an instant, his hand already glowing, and when I looked up, I saw that the front of the junkyard was alive with light now.

  A glow faded from Reese’s palm as another built around Devi’s, and while I stood there like an idiot, Reese rose from the degenerate he’d just exorcised. “One!” he half shouted, and before the word had even faded from my ears, he’d pulled another demon from the fence.

  “One!” Devi stood and kicked a deformed dead woman in the side, then grunted in surprise when another landed right in front of her.

  “One!” Finn called. Then, “Nina, heads up!”

  I turned just as the sixth degenerate dropped from the fence and snarled at me. I took a step back, flexing my left hand, praying for that light to appear while the demon advanced, snarling and snapping in anticipation. Finn stood behind him, the glow still fading from his palm and imprinted on my vision. He reached for the demon approaching me, but then one pulled him off his feet and he was suddenly ensnarled in another fight.

  I was on my own.

  “Two!” Reese yelled, and another bright glow appeared on my right, highlighting the degenerate just two feet in front of me now. His chin was too sharp and thin flesh clung to the points of his elbows. His eyes flashed with light, and I couldn’t tell what color they’d been before, but now they were black, as if the demon inside him had rotted the very color from his irises.

  “Two!” Devi shouted.

  The degenerate pounced, and I lurched to my right. I only meant to move out of the way to avoid being pinned. Instead, my feet hit the ground six feet away. Stunned, I turned and the junkyard spun around me, the glow from Reese’s palm streaking across my vision twice before I finally stilled, dizzy and confused. My intended 180 had become two and a half revolutions, as if I were stuck on my own personal merry-go-round.

  I threw my hands out, trying to regain my balance.

  The snarl and the flying shadow hit me at the same time. Pain slammed into my chest. My back hit the dirt. Jaws snapped near my nose for the third time in less than a day. I threw my arms up, and teeth sank into the left sleeve of my coat. Rancid drool dripped on my cheek, and I turned my head, shuddering in revulsion while my pulse raced in fear.

  The demon shook his head like a dog with a bone, and pain ripped through my arm from wrist to shoulder. I shouted and tried to jerk my arm free before he tore it off, but he wouldn’t let go, and the ache in my bruised bones was fierce.

  “Two!” Finn shouted.

  Desperate, I swung at the degenerate’s temple with my free right hand, and to my shock, his head snapped to the side and his pointy teeth were torn from my sleeve.

  “Three!” Reese called, and Devi echoed him an instant later.

  The demon groaned, stunned, and I saw my chance. I pressed my hands into his chest and lifted him as far from me as I could, then tucked my knees and wedged my feet between us. Then I kicked.

  The demon flew up and out, snarling in the air, arms and feet trailing uselessly. He crashed into the fence and I stood just in time to see Devi grab his shirt and shove him face-first into the ground. “Four!” she shouted, slamming her palm down on the degenerate’s back. The glow in her hand consumed the demon.

  “Hey! That one was mine!” I yelled, and Reese laughed.

  Devi shrugged. “Then next time exorcise it instead of playing with it.”

  “I wasn’t…It nearly pulled my arm off!” I did fast math in my head, still trying to catch my breath. Three for Reese, four for Devi and two for Finn. “Wait, that should still leave—”

  Something slammed into my back, and the earth flew up to meet me. My face hit the dirt, and air was driven from my lungs, through my throat.

  “Nina!” Finn shouted. Footsteps pounded toward me, then stopped abruptly.

  “She wanted a kill, Finn,” Devi said. “Let her have one.”

  Something hot and wet dripped on the back of my neck, and I sucked in a desperate breath, forcing my lungs to expand in spite of the weight pressing me into the ground. Claws raked through my hair, and I felt as much as heard a dozen tiny pops as individual strands were ripped from my scalp.

  The monster growled, and hot, unspeakably foul breath washed over me as it sniffed near my ear. It seemed to be looking for my face. My skin crawled and my pulse raced.

  “Nina, do something!” Devi shouted, and footsteps pounded toward me again, but stopped when the degenerate screeched in warning. Exorcists were fast, but so were demons. They couldn’t get to me before the monster ripped my head off and slurped out my brains.

  The degenerate clawed at my coat, and pain ripped through my back as he shredded both cloth and flesh. And that was when anger started to rival my pain and fear.

  If I was about to die, I wasn’t going to go out facedown in the dirt.

  I reached up and back, fumbling for a grip on anything, and my fingers closed over cool, taut skin. Ignoring another wave of revulsion, I pulled as hard as I could. The degenerate shrieked, and his claws ripped into my flesh again as I pulled him off me with a primal grunt of effort. I was stronger now, but the angle was awkward. Nearly impossible.

  As soon as I was free, I scrambled to my feet. The degenerate squatted a foot away, hissing, and my hand started to burn. So I threw myself at him.

  We crashed to the ground and I sat on his stomach, then pressed my
glowing left hand against his chest. The demon screamed like a wounded cat, and my hand burned and burned and burned.

  Two seconds later it was all over. I sat on a deformed corpse staring sightlessly at the dark sky as the light between us faded.

  “You okay?” Finn pulled me up by both arms and folded me into a hug. I squeezed him back, in spite of the pain from my injuries, burying my nose in the warmth and scent of his neck. I’d never been so exhilarated in my life—adrenaline pumped through my veins from both the fight and the intimate embrace.

  “One,” I said, panting, and Devi laughed. Reese grinned at me over Finn’s shoulder.

  “That adds up to ten,” Devi said. “Let’s go home.”

  ***

  Climbing the fence with injuries sucked, and my super speed and strength seemed to have abandoned me entirely in the wake of my first real demon battle. And after the fence, there was still an almost two-mile trek to their real hideout. No one talked much during the walk, and I was relieved to realize they were tired too. Even Reese seemed subdued; the only thing I heard from him during the trip was an offer to trade his five dollars for the first shower.

  The only thing I heard from Devi was an incredulous laugh, which was evidently Devi-speak for “no way in hell.”

  In spite of Finn’s promise that their “real” hideout was more comfortable than the warehouse he’d obviously set up just for my vulnerable transitional period, I expected them to take me somewhere similar. An unused office building or storefront. There’d always been lots of those in New Temperance. In addition to two-thirds of its human population, the United States lost a good deal of its industry during the war, even in the surviving towns and cities strung together only by deteriorating highways and necessity.

  So I was more than a little surprised when, less than an hour before dawn, we turned toward one of the residential neighborhoods near the northeast portion of the town wall. There were a couple of unused apartment buildings in New Temperance, just like there were abandoned businesses, but none of them were in the neighborhood we seemed headed for, unless they knew something about my hometown that I didn’t.