On the edge of my vision, Finn stood and kicked his father’s corpse aside. Another demon leapt for him, and Finn shoved his fiery left hand into the air. The demon landed on his hand in midair, speared by the flames and seemingly weightless.
The demon behind me squeezed my neck, and I gasped in pain as cartilage popped. The flames in my hand blinked out, and the monster that hung from them crumpled at my feet. I tried to twist and fry the monster behind me, but he grabbed my left arm and held it away from us both.
Thunder boomed through the alley, and the hand around my neck loosened. Something thudded to the pavement behind me, and I turned to find the demon who’d had me by the neck now lying on the ground with a small hole in his chest.
Shocked, I spun again to find Grayson still aiming the pistol in her right hand, her left pressed against the bullet wound in her side. “Good shot!” I said, but she only shook her head.
“I was aiming for his head.” Her voice was weak. Her face was pale, in what little moonlight shone into the alley.
“Finn!” I raced toward her.
He finished frying the last of the demons, then pulled his shirt off on his way down the alley. “Here. Press this against the wound.” He laid the wadded-up material over her side, and I held it there with as much pressure as I could apply. “We have to get her out of here.”
“Where can we get a car?”
“At the gate. They’re mostly used for trips into the badlands.” Finn picked up Grayson, then carried her down the alley and across the street. Everyone we passed was headed for the blazing building. None of them even looked closely enough to realize who we were.
Until we got to the gate five endless minutes later.
“What’s the plan?” I whispered, eyeing the nearest guard and his gun.
Finn glanced at the vehicles parked near the gate, and I realized that unlike in New Temperance, there was no patrol assigned to walk the perimeter. Evidently no one wanted to break into a city openly full of demons.
The only guards were four armed men standing in front of the gate itself.
“The plan is to put Grayson in a car and drive right through,” Finn whispered. “Don’t stop for anything.”
I searched the three nearest cars for keys as quietly as I could, and on the fourth, I finally found a set hidden in the visor.
Finn laid Grayson across the backseat, and I sat on the floorboard in the back to keep his shirt pressed to her stomach. Finn slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. He backed it carefully out of its spot, and the nearest of the guards walked toward us, carrying his gun.
“Kastor? Is that you?” he called.
Instead of answering, Finn stomped on the gas.
The remaining gate guards scrambled out of the way. One of them fired his gun, yelling for us to stop, and a bullet went through both our front and rear windshields.
The grille of the car rammed into the gate itself, which ripped free from its hinges with the spine-scraping squeal of metal and clunked onto the roof of the car hard enough to dent the center. Finn hit the gas again, and we lurched out of Pandemonia and into the badlands. The broken gate flew off our roof and hit two of the guards running after us.
We veered wildly around the gray car I’d abandoned when I’d turned myself in, then shot off into the badlands.
I stared out the rear windshield, watching to see if we’d be pursued, but no one came out of the city after us. A second later I understood why.
If Pandemonia had been extravagantly illuminated upon my arrival, it was lit up like a bonfire in the wake of our departure. Through the holes in the steel patchwork fence, I could see that not one, but at least three buildings were now on fire, and the residents—blissfully unaware that their hosts had become ticking time bombs—were no doubt more concerned with saving the city than with pursuing the invaders who’d set it on fire in the first place.
My pulse raced in my ears as I watched the flames blaze smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, and I laid one hand on Grayson’s sternum so I could feel her breathe. I’d already lost one sister, and I had no intention of losing another one.
Half a mile later headlights suddenly lit the interior of our car, and I twisted toward the front to see a vehicle headed straight for us from the depths of the badlands.
“Brace yourself.” When Finn lifted a pistol in his right hand, I realized he’d picked up Kastor’s gun on the way out of the alley.
“Wait!” I cried when the left headlight of the vehicle in front of us winked out for a split second. “Don’t shoot! That’s our truck!”
Finn blinked into the headlights and finally slammed on the brakes. Our car swerved on the crumbling road, then skidded to a stop. The cargo truck we’d appropriated from the Church slowed to a much more civilized stop beside us, winking headlight and all. Reese leaned out of the passenger’s-side window with Carter’s rifle aimed right at us.
“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, and I peeked up from the backseat.
“Reese. It’s us. That’s Finn’s new body. It used to be Carey’s.”
“Carey James?” He set the gun down on the floorboard and threw his door open. “Where’s—”
“Grayson is back here,” I called. “She’s hurt, beyond what we can fix. We need to get her to the Lord’s Army and hope they know how to remove a bullet.” That, and because the Lord’s Army had baby Adam.
“She got shot?” He was out of the truck in an instant.
“We can’t stop here,” Finn warned as Reese circled the truck toward our car. “We have to get away before the demons get their shit together.”
I climbed into the front seat to make room for Reese in the back. “You really think they’ll come after us?”
“The ones who don’t know about the virus will,” Maddock said from the truck’s driver’s seat, and I realized they’d talked to Eli and Anabelle. “Once they get that fire under control.” He nodded toward the demon city, which still blazed in the distance. “I assume that’s your work?”
“Damn right,” I said as Devi slid into the passenger’s seat of the truck. She looked impressed for the first time since I’d met her.
“Kastor’s dead, Maddy,” Finn said. “And soon all the rest of them will be. Nina figured out how to infect the whole damn city.”
Devi pushed her long braid over her shoulder. “You mean we drove like hell and still missed the party?”
“You can tell us about it down the road,” Maddock said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Finn revved his engine, and Devi closed the cargo truck door. Then Maddock turned the truck around and we followed him into the badlands, his taillights ahead of us, the blazing hulk of Pandemonia still flickering through the rear windshield.
“Well?” Finn said, and I looked up from the potato patties grilling over the morning campfire to find Anabelle standing in the entrance to Damaris’s tent, wiping her bloody hands on a scrap of cloth. “How’s Grayson?”
“Damaris thinks she’s going to make it.” But the tension in Anabelle’s frame told me how close it had been. Grayson had lost a lot of blood, and the Lord’s Army had neither a sterile environment nor a trained surgeon.
Fortunately, we’d collected a good supply of antibiotics and painkillers during our cargo raids over the past five months, and even after sharing with our hosts, there would be enough to help Grayson.
Reese hadn’t left her side for a single second of the twelve hours since we’d caught up with the Lord’s Army on the outskirts of Salina. Neither had Damaris or Eli. But Eli, I’d noticed, kept stealing starry-eyed glances at Ana as she assisted his mother. Evidently they’d bonded during and after their road trip in the badlands, and in retrospect, their mutual attraction wasn’t surprising.
Both had dedicated their lives to faith. Both were interested in caregiving in general and childbirth in particular. Both had more courage than any other human I’d ever met. Finn and I were happy for them.
Reese was thri
lled for them. And for himself.
“Want me to give you a breather so you two can have a few minutes alone?” Anabelle sat on the grass mat next to me and ran the back of one knuckle down Adam’s cheek. He stirred in my arms, but his eyes never opened. He’d turned out to be a very content baby, as long as he was well fed. But we’d already used half our store of formula in the few days he’d been alive, and when that ran out…
But that was a problem for another day.
“That’s okay.” Finn rubbed his hand up and down my back. “We like having him, and you must be tired.”
“Not gonna lie—I could sleep.” Ana pushed her hair back from her forehead, and even in the flickering light of the fire, I could see exhaustion drawn all over her face. “But tomorrow I want to hear about what happened out there. Every bit of it.”
“There’s a lot to tell.” I stared down at Adam’s tiny little lips, pursed in his sleep as if he were sucking on his bottle. Finn’s hand slid into my grip on the mat between us, and his thumb brushed my knuckles. The only thing missing from that near-perfect moment was Melanie, but it was her sacrifice that had made the whole thing possible. I smiled at Anabelle and squeezed Finn’s hand. “But the short version is that the world has changed for good.”
And for the first time in centuries, humanity might come out on top.
Crickets chirruped as I ran across the street into the shadows, already regretting my decision. But it was too late to change my mind.
“Are you sure about this?” Finn asked as I slid into the passenger’s seat and closed the car door as softly as I could.
“Hell no.” I peered out the car window at the featureless brick building, its windows dark except for a few on the top floor and one at the southwest corner. That one was Sister Tabitha’s office.
The light over the front porch flickered, and I caught my breath, hoping it wouldn’t go out. I stared at the box on the stoop and my stomach began to twist again.
I felt like I might throw up.
But we were doing the right thing. I’d been over and over it and kept coming to the same conclusion.
“The Church is hunting us. They’ll be hunting us for the rest of our lives. They know Eli helped us, so the Lord’s Army is a target. We have enough of a handicap with Grayson still healing. If Adam got caught in the crossfire, I’d never forgive myself.” Neither would any of the others. We’d only had him for a couple of weeks, but no baby in the history of mankind had ever been more loved.
“We can’t keep him safe, Finn, even if we had something to feed him.” We were nearly out of formula, and there wasn’t a wet nurse to be found among Eli’s friends and family. “But they can.” I stared up at the building again. “And they will. They won’t let a child die. Souls are too precious.”
“Unless they figure out who he is….”
“They won’t,” I insisted. “They don’t even know he exists. If they know Pandemonia fell, they’ll assume Melanie fell with it.”
This was the best place for Adam, at least for now. We were doing the right thing. Even if the right thing felt like a thousand white-hot swords being run through my body all at once.
I’d just put Adam down, yet my arms already ached to be holding him.
Finally the door opened, and I caught my breath. I didn’t recognize the sister who stepped out onto the porch, and from across the street I couldn’t tell whether her robes were embroidered. But for once that didn’t matter. Adam would be safe with her for the next few months.
And we would come back for him before things got dangerous. Before they had a chance to put it all together.
“It’s kind of fitting,” Finn said. “Letting it all end here, where it began.”
“Do you think Melanie would hate us for this?”
“I think she’d love you for doing what’s best for him even when that’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to do.”
“We’ll be back for him,” I said for the thousandth time in the past hour. “Soon.”
“How long do you think it’ll take them to figure it out?” he asked while we watched the sister lift my nephew from the blanket-lined box.
“I don’t know. He’s a passive carrier, and he’ll mostly be in the care of the unconsecrated. But eventually a possessed sister will change his diaper or ease his teething gums with her finger. Someone will be infected, and that someone will infect someone else, and Melanie’s little Trojan Pony will bring Troy to its knees. And they’ll have no idea how it happened.”
“I think she’d like that,” Finn said as the sister took my nephew inside and closed the door. “Bringing the virus back home.”
My chest ached fiercely. “I think she would too.” The light over the porch flickered, and my gaze snagged on the sign next to the door as Finn started the car.
NEW TEMPERANCE CHILDREN’S HOME
ALL INNOCENT SOULS WELCOME
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A big thanks to my critique partner, Rinda Elliott, who helped me figure out how to kill a demon and who is the very best sounding board.
Thanks also to Jennifer Lynn Barnes for weekly writing days, opinions, ideas, and good company.
A huge thank-you, as always, to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz, who gets things done. I have many irons in the fire, and you keep me from getting burned.
Thank you to my amazing editor, Wendy Loggia, for all her support and enthusiasm, and for asking the question about this story that most needed to be answered.
Thank you to all the readers who liked Nina and came back for more.
Rachel Vincent is the New York Times bestselling author of many books for adults and for teens, including the Shifters, Unbound, and Soul Screamers series. A resident of Oklahoma, she has two teenagers, two cats, and a BA in English, each of which contributes in some way to every book she writes. When she’s not working, Rachel can be found curled up with a book or watching movies and playing video games with her husband.
Visit Rachel online at
rachelvincent.com
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The Flame Never Dies Page 25
