The Stars Never Rise

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.