The Stars Never Rise

Reese made it look easy. Maybe it was easy for him, considering his size and obvious strength. I watched him in awe, but I couldn’t imagine ever doing what he’d just done—snatching one of hell’s natives from the air, then driving the demon back to hell before it had even caught its breath.

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.