The Stars Never Rise

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 strained 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.”