The Stars Never Rise

“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.

When we finally turned in to the rear grounds of a complex I knew, I pulled Finn to a halt with me. “Here? You’re staying here?” Anabelle had lived there with her parents, before she’d joined the Church. Many more of my classmates lived in that very complex. “This is possibly the worst place to hide in all of New Temperance. I bet there aren’t even any empty units.”

“There was one,” Devi said, and I didn’t like the way she said it. Something was missing from her voice. Sincerity, maybe.

“It’s okay,” Finn said. “Really.”

I decided to trust him because he hadn’t let me down yet. And because my shoulder was throbbing and my back was both burning from the demon scratches and cold from the air flowing in through the new ventilation in my old coat. I needed a shower and some antiseptic. And some breakfast.

They led me to a door on the first floor, near the back of the complex. Anabelle’s parents still lived one floor up, and maybe two doors over.