The Stars Never Rise

I reached for Bennett, my hand already glowing, but before I could make contact, guns thwuped from my left—one, two, three, four shots—and I flinched with each one.

Bennett convulsed with the impacts, then fell over dead.

“No!” I shouted.

My ears rang with the echo of suppressed gunfire, and the bright light faded from my hand. I blinked again, trying to make sense of the past two minutes, but the only things I was sure of were that I was still breathing and that Deacon Bennett was dead.

Well, evicted from her body, at least. The demon itself could be anywhere, in search of a new host.

I stared at the corpse, horrified to realize I’d lost the chance to exorcise the highest-ranking demon in New Temperance. To send the biggest threat to my sister’s safety back to the hell from which she’d sprung.

“She killed him,” one of the politicians muttered, wiping blood from the back of his hand onto his plain gray cassock, and I finally recognized him as one of Bennett’s clerks—I’d seen him standing behind her during several recent press conferences.

“She wasn’t a she.” I grabbed a tissue from a box on the unmanned receptionist’s desk to my right and finally realized I was in the front lobby of the police station. “She was a demon.”

“And you’re…?” The third cop still had his gun aimed at Bennett’s lifeless body, as if she might come back to life at any moment.

“An exorcist.” I wiped my face with the tissue, and it came away smeared with blood. “A real exorcist. I’m human, and so is my sister. If you don’t help me get her out of here, they’ll kill her.” That wasn’t exactly true, but I didn’t have time to explain the Church’s entire nefarious plot to a bunch of traumatized civilians.

And that was when I realized I no longer thought of myself as one of them.

They were citizens.

I was a soldier.

I glanced around at the handful of survivors and finally settled on the second cop—the one who’d holstered his weapon. His name tag read “Flores,” and he was the only one who didn’t look ready to either vomit or cry. “Take me to her. Help me get her out. Please.”

“I…” Flores blinked.

“Listen to me. My friends and I are the only things standing between you and a horde of demons hidden in plain sight.” I pointed at Bennett’s corpse for emphasis, acutely aware that I’d failed to vanquish that particular demon. “Do your part. Help me get my sister so I can go back to trying to save what’s left of humanity.”

He nodded once, hesitantly. Than again, more firmly.

“What about us? What about…” The other clerk hesitated, his focus skipping between the two dead demons. “What about them?” He turned to me, clutching the sides of his own plain cassock. “What about the rest of them? All the consecrated are possessed? How is that even possible? How do you know? How can you be sure?”

“I know it’s a lot to take in, and I don’t really know how to help you with that.” I could only imagine how much worse the shock and betrayal must feel for someone who’d unknowingly committed his life—not to mention his soul—to a Church run by monsters. “What I can tell you is that if they find out what you know, they’ll kill you. Or possess you. Your best bet is to pretend you don’t know anything about the consecrated or about what happened here. And put off your own consecration as long as you can.” I shrugged, already heading toward the hallway on the opposite side of the room. “If that doesn’t work…run. At least in the badlands you know who the monsters are.” Because they were rotting, drooling savages.

I turned back to Flores. “Let’s go.”

As he led me down deserted, labyrinthine halls, seemingly designed to confuse and disorient, Officer Flores pelted me with whispered questions about the secret demon occupation, and I answered as best I could.

“No, we don’t think it’s limited to New Temperance.”

“Yes, we think they’ve been here all along.”

“Yes, if you stay here, you will eventually be possessed. That’s the only reason they’ve kept us alive this long.”

When I got tired of answering and afraid of being caught, I grabbed his arm and pulled him to a halt. “The more you understand, the more danger you’re in.” I stared right into his eyes, letting him see the grave warning in mine. “You need to focus on feigning ignorance, or they will light you on fire on live television, just like they did to Adam Yung.”

“He was innocent,” Flores whispered, his voice half choked with horror.