The Stars Never Rise

“I think so,” Mellie said. I helped her carefully to her feet and kept one arm around her while she stepped over the restraints bolted to the concrete floor. “Yeah. I’m tired, but I can walk.”


Anabelle slid her arm around Melanie’s other side and Mellie looked surprised to see her. “It was all a lie, Ana. Mom was the demon, not Nina, and—”

“I know.” Anabelle smiled. “I’m not sure I understand it all yet, but I know,” she said as we helped my sister out of the cell.

“You need to get going,” Flores said. “Take a left into the hall, then two rights and another left. That’ll put you in the parking lot. But you’re on your own from there.”

“Thank you, Officer Flores.” I glanced back at him over my shoulder on our way down the aisle. “Be careful.”

He nodded, and we left him in that room full of empty cells, clearly trying to decide how best to proceed, armed with knowledge that could get him killed.

We took a left turn and two rights and were halfway to that last hallway when a soft thwup from a room ahead and to my right drew me to a silent stop in the middle of the hall. Something growled—a thick, guttural sound—and then I heard the distinct, grisly tearing of flesh.

Chills shot up my spine.

“Shit,” Finn whispered with Officer Jennings’s voice as my heart began to pound deep within my chest.

I’d just recognized the room ahead as the police station lobby—where I’d exorcised a demon a quarter hour earlier—when a man in an unembroidered navy cassock stepped into the doorway, one hand pressed to a wound in his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers, and his face was already pale. His focus found me without even veering toward Finn, Melanie, or Anabelle.

“You killed them,” the man said, and before I could object or ask who I’d killed, he spoke again, a thin line of blood leaking from one corner of his mouth. “You killed them all with that little demonstration. You killed them the moment you opened your mouth.”

And finally I understood. “Deacon Bennett?”

“Nina…” Terror and confusion rang in Melanie’s voice.

“Deacon Bennett was a demon,” I explained, without taking my eyes from the monster. “She lost her host, but now she’s found a new one.” And she’d slaughtered everyone I’d left alive in the lobby. Because I’d told them the truth.

Anabelle’s breathing quickened and Finn tensed at my side. “Nina,” he said. Time was running out. We needed to make a move. He was looking to me for a signal.

“Bennett is gone,” the possessed cop said, still clutching his chest wound. “Half a human-lifetime spent elevating myself in her skin, campaigning for deacon, and some snot-nosed assassin child ends the whole thing in five minutes.” He gasped, and when more blood dribbled down his chin, I realized Bennett’s new body was dying. Soon the demon would be free to search for another host. And again, I would lose the opportunity to purge the monster from our world and send it back to hell.

My left hand began to tingle, and I slid it behind my thigh, letting the heat build, hidden by my body. I was about to lunge for Bennett’s new host when the demon spoke again, and I froze, caught on his words like a fly in a web.

“I hope Kastor gets his hands on you.”

I blinked, and my eyes narrowed at him in surprise. If Kastor was an enemy of the Church—a thief of hosts—why would she hope he got his hands on me?

“Kastor?” Finn said, and I thought I heard something strange in the question, but maybe I just wasn’t used to his new voice yet.

“Who’s Kastor?” Anabelle said, and the name trembled on her tongue.

The demon gave us a bloody smile, eyes glinting with an inhuman shine. “Kastor is the boogeyman. You think humanity has reason to fear the Church?” he demanded, his voice filled with pain, yet somehow still menacing.

We had every reason to fear the Church—the room full of bodies to Bennett’s right was proof enough of that.

The demon read my reply in my expression, then snorted in derision. “Your fear is wasted on us, child. If Kastor rises, the Church will fall, and humanity will not be long for this world.”

“You believe your own propaganda now? The Church isn’t saving us—it’s leading us to the slaughter.”

Bennett’s new pain-glazed, contemptuous stare focused on me. “A farmer slaughters his cattle because he must eat to survive, but he also protects the herd from thieves and predators. If you leave the pen, the wolves will find you, child.”

“So Kastor is a wolf now? I thought he was the boogeyman.” Was this a distraction? Was her plan to keep us talking until reinforcements arrived?

“Kastor is destruction beyond what you can imagine. He and his libertines will devour the human race whole, and our kind will be stuck in hell once again, crawling over one another in the dark for untold millennia, until the next species creeps from the primordial ooze and evolves into something we can work with.” The demon’s body seemed to deflate as blood continued to leak from it. “Have you any idea how many eons we’ve wasted in previous cycles, thanks to gluttons like Kastor?”