Hmm, maybe that would be my backup plan if my new post didn’t pay well. Necros made good money, but if I was a Gristle, I was screwed. My boss would barely pay me enough to eat. My mom wouldn’t be able to work forever. Necro work was hard and soul-draining, so I’d have to eventually take care of her, Mikey, and maybe even Shea too.
Shea’s face fell and clouded over. “It’s sad. Most of the girls are barely eighteen. Some have kids to support or contracts to fulfill. I’m lucky Grim doesn’t make me dance. I’m surprised he hasn’t noticed that I was blessed with incredibly amazing boobs.”
I grinned. “And a nice booty.”
She chortled, turning to look behind her. “It is nice,” she agreed, making me smile wider.
“Are you nervous?” I inquired, changing the topic. “What if we’re both Gristles?”
Shea shrugged and reached over to hold my hand. “Then we’ll be the best damn Gristles Demon City has ever seen.”
I smiled again but it didn’t reach my eyes. On a day when we were supposed to be getting special powers and new careers, we were selling our souls to the wrong side.
“Do you think the war will ever stop, that one side will win? That the fallen might win?” I asked her. The sunlight was shining up ahead as the bus made its way to the border of Angel City. The place I had once lived in, until my dad got sick. I barely remembered it now, but I recalled that the majority of people were happy.
Shea’s gaze followed the rain streak down the window, her blue eyes looking out behind her bronze skin. She let go of my hand. “I dunno. I try not to hope anymore. It only leads to disappointment.”
Wasn’t that the damn truth. We could pass for normal on the streets now, but after today, a red crescent moon slave mark would mar our looks for eternity. Would show everyone who we were, and what we’d signed up for.
The bus slowed as it reached the border gate, and a security guard stepped out from behind the tall cement wall that closed off the two warring cities. After a few words and a scan of the driver’s badge, we rolled on through. The sunlight burst through the windows and heated my chilly skin. Driving into Angel City was an immediate mood lifter. I took a deep breath as I felt the tension in my shoulders recede.
Shea chuckled. “You love this place.”
“Don’t you?” Angel City was the normal side, the side with the good people.
“It’s not home to me like it is to you,” she added with a shrug. “I don’t feel any different about either side.”
That was true. Shea was from New Orleans, and after moving here, she’d only ever known Demon City as home. She loved the rain and gloomy days, whereas I was dying for a sunny day at the beach.
The bus stopped in front of the Awakening Center, and Shea and I disembarked. My hands clung to my messenger bag tightly, as we crossed the busy downtown street, and made our way to the line of teenagers walking into the open double doors.
“I saw a Lakers game here once with my dad. I barely remember, but we have a picture,” I told Shea.
“The Awakening waits for no one!” a slender woman, in her twenties, called out to us as the last of the kids went through the double doors.
“Why do they insist on dressing us up? This isn’t prom,” Shea muttered, running to catch up. I didn’t want to know what happened if you didn’t make it on time to the Awakening. I’d heard stories and they weren’t good.
“Because it gives them something to do,” I whispered back, then was met with a glare from the female officer holding the door. I looked down at the silver spiral insignia on her jacket. She was a Light Mage. She also had a silver FA patch right beneath it, the logo of the Fallen Army.
The line of my fellow Awakening ceremony companions began to tighten as we walked single file back to the dressing rooms. The fallen angels who hosted the ceremony every year insisted we dress up, and after we had our Awakening, they threw a big catered party for everyone, even the demon bound.
“I heard there’s a chocolate fountain at the party after.” Shea’s eyes lit up as she told me the rumor. She was obsessed with chocolate—and guys, but mostly chocolate.
The Fallen Army officer hung back until she was walking with Shea and me, giving us a side glance as she tsked through her teeth.
Shea pinned her with a glare as we walked. “Can I help you?” she asked her in the bitchiest tone possible. The fallen and all of their officers were high and mighty, acting better than everyone, especially better than us. The demon bound.
The woman shrugged. “It’s a shame to see so many firstborns pledge their lives to the demons.”
Another woman up ahead had started roll call at a set of double doors. Shea stopped and faced the officer. Her blood was boiling. I could see that in the way she clenched her fists, and I hoped I didn’t have to hold her back, if you struck an officer, it was a criminal offense.
How did she even know we were slave bound? She’d probably looked at all of the files beforehand, specifically looking for the ones like us.
“You think we pledge ourselves? Wow, you’re stupider than you look,” Shea spat.
I froze, unsure what the woman’s reaction would be. I didn’t spend a lot of time around the Fallen Army and their human consort. I’d heard they were more forgiving than the demon patrol officers that roamed our streets, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
“No.” The officer stepped closer to my best friend. “What’s stupid is that your mothers, the people in charge of your safety and security, pledged your life to a demon for their own gains.”
I stepped out of the line, ready to give this girl a piece of my mind, but the officer at the front called Shea’s name then.
“Shea Hallowell. Demon bound.”
Shea gave the officer before her one last glare before stepping in line and raising her hand.
The officer at the front typed something into her tablet and pointed for Shea to step out of the line. There was a small group of three others I recognized from Demon City. All demon bound.
“Brielle Atwater. Demon bound.”
The way she said ‘demon bound,’ like it was dirty, made me hate them more. The self-righteous Fallen Army.
I raised my hand, and held my chin high. Yes, my mother sold herself to a lifetime of demon slavery to save my father’s life, but what other choice did we have? That’s what you did for love, for family. The fallen angels didn’t heal the dying—free will, destiny, and all of that bullshit. They said the humans who were terminal were meant to pass, and no one should interfere. Pious bastards.
I stepped out of line and followed Shea to stand with the others from Demon City. Five of us. The rest were free souls and would exit stage right and be recruited to enter Fallen Academy. Mages, the Sighted, Centaurs, and of course, the rare and mythical Celestials were all of the Angel Blessed powers and were looked at as the ‘good ones.’ There hadn’t been a Celestial in five years. It was said they were endowed with so much angel energy during The Falling, that they were kin to the fallen angels themselves. They were easy to spot with their big large white wings, smaller yet identical to the wings of the fallen. The only difference was that the Celestials could retract their wings at will, and the fallen couldn’t.
I saw one once. A fallen. I was nine years old, right before my dad’s diagnosis while he was in the hospital. Raphael, the Archangel of Healing, was going around blessing the sick—he must have skipped my dad. I’ll never forget what he looked like, and the way he looked at me, like he could see right through me. It was unnerving.
“Free souls this way. Demon bound that way,” the lead officer called out, and we all entered the hallway.
The free souls started walking into a dressing room to the right as we headed left, where a demon slave with the red crescent moon was waiting for us. She had a cattle prod in one hand, and Shea and I raised our eyebrows at each other. She was a slave minder. If one of us chickened out or tried to run, we’d be shot up with electricity.
Icing on the cake.