The Flame Never Dies

Those and the rate at which a candle burned.

Maddock sat on the arm of an ancient, mildewy couch, peering behind a dusty set of blinds at the street out front. He didn’t notice me until I sank onto a wooden desk chair two feet from him. “Need a break?” I whispered, and when I shifted on the chair, peeling flakes of varnish caught on the seat of my worn jeans.

“I don’t think I could sleep if I tried,” he admitted, and I squinted for a better look at his face. Maddock looked tense and sad, but what worried me was the new edge of fear lining his brow and crinkling in the corners of his eyes.

“Finn told me why you don’t want to go west.”

He turned sharply to look at me. “What did he tell you?”

I shrugged. “That you were born out west and that Verity is too close for comfort.”

Maddock relaxed visibly, and I frowned.

“There’s more to it, isn’t there?” I said, and he nodded but offered nothing more. “We’ll head back east as soon as we’ve dropped Tobias off,” I assured him. “None of us is eager for a family reunion. Except maybe Reese.” His father had been burned as a heretic—otherwise known as a skeptic—in Diligencia, and his mother had sent him with Anathema to save him from the same fate.

“Or maybe Grayson,” Maddy added, and a sudden memory burned bright from the back of my mind.

Grayson’s parents had been exposed as breeders when her older brother, Carey, came into his exorcist abilities earlier than expected. The Church executed her parents and took her brother. Grayson was the only member of the James family to escape intact, and if not for Anathema, she’d probably be in Church custody, just like her brother.

Except that Carey James was no longer in Church custody.

During our escape from New Temperance, I’d discovered that the Church had lost him in a raid by a group of demons led by someone named Kastor.

For a while, I’d debated telling Grayson what I’d learned about her brother, but in the end, I’d decided not to say anything because I’d uncovered more questions than answers about Carey, and I was afraid that would only make his absence harder to bear. Then we had become overwhelmed by constant cold and hunger, and roaming degenerates, and I’d forgotten I even had that unfortunate bit of information.

Until Maddock’s mention of her family sparked the memory.

A flash of light caught my eye from between two of the slats in the mini blinds, yanking me from my thoughts. “What’s that?” I stood and peeked through the glass, my heart thumping rapidly. Usually Grayson woke up when she sensed that degenerates were closing in on us.

But Maddock didn’t seem worried. “I think they’re nomads.”

Supposedly, after the war several groups chose a dangerous, migratory life in the badlands over the totalitarian protection of the Church-run cities. In school we were taught that the nomads had succumbed to starvation and degenerate attacks decades ago, yet the half-dozen abandoned campsites we’d found seemed to suggest otherwise.

Maddock shifted uncomfortably on the arm of the couch. “They’ve been on the edge of town for hours and they don’t seem to know we’re here.” Which was why he hadn’t alerted the rest of us. Any movement we made now would only bring us to their attention.

The only people we’d actually seen in the badlands were uniformed Church cargo drivers and scavengers sent to “reclaim” resources from our past. They tended to work quickly and scurry back to the safety of tall steel walls, and they never veered off course.

By contrast, the nomads weren’t scared of the landscape they lived in, but they did seem to be shy. “That’s the closest they’ve ever come.”

Maddy shrugged. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“Maybe we should make contact.” After all, for more than a century nomads had been living off a landscape the Church told us could not be conquered. They’d been fishing, hunting, and harvesting—surviving among roving hordes of degenerates, presumably without exorcist abilities. “They could probably teach us a lot faster than Mellie’s books have.”

Maddock shook his head, still staring out the window at the bright flicker of what looked like a single candle. “Helping us would put them on the Church’s radar. If the ‘exorcists’ find us with those nomads, they’ll kill every one of them to get to us.”

FOUR

“Incoming!” Reese shouted, and I ducked as a degenerate flew over my head, its tattered cassock trailing through the air behind it. The torn and filthy Church robe was once navy blue, which meant that the host had been a policeman before he’d been possessed by the Unclean.

The mutated monster landed barefoot on the crumbling sidewalk four feet from me. His elongated toes were broken and oozing fresh blood, but he didn’t seem to notice. He howled, his sharply pointed chin dropping to reveal a mouth full of broken, rotting teeth. Then he lunged.

The beast slammed into my chest, driving me onto the chipped steps of an abandoned small-town courthouse. A chunk of concrete dug into my back, just left of my spine. The monster’s jaws snapped at me, drool dripping onto my shirt, and I shoved my right forearm against his emaciated throat, narrowly preventing him from tearing mine out with his teeth.

I pressed my left hand against the beast’s chest, and bright light surged between us. The monster screeched, his bald head thrown back, dark hollows stretching beneath his cheekbones, and the fire from my palm blazed deep into his flesh, burning the demon from its soulless, mutated human host.

When the light faded and the monster sagged against me, I shoved him onto the fractured courthouse steps, then rose to assess the fight still going on all around me. Finn stood guard with his rifle in front of the courthouse’s massive double doors, which no longer quite closed because the building had both settled and begun to rot in the century since it last saw use. Ana, Grayson, Mellie, and Tobias watched from a first-floor window, despite instructions to stay on the top floor, at a safer distance.

Reese, Devi, and Maddock were each locked in combat with other degenerates in the street—Reese was fending off three at once—and as I took stock, one of them abandoned the fight and darted across the overgrown lawn on all fours, her thin, matted hair flying out behind her.

As she hit the courthouse steps, I grabbed her by the tail of her torn, filthy shirt, then shoved her facedown onto the concrete and pressed my glowing hand against the back of her ribs. She screamed and flailed beneath me, and I could only ride out her violent death throes even as another monster lunged at Finn.

He swung the rifle like a bat—reluctant to kill a human host, because that would free the demon within—and the thunk of the steel barrel against skull made me flinch.

I backed away from the dead host beneath my hand and grabbed the degenerate he’d just bashed, then pressed my still-burning left palm against its bare, filthy flesh. The demon thrashed, caught by the flames blazing between us, and on the edges of my vision the other members of Anathema gathered to watch me burn out the last of the small horde.

Grayson pushed the courthouse door open as the monster crumpled to the ground. She ran past Finn and down the steps to throw herself into Reese’s arms. “I’m a walking monster magnet,” she groaned into his shoulder while he stroked her brown curls. “They won’t stop coming until I exorcise one and trigger my transition.”

I knew how she felt. During my transition a few months before, two small hordes of degenerates had managed to breach the walls of New Temperance, drawn to the emergence of my exorcist abilities like fish to a wriggling worm. But in the badlands, there was no wall standing between Grayson and the monsters. There was nothing but us.

Unfortunately, she was right; that wouldn’t stop until her hand began to burn in response to their presence, allowing her to actually exorcise a demon, which would usher in the full speed and strength that came with her new ability.

“Maybe if I help fight them, the close proximity will trigger my flame?” She held out her left hand with a hopeful look up at him, but he only shook his head.

“I’m not going to put you in danger to test a theory. When you’re ready, it’ll happen.”

Until then, all we could do was wait.

“Lemme see the bodies!” Tobias tried to run down the steps but tripped over a loose chunk of concrete and crashed to the ground instead. When he stood, blood welled from a gash on his right knee.

“Careful!” Anabelle knelt to examine the cut. “Hold still and let me get a bandage.” We’d found a crate of them in the cargo truck, and Tobias had gone through half a box in the two days since we’d found him.

“It doesn’t hurt,” he said while she rummaged through her satchel. “I can’t even feel it.”

“You’ve got to hand it to him,” Melanie whispered from my right, rubbing her belly with one hand. “That kid’s tough. Last night he burned his arm when he got too close to the campfire. It blistered, but he insists it doesn’t hurt at all.”

“This one’s still smoking!” Tobias squealed as Anabelle pulled him away from a corpse lying in the street. It was indeed still leaking smoke from the hole in the center of its back.

“Don’t touch,” Mellie scolded, leaving my side to tug him even farther from the body. “They’re probably crawling with germs.” Not that we were exactly clean since leaving the abundance of clear creeks and small lakes behind.

“Does the hole go all the way through? Let’s roll it over!”

Melanie distracted Tobias with a bottle of water and the bag of cookies she now kept at the ready. I wasn’t sure what we’d do with the precocious little boy when we ran out of sweets with which to bribe him.

“You okay?” I asked Finn when I noticed blood dripping from his arm. He blinked, then frowned at me until I showed him the long scratch across his forearm. “That last one had claws.”

“Oh. Yeah. I’m fine.” He swiped at the blood with the sleeve of his other arm, and then his focus strayed back toward the road. I followed his gaze to find Maddock staring westward into the setting sun, both fists clenched at his sides.

* * *

“I said no.” Anabelle plucked the chocolate bar from Tobias’s grip and tucked it into the front pocket of her backpack. “That’s the last one, and you can’t have it until you’ve eaten some real food.”

“I’m tired of beans for breakfast.” Tobias poked at the contents of his can with a stainless steel spoon. “I want bacon.”

Devi rolled two half-burned candles in an extra T-shirt, then stuffed them into her bag. “Do you see any pigs running around?”

Tobias’s bright brown eyes widened. “Bacon comes from pigs?”

“And from little boys who don’t do what they’re told,” she said, supporting my theory that she probably hadn’t liked children even when she’d been one of them. The child stuck his tongue out at her. Devi laughed and knelt to roll up her sleeping mat.

“I gave you beans because you said you were tired of stewed tomatoes,” Anabelle pointed out as she wiped her own spoon clean with a damp rag.

“They don’t taste good anymore.” Tobias pouted. “They don’t taste like anything. I think they went bad.”

I picked up his nearly full can of beans and read from the back. “They’re two years from their expiration date, like all the rest. You just don’t want to eat anything that’s actually good for you.”

“Yet he never grows tired of candy.” Reese winked at the boy and slid him a secreted chocolate bar from his own bag. Tobias grinned at him and took another small bite of beans.

I stood to gather the cans we’d emptied at breakfast and at dinner the night before, and my gaze fell on Melanie, still lightly snoring on top of her sleep roll. The further her pregnancy progressed, the more easily she tired, yet the harder it was for her to rest. We let her sleep late whenever we could afford to.

As I cleaned up I noticed that Maddock and Finn were both staring out the window. “What’s up?” I said, plucking the empty peach can from Maddy’s grip.

“They’re back.” Finn scooted to make room for me at the window, and I saw the problem immediately. We’d slept on the third floor of what was once a small-town courthouse, and the vantage point gave us a view of half the town, and of the crumbling two-lane road leading into the badlands.

About a mile outside of town the nomads had set up camp with four vehicles, two dozen tents, and about twenty horses. They hadn’t been there when we’d settled in the night before.

“Two days in a row.” Maddock frowned. “We can’t keep calling it a coincidence. They’re following us.”

I picked up the empty can at his feet. “Maybe they want to help us. Or warn us about something.”

“Or rob us blind and kill us in our sleep,” Devi offered from across the room, where she was stuffing her bedroll into her bag.

“If that’s the case, why make their presence so obvious?”

She shrugged. “It can’t be easy to hide an entire herd of horses.”

I stood by my theories, but Finn and Maddock hardly seemed to know I was there. The farther west we’d come—two-thirds of the way in two days, thanks to prewar roads kept passable by the Church—the more tense they’d grown.

Tobias, on the other hand, seemed happier with each mile that passed beneath our tires.

“How are we fixed for gas?” Reese added Devi’s duffel to the three others hanging from his shoulders.

“Too low to pass by the next station without filling up,” Finn said. “If I remember correctly, there’s a fuel depot a couple of miles south of town. With any luck, it’ll be locked but unguarded.”

Assuming the Church hadn’t anticipated our westward shift.

Maddock stood and hefted his pack onto his back. “Devi and I will take the SUV. Reese, you take the truck.”

“I’ll go with him.” Grayson rushed ahead before anyone could object. “I’ll stay in the truck, but I’m going. You can’t keep leaving me behind.”

“Oh, let her go,” I said. “Finn and I will hold down the fort here.”

Reese only relented when he realized he was outvoted.

“Watch the nomads,” Maddock said on his way out the door. “If they come any closer, call on this.” He tossed me one of our handheld radios.

I gave him a mock salute and clipped the radio to my waistband. As soon as they were gone, Finn took up watch at the window while I knelt to help Tobias with his—formerly my—sleep roll.

“Hey, Tobias, how long had you been with your new parents before we found you? Do you remember?”

He shrugged, and I held my finger in place over a length of black cord holding the bedroll closed so he could form a clumsy bow. “I dunno.”

“And you don’t remember your new parents’ names?”

Anabelle shook her head at me from across the room, where she was taking inventory of our hygiene supplies. But I couldn’t leave it alone. If demons adopting kids was going to be a new trend, I wanted to know as much as I could about how they were pulling it off.

“They just said to call them Mommy and Daddy.” Tobias stood from his messy but functional nylon bow and pressed his knees together in a stance any first grader would recognize. “I gotta go.”

The courthouse had half a dozen restrooms, but none of them had been functional in decades. “Hang on, and I’ll take you out—”

But he was out of the room and halfway down the first of two dusty marble staircases before I could even stand.

“Tobias, wait!” I called, and Mellie rolled over on her bedroll but didn’t quite shake off sleep.

The rapid patter of the child’s footsteps echoed below me as I stomped down the spiral stairs after him. A second later Finn’s boots clomped from above as he followed both of us. “Tobias!” he shouted, but the boy’s footsteps didn’t slow.

When I hit the first-floor landing, I stopped to listen for the echo of small shoes to figure out which way he’d gone.

Down the back hall, toward the rear door.

I followed Tobias into the back of the building, marveling at how well the courthouse had held up under a century of neglect. Stone floors and walls didn’t crumble or mold like carpet and drywall, and though many of the windows were broken, most of the doors were still intact, which had kept out the larger animals. And because the building had been stripped of furnishings shortly after the war, there was nothing left inside to rot or mildew.

“Tobias?” I called, my boots nearly silent on the grimy marble tiles.

Muffled footsteps whispered against the floor at my back, and a grunt exploded behind me, followed by a blunt crack. My heart hammering, I spun to find an unfamiliar man splayed across the floor at my feet, the short end of a crowbar lodged in the side of his skull.

I jumped back, startled, and my pulse raced so fast my vision swam.

Standing over the dead man was a boy about my age, wearing torn jeans and a dusty black cowboy hat, his feet spread for balance, his jaw set in a firm line. He wore prewar vintage Western boots, absent the spurs I’d seen in history textbooks, and despite my shock—or perhaps because of it—I wondered how he’d managed to walk so softly in footwear that looked stiff and unyielding.

His skin was dark, his eyes a piercing golden brown, and he wore a simple silver cross on a thin chain around his neck.

With a startling bolt of intuition, I realized the boy was one of the nomads—and he’d just killed the stranger who’d snuck up on me.

“Don’t move.” Without looking away from me, he braced one boot on the dead man’s jaw and wrenched the crowbar free with a wet sucking sound. Then he wielded it like a bat on one shoulder, ready to swing again, blood dripping from the short, bent end of the metal.

“I am Eli Woods, sentinel in the Lord’s Army.” His gaze narrowed on me. His grip tightened on the crowbar. “You have ten seconds to convince me you’re not one of the Unclean, or I will bury this in your skull.”

Uh-oh.

I took a step back and my spine hit the cool stone wall.

Eli wasn’t a demon, so I couldn’t exorcise him, and I wasn’t going to hurt a fellow human in anything less than self-defense. Which was starting to look like a distinct possibility.

“Five seconds.” He studied me, and I found no recognition in his eyes. “Who are you?”

Obviously nomads didn’t watch the news. They didn’t have television. But if they had a radio and had picked up any of the Church’s broadcasts proclaiming the infamous Nina Kane to be possessed, giving him my name wouldn’t help him trust me.

“Um . . .”

“Three seconds.”

I sucked in a deep breath and held his gaze. Then I spat out the truth. “I’m Nina Kane. But I’m not a demon, and I can prove it.”

Eli’s dark brows rose beneath the wide brim of his hat. “You can prove you’re not a demon?” He was either surprised or skeptical, but I couldn’t tell which because his face only seemed capable of scowling. His grip on the crowbar tightened. “That’s a new one. Start talking.”

But as I tried to figure out what to say, I realized that without a demon there to exorcise, proving my claim would be nearly impossible. I held my hands up, palms out, to remind him that I wasn’t armed. “Okay, I could prove it if there was another demon here for me to kill, but since there isn’t, you’ll just have to take my word for it.” In my whole life, I’d never wished for a demon, but in that moment, I got close. “I’m an exorcist.”

“There are no exorcists.” He pulled the crowbar back to swing, and my heart fell into my stomach. “They’re all demons the so-called Unified Church uses to hunt down its enemies.” He shifted his weight and leaned into his swing. Pulse racing, I dropped to the ground on my knees. Pain radiated up my legs. The metal bar swung over my head with a fierce whoosh. I scrambled around the dead guy’s feet and stood, backing away from Eli with my arms out. Trying to look harmless.

“No, wait! I’m not one of those exorcists.” I would have been relieved that he knew about the Church’s black-robed fakes if he didn’t think I was one of them. “I’m the real thing! So we’re actually on the same side—”

“Drop it!” Finn shouted, and I turned to see him in the doorway, aiming his rifle at Eli.

“Who are you?” the sentinel demanded, crowbar still held at the ready.

“That’s a complicated question.” Finn’s focus on Eli never wavered. “Come any closer to her, and you won’t live long enough to hear the answer.”

“Eli, please put the crowbar down.” I forced my voice to remain low-pitched and calm. “This is Finn. He’s with me. He’s not going to hurt you.” I turned to Finn. “This is Eli Woods. He killed the demon who snuck up on me, and I think we should all be friends.”

Finn glanced at the corpse on the floor but looked unconvinced.

“Finn, put the gun down,” I said.

“Him first.” His aim at the center of Eli’s worn-thin button-up shirt was a steady threat.

“Okay, boys, someone has to go first.” I turned back to the self-professed sentinel. “Since you obviously don’t recognize my face or my name, I’m guessing you haven’t seen or heard the news recently?”

He shook his head. “We don’t have television or radio.”

“We who? The Lord’s Army?” I said, and Finn gave me a confused look. “What is this army?”

“We are the last of the true believers.” Eli’s words had the formal cadence of an official pledge or creed. It sounded a little too much like the Church for comfort, but Eli—and presumably his nomadic army—were no more fans of the Unified Church than I was. “We are a beacon of light and truth, shining in a world of darkness and corruption.”

“Humble too,” Finn muttered.

I ignored him and focused on Eli. “It’s nice to meet you. And your army.” I cleared my throat and tossed a warning glance at Finn. “Are you familiar with the saying ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’? Because that’s kind of what we’re looking at here. The Church has been hunting you guys for decades, and now they’re hunting us too because of what we know and what we can do. Since we’re on the same side, maybe you could reconsider lowering your weapon?”

Eli took one hand from his crowbar long enough to reseat his black cowboy hat, briefly revealing short, tight curls. Then he reclaimed his expert grip. “You’re exorcists.” It wasn’t a question. He was repeating the part he obviously found hard to believe.

“We’re true exorcists. We hunt demons, just like you.” I gestured to the body at my feet. “But instead of puncturing skulls, we incinerate the bond between parasite and host and fry the demonic bastards back to hell.”

His eyes widened. “You’re serious.”

I nodded. “It’s kinda badass.”

“Though most of us don’t object to blunt force trauma when the occasion calls for it.” Finn shrugged and gestured with the rifle he was still aiming. “Or bullets.”

I glared at Finn, then turned back to Eli. “I need both of you to put down your weapons so we can focus on our mutual enemy.” I shrugged, aiming for casual confidence. “You know. Evil.”

Both of them glanced at me. Then they glared at each other. Neither boy lowered his weapon.

My temper spiked. “We’re in the middle of the badlands with a corpse on the floor and the Church on our tails. We are not each other’s biggest problem. So, Finn, put the damn gun down!”

Finn’s bright green eyes narrowed and his jaw tensed. “Not until you back out of his reach.”

“Striking a human would be a blight on my honor, and she’s obviously not possessed,” Eli said as I moved closer to Finn. “The jury’s still out on you.”

Finn’s glare grew colder, but he flicked the safety switch on his rifle, then lowered it. But he didn’t sling it over his back.

I turned back to Eli. “Your turn.”

When the sentinel took a deep breath, I realized that trusting Finn and me was as much of a risk for him as the reverse was for us. Maybe more. He lowered his bloody crowbar but didn’t put it down, and I decided that was the best we were going to get.