I froze. If anyone would know for sure, it’d be Finn. All he had to do was give a little psychic push in Tobias’s direction—as if to take over the child’s body—and he would only meet resistance if something else was already occupying that space.
A demon.
“But…” My pulse raced even as I tried to deny what I was hearing. A demon traveling in the company of exorcists, and notoneof us had realized? How was that even possible? We hadn’t suspected him because…“Demons don’t take over children’s bodies,” I mumbled, still trying to come to terms with what I was hearing. “Everyone knows that.” The limitations were too great. The hosts failed to mature properly. Degeneration came much faster.
Tobias smiled slowly, eerily, and chills crawled across my skin. There was nothing left of the little boy we’d spent the past two days with. “Which is exactly why you’d never suspect a child.” His gaze—his very awareness—appeared to age right in front of me, and suddenly his chubby cheeks seemed an absurd and disturbing disguise.
“He’s your nephew?” I asked Eli, without taking my gaze from the pint-sized demon. No wonder the nomads were following us. We were traveling with the human husk of one of their children.
“He was,” Eli corrected, and I could practically feel the tension in his bearing. I could hear it in every word he spoke. “Until four days ago.”
Four days. That meant his division of the Lord’s Army—whateverthatwas—had been raided the very day Anathema had turned south to leave the New Temperance area. Thatcouldn’tbe a coincidence.
“You weren’t leading us to Verity, were you?” My words echoed in the empty foyer, my voice deep and still with the weight of the question. I knew Verity was out west, but without a map I’d never realized the child had led us off course. “Where were you taking us?”
Tobias’s smile decayed with a cloying sweetness, like fruit gone bad. “Ask your boyfriend.”
Finn cursed so passionately the words actually compromised his aim. Not that he would shoot a demon unless he had no other choice.
“Finn?” I said, but his jaw remained clenched.
“I didn’t recognize you at first,” Tobias said, still watching Finn, and even his speech sounded different. Ageless. His voice was infinity, granted sound. “Where did you find such a pretty host?”
Finn bristled at the comparison of his incorporeal state to that of a demon, but I was too startled by the implication to be offended for him. Tobiasknewabout Finn.
How the hell could he know? We’d been so careful not to reveal Finn’s uniquely incorporeal state in front of the monster we’d mistaken for a child.
“Identify yourself,” Finn whispered, and there was something strange in the demand. Some ageless formality, as if the words carried more power—more imperative—than I could possibly understand.
“Don’t you recognize me, child?” Tobias’s small brows arched over eyes that had once shone with human joy and innocence, and the irony was staggering.
“Aldric,” Finn said, and it didn’t sound like a guess. “And who was that?” He tossed his head at the man Eli had killed with the crowbar.
“Meshara. And youknowhow she abhors wearing the male form.”
“Finn?” My hands opened and closed, my left palm burning with the flames my body wanted to unleash, and I was suddenly hyperaware of every opportunity I’d had to burn this Aldric from Tobias’s young form. I’d given him my bedroll. I’d sung to him in the cab of the truck and shared my chocolate ration with him. He’d sleptinchesfrommy sister.
“What’s happening, Finn? Where was he leading us?” I hadn’t felt so distressingly uninformed since I’d discovered that my own mother was possessed.
Eli stepped closer on my right, crowbar still ready to swing. “He was taking you to Pandemonia.”
The name was unfamiliar, but I knew the meaning of the word.
Pandemonia.
All demons.
My chills became a full-body quaking I had to fight to restrict to my insides. “A city full of the Unclean?” In truth, all the surviving US cities were being governed by demons in the guise of Church officials, but a citypopulatedby demons, advertising its presence with its very name? “When the Church finds out, they will wipe your demon city from the map.”
Aldric laughed, and the sound seemed to freeze as it slid down my spine. “She’s adorable, Finn. One doesn’t usually find such naïveté in an exorcist.”
Naïveté? “The Churchknows?” The very existence of Pandemonia was a threat to the Unified Church’s biggest secret. Why would they let the city stand?
The answer came as soon as I’d thought the question.Because they can’t take it down.If the Churchcouldraze Pandemonia, it would.
“Why are you here?” Finn demanded.
“Why do you think? He wants to see Maddock.” Aldric’s eerie smile slid my way. “He wants to meetallof Maddy’s little friends. Especially the exorcists.”
