“Who’she?” Eli asked, and if he hadn’t, I would have. But we got no answer. Whoever “he” was, he was obviously a demon, and his interest in the exorcist members of Anathema was painfully clear. Exorcists made much stronger, hardier, longer-lasting hosts than did normal people. Which was why my mother had chosen an exorcist to be my father—so that the child she raised to be her next host would be as durable as possible.
“He’ll never see Maddock again,” Finn growled. “And neither will you.” He turned to me. “Nina?”
I lifted my left hand, already cradling its flame.
“Grayson’s transitioning,” Aldric said, and I froze in the middle of my first step toward him, confused by the non sequitur. “No matter where you go, degenerates will flock to her, and he will follow them to you. How do you thinkwefound you?” The child-demon nodded at the corpse of his former peer—obviously the other half of “we.”
“We’ll fry everyone he sends after us,” Finn promised.
“And your sister?” Aldric turned to me. “Is Melanie an exorcist? Will her baby be one?”
“Stay away from my sister and her—”
Finn lifted his rifle, revising his aim.
Aldric spread his chubby arms, inviting Finn to shoot. “Go ahead.” His focus found me and lingered. He looked…hungry. “I’m due for an upgrade anyway.”
Surely he was bluffing. It wasn’t easy for a disembodied demon to claim a healthy, conscious human host. But I wasn’t confident enough to bet on that, and neither wasFinn.
“Nina!” Finn glanced at my hand, and then his gaze skipped to the demon.
I flipped a mental switch, and a handful of flickering flames kindled in my palm.
Aldric’s grin widened—a farce of childhood joy. “Kastor is going toloveher.”
“Kastor?” I said, and Finn gave me the smallest, subtlest shake of his head. The “he” from Pandemonia who wanted to see Maddock wasKastor?
Finn looked sick. I’d told him in confidence that Kastor—whose name the former Deacon of New Temperance had invoked to scare us—had stolen Grayson’s brother from a Church caravan. But Finn had never mentioned that heknewthis demon that other demons feared!
“You told her about Kastor?” Aldric said, then he read the answer in my expression. “Youhaven’ttold her. Yet she knows something….”
“Kastor is the wolf,” I said. And we were the sheep.
At least, that’s how Deacon Bennett had put it. She’d seen the Unified Church as a shepherd, slaughtering only the sheep they needed to survive, while the wolf, she’d claimed, would butcher us indiscriminately.
“Yes, the wolf.” Aldric’s eyes narrowed as they studied me. “I don’t suppose you own a red hooded riding cloak?”
“What?” I frowned.
The demon child shrugged. “No matter. He will devour you just the same, and Finn will be forced to watch. Eli knows all about the torment of spectators, don’t you?” Aldric said, and I felt Eli tense at my back. “He saw poor little Tobias wake up from an afternoon nap with a wicked smile and a voracious appetite for pain.”
Eli grunted, and something whistled through the air, end over end, so fast my gaze couldn’t quite track it.
“No!” Finn’s hand shot out, and Eli’s crowbar slammed into his palm hard enough to throw him off his feet. He landed in front of Aldric, his eyes shut tight, clutching the steel bar in his left fist and the barrel of the rifle in his right. Pain was drawn in every line of his face.
Aldric pounced, straddling Finn, his tiny hands around Finn’s throat. The muscles in his small arms bulged with more strength than a child should have had. He hardly looked human in that moment, and I didn’t understand why Finn didn’t fight back, until his eyes opened and they were no longer Finn-green.
They were Carter-brown, and terrified. Sudden, excruciating pain had driven Finn from the body of the New Temperance gate guard.
Eli lunged for them, and his movement broke through my shock. I lurched in front of him and shoved my left hand down on the demon child’s back. Light exploded between us. Aldric threw his head back. The screech that erupted from his small throat filled me with a savage satisfaction, and I was certain all over again that even on the run in the badlands, I was doing what I was meant to do.
Aldric’s hands loosened around Carter’s throat, then fell away as his scream died. When he finally collapsed on top of the poor, shocked guard, I fell with him.
For a moment no one moved. Then Carter gasped for air, blinking rapidly, and I scrambled off him on my hands and knees. “Are you okay?” I asked, disoriented by the lack ofFinnin the guard’s features and mannerisms.
“Where am I? What’s going on?” Carter shoved Aldric onto the floor with his swollen left hand, and flinched from the pain. Then he pushed himself to his feet with his good hand and backed away from the child’s still-smoking corpse, which—fortunately—put the rifle out of his reach.
“What thehelljust happened?” Eli demanded, and I stood to find him staring at us in total bewilderment.
