Reese wasn’t quite so subtle. “Those souls were—”
I elbowed him before he could derail their celebration with the facts.
“So, the Lord’s Army is really more like the Lord’s Cavalry, right?” I said, and the man with the white curls laughed out loud.
“I suppose it does look like that. Our mounts will graze on their own, and fuel’s hard to come by out here, so the horses make sense for us.” He turned back to Eli. “Will you introduce your new friends?”
“Isaiah.” Eli led the man—obviously the tribe’s elder—toward us. “Brothers and sisters.” He aimed a grand gesture at the others, to include them. “This is Maddock, Devi, Nina, Reese, and Finn. Grayson, Anabelle, and Melanie are…somewhere.” Eli glanced around for them, visibly disappointed by their absence.
“They’re still at the courthouse.” I plucked Maddock’s radio from his waistband and turned away from the rest of the introductions. “Anabelle?” I said into the radio, hoping that the smoke plumes had been enough of a distraction to keep the degenerates away from Grayson.
A second later she responded. “Yeah. You guys okay?”
“We’re fine. The smoke was from a funeral, but it drew a small horde. You three get in the truck and head toward Eli’s camp. We’ll meet you there.” We shouldn’t have left them alone. Not while Grayson was in transition.
I turned back in time to hear Eli explaining to his group that the term ‘Anathema’ meant something different to us. “Something less…dishonorable,” he finished, and I stifled a laugh. “They’re exorcists.Trueexorcists. They wield the Lord’s fury in the palms of their hands.”
A murmur began among those still holding their horses’ reins. Several craned their necks to see the burned-out bodies on the ground.
“Anathema, this is Brother Isaiah, our elder, and these are the most able among our soldiers.” Eli gestured to the rest of his group.
Maddock was the first to stick out his hand. “Nice to meet you, Isaiah.”
“The honor is certainly mine,” Isaiah returned.
“And this is my niece Joanna,” Eli said, as the girl in the pink hat knelt next to the demon she’d dropped. The moment she looked up, I realized she was Tobias’s sister. The resemblance was uncanny.
“How old are you, kid? That was one hell of a throw,” Devi said.
“Eleven.” Joanna pulled her dull knife from the corpse’s eye, then wiped the gore on its gray pants. “I’m the best in my age group.” She didn’t seem to be bragging; she was simply stating a fact.
Eli took his hat off and wiped sweat from his forehead with a faded red handkerchief. “Sheisthe best,” he confirmed. “But there are several ready to give her a run for her money. Some even younger.”
“I’ve asked the rest of our group to meet us at your camp,” I said, extending my hand for Isaiah to shake. “Is that okay?”
“It would be our pleasure. We’d love to hear how you wield the Lord’s holy flames”—Isaiah held up his empty left hand—“in the palms of your hands.”
Maddock was noticeably quiet, but Devi shrugged. “I’m not sure that’s actually what we’re doing, but we’d be happy to demonstrate if an opportunity comes up.”
“Oh, one always seems to.” Isaiah gestured for Joanna to mount her horse, while he pulled himself up into his own saddle with shaking hands. And suddenly, though I was in desperate need of a soul, I hoped Isaiah wouldn’t be ready to let go of his anytime soon. Any man who held the respect of his people—not just their fear—for so long must have been worthy of the position. “We don’t have much to offer in the way of refreshments, but what we do have, we will gladly share.”
“I suspect we could help out on that front,” Reese said, and I shouldn’t have been surprised. He may not have liked Eli or shared his faith, but he wasn’t selfish.
“We’ll join you in a few minutes,” I said to Isaiah, and Finn glanced at me in surprise. Maddock was already holding the keys to the SUV.
“What was that about?” Devi demanded as the horses galloped toward the columns of smoke still rising into the afternoon sky.
“These degenerates are all wearing the same clothes.” I knelt next to the one Joanna had dropped with her knife. “And the clothes are too new.” The hosts should have worn a wide variety of clothing. Jeans. School slacks and blouses. Church cassocks. Their clothes should have labeled them as former students, police, teachers, or doctors. Or even nomads.
And their clothing should have been in much worse shape. Yes, the degenerates we’d just exorcised were deformed in the typical ways and covered in dust and grime, but their clothes were only ripped, rather than shredded. They were dusty, rather than matted with mud, blood, and gore.
Something was…strange.
Reese knelt next to me. “They almost look like uniforms of some sort.”
“That’s it!” I stood so suddenly my head spun. “Jail uniforms.” The jogging pants and T-shirts looked just like what prisoners at the New Temperance jail wore. Except that these didn’t have the wordsNew Temperance Jailprinted on the back. “They’re generic jail uniforms.”
“They were prisoners?” Devi’s tone bled skepticism. “From where?” There was no more federal prison system of the sort the United States had had before the war, but each city had its own jail. “Verity’s the closest city, right? And we’re still…what? Half a day away?”
