“Then maybe you shouldn’t have possessed a pregnant woman.”
Meshara rolled her eyes. “We both know Melanie’s the only host you wouldn’t have tried to burn me out of at the earliest opportunity.”
Which meant she clearly didn’t expect me to remain tied up for long. Smart demon.
“So why did you fake…?” Suddenly I understood. “You were the distraction.” We were all supposed to be caught up with Mellie’s early labor so Kastor’s spies could get away with Grayson. Meshara had sent Grayson to the truck for her bag. She’d set the whole thing up, and we’d fallen for it.
“Nowyou’re getting it. Good to know there’s no permanent damage from the crowbar.”
“Does it even matter, if I’m just going to wind up as somebody’s host?”
“Physical damage matters. A possessed body heals slower than normal, and brain damage is nearly impossible to recover from. That’s why we don’t possess the mentally impaired. Now, psychological damage—thatjust gives the new occupant an interesting backstory to work with.”
“Melanie isn’t your backstory,” I snapped. “She’s my sister.”
“Shewasyour sister. Now she’s a collection of unique memories and experiences, distinct from those of anyone else in the world. She’s qualia for me to play with. And I have to say, pedestrian pregnancy aside, hers may be the most interesting life I’ve ever assumed. An aptitude for study, yet no fondness for it. Sex at thescandalousage of fifteen. And love!” Meshara twisted to look at me through my sister’s eyes, and the car swerved to the right so hard that I smacked my shoulder on the window. “It wasn’t just physical with the doomed Adam Yung. Mellie really loved him. And she loved their baby.”
“Stop.” Unshed tears stabbed at my eyes like needles, but Meshara obviously enjoyed my pain.
“Then the way he died! They made her watch, and it was too much for her, even just seeing it on the screen. He screamed her name at the end as the flames crisped his skin. She passed out cold. Hit her head on the floor. Did she tell you that? Her anguish must have beendelicious.”
I clenched my teeth and tried to ignore her as I watched fields and small, burnt-out towns pass by my window.
“Melanie thought you’d left her. They told her you’d escaped the city, and that hurt her worse than anything. Worse than being tied to an exam table, prodded with equipment and poked with needles. The worst part of all was that she thought you let it happen.”
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, turning to stare straight out the windshield at the miles of splintered concrete stretching out before us.
“What? Stop mumbling.”
“I’m not mumbling. I have to pee.”
Meshara rolled Mellie’s eyes again, and I realized she’d mastered the human gesture. “No, you don’t.”
“Yes, I do,” I insisted, squirming in my seat to emphasize my discomfort, which allowed me to twist so that my wrist bindings touched the passenger’s-side door.
“Cross your legs and hold it.” Meshara glanced at my bound ankles and laughed. “Okay, then just hold it.”
For the next few hours I tried to tune out the demon’s torturous nostalgia-by-proxy while I watched the few remaining highway signs to estimate our distance from Pandemonia. To judge the dwindling window of opportunity I had to free myself and disable the demon without hurting Mellie’s baby. I took advantage of every swerve and bump in the road to scrape the thin cord binding my wrists against a jagged edge of plastic in the broken passenger’s-side armrest, but I couldn’t tell whether or not the rope was fraying. I couldn’t even be sure that I was hitting it in the same place with every bump, though Iwassure I’d gouged my own skin several times.
According to Finn and Maddock, Pandemonia had grown out of a prewar city called Colorado Springs, which was about sixty miles south of the former Colorado state capital of Denver. Denver had burned to the ground during the war—I knew that much from history class. But what the sisters hadn’t told us was that Colorado Springs had escaped major damage only to be taken over not by demons disguised as Church officials, as in the other surviving cities, but by demons in no disguise at all.
No wonder the Church didn’t want people to travel very far beyond its walled cities. They couldn’t afford for us to know about Pandemonia, nor could they afford to lose any of their human cattle to Kastor.
When I gasped at the latest cut in my arm, Meshara glanced at me with a frown.
“I still have to pee,” I said, and before she could question my bladder as the source of my pain, I changed the subject. “So, what’s the plan when we get to Pandemonia? I’m assuming if you were going to possess me, you would have already tried.”
“I would have already succeeded.” She reached back between the front seats, and the car swerved while she felt around for something I couldn’t see. “I could have taken you while you slept, just like I took your sister.”
“Watch out!” I shouted, and she looked up just in time to swerve around a long-stalled minivan on the side of the road. Meshara held a snack-sized bag of cayenne-flavored peanuts, the last from a box no one but Reese could stand to eat because they were so hot. She ripped the bag open with her teeth and dumped an eighth of the contents into her mouth.
Mellie would have been crying from the heat, but Meshara looked disgusted as she chewed. “Cayenne, my ass. False advertising is what that is. These havenoflavor.” She dropped the bag into the center console, and red-powdered nuts spilled into the empty drink holder. “I can’twaitto get out of this body. Nothing feels right. Nothing tastes right. Nothing even looks right.” She leaned forward to peer over the steering wheel at the sky. “Is it getting cloudy? Why does everything look so…dull?”
I glanced out the window and found only a few wispy white clouds. “The windshield’s tinted at the top. So, whydidn’tyou possess me?” I asked. “Why go for a pregnant human who may or may not survive childbirth when you could have had a healthy exorcist body, which will last much longer?” When her jaw clenched and she stopped talking for the first time inhours,I understood what she wasn’t saying. “You don’t have enough rank to claim an exorcist host, do you? Why would you go to this much trouble for Kastor if he won’t let you profit?”
“If this errand is successful and I survive, I will have my choice from a selection of beautiful young bodies that havenotbeen stretched and weakened anddulledby pregnancy.” Meshara laid one hand on Melanie’s belly, and I wanted to rip her entire arm off. “Anything I want from the stables. Kastor gave his word,” she said as we passed another highway mileage sign.
Neither Finn nor Maddock had been willing to talk about geography in any way associated with Pandemonia, so in the interest of avoiding the demon city in future travels, I’d borrowed a very old, very well-worn map from Brother Isaiah. It had taken me two hours to memorize all the highways leading to Colorado Springs, as well as the names of several of the nearby towns.
