“This is all your fault!” Meshara’s words were slushy, but her tone was sharp. “I caught this plague from you and your friends!”
I worked the key back and forth as fast as I could, trying to ignore the friction burning into the pad of my right thumb. “The only people who’ve caught…whatever this thing is, are you and Aldric. Just the demons, Meshara.”
“No.” She shook her head. “Aldric and I were in Tobias and Micah for two days before we infiltrated your group, and we werefine.” Her words slid one into the next, and I had to listen closely to understand. “We got this fromyourpeople, and I wish I’d never laid eyes on any of you. I’d rather be crawling around in hell than trapped in a human body that doesn’t work.”
“In that case, I hope your little plague spreads! Humanity couldn’t ask for much more than demons voluntarily withdrawing from our world.” My hand froze as the last words fell from my lips, and I realized what I’d just said.
Humanitycouldn’task for much more than that. A disease that affects only demons, depriving them of the very senses they’d invaded our world in order to experience? That was too specific—too targeted—a plague to have natural origins.
Meshara’s illness wasn’t merely a miracle, it was a miracle ofscience.
We were looking at the kind of manufactured illness that would have taken researchers years—maybedecades—to engineer back before the war. The kind of illness that was completely beyond the abilities of what few scientists and facilities had survived the restructuring of the United States from a democratic republic to a demonic theocracy.
Which led me back to “miracle.”
I only knew of one organization in the business of making miracles happen, scientific or otherwise.
The Unified Church.
My hands fell away from my ankles. The keys thumped to the floorboard. “Itisa plague….”
“What?” Meshara demanded, furiously blinking her unfocused eyes, while I reached down for the keys.
“You’ve been poisoned by the Unified Church!” I resumed sawing, reinvigorated not just by the stunning—if puzzling—realization, but by the fact that Meshara’s stomach was clenching and twisting again in its primitive prenatal dance. The baby was running out of time, and I had no idea what to do.
“Never been to church,” she mumbled, and I could hardly hear her over the racing of my own pulse. “Never even been in one of their cities.”
I gave the cord around my ankles one last, vigorous attack, and the nylon finally gave, freeing my ankles. I was out of the vehicle in an instant, but I had to brace myself against the roof of the SUV while I regained my balance after having been tied up for at least twelve hours. From outside the car, I could see the damage from the wreck in its mangled, smoking glory.
The SUV was totaled.
My heart hammered so hard I could feel each individual beat. We were stuck in the middle of an unmaintained prewar highway, with no gun, very little food, and no shelter to speak of, other than the smoking ruin of our wrecked vehicle.
“Okay. We need to get you into the backseat,” I said as I rounded the car, with no idea whether or not she could still hear me. Her speech was getting harder to understand, and as far as I could tell, she was almost completely blind. Seeing my sister’s body fail was a special kind of torture, even though she was no longer in it. She wasn’t even sixteen years old. She didnotdeserve what I’d let happen to her, and the worst was yet to come.
If the loss of sensation limited Meshara’s control over her uterine muscles, Mellie’s baby was in big trouble.
On the driver’s side, I climbed onto the middle bench and began throwing things over the headrests into the backseat, keeping my eyes out for my sister’s labor and delivery bag.
“Meshara, can you hear me?” I spread the only blanket I’d found across the bench seat.
“Unfortunately,” she called, slurring the syllables.
“Come on.” I backed out of the vehicle and took her by the arm, overwhelmed by my mental list of things we needed but didn’t have. Not the least of which was a midwife. And a soul. “I need you to stand up. Can you walk?”
“What’s the point?” she demanded, staring over my shoulder, and with a fresh bolt of terror I realized she’d gone completely blind. This plague, whatever it was, was progressing even faster than the birth.
“The point is that if you don’t get your ass up and deliver my sister’s baby, I won’t have any choice but to roast you alive, then cut the baby out of you!” But I really,reallydidn’t want to do that.
I’d held it together so far because I had no other choice. Because Mellie’s baby was still depending on me. But if I had to perform an amateur caesarean only to watch the child die without a soul, I wouldloseit.
How much more could the world expect me to survive?
Meshara didn’t resist when I turned her legs toward the road, but she didn’t help either.
“You’re going to cut the baby out?” Her laughter sounded forced, but skeptical. “With what? A car key?”
“Listen to me.” I pulled her out of the driver’s seat, and she wobbled for a moment on legs she obviously couldn’t feel. “If you don’t bring that baby into this world safely, Iwilldig through the car for a glass bottle or a hunk of metal or a tool from the tire changing kit until I findsomethingthat will cut through human flesh.”
