had decimated two-thirds of the world’s population.
Now pregnancies were licensed and regulated by the Church. People who were declared unfit to reproduce were sterilized at age fifteen, as I’d been because I was slightly nearsighted and prone to seasonal allergies. To make sure that every baby conceived would actually live, elderly citizens were expected to give up their souls in simultaneous birth/death events carefully orchestrated by city officials. What the rest of the world didn’t know was that the Church only wanted those babies to live so they could be possessed and fed from as adults.
Escaping New Temperance had spared Melanie’s baby—and the rest of us—from that fate. Theoretically, at least. Unfortunately, our escape had also drastically lowered the chances of finding a soul for the baby. Without one, the youngest and most vulnerable of my two remaining family members would die within hours of his or her birth. We’d all known that from the beginning.
What I hadn’t told the rest of Anathema was that I was fully prepared to make the necessary sacrifice myself if I couldn’t find a willing donor before the birth.
“It’ll work out, Nina.” Finn squeezed my hand as I pressed on the brake to keep from rear-ending the cargo truck in front of us. “One way or another, it’ll all work out.”
But I knew better. Nothing in my life had ever just worked out. Good things never happened unless I made them happen, and five months spent wandering through the badlands hadn’t changed that.
Before we’d even pulled to a stop in front of the library, Grayson James burst through the cracked glass doors and raced down the crumbling steps without so much as a precautionary glance in either direction. I groaned as I shifted into park. One of these days her enthusiasm was going to get her killed. Or worse—possessed.
Reese got out of the SUV and pulled her into his massive embrace, then lifted her for a long, deep kiss. For a moment I was caught off guard by their demonstrative affection—a transgression worthy of arrest had we still been in New Temperance, or any other city. If Finn and I had become comfortable with our relationship, free from the enforced modesty of the Church, Reese and Grayson had grown bold.
Maddock and Devi’s connection had already been scandalous when I’d met them.
“Grace, you can’t just keep throwing yourself into unknown situations.” Reese set her on her feet on the crumbling concrete, and her head barely reached his shoulder. “Until you transition, you’re vulnerable.”
We’d seen an increase in degenerate activity over the past month as her seventeenth birthday approached, bringing with it the emergence of her exorcist abilities—a genetic inevitability because her brother and both of their parents had also been exorcists.
“I knew it was you,” Grayson insisted. “I didn’t hear any monsters.”
Degenerates could sense an exorcist in transition, like a cat scenting a mouse. Albeit, a mouse that would soon be able to burn the cat alive with a single touch. Grayson could “hear” degenerates in her mind, in the same way she could hear Finn talking even when he had no physical form. We didn’t understand her ability, but we couldn’t deny its existence.
Devi scowled, her dark brows drawing low over expressive black eyes that only seemed to venture beyond skepticism and disapproval when she was looking at Maddock. “Degenerates aren’t the only threat out here.”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” Grayson demanded.
Reese closed the SUV’s driver’s-side door. “That’s not the point.”
“That is the point. I’m not a civilian,” she whispered fiercely, trailing him around the vehicle as Melanie and Anabelle finally followed her out of the library now that they knew we weren’t under attack. “In a couple of weeks, I’ll be as strong and fast as the rest of you.”
“And we welcome the day,” he said. “But it’s not here yet.” Reese would willingly throw his own overgrown frame in front of her as both shield and weapon, but he worried that Grayson was vulnerable when he wasn’t around. I had the same concerns for my sister. And for Anabelle. Fortunately, neither of them was eager to start battling demons.
“It’s never too early to start training.” Devi shrugged. “Maybe if she knew what she was doing, she wouldn’t throw herself into unknown situations.”
That was one of the few things Devi and I agreed on, but Reese was afraid that training would encourage Grayson to put herself in danger.
Maddock unlocked the back of the cargo truck and rolled the door up as the last two members of our outlaw band made their way down the crumbling library steps. Anabelle had one arm around Mellie to help steady her. Every day Melanie’s stomach grew larger while the rest of her appeared to shrink, and the unborn child seemed determined to upset my fifteen-year-old sister’s balance. And to keep her up all night. And to make her feet swell, her ribs ache, and the circles beneath her eyes grow darker with every day spent on the run with inconsistent nutrition and nonexistent prenatal care.
Anabelle let go of Mellie on the bottom step. “That’s quite a haul!”
“This is only half,” I said, scanning the labels on the top row of boxes. “Cross your fingers that there’s a crate of vitamins in here, or we’ll have to go back for the other truck.”
Devi groaned—returning to the scene of the crime would be a huge risk for the group—but she didn’t argue. I’d made it clear since our escape from New Temperance that the health of my sister and her unborn child came first.
“We can’t carry all that.” Melanie stared with huge brown eyes up at the stack of crates.
Finn shrugged, and I could practically hear gears turning as he considered the problem. “We can if we ditch the shot-up car for this truck.”
“You want to drive across the badlands in a marked Church cargo truck?” My brows rose. “I guess that would be faster than actually painting targets on our backs.”
Maddock chuckled as he scanned the inventory, and I glanced from face to face. “By the way, am I the only one who didn’t know we’re heading south?”
“It’s news to me,” Anabelle said, but that was no surprise. I’d known her since I was a kid, but the others didn’t trust her like they trusted me, because I was a fellow exorcist, and they didn’t like her like they liked Melanie, because everyone liked Melanie. My sister’s gift—and her curse—was charisma. Which was how she’d wound up in love with and pregnant by a sweet but ultimately doomed boy two years her senior.
The oldest of our group by several years, Anabelle was a former ordained Church teacher who’d had to follow us into the badlands because knowing the truth about her superiors was as good as having a noose around her neck. She’d lost everything and everyone she’d ever had, just like the rest of us. But like Mellie, she was largely defenseless against the dangers of the badlands, and she was eager to earn her place in the group any way she could.
“First things first.” Finn pulled the collapsible stairs from a hidden shelf beneath the cargo hold, then stepped up into the truck. “Food. We’ll decide everything else once our brains are fueled.”
While Maddock, Devi, and I stood watch, Reese and Finn began pulling boxes from the truck and stacking them on the ground. Mellie and Anabelle made notes on the inventory sheet until they came to a crate of canned
