The Flame Never Dies (25 page)

When the flames in my left hand died, the man in purple collapsed to the ground, smoke curling from the charred hole in his chest. I backed away, and the crowd descended on him, pulling off scraps of his clothing and handfuls of hair from his head. He was a celebrity in death, and everyone wanted a souvenir.

Finn, Grayson, and I slipped out of the crowd and into the nearest restaurant, where they repeated their exorcist exhibition while I went into the kitchen, ostensibly to prepare a snack for my revered boss, and took the opportunity to spray down everything edible with a generous helping of my germs.

We spent the next couple of hours touring the downtown district, going from party to party, each weirder than the last. Grayson and I took turns playing first the distraction, then the infector. Finn didn't get to spray from his bottle at all because everywhere we went, everyone watched him.

In spite of his reluctance to let
me
go around kissing demons, he couldn't entirely escape the same fate. Kastor, evidently, was popular with the lady demons, and several wanted to stake their claim on his mouth. Publicly.

I eased my rage at the sight with the knowledge that in less than a day, none of those women would be able to see, hear, taste, or feel a damn thing. Finn's mouth was poison, and they were drinking straight from the bottle.

By midnight we'd hit the kitchen of every open restaurant and made a second trip through the marketplace. People were actively ingesting our germs. Part of me wanted to wait around long enough to see the virus take hold, but the rest of me knew better. Anyone who'd seen me spray from my bottle and dismissed it as an eccentricity of one of Kastor's top men would know better the minute the virus became public knowledge.

We needed to be long gone before that happened.

“So, how do we get out of here?” I whispered to Finn as we headed back toward the converted hotel, ostensibly so that Kastor could take care of city business.

In the lobby he waved to some people eating and blasting music I'd never heard before, and I hoped they'd all gotten their food from the infected hotel kitchen.

“Quietly. Covertly,” Finn said once the elevator doors had closed behind us. “Kastor and his guards never leave the city. Not once in the seventeen years Maddy and I lived here.”

“We need a distraction,” I said. “Something big that will draw everyone's attention while we escape.”

“Something that doesn't require Kastor's presence, or that of his two top guards,” Grayson added. The elevator bonged as it came to a stop, and then the doors slid open. Finn led us back down the deserted hallway and into Kastor's suite.

“Finn, do you have any idea where Maddy, Devi, and Reese are?” I asked as he locked the door of the sitting room behind us.

He shook his head. “They were tracking Grayson when I left. I told Maddock to stay away from Pandemonia at all costs. Considering how little he likes being ordered around, that probably means he's right outside the gate.” He crossed into the bedroom and began rifling through Kastor's dresser drawers. “But I have to hope he's being smarter than that. We can't count on their help.”

“Fire.” Grayson sank onto the loveseat, running one hand over the red velvet upholstery, and I glanced at her in question. “For the distraction. I suggest fire. They're fascinated with it here, in case you haven't noticed. They cook meat over open flames. They set alcoholic drinks on fire before they drink them. While you were in the kitchen at that last place, they offered Finn and me some kind of flambéed dessert. It was basically sugared bananas set on fire, then served over ice cream. It was good. But in an evil kind of way.” She shrugged, and I couldn't resist a small smile. She was starting to sound more like herself and less like a kidnapping victim who'd just discovered her brother had been killed and possessed by their worst enemy.

Hopefully, seeing the demon run out of her brother's body had helped with that.

“Hang on,” Finn called from the bedroom. “I have to get out of this shirt. It smells like whatever that demon sycophant in the gold bra spilled on me.” He shrugged out of Kastor's button-up shirt and was reaching for a tee from the second drawer when the overhead light shone on his back, and I froze.

A jolt of astonishment shot through me, all warm and tingly. “Finn, wait!” I jogged into the bedroom, and Grayson glanced at me in surprise.

“What?” He frowned as I turned him by his shoulders.

“Grayson, look at this.” I touched the base of his spine, where a small but distinctive pale brown line had just begun to stretch toward his neck. It was only an inch and a half long, but I would have recognized that mark anywhere.

“But…” Grayson knelt for a closer look at her brother's back. “But he's infected. And that wasn't there before. I saw Kastor change shirts earlier. Or yesterday. Or whenever that was.”

“There's a mark on my back?” Finn asked. “Like the ones on yours?”

“Yes.” Grayson stood. “I thought only human carriers got that mark.”

I shrugged, frowning. “That's what I thought too. Unless…” My eyes widened as the implication of Finn's carrier mark finally sank in. “Carey's not possessed anymore. Maybe this means the infection has been halted. I think that as long as Finn stays in Carey's body…he's just a carrier.”

“Wait, are you saying I can keep him?” Grayson's eyes were as wide as I'd ever seen them. “I mean, I know Carey's dead, but he still looks like my brother, and Finn's always been like a brother to me, so…this kind of fits.”

Finn pulled Kastor's shirt on and smiled. “So you're okay with this?” He spread her brother's arms, and she stepped into the hug. “Because you only get to keep him as long as I get to keep him.” If Finn left Carey's body for more than a few minutes, Carey's organs would shut down and he would die.

“Keep him,” she sobbed against Finn's shoulder. “This is what Carey would have wanted, considering the circumstances.”

When she finally let him go, Finn turned to me. “So, do you approve? Would you be okay with it if I looked like this for the rest of my life?” His green eyes were practically glowing. I could see how badly he wanted a body of his own, and an exorcist's body was more than he'd ever hoped for, because he would never have stolen one from someone else.

I pulled him close, and my eyes closed when his hands slid slowly down my back. “It's like this was meant to be.” I glanced at Grayson over his broad, firm shoulder and grinned. “Your brother's not bad-looking. Now let's see if we can get him out of here in one piece.”

“Y
ou're sure about this?” I asked as Finn pulled a match from the box. The gasoline fumes were giving me a headache, and honestly, I knew we'd already gone too far to back out. But I had to ask.

“There is no building I'd rather burn.” He dropped the match onto the gasoline-soaked loveseat, then stepped back as it burst into flames. “Let's go.” Finn ushered Grayson and me out the door and into the hall as flames crackled behind us, already well on their way to devouring Kastor's apartment.

I'd never committed arson before, but evidently it really
was
as simple as “pour accelerant; light match.” Especially if leaving evidence wasn't a concern.

We were much more concerned with leaving town.

On the bottom floor we lit secondary blazes in several custodial closets and unused offices, avoiding the kitchen and lobby areas, which were the only parts of the downstairs still regularly used.

Originally, there had probably been a sprinkler system and an alarm built into the hotel, but those had ceased functioning several decades earlier, by Finn's best guess, so when we fled the burning hotel through a little-used side entrance, no one else had yet realized the building was on fire.

No alarm had been raised.

We took several narrow back alleys on our path away from the hotel, avoiding the crowds still gathered at the auction square and the outdoor market, and when we finally turned back to look up at the building in which Finn and Maddock had spent their childhood, the flames were just becoming visible through windows on the top floor.

“They'll see that soon,” Grayson whispered, fear and awe echoing in her voice.

“And I'll make sure they know exactly who's to blame.”

We spun as one, startled by the voice behind us, to find an unfamiliar group of about a dozen fairly conservatively dressed demons facing us from the other end of the alley.

“Finn?” The one in front stared right into Finn's green eyes. “You always were the troublemaker,” he said, and we all came to the same conclusion at once.

“Kastor,” Finn said.

The leader of Pandemonia
was
the demon who'd escaped us in the stairwell, and he'd since convinced a dozen of his citizens that the Kastor they'd all loved in the marketplace that evening was an impostor.

“Assuming you haven't already been infected,” I said, stepping up to Finn's right side, flames tingling just beneath the surface of my left palm, “your best bet would be to flee the city. Now. We're all three highly contagious, and by this point, so is most of your city.”

“We've been spraying our saliva on your food all night,” Grayson added, and I almost laughed at how ridiculous our plan sounded, boiled down to its basics. But it was a good plan, and I had no doubt it would work, assuming no one warned the citizens in time for them to flee the city.

Kastor's brows rose, and I recognized the expression, even on his new face. “So you think we're just going to let you walk out into the badlands and spread your disease worldwide?”

But I could see through his intentions as if they were made of glass. “You know the Church won't let that happen. As soon as they're sure we've taken out Pandemonia, they'll hunt us down like dogs in the street. They wanted a
targeted
exposure.” But we were willing to spend the rest of our lives widening that target.

Kastor didn't give a shit whether we spread the demon plague to his enemies or not. The anger raging in his eyes said he was after revenge, pure and simple.

“If you think you can stop us from leaving…” Finn spread his arms. “Come—”

Kastor pulled something from the waistband of his jeans.

“No!” I shouted, the instant I realized he held a pistol.

Grayson lunged as Kastor fired at Finn. If she hadn't been triggered, she would have been too slow to get in front of the gun. But exorcist Grayson was just fast enough to catch the bullet high on her right side.

She flew backward from the force and landed on her back on the pavement. “Nina…,” Grayson gasped, and I dropped to her side.

A rage-filled sound ripped from Finn's throat. He lunged at Kastor, faster than I'd ever seen him, or anyone, move. He was amazing in Carey's body—but he couldn't fight twelve demons on his own.

I charged down the alley half an instant behind him.

Finn slammed into his father's new, young body, and the gun went off again. One of Kastor's men screamed and stumbled into the wall of the alley, blood blooming high on his chest from the bullet hole. Four others fled, evidently terrified to make contact with us and our contagions.

The other five all pounced at once.

I kicked aside the first demon who came at me. My left hand burst into flames. Finn's was already burning. The alley flickered with shadows of violence, cast by fire.

Finn growled and tossed a demon over his back. He threw a punch, and Kastor's gun slid down the pavement toward Grayson, where none of his men were willing to go while she leaked contaminated blood all over the ground.

I burned through the next demon that lunged at me, then used his flailing body to deflect the next. When the first demon collapsed, I turned my flames toward the next. A third grabbed my neck from behind, and when he hauled me off my feet, the monster hanging from my palm came with me, stuck to the flames like a magnet to metal. Blisteringly hot, flesh-melting metal.

On the edge of my vision, Finn stood and kicked his father's corpse aside. Another demon leapt for him, and Finn shoved his fiery left hand into the air. The demon landed on his hand in midair, speared by the flames and seemingly weightless.

The demon behind me squeezed my neck, and I gasped in pain as cartilage popped. The flames in my hand blinked out, and the monster that hung from them crumpled at my feet. I tried to twist and fry the monster behind me, but he grabbed my left arm and held it away from us both.

Thunder boomed through the alley, and the hand around my neck loosened. Something thudded to the pavement behind me, and I turned to find the demon who'd had me by the neck now lying on the ground with a small hole in his chest.

Shocked, I spun again to find Grayson still aiming the pistol in her right hand, her left pressed against the bullet wound in her side. “Good shot!” I said, but she only shook her head.

“I was aiming for his head.” Her voice was weak. Her face was pale, in what little moonlight shone into the alley.

“Finn!” I raced toward her.

He finished frying the last of the demons, then pulled his shirt off on his way down the alley. “Here. Press this against the wound.” He laid the wadded-up material over her side, and I held it there with as much pressure as I could apply. “We have to get her out of here.”

“Where can we get a car?”

“At the gate. They're mostly used for trips into the badlands.” Finn picked up Grayson, then carried her down the alley and across the street. Everyone we passed was headed for the blazing building. None of them even looked closely enough to realize who we were.

Until we got to the gate five endless minutes later.

“What's the plan?” I whispered, eyeing the nearest guard and his gun.

Finn glanced at the vehicles parked near the gate, and I realized that unlike in New Temperance, there was no patrol assigned to walk the perimeter. Evidently no one wanted to break into a city openly full of demons.

The only guards were four armed men standing in front of the gate itself.

“The plan is to put Grayson in a car and drive right through,” Finn whispered. “Don't stop for anything.”

I searched the three nearest cars for keys as quietly as I could, and on the fourth, I finally found a set hidden in the visor.

Finn laid Grayson across the backseat, and I sat on the floorboard in the back to keep his shirt pressed to her stomach. Finn slid into the driver's seat and started the car. He backed it carefully out of its spot, and the nearest of the guards walked toward us, carrying his gun.

“Kastor? Is that you?” he called.

Instead of answering, Finn stomped on the gas.

The remaining gate guards scrambled out of the way. One of them fired his gun, yelling for us to stop, and a bullet went through both our front and rear windshields.

The grille of the car rammed into the gate itself, which ripped free from its hinges with the spine-scraping squeal of metal and clunked onto the roof of the car hard enough to dent the center. Finn hit the gas again, and we lurched out of Pandemonia and into the badlands. The broken gate flew off our roof and hit two of the guards running after us.

We veered wildly around the gray car I'd abandoned when I'd turned myself in, then shot off into the badlands.

I stared out the rear windshield, watching to see if we'd be pursued, but no one came out of the city after us. A second later I understood why.

If Pandemonia had been extravagantly illuminated upon my arrival, it was lit up like a bonfire in the wake of our departure. Through the holes in the steel patchwork fence, I could see that not one, but at least
three
buildings were now on fire, and the residents—blissfully unaware that their hosts had become ticking time bombs—were no doubt more concerned with saving the city than with pursuing the invaders who'd set it on fire in the first place.

My pulse raced in my ears as I watched the flames blaze smaller and smaller in the rearview mirror, and I laid one hand on Grayson's sternum so I could feel her breathe. I'd already lost one sister, and I had no intention of losing another one.

Half a mile later headlights suddenly lit the interior of our car, and I twisted toward the front to see a vehicle headed straight for us from the depths of the badlands.

“Brace yourself.” When Finn lifted a pistol in his right hand, I realized he'd picked up Kastor's gun on the way out of the alley.

“Wait!” I cried when the left headlight of the vehicle in front of us winked out for a split second. “Don't shoot! That's our truck!”

Finn blinked into the headlights and finally slammed on the brakes. Our car swerved on the crumbling road, then skidded to a stop. The cargo truck we'd appropriated from the Church slowed to a much more civilized stop beside us, winking headlight and all. Reese leaned out of the passenger's-side window with Carter's rifle aimed right at us.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, and I peeked up from the backseat.

“Reese. It's us. That's Finn's new body. It used to be Carey's.”

“Carey James?” He set the gun down on the floorboard and threw his door open. “Where's—”

“Grayson is back here,” I called. “She's hurt, beyond what we can fix. We need to get her to the Lord's Army and hope they know how to remove a bullet.” That, and because the Lord's Army had baby Adam.

“She got
shot
?” He was out of the truck in an instant.

“We can't stop here,” Finn warned as Reese circled the truck toward our car. “We have to get away before the demons get their shit together.”

I climbed into the front seat to make room for Reese in the back. “You really think they'll come after us?”

“The ones who don't know about the virus will,” Maddock said from the truck's driver's seat, and I realized they'd talked to Eli and Anabelle. “Once they get that fire under control.” He nodded toward the demon city, which still blazed in the distance. “I assume that's your work?”

“Damn right,” I said as Devi slid into the passenger's seat of the truck. She looked impressed for the first time since I'd met her.

“Kastor's dead, Maddy,” Finn said. “And soon all the rest of them will be. Nina figured out how to infect the whole damn city.”

Devi pushed her long braid over her shoulder. “You mean we drove like hell and
still
missed the party?”

“You can tell us about it down the road,” Maddock said. “Let's get out of here.”