The Stars Never Rise Read online

  The small crowd was moving on, slowly, reluctantly, except for one young boy and girl, standing side by side on my lawn. Wearing identical expressions of terror.

  Melanie. And Adam Yung.

  “Wait!” Mellie cried as a man in a black cassock took her by the arm.

  “Don’t touch her!” Adam’s dark hair gleamed in the light from the front porch. He dodged the man reaching for him, then grabbed Melanie’s hand, but as the exorcists pulled her away from both me and Adam, Mellie began to struggle.

  Then her mouth opened.

  Don’t say it! I shouted in my head, but of course she didn’t hear me.

  “That’s my house. That’s my sister!”

  “No!” I yelled, drawing their attention back to me. If they thought there was something wrong with me, they might think there was something wrong with my sister too. “Leave her out of this. She has nothing to do with it.”

  “Melanie!” Adam was being restrained at the edge of the yard.

  “Nina!” Mellie tried to push her way past two of the exorcists, and at the exact moment a third turned to help them, wood splintered in the kitchen and someone kicked in my back door.

  “Nina!” a new voice shouted. I whirled toward the sound of my name and saw the boy from the alley standing in my kitchen. The boy with the green eyes.

  “Don’t move!” the exorcist team leader shouted again, and I turned to him on instinct, just in time to see one of the men on the lawn aim his gun at my sister, who’d become quite belligerent.

  “No!” I screeched, and though I couldn’t hear the footsteps at my back over the shrill sound of my own voice, I could feel them reverberate in the floor beneath my feet. “Don’t touch her! She’s pregnant!”

  I regretted it before the words even left my mouth, but I’d had no choice. They would have hurt her if she didn’t stop fighting, and she wouldn’t stop fighting until they hurt her.

  At my last word, silence descended. Melanie stopped struggling. Adam blinked at her, stunned, from across our small yard. The exorcist lowered his gun, and the other two let my sister go. What remained of our lawn audience stared in shock because the skinny girl who traded favors for food, and who was now being arrested by a team of exorcists, also had a pregnant fifteen-year-old sister.

  Clare Parker and her public execution were no doubt eclipsed in those moments as we made New Temperance scandal history.

  Warm fingers folded around my hand, and the boy’s green-eyed gaze met mine as the world fell apart around me. Then he began to pull me backward into my kitchen. “We have to go,” he whispered, and though no one else could have heard him, his words seemed to trigger the return of the planet to its regular rotation. Only, it felt like things were spinning even faster this time.

  “Stop!” The team leader raised his aim to my head again.

  The boy lifted his right arm. Sound thundered from the gun in his hand and echoed mercilessly in my head. The man in the doorway stumbled backward onto the front stoop. Moonlight glinted off his silver buckles and shone on something leaking onto his cassock as he fell.

  “Let’s go! Now!” the boy shouted, and before I could fully process the fact that he’d just shot the exorcists’ team leader, he was pulling me through my kitchen toward the back door.

  “Wait!” I insisted as the rest of the team raced across the lawn toward my house, guns drawn. “Melanie!”

  “They won’t hurt her if you leave her,” he said. “But they will shoot through her to get to you if we try to take her with us.”

  The exorcists gathered around their injured leader, and one of them spoke into a wireless radio, calling for help. The other two still aimed guns at us.

  “If you don’t come with me now, they’re going to take you, and I can’t help you once you’re in Church custody,” the boy said while they yelled at him to drop his weapon. “We have to run.”

  I didn’t understand everything he’d said, and I wasn’t even sure I’d heard all of it. But his point sank in.

  Run.

  I was more than familiar with the concept—I’d been caught shoplifting at two different grocery stores the year my mom stopped paying the bills, and both times I’d gotten away by following that very imperative.

  Run.

  He must have read my decision on my face, because he pushed the screen door open, and when I stepped out onto the stoop, already shivering from the cold, he snatched my coat and satchel from the kitchen chair where I’d dropped them after school, then followed me out.

  The screen door slammed shut and gunfire exploded from the front yard. Bullets thunked into wood behind us. The kitchen window shattered, and glass sprayed the dead lawn. I ducked. Melanie screamed. People started shouting. Then the boy was pulling me down the steps and across my tiny backyard. He shoved my coat at me, and by the time he’d wedged his first foot into the chain-link fence and started to climb, I could hear more sirens.

  “How did you find me?” I demanded, shoving both arms into my coat. Then I followed him up the fence.

  “Been looking all day,” he said, and if he was winded, I couldn’t tell. “In the end, I just followed the sirens.”

  I wanted to ask how he’d known the sirens would lead to me, but there was no time to talk after that. The minute my feet hit the grass in the yard that bordered mine, footsteps pounded behind us as the exorcists—at least two of them—gave chase. When I glanced back from the cover of darkness, flashing lights were painting the whole neighborhood in frantic bursts of red and blue.

  The first cop car screeched to a stop in front of my house, and a second later an ambulance swung into the driveway, but the boy in the dark clothes pulled me forward again before I could see anything else between the houses.

  We ran and climbed fences and dodged streetlights, huffing with exertion, our breath exploding in little white puffs that shone in the moonlight and trailed behind us with each step. Soon we outran the flashing lights, and right after that, the sirens stopped. Speedy medical care could no longer help the exorcist—he’d been shot in the chest.

  My mother had been beyond help long before the police had arrived.

  I tried to think of nothing as we ran—nothing but putting one foot in front of the other without tripping—but racing through a neighborhood I already knew by heart didn’t take much focus, and my brain was working much faster than my legs. The questions I hadn’t been able to put into words with my mother’s body cooling at my feet were suddenly there all at once, shooting through my head too fast to truly contemplate, much less voice. With the sharp wind stealing my breath, each inhalation felt like swallowing cold steel needles.

  And still we ran, his warm hand around mine, pulling me through my own neighborhood from one backyard to the next, then across the first major street with hardly a glance in either direction. A horn blared as a car screeched to a stop two feet away, but the boy just kept pulling me, faster, farther.

  The night was a blur of cold air and dark buildings, broken only by bright patches of light at every intersection. Our footsteps pounded, pounded, pounded, but that sound changed when we ran from concrete onto grass, then onto gravel, then back to concrete. At last, when my fingers were numb from the cold, my legs were sore from the run, and my lungs ached and burned with every breath, the boy pushed open a dented metal door in the center of a long, narrow alley, then tugged me into the building. And finally, we stopped moving.

  I leaned over with my hands on my knees, gasping for breath, my heart thudding so hard my chest felt like it was going to explode. I’d never run so fast or so far, and even though we’d outrun the police and the exorcists, I still felt like I was being chased. No, hunted. I felt like I was being tracked or stalked by something I couldn’t see—something I could almost see—and even though it hadn’t found me yet, whatever it was, it was still searching. Looking. Scenting me out. And it would find me. I knew that like I knew to breathe or I’d die.

  But I didn’t know how I knew.

  I p
ulled my hand from the boy’s for the first time since we’d left my house.

  “It’s okay,” he said when he noticed me scanning the room, peering into the shadows for this threat I couldn’t see but couldn’t shake off. “I don’t think they saw which way we went.”

  “It’s not that.” I wasn’t sure how much he’d seen, why he’d been near my house at just the right time, or why he was helping me, but my naïveté had died around the time I lost my first baby tooth. He knew all he was going to know about me until I knew a little more about him.

  His eyes narrowed as he studied me. “You feel something?” he said, and I blinked as if I didn’t know what he was talking about, because I shouldn’t have known what he meant, and he shouldn’t have known what I felt—the pursuit of…whatever was chasing me.

  None of this made sense.

  “I feel like my mother’s dead and I don’t know how that happened.” I breathed deeply while the burning in my lungs slowly faded. “I feel like my pregnant sister is in Church custody and probably terrified. I feel like I shouldn’t be standing in an abandoned warehouse with some guy I don’t know.”

  I feel like my life is a book, and someone turned the page before I was ready, and now I can’t follow the story.

  “That wasn’t your mother.” His green eyes practically glowed, reflecting moonlight shining in from a broken window overhead. He brushed his palms on his dark jeans, and when he turned to gesture through a doorway at the body of the warehouse, I realized that his black hoodie was threadbare and almost worn through at the elbows. “Come sit, and I’ll explain what I can.”

  A new possibility crept in to overwhelm the fears that had driven my flight from the police. I shook my head slowly, hands curling into fists at my sides. I didn’t know the alley we’d run through. I didn’t know the building. I didn’t know the boy. And I had no idea how he knew about my mother.

  Or how he’d found me.

  I lurched for the door we’d just come through, suddenly sure I’d made a horrible mistake. What if I’d run from the police and the exorcists straight into the arms of some pervert stalker/murderer? Or even another demon? Sure, he’d killed the degenerate hunting me and helped me flee the men aiming guns at my head, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have his own dangerous agenda.

  “Nina, wait!” he said the moment my hand touched the cold doorknob. “I have blankets. And food. And…answers. Some of them, anyway. You must want some answers.”

  I hesitated because he hadn’t tried to physically stop me from leaving. And because the lure of answers was more than I could resist.

  “If you go out there, they will find you.” He set my school satchel on the floor between us, obviously a demonstration of goodwill. “And asking your friends and neighbors for shelter would be like painting targets on their backs. Your face is probably all over the news already, along with whatever lie they’ve cooked up to explain what happened at your house tonight. They’ll probably say you’re possessed. They’ll definitely say you’re a murderer.”

  I turned slowly, my hand still on the doorknob at my back, and the boy was watching me. “Murderer?” The word wouldn’t sink in.

  He nodded. “Matricide. And they’ll probably tack on a charge for theoretical infanticide, because in killing your mother, you’ve denied some poor baby the chance to inherit her soul.”

  “But…she wasn’t my mother. She was a demon. No one could have inherited her soul.” The soul she’d stolen from my real mother years before I was born. The soul that was almost completely devoured by now, if her physical degeneration was any sign.

  “Yeah.” He shrugged and shoved his hands into his pants pockets. “They’ll probably leave that part out.”

  “How do you know what they’ll do?”

  “That’s what they did to us.” He leaned against the grimy wall of the warehouse’s entryway. Through the open door on his left lay the rest of the building—one huge, open room, as far as I could tell. “They broadcast lies in public, then hunt us in private, hoping for tips from the people they’ve turned against us.”

  And that was when I made the connection—part of it, anyway. “You’re one of them. One of the fugitives they’re hunting.” Possession is suspected. “You’re the reason the exorcists are in New Temperance.” If he and his gang hadn’t brought them here, the police would have been first on the scene at my house, and things might have gone differently. Maybe. Things certainly couldn’t have gone much worse.

  Another shrug from the boy, who had yet to introduce himself. “Sorry about that.”

  “Where are the rest of them? The news says there are…more of you.” They’d shown two pictures, but I couldn’t remember the names….

  “There are, but my friends don’t know about you yet.”

  I frowned as another layer of confusion settled over me. “What don’t they know about me?”

  “That I found you. That a degenerate found you first. That the Church knows you exist.”

  “The Church has always known I exist. My mother had a parenting license.” And, evidently, a demonic parasite. Admittedly, an odd combination. “Why were you looking for me? Why was the degenerate looking for me?”

  “It’s kind of a long story. Do you wanna…?” He gestured toward the larger room again, where, presumably, there was somewhere to sit.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” Well, anywhere other than the dark, creepy, abandoned warehouse I’d already followed him into. “I don’t even know who you are.” I kept my back pressed against the door in case I needed to make an escape.

  “Fair enough.” He smiled, and his green eyes sparkled in that beam of moonlight. “I’m Finn.”

  “Finn who?”

  He shrugged. “That’s all I know.”

  “You don’t know your last name?” Yeah. Right. “I thought you had answers.”

  “I do. But not that one.” He cleared his throat, apparently nervous now that I’d stumped him with what should have been an easy question. “Listen, the rest of this is kind of a long story, and I’m freezing, so why don’t we talk over there?” He tossed his head toward the far corner of the warehouse, where I could barely make out some camping equipment and blankets. “There’s another exit on that side of the building, if the urge to flee strikes again.”

  But I wasn’t ready to let go of the doorknob, and he could tell.

  “Okay, how ’bout this? Here.” Finn knelt and slid a long scrap of wood toward me on the floor. “If any of this starts to feel creepy or dangerous, you can beat me with that and make your escape. Only, I’d consider it a personal favor if you’d avoid the face,” he said with a crooked grin that was probably supposed to look disarming. And almost did.

  “All of this feels dangerous and creepy.”

  “I know. But if it gets any worse, you can…take a swing.” He mimed swinging a baseball bat, and when my expression didn’t change, his grin faded. “Okay, look. It’s dinnertime and I’m starving, so I’m going to make some soup. If you’re hungry, or if you want to hear what I know about all this—and about your family—I’ll be over there.”

  My chest ached at the thought of my sister, and the possibility of getting answers was more than I could resist. Still, I didn’t know him, and I had no evidence that anything he’d said so far was true. Though it all made a certain kind of strange sense.

  When I didn’t respond, Finn turned and picked his way through scraps of paper, assorted packing materials, and machine parts toward what was obviously his base of operations. Whatever those operations were.

  After a minute of watching him, trying to plan my next move, I scouted out the other exit he’d mentioned, then threw my satchel over one shoulder and squatted to pick up the wooden board. Then I followed him. I was armed—kind of—and had the nearest exit in full view, and I was wanted for matricide. What did I have to lose?

  The closer I got to his makeshift campsite, the more of it came into focus in the near dark. He had a two-burner camp sto
ve with a dented pot on each burner, and a small stockpile of canned goods lined against the wall behind it. Three regular bed pillows were arranged in an arc around the front of the stove, like cushions, and in the middle sat a battery-powered camping lantern. As I picked my way through the junk cluttering the warehouse floor, Finn turned on the lantern, which threw a soft circle of light over the immediate area and cast the rest of the warehouse in deep shadows.

  Several blankets were folded next to the double row of cans, and when I sank onto the pillow across from his, he reached over and tossed me one.

  “Thanks.” I sniffed, and when I smelled neither filth nor mold, I unfolded the blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. “So, what? Home is anywhere you can safely warm up a can of soup?”

  “In the traditional sense, yes. In the more esoteric sense?” He hesitated, then frowned. “Yes to that one too.”

  I had no idea what he meant by the “esoteric” sense of home, and I decided not to ask. He didn’t seem violent now that his gun was safely stowed, and if he was crazy, I didn’t want to know that until I’d had both dinner and answers. Starting with the most important.

  “What will they do with Melanie?”

  “Your sister?” he asked, and I nodded. “They’ll charge her with fornication and unlicensed pregnancy. They’ll interrogate her for information about her baby’s father, and about you.”

  “Interrogate.” The ache in my chest sharpened into a painful, piercing fear. “What does that mean, exactly?”

  He shrugged. “I’m not sure, since she’s pregnant. Normally, they’d starve her, or keep her awake for days on end, or drug her, or even beat her, but the baby makes her a wild card, so their move depends on their endgame.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You told your whole neighborhood about the baby, so everyone knows that if they hurt your sister, they’ll be hurting the baby too, and the last thing they want is public sympathy for a pregnant underage outlaw.”