The Flame Never Dies. Rachel Vincent

Which he’d insisted over and over.

      His early memories were as strange and inexplicable as his incorporeal state. Though playing with Maddy was the oldest thing Finn could remember, no one else had been able to see or hear him. Maddock’s family had assumed he was talking to and playing with an imaginary “friend,” which was how Finn got his name—that was as close as toddler Maddock could come to properly pronouncing the word.

      Finn sank onto the bedroll and patted the spot next to him. “What I do know is that when Maddy’s upset, I’m upset.”

      “That makes eight of us,” I said, settling in next to him, and Finn’s green eyes took on a grateful shine as he leaned in to kiss me. He was as glad that I liked Maddock as I was that he liked Melanie. “Mind if I share your sleep roll tonight?” I whispered against Finn’s mouth as his hand slid into my hair, gently tilting my head for a more accessible angle. “Tobias is using mine.”

      “You can share everything I own.” Finn’s mouth met mine, and he sucked my lower lip between his for one heart-pounding second. “Which is pretty much just this sleep roll,” he admitted, his lips brushing mine with every syllable. He kissed me again, and I decided that if the Church was right and carnal contact really was a sin, it was a sin well worth paying for. . . .

      * * *

      It was still dark outside when I woke up with Finn’s hoodie folded beneath my head for a pillow. I turned back one of the blankets from our recent Church raid, and when my hand brushed his warm, bare chest, my touch lingered. I didn’t want to leave our private cocoon, but nature called.

      Finn stirred when I stood, but he didn’t wake up, so I draped the blanket over him.

      While we’d slept, our candle had burned out, which meant I had to feel my way down the hall in the dark.

      Two candles were burning in the den, and by their light I saw that Maddock still stood watch, though my biological clock told me hours had passed since the rest of us had gone to bed. Since we had no actual clocks and I didn’t own a watch, my body and the sun were all I had with which to measure the passage of time.

      Those and the rate at which a candle burned.

      Maddock sat on the arm of an ancient, mildewy couch, peering behind a dusty set of blinds at the street out front. He didn’t notice me until I sank onto a wooden desk chair two feet from him. “Need a break?” I whispered, and when I shifted on the chair, peeling flakes of varnish caught on the seat of my worn jeans.

      “I don’t think I could sleep if I tried,” he admitted, and I squinted for a better look at his face. Maddock looked tense and sad, but what worried me was the new edge of fear lining his brow and crinkling in the corners of his eyes.

      “Finn told me why you don’t want to go west.”

      He turned sharply to look at me. “What did he tell you?”

      I shrugged. “That you were born out west and that Verity is too close for comfort.”

      Maddock relaxed visibly, and I frowned.

      “There’s more to it, isn’t there?” I said, and he nodded but offered nothing more. “We’ll head back east as soon as we’ve dropped Tobias off,” I assured him. “None of us is eager for a family reunion. Except maybe Reese.” His father had been burned as a heretic—otherwise known as a skeptic—in Diligencia, and his mother had sent him with Anathema to save him from the same fate.

      “Or maybe Grayson,” Maddy added, and a sudden memory burned bright from the back of my mind.

      Grayson’s parents had been exposed as breeders when her older brother, Carey, came into his exorcist abilities earlier than expected. The Church executed her parents and took her brother. Grayson was the only member of the James family to escape intact, and if not for Anathema, she’d probably be in Church custody, just like her brother.

      Except that Carey James was no longer in Church custody.

      During our escape from New Temperance, I’d discovered that the Church had lost him in a raid by a group of demons led by someone named Kastor.

      For a while, I’d debated telling Grayson what I’d learned about her brother, but in the end, I’d decided not to say anything because I’d uncovered more questions than answers about Carey, and I was afraid that would only make his absence harder to bear. Then we had become overwhelmed by constant cold and hunger, and roaming degenerates, and I’d forgotten I even had that unfortunate bit of information.

      Until Maddock’s mention of her family sparked the memory.

      A flash of light caught my eye from between two of the slats in the mini blinds, yanking me from my thoughts. “What’s that?” I stood and peeked through the glass, my heart thumping rapidly. Usually Grayson woke up when she sensed that degenerates were closing in on us.

      But Maddock didn’t seem worried. “I think they’re nomads.”

      Supposedly, after the war several groups chose a dangerous, migratory life in the badlands over the totalitarian protection of the Church-run cities. In school we were taught that the nomads had succumbed to starvation and degenerate attacks decades ago, yet the half-dozen abandoned campsites we’d found seemed to suggest otherwise.

      Maddock shifted uncomfortably on the arm of the couch. “They’ve been on the edge of town for hours and they don’t seem to know we’re here.” Which was why he hadn’t alerted the rest of us. Any movement we made now would only bring us to their attention.

      The only people we’d actually seen in the badlands were uniformed Church cargo drivers and scavengers sent to “reclaim” resources from our past. They tended to work quickly and scurry back to the safety of tall steel walls, and they never veered off course.

      By contrast, the nomads weren’t scared of the landscape they lived in, but they did seem to be shy. “That’s the closest they’ve ever come.”

      Maddy shrugged. “It was bound to happen sooner or later.”

      “Maybe we should make contact.” After all, for more than a century nomads had been living off a landscape the Church told us could not be conquered. They’d been fishing, hunting, and harvesting—surviving among roving hordes of degenerates, presumably without exorcist abilities. “They could probably teach us a lot faster than Mellie’s books have.”

      Maddock shook his head, still staring out the window at the bright flicker of what looked like a single candle. “Helping us would put them on the Church’s radar. If the ‘exorcists’ find us with those nomads, they’ll kill every one of them to get to us.”

FOUR

      “Incoming!” Reese shouted, and I ducked as a degenerate flew over my head, its tattered cassock trailing through the air behind it. The torn and filthy Church robe was once navy blue, which meant that the host had been a policeman before he’d been possessed by the Unclean.

      The mutated monster landed barefoot on the crumbling sidewalk four feet from me. His elongated toes were broken and oozing fresh blood, but he didn’t seem to notice. He howled, his sharply pointed chin dropping to reveal a mouth full of broken, rotting teeth. Then he lunged.

      The beast slammed into my chest, driving me onto the chipped steps of an abandoned small-town courthouse. A chunk of concrete dug into my back, just left of my spine. The monster’s jaws snapped at me, drool dripping onto my shirt, and I shoved my right forearm against his emaciated throat, narrowly preventing him from tearing mine out with his teeth.

      I pressed my left hand against the beast’s chest, and bright light surged between us. The monster screeched, his bald head thrown back, dark hollows stretching beneath his cheekbones, and the fire from my palm blazed deep into his flesh, burning the demon from its soulless,