The Flame Never Dies. Rachel Vincent

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СКАЧАТЬ key into the ignition while Finn and I climbed into the backseat. Reese got into the SUV behind us, and as we took off across the badlands, Finn pulled the semiautomatic rifle from the floorboard and checked to make sure it was loaded.

      “What’s the setup?” I asked, staring into the rearview mirror at the front of the decrepit school library, where my sister waited with the other two civilian members of our group, in the safest location we could find for them. Mellie was easily persuaded to stay out of the action if she had something to read.

      “Roadblock on the main drag of Palmersville.” Devi took a turn too fast on the splintered pavement and the tires squealed beneath us as I slid across the backseat into Finn. “They’ll have to go right through on their way to the gas depot, and the road’s narrow enough that Reese can block it with just the SUV. When the trucks stop, Finn will shoot out the tires of the rear vehicle to block their retreat. Then we melee.”

      “That’s the best way to fight.” Maddock twisted in his seat to shoot a gleeful grin at us. “Trap them, then force them to brawl hand-to-hand. Because chaos—”

      “—favors the militia,” I finished for him. “I know.” Obviously, we were the militia.

      I’d never been in a fight in my life until the week of my seventeenth birthday, five months earlier, when I’d discovered I was an exorcist by frying a demon from my mother’s body. Naturally, she’d died in the process, and the Church had accused me of matricide, to cover up the fact that their army of “exorcists” was full of fakes. I’d gone from high school senior to the country’s most wanted fugitive in a single instant.

      Since then, Melanie and I had been on the run with the rest of Anathema, armed with the dangerous knowledge that the all-powerful Unified Church, which claimed to have “saved” humanity from the invading demon horde a century before, actually was the demon horde, disguised with human faces and authorial robes.

      Minutes after piling into the car, we raced down the main drag of what was once a tiny town called Palmersville, which boasted a grand total of four mostly paved streets. Devi turned right onto one of them, and behind us Reese parked the SUV sideways across the entire two-lane road.

      Finn got out of the car with his rifle and took a quick look around the derelict town. He pointed at a crumbling storefront across the street. “I’ll be in there. Center window, bottom floor.”

      “Be careful.” I pulled him close for an adrenaline-fueled kiss, and when we let the moment linger, Devi grabbed the tail of my shirt and hauled me backward.

      “Priorities,” she snapped as Finn grinned at me, then turned to jog across the street.

      “We’ll take out the escort vehicle first.” Reese towered over the rest of us, in a group too varied in height to form a true huddle. “Then Nina and I will take the first supply truck and you two take the second one.”

      Maddock and Devi nodded, then headed into an alley across the way while Reese and I hid behind an industrial trash bin half-eaten with rust on our side of the street.

      Seconds later we heard engines.

      Our haphazardly parked SUV was dusty and dented enough to pass for abandoned, and I knew for certain that the ploy had worked when the caravan’s escort vehicle, a police car, stopped ten feet away. The police car bore the stylized emblem of the Unified Church—four intertwined columns of flames—and the men who got out of it wore the long navy cassocks of police officers.

      Even from a distance I could see the white embroidery on their full, bell-shaped sleeves. They were both consecrated Church leaders.

      Which meant they were possessed.

      A jolt of excitement shot up my spine, anticipation laced with an edge of fear, and I felt Reese tense beside me. He was as eager to fight as I was.

      The cops were already headed toward our SUV, obviously intending to push it off the road, when a passenger got out of the second cargo truck and shouted, “What’s the holdup?” He wore civilian clothes—a green jacket bearing the logo of the shipping company that owned the truck.

      “Abandoned car,” the first cop shouted over his shoulder. “We’ll have it out of the way in a minute.”

      “We came through here last week and there was nothing in the road,” the civilian called, and both cops turned to eye our vehicle warily.

      A gunshot thundered from Finn’s hiding place as the civilian was climbing back into his truck. One of its tires exploded, and shouts erupted from both trucks.

      The cops dove for cover behind their open car doors, pulling pistols from their holsters while they scanned the storefront for the source of the gunfire. Finn took two more shots in rapid succession, and one of them hit a second tire, effectively disabling the second cargo truck and trapping the two vehicles in front of it.

      My pulse raced, my left fist clenching and unclenching in anticipation.

      Maddock and Devi burst from their hiding place and crossed the distance quickly and quietly.

      Reese and I came at the lead vehicle from the opposite direction, running crouched over, and the driver got out of the car when he saw us coming. Even if his robes hadn’t been embroidered, I’d have known he was possessed from the way he moved, inhumanly quick and impossibly nimble. Daylight hid the demonic shine in his eyes—visible only to exorcists and fellow demons—but I saw recognition in his expression when he skidded to a stop in front of me, already reaching for the gun at his waist. He knew me.

      But then, everyone knew Nina Kane. I was public enemy number one.

      I lunged forward and pressed my left hand to his chest before he could pull his weapon. Light burst between us, and the demon screamed as he was burned from his human host while the body dangled from the fire kindled in my palm, weightless beneath the power of exorcism.

      On my right, Maddock grunted. A form flew past me and crashed to the ground, unmoving. The light from my hand faded and the body suspended from it crumpled to the cracked pavement. I turned and found Maddy fighting a second possessed police officer, but before I could get to them, I was suddenly yanked from the ground and thrown backward through the air.

      I screamed and flailed in flight, then crashed onto a patch of grass ten feet from the road. Before I could stand, another navy-robed demon sprang at me with an odd, squarish gun in his hand. I rolled out of the way, and the demon shoved the weapon into the ground where I’d been an instant earlier.

      The weapon buzzed, and I realized it was a stun gun. They’d come armed not to kill, but to capture.

      The Church still wanted us alive.

      “Watch out! Stun guns!” I shouted as I rolled over and leapt to my feet.

      The demon was on me in an instant. I tried to kick the weapon from his grip but missed his hand entirely. He was too fast. Too strong. After fighting only mutated and relatively weak degenerates in the badlands, I was out of practice battling demons in their prime, and the number of pained grunts bursting from my fellow exorcists said I was not alone.

      Time to step up my game.

      The demon cop lunged again and I blocked his gun arm, then kicked him in the chest as hard as I could. Breath exploded from his mouth and the demon flew backward several feet. I was on him before he could stand, my palm СКАЧАТЬ