Reese shrugged and tossed another dead demon aside. “My dad always said the Church does its best work covering up its own crimes….”

For several minutes, the monsters kept coming and we kept burning them out. Two managed to pin me, and a third ripped right through my hood and pulled out a chunk of my hair, but that proximity strength—as Maddock called it—was in full effect with this many degenerates around. I’d never been stronger or faster. My reflexes had never been sharper.

After each exorcism, I scanned the rapidly thinning crowd for other points of light, and twice, a stranger with familiar green eyes shoved terrified onlookers out of my way or pushed degenerates into my path, away from fleeing groups of civilians. Without an exorcist’s body to inhabit, Finn lacked super strength and speed, and he couldn’t banish any of the demons, but he was there every time I turned around, in a different large, capable body, pulling demons off of women and children and shouting for them to run. Then shoving them in the safest direction.

Finn made heroes out of a dozen different men in less than ten minutes.

The whole thing was over almost as soon as it had begun, and only when the last of the degenerates were lying dead on the grass or fleeing into the night—we couldn’t get them all—did I begin to feel the toll the night’s battle would take on my exhausted body. But there was only time for a single deep breath before more yelling began.

This was angry shouting, not terrified screaming, and when I turned toward it, I found the Church’s fake exorcists pouring from the nearest courthouse exit, confidently aiming guns at us now that the demons were all gone.

Not one of the casualties wore a black cassock.

“Down on the ground!” the closest of the exorcists yelled, and what few civilians still remained—most injured and bleeding—dropped onto the cold grass, some just feet from the putrefying degenerate corpses.

Reese, Devi, Maddock, and I froze. I glanced at each of them, spread out across the courtyard, hoping for some sign of what I should do, but I wasn’t yet tapped into whatever strange connection—experience?—made them such great silent communicators.

I’d lost sight of Finn. Several of the bodies he’d confiscated, then abandoned, sat on the ground, staring around in confusion.

“Get down!” the fake exorcist repeated, and I counted six of them, all aiming guns at us while Deacon Bennett and Sister Pamela watched in shock from near the dais, where the last of the gasoline was now burning out over Adam’s charred corpse.

The huge screen overhead was blank except for a slowly scrolling message alerting viewers to “technical difficulties,” which the network promised would be resolved very soon.

Now that the crowd had cleared, I could count the television cameras. Two on huge mounted tripods had been abandoned entirely. On a courthouse balcony, a dead cameraman was slumped over the railing behind a third camera, still aimed at the ground. A fourth, shoulder-mounted camera was still rolling, focused on us, though nothing was currently being broadcast on the news.