I lunged for the former deacon, my left hand ablaze, but the demon was faster, even in the new, dying body. He pressed the barrel against his temple.

“No!” I shouted.

Bennett pulled the trigger. Blood and liquefied brains exploded into the lobby from the hallway, and I caught a brief glimpse of the carnage already laid out inside.

“Damn it!” I backed away from the body, turning to put the massacre in the lobby at my back, clutching my own stomach in horror as more tears filled my eyes.

Bennett was beyond my reach, no doubt already searching for a fresh body. I might never know whether she found one or got sucked back into hell for want of a host.

But there was no time to mourn the lost opportunity.

“Nina, we have to go,” Finn said, and I turned to find him pulling my shocked sister to her feet. Anabelle sat blinking and stunned on the floor, leaning against the wall. “With any luck, the cops are headed back here from the gate.”

And with that reversal in the concentration of security, we might just make it out of town alive.

“Come on!” I hauled Anabelle up with one hand, digging Flores’s keys from my pocket with the other. “Are you okay?”

“I will be,” Anabelle said, one hand on the wall for balance, while she avoided looking at all the blood. “I just can’t believe she was a demon, hidden right in front of us.”

“She’s not the only one. Anyone wearing embroidered sleeves is possessed, Ana.”

Anabelle blinked at me, visibly struggling to process that new information—and the fact that she’d been days from consecration herself. But we were out of time. She’d have to process on the run.

“What about you?” I asked, turning to Melanie. “You okay?”

“I think so,” she said, staring at the body on the floor. “Still tired and thirsty, though.” And obviously in shock over everything she’d seen and heard in the past ten minutes.

“You can hydrate in the car. Let’s go.” We raced down the hall with Mellie half supported by Anabelle and Finn, and took the last corner so hard and fast I almost slammed into the wall. The parking lot was ahead, past a single glass door, and through the tall pane I saw red and blue lights flashing in the distance. In the direction of the south gate.

I pressed the bar on the door, and we burst out of the building, every breath puffing in front of our faces as we ran past the sparsely populated first and second rows, headed straight for the only car in the third. I shoved the key into its slot and twisted, and the car gave a soft thump as all four doors unlocked. We piled in, sirens growing louder in the distance as the colored lights flashed faster and brighter, and my heartbeat raced to match the pace.