Suddenly, my mother and brother were both bearing down on me, arms around me, squeezing tight. “Maybe you’ll be a dud and useless to everyone,” my brother mumbled into my hair, and then we all broke apart laughing.
I punched his arm lightly. “There’s only room for one dud in this family, and you’ve taken to that position beautifully.” He just grinned and shook his head.
A dud was a nonmagical being. A human. They were rare in Los Angeles, since The Falling started there, but it did happen. Maybe I would be a dud, but I was sure the demons could find use for a human, and I was also sure my brother had magical abilities as well. That night of The Falling, when I was floating up in the air above my bed, I had a vivid memory of my brother lighting up like a Christmas tree, bright green.
Neither of us would be duds.
After that night, adults’ gifts started showing immediately, but our gifts had to be locked down. Could you imagine a five-year-old Gristle eating up trash on the street? At least that part had been fair. We’d been given somewhat normal childhoods—if growing up with demons and fallen angels roaming the streets was normal. At least we weren’t being made to raise the dead at seven years old.
“I love you guys. Everything’s going to be fine,” I reassured my family, with as much strength in my voice as I could muster.
A heavy sigh escaped my mom, and she reached out to touch my cheek. “You’re wise beyond your years.”
My throat tightened as unshed tears lined my eyes. My father used to say that to me. In fact, they were the last words he shared before he left for work and was taken from us.
“I can’t be late. Gotta meet Shea.” I grabbed my hooded parka, and headed toward the door.
We lived in Demon City, the place of demons and their slaves, but the Awakening ceremony was all the way in Angel City. Those who enjoyed normal humanity, the free souls, and the angel blessed lived there. Both Demon City and Angel City used to formally be called Los Angeles, having been split apart and renamed after The Falling. Angel City encompassed everything north of downtown: Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Burbank and Pasadena—basically all the fancy rich places the angel blessed inhabited. Demon City was comprised of East Lost Angeles, from Inglewood to Long Beach, including the lovely city of Compton where we lived.
I was going to have to run if I wanted to make the 5:15 pm bus. I slipped my gray parka on and pulled up the hood. It rained 90 percent of the time in Demon City. No one knew why—maybe it was the concentration of so many demons—but the sun barely shone there.
Without another word, I grabbed my messenger bag and slipped out of the fourth-floor apartment I shared with my family, and my best friend Shea. She was meeting me at the bus stop, going right from work to the ceremony. Being late to an Awakening ceremony was not an option. The ceremonies were done each year on the day before classes started at Fallen and Tainted Academies, and Shea and I had birthdays only sixteen days apart, so we were going to be in the same one. Shea was also destined to be a demon slave, except for all the wrong reasons. Her mother was a drug addict and sold her lifelong labor to a demon for a day’s worth of drugs. Shea was her firstborn, so she went right along with it. She had moved to Demon City about the same time we did, and had seen me through more than some who had known me my whole life. When her mom bailed to go to Vegas, my mother took her in.
I burst through the stairwell door, and took the four flights down three steps at a time. Shea was the long-distance runner, while I was more of a “sprint and then collapse panting on the ground, willing myself to die” kind of person. With a giant leap, I crashed through the door that led to the outside. Sitting right next to the stairwell door was Bernie in his usual spot, Maximus curled up at his feet, his tail thumping when he smelled me.
“Who’s there? Is that you, Bri?” Bernie sniffed the air. It was pelting rain, but somehow he always knew it was me.
I grinned. Bernie was homeless and blind as a bat, but he was sweeter than sugar. The nicest man I’d ever met. He once tried to offer me his only coat when I was cold.
Pulling a blueberry muffin from my bag, that I had stashed their earlier, I plopped it in his hand. “I have my Awakening ceremony today. Can’t talk now, but I’ll come by later and bring you dinner.”
He patted my hand and smiled, showcasing the three teeth he had left. Ripping a piece of the muffin off, he gave it to Maximus.
“May you be angel blessed,” he said and nodded to me.
Angel blessed. Yeah right. Odds were unlikely, seeing as though my mother was demon gifted. And it wouldn’t matter anyway, because I was going to Tainted Academy whether I was angel blessed or not.
“Thanks, Bern. I’m late,” I told him again. I knew he didn’t have anyone to talk to and he cherished our chats, but I really couldn’t be late.
“Run like the wind, child!” he shouted, shooing me. Maximus barked for full effect.
Turning on my heels, I dashed out into the pelting rain and nearly slammed right into a tiny Snakeroot demon. I was able to sidestep him at the last minute but still got a whiff of his natural scent—sulfur, acid and raw sewage. Yuck. Their red beady eyes and threaded black horns gave me the creeps, but they were beauty queens compared to other demons I’d seen roaming around the hood. The top of my left foot was scarred from a Snakeroot demon. Long story, but it was Shea’s fault.
As I turned the corner onto Rosecrans Boulevard, I grinned when I saw Shea’s dark brown curly ponytail hanging out the bus’s front door, her boot on the curb. “I said hold the bus for one more goddamn minute!” she roared.
My best friend was half black, half Puerto Rican, and she didn’t mess around. You either did what she said, or you did what she said.
“I’m here!” I yelled.
Shea turned to meet my eyes and shook her head. “Always late.”
I just smiled, and we both rushed onto the bus to meet the glare of a demon slave woman who sat behind the wheel, her red crescent tattoo glaring on her forehead above hateful eyes.
“Next time I’ll shut the door on your pretty foot!” she snarled at Shea.
Shea shrugged as if she didn’t care. She really probably didn’t. A broken ankle would get her out of work detail for a few days until a healer demon could fix it, and that would be awesome. After Shea’s mom ran off when she was thirteen, it left her slave contract broken, which meant if she ever stepped foot in Demon City again, she was dead on arrival. They had better things to do than go chasing after a junkie to make them live out their contract. So instead, they’d made Shea pick up her mom’s post. She’d been working for demons ever since.
“How was work?” I made small talk, trying to get my mind off what was about to happen. Shea and I would both officially be slaves to the demons. Forever. We didn’t have our tattoos yet, so the demons couldn’t technically do that to us until we had gone through the Awakening. She’d been working off the books for the Grimlock demon who owned her contract. It kept her alive and fed, so she didn’t complain much.
She shrugged. “The usual. Master Grim had me interview some new ‘dancers’ for his club, and after that I scrubbed the leather seats with bleach and water. Fun times.” The way she did air quotes around the word dancer always cracked me up.
“How exactly does one interview a ‘dancer’?” Grim, her boss and the demon who held her contract, was also the owner of five strip clubs in Demon City. He made big money, and had more slaves than I’d ever seen. Shea was his personal assistant.
She pushed her breasts together, batting her eyelashes, and I laughed even more. Even when the world had gone to shit, Shea could always make me laugh. “That’s it? A nice rack and you’re in?”