My mother pushed open the door to my bedroom, allowing the light to leak inside. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the sudden brightness, and when they did, her troubled face came into view. I’d been sitting in my dark room all day, avoiding the inevitable.

“It’s time,” she announced with resignation.

My gaze swept over the hard lines around her eyes—from years of worrying—then at her tearstained cheeks, but what stood out most of all was the red crescent moon tattoo on her forehead.

The symbol of a demon’s slave. The symbol of my future.

Nodding, I lifted myself off my bed, with heavy limbs, and an even heavier heart. My mother stepped to the side as I passed her, and made my way out into the living room.

Mikey, my younger brother, sat on the couch, staring at the smooth plaster walls as if by his sheer will, he could change the present. Nothing could change what I was about to do, what I was about to become. My fate had been written a long time ago.

“I wish I was the firstborn,” my little brother muttered in a hollow voice that made my throat pinch with emotion. My normally goofball brother was near tears, and it killed me.

I didn’t wish he were born first. I was glad it was me. My brother was too soft emotionally to live the life of a demon’s slave. It was better this way.

“Today I wish I never had children,” my mother said gravely.

I knew she didn’t mean it. She just wanted to protect me from this, and wishing me out of existence would do that. That’s how bad times were. Since The Falling, none of us had any hope at a normal life anymore; all we could do was wish things were different or accept what was.

My mother wiped her leaking eyes and straightened. “Maybe you’ll get Necromancy like me, and get a more prominent post. Then we could work together after your academy studies.” Her mood instantly brightened at the thought.

I nodded, although it was highly unlikely. When the angels fell from Heaven and warred on Earth with Lucifer and his demons, powers flared out like the aurora borealis, infecting most of humanity. The Falling turned most of us into some sort of supernatural creature and left the rest human. Your gift depended on whether an angel or demon’s power touched you during the fight. It was completely random and had nothing to do with whether or not you were a good person. My mother was demon gifted with Necromancy, and reanimated the dead for a living. It was the only reason we weren’t living on the streets, like half of the human population. But they weren’t really alive; the… things she reanimated were akin to zombies. I shuddered, thinking of the times she’d brought her work home with her.

“It won’t be Necro, Mom. It’s random. She could be a Gristle for all we know.” There was my sarcastic Mikey, back in action.

My mom reached back and swatted his head. “Just be quiet,” she chided. Her normally vibrant blonde hair was dull and greasy. She’d no doubt stayed up all night worrying about this.

I laughed dryly to lighten the mood. If I was a Gristle, that would actually be the perfect shitty topping to my already shitty life. It meant having the magical ability to make trash disappear. Gristles smelled like crap, literally, and they were the bottom of the barrel as far as magical society class was concerned.
I was five years old when The Falling happened. My mom said that when the magic hit me, my body hovered in the air for a full five minutes, and she had to pin me to the bed to keep me from floating away. Mikey was four, so he wouldn’t really remember, but she mentioned his skin had turned green for over an hour.

Stepping closer, my mother smoothed my bright blonde hair down. “I’m sorry. I should never have taken the deal wi—”

I cut her off with a wave of my hand. Quite frankly, I was sick of the apology. My dad had been dying of cancer, and the whole family agreed that my mom would sell her services to the demons, becoming a lifelong Necro for the baddies. We just hadn’t read the fine print, which stated your firstborn was also a lifelong slave to the wicked.

I’d have been fine with it, if my father hadn’t been hit by a bus six months after the demons took his cancer. Six months of extended life was all that my mother’s and my lifetime enslavement earned him.

Life was jacked up, and I’d learned not to depend on sunshine and rainbows. The unicorns of my childhood dreams were dead and slaughtered.

Now summer was over and I was eighteen. Today I would go to The Awakening, a magical ceremony put on by the fallen angels to fully ignite our powers, to reveal what gifts or curses we held. Angel blessed or demon gifted—at least for those of us who had them. When The Falling first happened and all of the powers were unleashed on the humans, no one was sure who got hit or with what. When the angels realized what they’d done—mutated humanity—they contained all of the powers given to anyone under the age of eighteen. They couldn’t take them back, but they could keep them at bay so we could have a childhood, at least.

Once my power was determined, I would exit stage left, get my demon slave tattoo, and enroll in the notoriously dysfunctional and scary Tainted Academy while the others exited stage right and enrolled in the Fallen Academy with the rest of the free souls. Fallen Academy was an exclusive college for those who weren’t demon-slave bound, mostly the angel blessed. The supernaturally gifted would be trained for four years, and then be drafted into the Fallen Army, receiving good payment for their service to the light. We were still at war, after all, and I was about to sign up for the wrong side. My lifetime service to the demons would start today, and I felt sick thinking about it.

“I should get going. I don’t want to be late,” I said abruptly. That would result in my entire family being slaughtered by demons. They were greedily awaiting their new slave, a fresh eighteen-year-old to torture and wear down over the rest of my life.

My mom fell into a puddle of tears then and I just couldn’t deal with it. I needed to stay strong or I was going to lose it.

“Love you guys. See you after,” I added, ignoring my mother’s weeping as I walked hastily to where my coat was hanging by the door.

“Brielle.” My mother’s voice carried so much emotion that I knew I wouldn’t be able to turn around or I would completely fall to pieces. “I’m so sorry.

Forgive me?”

The apology was old, but this was new. Did she think I blamed her? We’d all agreed that the healer demon we went to had tricked her. She had no idea a blood oath included her firstborn. I was twelve years old and mature enough to know what I had encouraged her to do. We all did it for my father.

That time I did turn around.

“Of course I forgive you, Mom. It’s the demon scum that will never get my forgiveness.” I hated them. Rage built in my chest as I grieved for my future. The future I would’ve had if they hadn’t tricked my mother into giving up my life to save my father’s. If he’d still been alive, it would’ve been worth it, but six months? It wasn’t enough.

My mom just stood there and nodded. “Your father would—” She couldn’t finish as the sob escaped her throat. I needed to get the hell out of there. It was too depressing.

When the bus hit my father six years ago, I’d begged my mom to reanimate him so I could talk to him, tell him how much I loved him, and get bear hugs from him again. She refused, and at the time I’d hated her for it. As I grew older and interacted with the reanimated more, I understood why. They were zombies, shells of their former selves. Besides, he’d made her promise that she never would.

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.

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 there 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?”

Hmm, maybe that would be my backup plan if my new post didn’t pay well. Necros made good money, but if I was a Gristle, I was screwed. My boss would barely pay me enough to eat. My mom wouldn’t be able to work forever. Necro work was hard and soul-draining, so I’d have to eventually take care of her, Mikey, and maybe even Shea too.

Shea’s face fell and clouded over. “It’s sad. Most of the girls are barely eighteen. Some have kids to support or contracts to fulfill. I’m lucky Grim doesn’t make me dance. I’m surprised he hasn’t noticed that I was blessed with incredibly amazing boobs.”

I grinned. “And a nice booty.”

She chortled, turning to look behind her. “It is nice,” she agreed, making me smile wider.

“Are you nervous?” I inquired, changing the topic.

“What if we’re both Gristles?”

Shea shrugged and reached over to hold my hand. “Then we’ll be the best damn Gristles Demon City has ever seen.”

I smiled again but it didn’t reach my eyes. On a day when we were supposed to be getting special powers and new careers, we were selling our souls to the wrong side.

“Do you think the war will ever stop, that one side will win? That the fallen might win?” I asked her. The sunlight was shining up ahead as the bus made its way to the border of Angel City. The place I had once lived in, until my dad got sick. I barely remembered it now, but I recalled that the majority of people were happy.

Shea’s gaze followed the rain streak down the window, her blue eyes looking out behind her bronze skin. She let go of my hand. “I dunno. I try not to hope anymore. It only leads to disappointment.”
Wasn’t that the damn truth. We could pass for normal on the streets now, but after today, a red crescent moon slave mark would mar our looks for eternity. Would show everyone who we were, and what we’d signed up for.

The bus slowed as it reached the border gate, and a security guard stepped out from behind the tall cement wall that closed off the two warring cities. After a few words and a scan of the driver’s badge, we rolled on through. The sunlight burst through the windows and heated my chilly skin. Driving into Angel City was an immediate mood lifter. I took a deep breath as I felt the tension in my shoulders recede.

Shea chuckled. “You love this place.”

“Don’t you?” Angel City was the normal side, the side with the good people.

“It’s not home to me like it is to you,” she added with a shrug. “I don’t feel any different about either side.”
That was true. Shea was from New Orleans, and after moving here, she’d only ever known Demon City as home. She loved the rain and gloomy days, whereas I was dying for a sunny day at the beach.
The bus stopped in front of the Awakening Center, and Shea and I disembarked. My hands clung to my messenger bag tightly, as we crossed the busy downtown street, and made our way to the line of teenagers walking into the open double doors.
“I saw a Lakers game here once with my dad. I barely remember, but we have a picture,” I told Shea.

“The Awakening waits for no one!” a slender woman, in her twenties, called out to us as the last of the kids went through the double doors.

“Why do they insist on dressing us up? This isn’t prom,” Shea muttered, running to catch up. I didn’t want to know what happened if you didn’t make it on time to the Awakening. I’d heard stories and they weren’t good.

“Because it gives them something to do,” I whispered back, then was met with a glare from the female officer holding the door. I looked down at the silver spiral insignia on her jacket. She was a Light Mage. She also had a silver FA patch right beneath it, the logo of the Fallen Army.

The line of my fellow Awakening ceremony companions began to tighten as we walked single file back to the dressing rooms. The fallen angels who hosted the ceremony every year insisted we dress up, and after we had our Awakening, they threw a big catered party for everyone, even the demon bound.

“I heard there’s a chocolate fountain at the party after.” Shea’s eyes lit up as she told me the rumor. She was obsessed with chocolate—and guys, but mostly chocolate.

The Fallen Army officer hung back until she was walking with Shea and me, giving us a side glance as she tsked through her teeth.

Shea pinned her with a glare as we walked. “Can I help you?” she asked her in the bitchiest tone possible. The fallen and all of their officers were high and mighty, acting better than everyone, especially better than us. The demon bound.
The woman shrugged. “It’s a shame to see so many firstborns pledge their lives to the demons.”

Another woman up ahead had started roll call at a set of double doors. Shea stopped and faced the officer. Her blood was boiling. I could see that in the way she clenched her fists, and I hoped I didn’t have to hold her back, if you struck an officer, it was a criminal offense.

How did she even know we were slave bound? She’d probably looked at all of the files beforehand, specifically looking for the ones like us.

“You think we pledge ourselves? Wow, you’re stupider than you look,” Shea spat.

I froze, unsure what the woman’s reaction would be. I didn’t spend a lot of time around the Fallen Army and their human consort. I’d heard they were more forgiving than the demon patrol officers that roamed our streets, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

“No.” The officer stepped closer to my best friend.

“What’s stupid is that your mothers, the people in charge of your safety and security, pledged your life to a demon for their own gains.”

I stepped out of the line, ready to give this girl a piece of my mind, but the officer at the front called Shea’s name then.
“Shea Hallowell. Demon bound.”

Shea gave the officer before her one last glare before stepping in line and raising her hand.

The officer at the front typed something into her tablet and pointed for Shea to step out of the line. There was a small group of three others I recognized from Demon City. All demon bound.

“Brielle Atwater. Demon bound.”

The way she said ‘demon bound,’ like it was dirty, made me hate them more. The self-righteous Fallen Army.

I raised my hand, and held my chin high. Yes, my mother sold herself to a lifetime of demon slavery to save my father’s life, but what other choice did we have? That’s what you did for love, for family. The fallen angels didn’t heal the dying—free will, destiny, and all of that bullshit. They said the humans who were terminal were meant to pass, and no one should interfere. Pious bastards.

I stepped out of line and followed Shea to stand with the others from Demon City. Five of us. The rest were free souls and would exit stage right and be recruited to enter Fallen Academy. Mages, the Sighted, Centaurs, and of course, the rare and mythical Celestials were all of the Angel Blessed powers and were looked at as the ‘good ones.’ There hadn’t been a Celestial in five years. It was said they were endowed with so much angel energy during The Falling, that they were kin to the fallen angels themselves. They were easy to spot with their big large white wings, smaller yet identical to the wings of the fallen. The only difference was that the

Celestials could retract their wings at will, and the fallen couldn’t.

I saw one once. A fallen. I was nine years old, right before my dad’s diagnosis while he was in the hospital. Raphael, the Archangel of Healing, was going around blessing the sick—he must have skipped my dad. I’ll never forget what he looked like, and the way he looked at me, like he could see right through me. It was unnerving.

“Free souls this way. Demon bound that way,” the lead officer called out, and we all entered the hallway.

The free souls started walking into a dressing room to the right as we headed left, where a demon slave with the red crescent moon was waiting for us. She had a cattle prod in one hand, and Shea and I raised our eyebrows at each other. She was a slave minder. If one of us chickened out or tried to run, we’d be shot up with electricity.

Icing on the cake.

We were led into a small dressing room—coed from the looks of it—and the slave minder pointed to a rack of dresses and men’s suits. “Get yourself presentable, and then we’ll go out into the main reception hall. You have five minutes.”

She left the room and closed the door, presumably locking us in from the sound of the click.

“Five bucks says Steph is a Gristle,” Ben told the room, and we all laughed as Stephanie gave him the middle finger, but then smacked his butt. Steph and Ben had been dating for over a year now. They didn’t live in the same housing building as Shea and me, so I only saw them at school in one shared class, but they were cool people.

Shea started flipping through the dresses. “Reality is we could all be Gristles. No sense in worrying about it.”

Steph and I shared a look. Shea was my little pessimist. She never saw the silver lining or had hope that anything would work out. Only on rare occasions did that happen.

James, the fifth person in our group, was quiet, sitting in the corner while staring at the wall. He was one of those perfect guys—smart, utterly gorgeous, and gay.

“What’s up, James?” I asked, dropping into the seat next to him as the others spoke in soft voices near the dresses.

“I had a bad dream last night, that’s all.” He stood abruptly, and walked over to get dressed.

I stayed still. James had the gift of future sight.

When the fallen angels quickly closed down the powers of anyone below the age of eighteen, there were a few glitches, and not every child’s power was caught 100 percent.

James had prophetic dreams.

One day he came into school screaming for everyone to get out, even pulled the fire alarm. We all ran out of the building, and not ten minutes later a Fallen Army helicopter crashed into the side and blew up our school. He said he’d dreamed about it and just knew it was real. So if James had a bad dream last night, I was all ears.

Absentmindedly, I grabbed a black silk dress in my size, and followed James to the corner of the room where he was disrobing. I started to take my shirt off and James looked at my chest. “Eww, boobs.”

A chuckle escaped me as I rolled my eyes, stepping into the dress and pulling the delicate straps over my shoulders. “So… your dream? Should we expect a helicopter crash landing later today or what?”

I could usually make James laugh, as he had a good sense of humor, but this time he was just stone-faced. Dark.

“You need to be careful,” James whispered, as I shimmied out of my pants.

I stopped dead. “Okay, elaborate please.” What the hell did that mean, and why me? He said I needed to be careful. I was already nervous for this ceremony, and now my heart was jackhammering in my chest.

James side-eyed the rest of the group, who seemed to be laughing at Shea’s impression of the Fallen Army officer. Then he leaned in closer to me. “You’re different. They—”

The door swung open then, and James straightened as the slave minder walked in.

“All right, it’s time,” she growled, pointing her cattle prod at us.

Frick. Mental telepathy would be a good skill to have right now.

I followed my group out of the dressing room with my knees knocking together in fear. If James said I needed to be careful, I was royally screwed.