Chapter 3: Ava Monroe Does Not Kneel

I found her in the back courtyard with a crowbar in one hand and blood running down her left sleeve.

She was tall, pale under the grime, with dark blond hair hacked short at her jaw. A cracked badge hung from her neck.

AVA MONROE.

PARAMEDIC.

Behind her, six children huddled inside an ambulance with no wheels.

Behind them came the dead.

Not ghosts.

Bodies.

The little boy Ava shoved through the door had a dinosaur backpack and no shoes.

That detail stuck with me. Not the blood, not the dead police officer crawling over the courtyard wall, not the way the temple candles leaned toward Ava as if she had brought weather in with her. The bare feet.

He left muddy prints across the kitchen tiles.

Ava saw me looking and snapped, "He lost them running. Focus."

"I am focused."

"On shoes?"

"On the part where children are being chased by corpses."

She stared at me for half a second, then barked a laugh that sounded more like pain. "Fine. You get ten seconds of being funny. Then you become useful."

Their skin had swollen gray. Their mouths opened and closed as if drowning in air. One wore a police uniform with no jaw. Another dragged a child's backpack from one stiff hand.

Ava looked at my broom.

"That your apocalypse plan?"

"It worked once."

"Cute. Mine is running."

She shoved a little boy through the kitchen door and pointed the crowbar at me.

"If you own this place, make it safe."

"I inherited it twenty minutes ago."

"Then learn fast."

The dead hit the courtyard gate.

Wood cracked.

The incense burner chimed from the main hall.

[Living petitioners detected.]

[Shelter locked.]

[Unlock condition: three sincere prayers.]

"You have got to be kidding me," I said.

Ava narrowed her eyes. "Who are you talking to?"

"Possibly my inheritance."

"Fantastic. Your inheritance is useless."

The gate split.

I grabbed her wrist and pulled her toward the statue. She tried to wrench free until the first corpse crawled through the gap and the temple candles burst into blue flame.

She stopped fighting.

"What is this place?"

"A courthouse," I said. "For the dead. Maybe."

The smallest child in the ambulance had wrapped both arms around a stuffed rabbit soaked black from rain. He stared at the corpses without crying, which bothered me more than screaming would have.

Ava noticed too.

"Miles," she said, not looking away from the gate. "Eyes on me."

The boy obeyed instantly.

That told me she had kept them alive long enough to become law.

The corpses hit the courtyard gate again. One wooden plank cracked down the middle. Through the gap, I saw a dead hand wearing a hospital bracelet. The name had been washed away, but the fingers still moved with purpose, scratching for the children as if they remembered hunger better than life.

"How far did you run?" I asked.

"Six blocks, two alleys, one ambulance crash, and a pharmacy full of people who stopped being people halfway through asking for help."

She said it quickly. Too quickly.

I understood that. If she slowed down, the deaths would catch her.

The incense burner chimed again from the hall.

This time, I ran toward it before fear could vote.

"Maybe?"

"I'm new."

The children stumbled into the hall. The youngest girl was not crying. That made it worse.

The system pulsed again.

[Three sincere prayers required.]

I looked at Ava. "Ask for protection."

Her mouth hardened. "I don't pray."

"Neither do I. It still seems to be happening."

The dead reached the kitchen door.

Ava looked from me to the children, then to the cracked City God statue.

She did not kneel.

She stood straight, bleeding, furious, and terrified.

"Whoever you are," she said to the statue, "I have six kids who did nothing wrong. Keep them alive, and I will owe you."

The burner flared.

[Sincere prayer received.]

[Believer: Ava Monroe.]

[Profession: healer.]

[Compatibility: dangerous.]

Dangerous was not the word I wanted.

Every candle in the temple turned blue.