The Night The Undertaker
Opened Its Door

The first thing Luce ever killed in Los Angeles was not a demon.

It was hope.

Not the soft kind people wrote poetry about, all pale wings and morning light. No, that kind had died in her long before she crossed the county line. What she killed that night was the last stubborn, stupid belief that if she stayed quiet enough, hid well enough, and kept her head down, the world might pass over her.

Los Angeles did not pass over anything.
It swallowed.

The city stretched beneath a bruised violet sky, all glass towers and neon teeth, traffic crawling through its arteries like blood that had forgotten where the heart was. Heat rose from the pavement though the sun had been gone for hours. The air tasted like exhaust, salt, old prayers, and something sulfurous beneath the storm drains.

Luce stood in the mouth of an alley behind a shuttered funeral home and watched three men drag a girl toward the back door.

The girl was maybe sixteen. Maybe younger. Skinny, dark hair hanging in her face, one sneaker missing. She fought in frantic, useless bursts, elbows and knees and panic, but the men holding her weren't men. Not fully. Their skins fit them wrong at the joints. Their eyes reflected too much light.

Possession, then.

Sloppy possession.

The kind that rode human bodies until the tendons tore and the organs cooked.