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Sticky heat clings to my forehead under the thick leather as sweat drips down. Fuck. It’s no wonder I haven’t been back home in over twelve years. It’s way too fucking hot.

Sweet home Miami. Full of drugs, fake tits, and loud cars. People with no respect for anyone else’s time but their own. Flashing lights, loud beats, and trips to Denny’s at three in the morning after a night of sex-filled partying. It isn’t a place I miss, but it still sings to my core whenever I hear the loud Spanish abuelitas and the old men sharing a colada at the corner bakery. It’s large, yet still—somehow—everyone knows everyone, or knows someone who knows them.

But, right now, none of them know me. And I plan to keep it that way.

With the rich melting pot of Spanish culture that runs this city, religion— my religion—is fused into the humid air. There is a small hub of Roman Catholics from the diocese that reside here, and the handful of men who know what the Church is really doing here is even smaller.

And only one man knows what I am doing here—back in my home.

Father Rodrigo’s voice grumbles in the ear piece I wear under the mask. “Well?”

I whistle back.

He sighs. “Just . . . make it quick.”

Rodrigo hates nights like these. He hates when my . . . duty to the church goes beyond what the diocese accepts. But he has never once discouraged me from following my gut. I assume it was because he was there , but maybe it’s more than that. Father Rodrigo has seen demons. He has known devils and Hell.

Yet, somehow, man is often worse.

I’ve been keeping to the shadows of the long street. Wynwood, the trendy party district, is just a few blocks away, and I can still hear the coagulated bass from the clubs through the soles of my boots, vibrating into my chest.

The poor hellion I’m currently stalking should know better than to wander into the dark alone, away from civilization. The streets around here are either lively and bumping, or dangerous and mute.

And we crossed the line into danger two blocks ago.

The target, Victor Samuel, is a devout Catholic and a tourist. He’s here from some state up north where he left his wife and sixteen-year-old daughter at home to “finalize a business deal.” Victor, the sinner that he is, hired a hooker his first night here. Then, on night two, he picked up another woman at the bar, gave her too much cocaine, and kicked her out of his room at four in the morning without her purse, phone, or wallet.

But cheating and lying aren’t the sins I am following him for. No, I can leave those to God’s judgment.

What I am following him for is damnation.

That prostitute from his first night hasn’t been seen again. Since his hotel room the morning after had been filled with half-burnt candles and sigils painted in fresh blood, one can only assume the poor girl was used for more than a quick fuck.

I quicken my step, dropping my foot just a touch harder, loud enough for him to finally hear me. The moment he looks over his shoulder, I barrel at him. Victor’s blue eyes widen in fear and shock—a deer caught in the headlights. I wonder briefly what I must look like to him as I dash through the night. A black mass? One of his demons?

It doesn’t matter. As I near him, he finally comes to his senses and tries to run from me. He gets two steps before I tackle him to the ground. He’s already whining and begging for his life, but I don’t pay attention to any of it as I drag the metal rosary from my neck. Three little beads are scratched black, but the rest are as silver as the stars and they reflect the light of the lone streetlamp.

“Please, take my money. I’ll give you whatever you want.”

I wrap the beads around my knuckles, squeezing tight. The sharp crucifix dangles onto my wrist, lightly poking the exposed flesh there. I ignore Victor, instead mumbling a Hail Mary as I roll the bead closest to the last black one between my finger and thumb.

This is what causes Victor to finally meet my eyes. Well, I’m meeting his eyes. He’s only meeting a black mask with a large white cross jaggedly painted in the center of it.

“Who are you?” he says, his words slurring together. “What do you want?”

I take my time finishing another Hail Mary. Two more.

I won’t speak to Victor Samuel. I won’t dignify him with an answer. He knows what he’s done, and—more importantly— I know what he’s done.

To kill an ant means nothing when the nest is still functioning, thriving, cultivating. But, damn, does it feel good.

I tighten my grip on the metal rosary as I say, “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen,” and smash my fist into his face.

Victor screams, but the bastard doesn’t give up. He manages to squirm from under me, clutching onto his bloody nose.

“You’ll fucking regret that!” he screams.

Chuckling, I slowly rise. “Yeah? You sure about that?”

I know his next move before he even does, because I see it nearly every time I come face to face with one of these assholes. They’re too weak to do anything, so they always need some muscle on their side.

Instead of answering, Victor starts speaking in Latin, using his own blood to draw sigils on the concrete. I let him.

Cracking my neck and knuckles, I wait for the prick to finish. I could use a little extra exercise tonight.

After way too long—what a fucking lousy cultist—Victor has a summoning circle painted on the ground. The Miami air gets uncharacteristically cool as a violent wind pushes through the empty street. A black mist swirls and thickens in mass the more he speaks, and soon a shadow figure stands between the fuckface and myself.

Faintly, I hear the nightlife. Sirens from cops, horns from late night drivers, and still that ever present base from the clubs just a few blocks away.

But now a high-pitched cackle breaks through the never ending beat—coming from the all-black figure. It’s tall and thin, standing far too straight. But what I should find horrifying is its oversized eyes. Tiny black irises stare at me, revealing too much white. Slowly, it spreads its lips in a haunting smile, revealing teeth just as illuminating in the dark night.

It’s horrifying. Truly.

I run at it.

“Nice try, Victor,” I yell, smiling as wide as the demon. “But you’re a shit Satanist if this is all you could summon.”

The demon lunges at me, and all I have to do is raise my hand wrapped in the rosary for it to quiver back.

“Easy fuckin’ pickings,” I chuckle. “Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.” The demon screams, reeling back farther, farther, until it stands in the summoning circle once more. “Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread.” It whines still, and Victor jumps back.

“What the fuck?” he screams.

With a smile on my lips, I continue, “And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

The demon returns to nothing but mist being sucked back through the summoning circle, through the ground, and straight back to Hell.

“Amen, fucker.”

Victor’s panicked eyes dart up to me, and he looks like a small rabbit about to flee for his life.

But I’m the motherfucking serpent already wrapped around him.

I lunge at the bastard, grabbing him by the collar. He screams and screams, but it doesn’t phase me in the slightest.

“You killed that girl the other night all so you could summon that ? That was the power you killed for?”

Victor continues to squirm. “Please, I have a child and wife. They’re waiting for me at home!”

Fucking pathetic.

I pull my knife from my belt, flick it open, and slash through Victor’s neck. As he bleeds out, I drop his body and straddle his chest. In a mirror of my own mask, I carefully carve a shallow cross over the bastard’s face, starting from forehead down to his upper lip, then across his eyelids.

“And lead us not into temptation,” I repeat, as I always do when tainting the cultists I kill. “But deliver us from evil. Amen.”

I hop up the steps of the large wooden cathedral where I know Father Rodrigo is waiting for me. It may be close to four in the morning, but I know the man wouldn’t have gone to sleep yet. He has always waited till I got home, even in the years where coming home was a possibility, not a probability.

I cringe a little, thinking of myself at nineteen. The drugs, the sex, the parties. That all changed in a quite literal “come to Jesus moment.”

As I open the door to the church, the scent of frankincense punches into me, made even more pungent with Miami’s constant humidity, even late into the night in the dead of October. It may sound odd but ninety-five degrees in fall in the middle of the night? Totally normal here.

As expected, Father Rodrigo is sitting in the front pew, facing the bloodied crucifix of Christ hanging in the sanctuary. The lights are off, but every candle is lit.

I clear my throat a little, just to announce myself, and Rodrigo immediately turns to face me. Not for the first time today, I realize how he’s aged since I’ve last been home. The smile lines and crow’s feet have only deepened, and his thick black hair has mixed with gray to make an authentic salt-and-pepper look. Not only that, but el jefe has grown a little belly he seems proud of.

“ Marcelo, mi hijo, ?qué haces? ” He looks me up and down—probably looking for blood or the mask. But he won’t find either. Though he knows of it, and even helps with tracking sometimes, I don’t let him see that part of me. The mask is safely tucked into my bag in the car, and the blood was cleaned from the rosary the moment I finished with Victor.

“ Nada, Padre . What are you still doing up?”

“Waiting for you, of course.” He stands, bracing his hands on his knees, and making an over-exaggerated “oof” as he straightens. “It’s done, I’m guessing?” I nod, not wanting to give the bloody details. “Good. That was the fifth cultist this month, hijo . Five. That’s how many we had all of last year.”

“Something’s going on. None of them spill information, but it can’t be a coincidence. And Miami isn’t the only place the numbers are growing.”

He walks to meet me in the center of the aisle, before wagging a finger for me to follow him into his office off to the right. “The Vatican has had increased numbers everywhere. Places where Catholicism isn’t even the dominant religion. Georgia, Alabama, they too have seen increased numbers.”

“What are they doing about it?” I ask, already knowing the answer. If the church is anything, it’s slow and cautious. So cautious, things are rarely done about anything, which is why I started donning the mask.

Father Rodrigo shrugs. “You know them. It’s all politics. But enough about that. I have your next case.”

“Already? You begged me to come here, and now you’re telling me to leave again?” I huff a laugh. “Father, if I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were trying to get rid of me.”

“ Ay, cállate . You know we’re short-handed.”

“And I’m the best you’ve got.” I smirk.

Now Rodrigo huffs a laugh. “ Cabrón .”

Besides being a bishop, my legal guardian from the time I was fourteen, and the greatest man I know, Father Rodrigo is also my boss. He runs the Office of Exorcists here on the East Coast— real exorcists. We travel to where he tells us, decipher if it truly is a demon terrorizing a place or the vanity of man, and then we exorcise.

I follow Rodrigo down another hall and into his office. Unlike most bishop offices, Rodrigo has personalized it. Pictures of me as a boy hang on the walls, along with my best friend and her brother, Willow and Rowan. The three of us at fourteen, arms around each other, smiles wide though so much had already happened by then.

I quickly look away from the photos and slump into the seat opposite his. “So, tell me of this job.”

Rodrigo lands heavily in his seat. “Massachusetts.”

“Boston?”

He shakes his head. “You wish, mijo . It’s in West Massachusetts—middle of nowhere really. Small town, closer to New York state and Connecticut. Ever heard of Belmouth?”

I shake my head.

“Their priest claims his congregation is being possessed by the Devil.”

“Of course he does. And the ‘evidence’?” I make air quotes around the words, my jaded work history making me ever the skeptic.

Rodrigo grins, and his teeth are dark from the cigarettes he’s smoked his whole life. “Visions of violence and deviance have infected the congregation. If he is correct, exorcise the demon like usual. If he’s not . . .”

My job entails deciphering hysterics from fact, and 80 percent of the time, hysteria wins. Most people who believe they are possessed by demons, are merely possessed by their own greed and cowardice to admit their faults. In those cases, we let the Vatican know, denounce priesthood if the priest is part of the problem, and quickly find a replacement. But, in the rare 20 percent, when a creature from Hell is involved, my brothers and I are needed.

Exorcists roam, from chapel to cathedral. We go where we are needed. And now, Belmouth seems to be calling.

“All right, I’ll leave in the morning,” I say, pulling out a cigarette and flicking the lighter on and off.

“It’s another small town, Marcelo. You know people talk.”

Chismosos, I think, rolling my eyes.

“Just . . . be wary. Don’t be the cause of hysteria.”

“ Yo entiendo, Padre. ”

“And try to keep your . . . side job to a minimum. The Vatican is watching.”

I take a drag of the cigarette. “You want me to keep the mask hidden? While in the center of exactly what it is I’m fighting?” I raise an eyebrow, flicking the loose ash.

Rodrigo sighs. “Look. I know you feel inclined because your parents—”

“It’s not about them.”

He ignores me. “And you know I agree with . . . your work . But there is a time and place, Marcelo. One of these days, you’re going to get caught. And officers of the modern world won’t accept you are killing men for God. They’ll assume you’re a sociopath and lock you up.”

“Yeah? You think the sex worker Victor Samuels sacrificed to a demon two nights ago would agree? Or the three teenage girls in Georgia last month? They were kids, Padre . Children, getting murdered to summon these demons. These demons I exorcise.”

I think back to the ant. To the colony. Exterminate the nest and what do they have?

“I am all for what you’re doing. Killing cultists that are actually summoning evil into this world is helping man more than anyone realizes. And while the Vatican sits on their ass and does nothing, you’re actually doing something. But they also have had a history with you. They know you’re trouble and they are looking for any excuse to terminate your priesthood.”

I sit back then shrug. “Truthfully, Padre ? I don’t think it would affect me.”

“To lose your priesthood?” He leans his head closer. “Ay, Marcelo. You’ll give me an aneurysm.”

I chuckle. He’s always been dramatic. “You know me, Padre . You know who I am outside the collar.”

He sighs again and nods. “At least I know it isn’t a question of faith.”

“Never. I love God. But I love him my way. Not the way of the church.”

Rodrigo doesn’t say anything, he only nods. But I know. I know from the too many nights he’s called me when he’s had too much wine. I know from when he accepted and took in Rowan after he came out and his parents abandoned him, and more so when Rowan decided he, too, wanted to be a priest despite being a gay man. And most importantly, I know from when he took me in and raised me even when I was a little shit teen trying to rebel in any way possible. Including trying to summon the Devil in our church basement once.

It didn’t work.

And he has the backing of the Pope, so he does as he pleases, much to the dislike of the diocese. He married gay couples before they were recognized by the church. He employed sex workers and the unhoused for events the church held, paying in wages and meals.

Rodrigo is a renowned man, and he, too, hates the politics of the Vatican, the laws of the Church. They are made by man. Not God.

So I don’t listen to them.

I may be a bad priest, but I am a damned good exorcist.

Rodrigo continues to nod and then meets my gaze. “Fine. The cultists are up to something. If you see anything, investigate first. Then you report to me. I’ll tell you if the mask is needed. That is the only way I can justify this, Marcelo. Tell me you agree.”

Out of respect, I nod. “Okay. The mask stays hidden until further notice. Now, tell me about this church.”