by Joshua Ingle
“Little—” Shane began, then stopped. Sweat drizzled down his temples and mixed with the tears flowing from his bloodshot eyes. “Little puny demons! I could kill you right now if I—if I wanted to. I could, you know. Because I’m evil!” He hissed at them for added effect.
Thorn threw a sidelong glance at the Judge, whose gelled head of hair was perfectly combed and whose V-neck suit fit just a little too tightly. His absurd sunglasses did little to hide his fear of Shane. Shane himself was no threat to two spirits, of course. He was just a sixteen-year-old boy. But Vucion, the demon possessing Shane, existed in the spiritual realm with Thorn and the Judge, and in his current crazed state, the aggressive demon was a force to be reckoned with.
“I come straight from the bottom pit of Hell,” Shane continued. Thorn chuckled. He couldn’t guess how Vucion hoped to scare them with the human myth that demons came from Hell, since Thorn still remembered the fall from Heaven like it was yesterday. “I have escaped from the darkest depths of the eternal abyss, an endless inferno of everlasting anguish and gnashing of teeth.”
“Can we shut him up already?” the Judge asked in his soft, peevish voice, his posture defensive against Shane’s constant movement.
“If you want to make the first move, I won’t stop you,” Thorn said.
“I’m in charge, dude. You do it.”
“You’re a Judge, he’s a Judge. Keep it in the family.”
“I’m the Demon Judge of Atlanta. This poser is the Judge of Cedartown. That’s like comparing you to a fruit fly.”
“Where is Cedartown?”
“Fuck if I know. Go kill him. Goddammit this is embarrassing.”
“God?” Vucion seized on the word and screeched through Shane’s vocal cords. “God has no say here, fool! This is my domain!”
The Judge briefly hung his head. “Sorry. Slip of the tongue.”
“You have no tongue, spirit!” Half the muscles in his torso twitching, Shane stepped boldly forward. “But I… I am taster of blood! Raper of dogs! Defiler of… people!”
“You’re batshit crazy is what you are.” Thorn had known some lowlifes in demon society would lose their minds and possess a human every now and then, but finding a possession in the U.S. was surprising. Almost all modern possessions occurred in Italy and the former Eastern Bloc—the exile sites for the world’s most deranged demons. Most “possession” cases in America were actually mental illness misdiagnosed by religious nuts.
“Sunglasses demon!” Vucion called. “Why have you and Thorn dared to enter my presence?”
“Uh, well, you broke the Second Rule, motherfucker.”
“I have not!”
Thorn chimed in. “Possession is outlawed. By possessing this human, you have alerted him to our existence.” Although Thorn had once found terrorizing humans quite enjoyable, keeping demonkind’s existence a secret from them also kept the Enemy’s existence a secret, which was absolutely necessary to prevent humanity from siding with the Enemy. Besides, no humans could be made into hedonists or consumerists if they knew that literal devils were whispering in their ears.
As Shane continued to rant, the Judge stepped sideways toward Thorn and whispered to him. “You go left, I’ll go right?”
“We could just distract him with a dog to rape.”
“Hilarious. How about you go up, I’ll go down?”
“You cannot hope to conquer us!” Shane interrupted loudly. “We are Legion!”
“Somebody’s seen too many exorcism movies,” the Judge chided as he cautiously rounded to Shane’s right.
“I am the inspiration for every exorcism movie,” Vucion said through Shane.
“Wow that’s a lot of exorcisms. Must have hurt like a bitch.” The Judge was successfully distracting him, Thorn realized. He prepared to move, and strained to see Vucion inside his human host. Dimwitted demons like Vucion sometimes viewed humans as safe places to hide, since spirits could not easily see another of their kind while he possessed a human. Some demons had hidden in humans for decades before they were discovered, outed, and executed.
In truth, humans were unable to exorcise demons from other humans. Only the victim himself or another spirit could remove the possessing devil—an act which Thorn and the Judge were about to attempt. Demons really are the best exorcists. Better than angels, even. We know how to manipulate each other.
“I remember when they made the Second Rule,” Shane said as his eyes followed the Judge. “Fifth century, remember? Christianity was spreading, and we were taking over bodies, freaking people out, too busy with our infighting to care what the Enemy was doing. Those were the good times, you fool! So what, if humans were so afraid of demons like me that they fled to Him? Better that we—Better that we all disappear, you leaders said. Better to keep the humans ignorant of the Enemy than to keep them afraid of us.” Shane clawed through his shirt with his fingernails, drawing his own blood. “Well I never agreed to hide myself for the cause. Something had to be done, yes, but I—I never personally agreed to the Second Rule.”
Thorn had dissented as well, but over the centuries he had come to realize there was another, better reason for the Second Rule: if you tried possession, or revealed yourself to a human, you ran the risk of being overpowered by the human, and cast aside. Wrestling directly with a human will was extremely difficult; even the weak ones were remarkably strong. They must not be allowed to realize how strong their own wills actually are, lest they start to use them, Thorn had eventually understood. No, let them think they’re slaves to their bodies, to their environment, to their past, to whatever temporary fancies pop into their heads. Mere whispers were a far better means of control than outright possession.
“Well guess what, Your Honor?” the Judge said to his fellow justice. “I never agreed to chase down your sorry ass. So let’s call it even. You leave this Shane kid alone, and we’ll leave you alone.”
Thorn inched closer behind Shane’s back. While Vucion resided in the boy’s mind, he could see only through Shane’s eyes. He would not see Thorn’s approach.
“You just want him for yourself,” Shane accused.
The Judge raised his hands. “You caught me. I have a hundred and five charges: politicians, celebrities, religious leaders, and a few regular folks so challenging to control that someone like you couldn’t begin to handle them. I’m the most important demon in Atlanta next to Thorn, but yeah, I thought it’d be a blast to come to the ghetto and fight the Cedartown Judge for a high school kid.”
“Shane is my favorite and you cannot have him. We’re close. How many humans have you been with long enough that you can possess them? Not one, I’d guess.”
“Nope, and I really don’t care.”
“So you couldn’t possess Shane even if you stole him from me. Not firmly, at least. And not for long.”
Thorn arrived at Shane’s body and reached for his head, but stopped short. Even if Vucion did deserve to die, Thorn had not killed another being—much less one of his own kind—since before the Christmas Eve shooting. The thought disturbed him.
The Judge stuttered and tried to stall. He must have been expecting the kill before he needed to respond to Vucion. “Uh, well, I don’t want to possess him. I just want another charge for, uh, whispering and stuff.” His gaze flickered between Shane and Thorn. Shane noticed, and turned.
And screamed.
The sudden piercing cry sent Thorn back a step, and before he was aware of Vucion’s attack, he’d fallen to just above the ground with Vucion on top of him, clawing and shrieking. Though Thorn raised his arms in defense, the enemy demon wounded him more than once. Vucion wore Shane’s face like a mask, and the drooling boy tried biting at the air where Thorn lay, hissing all the while.
Just as the pain grew serious, the Judge twisted Vucion’s head all the way around, then unceremoniously yanked his corpse out of Shane’s mind and tossed it into a stack of plastic pallets. Shane’s whole body jerked, fell, and convulsed violently, foamy spittle flyi
ng all around him. Thorn stood.
“What were you doing, dude? You had him. Why’d you hesitate?”
Thorn was wondering that himself. He shook his head. Secretly becoming good was proving to be a chaotic kaleidoscope of opposing morals blending and shifting, confusing Thorn to no end. Thorn still wasn’t sure if he even knew how to be good after his eons of vice. Of course I know how, he tried to reassure himself. I just have to do the opposite of what I’ve always done. Becoming a moral being was simply a matter of curbing his old habits. But that was not easily done.
“You okay?” the Judge asked.
“It hurts but I’ll be fine.”
The Judge nodded, then hovered over to Shane, who was starting to recover. The boy sat and glanced frightfully about, as if unsure how he’d come to be in this deserted foundry.
“What are you going to do with him?” Thorn asked.
The Judge sighed. “Remember back in the day when possession was chill? No screaming or self-mutilation? You’d just enter the guy’s mind and fuck around. Smooth-like.” He motioned to Vucion’s motionless body. “The crazies aren’t good enough for it. You know the Second Rule only exists for their sake. Sometimes I want to declare possession legal for demons like you and me, the badasses on top of the food chain. We wouldn’t go all apeshit with it.”
“The other Judges would depose you in a week.”
“Yeah, go ahead, ruin my fun.” The Judge lifted Vucion over his shoulders and made for the double doors at the building’s front. “I’ll sic some demons on Shane, make sure he’s dead within the month. On the bright side, if he tells anyone a demon possessed him, they’ll think he’s just as crazy as Vucion here was. God damn. That bottom feeders like this think they can get away with breaking the Second Rule after all this time… it blows my mind, Thorn. Blows my fucking mind.”
As they stepped out into the flat Atlanta sunlight, Thorn recalled his own recent breaking of the Second Rule. He had followed Amy, one of his charges, to a club in Midtown, and found Marcus waiting for them there. The powerful demon had just returned from a triumphant campaign in Africa and vowed vengeance on Thorn for the Constantine affair, so when Marcus and several of his cronies crowded around Amy, whispering ridicule to her, Thorn had needed to defend himself and reclaim his charge. “You’re beautiful,” he had said to her suddenly. And then, for a few brief moments, Amy had seen him. Thorn had somehow entered physical space, and all the demons present had witnessed it. Fortunately, the event had no precedent, so the Judge hadn’t believed the witnesses when they told him the story. In the months since, Thorn had tried to repeat the event with no success. In private, he had whispered words of peace and love into the ears of various humans around the city, but on no occasion had he reentered the physical world. The lone event with Amy still perplexed him—and frightened him.
It was why he was here now. The Judge may have dismissed the story about Thorn entering physical space, but to satiate the other demons’ calls for blood, the Judge had been forced to nail Thorn on another allegation: the words he had said to Amy. You’re beautiful. Though not technically one of the Rules, whispering anything good to a human was a gross taboo. So despite the prestige Thorn had reclaimed after the recent mass shooting, the Judge had sentenced Thorn to “community service,” in the Judge’s words. Thorn had helped the Judge track down a demon who’d killed one of his own after a feud, helped him discredit another demon who had proclaimed himself Demon Judge of Buckhead, and finally helped him slay Vucion, who’d been running around Georgia with a possessed human for the last few weeks.
“I must be nearing the end of my service now,” Thorn said, neither firmly nor cautiously. “I would like to return to my own business soon.”
“Easy there, homeboy. Still one more thing.” The Judge led him down the dilapidated street, past melting piles of dirty snow, over cracks in the asphalt where weeds grew in clumps, to a freight container. He hefted Vucion’s body above his head, then tossed it underneath the container, where no other demon would see it until it dissolved into the ether.
“Marcus is still loose in the city,” Thorn said. At least, Thorn assumed he was still loose. Marcus hadn’t been seen since the day of the shooting; he had likely gone to ground, aware that the city’s demons would side with the now-famous Thorn in any conflict between the two of them. Still, the possibility that Thorn’s greatest foe could be lurking around any corner filled him with constant apprehension. “I don’t like being alone with you like this, without my followers.” Even in the presence of his followers, Thorn no longer felt safe, since some of them had betrayed him to his enemy when Marcus had first arrived in Atlanta. These offending demons had been forced from the city at Thorn’s request, yet Thorn remained sharply aware that his followers would leave him in a heartbeat if the tide turned against him again.
“Thorn, baby, you don’t trust me?”
“No.”
“There’s no way I’m gonna turn a celebrity like you over to Marcus, if it makes you feel better. Here.” He motioned for Thorn to follow him into a group of trees.
Thorn hesitantly obliged. “Have you heard anything? About Marcus?”
“A little. I think he’s lost interest in you. Rumor is he has a new project.”
“What’s that?”
“A serial killer.”
“How cliché of him.”
“Yeah, well, I think he wants to outdo you in the ‘American deaths’ category.”
“He’s welcome to try. You will make him leave the city, though, if he surfaces?”
“Sure thing, buddy. Here we are.”
In the small clearing ahead, several bamboo shoots had curiously sprung up amidst the leafless forest. Dull sunlight peered through the tall stems to fall on the squat demon who hovered under the bamboo.
Shenzuul. Marcus’s right-hand demon.
Thorn tried to flee but the Judge restrained him. “Whoa there, Hoss, hold your horses.”
“You’ve betrayed me!”
“Chillax, Thorn. Chillax yourself, okay? Listen.”
Thorn pulled even harder. “I can have an army at your doorstep within a day. You will regret this!”
“Jesus, you sound like Vucion.” He smacked Thorn square in the face. “Mellow out!”
Thorn calmed himself a bit. “What is this?”
Rips and patches adorned Shenzuul’s tattered suit. Loose pieces of it flapped as he drifted out to meet Thorn.
Thorn noticed that his own transitioning morals had produced a change in his perception of Shenzuul: the once-imposing demon appeared thinner and less healthy than he’d been the last time Thorn had seen him. He approached low, keeping Thorn above him at all times. “I need learn,” he said gruffly.
The Judge removed his sunglasses so Thorn could see his eyes, and Thorn tried to decide if the gesture was meant to display honesty, or to better hide a lie. “Shenzuul has spent the last millennium in the deep jungles of the third world,” the Judge explained. “The dude was in the third world before there even was such a thing. So he missed a few important things, like say, the Renaissance. World War Two. Netflix.”
“This means nothing to me.”
“It should, because Shenzuul is the last part of your community service. He has a solid rep in the Congo, but his style is just a little too…” He contemplated Shenzuul’s dour, craggy features. “Too brutal. For the States. Whereas you or I might tempt a girl into a lifetime of self-doubt and substance abuse, forever questioning the verisimilitude of all her closest relationships and yadda yadda yadda, Shenzuul would just try to find someone to rape and kill her. Not cool. Well I mean, pretty cool, but not in vogue.” He reached an arm around Shenzuul’s shoulders and grinned at Thorn. “Shenzuul will be here for another month, and while he’s here, he’s agreed to teach us his ways if we teach him ours. We learn how to turn Georgia into an anarchy ruled by rival warlords, and Shenzuul learns the finer subtleties of the demonic arts. Congratulations, Thorn. You’re his new mentor.”
Shenzuul grunted his thanks. Thorn cringed. “You do realize who this is?”
The Judge squinted as if he didn’t understand the question. “It’s Shenzuul.”
“It’s Marcus’s assistant Shenzuul. He’ll kill me.”
“Again, my friend, chillax. They have the First Rule in Africa too. No one is going to kill you.”
“I leave Marcus,” Shenzuul said. “He disgraced here in Atlanta. He alone now, and I with you.”
Thorn didn’t believe it for a second. Still, he studied Shenzuul’s face carefully. What is he after?
When Thorn didn’t respond, the Judge playfully punched him in the shoulder. “Do I have to lock you in my mother’s basement and force you to listen to my Scorpions collection until you say yes?” Thorn furrowed his brow at another one of the Judge’s strange figures of speech.
Thorn met the Judge’s gaze, and saw his face grow as grave as his own. “You’ll do this, Thorn,” the Judge said. “For one month. Or I’ll have to give you a punishment that’s a tad bit… harsher.”
Even with Thorn’s prominent stature in demon society, going up against Atlanta’s Judge would be a grave mistake. So Thorn ground his teeth, shook his head, and reluctantly said, “Okay.”
3
“The fear of loss,” Thorn said to Shenzuul as they drifted down through the cloudless afternoon sky toward Joel Williams’s upscale house. “Repeat it.”
“The fear of loss.”
Tensions had run especially high at the Williams household ever since the couple had begun their nasty divorce, but Joel and Angela’s relationship had been strained ever since Thorn had met them. Thorn had needed a new celebrity charge as part of his cover, and had thankfully been given Joel and Angela as gifts meant to flatter him for the Christmas Eve shooting. He’d accepted the gifts in order to do some subtle good in the couple’s lives, and also out of pure curiosity. Later, when he’d read Joel’s unique story in the newspaper, Thorn had realized Joel wasn’t just any celebrity charge…
