by Joshua Ingle
“Is Lexa your friend?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, no amount of exercise will help you be happy with your life if you keep peeps like her around.”
Amy shrugged. “She’s not always like that. She can be pretty nice.”
As Amy and Shelley continued their discourse, Shenzuul impatiently glanced at Thorn, probably expecting him to intercede. Thorn remained still. “What you do now?” Shenzuul asked.
“Nothing,” Thorn said. “Sometimes you don’t need to whisper. Sometimes you can just let human nature take its course.” Thorn’s followers gave him confused glances. He couldn’t come up with a reason why two girls exercising together would lead to something negative, so he let his vague platitude hang in the air. He rose above the treadmills, toward the recreation center’s roof. Outside the windows, the sun hung low in the sky.
Shenzuul and Thorn’s other followers kept pace. “Right, you very wise to see. Human nature evil.”
Thorn used to agree with that. Now he wasn’t sure. So he just nodded and exited the building. “Time for us to part, Shenzuul. We’ll reconvene in the morning.”
“No. No! I follow you. Learn from you.”
“The Judge assigned me to teach you about the subtleties of human temptation. I can only do that when I am around humans, which I do not intend to be again until tomorrow morning. So until then, goodbye. The rest of you as well, leave me be. I desire solitude.”
Shenzuul and the others reluctantly dispersed. If Shenzuul was reporting to Marcus, Thorn isolating himself was risky, but he would travel through the ground so he could not be followed. Then when he was finished at his destination he would join the inner-city demon horde in the night. One clandestine outing would not be so bad…
•
The night air was still and cold at the site of the future North Decatur subway station. No wind was present to sway the metal hook that hung from a crane over a hundred feet tall. Only columns, scaffolds, and bright new concrete steps kept Thorn company as he waited in the quiet. The construction site rested mostly aboveground, but the subway’s western rail dipped into the earth a bit, so Thorn had chosen this hidden spot for his waiting. Although humans and therefore demons abandoned the new station at night, he remained vigilant for any wandering demons passing by. I must not be seen here. I must not be seen with her. Where is she?
Unbidden, his thoughts turned to the shooting at the daycare. Children screaming, dying; blood spattered across the walls and floor; Thorn helpless to intervene. His own charge had killed them, but not at Thorn’s request. If only the other demons had heard his whispers. If they’d realized that Thorn had been trying to stop Jed rather than spur him on, Thorn might have had the pleasure of being dead now.
Instead, Thorn was forced to live, haunted by the specters of his many victims, still vivid in his memory. He feared he would never redeem himself for the shootings, nor for the countless other deaths of innocents he’d caused throughout history. No, he would have to live with all that death, and with the burgeoning realization that he’d been on the wrong side of the battle since the beginning of time. Thorn still loathed the Enemy for what He’d done to demonkind, but he also hated demonkind for the pain and carnage they continuously inflicted on themselves, and on humanity. Where does a demon go who is caught in the middle?
Thorn had gone to the angels’ quarantine zone in northwest Atlanta. Vastly outnumbered by demons, the few remaining cherubim were content to stay in the quarantine zones into which demons had forced them long ago, after the war. In the wake of the Christmas Eve shooting, Thorn had gone to Atlanta’s zone to defect, to admit his newfound desire to be good; but instead of solace or rejection, Thorn had found… something else. Some evidence of a grave secret. He had found Xeres, the great demon he’d followed for centuries, who had died in the early 1540s. Only now, somehow, Xeres was a full-fledged angel, complete with majestic wings and a white robe. He’d pretended not to know Thorn, then when Thorn had recognized him, he’d fled.
Thorn had floated there, dumbfounded, trying to make sense of what he had seen. A whole universe of questions had opened up before him. Common knowledge said that a demon’s sin was permanent, that none could defect. It was one of the cornerstones that had driven demon actions for billions of years. Despite having somehow become an angel, Xeres himself had stressed the impossibility of defection when Thorn had asked for help. Thorn had raved about conspiracies and lies, kicking and screaming as the angels drove him into the ground beneath their warehouse, yet even after months of searching for clues, of clandestinely petitioning the angels for audience, he still had no new knowledge of what he had seen.
But he had a guess.
In 1540, Xeres had left his territory in what would one day become Georgia to enter a Sanctuary. Created by the Enemy as testing grounds for humans, Sanctuaries had a reputation as dangerous, mysterious places. A demon could earn great prestige by journeying to a Sanctuary and killing the humans there, but the risk was so great that only one in a hundred thousand demons had ever attempted it. Of those, perhaps half had returned. And almost all of those had gone in groups. To enter a Sanctuary alone was nearly tantamount to suicide, so Xeres’s boldness had been lauded throughout the demon world at the time.
Xeres had returned from his Sanctuary as many demons did: quiet and glum. Like a neutered dog, he wandered and pondered, licking whatever emotional wounds he’d sustained. He claimed to have successfully killed the Sanctuary’s humans, but he avoided all humans upon his return, refusing to tempt anyone. He was killed by his own kind for it. Thorn had seen the body.
When Xeres was killed, Thorn had been too concerned with his own attempts to succeed him to think through the circumstances of his death. But ever since he had seen Xeres as an angel two and a half months ago, Thorn had been turning those past events over and over in his mind. He had tried to recollect everything he’d ever learned about Sanctuaries, too.
The demons who returned from Sanctuaries in groups would brag excessively, but their tales were all the same: they had murdered people, depriving entire lives of their future purposes. Some would entertain with tales of close encounters with the Enemy Himself, which Thorn always took for exaggerations (though influential exaggerations; the myth that the Enemy watched Sanctuaries closely was widespread). The few who returned from Sanctuaries they had entered alone—those like Xeres—never wanted to discuss their experiences. Some would urge their peers to fear Sanctuaries and avoid them at all costs. Others had the opposite reaction, bidding their peers to make the journey. Only one strange commonality permeated all the stories: reportedly, somehow, demons had more power in Sanctuaries. Their whispers were stronger, they had limited influence over material objects, and some could even possess the bodies of dead humans. Or so it was rumored.
Thorn had never been to a Sanctuary. He’d always avoided them due to the eerie fables surrounding them. Many thousands of years ago, when the first humans walked the earth and Sanctuaries had just been discovered, one demon acquaintance of Thorn’s had ventured to a Sanctuary and returned crazed and homicidal, inexplicably slaughtering other demons with no regard for the First Rule. Terrifyingly, it was not the demon Judges who had killed him. The Enemy had reached down from Heaven with His own hand and smote the offending demon. To this day, no one knew why. And that incident had been enough to convince Thorn conclusively that travel to Sanctuaries was a bad idea. They held too many unknown threats.
But do they make angels?
This was Thorn’s new theory, and it rested on the fact that every demon who did return from a Sanctuary had killed the Sanctuary’s humans. Thus, popular consensus assumed that the demons who failed in this goal had died. But what if they hadn’t? What if, due to some strange magic in the Sanctuaries, those vanished demons had been allowed to defect? Was Xeres’s transformation a result of his time in the Sanctuary? The theory left much to be explained, but it was a start.
Fluttering white robes suspended Tho
rn’s musings. A beacon of light in Thorn’s darkening world, Thilial rose from the ground and assumed a defensive posture beside a sign advertising the rapid transit system’s green-line expansion. She held her head high, and she appeared stronger and more robust than she had the last time Thorn had seen her. “What do you want?” she said abruptly.
Thorn tried his best not to sound desperate. “Ah, Thilial, thank you for coming.” Leaving the quarantine zone was perilous for her, but every night for the past two and a half months, Thorn had furtively entered the zone to nag the angels for a parley (and to search—so far unsuccessfully—for Xeres). They would not kill him, knowing full well the retaliation such an action would bring from Atlanta’s demon population. So eventually they were forced to relent, not because they cared, but because they wanted Thorn to shut up and go away. Thilial’s terse demeanor indicated she wanted Thorn to do so immediately.
“I want you to know,” he said. “I want you all to know that I have abandoned my fantasy of becoming the greatest demon of all time.” The fact that this had once been his life’s ambition embarrassed him beyond description. “I want to be good now. If you could make an exception for me, I would like to be one of you.”
“Be honest, Thorn.”
“I am.”
She shook her head and sighed heavily. “You killed all those little kids.”
“No. No! It’s a mistake. See—”
“You’re well on your way to becoming the next Lucifer. Just keep it up.”
“I told you I don’t care about that anymore. I don’t care about power or safety or conformity or…” As he said this, he realized he spoke a half-truth. Thorn did fear his moral transition. This meeting with Thilial was a desperate plea for companionship: some company to cushion the blow if he fell from demonic grace. If the angels’ final answer was “no,” Thorn might be too afraid to make any further changes. The fear of loss.
“And I told you to be honest.”
Her stubbornness infuriated him. He spoke as loudly as he dared. “Okay, fine. You want the truth? The truth is that I hate everything about my existence. I hate being a demon.” He approached her, and she backed toward the wall. “I cannot continue this ruse forever. Eventually I will get caught and they will kill me. And even if I were able to keep it up forever, I would go insane, Thilial. How can you—I don’t know what it’s like for you sitting in your cozy warehouse, filing paperwork and being holy and doing whatever it is you do all day, but out here in the real world, life is more difficult than you can imagine for anyone with a shred of decency. All I’m asking you for is some help. So yes, you’re right. The only reasons why I want to change are selfish ones. Is that what you wanted to hear?”
Thilial glared at him for several moments, hatred gleaming through her icy eyes. “You killed Ezandris,” she said. Then she turned to go.
So this was all for nothing. They would not relent. Thorn’s plea had failed. Why did I have to kill the damn angel? They wouldn’t despise me so much if I had let him live.
“Thilial,” Thorn called after her. She stopped but did not turn. “I saw Xeres. I know he defected. I know that somehow, it’s possible. And I’m going to find out how.”
Thilial bowed her head and sank slowly into the dirt, her back still to Thorn. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said before she disappeared.
•
Shenzuul found Thorn around midnight as he was wandering the streets of Midtown. “Come,” the short demon told him. Thorn was in no mood for games. If Marcus wanted a confrontation, Thorn would provide it.
Shenzuul led him to a small, disorderly tech repair shop. Behind a simple counter and cash register, wires and computer parts of all shapes and sizes littered dozens of tables, lit only by the neon signs beside the front door and the lone lamp in the back, where a man was working late. Shenzuul drifted near the man, and motioned for Thorn to come closer.
The man was in his thirties, bearded, thin. He was tinkering with a miniature remote-controlled car. After observing the nondescript scene for a minute, Thorn was certain it was a cheap trick, that Marcus lurked behind a wall somewhere, waiting to spring out at him. But Shenzuul remained still, watching the ordinary man with Thorn. “A dead girl is in next room,” he said plainly.
Thorn tensed. “What?” Shenzuul motioned toward a closed doorway. Thorn warily approached it, then peeked through to the other side. Sure enough, the body of a recently deceased teenage girl lay supine on a foldout table. A large bloody wound gaped in her stomach.
Thorn turned back to Shenzuul. “What is this?”
“You mean who is this.” Shenzuul smiled an ugly, toothy grin, lit by soft lamplight from beneath. “This Garrett. He a murderer. What you call serial killer. Marcus have him, I steal him, give to you.”
Stunned, Thorn examined the man more closely. Could this truly be Marcus’s pet killer? The one the Judge had spoken of? What was Thorn supposed to do with him? Cause more homicides? Shenzuul surely expected it. Or could this be an elaborate trick of some sort? As if I don’t have enough to worry about, now I have to find a way to stop a serial killer while maintaining my cover of wickedness?
“I know you busy,” Shenzuul said, as if he’d heard Thorn’s thoughts. “Garrett here if you want use him, but you no have to. I just want you be sure I not with Marcus anymore.” He slid a friendly arm around Thorn’s shoulders. Thorn flinched, then tried to relax. “Marcus want use Garrett to kill all your humans and make you look dumb. I say no. I get other demons, kick Marcus out. Garrett ours now. You and me.”
Garrett finished his work, set down his equipment, stood, and glanced around to ensure he was alone. Then he opened the door to the room where the body was hidden and stepped into the darkness, leaving Thorn alone with Shenzuul.
“I your friend,” Shenzuul said to Thorn.
4
Shenzuul was smiling as Joel signed the last page of his divorce papers, but Thorn could tell the grin was faked. Shenzuul would likely rather be with his serial killer than in an attorney’s office with Joel and his wife.
Joel’s grin was as big as Shenzuul’s, though likely a tad more genuine. His wife Angela had taken the house, the kids, and a hefty child support obligation, but what did Joel care? He was rich and famous now. His book, The Afterlife is Real, was flying off the shelves. Tying himself down to his family in the face of such success would only hold Joel back from realizing his personal dreams. At least, that was what his previous demon had led him to believe.
Joel’s case was one of the most bizarre and intriguing Thorn had ever encountered. He’d been a neurosurgeon with over five hundred successful operations who had woken up one night with severe bacterial meningitis. His wife found him unconscious and rushed him to the emergency room, where doctors raced to save one of their own. When Joel woke up, his infection subsiding, he had an unusual story to tell.
Joel claimed he had been to Heaven. He believed that during the time when his brain was comatose, when his cerebral cortex was shut down by the invading bacteria, he had entered another plane of existence, where a beautiful woman had met him among a sea of butterflies, and taken him on a tour. They flew through “an infinite whiteness” into “a sphere of light,” where Joel felt a comforting, divine presence, who told him he was loved and need not be afraid. He was led through billowy clouds to an area full of sparkling beings zooming across the heavens—angels, he assumed. Their uncontainable joy leaped from their bodies and fell down on him like physical rain. Once this boundless love had fully enveloped him, he awoke in his hospital bed.
His doctors had politely nodded and sent him on his way, but Joel went on to write a book about his experience, and that book became a New York Times #1 best-seller. Religious leaders across Atlanta, the nation, and even the world were using Joel’s example as proof of their beliefs.
Of course, it was all bullshit. Thorn had been to Heaven; had been created there, had fought a war there. Heaven was pretty, but in the end it was just
a big golden city with a great view of Earth. No butterflies or beautiful women, and if Thilial was any indication, the love of angels was not exactly boundless and uncontainable. The question for Thorn was whether Joel really believed he had seen Heaven, or was making it all up.
After some research, Thorn had decided on the latter. Joel’s previous demon, despite his accomplishments, was a timid fellow; not the type to dupe his charge in this manner. And Joel, a prosperous family man, hid a host of both insecurities and ambitions behind his placid veneer. After his friendless teenage years, Joel’s childhood dreams of becoming a world-renowned rock star had been crushed when his father demanded he go to medical school. Joel hated every moment of his schooling, then his internship, then his residency, and he similarly disliked the practice he started with some med-school friends. But he did like his small yacht and his big house. He loved giving his parents the finger when they hit hard financial times and needed money. For a few years, he even enjoyed his wife, despite their hasty matrimony. But as Joel’s previous demon had boasted to Thorn, Joel always wanted more. He thought he deserved more. So Joel gambled on some high-risk investments and lost most of his savings. Then a successful malpractice suit forced him to sell everything but his house, and shamed him among his peers. Once again, Joel was broke and friendless, with little direction or purpose in his life. Using a religion-based lie about his near-death experience to catapult him into the national spotlight had been a brilliant move, and though Joel’s previous demon had claimed otherwise, Thorn was certain it was Joel’s own idea rather than the demon’s.
As a man of science, Joel’s opinion held credibility. No one would ever guess that his visions of the Beyond were really a vague memory of an acid trip from his college years (or so Thorn had guessed). The neuroscience community argued that Joel’s visions had occurred as he came out of the coma, when his cerebral cortex was first sparking back to life and his temporoparietal junction was impaired. But demons had trained average Americans to regard hearsay and scientific consensus as being equally valid, as long as the hearsay supported their preexisting beliefs. Thus the book had taken off.
