by Joshua Ingle
“Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Firelight danced on Joel’s face. Thorn hoped that a life-changing decision danced in his mind as well. “Tell her the truth,” Thorn prompted again.
Joel said nothing for a long minute. Ash fluttered up from the flames as red embers fizzled below. The house’s gloom seemed to press in on them. Thorn huddled near the light just as much as the humans, but for internal rather than external warmth.
“Do you want to get back together?” Angela asked, an edge of frustration in her voice.
Mesmerized by the fire, Joel avoided eye contact. “Maybe,” he said.
Angela exhaled sharply. “Has God given you another spiritual epiphany?”
“Just because I had a spiritual epiphany doesn’t mean it was from God.” Joel was shaking, Thorn saw. His breath came in fits and starts, and his hands trembled. He started a story abruptly.
“I woke up that night with this unbelievable pain in my back and my head. I knew right away that it was meningitis and I needed help, and I’m glad you were there or I wouldn’t have made it.”
Angela nodded and crossed her arms. Where is this going? Thorn was no longer sure.
“I remember seeing you. You were so worried. As I was blacking out and you were reaching for the phone, I thought, ‘This is it. This is how I die.’ So I told you I loved you, and then you were gone, and it was just blackness. Just dark, like when you’re asleep, and there was nothing there.
“Until…” Tears flowed freely from Joel’s eyes. The terror in his voice frightened Thorn even more than his unsteady breathing. “The light in the house was all wrong. Red and dim. I saw our kids, Angie. Ethan was… he was hanging from a noose in the kitchen, right over there. His face was swollen and his arms and legs were all stiff. And Tyler’s head was in the kitchen sink. His body parts were all over the countertops and there was… Oh, Angie, there was blood all over. My children’s blood.”
Angela gently rubbed Joel’s back as he spoke. From the mortified expression marring her face, the motion served more to calm her than him.
“And when I went into the bedroom, you were there, only you were sick and in pain and… there was a man there, with tattoos and cuts all over his body. A man with no eyes, but he had the worst, most hideous smile you can imagine, full of rotted teeth and bugs and black blood and he was—He was raping you.” Angela withdrew her hand at this. “Then the house collapsed and I was in this—this sea of rats and snakes, and they were on fire, and they were all trying to burrow inside of me. And then there were… there were others. Other people, millions of them, all bloody and burned, with fire all around them. And the pain was unfathomable. Unmitigated agony. More than I ever thought was possible. I gritted my teeth so hard that they fell out, and the other people said… They told me, ‘Welcome to the Void. Fear all that you see here. Everything you do will be punished. You are loathed and unwanted, thoroughly, forever.’ And as they closed in around me, I knew that I would be there, in that place, for all time. I was in impossible pain, but the pain didn’t compare to the mental and emotional… Angie, words can not describe what I felt. Terror. Panic. Using these words is like trying to recreate the Mona Lisa with finger paint. It felt like dying over and over again. Not just the physical pain of death, but the sorrow that goes with it. I felt hopeless. And I knew no one would ever save me.”
Angela’s hands covered her mouth as she drank in the truth of Joel’s near-death experience. The fire no longer seemed so inviting to Thorn, and the shadows seemed to creep closer.
“The worst part, Angie, was that we weren’t alone down there. The men and women were all heinous and violent, but… but there were worse things. There were demons, Angie. Dead demons. They had lived their lives on Earth and they had died. Some had killed each other and some had been killed by angels, but now they’re down there, creeping through the depths, waiting for people—for new people—to come down, so they can terrorize them. Consume them. Pick them apart piece by piece. They eat us, Angie. And they eat each other. And they die, over and over. The agony and the immeasurable fear just go on and on and on and on and on.
“And just before I woke up, the man with no eyes came back. He said he knew that I came from Atlanta, and he knew I was going back, and he had a message for me to deliver. I didn’t get all of it, but I think he wanted me to tell someone that he’s waiting for him down there. That Gnaeus is waiting.”
Thorn could take no more. He fled from the house as fast as he could.
•
A modern gargoyle keeping watch over his city at night, Thorn huddled alone beside a small gothic spire atop One Atlantic Center. The luminous copper pyramid on the building’s roof glowed down on him. The dead demons could never touch him way up here in the night’s lights. He tried to shake Joel’s jarring confession from his mind.
Now Joel’s playboy lifestyle made more sense to Thorn. Rather than atoning for past wrongs after his brush with death, Joel had just assumed the fire at the end of his life was inevitable. Knowing the horror that waited for him, he’d resolved to take ultimate control of his life while he still had it, to spend every moment left on earth enjoying himself. Maybe I should do the same thing.
No. No! There must be a way out of this quagmire. If only Thorn could connect the dots, or see a little further into the mysteries surrounding the Enemy, perhaps he could avoid the same fiery fate that awaited his peers. Perhaps he could even save a few of them in the process.
Many demons dismissed the concept of Hell as a human invention, or as a lazy falsehood the Enemy had concocted to scare demonkind into submission. Other demons accepted Hell as Bible truth. Thorn had always avoided passing judgment on the idea, but Joel’s confession had frightened him deeply.
“Where you go, Thorn?” Thorn jolted at the intrusion, but it was only Shenzuul. “I with Amy, trying make her depress like I promise you, then I see you from street, wonder what you doing up here. No people up here to hurt.”
“I came here to think,” Thorn said, because he didn’t know what else to say. I came here to be alone, he nearly added, before realizing he didn’t crave his regular solitude tonight. The memory of the fireplace impelled him to let Shenzuul stay.
“What you think about?” Shenzuul huddled next to him, and together they observed the late-night traffic far below: glowing ants creeping over urban trails.
“The past. Things I should have done differently.”
“Even great demons like you have regret, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Shenzuul lowered his face and frowned. “Weird to think Marcus almost take Atlanta from you, only few months back.”
“Weird indeed.”
“If he did take city from you, wouldn’t you do anything to get it back?”
“Anything? At the time, yes, I suppose I would have.”
“Not now?”
A screech in the night. Close by. Both demons turned to find the source of the shriek, and saw a family of bats nesting in one of the tower’s flourishes. The mother had just returned and the babies were clamoring for milk. “Why do we do all this, Shenzuul? What’s the point of any of it?”
Shenzuul scowled at what he likely considered a display of weakness, a lack of resolve. “Obvious, no? To become greatest demon of all time,” Shenzuul replied, seriously. When Thorn frowned at him, Shenzuul sighed and offered a textbook answer straight out of Thorn’s teachings. “To deprive humans of their purpose. Give them wrong purpose in its place. Make them obsessed over be accepted like Amy, or sex and success like Joel.”
“Or power, like Jed.”
“Exact correct. Wrong purposes hurt Enemy, because Enemy love His humans.” He paused a moment before adding, “Or you just kill them. That good too. I like that one best, as you know.”
Thorn snickered darkly at this. “But I’ve taught you better.”
“Ha ha, yes you have. And I am glad for your help.” The mother bat took off again, fluttering past Shenzu
ul and through Thorn, then downward, back on the hunt. “Can I ask a question to you?”
“Sure.”
“I have been wondering. Remember back in December, at that club, when Amy see you?”
Ah, finally, this. Thorn had expected Shenzuul to bring it up much sooner. “Yes, I remember.”
“I know Judge not believe us, but I was there. I see you go into human world.” Thorn rose as if to leave, but Shenzuul rushed to block his path. “No worry! You no worry about me, I keep shut up about it. I tell no one your secret. I just want know how you did it.”
“I did not enter the physical world, Shenzuul. I don’t know what everyone saw, but—”
“I saw her bump you. You touch.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” Thorn tried to arc up and around him, but Shenzuul cornered him again. Thorn didn’t want to resort to entering the building to escape, but was nearly ready to.
He couldn’t blame Shenzuul for his interest, though; Thorn himself would once have reacted similarly if he’d seen another demon enter physical space. The ability to touch a human also provided the ability to kill a human, without the standard months of whispering that such an act normally required. If a demon were able to physically interact with humans, the deaths he could cause would give him enough prestige to rule the demon world. Shenzuul was naïve and desperate to ask for even the possibility of such power. “Please!” he begged. “You can trust me.”
“I have no idea, all right? I have no clue how I did it. It just happened.”
Shenzuul stopped flitting about and hung motionless in the air above the skyscraper. “Maybe if you think about it more you remember—”
“I’ve thought about it constantly since it happened. I’ve tried and I can’t repeat it. It was a one-time deal.”
Shenzuul’s whole demeanor changed then. His shoulders hunched further than usual and his eyes grew sullen. Even his clothing appeared more tattered in Thorn’s eyes. “Oh,” Shenzuul said. “That too bad.”
“Ahoy!” A small black blip in the distance, the Judge was crossing the expanse between the Four Seasons and One Atlantic. Thorn threw Shenzuul a warning glance, then drifted out to greet the Judge, who was his usual chipper self. “Peace be to you, my broskis,” the Judge greeted them. “My followers and I just caused a drive-by in Vine City. It was awesome. You guys should have been there.”
“I regret my absence,” Thorn said.
The Judge raised his fists in a boxing pose and mock-punched Thorn several times. “You’re a killer, Thorn, you’re a killer. A mood killer, that is. So I hear you wanted to chitchat. What’s up? How’s the edumacation going?”
Thorn braced himself to speak, hoping the Judge would hear him out and agree to send Shenzuul away. His argument was well prepared: the incident with Amy last night, plus Shenzuul’s general disposition toward rebellion and his counterproductive violence, plus the fact that Thorn had already taught him the most important bullet points of demonic subtlety in the four days they’d spent together.
But Shenzuul spoke first. “It going well. So well that I think I am done. I know all I need to know.”
The Judge froze in place for a moment, then admiringly shook his head at Thorn. “Well holy diver. You speedy son of a gun. You’re finished three weeks early?”
Unsure how to proceed, Thorn locked eyes with Shenzuul. He decided to play along with whatever game this was. Or perhaps it’s not a game. Perhaps it never has been. “Yes, I think we’ve covered everything there is to cover. Whatever deal you had with Shenzuul to learn each other’s methods, your side of the bargain has been fulfilled.”
“And so has yours. You’re a free demon, baby. Sentence served. Go have fun. I’ve gotta ask first, though, Shenzuul. Are you sure you’re done? This is Thorn. He’s a badass. I’m sure he still has stuff to teach you. Hell, I could probably learn a thing or two from him.”
You have no idea, thought Thorn.
“I sure,” said Shenzuul. “Thorn, you been good teacher.”
“You’re welcome,” Thorn said cautiously as Shenzuul shook his hand. The shake was forceful but sensationless; Thorn felt vague pressure but nothing that humans would call a sense of touch. A twisted punishment from our Creator, that the only objects we can interact with are each other’s bodies, that the only feeling we can sense is pain when hurt. The Judge followed Shenzuul’s lead and shook Thorn’s hand next. “What can I say but ‘thank you’? I’m genuinely grateful.”
Thank you? Those were odd words for a demon to say to a peer. The Judge smiled at him, then reached in for an embrace. “Bear hug!”
As the unusual experience of being hugged washed over him, Thorn realized that despite their differences, the Judge was the closest thing Thorn had known to a friend in the demon world—ever since Xeres’s alleged death, at least. Would the Judge ever consider joining him in his quest for answers, for a way out of demonhood? Or might the Judge at least aid him? Thorn hoped so. But now was not the time to ask.
7
The old-time twang of a country song bounded across the streets of Midtown, through traffic jams, into the lobbies of high-rises and banks, college lawns and museum antechambers. Thorn, who’d spent the night on top of One Atlantic Center, recognized the piece as “Snake River Reel,” a lively song he remembered from his time in St. Louis in the ’70s. The music drew him downward to find its source.
On the front patio of a coffee shop on West Peachtree, two musicians had erected a speaker to project their up-tempo tune to the city. The violinist fiddled away while his partner eagerly plucked his mandolin, a grin on his bearded face as he tapped his boot to the music. A small crowd had gathered around them, and soon began clapping along with the song. The vibrant tune promised Thorn a new day.
When the music finished, some of the audience dispersed while others waited for the next melody. As the violinist whispered to the mandolin player, a winged creature emerged from the dark glass of the coffee shop behind them. Thorn was taken aback, but the crowd paid it no mind, so the being was obviously a spiritual entity. Thorn had seen nothing like it in ages though. It bore the wings of an angel—immense white billows curved ten feet out from either side of the body—but the ubiquitous white robes of the angels were absent. In their place, the creature wore a striped suit and matching fedora. His face appeared as that of a wrinkled old man, his tall back slightly hunched and his hair as white as his wings. He whispered into the violinist’s ear and lumbered back through the glass. Thorn followed him.
Inside, the coffee shop appeared normal. Baristas mixed beverages behind the counter while a dozen or so demons hovered near their charges’ ears. A few of the demons took note of the winged creature as it settled by one of the shop’s round tables, but then seemed to ignore it. On the other side of the front window, raucous, chaotic music drew a round of applause from the crowd. The musicians had begun “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.”
Thorn examined the creature’s face. It was not the face he remembered, but Thorn had changed considerably since the ancient days in Heaven, and Wanderer had probably changed as well. Thorn—Balthior—had had his own pair of wings back then. The circumstances under which Lucifer had kept his were the stuff of the demons’ urban legends.
Wanderer caught Thorn staring. “Can I order you a coffee?” asked the old winged man. He grabbed at the used cup left on his table, and though his fingers passed right through it, he raised them to his mouth and feigned a sip. He threw Thorn a refreshed smile.
That smile. That smile, I recognize. Thorn laughed. Here was Beelzebub, the Great Deceiver, the Father of Lies, the Prince of Darkness himself, and he’d just asked Thorn to sit for coffee. “Yes, please.” Thorn approached him. For all the fame Wanderer had won in Heaven, he was just another demon in actuality. Marcus was more fearsome, Shenzuul crueler, Thorn more cunning. Thorn had been avoiding social contact save with his followers, lest he be discovered as a would-be defector, but he had little to fear from Satan, especially since Th
orn had not seen him since the dawn of time. He wouldn’t remember Thorn now.
Thorn’s interest in him was not based entirely in curiosity, though. Wanderer may not have been the greatest demon, but many considered him one of the most knowledgeable. He had once been close to Marcus, and perhaps knew something Thorn could use against him.
“Alas, if I whisper to the server girl a thousand times to bring us java, someone will probably have her committed sooner than we get our coffee. Here, have a seat.”
A seat? Is that a joke? Thorn smiled civilly and stood inside of a chair, its seat bisecting him at the waist. Speaking to the world’s most famous demon didn’t intimidate him, but he thought it best to pretend that it did. “I, uh—I’m sure you get asked this all the time, but the thing with the apple on the tree. Was that true? I’ve always been curious.” He had indeed.
Wanderer’s grin took on the veneer of dismissive politeness. “Yes, of course,” he said, and Thorn was no closer to learning the truth of it.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Wanderer. I’m a great admirer of your work.”
Wanderer shrugged at the flattery. “Isn’t everyone?”
So he does take pride in his own celebrity. Or at least he wanted Thorn to think so. Thorn decided to continue playing the fan. He stammered, as if unsure how to respond.
Wanderer saved him. “Relax, Balthior. We’ve met before, if you remember. When we first marched on God, you ran to warn us that He’d started killing angels. If not for you, we would have walked right in there, and I would be dead. I never got a chance to thank you. You’re called Thorn now, right?”
My reputation precedes me. Or he’s done his research. “I am.”
“And you’re pretty much the king around these parts, or so I’ve been told.”
“For now, yes. I wish I had known you were coming to my city. I would have prepared a welcome.”
“Like the welcome you prepared for Marcus? No thanks. I’m only passing through, as always.”
