A GOD TO FEAR

Book Five of the Thorn Saga

Joshua Ingle

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

A God to Fear

Copyright © 2016 Joshua Ingle

Edited by David Gatewood.

Cover art by Clarissa Yeo.

Cover photography by Reid Nicewonder.

Cover modeling by Fedor Steer.

Formatting by Polgarus Studio.

ISBN: 978-1-943569-04-5

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for reasonable quotations for the purpose of reviews, without the author’s written permission.

Contact the author at www.joshuaingle.com, and connect with him at www.facebook.com/joshthestoryteller/.

Table of Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

Acknowledgments

About Joshua Ingle

1

Othundro gazed out upon the dead Earth.

Thick clouds hung low over the desert, choking out the light from the red-orange sky above. What little light did slip through fell into the huge billows of dust that the never-ending windstorm blasted up from the dunes. The drab clouds contorted as wind whipped at them as well, but Othundro only caught a glimpse of the sky beyond every few moments. He remembered when that sky had been a hideous bright blue.

The sand and wind buffeted what had once been skyscrapers, but were now hulking testaments to a long-dead civilization. “Earthscrapers” might have been a more apt term, as sand drifts crawled up their sides with the slow persistence of fungi intent on devouring overlarge prey. The buildings would have collapsed years ago if not for the sand propping them up.

A shimmering haze of heat rippled upward off the sand, distorting Othundro’s view of the city he’d destroyed.

No. Of the planet he’d destroyed.

Othundro glanced down at Cigel’s body, hovering in spiritual space. The dunes had already covered it up to the bottom of its wings. How much time had passed since Othundro had snapped Cigel’s neck? A moment? A day? Othundro was too intoxicated by his glorious victory to know. The sky, the sand, the lifeless city… It was all too beautiful.

He’d worked centuries for this. The first step had been to split humanity into groups—any group would do. Religion, race, nationality, social class, and more. Othundro and his followers had lied to them all. “You alone know the truth,” Othundro had said to each group, to each individual human. “You alone are moral, and thus you alone are worthy of prosperity. All who do not think like you are fools. They are evil, and they must be subdued. Stamp them out.”

Some humans had risen up against Othundro’s lies. Beleaguered leaders blathering about peace and equality. But to anyone who listened to the hellions, Othundro had whispered, “Thinking about such things is too much trouble. Why question that you may be wrong when you already know that you are right? Olive branches are dull affairs. There’s no need to worry about them. So watch TV. Grow your business. Grow your family. And teach your children about how very, very right you are. If they listen to you, if they don’t question you, they can be just as certain of their rightness, too.”

The population had grown, and resources dwindled. Everyone wanted to live like royalty. Everyone deserved it at the expense of everyone else—or so Othundro had told them. They ate all the fish in all the seas. They cut down most of the world’s trees. They polluted their air until it barely qualified as air anymore.

And the wars… oh, the marvelous wars. On continent after continent, the young had been sent off to die so that the old could prove how right they were. How they, by divine decree, deserved to consume the few resources Earth had left to offer. Mass graves pockmarked Earth’s terrain. Literal mountains of bodies had been burned, for no time had been left to bury the dead before the next battle, then the next, then the next. Bloodshed on a planetary scale had overwhelmed even Othundro’s hardened heart. He’d wept at the beauty of the carnage.

Across the globe, “us” beat their chests, and “them” perished so that the strong could remain in power. Minorities were slaughtered by the millions. No one had good reasons for any of the fighting—they only knew the reasons that Othundro had given them. They only knew that they needed to win.

Powerful men had hunkered down in their mansions with their collections of fine wines and pricey cars as the atmosphere decayed outside. The rich hired small armies of doctors and security guards to protect their islands of pleasure while the rest of humanity died of starvation and plague. But soon the slaves died off, and then even the wealthy had to face the desolation. Before long, humanity’s most powerful had found themselves suddenly unable to breathe the scorching air outside.

Othundro liked to think the air had grown too thick with spilt blood.

The last humans died certain that they were so much more right than everyone else. “But being right is no consolation when it leads to your death,” Othundro whispered to them, tormenting them during their final days with reminders of all their dire mistakes. Othundro savored every dying tear as the humans, too late, recognized the lies he’d told them.

The Enemies had been helpless as They watched demonkind kill Their beloved humans. Othundro and other demons had pushed Them back to Their doorstep, behind which They cowered as devils around the globe reveled in their ultimate victory.

Yet it was not ultimate victory. Not while They still lived. So Othundro, a cunning mastermind even among the most elite demon lords, snuck into Their realm, stole Their power, and then sent Them to Their graves along with the humans. He’d found humans up there in Heaven too—dead ones he’d already killed on Earth. So he killed them again.

The successful storming of Heaven had left Othundro as the leader of all demonkind. His newfound power and knowledge demanded respect from all. He could enter the physical world at will, could fell a skyscraper with a breath, or end a life with a mere snap of his fingers. The demon world worshipped him for it. And he did a better job of ruling with such power than the Enemies ever had.

But as the last of Earth’s ecosystems collapsed and the last plants ceased their photosynthesis, demons began to disagree with each other on how their society should be run. Some openly rebelled. Othundro could have quelled dissent in an instant, but he enjoyed the infighting, so he let the conflict spread.

With all the Enemies gone, the demons created new enemies out of each other. Every minor disagreement broke yet another new sect away from the prevailing views. And each sect knew that it alone was right.

Thus Othundro came to realize what petty fools his underlings were; they were behaving just like deceived humans! How can I claim to be a superior leader when I rule over such common scum? So he pitted the demons against each other, just as he’d done with the humans, so that only the strongest would rise to the top and survive. The ensuing civil war was dazzling, the death far-reaching, the triumph euphoric. During the chaos of battle, Othundro even heard a report that his old rival Uthifel had perished on the other side of the globe. What a pity that Othundro hadn’t been present to deliver the killing blow himself.

When the demon population withered to little more than Othundro’s inner circle, he began to see resentment in their eyes. He wondered when one or more of them might try to usurp his power just as he’d usurped the Enemies’. So as a precaution, Othundro butchered them all. Some tried to flee, of course, but he eventually tracked them all down. His murderous spree culminated in the killing of his right hand, Cigel, here today, beneath the crumbling towers of humanity.

Cigel was the last one. Now Othundro was truly alone amid the sand and the wind and the giant relics of ages gone by. Who could have imagined that the simple act of spreading untruth could accomplish so much?

He’d killed the Enemies. He’d killed their precious humans. And he’d killed the frivolous demons who’d tarnished his initial victory. He’d won. He’d won it all. The Earth was his, and his alone.

Othundro had become the greatest demon of all time.

•

Days passed. Othundro drifted over fields of dirt, through acidic storms, and underneath boiling oceans, marveling at the ruin he’d wrought. He thrashed his wings and ascended into space, then viewed his dead world from orbit in all its magnificence. He passed the wrecked gate of gold, and roamed among the ruins of Heaven.

What would the Enemies say if They knew that one of Their most vile creations would massacre his Creators, then outlive Them by an eternity? They’d been so obsessed with controlling demonkind, demanding obedience or bloodshed, dictating every minuscule action that demons were or were not allowed to do, as if such tyranny would tame the demons. As if the demons would even listen to the distant autocrats. The devils all knew the Enemies to be detached, arrogant fools. They hadn’t even bothered to strip the demons of their wings during the initial rebellion. If They had, They might have had a chance at winning the war.

Othundro ran a hand over the hilt of the sword at his side—a sword that had once known this Heavenly prison as home. Free of blemishes and razor-sharp, the blade had been crafted by the Enemies as a means of travel; its strange magic allowed its wielder to carve passageways linking distant parts of creation. Naturally, Othundro had used the weapon to slay the society that had made it. He’d crafted a score of transit doors and led demonkind through them into the final battle in Heaven.

And now, with no victims left for the blade’s sleek metal, it served as a cherished trophy. Othundro unsheathed it and raised it high. Sunlight gleamed off its length and seemed even brighter when Othundro bellowed with all his might to the farthest corners of Heaven and Earth.

A victory cry.

Years passed. Othundro had journeyed to all the lands of the Earth to see the destruction he’d wrought in all its forms. He’d expected to feel jubilance upon witnessing each dead human city for the first time, but his excitement had faded with time. He’d grown restless. He’d eradicated all living things from this world, but it wasn’t enough. All Othundro wanted was to conquer more, yet nothing was left to conquer. He craved an enemy with whom to compete, yet none had survived his purge.

He found himself brooding over his former enemies, both those from Heaven and those from Earth. What would they do if they found themselves in my solitary position? He couldn’t imagine. He’d never been able to understand their narrow-minded motives and weaknesses. Still, would they feel as lonely as me, if they were stranded in this desolate world?

He’d never before considered that all those spirits and people he destroyed might have had inner lives comparable to his own. But now he contemplated: did they have goals and dreams and fears, just like him? He’d bested them all, so surely they couldn’t have thought as deeply as him. Could they have?

No. They were his enemies. Their minds had been no greater than the minds of animals when compared to Othundro’s superior intellect. He knew more about this wretched world than any of them. They were foolish, weak.

But he couldn’t help but notice one of his own intellectual shortcomings. He’d always been a master schemer, exerting his vast mental faculties to think further ahead than his competitors; but in the end, he hadn’t thought far enough ahead. His plans had succeeded brilliantly… but now what? Now he had no plans, nothing to fight for or against. He was alone and purposeless on a dead world of his own making.

And he couldn’t quite recall why he’d been in such a rush to defeat his opponents. He’d lied to them, used dogma to control them, played them like pawns on a game board.

But what was the point of any of it?

Othundro’s enemies died knowing that they were right, but Othundro was left living knowing that he was right. And somehow, living was more painful. Living gave him the time to consider that maybe—just maybe—he might have been wrong.

Othundro longed for a change of scenery, so he flew up to the North Pole, where he hoped to find some remnant of the former Earth. But when he arrived, he saw only the same barren rocks that covered the rest of the planet. The oceans here must have finished their long process of evaporating.

Othundro looked up, and all he saw was red and gray. In spite of himself, he missed the old sky. He wanted to look up and see blue again.

He strained and clenched his fist, willing a new glacier into existence before him—an immense ice shelf stretching a mile in either direction. But the instant it appeared, crevasses ruptured in its side and snaked down its length, calving off mountain-sized chunks of ice that shattered against the ground. Othundro ducked as ice and debris shot past him, distracting him from the glaciers. And without his will focused on them, they flattened under the atmospheric pressure. Moments later, they completely vaporized in the heat.

Centuries passed. Othundro wandered aimlessly, occupying himself with toppling mountains and blasting deep craters into the Earth, sometimes out of boredom, but more often out of anguish. Days and nights seemed to whiz past like shooting stars, so he slowed Earth’s rotation until the length of a day felt more palatable. He even tried to reverse the flow of time, but he found that he could only travel backward a small fraction of a day, and the time travel left him drained and exhausted besides.

Sometimes he played games with the clouds. He twisted them into all manner of shapes: cars, dogs, people. He liked to part the cloud canopy, lie on the ground, and gaze upward at an unadulterated view of the sun, his companion through the annals of time. It had been there during the first rebellion against the Enemies, and it would be there for billions of years to come. A constant reminder of the past. Of what Othundro had done.

He let go of the clouds, and their canopy closed above him.

Othundro trekked across the lifeless landscape until he came to a volcano, steam billowing from fumaroles that dotted the ground all the way up to the lake of lava. He followed them upward, crested the rim, descended toward the magma, and then entered physical space, making sure to form a barrier around himself that would protect him from the heat and pressure… at least for a minute. He disrobed and flung his clothes into the fire.

He nearly threw his sword in, too, but he couldn’t bring himself to part with such a relic. Instead he thrust it into the smoldering embers at the edge of the lake, and though it throbbed a dull red, it did not melt. Perhaps it would stay here, a nameless headstone marking Othundro’s final resting place.

Then he stepped up to the lip of the lava lake. Bright yellow bubbles popped, splattering against black stone. The far side of the lake lay obscured behind a thick veil of amorphous heat. Othundro found himself unable to face the magma, so he turned, knelt, and slowly leaned backward into it.

He allowed his protective barrier to fall.

The bottom tips of his wings ignited instantly. No pain registered at first. Othundro lowered his torso farther backward, and fire enveloped his wings. Then agony bit through his back as his nerve endings flared and his wings blazed with the Earth’s fire, with Othundro’s own fierce hatred for himself. He shuddered in unbearable pain, bellowed a mighty scream that echoed off the mountainside…

… Then he reestablished the protective barrier around him. He collapsed onto the ground and used his power to soothe his pain. He reached around and felt his wings—or rather, he felt where they should have been. They’d been burned down to the nubs.

Othundro could have remade them in an instant, but he lacked the will to do so. He lacked even the will to kill himself. Naked on the shore of a volcanic lake, Othundro had nothing. Nothing but the useless sword in front of him, burning red. Nothing but an entire planet, gone to ash.

His fear of his empty future felt as crushing as the dense atmosphere around him. He couldn’t bear to live through that future, yet he feared his own death even more. He’d even come to fear himself. Trapped among his great fears, broken, Othundro stared up at his smoldering sword. Fear. It was a fitting name for a sword, and particularly for the last sword. Perhaps Othundro deserved to live with his fear for a while.

Wingless, he stood. He willed new clothes over himself, and they appeared. He plucked Fear out of the burning earth, cooled it, and sheathed it.

With no one else present to observe this dead world, Othundro realized that he might have to resign himself to the task. He’d brought this ugly planet into existence, stillborn, and thus his fate was to watch over it as its unwilling parent, for all time.

Othundro stepped forward and wept.

Ages passed. Empty time. Wasted time. Othundro tried speeding time up, to reach its end faster. But after billions of objective years, it became clear that time had no end, that the enduring rhythms of this tortured desert were all Othundro would ever know.

He remained as resentful of himself as always, yet he could think of no way to escape his misery. He would have done anything, even become good and kind, if it meant bringing back humanity and spiritfolk. If only I could start over, do everything differently. I wouldn’t try to manipulate or destroy. I would work together with other spirits instead of seeking to prove myself greater than them.

Thus were his thoughts as he floated toward an area that had once contained Earth’s greatest forest. Now, of course, it was a wasteland. The same old dark rocks and grey clouds greeted Othundro as he climbed a hill to gaze out over the godforsaken plains. Othundro had despised this place when it had been fertile forestland—brimming with life, with human settlements, with possibilities. But now he remembered those things fondly. A small town had rested at the foot of the hill to Othundro’s right, with a roaring river passing through it. Deer and foxes and bears, rabbits and moose and wildcats and wolves had all lived under the shade of leaves above. In the fall, great clusters of butterflies hung from the trees, the air beneath so thick with the brightly colored insects that visibility waned.

Othundro tenderly watched a small orange butterfly descend and come to rest on his arm. Its wings wavered as it tried to balance itself in the wind. After a few moments, Othundro glanced back up at the lifeless expanse before him, then swiftly back down at the butterfly.

The butterfly was real.

Othundro summoned all the power at his disposal to protect the fragile creature, sequestering it in a safe bubble on his arm. He could scarcely believe his eyes. How had the butterfly survived the atmospheric pressure, the heat, the elements? And for so long? A whole swarm of them must be thriving somewhere nearby.

But when he looked around, all he saw was the same flat, dead landscape he’d seen for thousands of years. Where had the butterfly come from? Othundro scrutinized its body structure, its internal organs and the molecules that composed them.

And an idea came to him.

Othundro focused his power, and a new butterfly sprang into being next to the first. Othundro’s breath quivered as he exhaled, his mouth agape. He created a third butterfly, out of nothing more than his own imagination. Then a fourth. Then ten more.

Joy, an emotion he’d never felt before, struck him like a lightning bolt from the acidic clouds above. Why have I never considered this before? He swept a hand out over the landscape, and grass sprang up from the earth. Fully formed trees jutted upward. Dense forest spread outward from him, toward the horizon.

But Othundro began to feel a great strain on his mind. The more life he created, the more the burden increased. He was soon forced to relax his protective grip on the new organisms he’d spawned.

And when he did, they died instantly. The forest exploded in a violent wave of fire, parting the clouds as its heat billowed upward. In moments, the woodlands had been reduced to cinders. Ultra-dense air crushed the butterflies into tiny pinpoints, and they fell to the ground.

The life had died, but it had been life! And Othundro had created it! His stolen power was limited, but it could still breathe life! Never on this Earth, for certain—the planet was too far gone. But what if I can create a new Earth? It would take considerable time, but could I actually recreate humans? Spirits?

He had to try. He rocketed upward into space.

Othundro had told so many lies, caused so much destruction. But things would be different this time. No longer would he force other beings to believe untruths so that they’d hurt each other. No, Othundro would create humans who would crave to discover truth. Who would value reason, who would seek answers to all of their questions. Humans who would base those answers on evidence and who would regard each other with empathy and understanding. Othundro would create a good world, better than the hellish place that the Enemies had made. He would create morally immaculate friends, both spirit and human, to join him in the heavens.

But how can I ensure that my world won’t devolve into the chaos that befell the old Earth? After all, anyone with a free will could turn against Othundro. He would need to make the spirits purely, mindlessly loyal to him on this new Earth, so that they’d never tempt the humans to vice or ignorance, even inadvertently. In doing so, he’d be unable to give them free will, but this sacrifice was necessary. And as for the humans… perhaps he wouldn’t give them free will either. He’d have to experiment first and see what worked best.

Perhaps he should make a place of punishment, too, where Othundro could send defective humans. Yes, that will weed out unreasonable and evil folk, and anyone who challenges me. That will allow me to create the kind of universe we all will want to live in. My new Earth will not suffer the same fate as the old.

Othundro traveled far—so far that the old Earth appeared as just a speck against the stars—but remained close enough to the sun that his new life would thrive in its warmth. He felt a glimmer of his former glory return as he spread his arms to encompass the entire cosmos. To embrace it.

At last, he had a purpose again.

Othundro grinned, tapped deep into his well of power, and spoke.

Eons passed.

2

Clouds basked in the yellow of dawn. Grass rustled in the wind. Two demons faced each other on the surface of a withering Sanctuary.

Thorn eyed the gateway to the Corridors looming behind Wanderer. The edges of the circle shimmered with spiritual energy, slowly closing in, shrinking the opening and healing the wound Thorn had dealt to the Sanctuary’s boundary. Behind it, the sun was rising.

Thorn tried to focus on formulating an escape plan, but he couldn’t. Not after such an earth-shattering revelation. “You lied to us,” Thorn said. “God doesn’t value faith. He values reason, and compassion. He rewards disbelief in Him, doesn’t He? That’s the real test for humanity.”

The edges of Wanderer’s mouth snaked upward until he was grinning that toothy smile that Thorn found so disturbing.

“The Enemy hadn’t spoken to us in ages,” Thorn continued. “We didn’t know His plans. We were bored, aimless, with nothing to fight against. So you gave us something concrete to reinvigorate our hatred of the Enemy, and you gave the humans something concrete to believe in. You gave us the Bible.”

“Brilliant, wasn’t it?” Wanderer stretched his wings a bit in the morning sunlight. “It certainly pissed God off. Telling humans the truth about the creation story, but devoting the rest of the book to a tribalistic religion of my own design. Obedience, authority, loyalty, tradition, and other such frivolities… those are what’s important, dear humans. Such is my genius.”

“But there are some good things in the Bible. Things that any decent person would know are moral.”

“It takes a nice paint job to sell a lemon car, my friend. All the best lies contain a morsel of truth. I had to keep demons on the prowl! They would never have led people away from God’s plans if God’s supposed religion was as evil as they were. It needed to seem good.”

Thorn had left the demon life; he no longer allied himself with those working to increase human ignorance and vice. So he was surprised to find himself less angry at what Wanderer had done, and more angry at how he’d done it. “You could have just told us! Our fight against the Enemy gains nothing from your lie that God created a religion of His own. You have all demonkind fighting against your very own plan!” Thorn was dumbstruck that even he, the leader in Atlanta, once the right hand of Xeres, had been taken in by Wanderer’s ploy.

“Oh, Thorn,” Lucifer said. “God is my Enemy. You know as well as I that the best tactic against our oppressor is to corrupt all elements of His creation. You other demons just don’t go far enough. You see, demons, too, are a part of God’s creation. So it was my duty to corrupt all of you. If I’d revealed my scheme to any of you, you’d have started thinking—and we can’t have that, now, can we? You should know just enough to keep you from doing good, to quench any natural thirst for knowledge that you have, to keep you from questioning the purposelessness of your continued rebellion against God.”

Distraction, Thorn realized. The same technique we use with so many humans in the West. Distracting them with a meaningless activity goes so much further than fighting the truth directly.

“And God plays right into your lies,” Thorn said. “Why?”

Satan’s smirk seemed to grow impossibly large, inching up past his nose, toward his glib, beady eyes. “He has no choice. If He denounced Christianity in front of demonkind, it’d spoil His test. Demons would side with Him out of compulsion, not out of choice. He’d never know if they were able to think for themselves.”

“And Constantine…” Thorn thought back to the Battle of the Milvian Bridge: the greatest mystery of Thorn’s long life on Earth. While the human battle raged, another battle must have been underway up in the angelic realm, between angels and Wanderer’s cronies. Perhaps the very demons who’d attacked Thorn in this Sanctuary had been a part of Wanderer’s conspiracy from the beginning. Marcus certainly had, though Thorn doubted Marcus knew the full truth. How had Wanderer convinced him to give Constantine a vision of the Enemy? Had Wanderer promised that the vision would lead to Constantine hating Christians if he suffered greatly in the battle?

I must have thrown quite the wrench into their plans that day. Wanderer couldn’t possibly have anticipated Constantine’s life-threatening wound. Perhaps Wanderer himself had possessed the emperor in the midst of the battle, then hurried him to privacy, where Wanderer could use his advanced medical knowledge to treat Constantine’s wound and save his life. And spread Christianity throughout the Western world.

What other historical fulcrums had Wanderer orchestrated from behind the scenes? The Crusades? The Thirty Years’ War? Christ?

“That was me, with Constantine,” Wanderer said, smugness staining his voice. “Christianity caught fire in its infancy because it welcomed those whom Roman society had marginalized. The poor, the oppressed. It promised the powerless connection to a power greater than them, whose authority they could then wield against their persecutors. Of course, Christianity did have a few unforeseen positive effects, but I didn’t care. It replaced old power structures with new power structures. Power structures that I controlled.”

Thorn clenched his fists and shook his head. “How long have you been at this? Ever since you asked your initial, ‘Why?’ in Heaven?”

Wanderer snorted a laugh. “You should have seen the look on God’s face when He saw me there and learned I’d made myself His Archangel of Music. I stirred a desire for knowledge among the rebel angels, so on Earth I had to suppress it. Thinking is the worst virtue, Thorn. Or so you tell those you want to have power over.”

“If you created Christianity, you must have created Judaism too.”

Wanderer nodded. “And the Mithraic Mysteries, Egyptian religion, Zoroastrianism. I helped write the Epic of Gilgamesh. But those prototypes weren’t inclusive enough for popular appeal. Christianity was my masterpiece.”

Thorn was shaking with bitterness. “How could you betray us like this?”

Wanderer’s smile dropped at that. The edge of his mouth wavered, threatening to grimace. “Dearest Thorn. You don’t know God. He’s an insecure crybaby who doesn’t deserve to rule. I snuck into Heaven once to spy on Him. I found Him collapsed at the edge of the drop to Earth, weeping like a buffoon.” Satan knelt in midair, heaving his chest and pouting dramatically. When he saw that his act did not amuse Thorn, he snapped back to his solemn self. “God is weak. He throws tantrums when He doesn’t get His way. Is this really the being you want to dictate your purpose in life?”

“I’d rather dictate my own purpose.”

Wanderer stepped forward and scowled. “God created a chaotic world with no rhyme or reason, and I gave it purpose. The only purpose it could possibly serve. My purpose. To strike back at He who created such a monstrous thing. To end everything He cares about.

“An impressionable child trusts a parent who tells her it’s important to have faith and believe in God. The parent herself was once a child who trusted a parent, who was once a child who trusted a parent, and so on throughout history, to the past and the future, each person’s faith springing from nothing more that the coincidence of where on earth they were born. I’ve perverted God’s test, you see! I’ve freed us all from His control by placing us under my own control. I’m the greatest demon of all time! I’ve kept His humans and His demons small, dependent on my fiction. Few ever think to question the system I’ve built. And those who do, Thorn, must be put down.”

“So you want to free us all from God’s lies by replacing them with your new, even worse lies? Wanderer, this is intellectual slavery. You’re just as manipulative as God.”

“I never said I wasn’t. But I’ll be a better God than He is, when the time comes to overthrow Him.”

“How effective do you think your plan will be in the long run? Do you think there won’t be others like me? Others who see through the disinformation?”

“As long as no one listens to you, and as long as you’re easily silenced, it doesn’t matter.”

“And what if you do succeed? What’s the end result? What have you gained?”

“Greatness! Superiority!”

Thorn huffed and looked away. He reflected on the absurdity of God and Satan: these two conniving beings who’d bent the universe to their whims, crushing the lives and dreams of billions just to stroke their own egos. He regretted having always taken them so seriously now that he knew the petty reasoning behind their actions. And his anger toward God grew even greater now that he knew God valued reason over faith; as a former Angel of Reason himself, Thorn might have turned away from demonic culture long ago had he known this.

A trumpet blast interrupted Thorn’s thoughts. Piercingly high-pitched, it resonated across the Virginian hills. Thorn looked up.

A transit door had opened in the clouds high above. Dozens of winged figures in white robes were charging through and sweeping downward, searching for their prey.

Thorn didn’t waste a moment. He bolted toward Wanderer. And as he did, the Devil beat his wings and shot toward Thorn. Thorn readied himself for a concussive impact, but just before they collided with one another, Wanderer vanished.

Thorn paused, confused. Then something grabbed his neck and yanked him from behind. Thorn clutched at the choking hands and turned to see Wanderer, pulling him away from the dwindling hole in the boundary, speeding farther back into the Sanctuary. He’d gone into the angels’ realm, Thorn realized, passed straight through Thorn, then reappeared to attack from behind.

Wanderer hurled Thorn upward. Thorn tumbled and flailed, wincing against the blinding sun, trying to regain his bearings and return to the ground, where he might be able to hide from his enemies until he could find a way back to the hole. But when he finally descended back to earth, he saw that Wanderer was already dashing toward the safety of the Corridors.

Hoping to cut Wanderer off, Thorn zoomed toward the hole in the boundary. But Wanderer’s head start was too great. The winged demon squeezed through the hole—only three feet wide now and shrinking—and landed on the opposite side, on the flat white ground of the Corridors. Then he turned back to Thorn, crouched into a combat posture, and scowled. You weren’t expecting me to outrun the angels, were you?

Thorn glanced up at the angels above, and his confidence died. They had clearly spotted him, as they were now diving straight toward him with wingbeats so fierce that he could have mistaken their blaring murmur for an airplane’s buzzing. But he gauged their distance and speed against his own, and determined that he would reach the Corridors before the angels reached him.

Wanderer must have come to the same conclusion, because he squeezed back out into the Sanctuary and stood before the opening, blocking Thorn’s path. Thorn would not get to safety unless he fought past Wanderer first.

So be it. Thorn didn’t slow. He saw Wanderer bracing for the impact.

“Liar!” a voice called from somewhere.

Wanderer turned to find it.

The momentary distraction was all Thorn needed. He slammed into Wanderer at full speed, and the two hurtled toward the puncture in the Sanctuary, now just two feet wide. Thorn twisted his wingless body around so he hit the opening first, and he slipped through easily.

Wanderer was not so fortunate. His head, arms, and shoulders flew through after Thorn, but his great wingspan was too much for the shrinking hole. Lodged halfway between the Sanctuary and the Corridors, he grabbed Thorn’s foot and held fast.

Thorn’s forward momentum ceased. He turned and tried to pry Wanderer off his foot—only to see that someone else was already assaulting Wanderer’s lower half from the other side.

Paxis! She was deathly pale, and the wound that Thilial had dealt her still gaped in the center of her chest. Nevertheless, she struggled ferociously to pull Wanderer away from Thorn.

“Liar!” she yelled again. “Thorn will escape here, and he’ll tell all demonkind your little tale! We were loyal to you, and you repay us with deceit! You will burn for this, Wanderer!”

Wanderer tried to kick Paxis away while still holding tight to Thorn. He managed to squeeze one of his wings through the hole, then curled it into a scoop shape in what might have been an attempt to shovel Thorn toward him. Thorn couldn’t shake free of his grip.

But soon he wouldn’t have to. The boundary hole was closing.

The hole through which Wanderer’s body was stretched.

Wanderer had no choice but to let Thorn go. Thorn tried to grab Wanderer’s arm as he retreated back into the dying Sanctuary—but the Devil was too fast.

Not fast enough, though. Wanderer’s shoulders and head barely squeezed through the hole as it sizzled shut around his left wing. The wing audibly crunched—and then was snipped right off of Wanderer’s back as the circle fully contracted. All nine feet of it flopped lifelessly to the floor.

Thorn gaped. An empty black wall stood in front of him where an entire countryside had lain just moments prior, and before it lay a disembodied wing. Behind him rested the plane wreck, and beyond that, the Corridors seemed to stretch forever into a dark infinity.

3

Armor-clad angelic soldiers escorted Thilial across the marble bridge toward God’s House. A colossal waterfall fell mere meters away, its rumble overwhelming all other sound, its mist spraying against Thilial’s cheek. It caused an itch to form by her nose, but she would not scratch it. She needed to appear stalwart in front of her kin and her god. I suppose I’ve grown quite good at ignoring itches that need scratching.

Two giant seraphs strained against the three-story-tall doors of ivory, replete with engravings of battles long past and a pale specter of God watching down over all the carnage. The seraphs snarled as they heaved the doors apart, then tugged until they stood fully open, beckoning Thilial and her captors inside.

Centuries ago, shortly after Thilial came into the world, she had disobeyed God’s orders for the sake of Thorn. And now she’d done it again. Would He lock her in a dungeon with the other rebels? Would He end her life? He was a God of peace and love—until you dared to stray from His will. Then He became a God of wrath. Thilial had seen both sides of Him many times throughout the years.

Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.

Thilial was ashamed by what she’d done. If she could go back, do it over again, she’d kill Thorn. What came over me? What made me think that because Thorn showed mercy to another, I should show mercy to him? She steeled herself for God’s rage.

The guards led her to the sweeping atrium where God kept most of His pet animals and where He spent most of His time. The Lord’s vast collection of flowering plants, usually so soothing, smelled cloyingly saccharine to Thilial today. Will this be the last time I ever see these walls, these paths through the foliage, this crystal dome above us?

God was seated on the marble floor next to an immense pillar by the cliff face, biting His fingernails. As Thilial approached Him, three angelic guards pulled a fourth angel away from God.

“Eventually, all angelkind will rise up against You!” the angel was shrieking. “How does it feel, knowing that Your entire creation wants to destroy You?”

The other three angels dragged the rebel away from the cliff and down toward the Heavenly City far below. He continued ranting, but he soon grew too far away to hear.

Thilial and her guards stopped next to God.

“That was Karthis,” God said. “The one who helped Thorn escape Heaven.”

Thilial nodded acknowledgement, but God didn’t seem to notice. Fingertips held to His teeth, He kept staring at Karthis, now just a black speck against all the gold of Heaven.

God’s face was wet with tears, Thilial realized. He was much calmer than she’d expected, but His demeanor went beyond mere sadness. His body was curled up in a ball like a child sent to time out. His blue hair fizzled with only the barest trace of electric current, and stubble covered His chin. His whole face sagged, as if He was too despondent to move a single muscle. Even His voice sounded lethargic. Poor guy.

“I sincerely apologize for my actions,” Thilial said. “I regret them. They were unacceptable. I willingly accept any discipline You deem necessary.”

God said nothing for a long while. Was He still watching Karthis? The rebel had blended in with the tide of angels in the air above Heaven, a living blanket of wing traffic. Thilial had lost sight of him.

“I wanted to test people in an environment devoid of superstition,” God said, looking down at His city. “Or mostly, at least. I wanted to create friends who would live lives of purpose with Me. That’s all I ever wanted.”

“And by allowing a heinous adversary to escape, I have failed to give You what You want. I deserve to be stripped of my rank and imprisoned.”

God’s head fell toward His chest. He lowered His hand to caress one of the vines growing around His torso. “It’s all shit,” He said. “It’s all gone to shit. You have not failed, young Thilial. Your failure, and everyone’s failure, is ultimately My failure.”

That sentiment scared Thilial. She wanted to touch God, to comfort Him, but this was not the place nor the time.

From farther back in the colonnade, Gleannor spoke. “We should take him out, Lord.”

Thilial stiffened; she had not noticed that Gleannor was here. She paced toward them with a coterie of God’s other advisors. Of all angels, it has to be she who sees me like this…

“We should kill Thorn,” Gleannor repeated. “Once he surfaces. One of us could appear, snap his neck, and then vanish before any other demons realize what they’ve seen. Then we can pick Brandon and Heather up and return them to the Sanctuary system.”

“No, no,” God mumbled. “We’re past that. Thorn’s loose now, out in the open. He’ll tell people the truth. They may not believe him, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll have been told. We need to…” His voice trailed off, and His head bobbed slowly up and down. “We need to talk about containment.”

“War?” Thilial asked. An all-out attack on Atlanta? He can’t be serious. “Lord, our scouts may yet apprehend Thorn in the Corrid—”

“I can alert the Angels of War if You wish.” Gleannor spoke right over Thilial. “Their legions can be ready in hours.”

“No!” Thilial said, turning to Gleannor. Her guards dropped their hands to the hilts of their swords. “An attack on Atlanta would alert the world’s demons that we are still a force of great power. It will ignite another full-scale conflict between us and them.”

And you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Gleannor? Thilial’s rival had always loathed demonkind, had always been eager to exterminate them. But don’t I feel the same way? Why am I fighting this?

“So be it,” Gleannor said. “Thorn has proven, as have many others, that demons are beyond salvation. Perhaps it’s time we think about shutting down the Sanctuary system once and for all.” Thilial almost agreed with her on that point, but then Gleannor went on to say, “Perhaps it’s time we wipe out all the demons, all the rebel angels, and focus our efforts on saving the humans.”

“But God loves the demons. He wants to reconcile with them, form a relationship with them.”

“Seems like a pretty one-sided relationship,” God muttered. Thilial and Gleannor glanced down at their forlorn Creator, huddled against a pillar.

“Lord, please don’t let her talk You into this,” Thilial said. Your original plan is still valid and good. We should maintain the status quo, not rush to war.”

“Says she who consorts with demons,” Gleannor said, practically spitting the words.

“Be kind to each other,” God said, but without much conviction.

“We’ve had more than enough bloodshed in our history,” Thilial said to Gleannor. “The purpose of creation is to form beings who are both rational and empathetic, not to assert our power over weaker foes.”

“And let them trample over us and our values?” Gleannor retorted. “You sulking craven.”

“You arrogant hawk!”

“BE KIND!” God bellowed, bursting up from His resting place. He hovered in midair, wind whipping at His white robes, blue lightning arcing from His scalp onto the columns around them.

The guards all raised their hands, shielding their faces. Gleannor readjusted her stance to gain better footing. Thilial was gripped by fear, her brief reprieve from worrying about imprisonment ended in an instant.

But after just a few moments, the wind subsided, and God’s outburst quieted. “It’s important to be kind to others,” He murmured as if by rote. “That’s why I gave everyone free will. So they could all be kind and do what I say. It’s how I know they’re being selfish when they don’t agree with Me.”

Thilial tried to understand God’s nonsensical words, but their meaning eluded her. It was almost as if God’s sanity had become suspect. She took pity on Him. She’d never seen Him like this.

“War is okay,” God said. “I’m good at war. I’ve done it for a long, long time. Longer than any of you. But I just don’t know.” God’s feet alighted back onto the floor. He clutched His head and paced in a circle. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. What, uh—what would you guys do?”

Flabbergasted at God’s casual question, the angels in the room glanced anxiously at each other. Though God appointed many advisors, He never asked for advice.

No one spoke for a long moment.

“We should at least wait to see how the demons react to Thorn,” Thilial finally said. “Maybe this situation will benefit You in the end after all.”

“Ha.” God huffed at her. “Sure, whatever. Let’s wait.” Gleannor opened her mouth to protest, but God raised a finger at her. “Ready the armies, though. If it turns out that My plans have to go out with the garbage, I guess they might as well go out with a bang.”

Gleannor bowed to God. She peered at Thilial out of the corner of her eye, and Thilial couldn’t tell whether her gaze held malice or mere pride. Gleannor and her fellow advisors strode away with forceful gaits.

“And I guess I should punish you, too, huh?” God said to Thilial. He lumbered between her guards, His face tired and blank, then stopped centimeters from her. “For aiding Thorn, your punishment will be to lead a legion of angels into battle in Atlanta, if it comes to war. That is My will.”

“Yes, Lord,” Thilial said. “I am Yours.”

“Guards, leave her. She won’t make the same mistake thrice.”

The guards bowed, then marched away in formation. God returned to the edge of the cliff. Silhouetted against the majesty of Heaven, He looked strangely small. Save for His wardrobe, He could easily have been just another angel, slinking down against one of the House’s many pillars.

Thilial wanted to avoid the disrespect of flying above God, so she flapped her wings and flew back toward the waterfall entrance.

Troubled thoughts clouded her mind. Never in her lifetime had angelkind hovered so close to war. She had no problem with killing demons. Yet after having spent a night talking with Thorn, she found her empathy toward humankind extending to include him as well. She knew that war among humans was wrong, that the killing of humans was wrong… By extension, wasn’t it also wrong to kill demons like Thorn? Certainly killing all of the demons would be wrong.

Yet God had acknowledged that wiping out demonkind might be necessary, so it necessarily became moral.

But as Thilial raced the falling water down toward the river below, she wondered if the exact same command would have been immoral if it had been made by anyone other than God.

Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.

•

Something big rustled in the dark and brushed against the walls and ceiling. Hadn’t that ceiling been much lower back where there’d been light to see it? Now the world was lost in absolute darkness wherever Brandon turned. The blood dribbling over his eyes didn’t help matters. The hallways seemed to consume ambient sound; nothing echoed or reverberated, so the slightest noise sounded clear and precise. Brandon couldn’t be sure how close the thing stirring in the darkness was.

It growled. A deep guttural rumble. Heather gasped, and he felt her hand leave his. He reached for her, but she’d stepped away. Trying to ignore the pain bursting from his left arm, he felt around in the darkness for his wife. He didn’t dare say her name for fear of alerting whatever was out there to their presence.

Where the hell are we? He’d been too dazed by the plane crash and his injuries, and too distracted by Heather’s urgent fleeing to consider what was happening. Now that full awareness had returned to him, fear clawed at him as well.

The behemoth in the darkness shifted again, and Brandon thought he heard heavy footfalls thumping against the floor. They were moving in his direction.

Brandon turned and stumbled forward, trying to keep his own footsteps quiet. He reached out and—thank goodness—felt a wall. The wall gave him enough reference to move forward more quickly. He followed it, felt it disappear at a corner, then found it again, turned with the wall, and kept running. Still no light, nor sight.

The thing’s footsteps closed quickly behind him, and a gust of air buffeted Brandon’s side. He stopped so he wouldn’t draw its attention; the footsteps passed him right by.

The thing growled again, this time more softly than before. Was it moving away? Yes—after a few moments, Brandon could scarcely hear its movements. He wanted to turn back and find Heather…

… But was that light up ahead? In the direction the thing had gone? Brandon looked down and saw his blood-soaked tuxedo, although the blood looked as black and slick as oil in this low light. He used the sleeve that was clean sleeve to wipe some of it off of his forehead, then pressed on toward the light.

As he approached it, he began to see that the light was much more than a single, small source lost in the vast darkness, as it had appeared from a distance. The light actually came from some sort of doorway: tall and wide, pointed at the top, with strange glowing runes engraved on it. The light shining through it was brilliant—blinding, even. Brandon could see the jet walls, reflective white floor, and high ceiling of the hallway now. He couldn’t think of any building in Bristol with hallways that would look like this.

The air felt warmer as he approached the doorway. When he reached it, he peered through, squinting into the bright light.

His breath left him. The door opened onto a mountainside above the most dazzling city Brandon had ever seen—in reality, in photographs, or in the movies. Sunlight slanted in from above to shimmer off immense waterfalls. Flocks of birds twisted above rivers, soaring toward the towers and minarets of the city. Everything looked shiny and yellow, like it was made out of gold. The architecture flaunted a sleek blend of the modern and the ancient. Flying buttresses and immense marble pillars supported abstract postmodern buildings that rose high against the sky. A huge black wall of what looked like computer screens rose in the center of the city, and beyond it…

Beyond it…

Brandon refused to believe that the planet in front of him, rotating against a backdrop of stars, was Earth. Whatever grand illusion this was, though, it had nearly convinced him. Lifelike greens and blues blazed off of the majestic orb. Brandon could even see pinpricks of lightning in storm clouds on the night side.

A few birds flew near him—and he realized they weren’t birds. They were people. Flying people wearing white robes, wings lofting them on the wind.

Were they angels?

Brandon couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, so he stumbled backward, into the darkness of the hallways. He turned a corner, and had to slow down as total darkness took him again.

“Heather!” he called out.

“Hon! Where are you?” She sounded close.

“Over here. Follow my voice.”

They soon found each other. Brandon couldn’t see her, but he embraced her with his good arm. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “What was that thing?”

“I don’t know. I followed it, and I found this huge golden city.” A name for that city hovered at the edges of his thoughts, but he refused to let himself say it, or even think it. “Do you know where we are?”

“No. That guy outside told us to run in here, and I—I don’t know. I panicked. I’m sorry. He sounded so serious, and the plane had just crashed, and—Brandon, you’re bleeding like crazy. I’ve got your blood all over me.”

“How do we get out of here? We need to get to a hospital.”

“Yeah, that’s what that guy told us to do. He said we should go to Atlanta, but that’s a five-hour drive. What’s this about a city?”

Brandon was about to explain, when another thought struck him. “Wait—where’s Virgil?”

Heather didn’t respond, and Brandon didn’t like the sound of that silence.

“Hon, where’s Virgil?” he repeated.

“He didn’t make it.” Heather’s voice was soft with grief. “I’m sorry. The crash got him. I tried to revive him, but he was gone.”

A deep melancholy washed over Brandon, but now was no time for tears. Now was a time for survival.

And for sorting through his confusion. When he thought back to the crash, he found he couldn’t quite remember its cause, or what they had crashed into. Hadn’t the space in front of the plane at the moment of impact been empty air?

This has to be my head injury. The crash, these hallways, that city… How much of this is real, and how much is just in my head?

“Maybe we can get back to Karen,” Heather said. “It’s morning now. Hospitals will be open.”

But even as she said the words, Brandon touched his hand to a wall and sensed—somehow—that the passage before him was the way out. He took Heather’s hand and led her forward.

“What are you doing?” she asked. “I don’t think this is the way back to the plane.”

“Just a hunch. I think I might be able to get us to Atlanta.”

•

“Yes, this way,” Thorn whispered again to Brandon. Even in the best of times, the Corridors were unsafe for humans. They hadn’t been built with non-spiritual entities in mind, and in fact, they were restricted even to most angels. Even if Thorn had committed no other crimes against God, just this unauthorized travel through the Corridors would have been sufficient crime in itself. If God discovered them here, He would erase them all from existence. And now that Brandon’s arm was broken and his hair drenched in blood, getting the humans out of here was doubly urgent.

Thorn guided them with his whispers, which Brandon continued to heed, likely due to his disoriented mental state. The entire way through the Corridors, Thorn kept glancing backward, half-expecting to see Wanderer bearing down on them. Hopefully Paxis or the angels had gotten him. The conspiracy Thorn had just uncovered had left him dumbfounded, and his mind was too fatigued to face another confrontation with Wanderer.

Wanderer. Over the past three months, Thorn had searched every crevice of Atlanta for answers, but in the end, the details were in the Devil. He outsmarted me. He outsmarted everyone.

As a reformed demon trying to become good, Thorn detested Wanderer’s motives. But as the former demon leader in one of the most important cities in one of the most powerful countries in the world, Thorn also had to admit that his pride was hurt. I shouldn’t have fallen for his ploys. I should have been smarter than him. He vowed to never again let himself be taken in by such cunning. If he survived this ordeal, he would live a quiet, unassuming life.

A humble life is no life for the mighty Thorn, a part of him said. He silenced it.

After twenty minutes of halting progress, they found the first transit doors into Atlanta. These all required keys, though. Thorn had to search for another twenty minutes to find one that didn’t. All the while, the thought dogged him: Just over twelve hours have passed since my flight from Heaven, so God couldn’t have mobilized angels to guard every single one of Atlanta’s many transit doors already. Could He have?

When at last the humans opened an unlocked transit door, Thorn prepared to attack the angel that would undoubtedly be guarding its other side. But to Thorn’s relief, no angel was there—at least none that he could see. Are they watching me from the realm above? Will a sword pierce my chest, or my neck suddenly snap?

Heather and Brandon shuffled out into a dark, secluded corner of Centennial Olympic Park. Thorn hovered over them, and the door thumped safely shut behind the trio. If no angels had spotted them, then no one could easily follow them now. The structured Corridors could be searched methodically, but the bustling metropolis of Atlanta offered cover to anyone—spirit or human—who wished to stay hidden.

The ground was slick from recent rain. A blanket of clouds obscured the stars, but the speckles of lighted windows in the skyscrapers around the park cast their own sort of starscape against the heavens’ blackness. Honking and braking and the welcome din of traffic rumbled across the park, playing their delightful tune. Tourists played in the fountains shaped like the Olympic rings, oblivious to the two strangers who wandered in their midst, strangers Thorn had plucked out of the ether of the Sanctuary system into true existence on Earth.

Brandon and Heather marveled at the expanse of Thorn’s city, to which they’d walked in just under an hour. “Look at the clock up there,” Brandon said. “And that other one up on the building. They both say ten thirty. Why is it still dark outside?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.”

Strange that I’ve only been away from here for a single day, Thorn thought. Twenty-some hours ago—when the Judge had sent him to Crystal and Cole’s Sanctuary—already felt like a bitter memory from years past.

The Judge. I have to get Heather and Brandon to the Judge. Once Brandon is patched up, that is. He couldn’t communicate with them now that he was only a spirit again, so he hoped Heather had listened to his plea to get Brandon to the hospital, then to run herself to the courthouse. And now he was worried about that hospital. Would its staff inquire about the humans’ nonexistent identities?

“Excuse me!” Heather called to a passerby—a young woman draped in a colorful kanga.

“No!” Thorn whispered. “Don’t attract attention.”

But Heather continued: “My husband is hurt. Do you have a cell phone? Could you call an ambulance for us?”

The woman yelped when she saw Brandon’s bloody state, but quickly produced a cell phone and began dialing. “I so sorry,” she said with a heavy accent. “I call help now.”

Although the park was sparsely populated at this time of night, a few other passersby had noticed the commotion and were rushing to Brandon’s aid. Heather helped Brandon down onto the grass.

Thorn slunk into some foliage. Any enjoyment he felt at his homecoming vanished as every demon in the park turned its eyes on Brandon, tainting the beauty of Atlanta at night with their menace. Thorn imagined the inane thoughts of his former underlings. Pain! Oh, how we love pain and misery. Perhaps we can harm this boy further. We could whisper to one of these onlookers to offer faulty medical advice, or we could drive the hurt human to suicidal despair. They swarmed Brandon, bickering over rights to this delectable new charge.

Thorn wanted to intervene, but he knew such action was unwise. He didn’t know what the demonic rumor mill had spun out of his escapades in the Sanctuaries. For all he knew, the city’s demons would execute him on the spot if they recognized him. No, waiting to reveal himself until he stood in the Judge’s presence was a better plan. For now, he needed to stay hidden, especially because demons weren’t the only enemy after him now. Invisible hosts of angels lurked in their own spiritual realm, just out of view. Would they notice this ruckus in the park? Would they care enough to investigate? Thorn was glad that God’s power was limited. Him locating Thorn on Earth was probably unlikely, unless Thorn made a commotion.

“What happened to him?” someone asked.

“Uh, it was a plane accident,” Heather said. “I’m a little scuffed up too, but he got the worst of it.”

“Plane? Like an airplane? Where’d it happen?”

Heather ignored the question, leaning toward Brandon instead. “How you doing, hon?”

“It hurts a lot, but I think the bleeding stopped.”

Thorn kept his distance as the EMS workers arrived, eased Brandon down onto a stretcher, and whisked him and Heather away to the hospital. But as the ambulance wound through the luminous streets of Downtown, Thorn followed it from far above, drifting between skyscrapers, careful to stay far enough away from other demons that none could see his face.

Hundreds of demons waited at the emergency room. Hospitals. Always so crowded. Thorn had never liked the places, which attracted multitudes of lowlife demons eager for some easy suffering and death. They’d served him well when he’d needed attention. At the height of his dominance, flaunting his power in a hospital or two had been a sure way to boost his reputation across the city. But now he kept his head down as he floated in after Brandon’s stretcher, keeping a careful distance from Brandon and Heather.

Fortunately, the other demons were too self-absorbed to notice their former leader in their midst. Their attention remained on the humans, and especially on Brandon.

As the nurses wheeled Brandon down the hallway, another demon—along with what looked to be his protégé—drifted alongside Thorn. He turned his face so they wouldn’t recognize him, but he couldn’t help overhearing a snippet of their conversation:

“—ever again, foolish apprentice. Evils that come from within are the easiest evils for humans to control. So our job is to keep them from controlling them. Distract them with work, or entertainment, or addictions, or all the fun things they can buy; or here in the hospital, you can easily distract them with pain. Don’t ever let them cherish life. Don’t ever let them think. Distraction is the opposite of thinking, so if you need to—”

The voice faded as the demons turned down an adjoining hallway, but it was replaced by the cackling of several demons crawling over a convulsing patient in one of the rooms Thorn passed. “You’re gonna die!” the loudest of them shrieked as doctors scrambled to calm the man’s seizing. “You never thought your life would end, so you never did anything worthwhile, and now it’s too late! You’re gonna die, die, die!”

Dozens of demons were whispering to Brandon now, too. The farther into the hospital they traveled, the thicker the air grew with Thorn’s foul brethren. I can’t believe I used to count myself as one of them.

Three demons hovered above a passing doctor. The man wore scrubs and a surgical mask. He stared intently down at the tablet in his hands, and the demons studied the device with just as much gravity. Thorn couldn’t count the numerous hours he’d spent in the same position: peeking over a human’s shoulder, reading a scroll, book, a newspaper, a phone. Since demons could never touch these things, they had to wait until a human accessed them to read the information contained within.

“—the girl who got stabbed last night, but she’s no fun.”

The significance of this conversation fragment took a few moments to register with Thorn. When it did, he abandoned Brandon and Heather, then ducked inside a wall near the two gabbing demons.

“It’s like someone trained her not to listen to us, to question everything we say,” one of the demons said. “Just like Darnell. It’s disgusting. I’d hoped to get more out of someone who came so close to death.”

“She was Thorn’s, you know,” said the other demon. “She’s the one he tried to save before the Judge sent him off to die.”

“More’s the pity. I usually like a challenge, but she won’t bend a bit. Not even with those knife wounds.”

“Well, it doesn’t help that they have her drugged up. Once you’ve been in the hospital a while, you’ll notice that they don’t hear our whispers as well when they’re on meds. Just watch. In another day or two, I’ll have her praying to die.”

“Maybe so, but in the meantime, don’t ask me to watch her anymore. They just took her upstairs to recover, and that’s so far from the new patients. There’s no blood up there, and all the humans there have already been claimed. You shame me by—”

Thorn didn’t hear the rest of their conversation, because he was already darting upstairs.

4

Thorn found her in a room with a window featuring a dazzling view of downtown. Wearing a hospital gown, she looked weak and pallid, yet she was conscious. Alive. She lay on her back, listening to a visitor talk.

It was a simple sight—Thorn had watched Amy lying on her bed, falling asleep, countless times before. But not after he’d come so close to losing her. Not after God had threatened to let her die. Had God been merciful, in spite of Thorn’s rebellion against Him?

Two demons resided in the room when Thorn arrived; they clearly recognized him, because they immediately charged to attack. But they were scrawny things, and thirty seconds later, Thorn had killed them both and hid their bodies in the room’s closet. If any more demons entered, Thorn would dispatch them as well. Nothing could stand between him and a few more minutes with Amy.

… Or so he thought, until he turned to see Amy’s visitor.

“Yeah, the news lady is totally right outside and they can’t wait to interview us,” Lexa said, smacking some gum above her tongue. “I told them I was your best friend and that I’m gonna take care of you while you get better. Can you believe it, Amy? We’re famous! I mean I know it’s terrible what happened to you and all, but you could literally be on talk shows because of this, and you can get a book deal, and—”

“Lexa,” Amy said, her voice fatigued, and less irritated than Thorn would have been able to manage. “I know. It’s a big deal. But I really don’t want to think about it right now. I just want to relax. Relaaaaaaax…”

“Okay, but I was just thinking that maybe you could leverage your star power to earn some money for college, and maybe, you know, pay me back the money I let you borrow? You know, whenever you get the chance.”

Thorn frowned, then drifted back to the door to check for any other demons lurking nearby.

“Yeah, sure,” Amy said distantly. “I’ll see what I can cook up and stuff. Do you know where my mom is?”

“She was here waiting with me before you woke up, and I was telling her about my performance as Velma in the school’s production of Chicago that’s coming up next month, and all the prep work I’ve been doing, and how fantastic it’s gonna be—and you’re invited by the way—and I guess she had something to do, like go get food or something, but that was like three hours ago, so I’m sure she’ll be back any minute.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“Oh, and check it out. While you were sleeping—God, I love that movie—but while you were sleeping, I painted both our fingernails with… drumroll, please… with mint nail polish. Smell that.” She yanked Amy’s frail hand up to Amy’s face.

“Smells… minty.”

“I know, right? All the bitches love it.”

“Thanks.”

“Hey, what are BFFs for? We’ll have to show the news people when we go downstairs later.”

“Uh, I don’t know if I want to do that so soon.”

“Aw, really? Why not?”

Thorn had never found Lexa more annoying than he did at this exact moment. She can touch and influence the physical realm, yet she likes to keep her world so small. Thorn might have felt sorry for her if she hadn’t been such a blight on Amy’s life, or if he’d known her through different circumstances, but now Lexa was pestering his beloved charge in her weak state, and if she had the audacity to—

When he tried to move through the curtains shielding Amy from the hallway windows, they enveloped his face. After a moment of confusion, he grabbed the curtains with his hand. What? Again? Both of the times this had happened before, he’d been in Amy’s presence. He lightly tapped his foot against the linoleum floor just to be sure.

Then he grinned a devious grin. He’d always wanted to do this…

Thorn slunk up behind Lexa, prepared his most menacing voice, then spoke just an inch away from her ear.

“Boo.”

Lexa leaped out of her seat and screamed. Turning toward Thorn, she tripped backward onto the bed, then scampered across it over Amy’s feet. She fell sideways off of the other side and plopped to the floor.

“What the fuck?” she said, scrambling to stand, her hair in disarray. “Who the fuck are you?”

“A demon from the bowels of Hell.” Thorn stalked toward her.

Grinning with pleasant surprise, Amy giggled a bit.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Lexa said, assuming a defensive posture. “That’s close enough, creep. I have pepper spray in my purse.”

“This purse?” Thorn held it up, removed the pepper spray, then aimed it at Lexa. She yelped and covered her face, but Thorn tossed the canister onto Amy’s bed, within Amy’s reach.

Lexa peeked out from between her fingers. “Amy, you know this guy?”

Amy looked like she was trying very hard to hide her smile. “Lexa, this is my Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob, Lexa.”

“Pleased to meet you.” Thorn held out a hand to shake.

Lexa ran a hand through her hair, but only tousled it more. She inched around Thorn in as wide a circle as the walls would allow. “Yeah, uh, whatever. I’ll leave you two to talk about family and stuff.” She spit her gum into a trashcan near the door and backed into the hallway, but just when Thorn thought he was rid of her, she squinted back at him. “That suit you’re wearing… is that Gucci?”

“Get out of here.”

“Okay, jeez, all right.” She strode hurriedly down the hallway, looking warily back over her shoulder every few seconds. Thorn shut the door behind her.

Amy laughed feebly. “I think you scared the shit out of her.”

“Literally. As she would put it.”

Amy laughed harder, but then suddenly winced and groaned.

Thorn dashed to her side. “Are you okay? How badly does it hurt?”

“It’s only when I move certain ways. They’ve got me doped up pretty good, ha ha ha ha ha…” Her laughter faded into a dazed, contented smile. “You saved my life.”

“I thought you were gone. You’d lost so much blood.”

“Turns out he didn’t hit anything vital. I got some transfuses and things, so I’ll be all good to go before too much longer.”

Thorn chuckled at her slurred speech. “So you’re going to live.”

“I am.” Her beaming eyes were almost as beautiful as her smile. She lifted a hand up to Thorn’s cheek, and it came away wet. “Why are you crying? I’m okay now.”

A bit embarrassed, Thorn wiped the moisture from his eyes. “I’m just so happy to see you.” His voice trembled. His sinuses felt heavy. What was all this? This was new. “I’ve come through Hell and back to see you again. I can’t believe you remember me after you’ve only seen me these few times.”

“Well that’s what you told me to do, right?” Amy said, wiping away a tear that Thorn had missed. “In Heaven? To remember you.”

Thorn laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I did say that.”

“I feel like I’ve known you for a lot longer though. Who are you?”

The question brought Thorn back down to earth. He didn’t know how to answer it. I love you, he wanted to say. I’ve loved you for a long time now. But instead he merely asked, “Is Shelley okay?”

“Shelley’s just heard a very, very weird conversation,” Shelley said from the door behind them. “So I’m not sure if Shelley is okay or not.”

Thick gauze was wrapped around Amy’s best friend’s head, covering the wound that Garrett had dealt with his crowbar. Thorn smiled at her presence. “Shelley, hi. I hope your head’s okay.”

“Don’t worry, my head’s never been okay. But uh, who are you?”

“A friend.” Thorn rose and offered a handshake. Unlike Lexa, Shelley accepted. “I’ve known Amy for a long time.”

“So you heard what happened to us?”

“Who in Atlanta hasn’t by now? Amy’s quite the hero.”

Amy playfully waved him away, but Shelley approached the bed. “See Ames, I knew you had some fight in you. Even now. It’s only been one day and you look… well, you look pale and kind of stoned, but I can tell you’re doing good. I’m supposed to be in bed a few doors down, but I figured we could hang out while we’re both stuck here. My sister brought me some board games, or boring games, whichever name you prefer. But they beat staring at the ceiling and comforting concerned relatives. I can move your pieces for you.”

“That sounds great.”

“Cool. I’ll see if the doctors will give me some Valium so we can have a fair game.”

Thorn had ambled to the door to check the hallway for demons again, and when he briefly turned back, he saw that Shelley had caught him at it. He smirked sheepishly at her, hoping she’d ignore his conspicuous actions.

“Sorry, I didn’t catch your name,” she said.

“Heather!” Thorn called when he noticed Brandon’s wife standing by a vending machine in the hallway.

Still wearing her blue dress from the wedding reception, Heather glanced at the space around her, as if another Heather might have been standing nearby, then pointed to herself. “Me?” she said. Thorn waved her over to him.

“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a ‘Heather,’” Shelley said to Thorn. “I’d love to ask your parents about that.”

As Heather paced closer, her eyes lit with recognition. “You! You’re the guy who yelled for me to run, back in Virginia. What the hell is happening? Who are you?”

This being the third time in the past two minutes that Thorn had been asked that question, he felt obliged to offer at least a partial answer. “I’m Virgil,” he said. “Or, well, I’m the one who’s been posing as Virgil.”

Heather studied his face. “You do look kind of like him, but… what do you mean?”

Thorn sighed. I’ve been putting off telling her the truth for long enough, and I won’t get much further if I don’t tell her now. Maybe this is finally the time.

“Come in here.” He motioned for her to enter the room, and she obliged. “How’s Brandon?”

“Uh, they say he’ll heal up fine. The head wound’s superficial, but his arm will need a cast, and they’re gonna move him up here for a few days so he can recover. I just came up to see his room.”

“I’m glad he’ll be okay.”

“Me too,” Shelley said. “Who is he?”

“Heather’s husband. He was in an accident. Heather, this is Shelley. And on the bed is my char—my friend, Amy.”

They exchanged greetings, then sat around Amy’s bed and waited for Thorn to speak. He hesitated. He disliked having to open himself up like this, especially when a doctor or a demon could enter the room at any moment. “What I’m about to tell the three of you is going to sound absurd. Completely absurd. Afterward, you may label me a raving madman, but I must tell you this, both because I owe all three of you some answers, and because I need your help. Please take me seriously. I badly need you to.”

And then he told them. He told them that his name was Thorn. He told them about angels and demons, about the billions of years he’d spent on Earth and the lies he’d believed and help spread during that time. He told them about Constantine and Flying Owl, and Xeres and Thilial, and God’s dubious plans for humanity and for demonkind. He told them about Wanderer’s scheming, and that Heather and Brandon were the keys to convincing God and demons to finally have an honest conversation with each other. He admitted that he’d used Virgil’s body to manipulate Heather and the other humans. He even told them that he only wanted to live a peaceful life away from all this conflict, but that such a life was impossible while everyone was trying to kill him.

He didn’t tell them everything. Somehow he couldn’t quite manage to fit Marcus into his story, or his own role in the Christmas Eve shooting. He needed to paint himself in a positive light so that these people would listen to him. When it came time to explain the Sanctuaries, and that Heather and Brandon’s former lives no longer existed on Earth—except in their memories—Thorn almost skipped that part as well. But Heather needed to know it so that she wouldn’t try anything rash, like driving all the way to Virginia from here. So Thorn told her the hard truth that she hadn’t existed in her current form before tonight.

When he finished, a deep quiet settled over the room. The instruments monitoring Amy’s health continued to whir and beep, but the light foot traffic in the hallway outside grew more noticeable, and no one in the room moved or spoke for a long time.

Heather was the first to break the silence. “For many years I’ve considered myself to be a rational person, and I’ve felt sorry for people who believe things without solid support for those beliefs—support based on evidence and logic. I’ve felt sorry for people who ignored any counterevidence to their cherished beliefs, for people who treated that counterevidence as lunacy or conspiracy. I always thought that humanity would be better, and would grow exponentially greater if we could set aside these myths and superstitions of angels above us, of devils whispering in our ears. And of a reward in Heaven no matter how evil believers are, or of torture in Hell no matter how good nonbelievers are. I always thought such things were childish to believe, and I always thought that I was above them.

“There’s something that scientists say: extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And tonight, Thorn, you’ve shown me extraordinary evidence.” She reached across Amy’s bed, placed her hand on top of Thorn’s, and looked straight into his eyes. “I believe you.”

Thorn exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “That’s all it takes?”

“That’s all it takes. For now. I’ll want to learn about the world you come from in a lot more detail when I get the time. Imagine if scientists were able to access it. Imagine what we could learn.”

Thorn turned to Amy, who nodded her acceptance as well. Then he turned to Shelley, who rolled her head as if stretching her neck muscles.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Amy, you trust this guy?”

“He’s telling the truth,” Amy said. “He’s been trying to keep me safe. Everything he’s saying, I’ve seen it all for myself. And that’s before I was on meds.” She grinned a loopy smile.

Shelley dithered, avoiding eye contact. “All right, whatever floats y’all’s boat. I guess I’ll play along. But you said you needed our help? What exactly does that call for?”

“I can’t stay here,” Thorn said. “Sooner or later, my enemies will think to search for me near Amy. They know I care about her, so I’m going to leave you alone, Amy, until all this is over.”

Amy nodded, although she seemed a bit saddened by this.

“Heather, you and Brandon must avoid her, too. And as soon as Brandon gets his treatment, you need to flee the hospital. Don’t check out, don’t pay, just run. Blend in with a crowd and get away from here.”

“Okay, sure. But won’t these… won’t these ‘demons’ track us down, too?”

“They will, yes. But only stupid ones, most likely. There are only a few demons in the city who know how important you two are, and they won’t know where you are even if other demons do. As long as you don’t do anything to advertise your location, that is. And as long as you don’t talk about anything I’ve said here tonight, even alone with each other.”

“Works for me. But where can we hide?”

Thorn turned to the injured girl on the bed. “Amy and Shelley, that’s where you come in. Can we borrow some money for a hotel room?”

The girls exchanged glances. “Sorry man,” Shelley said, shaking her head. “My account is at zero. Well, negative eight thousand if you factor in student loans.”

“I’m broke too,” Amy said. “I owe Lexa a whole bunch of money. And my mom doesn’t have any.”

“It’s okay, I have money,” Heather said.

“Cash?” Thorn asked.

“No, I have my card.”

“Your cards won’t work outside the Sanctuary. But Amy, you’ll be in the hospital for a while, and I imagine your mom will want to stay here with you, at least for the next few days.”

Amy seemed to mull this over for a moment, then said, “I don’t know about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Amy’s mom isn’t exactly Maria von Trapp,” Shelley said. “She’ll probably go out partying the first chance she gets.”

“Right, I know. But I need a place for Heather and Brandon to stay, just for a day. I hope that’s all the time I need. Amy, would it be okay if they stay in your apartment?”

“Um, yeah, that’s fine with me. But why not Shelley’s place?”

“She has a big family and the house won’t be empty. I hate to ask this of you in your current condition, but do you think you can keep your mom away from your apartment for a day?”

“Sure thing.”

“Good. It’s not a perfect hiding spot, but it’ll buy us some time. Heather, you and Brandon go to Amy’s and stay there. If I haven’t contacted you after a day, leave. My enemies will eventually think to look for you there.”

“Works for me,” Heather said. “We’ll just need directions. And I have some limited medical experience, so I should be able to look after Brandon. You’ll definitely come for us there when you’re done with whatever you have to do?”

“Yes,” Thorn said. “And don’t let anyone in besides me.”

“Should we have some kind of secret knock or password?”

“Good idea. What should the password be?”

“Antidisestablishmentarianism,” Shelley offered.

“No,” Thorn said.

“Karen,” Heather suddenly said. “Did Karen make it out? What about my dad?”

Thorn gently gripped her hand. “Don’t worry about anyone you lost in the Sanctuary. They’re all fine, but they’re still stuck under God’s control. If I’m successful, they might all be freed.”

Heather nodded, her relief palpable. “How about we use ‘Karen’ as a password then?”

“‘Karen’ it is,” Thorn said. “Let’s move.”

He stood, and the others followed. Amy provided the keys to her mom’s apartment, and the group said its farewells. Shelley left to grab some board games for Amy. Thorn wanted to kiss Amy on the forehead, but thought better of it. He was still her demon, her protector. The time for closeness would be later, if ever.

As Heather was heading out, back toward Brandon, she stopped next to the door. “Thorn, can I ask you a question?”

“You may.”

“Did you ever know a girl named Crystal?”

Thorn stepped back in surprise. “Yes, I did.”

“Is she okay?”

How fascinating. Could it be possible that Heather was remembering her lives from previous Sanctuaries? Thorn supposed it was just another quirk of the system—yet another small imperfection that God had overlooked.

“She is okay,” Thorn said. “Cole, too.”

Heather smiled a pure, gleeful smile. She nodded to herself, then left the room.

Thorn ambled back toward Amy, but saw that she’d fallen asleep. So he walked to a window, amazing himself yet again that he instinctually knew how to walk—not to mention how to breathe and speak—in this human body, despite so little experience with the thing. It must be a sign that I was made for something more than demonhood. He eased the window open, then looked out from the old building onto the prodigious city he’d once called his own.

Brisk wind assaulted his senses, but he quickly came to enjoy the cold on his skin and the smell of the night air, full of pollen, car exhaust, cigarette smoke, and a faint trace of some distant fried food. Having never eaten before, Thorn would love to try it. But he knew that he’d likely morph back into a spirit again after taking a few steps out of the room. How is Amy having this effect on me?

Perhaps his physical form resulted from his newfound morality, somehow. Or at least from the morality I’m trying to obtain. Thorn had tried to act with a good conscience lately, especially during this last day in the Sanctuaries, but he still didn’t know where to turn when he needed answers about morality. How can a being as immoral as me derive morality from within myself?

Thorn hoped that he was changing for the better. But the corpses of the two demons in the closet might have disagreed.

•

“Judge!” Thorn yelled as he flew through the closed doors of the Judge’s courtroom. Hundreds of demons looked up from the spectators’ benches, the jury box, and every other cranny of the large room. Shocked surprise spattered onto their faces.

Thorn had spied the Judge before entering, hovering by the court clerk’s desk, so he’d planned his grand entrance as a curve, arcing from the doors, upward to the center of the room where all could see him, then downward to the Judge, who would have no choice but to listen if Thorn proclaimed his findings to the throng. “God created the Sanctuaries as tests for us, because He wants to reconcile!” Thorn bellowed. “He will accept defectors with open arms if we can prove ourselves moral enough. I have evidence of this: two humans, Brandon and Heather, who were in both Sanctuaries with me. The Judge has seen them, too. The Sanctuaries are not operated for their sake, or for the sake of any human. The Sanctuaries are for us—demons.”

“Rulebreaker!” one demon yelled. “Traitor!” called another.

Thorn continued speaking over a few more protestations. “If we spread this news to all of demonkind, God’s tests will become worthless. If He truly loves us, as He claims to, He will be forced to leave us alone. We will finally be able to form our own society apart from His tyranny.

“Furthermore, we have all been lied to about the nature of God, and of His religion. Christianity was created not by God, but by one of our own: Wanderer. For evidence of this, we need only to capture and torture him, or any of his closest followers, especially—”

Marcus. The gaunt demon rose from beneath the judge’s bench at the front of the room. The clamor among the demons grew louder as they sensed a showdown between Thorn and Marcus, two known enemies.

Thorn glanced down at the Judge, who hid his face. Marcus drifted higher and stretched out his arms in a gesture that demanded command of the room. The other demons hushed a bit. Marcus cast a steely frown at Thorn, and it blanketed him in dread.

“You say that God recycled two humans from one Sanctuary to the next,” Marcus said to him. “So what? Even if you can provide the evidence, which I doubt you can, all you’ve proven is that Sanctuaries don’t exist for the humans’ sake—not that they exist for ours.”

“What is this?” Thorn asked to no one in particular. Then to the Judge: “What is he doing in your courtroom?”

“It’s not his courtroom anymore,” Marcus said. “His long rule over this city has ended. He is deposed. I am the new Demon Judge of Atlanta, and I am the sole leader of this city.”

Thorn glanced down at the Judge, whose submissive posture suggested that Marcus spoke the truth.

“Wanderer put you here,” Thorn said to Marcus. He suppressed his fear and raised his voice for the whole room to hear. “Deposing the Judge was not just a normal power play. Wanderer has placed Marcus in this position, because Wanderer knew I would come here for help, and he wants to discredit me and end my life. But I say we seize Marcus and demand answers from him! What say you all?”

Thorn’s rally to action was met with silence. The crowd remained still, staring upward at the two rivals, one a plaintiff and the other a defendant.

“They trust me,” Marcus said, “because I haven’t broken any Rules lately, unlike you.”

“Marcus, you’ve seen Brandon and Heather. Stop believing what you want to be true and start believing what you see. What else could Sanctuaries be for, if not for us?”

Marcus ignored his question and spoke loudly, to the whole room. “You deserve execution, Thorn. But because I am a magnanimous leader, I will grant you a hearing rather than let the masses have their way with you. I will listen to your evidence… if you will tell me where I can find it.” He placed special emphasis on this last clause.

Thorn took a few seconds to realize Marcus’s ploy. He looked fair and generous in front of the crowd, but if Thorn brought Heather and Brandon to him, Marcus would abduct them, then sentence Thorn to death. He cursed himself for being so foolish as to charge in here with his prepared speech. But at least he’d had the foresight to hide Heather and Brandon just in case.

“The angels swear blind allegiance to God, and they are all slaves who fail to see the world as it really is,” Thorn said to Marcus. “You’ve sworn blind allegiance to Wanderer. You are the same as them. None of us, including you, should let ourselves be coerced into the service of someone who wants only to control us. I want to be free. Do you?”

“I am already free. I know what I know, as do we all. We’ve had this discussion before, and I grow tired of it. You are insane.”

Thorn lowered his gaze to look upon the crowd of demons, who stared shrewdly at him and seemed to be genuinely mulling over his pleas. “Do I look insane to you? I am your former leader! I led this city to glory and prestige! Would I say the things I have said tonight if I didn’t have good reason to say them?”

“You’ve always been a self-absorbed psychopath, Thorn,” Marcus said. “We once admired you for it, but we will not follow you into these new delusions. You are beneath me. You are beneath us all. And you deserve to die.”

At a swift gesture from Marcus, several guards rushed toward Thorn. They gripped his limbs before he had a chance to defend himself.

“Marcus, please, be reasonable.”

“Tell me where your humans are, and I will be reasonable.”

An intuition struck Thorn. He threw Marcus a rebellious grin. “You can’t kill me until I give the humans up, can you? Wanderer won’t allow it.”

“I do not take orders from Wanderer.”

The guards hauled Thorn toward the chambers behind the podium and the rooms farther back where prisoners were kept. “Since they’re still alive, anyone could find them. Anyone could ask the Judge or Shazakahn, and learn that I’ve told the truth here tonight!”

The rising commotion in the courtroom encouraged Thorn. Marcus would not be able to enlist other demons to aid him in his search for Brandon and Heather, lest they discover that Thorn was right.

“You’ll never find them!” Thorn yelled. He laughed spitefully. “But someone else might!” He shouted this last exclamation as an appeal to the crowd.

None rose up to save Thorn, though, as the guards dragged him toward captivity. “Question Wanderer and Marcus! Question all authority! Go to a Sanctuary yourself! The answers are before you, if only you care to search for them!”

Thorn got out the last word just before they pulled him through the wall.

5

I made my case so poorly, Thorn lamented in his prison cell, a small chamber used for holding inmates prior to their court hearings. It lay in darkness save for the dim moonlight sinking down from the window. Thorn thought of dozens of things he should have said to Marcus—things that might have persuaded the other demons. I should have taken more time to think through my speech.

Thorn’s true, spiritual cell was a cell made of bodies. A hundred and forty demon guards had locked their limbs together to create a lattice of spirit bodies above, below, and around Thorn. He tried to plan an escape, but even if he broke through the cell’s living walls, he would never survive the ensuing confrontation with so many demon guards.

He spent hours drifting about the cage. As the night wore on, he spoke to the guards, begging for them to believe that his recent discoveries were real, but in return they only taunted him, their minds closed to his pleading. At least I’m still alive. At least Marcus hasn’t found Brandon and Heather. But with the Judge out of power, what use were the two humans? Wanderer, at least, clearly thought they were a loose end that needed tying up, and this paranoia was the only reason he was keeping Thorn alive.

But Thorn doubted that even that loose end presented a risk to Wanderer anymore. Shazakahn might have half-respected the Judge’s word back when he was in power, but the African demons would never believe Thorn alone. Thilial had been right: demonkind’s stubborn beliefs were simply too entrenched. Would they listen even if the angels themselves declared Thorn truthful? If God’s own voice boomed down from Heaven? I’m sure they’d think it was some kind of trick.

More long hours passed. Dawn must have been approaching by the time Thorn heard a voice whispering loudly, quarreling with one of his cell’s guards. He moved closer to eavesdrop on the guard berating the newcomer.

“You may not enter. The prisoner’s ideas are poisonous.”

“Come on, Wex, you know me,” said the Judge. “What am I gonna do? Go full Rambo and bust Thorn out of the most secure building in the city? I just want to say hi. Gloat, as it were.”

“Marcus would not approve.”

“Marcus is a cock.”

The guard, Wex, seemed to consider this for a moment. “He really is.”

The Judge grinned and raised his hand for a fist bump. “There’s my man.”

“But no whispering. We must be able to hear everything you say.” Wex accepted the fist bump, then pried himself away from the lattice of demons to let the Judge pass through.

“Right on. I appreciate it. The next time I’m in power, I’ll buy you an ice cream cone.”

The Judge floated through the gap in the cell’s wall, then Wex latched his own body back into place behind him.

Thorn turned away, refusing eye contact. “Leave me,” he said. “You are a coward. I cannot fathom why I thought you could help me when you can’t even stand up to Wanderer and Marcus.”

“Thorn, chill. I just—”

“I said leave!” Thorn glared at the Judge and pushed upward. He stretched himself above the Judge in a posture of intimidation.

“Well, you’re a bit prickly today. Thorny, one might say.”

“You betrayed me.”

“Hey, now. You’re the one who went AWOL on us. You think I want to be allied with that scumbag upstairs? He overthrew me! But you have no power, buddy. If I side with you, I might as well put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.” He frowned. “Except that that wouldn’t really do anything, and I don’t know how I’d manage to grab hold of the gun in the first—You get what I mean.”

“You looked like you were about to try and save me. By the pool in the Sanctuary.”

“Maybe I was.”

“You could have stepped up in my defense at any time during all of this, but you didn’t, and look where it’s gotten you. Disgraced in your own city. A lowly servant in Marcus’s court.”

“They had dirt on me, man. It had nothing to do with you.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

The Judge shook his head, then eased himself down toward the floor made of demons. Thorn relaxed a bit as well. He looked more closely at the Judge and saw that his spiritual form had changed. His skin had always seemed slightly oily, as if he hadn’t showered in a few days, but now the unsettling griminess on his face had cleared. His hair was clean of gel, and his V-neck suit seemed to fit properly for a change.

“You look different,” Thorn said to him.

“So do you. Stronger. Cleaner. Not bad for a guy who every demon in the city thought was dead yesterday.”

Thorn drifted near the small window which, when glimpsed through the web of demons’ arms and legs, allowed a limited view of the tops of some nondescript buildings and the black sky beyond.

“I haven’t been this low in a long time,” the Judge said. “They took my title, my city. They even took my favorite charge, this corrupt banker who’s always got something disreputable going on at the courthouse. Cohn—you know him, right? My followers can’t do anything. They’re all pissed that Marcus is styling himself as a Judge when he was never an Angel of Judgment. Ha, it’s ironic.”

“Why’s that?”

The Judge snorted derisively and twirled the end of his tie between his fingers. “You know back at the beginning of time, when the Enemy created Angels of Love, Reason, Purpose, and all that?”

“Yes.”

“And you know that God didn’t just create those main denominations of angels. He created a branch of angels for literally everything. There are Angels of Cooking Vegetables, Angels of Sedimentary Rock, Angels of Premature Ejaculation. It’s goddamned ridiculous. Hell, for a few decades there was even an Angel of the Soviet Union. Poor bastard.”

“I’d heard of the Sedimentary Rock guys. There were only four or five of them, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah. These are all tiny groups, most of them formed before the things they were supposed to supervise even existed.

“Well anyway, there was this one angel named Galis. At the beginning of time, Galis was the only—one, sole, single—Angel of Manatees. Yes, the Lord Almighty saw fit to create an Angel of Manatees. Problem was, at the beginning of time, manatees wouldn’t evolve for several billion more Earth years. Even still, Galis pored over God’s instructions for overseeing the manatees. He wanted to do his best for those fat little seaweed-chowing monsters, but he couldn’t, because they didn’t exist yet. So Galis waited and waited. Then one day a war started in Heaven, and he was a little annoyed at having nothing to do all the time, so he decided to join the rebels, only to be cast out of Heaven days later.

“Now, what was a sensitive little angel like Galis supposed to do on primordial Earth, stuck with a rage-fueled gang of battle-hardened demons? Should Galis have waited for manatees to evolve so that he could mobilize an army of evil sea cows to wreak destruction upon the human world? No, it was easier and more realistic for Galis to just tell the other demons that he’d been an Angel of Judgment, so that they’d take him seriously and wouldn’t beat him up. During the Unification War, Galis styled himself as a Judge, and everything went just dandy for him. For a while.

“Eventually Galis met this asshole named Thorn, who had a buddy named Marcus, who had a boss named Wanderer, who somehow knew Galis’s secret. And Wanderer dredged up some reputable demons who remembered Galis from those days at the beginning of time, and they revealed to the whole damn city of Atlanta that its Judge had once been the one, the only, Angel of Manatees. Needless to say, they laughed him out of office.”

Thorn gawked at the bizarre tale. The story had touched him though. Dust motes drifted in the moonlight between Thorn and the Judge, whose gaze had dropped to the floor made of impartial demon guards. “I’m sorry, Judge. Truly. But your story only illustrates why we need to end the brutality of demon society, so that we all can live freely.”

The guards’ dark eyes followed the Judge as he rose and moved toward Thorn. “Let me ask you, buddy. If I were still in power, and I offered to forgive everything you’ve done if you’d just shut up, live your life, and stop thinking so much, would you do it?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because now I know too much to keep quiet. Because I’ve felt the physical world, and I know we can change. Because I want to be good, and none of you will let me.”

“And how exactly did you enter the physical world?”

“Oh not you too.”

“I’m just curious.”

“It has something to do with Amy. That’s all I know.”

“That girl you’re in love with?” When Thorn rolled his eyes, the Judge chuckled. “Come on, broseph, don’t deny it. It’s obvious to anyone who’s ever seen you with her.”

Thorn just shrugged and turned back to the window. He couldn’t tell whether the Judge wanted pity or wanted to make fun of him, but he would give the Judge no satisfaction.

“So if I love something, maybe I can enter physical space too?” the Judge said.

“As if you know anything about love.”

“I do! I love… I love puppies.”

“Puppies?” Now the Judge was just being absurd.

“Yeah, who doesn’t love puppies? Do you think if I found some puppies and thought about how much I love them, I’d be able to enter physical space? Then I could get my prestige back. Tell me your secret and maybe I can set you free.”

“Or maybe you’ll tell Marcus. Or one of these guards will. Is that why you’re really here? To spy for him?”

“No! Never. Pinky promise. Or maybe it’s love combined with tragedy that does it? You love her but, like, she’s in pain? And that tips you over into the physical realm?”

“Why don’t you try it? Imagine a puppy getting brutally murdered.”

The Judge said nothing, so Thorn turned to him. The Judge’s eyes were clenched shut in concentration.

“Really?” Thorn said.

The Judge opened his eyes. “I mean, puppies getting brutally murdered would be awesome.”

“But you said you love puppies.”

“Yeah, I love puppies.”

Thorn noticed several of the guards glancing quizzically at the Judge. After a few awkward moments, the Judge waved a hand and abandoned the issue. “I honestly expected I’d die millennia ago,” he said. “It’s a joke that I’m still here. If this is the end of my long reign, I might as well embrace it.”

Moonlight slid from the Judge’s feet up toward his face as he floated forward to join Thorn near the window. They gazed out upon their city together.

“I would have let you be good,” the Judge said. “If society had let me let you. You know, I don’t think any of us really want to be evil. We just live in an evil system where anyone who acts differently is shunned or ignored.” He sighed heavily. “But I’m a demon, Thorn. Through and through. All I’ve ever wanted was to be a badass and kick the Enemy’s butt when I could. So do you know what I say when change is introduced into the world I helped build? The change that you’ve been riding like the world’s tiniest wave?”

Thorn huffed, slunk downward, and curled his arms around his knees. He was in no mood for this taunting banter.

“In the face of such change,” the Judge continued, “I say, ‘Why the hell not?’”

Thorn glanced up in surprise at the sleazy demon in the V-neck suit, who flashed a devilish grin then flipped on his sunglasses and spoke in a murmur. “Fear not, Thorn. The Angel of Manatees is here to save you.”

“No whispering!” Wex yelled.

The Judge floated back toward the lead guard. “Sorry, sorry. I’m done here anyway. Let me out and I’ll go clip Marcus’s toenails or something.”

Wex obliged, untangling himself from the other demons. The Judge glanced back at Thorn, winked over the rim of his shades, then drifted away through moonlight and shadow.

•

Marcus felt annoyingly insignificant next to these great demon leaders from across the South and East. Next to him floated Blethmohn, from Augusta, whose knack for subtle perversions of familial relationships was legendary. Above the toilet hovered Gorhrum, the obscenely fat demon leader of New York City, who was a pig, completely unsubtle in every way; yet Gorhrum owned charges who ran the world’s largest child pornography network, and other charges who’d caused several nationwide financial recessions, so despite his base nature, demons across the world admired him. Even Shazakahn had stayed in town when Wanderer asked him to; he was perched above a towel rack, looking down on the rest of them. A dozen or so other demon leaders lurked around the ornate bathroom, at the top of an old Midtown high-rise condo that reminded Marcus of Cole’s condo from the Miami Sanctuary.

But all the greatness in the room was dwarfed by the one-winged demon in the shower, hovering over a pudgy man in his fifties. A sole light from overhead fell onto Wanderer’s shoulders, but his downturned face remained in shadow. His hands rooted about inside the naked man’s mind as the man relaxed under steamy water.

“This man is Gregory Cohn,” Wanderer said to the gathering of demons. “Mr. Cohn was the former Demon Judge of Atlanta’s prized charge. He’s sold toxic assets to unsuspecting investors, demeaned his underlings so he could rise to power, and created a small empire on the backs of the weak. Mr. Cohn is my kind of man.” Several of the demons snickered at this. “You all know how I like to put wicked people in power. And put wicked, loyal demons such as yourselves in power as well. We need to get more charges like Mr. Cohn here, and consolidate the world’s wealth and power with them.”

In truth, Marcus had been the one who’d won Mr. Cohn for Wanderer. Marcus had returned to Atlanta in the wake of Wanderer’s takeover and learned that the Judge’s most loyal followers had clustered around this esteemed banker as a last stand. And despite the injuries that Marcus had suffered at the hands of Thorn, Wanderer had sent Marcus to fight those followers off. Meanwhile, Wanderer himself entered the Bristol Sanctuary to deal with Thorn. And Thorn chopped off his left wing. Unbelievable.

Marcus was amazed that Wanderer had managed to slaughter that traitor Paxis and escape through a transit door with only one wing. A fresh stub now protruded from Wanderer’s clothing where the wing had been just hours before. Marcus’s own wounds were far from healed, but with Wanderer having lost a wing, he could scarcely gripe about his own pain.

Still, Marcus had fought hard to obtain this Gregory Cohn, so he felt he deserved to keep him as a charge. Wanderer should have had no claim to the man. Eons ago, when devils had outnumbered humans, competition amongst demonkind had been exceedingly brutal; Marcus had once seen twenty demons battling over a single man. Now that the human population had grown, about twenty people existed for every demon, and demons couldn’t possibly get to them all. The result was much less competition over any individual human.

But even though the harvest of humans was plentiful, Mr. Cohn was of a rare crop indeed. Marcus wanted him for himself, almost as badly as he’d wanted to know Thorn’s secret to entering physical space. Almost as badly as he’d been wanting to usurp Wanderer’s power for the last several thousand years.

Wanderer eased his hands out of Mr. Cohn’s mind, then drifted through the shower curtain into the company of the other demons. “My sources in Heaven tell me that for the first time in ages, the Enemy is mobilizing against us.” The demon leaders jeered, circling around Wanderer, some urging him to do battle with the Enemy once more. Wanderer gestured for them to be silent. “The angels didn’t spot me in the Sanctuary, so I know they’re not mobilizing because of my involvement. I believe they’re mobilizing because of Thorn. They want him dead—him and anyone he’s talked to. I tried to avoid this consequence, but someone…” He shifted his gaze onto Marcus. “Someone disappointed me, twice.”

Marcus glowered. He didn’t see how Wanderer could blame him for failing to kill Thorn when it was Wanderer who was now forcing Marcus to keep him alive.

And why were Brandon and Heather still so important to Wanderer? If Heaven had already declared war, why not just forget about them, kill Thorn, and end his slander? All other demons—including the elites in this room—would forget about the two measly humans in the face of a renewed war with Heaven anyway. Yet Wanderer insisted that Thorn be kept alive, and tortured, until he provided the location of the humans.

Wanderer continued: “I called you all here on such short notice as a contingency. We need to rally as many demons from as many cities as we can get. We need as many as can travel to Atlanta immediately. A new war with the Enemy is dawning, and its first battle will be waged here. And we will shock the Enemy with how strong we’ve grown since our last war. We will entomb Him beneath a mountain of the corpses of His angel slaves!” The demons cheered for Wanderer, and Marcus’s envy deepened. “Toward this end, I have begun my long-awaited yet inevitable ascent to greatness, and I have taken Atlanta for myself. The Judge has been brought low, and Thorn, of course, is imprisoned and waiting execution, which will happen once we locate those humans of his. So join me in terrorizing this city. Join me in—”

“Wanderer,” Gorhrum interrupted.

Wanderer spun toward the obese demon. “Gorhrum! You dare interrupt me, the leader of leaders?”

“I dare indeed,” Gorhrum said. “I was just wondering where your charge went off to so suddenly.”

He lifted a pudgy finger toward the shower, which was still turned on, steam rising from behind the curtain. But the bathroom door was open now, and Mr. Cohn was gone.

6

The broken bone in Brandon’s arm had looked ugly, all purple and swollen, but fortunately it wasn’t a serious break and didn’t require surgery. The doctors had injected some local anesthetic, which nestled Brandon into a relaxation that—after gritting his teeth against the pain for the past hour—felt positively transcendent. They’d then set the bones, bandaged the arm in a cast, and eased the cast into a sling. Over the course of the procedure, Brandon felt his heartbeat slow and his breathing return to a normal rate. Fatigue began to chisel away at his consciousness, and he realized he hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. Add in a wedding massacre, Dad’s death, and a plane crash, and it’s a wonder I haven’t passed out.

And what had caused that plane crash? To where had he stumbled in the darkness afterward? He remembered Virgil barking commands at him, and he remembered stumbling upon a radiant doorway in the darkness, but his brain was probably creating memories to explain his trauma. In time, a more accurate picture of the accident would likely form in his mind. Had he even crashed in a plane? Heather had said it was a plane, and so he’d told the doctors it had been a plane. But maybe it had been a car after all. Why was I flying my plane again? Was anyone else hurt?

The thought that Heather could be injured pushed back against the sedatives in his bloodstream and roused him to alertness. He stood.

“Whoa, there. Take it easy, fella.”

“Where’s my wife? Heather. Is she okay?” Brandon squinted to see the nurse against the harsh fluorescent lights.

“She’s just fine. A little scuffed up, but she came in here with you. Not sure where she ran off to, but I’m sure she’ll be back soon.”

Dark fog speckled Brandon’s vision. Dizziness forced him to sit back down.

“That’s it. You’re fine. Just relax. Can I get you anything?”

“Water would be nice.”

“Sure thing, dear. I’ll be right back.”

The bed beckoned, but Brandon was hesitant to lie back down, for fear that he might doze off. Before he let himself rest, he needed to know exactly what had happened.

Luckily, shortly after the nurse left, Heather peered around the doorframe and stole into the room like a runaway, glancing all around, her eyes awash with fear.

“What’s wrong?” Brandon asked.

“There are some police downstairs who want to talk with us,” Heather said. “We have to go.”

Brandon hefted himself off the bed, more gingerly this time. The dizziness wasn’t as bad now. “What do you mean we have to go? Let’s tell the cops what happened.”

Heather slung Brandon’s good arm over her shoulder. “Hon, can you trust me with something?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“We need to get out of this hospital. Now.”

“Why?”

“It’s not something I can explain. Not for a while. But we’re not safe here. I have a place where we can hide. Where you can rest.”

“I don’t do well taking things like this on faith,” Brandon said. He’d followed Virgil on faith last night, and the lunatic had nearly gotten them killed. He’d caused the plane crash! Hadn’t he?

“It’s not on faith,” Heather said as she led him toward the hallway. “I took vows to you. You know me, you know I love you. I have good reasons for not telling you what I know. I can tell you eventually—just not now. Can you be okay with that?”

Brandon idled. Seeing the pink light of dawn seep through the outer windows, and new doctors and nurses arriving for their shifts as their yawning colleagues departed, he marveled at how normal it all looked. This white-walled hospital appeared so innocuous, so mundane. No danger would assail him here, and he was so tired. Staying in his bed and talking to the police after he woke up seemed like the best option.

Nevertheless, he let Heather help him get his shirt and jacket back on. She led him downstairs, out a back door, down some concrete steps next to a loading dock, and away from the building. He never answered her question; he didn’t have the energy to protest. He’d have lain down here on the asphalt and slept if his wife had let him. Whenever he tried to think about what she’d said, or tried to analyze what was happening to him, a cloud of drowsiness blocked his efforts, lulling and dulling his mind into a childlike daze. I’ll go wherever you want to take me, hon, he thought. But let’s get there soon. Heather had promised safety, and safety sounded good. But the comfort of sleep sounded better.

As the sun rose, the newlyweds blended in with a steady stream of pedestrians and walked through the unfamiliar city. Brandon tried to convince himself he was in Charlotte, or even Seattle, but after fifteen minutes of not recognizing a single street or landmark, he let himself believe they were truly walking the streets of Atlanta.

They passed some brick houses, a power substation, and some hole-in-the-wall restaurants where the smells of sausages and pancakes woke Brandon up a little. In his disoriented state, he half-wanted to go in and try a bite. An American flag overhead snapped in the wind, brakes squeaked in the morning rush hour, and a metro train rattled on its tracks. Brandon’s internal clock protested as the sun rose steadily higher.

As Heather led him beneath a series of pedestrian skybridges, deep bells rung far away. Down one side street, Brandon glimpsed a hundred or more people waving signs and hollering slogans in the midst of a heated protest. Some kind of street preacher stood on a wooden box beside them, egging them on. Straight ahead, skyscrapers reached up past clouds and looked down on the demonstration with indifference.

And none of it mattered. Every brain, every dollar, every hope in this whole city amounted to nothing more than an arbitrary collection of particles, flung to the cosmic wind just as Brandon had been when his wedding reception was cut violently short. No purpose had been bestowed on these particles, these people bustling all around him, but in their naivety, they’d seized purpose for themselves, unaware that any struggle they took up was ultimately meaningless. They should all just go to sleep. We should all just go to sleep forever.

Heather stopped at an unseemly old apartment building just below a freeway. “This is the place,” she said as she checked the numbers above the doors. The humming and honking of the traffic above would threaten the slumber of any person on a normal sleep schedule, but Brandon had no doubt he’d drift right off once he laid down.

Heather helped him climb the stairs to an apartment on the second floor, then placed a key in the lock. Where’d she get that from? They stepped inside to find a quaint little place badly in need of upkeep. A mound of grimy dishes spilled over the edge of the sink, while stacks of paper and dirty clothes littered the floor. Most of the walls were blank, with only a few generic floral paintings lazily sprucing up the milieu. Across from a small TV set, sooty cigarette butts lay scatted across a table beside a sunken old couch. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a smoke.

Before Brandon could fully take in the space, Heather returned from the back rooms, carrying some clothes. He hadn’t even realized she’d left.

“You need to change out of that bloody tux,” Heather said. “We were drawing everyone’s attention on our walk here.” She handed him some blue jeans and a plain black shirt. “I think these are women’s clothes, but I tried to pick something gender-neutral for you.”

Heather inverted her blue frock up over her head, then changed into jeans and a T-shirt. Brandon swapped clothes too, and moved his wallet, keys, lighter, and cigarettes to the pockets of his new pants. As he changed, he noticed a leather jacket hanging on a rack by the door. The word “OUTLAWS” was emblazoned across its back, above the image of a skull crossed with two pistons. A matching motorcycle helmet lay on the floor beneath it.

Brandon sniffed the jacket. It smelled clean. He pulled it off the rack and slid it over his shoulders. Although he couldn’t fit his cast through the left sleeve, he was still glad for some warmth after the brisk air outside. And as he glanced in a mirror, he saw that the jacket did make him look slightly less odd in these clothes that had been fitted for a woman.

He turned to Heather. “What do you think?”

She eyed him doubtfully. “I think we should try calling our relatives.”

“I already tried that. My cell’s had no signal ever since we were in those dark hallways.”

Heather paced to the landline—they were lucky this apartment still had one—then snatched up the phone and dialed.

Thirty seconds passed. She tried dialing again, maybe another number this time. “Hello?” Heather said after a few seconds, surprise crossing her face. “Aunt Diane?”

Heather’s surprise gave way to disappointment, then confusion. She shook her head at Brandon in bewilderment. “Okay,” she said into the phone. “I’m sorry. I must have the wrong number. Thanks.” She hung up and stared at the crisscross pattern of tiles on the floor.

“Have you tried calling Karen?” Brandon said.

“He was right,” Heather muttered. “He was right about everything.”

“Who was right?”

Heather looked up at him. “No one. Let’s get some sleep.” She plodded toward the bedrooms, and Brandon noticed for the first time that her eyelids were sagging too.

“Whose place is this?” he asked.

“A friend’s. Come on. There’s a bed in the smaller room that we can share.”

•

Thick, soupy sleep tried to hold Brandon down, but the knocking at the front door reminded him—even in his dreamy state—that danger had been stalking him all night long. He wrenched his mind out from its slumber and tried to see through the bleary film separating him from his surroundings. Where was he again? Some apartment in Atlanta? Atlanta? And Tim was dead. But there was Heather, asleep on the bed next to him, breathing steadily. So she was okay. But his plane had crashed. How had he gotten here?

He stumbled out of bed and to the bedroom door. Another knock. With great effort, he put his left foot in front of his right, then his right in front of his left. He tried to steady himself with his left arm, but then saw that it was covered by a cast. This startled him, but he quickly recalled that his arm was broken.

After a minute of struggling against drowsiness, Brandon reached the front door, made sure it was locked, then peered through the eyehole. On the other side stood a man in his fifties with an average build; he appeared to be completely naked save for a pink bathrobe wrapped around him. Sweat covered the man’s brow where his receding hairline did not. He looked like he was panting after a hard run. “Helloooo?” he said. “Anyone in there?”

Brandon felt adrenaline kicking in. Remembering the events after his wedding last night, he was waking up fast. Who was this strange man at the door of this strange apartment? Could peril have followed him and Heather all the way to this new city?

“Who is it?” Brandon asked, his speech rasping from his dry throat. He swallowed to regain his voice, then shuddered to shake some of the fatigue out of him.

“Ah!” the man outside said. “Hi there. Are you Brandon?”

Brandon considered the question for a moment. “Tell me who you are first.”

The man outside seemed to consider Brandon’s question for an even longer moment. “Uh, people call me the Judge. I’m a friend of Thorn’s.”

The Judge? Thorn? What are those? Drug dealer handles? “I don’t know anyone named Thorn,” Brandon said.

“Thorn?” Heather said, rubbing an eye as she wound around the hallway from the bedroom. “Who said something about Thorn?”

“There’s a guy outside who says he knows someone called Thorn.”

Heather ran to the front door and pushed Brandon aside. “What’s the password?” she said, loud enough for the man in the bathrobe to hear her. Perplexed, Brandon peeked through the window blinds.

“The password is… ‘password’?” the Judge said, cringing while he said it.

“Nope,” Heather said. “You’re gonna have to leave.” She turned to Brandon and whispered, “Get ready. We might have to run for it.”

“No, hey, I’m here to save you,” the Judge protested. “Thorn’s stuck in prison and I need to use you two as a distraction. We can rescue him! Not that Thorn would agree with this strategy, but screw him. I can be the hero for a day.”

“Are you human?” Heather asked nonsensically. Brandon threw her an inquisitive glance, but she ignored it.

The Judge laughed a showy laugh. “Psh, of course I’m not human. This is my man Greg Cohn. Say hi, Greg.”

The man’s facial expression suddenly shifted to one of total panic. “Shit! What the fuck? Let me go, you alien fucker! If you think you can abduct—”

Abruptly, the man’s face relaxed again into an amused grin. “Greg thinks I’m an E.T., taking control of his body. Isn’t that just the best?”

“How’d you find us?” Heather asked through the door.

“Oh, Thornyboy’s had a little crush on this girl called Amy, so I thought I could use her to spring Thorn out. She turned out to be kind of knifed in the stomach, though, but I did hear her tell her mom not to go back to her apartment, which is, conspicuously, this apartment, of which you are not a resident. So I put two and two together like the clever cat I am. Now are you gonna let me in, or what?”

“Not unless you can tell me the password. If Thorn sent you, he’d have given you the password. Are there any more of you things around here?”

Brandon noted that Heather was eyeing the sliding glass door that led to the small balcony.

“Lock those doors,” she told him. Brandon accommodated her.

“There were two of them, but I came in while you were asleep and kicked their asses out. Come on. Time’s a-wastin’. I don’t know how long Marcus can resist killing Thorn when he’s got him right there under his thumb. Especially when he’s scared that some kook like me could just distract his guards and yank Thorn out through the walls.”

“I thought Thorn was in a physical body,” Heather said.

“What are you talking about, hon?” Brandon said, but she ignored him again.

“Eh, sometimes he is, sometimes he isn’t. It’s weird. Now please, for the last time, I need you to let me in so we can talk about a rescue plan.”

“Not gonna happen,” Heather said.

“Fine,” the Judge’s muffled voice came through the door. “Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll—”

•

For a moment less than a tenth of a second in length, Thilial dropped into the physical world to cushion Heather from the falling door. The Judge abandoned Cohn’s body, then sped past the wrecked hinges in the doorframe. He reached Brandon before Heather even hit the ground. He wrapped himself around his head, and—

God almighty! Is he trying to possess him? He hasn’t studied him. He doesn’t even know him! Given this, possessing Brandon would be extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Back in the angelic realm, Thilial rushed to Brandon and wrestled for control of his mind. But after the Judge easily settled inside of Brandon’s headspace, Thilial realized she’d only made the problem worse. Two sets of spiritual hands pulling at Brandon’s fatigued brain wrung it into submission faster than the Judge’s hands alone could have. Thilial half-wished she’d never found those two demon bodies in Amy’s hospital closet, so she could wash her hands of anything that happened here.

Four of her underlings had been guarding Amy’s room since midnight in hopes that Thorn would show up, and they certainly hadn’t put those bodies there. The dead demons’ presence left Thilial with a hunch that Thorn had visited Amy already. The angels must have just missed him—a mistake that would never have happened had Thilial continued to oversee Atlanta instead of rollicking around after Thorn in the Sanctuary. She cursed herself for her negligence.

Still, she was immensely grateful to God for sparing Amy. That was at least some consolation, no matter what happened with Thorn. Thilial had been getting to know Amy these past few months while watching Thorn’s interactions with the girl, satisfying her own morbid curiosity about Thorn’s circumstances. And it was a good thing, too. Had she not cared for Amy, she might not have stayed at the hospital to whisper words of reassurance to Amy, and she might not have been there when the Judge came barging into Amy’s room.

What are you doing, fool? Thilial had asked herself over and over again during her hasty flight here, chasing the Judge across town. You swore to Thorn himself that you’d never aid him again.

But Gleannor’s talk of warfare had frightened her, as did the suspicious murmurings of a coming war among Atlanta’s demon population. Despite Thilial’s hatred of demonkind, she did not want war. War would mean the deaths of untold multitudes of her own kind, and the neglect of as many humans. Besides, as Thorn had shown her last night… maybe not all demons were quite so bad. Thilial couldn’t bear to think that her own actions in the Sanctuary might lead, even if indirectly, to the extermination of all demonkind. And if Thilial was to prevent bloodshed, she needed allies. No angel she knew of would dare to assist her, and under God’s wary eyes, she would not dare to ask.

But Thorn could help her. With him handling the demons and Thilial handling God, and the two humans as evidence that all demons were living under an oppressive system of lies, maybe war could be avoided. It was a long shot, but maybe God could finally have the long talk with demonkind that He should have had ages ago.

But for the moment, Thilial couldn’t worry about any of that. She needed to keep Brandon safe from the maniacal Judge who’d just possessed him. She considered outright killing the Judge, but God would only punish her further for that, and the Judge was also a potential ally in her plight. But only potential: she didn’t trust him yet, and his manner was too haphazard to entrust with Thilial’s delicate responsibilities. Nevertheless, she needed to free Thorn from Marcus’s confinement just as much as the Judge did.

Brandon’s body convulsed and nearly fell as the Judge asserted imperfect control over it, breaking his own esteemed Second Rule. Brandon stabilized and looked up at Heather, who was dusting herself off, recovering from her fall.

“And I’ll blow your house down, muthafuckas,” Brandon said at the Judge’s behest, a wild simper on his face. He sprinted out through the front door.

Heather grabbed some shoes from beside the door and ran after him, down the stairs outside.

“Wait!” called Cohn, who was picking himself up off the concrete walkway at the top of the stairs. “Who are you? Did you probe me? You think you can just abduct my rich ass and walk away? Get back here!”

Thilial grimaced at the ridiculous situation, but she knew she’d have to help the Judge if he was to have any chance of success, and if the humans were to be kept safe. And her own chances of freeing Thorn would be greater with the Judge’s help. She rose into the sky above the apartment, spread her wings, then gave chase.

And so it was that the Judge, the beleaguered angel, the possessed flight instructor with the broken arm, his wife, and a half-naked banker all raced across Atlanta to go rescue Thorn.

7

A prisoner in his own body, Brandon strained for control. Sweat drizzled down his neck as he ran across the city, struggling even to breathe, since whatever had taken over his body seemed inattentive to Brandon’s basic bodily functions. And something was controlling him. For the first couple minutes, he’d taken his sudden involuntary movements as some sort of mental break resulting from his recent trauma and lack of sleep. But as his body sprinted relentlessly forward, he realized that he was still lucid, and he began to sense that someone else occupied his mind with him. He didn’t know who it was or how this was possible, but he could feel the foreign entity issuing commands, and he could only disobey those commands if he resisted with all his effort—a difficult prospect in his fatigued state. He couldn’t even turn his head to see if Heather was behind him, or how far. Thank goodness my arm is still numb from the hospital. And that I’m in decent shape. This run might have killed me otherwise.

Brandon’s feet took him past a huge stately building with a gold-colored dome and on toward a drab monolithic building with neatly landscaped lawn and shrubs but no other distinctive features. He tried to resist again, but he was drawn inexorably toward the structure’s entrance. Four pillars, each three stories high, supported a triangular pediment upon which the word “COURTHOUSE” was engraved. Brandon’s feet walked between a set of some sort of weeping trees, then beneath the imposing portico and inside the building.

He found himself in a small line of people waiting to pass through a metal detector. Three security officers stood around the machine: one instructing guests to place their belongings in a plastic tray, another officiating the person walking through the detector, and the last scrutinizing the contents in each tray from behind a computer monitor.

What the hell is this thing controlling me? And why is it taking me into a courthouse? Beneath his fear simmered a weariness of this ongoing string of surreal events. Were it not for the prospect of danger, Brandon would almost be tempted to accept this excursion as normal.

“Hey lady,” he heard himself say to the woman in front of him, who turned at his words. “I’m rrrrrrrunning late for a court hearing. Can I cut in front of you?”

Her gaze flitted downward for a moment, and when it rose again, she looked wary. “Sure…” she said, and eased around him.

Brandon felt the thing inside him growing anxious. His heart was still pounding as fast as when he’d been running outside. “Afraid Heather’s gonna catch up with us?” Brandon asked aloud—surprisingly—of his own volition. His body immediately tensed as the entity in his head tightened its hold on him.

“Excuse me?” the nearby security officer asked.

“I said,” Brandon said involuntarily, “I’m afraid the weather’s gonna catch up with us. I always hhhhhhhate when it rains on my… on my court dates. Yeah.”

The guard glanced outside at the perfectly sunny day, then tossed Brandon a skeptical nod. “Please place any loose items in the tray, sir.”

“Yeah, okay.” Brandon felt his right hand dig into his pocket and close over his wallet and his keys. He dropped them into the tray, which the officer then rolled beneath the scanner. The officer on the other side of the metal detector motioned Brandon forward.

As he passed through the detector, Brandon’s eyes caught something unsettling in the courthouse’s lobby. The air was stirring beneath the large lighting fixture in the center. Shimmering forms, each about the size of a person, drifted throughout the large room. He’d seen the same apparitions on his run here, but he’d taken them for heat waves… which made little sense, now that he thought of it, since the city was so cold today. What are those things?

The thing inside Brandon must have seen them too; he could feel its apprehension. “Don’t make a ruckus in here, kid,” Brandon’s own voice whispered, quietly enough that only he could hear. “They can’t sssssee me while I’m hiding in your noggin. Let’s keep it that way. If they rrrrrealize I’m in here, they’ll fuck you up just as mmmmuch as they will me.”

Brandon gave in to the thing’s control and decided to roll with the punches. It was as if the universe had homed in on Brandon’s nihilism and set out to convince him that he’d underestimated how absurd the universe actually was. Had one of the security officers suddenly started ranting about the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Brandon wouldn’t have batted an eye. Not that he’d have been able to bat an eye, with this thing controlling his most minute movements. He felt his lungs breathe in, then out, not quite fast enough to ease his shortness of breath.

The officers cleared Brandon, but they wore strange expressions as his hand gathered his wallet and keys again. Why are they looking at me so suspiciously? Can they sense that something’s wrong?

His feet stepped into the lobby, then quickly paced across it. After they rounded a corner to the left, Brandon found himself in a long hallway lined with windows to the outdoors. He clipped along down it, moving at least twice as fast as the other pedestrians. Most of the people here either wore the tight blacks and grays of professionals or the shabby, faded clothes of the poor—the lawmakers and the lawbreakers over whom they exercised their power.

“Don’t look now, kid, but the po-po are following us,” Brandon’s mouth whispered to him.

Instinctively, Brandon turned his head around. Indeed, two officers were trailing some distance behind him. One was looking right at Brandon, while the other spoke into the radio clip on her shoulder.

The thing jerked Brandon’s head back around. “I said not to llllllllook!”

Brandon’s body suddenly dropped to the floor and his head smacked against the linoleum. His arms shook with painful, uncontrolled spasms. “Augh!” he yelled to the thing. “Stop it!”

“It’s—not—not me!” his voice barely managed to say back to him.

The people around him had spread out, forming a circle of alarmed faces. The two officers broke into a sprint.

But just as quickly, Brandon was back on his feet. He pushed through the onlookers and ran for the next open area.

“Shit, shit, shit,” Brandon heard himself say. “I’m llllosing you, kid. Uh…” Brandon turned a corner and raced down a new hallway. A paralegal jumped out of the way, several case files spilling out of his arms and onto the floor. “Uh… if I disappear, just outrun the cops, then go up to the seventh floorrrrrrrrr, find the jail cell, and get inside somehow, okay? And tell any demons who pester you to fffffuck off.”

The shimmering entities—demons?—had caught on to the action. They were swirling all around Brandon as he careened into another entrance foyer. As disheveled as he must have looked by now, no one here paid much attention to him. The officers would arrive here momentarily though. He looked around for a way out, unsure if it was him or the thing controlling him that was doing the looking. Another metal detector stood by an entryway here, and the officers manning it were turning toward him now. He spotted an elevator about twenty feet away.

Brandon’s leg twitched, jerking sideways. He fell.

An arm caught him.

His torso spasmed, but then the being in Brandon’s mind reasserted its control. Brandon’s body stiffened, then stilled.

“Well hey there, sweet pea,” the woman who’d caught him said. “You almost had a nasty tumble.”

Brandon examined her. She appeared young, but frizzled graying hair tried to escape from the red bandana encircling her scalp. Peeling sunburn covered her skin, and one eyebrow was inexplicably missing. Her meth-stricken teeth—in the few places along her gums where she still had teeth—were almost as endearing as the tattoo of a winged motorcycle adorning her left arm.

The motorcycle jacket! Of course! Brandon had forgotten that he’d been wearing the Outlaws jacket this whole time. No wonder the officers had tailed him.

The biker woman raised her one eyebrow at him. “What’s a good-looking fella like you doing in a fussbudget place like this?”

“I’m, uh—I’m going to the elevatorrrr.” Brandon’s feet carried him toward it.

“Well what a kawinkydink! I’m headed upstairs too. Why don’t we ride together?”

Brandon’s finger pushed the button. Mercifully, the doors opened immediately. He slipped inside just before the officers who’d been chasing him ran into the room. The other officers by the metal detector were yelling at them.

He felt his body maneuvering so that as the woman walked into the elevator, she stood between him and the pursuing officers, who stopped in the center of the foyer, their gazes swiveling toward the elevator.

“That’s him!” Brandon heard a familiar voice call from the other side of the room. “There’s my husband! In the elevator!” From the line on the far side of the metal detector, Heather pointed.

Brandon felt himself grin, raise his hands, then wiggle his fingers in a dainty little wave. At the sight of Heather, hope welled inside him. But then the doors closed, and his finger hit the button for the seventh floor.

•

Thilial rocketed across the Atlanta skyline, so fast that other angels gaped at her from the ground. She had scant time to waste. The Judge. What an idiot.

She swept downward into the hospital where Amy was recovering, traversing eleven stories in a single second. She reached Amy’s room and jerked to a stop.

Shelley was sliding a piece across a board game set up on Amy’s bed. Amy lay on her back, her head turned to survey the game board. She looked lucid, which was good; Thilial couldn’t work with her if she had too many drugs dulling her neural connections.

“Report back to the quarantine zone,” Thilial said as calmly as she could to Amy’s angel guards. “You’re being reassigned. I’ll take over this post for the time being.”

The angels nodded and departed.

Two idiot demons hovered above the girls, whispering foul suggestions of rivalry—as if the girls’ friendship could be ruined by playing a board game. “She’s more skilled than you,” one of them said. “You can play this all day, but you’ll never outsmart her. You’re not good enough at this, or at anything.”

Thilial rushed into Amy’s mind and stretched for control. “Don’t worry, Amy,” Thilial said. “Stay calm.” Amy’s mind protested, but in seconds, Thilial had full control of her body. Even as Thilial expropriated Amy, she regretted that she couldn’t think of a plan better than the Judge’s same scheme: possessing a human in order to influence the physical world. If another angel found out about this, Thilial could very well be locked up with Karthis and his like. That won’t happen though. I’ll be careful. I’ll be safe. She tried not to think about how deeply betrayed God would feel if He knew she was doing this.

“Shelley,” Thilial said through Amy.

“What’s up?”

“Did you get your car back?”

“Uh, it’s missing a window, but yeah, the cops gave it back.”

Thilial flung the sheets off of Amy, unhooked her IV and electrode monitors, then gingerly stepped out of bed with her, taking care to move her injured stomach as little as possible.

“What are you doing?” Shelley said, rising.

“Get back here!” one of the demons said. “Finish your board game! You have nothing better to do!”

“Come back!” the other yelled. “We control you! You do as we say!”

Thilial ignored them all and paced toward the door. “Grab your keys,” she made Amy say to Shelley. “We’re going for a ride.”

•

The most innocuous possible smooth jazz music fizzled out of the speaker in the elevator’s ceiling as Brandon and the biker woman rode upward. For the first two floors, Brandon and the thing in his head stared straight ahead. He didn’t say a word. Neither did the woman. Then:

“I get it. I really do. You runnin’ from your lady. She done you wrong, and you runnin’. Maybe lookin’ for someone else to warm your sheets.”

Thankfully, Brandon’s mental driver steered him away from a conversation. Brandon said nothing. Another floor passed.

“So, you like to ride bikes, huh? What else do you like to ride?”

Brandon cringed internally as he felt his mouth open. “Look, if I hhhhad a sex drive, I’d be very interested in you. But I absolutely do not have one.”

The woman seemed unfazed by the deflection. “You a one percenter?” she said. “You like to do the tuck all down the freeway? Twist the wick with a cushy back warmer on your bitch pad?”

“I, uh, I don’t know what that mmmeans. But you’re a lovely person. Really.”

“You got a little crotch rocket or one of them big, big cruisers?”

“I’m gay.”

Silence for a few moments. Brandon didn’t dare turn back to the woman, and neither did the entity in his head. The elevator doors opened.

Brandon’s body immediately sprinted out of the elevator, down one hallway, then another, past a few startled legal workers. Whatever was compelling him, it knew where it was going.

But as it turned him down a third hallway, he saw two security officers running toward him. “Ah, dammit!” his voice said. He was spun around, and then he was flying through a series of back offices, past desks, filing cabinets, a coffee machine, and more objecting workers. He soon turned back onto what looked like the main artery of this floor, ran down it to a large set of wooden double doors, and flung them open.

He was in a courtroom—a rather large courtroom. Rows of seats stretched forward from the back doors to the trial area. They were empty save for a few seats at the front, where spectators sat watching the trial.

“Objection!” he heard his own voice call out. Soft murmuring spread through the room as the jury and spectators turned to see the newcomer. Brandon tried to apologize and leave, but the thing in his head wouldn’t let him.

As he trotted toward the judge’s bench, his arm frantically swatted away the shimmering shapes in the air around him; they swooped at him every few seconds. The judge, an imperial-looking woman with posture as straight as her robe was black, bolted upright. “What is the meaning of this?” she barked.

Brandon’s body hopped over the barrier between the gallery and the main courtroom, prompting a pudgy old bailiff—well into what should have been his retirement years—to advance on him. Brandon’s fist punched the man square in the nose. The bailiff fell backward. Several gasps escaped from the audience.

“That’s right, I’m crrrrrrrazy!” Brandon’s mouth said. “I’m crazy, crazy, crazy!”

“Someone!” the judge called as she backed around her bench. “Restrain that biker man!”

A rugged-looking guy who’d been sitting in the witness stand, and who wore a white jumpsuit stamped with “DEPT. OF CORRECTIONS,” jumped down and assumed a fighting posture. Brandon’s feet ran the other way.

A quick glance behind him revealed that most of the spectators had left their seats and were fleeing the room. The prosecution and the defense were packing up their documents in a frenzy. Brandon got a brief glimpse of more security officers fighting the crowd, trying to enter the courtroom, then his body spasmed again and he crashed to the carpet.

He cried out when his left shoulder hit the ground. Even with the numbing medication, he felt the jolt to his broken arm. The prisoner took the opportunity to lunge at him, reaching for his cast, but Brandon’s leg kicked him. As the man recoiled, Brandon regained his feet.

The people were retreating quickly, but the air was growing thick with shimmering shapes.

“Gah! Get away frommmm us!”

Brandon’s hands swatted at the air again. His feet carried him toward a door in the side of the room, but three more bailiffs ran through it, toward him. “Gah!” His body twisted around, then his feet bounded toward a door at the very back of the room, behind the judge’s bench. “All you humans and demons can kiss my ethereal ass!” Brandon heard himself shouting. “You can go tell Marcus, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck yooooooouuuuuuu!”

He ran into the jury room, then beyond.

•

Marcus was floating down Edgewood Avenue with some of his followers, stewing internally over Wanderer’s condescension toward him, when a lone demon—Renthor, Marcus thought his name was—pitched down from the sky toward him.

“Marcus!” Renthor called, his voice panicked. “Marcus! Chaos at the court! The Judge has possessed someone and is terrorizing the humans there! We tried to stop him, but the court demons won’t let us. He’s their old leader, so they think it’s funny that he’s sunk so low! They want to watch his madness like it’s entertainment!”

Marcus darted forward toward the courthouse. His followers and Renthor kept pace.

“He’s there for Thorn,” Marcus said. “Send half our forces to Thorn’s cell. Send the other half to the first floor.”

“The first floor? Why?”

“Have them form a grid with their bodies. They need to create a barrier so that Thorn and the Judge can’t escape underground.”

“Very well, half to the first floor, the other half to guard Thorn.”

“No, you halfwit! Not to guard Thorn. To kill him!”

Wanderer’s plans be damned.

•

Thorn heard the distinctive sizzle of a taser outside his holding cell, followed by a human scream. A key jiggled in the door’s lock. Thorn’s captors were caked around him, three of them holding each limb and Wex holding his head, ready to twist it full around rather than lose his prisoner. The rest of the demon guards had flooded the space between Thorn and the physical cell door. Some of them grunted in anticipation, and others outright taunted their unseen adversary on the other side of the door. Bloodlust burned in their eyes. Like most devils, they rarely got the chance to kill, much less kill a fellow demon.

It was into this inimical environment that Brandon strode, his shoulders tilted back in such a lazily self-assured posture that Thorn knew the Judge was possessing him even before he poked his own bewildered face out in front of Brandon’s.

The Judge scanned the room and all its demon guards, who waited for Wex’s order to attack. “Why are they all still here?” the Judge said.

“Why is Brandon here?” Thorn replied, trying to ignore Wex’s grip on his head. What little of his morale remained now left him as he tried to piece together the Judge’s delusional plan. “You brought Brandon right to Marcus’s doorstep? Is that what all this commotion has been about?”

“I needed a distraction so I could bust you out!”

“You’re not supposed to cause the distraction right next to the thing you want to distract from!”

The Judge knotted his eyebrows and leaned his head sideways. A few of the guards mirrored his curious head movement. “Balls,” he said.

The Judge’s grasp on Brandon’s mind slowly relaxed, and the human eased down to his knees. His body spasmed as the Judge left him entirely. He started gasping for air, likely because his lungs had been receiving scant orders to breathe from a foreign mind for the last half hour.

“Well, at least we can hide you inside Brandon now,” the Judge said to Thorn. “No one will know!”

“Except for the hundred other demons in this room!” Thorn said. He couldn’t believe he’d ever wanted the Judge on his side. What an idiot. Were Thorn not weak and wounded from having been tortured, the Judge would have more to fear from him than from the guards.

Someone flew through the outward-facing wall at high speed. He stopped to orient himself, and Thorn saw that it was another demon. Some kind of runner?

“Kill him!” the new demon shouted to Wex. “I’ve just come from Marcus. He orders you to kill Thorn!”

Thorn felt Wex’s hands clench, viselike, around his head…

But if Wex ripped his head off, Thorn didn’t feel it. He was too stunned by Amy, who suddenly peeked her head around the frame of the cell door. The mere sight of his most precious charge in this hostile place thrust him into an ocean of confusion. “Amy?”

“Thorn, hi.”

“What are you doing here?”

She shuffled farther into the room, her face pallid, her eyes sunken yet alert. She held her hands against the front of her hospital gown and the wounds beneath. Thorn rose and ran to her, so taken by Amy’s presence that he barely noticed he’d escaped his captors. Brandon continued coughing on the ground nearby.

“I’m Thilial, you nitwit,” Amy said, her voice straining to sound strong. “You’re in the physical world now. Run.”

•

Thilial arced up out of Amy’s body and down into the demon realm, brandishing Fear, her ancient sword. The demon guards, who had been desperately grabbing at the suddenly out-of-reach Thorn, now desperately retreated through the floor, walls, and ceiling. Thilial slew five of them before the room was empty, then turned her weapon on the Judge, who still hovered by the door. He curled up and shielded himself with his arms. When she didn’t strike him, he peered warily out from behind his fingers.

“Thank you?” he said.

Two demons zoomed through a wall. One struck Thilial in the gut. The other tried to grab her head, but she hewed him in half before he could touch her. Then she spun and speared the first demon.

Thorn shouted something at her, but a third demon attacked, and Thilial didn’t hear him. Before Thilial could kill the demon, a dozen more of them were in the room with her, seemingly undeterred by her sword.

“Hang on, sugar tits, I got you covered!” the Judge called as he leaped into the fray. Two demons immediately tackled him. Thilial tried to slice them off of the Judge without slicing him.

“Not me, you fool!” Thilial shouted at the Judge. “Thorn and the humans! Get them and get out of here!”

The Judge slammed a fist into a demon’s face, then nodded at Thilial. He flew down through the floor.

Dozens more demons flooded into the room. They bit at her, clawed at her. She struggled to keep her sword in her hands, much less fight with it. “I’m trying to help you!” she yelled at the horde. “I’m trying to stop a war!”

“The only war you’ll be stopping today,” said a voice from behind Thilial, “is your own.”

The demon mob surrounding Thilial faded into muted sepia tones. Their hands went straight through her body, and she realized she’d been pulled back up into the angelic realm. She turned to find Gleannor looking down at her.

•

The fire went out of Amy’s eyes and she swayed precipitously, so Thorn gently placed his hands on her shoulders to steady her. “Amy? Are you okay?”

“I—wha—” She blinked. “Where am I? How’d I get here?”

Thorn cursed under his breath, then turned to the room behind him. Seconds ago the room had been filled with demons. Now it appeared empty, save for Brandon.

“You dare draw Amy into this mess?” Thorn shouted to Thilial, who was likely still in the room, albeit invisible to him. “You dare endanger my charge?”

He turned back to Amy. “How’s your injury? Is it bleeding?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“We’re in a courthouse a few blocks away from your hospital. Don’t worry. I’ll get you back there.”

Thorn heard a door fling open somewhere close. Several pairs of feet pounded down the hallway outside the cell.

“Thilial, Judge!” Thorn called. “If you can hear me, make sure the humans escape. They’re the imperative, not me!” Hopefully Thilial will keep the Judge in line.

Thorn coaxed Amy back into the cell with him, past Brandon. Color was just starting to return to the boy’s face. He looked up at Thorn with an expression of utter bafflement.

“Who are you?” he said.

“ON THE GROUND!” Security officers, guns raised, streamed into the room. Brandon yowled as he was pressed to the floor face-first, lying on top of the broken arm that the sling hung in front of his body. One officer kneeled on his back and clutched his good arm to restrain him. Behind them, several bailiffs entered, until a total of eleven humans surrounded Brandon.

When they saw that he was calm and under control, their attention shifted to Thorn. “Who are you?” an officer said.

Thorn kept a protective arm around Amy, whose eyes were wide and scared. He sensed demons in the spirit world scratching at his mind, intimidating him, but he tried to ignore their efforts. After glancing down at his own physical body, at the fine-tailored suit that costumed it and the black satin tie knotted perfectly around his neck, Thorn raised his gaze back up to the officers. He prepared to do what he did best.

“I’m this boy’s attorney,” Thorn lied with feigned offense. “And I’m appalled that you would treat him in this fashion in a sanctioned court of law.”

The officers exchanged incredulous glances with each other. “What are you doing in here?” asked the officer with a knee on Brandon’s back.

Thorn imagined that the Judge must have caused quite a commotion on his way in—Thorn had heard part of it from this cell—so he said, “My client requires daily antipsychotic medication, which he has not been taking due to his severe anxiety disorder, which was exacerbated by the subpoena sent to him by this court. I talked personally with Judge Beasley on this matter, and I explained to her that my client’s mental stability could not be guaranteed at a court hearing. But she refused to rescind the subpoena. So when I arrived with my client, the officer downstairs saw his Outlaws jacket and unfairly singled him out for a body search, which triggered my client’s psychotic break. He ran up here to see this young woman, his little sister Amy, who is here on loan from Grady Memorial to testify in the same case. The guards outside overreacted, tried to stun him and shut him inside this cell, and my client was forced to defend himself. If you have any further questions, I suggest you take them up with Judge Beasley. Or would you like your names mentioned in our lawsuit as well?”

Thorn kept his gaze stern, hoping they’d buy the ruse. For all the Judge’s shortcomings, he’d have been far better than Thorn at speaking legalese.

But perhaps Thorn’s attempt was good enough. Upon hearing his explanation, some of the guards loosened their posture, and a few even holstered their guns. “We didn’t receive any word that an unstable witness was scheduled to testify today,” the first officer complained. “Both he and the girl are parties to a proceeding?”

“Yes,” Thorn said blindly.

“Which proceeding?”

Thorn probed his memory for any information about the courthouse’s ongoing trials. “The Cohn trial,” Thorn guessed. The man was always involved in one lawsuit or another.

The officer sighed. “I assume you’ll be requesting a continuance?”

“Indeed I will.”

“Well we’re still gonna have to talk to your client for a few minutes. Come with us.”

Trying not to wince at the thought of a police interrogation, Thorn turned to Amy. “Are you okay to walk?”

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell.”

“Do you want me to leave you here? The police will take you back to the hospital.”

She eyed the grim-faced officers in their sweat-stained uniforms. “No, I’d rather stay with you, if that’s okay.”

“It is. Let’s take it slow, though.”

Thorn guided Amy over to Brandon, who cringed as an officer pulled him to his feet. Most of the officers dispersed, speaking reassurances to the loud voices on their radios as they departed. Two officers fell in beside Thorn as they followed the one escorting Brandon toward a back elevator.

And naturally, now that Thorn had the situation almost under control, Heather stepped out of that elevator.

“Brandon!” She ran to him, hugged him, taking care to avoid his left arm. “Why are these guards here?”

Brandon opened his mouth but said nothing, apparently lost for words.

Heather spotted Thorn. “You. What’s happening?”

“Ma’am, what is your involvement with this man?” the officer holding Brandon asked.

“I’m his wife. What’s going on?”

The officer threw a brief, leery glance at Thorn before responding to Heather. “Does your husband have a history of psychotic episodes?”

“No,” Heather said.

“They both do,” Thorn said simultaneously.

“They both do?” said the officer.

“Officer Prescott!” a voice called from down the hallway before the officers could respond to Thorn’s lie. Thorn turned to find Judge Beasley, who’d been one of the Judge’s favorite charges due to her obscenely strict “tough on crime” stance, hurrying toward them in her customary black robe. “Officer Prescott, I see you have the man under control now. What exactly just happened in there?”

Officer Prescott glanced skeptically at Thorn again, then back to Beasley. “This attorney talked with you about it before the trial, didn’t he?”

Beasley examined Thorn. “I’m sorry, I can’t recall. You are…?”

Prescott turned to Thorn as well. “Yeah. What’d you say your name was again?”

Thorn dithered. “My name is… uh…”

Thorn grabbed Prescott’s hands and squeezed them as hard as his human body could manage. He held on tight until the hands let go of Brandon. Then Thorn shoved Prescott into Beasley. They both yelped as they went down.

Another officer grabbed Thorn from behind. Heather stepped in and socked him across the face. The last officer drew his firearm, but Thorn snatched it from him before he could aim. The officer ran, and Thorn fired two warning shots into a window. Employees in nearby offices screamed and took cover behind their desks.

“We need backup at room 771,” said Prescott into his shoulder-mounted radio as he dragged a flustered Beasley behind a desk. “Shots fired, shots fired. Request backup outside room 771. Suspect is armed, wearing a suit and a black tie. Accomplice in an Outlaws biker jacket. A woman with them—”

Thorn snapped off a shot in the direction of Prescott, but he aimed at the tall office plant next to him rather than at Prescott himself. Then he signaled for his human companions to follow him as he walked sideways toward the elevator.

Amy was the last one in. Thorn repeatedly jammed his thumb down on the “door close” button. He held his breath and muttered what might have been a prayer. After a few tense moments, the door slid shut.

All four of them exhaled simultaneously. Thorn switched the safety on the gun and slid it under his belt, keeping the weapon as a precaution, although he didn’t plan on hurting anyone. “They’ll be waiting for us downstairs,” he said.

“What should we do?”

Thorn thought through his options, of which there was precisely one. He was unwilling to sacrifice anyone in this elevator. That is, anyone but myself. “I’ll make a run for it,” he said. “They’ll focus on me. Wait five seconds, then try and sneak out.” Thilial was somewhere out there, apparently on Thorn’s team now. He hoped that even if his own life was lost, he could rely on her to rescue the humans. Then later, perhaps she would take up his cause and search for a way to end the Enemy’s deception. Or maybe that’s just my own wishful thinking in a moment of desperation.

Thorn continued: “If the cops capture you, the demons will have you right where they want you, so don’t let that happen. You’ll have to find a covert way out of the city, preferably out of the state, before the demons find a way to kill you.”

Heather nodded, but Brandon scowled. “Demons? What the hell is going on right now?” he said, and Thorn remembered that no one had explained anything to him yet.

“I don’t want to die again,” Amy said meekly.

Thorn grimaced at her poignant statement. Huddled in the corner of the elevator with her hands on her stomach, she looked like a lost puppy in a snowstorm. Hopefully after today she’d live a peaceful life, free from the crucibles of devils and gods.

“Amy, I want you to go back to the hospital,” Thorn said. “No one is after you. You’ll be fine no matter what happens to the rest of us.” And I take much solace in that.

Amy smiled. “Good luck. I’d hug you if it wouldn’t break open my stomach.”

Thorn smiled back. The elevator continued to descend, from the fifth floor, to the fourth, to the third. Fortunately no passengers were waiting at any of these potential stops. No alarm sounded, but perhaps the building had still been locked down.

“Was that biker chick hitting on you?” Heather asked Brandon.

Brandon frowned and shook his head. “Yeah.”

“Take off that goddamned jacket, hon.”

“Yes!” Thorn said. “Quick. Give the jacket to me.”

Brandon slid his right arm out of the jacket and held it out for Thorn with his good hand. Thorn’s stomach lurched as the elevator’s downward momentum ceased. He pulled the Outlaws jacket on over his suit just as the elevator clicked into place on the ground floor. Brandon and the two girls pressed themselves against the walls.

The doors slid open.

Thorn shot out of the elevator at a breakneck pace. A bullet hissed over his shoulder so close that he could hear it slice the air. He darted around a corner and wound through another of the endless identical hallways this building seemed to have. More security guards spotted him in seconds.

“Hey, you! Stop right there!”

Thorn kept running until he reached a lobby. It was about a hundred feet wide, with a metal detector at the far end and an information desk lining the side. Humans stood in line at both locations—the building hadn’t been locked down yet.

Thorn bolted for the exit.

The officers on his tail poured into the room after him. “Everyone on the floor! You running! Stop now or we will open fire!”

Thorn tried to run faster, but he was unaccustomed to his own body performing the strange motions required for running. He’d fled less than halfway across the lobby when he heard the officers’ shoes squeak on the linoleum floor behind him—stopping to get a better shot, he knew. The humans waiting in line in front of him had all dropped to the ground. The security guards at the metal detector were crouched and fumbling for their weapons. Just five more seconds and I can make it out…

A volley of gunshots burst from behind Thorn, whizzing through his body and buffeting the metal detector in front of him. Thorn’s legs lost contact with the ground, though he hadn’t stopped moving them. When he glanced down to check his bullet wounds, he found that he had none. The ground was speeding by beneath his feet, as if gravity had suddenly fled from the room. He looked behind him and saw Brandon’s Outlaws jacket fluttering and his own gun clattering to the ground.

Above these items, a horde of a thousand furious demons opened like the maw of a single giant organism, reaching out to swallow Thorn. A lattice of demons were in the process of locking limbs across the floor, preventing Thorn from escaping underground—an ancient demonic battle tactic that Thorn hadn’t seen used combatively in ages. As the demon swarm closed in, Thorn almost decided to retreat back toward Amy, so that she’d trigger his reentry into physical space. But for the sake of her safety, he turned back to the outer wall and zoomed upward. The demons were forming another lattice along the building’s walls, but Thorn was moving too quickly. He surged up through several more stories, dodged through his adversaries, and emerged into the sun.

•

The crazy guy in the suit who claimed to be Brandon’s lawyer booked it out of the elevator. Somebody shot at him, but he kept running. He’d told them to try and sneak out, but Brandon didn’t see how that was possible. Several security officers were knelt with guns trained on the elevator. From both sides of the door, two more officers spun around and aimed weapons at Brandon.

“We give up,” Brandon said simply. “We surrender.” He looked at Heather to make sure she agreed with him. She sighed in disappointment and nodded.

“Out into the hallway. All three of you.”

Brandon stepped out and saw that some officers were still trying to clear pedestrians out of the area. They were focused especially on one group of twenty, all wearing relatively tacky or threadbare garments—obviously not the crowd who worked here. They were all huddled around someone at their center.

Heather noticed them too. “Is that the guy who was knocking at the apartment?” she said.

Brandon looked closer, and sure enough, the man in the pink bathrobe with the receding hairline who called himself the Judge—or was it Cohn?—stood at the center of the crowd. His hands were full of money, and he was passing it out freely.

The guards tensed as the crowd drew closer. The two near Brandon moved behind him.

“A thousand for you, and a thousand for you, and a thousand for you,” Cohn was saying, a smile shining across his face. “Bless you, my peeps. Take it all. I don’t want it anymore. I’m a changed man. You all need this more than I do.”

His blue-collar assembly hooted and clamored for more of his cash. “Everyone, you need to leave this area, now!” yelled one of the officers, but even his loud voice couldn’t carry over the hubbub. As the gathering passed Brandon and the women, Cohn stepped discreetly up to them.

“Would you two like some money?” he said as the indigent folks reveled around him.

“Sir, we have a situation here,” said the officer behind Brandon. “I’m gonna ask you to please leave the area.”

Cohn responded by punching him in the face. Hard. He jabbed the other guard in the stomach, then kicked both men after they’d fallen. Amy yelped, but the crowd’s presence had hidden the beating from the views of the other officers.

“Damn right we have a situation,” Cohn said to the incapacitated men on the floor. Then he addressed Brandon and Heather. “Blend in with the crowd, okay? Be leaves on the wind.”

Cohn turned his back to them, flung all his money up into the air, and squawked at the top of his lungs, “I have a grenade! I have a grenade, and a bazooka, and nerve gas, and some darts! And I’m gonna blow us all up!” He cackled maniacally.

Wads of bills in their hands, the people around him screamed and ran erratically. Cohn himself sprinted down a hallway unguarded by security officers.

Brandon looked to Heather for guidance.

“You heard the man,” she said. “Blend in.”

•

Thorn dived into an apartment complex. The many stories rushed past him so quickly that all he could see were brief glimpses of the startled demons inside—the lower-class demons who hadn’t been told about the excitement at the court, most likely. He abruptly stopped at the first floor when he saw that demons had latticed the ground beneath him again. Damn! They reached up to grab him, so he took off. There aren’t enough of them to keep this up forever. But Thorn wasn’t sure he could keep the chase alive much longer either. Everywhere he fled, the demons swarmed after him, closing in, a living cloud of corruption.

He spiraled out of the apartment building, intersected a church’s bell tower, then spun around toward the court’s parking garage. Hundreds of people were running across the street away from the courthouse. Security officers shepherded them, and Thorn could hear sirens in the distance.

He dodged two demons who tried to attack him head on. He scanned the crowd. Come on, come on, please tell me you guys made it out okay.

There! He spotted a black luxury sedan parked crookedly on the sidewalk. Heather was just climbing in.

Thorn pushed his wingless body as fast as it would go, fending off demons left and right, above and below as he zigzagged his way toward the car. Even before Heather slammed the door behind her, the sedan’s wheels spun violently, scattering grass and dirt from the road verge across the evacuees behind it. The car bounded off the curb, its tires squealing when they hit the asphalt.

Thorn identified Gregory Cohn in the driver’s seat, his window rolled down. Huh? Did the Judge steal him back from Marcus?

As Thorn approached behind the car, his suspicions proved accurate. Cohn glanced out the open window and shouted, “Well hey, Thorn! Déjà vu!”

“Look out!” Thorn yelled. The sedan swerved to avoid a garbage truck passing in front of it. It caromed off of the truck’s rear, shearing off one of the car’s side mirrors, then righted itself back in the center of the road, past the red light it had just driven through.

“Do you even know how to drive?” Thorn called ahead, ducking beneath a web of twenty latticed demons flying at him.

“How hard can it be?” the Judge said.

Where the hell is Thilial? The Judge can’t handle this by himself!

“Thorn!” Marcus’s voice boomed from somewhere in front of them. Thorn looked up. Two blocks ahead, a wall of demons was coalescing, ten stories high, and likely far underground as well. The massive horde from the courthouse bore down on him from behind, ever closer, and a steady cluster of demons continued to fly beneath him, ensuring he couldn’t retreat under the earth. “You’re through, Thorn!”

Thorn feared what would happen to the humans if the demons nabbed the Judge and the car suddenly found itself being driven by a disoriented Cohn. He brought himself forward to hover directly above the sedan as it sped inexorably toward the demon wall. “Stop the car!” Thorn yelled. “Tell the humans to run for it!”

“Hell no! We’re gonna ram ’em!”

Ram them? The Judge truly was a lunatic. Thorn had to gain control of that car. He’d have to try to possess Brandon or—

“Who are you talking to?” Amy’s soft voice came from the car. “Is Thorn outside?”

Thorn had half-forgotten that Amy was inside the car, too. At the sound of her voice, he felt pangs of affection and protectiveness, each as potent as the other. And by now, Thorn knew exactly what would happen to him as a result of those feelings.

“Oh, fu—!”

The wall of demons vanished in an instant. Gravity jerked Thorn’s newly physical body downward and slammed it against the roof of the car. He flailed for purchase.

Police sirens blared. As Thorn struggled for a grip, he glimpsed a police cruiser just three blocks away, screeching through a sudden turn toward the Judge’s car. Its sirens screamed even louder as it sped toward them.

“Don’t worry, I’ll lose ’em!” the Judge said, and the sedan veered sideways—right into a chain-link fence. The fence flattened under the force of the impact, and Thorn clenched his hands against the grooves above the driver’s side window, struggling to keep from being yanked off of the car.

The car bounced across a dilapidated abandoned lot, half full of cracked concrete, half full of rutted clumps of brown grass.

“Can—you—do—any—thing—right?” Thorn yelled from bump to bump.

“I can possess a human really damn well!” the Judge said. “Look at Brandon. Not a scratch on him!”

The car crashed through the fence on the other side of the lot, flinging Thorn two feet upward as the car hurtled over the gnarled metal. When he crashed back down to the roof, he heard Brandon shout in pain inside the car.

“You are supposed to save these humans, you know,” Thorn said.

“Chillax, I’m a professional.”

“Clearly. Are there any demons at the MARTA entrances we’ve been passing?”

“No, but there’s a Hindenburg’s worth of them coming up behind us and—Shit!”

The Judge swerved right, down a back alley between two buildings. Thorn nearly fell off this time.

“What was that?”

“Demons! I just got past that big wall of ’em. I think.” He called backward as they sped out of the alley: “That’s what you get for judging the Judge! Ha ha!”

“Turn into the MARTA station three blocks ahead. Down the stairs so no one can see us.”

“You want me to drive into a subway station?”

“Do it!”

The tires screamed and kicked up smoke as the Judge halted the car by the stairs leading down into the MARTA station. The humans screamed just as loudly when Thorn fell down across their windshield.

“Sorry,” he said, grasping at the wipers for stability.

The Judge turned the car toward the stairs and edged it forward. The sedan jounced and bucked as it pitched downward. A group of five humans at the bottom ran for cover.

“Okay, stop here,” Thorn said when the car had descended just below street view. The Judge stopped the car, sending Thorn sliding down the hood and off the front end. He landed on his feet. “Get out! Quick!”

The humans obliged. Amy groaned and clutched her stomach as she stumbled out of the passenger door. Thorn felt guilty for being the cause of her pain, but he had no time for sentiment. “Hurry down the stairs and get on a train. You only have a few minutes before the police catch on—less than that for the demons. Get off at the next stop, get new clothes, get Amy back to the hospital. Then meet us at the Oakland Cemetery at five o’clock. Go. Now!”

Heather helped Amy down the stairs while Brandon ran ahead underground. Thorn turned back to the Judge, still in Cohn’s body in the sedan’s driver’s seat. “Now back up! Fast!”

The Judge shifted into reverse while Thorn charged up the stairs toward the car. When it stopped up on the road, he grabbed at the handle to open the passenger door, but his hand went straight through it. Amy must have walked far enough away that Thorn had fallen back into the spirit world. What is it about that girl that shifts me between the realms?

Thorn drifted into the Judge’s car and kept pace with it as it accelerated forward. Two police cruisers raced around a turn onto the street behind it, and myriad demons came with them. In fact, thousands of demons now dotted the city’s skyline. Word had spread, no doubt, and the leeches wanted to locate the action so they could suckle at any death that resulted from it. Well, you won’t find any death today, boys. Fortunately, none of the demons seemed to notice the humans’ absence. None broke off to enter the metro station.

“Judge, we’re far enough out from the main horde now. They’re not below us anymore. We can escape underground.”

“Not without Cohn! I spent eight years getting this guy. I’m sure as hell not letting Marcus steal him again.”

“You don’t have a choice. Now come on!”

“I can outrun them all. Don’t worry. I’m a—” The car nearly spun out as the Judge pulled it around a tight corner. Its back tires fishtailed wildly on the asphalt as he struggled to correct its course. “I’m a professional?”

The Judge hit the gas and the car zoomed toward the upper level of an overpass. “We can escape with our lives!” Thorn said. “Don’t be foolish. They’ll catch us if we stay in the car.”

“They’ll catch us? Is that right? Well watch this.”

They reached the overpass. The Judge wrenched the steering wheel and the car veered right, shattering the concrete barrier lining the overpass. The sedan vaulted over the edge.

Thorn winced, grateful that he couldn’t feel the effects of inertia or gravity. As the car fell into some sort of roadside billboard, destroying both sign and vehicle, Thorn decided that the Judge had caused him enough grief. He abandoned the car and retreated straight down under the earth, leaving the Judge to his own devices.

•

Jill Corrigan was driving her son Jasper to his middle school on a sunny Monday morning, stuck in the usual Atlanta gridlock. Jasper was late for the ninth time this semester. He claimed to be running a fever, but his forehead didn’t feel hot and his grades were suffering, so Jill had decided to force the issue. She would take him to school whether he wanted to go or not.

Jill worried about the friends Jasper had been keeping lately. Some of them listened to punk rock music and watched the adult shows on cable TV. For all Jill knew, it was their corrupting influence that was causing Jasper to miss so much school. I should never have let Al talk me into moving to Atlanta. It’s too big of a city. There are all kinds of bad people here, and the last thing I want is for Jasper to grow up into some kind of crazy—

The concrete barrier on the overpass above Jill exploded. She screamed as debris rained down on their minivan.

A black sedan plummeted from the overpass, landing on a billboard for the Georgia Aquarium. Sparks zapped outward and metal protested with a shrill cry as half of the billboard collapsed under the weight of the car. Then the sedan smashed front-first into the ground, flattening its engine compartment with a bang that Jill heard like a gunshot even from behind her van’s windows.

Traffic, which had been slow, now stopped completely. A few daring drivers ventured out of their vehicles to snap pictures of the wreck, but most—including Jill—stayed within the relative safety of their cars. Jill heard sirens approaching.

As smoke surged out from beneath the sedan’s mangled hood, a man crawled feet-first out of the driver’s side window. He stumbled out onto the ground, and Jill saw that he was in his fifties, with not much hair. He wore nothing but a pink bathrobe. Soot stained his wide-eyed face. His mouth dropped open as he gazed at the dozens of people who sat frightened in their cars, watching his bewilderment.

The man turned to the billboard behind him. The Georgia Aquarium logo and a giant sea turtle remained intact on the left side of the sign, but on the right side, a huge manatee had been cleaved in two, with only its head remaining.

The man, dwarfed by the billboard, bellowed a furious howl. He raised a clenched fist at the billboard. “You follow me everywhere, don’t you?” he screamed. “Goddammit! I hate—I fucking loathe—goddamned motherfucking piece of shit manatees!”

Now Jasper’s jaw dropped at the stream of cussing. Jill quickly covered his ears.

“FUCK YOU, MANATEE!” the madman said, jumping frenziedly as he shrieked. “YOU DESERVED IT!”

The onlookers just stared. Jill was about as confused as she could possibly be.

A police car shot past Jill’s minivan on the road’s shoulder and screeched to a stop near the raving man. Another cruiser sped in from the other direction. Once they’d assumed flanking positions, their occupants immediately opened their doors, took cover behind them, and aimed their weapons at the crazy guy.

“Get on the ground! Hands on your head!”

The crazy guy turned to them. He sighed—a casual sigh of mild annoyance—and shrugged. Then his eyes glazed over for a second.

Then he recoiled as if suddenly surprised by the sight of the police. “Whoa!” he said, raising his arms high. “How’d I get here? Did you see the aliens? Did you fucking idiots see the aliens who put me here?”

Jill didn’t stay to see any more. She pulled onto the shoulder, did a hasty three-point turn, and drove back toward the previous intersection.

“Mom, that was intense,” Jasper said. “What was that?”

“That,” Jill said, “is why we’re moving back to Kansas.”

8

Thorn and the Judge drifted among gravestones in late afternoon. Neither spoke. Thorn sensed that the Judge had grown just as dispirited as him.

The humans were late, by nearly an hour. Had the police found them? Had Marcus? I should have stayed with them. Thorn had chosen the centuries-old Oakland Cemetery as a meeting place because of its quietness, its innocuousness. No one would look for fugitives here. But perhaps it was too far out of the way. Perhaps fatigue had claimed the humans before they could make the walk. Thorn knew this was unlikely, though, when he looked up at the Atlanta skyline and saw how near it was.

He floated past a cluster of Confederate headstones, worn from erosion and draped in lichen, and wondered if he’d met any of the men buried here, or caused any of their deaths. How many bodies in how many graves around Atlanta—around the world—could be traced back to Thorn’s actions? Jed and his victims were freshest in Thorn’s memory; but before that was Jada, and then Madeline, then Jamar, and on and on into the distant past. Months ago Thorn would have bragged about his body count, but now shame had replaced his pride.

Why did I never come here before, back when I loved death as much as any demon? Thorn’s only memories of cemeteries were of the funerals held in them, when he and his peers had preyed on the misery of the bereaved. Most demons never came to these forlorn places—one reason why Thorn had chosen this as a hiding place—and Thorn was only now realizing how strange this was, given demonkind’s fondness for death. Thorn remembered being bored by cemeteries, since they existed only as a marker of past victories and offered little opportunity for future conquests. But perhaps there was more to it. Perhaps cemeteries reminded demons of their mortality, just as they did for humans. Perhaps these bleak plots of land filled with dead people reminded demons of the futility of their life’s work. Looking out at the headstones and monuments, at the parched grass and the barely legible and long-forgotten names, Thorn could not think of a more depressing reward, nor a more apt punishment, for demonkind than a cemetery.

Especially the one where Flying Owl lies.

Tours had ended for the day and the last tourists were leaving the cemetery. Thorn and the Judge stayed low, but Thorn hadn’t seen another demon in over an hour, so being spotted was unlikely regardless. They moved into the oldest section of the cemetery, near the front, past a mausoleum embellished with two large, verdigris-coated vases on pedestals at its entrance. It was then, to Thorn’s immense relief, that they saw Brandon and Heather approaching down the path.

Thorn prepared for the unpleasantness of trying to possess one of them in order to communicate… but then he saw that Amy was with them, wearing a T-shirt and cargo pants, trying and failing to look normal, her teeth gritted in pain. One of her hands was trying to cover the blood seeping through her shirt.

“Warn me if any demons are near,” he said to the Judge, then drifted forward until he felt gravity tug his shoes down onto the brick walkway.

Brandon and Heather gasped at Thorn’s sudden appearance.

“What is she doing here?” Thorn said, his angry whisper so loud that it barely qualified as a whisper. “Her condition will grow more serious with every minute she’s out of the hospital.”

“Chill out,” said Heather. “We tried. The hospital’s full of cops. They saw Amy on the courthouse’s security footage and recognized her from the news. They know she’s involved with us.”

“So what? Have her make up a story, say we abducted her, whatever. Something that’d make her look innocent, since she is innocent.” And since no one would believe the truth. “It’s more important that she lives than that we avoid the police.”

Heather paced to Thorn and tapped him on the chest. “Look. You’ve dragged us through some serious shit the last two days. We’re so tired we can’t think straight. Both Brandon and Amy passed out before we even reached the hospital. We couldn’t call an ambulance, so I stole some water bottles and we rested in a park for a while. I had to steal clothes for Amy, too. We barely know what’s going on—what your priorities are, what ours should be. Cut us some slack, okay?”

Thorn calmed himself. She was right, of course. He’d reacted too harshly. Amy looked almost as bad as she had on the night she’d been stabbed, though. And it was Thorn’s fault that her life was once again in jeopardy.

“Amy, do you have your cell phone on you?”

“Yeah,” Amy said frailly.

“Heather, I’m sorry for my outburst. But can you please call a taxi for Amy?”

“None of us have money to pay.”

“The driver won’t know that. And I’m sure the police will be happy to pay once she returns to the hospital.”

“Okay. Fine.”

Heather turned to leave, but Thorn stopped her. “And Heather?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry that I was imprisoned. I’m sorry that the Judge had to be the one to find you.”

“Yeah, well… thanks.” She smiled a grim little smile and patted him on the shoulder, then took Amy’s phone and walked past several rows of gravestones.

Thorn sat next to Amy on a short brick wall, and Brandon moved to examine some of the stone monuments around the graveyard.

“Amy,” Thorn said. “Do you need any water? Is there anything I can do?”

“You can thank me,” she said weakly but playfully. “It was me who saved your butt for a change.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

Thorn laughed. At least she’s in good spirits. “I’m so sorry about all this. I didn’t know Thilial would possess you like that.”

“Who’s Thilial?”

Thorn shook his head, wondering how to explain his winged accomplice. “A friend, I think,” was all he could manage.

He would have touched Amy—perhaps hugged her—had he not been worried about hurting her or spurring her into any type of movement. The less she moved, the better.

He wondered how he looked to her, and to the other humans, in physical form. Did they find him fearsome, average, strange? Now that he’d experienced having a physical body of his own, he understood how humans could so easily develop an overly critical posture toward their own bodies, as Amy had. Thorn had glimpsed himself in mirrors on a few occasions during the last few days, and was always surprised to find how similar he looked to how he imagined himself to look. Yet another odd quirk of God’s creation? Or perhaps He’s trying to tell us that we, in some small sense, create ourselves.

“What’s it like being a demon?” Amy suddenly asked, as if she’d read his thoughts. The level of comfort with which she spoke to him hadn’t bothered him at the hospital, but now, with her wound worsening, it gave him pause. Most humans would not have been so comfortable around a demon.

Thorn searched for words. No one had ever asked him that question before. He decided on an analogy that a human might appreciate. “It’s like the most grueling job you could possibly have, where you can’t clock out, the workday never ends, and all your coworkers are gunning for your position twenty-four hours a day. If you blink, they’ll take it. And the company you work for literally has plans to destroy the world. You tried to play along for a time, but after a while, you just can’t do it anymore. You can’t look your coworkers in the eyes and tell one more goddamn lie. You feel like a monster. And a moron.”

Amy gazed at him for a few moments, the perpetual smile that she always wore around Thorn still unwilling to leave her face. “Well you don’t look so bad to me,” she said.

Thorn felt a heaviness behind his eyes: a peculiar sensation, which he only realized was tears when they threatened to escape from his eyelids. He blinked them away. “Thank you, Amy. You should lie down. Rest. A taxi will be here for you soon.”

“Will do.”

He helped ease her down onto the ground, and she delicately lay back flat on the bricks.

Thorn spotted Brandon nearby, kneeling by an old stone cross: a grave marker with its name long worn away. Thorn had difficulty connecting with the troubled young man, so he’d have much rather stayed and talked to Amy. But he’d barely spoken to Brandon since the Sanctuary, and the boy had gone through just as much as the rest of them had, if not more, so Thorn strolled over to him.

“I take it Heather told you everything? About demons, God, Sanctuaries, the like?”

Brandon frowned. He traced his fingertips along the horizontal length of the cross. “You say that my dad’s still alive?”

“Or at least he will be, probably,” Thorn said. “I don’t know exactly how it works.”

“And you lied to us the whole night, in Virginia? You were never really Virgil? Just something that was using his body?”

Thorn sighed. “Yes, that’s true.”

“Virgil was my friend,” Brandon said. “He might have been just—what, just a bag of meat, to you? But I knew him. He was a good guy. How could you do that to him?”

“I did what I had to do to keep you safe. You’d never have believed the truth. Well, not until now.”

Remaining crouched, Brandon turned to face Thorn. “You think I believe you? You think I believe Heather? I don’t know how you talked her into it. In fact, I want to hear it from your mouth. Is there a God?”

Thorn looked away and dithered, unsure of how to answer that particular question. Telling the truth that God existed would only add to Brandon’s irritation, and Thorn needed Brandon’s trust, or at least his cooperation. But telling Brandon there was no God would be a lie, and lies were starting to taste more and more sour on Thorn’s tongue.

Thorn settled for an intermediary answer, which may have been truer than a simple acknowledgement. “Not as anyone on Earth imagines Him. No, that God does not exist.”

Brandon seemed a bit surprised by this. He nodded, then returned to examining the stone cross, standing stalwart against the ravages of time. “Good. Because I don’t believe in God.”

Thorn shuffled his feet in place, trying to think of some way to connect with Brandon. A chill wind picked up, and dead leaves danced across the brick walkway. “I wish I had the luxury of believing there is no God,” Thorn said.

“I don’t even want to try to understand what you mean by that. I’ve had enough of running, of fighting, of trying to make sense of this bullshit. I want to go home.”

“As do I. But the homes we both remember are gone. We’ll have to make a new home. That’s what I’m fighting for.”

Brandon knee-walked to the next grave, which was marked by a short stone pillar with a rounded top that might once have been a cross as full as its neighbor. He touched it, then stayed still for a few moments, as if praying for a departed friend who lay beneath the earth. “We’ll join them someday,” he said. “Both me and you. Maybe it’ll happen in sixty years. More likely someday soon, the way things are going.

“And if we die, who notices? No one will remember us. Eventually the world will end, and nothing we ever did will have any meaning. We’re all just collections of atoms. Just specks on a tiny planet circling one small star in all of space. The universe doesn’t care about us.”

“Well, who cares about any of that?” Thorn said, surprising himself. Brandon turned, his eyes blazing with offense. Thorn didn’t know if this approach would work, but he’d tried the compassionate approach. Maybe a bit of raw common sense would do Brandon some good. And besides, Thorn was tiring of Brandon’s pouty nonsense, which flew in the face of everything Thorn had come to believe during these last few days. Brandon needed to change, and he’d refused to even contemplate any opposing viewpoints during the short time that Thorn had known him. Well then, I’ll give him a push in the right direction.

“You heard me,” Thorn continued. “Who cares if there’s no Cosmic Best Friend to make you feel special? It’s not all about you. It’s about humanity. Perhaps I won’t be remembered, and perhaps you won’t either, but our contributions to the human race will matter.” And in my case, I hope, my contributions to spiritkind. “Can every collection of atoms think? Can every collection of atoms reason, emote, empathize, and observe and study the universe around it? The atoms that make you, Brandon, were born in the hearts of dying stars. What are the odds that in all the vastness of space, those atoms would accrete into a planet? What are the odds that that planet would be hospitable to life, or the odds that life would actually develop, or that it would develop into sentient beings? You may be one of eight billion people, but humanity is a one-in-a-centillion chance. You as a species are astoundingly unique. Yet you dare to call yourself ‘just a collection of atoms.’ From where I stand, atoms are pretty impressive if they can be used to build things like you and me.

“So why waste what little time you have here moping that you have no purpose? Why not use that time to create purpose, to help other people in some way, to—”

“But it’s all just darkness out there,” Brandon said, finally interrupting Thorn. Thorn was surprised he’d let him speak as long as he had. Without standing, Brandon gestured up to the sky, still full of the day’s sunlight. “It’s all just a big empty void of darkness. Doesn’t the nothingness scare you? Doesn’t knowing you’ll end up as part of that darkness scare the living hell out of you?”

Thorn stepped toward him, and spoke firmly. “I have seen the darkness, Brandon, and it is not ‘out there.’ The darkness inside ourselves is the darkness that truly causes pain in the world. I’ve seen thousands of people who believe what you believe, Brandon, and that’s no way to live a life. I never cared before, but now I do. I want to save you from that empty life, so please, if you truly believe that no God exists, stop living in depression over the fact that He’s not real. Start living a life you choose for yourself—rather than a pale reflection of what your life would supposedly have been if God were real.”

Brandon looked back down at the broken cross, shook his head, and stood. Was the Judge drifting nearby, eavesdropping on Thorn’s rant? I wonder what he thinks of all this.

Brandon stared at Thorn intently, as if studying every pore in his face. “Do you really care about me,” he said, “or do you just care about being right?”

Thorn’s first instinct was to retort with an even harsher rebuke, but he restrained himself. Leaves crunched under Thorn’s foot as he stepped back and peered into his own mind. Did he truly care about Brandon? The boy had originally been just another means to Thorn’s ends, but now… now, yes. Thorn did care about him. But several seconds had passed, and even if Thorn claimed to value Brandon, the claim would now sound like a lie he’d made up.

Brandon’s eyes dropped, and he scratched his skin under the edge of his cast. “I really need some sleep,” he said.

Still trying to form an adequate response, Thorn followed him the short way to Heather, who was tapping her fingers on Amy’s phone. “Taxi should be here any minute,” she said. “What about us? What do we do next?”

“I’ll have my friend, the Judge, get you a car,” Thorn said, knowing that the Judge had charges he could possess all around Atlanta, and that most of them owned vehicles. “There’s a place I know where you can stop for some rest, where no one will find you. I’ll give you directions. It’s an abandoned warehouse in northwest Atlanta. After you sleep, keep heading north for a day, and then I’ll find you. We’ll go from there.”

There would be no “after,” of course. Thorn couldn’t ethically keep Brandon and Heather here on Earth. They had no legal identities, no money, no jobs, no friends or family. And they served no further purpose to Thorn, since his plan to use them as evidence of God’s deceit had failed, with Wanderer effectively rallying the city’s demons against him and the Judge and anything they might say. The only humane course of action was to send them to the angels’ quarantine zone. When the angels found them, God would reinsert them into the Sanctuary system, from which they’d eventually be freed to their lives on Earth. Thorn hated to lie to them like this, but with their very lives at stake, the lie was necessary. It was the best outcome any of them could hope for under their current circumstances.

Thorn hoped that the little speech he’d just given Brandon would somehow remain planted in his mind, a seed to blossom in his next Sanctuary. This Brandon, after all, was far more moral than the previous Brandon, and Thorn couldn’t help speculating that perhaps the change had been caused, even in part, by something Thorn had done or said to him. Heather held memories of previous Sanctuaries, so perhaps Brandon, too, would remember Thorn’s words, and grow.

Thorn walked back to Amy, whose eyes were now closed. He checked to make sure she was breathing, and he found that she was simply asleep. He gazed fondly down upon her for what might be the last time, then wished Brandon and Heather good luck and goodbye. The humans would be safe, and Thorn could even be said to have felt joy at that moment. At least one goal he’d worked toward had been successful.

But he had other, more perilous goals to focus on now. He paced down the brick walkway back toward the graveyard’s Confederate section. Before long, gravity vanished, and the Judge appeared before him.

“You got a plan?” asked the Judge.

“I do,” said Thorn.

“You got a couple hours to spare before things get crazy again?”

“Perhaps. Why?”

“Because… Well, let me find them a car, and then there’s something you oughta see.”

•

They sailed over snow-capped hills, shimmering lakes, and trees with long shadows as the sun sank toward the horizon. Tonight the sunset smoldered a dull pink, lazily tinting the gray clouds as it stretched its gradient across the sky. They passed a flock of geese flying beneath those clouds. It’s some consolation, Thorn thought, that we can fly, in a way. I envy humans for so much, yet they would envy me this view.

The pair drifted away from roads and power lines, departing these last traces of civilization for a dense tree canopy ahead. Thorn hadn’t the faintest idea where the Judge might be taking him.

“You remember our agreement, Thorn?” the Judge said.

Thorn took a few moments to recall a deal he’d made in his old, wicked life. “Our agreement for shared power, when I first rose to prominence in Atlanta?”

“Bingo. You and I have never been enemies, but we still competed with each other for charges, for recognition. We both had the power to seriously fuck each other up.”

“Which is exactly why we didn’t. Mutually assured destruction. Checks and balances. Hence our agreement to share power.”

“Right, yeah. But my point is, you’ve always been a rival to me. A possible threat to my power.”

“Why are you bringing this up?” Thorn asked.

“Because I wanted you to know why I never told you about this.”

“About what?”

The Judge pointed downward. Thorn looked, and saw only treetops at first. He descended to look closer, and soon saw beings in suits drifting beneath the canopy. Demons. Many of them. Why such a large group of them would gather out here in the woods was beyond Thorn, but he tensed as he saw their eyes peeping up at him. Do they recognize me? He rose back up toward the Judge. “Why have you led me here? If they find out who we are, they’ll kill us.”

The Judge chuckled mischievously. “Right now, they’re thinking the same thing about you.” He gestured for Thorn to follow him down. Thorn half-feared another of the Judge’s disastrous escapades, but for all the Judge’s shortcomings, Thorn did trust him.

They lowered themselves through a dense web of oaks and hickories, and the world darkened. This secluded forest reminded Thorn of his own place of solace at the Cherokee burial ground. He had a feeling that he was about to discover the Judge’s equivalent.

Hundreds of eyes watched them as they dropped. The other demons did not try to hide themselves. Rather, they slowly—cautiously?—closed in around their visitors. Thorn was curious to note that their ties were all loosened, their jackets unbuttoned, as if they were unwinding with a beer after a hard day at the office.

As Thorn neared the leaf-blanketed ground and gained a view stretching farther back into the dim forest, so many demons wandered beneath the trees that the darkness itself seemed to move. Incredible! There must be thousands of them. Why are they hiding here? Away from humans and therefore from the spirits who exploited them, these woods offered an ideal refuge from anyone wishing to avoid demon society. Could it be…?

Thorn and the Judge stopped their descent two feet above the ground. The other demons formed a circle, then a sphere around them, blocking the wan light that penetrated the canopy. And blocking any potential for our retreat underground. Thorn read the crowd’s faces. Some seemed curious, others fearful. One demon smiled—cordially!—as he hovered forward toward the Judge. The smile seemed a bit forced, though. Thorn took it to mean that this visit was unexpected, and at least a bit unwelcome.

“Anaak, what’s shaking?” the Judge said.

The smiling demon gave a small bow. Despite his shabby clothes, face full of stubble, and deferential posture, he looked healthy and hale—far more so than most demons. His skin appeared bronzed and youthful, as if to spite the fact that he hadn’t seen the sun in some time. “All is well with us, mighty Judge,” Anaak said. “We are most pleased by your surprise visitation.”

“And I am most pleased to have smoke blown up my mighty ass,” said the Judge. “But you don’t have to worry about me anymore. I’ve been deposed.”

Anaak’s posture straightened a bit. “Truly?”

“Yessir. As has my pal Thorn here.”

Several gasps escaped the throng. Murmuring erupted, and the sphere of demons widened a few feet. Anaak’s eyes grew fearful as he took in Thorn. “Ah, yes. Fearsome Thorn, you are welcome here.”

“Anaak!” said the Judge. “Chill! We’re outcasts now, same as you. We’re not here to bust your balls. We’re here because we need a safe place to stay.”

Anaak remained still for a few moments, his gaze passing between Thorn and the Judge at least five times. What is he so afraid of? There are two of us and thousands of them. They could kill us in a heartbeat.

Slowly, Anaak nodded. “I apologize, Thorn. We receive very little news of the outside world. But if it is true that demonkind has cast you aside, you are indeed welcome here, to the nest of Chattahoochee Forest.”

Nest? Thorn hadn’t heard that term in ages. As humanity had migrated into cities, so had demons, and thus the need for demon nests had declined. Over hundreds of years, the term had fallen into disuse.

Anaak led Thorn and the Judge through the wilderness. The cloud of demons around them thinned. Many returned to their own business, but several dozen still fluttered nearby, following along with the visitors—perhaps out of wariness, perhaps out of curiosity.

“What is this place?” Thorn asked.

“A haven for freethinking demons,” Anaak said. “Some of us were beggars on the bottom rung of demon society, and a few were powerful leaders who’d fallen, like you. But most of us were just ordinary demons who grew disillusioned with our culture’s hypocrisy—and with its tyranny over our thoughts. We reject tradition and authority as sources of truth. We like to think for ourselves.”

“And you knew of this?” Thorn asked the Judge. “You allowed this?”

“Eh, ‘endure’ is a better word for it than ‘allow,’” said the Judge. “For a long time I’d just sentence anyone who thought differently to death. But there were so many of ’em, man. I never agreed with them—not until now, and even now not entirely. But what’s a leader to do? Keep killing my own peeps because they don’t want to conform? I’m not that much of a dick, Thorn.”

“Ha. Angel of Manatees indeed.”

“Shut up about that.”

Had Thorn known about this before his own change of heart, he’d have mounted a campaign against the Judge, usurped his power, replaced him with a weaker Judge, and had his old friend executed after a show trial, even though he’d technically violated none of the Rules. Now, though, Thorn reveled in the knowledge that a place such as this existed. And if this place existed, how many other small, unknown havens for freethinking demons must dot the United States, and the world? I thought myself alone this whole time, yet here is a whole world where I belong.

“I must ask,” said Anaak. “You weren’t deposed because of us, were you, Judge?”

“No, no, broski. You’re solid.” Thorn’s attention wandered to a cluster of demons up in the trees. He was practically beneath them by the time he noticed them; due to their dark clothes, they were nearly indistinguishable from the knotted branches. There were nine of them, drifting in midair, lined up one next to the other, their limbs outstretched. A few of them glowered, but most just looked tired. Catatonic, even. Their suits appeared old, faded, and tight. Each of their limbs was held firm by a guard demon, in a manner similar to that which Thorn’s captors had used to restrain him in the courthouse. Even as Thorn watched the hovering group, two of the guards rotated out with replacements. Each settled in on its designated limb.

“You have prisoners,” Thorn observed.

“I thought there were only eight,” the Judge said bleakly before Anaak could reply.

Anaak glanced upward at the immobilized captives, who likewise glared down at him. One of them widened his eyes and stiffened, likely recognizing Thorn. “Yes, well,” Anaak said, “another wandered in two weeks ago.”

“You imprison any rival demon who wanders into your territory?” Thorn asked.

“What choice do we have?”

Thorn drifted upward toward the prisoners but kept his distance. How horrible a fate would this be? To be confined by enemies for years and years, never moving, never sleeping? If I myself had stumbled upon this patch of land during my more devilish days, I would be stretched out now along with these others. Prisoner number ten.

One demon in particular drew Thorn’s attention. He appeared frail and ancient, spotted skin drooping from bones devoid of muscle and fat. A ragged white beard puffed around his face. Although no gravity affected him, his head lolled to the side. His eyes seemed empty, distant, completely unaware of Thorn’s presence.

“How long has this one been here?” Thorn asked.

“Icanthel? He’s a holdover from our previous nest,” Anaak said. “He’s been our prisoner since 1958.”

“1958?” Thorn said, not bothering to hide his disgust from Anaak. “Don’t you give them an opportunity to change?”

Anaak hesitated, seemed to grow introspective. He looked downward at the forest floor twenty feet below. “It took me fourteen years,” he said. Then he chuckled. “I suppose that’s pennies in the life of a demon, but not when they hold you like that. It took me fourteen years, but they released me five years ago.”

“You were once one of the prisoners?”

Anaak smiled cordially. “As you yourself must know, anyone can change.”

•

Thorn and the Judge convened with a few of the nest’s other leaders, who—once they learned that they had nothing to fear from their guests—merrily regaled them with the nest’s history and traded scalding barbs about demonic culture. Thorn heard more than a few tall tales about himself that the rumor mill had spun in his absence: that he’d died in the Sanctuary, that he’d come back mad and been put to death, that he and Marcus had joined forces against the Judge. Thorn dispelled each of these bits of gossip with a laugh and a smile.

He was also glad to learn that the nest stood against God as much as it did demon society. When he told them about his meeting with the Almighty, they took the story with a grain of salt, but they didn’t reject it on principle, as other demons had. Like Thorn, these demons simply wanted to be free. Free to think, and to do no evil.

Here were demons he’d just met minutes before, and they were already bonding as if they were old friends. Thorn had actual old friends in the demon world with whom he’d share nothing more than a civil nod. He felt he could one day be at home here, in the darkness under these trees. He considered staying… But how long until I crave the light again? He might be able to hide in the nest for years, concealed from demonkind and from God above. But they’d find him eventually. For all Thorn knew, God was already aware of this place, and His angels would stop here during their search for him. And Marcus had already carried his grudge for seventeen centuries, so he was unlikely to abandon it soon. If this demon nest were found by the demon mainstream, would these freethinking spirits, many though they were, be able to defeat the larger demon world in open battle?

Thorn knew that they would not.

Ultimately, Thorn decided that he had to finish this now. He had to find a way to reveal the truth about God’s false seclusion and the devil’s false dogmas now, while his foes were still scrambling to catch up with him.

“Join me,” Thorn said to the nest’s leaders. He was fighting only for his own freedom, but he knew that these demons wanted an open, empathetic demon society. If Thorn could convince even a handful of them to become freedom fighters, his own chances of survival would broaden greatly.

But the leaders declined to help. Thorn couldn’t blame them. For one thing, they had no way of knowing whether Thorn and the Judge were being truthful; but their caution went far deeper than that. As the Judge explained after the leaders had left them: “These guys are gatherers, not hunters. They keep their ears to the ground for any demon who might want to join them, then slowly, cautiously approach him over the course of years. It’s all very organized. It has to be that way, or the whole operation would go kablooey. And if they hopped on whatever bandwagon happened to pass by, hooting at them to join some fight, then, well, there’d be none of them left to sustain this place.”

This nest existed, and that was something, but its isolationism troubled Thorn. “If you knew they wouldn’t help me, then why did you bring me here?” he asked.

The Judge started forward through the trees again: an implicit invitation for Thorn to follow. “I just wanted you to know that there’s a place full of demons like you,” he said. “I would suggest to you that we hide here and live out our days, but I know you better than that.”

Thorn followed the Judge a short way until the trees grew thin and they came to a lake about the length of Downtown Atlanta. Its calm waters mirrored the sky’s darkening blue. Countless fireflies danced above their own reflections, first glowing, then dim, then glowing, then dim, as if flickering in and out of life and death. With none of the humans’ artificial lights, these last moments of twilight out here in the gloomy wilderness might have frightened Amy, Brandon, Heather, or any other human, but Thorn found the place peaceful. Here he was, safe, surrounded by demons who could become close friends, and with a sky above him brimming with stars more numerous and radiant than the fireflies.

And somewhere up there, somewhere closer than all that vastness, lies Heaven, and the Enemy, and Thilial.

Where had Thilial disappeared to? Had she been discovered aiding Thorn’s escape? Would God sentence her to Heaven’s jails? Would He execute her outright? Or had she not shown her face again precisely to avoid such a fate? Thorn realized how thankful he was to both Thilial and the Judge—two considerably unlikely allies. If they can change their views, so can any angel or demon.

“Why are you helping me?” Thorn decided to ask the Judge, who had drifted out over the shallows at the lake’s edge, hovering among reeds leaning in the wind.

The Judge kept his face toward the lake, likely absorbing the drab beauty of the place along with Thorn. “Because, YOLO,” the Judge said.

Thorn shook his head at the flippant response. “How do you know I’m not the one in the wrong? What made you change your mind?”

The Judge drew back his hand, then swung it forward forcefully, flicking his wrist at the last moment. Had he carried a stone in his hand, it might have skipped over the smooth water. “How do any of us know what’s right or wrong?” he answered.

It was a good question—one that Thorn had asked himself often in the last week. Trying to become good merely by doing the opposite of his habitual evil had only gotten Thorn so far, yet somehow he’d grown beyond that, and far faster than he’d ever thought possible. “You’ve been with the Judges for a long time, presiding over the rest of us, claiming to know what’s best. You’re more qualified to answer that question than I am.”

“Ha.” The Judge rotated to face Thorn. “I was just going with the flow, man. I enforced the Rules, but I didn’t make the Rules. Anything that the Rules didn’t apply to, I just went with my gut. And my gut usually told me to kick babies and skin cats.”

Thorn nodded. “I always went with my gut, too. I don’t think one’s gut is particularly trustworthy.”

“Nah, I think it is, sometimes. It was your gut that started you in the right direction, wasn’t it?”

“Still, I wish we had a better God. I wish I could look to Him as a source of all that’s right and good. Otherwise, what’s the difference between my old self and my new self?”

The Judge shrugged. “Knowledge? Is knowledge the difference? Or at least part of the difference?”

The response caught Thorn short. Knowledge. What a perceptive answer from such a scatterbrained demon. I never knew what lies God and Satan had wrought upon the world. I never knew that anyone actually questioned the social order. I never knew that I could be wrong about some things. Now I know all of this and more. Now I’m willing to change myself based on what I know.

Yet I still have so much more to learn.

“I don’t really know,” the Judge said in his nasal voice, apparently unaware of how deeply his answer had stirred Thorn. “Maybe the difference is the humans. Maybe we found our new morals by watching them too much. Whatever. All I know is, I’ve been fucked over by our peeps too many times. The human civilizations aren’t perfect, but most of them teach their members some basic morality, to minimize the fucking over, as it were. It’d be nice if demons could have that too, right?”

“Right.” Thorn rose a few feet into the air to take in one last view of the lake and its woods, which were barely visible now, having crawled beneath the blanket of full night. If not for the swirling fireflies, the Judge’s face would also have been obscured in shadow.

Thorn dreaded leaving this refuge so quickly after being introduced to it, but he needed to act now, before God and Wanderer realized there was one piece left on the chessboard that they’d both overlooked. “Will you help me again?” Thorn asked.

The Judge rubbed his hands together in an odd display of anticipation, then smirked.

“Let’s go,” Thorn said.

“Let’s,” the Judge replied, his tone inappropriately chipper. “I loves me some Rule-breaking. It might help if you explain what your plan is, though.”

Thorn turned away from him and began his rise away from the lake, up through the oak branches, back to Atlanta. “Not what,” he said. “Who.”

9

A lightning storm started up outside while Thorn waited. He’d left the Judge in a copse of trees four blocks away, with instructions to flee to the nest if Thorn didn’t return by morning. Then, under a stormy night sky, he’d slunk underground, beneath the feet of hundreds of demons, and stolen unnoticed into the familiar old warehouse complex to have a long overdue conversation.

Thorn was unsure he’d even find his quarry here. And even if he did, he expected his waiting game to occupy at least half the night—and even more time than that once he saw the oddly excited nature of the quarantine zone. Many more angels than usual roamed these halls tonight, and there were perhaps even more up in the angelic realm. Thorn glimpsed swords and heard worry of war, which he took as an ill sign. Why on Heaven or Earth would the angels make war again, when God desires peace? Surely it can’t be just because of me and the knowledge I’ve been trying to spread. Can it? He hoped the angels would notice Heather and Brandon sleeping in the car outside. The distraction would lower the cherubim’s chances of finding him here.

Thorn’s low spirits were saved from further depression when he spotted Xeres running papers between offices like the world’s most absurdly brawny intern. He towered above the other angels—his bosses, it would seem—so he was easy to track from Thorn’s cover inside the walls and the ground.

Thorn followed him to an isolated section of the complex where pipes dripped brown water into syrupy puddles on the warehouse floor. Parchment littered the place, covering nearly the entire ground, clumped into small masses of rot beneath leaking pipes and water trickling in through the dilapidated roof.

It seemed as good a place as any.

“I used to want wings, like you have,” Thorn said, floating forward out of the wall and revealing himself.

Xeres spun and dropped his papers, which, despite their full size, were still smaller than the hand that had carried them.

“But I’m not so hot on wings anymore.”

Xeres stared, frozen. Lightning flashed outside, illuminating graffiti on the walls and rodents in filthy corners. Thunder followed shortly. The orchestra of dripping water intensified.

Xeres unfolded his wings slightly—a gesture of intimidation. “I do not know you, demon,” he said in his bottomless voice. “You dare to intrude again on this holy quarantine zone? I command you to leave at once, or I shall—”

“Xeres,” Thorn interrupted calmly. “Enough.”

Thorn’s old mentor glared at him from across the warehouse. Thorn drew nearer, drifting through water droplets that fell through his spiritual body.

“You’ve come close enough,” Xeres said, though his tone lacked conviction. His wings sank behind his back as his eyes morphed from angry to fearful. His powerful voice shook with nerves. “If another angel catches us, I will feign ignorance, and I will fight you.”

“Fair enough.” Thorn continued his guarded approach. Seeing this legendary demon warrior as a thrall of the angels again disturbed Thorn, who hadn’t even fully recovered from learning that Xeres was still alive. The wings did suit him, though. Even as a demon, he’d been tall, regal, majestic to behold.

“I need your help, Xeres. I’ve been branded a renegade and a lunatic, so demonkind won’t listen to me. But they will listen to you.”

Lightning struck again, flashing white light through the windows. Xeres, hovering beside a pillar, was momentarily cast into shadow. “They will not listen to a defector.”

“They will listen to you. If they merely see you alive, you’ll have exposed the truth that they even can defect. Please. I have a friend waiting nearby. We can smuggle you out of this prison and come up with a plan to spread our knowledge.”

Xeres frowned and turned away, so Thorn tried a new tactic. “Do you realize what I’ve been through?” he said. “Two Sanctuaries. I risked my life to save two humans I could use as proof of God’s deception. But Wanderer outsmarted me with deception of his own. Now no one will listen to me. No one wants to see the truth. You know what that’s like, don’t you? You’ve been where I’ve been, in a way.” But you took the coward’s way out. “I’ve risked my life again by coming here tonight. Over the course of my journey, I’ve come to believe that we all create our own purposes. We evaluate which purpose will be the best for everyone, and if we’re good, that’s the purpose that we’ll choose. Your purpose, Xeres, can be this. To tell the demons the truth.”

Xeres dithered, then sidled to the outer wall, keeping his head down. He stopped by some exposed drywall and sat on the parchment-encrusted floor, taking care to stay away from the windows—and out of view of the demons perched on rooftops across the street. Even obscured by the rain, Thorn could see their vague forms scampering about.

“That Wanderer is a cunning one,” Xeres said dolefully. “I played right into his hands for so long, with my single-minded hatred for Christianity. I thought my victories were my own, over Cruor, over Kivthes—but Wanderer killed them all. He was grooming me, you see, to lead demonkind on a wild goose chase.”

Thorn nodded. “And wild it was. But we know better now. We know more, and we’re still in this fight whether we like it or not. Would you rather continue as an angel, letting God’s heavenly attendants treat you like a second-class citizen because your wings were once clipped? Or would you rather fight for something again? Something good this time? At the very least, this is a chance to stick it to the God who’s imprisoned you. And to the demons who killed you.”

Xeres buried his head in his hands, then let them slide down his face. He exhaled a shaky sigh. “I killed myself.”

The words dropped with such weight that the sagging roof might as well have caved in. Thorn drifted backward at the revelation. He killed himself?

Had the old Thorn known this, he’d have looked down on Xeres as an asinine weakling, and his memories of his dead leader might not have been so fond. Thorn thought back to that shocking day when he’d found Xeres’s corpse floating above newly built thatch-roofed houses at the center of the reconstructed Cherokee city of Tugaloo. Thorn’s head had been filled with too much ambition at the time to care, but now that he knew the whole story, and now that both he and Xeres had changed so much, Thorn felt a deep pity for him.

“I missed you, Thorn. In the days after. I got wings, I got a new place in Heaven, I was told to forget my old, sinful life. But I kept thinking about you. You were so loyal to me, yet I’d left you behind like the backstabber I was. You could have been good, too. I knew it. I knew you had it in you to join me in the light, but God would never let me contact you, no matter how often I asked Him. I’m so sorry, Thorn.”

Thorn tried to come up with a response, but remained speechless. He’d expected a harsh confrontation with Xeres, not this babbling mess, so he found himself unprepared to deal with his old comrade’s breakdown. All he could do was drift there, listening to the creaking windows and the trickling rainwater.

Xeres looked like he was about to weep, if indeed angels could weep. But instead he glanced up at Thorn with fierce eyes and a trace of a wicked smile.

“I did something bad,” he said. Lightning caught in his eyes, lending them a wolflike intensity. Thorn was impelled to back up a few feet.

“God’s power is not innate,” Xeres said as thunder clapped. “I learned that it could be stolen out from beneath His feet, if one simply knew how. I skirted hellfire, but I filched the most minuscule bit of His power, which was the largest I dared.

“I’d heard you were doing well for yourself in Atlanta. I wanted to see you. So I weaseled my way into an assignment in the Big Peach. Angels work in every crevice of the city, so I needed to be careful. But I followed you. I saw Amy, and how you acted with her.

“I gave you a gift, my dearest friend. A gift that love would unlock. A gift that would lead you back to me.”

You’re beautiful, Thorn had said to Amy at the nightclub, the first time he’d entered into physical space with her.

Excuse me? she’d said in return. Do I know you?

Thorn stared at Xeres and raised a hand to his gaping mouth. Amy seeing him in the flesh had been one of the key events that had set him on his new, more virtuous course. It had bolstered his bond with her, given him hope in the dark months after the Christmas Eve shooting. Thorn might never have wound up in the Sanctuaries had he not cared enough about Amy to save her from Garrett and Shenzuul.

“Your gift almost got me killed,” Thorn said, though he was indeed grateful that Xeres had subtly pushed him to change his heart. He was touched, too, that Xeres had longed to reconnect.

“I did not expect you to show up on my doorstep,” Xeres said. “Your presence here forced me to feign apathy and disgust. When God heard you’d discovered me, He removed me from service here until you entered the Sanctuary. And believe me, Thorn, if He’d found out what I’d done, Hell would not have been the worst of my punishment. I just wanted to be sure you’d make the right choices…”

He stood and paced toward Thorn, who hovered in midair, thoughts of the recent past dashing across his mind. Xeres placed a hefty hand on Thorn’s shoulder, then brought their faces close together. He spoke in a whisper. “Why, Thorn?” Pain saturated his voice. “Why did you have to stand up against God? He would have taken you back. We could have been together again.”

Thorn couldn’t look Xeres in the eyes, so instead he looked beyond him, to the water bleeding down the windows. In that moment, Thorn did wish that he’d accepted God’s offer of angelhood. I wish I’d known that Xeres was a friend who loved me rather than a coward too afraid to help me.

And love it was, or some form of it. Thorn had seldom known what love felt like. The feeling was so tangible, so present, that Thorn was doomed to be cut deeply by it. This love would slip away from him, just like God’s, just like Amy’s. Will I never find peace? Am I condemned to only ever hold happiness for fleeting moments between panicked fights for survival?

Or will death find me first?

Xeres dropped his immense hand from Thorn’s shoulder to his own side. He looked downward again, then shuffled away, back toward the papers he’d dropped. “I’m sorry, Thorn, but it’s too late. I can’t help you. No one can help you.”

Xeres’s words were true, Thorn realized painfully. As the storm roared outside, he watched his last hope walk away. He wanted to run after Xeres, to plead with him as he’d done when he’d first tried to defect. But Thorn knew when Xeres had made up his mind. He couldn’t bring himself to say goodbye, so he simply lowered himself beneath the squalid floor, through the building’s foundation, then into the earth.

And now what? Thorn had no obvious options left. The angels hadn’t discovered Heather and Brandon outside yet, but they could no longer be used as proof of anything. He could flee with the Judge back to the demon nest, but that solution would only be temporary, and he could never live with himself if his own need for concealment caused the nest to be discovered and attacked.

Then the worst case scenario presented itself: Thorn could approach one of his enemies and beg for clemency. It was unlikely that either God or Wanderer would give him any, but at least it was better than dragging anyone else into—

Something bumped into Thorn. He reeled backward, tensing at the shock of hitting something underground. Was he somehow human again? No—if he were, he’d be crushed and suffocating in the dirt that surrounded him. Besides, Amy wasn’t nearby. Then what could it have been? Another spirit, perhaps?

“Hello?” Thorn said, then moved to a new position, in case the other spirit was hostile and decided to attack. Seconds passed, but no response came. Thorn’s eyes saw only darkness. He cautiously reached a hand into the unseen space before him. “Who’s there? Judge? Is that you?”

Silence.

Angels had no reason to travel clandestinely underneath their own compound, so the other entity had to be a demon. But why would a demon, other than Thorn, be skulking beneath the angels’ quarantine zone? And what were the odds of Thorn bumping into him? Thorn had traveled underground countless times during his billions of years on Earth. Encountering another spirit beneath the ground was exceedingly rare, save for times of battle when entire armies of spirits would launch surprise attacks from below.

Thorn paused on that thought. He turned it over a few times.

Thorn darted up through the dirt, past the warehouse’s foundation, and back into the expansive room. Xeres had gathered his papers and was nearly through the far door.

“Xeres!” Thorn called.

Xeres turned and addressed Thorn with frustration. “I’ve said everything I have to say. It’s best if you—”

He stopped speaking when three demons leaped up from beneath the floor between the two of them. The devils quickly took in their surroundings. Two rushed for Xeres, and the other examined Thorn. He knitted his eyebrows, likely confused that another demon was already inside the room. Then his eyes widened in recognition of Thorn, and he blitzed forward, howling a shrill war cry. Even as the three demons sped across the warehouse, dozens more poured upward from the ground, all around the room.

“What’s the meaning of this?” Xeres shouted to Thorn. “What’s happening?”

Thorn braced for combat as his attacker surged forth. He called to Xeres: “I think the quarantine zone is being attacked!”

10

A bolt of lightning tore through the sky just meters away from Thilial, shot through the company of angels to which she’d been assigned, and splintered into a half dozen arcs that snaked into other storm clouds below. Thilial yelped and flapped her wings backward, as did several of the other angels. She looked downward as the last glimmer of the bolt sizzled away. Huge beads of rain poured from the heavens above, falling through Thilial’s body—and the bodies of the other hundred thousand angels—toward the Atlanta ground some two kilometers below. The height dizzied Thilial, as did the immense scope of the army around her.

The angels gathered back into formation, then proceeded on their journey downward. Thilial watched the grim expressions on their faces, all squinting and scrunched as if against the rain and the lightning. She waited for one of them to meet her gaze in consolation, or at least in solidarity, but none did. She did not know these cherubim, nor they her, but they would do battle side by side tonight.

Gleannor, the brute, had gotten her way. The demons preparing to attack had given Thilial’s rival all the ammo she’d needed to convince God to send His angels to war. God had declined to even grant Thilial an audience after He heard of her involvement in Thorn’s escape from the demons. After all, she’d aided the enemy. And Thilial was now carrying out her resulting sentence: serving as a lowly foot soldier in what was to be the first major conflict between angels and demons in over a thousand centuries.

“He blames you for the demons’ mobilization to war,” Gleannor had explained to Thilial, in chains on the doorstep of God’s House. “You claim to desire peace, yet if you hadn’t let Thorn go free—twice—war would not be necessary.”

Thilial felt strangely guilty about this. Ever since Tugaloo, she’d been trying to convince God to cease His efforts to rehabilitate demonkind, yet now that He was on the cusp of granting Thilial’s wish, she was far from satisfied. She was angry. With God, with herself. With Thorn for starting this whole mess. As she and Gleannor had risen through the angelic ranks, they’d always been competitors, but Thilial had still agreed with her that Hell was the only appropriate place for the rebellious creatures.

So why am I so troubled by the prospect of finally exterminating them all?

With Gleannor and her coterie coaxing Him all the while, God had granted His army the freedom to abscond to the angelic realm during the battle whenever its soldiers deemed necessary—which would reveal to the demons the existence of the angelic realm. This, plus the carelessness with which He’d allowed war against Atlanta’s demons, signified to Thilial that He truly had given up on demonkind.

“We must purge the knowledge that Thorn has been spreading,” Gleannor had argued, as if any demons but the Judge actually believed Thorn. “We must stomp the demons into oblivion so they will never challenge us again. They will not listen to the Lord. They never have, and thus they deserve death. Even God must admit this now.”

Angels tell better lies than devils ever could, Thilial thought bitterly as she descended with the other white-robed warriors. She could see the flying specks of spirits battling in the spaces between warehouses, far below in the quarantine zone. The demons had struck first, but not by much.

As the specks grew larger, Thilial tried to convince herself that all demons did deserve to die, so that killing them might come easier to her. She found herself unable to do so. Hopefully Thorn had found a way to convince some of the city’s demons not to fight. Maybe the angels would arrive on a mostly empty battlefield. But as they descended through the lowest layer of stratus clouds, Thilial saw many thousands of demons crowding into the warehouse complex, and she knew that even if Thorn was free, he’d failed in his mission.

Lord, I am Yours, she repeated to herself, less as a genuine prayer and more out of habit. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.

She unsheathed Fear. A smattering of the army’s other cherubim had brought swords left over from the old days, the days when Heaven had still forged such things. Most were dull-edged and rusted, but none so much as Thilial’s. She took comfort in its presence, since most of the angels had no weapon and would be fighting hand-to-hand. Many of them, she noted, were younger angels like herself. The older ones—those with more seniority—had been allowed to stay in Heaven to watch the battle from afar.

Lightning struck through the army again, and the rain vibrated with the ensuing boom of thunder. Shortly after, bands of demons near the ground began to swirl into fighting formations. They’ve seen us.

Thilial grimaced as she drew nearer to the opening battle in the new war between angels and demons. Rain pounded down, and Atlanta’s stolid skyscrapers regarded the opposing forces from their light-speckled perch in the distance.

•

“On me!” Marcus bellowed to every raiding demon within earshot. Only a few dozen heeded his words at first, but the group behavior gradually bled outward, and soon demons were withdrawing through windows, walls, and roofs across the many warehouses. “On me!” Marcus yelled again, so the newcomers could find their leader’s position in the throng. Myriad demons circled in around him, hooting and cheering at this uncommonly violent adventure, some dragging angels’ dead bodies like children’s toys behind them.

The raid on the quarantine zone had been an overwhelming victory. Some straggling cherubim had probably managed to survive the attack, but Marcus hadn’t the will to root them out. The important thing was that the Enemy had taken the bait. Marcus’s attack had lured out His angelic legions, and now they were Marcus’s prime target.

Marcus had been ecstatic at this chance to finally act, rather than continue the endless furtive scheming that Wanderer enjoyed so much. But when he saw the colossal heavenly host moving in from above, a newfound fear pierced Marcus. Vast bands of angels, thousands upon thousands of them, stretched into a ghastly white aurora snaking through the thunderclouds. Wanderer wants me to fight that?

Marcus supposed it was doable. The angels he’d just fought had been craven weaklings, fleeing rather than fighting—the rest would be just as cowardly. And the ten thousand demons he’d led to attack the quarantine zone were only the first wave. Wanderer held multitudes in reserve: demon armies from Augusta, Columbus, Charleston, Charlotte, Nashville, Birmingham, Richmond, Orlando, Baltimore, and even a lethal force from New York City. All lay in wait beneath the ground for many blocks in all directions. At the right moment, Wanderer would rally his forces and join Marcus in the battle.

And maybe Marcus would shine so brightly in combat that he could expand his followers beyond the demons of Atlanta; perhaps the out-of-town demon hordes would consider following him rather than Wanderer. Maybe Marcus would finally have his chance to usurp his leader’s power.

And I bet the angels, those arrogant oafs, think they’re surprising us with their advance. They’ve seen nothing yet.

Even as he thought this, he saw thousands more demons silhouetted against the lights of Downtown, soaring toward him. He wouldn’t be surprised if the entirety of Atlanta’s demon population joined him in this first strike in their renewed struggle against the Enemy. If that angel’s rescuing of Thorn at the courthouse hadn’t convinced the demons to ally with Marcus, this force of angels encroaching on the city certainly would.

“The Enemy’s tyranny must end!” Marcus shouted to the growing horde of demons. “Form up! Tonight we will strike Him a blow that will ring through the annals of history!”

The demons cheered at Marcus’s rally to war. With so many of them present, it sounded more like the dull roar of a crowd than a legitimate war cry, but Marcus took that as a sign of the strength of his numbers.

A few demons made a slapdash effort to accrete themselves into a military formation, but most continued swirling around Marcus in chaotic, celebratory arcs. Less than a mile away now, the descending angel army was arrayed in pristine rows and columns, a far cry from the demons’ disorganization. Maybe I shouldn’t have insisted on leading a force of this size by myself.

“Shazakahn!” Marcus called when he saw a grouping of African demons.

Their leader shoved his way past a few of his zealous, careening followers. “What?”

“Help me form them up! We need to prepare for the battle!” Marcus felt a pang of nostalgia at his barked order—a fond remembrance of wars long past. But with this memory came the realization that none of the demons in this horde had waged war in ages. Do they even remember how? But certainly the angels didn’t remember, either.

Shazakahn marshaled his troops. Between him and Marcus, several hundred demons joined the rough formation. Their peers finally started to follow suit, conforming to their leaders’ wishes.

Marcus raised his voice to its upper limit. “On my mark, we charge to attack them!”

The demons shouted their hurrahs, and most of the formation collapsed at Marcus’s words. At least a thousand demons broke from the main group and rushed forward toward the angels. Had they not heard Marcus say, “On my mark”?

“Demons, return to formation!” Marcus called, but a thunderclap doused his words. Seeing that their peers were already charging into battle, the bulk of Marcus’s force began its advance as well. “Demons, back!”

Even Shazakahn waved Marcus away as he commanded his own troops to attack. How dare he! But Marcus could do nothing to stop an army over which he had so little control. He had no choice but to join the headlong assault. “On me!” Marcus called to the few followers who’d stayed arranged with him. “TO WAR!”

Marcus surged upward at full speed, one demon among thousands. Falling rain droplets blurred into a haze of motion on both sides. Lightning struck again, this time between the two armies, and Marcus wondered if the fulmination was natural or God-caused. The Enemy Himself is watching me tonight.

The angels ahead had ceased all movement at the demons’ advance, but they made no defensive moves whatsoever. The buffoons just idled in formation, confirming Marcus’s hunch. They’re just as out of practice at war as we are. I’ll be able to slaughter scores of them tonight. He tried to savor the experience as best he could as he rushed forward to meet his foes.

The idiot demons who’d blitzed into battle before Marcus gave the order had a thirty-second head start on him. They were nearing the angel’s forward lines now. Marcus counted the seconds passing, eager for the violence that was about to unfold. We’re back for you, you obsequious peons. Your very existence is a mockery of us and our way of life. I will show you no mercy.

The front wave of demons clashed into the angel army. From Marcus’s vantage, it looked like the angels barely bothered to defend themselves as the demons plowed through them.

Then, seconds after the initial collision of armies, the entire angelic host disappeared. Over a hundred thousand angels simply vanished, as if the storm clouds had swallowed them up. They left behind only lightning, rain, and a great many confused demons, who continued onward into the empty space that the angels had vacated.

What deception is this?

Marcus stopped his advance, letting the rest of his force charge ahead of him. Had the angels somehow retreated, seeing that they were outmatched? Had they been an illusion—a feint from the Enemy to distract from something else? Marcus looked around to all sides, then up to the clouds, then down to the sleeping city far below. He saw many more demons drifting toward the battle, but no battle would take place without the missing angels. Marcus cursed himself for not anticipating the Enemy’s trickery. Perhaps if the angels failed to fight, the demons could still claim victory. But then neither his plans nor Wanderer’s plans would come to fru—

A great cry went up among the demon horde: hundreds of death wails combining into one. Marcus turned to the leading edge of the demon force, just a quarter mile away. The angels had reappeared around the unsuspecting demon army. The cluster of spirits was so intermixed that Marcus could not discern where the demon army ended and the angel army began. It looked as if the angels had reappeared right next to the demons, then butchered them without warning—indeed, a full half of Marcus’s fighting force now floated lifeless among the clouds.

The other half exploded into a panic, darting in chaotic vectors in an attempt to flee. Marcus was still trying to comprehend what had happened, and how it had happened so fast. But he would not accept defeat. I must hold them together. We can still achieve victory.

“Shazakahn!” Marcus called. He flew through the tumult, searching for the African leader. Screaming demons lurched every which way. Marcus impacted several dead bodies in his haste to find help. “Shazakahn! Where are you?”

“Shazakahn is slain!” came a response from somewhere in the chaos. “We must retreat! Retreat!”

“No!” Marcus bellowed. “No retreat! Form up around me! We can hold them off! Form up—” An angel appeared—literally out of nowhere—and raised its sword to strike Marcus. Marcus yelped as the cherub brought its sword down, but another demon slammed into the angel at the last moment, saving Marcus’s life.

Where is Wanderer? We’re getting slaughtered! We need his reserve forces. We need to turn the tide of this battle.

As the horrific scene unfolded around Marcus, he saw that all of the angels seemed to be using the same new trick that had nearly killed him moments ago. If a demon had the advantage, an angel would vanish, only to reappear moments later with its hands around the demon’s neck or its sword skewering the demon’s midsection. The angels’ new ability flabbergasted Marcus. Even he was forced to admit to himself the futility of fighting an enemy with such a skill.

What’s more, the winged angels flew much faster than the wingless devils. The demons could not flee. And up here in the sky, they had nowhere to hide. They were too terrified and undisciplined to mount a counterattack. What had begun as a promising battlefield had been transformed into a total massacre in less than a minute.

Marcus charged toward the ground. It was a mile beneath him, but if he could escape beneath the surface, he’d be safe.

He’d barely begun his flight, though, when he saw a heartening sign. A new force of demons was rising from the ground! These brigades were well coordinated and arranged in tight spherical formations as they drifted upward—deadly weather balloons rising in the storm. Perhaps this was the force from New York, since Marcus knew of no southern demon force that was so systematized. Whoever they were, they looked to be some twenty thousand strong.

Only twenty thousand? Why not send the full force now? Maybe Wanderer had some sort of flanking maneuver planned.

The angels must have noticed the incoming demons too. They fell back and upward a ways, reforming for the next attack, likely just as aware as Marcus that the demons wouldn’t make the same mistake twice. Heaven’s opening move had left a sobering detritus of demon bodies in the angels’ wake. Did Wanderer send my first wave in to expose the angels’ trap? Did he send us to our deaths?

Some spirits lingered in the space between armies, hacking away at each other, so Marcus withdrew closer to the ground, near the safety of the other demons. It will not be me who takes the glory for this battle, Marcus realized, though he was glad to still have his life. Some other demon will lead us to victory, and I’ll once again become Wanderer’s errand boy. For now.

Marcus looked downward to see some angels emerging from the warehouse complex on the ground—only a couple dozen, but enough to worry him. Should they choose to martyr themselves, they could mount an effective enough raid to distract the demon horde from below while the greater angelic force attacked from above. Maybe Marcus could gather some of his surviving followers and massacre this group of cherubim. Maybe he could still carve out his own slice of prestige from this battle.

He was preparing to call for his followers when he noticed a single demon floating next to one of the angels on the ground. Marcus’s zeal for bloodshed burned even hotter when he saw who it was.

Him.

From this distance, Thorn looked unscathed. Had he fought in the quarantine zone during the attack, like the traitor he was? Or had he arrived afterward to tend to his wounded angel friends? No matter. He’d die with the rest of them.

But who was that standing next to him? It was one of the biggest angels Marcus had ever seen, short of a seraph; he stood at least twice Thorn’s height. Yet despite his size, he looked frail and unhealthy. His back was hunched, his hair missing in places… but he looked familiar. Had Marcus once seen this angel in his haler days?

The angel next to Thorn was gazing upward at the battle in the sky, at the spheres of demons rising toward the angel army, at the slew of demon corpses suspended in the clouds like the remnants of some macabre fireworks display. The other angels near the ground wore expressions of ire, of hate. But Thorn’s accomplice looked more sad than anything.

Neither Thorn nor the angel had noticed Marcus hovering a few hundred feet above them. I should swoop down from behind, take them unaware, murder them both. But he feared that angel for some reason. Something dark and vicious clawed at his memory’s periphery.

Before his eyes, the angel flared his wings and shot upward. The wings, each more than two car lengths across, beat powerfully against the roiling wind, flinging great gusts of water droplets outward against the rain. Thorn made no move to follow, nor did the other angels. They just hovered motionless, watching him rise. Marcus, captivated, did the same.

The angel sped upward, circling around a thick bolt of lightning that ripped a fissure in the heavens, blasting a shockwave of rain, air, and sound outward. He twisted through the sky as he climbed to the height of the demon brigades, then wove between them, ascending ever higher.

And then he spoke.

“Demons, hear me!” the angel roared in a sonorous voice that Marcus recognized immediately.

No. It can’t be.

“I am Xeres, the greatest demon lord of all time! You are my former followers, my former brothers, and I will not let you march forward to certain suicide!

“God has lied to you! Lucifer has lied to you! There is no need for anyone to be an enemy of anyone else! This fighting is pointless! It is a waste! So I urge you—no, I command you: RETREAT! End this foolishness! Ignore the distortions that have been sold to you and discover truth for yourselves!

“Peace!

“Peace!

“PEACE!”

The sight of Xeres as an angel, blaring orders with his dominating voice, overwhelmed Marcus, and the demon army as well. The orbs of demons started sagging as Xeres soared among them. When he flew close enough for each sphere to see, it collapsed entirely into swirling confusion. Some of the demons tried to hold their positions and some tried to regroup, but others fled downward, or sped after Xeres, or idled in the wet air.

It’s a trick! It has to be another trick. Xeres is dead. Defection is impossible.

The angel army didn’t waste a moment. It charged at breakneck speed toward the confused demons.

“Angels!” Xeres called to them. “You, too, are my brothers and sisters! Do not attack! Do not kill for a baseless cause!”

But Xeres’s words did nothing to the angels. They continued their onslaught. When they collided with the first group of demons, they slaughtered them.

Marcus felt as small as he had when the hordes drove him out of Rome. He grew aware that he was panicking, and it panicked him all the more. His body would not respond to his mind’s commands. The pandemonium he was witnessing among the demonic forces was so far removed from his plans that he couldn’t even remember what his plans had been. Where is Wanderer? Does he see that his soldiers are perishing by the thousands? Does he care?

•

Thunder roused Brandon from the depths of sleep. He’d had the strangest nightmare. The wedding had ended in a massacre of its guests, Tim had been shot, then Brandon and Heather had been chased by evil spirits of some kind all night long.

He slid his eyes open, tried to regain his bearings. He was sitting in the passenger seat of a car next to Heather, who looked even more sleepy than he felt. She twisted the key in the ignition a bit, then adjusted the air when it turned on. She noticed Brandon watching her.

“Hey, hon,” she said blearily. “It sure got cold while we slept, didn’t it? How you doing?”

Why was his arm in a cast? The plane crash from his nightmare couldn’t have been real. Could it? “Where are we?”

“We’re at the warehouses Thorn told us to go to. We’re safe, I think. You can go back to sleep.”

Thorn? The name jogged Brandon’s memory, and he recalled that his nightmare was real. He closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep, or maybe to wake up.

He couldn’t.

•

A demon rammed into Thilial—perhaps by accident, because she felt no pain from any assault. She tumbled end over end through a small cloud, passing several skirmishes on the way. One demon, screaming in murderous rage, charged at her as she sought to reorient herself. It spun before her, bottom to top. Only by sheer luck did she manage to decapitate it before it attacked. Eager to leave the fighting for a moment, she flew straight up…

… only to find the city of Atlanta above her, on the ground! She shook her head, trying to make sense of her positioning, but the sky around her was so crowded with spirits and clouds and disorienting lightning blasts that she couldn’t make sense of the visual overload.

Thilial drew her wings inward and dropped down into the physical realm. The warfare vanished, and gravity instantly told her which way was down. She adjusted her body so that her feet faced in that direction.

When she climbed back into the demonic realm, she found herself in the midst of thousands of dead demons, drifting like abandoned rag dolls on a night sea. This must be where the first skirmish happened.

The bodies wouldn’t disappear for a few more days, so Thilial, disgusted, decided to disappear. She sprang up into the angelic realm, and the vista around her transformed into a surreal panorama. The doomed demon army took on russet hues. The angels winked in and out of true color as they took brief respites in the angelic realm—or used the realm to facilitate an attack—then blinked back into demonic space. Some angels, like Thilial, were waiting unnaturally long to rejoin the battle.

She’d tried to revel in the warfare. Justice was finally being served to these vermin, and that was something to celebrate. But Thilial had been created in the 1500s; she hadn’t been present for the great battles of the distant past. This mass killing was a new experience for her, and she found it abhorrent at a visceral level. Talking about killing God’s enemies was one thing, but being here in person and actually participating in the extermination…

Thilial knew that there must be a better way to achieve God’s goals. This was deeply, deeply wrong, especially in light of so many demons heeding Xeres’s plea to retreat. He tried to open their eyes, and many of them listened, but we’re killing them anyway. If they will not fight and we rush to slaughter them, who is truly the demon, and who the angel?

“Thilial!” a commanding angel called from the safety of the sidelines in the angelic realm. “Get back into combat!” His severe eyes went even further, warning Thilial, Or you’ll rot in Heaven’s prisons for eternity.

Thilial dropped back into the demonic realm, and color was restored to the tens of thousands of fighting spirits. She raised Fear in a defensive posture. Maybe if I keep moving, and strike only in self-defense, my superiors won’t notice that I’m avoiding the fray.

She began a wide circular motion around the perimeter of the fighting. From this distance, the battle looked like an enormous glob of churning particles drifting in the sky. When viewed from afar, the horror and violence inside that glob seemed almost forgettable. She didn’t know those angels or those demons, dying by the hundreds. From out here, they were just spectacle. She again attempted to force herself to see this as a necessary—

Scathing pain burst across Thilial’s back. She tried to flee from whatever had caused it, but two hands closed around her head, preventing her escape. She grabbed the hands just as they tried to twist her head into a snap. In doing so, she dropped her sword.

Fear toppled forward out of her reach. She summoned all of her strength to strain against the hands of whatever demon was behind her.

The demon abruptly released her head and delivered two sharp blows to her side. Thilial’s hands, having been pushing against the demon’s, thrust outward, throwing her whole body off-kilter. She struggled to right herself.

Panicked, Thilial scanned for her attacker, but somehow, he’d vanished. She turned to look for her sword, and spotted it—in the hands of an angel who was speeding away from her.

An angel? Was this who had attacked her? What reckless angel would betray his own kind in the midst of such a victory over demonkind?

Pain radiated from Thilial’s back and throbbed through her body. Her wounds felt grave. I should retreat. I need to get back to Heaven.

As she floated there, a kilometer above the ground, trying to climb into the angelic realm, she watched her attacker flying downward. He was just a fleck in the darkness now, but Thilial could still see her sword in his hand.

As unconsciousness wrapped its blanket around her mind, Thilial’s last thoughts were of fury at the angel who’d crossed her, and confusion over the fact that he had only one wing.

•

Thorn had rushed into the fray to defend Xeres from several attackers—mostly angels—but Xeres seemed to be handling them himself. He disappeared and reappeared, outflying some and flinging others away with his mighty arms, wounding a few but killing none. Thorn could do little but watch.

While escaping the assault on the quarantine zone, Thorn had feared for his life. The demons all knew him to be a traitor, and the angels all knew him to be a renegade—the target of God’s manhunt. If not for Xeres protecting him from the spirits in the compound, Thorn would have been slain.

Then, floating next to Xeres beneath the battle, watching him gaze up at the carnage, glimpsing the change in his eyes when he saw the death being wrought by the war he’d neglected to prevent, Thorn had felt hope for the first time in days.

And now the angels were dashing that hope to pieces, murdering every demon in sight. Could this order truly have come from God? He was vain and relentless, true, but in Heaven, His desire to save demonkind had seemed genuine. Could He truly be terminating the entire demonic race just because some of them had learned that He still wanted them back? Was God so callous, so insecure?

As Thorn was trying to make sense of it all, he noticed two familiar beings near the outer edge of the chaotic battle. Wanderer was attacking Thilial! The hoary old demon hit her twice in the side, then swooped around her and grabbed her sword. He raced downward toward the ground.

Paralyzed, Thilial flickered away into the angelic realm. From this far away, Thorn could do nothing to help her, especially not when she’d fled to the realm above his. But what was Wanderer doing out in the battle? Why had he risked his own safety like that? Shouldn’t he be huddled in a safe house somewhere, dispatching orders from behind several lines of defense?

“Thorny!” the Judge called from behind him. “You’re alive! Holy hell, dude, you started a war!”

“Judge! Follow me! I need your help!” Thorn veered away from the main battle and set himself on Wanderer’s trajectory. The angels’ victory seemed imminent; the disorganized demons stood no chance. But seeing Wanderer’s stealthy incursion, Thorn discerned that this confrontation with the angels couldn’t possibly be his entire plan. No, Wanderer was much too cunning for that. This battle had to be a diversion from something else.

And whatever it was, Thorn was going to stop it.

11

A few blocks away from the angels’ quarantine zone stood the Atlanta Fellowship of Faith and Freedom, a five-story-tall megachurch that Thorn had frequented during his days as Atlanta’s top demon. A white, bottom-lit cross monument rose before it, twice as tall as the church, stretching up into the storm as if challenging the heavens themselves. Perhaps in answer, lightning struck the huge white cross as Thorn and the Judge approached.

“Don’t do it, Thorn,” the Judge said again, yelling above the wind and rain. “Wanderer scares the bejesus out of me. We lost this battle. Let’s just go back to the nest and rethink our options.”

Thorn said nothing and continued ahead. He was through with running and hiding. This would end tonight, one way or the other.

The Judge finally shut up as they neared the fourteen glass doors at the church’s entrance. They floated through, past the church’s bookstore, its gym, and its breakfast restaurant. The lights here had been dimmed for the night, as had the lights in the main auditorium.

This massive, central room seated at least three thousand people, maybe four. Curved rows of cushioned movie theater seats tiered outward from the stage, stopping well short of the back wall, lest they inadvertently encounter any suffering that might lurk in the streets outside. As Thorn crept through this rear area, vacant but for its Tuscan pillars and voguish carpet, he looked up to the banners exclaiming “Hallelujah!” and “Hosanna!” and “Prepare Ye the Way of the Lord!” hung from the room’s expansive dome ceiling.

Thorn could barely read the words, however, because the air was so thick with demons. Many thousands of them hovered between the dome and the chairs, spanning back into the darkness at the edges of the room. They took note of Thorn’s presence, but didn’t move to intercept him. Some of them even withdrew as Thorn approached, making a path for him. He recognized a few who’d been his own followers only last week. Now they sneered at him with the rest of the waiting army. He heard a few growls and a few snickers, but the most frightening aspect of the throng was its relative silence. These demons stared malice at him, and as he marched toward the front of the auditorium, he felt his own death growing ever more inevitable. He briefly turned around to make sure that the Judge was still with him.

He was, and he looked terrified.

Numerous lights hung from trusses above the stage, though they were deactivated now, as no physical person was present to be entertained. Beneath the rigging, a whole forest of music stands grew across the stage. Guitars, drums, tambourines, and three different pianos adorned the fringes of the musical forest. An array of seven screens towered behind the podium, six shaped like squares and the last shaped like a three-story-tall cross in the center of them all. Even as a demon, Thorn had enjoyed these screens’ colorful displays on Sunday mornings. But now all were dark.

Completing the musical spectacle were the tallest trees in its woods: the pipes of a postmodern pipe organ, set onto the wall between the screens. Their ranks climbed and fell, some shaped as triangular or rectangular prisms, others extending straight out from the wall at ninety degree angles.

And next to the organ’s console, at the foot of the video cross, hovered Wanderer. He’d stabbed the cross with Thilial’s sword, but instead of damaging the screen, the sword’s foible simply disappeared into some kind of gleam of light. Firmly and deliberately, Wanderer was now cutting upward with the blade as if carving something into the video cross. The sheen of light followed the front of the blade wherever it sliced.

What exactly am I seeing? Thorn drifted closer, trying not to think of the multitude of demons surrounding him, and how they could rip him apart in a second.

“I tire of this game, Thorn,” Wanderer said without turning from his work. “Dead or alive, you are of no use or consequence anymore. Leave. You can do nothing here.”

Wanderer’s voice boasted a strange, reverberant quality in the presence of so many other spirits, bouncing off their bodies like music might bounce off the room’s huge walls. It almost seemed to echo.

The Judge drew closer to Thorn, who tensed, preparing himself to confront the Devil.

“What are you doing?” Thorn asked, and his voice reverberated too.

“If you do not leave, I will kill you,” Wanderer said. “Discovering this sword is too fortuitous a boon to postpone in favor of petty bickering with a bleeding heart like you.”

Thorn passed the front row of cushioned seats and inched toward the carpeted stairs that led up to the stage. “You’ve corrupted billions of spirits who call themselves demons. You’ve confused billions of humans who call themselves Christians. You’ve caused untold death and suffering worldwide. You’ve lied—”

“All for the greater good. Who are you to judge? You know so little.”

“Who am I to judge?” said the Judge, a little too loudly. The demons around them stirred and moved closer. “I’m the goddamned Demon Judge of Atlanta, buddy. And you’re an asshole.”

“On the contrary,” said Wanderer, his back still to Thorn. “I’m the greatest demon of all time. Of time longer than you know.”

Thorn slunk up the stairs, then started his way through the many music stands. “You are great,” Thorn admitted. “You knew how to defeat an untouchable Enemy. You attacked what He cares about. You attacked His creations, controlling them when He wanted them to be free. And controlling them in His name, no less. I see some value in your ends—in overthrowing God—but if you think that your ends justify your means, you’re—”

Wanderer spun, lunged, and cut Thorn’s arm off at the shoulder.

Thorn screamed. His detached limb floated away into the crowd of demons, who tossed it among themselves, laughing. Thorn focused through the pain, and saw Wanderer charging again, Thilial’s sword raised high.

But before he could strike, the Judge rammed him from the side. They careened into the area of the drum set, where the Judge tightened his hands around Wanderer’s neck.

Wanderer summarily vanished, presumably into the angelic realm.

The Judge swiveled around in bewilderment, trying to find Wanderer. A moment later, the Devil appeared above him and kicked him in the head. The demon horde hooted wildly.

“You’re a Judge,” Wanderer said. “Isn’t there a Rule against killing your fellow demons?”

“My fellow demons don’t have fairy wings. Rules don’t apply to things with wings.” The Judge jumped upward and tried to hit Wanderer, but the one-winged demon flickered away again. He only disappeared for an instant this time, just long enough to throw the Judge off kilter so he could kick him again when he reappeared. The Judge reeled.

Wanderer then turned to Thorn, who was cringing from the pain rippling through his shoulder. “An arm for a wing, Thorn. That should appeal to your sense of justice.”

Now that Wanderer had moved away, Thorn could see what he’d been crafting at the foot of the video cross. The screen and the wall behind it had been deformed by the blade, which had produced a carving in them that almost looked like wood. Small, incomprehensible runes glowed in its familiar frame. A transit door?

Thorn blinked, clutched his armless shoulder, and looked again. Indeed, Wanderer had somehow carved a transit door into the wall at the rear of the stage. Thorn had trouble believing his eyes, so he asked, “What is that?”

Wanderer sauntered toward Thorn, brandishing Thilial’s sword. “A stairway to Heaven,” he said smugly.

A transit door to Heaven? How? Perhaps the angels possessed special swords that allowed such a thing to be created, though Thorn had never heard of such magic. Did Wanderer plan to attack Heaven directly?

“I don’t—” Thorn started. He had to bite against the pain before continuing. “I don’t care if you have a million demons waiting to strike. In Heaven, you’ll be outnumbered.”

Wanderer suddenly swiped the sword downward, but Thorn was faster this time. He flipped himself over, away from the weapon, and grabbed at Wanderer’s head. Wanderer disappeared for a moment, then clobbered Thorn with the sword’s pommel. Thorn scampered back. With only one wing, can Wanderer enter the angels’ realm for only an instant at a time?

“Stay back!” Wanderer shouted to his followers, who were begging aloud for the honor of slaughtering Thorn. “He’s mine!”

Thorn briefly locked eyes with the Judge, whom the demons were heckling as he tried to return to Thorn. Wanderer pressed forward as Thorn retreated across the stage.

“In Heaven as a whole, yes,” Wanderer said. “But I won’t be outnumbered in God’s House. He might defeat my first wave, and maybe even my second, but soon, His power will run out. I don’t have to best the angel armies. I just have to kill God.”

Kill God? As much as Thorn detested God, he trembled at the thought of Wanderer murdering Him and taking His place.

Wanderer must have seen the fear on Thorn’s face, because he said, “No, no, don’t worry, Thorn. You won’t be around to see it, but I’ll be a better leader than God ever was. I’ll wipe out every trace of His old world, and build a new world where everyone will be free.”

“Free in your little box of lies,” said Xeres.

Wanderer froze. He looked up.

Xeres hovered between the lighting rigs, his colossal wings spread over most of the stage. Thorn could discern none of his features. He appeared as a hulking silhouette with a menacing voice: a demon of demons with the wings of an angel. He looked stronger and more vigorous than Thorn had ever seen him.

Although the horde could have killed Xeres as easily as it could have killed Thorn, it receded at his sudden presence. A hundred or two of them even fled from the building. The rest murmured stunned whispers. Xeres was alive, and he was an angel somehow! Would any of these demons defect upon seeing him? Would his presence here have a similar effect as it had in the battle outside?

Xeres began to descend. Wanderer raised his sword.

“You stayed in the shadows,” Xeres said, his deep voice becoming one with the room’s own shadows, terrifying even Thorn. “You ate away at my empire. For that alone, I would kill you, if I were not changed from who I used to be.”

Wanderer drifted back toward the drum set. Xeres lofted down between him and Thorn. “Now, foul Lucifer, I hate you for a different reason entirely. I hate you for what you’ve done to demonkind.”

The other demons implored Wanderer to let them attack. Wanderer did not give them permission, but neither did he deny it. His attention remained fixated on Xeres.

“If you attack me,” Wanderer said, his voice trembling, “you’re dead.”

Xeres shrugged, his muscles earthquakes and his shoulders mountains. “God was watching my wings fly through the demon storm, spreading truth. He saw my rebellion; He’ll kill me soon enough. If I have to die, I’d rather you die, too.”

Xeres lunged at Wanderer. Dodging a slash of the sword, he reached for Wanderer’s head. Wanderer immediately absconded into the angelic realm, but when he disappeared, Xeres did as well. And when they both reappeared, a jagged gash had been torn in Wanderer’s remaining wing.

Xeres disengaged, then halted between the drum set and one of the pianos, forcing Wanderer into a position between Xeres and Thorn. The other demons had grabbed the Judge and pulled him into the air above the rows of chairs. He yelled for help as they taunted him. Wanderer backed toward Thorn.

“Beings like you try to put us all in cages,” Xeres said to Wanderer as he advanced. “But it is beings like you who belong in the cages.”

Wanderer bumped into Thorn’s legs. He jumped with a start, though Thorn’s pain had grown so intense that he couldn’t muster the focus to attack. When Wanderer turned his head to look at Thorn, Xeres lunged again.

Wanderer heard the wingbeats. He turned back, whirling the sword around behind him, then over his head. He brought it down hard.

The sword cleaved through Xeres from his neck to his abdomen: a length longer than Thorn’s height.

Xeres groaned, the sound a blunted roar rumbling through the church. He reached for Wanderer, but the Devil twisted the sword in his gut, and his hands fell to try and still the blade.

As Thorn watched his old mentor die, his dream of freedom seeped away, a fondly remembered fantasy that would never come to fruition. The Judge screamed nearby in his own chasm of agony. Thorn could only guess what the demons were doing to him.

From Thorn’s vantage behind Wanderer, he saw the far edge of the Devil’s lips, which curled upward, twitching with satisfaction. Seeing this faint trace of Satan’s haunting smile was somehow more disturbing than seeing it dead on.

Wanderer tried to yank the sword out from Xeres’s belly, but Xeres held fast to the blade, which sawed into his hands.

Wanderer braced himself and tightened his grip on the sword. He pulled again, harder. And the instant he did so, Xeres disappeared. Wanderer’s tug at the sword now threw him backward, and as he lost stability, Thorn saw an opportunity. Repressing his own pain, Thorn kicked Wanderer in his upper leg, sending him spinning in an odd, gyroscopic twirl.

The sword flew free from Wanderer’s grip.

It tumbled over his wing toward Thorn.

Wanderer slowed his spin, regained his bearings.

Quivering at the violent pain surging through his torso, Thorn reached out with his one remaining hand. Wanderer reached too.

Wanderer was closer. His hand closed around the hilt.

But before he could secure it, Xeres’s hand appeared around the blade’s forte and snatched the sword from Wanderer’s reach.

Xeres bellowed a thunderous, animalistic cry as he arced the sword up around his head. He thrust it point-first, forward and down. It plunged through Wanderer’s chest.

Wanderer heaved backward. He gasped and staggered forward as Xeres removed the sword. Then he grunted in agony as Xeres speared him again.

The demons went wild. Intense furor erupted around the room. The cacophony nearly deafened Thorn. Five larger demons swooped toward Xeres, and quickly found themselves without heads. A dozen more flew in, but in a flurry of motion Thorn would have thought beyond someone so mortally wounded, Xeres dispatched them as well. This sent the others into an even greater frenzy, but for the moment, they kept away from the great angel. In the midst of the chaos, the Judge managed to free himself and bolt toward the stage. Like the other demons, though, the Judge gave Xeres his space.

Wanderer disappeared, then reappeared less than a second later. Seeing this attempt at escape, Xeres swung the sword down mightily, completely severing Wanderer’s remaining wing.

Wanderer yowled. Trembling beneath the minacious angel above him, he tried to scurry backward, but Thorn could tell his strength was weakening.

“You’ll not die as an angel,” Xeres said. “You’ll not die as a cunning mastermind. You’ll die as what you are in your heart. You’ll die as just another fool demon.”

Lurching, Wanderer fled toward the transit door at the base of the cross. He opened it, and golden light from Heaven shot through the dim room. The demons in its path shielded their eyes as Wanderer dived through.

Halfway through the door, Wanderer audibly choked when Xeres clutched his neck and yanked him backward. Xeres flung him aside, hurled the sword through the transit door, then smashed it shut with such force that its wooden frame cracked and splintered. The light in its glittering runes faded away.

Xeres now stalked Wanderer, who slowed to a stop beneath the pipe organ’s console. “B—B—But—” Wanderer stammered, feebly holding his hands up against any further attack by Xeres. “Do you realize what you’ve done? You’ve let him get away with it. Othundro’s up there on his throne right now, high and mighty, lording it over all of us. You’ve let him get away with it!” This last exclamation came out as barely a sob, though Thorn could see the inferno in Wanderer’s eyes. The demon horde quieted as it strained to hear him.

Xeres advanced, and Wanderer backed into the pedalboard between the organ’s bench and its console: a space that looked alarmingly coffin-like under the circumstances. His striped fedora fell off and drifted in midair. He reached a hand up toward Xeres, or maybe to the pipes above him… or perhaps even to Heaven far beyond. “Oh, what music I made,” he said weakly.

Wanderer’s passion dwindled on his face. His head started to loll and his eyes began to droop. Then he slumped down, out of Thorn’s view, and remained still for a long time.

Thorn couldn’t tell precisely when Wanderer died. Thorn himself was too weak to move, and barely noticed when the Judge approached Xeres’s side. He watched his friends as they gazed down at the Devil, dead beneath the church’s giant pipe organ.

At last, the Judge voiced the most fitting eulogy Thorn could have hoped for.

“So long, motherfucker,” the Judge said. “You’ve been touched by an angel.”

•

Purposeless in the wake of losing their leader and his portal to Heaven, the room’s demons loitered in the air around the stage. They gaped, exchanging stares of disbelief.

Thorn eyed Xeres’s sickening wound, which ran over half the length of his body. He would not survive—that much was certain. But perhaps God would reward Xeres for defeating Wanderer? God had shown mercy on Amy, after all; He was not entirely unreasonable.

Thorn taxed his body in an effort to rotate himself upright. The Judge saw this and flitted over to assist.

“We need to get out of here,” the Judge whispered.

Even as he said this, another group of demons veered downward to attack Xeres. Without the sword, Xeres struggled to defend himself. He cried out as the demons raked the gouge that Wanderer had cut into him.

Thorn saw the excitement on the faces of the other demons as they realized that Xeres was vulnerable. More rushed toward him. Numerous spectator demons were half-concealed in the floor, so Thorn expected that their number extended downward for some way. And the air was thick with them. The only way out was through the wall with the screens. Thorn shut out the pain in his shoulder as best he could and sped through the back wall, the Judge aiding him.

They fled through ministerial offices, a kitchen, and a restroom, all just as saturated with demons as the sanctum had been. When these demons saw Thorn and the Judge burst past, they joined the pursuit. Thorn soon emerged into a large recreation hall where moonlight beamed through tall windows, past several thousand more demons, and onto a set of bleachers pressed against the far wall. Seeing the futility of further flight, Thorn tried to stop, but the Judge doggedly pulled him onward.

The demons swarmed around them, converging. But as they moved in, broad angel’s wings folded down over Thorn and the Judge. Thorn glanced up and saw Xeres, flying along with them, staring straight ahead at the incoming foes.

Xeres’s protective wings contorted into gnarled shapes as the demons attacked. His wings beat back and forth, buffeting any demon who tried to get to Thorn and the Judge. Together, the three of them zoomed past the outer wall of the megachurch and turned toward the quarantine zone.

Between Xeres’s wingbeats, Thorn glimpsed the battle that continued to unfold in the sky above. The demons who hadn’t retreated had now regrouped, and they were staging what looked to be a somewhat effective defense against the overwhelming number of angels. Still, their defeat seemed inevitable. A single small cloud in an immense storm, the demon army was surrounded in all directions. But there are plenty of demons left down here to join the fight.

Xeres cried out with a powerful wail of pain, and the shade of his wings melted away. Thorn looked back—Xeres could barely be seen through the mob of demons. He flung a few of them away, but more swooped in to engulf him.

Thorn wanted to shout after his dying friend, to rush recklessly back to defend Xeres, as Xeres had defended him. But Thorn had been maimed, and would be of no use. And if Thorn rushed back to his own death, surely that would invalidate Xeres’s final rescue of him.

Fortunately, in their zeal to tear the giant angel who’d killed Wanderer limb from limb, the demons seemed to have momentarily forgotten about Thorn and the Judge. The Judge led Thorn over to one of the angels’ warehouses. “Stay here for a sec,” the Judge said. “I’ll go tell them to scram.”

Them? Who is he talking about? Thorn peered in the direction the Judge was floating and saw, sitting in a car about fifty yards away, Heather and Brandon. I almost forgot about them! Thorn felt exposed without the Judge beside him, but he agreed that the humans needed to leave. The last thing he wanted was for them to get caught up in this mayhem.

“Judge! Tell them to—”

A demon burst from the warehouse and clouted the Judge in his temple, right where Wanderer had kicked him minutes earlier. The Judge drifted lazily sideways through the downpour, unconscious.

The demon who’d struck him then turned to Thorn, and any hope Thorn might have had fell away with the rain.

“Rat,” said Marcus, with utter malice in his voice and two thousand years of hatred simmering behind his eyes.

•

Brandon couldn’t get back to sleep. Something ominous about the storm outside the car prickled him with unease every time he started to drift off. The car was still, but the sheets of water spilling down the window obscured any view of what lay outside, save for the shadows of trees and buildings that jumped out of darkness whenever lightning flashed. Waiting by this abandoned warehouse complex in the repose of early morning felt all wrong to him after everything he and Heather had been through. Where was this Thorn character? And what made Heather so sure he could be trusted?

“I’m gonna grab a smoke,” he said to Heather. Her eyes droopy, she nodded. He unlatched the door and left the car, then rushed quickly under a nearby overhang, where rivulets of rainwater fell and splattered on the asphalt beneath. Brandon paced forward, staying as close to the outer edge of the overhang as he could without getting wet, keeping his distance from the cloudy windows and rust-stained walls of the warehouse. He tried to not even look at the gloomy place.

Stopping at a corner where a heavier runnel of water fell, he turned and stared out at the rain. The large parking lot was unlit for a hundred yards, all the way out to the road, where dim streetlights barely illuminated the buildings across the street. Beyond those buildings, the branches of tall trees waved in the wind; between those branches, Brandon could make out the lights of skyscrapers several miles away.

Avoiding the cast and sling protecting his aching left arm, Brandon slid his right hand into his left pocket, where he still had a few cigarettes left in his pack. It was the same pack he’d shared with Tim last night.

Will I ever see you again, Dad? He pulled out a cigarette and lit it. He inhaled, closed his eyes, let the warmth percolate down through his body. It felt great. He hadn’t smoked in over a day, which would have been damn unusual under normal circumstances. He imagined Tim next to him, in the garden in back of the country club, concerned for his adopted son’s well-being. Tim would be just as confused as Brandon if he were here now, but Brandon would gladly have switched places with him. He desperately wished he’d had a chance to say goodbye. He wanted Tim here now more than anything. Hell, he even wished Karen were here now, or Cole.

Cole? Who is Cole?

Brandon opened his eyes, and nearly collapsed from the shock of what he saw. The world’s colors had changed: they were all darker, muted, tinted reddish brown. And beyond the wall of rain falling from the overhang, an incomprehensible scene unfolded. Ethereal, illuminant things were whirling around across the parking lot. They had arms and legs, and something like faces. Yellow and glowing, they cast delicate light wherever they went. They looked beautiful… but they seemed to be struggling against each other. Brandon faintly recalled the shimmering invisible entities in the courthouse earlier in the day.

“Brandon!”

He swung his gaze toward the voice. It had come from somewhere out in the parking lot, but he couldn’t see exactly where.

A huge one of the things with great white wings was struggling near Brandon. Dozens of the smaller ones crawled over it, ripping pieces off of it. It looked weak, like it was dying. Nevertheless, it reached a mighty arm out toward Brandon. The thing spoke to him!

“You. Thorn’s humans. A gift for you. This is our realm.” The huge thing moaned in agony, then croaked out a request in its impossibly deep voice. “The sword. Get Him talking. Open… with the sword. Let them hear. Let them know.”

And with that, the thing foundered, then seemed to yield to its attackers. It lay motionless in midair. The things crawling over it gave a cackling cheer.

“Hon?”

Brandon turned to see Heather approaching from the car, her eyes alert as she scanned the parking lot. “You see it too?”

“Yeah. What are they?”

He followed Heather’s gaze upward to see a dazzling sight that he’d missed until now. The stormy sky above them was teeming with thousands and thousands more of the glowing things. Most of them were concentrated in a big luminous group. Were they fighting? Brandon couldn’t tell, but these strange fireflies buzzing in the midst of the lightning storm mesmerized him for several moments. Until he heard his name again.

“Brandon! Help!”

“He can’t hear you, Thorn,” another one said. This one was hovering in the air a foot above the asphalt, stalking in a circular motion around the one that had called for help. “Thilial is gone, the Judge is out cold, and Xeres is dead, truly this time. You have no friends left to help you. Your ideas have left you alone and destitute, and your ideas will die with you.”

“You seem more angry at my ideas than you are at me,” said the weakened one, floating near the ground. Thorn?

“Can you blame me?” said the aggressive one. “Your ideas have sabotaged our battle. If demons are allowed to dwell on them, they will poison our cohesive society and everything we’ve worked so hard to build. Is that such an unfounded criticism?”

“It’s tribalism. It’s censorship.”

The aggressive one stopped its circling and strode toward Thorn. “And that is why you must die, even if you hadn’t spurned me in Rome. You can not think such things! Just look at how Xeres, the greatest of us, was brainwashed by the same lies you constantly spout. You must not be allowed to coax people to think differently!”

“Or perhaps I’m simply not allowed to coax people to think.”

The aggressive one’s arm surged forward and clutched Thorn’s throat. Thorn gagged as he lifted him above his head. “It is my hallowed duty to kill you now. Your death is my reward for all my service. It was for this moment that I invaded Africa, for this moment that I orchestrated Shenzuul’s death, invaded two Sanctuaries, and killed all those people at the wedding.”

At the wedding? Brandon dropped his cigarette and stepped forward, out into the rain.

“It is for this that I’ve lived my life, Thorn. To kill my enemies. What purer purpose can a person have?”

“Did you kill Tim?” Brandon called across the parking lot. Several of the glowing things turned from their fighting to watch him advance on Thorn and Thorn’s attacker.

“Hon. Hon! Don’t go near them!”

Brandon heard Heather’s footsteps running after him.

The thing attacking Thorn gave Brandon only a cursory glance, so Brandon repeated himself, louder this time, enraged. “YOU! DID YOU KILL TIMOTHY BARNETT?”

The glowing thing swiveled its head toward Brandon, bewilderment written on its vague features. It let go of Thorn.

“You can see me?” the thing said, a moment before Brandon pummeled it in the face. It spun backward but rebounded quickly. It tried to maneuver around Brandon to get at Thorn, but Brandon hit it again, then grabbed its neck just like it had grabbed Thorn’s.

Brandon looked into the creature’s glowing white eyes, trying to see what was there. It clutched at Brandon’s arm, trying to free itself. Brandon had to exert tremendous force against its considerable strength. “I don’t know who Tim was,” it choked out with a sneer. “But I know who you are. You might remember me as ‘Shannon.’ I killed all your friends and family.”

The thing lashed out with its leg, kneeing Brandon in his broken arm. Brandon yelped at the sharp jolt of pain and lost his grip on the thing that had been Shannon. It quickly grabbed him and flung him toward Thorn. He hit the ground and rolled, sending fresh bursts of pain sparking through his broken arm.

When he looked back up, the thing was charging at him. He raised his good arm to shield himself and braced for the hit.

Heather charged past him and plowed into the attacker head on. The thing didn’t fall, but it staggered back a few feet as she struggled to get hold of it. Brandon ran to help her. He gripped the creature’s left arm while Heather gripped its right. Once their arms were locked with the thing’s, they tried to push it downward.

It grunted as it resisted them, slowly pushing them back toward Thorn. Its strength alone was greater than theirs combined. Dozens of other glowing beings were whirling around them now, yelling indecipherable taunts.

Then the thing abruptly stopped fighting and sank through the ground. Brandon and Heather’s momentum forced them forward. They tumbled onto the asphalt.

Brandon groaned as his left arm exploded into new and excruciating pain. He stopped himself with his right arm, then rested his head on the blacktop. Glancing down toward his left forearm, he saw that it was now bent up toward his shoulder at a sickening angle.

Heather had fallen in front of him. She winced as she touched a bloody scrape on her head. “Are you okay?” she asked Brandon.

Brandon was about to answer when a glowing hand reached up from beneath the ground, obscuring his vision.

•

Thorn watched, horrified, as Marcus snapped Brandon’s neck. Brandon’s whole body spasmed, then went suddenly still.

Heather screamed. Marcus rose from the earth and grabbed her by the arm.

Thorn summoned what little energy remained to him and charged to aid Heather. But before he could get to her, Marcus clutched her by both sides of her head and spun it a hundred and eighty degrees. A muffled crack escaped her neck. Marcus released Heather, and she fell limply to the ground.

No! Before Thorn could fully grasp what had just happened, Marcus struck him powerfully, propelling him backward. No, no, no! Not the humans, too! Not Brandon and Heather. Not after Xeres. Can’t I just keep one friend? Can’t I just save one single person?

As if in answer, Marcus said, “Amy will be next.” He reached down, clasped Thorn’s head, and drew Thorn up to his eye level. “You are wrong. I am right. You are wrong. I am right.”

“Have you forgotten that I spared your life when I could have killed you?”

Marcus increased the pressure on both sides of Thorn’s head. “You are wrong. I am right.”

Thorn gazed upon Brandon and Heather’s dead bodies, eerily familiar from the Miami Sanctuary. They’d lived for only two days, Thorn realized. Such a short time had passed from the beginning of the Bristol Sanctuary until now, and that had been their entire lifespan. What had they known during that brief period? Panic, terror, bloodshed, grief? Thorn intensely regretted what he’d put them through. And all for nothing, in the end. He wished he could have at least shown them that he cared, that he loved them.

The pressure from Marcus’s grip grew unbearably great. Utter agony burst through Thorn’s skull. His vision blurred. His consciousness waned. Marcus drifted backward, away from him, yet his suffering did not cease. Has Marcus crushed my head?

Thorn collapsed into the air just above the ground. He gasped for that air, but none came to him. He tried to ignore the pain. He tried to focus on Brandon and Heather, on the simple joy he’d felt when he’d thought they were safe.

Rain pattered against his suit and his skin. Marcus had left Thorn’s field of vision, but when Thorn turned to find where he’d gone, he couldn’t locate him. In fact, all of the demons and angels had gone. To where?

Alone with Brandon and Heather, Thorn rested his mangled skull against the wet ground. The pain flowing through his head and his shoulder gave way to a sudden numbness. As the world went black, Thorn felt nothing. Nothing but a strange sense of heaviness, of tangible weight.

Am I human again?

Darkness took him.

•

Thorn blinked. His pain was gone, his arm was back, and his fingers on the end of that arm curled when he wanted them to. His eyes didn’t even have to adjust to the bright light, as if he’d never even left here. Brandon and Heather were standing next to him, alive and well, and confused.

Thorn was in Heaven. Again. He and the two humans stood on a cantilever platform attached to one of the Celestial City’s nearly vertical mountainsides. Many such platforms dotted the cliff face, and as Thorn watched, new—or newly deceased—humans appeared on some of them, greeted by angels. The golden city stretched outward in the wide valley beneath them.

Thorn swapped glances with Heather, then with Brandon. Both appeared floored, speechless. Thorn almost explained to them that because they’d both been rational people who’d done good deeds during their short life on Earth, they’d automatically gone to Heaven when they died. And so had Thorn, since he’d died as a human. But when Thorn opened his mouth, he found that he was speechless as well.

Near the mountainside, some twenty feet away, two white-robed angels stood behind a celestial console, digits and symbols streaming across its surface. They gaped as they observed the newcomers.

“Well this is awkward,” said Thorn.

12

Brandon tried not to look at the big wall of TV screens as he was led across the golden city. Heather, though, kept staring at the giant black monolith, like it confirmed a suspicion she’d long held. Even Thorn seemed mesmerized by the structure as they passed less than a mile away from it, surrounded by a dozen winged creatures—angels?—and walking on foot.

Brandon remembered that black wall. He’d glimpsed it briefly during his delirious flight from the plane crash. But he hadn’t seen it so closely then.

It was indeed composed of tens of thousands of small screens, each no larger than an average television set. Various digits and figures flashed across the screens, all the way from their base up into the clouds, where the top of the tower disappeared into white mists.

The monolith drew Brandon’s attention like a siren calling his name. He somehow knew that dark horrors waited for him inside the black structure, but as he walked by, he was helpless but to gaze upon it. And when he did, he felt it reach into his mind. It showed him things—things he’d only glimpsed in the periphery of his mind’s eye when he’d looked at it before. But here, so close, the visions were brighter than waking dreams.

This is what would have been.

Brandon saw himself seated in Good Shepherd Family Church, one of many guests at a service. Splotchy colored light poured through the stained glass windows, but it fell onto black garb and sad faces. A funeral was in progress. A collection of candles and photographs of the departed adorned the area behind the pulpit. Brandon spotted Tim’s face among the pictures.

Pacing along the sanctuary’s center aisle beneath the chandeliers, Karen stopped by each one of the old, worn pews to comfort the folks who sat there. She cried with them and prayed with them, their anchor in the gale of grief. “Jesus will give you the strength you need,” she said. Then Brandon watched her approach him, dressed in blacks like the rest of them, but seated near the back, silent and shaken. She sat with him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. Brandon felt small next to her kindness, beneath her caring arm. In that moment, he felt terrible for every snide comment he’d ever made about Karen, or about any Christian.

As she consoled him, the black monolith replaced the church with a different, darker vision.

This is what could have been.

Brandon saw himself wearing stylish apparel, in a high-rise condominium near the waterfront. He watched as he tried to manipulate another, shorter man—Cole?—then terrorize a panicked girl. Was he raping her? He looked away in disgust, but the vision moved along with his gaze as if punishing him for these deeds that he never would have done in his right mind. And then he was downstairs in the lobby, trying to kill the same girl. As he raised a golf club to swing, he turned and locked eyes with himself.

“The Fun can’t last forever,” the cruel Brandon said. “If I die on a wild night out, that’s a good death. Live like a rock star, party hard, die young. Go out with a bang instead of a whimper.”

Brandon yelled at his darker self. “You’re horrible! Any one of us could have been born into any life! Can’t you see that now? Why should you treat her as any less than yourself when you could easily have been her?”

But Brandon’s other self just chuckled as if he’d made a clever joke. Then he turned and swung at the girl anyway.

Brandon repulsed himself. Could he truly have ever become such a selfish and destructive person? The darker Brandon was so clearly under the control of cultural forces like the seeking of fame, and psychological forces like a lust for power. How could such a person fancy himself an independent thinker, intellectually superior to all others?

It made Brandon wonder under what forces he was acting unawares in his current life. What assumptions had he made and never questioned?

The horrific images of the high-rise condo faded…

This is what should have been.

For a moment, Brandon saw himself saying a calm goodbye to Crystal and Cole and leaving the condo forever. Or maybe he saw himself making peace with Karen at the end of his wedding reception, shaking her hand as the last guests left for their homes, late at night. He had no time to ascertain exactly which scenario this final vision portrayed, because an angel harshly prodded him into a tunnel at the base of a mountain. The huge black wall went out of his view, and the visions of other times and places—maybe real and maybe imagined—vanished with it.

Brandon finally snapped back to the present. He, Heather, and Thorn were led into a circular room with a large, unbroken slab of stone for its floor. The walls extended upward many hundreds of feet, from this dim area to a blazing yellow light at its top.

Even as Brandon marveled at the room’s height, the stone slab shifted beneath him, and he had to brace his knees against the sudden upward thrust of the heavenly elevator. With no obvious pulleys to operate the lift, Brandon found the contraption fascinating, and under better circumstances he might have asked to study it for an afternoon.

He tried to catch Heather’s gaze, but her eyes remained frightened and facing forward. She breathed in and out slowly and deliberately, as if the mere act of breathing required all of her attention. She’s the one who believed Thorn’s tall tales, and she seems more surprised by this situation than I am. We’ve died and gone to Heaven, obviously. What’s simpler to understand than that?

Brandon was more awake and alert now than he’d been on Earth, and his broken arm had been instantly healed. He also felt relief that his nihilistic views of the universe had been proven at least partially incorrect. There really was something out there greater than himself. And as the lift slowed at the top of the elevator shaft, Brandon had a feeling that he was about to meet that Something face to face.

Yet in spite of Brandon’s current good fortune, he couldn’t help but think of how he and everyone he’d ever known had been subjected to such misery during their lives on Earth. God had never intervened. God had let the suffering go on and on and on. God had never answered his questions. God had never shown him that He cared. Brandon had never believed in God while he was alive, but now that he knew that God had existed all along, yet had allowed Brandon to wallow in ignorance and pain… Brandon was angry.

The lift stopped and a doorway slid open, revealing a room bigger than Brandon thought a room could be. Several football fields could have filled the place. Sunlight slanted in through tall windows and numerous skylights, past marble columns and air thick with specks of pollen, coming to rest on the oasis of flowers and streams that carpeted the ground in all directions.

Far more spectacular than this, though, was the view to Brandon’s right when he stepped out of the lift. Empty air filled the space where one of the walls should have been, revealing a vast panorama of what appeared to be Planet Earth, spinning in the vacuum of space. As Brandon watched it, the line of dawn crept languidly across the planet’s surface. From this perspective, most of the planet slept in nighttime, extensive webs of city lights cradling their fragile civilizations. But as daytime consumed the darkness, the night’s lights disappeared as if dwarfed by the far greater luminance of the sun.

Brandon stopped and gaped at the spectacle. It was either the real deal, or the most impressive computer animation he’d ever seen. He took a step toward the rotating planet, but an angel gripped his arm and led him sideways, parallel to the striking view.

When Brandon finally wrenched his eyes away from the breathtaking sight, he found that he was being led past a great fountain, complete with griffins spewing spouts of water and a tall statue of a naked angel. They walked for another five minutes, beneath stately marble archways and past various animals, including two markhors, a family of ferrets, and what looked like a Komodo dragon slinking through the underbrush. Eventually they turned left and arrived at a filigreed gate of gold, its inlaid gems of black opal and alexandrite shimmering as angels pulled it open.

Beyond this lay a long, purely golden room. The walls and floor were gold, as were the ceiling and the columns supporting it. Flames burned brightly in golden sconces along the walls, perplexing Brandon as to why the sconces didn’t melt. For all he knew, even the threads of the sunglow rug extending from the door across the room’s entire length were made of gold.

There was no wall at the far end of the room, just another brilliant view of Earth. But looming in front of this view stood a pyramid of golden stairs, leading upward to the foot of a golden throne.

Were it not for the reflected light from the sconces and the darkness of the planet behind Him, the figure seated atop the throne might have been a silhouette. But Brandon could see Him clearly, even from this distance. He wore white clothes wrapped in thin, leafy vines. Glowing volts of electric plasma sizzled outward from His gossamer hair and evaporated into the air around His head. His torso was hunched over, and His chin leaned on one of His hands for support. His eyelids sagged over His eyes. For all His glory, He looked strangely depressed.

Is this God?

The angels led Brandon, Heather, and Thorn forward like prisoners. One cherub ran ahead to whisper in God’s ear. God nodded glumly.

“Heather, Brandon, I’m wondering where to put you,” God said before they’d crossed even halfway to His throne. His soft voice carried unnaturally far, and Brandon did a double-take to make sure God hadn’t somehow appeared right next to him. God’s voice was listless, though, and nearly apathetic. He had yet to make eye contact with them.

God then turned to Thorn, whom the angels had separated from Brandon and Heather. Thorn approached the throne from the right, and they from the left. “I know exactly where I’m gonna put you,” God said to Thorn, with only a faint trace of interest.

He continued to face Thorn as He said, “You humans, you’ve caused some trouble. You’ve been helping him, and I can’t tolerate those who aid My enemies. Yet you’ve proven to have the kind of minds I need up here in My Kingdom. Rational minds. Selfless, more or less. I can’t ignore that. I’d like to offer you a place here, in Heaven.”

Silence followed, save for the fluttering of the sconce flames. Brandon looked at Heather, but she seemed too awed by God to notice his glance. When neither of them responded, God finally turned away from Thorn to look Brandon in the eyes. His passionless gaze was far less threatening than Brandon had anticipated.

“Well?” God said.

“Where were You?” Brandon asked in response.

God blinked, swallowed. “Where was I?”

“Where were You when my friends and family died? When Tim’s wife died in a car wreck? Where were You when I asked for Your help when I was in pain?”

“I was testing you,” God said, His face devoid of apology, and of all other emotion.

“Testing me?”

The immense orb of Planet Earth turned behind God as He looked down on Brandon. “Is that really so awful?” He said, scowling a little. Then He actually laughed. “I used to be so proud of the system I’d created. But now it’s all just…”

His voice trailed off into nothingness. He shook His head, and His shoulders sank lower. He stared blankly at His bare feet. One of the vines that coiled around His arm slithered toward His hand, then licked at it with a thin, forked tongue. Brandon tried to hide his surprise when he realized it was not a vine.

“It doesn’t matter,” God said at last. “We’re all just infinitesimal specks circling one small star in all of space, after all. Why should any of it matter? It’s all so arbitrary.”

Before Brandon could formulate an answer, Thorn shook off the angels who’d been holding him. They moved to capture him again, but a wave of God’s hand stayed them. Thorn remained where he stood as he spoke.

“You’re just like Wanderer,” he said.

That got God’s attention. He jolted to His feet and straightened His back. The snake twined tighter against His arm. “What did you say?”

“You just want to be in control,” Thorn said. “When You can’t have it, You explode into a rage or You sink into despair. You’re a child.”

“And you’re a virus! You’re no larger than a molecule next to Me! I could crush you in—”

“Go ahead. Crush me! Run Your tests and ‘save’ us all from ourselves. You’ll never create the great races of humans and angels that You want, because You can’t admit that You don’t know what’s best for everyone, and that people who think differently from You—people ‘beneath’ You—might have worthy ideas.”

“I am fair and just in all things.”

“Then why work to create reasonable people when they’re only allowed to think one way? When You intend to punish everyone who disagrees with You? You want people to be free on Your terms, under Your rules, just like Wanderer. Using dogma and deception to manipulate people into Your version of freedom is not true freedom.”

“And you know better?” God said at almost a yell.

“You’ll never find out if You keep striking down or imprisoning anyone who dissents.”

God huffed, then plopped back down onto His throne. His face was turning red. “You won’t listen to Me. It’s all your fault, you know. None of you demons would listen to Me.”

“Maybe if You stopped condescending to us and started loving us like You claim to, we’d be more inclined to listen.”

The beginnings of a tear formed in God’s eye. His breathing became shaky, labored. The snake raised its head off His arm, then looked around as if probing to ensure its safety. God saw the motion, lifted the snake, and unwound it from His arm. He set it on the gold beneath His throne, and it slithered down the steps, smudging the gold with the greasy trail left in its wake.

“You Yourself said that we’re good people,” Brandon said. “We just want to live our lives on our own terms. Is that really so awful?”

Thorn strode halfway to the throne’s stairs, his elegant black shoes clanking against the golden ground. “End this,” he said. “End the ignorance, end the dying. What do You say?”

Heather’s slim fingers slid through Brandon’s, and she held his hand, her eyes still focused on God. The Creator watched the snake make its way down the stairs, then soil the golden rug as it began its long journey across the room. “I say…”

Several of the angels in the room leaned slightly forward. Brandon held his breath. Thorn’s fists were clenched, his whole body tense. God’s tear quivered in His eye, but refused to fall.

Finally, He leaned back in His chair, sighed, and smiled.

“No,” God said.

He flung His hand toward Brandon and Heather. A blinding burst of energy erupted from it, engulfing them. Brandon gripped Heather’s hand like a vise as the room’s walls receded, falling away into blackness. His sense of balance spun out of control. Every direction was up, but also down. Heather’s arm pulled taut against his. He tried to hold on to her, but she was ripped away. She screamed.

13

Something was pressing into Brandon’s neck, something rough and cold, disturbing his sleep. Someone nearby was talking too fast for him to understand. Was it those demon-things again? I need to run. They’re gonna kill me if I don’t run.

Memories of dead family members and ominous other dimensions pulled Brandon up into the waking world. But when he opened his eyes and saw the fading light of late dusk, the sidewalk speckled with dried black gum, and the man in the business suit yakking on his wireless headset about some client’s account, Brandon’s dream world beckoned him back down into slumber. His blood was still rushing from the nightmare, but no nightmare could be worse than his reality.

He tilted his neck to the left and reached his bad arm around to feel a rusty old bolt protruding from the streetlight’s pole. It had left a sore indentation in the back of his neck. How long was I out? The sun had been high in the afternoon sky the last time he’d seen it, and now the sky was darker than the sleep he’d just woken from. Thank goodness he’d dozed off under the shade of the shopping plaza. Had he not, he might have gotten sunburned again and been forced to live near the river’s cooling waters for a week or two.

The businessman carried grocery bags in one hand—likely something he’d picked up for his wife or kids on his way home from work. He didn’t seem to notice that Brandon was there until he paced a little too close to him. Then he puckered his nose and scuttled away to escape the stink. Brandon didn’t even bother to hold up his jar of change. Busy rich folks never gave him money. Only the poor, who could partially understand his situation, ever helped him out.

Fatigue caressed the backs of Brandon’s eyelids. Something urgent about his nightmare stayed lodged like an ice pick somewhere in his mind, but then, his nightmares were always like that. One of his squad was always stuck in some ratty old shack in rural Zabul, taking fire, impossible to get to. Or sometimes it was Brandon himself cornered behind the walls of his OP, screaming for help as enemy bullets tore through his flesh. He’d wake from those nightmares panting, a cold sweat glistening on his skin. This nightmare had been tame by comparison. And weird, too.

His stomach was clawing its way out of his belly. Had he eaten today? Maybe not. He checked his jar. Two and a half dollars could buy him a little bit of fast food, at least.

The grease on Brandon’s tattered clothes made a slurp as it separated from the metal of the streetlight he’d been leaning on. He’d needed a shave more than he’d needed new clothes, but that had been a week ago, and now he cursed himself for spending money on something as trivial as a razor. His joints protested as he stood on his little cardboard mat, torn from a box he’d found in a dumpster yesterday. Where was his cardboard sign? Had it blown away while he slept? While halfway to standing, he spotted it under a nearby bush, so he slunk back to the ground, to his hands and knees, to crawl over and grab it.

“Hey there.”

The voice stopped him in mid-crawl. A woman was standing over him, tall and blond, but wearing sneakers and a T-shirt that downplayed her natural beauty. Brandon plopped his butt back on the sidewalk, then closed his arms and legs inward, scrunching his body up into a ball. In high school he might have had a chance with a girl like this, but damn, did she have to walk up to him now, weeks after he’d last bathed, as he wormed across the concrete to find his “homeless please help” sign? He didn’t even want her money. The embarrassment was too great.

“Hi, hon. Do you remember me?”

Brandon glanced briefly up at her, then back down. “Nope,” he said, although the brightness in her eyes and the slight upward curve of her lips did seem familiar.

“It’s good to see you,” the woman said. “I feel like I’ve never even met you before, though. This is so wild.”

Brandon started to rock back and forth and hum a meandering tune. If this lady thought he was crazy, maybe she’d go away.

“There’s not much time,” she said. “I found the transit door we came in through—it’s not far, and it wasn’t locked. It might get us back to Thorn, but I need you to show me the way. Will you come with me?”

Whoa. Playing crazy ain’t gonna get me out of this one. Kids liked to tease Brandon by testing the limits of what he’d do for money, but this woman hadn’t offered money, and her voice was bereft of derision. She seemed too old for the games of teenagers anyway.

“My name is Heather. I know you. I know you very well. Please. This is worth fighting for.”

“Ain’t nothing worth fighting for,” Brandon said, wobbling his head back and forth in a loose interpretation of a head shake. “A man in power says we gotta fight this group of people one year, then the next year we gotta fight that group of people. ‘They ain’t us,’ the big man always says. ‘They don’t think the way we do. So we gotta grind ’em into the dirt they came from.’ Dirt’s all it is, you know. All anything is, or ever will be. I got no reason to fight over a bunch of dirt.”

Heather’s trace of a smile bent downward. She kneeled next to him, reached her hand toward him…

He flinched away. Why was she trying to touch him? Why wasn’t this pretty girl running away? Everybody ran away whenever Brandon started talking about the war.

Her fingertips lighted on his oily hair, then combed through it ever so gently, without touching his scalp. “Oh, Brandon,” she said. “What’s happened to you?”

Being touched again after all this time felt like spiders crawling on Brandon’s skin. He ducked his head away from her hand. “Lady, I was just another corn-fed, churchgoing Florida boy, told I was special. Told I was doing the Lord’s work. But that turned out to be a boldfaced lie. Ain’t no Lord’s work, and there ain’t no Lord. And without Him, I’m weak, I’m nothing, and nothing matters. That’s what they told me anyway, and now I live like that’s the Bible truth. I guess I’m proving ’em right, huh?”

Heather finally stopped looking at him, thank goodness. Her eyes seemed sad, though. “Yeah,” she said. “I think that happens to a lot of people.”

Ah, shit. Now I feel guilty. Brandon hadn’t meant to make such a pretty girl so sad. Maybe if he scooted a few feet away from her, she’d get the hint that he wasn’t good around people.

But when he tried to back away, she took his hand in hers. She took his slimy, soot-covered hand like it was a precious gem in need of great care. She looked into his eyes, and for a moment, those eyes were too mesmerizing to resist. “I get it,” she said. “You had a purpose, and it turned out to be based on empty air, and that hurt you. And that really sucks. I’ve been there. It’s hard to trust again after something like that. But in the end, that’s just one purpose. Just because that purpose was groundless, it doesn’t mean that all purposes are groundless.”

She spoke well, and Brandon liked her Midwest accent. The cadence of her voice felt like it could clean the grime from his hands, clothes, face, and hair, then pour inside him and clean up his heart, too. Who was this strange girl approaching him at night, offering him a new reason to live?

He certainly needed a new reason to live.

Brandon closed his dirty fingers around Heather’s clean ones, smudging them up. He didn’t like touching or being touched, but the gesture came as easily as slipping into old clothes. I know this girl. Somehow, I know her.

“Well, it’s not like I know everything,” he said. “Maybe I’ll come with you, just for a little bit. Just to see what you’re talking about.”

Heather smiled. A big, wide, dazzling grin.

I could get used to that grin. I really could.

•

Near the dumpsters where Brandon had found his box, Heather found a weird glowing door. The door led them through a dark hallway—a very dark hallway, in fact. After fifty or so paces, the white floor disappeared into total blackness and Brandon couldn’t even see Heather an arm’s length in front of him. She was nearly sprinting in the darkness.

“Hold up, hold up,” he said. Half of his brain told him that this was war. It was dark outside, and they were running from enemies, and he badly needed night vision goggles. The other half of his brain insinuated that a wrecked Cessna should be somewhere around here. He squeezed his left arm to check if it was still hurt, but no, he’d gotten that wound in Afghanistan, years ago. They spun around and around in his head, those memories that may or may not have been. Something about a high-rise condo?

“Can you lead the way from here?” Heather asked.

Brandon scoffed at the ridiculous question. But when he leaned against a wall, he did feel a sense of place. If he followed this wall long enough, it would lead around a corner to the right, and then…

“Where do these hallways lead?” Brandon asked.

“Everywhere, I’ve been told.”

“Huh.”

Holding Heather’s hand, Brandon strode through the black, turning right, then left, then right again, not knowing exactly where he was going, but feeling like he’d been here before.

They soon came to another of the glowing doors. This one was bigger and wide open, and radiant light streamed through it. But how was that possible? It had been nighttime at the shopping plaza.

When Heather saw the door, she pulled him forward. They burst through it, running ever faster. Brandon tried to take in the mountains, the waterfalls and rivers, the glittering golden city stretching out below them, but Heather didn’t give him a moment. They charged toward a big, fancy-looking building atop a cliff. As they ran, Brandon could see little people with wings flying around the skies.

Heather led them to a small gate in the side of the grand chateau. No one met them there, so they ran right inside.

Are we in Heaven? Brandon thought absently. The thought was absurd, but wow! Minutes ago he’d been having nightmares about the war, and now he was running through an exciting adventure dream with a beautiful woman. He was sleeping again, obviously.

A low, guttural voice slowly rose in Brandon’s ears as they ran. It wasn’t particularly loud, but it was so clear that it seemed to come from right next to him. No one was there but Heather, though.

“They rebelled against My wishes,” the big voice was saying. “They had a choice. I had none.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s this?” In a small arched hallway joining two larger rooms, Heather stopped and crouched to examine a sword lying on the marble ground. The thing was huge, and rustier than the screw that had vexed Brandon’s neck as he slept. Or was waking up just part of the dream, too?

The corroded weapon looked out of place in the pristine surroundings.

“He told us about this sword,” Heather said.

“Huh? Who did?”

“Let them hear. Let them know,” Heather replied absently. Then she turned to the wall, where another one of those glowing doors was set into the marble. Only this one wasn’t glowing. When Brandon inspected it more closely, he saw that it was just a carving, and a gnarled, misshapen one at that. But why was it carved here, at a random spot in this hallway? With no other such carvings nearby, the non-door looked just as unseemly in this environment as the sword. Even stranger, little marble rocks littered the walkway in a half circle around the carving. Had someone just chiseled this door recently?

Brandon chuckled, cheerfully this time, as Heather hefted the sword. This dream was so detailed, but also so ludicrous. What was his wife gonna do with a sword like that?

Wait. My wife?

“What are you laughing at?” Heather asked.

“Sorry, sorry. This is just so far out.”

“It is,” she said, that fabulous grin peeking out again. “Thank you for trusting me.”

“Ten-four. And hey… I swear I know you. Where do I know you from?”

Pointing the sword safely away, Heather dashed toward Brandon. She smacked into him, and briefly—but passionately—kissed him on the lips. “You know me from Bristol, and Miami, and a hundred other places,” she said. “You’re not always a good guy, but today, you are.”

With that, she turned and approached the wall, and brandished the rusty sword. Brandon just stared, rigid as the marble walls, clueless as to what to make of any of this. Although he liked this Heather girl, she did seem a bit crazy. But soon I’ll wake up on the streets of Tampa again, with no food and no hope.

And then he remembered his jar of coins, which he’d left next to the streetlight for any passerby to steal. Damn it! It was only a couple bucks, but his stomach was still gurgling with unused acid. Was the sensation part of his dream? Was the money he’d forgotten? What if someone swiped it while he slept?

He pinched his arm, which did nothing. Maybe he’d have an easier time waking up if the dream turned sour…

He sidled up beside Heather as she examined the poorly carved door. Maybe if he brought their conversation away from this flight of fancy, and back toward the uncomfortableness of their initial conversation, that would do the trick. Brandon was still just an indigent vet, after all, and Heather a middle-class dream girl. And even in my dreams, it’s dangerous to want someone like her.

“You know,” Brandon said, “there’s no one up in the sky to give us a reason for doing this, whatever this is. So do you really believe it’s worth doing?”

Gripping the sword’s hilt with two hands, Heather drew the weapon back, then plunged it into the heart of the door. The blade pierced the marble as if the stone were made of flesh.

Immediately the door’s grooves deepened, its runes grew more defined, and within seconds, it began to take the shape of the doors he’d seen in the dark hallways.

“I don’t believe,” Heather said. “I know.”

14

Thorn lowered his arm from across his eyes, his ears ringing in the blast’s aftermath. He saw God doubled over in front of His throne, coughing. The planet He’d created revolved behind Him as He struggled to reclaim His composure. Brandon and Heather were gone.

“Where are they?” Thorn asked.

“I re—” He coughed, shook His head vigorously. “I reprocessed them into the Sanctuary system.” God bounded down the stairs and raised His bony arms above His head. Bright blue energy flickered between them. “And now I shall send you, like the plague you are, to Hell.”

Thorn jumped aside as the energy leaped from God’s hands. The current sought him out regardless, arcing around him and surging through him. He reeled, the room spiraling around him, the zaps pricking at his nerves… but other than that and the dizziness, Thorn felt no ill effects. He stayed right where he was in God’s throne room, and God bent over in another coughing fit.

Not enough power to pull that trick off twice in a row, eh?

Thorn heard a dense ruffling behind him. He turned and saw angels—hundreds of them—streaming through the gate. “Lord!” one of them called. “We heard a blast. Do You need our assistance?”

God wheezed out a weak cough, then inhaled deeply. “Hold on,” He rasped. “Need to recharge.” When He tried to stand up straight, He groaned, then bent over again, His hands braced against His knees. “Oh, I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Two seconds later, an angel was at His side with a plastic bucket, just in case.

Thorn allowed himself to chuckle at the sight. He was beyond caution now, along with any willingness he might once have had to be civil toward God. He’d exhausted so many last-resort options in the last hour that his own fate seemed completely up to chance. He tried to think beyond this randomness, to set aside his delirium. But in the end, he could think of only one way to save his hide, and that task—to change God’s mind—was an impossible one, for God was more ancient and stubborn than any demon, unbending in all of His encounters with Thorn.

Except that He let Amy live.

The task was impossible, but God did claim to value reason. Thorn had to try.

“Hell,” Thorn said, stepping forward. “You want to send me to Hell, with all the other bad people. With all the bad people and the even worse demons You sent there based on their actions. Actions which were taken because of a lack of information provided by You. Not exactly fair and just.”

“They failed the—the tests. Why not confine them to their own world, to live with each other in the absence of Me?” This last word came out as a croak, followed shortly by vomit. The angel holding the bucket turned his head away as God lost His holy lunch.

Two angels moved to restrain Thorn, but God waved them away. Thorn paced forward still, walking in a predatory circular motion around God.

“Why sentence people to infinite punishment for a finite amount of wrongs? And what about all the bygone humans who were sent to Hell just because they lived in a time before modern moral and rational sentiments? And even if someone is genuinely evil, why not just erase them from existence? Why the need to punish them like a teenage bully? Do You send Christians to Hell? Those poor people who believe in You and love You?”

Still bending over His bucket, God glanced up at Thorn and shrugged.

“That’s appalling,” Thorn said. “Christians aren’t rational enough for Your sensitive ego, so You banish them to eternal punishment? Put Yourself in their shoes, for Christ’s sake. They’re not evil. Let them live out eternity in a day spa, for all it matters. Why all the fire and brimstone?”

God sucked in a lungful of air, held it in, and righted Himself. He waved the angel with the bucket aside, then rotated to face Thorn as Thorn paced around Him. “Those who walked away from Me have only themselves to blame for their fate. They rebelled against My wishes. How can I be blamed for the dark place they wound up in? They had a choice. I had none. Don’t blame Me.”

“Don’t blame You for a system that You set up? For a Hell that You created? Of course You had a choice. You’re omnipotent, or near enough. Yet You insist on Hell. You insist on causing untold suffering for the sake of testing and ‘perfecting’ us.”

“It’s the only way I know how,” God said weakly, even meekly. His lower lip quivered. He stopped turning to follow Thorn’s movements, His gaze resting instead on the green snake that was just now reaching the gate at the room’s entrance, slithering unnoticed beneath the multitude of angels above it. Thorn noted that a number of the cherubim were battle-worn, with torn white robes and disfigured limbs. He spotted Thilial among them, watching him. Her robe was half-gone, ripped on one side, and a thick white bandage was wrapped tightly around her midsection.

Wearing an astonished expression, she raised a hand to wave hello. Thorn gave only a terse nod in response; he could not allow God or the angels to see him as soft.

When he turned back to God, he saw that the Great Almighty was fighting to keep His androgynous face calm. His facial muscles twitched, like they wanted to fracture His countenance into a thousand different expressions. He breathed only through His nose, but the breaths were strong and fierce. As Thorn watched, gleaming rivulets fell from His eyes down past His stubbly jaw.

“I’m sorry,” God said. He began to weep as He spoke. “All I wanted was some friends. Friends who would think, who wouldn’t let others tell them what was true and false without investigating for themselves. Who wouldn’t suffer the same fate as… I thought I was doing the right thing.”

Thorn stood at a distance from the odd breakdown. Success suddenly seemed possible, but Thorn was hesitant to lower his guard. God’s bipolar nature could flip His mood in a heartbeat.

“It started so innocently, but—but I should have nipped dogmatic beliefs in the bud when Wanderer started them up,” God said, His wide eyes pleading with Thorn, drawing him in. “I should have realized My creations would use those beliefs to control one another. It’s so… offensive. Hell, the creation story is the only part of the religion that’s true, and even that’s offensive. It made humans worship Me. I wanted to be the source of rationality, not blind conviction!

“But see, I—I thought that with those beliefs around to tempt you, the people who did choose reason over comfort, empathy over factionalism, would be even better people in the end. Maybe they’d grow to a level where they didn’t need to believe in Me anymore. And some do grow! And when they do, it’s beautiful and inspiring. I just didn’t know that so many humans and demons would take so much on faith.

“I want to reconcile with you, Thorn. And with all of demonkind. I want you to go into the Sanctuaries and pass the tests I built for you. I want you all to be free to think, and to prosper, and I’m working toward that world the only way I know how.”

As He spoke, God gradually backed toward the steps beneath His throne, and now He sat on them. His torso rocked forward and backward, His eyes staring nowhere in particular, lost.

I must tread lightly. This being who controlled everything had such a vastly different perspective than Thorn. How can someone as limited as me console someone like this, and coax Him into the light?

Thorn stepped toward Him with such caution that his hard-soled shoes made no sound on the golden floor. He laid his hand on God’s shoulder like a feather. When God made no acknowledgement of its presence, Thorn sat on the step next to Him.

“You got morality mostly right,” Thorn admitted. “Reason and empathy are good things. But You can’t force us into them, and You can’t stand aloof and leave us in abject suffering until we choose them for ourselves. Sometimes, Lord—” The word felt caustic on his tongue, but he did his best to sound submissive; if he could share how he himself had stumbled onto the right path, perhaps he could demonstrate to God the effectiveness of that path. “Sometimes, to ensure maximum freedom, you have to help people along. Gently. Don’t coerce them, but give them resources, information, encouragement, love. As long as they’re not hurting anyone, You should accept them even if they choose something different from You. Please. Is control over all of us what You really want after all this time? After all this failure?”

A thousand angels waited to hear what God would say. His eyes had remained focused on the same indistinct spot during Thorn’s appeal, and they stayed there even now that he’d finished speaking. Thorn loosened his tie to let himself breathe a little easier. His heart felt like all the souls he’d sent to Hell were pounding at his chest, eager for revenge.

But whatever response God was considering, He never got the chance to say it. The room suddenly filled with the fluttering of wings and the guttering of sconce flames. When Thorn looked up, he saw angels hurrying away from the entrance gate, forming a wall of their own bodies between the gate and God, barking commands at each other and at something else. One angel yelled sharply, “Demon! Stay back!”

Thorn peered through the wall of angels, and indeed he glimpsed a single demon stealing around the corner of the gate, its feet light and cautious upon the ground. A demon, here? How? Thorn bolted upright, then ran toward the side wall for a better view. God rose as well, His face betraying the same confusion that Thorn felt.

A second demon slunk around the edge of the gate. Then a third. Two dozen angels left their line and charged at the newcomers, but their ranks broke like a wave against a glass wall. They bumped into each other in their rush to return to the line.

It soon became clear what had caused their retreat: first dozens of demons, then hundreds rambled through the halls of God’s House, toward the throne room.

“Sound the alarm!” someone called. A few angels zipped away to do so, but Thorn guessed that the alarm would prove unnecessary. The angelic forces must realize what’s happening. The demons made no move to fight, nor to defend themselves against potential attack. They simply walked forward and stared with what looked like bewilderment.

Confirming Thorn’s suspicion, he saw Heather and Brandon walking with the quizzical demons, in the very center of the crowd. The humans were dressed strangely, but they looked unharmed. Is she carrying Thilial’s sword?

“No farther!” an angel called to the approaching demons. The demons in front of the horde meandered to a halt. Several of the angels had drawn swords. Thorn took cover behind a pillar in case a skirmish broke out.

God calmly paced toward the wall on the opposite side of the room. Once He stood in view of the demons, every single one of them turned their gaze to Him.

In the front of the crowd, one demon Thorn had never seen stepped forward three feet in front of his peers. His posture was lax, his gait unhurried. For all the heartache in his eyes, he may as well have held a white flag.

“We heard,” he said.

•

Marcus zigzagged through rain and lightning in the sky above Atlanta. He, along with Gorhrum and some of Wanderer’s other close followers, was swerving around the outskirts of the disbanding demon army. “Attack, you fools! Attack!”

The battle’s outlook had been, if not good, at least adequate. Marcus had killed Thorn and his pet humans, and then Wanderer’s tens of thousands of reserve soldiers had risen from the ground, causing the angels to fall back. Massive and at least somewhat orderly, the demon army rising to meet the Enemy’s thralls had been a triumphant sight indeed. Marcus nearly felt vindicated for all the millennia he’d spent under Wanderer’s command.

But then that booming voice from nowhere. The Enemy’s voice, speaking of false religions, of Sanctuary tests, of reconciliation. The Enemy’s voice, claiming that everything Thorn had said was true!

“Don’t believe the conspiracy!” Marcus shouted. “All you heard was a blatant lie! The Enemy is deceiving us again! That’s what He does! He is evil! Pure, black, wretched evil, and we must destroy Him!”

But the demon forces dissolved even further. Some demons fled into the storm, while others just sped around in panicked patterns, dark chaotic bottle rockets flying every which way. Many swooped down toward the megachurch, from where—apparently—the voice of God had originated.

“Brothers, come back! Do not believe His lies! Believe what we have always believed! Believe in the destruction of all who oppose us! Believe in greatness!”

But Marcus’s rallying cry held no traction. His army deserted him, along with his dreams of conquest. He was left alone in the wind and the clouds, the last member of the army, standing against an ocean of angels.

•

Thilial covered her ears as a piercing roar rang through God’s House. The sunlight and the torches on the walls plunged to a deep crimson as the number of demons flooding the gardens outside the throne room gate grew ever greater. At least five thousand cluttered the area now, yet they didn’t jeer as they usually did. They just stood there, unnaturally calm before a wall made of hundreds of angels. On the golden floor beyond the wall, God peeked around the far edge of His angelic force. Thilial stood behind the formation’s opposite side, close to Thorn.

A few angels lowered their weapons. Gleannor, near the bottom of the formation of angels, did not. At least she was part of the formation. Had she not been, she might have flitted over to God’s ear to whisper more words of warmongering to Him.

Thilial glanced at Thorn. The renegade demon was still among the living, or at least the not-yet-permanently-dead. His speech to God had moved Thilial, but she wasn’t convinced that it had moved God. This stalemate had lasted for minutes already, and He had yet to say a thing.

The poor guy, hunched in the shadows with the weight of eons on His shoulders. Those shoulders needed an embrace, and those ears a kind word to let Him know that for all Thorn’s vileness, Thorn was right. But no, if Thilial joined Thorn now, his message would be diluted before God, who looked down on her for all her indiscretions these last few days. When this is all over, I’ll make amends with Him. I’ll stay by His side for—

“You fools,” said God, scattering Thilial’s thoughts. Still hiding behind a corner of His army, He addressed the demons beyond. “You floundering, oblivious fools. You’ve ruined it all! You’ve all ruined it ALL!”

God collapsed onto His knees. His electric hair sizzled as He ran a hand through it. “My plans. All My plans are in ruins now.”

Thilial stepped toward Him, but the wound on her back protested, reminding her that if she wanted peace, she needed to keep quiet.

“I should—I should kill you all.” God stumbled back to His feet and moved out of the cover of His army, toward the demons. “I love you. I want to forgive you. But I can’t! You can never be made perfect now. You have to die. You all have to die!”

“We don’t need to be made perfect!” one of the demons called, prompting cheers from his peers. “Is it really so evil if we just try our best to be good?”

That a demon other than Thorn had enough insight to ask such a question surprised Thilial. Might even more of them think this way? When Thilial thought reasonably about it, she had to admit that there must be at least some demons who did. Maybe many.

“If You love us like You say You do,” another demon said, “will You let our comrades in Atlanta perish now at the hands of Your angels? Or will You save them? Will You call Your angels back and give us a choice in the future, or will You let us die?”

Numerous other voices rose from the crowd, challenging the Almighty. He was breathing so quickly that Thilial feared He’d hyperventilate. His head swiveled from demon to demon as they questioned Him, but finally, He simply raised His hands to cover His ears.

“Thilial!” God yelled.

Thilial tensed, her wings rigid and her eyes fixed on God. Several of the other angels glanced around the room until they found her in their midst. She tried not to meet Gleannor’s gaze. Has God come unhinged? I am in no position of command. Another, more loyal angel should aid Him. Not me.

“Yes, Lord?” she said.

“Lead the army, and kill the rebels! Slaughter every last demon in Heaven, then eradicate them from the Earth!”

The shrieking alarms stopped their racket moments before God finished speaking. The echo of His voice resounded markedly off the golden walls. “Earth, Earth, Earth,” echoed into distant rooms.

Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength. Had God forgotten Thilial’s recent demotion? Did He not remember her pleas for peace?

Thilial suppressed tears. God had sunk so far from the visionary He had once been. Part of her wanted to obey His violent order. Demons had been her bane from the very month of her birth. But if I follow through with this… if I obey… will I be giving God what He truly needs? Could disobedience actually be the option that God would respect me for in the long run?

This was the God who had threatened to send Amy to Hell just to manipulate Thorn. This was the God who had shamed Thilial merely for desiring peace. This was the God who had quarantined His enemies on Earth and played chess with their lives, who’d demanded that the black pawns either defect or be knocked off the board by the white King.

I am loyal, perhaps to a fault. But my loyalty is not blind. Lord, I am Yours.

“No,” Thilial said to God.

God spun to face her. Redness stained His cheeks. The tears upon them were well on their way to evaporating. “What?”

“You have created something beautiful, Lord. You have created us. All of us. I will not damage Your creation. I would rather try to save it, just as You once wanted.”

“They can’t be saved! Not anym—” Then He paused and chuckled spitefully. “You know what? I don’t know why I’m even arguing with you. Gleannor! Lead My armies and destroy demonkind.”

Thilial held back tears of her own. She’d never seen God in such a rage that He could not be reasoned with. Can He not see that He’s going against everything He stands for, for no other reason than to preserve His own ego? Perhaps Thorn was partially right, though Thilial was loath to admit it: perhaps in some ways, God was just like Wanderer at heart.

Her entreaty having failed, Thilial dithered, then backed behind a pillar near Thorn. She couldn’t bear to witness the coming bloodbath. But she stopped her retreat when a voice broke the silence that had blanketed the room.

Gleannor’s voice.

“No.”

Thilial turned. Alone between two peaceful armies, the Alpha and Omega stood frozen. “What?” God said again.

Gleannor broke from the main formation, her head bowed in supplication. “It’s one thing to crush our enemies from a distance. But look at them. They’re contrite. They’re—”

“I OWN YOU! You do what I say, or I will count you among My enemies, and you will perish with them!”

“I want us to win as much as You do, but can we please just talk about—”

“Angels!” God called to the whole room, and maybe to the whole of Heaven. His voice grew so loud and threatening that Thilial considered retreating to the vacuum of space at the room’s rear. “Angels, who among you will lead this attack and purge the world of the unworthy? Will you obey Me and shine in My righteous glory?”

God’s thunderous voice gave way to silence. The demons did not murmur a peep. Most of the torches had been extinguished due to the angels’ wingbeats, which now stilled and stopped as the angels descended to the golden floor—one by one at first, and then all together. The wall of cherubim collapsed. Defiant, hundreds of them stood between God and His throne. Their mouths were shut, but the word “No” was written in all of their eyes.

And then all grew utterly still. Thilial dared to smile a little at Thorn. Thorn shrugged and smiled back.

“You all think I’m so high and mighty, don’t you?” said God. “‘No, don’t listen to God, because He’s an elitist. He thinks He knows better than everyone.’ Well, I do, okay? I do know better than everyone!”

God lashed out with His arm, sending a bolt of energy ripping through the air. It struck two angels. Their smoking, blackened bodies crumpled to the golden ground. Panicked chatter rose throughout the angelic crowd. Gleannor and some others formed a defensive barrier around their peers. A few angels fled into space.

For their part, several demons rushed to defend the angels. They charged at God, but He shot another blast of energy at them. It hit them, and they leaped back, but none seemed to be injured.

God swiped His arm yet again, but this time nothing happened. What a relief that He’d used too much of His power sending the humans away.

Thilial readied herself to fight if God’s life grew endangered. Alienating these two great forces of spirits was unwise of Him, but she would die before she let them kill this God to whom she owed everything.

He paced between the armies, ranting to them both. “What, you think you don’t need a God anymore? I don’t want you to need Me, but you do, okay? You’re not mature enough to live without My control yet!” He swiped His arm ferociously at the angels, several times in a row. With no energy emanating from His hand, though, the gestures looked absurd, even comical. “It’s a lot of responsibility being God. You think any of you could do better? You think you can deal with the evil and the selfishness of things that were created to be good?”

He stopped in the center of the room and roared to them all, “ALL I WANTED WAS SOME FRIENDS! Some nice, thoughtful friends! All I wanted was… Ha!” He smiled a maniac’s grin, toothy, His lips stretching halfway from ear to ear. “I don’t know what I want anymore! I don’t know if I want to just shut up and leave you all, or if I should try killing Myself again, or—”

Some terrible new idea thrust sudden fury into God’s eyes and sucked His grin down into darkness. He held up a finger as He thought. The motion reminded Thilial of days long gone, when God had played the mastermind, the benevolent Genius running the show. All benevolence was gone from His face now, though. As angels and demons closed in around Him, Thilial was hesitant to approach. God looked hateful, evil. He looked like a demon. And Thilial knew from His face that He still had one play left to make.

“Let’s run one last test,” God said in a suddenly calm voice, raspy and eerie after all His yelling. His breathing was jagged. The vines encircling His white suit were turning brown, their leaves withering. “Would you all like to see what the world would be like without My wisdom? Would you all like to see what happens to a world with someone else in charge? I know what happens, but now it’s your turn! Ha ha!” God smacked His hands together, then danced a strange little jig as He ripped the vines off of His suit.

“I give up!” He said joyously. “But I bet you’ll miss Me when I’m gone. Now you’ll realize what a good God I’ve been. Now you’ll thank Me for all My testing and refining and controlling. You think My ages of rule were bad? Let’s let someone else decide whether to kill you all or let you live, and how to run or ruin your lives. Someone you all seem to like. Let’s join together to watch ecosystems decay, millions die, all of creation go up in flames within mere minutes. The world is ending today, and I feel fine!”

God struck a graceful pose, His hand outstretched above Him. It burst into an unearthly glow, bright white and impossible to look at. A sharp crack, like that of a firework going off too close, assaulted Thilial’s ears, followed by a shockwave that expanded across the throne room.

The angels and demons fell back from the rushing air. But the light in God’s hand soon began to fade. It waned to a glow no brighter than a flashlight bulb, and seconds later, a candle flame.

God cackled madly. “Righteous angels, wicked demons, here are all My powers. Bye-bye. Too-da-loo! Worship your new God now, everyone! Worship the almighty, all-powerful… THORN!”

•

The world dilated before Thorn. The golden throne room billowed into a rich mosaic. Every color shattered into a thousand more, and every millimeter of space became a mile in His eyes. The small corner where He stood transformed into a vast world He could have spent a lifetime exploring. He never knew there was so much to see!

And with the seeing came knowledge. Glorious, extensive, universe-spanning knowledge! He could feel information deluging His brain, and its capacity increased a million-fold. Immediately, He knew the answers to intricate, multilayered questions He’d never even thought to ask. After one second, His brain had unified General Relativity and Quantum Field Theory, then reconciled them with the existence of dark matter and dark energy, which turned out to be quite simple things, in the end. He’d learned the spins and masses of every subatomic particle, every sub-sub-atomic particle, and every particle all the way down to the Planck length. After two seconds, He’d solved the Münchhausen trilemma, the Hodge conjecture, and the hard problem of consciousness. After three seconds, words had never been invented to describe the knowledge that Thorn was grasping—and mastering.

Sixty seconds passed before He remembered that He was still in god’s throne room. Angels watched Him, some with horror, some with awe, most with a healthy mix of the two. Thilial had fallen, and was crab-walking across the floor toward god, her eyes locked on Thorn. God himself took a seat on a bench next to the far wall. His arms were folded, his eyes eager, as if he expected some great and terrible entertainment.

Thorn felt everything. He felt the vibrations coursing through the air from the three lynxes playing five rooms away. If He focused, He could feel the organelles inside any cell inside any living being on Earth. His mind happened upon a cactus outside of Holbrook, Arizona, and He tried to knock it over. He couldn’t quite manage that, so He tried to tap the shoulder of a woman named Erdenechimeg who was entering a bookstore in Ulan Bator. He couldn’t quite reach her either.

“Amy.” He said it directly to her, lying next to Shelley in the hospital. And Amy did look up!

“Thorn?” she asked.

He healed Amy’s knife wounds instantly, and Shelley’s crowbar wound for good measure.

His mind was too giddy to stick around, though. It roamed the planet, tripping fleeing burglars in Marseille, stopping bullets in Gaza, saving a mountain climber from a nasty fall on Annapurna… but more often failing to do such things. My power is limited. I can do so much, but I can’t do everything. Still, Thorn had never felt such control over His own life, much less the lives of others.

Why had god done this? Thorn brought His colossal mental faculties to bear on this simple question, but could not reach an answer. What had god said, just before Thorn had been struck with this unthinkable power? Something about the end of the world?

He gazed into the eyes of every spirit in the room—it took Him four eighty-fifths of a second to do so—and most were clearly afraid of Him. The few who weren’t were fools, for who wouldn’t cower at the sight of the fearsome Thorn, of Balthior the Great? He had only to wait for His energy to regenerate, and He could crush this room into a space the size of the head of a pin, from the ornate gate to the sumptuous throne.

Thorn looked at the throne now.

That throne was His.

Thorn could control morality, dictate right and wrong for all humans, all angels, all demons. No longer would god or Wanderer stand in His way. Against all likelihood, Thorn had won! He’d won it all. One minute He’d been weak, trembling before god, before that little man in the white suit sitting on a golden bench. One minute Thorn had been a Rat, and the next He’d achieved everything He’d strived for across billions of miserable, backbreaking years.

Thorn had become the greatest demon of all time.

Kill them all, Thorn said to Himself. Wipe out the angels, and You wipe out tyranny. Slaughter demonkind, and You slaughter evil itself.

“No,” Thorn argued back inaudibly. “The demons are My brothers. They were betrayed by god and cast down from Heaven with Me. We made war against the enemy together. For millennia upon millennia, they were My company, joking, scheming. I learned from them and taught them. I followed them, and was followed by them.”

But think of their faces. Marcus, who has relentlessly sought Your death based on an age-old grudge. Wanderer, who divided angels and humans into factions, and even betrayed his own faction. The Judge, who washed his hands of Your fate and sent You off to die. Shenzuul, a brute, who tried to end Amy’s life, whose followers hounded You in the Miami Sanctuary.

Vengeful, spiteful, and narrow-minded, the lot of them. Your brothers have stabbed You in the back and left You to die more times than You can even recall. For all those millennia, You’ve lived looking over Your shoulder, fearful of who might oppose You.

Let them die. Let them all die.

“Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad if I kept My power. I could do a lot of good. I could end so much evil, so much suffering… But wouldn’t I cause more suffering in the long run?”

No. You’d be doing the humans a favor. Kill all of the spirits, and reign over humanity Yourself. Perhaps this is the purpose You were meant for all along. You’re finally free from god and Wanderer, but it’s much more than that.

You’re free to remake the world as You see fit. You’re free to wield such power as you’ve only dreamed of. You’ve toiled for so long in order to attain it. You deserve it.

“A world built for Me and Mine…”

Indeed. A world with no demons, no pain, no sin, no—

No. Thorn shut the voice out of His considerable mind. It was a demon’s voice: the voice of His old self. He could not trust a voice that lied.

But then how could He decide what to do? Should He simply hand the power back to god? No, god had proven untrustworthy, and such an action would end in Thorn’s death—at a minimum. Should He use the power to bring about justice? He knew so many evil beings, and ending their lives seemed like such a noble idea, a means to protect the good in the world.

But as Thorn turned these issues over and over again, the impulse to kill His enemies seemed increasingly tribalistic. He’d struggled for months to escape His old in-group morality… Perhaps I should think rationally about this. It’s good for Me to take control of My own life, but is it moral for Me to do so at the expense of others’ abilities to control their lives? Thorn’s thoughts drifted to the Brandon from the Miami Sanctuary, and his machinations to dominate Cole and Crystal, all in the name of his own freedom.

Perhaps asserting control over some malevolent beings—such as Marcus, or the original Brandon—was necessary to allow for the freedom of everyone else. But Thorn knew that if He tried to control people who tried to control people, He’d end up just like them. Just like god. Perhaps the best that could be done for those like god was to strip them of their power, rather than take their power for one’s own.

Thorn looked inside Himself, at the wicked demon He once was and whom He could easily become again, and He had to admit how unqualified He, or anyone, was to possess such immense power over others. Simply having the power is unethical, no matter how one wields it. The more I use it, the more I will abuse it. No matter how pure My intentions are to begin with, the power itself will distort them into something sinister.

The small voice of Thorn’s former self protested—ranting, screaming, throwing a temper tantrum. Thorn wanted fiercely, desperately to keep god’s power. He Himself was more deserving of the power than any spirit He’d ever known. But every spirit I’ve ever known would think the exact same thing about themselves. If He kept the power, He could be good to others yet simultaneously great in His own right. Neither He, nor anyone else, would have to live in fear of god or Wanderer ever again. It would not be so bad if I were God…

But that was a lie. Thorn knew the truth. In some ways, He’d known it ever since the day He’d caused the massacre at Tugaloo. The day He’d caused Flying Owl’s death.

Thorn’s own self was the god He should fear most.

He’d fought so hard for His individual freedom—and now He had it, and it was good. But the good of all peoples across Heaven and Earth was more important than one being’s right to the freedom of ultimate power. And only one option remained to any morally decent being who found himself in possession of such exclusive power: to abandon it, and to ensure that no one else was able to claim the power afterward.

But was such a thing possible?

Thorn dug inside Himself, tapped into the well of knowledge He’d been given. He aimed it back toward itself, and forced Himself to forget the explanation for the origin of life. It worked: a moment later, He couldn’t remember it.

Next He aimed wider. He erased the knowledge that lent Him the ability to create something from nothing. He expunged His capacity to see the world at the microscopic level, His limited teleportation power, and His even more finite ability to manipulate time. Perhaps Thorn could have shared His knowledge with others, for the benefit of all, but His own experiences told Him that the societies of Earth and the spirit realms were just as unready to possess such knowledge as He was as an individual. So He whittled away at His mammoth reservoirs of knowledge and power. And as He did so, He found that focusing His attention on the throne room around Him grew easier.

There was Thilial, her back to a column, breathing fast. There were the angels and the demons, some of them stooped in defensive postures, some of them trying and failing to quell their own fearful trembling. Back in the crowd of demons stood Brandon and Heather, holding hands tightly and watching Thorn bring Himself back to their level. God still sat on his bench against the far wall, his jaw loose and his eyes on the verge of popping out of their sockets.

Perhaps Thorn’s former self clamoring for power got the best of Him, or perhaps Thorn’s new self just wanted to do the right thing, but as Thorn’s power waned, He decided to reach around the universe. In a flurry of action, He allowed Himself to undo some of god’s worst decisions.

The Sanctuary system expanded for hundreds of miles across the Corridors, but a few pulls on the correct dimensional strings unraveled the whole tapestry. Never again would a demon be tested in a Sanctuary, and never again would a human face the potential of such torture. Some demons would still choose wickedness, but as Thorn knew from experience, change takes time. At least now, the demons have a choice to do good without having to grovel to god. They have a choice to end suffering and promote happiness of their own volition. Thorn’s brothers would need time to heal. But they would heal.

Thorn searched for Hell, and found it in its own spiritual realm separate from the others. Perhaps symbolically, god had placed it in the Earth’s scorching core. Thorn’s power was dwindling, so He had only enough time to make minor changes. He ended the torture and the pain. He freed a few hundred million souls who’d been wrongly sent to burn. The realm of Hell was complex and abstract, difficult for Thorn to scrutinize, but He did His best to change it hastily from a realm of suffering to a realm of mediocrity, a bit more boring than Earth. From now on, the angels themselves would have to sort out who went there and who went to Heaven. Such sorting might prove imperfect at first, but Thorn guessed that it would become more equitable over time, as the angels caught up to humanity’s ongoing moral growth. Perhaps soon they’d even allow the damned prisoners to work their way out of Hell and into Heaven.

Prisoners… Ah, yes! Thorn swept His shrinking mind across Heaven’s great golden prisons. He unlocked all of the gates and yanked all of the prison guards up to the surface. He even left a thank-you note in front of Karthis’s cell, which Karthis’s wingbeats almost blew away, but which he did find—

Wings! Thorn reached across the room to the demons at the gate and tried to pry new wings out of the stumps on their backs. The knowledge of wing growth had already left Him, though. His power had grown too dim. Not a single demon’s wings grew back.

Thorn quickly returned Heather’s and Brandon’s memories to them in full, before the power to do so left Him.

Throughout Thorn’s transformation, God had been blathering on about the arrogance of eradicating his power, how Thorn was an unparalleled fool, and so on. But some angels had held him back, and Thorn had easily blocked out his tirade with only a minuscule piece of His mind. But now that Thorn hadn’t the mental faculties to focus away from him anymore, god’s squawking grew clearer.

“You cretin! You’re undoing all my work, and not in the way You were supposed to! Just like a demon. All You know how to do is destroy what greater beings have built! If You were half the god I am—”

Thorn ignored him as best He could. His imploding mind was nearing its original capabilities. He’d forgotten vast libraries of information that no one else would know for centuries to come; He felt them fade like pleasant childhood memories.

Then Thorn gathered all His remaining power and focused it on one last thing.

Xeres, where are you? Thorn searched through the bowels of Heaven and the crevices of the surrounding mountains. He took a quick peek into Hell, then scoured the Earth’s surface, sweeping from South America up across Canada and over to Europe, Africa, and Asia. When Earth proved fruitless, Thorn even searched the Moon.

I’m sorry you couldn’t live to see the better world that your sacrifice will bring about. Goodbye, My friend. And thank you.

With a final farewell to His old companion, Thorn reduced His mind to its previous level of intellect, forgetting the last of god’s knowledge, and surrendering all of god’s power.

Well, almost all of it.

15

A carpet of dead leaves protected a village of dead people below the earth. Thorn and Thilial floated above the sun-dappled cairns, letting memories percolate through them. The warm light of dawn cast long shadows through the oak branches, but not so long as the shadows of history, or of guilt.

Thorn looked up into those branches now. Were these the same trees in which he’d once perched with Xeres, gazing dejectedly down upon the Cherokee survivors burying their dead? Or had those old trees long since sunk into the peat below, leaving their offspring to grow toward the sun, as tall and mighty as their ancestors had once been? Thorn took heart upon seeing small yellow flowers poking through the dead plant matter, bright and ready to bloom.

Even more heartening was the thought that Flying Owl could still be alive in Heaven. Only after Thorn had abandoned most of god’s powers had he realized that the boy’s reasonable and charitable tendencies may have earned him a place in Paradise. He’d beseeched the angels to help him search for his long-lost charge, but they’d hear none of it. Thorn had freed them, yes, but he’d collapsed their entire social order. He would not be welcome in Heaven again until his final number was up.

And Thorn could accept that. Just knowing there was a chance of seeing Flying Owl again was enough to satisfy Thorn until the time came. For now, he was through with crusades, with flight from relentless enemies, with panic in the darkness. He’d earned a more peaceful life.

Thorn had tried to convince himself that this battle he’d waged had been waged for him, and him alone. My own freedom was my goal all along, he kept repeating in his mind. But as he looked out over the graves and back through the vault of time, that seemed less and less true.

His own potential death at Marcus’s hands had opened his eyes to the death and suffering he himself had caused. The mystery he’d uncovered upon finding Xeres alive in the present had opened his mind to all the false assumptions he’d been making. His burgeoning affection for the humans had opened his heart to the fact that everyone, even his enemies, had an internal life that was just as rich as his own—a life that was worth nurturing and protecting. Perhaps that was what he’d truly been fighting for. And now that he’d succeeded against all likelihood, what would be his purpose moving forward?

“What will you do now?” Thorn asked Thilial.

She shrugged. “There’s no reason for the deception of quarantine zones anymore, so I suppose I’ll help begin the combining of angel and demon worlds, where they will allow it. Ha.”

“What?”

“It’s still hard for me to view you all as anything other than vermin to be trampled underfoot.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“It will be difficult, forging this new path separate from god, and also from demonic culture.”

Thorn nodded. “Perhaps eventually, the distinction between angels and demons will become irrelevant. Perhaps, eventually, we’ll all just call ourselves ‘spirits.’”

“I hope so. God willing.”

Thorn turned to correct her mistake, but he saw her smirking knowingly. “Ah, Thilial has a sense of humor. Who knew? And since you mention god, how is he?”

“Well, he’s given an official apology, and I think it’s genuine. I think this will be good for him, having to live as one of us. He seems healthier now, more stable. Maybe even optimistic.”

“So you’ve seen him?”

“I check in on him to make sure he’s okay.” Thilial tilted her head downward and away at this, like she was embarrassed to discuss it. She added: “I think he’s glad for the company.”

Thilial rested a hand on the hilt of the rusty old sword that Heather had returned to her minutes ago. Her wings folded slowly open. “I have business. I’d best depart. Wish your humans the best for me.” She gestured toward Brandon and Heather, who were pacing among the cairns, inspecting their intricacies.

“Farewell, Thilial. Thank you for everything you’ve done.”

Thilial gave a curt nod, then took off through the treetops.

Thorn dropped into the physical world. He smiled at the sight of human footprints disturbing the dead leaves for the first time in centuries. “What do you think?” he asked.

“It’s really interesting, especially after hearing this place’s story,” Heather said. “And no one knows this is here?”

“I’ve never shared it with anyone, no. But I think it’s time that humans know about it. I’d like you to tell other people, if you’re willing. I’ve created identities for you, opened sizeable bank accounts, and purchased this land in your names, but I can’t emphasize this strongly enough: no one owns this land. It belongs to the Cherokee, if to anyone. You are stewards, not owners.”

Heather nodded seriously. From everything Thorn had seen of her, she was responsible and mature, and would be a good caretaker of this place. “Thank you, Thorn,” she said.

He paced toward them. “There are also some structural remains about a mile north of here. Please coordinate with the Eastern Band of the Cherokee. I would like the legacy of these people to be honored. Perhaps have a history museum opened here.”

“We’ll do what we can. I can tell the place means a lot to you, so we’ll take good care of it.”

“And what about you, Brandon?” Thorn asked the young man seated on the leaves, staring away from the conversation, into the forest. “How have you been holding up? How’s your memory?”

Brandon tossed a small stone above his head, caught it again, then flung it into the woods. “I remember it all. It’s a lot to remember.”

“Indeed.” Thorn did not envy these humans’ path forward. He’d forged their paperwork, but they would soon undertake the arduous process of building their true identities. They would both have to gather the pieces of their past selves, then decide what types of people to meld them into.

“Will I ever see Tim again?” Brandon asked. “Will I ever see Cole?”

And will I ever see Flying Owl?

Thorn answered honestly: “I don’t know. But it is a possibility.”

Brandon lifted another stone and tossed it up and down a few times. Thorn couldn’t read whether he was satisfied with this outcome, and he couldn’t guess whether Brandon would sink to his worst or rise to his potential. At least he had Heather with him. Love for another went a long way toward healing one’s hurt. She would be his anchor, and Thorn could only hope that, once he healed, he’d return the favor for her.

Thorn promised himself that if these two stayed on Earth, he’d visit them frequently. He owed them quite a debt.

“What’s the matter, hon?” Heather asked as she plodded over the dense turf. She sat next to Brandon and eased an arm around him.

Brandon glanced up at the canopy above, at the shadowy leaves and the light lancing between them. “I don’t know. I just wish we could have gotten more answers. You know, to the big questions. Where did god come from? How do we have consciousness? How did the universe really come to be?”

Thorn looked back toward Flying Owl’s grave. The boy might have asked similar questions had he lived in the contemporary age. But Thorn had no answers for Brandon, and likely, neither did anyone else. At least not at this point in time. Thorn himself was only starting to come to terms with the fact that although he’d learned the answers to every question he’d ever conceived during his brief stint as a deity, he would likely never get all of his questions answered again. But would humanity ever learn the immeasurable knowledge he’d momentarily known and then forgotten? He hoped that when they did start unlocking the universe’s answers, all the humans would have access to those answers, and no individual would use them as power to keep others subservient and ignorant, as god had done. Fortunately, a free, open future was likely, given the upward trajectory of human history, and also given that Thorn had allowed himself to remember a few key details that might help humanity out. But for now, when no one knew the ultimate answers, what could he tell Brandon?

“Maybe it’s okay not to know,” Thorn said, still gazing on Flying Owl’s final resting place. “Maybe it’s okay to admit that we don’t have all the answers, and to admit that some of our guesses were wrong. There’s no shame in that. I think it’s admirable, actually—certainly preferable to making answers up.”

“And maybe that’s the first step toward true knowledge,” Brandon said.

Thorn turned back, away from the dead boy and toward the living one. Brandon threw his stone into the air again, caught it again, moved to throw it… then set it back down instead. He sighed. Heather laid her head on his shoulder, and the two lovers sat under the orange sunlight as it warmed away the night’s chill.

•

Children capered across the Mayor’s Grove Playground in Midtown Atlanta, climbing on a web of ropes, pounding on a set of play drums, and seeing how high the swings would take them before leaping off—much to the chagrin of their parents, who tried to maintain order as they paced between their many young ones. One little boy squealed with glee as he looped down a plastic orange slide. Three girls wearing eye patches were playing some sort of pirate game, steering the earth-toned playground across the high seas, wreaking havoc on all ye landlubbers. A baby, less than a year old, gawked in amazement at the frenetic display as his mother rolled his stroller through the park. The shadows of tall trees kept all in gentle shade.

Not as many demons were out whispering today as would have been here in the past. Thorn saw a couple of them hovering above the pirate girls, trying to route their play into a fight, and another drifting near two mothers who were reprimanding their children by the swing set. Thorn took special note of the five demons floating under an elm tree beside the park, observing the proceedings with all the envy of childhood outcasts who wanted to play. They made no effort to cause others pain; they only watched. And their jealous eyes rested not on the whispering devils, but on the gleeful children. Certainly, not all of demonkind would listen to the truth—especially in areas far removed from Atlanta—and the news would take time to spread. But here, Thorn could already see changes taking place.

Thorn’s guest journeyed in across the soccer field to the west. For a minute he appeared as a dark speck against the bright green grass, but soon his features grew clear: his funeral suit, his tall and gaunt build, his brow furrowed in ire. He drifted like a vulture above the playground, glaring at the children as if he might swoop down and snatch one up, then fly off with it as its parents screamed behind him.

Marcus floated through the monkey bars as he approached Thorn, who pocketed his hands lest their shaking betray his nerves.

“Thank you for meeting me,” Thorn said.

Marcus stopped a dozen feet away from him. “I do so only to demonstrate that I’m not afraid of you. That my beliefs in a purely demonic society make me stronger than you.”

“In light of recent events, have you at least considered that the claims I made about god and the Sanctuaries were indeed correct?”

“Pfff.” Marcus made a dismissive gesture. “You are cunning, Thorn. I will give you that. But I see right through your conspiracy. Somehow, you and your cronies have fabricated evidence to support your delusional musings. I’ve even heard a tall tale that you were God for a few minutes. Ha! Yet here you are with none of his powers, the same conniving Rat that I’ve always known.”

Thorn said nothing, and with some effort, he remained composed. He would not give Marcus the satisfaction of an altercation. In truth, he had little left to argue about. “I will find out how you did it, and I will expose you for the conceited liar that you are,” Marcus said, blind to Thorn’s pacifism. “I will kill you a third time, and a fourth, and however many times it takes. And even if your efforts to dissolve our society are successful, we’ll have no First Rule anymore. No one will be left to stop me from murdering you in broad daylight.”

“Marcus, I—”

“No! You do not get to speak! Your words are poison, and I will not have them enter my ears. I will never believe as you do, and neither will the rest of demonkind. We will never compromise! We will crush your precious humans, and we will—”

“Mommy, why’s that man so angry?”

Marcus froze at the words from the little girl, who stood under one of the playground’s pavilions a stone’s throw away. She gazed at him with a mixture of puzzlement and fear, as did her mother, who quickly took her daughter’s hand and led her away.

Marcus looked down at his feet. They were planted firmly in the dirt, but by the panic in Marcus’s eyes, he may as well have been standing in acid. The other demons gaped. One of them, trembling, fled beneath the ground.

Marcus’s gaze searched frantically for Thorn, and swept right past him. Kids across a whole fourth of the playground had ceased their fun to stop and stare at the weird man in a suit who had suddenly appeared in their midst. When Marcus started to stumble backward, away from the curious young eyes, Thorn decided that he’d had enough. He reached out with his mind and brought Marcus back into the demonic realm.

Marcus bolted upward a few feet after the sudden loss of gravity, overcompensating as Thorn had often done. His head darted around until his eyes found Thorn. The trepidation in them was, Thorn had to admit, more than a little gratifying.

“What was that?” Marcus asked, sounding oddly out of breath for a spirit who had no lungs.

“A gift,” Thorn said. “A friend once gave it to me, and I thought I’d pass it along to you.” Marcus just stared dumbly, so Thorn continued: “That was the last time it’ll happen to you until you learn to feel love for another. But when that happens—when you finally empathize with someone who is different from you—you’ll have the gateway into the physical world that you’ve wanted so badly. Then you can cause all the mayhem you want. Of course, at that point, I don’t think you’ll want to cause any.”

Marcus was shaking. Thorn couldn’t tell if he was fearful or enraged.

Thorn floated closer to him and spoke as compassionately as he could. “You don’t have to believe what I believe, Marcus. All I ask is that you step outside yourself, try to understand ideas contrary to your own, and consider.”

Marcus backed away from him, his eyes wide. “What deviltry is this? You seek to humiliate me? You seek to become the greatest through new, freakish sorcery?”

“No. It’s better for us all to become the greatest together than for me to become the greatest alone. If we want to move forward, brother, we need to stop trying to beat each other and start trying to help each other.”

And perhaps that was Thorn’s purpose, the same as Thilial’s. To help others in ways in which I was never helped. To create a world free from god, Karen. A world free from demons, Brandon. To create a world for us. For all of us.

Thorn was through with spirits, though. He wished them the best, but they would have to build their new world themselves. Because the new world that Thorn would help create… lay elsewhere.

•

“I’m going to turn myself into a human,” Thorn explained to the Judge as they floated above the tables at an outdoor restaurant downtown. “Permanently this time.”

The Judge raised a finger to the bridge of his sunglasses, then eased them down so he could look Thorn in the eyes. “For realsies? That’s a pretty big move.”

“Yeah, well, the fate of the humans is important to me. I’ll be more able to help them if I’m one of them. Plus, I’d like to look after Amy without being pestered by demons and angels.”

“Amy, huh?” The Judge slid the shades back onto his brow, then looked out over the crowd of humans munching on their early dinners. “I guess every rose really does have its Thorn.”

Thorn laughed at that, but his laugh was cut short by a more sincere sentiment.

“Am I ever gonna see you again?” the Judge asked. “You feel like my sidekick now. Like the next time the bad guys have me cornered, I’ll just have to lay down and die, because you won’t be there to back me up.”

“Perhaps that’s when you’ll see me again.”

“When I’m dead?”

Thorn smirked.

“Ah! Ah! You laugh now, but seriously, man. Am I gonna have to wait sixty years till you’re an old wrinkly dude on his deathbed to have any hope that we can bust some nuts together again?”

Thorn grimaced. “I don’t think that phrase means what you think it means.”

“Whatever. You know what I’m saying.”

“Well, sixty years isn’t long. I just need some time away from spirits, to think, to discover who I really am and want to be. You’re a likable guy, more or less. Or even lesser.” The Judge flipped him the finger. “I’m sure you’ll make new friends quickly enough, Judge. The bad guys will have nowhere to hide once you’re running this town again.”

“Judge, jury, and executioner,” the Judge said in a deep voice, then formed his hands into gun shapes and fired a few shots—”Pew, pew, pew!”—at the crowd.

“That’s the spirit.”

“I’ll send ’em straight to the pits of Hell. Pending the results of a fair trial, of course.”

“You know,” Thorn said, “I found Hell. The actual Hell. It has its own realm of existence, right in the iron-nickel ball at the center of everything. Who knew, right?”

“Oh, I could have guessed. I traveled to the center of the Earth one time out of sheer boredom, in our realm, naturally. You know what I found there?”

“What?”

“A guy running really, really fast on a giant hamster wheel, trying to keep the planet spinning.”

Thorn chuckled at the goofy image. Relaxing like this and being able to laugh for a change were luxuries that Thorn would not soon take for granted. He would indeed miss the Judge, but his departure was for the best. Thorn had no doubt that demon culture would fragment into countless sects again, in light of the recent revelations. Wars might even be fought. But there were others to fight those battles. Thorn had done his job. The truth was known. And he had other duties.

Across the crowd, Thorn noticed the person he’d come here to see: Darnell, the street preacher Atlanta’s demons had been trying to corrupt for years. Thorn had spotted him a few blocks away, walking in this direction, and he’d seen Darnell perform at this restaurant before, so he’d asked the Judge to join him for one last Darnell sermon as a demon. Thorn looked forward to meeting Darnell in person sometime in the coming weeks.

As distinguished and unabashed as if he’d been invited here by the restaurant’s owners themselves, Darnell paced beneath the outskirts of the wide awning hanging above the tables, then set his wooden box down in the street just beyond the corner curb. Perhaps that was as close to the restaurant as he was allowed to come. Nonetheless, he cleared his voice to speak.

“How you fine folks doing tonight?” Darnell said in an uncharacteristically chummy tone. He even smiled at the dining crowd. As usual, a third of his captive audience perked up, a third ignored him, and a third scowled at him. “I’ll only take a minute of your time,” he said. “I’d like to talk with you about something that’s always popular here in the good old U. S. of A. I’d like to talk with you about freedom.” When the din of restaurant chatter threatened to overwhelm his voice, Darnell shouted, “Freedom!” He earned a few more glances, and one man’s cry of, “Let us eat!”

Darnell continued. “Of course, you can’t have freedom when you’ve got people in charge of you telling you exactly how to think, exactly how to behave. You can’t have freedom when good people let bad ideas grow big and powerful by not asking questions. When you follow whatever you’re told is true and you never ask why it’s true, then how do you know what you don’t know? How do you know you’re not living under someone else’s thumb?”

Two demons, one at each of Darnell’s ears, whispered to him. But most of the demons who were scattered about the area turned to listen to the man—for once.

“Some people like to tell you that if you’re not with them and their ideas, then you don’t matter. But wow… Wow! What a waste of everyone’s time and energy, trying to gain all that power over each other. We only have so many resources. Why waste them all trying to keep other people beneath us? Why not work together on something better? Something like… like learning?”

Darnell swept his hands out over the crowd. His affable voice grew more powerful, his grin a bit wider, demanding even more attention. As best Thorn could guess, at least half of the restaurant’s patrons were now watching Darnell, even as the managers in the open kitchen dialed for the police.

“Knowledge, my friends, is inextricably linked to freedom. The more we know, the better we can see through the lies of anyone who wants to manipulate us. If we plug our ears and hold our eyes shut tight, and the only thoughts we ever think are the ones already inside our heads, we may as well chain our arms and legs and walk back into slavery. So open your eyes. The strange and the new are not as scary as you’ve been told. Open your ears, and you might hear something that changes you into a better woman or man. Swim in the sea of ideas, of knowledge, of reason. This sea is deep and it is warm and you are welcome any time.

“Swim, my friends, and be free.”

Darnell gave a small bow to the crowd, some of whom clapped lightly. As he stepped down off of his box and picked it up, the people returned to their food and their conversations, and the restaurant grew clamorous again. The demons took a bit longer than the humans to return to their routines. Many drifted in place, caught in the still wake of the powerful address.

Thorn turned to the Judge. “What’d you think?”

“Meh. I could do better.”

Thorn shook his head at the joke… if it had indeed been a joke. He watched Darnell marching away at a measured pace, as if the police had never once been called on him. In spite of all the times he’d been booed, he’d lost none of his dignity or aplomb.

Just as Darnell walked past the end of the awning, a man at the table there stood up to greet him. Thorn took a few moments to recognize him. Joel?

Thorn hadn’t realized until now that the wayward doctor was present. He drifted closer to hear the conversation as Joel shook Darnell’s hand.

“—was a really great speech,” Joel finished saying.

“Thank you, thank you, I do my best,” said Darnell.

As Thorn neared, he saw that Joel had abandoned a fresh and steaming fajita dish, a nearly full bottle of wine, and a date who looked fifteen years his junior.

“I’ve seen you around town,” Joel said. “You always draw a crowd, but I can never tell if they like you.”

“Neither can I,” Darnell said, laughing.

“Well, I thought it was great. Where do you come up with that stuff? Are you trained as an orator?”

Darnell held out his hands, palms up, in a gesture of humility. “I’m just another traveler on the road of life. If no one else is saying something that needs to be said, I say it.”

“It spoke to me. It did. I really appreciate what you do. And hey.” Joel dug through his pocket and procured a business card holder. He slid a card out for Darnell to take. “I own a restaurant up in Midtown. It’s all indoors, but if you want the curb out front, you’re welcome any time.”

Darnell’s poise faltered a bit as he plucked the business card with his fingertips. He stared at Joel with what looked like surprise heavily tainted with suspicion. “Really?” he asked.

“Absolutely,” Joel said.

Darnell’s face alternated between wariness and glee, and Thorn wasn’t sure which would win. But Darnell was beaming by the time he slipped the card into the pocket of his weather-beaten pants. “I may just take you up on that.”

The two men said their goodbyes. Now Thorn was more excited than ever about entering human society. Whispering positive thoughts to his charges was one thing, but actually knowing and growing with these people he’d once studied… Thorn could scarcely wait.

“I think I’m going to leave now,” Thorn said to the Judge, who’d floated up behind him.

The Judge didn’t look too happy about that, but he shrugged anyway. “All right man, it’s been real.”

The Judge moved toward Thorn, so Thorn reached out his hand to shake. But instead of shaking hands, the Judge widened his arms and embraced Thorn tightly. Thorn stiffened at the awkward display of friendship. “No, don’t fight it, Thorn. Don’t fight the love. Hug it out.”

Thorn endured several more seconds of the hug before the Judge let him go. “I won’t miss your hugs,” Thorn said.

“And I won’t miss your sunny disposition.”

Thorn grabbed the Judge’s hand and shook it. “You have my deepest gratitude, Judge. And I mean that from the bottom of my heart. You’ve been an essential ally, and a good friend.” Thorn had been hoping for an apology from the Judge for his role in hindering Thorn’s progress, back before he’d decided to assist Thorn. Given the productive relationship they’d developed since then, Thorn was surprised that he hadn’t yet received that apology.

But it seemed he wouldn’t be getting it now, at their last goodbye; the Judge only nodded. “You’ve been a pain in my ass. In a good way.” And perhaps that was as much of an apology as Thorn would ever get. The Judge waved farewell and backed away through the restaurant’s oblivious patrons, their tables, and their food.

“Be good,” Thorn called to him as a final request. “We’ve fought too hard for either of us to return to our old ways.”

The Judge backed through a waitress balancing several plates of food, then toward the restaurant’s outer wall. “Well, you know,” he said, lowering his sunglasses a bit, “playa gon’ play.”

He winked at Thorn, then disappeared inside.

•

Thorn flew over Atlanta one more time, solemnly aware that if he wanted to do so in the future, he’d need an airplane. This city had been his home for over two decades, and although he intended to stay here for the time being, the uncomfortable feeling that he was leaving his home forever welled within him. He meandered past the skyscrapers of Downtown, then Midtown, then Buckhead, then curved back around to drift over parks, metro stations, the stadium, and all that traffic that he’d have to get used to. Plenty of other demons threw him foul glances on his journey, but Thorn didn’t mind. Perhaps the next time he saw them all, they’d have changed their minds about him, and about what he’d done.

When he’d finished his sightseeing, Thorn descended to an isolated corner of the lake at Piedmont Park. The sun was sinking behind the skyscrapers in the distance, casting oranges and reds to dance together in the water. The only two humans in sight were a couple leaning against each other in the gazebo out in the lake. It seemed as good a time as any.

Thorn summoned one of the few remaining remnants of god’s knowledge, and just like that, he was human. His body jolted as gravity pulled him downward an inch and his feet landed on the ground. He breathed in deeply. After pondering for a few minutes whether he was certain about this course of action, Thorn steeled his resolve and destroyed the knowledge that could change him back to a spirit.

Now he was human. Permanently.

To test this, Thorn tried to force his spirit up out of his physical body, as he’d been able to do in the Sanctuaries. The sun’s reds and oranges had softened to pinks and purples by the time Thorn was satisfied that he could not. His spirit and his body were one and the same. For the first time, Thorn’s physical brain housed everything that made him him, just like all the other humans.

An entire mind made out of cells, he thought in amazement. Out of physical neural tissue. The concept was as strange to him now as it had always been. But it was beautiful.

Thorn strode to the lake’s shore and gazed down into the water’s reflection. The man he saw there was in his early thirties—somewhat younger than his past human incarnations had been, and with different enough facial features that the police wouldn’t recognize him. He reached his hands back between his shoulder blades, and was relieved to find no stubs of wings there.

Fantastic!

He had to see his smooth back for himself—he’d never thought to do so before, during his previous stints as a human. He yanked off his tie and tugged at his constricting jacket hard enough that the buttons popped off. He threw both items of dress into the lake. Good luck to anyone who ever tries to force me into a suit again. Then he ripped off his white dress shirt, exposing his new skin to the faint tickle of the evening wind.

Musky lake water, a thousand different types of pollen, and even the smell of his own skin wafted into Thorn’s nostrils as he bent backward over the edge of the lake. Turning his head, he was just barely able to catch a glimpse of the smooth contours of his reflected human back. And then gravity, to which he was unaccustomed, tipped him too far.

A dull rush swamped his ears and cool water splashed against his face, up his nose, and down his legs. He thrashed around, trying to swim. After all that I’ve been through, I’d better not drown now. In his confusion, he inhaled a deep gulp, and nearly panicked before realizing that he’d breathed in mostly air. He coughed a few times, then stood up. He was only waist-deep in the lake.

Thorn cracked up. He whacked at the water, spraying glimmering orange droplets. He splashed again, more deeply, and this time the surge of liquid glanced across his face. The couple in the gazebo gawked at his chortling, but Thorn didn’t care. He slid off his shoes and merrily threw each one toward the humans. They yelped but remained put, so Thorn balled up his socks and threw those as well. After another half minute of Thorn’s laughing, the onlookers scuttled away.

Thorn sloshed around in the lake until the sun had vanished and the city’s lights shone brilliantly through late dusk. Then he waded through the shallows some more, relishing the feel of the water lapping against him. He waited for the stars to come out before he leaped out of the lake. Then he ran forward, the ground thumping against his wet feet, cold wind bracing his flesh as each exhilarating jolt resounded through his knees, reminding him that he was truly, finally, alive.

16

They met on a hillside, the girl and her demon. She wore a sleeveless, knee-length viridian dress covered with white polka dots. He wore a sky blue polo shirt with khaki shorts. Small white clouds drifted in front of the morning sun.

The hill sloped downward away from them, past a hundred other people picnicking on blankets, relaxing on lawn chairs, or flying kites with their families. Pet dogs chased each other across the fields. Atlanta’s treetops and rooftops stretched to the horizon.

Thorn and Amy looked at none of this. They were looking at each other.

Thorn had always had difficulty making friends. And, as Thorn knew all too well, so had Amy. Even though they’d helped each other through the greatest trials of their respective lives, they’d never before met under ordinary circumstances. Now Thorn didn’t know how to behave around her, and he felt distressingly self-conscious—poetically so, given the mountains of anxiety beneath which he’d buried Amy over the years. Am I standing straight enough? Am I walking like a normal human? Do I smell? The questions kept coming. After neither he nor Amy had spoken for minutes, he was forced to shut the nagging uncertainties out.

But Amy spoke first. “I don’t know you as well as I would like to,” she said.

Thorn grinned. “And I don’t know you as well as I should.”

… And the conversation reached gridlock again. Amy giggled. Thorn laughed. He considered asking her what she’d told the police, or what she’d told Shelley about her adventure at the courthouse. He almost asked what the doctors had thought of her wounds healing so abruptly. And then he thought it might be pertinent to inquire about Amy’s mom, how she was weathering this tumultuous month, and if Amy was planning to live with her, or back at her dorm. For that matter, perhaps Thorn should ask how school was going for her.

But small talk seemed oddly beneath them. Their connection went deeper than that. Dammit, why am I so tongue-tied?

“I, uh, I paid your debt to Lexa,” Thorn stammered.

Amy goggled at him. “You what?”

“Your, uh, your tuition too. I’ve got your tuition covered through your graduation, if you’ll accept it.”

Amy stumbled in place. Her knees looked like they were fighting to give out, and like she was fighting back.

“I, uh… uh, wow. I…” She steadied herself. She looked up at him with overflowing curiosity. “What’s your name? Your real name. You’re not really called Thorn, are you?”

She had a good point. Thorn hadn’t yet considered what to call himself on Earth. His current moniker was likely to brand him as a gang member or a failed rock singer, so a new name would be necessary. But what other name could he become comfortable with? Balthior? Obviously not.

“Virgil,” Thorn said. “My name is Virgil.”

Amy smiled a smile so big that it might have gone all the way down to her heart. Self-consciousness reared its head again as Amy tried and failed to hold back her stunning grin. “Well, Virgil, I’d like to get to know you.”

She lightly touched his hand, and it felt like she’d touched every nerve on his body at once. He pulled away. “I, um, I’ve done a lot of bad things,” he said. “I’ve hurt a lot of people, including you.”

She took his hand again, and though it felt just as exciting as the first time, Thorn calmed himself and let her touch him.

“Have you changed?” she asked.

“Yes. Dear god, yes.” He looked down into her sunlit copper eyes.

“Then we’ll work through it,” she said.

Amy’s words encouraged Thorn a bit, but his unease suddenly blossomed into full-fledged doubt. Silky whispers groped at the back of his mind, threatening him with thoughts of inadequacy, ridiculing his affection, urging him to leave Amy, warning him that any loving relationship between himself and a human was bound to fail. His aspirations were purposeless, the whispers said. They pricked at him, prodded at him, tried to bend him to their will.

With the meticulousness of an inquisitive demon lost in the dark, Thorn considered everything the disparate whispers had to say. He didn’t judge, he didn’t assume, and he didn’t take anything on faith.

In the end, Thorn gazed down on Amy, smiled, and made up his own mind.

THE END

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Acknowledgments

I owe loads of gratitude to Robert Eichenberg, Robin Ingle, Marissa DePasquale, and David Sigurani for their feedback and encouragement during the writing of these Thorn books. Extra special thanks goes to Fedor Steer, whose dedication to this project and willingness to give continued criticism over the span of years is humbling and greatly appreciated. Thank you, Fedor, for offering your sharp eyes to these books from the very beginning—and for lending your face to their covers! Thanks also to Reid Nicewonder, for challenging me to always think deeper.

The largest slice of my Thank You pie goes to David Gatewood, whose deft editing took my raw story and raised it to the next level. David, thank you for your honesty and your keen insight, and for helping me craft these books into something truly special.

Last but certainly not least, thank you, dear reader. You’re the reason I write. Without you taking a chance on my books, their stories are just thoughts in my head that I happened to scribble on a page. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.

About Joshua Ingle

Joshua Ingle is a pathologically curious sci-fi and fantasy geek. The Thorn Saga is his first series of books.

Learn more at www.joshuaingle.com.

Connect with Josh at www.facebook.com/joshthestoryteller.