Thorn (11 page)

Jed killed his mom first. Nancy’s eyes widened in disbelief, then her son gunned her down and the children screamed. The teenage girl charged Jed, but a volley ripped through her neck, sending her lurching onto some blue mats where the scattered crayons beneath her abruptly lost their rainbow of colors in favor of a uniform red.

When Jed opened fire on the kids, Thorn looked away. He heard
POP
after
POP
after
POP
, screaming and crying and burbling last breaths, and for the first time, chaos and death didn’t register to Thorn as his victory—they registered as his
fault
. Each one of these shrieks had begun days and weeks and months ago as a simple whisper in Jed’s ear.
How could those have led to this? I never wanted this.
Jed’s expression remained sharp, focused. His actions seemed to give him no joy or satisfaction, but rather pain. He looked as if he hated this, yet felt it was something he had to do. Thorn knew that feeling all too well.

The infants continued crying as Jed finished with the toddlers, but Jed ignored their wails and paced toward the exterior door. When Thorn looked back at the area where the children had been, all he saw was a sick blur of red, so he turned and nearly left the room, but an imposing group of demons had entered sometime during the killing spree. Their gazes pierced him, and he could hear the inquisition now, though none had spoken yet. “Why did you try to stop this?”
Because it’s wrong
, he almost told them, before he realized their eyes glared not
at
him, but
through
him, to Jed.

The old man had grabbed two bleeding toddlers and limped to the wet parking lot outside. Both children were dead now, and several rounds had torn flesh off the man’s left calf, yet he continued his crablike walk backward, away from the church. Jed met him under an overhang, then raised his gun. The man stopped his crawl, mouth quivering in a desperate, unspoken plea, eyes locked on his assailant, and Thorn couldn’t help but recall the suburban house where Marcus had found Thorn last week. This old man looked as pained and surprised now as Thorn imagined he must have looked then.
An implacable foe from out of the blue.
Jed stood over the man just as Marcus had stood over Thorn.

“Jed,” Thorn whispered softly as he approached his charge. “Jed, let him live.”

Thorn didn’t care about the demons behind him. He didn’t care about Jed. Nor did he care about his own fate after this moment. If Thorn could save just one life, they could bring him before the Judge or kill him on the spot for all he cared.

Jed shot the old man. Then he turned his handgun on himself and pulled the trigger.

After the police had arrived, and families had gathered outside, and forensic analysts had begun taking photos, Thorn cowered in a low corner of the killing room, contemplating a crayon mural of Noah and his ark on a wavy ocean. Each child had drawn an animal, so each was unique: a green cat, a bowlegged panda bear standing on two legs, a giant three-humped camel, some flying jellyfish, a turtle with stars on its back. Some small creatures appeared as indecipherable yellow squiggles—worms, perhaps. As Thorn studied the drawing, he mourned silently for the children he’d inadvertently slaughtered. Now that the shooting was in the past, he saw all the warning signs in Jed: unhealthy isolation from his peers, a grandiose ego, the compulsive need for power, his interest in Travis. Thorn found it darkly amusing how easily he might apply this same description to himself. He had never been part of a mass shooting before; he’d only seen them on the news and wished for a chance to wreak such havoc one day. Now that day had come, and all he wanted was to take back every word he’d ever whispered to Jed.

During the shooting spree, Thorn had violated the Second Rule by whispering that demons and angels were real. He had tried to reveal his own existence to the boy, and the Judge could not defend him this time by claiming his actions were impossible. Just as stupidly, Thorn had spoken aloud to try to stop Jed’s murders.
How will my kin punish me after the trial?
Would they kill him themselves, or turn him over to Marcus? He cursed himself for his overreaction to Jed, wishing he’d saved himself rather than futilely attempting to dissuade the boy.
Why did I care so much?

“Thorn.”

He looked up to find twenty of his former followers staring down at him. He nodded solemnly and resigned himself to face judgment.

“Mighty Thorn,” the demon continued as all twenty of them knelt down to Thorn’s level. “Your display of violent murder has left us all profoundly impressed. You are truly one of the most cunning demons on the face of this forsaken earth, and you deserve all the power you once had. Will you allow us to follow you again so we might learn from your ways?”

In his daze, Thorn took a few moments to comprehend the demon’s words, and even then he wasn’t sure he’d heard right. When he didn’t reply, the demon prompted him.

“We will understand if you cast us aside for having so carelessly abandoned you, but if you accept us back into your fold, we will work to exalt you to your former position of power in Atlanta. We will force Marcus out of the city for now and for always.”

They didn’t hear me
, Thorn realized. His whispers had indeed been whispers. With all the frantic running, screaming, and gunfire, the other demons had heard nothing Thorn had said to Jed. They’d merely seen him whispering.
And I, oblivious, played the part the whole time, floating beside Jed as if steering him every which way. I must have looked like I was
causing
the shooting rather than trying to stop it.

Searching for an answer for his followers, he turned to the crayon ark next to him. There in the center was Noah, robed in white, the multicolored beasts organized two by two around him on top of the great wooden boat. Thorn chuckled numbly when he saw a black figure prowling off to the picture’s side. Outside the ark, apparently falling toward the water, some child had drawn a wolf.

“God rest ye merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay”

The carolers’ glum music floated down the street through the drifting snow. Thorn tried to ignore it as he hovered in the boy’s front yard, several houses away.
If only I were as bereft of hearing as I am of tasting, smelling, touching…

He stretched out his imaginary hand and felt none of the falling snow. When he stuck out his imaginary tongue, the snow drifted lazily through it, and Thorn tasted nothing.
If my body is imaginary, perhaps I am imaginary too
, he considered, not for the first time.
My life is just a bad joke in the Enemy’s mind.
This morning he’d had no charges and no followers, yet now he was back on top of the demon world, lauded by Atlanta’s devils as the orchestrator of one of the most heinous public shootings of this century. Now he had leverage over Marcus, who was currently the subject of a citywide manhunt, at Thorn’s request. Thorn had security, safety, power, and glory. The city was his again just before Christmas, and his followers were explicating to him all the dark presents Santa might bring the city tonight.

“Remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas Day”

Thorn observed the boy in pajamas lying on the living room carpet, gazing up at the television. He thought of the fifteen other young boys and girls who had died to return his prestige to him. Human death was to be celebrated, of course, but somehow Thorn felt only loss and sorrow.

“To save us all from Satan’s power when we were gone astray”

The boy was watching “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” as he had been the last time Thorn had seen him.
At least
he
survived this mess.
Living with his aunt in a safe neighborhood, the child would have a good future, and Thorn took some solace in that. He wondered whether Flying Owl would enjoy Christmastime, would be as entertained by the Grinch as this boy was.

“O tidings of comfort and joy, comfort and joy”

Of all the days for the rare sight of snow to grace Atlanta, Thorn thought, what a sour omen that it would appear on the same day as the shooting. The weather had been sunny a week ago, with no snow in the forecast.

But much had changed in the past week. Turning from the boy and the television to face the white, Thorn marveled at how eons of learned behavior could change on a dime. Marcus’s return, the fight for his life, the shooting, all of it… it had shaken Thorn, disturbed him, and most frighteningly, it had changed him.

“O tidings of comfort and joy”

The song faded behind him.

Thorn’s journey through the ground was long. When he was sure he’d lost his followers, he peeked his head aboveground to find himself in some woods beside Chamblee Tucker Road. Some demons in the traffic saw him, so he retreated back under the earth and traveled northwest toward the quarantine zone. When he encountered rock slick with groundwater, he realized he must be beneath the Chattahoochee and had gone too far, so he doubled back and eventually found himself near the old warehouse complex. As usual, hundreds of demons lurked outside, so Thorn was careful to stay in dark alleys or wooded areas. The snowfall helped to conceal his approach. Still, in the end it came down to an educated guess, and when Thorn plunged through the ground for the last time, he could not be exactly sure of the distance.

He rose inside of a wall, just inches from the exterior where his peers would have seen him from their perches on the roofs across the street. Eyeing them through a crack in the plaster, he found himself grateful for the demons’ taboo against entering the quarantine zone to pester the angels, lest other demons mistake the pesterer for a defector. Thorn would encounter none of his own kind in here.

He assessed that he was somewhere in the largest warehouse. Relieved, he rested a moment to consider his next move, which in here could easily be his last.
This is madness. I should leave immediately.
But he exited the wall toward the building’s interior and found himself in a corner by some crates. As he wandered through and around them, searching for an angel, Thorn hoped he would at least be spared Thilial’s presence. This would not go well if she were here.

But the angel he found was not Thilial. He was a hulking, imposing figure seated at a humble desk, writing. The Enemy had unfairly allowed angels to keep the ability to influence physical objects after He’d cast the demons out of Heaven, so the simple sight of this angel lifting pen to paper would once have enraged Thorn. He might even have attacked the angel out of mere spite. But now he was paralyzed with fear, hiding behind a crate, examining the lamplight gleaming off the angel’s white robe and heavy brawn.
This creature could kill me in a heartbeat.

Thorn couldn’t recall the last time a demon had been inside an angel quarantine area. Whether that was because it hadn’t happened since the days of Altherios, or because none who entered angel territory lived to tell about it, Thorn couldn’t say. He kept telling himself he was overreacting, that they would just mock him then send him off…

But Thorn would not accept being sent off. Not after this past week. Not after today.

Old chalky dust stirred on the floor as Thorn slunk around the edge of the crates, briefly giving the illusion that he had once again entered physical space. When he looked down, though, he saw it was just a passing rat that had agitated the dust. Though dusk had not yet settled, the thick snowfall let only a dreary gray light through the foggy windows. An inch at a time, Thorn drifted toward the burly angel, until at last the creature glanced up and saw him.

The pen dropped and bounced on the floor. The cherub’s body froze while his wide eyes studied the abject demon in the dress suit floating toward him. Still a distance away, Thorn decided it was safer if he made the first move.

“Don’t be afraid,” Thorn said. “I mean you no harm. I… I need to speak with you.”

The angel looked Thorn up and down, then retreated a foot backward in his rolling chair so that his face stopped just outside the lamplight.

“I have grown discontent with my kind. I wish to…” He could not bring himself to say it, so instead he said, “I wish to open up a dialogue, so that we might—”

“Enough, demon. You are not welcome here.” Despite his ominous size, the angel’s deep voice was soaked in fear.

“I am Balthior, at one time a servant of the Most High God. I have come to—”

“You are no servant of God. You are Thorn.”

“I was once an angel like you, long ago.”

“You are a fallen angel. Your place has been made for you in Hell.”

Thorn arrived at the table and the angel rose from his seat. Though he loomed over Thorn, his wings were tucked behind his back and his posture was one of defense, so Thorn raised his hands to show he was no threat. “Please, my friend. I only want to talk.”

The angel shook his head, then turned and strode toward the back wall, behind which he could escape if he so chose. Thorn quickly maneuvered around him, placing himself between the angel and the wall. “You must hear me out. Just listen, is all I ask. Just listen to my plea.”

The angel’s face twisted into an expression of puzzlement over Thorn’s strange behavior. “Plea? The great Atlanta demon has a plea? Shouldn’t you be demanding
we
plead to
you
?”

This is not going well.
“Will you make me beg?”

“Did you make Ezandris beg?” He crossed his arms into his flowing white sleeves and turned his face away, as if unwilling to make eye contact. He tried to sound gruff, but the quiver in his voice was palpable. “Very well. Speak your plea.”

“As I said, I have grown discontent with my kind. Our lives are savage and meaningless. Every day is a struggle to win some rivalry or retain power over some human. Never a moment of peace. I have had enough. I want no more part in it.”

“Defection is forbidden and impossible. An angel’s sin is permanent.”

“No, you misunderstand me. I have no desire to—I—It’s just that I want—”
Why am I denying it?
If he was going to say it outright, he knew he needed to speak soon. But the demeaning words would not leave his lips.
How can I make this sound like something he’ll listen to? Something other than what it is?