A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) Page 10

  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 do
or. 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?”