A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) Page 13

  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 ware
house, 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 themse
lves 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.