A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) Page 15

  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 th
e 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 peda
lboard 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.