A God to Fear (Thorn Saga Book 5) Read online

  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 n
ose, 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.