Thorn Read online

  But Thorn had not come to the burial grounds to reminisce. He’d come here for clarity. His dress shoes never touched the ground as he paced, which was really just an imitation of a human walk; floating from A to B while shuffling one’s feet was a curious habit most demons had picked up long ago.

  Did I really almost die tonight? Having lived since the dawn of time, Thorn had expected to see time’s end as well, since demons, as spiritual entities, could not age as humans did. He had thought that he didn’t particularly like his life on this earth, but earlier tonight, faced with the end menacing over him, he found that he dreaded death as much as any human. What would have happened after I was gone? Some other ambitious demon would surely have taken his place. His charges would have been tossed to the wind, picked up by who knows. Would his name have been remembered as one of the great demons, like Xeres or Wanderer? Would he still have been feared hundreds of years after he was gone? Or even ten years after he was gone? Thorn was the greatest in one city, true, but Atlanta was only one city out of all the cities on earth.

  With Marcus prowling Atlanta, Thorn would have to fight to escape a bitter demise. This is bad. Very, very bad.

  As he knelt beside the boy’s grave to pay his respects for the thousandth time, he thought through his options. If he fled the city for a new stomping ground, the demon world would think him a coward, and his fearsome reputation would be lost. Even if he changed his name to ensure his safety, Thorn wasn’t sure he could bear living a meager life again. On the other hand, if he stayed in Atlanta and asserted his power, Marcus would find a way to kill him, sooner or later. Thorn would have rallied his followers to banish a lesser foe from the city, but facing such a well-respected enemy as Marcus, this option was closed. Thorn even considered staying here in the woods. He’d be safe here, but unfulfilled. What purpose would his life have, with no humans to torment?

  Even with us as your fodder, what purpose does your life have? the dead boy under the cairn seemed to ask him. Thorn ignored the imagined jab. He already knew what he had to do.

  Jada would be the hardest human to kill. She hadn’t cracked in all the years Thorn had afflicted her. Amy would be quite a loss, but a necessary and easy sacrifice. Jed would be trickier, although even if Thorn failed with him, the cancer would take him soon enough. Madeline would be a piece of cake. Thorn had other charges, but these were those with whom he was most often seen, and hence most known for. Luckily, Thorn was between high-profile charges at the moment; otherwise he’d be burdened with the additional stress of causing a celebrity’s death.

  If Thorn wanted to skip town and have any hope of preserving his reputation, he had to find a way to kill his four main charges first, hopefully by Christmas Day, just a week from now. Such a sudden fire sale of death would cement Thorn’s lasting repute, and serve as a pointed and memorable end to his time in Atlanta. If anything, it would make him even more popular when he came out of hiding and reclaimed his name once Marcus had been dealt with. Demons loved death above all things, after all. And since killing each other was illegal, a human’s death signified the most momentous demonic act.

  Thorn left the dead boy and went back to the city.

  2

  “Buy it,” Thorn whispered to the woman with the leather purse.

  She eyed the turquoise blouse more closely.

  “You deserve this,” Thorn continued. “It will make you happy.”

  The blouse was a harmless thing, as was everything else in the mall. “It’d look so good with those jeans you just got at Bloomingdale’s.”

  She nodded as if in agreement, but she didn’t take the upscale top off the rack.

  Thorn drifted around to her other ear. “You need this. You don’t have enough blue-green in your closet. Your gal friends will like you more and so will men. Buy it.”

  She did.

  Thorn reminded himself that there was no unimportant temptation, just tasks with more glory and less glory. Let Marcus keep his impressive yet tasteless African genocides. All immorality was social currency. Not only mindless barbarism, but more subtle ventures too. I cause more of it, I’m rich. I cause less of it, I’m poor. It’s as simple as it’s always been. No one in the civilized world will look down on me because I’m not as violent as Marcus. American vanity had done immense damage in the world, and more subtly. Marcus’s genocides would never have been allowed to happen if Westerners hadn’t been busy shopping at the time. And that vanity was the doing of Thorn and his followers—at least in Atlanta.

  Leaving the woman, Thorn passed under some plastic mistletoe and a string of lights that was half-deactivated. In the mall’s main walkway, he kept his distance from Shenzuul, whom he’d been tailing. Currently, the idiot was trying to distract a man into choking on his fries in the food court.

  What a fool, aiming constantly for death, Thorn thought. As if a human would actually listen to such an obvious ploy. No, better to tempt him into ordering a third helping of fries while reminding him of a negative personal issue, so he’ll get used to turning to food for comfort. A life wasted on self-pity would have a longer-term effect on his friends and family than a sudden death would, and would be easier to pull off.

  Thorn grimaced at a newspaper lying on a food court table. The murder-suicide that should have been his had made the front page: but just a small column on the bottom left. And Travis had survived a self-inflicted gunshot wound! The child had lived as well. In Thorn’s hands, all three humans would have died, and the murder would have been brutal enough for a headline.

  “The new Call of Warfare game is probably over at the game store,” Thorn whispered to a passing teenage boy who looked like a gamer. “You deserve it. Your mom should buy it for you.” Thorn did not often stoop to petty consumerism, but he needed to keep track of Shenzuul, and tempting people to buy things they didn’t need, with money they didn’t have, was a perfect cover. Thorn blended well with the myriad of other demons at the mall today doing the same thing, and had evaded Shenzuul’s attention so far.

  According to Thorn’s followers, Marcus had not been seen since last night at the house. Thorn had sent the demons he trusted most out searching for Marcus, but none had found him so far.

  Thorn had also asked his followers to continuously stay near, to be witnesses in the event that he was attacked, or killed and the First Rule violated. As he drifted across the mall, they followed him from a distance in all directions, masquerading as regular demons concerned only with trivial temptations.

  Thorn hovered past a line of parents and children and demons waiting to see Santa, and laughed silently as he wondered what the parents would think if they could see the devils whispering in every ear. Even scarier, what would Santa do?

  Thorn appraised his wounds and was pleased to find them healing well. Did I really almost die last night? He couldn’t shake his new and uncomfortable awareness of his own mortality. His monotonous life had seemed so never-ending that he’d forgotten it could actually end. With the First Rule in place and the Enemy forever cowering behind His heavenly veil, Thorn should easily have had millions of years left on Earth, and his pick of humanity during that time. He was one of the greatest demons, after all. He deserved it.

  Confident that Shenzuul was just passing time and that Marcus was not on his tail, Thorn left the mall for the first of his charges. At nineteen years old, Amy wasn’t exactly challenging, but like fries in the food court, she was Thorn’s comfort food. Ever since Amy was six years old, he’d whispered to her to console himself when his other charges’ temptations weren’t going as well. With no father, an unstable mother, a pudgy body, and desperate insecurities—that last one thanks to Thorn—she’d always been an easy target. Hopefully she would continue to be so. He had less than a week to provoke her to suicide.

  As Thorn approached Amy’s mom’s second-floor apartment—an ugly place in the wrong side of town, with a loud freeway passing directly overhead—he saw a flashy pink convertible gleaming out front. The car’
s presence puzzled him until he saw Lexa, Amy’s friend from college, in the driver’s seat. Kelly sat next to her, and Amy in the back. Their lips were moving. Thorn passed through the car’s walls and listened to Lexa prattling on as usual.

  “—that I was gonna sing it, and Gina heard it from her, so now Gina’s gonna sing the same song as me, and I’m like seriously unprepared with a backup.” Amy fidgeted while idly eyeing the clouds outside. Lexa checked her lipstick in the mirror, then smacked the gum she seemed to always be chewing as she continued to jabber. “I mean it’s my Christmas party. And I’m artistically on a whole other level than Gina. I should be able to showcase my voice without being compared to her hot mess of a performance, right? And when I told her that, she says, ‘It’s just karaoke.’ Seriously! Can you believe that? Like I’m gonna have ‘just karaoke’ at my party. It’s not like I’m having people sing because, oh I don’t know, I’m fucking good at it and want to show off. I mean don’t theatre majors usually have singing at their parties in college? Or is that weird?”

  Amy jerked out of her daydreaming and grasped for a response. She seemed worried that Lexa had noticed her inattention, so Thorn leaned toward her ear and added, “She doesn’t like you. You need her but she doesn’t like you.”

  “Uh… maybe not,” Amy told Lexa.

  Lexa took that as a definitive no. “Good. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m weird. Just stay away from Gina, okay? We’re better than her, and you seriously don’t need her as a friend. I mean don’t tell her that. I don’t want to look like a bitch. But it’ll be good if we just kind of drift apart from her. This isn’t the first time she stole one of my ideas, you know.” She turned back to Amy for approval to continue, but Amy was gazing outside again. “Are you listening?” she asked Amy. “You agree with me, right?”

  “Of course,” Thorn whispered.

  “Of course,” Amy lied. “Gina’s really immature.”

  “Exactly. I just don’t want to be all gung ho about avoiding her and have you or Kelly pussy out and not do it, so…” She tapped the dashboard. “You think we should just have the party at a club instead? Yeah, Gina doesn’t like cigarette smoke. Maybe she wouldn’t even come.”

  “Yeah, good idea.”

  “Yeah. And Kelly, don’t wear what you’re wearing now to the party. If Gina does show up I don’t want to give her the impression that it’s okay to dress like a bum around us.”

  Kelly examined her clothing and bleated her apologies. Pleased with herself, Lexa checked her smile in the mirror again, still smacking her gum. Thorn had always been amused that no demon claimed her, and that none ever had. Lexa was all Lexa. Ever since Amy had met her at freshman orientation last summer, Thorn had encouraged Amy to have a high opinion of her. She was extroverted and Amy wasn’t. She was pretty and Amy wasn’t. She had friends and money and Amy didn’t. The constant comparisons Thorn kept in Amy’s mind sapped the few positive thoughts she did feel about herself, and Lexa, who kept outwardly inferior girls in her social circle so she could look better than them in public, was keen to reinforce Amy’s negative self-image.

  “Okay, well, I guess I should get going,” Lexa said. “Just wanted to show you my new car. Ahh!” She made a mock-astonished face with wide eyes and mouth, then squealed excitedly.

  “Yeah, super cool.” Ever longing for acceptance, Amy did her best imitation of enthusiasm. She’d become good at that imitation over the years. While Lexa fiddled with the radio, Amy leaned forward on the far side of the car and whispered to Kelly. “I think you look fine,” Amy said. Kelly smiled thankfully. Thorn frowned.

  The girls exchanged goodbyes, Amy exited the vehicle, and Lexa drove off. Eight of Thorn’s follower demons waited near the apartment’s stairs, eager to one-up each other and impress Thorn should he need any assistance. He told them to wait there while he followed Amy inside.

  Amy shut her bedroom door and stepped over the biology textbooks that cluttered the carpet. Thorn had tried to coax her into business school, or musical theatre like Lexa, but she’d resisted and started a premed track, which had troubled Thorn these last few months. She seemed quite fulfilled following her passions in the sciences, so Thorn had introduced her to friends he could use to prey on her insecurities, and kept her isolated from any sense of community she might find in college. This was easy, because she was poor, not girly in the slightest, and ugly to boot. Thorn reminded her how little she fit in whenever she met someone new, and her resulting shyness kept her depressed and alone. Still, he eyed the books strewn across the floor with distaste.

  A mirror rose above Amy’s dresser—the same mirror to which Thorn liked to keep her glued for hours each week. She removed her shirt and gazed discontentedly at her wide hips, her flabby belly, and her square face. Demons had helped shape a culture in which most young women were kept quiet, their independence scoffed at and their bodies objectified, even by themselves. Many women realized the lies and dealt healthily with them by the time they hit thirty, but foolish adolescents like Amy fell into Thorn’s grasp time and time again. Body image lies were almost too easy now.

  Thorn had known for years he would need to have Amy kill herself before she grew too old, but now, with her death imminent, he almost regretted having to do it. Not because he cared about the girl, of course, but because she was his home. He’d spent more time with her than with any living human, even Madeline or Jed. Most demons kept a pet human or two, and naturally grew accustomed to their emotional routines, but Thorn had even come to think of himself as Amy’s “guardian demon,” borrowing the term from the nonexistent angelic variety. Thorn would miss how easily he could incite Amy to skip dinner when she saw a thin model on TV, fight with her drunken mother when the reckless woman came home from a night out, stress about the money she’d borrowed from Lexa for her tuition, or cry herself to sleep after a taxing shift at the restaurant job where she slaved away to keep herself afloat. Amy was as predictable as any asinine young girl, and to Thorn, predictable was comfortable.

  Thorn approached her in front of her mirror and moved his lips next to her ear. What should I say? This next whisper would be the first suggestion on the path to her suicide. He knew her so well that an idea came quickly. Yes. The perfect beginning of the end. Thorn opened his mouth to speak.

  “You ugly,” Shenzuul whispered.

  Thorn flinched and backed swiftly across the room. Wearing a faded old suit, Marcus’s associate drifted in the air by Amy’s other ear. He smirked at Thorn as he whispered to her again. “Boys never notice you. Maybe you’d be good for quick fuck but never nothing permanent.”

  No. Not Amy. They can’t take Amy from me. Anger rose inside Thorn.

  But Shenzuul continued. “Look at fat arms. You disgusting. And cruel to poor mother. And too shy, with weird interests. No one ever want you.”

  In spite of the strange accent, the whispered lies weren’t bad. Thorn could have done better, naturally. He eyed Shenzuul defensively as Amy slipped back into her shirt. The fool was short but powerfully built—Thorn was not sure he could take him in a direct fight. Thorn could always call his followers in to help, but at the risk of appearing weak and needy, which he couldn’t afford in his current wounded state. Not to mention that his followers avoided violence against their own kind, as many demons did, lest an accidental murder occur. So Thorn resorted to the same trait he’d relied upon to build his renown over the centuries: his cunning.

  “Lexa is much more attractive than you,” Thorn called across the room. “Maybe if you stay with her, boys will notice you too.” And if I show that you only listen to me, maybe Shenzuul will realize I’m his better.

  Shenzuul countered as Amy grabbed a textbook from her nightstand and plopped onto her bed. “Maybe you be prettier if you slit your wrists.”

  No, not violence. Never violence. She wouldn’t go for that. Shenzuul’s statement didn’t even make sense. It was just brute savagery. Predictably, Amy ignored him and began reading her book.


  A soft rattling came from the kitchen, which Shenzuul took as inspiration. He threw an arrogant grin at Thorn and said to Amy, “Mom in kitchen. You should go to her, tell her ’bout your problems. Maybe she understand.”

  What an idiot. No doubt he’d done some research on Amy and thought she would confront her mom as usual, but the mother was sometimes sober during the afternoon, and thus prone to occasional bouts of sympathy for her daughter. Thorn’s control over their relationship rested partially on the pair never having a chance to honestly express themselves to each other. So to appeal to Amy’s pride, Thorn said, “The only real pain is pain suffered alone.”

  But she did go to her mother, and they did talk, and Shenzuul thus began to pick away at Thorn’s livelihood. Had Shenzuul been just another demon, Thorn would have viciously fought back. But he remembered the sharp intelligence Marcus possessed, and feared a trap. Thorn was still too injured to fight anyway. He decided that his best course of action was to leave Amy be, for now. He would return to reclaim her once his wounds healed. His work on Amy ran deep enough that no important damage could be undone in a mere few days…

  •

  So this is Marcus’s plan, Thorn thought as he drifted down Lowery Boulevard in the heart of the Bankhead slums, toward Magnolia Park. Ruin my work and discredit me, like I once did to Marcus, then get me alone somewhere and finish me. On the bright side, this gave Thorn more time to escape, if escape was all he wanted. But his reputation would be ruined if he ran. And now the same would happen if he stayed. He could not directly fight or kill Marcus or Shenzuul, or he would be in violation of the First Rule and sentenced to death. Besides, both demons were stronger than Thorn, and he’d inevitably lose the fight, unless he could convince his followers to violate the First Rule with him, which was unlikely. Thorn also considered declaring loyalty to Marcus, surrendering his charges to him, and then subverting Marcus’s authority from inside his den of followers. This would have been a good last resort strategy for dealing with any other rival demon, but Marcus would never fall for it. Alternately, Thorn could hide and wait… but only cowards hid, and if Marcus still held his grudge after all these centuries, he would not likely forget it soon. Eventually, Marcus would come for him. Thorn’s followers would not voluntarily exile themselves with him, and he dreaded being alone when Marcus found him.