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

  Two giant seraphs strained against the three-story-tall doors of ivory, replete with engravings of battles long past and a pale specter of God watching down over all the carnage. The seraphs snarled as they heaved the doors apart, then tugged until they stood fully open, beckoning Thilial and her captors inside.

  Centuries ago, shortly after Thilial came into the world, she had disobeyed God’s orders for the sake of Thorn. And now she’d done it again. Would He lock her in a dungeon with the other rebels? Would He end her life? He was a God of peace and love—until you dared to stray from His will. Then He became a God of wrath. Thilial had seen both sides of Him many times throughout the years.

  Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.

  Thilial was ashamed by what she’d done. If she could go back, do it over again, she’d kill Thorn. What came over me? What made me think that because Thorn showed mercy to another, I should show mercy to him? She steeled herself for God’s rage.

  The guards led her to the sweeping atrium where God kept most of His pet animals and where He spent most of His time. The Lord’s vast collection of flowering plants, usually so soothing, smelled cloyingly saccharine to Thilial today. Will this be the last time I ever see these walls, these paths through the foliage, this crystal dome above us?

  God was seated on the marble floor next to an immense pillar by the cliff face, biting His fingernails. As Thilial approached Him, three angelic guards pulled a fourth angel away from God.

  “Eventually, all angelkind will rise up against You!” the angel was shrieking. “How does it feel, knowing that Your entire creation wants to destroy You?”

  The other three angels dragged the rebel away from the cliff and down toward the Heavenly City far below. He continued ranting, but he soon grew too far away to hear.

  Thilial and her guards stopped next to God.

  “That was Karthis,” God said. “The one who helped Thorn escape Heaven.”

  Thilial nodded acknowledgement, but God didn’t seem to notice. Fingertips held to His teeth, He kept staring at Karthis, now just a black speck against all the gold of Heaven.

  God’s face was wet with tears, Thilial realized. He was much calmer than she’d expected, but His demeanor went beyond mere sadness. His body was curled up in a ball like a child sent to time out. His blue hair fizzled with only the barest trace of electric current, and stubble covered His chin. His whole face sagged, as if He was too despondent to move a single muscle. Even His voice sounded lethargic. Poor guy.

  “I sincerely apologize for my actions,” Thilial said. “I regret them. They were unacceptable. I willingly accept any discipline You deem necessary.”

  God said nothing for a long while. Was He still watching Karthis? The rebel had blended in with the tide of angels in the air above Heaven, a living blanket of wing traffic. Thilial had lost sight of him.

  “I wanted to test people in an environment devoid of superstition,” God said, looking down at His city. “Or mostly, at least. I wanted to create friends who would live lives of purpose with Me. That’s all I ever wanted.”

  “And by allowing a heinous adversary to escape, I have failed to give You what You want. I deserve to be stripped of my rank and imprisoned.”

  God’s head fell toward His chest. He lowered His hand to caress one of the vines growing around His torso. “It’s all shit,” He said. “It’s all gone to shit. You have not failed, young Thilial. Your failure, and everyone’s failure, is ultimately My failure.”

  That sentiment scared Thilial. She wanted to touch God, to comfort Him, but this was not the place nor the time.

  From farther back in the colonnade, Gleannor spoke. “We should take him out, Lord.”

  Thilial stiffened; she had not noticed that Gleannor was here. She paced toward them with a coterie of God’s other advisors. Of all angels, it has to be she who sees me like this…

  “We should kill Thorn,” Gleannor repeated. “Once he surfaces. One of us could appear, snap his neck, and then vanish before any other demons realize what they’ve seen. Then we can pick Brandon and Heather up and return them to the Sanctuary system.”

  “No, no,” God mumbled. “We’re past that. Thorn’s loose now, out in the open. He’ll tell people the truth. They may not believe him, but it doesn’t matter. They’ll have been told. We need to…” His voice trailed off, and His head bobbed slowly up and down. “We need to talk about containment.”

  “War?” Thilial asked. An all-out attack on Atlanta? He can’t be serious. “Lord, our scouts may yet apprehend Thorn in the Corrid—”

  “I can alert the Angels of War if You wish.” Gleannor spoke right over Thilial. “Their legions can be ready in hours.”

  “No!” Thilial said, turning to Gleannor. Her guards dropped their hands to the hilts of their swords. “An attack on Atlanta would alert the world’s demons that we are still a force of great power. It will ignite another full-scale conflict between us and them.”

  And you’d love that, wouldn’t you, Gleannor? Thilial’s rival had always loathed demonkind, had always been eager to exterminate them. But don’t I feel the same way? Why am I fighting this?

  “So be it,” Gleannor said. “Thorn has proven, as have many others, that demons are beyond salvation. Perhaps it’s time we think about shutting down the Sanctuary system once and for all.” Thilial almost agreed with her on that point, but then Gleannor went on to say, “Perhaps it’s time we wipe out all the demons, all the rebel angels, and focus our efforts on saving the humans.”

  “But God loves the demons. He wants to reconcile with them, form a relationship with them.”

  “Seems like a pretty one-sided relationship,” God muttered. Thilial and Gleannor glanced down at their forlorn Creator, huddled against a pillar.

  “Lord, please don’t let her talk You into this,” Thilial said. Your original plan is still valid and good. We should maintain the status quo, not rush to war.”

  “Says she who consorts with demons,” Gleannor said, practically spitting the words.

  “Be kind to each other,” God said, but without much conviction.

  “We’ve had more than enough bloodshed in our history,” Thilial said to Gleannor. “The purpose of creation is to form beings who are both rational and empathetic, not to assert our power over weaker foes.”

  “And let them trample over us and our values?” Gleannor retorted. “You sulking craven.”

  “You arrogant hawk!”

  “BE KIND!” God bellowed, bursting up from His resting place. He hovered in midair, wind whipping at His white robes, blue lightning arcing from His scalp onto the columns around them.

  The guards all raised their hands, shielding their faces. Gleannor readjusted her stance to gain better footing. Thilial was gripped by fear, her brief reprieve from worrying about imprisonment ended in an instant.

  But after just a few moments, the wind subsided, and God’s outburst quieted. “It’s important to be kind to others,” He murmured as if by rote. “That’s why I gave everyone free will. So they could all be kind and do what I say. It’s how I know they’re being selfish when they don’t agree with Me.”

  Thilial tried to understand God’s nonsensical words, but their meaning eluded her. It was almost as if God’s sanity had become suspect. She took pity on Him. She’d never seen Him like this.

  “War is okay,” God said. “I’m good at war. I’ve done it for a long, long time. Longer than any of you. But I just don’t know.” God’s feet alighted back onto the floor. He clutched His head and paced in a circle. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know. What, uh—what would you guys do?”

  Flabbergasted at God’s casual question, the angels in the room glanced anxiously at each other. Though God appointed many advisors, He never asked for advice.

  No one spoke for a long moment.

  “We should at least wait to see how the demons react to Thorn,” Thilial finally said. “Maybe this situation will benefit You in
the end after all.”

  “Ha.” God huffed at her. “Sure, whatever. Let’s wait.” Gleannor opened her mouth to protest, but God raised a finger at her. “Ready the armies, though. If it turns out that My plans have to go out with the garbage, I guess they might as well go out with a bang.”

  Gleannor bowed to God. She peered at Thilial out of the corner of her eye, and Thilial couldn’t tell whether her gaze held malice or mere pride. Gleannor and her fellow advisors strode away with forceful gaits.

  “And I guess I should punish you, too, huh?” God said to Thilial. He lumbered between her guards, His face tired and blank, then stopped centimeters from her. “For aiding Thorn, your punishment will be to lead a legion of angels into battle in Atlanta, if it comes to war. That is My will.”

  “Yes, Lord,” Thilial said. “I am Yours.”

  “Guards, leave her. She won’t make the same mistake thrice.”

  The guards bowed, then marched away in formation. God returned to the edge of the cliff. Silhouetted against the majesty of Heaven, He looked strangely small. Save for His wardrobe, He could easily have been just another angel, slinking down against one of the House’s many pillars.

  Thilial wanted to avoid the disrespect of flying above God, so she flapped her wings and flew back toward the waterfall entrance.

  Troubled thoughts clouded her mind. Never in her lifetime had angelkind hovered so close to war. She had no problem with killing demons. Yet after having spent a night talking with Thorn, she found her empathy toward humankind extending to include him as well. She knew that war among humans was wrong, that the killing of humans was wrong… By extension, wasn’t it also wrong to kill demons like Thorn? Certainly killing all of the demons would be wrong.

  Yet God had acknowledged that wiping out demonkind might be necessary, so it necessarily became moral.

  But as Thilial raced the falling water down toward the river below, she wondered if the exact same command would have been immoral if it had been made by anyone other than God.

  Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.

  •

  Something big rustled in the dark and brushed against the walls and ceiling. Hadn’t that ceiling been much lower back where there’d been light to see it? Now the world was lost in absolute darkness wherever Brandon turned. The blood dribbling over his eyes didn’t help matters. The hallways seemed to consume ambient sound; nothing echoed or reverberated, so the slightest noise sounded clear and precise. Brandon couldn’t be sure how close the thing stirring in the darkness was.

  It growled. A deep guttural rumble. Heather gasped, and he felt her hand leave his. He reached for her, but she’d stepped away. Trying to ignore the pain bursting from his left arm, he felt around in the darkness for his wife. He didn’t dare say her name for fear of alerting whatever was out there to their presence.

  Where the hell are we? He’d been too dazed by the plane crash and his injuries, and too distracted by Heather’s urgent fleeing to consider what was happening. Now that full awareness had returned to him, fear clawed at him as well.

  The behemoth in the darkness shifted again, and Brandon thought he heard heavy footfalls thumping against the floor. They were moving in his direction.

  Brandon turned and stumbled forward, trying to keep his own footsteps quiet. He reached out and—thank goodness—felt a wall. The wall gave him enough reference to move forward more quickly. He followed it, felt it disappear at a corner, then found it again, turned with the wall, and kept running. Still no light, nor sight.

  The thing’s footsteps closed quickly behind him, and a gust of air buffeted Brandon’s side. He stopped so he wouldn’t draw its attention; the footsteps passed him right by.

  The thing growled again, this time more softly than before. Was it moving away? Yes—after a few moments, Brandon could scarcely hear its movements. He wanted to turn back and find Heather…

  … But was that light up ahead? In the direction the thing had gone? Brandon looked down and saw his blood-soaked tuxedo, although the blood looked as black and slick as oil in this low light. He used the sleeve that was clean sleeve to wipe some of it off of his forehead, then pressed on toward the light.

  As he approached it, he began to see that the light was much more than a single, small source lost in the vast darkness, as it had appeared from a distance. The light actually came from some sort of doorway: tall and wide, pointed at the top, with strange glowing runes engraved on it. The light shining through it was brilliant—blinding, even. Brandon could see the jet walls, reflective white floor, and high ceiling of the hallway now. He couldn’t think of any building in Bristol with hallways that would look like this.

  The air felt warmer as he approached the doorway. When he reached it, he peered through, squinting into the bright light.

  His breath left him. The door opened onto a mountainside above the most dazzling city Brandon had ever seen—in reality, in photographs, or in the movies. Sunlight slanted in from above to shimmer off immense waterfalls. Flocks of birds twisted above rivers, soaring toward the towers and minarets of the city. Everything looked shiny and yellow, like it was made out of gold. The architecture flaunted a sleek blend of the modern and the ancient. Flying buttresses and immense marble pillars supported abstract postmodern buildings that rose high against the sky. A huge black wall of what looked like computer screens rose in the center of the city, and beyond it…

  Beyond it…

  Brandon refused to believe that the planet in front of him, rotating against a backdrop of stars, was Earth. Whatever grand illusion this was, though, it had nearly convinced him. Lifelike greens and blues blazed off of the majestic orb. Brandon could even see pinpricks of lightning in storm clouds on the night side.

  A few birds flew near him—and he realized they weren’t birds. They were people. Flying people wearing white robes, wings lofting them on the wind.

  Were they angels?

  Brandon couldn’t comprehend what he was seeing, so he stumbled backward, into the darkness of the hallways. He turned a corner, and had to slow down as total darkness took him again.

  “Heather!” he called out.

  “Hon! Where are you?” She sounded close.

  “Over here. Follow my voice.”

  They soon found each other. Brandon couldn’t see her, but he embraced her with his good arm. “Are you okay?” she asked him. “What was that thing?”

  “I don’t know. I followed it, and I found this huge golden city.” A name for that city hovered at the edges of his thoughts, but he refused to let himself say it, or even think it. “Do you know where we are?”

  “No. That guy outside told us to run in here, and I—I don’t know. I panicked. I’m sorry. He sounded so serious, and the plane had just crashed, and—Brandon, you’re bleeding like crazy. I’ve got your blood all over me.”

  “How do we get out of here? We need to get to a hospital.”

  “Yeah, that’s what that guy told us to do. He said we should go to Atlanta, but that’s a five-hour drive. What’s this about a city?”

  Brandon was about to explain, when another thought struck him. “Wait—where’s Virgil?”

  Heather didn’t respond, and Brandon didn’t like the sound of that silence.

  “Hon, where’s Virgil?” he repeated.

  “He didn’t make it.” Heather’s voice was soft with grief. “I’m sorry. The crash got him. I tried to revive him, but he was gone.”

  A deep melancholy washed over Brandon, but now was no time for tears. Now was a time for survival.

  And for sorting through his confusion. When he thought back to the crash, he found he couldn’t quite remember its cause, or what they had crashed into. Hadn’t the space in front of the plane at the moment of impact been empty air?

  This has to be my head injury. The crash, these hallways, that city… How much of this is real, and how much is just in my head?

  “Maybe we can get back to Karen,” Heather said. “It
’s morning now. Hospitals will be open.”

  But even as she said the words, Brandon touched his hand to a wall and sensed—somehow—that the passage before him was the way out. He took Heather’s hand and led her forward.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “I don’t think this is the way back to the plane.”

  “Just a hunch. I think I might be able to get us to Atlanta.”

  •

  “Yes, this way,” Thorn whispered again to Brandon. Even in the best of times, the Corridors were unsafe for humans. They hadn’t been built with non-spiritual entities in mind, and in fact, they were restricted even to most angels. Even if Thorn had committed no other crimes against God, just this unauthorized travel through the Corridors would have been sufficient crime in itself. If God discovered them here, He would erase them all from existence. And now that Brandon’s arm was broken and his hair drenched in blood, getting the humans out of here was doubly urgent.

  Thorn guided them with his whispers, which Brandon continued to heed, likely due to his disoriented mental state. The entire way through the Corridors, Thorn kept glancing backward, half-expecting to see Wanderer bearing down on them. Hopefully Paxis or the angels had gotten him. The conspiracy Thorn had just uncovered had left him dumbfounded, and his mind was too fatigued to face another confrontation with Wanderer.

  Wanderer. Over the past three months, Thorn had searched every crevice of Atlanta for answers, but in the end, the details were in the Devil. He outsmarted me. He outsmarted everyone.

  As a reformed demon trying to become good, Thorn detested Wanderer’s motives. But as the former demon leader in one of the most important cities in one of the most powerful countries in the world, Thorn also had to admit that his pride was hurt. I shouldn’t have fallen for his ploys. I should have been smarter than him. He vowed to never again let himself be taken in by such cunning. If he survived this ordeal, he would live a quiet, unassuming life.