Thorn Read online

  Long ago, in what seemed like another life, Thorn had been an Angel of Reason. He could no longer recall what his duties had been, but he liked to think he’d retained some of his original intelligence. There must be a way out of this.

  A new name, perhaps. Thorn’s only real option was an alias and a new city, where he would bide his time, study Marcus from a distance, and find a way to orchestrate Marcus’s death. But starting over with new humans from scratch? That would be tough to endure.

  Thorn found himself wondering how many times this had happened before: a vendetta between two great demons. Devils often bickered, as brutal competition was their way of life, but they rarely held grudges lasting this long. And even if they did, few would dare discuss them openly, since all lived in the shadow of the First Rule and the Judges who enforced it.

  Thorn drifted past a small group of demons working together to coordinate a drug deal in a back alley. Shouldn’t that be our purpose? Thorn thought. Destroying the work of the Enemy, forcing misery and hollowness and lies into every human’s life until their ultimate deaths? How strange it was that the struggle for glory and prestige always seemed paramount, at the expense of the fight that really mattered. Not that Thorn would trade his prestige for the meager lives of that scum in the alley. No glory lay in ruining the life of a person whose life was already ruined.

  Thorn thus preferred to spend his time with people whom he could change from their essentially “good” beginnings. With greater difficulty lay more prestige, so Thorn had worked himself into a position where he could have any human he wanted. He even had power enough to swindle murders, suicides, and rapes (the three most sought-after of the base sins) from lesser demons—just as Marcus had done to him last night. Thorn would not, and could not, part with his current status in the demon world. He would just have to outsmart Marcus. Beat him at his own game. This thought plagued him as he entered Magnolia Park, “An Active Adult 55+ Living Community.”

  Madeline’s death was just a matter of blood pressure. She was eighty years old, and Thorn had eased her into a sedentary lifestyle and a sugary diet. Perhaps he could add extreme stress to her life this week. Or persuade her to eat especially unhealthy meals, then scare her with a sudden shock. Thorn couldn’t decide. The stroke or heart attack could come from any number of setups, so Thorn would try them all.

  Madeline wasn’t home, but Thorn found her at the grocery store next door, hunched over on her mobility scooter in line to check out. An unfamiliar demon hovered beside the cashier, a boy in his twenties who ran Maddie’s items through as she rolled up. Inspired by the teamwork he’d seen at the drug deal, Thorn nodded at the other demon, and the demon nodded back. They whispered in their respective charges’ ears. Thorn went with the classic, “He’s young, so he probably voted Democrat,” just to piss Madeline off.

  “Would you like to donate to the Kids of America Foundation today to help kids with cancer and juvenile diabetes?” the cashier asked, holding up a golden paper star. Hundreds of such stars lined the store’s walls.

  Thorn continued to rankle Madeline. “He’s probably a freeloader, sitting in his room playing video games all day, too lazy to get a real job.”

  Madeline took the bait. “How about they donate something to me?” she said in her light southern drawl.

  The cashier was taken aback at first, and appeared bothered by the old woman’s acrimony. He ignored her comment. The other demon continued to whisper in the boy’s ear, though Thorn could not hear the words. “Your total comes to forty twenty-seven.”

  “No, no, I’ll donate. Give it here.” He handed her the paper star. “And a pen?” With slow old hands, she scribbled out her name.

  The cashier glanced impatiently at his long line.

  Thorn enjoyed ageism quite a bit, both the young-to-old variety and its lesser-known cousin, old-to-young. After witnessing successive generations of early humans, the endless advantages of pitting each generation against the others had become clear to demonkind. Such hostility inhibited the passing of morality and knowledge, so each generation remained isolated and immune to truths learned by the others. Many humans had eventually found workarounds for the demons’ ageism policies, but many were still ensnared, and shunned befriending those in other age groups. Let their only interactions be in traffic, or in customer service situations, where tensions run high. Today, Thorn hoped, maybe there would be enough tension to cause a stroke.

  Madeline handed the cashier a food stamps card. He hesitated. “Uh, sorry ma’am, but you can’t pay for the donation with food stamps. Do you have an extra dollar?”

  “No. That’s all I have.” She stared him down, as if staring would change the government’s policy.

  “Okay, um, wait just a minute while I get a manager to refund the donation.”

  “No, I said I wanted to donate. I already filled out the star.”

  “But you can’t pay for the star with food stamps.”

  “Why not?”

  “Damn it.” He said it softly, to himself, but Madeline and the other customers heard him and gaped. The damage had been done. The cashier’s demon winked at Thorn.

  “How long have you worked here?” Madeline asked the boy.

  “Five years. Now if I could just—”

  “Well you’re not trained properly. I’d like to speak with your manager.”

  After describing to the manager how “very offended” she was, and trying her damnedest to get the boy fired, Madeline drove her scooter home. Thorn floated with her, muttering sour criticisms of the few young people in her life.

  Ironically, it was a teenager who had introduced Thorn to her, at church of all places. Thorn had gone with Jed that day to focus all his energies on a girl in the youth group Jed had wanted to sleep with. While drifting through the hallways of that societal relic, Thorn had noticed a group of old ladies setting up polls for the then-upcoming election. Upon further investigation, he learned that they were a group of seniors hilariously named “God’s Grannies” who were active in the community, raising money for charities, setting up an adoption agency, testing their abilities in local politics, and giving food to the poor, despite being at poverty’s doorstep themselves. Rarely did they murmur a word about social security, the country’s “declining morals,” or any of the other hot-button issues so loved by America’s retirees. These women appeared to be truly selfless. As de facto demon leader of Atlanta, Thorn had found an unlikely nemesis in Madeline, the widowed leader of God’s Grannies.

  That had been four years ago, and Madeline had been a challenge, because at heart she was good. Her Southern Baptist heritage daunted Thorn, but only at first. Some demons lived in great fear of religion, but others, such as Thorn, had grown to accept its occasional usefulness. “Religion’s appeal to us lies in its apparent ability to answer any and all human questions,” Thorn had recently explained to some of his followers. “When confronted with foreign or contradictory information, have your charges tell themselves, ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ and leave it at that.” If humans could be trained to believe something without questioning it, they were also more susceptible to believing the suggestions of the demons without questioning them. “Thinking is the worst virtue,” was a popular demon mantra. The Enemy’s plan, oddly, had worked out to the devils’ advantage.

  So Thorn had comforted Maddie with thoughts of her reward in Heaven, so she would become inactive on Earth. Her embracing of religion was fine with him so long as she did no good in the world. Over the course of months, he drew her attention increasingly to the work she had done, from her career as a young nurse, to the family of six she’d created, to her long-term job as a high school receptionist, to her retirement and community-leader status as a senior.

  “You’re tired,” Thorn often whispered to her. “You deserve a break now. In fact, the world owes you a break.”

  Eighty years was nothing for a demon, but the time had taken its toll on poor Madeline, and Thorn used this to his a
dvantage as well. Whenever her arthritis acted up, he told her she should slow her life down. When she had to squint even through her glasses to read a Bible verse, he reminded her that her independence wouldn’t last forever. With every bout of trivial indigestion, he warned her to settle her affairs, and she bought it. She bought it! She quit God’s Grannies and abandoned most of her friends, except the few Thorn had allowed her to keep due to their penchants for television, cards, and other time-wasting activities.

  Every lie Thorn had told the old lady had been a common one, but few demons could have sunken such an angelic woman as far as Thorn had sunk Madeline. She now lived in such seclusion that she’d even disposed of her telephone.

  Maddie had been in good health. She could realistically have lived to be a hundred and ten. Now, those were thirty years of a good person’s life that would be spent playing cards. Over a fourth of Madeline’s valuable time on this earth: wasted. If she survived the week, of course, which Thorn would make sure did not happen.

  Shenzuul would probably try to convince her to murder her pastor or become a street prostitute, or some other overblown idiocy.

  Fortunately, the gruff demon was nowhere in sight as they entered the trailer home where Madeline lived alone, and this time, several of Thorn’s followers came inside with him for safety. The place was littered with trinkets Thorn had encouraged her to collect: ceramic pots, religious figurines, doilies, clocks, plants. She sat in her ancient recliner and turned on a rerun of “The People’s Court.” Her eyelids were just starting to droop when the doorbell rang.

  She jolted awake with such suddenness that Thorn thought she might be having a stroke right then and there. But no, providence wasn’t so kind, and Madeline answered the door to find some girl in her late twenties whom Thorn had never seen.

  “Hey, Grandma,” the girl said sweetly. Thorn grimaced.

  Madeline took a few moments to recognize her. “Jackie? Or are you Lisa?”

  “Nope. Jackie. Just thought I’d stop by to wish you a happy birthday.” Jackie revealed a small chocolate-chip-cookie cake she’d had hidden behind her back.

  Who is Jackie? Why have I never seen her before? Even after four years, Thorn knew little about Madeline’s family, other than that she’d once been an imposing matriarch. Perhaps too imposing; her family never visited.

  Thorn improvised. “They don’t care about you,” he whispered to Madeline. “None of them do. Send her away.”

  “Oh, uh, thank you, Jackie,” Maddie answered awkwardly, with a big fake smile plastered on her face. “Did your mother send you?”

  “Nope, just me. I haven’t seen you since I was in college, and I miss your stories.”

  “Aw.” Madeline blushed.

  “Yeah, I wanted to see you again, so uh, hi!” Jackie’s genuine grin turned Madeline’s into something just as disgustingly honest. Thorn whispered that Jackie was just another dumb young person who made selfish choices and knew nothing of the world, but it wasn’t enough, and Madeline let her inside.

  They warmed up to each other quickly, and chatted for hours. They discussed family history, Madeline’s activism in the civil rights movement, and Jackie’s coaching of a girls’ softball team. Jackie invited her over to visit her family sometime. Madeline grew more cheerful at that than Thorn had seen her in years.

  He tried to effect some damage control by whispering to both of them, but their need to connect proved stronger than his lies, so he left them, discouraged.

  Where had such an act of kindness come from? Was this sabotage? Marcus’s doing? If so, why hadn’t he or Shenzuul shown up? This granddaughter may not ruin my influence over Maddie in the long run, but I may not have the long run to work with. At least the cookie cake would raise her cholesterol.

  On to the next one.

  •

  He found Jada where he always found her: on a tall, unnamed bridge spanning a turbulent section of the Chattahoochee River. She stood where she always stood, on top of the thick steel guardrail halfway across the bridge, arm braced on one of the bridge’s supports. The streetlights lit the expanse well, but Thorn could only faintly glimpse the water a hundred feet below in the moonlight.

  In the mood for a pick-me-up, Thorn decided to try something he hadn’t in a while. “Jump,” he whispered to her. “Too much stress. Too many bad decisions. Your life will always be meaningless.”

  It didn’t work, of course. It never did. About three years ago, Thorn had been with Amy in her car, driving across this ominous rural bridge, when he’d seen a woman standing on the edge, preparing to leap to her death. Amy had been horrified and had driven on, but Thorn, eager for the glory of a quick kill, had stayed behind in order to convince Jada that death was the answer. He pulled out all the stops, tried every trick he knew, but after an hour, Jada had just walked to her car beside the bridge and driven away. Baffled, Thorn followed her home to research this woman.

  Jada turned out to be an allergist completing her residency at an allergy and asthma clinic in Sandy Springs. Her tired eyes added ten years to her face, but she appeared outwardly happy, living with her successful and handsome boyfriend and cultivating strong, positive relationships with her family and close friends. She spent her spare time running with her dog, reading medieval history books, and mountain biking with friends. She was healthy, financially well off, and seemed to love her life.

  Thorn would have found Jada quite boring if not for her nightly journeys to the bridge. Every single night, she would get in her car, drive here, stand for an hour, then go back. If only demons could read thoughts as the Enemy claimed He could, Thorn could have solved the riddle immediately; but Jada remained an enigma to him. Was this some romantically morbid relic of her teenagehood? Did she just want to see how passersby reacted? Or was she just enjoying nature and Thorn was reading too much into it? He didn’t think so, because rural Georgia had plenty of safer places to enjoy nature, and he found her crying from time to time.

  But she never jumped. Pickup trucks flying the rebel flag would screech to a stop behind her, and the drunken hicks inside would hoot and jeer at her to do it, but she’d just stand there. A police officer found her once, but she made an excuse and waited three nights before coming back. She didn’t even jump after Thorn orchestrated her mother’s death.

  Thorn’s followers, too, were entranced with this woman who ignored Thorn’s whispers. They often tried to help him kill her and frequently watched him at work, to learn from his attempts on her life. Thorn felt a fool, but he’d committed too much time to abandon Jada now.

  Most suicides—when caused by demonic lies rather than humans lying to themselves—were caused by exaggerating short-term considerations to one’s charge. Thorn liked to make temporary problems seem permanent, to exacerbate immediate difficulties in the echo chamber of the human mind, to present the human’s future goals as unattainable.

  Jada fell for none of these. No standard or even obscure lies would work on her, leaving Thorn bewildered.

  He’d considered revealing himself to her, coming in her sleep through a terrifying nightmare of the mighty Thorn, a demon who would torment her and her loved ones for all the days of her life. It would leave her longing for death. Thorn had even considered possessing her and physically forcing her over the edge. But those things were forbidden under the Second Rule. If Thorn revealed the existence of the spiritual realm to a human, he would be sentenced to die.

  No, Thorn would not find solace with Jada tonight, he decided after just a few minutes with her. If she ever cracked, it would be her own doing, not his or any other demon’s. Including Marcus’s, Thorn thought thankfully. Even if Marcus did try to take her from Thorn, he would just make a fool of himself trying to kill her.

  After pondering various courses of action all day, Thorn decided his best option was to wait out the week and see what would happen. Marcus and Shenzuul had left him alone most of the day, after all. And if he fled right away, he could not defend his reputation, nor kill
his charges. Plus, his followers would be with him in Atlanta, so he would be safe here.

  Even now, as he traveled down the Chattahoochee toward west Atlanta, twenty of them trailed along overhead, waiting for their chance to help Thorn, or impress him. Or betray me. But although Marcus might have bought the hundred who attended the would-be murder-suicide last night, but he couldn’t buy all twenty thousand of them, and most would report any betrayers in their ranks.

  Unease still lingered, though, as Thorn knew that all demons’ loyalties lay only in what glory they could gain from those loyalties. And since Marcus had killed more people, he ostensibly had more prestige than Thorn, although Thorn too had caused great suffering in the world.

  Thorn’s late-night meandering took him to some dirty old apartment buildings at the edge of the Downtown District. His daytime charges would be asleep by now, and he hadn’t found a new nighttime charge since his last one had died in a street race. Daytime or nighttime, challenging humans were hard to find. Yet after dusk, any human was better than the alternative…

  Nights had always been hard for demons, who did not sleep. Most humans were diurnal, so most demons found themselves each night with no pets to harass and nothing to do, save for the fleeting, dull thrill of orchestrating nightmares. Purposeless in the dark, they gathered in the streets, as they did now all around Thorn. All were silent; not a word was spoken.