Thorn Read online

  •

  “Night, dear. Love you.” Jed’s mother waved to him from his bedroom doorway. Lying motionless on his twin-size mattress in the far corner of his dark room, he pointedly ignored her. Lately, he’d taken to using his own misery to manipulate her emotions like this. Thorn guessed it had less to do with his need for pity and more to do with his need to feel like he still had some control over something, someone. Nancy frowned as she shut the door behind her.

  Thorn and Jed listened together to a soft wind rustling the leaves in the tree outside, which made a clack clack clack sound every thirty seconds as its branch rapped at the window.

  “Tapping on your brain,” Thorn said to Jed. As if in response, the boy raised his arms and rubbed his bald scalp. Arms covering his face, he shook his head vigorously, as if to exorcise a demon, then gasped a little when he was done and returned to lying supine. The boy must have been falling apart inside, both literally and figuratively.

  “So many people waste their lives,” Thorn taunted him further. “But you wanted to do something different than the rest of them. Something important.”

  Jed ground his teeth, his eyes watering. Thorn no longer enjoyed this cruelty, but continued out of habit. Or was it out of his own melancholy? “So why is it that you, the thinker, should die so young? Why can’t you have a life? Why should you be denied the right to exist?” Thorn said this maliciously, but he would gladly have traded his entire future as a demon for a few months in the physical body of this dying teenager.

  “Every relationship you form is predicated on your outward identity, and not who you are inside.” Jed rubbed his head again. He belched a mighty burp, tried to swallow it back, then abruptly vomited into the bowl beside his bed. As the chemo did its work and Jed retched again and again, Thorn continued. “So you form one-sided relationships with people who can’t see or hear you.”

  Except Amy.

  Jed finished heaving for a moment. When he looked up, Thorn saw that he was crying.

  “You’re powerless. And you feel like you’re running out of time. Like if you don’t do something to change the game right now, nobody will care that you ever lived.”

  But what can I do? Thorn wondered. What options do I have left except to run or die?

  •

  Later, floating stationary by Jada on the bridge, Thorn watched as his last remaining followers spiraled through the air above them. Only six of them remained of the thousands he’d had just a week ago, and they were a destitute bunch at that. These six were stupid demons who hadn’t the intellect to torment a human themselves. These were below even the bottom feeders who tempted drug addicts; these could only compete in the demon world by trailing behind a much better devil than themselves. And they were all the protection Thorn had left.

  Thorn had decided roughly what he would do about Marcus, but couldn’t yet bring himself to do it. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he ran. He would lose in a fight. Defection was impossible. And if he quit demonhood, he would likely be killed as Xeres had been. It left only one choice, and Thorn couldn’t quite work out all the details. He wasn’t even sure it would work, but if he had to die, he figured he might as well die with some dignity.

  As Thorn pondered these things, gazing out over the river, Jada stirred beside him. She was already halfway down to the water before he realized what was happening, and then the faintest of splashes took her life far below, leaving Thorn alone on the bridge.

  When he peered over the edge to find her body, all he saw was a huge column of reinforced concrete descending into an abyss of darkness. Despite the mighty rumble of its current, the river at nighttime was as invisible as Thorn.

  He laughed. His situation was already so ridiculous, it seemed only logical that Jada would off herself on the one night when Thorn had whispered nothing to her. He didn’t even care why she’d done it. Too many nights sitting here ruminating on whether there was more to life than this, he supposed. She should have saved them both the trouble and listened to him in the first place. “There is nothing more than this,” he’d assured her since the day they met. There was nothing more for Jada, and there was nothing more for Thorn.

  He moved up onto the edge of the railing and leaped off the bridge after her.

  It was the early morning of Christmas Eve.

  6

  The clouds had never let up from the day before, but they didn’t seem so ominous over the church. Only in the south could trees stay this green all winter long, and someone had grown a veritable garden around the church grounds, complete with rosebushes, peach trees, neatly trimmed hedges, and two fountains with granite angels as their centerpieces. The fresh white paint and smiling faces lent the church an added atmosphere of friendliness and invitation.

  Demons were always gathered around churches, so Thorn would be safe even though three more of his followers had left in the night. Marcus would never kill him with so many eyes watching. But when Jed had left his house fifteen minutes ago, Thorn had seen Marcus, partially concealed in the shadows behind a copse of trees, watching him, preparing to close in.

  Amy and Jed were now Thorn’s only living charges of any significance, and Amy was watched too closely after the club incident. So, in the absence of his followers, Thorn harbored himself with Jed. Over the holidays each year, Jed’s mother volunteered at the church’s daycare, where busy church women or low-income moms in the community would pay a bit for their child to be taken care of while they worked or shopped or socialized. Judging from the many kids on the red and purple playground, a surprising number of mothers had elected this option on Christmas Eve. Demons working to separate parents from their children in their formative years, Thorn guessed. The daycare usually cared for toddlers, but some of the children he saw now looked as old as six. Inside, the place would be packed with kids, and therefore demons. As Thorn watched, an old man called the children indoors, away from the drizzle that had just begun.

  Thorn had thought Nancy would stay home with her dying son this year, but Jed was prone to fiery outbursts and insults, so she likely needed the escape that working at the daycare provided. And a short while ago, Jed had gotten a call from her, asking him to come over to the daycare with more arts and crafts supplies—which he wasn’t happy about—so Thorn had traveled with him. Jed hefted the two huge duffel bags out of the trunk, slammed the door, and strode toward the daycare on the far side of the parking lot.

  Thorn would normally have pestered him with gloomy thoughts, but Jed seemed angry enough already and Thorn was preoccupied. He still couldn’t determine how to trick the Judge into thinking himself the target of an attack by Marcus. And the Judge was the key. He was nearly as influential as Thorn had been, so if the Judge thought his own life was in danger, and he sentenced Marcus to death based on some pretense, all Atlanta would rally behind him. Marcus might still find a way to dispatch Thorn, maybe through Shenzuul or another African demon who cared little for the First Rule, or maybe he’d find a way to kill Thorn himself before the Judge got to him. Thorn might die, but he’d take Marcus down with him, so at least he would be remembered. In the grand scheme of things, isn’t that the best a demon can hope for?

  Inside the church, Jed took a detour into the restroom and locked the door to the far stall. In the small space, Thorn suddenly noticed his three remaining followers were gone, and no other demons were in the room with him. For a moment he panicked: had he somehow gone into the physical world again? But no, Jed didn’t seem to notice him. Perhaps his followers had left voluntarily… or perhaps Marcus lurked nearby.

  Thorn readied himself to retreat underground if necessary. He would have to find the Judge quickly. Going out with a bang like Altherios was far preferable to dying as a coward like Xeres. Still, Thorn wished there were another way. Demons didn’t often wish for peace, but Thorn had had enough of—

  Jed removed an assault rifle from one of his duffel bags.

  What? Why did Jed have a gun like that at his mother
’s daycare? Thorn thought he knew the answer but he couldn’t believe it. After checking the big gun, Jed unzipped the second duffel bag and removed a shotgun, two smaller handguns, and some holsters. Where did he get them? No one in Jed’s immediate family owned a gun, and Thorn hadn’t noticed him purchasing these weapons.

  He handled these guns adroitly though, and seemed to know their workings far more thoroughly than did Thorn, who barely knew how guns worked at all, despite having rejoiced with the rest of demonkind when humans had invented the things. After strapping some body armor around his torso, Jed slung the shotgun across his back and belted the holsters to his waist. He proceeded to double-check his other weapons.

  Save for Jed and Thorn the bathroom was empty, so Thorn decided no one would hear him. It was safe to talk. “Jed. Jed, listen to me. I know you want significance for your life. You want people to remember that you were here on Earth. That’s good, that’s fine, but this isn’t how you do it.” Jed holstered his handguns. “Jed. You do not do this now. This is not who you are, this is not who I made you to be.” But even as Thorn said the words, he knew he was lying again. How do I tempt to virtue rather than vice? Can it be done? If so, Thorn knew he had only seconds to find out.

  Jed’s breath wavered with each exhale. His whole body shook as he prepared to open the stall door.

  “You used to be a good kid. Remember that. Remember who you were before I found you. It’s not too late to go back to that.”

  The restroom door opened. Footsteps echoed across the tile walls as a man paced to one of the urinals, unaware of the danger. Thorn peeked out at him. He was a heavyset man wearing slacks and a church T-shirt, with a kind face, balding scalp, and a stack of books he set on the counter before relieving himself. Thorn tried desperately to save his life. “There are other ways to express your anger, Jed. I know you feel like it’s you against the world, but you have people who care about you, and you can talk to them about your problems.”

  Jed’s breathing quickened, as if he were preparing for a sprint. When he unlocked the stall door and raised his weapon, Thorn knew it was time to change strategies. He propelled himself sideways through the walls of two other stalls, so his mouth would be at the ear of the urinating man. “Danger!” he whispered. “Run. Get out of here!” The stream sputtered for a moment and the man looked over his shoulder, but it was too late. Jed burst out of his stall.

  POP, POP, POP.

  The innocuousness of the sound was almost as sickening as the blood splatters on the walls. The dying man tried to gurgle a plea for help, or maybe a warning to his coworkers, but he quickly passed out and fell limply to the floor in an awkward sideways position, his head resting on the edge of the urinal. Thorn was uncomfortably aware of how disturbing the scene appeared to him, when less than two weeks ago he would have celebrated this.

  Jed wasted no time. As if some oppressive timer had begun, he paced out into the hallway. Hovering near his ears, Thorn followed him. “You deserve a future,” he whispered. “The cancer stole that from you, but that’s no reason for you to steal the future of anyone else. They deserve their lives just as much as you deserve—Jed no!”

  POP, POP.

  An old woman, about Madeline’s age, had been walking from one room to the next with a piece of paper. It had cost her her life.

  “Okay, Jed. You have all the power now. You’re in control. You need to use that control to calm down and think this through before you hurt anyone else.” Jed’s gait quickened. Thorn had always known exactly what to say to humans; why could he think of nothing adequate now, when it mattered most? He considered giving Jed a waking vision of some alarming tableau that would delay him, but visions took hours of whispering to create, and Thorn would have to know Jed intimately for that.

  “You don’t have to do this.” The phrase was a hackneyed long shot, but it was the last approach in Thorn’s arsenal. Well, not quite the last.

  Thorn rotated vertically over Jed’s head nearly three hundred and sixty degrees, then sideways until they were face to face, Thorn moving backward while Jed strode forward. “Jed, I’m a demon. Demons exist. We’re not supposed to tell you, but here I am. God, angels, it’s all real. Knowing that, do you really want to die today?”

  It didn’t work. Jed shot at a woman who peeked from around the front office’s corner, and he missed. When she screamed for others to take cover, Jed hurried even faster, likely aware of the impending arrival of police. The colorful door to the largest classroom loomed ahead.

  Thorn grabbed at Jed’s head, as if it would make a difference, and whispered a final plea. “Don’t do this, Jed. Please… please, please, please. It’s not worth it, for you or for me. Just turn around. Walk away. I’m begging you to stop.”

  As they neared the classroom, Thorn noticed other devils watching from the passing doorways. Several of them stood dumbfounded in the office, gaping at him through its glass wall. As Thorn examined his surroundings, it appeared that every demon in the building had abandoned his charges to come see the show. How long have they been watching?

  The colorful door was locked. POP, POP. Not anymore. Jed flung it open, toppling a bookshelf and several cubbies full of art supplies that had been stacked against it. He worked his way through the clutter.

  Thorn charged through the wall to see the situation in the classroom. Against a backdrop of finger-painted murals hanging from tacks across each wall, an old man, a teenage girl, and Jed’s mother were herding a group of fifteen children through an exit door into the rain outside. Only fifteen. Thorn was grateful for that much; the other kids were probably at lunch or naptime. With such little warning, the adults had had no chance to evacuate several babies in the nursery next door. As if the infants could sense the danger, they began wailing just as Jed broke through the barrier. If only I could shut the nursery door, or jam his gun, or touch the physical world again somehow. Approaching with Jed, Thorn shouted at the daycare workers. “Go!”

  Jed killed his mom first. Nancy’s eyes widened in disbelief, then her son gunned her down and the children screamed. The teenage girl charged Jed, but a volley ripped through her neck, sending her lurching onto some blue mats where the scattered crayons beneath her abruptly lost their rainbow of colors in favor of a uniform red.

  When Jed opened fire on the kids, Thorn looked away. He heard POP after POP after POP, screaming and crying and burbling last breaths, and for the first time, chaos and death didn’t register to Thorn as his victory—they registered as his fault. Each one of these shrieks had begun days and weeks and months ago as a simple whisper in Jed’s ear. How could those have led to this? I never wanted this. Jed’s expression remained sharp, focused. His actions seemed to give him no joy or satisfaction, but rather pain. He looked as if he hated this, yet felt it was something he had to do. Thorn knew that feeling all too well.

  The infants continued crying as Jed finished with the toddlers, but Jed ignored their wails and paced toward the exterior door. When Thorn looked back at the area where the children had been, all he saw was a sick blur of red, so he turned and nearly left the room, but an imposing group of demons had entered sometime during the killing spree. Their gazes pierced him, and he could hear the inquisition now, though none had spoken yet. “Why did you try to stop this?” Because it’s wrong, he almost told them, before he realized their eyes glared not at him, but through him, to Jed.

  The old man had grabbed two bleeding toddlers and limped to the wet parking lot outside. Both children were dead now, and several rounds had torn flesh off the man’s left calf, yet he continued his crablike walk backward, away from the church. Jed met him under an overhang, then raised his gun. The man stopped his crawl, mouth quivering in a desperate, unspoken plea, eyes locked on his assailant, and Thorn couldn’t help but recall the suburban house where Marcus had found Thorn last week. This old man looked as pained and surprised now as Thorn imagined he must have looked then. An implacable foe from out of the blue. Jed stood over the man just as
Marcus had stood over Thorn.

  “Jed,” Thorn whispered softly as he approached his charge. “Jed, let him live.”

  Thorn didn’t care about the demons behind him. He didn’t care about Jed. Nor did he care about his own fate after this moment. If Thorn could save just one life, they could bring him before the Judge or kill him on the spot for all he cared.

  Jed shot the old man. Then he turned his handgun on himself and pulled the trigger.

  •

  After the police had arrived, and families had gathered outside, and forensic analysts had begun taking photos, Thorn cowered in a low corner of the killing room, contemplating a crayon mural of Noah and his ark on a wavy ocean. Each child had drawn an animal, so each was unique: a green cat, a bowlegged panda bear standing on two legs, a giant three-humped camel, some flying jellyfish, a turtle with stars on its back. Some small creatures appeared as indecipherable yellow squiggles—worms, perhaps. As Thorn studied the drawing, he mourned silently for the children he’d inadvertently slaughtered. Now that the shooting was in the past, he saw all the warning signs in Jed: unhealthy isolation from his peers, a grandiose ego, the compulsive need for power, his interest in Travis. Thorn found it darkly amusing how easily he might apply this same description to himself. He had never been part of a mass shooting before; he’d only seen them on the news and wished for a chance to wreak such havoc one day. Now that day had come, and all he wanted was to take back every word he’d ever whispered to Jed.

  During the shooting spree, Thorn had violated the Second Rule by whispering that demons and angels were real. He had tried to reveal his own existence to the boy, and the Judge could not defend him this time by claiming his actions were impossible. Just as stupidly, Thorn had spoken aloud to try to stop Jed’s murders. How will my kin punish me after the trial? Would they kill him themselves, or turn him over to Marcus? He cursed himself for his overreaction to Jed, wishing he’d saved himself rather than futilely attempting to dissuade the boy. Why did I care so much?