by Joshua Ingle
The officers’ hands dropped to their weapons when they saw the scrapes and bruises on Virgil’s face. Hopefully the security guard uniform he still wore would convince them he was on their side. “Hi,” Thorn said through Virgil. “I’m not sure what was said about me in the nine-one-one call, but I’ve been trying to help the people upstairs. They have a bit of a problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
“Domestic disturbance. What took you guys so long?”
“Busy night. Can I ask what happened to your face?”
Thorn led the officers toward the garage elevator as he spoke. “Guy named Brandon Carter. A friend of one of the residents here. He’s become violent. Please, follow me.”
The officers exchanged a glance that was hard to read. “You stay here. We’ll take care of it.”
“Please, officers. He knows me. I might be able to talk him down. Here’s my ID. Virgil Cafferty.”
One of the men took the ID card, examined it, then nodded approval to the other officer. “Okay, but you stay in view of us at all times, and we make the decisions. Is that clear?”
“Absolutely.”
“Is he expecting us?”
“Yes. He’s been coming down to check the front entrance, which is why I waved you guys over here. I’m afraid he may be waiting to ambush us at the top of the elevator. We’ll be safer if we take the stairs.” And that will give me more time to plan how to deal with you two.
•
Marcus opened Brandon’s eye. A quilt covered his face, but he used Brandon’s hand to fling it aside. Then he stretched the muscles in Brandon’s stiffening body, which was fortunately still nimble enough to wreak some havoc on the humans.
After seeing how Thorn had fawned over that Amy girl on Earth, Marcus knew that protecting these humans was more than mere penance that Thorn hoped the Enemy would notice. No, Thorn would never go to these lengths unless these two humans had somehow gained his affection. And that was all the better. Having another chance to crush Thorn’s hopes before finally crushing Thorn himself delighted Marcus to no end.
He took in his surroundings. Piano music from the bedroom. The telltale red and blue of police lights outside. The elevator display reading “P” for “parking.” Thorn would be on his way back up soon, and now Marcus owned a physical body with which he could easily neutralize the police. The others will enjoy this show… Marcus had kept the demons outside from entering, in case one or more of the cretins decided to violate their truce with him. Besides, he’d promised the Judge that he wouldn’t let them inside.
His new ally had now shrunk into a corner and was making no eye contact, as if he was ashamed of what he’d done. What a feeble Judge. No Judge in Africa or India would let himself grow so fond of a fellow demon. Still, Marcus would honor their agreement and let the Judge live.
Marcus spotted some knives in the kitchen. He supposed he might drown one of the humans in the bathtub, then use its body to knife the other—preferably while Thorn watched.
But Marcus had never been in the market for cheap revenge. Revenge is like a fine wine: prepared from the most select ingredients, fermented just so, and made more potent with age—not that he had ever tasted wine, or wanted to. He could kill Thorn—and he would—but a psychological victory first would satisfy him much more, especially in light of Thorn’s recent transformation. In all Marcus’s centuries of patient plotting, he’d never once imagined that Thorn would turn lunatic: rescuing humans and skirting the faulty morals of the Enemy. Thorn seemed to genuinely be trying to defect, to make amends for his initial rebellion in Heaven: an impossible task, given that the Enemy had vowed to never forgive a demon. Thorn had to be delusional to think that he could coax these degenerate humans into the Enemy’s virtue, into the choices that the Enemy had designed for them tonight.
How much sweeter will my wine taste if I can prove Thorn wrong before I kill him?
As Marcus used Brandon’s fingers to probe his mangled eye, as he listened to the humans’ eloquent musical composition, a plan came to him. A slight adjustment. The perfect demise for Thorn.
•
The piano piece gradually evolved into something new. Cole dropped their improvised song into a minor key, so Crystal tried to keep her harmony as uplifting as she could.
“The painting of the kid with the man wearing black,” she said, avoiding mention of the painting’s prominent gravestone. “Did you paint that after you were blind?”
Cole seemed hesitant to speak at first, but he soon answered. “The day after my dad’s funeral. My mom caught me painting it and tried to throw it away, but I hid it from her. They hated each other.”
“It’s a really good painting. Who’s the man in black? Does he represent death?”
Cole chuckled. “No. Believe it or not, that was my plastic surgeon. Friend of my mom’s in Vegas who redid my face after the fire. I was crying at the funeral because I couldn’t see, and this surgeon—Jerry was his name. He told me that God allowed me to become blind so that I could see what really matters.” Cole shook his head. “That still pisses me off. But I bought it at the time, as did my mom. Did I ever tell you she was an escort?”
“Huh.”
“My dad hired her on one of his business trips. She poked a hole in the condom and poof. I was born.”
“Seriously?”
“So I’ve had this complex my whole life, like I shouldn’t be here or something. My whole purpose for existing was as a bargaining chip my mom could use to get rich.” Cole’s voice wavered with some buried emotion that he seemed to struggle to keep down. “Thankfully my dad had no other kids and liked me enough to leave me his money—otherwise who knows where I’d be now.”
“A Chippendales dancer in Vegas, obviously.”
Cole laughed, then sniffled. “Obviously.” He brought their piano piece an octave lower. “On the night of the fire, I was at my dad’s place. He was yelling at my mom over the phone, and he forgot his food on the frying pan. Hadn’t changed his smoke alarm batteries, so half the house was in flames before he realized it. I kept thinking that if I’d never been born… maybe my dad would still be here.”
Crystal was stunned. Cole had never opened up like this before, at least not to her. She rested a hand on his shoulder.
“So when that asshole surgeon told me that God made me blind so I could see what really matters, I told him to go fuck himself.” It was Crystal’s turn to laugh, and Cole abruptly ended the piano piece with a brief goofy tune. Crystal stopped playing her part too. “Yeah, I was a fun kid. But like I said, for a long time I thought Jerry was right. Even though I never saw anything. I never got any spiritual epiphany from my blindness. So according to Jerry, since I can’t see anything, nothing really matters, does it? Ha. Just like Brandon always said.”
“Well, what matters to you?” Crystal privately wondered how much of a hand Brandon had had in causing Cole’s problems in the first place. And if Virgil is right… if none of this ever happened…
Cole took a moment to ponder her question. He looked upset, so Crystal changed the subject. “Hey, the money you gave to Heather earlier. That was nice.” She playfully elbowed him in the ribs. “You’re not all bad, Cole.”
“Glad you noticed.” Cole leaned backward. His upper body plopped back onto the bed. His eyes looked upward at the ceiling, at nothing. “You really think I could be a dad?”
Crystal smiled in spite of herself. “Yeah.” She placed her hand over Cole’s.
Suddenly, raised voices came from the living room: three, maybe four men yelling at each other. Gunfire rang out, then all was silent.
Crystal’s heart skipped, then pounded. She sprang from the bed, aware of Cole trailing behind her. As they cautiously entered the living room, a bloody hand reached around the corner by the door to the service hallways. A police officer fell into view, on his knees.
His neck was slit. Blood gurgled out. He fell.
Crystal saw the other officer lying a short d
istance away, a knife embedded in his skull. Then she noticed that Brandon’s body was gone from underneath the quilt.
“Run!” Virgil called from across the room, as Crystal was still trying to figure out what had happened here. He tumbled into view by the kitchen. Brandon kicked his face with a force that would have killed a living man.
As Virgil reeled, Brandon locked eyes with Crystal. She knew he was dead—the gaping hole where his eye should be made that clear—but an intelligence lurked behind his good eye. An intelligence that gave the illusion of the old, ravenous Brandon. He stepped toward her.
Virgil leaped upward and clasped his hands around Brandon’s head. Brandon yelled in pain, and then both men collapsed on the floor. They stayed motionless for ten seconds. Twenty.
Just like that, Crystal and Cole were alone again.
•
Thorn wrenched Marcus from Brandon’s body and pulled him into the ether of the spirit world, leaving Virgil’s body in the process. They scuffled for a moment before breaking apart to regain their bearings. Thousands of demons regarded them from outside the windows.
Thorn bellowed in anger at his old foe, and at the Judge who’d betrayed him. The officers’ deaths had enraged Thorn, which surprised him, since he didn’t even know them. Since when had all human life become so valuable to him? He grasped his rage, kindled it. It helped him quell his fear of Marcus.
Crystal and Cole lingered at the door to the master bedroom, so Thorn moved to a spot between them and Marcus, whose gaunt form prowled the shadows near the balcony. “You’re crazy for coming in here after me,” Thorn said. It was true: had their roles been reversed, Thorn would certainly have decided that following Marcus into a Sanctuary was too great of a risk, and would have let the vengeful army dispatch his opponent instead.
Marcus cradled his injured head and grimaced. “You’re running around trying to save doomed humans, hoping you can undo your ancient choice to join the revolt against the Enemy, and you’re telling me I’m crazy?”
“Yes. Because you have to be the big dog, the one leading the charge. All the humans, all of your own kind who’ve had to die for your obsessive grievance with me… They’re all just collateral damage to you.”
“It’s why I am great and you’ve been reduced to nothing.”
Thorn imagined his own past self, pressing the same point in countless arguments. Power is power, and nothing else matters. “We all claim greatness, but has any demon ever truly been the greatest?” Thorn asked.
“Greatest, no; but great, yes. Just because a game is unwinnable doesn’t mean it’s not worth playing.”
“To what end?”
“Yours.” Changing the subject, Marcus nodded toward the Judge, cowering in a corner of the kitchen, afraid to look at either of them. “I planned to kill you in here, in this Sanctuary, where no Judge would know—but even your own Judge agrees with me now. The time has come to put you down.”
“And reign over anarchy on Earth?” Thorn said, changing the subject back to the ultimate futility of Marcus’s actions.
Marcus smirked. “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”
“Oh, wake up. Can’t you see something else is going on here? What if there’s a path to defection here?” To so blatantly reveal that he was breaking the Third Rule felt like blasphemy to Thorn, especially in front of the Judge—but right now it was particularly important for the Judge to hear Thorn’s theory. So he tried to quell the ages of conditioning that led to his hesitancy to speak of such matters. “Marcus, what if Xeres’s journey to a Sanctuary was what led to him becoming an angel? You could search in here with me. We could find a way—”
“Xeres is dead.”
No he’s not, but I know I can’t convince you of that. “You must admit it’s strange that the Sanctuary operates by different laws than Earth’s. Why can we control dead bodies here? Why do we have so much more influence over human minds?”
“Because the Enemy never expected we’d discover the Sanctuaries. In His foolishness, He neglected to build safeguards against us.”
“Ah, yes. The blind crusade against the Enemy. We despise Him so much after all this time because… why?”
Marcus drifted into the light, the scowl on his face sharp enough to cut through spirit and flesh alike. “Everyone knows why. He loathes us, and wants us all in Hell.”
“Then why aren’t we in Hell?”
“Because we are stronger than Him.”
Unbelievable. Thorn shook his own head in scorn. “What is it like to go through life never questioning anything?”
“Why question something if you already know that it’s true?”
“Does knowing the truth make you feel better than everyone else?”
“Try it sometime, Thorn. It’s pleasant.”
“It’s pleasant for you. For now. But put yourself in the humans’ place.”
“That’s what you’ve done, is it?”
“Goddammit, yes. They’re not collateral damage. They don’t deserve to die just because of who created them. They have minds and ambitions and feelings and choices, just like us.”
“The Enemy never let us have choices! One skeptical word against His authority and we were doomed for eternity.”
Thorn remembered that initial feeling of doom well, and bitterly. Most demons had quickly grown disappointed with the double-edged freedom their actions had wrought. After the fall from Heaven, they were finally masters of their own destiny—but what a bleak destiny. Most of them still believed what their Father had told them: that they had no free will, that an angel was either obedient or dysfunctional, with no in-between. They’d been told they were evil… so evil they became. And they took their frustrations out on each other, and on humanity.
The demons had been like children then, with little understanding of the Enemy and no knowledge of His universe other than what He’d told them. It had taken Thorn until very recently—just a few hundred years ago—to realize their idiocy. They had chosen to rebel, so of course they had free will; it was only God’s unnecessary dichotomy that had forced them to choose between black and white. And these last few months, Thorn had become increasingly troubled by the fact that even in the present day, many demons continued to believe in their own lack of agency. It was such an obvious lie, yet it was easier to stomach than the hard truth: that they could still choose to be good, but that doing so would not cause them to be welcomed back into Heaven—and that they’d be slain by their peers besides. Any choice other than the demonic path would send one to a tragic end, so the illusion of no free will remained strong.
Thorn realized that over the course of his argument with Marcus, he’d floated forward, and now hovered mere feet from his old enemy. They drifted within striking distance of each other, but neither moved to attack. So Thorn pressed on. “Marcus, I’m not trying to save myself by undoing my actions against God. I know that would be futile. I’m doing this to save the humans.” Thorn had known from the beginning that he’d likely die in here, but as long as even one of the humans lived, at least his death would have some meaning.
Marcus huffed, and seemed to take Thorn’s words as a challenge. “You could kill them yourself, you know. Do it in front of the other demons. You can’t save your life, but at least you can save your legacy.”
Thorn shook his head. “All this killing, all this destruction… it’s not our only option anymore. I found another choice.”
“Suicide is not a choice.”
“It’s not suicide. It’s sacrifice.”
Thorn and Marcus stood face to face. Even after this quarrel, Thorn guessed that Marcus understood his actions no more than Thorn understood Marcus’s. All he saw in Marcus was myopia, blindness. What did Marcus see in him? Vanity? Insanity?
“Follow me,” Marcus said, and moved around Thorn, toward Crystal and Cole. When Thorn hesitated, Marcus tried to reassure him. “I won’t hurt them. Not yet. I want to show you something. You too, Judge.”
The Judge rose, sulking, then trailed Thorn and Marcus at a distance. What a fool I was for trusting him. Was I really so desperate for camaraderie?
As Marcus passed Cole on his way into the master bedroom, he casually touched the young entrepreneur’s mind.
•
Crystal trembled at the brutal violence she’d just witnessed. Virgil’s and Brandon’s bodies hadn’t moved for over two minutes—maybe they were really dead this time. Are we still safe in here? Should we run for it? What happened to Virgil? The thought that their only protection had vanished crept into her mind with tendrils of dread.
“Are they dead?” Cole asked.
“I don’t know.” The bodies seemed dead and vacant to Crystal. “Do you think—” She looked at Cole… and saw a familiar vacant expression in his eyes. “No. No, not again. Hey, Cole. Cole!”
But Cole couldn’t hear her. He turned around, zombielike, and lumbered down the hall toward his bathroom. Crystal guardedly followed him.
•
Wherever Marcus was leading him and Cole, Thorn knew that this would be his last chance tonight to persuade his foe. “Would you like to know what changed my mind?” Thorn asked. Marcus said nothing, so Thorn continued. “When I first arrived in the Sanctuary, just nine hours ago, I considered killing the humans before you all arrived. I would have been free. But then I looked in a mirror.
“All I’ve ever seen in mirrors is empty space. But this time I saw a man. I saw myself. And then I touched the mirror with my own fingers. I felt it. I waved to the security guard as he passed, and he saw me. I was human, Marcus.” An earnest wish, suddenly granted. Confusion had surged through Thorn at this apparent act of God (for what else could it have been?). As he’d gazed down at the living tissue that was both part of and separate from him, Thorn had seen how such an event could awaken the ancient desire for freedom in any demon—the same need for independence that had fueled demonkind’s rebellion in the first place. But for Thorn, this new body had added fuel to the flame of his yearning to be free from demonkind and its customs. In his new human body, he wondered: Did he have free will, as much as the humans did? Did he have choice? Or was it just some cruel trick?