by Joshua Ingle
Though they’d been stripped of any powers they’d had, including the ability to influence physical objects, they soon discovered they still held a potent weapon in their continuing fight against God. To this day, Thorn realized, a demon’s one weapon is a lie. A whisper. He often wondered why God had allowed this.
Demonkind had reveled when it discovered that humans could hear devils’ voices in their thoughts. Demons had nothing else to do, so rather than let eternal boredom overtake them, why not seize vengeance on their Creator by ruining humankind, His other creation? So their endgame became the destruction of all humanity. Most demons claimed this goal as an expression of power, but Thorn knew by looking into his own soul that their reasons lay elsewhere. Deep down, their real desire was for freedom. Somewhere inside, they were still those young angels in Heaven, deprived of identity, deprived of liberty. They wanted revenge, and they wanted to be free. Simple as that.
Thorn felt, as Balthior had, that humans were exceedingly fortunate to have been given a choice to side with or against the Enemy, and even to switch back and forth. They were physical beings, so they had the option to act, to choose. Thus it was vital to keep them complacent, idle.
And then, of course, there was Christ. Thorn hadn’t witnessed the man himself, but he knew other demons who had. Marcus was one of them. Thorn had thought Marcus dead until the 1400s B.C., when he’d resurfaced as the right hand of Xeres, one of the greatest demons of all time. Successful in his conquests, Marcus had forgotten all about Balthior. Thorn had heard that Lucifer had taken a keen interest in Christ as well, but he couldn’t be sure. Nearly as many inconsistent accounts of Christ were gossiped about throughout the demon hordes as were written in what eventually became the New Testament. Thorn had his doubts about both sources, and in fact questioned much of Biblical history’s accuracy. He’d been in Western Europe at the time, and seen none of Biblical history firsthand, save for the Earth’s creation.
Regardless, the sins of angels remained irreversible, according to God. For what reason, Thorn hadn’t a clue. If God had created Angels of Forgiveness, why did He neglect to forgive? This irked Thorn above all else. Whenever he encountered one of the passionate debates about God’s existence, of which humans were so fond, Thorn longed to interject and divulge this truth. As a demon, Thorn had definitive knowledge that God did indeed exist. The only problem, of which humanity remained blissfully unaware, was that God was a divine asshole.
Thorn’s thoughts were interrupted when he came upon the warehouse. The Atlanta Quarantine Zone spanned one square block: a small industrial complex that had been abandoned for decades. Every demon in the city knew the place, and watched it closely (as demons watched all of the world’s angel lairs). Thorn used to wonder why demonkind allowed the few remaining, defeated angels to share Earth with them when killing an angel meant great honor for an individual demon. The angels posed no threat and could easily be slaughtered. But a few surviving angels served as a constant reminder of the demons’ victory—that they could take on God and win. If they killed all the angels, nothing would be left to remind them of their Enemy. It would be almost like they had no enemy, and therefore no purpose. And even devils, who deprived humans of their reasons for being, needed purpose for themselves.
Demons perked up on their rooftops as Thorn neared. Some gave cheerful battle cries while others glowered in envy. At least five hundred were present. Good. I want word of this to spread quickly.
Thorn floated from the empty road to the complex’s entrance and left Ezandris’s hefty body at the angels’ doorstep. No one came to retrieve it. The angels were notoriously cautious, and seldom showed their faces outside of their own complex. Thorn did, however, notice one spirit’s face behind a window of the main warehouse. Thilial. He smirked at her, and hoped for a fight.
“I am Thorn!” he bellowed. “Enemies, this city is mine!” He turned to see curious expressions on the faces of the other fallen angels behind him. “Brothers, this city is mine! Any who seek to take it from me will die!”
No angels came out to fight him. After five minutes he could tell the demons were tired of his yelling. After ten minutes he left quietly.
•
Later that night, Thorn found himself on the bridge again, bewildered by Jada’s unwillingness to jump. Why would she not choose? There was no reason to stay in a miserable limbo between a happy life and a freeing death. The choice would have been easy for Thorn in her position. He envied her; he envied everything about the humans, and hated them all the more for it.
Did I really consider defecting earlier today? Am I just as suicidal as Jada?
In the distant past, near the beginning, Thorn had overheard the great demon lord Altherios confiding in his coterie that he wanted to die. “What do we have to look forward to?” he had asked them as they watched a volcano spew flame in the distance. “I hate living like this. I’d rather end it on my own terms, in a blaze of glory.” Then Altherios had left them, and told the angels he wanted to defect.
It was a trick. Although angels never accepted a demon back into their fold, they did sometimes—strangely—listen to a would-be defector’s plea. When Altherios was allowed into their midst, instead of begging for a return to angelhood, he abruptly slaughtered many of them, and was soon overcome himself. Despite the suicide, demonkind remembered Altherios as a hero. Thorn was sometimes tempted to join him. Perhaps Ezandris had felt the same longing, to end whatever pain ailed him by going out with a bang.
Thorn realized then why he cared so much about Jada’s case, why he was drawn so strongly to solving the puzzle of why she would not jump. It was because, despite his current struggle for survival, a part of Thorn did wish to die.
Strange, he thought. The First Rule forbids killing other demons, but not killing yourself.
He had no one with whom to share this ache. No one to confide in but his charges. “The only real pain,” he said to Jada, only now he started to believe it himself, “is pain suffered alone.”
4
“In the name of Jesus, I bind you Satan, and I command you to leave this home.”
Madeline did stuff like this all the time, and Thorn and his followers always had a good laugh. She didn’t actually know they were in the room with her, but they’d used her religion to make her paranoid in recent years, so she’d developed the odd habit of “binding” demons whenever she heard a bump in the night. Or during a late-morning nap, as the case was now. She would pray and she would bind, then bind, then pray, sometimes for over an hour at a time. Like all praying, it did nothing, or at least nothing the demons could notice.
“Some people like the idea of demons,” Thorn had once explained to some of his less-experienced followers when they’d asked about Madeline’s eccentricities. “If demons are pulling the strings, then nothing is their fault. They hold no responsibility for their actions.” This was exciting behavior, when a human started blaming all her problems on the devil. In truth, demons usually preyed on desires that were already present; the human was the one who chose to act on those impulses. In their pride, most demons did fancy themselves as the sources of evil, but they were actually just its advocates.
Maddie’s old joints popped as she left her bed and grabbed her worn Bible from her nightstand, sighing as she plopped onto her sofa and began to read the Good Book for reassurance. Her body relaxed, and her breathing grew slower, calmer. The comfort the book gave her bothered Thorn, but better comfort than critical thought. Thinking was the worst virtue, after all, and comfort made it easy for people to ignore problems. This was why demons loved religion’s contenting elements—dogma, arbitrary rules, church culture—while despising its challenging elements—community, family, altruism—which were more genuinely beneficial.
A knock at the door. Jackie again? No, Thorn’s followers had seen to her—Jackie’s boss had burdened her with an unexpected workload over the holidays. Madeline opened the door and found two men outside, one dark-skinned and one light.
They wore semi-formal clothes and authentic, welcoming grins. The white guy had a demon whispering in his ear. Thorn nodded to him.
“Good morning ma’am, I’m John and this is Amir, and we just wanted to let you know about a picnic we’re having tomorrow at the community center next door. We’re inviting all our neighbors, and uh, that includes you. There’ll be grilled chicken and steak, all halal, and mac ‘n’ cheese, coleslaw, and a bunch of other stuff.”
“Our wives are great cooks,” Amir put in. They waited just a moment for Madeline to react, but she regarded them with silence and suspicion. Her frown at Amir suggested that his name was somewhat less acceptable than John’s. Thorn had trained her for this, so he just stood back and watched.
John continued. “So, uh, it’s at one p.m. and you’re welcome to come. Plenty of other seniors will be there too.”
Madeline tried an escape route. “I hope you didn’t invite Mr. Vensil next door. He’s a drunk, you know. Even in the daytime.”
“Oh, there won’t be any alcohol. We’re Muslims.” He hesitated before saying that last word, as if he knew in advance how she would react.
She didn’t disappoint him. Her eyes widened in bitterness as she recognized them. “Well I’m a Christian, and I don’t do that sort of thing.”
Amir was sympathetic. “Oh don’t worry, you’re welcome all the same. There won’t be any sermons or anything. It’s honestly just a get-together so we can introduce ourselves to the community.”
Madeline wouldn’t have any of it, of course. “Us versus them” was a staple of Thorn’s whispering to Madeline, and of much demonic whispering in general. The demons would isolate a group, be it religious or political, and convince its members that no opposing viewpoints were genuine—those others had never thought through their views as deeply as you had, and what’s more, they had sinister motives for believing as they did. Demons would urge the human to see only the others’ surface, and to conclude that those people must be dumb or crazy or intentionally evil. It all boiled down to, “Anyone who doesn’t think like you is your enemy.” The same trick worked on everyone.
After Madeline had closed the door on John and Amir and their demon, Thorn whispered to her about how alone she was. The world was full of bad people, and they were having picnics, no less! She was the only one who knew the truth anymore. Even her friends from God’s Grannies thought too differently for her to bear sometimes.
And then, so she wouldn’t use her loneliness as fuel to motivate herself, he turned her thoughts to her past. “Everything most people have to look forward to has already passed you by. Romance, sex, family, a rewarding career… all in the past. And even when you had those things, you made so many mistakes.” She’d never had the chance to reconcile with her husband before he died. Her community activism had kept her from knowing her children well as adults. Never mind all the happy years she’d spent with her husband or the thousands of people she’d helped with her activism. “For the wages of sin is death,” Thorn whispered to her. “And you’ve sinned quite a bit, Madeline.”
The closer to the end anyone thought they were, the less action they would take in the world and the more complacent they would grow. It was often good to suggest a vague anxiousness about the end to anyone who would listen, as long as it would spur them to inactivity rather than to action and a life well lived.
In this case, though, it wasn’t just a vague anxiousness; Thorn actually was working to accelerate her death—via a stroke or a heart attack, hopefully only a few days away. Briefly, he imagined himself standing over a dying Madeline just as Marcus had stood over him a few nights ago in the rain, and he felt strangely guilty. But no, he had to do it. “The wages of sin is death,” he repeated. “Is death, is death, is death…”
One of Thorn’s favorite privileges of demonhood was that he got to play both bad cop and good cop. “Don’t worry, though,” he told her. “God has forgiven you, and your suffering will end in heaven.” In other words, stay inside until you die.
•
It was the last Friday night before Christmas, and the Midtown streets came alive with hundreds of clubbers. All down Crescent Avenue and Thirteenth and Twelfth, girls in skintight dresses and men with loaded wallets laughed and stumbled between the flashy cars that inched along the crowded streets. Alongside nearly all of them floated their invisible demonic companions, shuffling their legs in that strange movement that mimicked walking but looked more like rollerblading.
According to one of Thorn’s followers’ reports, Amy should have arrived half an hour ago, but waiting thirty minutes for a human was nothing for a demon who had once waited billions of years. To pass the time, Thorn tested the ground with his foot. It went straight through like always. Seeing humans experience the joys of the physical world when Thorn never could had always been irksome. What does pizza taste like? he often wondered—more these days than he used to, it seemed. What does the ocean smell like? Is learning an instrument as difficult as it appears? Does a cat’s fur feel any different than a dog’s? Is sex really that good? What is it like to love? Most demons believed that they were no longer capable of feeling positive emotions. This was a source of pride to them, for it meant they had excised every good thought their Creator had ever given them. (“Good” as defined by the Enemy.) Others said He had stolen their ability to feel happiness. But Thorn knew that wasn’t true. He knew it from the laughter he sometimes shared with his brothers—often at a human’s expense, but laughter nonetheless. He knew it from his longing to feel droplets on his face whenever it rained. And he knew it from the Native boy…
So much time had passed since Thorn had been an angel that he’d forgotten how plainly, scrumptiously good some of the Enemy’s creation could be. But he hadn’t forgotten all of it. He could still hear, could still see the beauty of the world. Two out of five senses—or however many senses humans had—was enough to make him wish for more.
Pondering the world’s goodness in spite of its evil, Thorn stumbled upon a new potential course of action. What if I just quit it all? I don’t have to defect or go into hiding. I could leave my pet humans, eschew demonkind and its savage competition, and live alone until the end of time. Perhaps then Marcus wouldn’t perceive him as a threat, and would abandon his revenge fantasy. And Thorn still hadn’t seen all of planet Earth, especially in its modern state, so simple tourism could occupy him for ages.
But would he be able to abandon his comfortable dominion over his brothers? Would he be capable of swallowing his hatred for the Enemy and never again working to ruin His creations?
Xeres had tried it. Thorn had been by the great demon lord’s side for centuries before Xeres’s ego grew so great that he planned an assault on one of the Sanctuaries. Xeres had even gone in alone, and when he returned he was… different. He claimed he had been successful in slaughtering the Sanctuary’s humans, but he didn’t revel in his victory. He became uncommonly quiet, spending most of his days alone in forests. Before long, Thorn and Xeres’s other followers realized Xeres hadn’t whispered to a single human since his return.
One day, centuries ago, near a Cherokee town just ninety miles from where Thorn stood now, Thorn had summoned the courage to reproach his leader. Thorn had enjoyed as close a relationship with Xeres as demons could have; he’d felt bound to him ever since Xeres had raised him up from nothing. In retrospect, the height of Thorn’s power had been as Xeres’s right hand. His de facto bigwig position in Atlanta paled in comparison.
“You’ve lost your way,” Thorn had said to him.
Xeres, comically huge next to a flock of wild turkeys at the edge of the forest, just nodded meekly and turned away.
“I will not be ignored,” Thorn continued. “I mean to bring you back to sanity. Tell me what is wrong.”
“Nothing is wrong.” His voice was still deep, but shockingly soft: a mouse’s murmur where a wolf’s howl had once been. “For once, nothing is wrong.”
The serenity with which he said those
words frightened Thorn far more than Xeres’s booming rages ever had. “This woman…” Thorn motioned at a woman picking berries nearby. “Tempt her. Whisper devilish thoughts of incest, or suicide, or anything. She need not even follow through with sin, but I must see you tempt her.”
Xeres nodded again and lumbered over to the woman. “You crave squash,” he said.
Thorn couldn’t help but laugh at that, as sad as it was. “No, you fool. Something evil.”
As the woman finished filling her basket and prepared to walk back to the village, Xeres considered Thorn’s command. With his eyes on Thorn, as if hoping he would retract the request, Xeres leaned toward the woman’s ear. “You crave evil squash.”
In spite of himself and the troubling events of recent days, Thorn guffawed and let the matter rest. Xeres smiled when Thorn did, but he seemed not to recognize his own humor. Had he not turned up dead the next day, Thorn might still have found it funny. Xeres’s body had been found suspended in the air above the thatch roofs at the center of town, his eyes glazed over. No one bothered to investigate the cause of death, but Thorn supposed that one of his bored followers had killed him so they could all move on. For a day, Thorn had exulted at Xeres’s death because it meant Thorn could take his place as the greatest demon on earth. But Thorn found himself unable to hold the group together. The massive horde of followers had disbanded, each member searching for his own glory, or for another leader to follow.
At least the woman did, in fact, eat some squash.
To this day Xeres’s demise haunted Thorn. What had happened to him? And was it happening to Thorn now? Xeres had broken neither of the Rules, nor even the Third, but his aloof demeanor was so taboo that he was killed, and no one but Thorn cared.
Thinking about such matters, Thorn realized he felt sorrier for Xeres now than he had when he’d died. He missed Xeres and his companionship.
“—my own party. Just because I’m having a good time doesn’t mean I want some ho recording me drunk. Seriously.” Thorn knew Lexa’s voice a hundred yards off. Amy was with her, dressed to impress, wearing much more makeup than usual, and sporting a skirt much too tight for comfort. She fidgeted with it constantly.