The Devil's Secret (12 page)

Heather and Tim exited the boardroom onto the indoor balcony; demons hovered above them as well, whispering to them. Thorn heard cheering from downstairs, then saw the two remaining demons—and the corpses they manipulated—stroll in through the front doors that had been chained shut the last time Thorn had seen them.

Heather, Karen, and Tim stood still in front of him, docile, their faces blank.

“I know your tactic is to string things out,” Marcus said to Thorn through Shannon’s voice, “so I won’t let you do it any longer. Drelial, do you still have the gun?”

Puppeteering a human body, Drelial arrived at the top of the stairs. He walked around the railing toward the group and waved his gun for them to see.

“Kill the father,” Marcus said.

“No!” Brandon yelled. He struggled against Marcus, but Marcus held him tight. “No! Hey! Hey, stop!”

Tim had fallen too deep in his demon-induced trance to realize what was happening. Thorn moved Virgil toward him, but one of the demons swept up behind Thorn and held him back.

Drelial ambled casually up to Tim, then shot him in the forehead. Tim’s body collapsed into a heap on the ground.

Brandon, strangely, stayed completely silent. His mouth dropped open though, and his face contorted into an expression of absolute agony. He dropped to his knees and let his head fall. Marcus seemed to be supporting most of Brandon’s weight via his grip on his hands. The demon who’d been whispering to Tim donned a smug expression as he drifted above the man’s body.

Thorn quickly thought through any possible avenue of escape, no matter how far-fetched.
Is there any option I’ve overlooked? Anything at all that could save us?

“Can
I
shoot the next one?” the demon restraining Thorn asked.

“You may,” Marcus said. “Drelial, give Amos a turn.”

Light blood spatter from Tim covering his human’s arms, Drelial grabbed hold of Virgil and Thorn. Amos whisked over the railing, then sped back up the stairs with a corpse of his own.

“That’s riiiiiiight,” Drelial muttered to Thorn. “This is the end of the line for you. I’ll give my regards to your followers back in A-town. Maybe I’ll catch up with some of your charges. Kill ’em. Rape ’em. It’ll be a blaaaaaaast.”

Amos grabbed the gun Drelial had left on the ground. “Paxis,” Marcus said to the demon controlling Karen. “The older woman is next. Leave her be. Let’s hear her scream before we kill her.”

Paxis nodded, then drifted away from Karen, who blinked, regaining her bearings. She took in Brandon weeping on the carpet, then turned to Heather beside her, then spotted Tim’s motionless body.

Karen didn’t scream—she gasped. Her eyes grew wide, but she didn’t tear up as Brandon had. She looked like she didn’t know what to do, like the sight of Tim’s body was too much for her, too overwhelming to comprehend. Frozen in place, she continued to stare at him.

Now is the time. If this is the end of the line, I’m taking Marcus with me.
Thorn tensed, preparing for action.

“Ah, not much of a show,” Marcus said through Shannon’s voice. He turned to Thorn. “
You’ll
give us a good show though, won’t you? Demons as proud as you never go quietly.”

Thorn kept his face grim, firm. He’d give Marcus no satisfaction. And soon, he’d give Marcus death.

When Marcus saw he’d get nothing from Thorn either, he shook his head and turned back to Karen. “Go ahead, Amos.”

Thorn fixated on Marcus, on his hatred for Marcus, and summoned all the strength he could muster. Then, all at once, he knelt and thrust his arms out sideways. The sudden motion freed him from Drelial’s grasp. Thorn sprang forcefully up from the ground, onto a surprised Shannon and Marcus. He wrapped Virgil’s arms around Shannon’s neck and carried her to the balcony’s floor.

This is it, old friend. This is where we die.

Before Marcus could retaliate, Thorn pulverized his midsection with three heavy blows. He reached his hands toward Marcus’s head—but a bizarre sound stopped his movement before he could finish it.

Marcus screamed.

Not a battle cry nor a death wail, but a blood-curdling
scream
of utter horror. The kind of scream Marcus had wanted from Karen. The fear of death was plainly written in his eyes. But when Thorn peered more closely, he saw that Marcus was looking not
at
Thorn, but
behind
him.

Thorn turned.

Thilial stood tall in all the glory of her Heavenly white robes, her wings extended to their full, menacing length, her hand clutching the biggest, ugliest sword Thorn had ever seen. Drelial’s dying spirit lay skewered on it.

“Help,” Drelial croaked to Marcus.

With a flick of Thilial’s sword, she cleaved Drelial in two. Her eyes bored directly into Thorn’s as she did it, and those eyes said,
This was meant to be you.

The other demons charged.

Amos grabbed Thilial’s left wing and dug his teeth into it while the other three attacked her torso. She curved her sword through the air, missing the demons. They clustered around her, forcing her to fight them with her hands.

Thorn turned back to Marcus, but found only Shannon’s empty body. Marcus had fled, and was nowhere in sight.

When Thorn turned back, he immediately ducked beneath a blow from Thilial. Even with four demons on her, she’d managed to leap forward and strike at Thorn. Her momentum carried her and the demons over the balcony’s railing, then down to an audible crash on the lobby floor.

Thorn turned his attention to the three surviving humans, who were surveying their surroundings with confusion, probably wondering why their aggressors had just dropped unconscious. “Hurry!” he said to the humans, through Virgil. “Run outside and get to safety. Somewhere they can’t find you.”

Karen was slow to react, and Brandon was still sobbing about Tim, but Heather, despite having just noticed Tim’s body herself, grabbed the other two by the arms. “To the stairs in the back,” she said. Brandon and Karen seemed to snap out of their stupor long enough to realize they had a chance to escape. They let her pull them along. By the time they turned a corner out of Thorn’s sight, all three of them were running at full speed.

Thorn stood and peered over the edge of the railing. In the lobby below, Thilial swung her sword at one of the demons, missing again but slicing through the glass and plastic of the awards case, sending sharp debris flying across the lobby. The demons fought brutally, never giving her a moment’s rest. But she did have the sword, and she fought vigorously, if not expertly.

Thorn ran back into the boardroom, past the conference table, straight to the other end of the room, where he leaped out of the blown-out window.
Only one story to fall this time, thankfully.
He landed on Virgil’s feet and didn’t even break a bone.

Nearby, the three humans he’d rescued were climbing into a golf cart. Thorn ran to them.

“Hey!” Karen called. “Back off!”

Thorn raised his hands, but continued his approach. “I’m unarmed. Please. Let me come with you.”

“Not a chance. Back off!”

“Hold up, hold up,” Heather said. “Isn’t he trying to help us? What’d you see in there, hon?”

Brandon marched right up to Thorn, then socked Virgil in the face. Thorn feigned injury. “What kind of plan was that?” Brandon yelled. “Huh? You just stand silently in a room for ten minutes then let them kill my dad? What the fuck were you thinking?”

Hands trembling, tears rolling down her face, Heather rested her hands on her husband. “Hon, my dad’s probably gone, too. A lot of people are gone. But let’s not focus on that right now, okay? We need to leave.”

“I’m so sorry,” Thorn said to Brandon. “I wasn’t thinking straight. But I’m coming with you.”

Brandon and Karen scrutinized Thorn with incredulous gazes. He jumped into the golf cart. “Let’s go. They’ll find us here.”

“Come on,” Heather said to the other two. Reluctantly, they entered the vehicle.

Minutes later, the four of them were speeding through the darkness over grassy, bumpy hilltops. Karen drove, with Thorn seated next to her. Heather sat next to Brandon in the back, clutching the metal beam that supported the roof. The golf cart traveled faster than Thorn had thought possible for such a small vehicle—it must have been going upward of thirty miles per hour—but it was not a smooth ride. At one point, the incessant bumps nearly threw Virgil from the cart, which carried no seat belts. Karen left the headlights off to keep them inconspicuous, and the hill had no streetlights to guide them; their way was lit only by the moon and the stars as they journeyed through the night, fleeing the chaos behind them.

Thorn heard Brandon sobbing in the darkness.

“Tim’s not really gone,” Thorn said. “You’ll probably see him again someday.”
In another Sanctuary, or elsewhere.

“That’s right,” Karen said. “We’ll see Tim again in Heaven.”

A few moments of silence followed, perhaps in mourning for the departed, or perhaps because no one knew what else to say.

“Let’s get to the plane,” Brandon said in a shaky voice. “I can fly us out of here.”

“You fly?” asked Thorn.

“Yeah.”

“No,” said Karen. “I’m taking us to the church.”

“What?” Heather said. “Why?”

“One, it’s safe there. You wouldn’t believe it, but I reckon a church is the safest place to be right now. Two, we have internet, and an old ham radio in the basement. With the cells not working and the phone lines down, those are our best shots at calling for help.”

“I think we should go to the plane,” said Thorn, who had something else in mind for the aircraft. “We need to get out of here, not call for help.”

“No, it’s our responsibility to get help. What if those monsters are still alive and decide to go kill somebody else? What if they decide to flee the country? No, I’m calling the authorities and bringing justice down on these crazy people. If people is what they really are.”

“What do you mean by that?” said Heather.

“Ask Virgil,” Karen said. “Or the thing claiming to be Virgil.”

“What are you talking about? Virgil, what’s she talking about?”

“Go ahead,” Karen said to Thorn. “Tell them. I heard what he called you back there.”

“Demons as proud as you never go quietly,”
Marcus had said to Thorn.

After the hassle with Crystal in the previous Sanctuary, Thorn was hesitant to tell these humans the truth about his identity and their current circumstances. His previous candidness had only caused unnecessary delays with Crystal and Cole. If he hid the truth from these humans now, they’d be easier to manipulate, and his job of saving them would become simpler.

Is that still my first instinct? To manipulate? Have I really not grown past my base demonic nature, even after all this?
Perhaps this was how any controlling relationship began: by one party thinking they knew what was best for the other, then forcing it upon them.
Am I no better than God?

And would these humans trust that “Virgil” had their best interests in mind, after his actions had led to Tim’s death? Might Karen try to somehow force Thorn to admit that he was a demon? Thorn resented her silly paranoia, even though in this case it happened to be correct.

“I’m me,” Thorn said through Virgil. “Same as I’ve always been. I’d rather not talk about what happened back there, though. I’m grieving for Tim, too. Just know that I made a bad call, and I’m deeply sorry, and it won’t happen again. I’m very much on your side.”

No one said anything else, perhaps because each of the golf cart’s occupants was too haunted by their own thoughts to bother any more with Thorn.

The cart swung through a small forest, then back into clear space, where it continued bouncing over hilltop after hilltop. Had more forest been present, Thorn might have advised staying hidden beneath the trees, but much of the landscape here was bare save for the grass.

As they drove, Thorn’s thoughts wandered to Marcus, and the malicious words Thorn had said to him upstairs in the country club. Thorn regretted those words already. In spite of everything, he didn’t hate Marcus—at least not anymore—and he didn’t wish for Marcus’s death. He only wished that Marcus would open his eyes. Yet in the heat of argument, Thorn had let his frustration get the better of him, and now Marcus might be lost forever.

Why am I still so attached to this vile creature?
Thorn wondered.
Why do I want to save him? Perhaps because I know that convincing him of the truth means that there’s hope for anyone. Even for me.
This answer felt weak, but it was the best he could formulate.

Thorn half-wished that God could wave a hand and smite the other demons, though, to save him some trouble—not that God would kill them, since He claimed to want reconciliation with all demons. But Thorn was grateful that God couldn’t wave a hand and smite
him
.

A limited God. How strange to consider.
The thought had never crossed Thorn’s mind before today.
A God incapable of knowing our hearts, so He has to test us.
Yet this wretched place was certainly not a test for the humans, and that relieved Thorn.
How freeing it is to be able to plan without worrying about the Big Choices that God wants us all to make. What a fool’s errand that was. And how freeing it is to be able to do good without having to worry about pleasing God and getting into Heaven.
Indeed, even after all that effort—after every leap of reason and every selfless act—Thorn had still nearly been sent to Hell. What brazen arrogance God possessed to even create such a place, much less send good people there—solely because their beliefs varied just slightly from His. And Thorn might still be sent there too, for merely desiring a choice other than God or evil.

Thorn wondered: if God was so unwilling to bend His rules and let Thorn live his own life on Earth, why had God admitted so much information to him? Why had God revealed so much potentially sensitive knowledge to someone who was clearly an independent thinker, who was clearly hesitant about accepting God’s offer of angelhood? Had God’s emotional episode just been a show to manipulate Thorn? If so, it was strange behavior for someone who supposedly wanted to grant Thorn—and all demons—forgiveness. For such a powerful and prideful being, God certainly had trouble expressing Himself.