The Devil's Secret (5 page)

“Yes. Leave the girl here. She’ll slow us down.”

“No!”

Karthis shook his head dismissively. “Quickly now.” He stopped at a golden grate, which he jerked out of the ground. At his prompt, Thorn jumped down into the resulting hole. He fell a story or two, but hit the ground on two feet and kept Amy in his arms.

Karthis followed him down, somehow replacing the grate as he fell, then took off once again. He led Thorn on a winding path—through a complex series of hidden tunnels, ancient stone aqueducts, abandoned storerooms, and endless hallways of cracked marble and gold twisting through the rotten bowels of Heaven. When they seemed to have lost their pursuers—and Thorn was thoroughly lost himself—he ventured some hasty conversation.

“If there are so many rebel angels, why have none of you reached out to us demons on Earth? We could have used your access to invade Heaven again.”

“We do reach out! All the time. But you demons see our wings and slaughter us before we can make our case. Or God catches us first. We live under harsh surveillance. Most angels are too afraid to do anything but obey. It’s a damned witch hunt up here.” Karthis leaped onto a toppled pillar and kicked through an old stone wall. Rays of sunset poured through the opening. “Hang on to the girl.”

Before Thorn knew what was happening, Karthis had jumped behind Thorn and wrapped his arms around him. Then Thorn’s feet left the ground, and the wind from Karthis’s wings brushed against his shoulders. He gripped Amy tighter.

The darkness of the underground chamber gave way to blinding red sunlight as Karthis flew them through the broken wall, back up onto street level, and then higher. They zigzagged around obelisks and spires, over a wide river, underneath a series of giant marble arches. Had his life not been in danger, Thorn might have relished the sensation of flying again after all this time. But when he looked behind them, he saw another host of angels gathering in pursuit.

Karthis sped even faster as he approached a tall golden building. “Hold tight!” He spun around, and Thorn felt a gust as Karthis folded his wings inward, shielding his accomplices. Glass shattered around them, then blew inward with them. As they slid across the marble floor, Thorn tried to shield Amy from the flying shards. Karthis abandoned them while they were still moving. When they stopped, Thorn saw why.

Two angelic guards crouched defensively before another large door, similar to the one at the prison. Faster than Thorn could stand, Karthis was on them. He flew in from the left, kicking one in his face, then grabbed the other’s head and swung his own body around until the angel’s neck snapped. The angels collapsed: one knocked out, the other dead.

Thorn lay there staring at Karthis. “Fairness?”

“Sometimes life’s not fair,” Karthis said as he untwined himself from the angel’s corpse. “Inside!”

Thorn scooped up Amy and ran for the door. More shouts came from the broken window behind him. “Thorn! Desist!”

Thorn entered the next room. Karthis slammed the door, sealing them inside, then lowered an immense bar into place to lock it.

Thorn took in the windowless room. It was small, but it would do. Each of the three walls—in front of Thorn and to either side—contained a single wooden door. And these were no ordinary doors: these were transit doors, through which the Enemy and His angels accessed His universe. Elaborate engravings covered each door from its pointed top to its wide base, and they glowed with otherworldly light. This luminance also gleamed from a keyhole in each door, pouring in so heavily that the light seemed to have a thickness to it. In the days at the beginning of time, Thorn had sometimes stared at such doorways for hours, mesmerized by their ethereal beauty.

An emphatic
thump
resounded through the room as the angels outside tried to beat down the door. Karthis examined a store of golden keys hanging on the near wall. “Do you know the fastest way to Earth?”

“I’m not going to Earth.”

“What?”

“I’ve found proof that God wants to forgive demonkind. If I can take the evidence to a Judge, I can undermine His control over me. Over all of us. I can show everyone how He wants us to think we’re evil just so we’ll return to His service. But the evidence I need is in a Sanctuary.”

Karthis shook his head. “Have it your way.”

Recalling the coordinates he’d seen on God’s great Sanctuary wall, Thorn searched for the appropriate key. Having already found his, Karthis set to work opening one of the doors.

Another
thump
. This time a bitter
crack
accompanied it. The entrance door would not last much longer.

Thorn snatched his key from the wall, then moved to the door opposite Karthis. Without setting Amy down, he inserted the key, turned it in the keyhole, and felt the satisfying click of the lock. He flung the door open to reveal a dark hallway lined with dozens of other transit doors.

The Corridors.

They would lead him to the Sanctuary. Thorn breathed a sigh of relief and stepped through the door… but was stopped short. He tried again, with the same result. He could not get through.
Is some invisible barrier blocking my entry?
When he stepped forward, it felt like the door was still closed, but Thorn could see clearly through to the other side.

“You didn’t think you could take her with you, did you?”

Thorn turned to find Karthis standing before his own open doorway, black and white Corridors of his own choosing stretching off beyond it. “What do you mean?”

“Humans can’t leave Heaven,” Karthis said. “At least not through a door. It’s against the rules. I was wondering why you brought her along.”

No. We’re so close.

“The door won’t let her through,” Karthis continued. “But she’ll be fine here. It’s Heaven. God actually
likes
humans.”

“She’s not from Heaven. God stole her from Earth to use as leverage over me. Come on. There must be a way to bring her through.”

Karthis just stared helplessly.

Thump.
A small golden chunk of the entrance door fractured, fell, then clinked against the floor.

Thorn couldn’t help but feel that God was watching him smugly from up in His House. Thorn would have to choose between saving Amy and freeing himself after all.

Karthis turned to leave, then hesitated, an arm on each side of the doorframe. Amy grew heavy in Thorn’s arms.

Thump. Clink.

Karthis sighed, then turned and approached Thorn. He slid his arms beneath Amy.

“What are you doing?” Thorn asked.

“Maybe I can fly past them when they break through the door. Get her somewhere safe.”

“They could kill you. They could kill both of you.”

“Thorn, if you have the evidence you say you have, your cause is more important than any of our lives. God thinks anyone who stands against Him is a selfish, purposeless brute, so let me take this stand. Let me prove Him wrong. You have more important things to worry about than me or this girl.” Thorn was too stunned to resist when the angel took Amy from him. “Just remember that we’re here. We’re incarcerated, but there are hundreds of thousands of us, and we’ll support any rebellion against God.”

Karthis kept talking, but Thorn heard none of it. He was entranced by the commotion at the door, by the blood on Amy’s shirt, by the fading light in her eyes. He knew he couldn’t abandon her. Never in a thousand years would he abandon her.

But he felt his feet carry him backward through the door, into the Corridors.

“Go! Run!”

He was faintly aware of Karthis shouting at him. Then he heard a deep ripping sound as the golden entrance gate shattered and its shards clanked against the walls. From the Corridors, Thorn looked back through the transit doorway and saw Karthis in the small room, braced for a fight—and there was Amy in his arms, strands of her chestnut hair falling in familiar patterns by the angel’s side.

For a moment Thorn thought to run back, out of the Corridors, to help protect Amy, but Karthis kicked the door shut, locking Thorn inside, sealing him off from Amy forever.

The shock of sudden quiet startled Thorn back into his present circumstances. He scanned the hallway for spatial guidance, and soon found the telltale lines on the walls, leading anywhere and everywhere. Thorn ran around a corner, then another, up some stairs, through a pitch black tunnel, and down another hallway. Within five minutes he’d found the door he wanted. He twisted the key in the lock, opened the door, and strode through onto a grassy plain.

Thorn shuddered as his body entered a purely physical realm; whatever part of him lived in spiritual space was now attached to his newly minted physical body.
Have I arrived here before Marcus? Did the Sanctuary give me a body because it thinks I’ll be the only demon here? Or did God let it happen in hopes that I’ll retain this body and be slaughtered with the rest of the humans here?

Thorn shut the door behind him, gripped the latch with both hands, and pried it off the frame. Then he spent the next few minutes kicking the door in. At last the light in the keyhole faded, as did the glowing engravings. Thorn peered through a gap his foot had left in the wood and saw only more of the grassy field on the other side. The Corridors were lost to him, and the transit door was dead.

Now, to find Brandon and Heather. God will have an army on the way, and I need to be long gone by the time it gets here.

He strode forward, trying to ignore the emotions welling inside him, but the pain and regret soon grew overwhelming. He collapsed onto the ground. Her blood was on his clothes and on his hands and on his conscience. He’d killed her. He’d killed the girl he’d loved.

And for what? For this empty field of grass and this starry night sky? For the humans I may or may not be able to rescue? For a fleeting chance at freedom?

Perhaps one day, I’ll journey into Hell and bring her back.

Between heaving sobs, Thorn smelled orange pulp, and the dampness of the dirt beneath him. He felt the slick grass sliding through his fingers. At any other time, his humanity would have been a cause for joy. But now, all he could think of was Amy.

Brandon hated weddings.

He hated that everyone had to feign happiness for a day. He hated the pompous ceremonies, the family drama, the needless and exorbitant expenses. He hated the myriad of traditions that were blindly followed for no reason other than to maintain the status quo of a manly man and a womanly woman, chained together in holy matrimony. He hated the idea that this event was mandatory as a rite of passage into the adult world. He hated the predatory wedding industry prompting the bride to spend, spend, spend, since her special day wouldn’t be special unless she bankrupted herself for it.

As he sat in a dark corner of the clubhouse, looking out at the hundred or so guests finishing their meals, he marveled at the extensive planning that went into this single, stressful day, and questioned why any of his friends and family thought it was worth the trouble. There was Tammy Matherson examining the cake, smug that it wasn’t quite as extravagant as her own wedding cake had been. And there was Virgil Cafferty and his wife Norma, who’d gotten hitched in their early thirties just because all their friends had been doing it. They’d stayed unhappily married for over a decade now, yet there they stood with the father of the bride, blithely congratulating him. Then, of course, there were Hannah and Carl, cozying up beside the overlarge fireplace, eager for their own wedding just weeks away.
Young love in all its bliss. Never mind that Hannah and Carl are nineteen years old, oblivious to the challenges of marriage, and letting the throes of puppy love guide them into a decision they’re far too immature to be making.

This whole event was such an obvious and pointless appeal to tradition. The bride’s dress had looked the same as every other bride’s dress. The same old vows had been exchanged. The reception had included the same food and the same songs as the last two weddings Brandon had attended. Even the order of events remained the same as in every other generic wedding.

But what Brandon hated most of all was that none of the people here had stopped to ask
why
. About the marriage, or really about anything. What was the ultimate purpose of today’s union? Was it to complete each spouse as a person? That was doomed to failure. Or was it just so they wouldn’t be alone? That was nonsense, since they hadn’t been alone as a dating couple. Or was it to deepen the relationship’s level of commitment by pledging togetherness for life? That was a promise that
no one
was capable of making, since no one knows what the future holds—how drastically circumstances or personalities might change. Brandon was bitterly aware that the happy promises of millions of other days just like today had ended in divorce.

No, this wedding was all about tradition, just like everything else in Bristol. Most of the people here even
disapproved
of this particular marriage, and yet they’d joined today’s celebration regardless. The whole thing was a sham.

Brandon hated weddings, but he especially hated this one.

“Excuse me, sir? Are you the groom?”

Brandon had been so caught up in his thoughts that he hadn’t seen the man approach. Brandon recognized him as someone from the catering staff, or the event coordinator, or something.

“Yeah, that’s me,” Brandon said.

“It’s almost time to cut the cake, and no one can seem to find your wife.”

“Really? Did you ask Tim?”

“We did. No one’s seen Mrs. Barnett in over half an hour.”

“Huh. Well, I have a hunch where she is. I’ll go get her.”

The man mumbled his thanks then backed off into the crowd.

Brandon sighed and stood. He knew he should be thankful for today, and that the months of ridicule were finally over. The ceremony had passed with relative ease, and the reception was proving calmer than Brandon had anticipated. It was a nice reception too, with classy décor and a live band and a dance floor with colored lights—certainly better than any wedding Brandon might have hoped for during his foster home years. He felt slightly guilty that all this money was being spent on him and Heather, but then again, Tim could afford it, and Brandon
was
thankful for that.