Thorn (4 page)

“Well you’re not trained properly. I’d like to speak with your manager.”

After describing to the manager how “very offended” she was, and trying her damnedest to get the boy fired, Madeline drove her scooter home. Thorn floated with her, muttering sour criticisms of the few young people in her life.

Ironically, it was a teenager who had introduced Thorn to her, at church of all places. Thorn had gone with Jed that day to focus all his energies on a girl in the youth group Jed had wanted to sleep with. While drifting through the hallways of that societal relic, Thorn had noticed a group of old ladies setting up polls for the then-upcoming election. Upon further investigation, he learned that they were a group of seniors hilariously named “God’s Grannies” who were active in the community, raising money for charities, setting up an adoption agency, testing their abilities in local politics, and giving food to the poor, despite being at poverty’s doorstep themselves. Rarely did they murmur a word about social security, the country’s “declining morals,” or any of the other hot-button issues so loved by America’s retirees. These women appeared to be truly selfless. As de facto demon leader of Atlanta, Thorn had found an unlikely nemesis in Madeline, the widowed leader of God’s Grannies.

That had been four years ago, and Madeline had been a challenge, because at heart she was good. Her Southern Baptist heritage daunted Thorn, but only at first. Some demons lived in great fear of religion, but others, such as Thorn, had grown to accept its occasional usefulness. “Religion’s appeal to us lies in its apparent ability to answer any and all human questions,” Thorn had recently explained to some of his followers. “When confronted with foreign or contradictory information, have your charges tell themselves, ‘The Lord works in mysterious ways,’ and leave it at that.” If humans could be trained to believe something without questioning it, they were also more susceptible to believing the suggestions of the demons without questioning them. “Thinking is the worst virtue,” was a popular demon mantra. The Enemy’s plan, oddly, had worked out to the devils’ advantage.

So Thorn had comforted Maddie with thoughts of her reward in Heaven, so she would become inactive on Earth. Her embracing of religion was fine with him so long as she did no good in the world. Over the course of months, he drew her attention increasingly to the work she had done, from her career as a young nurse, to the family of six she’d created, to her long-term job as a high school receptionist, to her retirement and community-leader status as a senior.

“You’re tired,” Thorn often whispered to her. “You deserve a break now. In fact, the world owes you a break.”

Eighty years was nothing for a demon, but the time had taken its toll on poor Madeline, and Thorn used this to his advantage as well. Whenever her arthritis acted up, he told her she should slow her life down. When she had to squint even through her glasses to read a Bible verse, he reminded her that her independence wouldn’t last forever. With every bout of trivial indigestion, he warned her to settle her affairs, and she bought it. She bought it! She quit God’s Grannies and abandoned most of her friends, except the few Thorn had allowed her to keep due to their penchants for television, cards, and other time-wasting activities.

Every lie Thorn had told the old lady had been a common one, but few demons could have sunken such an angelic woman as far as Thorn had sunk Madeline. She now lived in such seclusion that she’d even disposed of her telephone.

Maddie had been in good health. She could realistically have lived to be a hundred and ten. Now, those were thirty years of a good person’s life that would be spent playing cards. Over a fourth of Madeline’s valuable time on this earth: wasted.
If
she survived the week, of course, which Thorn would make sure did not happen.

Shenzuul would probably try to convince her to murder her pastor or become a street prostitute, or some other overblown idiocy.

Fortunately, the gruff demon was nowhere in sight as they entered the trailer home where Madeline lived alone, and this time, several of Thorn’s followers came inside with him for safety. The place was littered with trinkets Thorn had encouraged her to collect: ceramic pots, religious figurines, doilies, clocks, plants. She sat in her ancient recliner and turned on a rerun of “The People’s Court.” Her eyelids were just starting to droop when the doorbell rang.

She jolted awake with such suddenness that Thorn thought she might be having a stroke right then and there. But no, providence wasn’t so kind, and Madeline answered the door to find some girl in her late twenties whom Thorn had never seen.

“Hey, Grandma,” the girl said sweetly. Thorn grimaced.

Madeline took a few moments to recognize her. “Jackie? Or are you Lisa?”

“Nope. Jackie. Just thought I’d stop by to wish you a happy birthday.” Jackie revealed a small chocolate-chip-cookie cake she’d had hidden behind her back.

Who is Jackie? Why have I never seen her before?
Even after four years, Thorn knew little about Madeline’s family, other than that she’d once been an imposing matriarch. Perhaps too imposing; her family never visited.

Thorn improvised. “They don’t care about you,” he whispered to Madeline. “None of them do. Send her away.”

“Oh, uh, thank you, Jackie,” Maddie answered awkwardly, with a big fake smile plastered on her face. “Did your mother send you?”

“Nope, just me. I haven’t seen you since I was in college, and I miss your stories.”

“Aw.” Madeline blushed.

“Yeah, I wanted to see you again, so uh, hi!” Jackie’s genuine grin turned Madeline’s into something just as disgustingly honest. Thorn whispered that Jackie was just another dumb young person who made selfish choices and knew nothing of the world, but it wasn’t enough, and Madeline let her inside.

They warmed up to each other quickly, and chatted for hours. They discussed family history, Madeline’s activism in the civil rights movement, and Jackie’s coaching of a girls’ softball team. Jackie invited her over to visit her family sometime. Madeline grew more cheerful at that than Thorn had seen her in years.

He tried to effect some damage control by whispering to both of them, but their need to connect proved stronger than his lies, so he left them, discouraged.

Where had such an act of kindness come from? Was this sabotage? Marcus’s doing? If so, why hadn’t he or Shenzuul shown up?
This granddaughter may not ruin my influence over Maddie in the long run, but I may not have the long run to work with.
At least the cookie cake would raise her cholesterol.

On to the next one.

He found Jada where he always found her: on a tall, unnamed bridge spanning a turbulent section of the Chattahoochee River. She stood where she always stood, on top of the thick steel guardrail halfway across the bridge, arm braced on one of the bridge’s supports. The streetlights lit the expanse well, but Thorn could only faintly glimpse the water a hundred feet below in the moonlight.

In the mood for a pick-me-up, Thorn decided to try something he hadn’t in a while. “Jump,” he whispered to her. “Too much stress. Too many bad decisions. Your life will always be meaningless.”

It didn’t work, of course. It never did. About three years ago, Thorn had been with Amy in her car, driving across this ominous rural bridge, when he’d seen a woman standing on the edge, preparing to leap to her death. Amy had been horrified and had driven on, but Thorn, eager for the glory of a quick kill, had stayed behind in order to convince Jada that death was the answer. He pulled out all the stops, tried every trick he knew, but after an hour, Jada had just walked to her car beside the bridge and driven away. Baffled, Thorn followed her home to research this woman.

Jada turned out to be an allergist completing her residency at an allergy and asthma clinic in Sandy Springs. Her tired eyes added ten years to her face, but she appeared outwardly happy, living with her successful and handsome boyfriend and cultivating strong, positive relationships with her family and close friends. She spent her spare time running with her dog, reading medieval history books, and mountain biking with friends. She was healthy, financially well off, and seemed to love her life.

Thorn would have found Jada quite boring if not for her nightly journeys to the bridge. Every single night, she would get in her car, drive here, stand for an hour, then go back. If only demons could read thoughts as the Enemy claimed He could, Thorn could have solved the riddle immediately; but Jada remained an enigma to him. Was this some romantically morbid relic of her teenagehood? Did she just want to see how passersby reacted? Or was she just enjoying nature and Thorn was reading too much into it? He didn’t think so, because rural Georgia had plenty of safer places to enjoy nature, and he found her crying from time to time.

But she never jumped. Pickup trucks flying the rebel flag would screech to a stop behind her, and the drunken hicks inside would hoot and jeer at her to do it, but she’d just stand there. A police officer found her once, but she made an excuse and waited three nights before coming back. She didn’t even jump after Thorn orchestrated her mother’s death.

Thorn’s followers, too, were entranced with this woman who ignored Thorn’s whispers. They often tried to help him kill her and frequently watched him at work, to learn from his attempts on her life. Thorn felt a fool, but he’d committed too much time to abandon Jada now.

Most suicides—when caused by demonic lies rather than humans lying to themselves—were caused by exaggerating short-term considerations to one’s charge. Thorn liked to make temporary problems seem permanent, to exacerbate immediate difficulties in the echo chamber of the human mind, to present the human’s future goals as unattainable.

Jada fell for none of these. No standard or even obscure lies would work on her, leaving Thorn bewildered.

He’d considered revealing himself to her, coming in her sleep through a terrifying nightmare of the mighty Thorn, a demon who would torment her and her loved ones for all the days of her life. It would leave her longing for death. Thorn had even considered possessing her and physically forcing her over the edge. But those things were forbidden under the Second Rule. If Thorn revealed the existence of the spiritual realm to a human, he would be sentenced to die.

No, Thorn would not find solace with Jada tonight, he decided after just a few minutes with her. If she ever cracked, it would be her own doing, not his or any other demon’s.
Including Marcus’s
, Thorn thought thankfully. Even if Marcus did try to take her from Thorn, he would just make a fool of himself trying to kill her.

After pondering various courses of action all day, Thorn decided his best option was to wait out the week and see what would happen. Marcus and Shenzuul had left him alone most of the day, after all. And if he fled right away, he could not defend his reputation, nor kill his charges. Plus, his followers would be with him in Atlanta, so he would be safe here.

Even now, as he traveled down the Chattahoochee toward west Atlanta, twenty of them trailed along overhead, waiting for their chance to help Thorn, or impress him.
Or betray me.
But although Marcus might have bought the hundred who attended the would-be murder-suicide last night, but he couldn’t buy all twenty thousand of them, and most would report any betrayers in their ranks.

Unease still lingered, though, as Thorn knew that all demons’ loyalties lay only in what glory they could gain from those loyalties. And since Marcus had killed more people, he ostensibly had more prestige than Thorn, although Thorn too had caused great suffering in the world.

Thorn’s late-night meandering took him to some dirty old apartment buildings at the edge of the Downtown District. His daytime charges would be asleep by now, and he hadn’t found a new nighttime charge since his last one had died in a street race. Daytime or nighttime, challenging humans were hard to find. Yet after dusk,
any
human was better than the alternative…

Nights had always been hard for demons, who did not sleep. Most humans were diurnal, so most demons found themselves each night with no pets to harass and nothing to do, save for the fleeting, dull thrill of orchestrating nightmares. Purposeless in the dark, they gathered in the streets, as they did now all around Thorn. All were silent; not a word was spoken.

It had been this way since the dawn of time, with this horde of devils who were supposedly united against the Enemy. In practice, though, they were all rivals, far from united, each waiting for a chance to stab another in the back for an ephemeral glimpse of glory and power. Thorn knew his kind would have wiped itself out long ago if not for the First Rule.

Xeres had once wondered aloud why they congregated like this when they hated each other so much. Thorn hadn’t wanted to appear weak, so he shrugged the question off as hypothetical, but he knew the answer.

They congregated because they were lonely. Constant competition with each other caused demonkind to lack friendships like those that humans had. Their inner thoughts remained within. Even Xeres, the mentor whom Thorn had followed for centuries, who had been the closest thing Thorn had ever had to a friend, had abandoned Thorn in the end.

He remembered their relationship now as cold and formal, Xeres always preoccupied with his own prestige. Perhaps silently wandering the streets with all these strange demons was preferable to such a loyal but strained friendship… or so Thorn tried to convince himself. Though he was loath to admit it, he missed Xeres.

As the city slumbered, Thorn exchanged dark glances with his followers and his other demonic brothers in their fancy black clothes, isolated in various sections of the dead downtown landscape. He thought he heard a gunshot from afar, but couldn’t be certain. If it killed someone and a demon was behind it, he would hear the bragging tomorrow.

Thorn examined the other demons. He was so used to viewing them as his inferiors that ages had passed since he’d really
seen
them. The Enemy once described devils as roaring lions, but in actuality these thin men in business suits looked more like starving wolves. Many of the less-intelligent demons were indeed starving for human misery. They didn’t have the wits to create it themselves. One of them was visibly salivating even now, at this quiet hour, absurd in his suit.