The last screams and moans of the dying rattled into the lobby, then all fell quiet but Shannon’s footsteps. From beneath the tablecloth that mercifully concealed him and his wife, Brandon watched Shannon’s sparkling gold-colored flats patter softly against the carpet. Her gait was slow, deliberate. She must have known that someone was here, hiding from her.
Abruptly, Shannon ran around the front desk. “No!” a man’s voice yelled. “No, please don’t. Please—”
A gunshot silenced him.
Shannon has a gun?
She must have taken it from Bob or Roy. But where and when had the affluent housewife learned to use a gun?
Brandon checked his phone, only to find that his call hadn’t gone through. He checked his bars: no reception.
Shannon’s feet padded across the lobby, away from the table where Brandon and Heather hid. Heather’s hand gripped his, and he held hers tightly in return. Her eyes were saturated in tears, beyond mere fright or panic.
What if this is the last time I ever see her?
Brandon could feel his heartbeat in his feet. His entire body was on edge, ready to spring into action at a moment’s notice.
Shannon threw open a closet door on the far side of the lobby. More yelling and frantic pleading. From beneath the tablecloth, Brandon saw three people bolt out of the closet. One man engaged with Shannon, grabbing hold of her arms and kneeing her in the gut. But soon Brandon heard a gunshot and saw blood spray across the floor behind the man. His body fell limp. The other two people had made a good run for it, but Shannon gunned both of them down as well, one right next to Brandon and Heather.
It was Virgil Cafferty. He staggered and fell, then bloody spittle misted from his mouth as he hit the floor.
“Ah, shit,” Shannon said.
A puddle of blood formed underneath Virgil’s torso. He grimaced in pain, tried to put pressure on his wound… then looked directly at Brandon, beneath the table. His mouth moved to speak, but only bloody sputtering came out.
Shannon’s feet padded across the carpet, toward Virgil. Toward Brandon. Music started up in the dining hall. For some sick reason, someone had turned on the wedding playlist meant to serve as background music while the band wasn’t playing. Frankie Valli’s voice resonated through the country club as he started into his classic recording of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.”
Brandon checked his cell again, with no luck. When he turned back to Virgil, the man’s eyes were lifeless, the puddle of his blood disgustingly large, crawling toward Brandon beneath the table. He cringed at the sight of another familiar face killed by this senseless violence.
Brandon heard clicking from Shannon’s direction… the reloading of ammo? He peered under the tablecloth and saw her feet, halfway across the lobby and headed his way. In Virgil’s dying pose, his eyes were pointed right at Brandon; Shannon was sure to check underneath the table.
Brandon exchanged a glance with Heather, and saw that she’d come to the same conclusion he had: they had to fight Shannon. Brandon wasn’t about to let Heather become the night’s next casualty, so he steeled himself to take a bullet for her. If he could throw himself on top of Shannon, Heather could grab the gun and shoot her. Then maybe Heather could find a way out of here while Brandon held back the rest of the assailants.
Using hand signals, Brandon communicated his plan as best he could to Heather. She nodded, and seemed to understand, so he peeked back beneath the tablecloth. Shannon was much closer now, only twenty feet away. Brandon readied himself to strike…
And then the impossible happened.
Virgil blinked. Brandon did a double take, and the dead man’s eyes remained not only open, but alert. Remembering Bob and Roy, Brandon prepared to fight Virgil as well. But the pale-skinned man simply pushed his arms underneath himself, then grunted as he stood up.
Shannon backed away a few steps. Brandon opened a sliver of space where the edges of the tablecloth met so he could glimpse more of what was happening.
Virgil stepped forward. Shannon assumed a defensive posture. She made no move to shoot him, though. They stared at each other for several moments as Frankie Valli continued his jovial song, which clashed with the apparent faceoff that Brandon was now witnessing.
“You,” said Shannon, in astonishment.
Virgil nodded at her. “You,” he said.
Shannon shook her head in what looked like awe. “I didn’t believe it when I was told you might show up here. But here you are. In the same body as last time, no less.”
“Who told you I might show up?”
Shannon broke her gaze and glanced back toward the dining hall.
Virgil continued. “Are you working for someone?”
“No.”
“You’d have no way to know on your own that I’d come here. This is about more than mere revenge, isn’t it?”
“This is about me taking my rightful place among the greatest of all time, and you fading into the dustbin of history where you belong.” Shannon called over her shoulder: “Hecthes! Donundun! Thorn is—”
Virgil plowed into her, slamming her body into a case of golfing awards, shattering its glass. “Brandon!” Virgil called. “Up the stairs! The boardroom!”
Brandon didn’t have to be told twice, nor did Heather: she ran out from beneath the table before he did. As the chorus of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” resounded from the speakers in the dining hall, the newlyweds darted up the open staircase together.
Once on the second floor, Brandon turned to watch the fight in the lobby. Virgil had smacked the gun out of Shannon’s hand, but in one swift move, she grabbed his arm and dislocated it, then delivered a crushing blow to his ribs. Brandon heard the crack from up on the second floor. Just as he thought Virgil was done for, the man braced himself against a pillar, then kicked Shannon hard in the chest, cracking some of her bones as well. She flew backward into the dining hall. Then Virgil fled after Brandon, wood shards bursting with every gunshot that hit the staircase around him. Brandon turned and raced after Heather.
The boardroom was a stately office suite on the country club’s second floor. Dusty old books that no one ever read lined its walls, and its single large window offered a spectacular view of the golf course that no one ever appreciated. For as long as Brandon could remember, the room had only been used by wealthy landowners, to formally discuss their real estate ventures and the occasional business partnership.
Now, it could serve as a bunker. It had only one entrance, and that entrance contained a double set of thick wooden doors that would be next to impossible to break through. Of course, whoever was attacking them could shoot out the window, but since the room was on the second floor, the attackers would have trouble getting up to them. In the meantime, maybe Brandon and Heather could devise a plan of escape.
Together, they ran across the interior balcony overhanging the lobby, then through the boardroom’s huge wooden doors. Brandon waited for Virgil to join them, then slammed the doors and locked them with a heavy sigh of relief.
•
Thorn had met Amy by chance, when her mother had gone to the house of a friend—one of Thorn’s charges at the time—to socialize. Thorn had grown bored with the conversation, so he’d wandered into his charge’s daughter’s bedroom. Madison, the girl had been named. She’d been told to play with Amy. The girls were both six years old, and the mothers had assumed they’d become best friends, like themselves.
“I know something you don’t know,” Madison said when the girls were alone.
“What’s that?” little Amy asked.
“If you take a little bit of salt, and you sprinkle it on top of your head, you can fly.” She whispered this last bit like it was a profound revelation.
At first, Amy was impressed. “Really? Whoa.”
“Yeah. I almost tried it and jumped off the bunk bed, but I got scared. Will you try it?”
“You want me to try and fly?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” The girls snuck out to the kitchen, nabbed some table salt, then sprinkled a bit in Amy’s hair. She climbed to the top of the bunk bed, but when Madison—and Thorn—prompted her to jump, she balked. “How do you know you can fly if you put salt on your head?” Amy asked.
“Well how do you know you can’t?” Madison responded.
“I don’t want to do it if I don’t know if it’ll work.”
“Trust me. I know it’ll work. I saw it work on someone in a movie.”
“But this is just normal salt. How do you know it’ll work for me?”
Madison stood up and put her hands on her hips. “I believe really strongly that it’ll work. That’s how I know.”
Amy peered over the edge of the bed at the floor, which must have looked very far away to a six-year-old.
Provoked by nothing more than Amy’s hesitation, Madison said, “You think you know everything, don’t you? I know a lot more than you.”
“No, I
don’t
know. That’s why I don’t want to jump.”
“Are you chicken?”
Ever the shy introvert, Amy kept her head lowered as she climbed down from the top bunk, shamefaced. “I’m really sorry,” she said.
Madison pushed her against the wall. “Gosh, you have no imagination. You must be a boring person. Maybe even a bad person. Why won’t you just believe me?”
Why indeed.
As a former Angel of Reason, Thorn had felt a kinship with the young Amy’s questioning nature. She was keen for a girl of six; even at that age, she’d resisted peer pressure better than most adults. Perhaps, the mighty Thorn had thought, he could wield Amy’s intelligence to effect her demise and the demise of everyone around her. He’d fantasized about how he could keep her questions from shining the light that all questions shine, and use them instead to control others through her. He’d known that, at the very least, it was his responsibility to stifle Amy’s curiosity so she’d never grow.
And now I’ve killed her.
As Brandon and Heather caught their breaths, Thorn tried to focus his mind on the task at hand.
What have I done? Oh, Amy…
“Brandon?” said an older man who’d been hiding in a corner of the boardroom. He stood, revealing a sharp kitchen knife in his hand. A woman slightly younger than him revealed herself as well. Wet tears covered her face.
Brandon ran to the man, and they embraced. “Tim, thank goodness you’re all right.”
“You too. Both of you.” Tim nodded to Heather.
“What’s happening?” the other woman said, her voice shaking.
“I don’t know,” Brandon said. “Everyone downstairs is dead as far as I know. How could this happen? Tammy, Shannon, Bob McKenzie. Why would they do something like this? They seemed so normal even ten minutes ago.”
“I don’t know either,” Tim said. “As soon as Bob started shooting people, Karen and I ran up here to hide.”
From across the boardroom, Thorn examined Brandon’s face. It wasn’t quite the face he remembered, though Thorn couldn’t be sure if the difference was due to genes or to life circumstances. This new face was smoother, less rugged, kinder. Thorn frowned at the memory of Brandon in the previous Sanctuary. What would his Big Choice have been? Thorn was saddened that he never got the chance to find out.
“Virgil, how are you holding up?” Tim asked.
When Thorn realized that Tim was talking to him, he decided to play the part. “I’m shot, but it’s not too bad. I think I’ll be okay for now.” Thorn’s grimace wasn’t entirely an act. Having left his own physical body by a tree in the countryside, he’d hoped to reach the humans before Marcus and his team murdered any of them… and now here he was, puppeteering the corpse of one of the targets he’d come to rescue. He couldn’t mourn Virgil as deeply as these humans who’d known him, but still, the man’s death stung, even among the memories of Amy that insisted on parading themselves through Thorn’s mind.
Brandon eyed Thorn warily, as if he didn’t quite believe him.
“Did Norma make it?” Karen asked.
Thorn had never cried before, but he pulled on the nervous system in Virgil’s dead body and used his sorrow over Amy to deliver his most convincing sob. “No. No, I don’t think she did.”
“Oh, Virgil, I’m so sorry,” said Tim. He moved over and placed a comforting arm around Virgil’s shoulders. Karen burst into tears.
“Don’t worry about me,” Thorn said. “We need to find a way out. That’s what’s important now. There are only six of them, I think. I’m sure we can outsmart them somehow.”
And why only six demons?
Thorn wondered. Marcus had brought a whole army to the previous Sanctuary. Whoever was in charge must have wanted to keep this operation under wraps.
Because I know things now. Marcus’s boss wants my knowledge to die with me. I’m not supposed to tell other demons what I know.
So why don’t I do exactly that?
No doubt the other five demons believed in the cause just as staunchly as Marcus, but getting through to only one of them might make all the difference.
“Does anyone have cell reception?” Brandon asked. “My phone isn’t working for some reason.”
The other humans shook their heads. “The land line up here is out, too,” Tim said.
Thorn kept quiet about the dead humans he’d found beneath a cell tower while on his way to the country club. Marcus had arrived in the Sanctuary later than Thorn had, but he’d been speedy, and he wanted police showing up just as little as Thorn did.
“Thorn!” Marcus called from somewhere in the lobby, in the spirit realm so that only Thorn could hear.
“What do you want?” Thorn called, also in the spirit realm. In answer, a salvo of bullets pierced the window on the far end of the room. The humans threw themselves to the floor.
“You’re cornered, Thorn! Why not save us a few minutes of blowing out that window and open those doors now, huh?”
Thorn realized that Marcus was right. He’d planned to barricade the window with the large conference table in the room’s center, but that would only hold the demons off for so long. He needed a new strategy.
“Tim, can I have your knife?” Thorn asked with Virgil’s voice.
“Uh, sure. What for?”
Thorn took the knife from Tim and motioned for Brandon to follow him to the doors. “Brandon, come here.”