I told You Thorn couldn’t be trusted
, she wanted to say.
Why did You have to bring Amy into it?
she wanted to say. But Almighty God was her king, and she would not raise her voice against Him no matter how breathless and hurt she felt at the girl’s demise.
Lord, I am Yours. Keep me safe and give me Your strength.
“Yes, Lord?” she said.
“If Thorn somehow gets out of that Sanctuary alive, I think we know exactly where he’ll go next.”
“Atlanta.”
“Yes. I need you to go back there with a contingent of angels. Post guards by as many transit doors as you can.”
“Lord, with respect, I was planning to join the others and pursue him to the new Sanctuary.”
“We need as many angels as possible in Atlanta in case a manhunt is needed. Pleurian and the other leaders there have already been alerted, but you have command experience, and you know the city well. I need you to make preparations.”
“But I know Thorn. I know how he thinks. I can hunt him better than anyone.”
“Thilial, he destroyed our way into the Sanctuary. It might take all day before we can navigate a new path. I’m aware that you know Thorn well, but unless you know exactly which doors currently lead to his present location, the task for which you’re most qualified lies in Atlanta. Go there now.”
God’s orders severely disappointed Thilial, but she knew better than to argue. “Yes, Lord.”
•
Thirty minutes later, Thilial was flying through a warehouse in the Atlanta quarantine zone, shouting orders, ensuring that the bustle indoors was hidden from the demons who were always loitering outside, and making all sorts of preparations in case Thorn should reach Atlanta. She sent scouts into the Corridors—the network of dark hallways and transit doors between Heaven and Earth—and she made sure all the angels finished any pressing business with their charges throughout the city. She even snuck underground and across the street to overhear the day’s demon gossip.
Thorn was dead, they all said. He’d “perished in the Sanctuary.” Several of the city’s top demons were fighting each other for the right to succeed him. And apparently the Atlanta Judge had gotten into some kind of fight. But no demons were actively trying to aid Thorn, and that was all Thilial cared to know. She dropped underground and flew back to the warehouses.
As an Angel of Truth, Thilial had journeyed all over the world, helping to devise and implement God’s strategy on the ground. Along with the Angels of Love and the Angels of Reason (and formerly the Angels of Judgment), Thilial’s order was considered one of the three dominant orders of cherubim, thus allowing her the privilege of travel. She’d been in Novosibirsk last year, and in Xi’an the year before that. As an administrator, she rarely stayed in one location more than two years: she came, ensured all was running smoothly, and then went.
She’d never expected to run into Thorn again—and so close to Tugaloo! Seeing him in the church last December had shaken her. Her thoughts had dwelled on Thorn for days afterward, then weeks. She hated him: his arrogance, his cruelty, his callousness. She wanted him dead more than God wanted him dead. More even than Marcus wanted him dead.
These venomous thoughts roiling through her mind, Thilial found herself in a corner of a warehouse she hadn’t visited in months: a corner containing a special crate, near the back of one of the smaller stockrooms. The place was lit by a single dim fluorescent light that barely even illuminated the dust wafting through the air.
No, I shouldn’t look at the crate. I shouldn’t be in this room when I’m mad.
But temptation got the better of her. She opened the crate and reached inside. When her hand reemerged, it held an immense, lumbering sword, nearly as long as Thilial was tall. Despite its size, it was a simple-looking thing. Whatever cloth had once clothed its hilt lay in tatters now, rotted through, and the rust of many ages covered the blade, leaving only the barest tendril of original metal still visible. Ugly and ungainly, the weapon was a relic of the ancient days when such things had been used by angelkind.
Its fine edge still looked sharp enough to slice through diamond, though. The sword was a fearsome thing, and thus had it been named. Fear, the sword was called. The oldest sword known to exist.
“My, that’s a sight,” said a voice from behind Thilial.
She spun around to find an angel marveling at her weapon. He’d frozen in mid-gait, as if he’d just been passing by when he’d suddenly been awestruck by the sword. He was an older fellow—very old, in fact. Wrinkles adorned his skin and his wings sagged a bit. He looked as if he might have been around to see Fear during its glory days.
“It’s just a keepsake I like to admire now and then,” Thilial said. “It certainly is a sight, though.”
The elderly angel stepped toward the blade, walking cautiously, as if trying not to trip over his white robes. “May I touch it?”
“Please.”
He did so, running his frail hand along the rusty blade, all the way down to the cross-guard. “Can you wield it?”
“Ha. I suppose I could, though I’ve no idea why I’d want to.”
“For Thorn,” the old angel said, and he was right. “A public execution with the likes of this would send quite a message to Atlanta’s other demons.”
“That it would. Though God would never allow such a thing.” As the angel squinted through age-worn eyes at her sword, Thilial squinted back at him, trying to place him. “Have we met before? I don’t think I’ve seen you around here.”
“Ah, no. I’m Leregnon, an Angel of War. A group of us was sent here to plan for contingencies.”
“Yes, I’ve heard. I’m Thilial, an Angel of—”
“Oh, I know who you are. You don’t have to introduce yourself. We’re all behind you, you know. We all want to see Thorn suffer for what he did to Ezandris.”
“You knew Ezandris?”
“Indeed. He was an acquaintance. I mostly knew him through friends. His breakdown was such a shame. I was sad to hear he’d been murdered.”
“Yes.”
As much as anything else Thorn had done to Thilial, the memory of her friend Ezandris stung as fiercely as the blade she carried. She paced to some boxes and sat on them, placing Fear athwart her lap.
Leregnon must have noticed her somber mood, because he unfolded a nearby chair, sat across from her, then spoke in a chipper voice. “Tell me the story of your sword. Where does it come from? What’s its history?”
“Ha. I’m sure you have things to do. I won’t waste your time with an old sword story.”
“Ah, we both have things to do. The Man Up Top has us working our asses off. We deserve a break.”
“I suppose so.”
“So tell me about your sword.”
Thilial shrugged. “Its name is Fear. I’ve been told it was made in Heaven’s great forges at the beginning of time. Some say Tobrius smithed the blade himself, and that when he was slain during the War in Heaven, this was the blade he wielded. A hundred years ago, I actually had the metal tested, and it’s no metal known to angels or humans.” She hefted the blade and arced it through the air in a figure eight. “It’s stronger and lighter than any other metal, and it allows the sword to affect the physical world and the spirit worlds simultaneously.” To demonstrate, she let the sword fall to the floor. It clattered against the cement in the physical realm.
“Fascinating,” Leregnon said.
Thilial grabbed the sword and placed it back into her lap. “Over the course of history, Fear has become more of a prestigious antique than a practical weapon, especially after God declared an end to the war on demonkind. Countless angels have owned it. I’m only the most recent in a very long line.”
“How’d you come by it?”
“Oh, a superior gave it to me as a gift for my role in ending the legal slave trade. I’ve kept it close at hand in every city I’ve traveled to ever since. And that’s really all there is to say about it. I’m sure an Angel of History could tell us more, but I’ve never taken the time to check with one.”
“Well, you’re quite fortunate to own something like this.”
“Indeed. Now tell me a story about yourself. You’re an Angel of War—you must have seen some crucial historical events. I’m very young compared to you.” Such a statement might have struck a sour chord among humans, but angels revered their elderly. To admit one’s own youth was an act of deference.
“I’m no spring chicken, that’s for sure,” said Leregnon. “But truthfully, I’ve lived a rather humdrum life. I haven’t got many stories to tell.”
“I don’t believe that for a moment.” Thilial smiled a coy grin, though in truth she was just looking for a distraction from her thoughts of Amy.
I’d better find out when the funeral will be held.
“Come now, Leregnon. A story for a story. I told you of my sword, now you tell me of something from your life’s history. Your favorite story from the past.”
Leregnon glanced at the boxes, the drawers, and the shelves full of dusty old knickknacks around the room, as if looking for a way to escape Thilial’s request. Apparently he found none, and his eyebrows arched. Thilial couldn’t tell if he was angry, or deep in thought.
After several seconds, he finally said, “Well, I don’t have any interesting stories from my own life, but I do have a favorite story that I like to tell to anyone who will listen to an old-timer’s tale. I told a form of it to Ezandris, as a matter of fact.”
“Oh, now I have to hear it.”
Though anything that rekindles the memory of my dead friend is necessarily bittersweet.
“It’s a dark story, but it’s always captivated me.” He glanced again at the sword in Thilial’s lap. “I overheard it when I was stationed in the Carpathian Mountains, at the edge of Transylvania in the fifteenth century. I’d followed an old man out hunting with his grandsons, and around a fire one night, they heard the howling of wolves in the darkness. The boys weren’t scared of the wolves one bit though: in fact, they bragged to each other about how many they could kill. But the old man warned them that they should be very afraid of the wolves. And then he told them this folk tale, ancient even when I first heard it centuries ago.
“Long ago, in the world’s darkest forest, there lived a wolf named Othundro. Othundro was among the greatest of all the wolves. He was one of the strongest, fastest, and most vicious. But he wanted to become greater still. He had a rival, a wolf named Uthifel, with whom he fought for dominion of the forest. Othundro knew that if he could just get an edge over Uthifel, he could kill him. And if Uthifel died, Uthifel’s pack would abscond to Othundro, and he’d be the undisputed power in the forest.
“Othundro and his pack had eaten all of the other animals in the woods, so they began to prey on the livestock in the nearby town, pestering the villagers and frightening their children. One night, while his pack was feasting on a man’s cattle, Othundro left his pack and peered into the man’s house. By candlelight, Othundro saw how tall the man stood. How he walked around on only two feet, one in front of the other. Then with some effort, Othundro tried to do the same. He stood on his hind legs, put one foot in front of the other, and tried to stride as a man would. It was difficult at first, but Othundro practiced all night, even after his pack had returned to the woods without him. And by dawn, Othundro had learned how to walk like a man.
“The next night came, and Othundro’s pack was eating another man’s livestock. But Othundro went hungry that night, because he was again peering through the window, watching the man talk to his children and his wife. Othundro memorized every word and every part of every word that the man said. He listened to the man’s grunts and groans as he moved about his house. He listened to the man snoring and muttering in his sleep. And by the time dawn arrived, Othundro had learned how to speak like a man.
“The third night came, and Othundro knew he had much more to learn. But he was too eager, impatient, unwilling to just sit and watch any longer. So after his pack had left, he leaped through a window into the nearest house, and slaughtered the man there. This man had no family, so no one would notice he was gone. And when Othundro killed him, he was careful not to damage his skin. Othundro ate his insides though, starting with his brain and working his way down to the man’s bowels. Then Othundro crawled inside the man’s skin and sewed it up over himself. It took all night, but by dawn, Othundro had dressed himself up in the skin of a man.
“Instead of returning to the forest, Othundro decided to open the front door and walk through the town. He saw a baker selling bread, guards posted outside a nobleman’s keep, an older brother teaching his younger brother how to spar with swords. He walked among the everyday life in the town, and no one saw through his disguise. When he spotted a tavern, he went inside. He spoke with some of the men there, and still no one guessed at his camouflage. He even made friends with some of them, and over the course of the fourth day and the fourth night, he learned much from these men. They taught him how to make fire, and all manner of things that the other wolves—most notably Uthifel—could never think of doing. He went to the boys he’d seen earlier, and from them Othundro even learned how to use a sword.
“On the fifth day, Othundro at last returned to the woods to show his pack how great he’d become. But his pack only snarled at him. You see, Othundro was such a good liar, and he’d learned the customs of men so quickly, that his own pack mistook him for a man. He tried to tell them that he was Othundro, their leader, and that he was wearing the skin of a man, but the pack did not believe him. So he got down on his hands and knees, and he howled as loudly as he could. He made them follow him to a herd of wild aurochs and watch as he ripped out one’s throat with his bare teeth. He did many more things that only a wolf would do, and by dawn, his pack believed his story.
“‘The people in that town have always hunted us, and claimed to rule over the land that is rightfully ours,’ Othundro said to his pack. ‘They live in their luxurious buildings, while we have to live in the woods. Let’s go and destroy the town and kill everyone in it. I know how to make fire. I’ll burn all their houses, and you all can eat them when they come running out.’ The pack liked that idea, so that’s just what they did. Othundro ran around the backs of every building in the town and used a torch to light them all on fire. His pack surrounded the town and butchered every man, every woman, and every child who fled the flames. And during the carnage, Othundro used his new skill with a sword to kill the very boys who’d taught him how to use it.