The Devil's Secret Read Free Page A

Sanctuaries are only there for your sake.” God plucked an orange from a passing tree and examined it as they walked. “If they die or don’t pass their test, I just send them to another Sanctuary, and then another, until they pass. Their lives on Earth are their true tests.”
    Using real humans as bait seemed grossly inhumane to Thorn. “Then why use real humans at all? Wouldn’t it be less cruel to them if You used fake humans to lure us in?”
    “You had to think you could earn prestige in Sanctuaries. You had to think I was protecting something valuable in there. The illusion had to be maintained. Ah, here we are. Behold.” God led Thorn off the gravel path to an expansive area with a marble floor and a large, paneless window that looked out on the city. Thorn stopped short when he walked through a screen of trees and saw what lay beyond the window. Outdoors, a short distance across the city, stood a great wall, hundreds of stories tall and immeasurably wide. It jutted into the sky and nearly blocked out the sun. Numbers and statistics covered its surface. Thorn looked closer, and saw that the digits moved and changed, yet never left the small boxes to which they were confined. The wall thus resembled a giant television screen, divided into tens of thousands of smaller screens, which seemed to alternate to a new set of figures every few seconds. It reminded Thorn of the New York Stock Exchange, which he’d frequented in the late eighties.
    God’s attempt to change the topic bothered Thorn, but the wall was so majestic that he didn’t retort. “What is this?”
    “A surveillance system of sorts. And also a map. Each box you see represents a Sanctuary. I built this wall and the entire Sanctuary system in the hope that many thousands of you would join us daily, but we only get one of you every few months.”
    Now this is downright strange. Thorn wondered if God realized how frightened most demons were of the mysterious Sanctuaries, and how this fear might be foiling His plans to reconnect with His fallen angels. Thorn was still having trouble processing the fact that God even wanted to reconnect. “Why didn’t You simply tell us that You wanted us back? Why go to all this trouble?”
    God chuckled indignantly. He tossed His orange upward then caught it as gravity pulled it back down. “Have you heard of a demon called Altherios?”
    “I knew him.”
    “He’s the reason why.”
    Seriously? “Altherios only killed a few dozen angels during his defection ploy. What were their lives compared to the millions of demons who’d return to You if You simply told us that You’ll let us defect?”
    “I—You see, I—” God exhaled sharply and shook His head in irritation.
    Thorn sensed that he’d touched on something—some secret that God was trying to keep hidden. He continued his onslaught of questions. “Why don’t demons who’ve gone over to Your side ever try to save the rest of us?” The question was rhetorical; Thorn already had a good guess about the answer. “Because it would make the right choice obvious and ruin Your precious tests?”
    The exasperated look on God’s face told Thorn that he was right.
    “Why did You create anything in the first place? Clearly not to bring glory to Yourself. An omnipotent being would have been able to satisfy all its needs and desires instantly, long ago, having no need to create—”
    “I’m not omnipotent!”
    Thilial and the bodyguards retreated a few steps at God’s outburst. The harpist, who had followed them here, stopped playing. The revelatory words hung between God and Thorn, the first piece in an enigmatic puzzle that Thorn had been trying to solve for months, if not centuries.
    Thorn was stunned. Yet the angels’ expressions remained stoic. They all knew. Of course they all knew.
    “I can’t see people’s thoughts, I can’t be present wherever I wish, and I don’t know everything, much less the outcome of My tests. I’m a limited god.”