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he threw her onto the bed face-first. She tried to cry out, but he climbed on top of her, covered her mouth with one hand, and undid his belt buckle with the other.
    •
    Thorn couldn’t stop Brandon, but neither would he keep watching the unthinkable act through the window. He rounded the southern face of the condo and sneaked down into the palms by the docks. He knew now that tragedy permeated the lives of the people upstairs. Only Heather seemed psychologically stable.
    Crystal’s case was beyond troubling, but it could possibly be mended before the night was through. How fitting that she’d given Cole Paradise Lost on this specific night! Thorn had read it ages ago, and although some of its details were preternaturally correct, he’d found its depictions mostly inaccurate, especially of the War in Heaven. Milton had given too much credit to the Enemy, and left out Marcus’s role entirely.
    Thorn saw echoes of himself and Marcus in Cole and Brandon: deeply close friends torn apart by circumstances, each now grappling for power over the other. Marcus, however, was more focused and methodical than Brandon, and therefore more dangerous.
    “Be seeing you soon,” Marcus had said to Thorn, just hours ago. Thorn dreaded Marcus’s arrival; he’d sooner let the demon army end his life than fall into Marcus’s hands. If it came to it, Thorn wouldn’t give Marcus the satisfaction of slaughtering him himself. Though he’ll have his hands in it regardless. If it weren’t for Marcus’s ploy, this army wouldn’t be here to kill me now.
    Thorn considered fleeing, but he didn’t know how to escape this place. If the humans died, the Sanctuary would end and he’d be free; but he’d abandoned his notions of killing them shortly after he’d arrived. Conversely, if the humans made their Big Choices and survived the Sanctuary, would Thorn go on living then as well? No demon who’d “failed” a Sanctuary had ever returned to Earth, so Thorn doubted he’d survive in that event, either.
    But perhaps there was another way out. The transit door through which Thorn had entered the Sanctuary had been destroyed behind him, but clearly there were other ways in. The demon army would leave guards by their door out in the sea, but maybe—just maybe—there was a third door in here somewhere. A door that would lead Thorn back to Earth.
    Such things were well hidden from demonic eyes, though, despite demonkind’s frequent discoveries of the temporary gateways. Thorn’s only real chance of learning a door’s location was by befriending one of his foes and asking for it. Fat chance.
    Five more demons had arrived since Thorn’s brief trip upstairs, and they’d now joined the first one with the scarred face, who was still toying with Virgil by the nearest pier. The guard’s eyes were glazed over, his posture relaxed, his lazy gait reminiscent of a zombie’s staggering in a horror film. Thorn had reluctantly deemed the man a lost cause as soon as the others had nabbed him.
    One slow step at a time, the guard wandered onto the pier, blindly following his unseen leader until he reached the walkway’s end, where only the water of the harbor and the bay beyond lay in front of him. Sheet lightning pulsed in the clouds as Virgil smiled, vaguely euphoric. Seeing whatever they want him to see.
    Thorn left the trees’ cover and submerged most of his body beneath the surf. His opponents didn’t see him. He edged closer until he was near enough to read the subtle struggle on Virgil’s face, as if the man’s own excessive happiness had terrified him. A single tear fell from Virgil’s eye. Then his body tipped forward, straight as a plank as it splashed into the water. Before long, the air left Virgil’s lungs, and he sank.
    He stayed under. Thirty seconds passed. Forty.
    Thorn had learned earlier that, despite his newfound powers in the Sanctuary, he couldn’t just make a human stab herself. Distraction was easy; deliberate persuasion