Apocalyptic Fears II: Select Bestsellers: A Multi-Author Box Set

by Greg Dragon

  “You are free to return to your damaged world, Alysia, but now you have a weapon that can help you remove all of the lost.”

  “Must it stay this shape?” she asked, holding it up to examine its artistry. “It’s beautiful, but I still feel like it belongs to Dibolosa. I prefer a more elegant blade, and I would like it to be a single-sided weapon; it is what I am trained in.”

  “We will turn it into any weapon you want, Alysia,” he said, “but you must promise me that you will join us when it’s time. To defeat the lost, in my home world. You must take Dibolosa’s place by my side, but only after you have freed your world. Will you do this?”

  “Of course, Lord Chaos, but you still owe me a few things, too. Release my father and my friends from whatever prison you have them in. And there is one final request,” she said to him.

  “What is it? What is this final request?”

  “I want my handmaidens to accompany me back into the world to fight. I want them freed from whatever you have keeping them here, and I want them to be extended the same privileges that you have given me.”

  Chaos looked at the handmaidens standing next to Alysia and surmised that he wouldn’t be losing much if he agreed. “You can have them,” he said to her. “But come the time of the war, with the lost, I expect that as members of the Bloody Garot, you will answer the call to come and fight alongside your brothers and sisters.”

  “Of course,” Alysia said, and Isobel hugged her tightly.

  BOOK 4

  And Then All Was Lost

  Tracy stared at herself in the mirror, wondering if she had dreamt the happenings of the last week, or if she was dreaming now. She lifted up her shirt and the bruises from the kreple bites were gone. Her skin appeared smooth and was flawless with the exception of the three tiny cuts that were healing.

  “This is weird,” she said to herself. “Where did all my scars go?”

  “Jimmy, baby, can you come in here?” she shouted through the bathroom door.

  James Knight made a noise that sounded like he knocked something over and stepped in.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, and looked in the mirror at the areas she was touching. He took her shoulders and maneuvered her around to stand in front of him, and then he started to touch her abdomen while scanning her face for any signs of pain. “How in the hell did you heal so fast?” he asked her. He knelt and applied real pressure to the old wounds to try and elicit some sort of response from her.

  “That kinda tickles,” she said as he touched her, and then she wrapped her arms around his muscular neck. “I don’t know why it happened, or how I’m healed all of a sudden, but I’m not complaining.”

  James lifted her up and seated her on the counter. He kissed her deeply and held her close, happy she was no longer suffering from her infection. “The two of us must’ve been high for a week because wounds don’t heal that fast, and I’m sure that your bullet wound should be right here.” He touched her shoulder and shook his head. “World keeps on getting stranger and stranger by the minute.”

  “Let’s see you, now,” Tracy said. She pulled off his shirt and held him at arm’s length. “Apparently you didn’t get the healing miracle, baby. I’m so sorry,” she said as she touched the numerous scars that had come from the demon’s attack. “It really sucks what she did to you,” she started to say, but he shrugged and pulled his shirt down, looking as if the subject bothered him.

  “Just let it be. We have more pressing business,” he said to her.

  “Oh yeah, what’s going on?” she inquired, impressed at his patience with hearing her out first.

  “I need to look a little lower to see how you’re healing,” he said with a smile.

  “Oh, I forgot to check—“

  “Mr. Knight, I think you better come see this,” Jaime announced from outside the bathroom.

  James hesitated and sighed loudly. He looked into Tracy’s eyes, which seemed to beg him to stay and ignore everything, but he pulled away from her painfully and exited the bathroom.

  “What is it?” he asked, and Jaime motioned for him to join him by the window.

  When he walked over and peered outside, he felt his heart skip. There was his daughter, smiling from ear to ear, with three young girls standing next to her. She was dressed in red like the creature that had removed them from the house, and the girls were in all black. There was something different about her disposition, and it made him worry that what he was seeing was the result of a demon’s trick.

  “Tracy, CeeCee is here!” he yelled as he ran out of the motel room and down the stairs to meet his daughter.

  Alysia saw her father and ran to him. They hugged for a very long time before he released her.

  “Where have you been, baby girl?” he asked her. The girls began to giggle when he said it. He looked at them curiously and noticed they were dressed in what appeared to be a uniform.

  “It’s too long and too crazy to try to tell you now, Dad. There are parts of it that won’t make any sense, and parts that you are not going to like. Actually, you will want to change the reality of it, but—” She sighed and shook her head. “The fact that you all are safe, and I am able to be with you, makes it all worth it,” she said.

  James Knight touched her chin and looked into her eyes, noticing a difference in them that frightened him. There was a slight reddening to her iris, and she bared her teeth to show him her short fangs.

  He backed up from her with a look in his eyes that made her think he was about to cry. He seemed frightened and confused, but then he brought her in close and hugged her for what seemed like ages. Alysia could only imagine what was going through his head when he saw her like that. They had only ever killed the demons, some being freshly turned by the huntress. Now here was his beloved daughter – a woman who had gone missing for more than a week – surrounded by demon girls, and bearing features that were demon-like.

  “I’m still me, Dad, you don’t have to make the face. I swear I’m me. You can ask me anything. I’m still your CeeCee,” she said, holding his hand and bringing it back to her face.

  “You’re a vampire?” he asked her, and she smiled and shook her head.

  “I guess you can say I’m part demon,” she said to him sadly, and they began to walk back to the motel. “I am still your CeeCee, Dad, so don’t be afraid. But there is something bigger that I have been made a part of, and that is what you will not like.”

  James Knight didn’t say anything more as he led them up to the room. One of the drug addicts who lived in the room next to them was descending the stairs, and as he passed Isobel, he noticed she had a sword under her cloak. He began to laugh hysterically at it, because it was October, and he assumed that they were children coming back from trick or treating.

  The group ignored him and piled into the room, where they removed their cloaks and sat on one of the beds. Jaime backed up and stood next to the guns he had stolen, and Tracy came out and took James’s hand and stared at Alysia.

  “So, they finally got you?” Jaime asked as Alysia removed her cloak and handed it to Jasmine. “You’re here to tell us that you’re one of them now, and you need us to be your familiars,” he continued.

  She looked at him, fanned the air, and then took a deep breath to calm herself. She then told them the entire story of her kidnapping. She spoke of her recruitment into the Bloody Garot, and the war between the factions of demons. She spared no detail as she told them about her fight with Dibolosa, the assumption of the power, and what awaited her when the world was free.

  It took her half an hour to tell them everything and when she was finished, there was only silence and stares. Nobody dared to move or ask her anything, and Tracy turned to hug James and cry silently into his shoulder. Alysia drew her sword and handed it to her father; it was the one thing she could do to prove that her story was the truth. He held it up and observed the blade, then looked at the tsuba, the craftsmanship of it all, and the way it felt.

  “Who
made this for you, CeeCee?” he asked as he handed it back to her.

  “Chaos. It was melted down and forged to suit my skillset, and as you saw from the design on the blade, it is now a Knight family sword, through and through.”

  The sword had been fashioned into that of an old Japanese katana, but at the base of the blade was a bit of artwork that depicted an ethereal woman, reaching down to touch an armored warrior that looked very much like Alysia.

  “I take it, that’s your mother?” James asked with a smile, and Alysia nodded and sheathed the sword.

  “This is Isobel, Koko, and Jasmine,” she said, and each of the girls waved as she said their names. Tracy and Jaime were still in shock but they waved back to the girls. Tracy then went back into the bathroom, and Jaime sat down at the desk. “I know that this will take you all some time to process,” Alysia said. “But now we know why they have been coming for me, and why it has been more than luck keeping me alive. All that we love and cherish that was material to this world is gone, and all we have left is one another. I am still Alysia, still the girl who loves swords and video games. I would hate for you all to stop trusting me, or loving me, just because of what happened.”

  “So, what kind of powers do you have now, CeeCee?” Jaime asked as he rubbed his head and stared at her with a look of excitement in his eyes. She noticed that he had shaved his hair off, and smiled to herself at the influence that her father had had on him. The baldhead made his green eyes stand out more than when he had a crop of hair, and she found that she liked it quite a bit.

  “Well, I am faster in everything I do. I can make myself lighter when I jump; I have better balance, I can sense danger, and I can heal like the demons … it will take a lot for them to kill me,” she said.

  “Could you, like, give me some of that power?” Jaime asked. “I want to be a badass half-demon too. Do you bite us and drink our blood, or is there a ritual we have to undergo?”

  Alysia thought about his question and then looked at each one of the girls. They had been given the same sort of powers when they joined Chaos, but hers was enhanced by the Twilight Sword and the essence of Xatas. Was the power transferrable? Could they pull her father into the other realm to undergo the trials? She had no doubt that he could pass them and be on her level, but she didn’t know if she was allowed to recruit them into the order.

  “Isobel, are we able to create more like me?” she asked the dark-haired girl, but she shook her in earnest.

  “Only challengers to the champion are permitted the trials, CeeCee. Your friends would have to be chosen by Chaos, lord, and then brought to the underground chamber. That is the only access point to the world of Yalem, and the Bloody Garot trials.”

  Alysia felt a wave of depression come over her when Isobel said this. She had always suspected that it would be this way, but a part of her hoped—albeit selfishly—that her father could be cursed to fight in the other world so that they would stay together once it was all over. She looked at Jaime, shrugged, and apologized.

  “Oh, it’s all good, CeeCee, I figured I’d at least try. So, I have another question,” he said, this time getting up to sit next to her. “See, I’m not afraid of you, like Tracy over there.”

  Tracy shot him a glance that could cut a diamond, then took a seat on the other side of her and hugged her close. “You can be a real pain in the ass, do you know that, Jaime?” she said. “I’m glad you’re back, CeeCee. You had us all worried.”

  Alysia returned the hug and smelled her hair; it smelled of shampoo and something else she couldn’t put her finger on. The transformation had given her heightened senses, but she ignored it, letting her love and comfort pass through via the hug to a friend she had almost lost.

  “So, CeeCee, how does this master demon expect you to save the world? Do you have to fight for 100 years to kill every last demon? Or do you convert people into demons, like the girl we fought? Seems like an impossible mission to me,” Jaime said.

  “I would love to kill them all, Jaime, for what they did to my mother, but the truth, is we only need to take out their leaders. Six masters from the demon world will be summoned to the earth, and once we kill them the rest will return, and that will be the end of it,” she said.

  “You make it all seem so easy,” Tracy said. “I imagine these masters will probably be a big deal.”

  “They will most likely come with an army of demons and giants to protect them, plus a few other things that we haven’t run into yet,” Alysia said, smiling confidently.

  “How do you know where these Generals are?” James asked. “I highly doubt they are all here in New York, much less the United States, for that matter.”

  “With the change, I am connected to them,” Alysia said. “I can see them when they try to hide amongst us, I can hear them when they are close, and when Chaos learns of the location of a master, he will tell me, and then we can hunt it down.”

  “At least we have some direction now,” Jaime said. He got up and bounced around happily. “We can help you, get more people on our side, and take back the earth from these things, and then we’ll be world heroes, or something like that.”

  James Knight shook his head at Jaime’s shortsightedness, but he forced a smile in celebration of his daughter’s return. “You keep on getting lost, then returning to me,” he said to Alysia. “I’m just happy that you’re here. I don’t like that you made a deal with the devil, or whomever this Chaos is, but I am here for you, baby girl. Just promise me that you will never leave us behind again, if it is up to you.”

  “I promise, Dad,” she said to him, and then got up to give him a hug.

  ~ * ~ * ~

  Sleep did not come easily to the members of the Bloody Garot, and this was one of many side effects that Isobel had neglected to tell Alysia. She stood in the moonlight on the top of the motel roof and observed the lost demons running here and there along the streets. She found that she had a newfound hate for them, a growing ire that spawned from the tale her father had told her of how the demon huntress took over the young girl’s body.

  “You do that quite a bit, you know?” Isobel said as she pulled herself up unto the rooftop and walked over to Alysia. It was still hard to accept that she wasn’t a child, and Alysia took her hand and stood with her, looking out on to the streets.

  “What do I do ‘quite a bit,’ little one?” she asked.

  “You like to stand by yourself, like this,” she said, and took on a pose where her hands rested on the hilt of her sword and a serious expression crossed on her face. She stood like that without moving for a time, and Alysia found it amusing.

  “What? Nobody likes to meditate where you’re from?” she asked, and Isobel looked up at her and smiled.

  “Of course we do. Just not as much as you, though. Every time Jasmine says, ‘Has anyone seen Alysia?’ I know that all I have to do is to find the most private area around and you will be there, standing the way you always do.”

  “If you knew the weight that I have on my shoulders, you would be standing the same way too, Isobel,” Alysia said.

  “We have all had our share of loss, Alysia Knight. We have all lost family, friends, our way of life … our souls. We know the weight you bear and I won’t pretend that it is any less than you make it. I just don’t like seeing you sad, so I do things to make you laugh,” Isobel said. She walked to the edge and sat down so that her feet were dangling off of it.

  Alysia walked over and sat next to her, unfazed by the height of the building and the fall they would suffer if they weren’t careful.

  “Chaos chose you to become one of us, CeeCee. You did not volunteer to become the champion of your world. Tell your friends and father that it was not up to you. We broke your form and made you into our image. They should not treat you differently for it,” Isobel said in her animated way, and Alysia touched her shoulder to keep her steady.

  “Have there been many girls that you’ve had to train, Isobel?” she asked and the tiny girl nodded
and sighed.

  “Many trained, many died, and some became sisters,” she said.

  “How do you keep your sanity?” Alysia asked, trying to imagine the emotional baggage that Isobel carried.

  “Who is to say that I am sane?” she replied and smiled, showing her fanged teeth, which gleamed white beneath the hunter’s moon.

  “We’re going to win—” Alysia started to say, but her voice was cut off by a blaring alarm that seemed to come from everywhere. Not knowing what to think, she rolled backwards and stood up in one motion, and then pulled Isobel up to join her. They hopped down onto the staircase that sat behind the building and then rushed inside to find the others.

  “That alarm is a warning for something major!” James said. “We need to get underground, and we need to hurry.”

  Without objecting or asking questions, they gathered their supplies and descended the stairs. James took point and began to sprint, and they followed closely behind, keeping an eye out for demons and kreples.

  “The alarm is warning of something massive incoming. It could be the bomb that we were supposed to wait out in the bunker for.” he said.

  “Why don’t we get to the closest one, now?” Tracy asked.

  “The closest one is ten miles away,” he replied, and they all grew quiet once again, hoping he had a good plan.

  When they reached the edge of the city, James took them into the subway underground and began running on the tracks. “Get to this level and keep your heads,” he ordered, and they all hopped down and followed him into the darkness.

  They kept on running with no end in sight. Alysia, who would normally be frightened and in a slight panic over the bomb, was surprised by how calm she felt. Her legs were moving rapidly and she slowed down just enough to stay behind her father, but Koko, Isobel, and Jasmine were ahead of him, swapping places and playing around like children at recess.

  “Demons are fast,” Jaime remarked between labored breaths, and Alysia looked at him and nodded her head in agreement. “Can you move that fast?” he asked and she once again nodded, causing him to laugh and shake his fist in approval.