Never Just One Apocalypse

by Karen L Mead

  “No, you may not, Hunter!” Annette shrieked. She was pale, but otherwise seemed calmer than Sam would have expected. She scowled and turned to her husband.

  “This is all YOUR fault.”

  “WHAT?” Sam and Cassie blurted out simultaneously.

  Annette pointed a finger at Jon and continued. “You were the one who wanted the house on Meredith Street. You were the one who insisted we take that loan.”

  “Oh please, I was the one? You were the one who said you would die if you had to live in that ‘rat trap’ on Hazelwood!”

  “Yes, but then I changed my mind, remember?”

  “So what? It was too late by then! I’d already taken his money!”

  Sam looked down at Cassie. “I’m not following this,” he murmured.

  Cassie cleared her throat. “Wait, Mom, Dad…you already know about demons?”

  “Yes of course, dear, how do you think we paid for our first house?”

  Annette shook her head angrily. “I knew it, I knew we couldn’t trust him. He said he would accept money, but what he really wanted was our first-born child. This is on you, Jon.”

  Jon stood up, livid. “You really think I would have agreed to the deal if I knew the price would be my own daughter’s soul? Annie—”

  “Uh, Mr. and Mrs. Tremblay,” Sam interjected, standing up himself. “I’m actually glad you already know about demons, because that makes life easier, but I assure you: whatever deal you two made in the past, it had nothing to do with Cassie and me. You didn’t make any deals for your daughter’s soul.”

  “You would say that, wouldn’t you?” said Annette.

  Jon picked up a carving knife. “Can I duel you? Is that allowed?”

  “…what?”

  “A duel, for my daughter’s freedom. If I win, you leave Cassie alone. If you win, you can…you can have my soul.”

  “A duel, a duel!” yelled Hunter. “Kill ’em Dad!”

  “Who wants your soul?” Sam exclaimed, getting annoyed. “And I thought you liked me!” he said to Hunter.

  Cassie’s brother just shrugged, like what do you want from me? I just live here. The cornstalk was still burning.

  Just then the doorbell rang. Everyone looked out to the living room in surprise. Annette recovered first.

  “One of your friends? Satan, perhaps?”

  “I don’t know Satan personally,” Sam muttered, then made his way toward the living room. “I’ll get this. If it’s anything dangerous, they’ll have to deal with me[GW3].”

  As Sam excused himself, Annette turned to her daughter.

  “A demon, hmm? You couldn’t just be having a fling with an older man, like a normal, stupid teenaged girl?”

  “It wasn’t on purpose, Mom! It just kind of happened.”

  “I’ll bet he’s a really pathetic demon too, one of the ones who doesn’t even get invited to those parties they have in Vegas all the time.”

  “No, Mom, actually it’s the opposite. He’s one of the most important demons in the world.”

  There was a significant pause.

  “Wait, what? Start from the beginning. Tell me everything.”

  Sam smirked as he looked through the peephole.

  Oh, so now everything’s okay with her, huh?

  “Serenus!” he exclaimed and threw open the front door. He grabbed the older man in a bear hug.

  “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you for a month, I keep getting your voicemail.”

  “Ser!” yelled Cassie, running out of the dining room. She stood up on tiptoe and kissed him on the cheek.

  The professor looked slightly sheepish. “Sorry, I’ve been a little busy.”

  “What brings you here?” Sam asked.

  It would be one thing for him to show up suddenly at my apartment…but Cassie’s house? Why?

  Ser turned to the side and gestured behind him, where a large vehicle was parked by the curb. The van was emblazoned with the Sterling Zoo’s logo.

  “Uh-oh…” said Cassie, taking a step back.

  “As you may have already surmised, I am here to deliver an elephant.”

  Chapter 12

  After greeting Serenus, Cassie noticed a distinguished-looking man with hints of gray at his temples standing a few yards behind the professor. Cassie was sure she recognized him, but wasn’t sure from where. Somehow, Serenus had already launched into a lecture.

  “—doesn’t confirm my theory about Sympathetic Field Conversion, but it’s certainly compelling evidence. See, animals always give us such disappointing results when we test for magic, most have simply given up on it. But I’ve been saying for a long time that it’s possible that animals have dormant magic, and need to be exposed to a magical field on the same wavelength—for lack of better terminology—before their magic activates. I believe that’s what happened with you and that bat, and now apparently this creature has responded to Cassie, and—”

  “How do you even know about this?” Sam asked. “You’ve been out of contact.”

  The professor rolled his eyes. “Even I have been known to go on the internet from time to time, Sam.”

  “You saw those videos?” Cassie said. It was a pointless question, since he obviously had, but she didn’t know how else to enter the conversation.

  “Cassie, it’s marvelous!” said the professor, his eyes practically glowing with excitement. “Do you know how rare cases of magic use by non-human creatures are? Do you have any idea?”

  “Is Teddy okay?” asked Cassie, feeling a strange pull on her stomach. She looked past Serenus out the open door, toward the van.

  “We brought him with us,” said the other man.

  Cassie squinted at the man, then remembered watching the news report with Mike and Jay at the cafe. “You were on the news. You’re from the zoo.”

  Cassie heard footsteps as her parents, and Hunter, came to stand behind her. The zoo executive cleared his throat.

  “Darrell Moore, Zoo Operations. Look, I don’t know how much of this story I’m willing to believe,” he said, with a dark glance at Serenus, “but I don’t know what else to do. At this rate, this animal won’t last the week. Either he’ll starve to death, or the other elephants will kill him.”

  “Kill him?” said Cassie, suddenly feeling like the food she had just ate was about to come back up. “Why?”

  “No one knows. But his herd—the other elephants in the enclosure—they’ve rejected him. He won’t eat, won’t sleep, and his own mother tried to step on him. We had to remove him for his own safety.”

  “Step on him?” Cassie parroted again, feeling bile build in the back of her throat. It’s bad enough that all this stupid magic has to screw up my family; now it’s destroying the families of other species too?

  “I was preparing to have him sent to the sanctuary for injured elephants in Tennessee,” said Moore. “But then Professor Zeitbloom here dropped in with all these documents about his magical theory, and—it made sense. God help me, but after what I’ve seen with Teddy, it makes sense to me.” He shook his head, as though he himself couldn’t quite believe what he was saying. “In any case, if the professor is right, then sending him to the sanctuary won’t do any good. He needs you.”

  Cassie pushed past Serenus and Moore; no one stopped her. She ran down the driveway, feeling as though her heart had leapt into her mouth. When she reached the van, with the zoo’s logo proudly emblazoned on its side, she put a hand on the door.

  If only I wasn’t at the zoo yesterday, this never would have happened. It’s not my fault, I didn’t MEAN to do it, but if I had just been sick that day....

  “Hang on, you still need me to open it for you,” Moore said in a gruff voice, coming up behind her. He jangled his keys and unlocked the door, and Cassie jumped into the van as soon as he was out of the way.

  The back of the van was padded and largely empty save for its occupant, clearly meant for transporting animals to and from the zoo. Teddy lunged for her as soon as she e
ntered—he had clearly sensed her coming before the van was open—but there was a sharp sound of metal-hitting-metal, and he stopped with a tripping motion, a few feet from her. Too weak to trumpet at her arrival, he still lifted his trunk skyward, as though celebrating.

  Cassie glared at the zoo director over her shoulder. “You put him in restraints?!”

  “He’s been acting erratically, it’s standard for any large animal,” said Moore with a barely-there shrug. “Go to him and see if you can get him to eat any of the greens next to him. I want to see how he reacts.”

  Cassie hesitated for only a moment, then closed the distance between herself and the elephant. Slowly, she knelt down next to him, and gasped when he immediately collapsed to the floor and put his head on her lap. His trunk moved all over her, smelling and touching, as though assuring himself that she was really there. For a few moments, she just stroked his head, marveling at the strange combination of roughness and softness that defined his thick skin. Once he seemed to have calmed down a bit, Cassie picked up one of the green plants on the floor and gently steered it toward his mouth. He chewed it quickly (or at least it seemed quickly to Cassie; she wasn’t sure how fast elephants usually ate), then tugged on the fabric of her dress with his trunk.

  “I think he’s asking for more food,” said Cassie, and Moore nodded, watching his animal carefully. Cassie picked up another green and fed it to the ravenous youngster, then another.

  Sam entered the van behind Moore, who moved to make room for him. “Serenus is helping your parents understand the situation right now.”

  Cassie nodded as she fed Teddy. Thank goodness something is going right.

  Moore sighed. “That settles it, I have to leave him with you, or else he’ll probably starve himself to death. But how are you going to keep him? I can tell you how to take care of him, but keeping a grown elephant in your house—it’s just not possible.”

  “Well, I guess we could curse him so that he doesn’t grow past the size he is now,” said Sam, stroking his chin. Cassie shot him an angry look.

  “What, you think I want to? How else are you going to keep an elephant as a pet?”

  Moore pulled on his collar, loosening his tie. “Curses, hmm. So that’s all real, is it? Never mind, I don’t think I want to know. After tonight, I’m going to drink a lot of Scotch and try to forget this all happened.”

  “I recommend that,” said Sam.

  There was silence in the van, except for the sound of Teddy chewing all the greens Cassie could stuff in his mouth. As he regained his strength, he began making soft noises; Cassie didn’t speak Elephant, but she was pretty sure the sounds he made indicated contentment. After all the greens on the floor were gone, Cassie returned to petting him gently, then sighed as he appeared to fall asleep with his large head still on her lap.

  “Great, now I can only look at apartments that allow pets,” she mused.

  “I think an apartment is out of the question now,” said Sam.

  “I know that. I was kidding.”

  “Elephants sleep communally; he probably won’t get to sleep without you,” Moore warned.

  Cassie ran her finger along the outside of one of Teddy’s ears, which seemed to tickle him a little. “I guess we could sleep in the backyard tonight. That way he won’t break any furniture.”

  “You’re going to sleep outside?” asked Sam.

  Cassie shrugged. “I have a sleeping bag, left over from Girl Scouts. It’s warm enough tonight.”

  “Camping!” exclaimed Hunter, suddenly jumping into the van. “I’m camping too.”

  “Well, good for you, young man,” said Darrell Moore. He was starting to sound very tired.

  Cassie turned back to look at her brother. “How are Mom and Dad taking all this?”

  “They’re really confused, but the professor is helping a lot. Mom’s calming down.”

  That won’t last.

  “Listen, Hunter, tell Dad to bring the camping stuff out into the backyard, okay? I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Hunter didn’t seem to be listening to her. “Are you going to name him?”

  “Huh? He already has a name. It’s Teddy.”

  Hunter made a pouting expression that made him look about five years younger than he was.

  “We don’t get to name the little elephant?”

  “Hunter, go help Dad put up the tent!” Cassie snapped, and her brother took off.

  Sam knelt down and talked to her quietly. She was still on edge around him, but that didn’t matter: she was used to her feelings toward him being mixed. They still had a level of intimacy that she had with no one else; they had been through too much together.

  “Are you sure this is alright? He’s heavy. What if he rolls over on you?”

  Cassie shrugged. “He’s an animal familiar, right? Would Vladmira ever hurt you?”

  “No,” he admitted.

  “I don’t want to wake him now that he’s sleeping, but we have to if we’re going to move him to the backyard.”

  “How ARE we going to move him?” asked Sam.

  Moore chuckled dryly. “That’s easy, nudge him to wake him up, then have the girl go around back. He’ll follow her. Trust me on this.”

  Chapter 13

  It was a while before Corianne found the realm with the icy castle again, though not for lack of trying. For some reason, she kept ending up in summer realms, where the sand burned her toes and millions of hermit crabs scampered about. What was cool about the beach realms was that, sometimes, they had little shops that sold iced drinks made from fruit that didn’t exist on Earth. She could taste them in her dreams, but when she woke up, she could never quite remember the flavor. Sometimes the sea itself was drinkable, like a blue cream soda, and the sand smelled strongly of cinnamon and sugar, but those realms were so far out that she started getting nervous that she was traveling too far, even for her. She was relieved when she found herself in Aeka’s realm again, because that meant she was going in the right direction: back to her own room.

  She ran along the top of the castle wall, shattered ice crystals surrounding her with blue powder, looking for her aunt. However, something was different from last time; Aeka was nowhere to be found along the wall. Corianne could have tried to enter the castle itself, but she sensed there was nothing there…that if she tried to walk too far into the castle, it would all just evaporate, and she’d be back in one of the sandy realms where the sun hurt her eyes. The castle’s façade was like a set in an elaborate play; only the wall mattered, so only the wall was there.

  She exhaled and watched her breath crystalize into pretty azure waves, then looked down from the castle and to the snow below. There was a few hundred feet of empty land, filled with waist-deep snow, surrounded by an abundance of icicle-laden evergreen trees. There seemed to be nothing there except heavy snow and quiet forest, but she thought she could hear something from further away, so she resumed balancing on the castle wall, carefully making her way forward. As she drew closer to the sound of the conflict, the wall was fortified with spikes—icicles, really—which she jumped over with great care. At home, it would take a lot of magic for her to be able to jump over an eight-foot spike, but here, it was as simple as pushing off with one foot; gravity here was a bit floaty, and her skirt puffed up on the way down, slowing her descent.

  When she finally reached the source of the sounds she was hearing, she almost wished she’d ditched this realm for an empty one of sand and surf. It was Aeka, fighting in the field below. Her opponents were large, cadaverous, shuddering things; they were vaguely humanoid, but none of their parts seemed to be in the right places—the one that Aeka was current impaling with her spear had its pelvis where its heart should be. All of them were long-limbed, but those limbs were only partially covered with skin, exposing bones and naked muscle, which shimmered in the freezing air. Corianne squinted to try to get a better look at the creatures, but it was to no avail; they seemed to be vibrating every which way at once. T
rying to focus on any one of them did nothing but give her a headache.

  Somehow, Aeka could see them fine, since she was hacking them up with ease. Using both her lance and her sword, she hacked off limbs and bulbous protrusions that might be heads, smearing the snow with rivers of reddish-purple blood. In her silver armor, still untouched by gore, she was making movements more swift and precise than any dance, her grace standing out all the more against the hideousness of the creatures that surrounded her. There was nothing ostentatious about her movements; she wanted to kill these things, and every move was clean and efficient.

  Still, as fast as Aeka was moving, with two blades at once, she was badly outnumbered. Corianne gasped as a creature that seemed to be all exposed ribs and distended abdomen crept up behind her, while Aeka was severing the arms of another opponent. Pointing her fingers like a gun, Cor made a popping sound with her lips and hurled a curse at the monster, whatever it was. The curse seemed to confuse the creature, making it pause, still shuddering, and giving Aeka enough time to whirl around and sever its spine in two places at once.

  Corianne bit her lip in frustration; a lot of things were easier here, like jumping high in the air, but some things were harder. At home, one of her curses would have blown anything to bits, whereas here, curses were weak little things; the barest suggestion of what they could be. Of course, if she were in her own realm, she’d never see creatures like this; at least, she hoped not.

  As deadly as Aeka was, creatures were emerging from the forest faster than she could kill them. Corianne did her best to help, hurling curses with two fingers at once, like she was dual-wielding revolvers, but the best she could do was stun the creatures temporarily; sometimes the curse just passed right through them, having no effect at all.

  Finally, Aeka had her back to the wrong creature at the wrong moment, and an arm that ended in a foot-long claw pierced her abdomen, nearly splitting her in half. She still fought for a few moments, throwing her lance with great force to impale a particularly large creature that had just emerged from the trees, but soon succumbed. As she collapsed, red blood poured from her midsection, mixing with the blue-purple blood of the creatures that had already stained half the snowy field. Several of the creatures converged on her prone form, ready to dismember her.