Never Just One Apocalypse

by Karen L Mead

  “Oh, get over yourself,” she snapped. “You know what? The greatest trick Devon ever pulled was convincing the world that anyone gives a damn. You’re boring.”

  He let out a low whistle. “That was pretty clever, and under pressure, too. I would be hurt, if I didn’t know for a fact that I’m actually very interesting.”

  “Send me home, now,” said Cassie, feeling her fear drift away. The situation had become so bizarre that she didn’t even know what to be scared of anymore. “Find a good shrink to help you get over that Oedipus Complex, and let me go home to take this stupid, god-forsaken test that I hate more than anything in the world.”

  “It is about time,” he said, looking up. “I feel like this place won’t allow intruders for much longer anyway.” He knelt down in front of her and looked into her eyes; his red eyes turned the falling snow around him light pink.

  “Don’t overthink the analogies part, that’s how they get you. At least that’s what they say, I haven’t even taken the PSATs.”

  The next time Cassie woke up, she actually was on the right couch. She immediately jumped up and went to take a shower, but no matter how hot the water was, it was impossible to feel warm, let alone clean.

  Chapter 24

  Dorothy was happy to hang out at The Daily Grind on Saturday while Sam was working. She stayed in a corner, drinking countless hot chocolates and reading magazines. Near lunchtime, Mike came in with his laptop and sat down at the table across from her; since he wasn’t undead, she didn’t seem to mind. The two of them made an odd pair.

  Not long after Mike, John Golding practically sprinted through the front doors. “I have it. I know what we need to do.”

  “Hello, kind sir. Would you like a beverage?” said Khalil. “Please keep all occult strategy talk in the back.”

  Sam waved Golding back behind the counter, and the two of them went into the break room.

  “Oh sure, Sam, I don’t mind covering the front for you for a few minutes,” Khalil called sarcastically over his shoulder.

  “What have you got?” Sam asked.

  “I was going through my books last night, and I realized that almost all of the most trustworthy texts I have originally belonged to Alfonse Liddell. But he has a lot of texts I never got a chance to look at, and I’m sure he’s read them all; he’s a scholar, not just a collector. If anyone’s going to know anything, about the Phantasms at least, he would.”

  Sam grimaced slightly. The prospect of dealing with any vampires that weren’t the Buckleys was unpleasant. Then he thought for a moment about what John had just said. “Wait, your books ‘used to belong to’ Liddell? Does that mean you stole them?”

  Golding swallowed and pulled at his wrinkled collar. “I didn’t steal them, not intentionally. But I did borrow a few, and I ended up severing all ties with him before I had a chance to properly return them.”

  Just then, the landline rang. Sam picked it up, and to his surprise, it was none other than Donatello Arrigio.

  “I’m going to ask you just once: Are you protecting a fairy?”

  “Yup.”

  “You need to transfer her to our custody. In a matter of hours, I can have—”

  “No.”

  “Boy, you cannot trust the fae, not a one; even you must know that.”

  “Oh, as opposed to you, who’s just so eminently trustworthy,” said Sam, starting to get angry now. “Tell me again, Don; why do you need a werewolf?”

  There was a pause as the Chairman rapidly did math in his head to try to figure out how much Sam now knew. “Sam, you have to understand—”

  Sam took the phone out of his ear and handed it to Golding. “Here, you talk to him. It’s not like he listens to me anyway.”

  Golding just listened for a while; apparently the Chairman hadn’t realized that Sam was no longer on the line. When he got a chance, he interjected.

  “Hello, Mr. Chairman? It’s an honor to speak to you like this, sir. You may remember me from Las Vegas, I had to slam into you to stop you from killing Cassie Tremblay, but I hope we can look past that—huh. He hung up.”

  Sam began cleaning some dishes. It wasn’t the part of his shift when he normally cleaned, but doing manual labor like this calmed his nerves. “Forget him, it’s not important right now.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Golding, cradling the phone in his hand. “What if he sends demons to take Miss Dorothy by force?”

  “Not gonna happen, he won’t risk Cassie getting hurt. I’ve got him between a rock and hard place for now; won’t last, but one problem at a time,” Sam said, thinking out loud. “So I have to go pay Mr. Liddell a visit. You’ll direct me to his place?

  “Ah, wait,” said Golding, hanging up the phone properly. “For one thing, you shouldn’t be the one to go; it looks weak. You can send me.”

  “No, he has the information I want, I’m going to talk to him. I don’t have time to waste on this protocol nonsense.”

  Mike walked into the break room. “Khalil sent me back here to tell you that if you’re goofing off for this much time, he wants a full hour for lunch.”

  Sam grimaced and turned up the water in the sink. “He’s an assistant manager, he can take as long a break as he wants! Anyway, let’s go as soon as my shift’s over. John, you can direct me there.”

  Golding put his hands in his pockets, looking sheepish. “Err, as much as you may not care for protocol, Liddell is an absolute stickler. And you’ll have a much better chance of getting complete information out of him if you provide him with a gift, as is the custom.”

  Sam turned off the water and turned around; he had a bad feeling about this. “What sort of ‘gift’?”

  Mike looked at Golding expectantly, making no move to leave the break room. No one bothered to shoo him out.

  Golding couldn’t quite meet Sam’s eyes. “A delicacy. A human they’ve never tasted before.”

  “Are you out of your tiny little rodent-teacher brain?” Sam asked, furious. “You honestly think we’re doing that?!”

  Golding made mollifying gestures. “It’s not permanent! A typical gift is you lend them the human for a few days…enough for everyone to get at least a taste. You would only give them the human permanently to seal some sort of deal for territory, or something to that effect.”

  This new information did not make Sam feel any better about the subject. “If you think there’s any way in Hell we’re doing that—”

  “Make me the gift,” said Mike suddenly.

  “What?” said Golding and Sam, turning to the teenager in unison.

  Mike straightened his thin-wired glasses. “If I’m there as a gift, no one will think it’s suspicious at all that I’m hanging around the place. All I need is a few minutes near a computer and I’ll have access to everybody’s files, including their email. So anything this guy doesn’t want to tell you, we’ll find out anyway.”

  The two men exchanged worried expressions.

  “Mike, these are very old vampires. I really doubt they discuss a lot of things by email.”

  “Actually, they do,” said Golding. “Liddell doesn’t do most of it himself, but he does have people to operate his computers for him. And the younger vampires of course use modern technology just like everyone else.”

  “You really could have kept that information to yourself,” Sam said to Golding through an angry, forced smile. “Mike, you’re not doing this. I’m not throwing a human kid into a nest of vampires. You could be killed.”

  Mike looked unimpressed. “In case you guys forgot, the world’s supposed to end any minute now. If this isn’t worth taking a risk for, I don’t know what is.”

  “He’s right.”

  “No he’s not, and this conversation is over,” said Sam. He stomped out of the break room to ensure they’d all have to stop talking about it.

  After Sam had made himself busy on the espresso bar for a little while, Khalil wandered over to the drink station in between customers. “Is this a normal event, l
ike territory negotiation or some shit, or is something big going on? I want to know how scared I should be.”

  Sam put a café mocha down on the table so hard that he broke the cup, barely suppressed a curse, and started the drink over again. “If you want out of this life, then get out, alright?”

  “Like it’s that easy.”

  “I didn’t say it was.”

  “Just answer me this: Does it matter where I move? Or am I just equally screwed everywhere, at this point?”

  Sam deemed that a reasonable question and gave it some thought.

  “I’d aim for somewhere with low population density.”

  Chapter 25

  Cassie decided to distract herself from cryptic warnings from future offspring by unpacking, which desperately needed to be done anyway. In her old room at home, her books had practically overflowed the small space, but it was beginning to look like all her volumes would only half-fill the giant, floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the living room, if even that. As she sorted books and shelved them, Miri was stretched out on the couch, watching a reality show.

  “Ooooh, this is bad, he found a raccoon in the kitchen. They find rats in these restaurant kitchens all the time, but you never see a whole raccoon family in there.”

  Cassie rolled her eyes, although considering how many food-related TV shows she watched, she didn’t really have the right to look down on Miri’s choice of programming. “Are you going to stop watching that and help me over here?”

  Miri crunched into a potato chip, transfixed by the screen. “No, because I know you. The moment I put a book on the shelf, you’re going to scream that it’s in the wrong place, and then you’re going to explain your whole complicated organizational system to me, and I’ll fall asleep.”

  “God, you’re useless,” Cassie murmured, but let it drop, partially because she didn’t really want Miri touching her books anyway.

  Teddy was trying to hand her books with his trunk. He kept dropping them, but eventually found a way to nestle them between his trunk and his mouth and place them in her lap. She appreciated the thought, but every book he handed her needed to have the cover wiped down with baby wipes to remove his drool, so he was really just making everything slower.

  The front door opened and closed, and Cassie turned to see that Aeka had re-entered the house. Wearing a tent-like t-shirt, baggy sweats, and oversized socks, she looked about as messy as an ethereally beautiful angelic creature could look, which wasn’t very. She was pulling the top off of a container of cherry ices. Another container of ices poked out of her side pocket.

  “Ooh, ice cream truck outside?” asked Miri, stretching.

  “The truck is there.”

  Cassie finished putting her old biology textbooks on the shelf and turned around to look at Aeka. “Hey, after you finish that, do you want to help me put stuff away?”

  “No,” said Aeka curtly, heading upstairs with quick, soft steps that barely made a sound on the hardwood floors.

  Miri snorted. “Typical.” She turned back to her show.

  “That head chef is lying, they do not clean that kitchen twice a week. That stove hasn’t been cleaned since at least the Reagan administration. There is no way they’re going to fix this tapas place in twenty-four hours.”

  Cassie sat back on the floor and pulled her knees up to her chest.

  “Miri, I have to tell you something.”

  Miri directed her eyes to Cassie but didn’t move otherwise.

  Cassie sighed. “Something terrible is going to happen next Saturday, when I take the SATs.”

  “Oh,” Miri said, sounding relieved. She shoved some more chips into her mouth. “Is that all? Of course it is.”

  Cassie sputtered for a moment, not sure how to respond to that. “Miri! This is serious!”

  “I know, but the thing is, kiddo, something terrible happens to you like twice a month, minimum. And the SATs are a really likely place for something to happen, with your luck. Eugene’s already on it: he’s called in reinforcements from out of town for next weekend.”

  Cassie lay back on the floor, enjoying the scent of the wood varnish that permeated the room. Lately, she found herself lying down a lot; being close to the ground felt safe, somehow.

  “So I’ve been beating myself up all morning, wondering if I should tell anybody about this when I don’t even know what’s going to happen, and it turns out everybody already knows.”

  “How do you know?” Miri asked, reaching down to get the last crumbs of potato chips out of the bag. “Did that girl from the future show up again?”

  Uh…let’s just go with that. “Yeah.”

  Miri threw the plastic bag into the garbage can all the way across the room. “Now, Cassie, you can’t just go getting all upset every time your kid comes back in time and tells you something horrifying. Demon kids need boundaries—"

  There was a loud crash, and Cassie sat up with a start. Teddy had knocked over a porcelain vase with his behind, and the valuable piece of decor was now sitting in several pieces.

  Why do I even have a fancy vase like that? That must have been here before I even moved in.

  Teddy made a distressed sound, and Cassie hopped up to rub between his ears. “It’s okay, Ted, it’s okay. That thing shouldn’t have been in here in the first place.”

  Miri went to pat Teddy’s back, but he shied away from her; he didn’t seem to want her to touch him. Used to it, Miri shrugged and sat back down on the couch.

  After Teddy was quieted, Cassie knelt in front of the broken vase, furrowing her brow. Since it had broken so cleanly, it looked fixable; a bit of superglue ought to do the trick. As she imagined how she would put the pieces back together, she idly reached out a hand and touched the cold, smooth surface of the porcelain. Out of nowhere, she felt an odd swelling sensation in her chest, then the vase quickly put itself back together.

  Cassie hopped up and jumped back from the vase, startled. Teddy was frightened and hugged her knees with his trunk.

  “What the….” Cassie started, looking down at her hands. Did I just do that?

  “You just reversed time,” Miri said slowly, as though she wasn’t sure she believed what she was saying. “Like he does.”

  Cassie shook her head. “No, that’s not possible. I can’t do that.”

  She turned around and looked at Miri, who was standing at attention, as though analyzing the situation for threats.

  “If it wasn’t you, then what just happened?”

  Cassie looked down at her hands again, feeling like she had a fever. “I’m a witch, but that’s not the kind of magic witches do. Only demons do that.”

  Miri walked closer to the vase, her small face perturbed. “Maybe your pet here—”

  “No, it wasn’t him, it was me,” Cassie said quickly. “I felt something. I did something, I just don’t know what. Or how.”

  “We have to tell Sam about this,” Miri said softly.

  Cassie made a grunt of frustration. “What am I supposed to tell him? That I’m using demon magic now, only I don’t know how? And that something big is going to happen on Saturday, but I have no idea what? I can’t tell him anything, because I don’t know anything! I never know what’s going on until it’s too late!”

  “If you don’t tell him, I will,” Miri continued, solemnly. “I have to. It’s my job.”

  Cassie just shook her head, unmoved by Miri’s declaration. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t want Sam to find out, but more that she didn’t think that telling him would accomplish anything besides worry him.

  When we were together, in that place, Devon[GW4] touched me. He touched my stomach. Could he have done something to me?

  “Only the Devil knows,” Cassie said flatly.

  Miri looked at Cassie, worried. “Uh, now the Devil’s involved? You’re going to summon the Devil?”

  “No,” Cassie said, brushing the dust from her books off of her black skirt. “I’m going to do better than that. I’m going to call the De
vil’s Grandma.”

  Chapter 26

  Sam felt a strange twinge while in the car on the way to the Liddells’ compound. He winced and put a hand on his stomach, surprised.

  “Are you alright?” asked John Golding, his eyes flicking from the road to Sam in the passenger seat.

  “Yeah. Probably just indigestion,” Sam muttered.

  I have a bad feeling that’s not really what it is, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.

  Mike was sitting in the backseat, his laptop making constant shrill pinging noises. Sam was starting to get a headache.

  “Can you turn that down? What is that, anyway?”

  “It’s an old Nintendo game from the ’80s. That’s why the soundtrack is kind of simplistic, because it’s old.”

  “Oh,” replied Sam, then thought about it for a moment. “If it’s an old Nintendo game from the ’80s, how are you playing it on your computer?”

  Mike was surprised. “You’ve never heard of emulation?”

  “What’s that?”

  Sam would learn to regret asking that question.

  “It’s a way to play old video games on your PC. I have an emulator from practically every system released from the ’70s through 2010 on this computer, so I can pretty much play anything.”

  “I see,” said Sam. He didn’t particularly care about video games, but had an odd inkling that this conversation might be significant for some reason. “Is that…is that legal?”

  “Weeeeeeeelllllll,” Mike began, making a slightly pained expression. “It’s complicated.”

  “So, illegal, then,” Golding said in a flat tone.

  Mike resumed playing the game, talking while he typed. “Not really. Every single emulator I have on here is 100 percent legal. There are no laws against having these programs installed, at all.”

  “Then why is it complicated?”

  “Having the games is illegal.”