Never Just One Apocalypse

by Karen L Mead

  “I’ve waited for this moment for so long, I almost can’t believe it. That you’re finally here, in the flesh. It’s a good thing you could stand to lose about twenty pounds, otherwise you’d be too beautiful to be real and I just wouldn’t believe it.”

  “Hey!” Cassie cried out, offended.

  Who does he think he is, making snide comments about my weight?

  “The fact that you can’t appreciate this kind of luscious thickness is just further proof that you belong down here forever,” Sammael said in a solemn tone.

  Cassie’s jaw dropped.

  Hell: the place where men discuss your body right in front of you like you’re not even there. Also, there’s fire and crap.

  “Never pegged you for a chubby-chaser, Grandpa. In any case, there’s work to do. We must get started.”

  He rubbed his hands together in glee.

  “Get started doing what?” Cassie asked. It was the kind of question you asked knowing full well that the answer isn’t going to be anything remotely good, but you have no choice but to go through with asking it anyway.

  He grinned, and the fire reflected off of his pointy teeth, making them glow a golden color.

  “Why, procreating of course. How else do you expect me to make an Antichrist?”

  Chapter 40

  Khalil looked David Alderton over one more time and sighed.

  “Okay, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but you seem to be part of the club. Plus, you have a British accent, and that makes you seem important, so you can come in back.”

  When Khalil brought the boy to the back, Sam jumped to his feet.

  “Why did you let him in here?”

  “Because of this,” the boy said, removing the rod completely from his jacket.

  “This is the Rod of Moses, passed down from Moses’ brother Aaron to his descendants. My mission is to smuggle this out of the UK and bring it over to you all. Dr. Cordley sent me.”

  “Dr. Cordley?” Sam repeated, surprised. “What does he have to do with this?”

  “He’s only trying to stop the Arcane Phantasms from killing all of us. Thought you might be on the same page with that.”

  “Arcane Phantasms?” Khalil said. “I think I, uh, missed a few meetings….”

  Sam ignored Khalil and reached for the rod, but stopped short of touching it.

  “How on earth did you get this out of Europe? The Court must have been watching the airports like a hawk.”

  “That’s because I didn’t go through an airport. Fisherman friend of the Doctor rowed me out to a fishing boat, where I stayed in the hold for five days. No airport security there.”

  “That explains the smell,” Dmitri mused.

  The boy reddened at that.

  “I did shower afterward.”

  “Sometimes one shower just isn’t enough; I know from experience,” Sam said. He moved to take the rod from the boy’s outstretched hand, only to let out a groan of pain once his skin touched the wood. When he looked down at his hand, it looked burned, like he’d just put his hand down on a hot stove.

  “Huh, interesting. I guess demons can’t touch it, if it’s a holy thing or whatever. You really should’ve known better, Sam,” Khalil said.

  Still in pain from touching the rod, Sam grimaced.

  “He’s a demon and he’s touching it!”

  The boy looked slightly embarrassed.

  “Er, well, technically I guess I’m a demon? My pa is. But I never had any magic, so I guess I’m only a demon in name only. I don’t feel much of anything when I touch the Rod. Maybe a little tingle, sometimes.”

  Still in pain, Sam hobbled over to the sink to wash and dress his hand.

  “How nice for you,” he said sarcastically.

  “What’s your name, kid?” Khalil asked.

  “David Alderton. Or at least, that was my name,” he said thoughtfully, like he was reevaluating the whole thing. “Alderton is a Court name. I guess I’ll have to drop it, now that I’ve, uh…defected.”

  “You left your family to bring that thing here?” Sam called over the sound of the water running in the sink.

  The boy shrugged; Khalil had a feeling that the reality of leaving his family hadn’t really hit the kid yet. “I didn’t really have a choice. I heard what they were planning, and it was mental. Someone had to do something.”

  Khalil looked from David to Mike sleeping on the couch, then back again.

  “Listen, it’s great that you made it here, and if we don’t seem super-happy to see you right now, don’t take it personally. We just lost someone.”

  David took in the sight of Mike lying motionless on the couch and winced.

  “Is he dead?” he whispered.

  “He’s in the process of turning into a vampire. At least, that’s what we’re hoping.”

  Khalil looked at the rod in David’s hand. At first glance it looked ordinary, but there was something about it that commanded attention. Khalil found it hard to take his eyes off of it once he’d noticed it.

  “I don’t suppose the Rod of Moses cures death by any chance, does it? Because that would’ve been really useful about an hour ago.”

  “Afraid not,” said David.

  There was a loud noise. Khalil turned around to see that Sam had banged his head on the bottom of the cupboard while rising from the sink. Despite the injury, Sam’s eyes were full of hope when he turned around.

  “The Rod! It reverses curses, doesn’t it? All curses?”

  “Uh, that’s one of the things they say it can do,” David said, clearly confused by Sam’s sudden enthusiasm.

  “Vampirism is a curse. If we can cure it with the Rod, Mike will be human again. And alive, more importantly.”

  Khalil’s eyes widened at this new information.

  It’s too good to be true. It can’t possibly work. We could never be that lucky….

  “So you mean to tell me that if we just point the Rod at him right now and say the right words, bam! he’s alive again?”

  “Not right now!” said Helena, and everyone jumped a bit at her sudden interjection. She looked panicked for a moment when everyone turned to look at her, then continued on, undaunted. “Right now, he is in the sleep of death, before his awakening. Only the curse ties him to this world. If you were to break the curse now, he would simply die normally.”

  “I guess you need to wait until he wakes up,” Dwight said, thinking out loud. “Then if you remove the curse, he’ll still be alive, just not a vampire.”

  “Even if that would work, can any of us even use the damned thing? It nearly took Sam’s hand off, so I’m guessing he’s out,” Khalil wondered aloud.

  “What does it take to use it?” Sam asked David Alderton. The boy looked lost, like this was a test he hadn’t studied for.

  “Uh….”

  Sam grabbed the boy’s shoulders and shook him gently. It was obvious that he was consciously restraining himself from using too much force.

  “C’mon! How do you use the Rod? What does it take?”

  “Alright, alright, I’m just trying to remember what Dr. Cordley said!” David said, moving backwards out of Sam’s grasp. “Um, I think he said only descendants of Aaron can use it, so only a small group of Jewish people who are descended from the priesthood can use its full powers.”

  “Who says we take a visit to the local synagogue? I’m sure they’ll love me there,” said Khalil.

  The boy shook his head. “You can’t just walk into a Jewish temple and expect to find a descendant of the priesthood. Even the Rabbis who are true descendants may not know that they are, and that alone isn’t enough. You need someone who has the ancient blood, and the Holocaust wiped most of those people out.”

  “Freakin’ Holocaust had to go and ruin everything,” Khalil scoffed. Everyone gave him pained looks, even Helena.

  Sam was looking at Mike’s prone body, his elation clearly fading. “We do know of one person capable of using the Rod: Mike.”

 
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “The one person who isn’t conscious to use it.”

  Dammit, irony is one helluva nasty bitch.

  “I wish it weren’t so, but I do not believe he will be able to use it once he awakens,” Helena said. Her face was still tear-stained, but she appeared calm now. “I have known Jews who have become vampires, and they cease to be Jews. To perform even a simple ritual of faith hurts them, and they soon stop trying.”

  “It’s not only Jews that happens to,” Dmitri said quietly. For a moment he looked like he was going to say more, then changed his mind. Shaking his head, he resumed his silent vigil by Mike’s side.

  “What about his parents? Can we find his parents?” Sam asked no one in particular.

  While the rest of the group discussed the possibility of finding Mike’s family, Khalil found his gaze drawn to the Rod once again.

  “Hey kid, do you mind if I hold it?”

  “Go ahead. Unless you’re a demon, it’s not going to hurt you.”

  “I’m definitely not a demon,” said Khalil, taking the slender piece of wood in his hand.

  Suddenly he remembered something that he hadn’t thought of in many years: his first winter at his grandparents’ house. He remembered the snow, piled almost high enough to block the windows, and warm, cozy afternoons spent in his grandfather’s library. While looking at the snow through the window, he would run his hands over books…old books. Religious books. Books penned by hand in an ink that was already ancient when his grandfather was a boy, let alone himself. He could barely read back then, but he’d always had an odd inkling that he knew what the books were saying; or maybe, that what they were saying didn’t require words.

  Most of the volumes in the library were medical books, huge tomes on all the different systems of the body and every disease that could harm it. The Latif family were a family of doctors, as everyone knew. But they weren’t always doctors, and those beautiful books had hinted to Khalil of the time before they had devoted themselves to medicine. Though in good condition, those religions texts had hardly been pristine; they showed signs of use, used daily by people who considered them precious beyond rubies….

  Khalil blinked and shook his head, only emerging from the reminiscence with effort. He looked at the Rod sitting in his hand and once again felt the cold of the snow outside the library, the feeling of his finger running across old parchment, the sudden warmth when his tiny child’s fingers got too close to the candlelight….

  The others were bickering; apparently Mike’s parents were last known to have been in Dubai, but they were frequent globe-trotters, and no one had any contact information for them; that info was presumably in Mike’s phone, but there was no way anyone could unlock it. For a moment, Khalil considered what a lonely life Mike had for a teenager, then interrupted, squeezing the Rod gently in his right hand.

  “Hey, guys? You know how they say you have to be a descendant of the priesthood to use the Rod? Does it specify which priesthood?”

  Chapter 41

  “I can see you’re a little freaked out. Try looking at it from my perspective,” Devon said, taking a leisurely step forward. Sammael tightened his grip on Cassie’s arm and pulled her behind him.

  “You’re hurting me,” Cassie said to him, but he didn’t seem to hear her.

  “You’ve lost whatever semblance of a mind you had left, Fly-eater,” Sammael said, the last word sounding like a curse. “And you’re not getting any closer to her.”

  Devon ignored Sammael like he hadn’t spoken, instead addressing himself to Cassie.

  “Now, if I want to create a child capable of challenging the Almighty, I’m going to need a proper thoroughbred, right? Needless to say, I will serve as an adequate father”—he gestured to himself with a little flourish— “but I need a suitable mother. Only a few women in history have given birth to children with truly divine powers, so my choices are limited.”

  “Shut. Your. Mouth.” Sammael growled, but Devon continued ignoring him.

  “Obviously there’s the Virgin Mary—such as they like to call her, heh—but having the AntiChrist be brothers with the actual Christ? That’s a little on the nose for my taste…plus, she’s not my type. Now, there’s your mother, Annette,” and here Devon made a disgusted face to show what he thought of that idea, “and then there’s Grandma Helen, of course. She would be an excellent choice, but what can I say; she’s my grandma. She practically raised me, for crying out loud! I’m not getting into it with her.”

  Cassie popped out from behind Sammael’s back, unable to restrain herself.

  “So getting it on with your grandma is weird to you, but doing it with your mom is totally fine? What’s wrong with you?”

  It was a rhetorical question, but Devon appeared to take it seriously.

  “Well, I lost my mother at a young age, had to be raised by my Gran while my father…my father had no use for me. That kind of thing can screw you up, you know?”

  Sammael was simply glaring at Devon with a look of complete and utter loathing. Cassie thought that Devon’s mentioning Helen as a potential breeding partner had made him too furious for words.

  Devon shook his head, like shaking off memories from the distant past.

  “Anyway, that doesn’t matter now. What matters is, you’re the only suitable mother for the kind of being I’m trying to create, and everything else is details.”

  He took another step closer to Sammael and Cassie. Sammael put a hand forward and put a wall of obsidian between the pair of them and the Devil. An instant after the wall was created, the obsidian shattered into a million pieces and went flying; a tiny shard grazed Cassie’s face, under her right eye. She put a hand to her face and felt a tiny drop of blood.

  “Careful, Gramps,” said Devon in a mocking tone. “You forget how delicate she still is.”

  “You’re still imprisoned here,” said Sammael. “Nothing you do, nothing you say will change that. You’re not procreating with anyone, although you’re more than welcome to go fuck yourself.”

  Cassie shuddered. Sammael rarely used language like that, and when he did, his emotions were running high.

  Devon put a hand up to his chin, as though considering the other demon’s words.

  “That’s right, my imprisonment, such as it is. Tell me, have you noticed anything about the flames down here in the past few minutes?”

  Cassie looked around; the flames had indeed changed. The pit was still full of fire, but the hotter blue flames were nowhere to be seen; all the fire was shades of orange.

  Devon stuck an arm out and plunged it into a nearby column of flame. When he removed his arm, he was holding a tiny fireball, dancing above his palm.

  “Did it every occur to you, Gramps, that bringing a second Water Elemental Divine into a prison based on fire wasn’t the best idea in the world? Temperature in here seems to be dropping quite a bit.”

  Sammael grinned. There was something relieved about that grin, and that bothered Cassie on some level she couldn’t explain.

  “So that’s why you wanted to see her in person? Thinking you could cool the flames and use that to bust on out of here? Bad news, Fly-eater, but the curses binding you here are stronger than that. Enjoy the breeze, but that’s all this buys you.”

  “That would be a foolish plan indeed,” Devon said, examining the dancing ball of flame in his had like it was fascinating to him. “However, you didn’t just bring in a water elemental; you brought my mother. Who, even now, has a tiny part of me inside her. Just waiting to be born.”

  Cassie put her free hand to her middle. She was beginning to feel what felt like menstrual cramps, if menstrual cramps could be inside-out.

  “Sammael,” she grunted, then fell to her knees.

  “Cassie?” Sammael said, his voice filled with genuine alarm.

  He called to the sky.

  “Azrael! Beelzebub! Get in here!”

  The fireball in Devon’s palm turned to clear water
, then ice. He closed his fist and the ball of ice shattered. Where the fragments of the ice ball landed, the flames began flash-freezing, turning from orange to undulating ice blue sculptures.

  “See, one of me was never going to be enough to break out of here. But two of me? Two of me might be…just enough….”

  Cassie must have blacked out, because the next thing she was conscious of was Sammael cradling her head in his hands. She took a deep breath, then breathed out. The fact that she could see her breath triggered a feeling of despair like she’d never felt before.

  “What happened?” she asked, slurring her words.

  She looked up; as she had expected, the pit of flames was now a pit of ice. Everywhere she looked, she saw her own terrified expression reflected back at her. She shivered, both because of the cold and because of the knowledge that something was suddenly very wrong in the world.

  “He outsmarted us. Outsmarted me,” Sammael said quietly. He stroked her cheek, his former anger with her seemingly forgotten.

  All around the pit, other demons were walking around in disbelief. Some wore suits, some wore robes, and some wore clothes Cassie didn’t even recognize. But all of them looked around at the world of ice with expressions like they’d all just been punched in the gut.

  “And now, for the first time in eons, the Devil is free to walk the earth.”

  Chapter 42

  “Thanks,” said Mike, taking his third white hot-chocolate from Dwight. “Really want sugar right now, guess that kinda makes sense, blood loss and all.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to drink blood?” Sam asked. Sam was looking at the boy on the couch like his presence was too good to be true.

  Mike shrugged. “Nah, just sugar. If I try to think about drinking blood, it feels about as gross as it always did.”

  There was silence for a few minutes, other than the sound of Mike quickly typing on his laptop. David Alderton scratched the back of his head for a second.

  “Well uh, I’m glad he’s okay. Glad I got here in time with the Rod, and all.”