Never Just One Apocalypse

by Karen L Mead

  However, when he finally slipped out of his clothes and nestled between her soft thighs, the look in his eyes then was not laughter, but something very, very different.

  Chapter 66

  Dr. Cordley opened the door for a little rat. The rat scampered into the shop on his little legs, holding something metal in his mouth. The rat jumped up onto the table where Mike was sitting and deposited the new foil card onto Matt’s empty plate.

  “Nice. Thanks, John.”

  “You lot just let a rat run around in your shop?” David asked, mildly scandalized. “That’s not sanitary.”

  “He’s not just any rat,” said Ethan. He was sitting at the table with Mike and Jay, looking at the internet and not at his cards for once.

  Gently, David picked up the rat, which seemed to give him a soulful look.

  “Well, you’re quite handsome, aren’t you? Nice little fellow. Want a piece of my cookie?”

  “Careful. If you talk down to him too much, he’s never going to write you a recommendation for college.”

  “What?”

  David looked at the small creature he was petting, horrified. “You mean….”

  “I have something that might cheer you up,” Dr. Cordley said. He had an arm in a sling, a remnant from his time as Sammael’s prisoner, but looked hale and hearty overall. With his good hand, he held out a package for David to take. David gingerly put his English teacher down on the floor and took the package. His eyes widened when he read the label.

  “Darjeeling tea, full leaves, first flush? What must this have cost?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I heard about your tea problem and I was glad to help.”

  David looked at the package of tea and nearly salivated, imagining the complex, satisfying brews that were in his future.

  Mike leaned over to Ethan.

  “And that right there is called a British-gasm.”

  “No it’s not. That’s not a word,” said Ethan crossly. He was in no mood to be talked down to.

  “Anything we can help you with, Dr. Cordley?” Jay asked politely.

  The doctor looked past them, toward the back of the store.

  “I was hoping Mr. Latif was in. I’m fascinated by how someone outside the line of succession managed to take control of the Rod of Moses.”

  Jay yawned and pointed to the break room.

  “Khalil’s in back. He’s on break, but I’m sure he won’t mind talking to you.”

  The doctor smiled.

  “I’ll try poking my head in then.”

  He turned and looked at David one more time.”

  “Mr. Alderton?”

  “It’s Fishman now.”

  “Good work,” Cordley said softly, then went to go find Khalil. David felt a stirring in his chest, like the doctor’s soft praise meant more than it appeared to on the surface.

  When Cordley was gone and John had skittered off somewhere (presumably to find pants), Jay changed back to their usual subject nowadays.

  “So, how’re we doing?”

  “With the cards? Good. Thanks to the one Golding just gave us, we’re up to nearly 30 percent.”

  “Can we really get all of them?” David asked.

  He was tempted to go behind the counter and use the hot water spigot to make a cup of his new tea immediately, but that would just lead to Mike teasing him for his Britishness, so he decided to hold off…for a little while, anyway.

  Mike frowned.

  “I don’t know. We’re doing really well so far, considering we just started. But we may have just got all the easy ones. Some of them are not going to be easy to track down, let alone steal.”

  “Which one are you looking for now?” Jay asked, leaning over so he could see Mike’s laptop.

  “The 15/15 grey creature. You know the one.”

  “Oh, yeah, the Lunar Beast? Mitchell had it in his deck at the tournament. I love killing that thing.”

  David was still holding the tea, tempted.

  I wonder if Cassie likes tea? Maybe I should wait and share this with her? She seems like more of a coffee girl, but nobody’s perfect….

  Then he thought of Sam, and his smile disappeared. Even though the demon had lost his powers and was now as human as David was, somehow David didn’t think the older man would deal well with David trying to put the moves on his girlfriend. Even if Sam could no longer turn him into something horrid, he could still punch him in the face; David had a feeling that Sam was good at punching.

  He had no real plans of trying to steal Cassie away, but he couldn’t help thinking about her with longing.

  “Oh,” said Mike suddenly, all color draining from his face.

  “Oh. Oh. Oh.”

  “What what what?” said Jay, impatiently.

  Mike seemed to fumble for the right words for a moment.

  “The foil version of the Lunar Beast, it’s uh…we may have a problem bringing that one in.”

  “Why? Is it in Europe?” David asked.

  Some of the foils would have to be in Europe, within the Eastern Court’s jurisdiction. He’d been wondering how Mike planned to deal with that.

  “No. It’s worse.”

  “What’s worse than Europe?” Jay asked. David gave him an angry look.

  “You know what I meant! Is it in Japan or something?”

  “No,” Mike said. He closed his laptop and put his head down.

  Jay and David exchanged glances; Mike was acting strange indeed.

  “Hey, Ethan,” Mike said finally.

  “Yeah?”

  “Those Sorcery tournaments you keep signing up for. Tell me if you hear about one on the moon.”

  Epilogue:

  Saying that the Academy on High had improved since the last time Sammael had access to it was an understatement. Back in his day, they didn’t even have the Torah yet, so the tomes that lined the shelves were mostly incoherent babble, and commentary on incoherent babble. Post-Torah, he heard that things had improved somewhat, but he was already in Hell.

  Nowadays, the Academy’s library didn’t just house religious texts, but all texts: every accomplishment of human culture was scrupulously documented. If Sammael had known that the Academy now had a collection of every video game that had ever been published, he might have lobbied to get his job as an angel back a lot sooner. Nevertheless, here he was.

  Still, despite the broadened focus, plenty of the library was still devoted to Torah study. For a lot of scribes and priests, apparently a lifetime spent arguing over the Torah could only be complemented by an eternity in heaven spent arguing over the Torah. Sammael had never understood that, but hey, different strokes for different folks.

  Naturally, Rabbi Simon could always be found doing Torah study. One day (to the extent that heaven has days, which it doesn’t, but let’s gloss over that) he took a seat across from the Rabbi and clicked his tongue.

  “You were wrong, you know.”

  The Rabbi didn’t even bother to look up at him at first. Eventually his gaze flicked from the parchment in front of him to Sammael’s face.

  “How so?”

  Sammael leaned forward, careful not to touch the Rabbi’s scroll. Touching holy books would no longer harm him, not while he was on the side of the Angels again, but old habits died hard.

  “You swore up and down that I would marry a woman named Lilith. Never even met a Lilith. Own up, Seer, you goofed.”

  The Rabbi made a self-satisfied sound and dropped his eyes back to his scroll.

  “Oh, that? I lied.”

  Sammael had not expected that response.

  “Excuse me, what? You lied in your prophecy?”

  Rabbi Simon made a subtle gesture that might have been a shrug.

  “If I had written ‘you will marry a woman named Helen,’ you never would have done it. Every time you met a Helen, you would say to yourself ‘I must not marry this woman, I will prove that mortal seer wrong!’ Because you are very foolish that way. So, I made up a different name. Oth
erwise, my predictions were spot on.”

  Sammael was having trouble accepting that.

  “You can just blatantly lie in a book of prophecy? Isn’t there some kind of rule against that?”

  A cheeky expression settled on the Rabbi’s face. On him, it was mildly disturbing.

  “What, you think the Prophecy Council is going to come and arrest me? Perhaps the Prophecy Police?”

  “Well, they should,” Sammael said, pouting. He was annoyed that his plan to prove Rabbi Simon wrong had gone awry, and he didn’t care who knew it.

  “There is no such thing as the Prophecy Police, you goat-brained fool!” the Rabbi bellowed. He pushed his scroll aside and unrolled another, his body language radiating annoyance.

  “I know there’s no such thing! I’m just saying, there should be some semblance of professional standards here.”

  “Is there something you want, my friend?” the Rabbi said. He didn’t take the bait about “professional standards,” which only disappointed Sammael further.

  “Yes. About 2,000 years ago, give or take, you told me that I could come see you at the Academy on High. At that time, I didn’t believe I would ever be back here.”

  Sammael paused in anticipation. This was the bit that he really was curious to know.

  “Did you know I would return to the Higher Realm, be forgiven? Did you see it in a dream?”

  At that, Rabbi Simon looked at him seriously for the first time.

  “It was not a dream,” he said, turning his quill pen around in his fingers. “It was that if a being as truly kind as you were barred from here forever, then this place would no longer have any meaning. I believed in the Academy more than that.”

  At that, Sammael was stunned into silence, the Rabbi’s answer coming as a complete shock to him. He looked down for a few moments to gather himself, while the Rabbi continued perusing his manuscript.

  “I guess I am kind of nice,” he said after a while. “After all, I gave up most of my access to the mortal world in order to save my son, meaning I can’t see my wife again. It was rather self-sacrificing of me. Of course, if I hadn’t done that, she would have made my life a living hell for not saving the little bugger, so maybe I only get partial credit there….”

  “Your wife?”

  The Rabbi had a conspiratorial gleam in his eye.

  “Why, you can see your wife anytime you like. In book form, at least.”

  He turned around and looked at the wall of books behind him, finally picking out a slender monograph. He tossed it gently toward Sammael, who caught it. Sammael looked at the book and frowned.

  “The Book of Succession? What does this have to do with Helen?”

  “She wrote it, goat-brain. You honestly had no idea?”

  “What!?”

  While Sammael flipped through the book, frantic, the Rabbi sat back down.

  “She imagined herself as the Mother of Sorcerers, predicting that a line of great mages would spring from her loins. She wrote it not because it was true, but because she wished it to be true; the genius of humans. I don’t follow much outside this room, but from what I know of the mortal world these days, it seems that she succeeded, no?”

  Sammael read silently for a little while longer, then groaned.

  “Oh, God. ‘The age of the small gods, and even the large gods that begat them, and that which begat the very idea of that which was begat,’ blah blah blah, that’s got Helen written all over it. How did I not realize this until you told me?”

  “Sometimes things right before your eyes are the hardest to see.”

  Sammael very nearly threw the book against a wall, but stopped himself in time. He was an angel again; there were appearances to maintain.

  “And the worst part is, now that I’m up here, I can’t even tell her that I know! She’s going to think she fooled me right to the end!”

  “She did; that part is not in dispute.”

  “Arrrrgh!”

  Sammael yelled in frustration, kicking his feet. A well-coiffed Talmudic scholar over at the next table shushed him with irritation, and Sammael stopped his childish display.

  “You will see her again, someday,” the Rabbi said after Sammael had calmed down.

  “I’m not sure I want to,” Sammael said honestly.

  As much as he wanted to see Helen again—to tease her about her secret career as a prophetess—when he saw her again, that would mean her mortal life was over. And he didn’t ever want her mortal life to be over. The very idea of it was frightening to him, and as he existed now, he was afraid of practically nothing.

  Rabbi Simon took his hand.

  “When that time comes, I will be here. You can introduce her to me.”

  “Who says I want to? I’m embarrassed to even know you.”

  “Don’t lie.”

  “I don’t want to hear that from you.”

  The Rabbi sat back in his chair.

  “I have more to study. If you’re going to act like a bratty kid, then leave me.”

  There was silence for a moment as Sammael continued to process everything he’d just learned. Finally, he slapped his knee.

  “That’s my girl, huh? Tricks the entire world, even me, like it ain’t no thang.”

  “Yes, you have excellent taste in brides. It is perhaps your one redeeming value…besides kindness.”

  Sammael considered his friend.

  “How do you feel about miniature golf?”

  Afterword

  Thank you for reading Never Just One Apocalypse. To learn more about Demonic Café and my other books, visit my author page at my blog. Alternately, you can visit my page on Facebook. In addition to announcements about new books and special discounts, I also post character art; I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be an enticement or a warning, but it’s the truth. I also post musings about my life and being an indie author, but I try to keep it relevant. No stories about my cats, primarily because I don’t have any cats.

  (Seriously, I wish I had cats but my husband won’t let me get any because he’s afraid they’re going to mess up the house too much. Eventually my daughter will get old enough to ask for a kitty though, and then he is TOAST. Time is on my side.)

  I’m so happy to be writing the very last bit of book four, you have no idea. Years ago, I put out books 1-3 in the Demonic Café series (under a different name) rather quickly, then I got pregnant and had my baby girl. Then everything changed, and I seemed to get out of the habit of writing. Finally, in the summer of 2019, I decided enough was enough and it was past time to get back to this series. I was afraid that after so much time away I might have lost the feel of things, but I don’t think so; if anything, I think this is the best book yet.

  What’s next? I’m planning to release book five sometime in 2020, but not soon enough that I can rush it out the door at the beginning of the year; I have some shorter, neglected projects I need to get up to speed first.

  Thanks for joining me for this leg of Cassie and Sam’s journey—especially those of you who’ve been reading from the beginning and had to put up with a nearly 5-year wait between books three and four. You guys are the best readers any author could ask for and you have no idea how much I appreciate your patronage and your patience; I only hope I can write books worthy of you.

  Love,

  Karen L. Mead

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