by Andrea Speed
Alex squirmed against the chains, but they weren’t going anywhere. They were crying, and the reverend was coming toward them with the knife. “Yes,” Alex thought. “Yes, yes, yes.”
And it was over in a blink.
That was not an exaggeration. Alex wasn’t sure what had happened, but the darkness flickering around the margins of the candle flames seemed to come to squirming, writhing life, like the shadows had become angry anacondas, lashing out at anything warm. They didn’t see what had happened to Green, except his knife fell to the floor and he was simply gone.
The chain broke, and suddenly they could move again. Alex was still frightened, sure that some adult would rear out of the dark, but the voice was in their head again.
“No one can harm you as long as I am with you. Would you like to be a speaker for me, little one?”
“I don’t know if I speak well. I’m deaf.”
“That doesn’t matter. You’re my eyes in the world. You relay messages from me whenever necessary and I will protect you for as long as you live.”
Alex was six. Their parents had tried to kill them and were probably gone now. Did they have a choice? “Okay.”
“You are free to go. The way is clear.”
“What if more adults come…?”
“There are no living adults in the vicinity. I guarantee there will not be for as long as you are here.”
Alex was still cautious, stepping carefully out onto the cold, dark floor. But Cthylor was as good as her word. Alex briefly stepped in something wet and warm but couldn’t see what it was. They couldn’t see anything in the shadows either, which were quiet now, peaceful. Lumpy but unmoving. There was a bad smell in the air, like metal and shit.
Of course, Alex had walked through a massacre. Again, they realized that in retrospect. Cthylor had killed everyone in the room, as if they were made of fragile eggshells. One tap and they were gone. But that was Cthylor’s power. Too overwhelming for this world. She needed a messenger, because to completely appear even in shadow form would wipe out a city, a state, possibly an entire continent, without intention.
In the end, Cthylor wasn’t sure what god Green had been attempting to contact; best guess was Dagon or Ba’al. But he opened a far deadlier channel and was probably so stupid he didn’t realize it even as she killed him.
Cthylor did take care of Alex. Alex didn’t know what to do, but Cthylor instructed them, and Alex followed. Cthylor led Alex to a house in California where they met an older woman named Miri Rayasi. Cthylor didn’t go into detail; she simply said Miri’s family had known of her and her father—Alex didn’t know that was Cthulhu until they were a bit older—for some time. Miri pretended to be Alex’s great-aunt, and she lived in a big old house. She didn’t know sign language, so she wrote Alex notes. Miri took to constantly carrying a notebook with her, and Alex usually had notes spilling out of their pockets.
They were never super close, but that was okay. Miri performed the role of adult parenting figure more than adequately and only expected the basics from Alex: keep their room moderately clean, do basically okay in school, avoid getting in trouble. That was it. Their relationship was friendly enough but not warm, and that should have bothered Alex, but it never did. Maybe because Cthylor was really their parent.
There was no special school for deaf children near them, and Miri balked at putting them in a “special needs” class, so Alex went with the “normal” students. Even Alex was initially nervous, assuming they’d be bully bait. But that was where Alex first learned about the strength of Cthylor’s word.
The first day, Alex was approached and taunted by a group of boys, led by the chief bully boy himself, Tyler Ambrose. Of course being deaf, Alex couldn’t hear what they were saying, but judging from the hyena-looking laughter of his friends, it wasn’t great.
But Cthylor had vowed to protect Alex. Apparently, it encompassed even this.
Following a blink of darkness, a shadow appeared between locker bays, and it looked to Alex like a nearly translucent shadow tentacle slapped right through Tyler’s chest. He froze like a deer in headlights and dropped to his knees, shuddering so violently his mouth opened and closed like a suffocating fish. When the smell hit them, Alex realized Tyler had pissed himself, and since there was nothing funnier to boys than that, his group started laughing hysterically at him.
Tyler recovered physically, but his reputation was destroyed. As for Alex’s, theirs grew quickly. Anyone trying to bully them ended up like Tyler or worse. They’d be struck dumb or come down with full-body shivers that were occasionally mistaken for seizures. They were basically ostracized as the “spooky deaf kid,” but that didn’t bother Alex at all, as long as they were left alone. Rumors circulated that Alex was a witch or something and cursed people, which Alex found hilarious.
Not having to be afraid of anyone or anything was a source of great freedom. Alex could walk alone at night, secure in the knowledge that Cthylor would incapacitate or kill anyone who tried to harm them. People did try, and they never lasted long at all. It wasn’t that Alex liked to see people suffer, but the people who intended to hurt others…? Oh yeah, fuck them. Cthylor was the instant karma they deserved.
No one ever seemed to notice the shift of shadows or the nearly translucent, smokelike tentacles. Cthylor said it was simply that people didn’t want to see it, and it had always been the greatest boon to all extranormal creatures. Humans didn’t generally accept things that didn’t fit into their narrow worldviews, therefore making everything infinitely easier for creatures on the margins. Human denial had been, and always would be, a benefit for all the monsters, human or otherwise.
And yes, a world of other things existed. Cthylor reassured Alex that they’d never have to worry about any of them, but Alex already knew that. Most people believed in either a wrathful god or a peaceful one, a being they never saw or communicated with in any meaningful way, but Alex knew they had a god in their corner.
The thing was, Alex never saw Cthylor as evil. Cthulhu? From the sound of it, he was. But not her. She had been a genuinely caring parent, and those she hurt deserved it. You couldn’t call the best parent you ever had evil.
This complete freedom from fear allowed Alex to come out quite early with regard to gender expression, and once again, those who mocked quickly wished they had never opened their mouths. Also, because Cthylor had a tendency to show up whenever Alex was annoyed, they had to work out a system where Alex would request Cthylor’s help in certain circumstances. In physical attacks, there would be no requesting—Cthylor showed up. Alex was fine with that.
Cthylor’s appearance did affect people beyond the initial hit. Alex discovered that in high school when Tyler Ambrose decided to come to school with a gun.
Alex didn’t hear the shots—of course—but they were in the bathroom and witnessed the other kids there freaking out. Most of them hid in the stalls. Alex decided to see what was going on and asked Cthylor to guide them. Cthylor did, and that’s when Alex found Tyler in the hallway leading to the lunchroom, holding an automatic weapon. Upon seeing Alex, Tyler screamed and aimed the weapon at them, then froze as still as a statue. Alex asked Cthylor to hold him but not move in for the kill—not yet. They saw the fear in his eyes as he kept attempting to pull the trigger, veins standing out as he struggled in vain against an invisible opponent, one he could never beat. Cthylor was the size of the moon, of the ocean, of the dark space between the stars. Her shadow was vast, and all that shadow brought was death. This little boy, armed with the American god—also known as a gun—was less than an insect. More like a protozoa or krill, something too small for Cthylor to see. A million of them in one place would still not register with her.
“I’m not a witch,” Alex told him. “And I am not responsible for what happened to you. You decided to pick on a deaf kid to make you feel like a big man. You’re a piece of shit, Tyler, and you will be remembered, very briefly, as another piece of white-trash crap in a vast tapestry of them.
” Alex couldn’t help but smile as Tyler started panicking, as the hand holding his weapon began moving of its own accord. Alex could see the dark tentacles controlling his arm, the wreath of shadows around him, but Tyler seemed completely unaware of it. His gun turned to face him; Tyler now had a beautiful look down the barrel of his weapon as it aimed at his own eye.
“My god ate your god,” Alex said.
Tyler screamed before he pulled the trigger, and the top half of his head was simply erased in a cloud of blood and pulverized bone that splattered down the mouth of the hall.
In all, Tyler had killed two students, including his ex-girlfriend, and one teacher, and injured seven others. It was assumed he killed himself before police could get him, even though police were five minutes away from arriving when Cthylor killed him. Some students in the science room reported they thought he was talking to someone and screamed before he shot himself, briefly making people think he had a helper. But that was never proved, and it was determined he was a small asshole of a boy, a broken bully who could never feel big enough to suit his ego. Cthylor didn’t do that to him; she just made him see it.
Cancer eventually killed Miri, but by that time, Alex was nineteen and able to live on their own. They got the creepy old Rayasi house, which, for all its creepiness, was big and well situated. Cthylor learned of the looming apocalypse and clued in Alex as to what they could do about it. She taught them the secret language of the Old Ones, the language that would not only allow Cthylor’s shadow self to peek in, but a portion of her to reach into the world. That spell took down all the demons and angels in the building where the others found the Scourge.
Alex couldn’t remember when they had figured out that Cthylor was their true parent. But Cthylor had always been there for them, always took care of them, and wiped out any obstacle that might harm them. Alex couldn’t have asked for a better parent.
In fact, looking back on it now, Alex’s adoptive parents attempting to murder them was the best thing that had ever happened to them. Without crazy Reverend Green, his rusty knife, and his poor summoning abilities, Alex never would have met Cthylor.
Cthylor admitted love was a foreign concept to the Old Ones, who didn’t love or hate or anything. They consumed, they burned, they destroyed. They were entropy incarnate, chaos given form. But Alex believed Cthylor did have something approaching fondness for them, or at least something similar. She couldn’t have taken such good care of them if she hadn’t.
They didn’t kid themselves. Surely they were an oddity to Cthylor, a weird little pet she impulsively decided to feel sorry for. To assume more would have been way above their station. But Alex didn’t mind that. Cthylor didn’t pity them. Cthylor had made them strong and fearless and capable of taking on the entire world and winning that fight. If their life had followed the trajectory of its beginning, they’d probably be a miserable foster kid, looked upon as an annoyance by all the so-called normals. They would be just another sad statistic in a world full of them. No human could possibly do for them what Cthylor had. Not even close.
They didn’t even want for money. Once, when Miri was having a hard time paying the bills, Alex did their best to explain money to Cthylor, as it was a human thing that no Old One was familiar with. After attempting to understand it, Cthylor dumped a few hundred pounds worth of gold, silver, and gemstones in the living room and asked if that was what was meant. In the end, they cleared a little over a million dollars. Cthylor had access to everything—under the ground, beneath the waves, out in the stars. Alex could ask for it, and Cthylor would give it to them, because material things meant nothing to her. They were simply fuel, things to be consumed or destroyed, now or later. And when Earth boiled and burned, she would get all those goods back anyway. Cthylor saw it as a temporary reshuffling of items. In the long run, it didn’t matter where they were. They were always and forever hers.
As was Alex, even though a human lifespan wasn’t even a full blink to the Old Ones. It was a nanosliver of a nanosecond. They existed before time and would be present at its death. Alex was a little sad they wouldn’t be there too, but honestly? Immortality didn’t sound that great. According to Cthylor, much of it was extremely boring.
Alex was aware these people—Team Apocalypse was what they had mentally dubbed them—weren’t very comfortable with them. It was probably a lot to take in. Sure, they were aware of the angel and demon bullshit, but the Old Ones? They’d hid their existence well. Most people, if they knew of them at all, assumed them to be the fictional ramblings of a troubled racist horror writer. How could they possibly be real? But of course, that was how the Old Ones wanted it. If they wanted to be known, they would be. But most predators were better hunters when their prey had no idea they were there.
Team Apocalypse was a curious bunch. Alex had never met a harpy before, or a witch who bled so much power. And then there was the Destroyer, who was in a class all his own as a hybrid human-demon amalgam, blessed with both Satan’s power and some magics, which must have come from the human side. But the human was weird—why was a human involved? They were cannon fodder and could bring nothing to the fight, although now that the Scourge was twinned to him, he had something to offer beyond a pretty face. But the most curious of them all was the mummy, Ahmed.
He didn’t instantly read as a life-form to Alex. Being the messenger of Cthylor allowed them to see energy that other people could not, and living things usually had a background pulse of light to them. Ahmed was flat, with a curious glow that sometimes occurred with seriously cursed objects. He wouldn’t register on their radar as a living thing.
But he was, in a sense. He was an undead being, but unlike vampires, who pulsed with the lifeblood they stole, he was a stillness. Cthylor knew little of mummies, except they were only immortal in the sense that their state of living death made them almost impossible to permanently kill. Where a vampire’s undead state still gave them appetite, and therefore a very obvious and lethal weakness—a mummy was simply a person cursed to never be human and never be dead… again. Cthylor admitted it was a sort of parsing of the terms of being undead and curse work, and it was arcane enough to bore her. In one sense, Ahmed was a perfectly useless member of team apocalypse. Yes, he wouldn’t die, but his use as a fighter was iffy. He was only a physical being when he had the intent to be physical, and while he could be stronger than a human his size, not much stronger. But he was also an asset, because, yes, he wasn’t a living being. He couldn’t be cursed again, as the curse he bore was overwhelming in size and scope. It would be like trying to relight coals that had already fallen to ash. There was no fuel there, nothing to consume. Magic would be mostly useless for the very same reason. How could you affect a thing that was barely a thing at all?
THANKS TO Cthylor, Alex was taken back to the witch’s house as soon as they were summoned.
Cthylor opened a small dimensional rift that Alex could step into. Cthylor would then move Alex wherever they wanted to go. They didn’t know how Cthylor did it exactly, but much like the shadow manipulation, Alex didn’t care how it worked, as long as it did. And Cthylor remained the perfect parent who never let them down. How many humans could say that about their parents? Alex knew they were very lucky.
The witch’s house was very nice, well appointed, and rife with spellwork. Some witches were very careful about spells and how they used them because magic had a cost. Magic used energy, and that energy came straight from the caster. Cast too much, cast poorly, and you could drain your life force to nothing. But Esme was different in many respects, and thanks to a combination of genetics—she was clearly from a long line of magic users—and natural talent, she probably couldn’t kill herself in such a manner. Her evil eye alone generated so much energy, it would power a city if you could harness it properly. Not that Alex would ever try. Even Cthylor thought her power was impressive for a human, and that was really saying something.
Although it didn’t compare to the radiant nuclear furnace that was the Des
troyer. He was somehow a walking neutron star, so full of energy it was amazing anyone could be near him without being burned to a crisp. Thanks to Cthylor, Alex could see through the otherwise powerful glamour to his true hybrid self, and it was a little startling at first. Alex had never seen anyone who was essentially the halves of two different beings smushed together, but there he was, a thing that shouldn’t be but was, thanks to powerful demonic forces and a little bit of dark magical energy. The sword he carried too, Godslayer, had a dark current of energy all its own, like a black hole in weapon form. It wouldn’t hurt Cthylor, but even she was slightly unnerved by it. An inanimate object shouldn’t have that energy signature. But everything about Lucifer and Hell and Heaven was deeply confusing, and Cthylor referred to them all as “fleas,” so that’s how much Alex thought about any of them.
The harpy had a sharp green energy signature that suggested power and vitality uncommon to average beings. That apparently came from the long-ago goddess who created them. Cthylor seemed to think they were decent soldiers, which was high praise from her.
The human was just a human, with the standard energy field, although there was an oddity to it when you looked at it from the corner of your eye, like a stray glint that Alex assumed was proof of angel blood in the lineage, although it was dormant. Now he also had a spot, which was the Scourge locked to him. Cthylor really liked the Scourge—a magnificent beast, supposedly, and according to her, the only thing Hell ever did that was worth a damn.
They were gathered around Esme’s slate table, and Ceri quickly caught Alex up with his deft signing. He was quite good at it, remarkably fluid, but according to Cthylor, that was to be expected from the offspring of the devil. Satan spoke every language because how could you recruit to your side with a language barrier? Made sense. And what Satan had, Ceri had.
They were expecting a call from Bucket, the lone demon survivor of the battle of Seattle, where Cthylor had officially introduced herself to Heaven and Hell. It was easy to imagine neither was pleased by this development.
