My Cat is The Antichrist

by J B Trepagnier

  “Oh, yeah, I forgot to tell you. Ariel and I are better at that together. It’s what Esther meant about guests. We think Drake hasn’t made his move yet because Mattan is preparing him. Drake needs acolytes. He’s going to go for the elders and the thirteen families first. He already started by getting Odelia over there with Ariel. That was a grab at the runt, but if he had Odelia’s ear, he hoped she would turn the other families against you. He underestimated my mother. She went directly to you to call you out to your face instead of gossiping behind your back.”

  “She’s definitely your mother then. Is my new house going to be full of strange people?”

  I never did well in crowds. Working at a bar was miserable if there was a football game on. That would be nothing compared to thirteen families consisting of who knows how many people in my house wanting me to tell my story. I didn’t do well with public speaking either. I totally froze, and I even puked once.

  “Tabby, come on. Who are you talking to? Only the elders are coming. And we should get out there because Esther invited them in about an hour. Just to warn you, your grandparents are going to be there. Mattan just told everyone you were a distant heir. That was why none of the elders were at the welcome home party. They are very interested in you now.”

  There was a knock at the door. When I opened it, it was Natalia, and she looked like she was hoping Lizzie would answer. I grinned to myself. I could tell Natalia dug her too. If she hurt my friend, I’d break her face, but right now, it looked like she wanted to get to know her better. I was grinning like a total shit head as I walked behind them and I watched Natalia tentatively slip her hand into Lizzie’s. I tried not to squeal like a pig because I’d wanted Lizzie with someone who would make her happy for the longest time.

  When I followed them out to the sitting area, it was full of people. Two older couples approached me. The woman of one of them looked like my mother, and the man from the other looked like Elliot. They all looked like they were about to burst into tears and they all took turns hugging me — real hugs that kind of hurt a little.

  The couple that I could tell was Elliot’s parents smiled at me gently. “We don’t care what Mattan did. You’re still our grandchild. You still have Lamb blood. We hope you’ll call us Nona and Sabba.”

  “Of course,” I said, hugging them both again. I did have real family here.

  My mother’s family came over to me next. My grandmother stroked my cheek. “I think Levana would like your look. She was always into playing dress up. Will you call us Oma and Opa?”

  Now, I was the one bawling like an asshole. My grandparents led me over to the sofa and made a fortress around me. My Nona was stroking my hair, and my Oma was stroking my cheek. Sabba and Opa were on either side of them holding them. We were a unit — a family. And Mattan and Drake weren’t going to tear us apart. I was going to fight for them.

  When I was reduced to a sniveling mess, someone across the room cleared their throat. “This could have waited until after you’d met your family. Should we leave?” a severe looking man said.

  “No. We need to deal with Drake and Mattan,” I said, wiping my eyes. Oma squeezed my arm.

  “So, we’ve got the Lamb, the Antichrist, the Horsemen, and the two witnesses are already coming into their gifts?”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know you,” Lizzie snapped. I didn’t either. I didn’t know any of them.

  “Herschel Hutchrance. I’m sort of what you would call a leader out of the group. I’ve never trusted the Adlers. Irina, when Levana and Elliot went to get married, you came to me about the Adlers. I didn’t hear you out then, and I’m sorry. Tell me what you wanted to tell me then.”

  Well, I knew where Lizzie got it from now, and I was starting to see what I got it from. My Oma glared at Herschel. “You mean when I told you about the conditions? We all had to fight with Opal when we were negotiating for Elliot and Levana to marry. Opal didn’t want the two of them together. She kept suggesting a union with Levana and Mattan instead. Like Elliot and Levana weren’t smitten with each other! Knowing what you know now, can you see why?”

  “Aren’t there elders from all families?” I asked. “Isn’t someone with Mattan’s family here?”

  Herschel grinned at me. “No, dear. When we found out someone in the Adler family had committed rape and started the apocalypse, we met without them. I had no idea if it was just Mattan or the entire family. It sounds like if what Irina says is true, it’s the entire family.”

  “Then why wait until now to do it?” I asked.

  “Opportunity,” Ariel said. “If an Adler just raped a female Rothledge, then they would be punished and not given the opportunity to guide the child. When Elliot and Levana got together, it gave them the window. When the condition was given to get a vasectomy, they knew if Levana ended up pregnant and tried to blame Mattan, they could just say she was blaming Mattan to cover up her mistakes.”

  Lizzie was grinning proudly at Ariel, and I was pretty damned impressed with the runt too. Herschel was grinning at her.

  “I want to know how Lizzie and I both ended up in Kentucky,” I demanded. “It doesn’t make sense that out of the entire world, we both wind up in the middle of nowhere in the same place.”

  A tiny, older lady cleared her throat. “I can answer that. You may call me Sara. There was an orphanage in Kentucky, and it’s kind of like our dirty little secret. Many children from the families end up there. We didn’t know about you and Lizzie, but all of the families know about it to send children to. It was founded by one of the family members a long time ago. We had no idea it had come to such a state it’s in now that you and Lizzie went through what you did. I’m going to have a talk with them and remove all our financial backing unless they straighten up.

  “Yes, girl, they were given a lot of money to make sure children found good homes. They apparently pocketed it and didn’t do the right thing. I’ve half a mind to sue them.”

  “You’ll have to find a different lawyer if Mattan handles all your law work,” I snorted.

  “Actually, I handle all the law work,” a tall man said. “My name is Arlen. I’m handling a huge case right now for all the families, and Mattan asked to handle your family’s estate. Trust me; if Sara says to sue, they won’t be left with a penny to their name and all the children will find homes.”

  “You’re not going to be able to any of that unless you stop Drake,” Ariel reminded them.

  “Well, we’ve got the witnesses, the Lamb, and the Four Horsemen here,” Herschel said. “I think we can come up with a plan.”

  My Four Horsemen were oddly quiet like they wanted us to figure this out on our own. I needed to think. What would the Antichrist do in this century?

  “He’s going to need followers, right?” I asked. “That was the whole point of getting to you. He would start with the elders and use your resources to get more.” Nona and Oma both squeezed my hand like I was on the right track.

  “It won’t be long before he figures out the elders are on our side,” Lizzie said. “It may make him careless.”

  “It will,” Ariel said. “He knows it’s going to be harder to get to Tabby to get her to break the other seals. And she can’t break them before he’s ready. He tricked her into breaking the first four because he hoped the Four Horsemen would help him. Tabby would feel sorry for him and be on his side.”

  Lizzie snorted. “Because he didn’t do his research on Tabby. He’s going to need to start building a following now. How he’s going to do that now is social media. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube. He’s probably already started. One of you big, beefy Horsemen with computer skills hasn’t found that yet?”

  Chase and Gideon already had their computers out. Gideon was silently typing away, and Chase was muttering about how you were supposed to get anything said with meaning with a limited number of characters. They both looked up at the same time like they found something. Gideon actually grinned.

  “If Tabby or Lizzie sees this, they are
going to smash my laptop. I’ve got a feeling the little witness is going to as well.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  “Our laptops are top of the line, and we’re going to need them in the future, Tabby,” Chase said. He had this shit eating grin on his face like Drake was building an army of evil clowns or something. I don’t care how harmless or goofy they seemed; clowns freaked me out. It was probably a good thing we didn’t have a McDonalds back in Kentucky.

  Zed and Bash had both gotten up to look over Chase and Gideon’s shoulders.

  “Incels?” Bash scoffed. “The Antichrist is an Incel, and that is who he is building a following of?”

  Lizzie let out her famous snort. “Of course, he’s a fucking Incel. Right after he gets let out of being a cat, one of the girls he’s into plots to kill him and the other one who is illegal runs away. He probably thinks all you Horsemen are Chads stealing his women. He’d better be referring to the runt and me as Stacys and not Beckys.”

  Lizzie served drinks to a guy who kept insulting her and calling her Stacy all night. He kept calling the other bartender Chad and insinuating Lizzie and the other bartender were fucking in the alley on breaks. It ended up being the bouncer that overheard and dropped the term Incel to Lizzie right before booting the dude on his ass once his taunts got worse the more he drank. Lizzie was obsessed after that and read everything she could about it.

  Herschel was looking at her like she was insane. “Care to explain that to the rest of the room? And keep in mind most of us are in our seventies and don’t visit online forums.”

  I just nodded to Lizzie. She could have written a fucking dissertation on Incels. She stood and ran her hands down her skirt. She put her hands behind her back, and I could tell this was going to be some huge, dramatic Lizzie speech. If she could have tucked a pencil behind her ear like a television college professor, she would have.

  “Okay, so, Incels. Listen up. Incel means involuntary celibate. They are a bunch of pale little white boys sitting in their momma’s basements posting on forums about how the government should mandate programs so that women should have to fuck them. Like, they think it’s their god given right to get sex from women, and some of them want the governments to help. They get pretty rapey and think if the government won’t help them, they make all these plots on how to rape and get away with it.

  “There’s all this slang with the Incels, and they hate people who are going out and getting laid. Like, they want us girls to fuck them, but they don’t actually want us fucking anyone else. Guys that are getting fucked are called Chads. Hot girls getting laid are called Stacys. Less hot girls getting fucked are called Beckys. They want the Stacys and the Beckys to fuck them, but they are sluts for having a good time with anyone else that doesn’t give off creeper momma’s basement vibes like an Incel.”

  Odelia cleared her throat. “That you for that explanation, dear.”

  “Whatever happened to using a sock and your imagination until you managed to romance a bird properly?” my Opa said. Okay, clearly, I didn’t just inherit my mouth from the females in the family. My Opa was a badass too.

  “Do the four of you want to stay for dinner?” I asked. I wanted to get to know all of them so badly.

  Nona just smiled at me gently. “Of course, but I believe your friend just gave us a little lesson about the kind of men your brother will recruit. We need to worry about that.”

  Sara just threw back her head and let out a laugh. She kind of reminded me of like, this really evil Yoda right at that minute, but I had a feeling whatever she was going to say was going to ruin Drake’s plans. Everyone in the room had to be an elder for a reason. None of them had said a word to me about my twin being the Antichrist or how I wasn’t supposed to be born. They were all being nice to me, and they wanted to help me. That was something new for me, and I liked it.

  “Mattan’s wife has complained to the elders a few times about Mattan. Nothing we had the power to do anything about, but there’s a particular escort service he likes to use. I would imagine he’s bringing women for Drake now that he’s not a cat and he didn’t get the women he wanted. What would this sad little community of perverts do with a video reel of Drake with a bunch of different beautiful women?”

  Lizzie crossed her arms. It was a good idea, but she was thinking the same thing I was.

  “Only if you can blur out the women’s faces,” I said. “I don’t want any of them getting hurt, and whatever is filmed and released, it’s not them having sex. I don’t care how old you are; I think everyone here would agree you wouldn’t want a video of you fucking anyone on the internet.”

  Finally, the Horsemen decided to contribute something. They had all been hunched over the laptops, and I thought they weren’t paying attention. They weren’t looking at the elders now. They were looking at me. I remembered them telling me they answered to me. How the hell did I go from not know if I was going to make rent to having the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse at my beck and call?

  “Tabby, we knew about the escort service. There have been women at the house ever since Ariel stopped talking to Drake. I guess he didn’t care she was only seventeen. There’s a camera at the door, and Drake is the one that answers,” Gideon said. “He’s pretty much panting like a hungry puppy. The Incel stuff was started probably right after he became human again and found out Lizzie wasn’t going to be his first. He must have decided to stick with it, even with the escorts coming in and out because he seems to have fans.”

  “Great, we’ve got to stop the Antichrist and his army of perverts who are angry about not getting laid,” I muttered.

  Sara was still staring at me. “You surprise me, Tabitha. You grew up totally away from here, but you take after everyone in your family except your Adler blood. None of the Adlers would have had any issues releasing videos of Drake having sex with those women. How did you want to play this without doing that?”

  I lifted my chin stubbornly. She was the first person to mention Mattan was my father today. She didn’t do it in a bad way, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to just blindly follow someone who was okay with ruining women’s lives like that. Sure, we would be stopping the end of the world, but I’d worked in strip clubs before. Some of those women visiting Drake and Matten could have the same story as the women who danced. People looked down on strippers and sex workers, but a lot of the women and men doing it were the ones with all the power. People came from miles around just to throw money at you to see you without your clothes on or pay you for sex. You were the one getting rich in that situation.

  “I’m using my resources before I make a plan. I’ve got two witnesses, Four Horsemen, and now all the elders here. Drake is cunning, even if he technically never left the house as a cat. Mattan has probably been planning this for years. We can’t make any stupid moves. If we do something, it needs to be after it’s been gone over with a fine-tooth comb.”

  Lizzie had my back like always. So did Ariel. I was starting to like that kid. “We don’t release sex tapes,” Lizzie said. “There’s got to be a way to show Drake’s got beautiful women around him whenever he wants without ruining other lives besides Drake and Mattan’s.”

  “I get the feeling Drake is going to react worse to that than to us taking the elders away,” Ariel said. “The elders have a bigger reach as far as money and tech, but I get the feeling he identifies with the Incels more. I have this feeling Drake is going to make a huge move when those videos are released,” Ariel said.

  “I have the same feeling as the runt,” Lizzie said.

  “Good,” I said, nodding. “I want Drake shaken up and careless. This is what’s going to happen. I don’t even know if we could have gotten cameras in the bedroom in the first place—”

  “Um, Tabby?” Chase said. “There are cameras in there. Drake gets off on the reruns.”

  “Gross, Chase. So, this is the plan. We can take the footage of Drake letting the women into the house, then again to his bedroom. If Drake makes an ass
of himself before the woman gets naked, we’ll make a copy of that. Let Drake build an army of Incels for now. We’ll be recording him and expose him as a false prophet to the Incels. Take away Drake’s merry band of perverts and Drake is going to leave Mattan’s fortress to face me. I’ll be ready and so will the witnesses and the Horsemen.”

  Chapter 19

  I was barely walking on two feet when I went to bed. I totally understood what Lizzie was feeling now and why she was spending so much time at the Belcourt Manor with her mother and sister. My grandparents were amazing. Elliot’s parents were still distant relatives of mine through the Lamb connection to the Adlers, but we just ignored that. We pretended Elliot was my birth father and I called them Nona and Sabba. Somehow, I was just guessing my grandparents from Mattan were just as horrible as he was.

  All four of them were amazing. They told me stories of my parents when they were growing up. Elliot was pretty straight-laced, and my mother liked to get in trouble like me. Elliot had been in love with her since kindergarten and she totally friend zoned him until they were fourteen and Elliot hit his growth spurt. She hadn’t even realized he was smitten with her and started hitting on him pretty hard, which just confused the hell out of him.

  Both my grandparents were joking about how it was this awkward mess of hormones and miscommunication for a while before they both finally figured out they were into each other. Then, they could joke about it and were inseparable. The story of my parent’s romance, both how they ended up together and afterward, dominated dinner. It was sweet and not like me to get all mushy-eyed about a romance story. That was a genre I normally stayed away from. Maybe I was turning into a mutant since I got here.

  Mutant or not, I threw a gauntlet down this morning and so did my Horsemen. Zed was guarding me tonight, and I believe he made a promise about his fingers over breakfast. I just got this vibe none of them were going to give me what I wanted and fuck me unless I could convince them to do it all together, so I didn’t kill them. What I didn’t get was why they were flirting so hard if my vagina was a death sentence for all of them.