The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2)

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  Manhattan told me she’d hung out with some of them once or twice. “It’s like trying to have a conversation with somebody who is high on acid. It’s not that they’re wrong, necessarily. But they irritate the shit out of me.”

  Everybody agreed the Spooks — the small squad of remote viewers from the CIA — were more annoying. They thought they were better than the Magicals because they were, “bringing science to the mystery,” as they put it.

  The Spooks also thought they were better than the Choir’s singers because most of them came from the “real” military. They looked on us like we were a bunch of amateurs even though they’d never faced a demon in their lives.

  Pop quiz: who is the more badass warrior? The military man or woman who is all trained up and loaded down with survival skills and instruments of death or the average member of the Choir Invisible?

  Answer: trick question. Obviously, the trained killer is more badass than we are.

  Follow-up quiz for bonus points: Who is braver? The armored grunt surrounded by a team of his buddies backing him up, or a singer for the Choir Invisible, armed with little more than a sword and a prayer?

  Answer: trick question. Obviously, we’re mostly a bunch of undertrained kids compared to regular military. On average, we’re braver because we’re going into a fight with less on our side. That also makes us dumb. Skills, weapons and tactics outgun bravery almost every time.

  Manhattan thought the CIA guys were unintentionally hilarious. “They’re all puffed up, stiff and starched in their combat fatigues,” she said. “It really frosts their nuts that our Casper and the magical amateurs have a much higher accuracy rate than their remote viewers do.”

  That’s what the Spooks called Rory every time, pretending they didn’t know his name. “Our Casper,” as in the friendly ghost. They resented him and were more than a little creeped out.

  Since his wispy, misty nature was split — “hither, thither and yon,” Rory would say — he was barely at the Keep until this torturous binding spell snagged him. He usually appeared to us as barely there, a cloud in the form of a man. I dared to press the accelerator a little harder and instantly felt the wheels on the bus go round and round, spinning on fresh ice.

  I wished Manny or Wilmington were here. The last time I’d spoken to Wil over lunch, she and Manny were making fun of the remote viewers. With dangers lurking, a sad body behind me and Rory in the Keep screaming pain into the storm, puppies and kittens and baby pigs weren’t doing it for me. I needed my friends with me to make me laugh and calm my nerves.

  “The Spooks are used to digging up terrorists and spies,” Wil said. “Ghosts and demons aren’t their thing.”

  “Rory is the most misty of the misty wistfuls,” I’d told her, “but he zeroes in on evil. Even the lowly seers beat the Spooks out on accuracy identifying pedophiles in the neighborhood.”

  The day the Spooks arrived, the whole Choir had been thrown into high alert because one of the CIA guys immediately insisted there was one or possibly two demons within the Keep. Armored up and freaking out, we remained pure, demonless and unmurdered after a thorough search of every nook and cranny, tower and dungeon.

  Since the false alarm, the CIA guys pretty much kept to themselves except at mealtime. Each breakfast, lunch and dinner, they marched into the cafeteria in a line. Three times a day, they walked around with their sleeves rolled high to show off bulging biceps.

  Wilmington called the daily show, “Veins, low self-esteem, doubt and frustration on parade.”

  “If they didn’t act like such entitled dicks, I’d feel bad for them,” Manny said.

  Then, in a blink, Rory had popped in beside us. “Now, now. Don’t be too hard on them. They’re all volunteers, far from home and terrified to learn there are such things as demons and things like me. They are on our side and they do mean well.”

  “They still act like dicks,” Wilmington said.

  “Well, yes,” Rory agreed. “But they are brothers in arms.”

  “How come there are no sisters in their squad, do you suppose?” Manny asked. “I love a girl in uniform.”

  Wilmington rolled her eyes. “Yeah, we get it. You’re into girls. We haven’t forgotten.”

  Manny smiled and said, “You haven’t forgotten, but you haven’t done anything about it yet.”

  “Hm.”

  “I live in hope,” Manhattan said. “It’s just a delightful invitation. Be flattered.”

  “I am flattered,” Wilmington said. “I’m also engaged. My honey’s back in Vermont, thinking I got a graphic design job in the City.”

  Manny feigned horror. “Then I’m your last chance before you lock that vajayjay down!”

  “Girls, girls,” I said. “Take it down a notch. I do wonder why the military volunteers we get are male. Even the Choir conductors are all men.”

  Victor Fuentes started the Choir Invisible. Vlad was his second in command. Kevin Chang, my first martial arts instructor, had been third. Peter Smythe, the man I refused to call father, had been fourth.

  “I have an answer to your question I think you’ll enjoy,” Rory said. “When I was human, much of my success with women came from bald pandering.”

  “Pander,” I said. “We like that.”

  “Men have a greater capacity for self-delusion than women,” Rory said. “Give a man an inch and he’ll call it a foot.”

  We giggled.

  “They’re here because they think they’re good at what they do,” Rory said. “I’ve heard those men speak among themselves. I recognize their problem. The worst sailors and the dumbest doctors all have the same malady. They think they’re geniuses. In my experience, women are more humble, and therefore smarter. No one’s so smart they should declare their own genius. That’s for others to say.”

  The Spooks’ corporal looked up from his New England clam chowder to scowl at us for consorting with the non-corporeal. Maybe he heard us. Maybe his ESP wasn’t as bad as Rory suggested.

  Since their debut in debacle, the Spooks had predicted nothing more. Nobody knew what the remote viewers did in their quarters below the Keep so, naturally, I asked Rory, our most pro snooper. The ghost gave me a wink with one flaming eye. “They play a lot of cards, trying to get better at reading each other’s minds. If they guess a card is a two of clubs and it’s a three of spades, they count that as close. After a while they get tired and play poker.”

  I suspected the “real” military would look down on the Spooks, too. Still, as I wound through the dark streets, I wondered if Victor had taken on too much for the Choir to deal with alone. A bunch of Marines blasting through on the vanguard during a demon invasion wouldn’t be unwelcome backup.

  We still didn’t have enough blessed bullets, though, especially since each round had to be prayed over individually three times (or as the Magicals insisted on saying, “thrice”.) Gunfire is often far too indiscriminate, trying to make up for ill-placed shots with quantity. Even with the pastors, monks, priests and shamans working in shifts, the first small incursion of the Keep had decimated our ammo reserves. The demons had successfully blown up the library of magical lore which might have kept the doors between dimensions locked tight.

  Lesson 116: To prepare for the end of the world, work on becoming a good shot. Think one shot, one kill sniper-type shit. Mucho macho gunners who pray and spray will quickly run out of rounds. When they’re out of ammo, they’ll wish they’d spent more time in the central courtyard swinging swords and learning to duck.

  The blackout screwed me up on Troy Avenue. With the traffic signals all flashing red, traffic had come to a stop and start crawl as drivers tried to work out who should advance first. This being New York, not everyone negotiated the morass in the spirit of cooperation or respect for traffic laws. Many drivers worked by the motto, “Me first.” The intersection ahead jammed as the sleet turned to hail.

  I pressed the horn and kept pressing. Nothing moved as the hail pelted the city even harder. I was stuck
halfway to Castille with Rory burning in torment.

  Under assault by chunks of ice as big as babies’ fists, the roof of the Odyssey became a snare drum. The noise was loud enough to wake the dead. Unfortunately, the waking dead lay directly behind me.

  Chapter 13

  I heard something rustling and looked behind me.

  Nothing.

  Anxious, I reached for my phone to find an alternative route as the traffic slowly pushed forward. A moment later, a narrow opening between cars appeared and I floored the accelerator. The wheels spun, caught, and I shot through, barely missing the back bumper of the car ahead of me. My right wheels went up on the sidewalk as I slipped and swerved around the bottleneck.

  I spun the wheel to fishtail down a side street and I was on my way to Castille again.

  The dead woman cleared her throat. “Slow down, girl…You’ll kill us both… Heh, well…not both of us.”

  As soon as I touched the brakes, the bus slid sideways. To my surprise, if the road conditions are icy enough and if the driver is in a panic, a Honda Odyssey can travel just as fast sideways as it can moving normally. I almost wrecked the bus, but I somehow kept it on the road.

  Eldora Clemnan, strapped in and zipped tight, cackled wildly.

  I took my foot off the brake and the bus straightened out before I crashed into an oncoming car. The bus was still rocking to a stop as I spun in my seat. I pulled a blessed blade and reached back to pull the body bag’s zipper down. The green velvet parted and Eldora was still there. She looked just as dead as ever.

  The chest heaved up slowly and her mouth moved. “Always in such a rush….” The chest heaved up again. “You still imagine you’re the heroine, so righteous and pure.”

  There was something about the way she breathed and spoke that made me think of a trumpet player taking breaths before each blast. This wasn’t Eldora speaking. Her body was simply an instrument rather than the origin. Each sentence came out in a long mournful sigh.

  “Who am I talking to?” I asked.

  “My name…is Key.”

  “What are you?”

  “You know what I am, girl…better than you know yourself.”

  “What? Oh. Riddles,” I said. “Great.”

  “I am using this…hollow vessel to communicate across… the rift.”

  “I didn’t know demons could do this.”

  “Some of our earliest explorations of your dimension…were in Haiti.”

  “You’re talking zombies, aren’t you?”

  “Your word…your tiny understanding.”

  “What would you call it, demon?”

  “Demons. That is another…of your words….an ugly thing. We are not demons. We are the Ra…of Ra.”

  “What do you want?”

  “To parlay.”

  “To what?” I glanced at my GPS and turned the windshield wipers up to beat harder. At least another five minutes to Castille. I hoped someone from the Choir would be waiting to help me deal with the thing speaking through Eldora’s body. Nothing in my training had prepared me to deal with a zombie.

  “Call me Key.”

  “I’ll ask you once more, Key, what do you want?”

  “Mostly?” A long breath. “Kentucky Fried Chicken.”

  “What?”

  “You say what a lot. I was told you were intelligent, Tam. Was I…misinformed?”

  “How about you stop screwing around before I see what holy water does to you?”

  “That would break our connection…and we have much to discuss. Slow down.”

  “Talk faster.”

  The hail eased but the snow and lightning continued. Thunder rolled overhead again and the sudden quiet following the thunderclap made me feel claustrophobic. I never thought I’d converse with a demon, especially on a grisly telephone across the interdimensional rift.

  “Humans,” Key said finally.

  “I sense a pedantic lecture on the horizon,” I said.

  “Humans are always in such a rush. Full of distractions…and urgency. Always hurrying… always late. You imagine you are so important…but you are less than a dust speck that exists for…a brief moment…not only in a vast universe…but you are lost to infinite universes in…the multiverse. And still…you believe you matter.”

  “I never pictured demons as being much on multiverse and string theory. All the demons I’ve met have been mindless killing machines.”

  “They are soldiers on a…noble quest.”

  “I’ve seen your soldiers. There’s nothing noble about demons.”

  “Each army in a war must convince itself…of its purity.”

  “Your point?”

  “You won’t accept it easily.”

  “Say it.”

  “You…the Choir Invisible…you are the villains in this conflict, Tam. You are…selfish.”

  “I’ve seen what your side does.”

  “You have seen noble warriors fight…for survival. You have seen…us fighting for our children.”

  I turned the wheel too fast and the back of the bus slid sideways. Something crashed against the right rear fender. When I peered through the back window, I saw that I’d knocked over a mailbox.

  “Careful. Samantha Biggs will be upset…with you if you damage this vehicle…but don’t worry. She considers…you a friend.”

  That shocked me. We knew demon agents could move through to our dimension in small numbers — usually in ones and twos — but why would they know the details of my life?

  “What do you want, Key?”

  “Surrender.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “This request comes…from your father.”

  “I have no father.”

  “Peter Smythe is your father.”

  “Like I’m Luke Skywalker and he’s Darth Vader? No. Screw that. Peter Smythe is not my father. Not anymore. Fathers stick around. Good ones don’t betray the human race.”

  “He wants you…to be spared. When we break through in…full force…New York will fall.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Run home and hide?”

  “Precisely. Cooperate and you…and your mother will be spared.”

  “You’re asking me to be a traitor.”

  “Your father is asking you…to survive.”

  I glanced back, forcing myself to drive slow enough to avoid sliding into a bodega. Even though the body was strapped in, I hated that it was behind me.

  “Tamara. Ra is…fire and ice. Ours is a dimension of Hell and your dimension…is our heaven. Our homes are threatened…by lava. Imagine…your world threatened by the…eruption of a super volcano. You have been misled. When…Ba’al establishes his reign on Earth, humans and the Ra will live together. We…have culture. Our opera is so sweet…it would make you…cry.”

  “I hate opera. All of it makes me cry.”

  “We have art. Much of what you call magic is our science. We…have dreams. We must escape our dimension so…those dreams can be brought…to fruition. Your…kind will share your world or perish.”

  “You used the words, ‘establishes his reign.’ That’s all I need to know. The answer is no, Key.”

  “Are…you certain, girl?”

  “I will look for you in the field of battle. I’ll be the one with the bloody sword, coming for your throat.”

  “Well said…even if I don’t believe your bravado. We are not…so different. Your armies conquer and occupy…just as ours do. Robber barons rule your world. Your politics… disguises the fact that…a few families run everything. Ba’al is a benevolent leader who is trying to save…his people.”

  Almost to Castille. I hoped Victor and Manny or Wilmington would be waiting. Maybe Chumele would be ready with the spell to release Rory. Playful puppies and cute kittens and dancing baby pigs. Playful puppies and cute kittens and dancing baby pigs!

  “Always in a rush…always late. Time is so fast…a river flowing past. You try to grab at the current, to cup a moment, but the present…slips i
nto the ago and…away. The future is not here, but it’s coming faster…than you can bear.”

  “Is this how you really talk? Or is that bad demon poetry?”

  “Demon. Your word. I told you…we are the Ra. It is the nature of opposing…armies to demonize each other. It allows us to commit…unspeakable acts of war.”

  I turned the last corner and slammed on the brakes, eyes wide.

  The heavy snow turned orange as it fell into fire. Castille lit the night. High flames and blasting heat reached up to melt the snowstorm.

  I picked up my phone to call 911. The text screen was still open. Sam had texted TO FREE RORY, BRING ELDORA TO CASTILLE! SHE’S KEY! VICTOR’S ORDERS!

  She’s Key.

  Lesson 117: Demons have a sick sense of humor. Yeah, I had no idea, either.

  A new text came from Sam just as Eldora’s corpse gave a breathy farewell. “Welcome to Hell…Tamara. Meet me in…Sam’s office.”

  In black and white text, the screen lit up: WELCOME TO HELL, TAMARA. MEET ME IN SAM’S OFFICE.

  Key had spoken to me through a dead woman, but not through an interdimensional rift. He was lying to me from Sam’s office.

  I heard no sirens promising that help was on the way. Hands trembling, I tried calling 911. At first, I dialed 411 instead. I tried again, got a dispatcher and told her to send firefighters and SWAT.

  The front of the building was already engulfed in flames and I heard popping sounds. Some of the chemicals in the prep room were very flammable. I wanted to rush to Sam’s office, but there was no way in.

  I stared at the flames, frozen in firelight. Welcome to Hell.