Apocalypse Happens

by Apocalypse Happens (epub)

  If you saw her in the shadows, if you saw me in the dark, we could easily be mistaken for the other. Which might work out to my advantage, or it might yet get me killed.

  “We need to go.” I glanced at the Dagda. “To Cairo, Illinois.”

  “Follow me.” He ducked through the opening of the cave.

  I motioned for Jimmy to proceed, but he was already moving. I suppose getting out of the Otherworld was worth anything. Even getting out of here with me.

  “You will hold hands,” the Dagda ordered.

  I could barely see Jimmy. The damn mist was thicker and colder than ever. I inched closer, but he inched back. I reached for him, and he lifted his lip like a cornered dog.

  “Knock that off before I smack you with a rolled newspaper,” I muttered. “I won’t bite.”

  “Yes,” he said simply, “you will.”

  I grabbed his hand anyway, holding on tightly in case he took it into his head to pull away. I was treating him like a little kid again, but if the behavior fit . . .

  As soon as I touched him a warm, dry wind stirred my hair. We were no longer in the cool, misty Otherworld but standing on a decent-sized hill above a tired small town bordered by a lot of muddy water. I’d seen the Mississippi River often enough to recognize it.

  “Welcome to Cairo,” I murmured.

  Jimmy was looking around, blinking as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “Freak-y,” he said. “I didn’t even see him . . . anything.”

  “Guess it pays to be a fairy god.”

  “Probably not well.”

  Jimmy was joking again. That was good. It just had to be, so I smiled, even though he chose that moment to yank his hand out of mine as if I’d recently been infected with leprosy.

  I tried to make conversation, so I wouldn’t have to deal with the fact that the only time he could bear to touch me was when he was evil.

  “Nice hill.” I kicked the grass, which was more like hay, and a puff of dirt rose around my foot. “Back where I come from, we call those from the Land of Lincoln flatlanders, with good reason.”

  “Back where I come from too.” Jimmy headed for Cairo, his pace speeding up more than it should have despite the downward dip, probably because he didn’t try to slow his pace.

  The better to get away from you, my dear.

  “This part of Illinois has more hills than the rest.” He gestured toward the water. “The rivers.”

  I nodded. The area around the Mississippi in Wisconsin was downright craggy.

  Since we’d popped out of the Otherworld without benefit of a car, we had little choice but to hoof it in the direction of Cairo. I could see houses in the distance and beyond them another body of water, the Ohio River, I assumed.

  “Who thought it would be a good idea to build a town between two major rivers?” I asked.

  “Probably the same guy who thought New Orleans was a fabulous concept.”

  “New Orleans is a fabulous concept,” I argued. I’d been there once, for a bartenders seminar—code for tax-deductible drunk fest—and I’d been charmed.

  “Except when it’s getting hit by a category five and caskets start floating down the street.” I cast him a quick glance, and he shrugged. “When you bury people above ground, which is actually below sea level, shit happens.”

  “And Cairo?”

  “Gets flooded a lot. The highest ground around here is the levees.” He pointed to a bridge with the word “CAIRO” painted across the front. “There’s a gate they shut when it gets really bad. Cuts the town off and sends the floodwaters into the fields.”

  “Why settle here?”

  “In the eighteen hundreds, this place was hopping. Major port on both rivers.”

  “And now?”

  “The ships don’t need a port between Minneapolis and New Orleans. No passengers, no need to fuel up.” He shrugged. “I hear the place is pretty ghostly.”

  The sun had nearly set, casting everything in sepia. Shadows loomed. I hated shadows.

  “What did you see when you stared into the pot?” Jimmy asked. “At the end, I mean.”

  “My mother looks oddly like me.”

  “How oddly?”

  I slid my gaze in his direction, then back to the road. “Just don’t kill me by accident.”

  “I’ll try,” he said dryly. “I don’t suppose you know how to kill a phoenix.”

  “I was hoping you did.”

  “Never met one. Considering the legend, there might be a reason for that.” At my curious glance, he continued. “A phoenix lives for a thousand years and is reborn for another thousand from the ashes of its funeral pyre.”

  “Still not catching a clue.”

  “Maybe there’s only one.”

  “Seems like a waste of a good legend,” I said. “There could be a thousand of them. None of which ever truly die, but are instead reborn again and again.”

  “An army of virtually indestructible birds,” Jimmy mused. “I hate it when that happens.”

  “Ha-ha,” I said, but I didn’t feel like laughing. “You think that’s why she’s been raised? To lead the army of indestructible birds?”

  “Why stop there? Why not lead the whole damn indestructible army of the Apocalypse?”

  I’d been thinking the same thing; I just hadn’t wanted to say it.

  “Nice to meet you,” I muttered. “They call me the daughter of the Antichrist.”

  “She hasn’t taken over yet.”

  “She has the key; it’s only a matter of time.”

  “I think if the Antichrist had taken form—whatever form—we’d know, don’t you?”

  “Why? Is there a sign? Big red letters in the sky? A rain of fire? Perhaps a mass e-mail?”

  Jimmy stared at me for several seconds before answering my original question. “The end of the world is predated by wars and rumors of wars, famine, disease, lawlessness, earthquakes.”

  “Check and mate.” I frowned. “Except that’s been going on since forever.”

  “Because there’s been the possibility of the end over and over and over again, but we’ve always stopped it.”

  “We’ll stop it this time too.”

  “It’s never gotten this far before. We’re one step away from Armageddon.”

  “The final battle is now,” I whispered, paraphrasing the last words a living Ruthie had ever spoken to me.

  “Ruthie!” Jimmy exclaimed. “She’d tell us if we were fighting a losing battle.”

  “Would she?” I asked. “What good would that do?”

  At his confused expression I continued. “If she told us the Antichrist had taken form, that all of our efforts weren’t enough to stem the demon tide, people would give up, crawl in a hole or surrender. Hell, maybe they’d even join the other side.”

  “Would you?”

  I gave him an evil glare. As if.

  “The end is just the beginning,” I said. “Ruthie knows that. We’ve got prophecy coming out of our ears and none of it is exactly crystal. There’s always a way out if you just keep searching.”

  “It ain’t over until . . .” Jimmy stopped, tilted his head and glanced back at me. “When’s it over?”

  “When I say it’s over.”

  His grin made me catch my breath. Sure, he still appeared as if he’d just spent several days worshiping the porcelain god, then another two or three unconscious in a garbage dump. Regardless, his physical beauty shone through. It would take more than a torture session with a fairy god to erase that. Thank goodness.

  Because his smile, and that face, made me think of things I shouldn’t, I kept walking.

  “There’s another problem,” I said as Jimmy hustled to catch up. “Even if Ruthie would tell us that the end of the world is nigh, she can’t.” I tapped myself on the temple. “Cable’s on the fritz.”

  The reminder that I no longer had a direct line to Ruthie because of what he’d done—and how I’d made him—caused Jimmy’s smile to disappear like the last ray of sun bef
ore the storm of the century. His gaze returned to the horizon where bits of pink and orange had faded to a thin, purple line.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea,” he murmured.

  “It’s the idea. Ruthie’s idea. Only by becoming the darkness can we overcome it.”

  “I’ve never been real clear on how we do that.”

  I wasn’t either, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  “Ruthie said to infiltrate the Nephilim.”

  “Because walking straight into the lion’s den is always a good idea.”

  “Worked for Daniel.”

  Jimmy rubbed his eyes and didn’t answer.

  “Relax,” I said, then remembered something Sawyer had told me once. “To win, we have to believe that we will.”

  Dropping his hand, Jimmy began to laugh. “You think they don’t believe they will?”

  “You have to have faith, Sanducci.”

  He sobered as quickly as he’d lost it. “Do not quote George Michael to me, Lizzy.”

  And then I was laughing. It felt good.

  We reached the outskirts of Cairo. The place had a haunted air that I didn’t think had anything to do with the Phoenix. My laughter died. I wished like crazy we’d popped out of the Otherworld when the sun was still shining.

  “It does feel like a ghost town,” I murmured. “You don’t think—”

  “I don’t know,” Jimmy interrupted. “Maybe.”

  I didn’t point out that I hadn’t finished my sentence. Jimmy wasn’t psychic, but he wasn’t human either. However, his ability to know what I was thinking, to finish my sentences, stemmed from something that wasn’t, for a change, supernatural. It stemmed from being raised together, loving each other, sharing everything, at least until we’d stopped. That he was acting like he used to, before the world fell apart, was too precious to question and risk driving away.

  “Where do you think she is?” I murmured.

  “That would be your department, not mine.”

  My gaze wandered over the street, the buildings. We’d passed by beautiful stately homes—some restored, others broken. In front of us lay the main street, which appeared to be more of the same—storefronts that had been renovated to resemble small-town America and others that had been left boarded and empty.

  The quiet was so loud it seemed to hum, or maybe that was just the power lines overhead. I stepped forward and felt a jolt, as if I’d licked my finger and pressed it to a light socket.

  Jimmy, who’d been right on my heels, started, cursed and froze. “Did you feel that?”

  “Yeah,” I said. The roots of my hair still prickled. “What do you think it was?”

  “Magic,” he muttered, dark eyes flicking from one side of the street to the other. “You okay? Any weird urges?”

  “No urges,” I said. “I’m fine.” Or as fine as I would ever be with a dog collar around my neck and a demon murmuring in my head. “You?”

  “Just dandy. Come on.”

  As we walked past the hardware store, the outside light snapped on, the door opened and a tall, thin man stepped out.

  His hair was so blond it was nearly white and his bugged eyes and buckteeth only contributed to the image of an overly excited palomino.

  “Hey there,” he said, staring straight at me. “What’s your name?”

  Jimmy stepped in front of me. “Why do you want to know?”

  The man’s face creased in confusion. “Just bein’ friendly.”

  “Then why don’t you want to know my name?”

  “Jimmy.” I tugged on his arm. “It’s a small town and we’re strangers. Relax.”

  He didn’t. Not completely, but he at least let me move out from behind him so I could converse with the man.

  “You must be here to see the new gal,” he said.

  “How’d you guess?” Jimmy asked.

  “Well.” The guy hitched up his pants, which were in great danger of drooping past parts I did not want to see. He hadn’t taken his gaze off of me once. “One glance at your face, and I figured you for a relative or somethin’.”

  My smile was tight, but he accepted the expression for the “yes” that it was.

  “You look just like your . . .” He waited for me to supply my relationship.

  I tried; I really did. But I just couldn’t get “mother” past my lips.

  “Mother,” Jimmy murmured, and shrugged when I cast him a glare.

  The man slapped a huge hand across a bony knee. “I knew it. Sure enough. Though your ma, if you don’t mind my sayin’, appears nearly the same age as you.”

  I bet she does, I thought sourly.

  “Good genes,” Jimmy said.

  “Or no genes,” I muttered.

  Jimmy elbowed me in the ribs, but the man didn’t seem to notice. “Don’t have many newcomers to Cairo. Not much goin’ on here these days for em-ploy-ment but the one factory. Biggest thing to happen in a coon’s age was your ma showin’ up.”

  He had no idea how big. Or how lucky he was that we’d arrived before she’d started stringing the streetlights with dried intestines and using severed heads to decorate the fence posts or doing whatever else she might have to do to become queen of the end of the world.

  I shivered.

  “Cold, miss? Chilly when the sun goes down on the river. But don’t worry; it’ll heat up tomorrow.”

  “I’m sure it will,” I said.

  “So”—he rocked back on his heels—“just you two come to town?”

  “You see anyone else?” Jimmy asked.

  “What is with you?” I muttered, but he ignored me.

  The man didn’t take offense; I wasn’t sure why. “Just wondered if you’d need a place to stay is all.”

  “Uh-huh.” Jimmy’s voice was as skeptical as his expression. “So, where’d you say she lives?” Jimmy asked.

  The man pointed to the far end of town. “She’s in the biggest old house left standin’. Probably a half mile out. Just follow this street. Red brick. Pert’ near big as a hotel. Can’t miss it.”

  “We won’t,” Jimmy said.

  I caught a strange sound, one I recognized but couldn’t place right away because it didn’t fit. Not until the talkative, friendly townsman turned to dust right before my eyes. One minute he was solid; the next tiny particles sluiced into a pile at my feet, then drifted away on the wind.

  Jimmy flipped his wrist, causing his silver switchblade—the source of the odd yet familiar noise—to fold back in two before he slipped it into his pocket.

  The guy hadn’t burst into ashes, as if he’d been incinerated with a flame hotter than any known to man, as he would have if he’d been a Nephilim. No. He’d turned to dust like a—

  I hadn’t a clue.

  “What in hell was that?” I demanded.

  “Could you be a little louder? I don’t think they heard you in Panama.”

  “There’s no one here.”

  “You’re wrong,” Jimmy said quietly, his gaze intent on something farther up the street.

  The chill I’d felt earlier came back and gave me gooseflesh on my gooseflesh. When Sanducci moved into the road, I followed.

  The sun was completely gone, the sky an icy gray. The streetlights hadn’t yet kicked in, so the figures at the outskirts of Cairo seemed to loom up from the ground, materializing out of nowhere. Hell, maybe they had.

  “There are a few other signs of the Apocalypse I left out,” Jimmy said.

  “I take it those are one of them?”

  “Revenants.”

  “And you left them out why?”

  “There are thousands of signs, which come from just as many interpretations of prophecy. I can’t remember every one. And until they actually happen”—he spread his hands—“they’re just a theory.”

  The crowd of shadows began to move forward. “These look a little more solid than a theory. What are revenants?”

  “ ‘When hell is full,’ ” Jimmy quoted, “ ‘the dead will walk the earth.�
�� ”

  “Revelation?”

  “George Romero. Dawn of the Dead.”

  “They’re zombies?” I thought of the graves spilling upward as the Phoenix sprinted over them.

  “Kind of.” At my evil glare he continued. “They’re a special type. Not your garden-variety zombie or they’d be decaying all over the place.”

  “But they’re not Nephilim.”

  “Nephilim turn to ashes, and zombies—”

  “Turn to dust,” I finished.

  “Uh-huh. They’re dead, not demonic.”

  “How’d you know what he was?”

  “Wasn’t sure. Had to stick him and see.”

  “What if he’d been a person?” I snapped.

  “He definitely wasn’t a person. I knew that much.”

  “How?”

  “Can’t you feel them?”

  He jerked his chin toward the advancing shades, which appeared to have increased greatly in number in the few seconds we’d been chatting.

  That buzzing I’d sensed earlier, which I’d thought was too much silence or cancer vibes spreading from the power lines, I now recognized as the hum of supernatural entities—a lot of them.

  A scuffle behind us and I spun, only to discover that there were even more revenants closing in from the rear. My knife was in my hand, and I didn’t remember how it had gotten there; I was just glad that it had.

  I pressed my back to Jimmy’s. “How’d you kill the first one?”

  I knew there’d been a silver knife, pointy end into the revenant, but when killing supernatural boogies, where the knife went was sometimes as important as there being a knife at all.

  “Silver straight through the heart.”

  “Heart only?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit,” I muttered. Hitting the heart dead on isn’t as easy as it sounds, especially when you’re outnumbered a helluva lot to two.

  “Do you want to surrender first?” Jimmy asked. “Or should I?”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t you remember?” Jimmy turned his head, met my eyes. “Getting into that house is what we came here for.”