Not My Apocalypse Read online

  NOT MY APOCALYPSE

  Alex Holden: Book 1

  Copyright © 2012 Devin Harnois

  Cover design by Amanda Kelsey

  Edited by Anne Victory

  Dedication

  To my parents, who are the kind poor Alex only wishes he could have. Thank you for always loving me and supporting my dreams.

  Also to all the good people and wonderful friends I've met through NaNoWriMo.

  Chapter 1

  My name is Alex Holden, and I’m the Antichrist. It’s not what I want to be, but I’m stuck with it. My father is the devil; my mom is his devoted worshipper. I fucking hate them both.

  I’ve run away so many times I’ve lost count. This time I climbed out of my bedroom window and down the wall using my claws. That was a power I’d recently acquired—growing sharp little demon claws. I got to the ground and checked for any signs of my parents being awake. Eleven windows at the back of the big house, all of them dark. No sounds but the breeze and the hum of the central air system.

  Now I just had to make it to the cemetery a mile and a half down the road before they realized I was gone. For about the millionth time I wished I could teleport like Stefan. I’d been able to do it a few times, but I couldn’t count on it, so I had to use other ways to get around. One car passed me as I walked along the side of the road and I tensed. No, Mom and Ken wouldn’t come after me in the car; they’d send Satan to fetch me.

  I made it to the cemetery and said hello to the ghosts I passed, but I didn’t have time to stop and chat. In the middle of the grounds was an old family plot with a giant headstone that served as the gateway. All but the smallest graveyards are connected by gateways, and I’ve been traveling by them for years. I touched the cool marble and pictured another cemetery hundreds of miles away. In the next moment, I was there.

  Mew-Mew, my cat, hurried up to me and rubbed against my leg. Emily is on her way and I left a message with Stefan’s raven.

  I guess you could call him my familiar, but he’s really my best friend. And yes, his name is Mew-Mew. I named him when I was four, okay?

  I bent down to scratch behind his ears. “Okay, thanks.”

  “Hi, Alex,” Elliot said. He and Colin were sitting under a tree. Elliot was arranging flowers in small plastic vases. He often brought flowers from his garden as gifts to the dead.

  “Hey, guys.” The two of them, plus Emily and Stefan, made up our group. All of us were demigods, one of our parents mortal and one divine. Or I guess demonic in my case. Elliot is the son of Ares, and Colin is Brigid’s son. We’re a crazy mix of pantheons but we’re all around the same age and we became fast friends.

  No siblings for me. I used to think it was because I was so special no other child my parents had could ever measure up; now I know it was because they didn’t want to risk me getting jealous or upset and like, exploding the poor kid or something. Could you imagine getting pissed at your little brother or sister and then—bam!—nothing but blood and guts all over the walls? I suppose Satan could have put the same protections on them that he put on Mom and my stepdad. I haven’t been able to blow them up or disembowel them no matter how many times I’ve tried. My terrible twos were apparently really epic, and believe me, the only reason they survived is the magical protection that keeps me from doing them any serious harm.

  A few minutes later Emily showed up. She’s the daughter of Ra, all sleek bronze beauty. A few thousand years ago she would have been a queen, but now she’s busting her ass to get good grades so she can get a scholarship. “Hi.” She gave us all a smile. “Where’s Stefan?”

  I shrugged. “Not here yet. Mew-Mew left a message with his raven.” We kept waiting and waiting and I wondered what the hell was keeping him. I was eager to see everyone and make plans to do something fun. We hadn’t hung out since my last beating, almost two weeks ago.

  When Stefan finally did show up, he was pale as fuck. He almost could’ve passed for a ghost. “What’s wrong?” Emily asked.

  “Ragnarok.”

  “What about it?” I was rather well-versed in end-of-the-world prophecies. I study them since I’m supposed to feature in one.

  “Thor told me it’s coming and I should get ready for battle.” Stefan swallowed, leaning against the tomb that was this cemetery’s gateway. Thor is his uncle and his father is Odin, king of the Norse gods.

  “Huh.” I hadn’t considered that another pantheon might beat Satan to it. “So how does he know it’s coming now? They’ve been talking about it forever.” Even longer than Revelations had been around.

  “He said one of the horses in the sun chariot has a limp and Sköll is catching up.”

  “What does that mean?” Emily asked.

  “It means Sköll is gonna eat the sun, and Hati eats the moon, and everything gets dark, and his dad gets chomped by the fucking Fenrir wolf,” I said. “And there’s a big fight between the gods and the giants and then the world ends.”

  Emily paled. “But this Skull guy can’t eat my father.”

  I waved my hand. “It’s not the same thing. Different layers, remember?” Reality was really fucking fuzzy, especially when you’re dealing with gods and not-so-mythical places. Sometimes the thought of it makes my head hurt. “And it’s Sköll, not Skull. No, he can’t eat your father, but he can eat the sun chariot that belongs to the Norse, and if he does, it starts the chain of events that leads to Ragnarok and then we’re all fucked.”

  “I don’t want to be fucked.” She looked like she was gonna be sick.

  “None of us does,” I said.

  Stefan sighed. “I thought we just had to worry about your dad’s plans to end the world. Now it turns out it’s gonna be my family’s fault.”

  “How long do we have?” Elliot asked.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  They all looked at me. “I don’t know either. The prophecy is just a sequence of events. It’s not a fucking timeline.”

  Everyone went quiet.

  Here’s the thing: I’m supposed help my father end the world, but I’ve never been on board with that. Even though we were dealing with a different pantheon, it was the same problem. I stood up and said, “Fuck this.” They looked at me. “I’m not going to let the world end.”

  “But what are we supposed to do?” Colin asked.

  “We stop Sköll from eating the sun. If we do that, then none of the other stuff happens.”

  Stefan stared at me. “How the hell are we supposed to stop Sköll? It’s in the prophecy.”

  I started to pace. “Fuck prophecy. Fuck Ragnarok. Fuck Sköll. We can’t just sit here and let it happen.” I felt heat rise off my skin, a little shimmer dancing in the air around me. That had been happening lately when I got really pissed.

  “But even the gods can’t stop it. We’re only half gods and we have no idea what to do,” he said. “We can’t stop Ragnarok.”

  “Maybe we can stall it or something,” Emily said. “My dad fights the chaos serpent every night so the world doesn’t end.” It would have been nice if Ra or some of the other gods could help us, but there was a whole lot of political shit in the way. If gods from one pantheon interfered directly with another pantheon, it might start a war. A war between the gods was exactly what we were trying to prevent, and it would be really fucking ironic if we caused Ragnarok by trying to get the Egyptian gods to stop Sköll from eating the sun. All of us, being half-mortal, didn’t have to play by the same rules. We were considered part of the human realm.

  “So we’re supposed to fight Sköll every night?” Stefan said.

  “We can’t do that,” Elliot said.

  “No, she’s got a point,” I said. “You said one of the sun horses is limping and that’s why Sköll is catching up. W
e just need to delay him until the horse gets a… I don’t know, a vet or something.”

  “A vet for a sun horse?” Stefan said.

  I shrugged.

  “Apollo has sun horses,” Elliot said. “Maybe we could swap them out.”

  “Yeah.” Now it wasn’t just frustration and a lot of fucking hot air. A little thrill went through me at the idea that this might be possible. “We hold off Sköll long enough to switch out the horse and then the chariot should be able to stay ahead of him.”

  “But that brings us back to the original problem. How are we supposed to hold off Sköll?” Stefan said. “This isn’t some angry neighborhood dog, you know. It’s a giant freaking sky wolf big enough to eat the sun.”

  “Emily had it,” I told them, so excited I started smiling. “Her dad fights off Apep every night. Him and the other warriors use these huge spears. If it can fight off the fucking chaos serpent, it can sure as shit stop a sky wolf.”

  “How are we supposed to get Ra’s spears?” Colin asked.

  “We’ll just ask him if we can borrow them.”

  “But he needs those,” Emily said. Unlike me, she doesn’t hate her father. She really does seem to love him, even though he hasn’t exactly been the most attentive from what she’s told me.

  “We’ll borrow them during the day and we’ll bring them back before he needs them at night. I’m sure if Emily asks him and explains what’s going on he’ll be happy to lend us one or two. It’s not like he wants the world to end.” That was the whole point of him fighting Apep every night, keeping the world from falling into chaos.

  “So, Emily, you go talk to your dad, and Elliot, you find a way to talk to Apollo and ask him for one of his horses. Meet back here tomorrow and we’ll have this all set.” I thought it would be easy. We had a plan and everything, and it shouldn’t have taken more than a day to get it all ready and then tomorrow we’d figure out how to get up to the sun so we could take care of this.

  I admit, I was pretty fucking naive.

  ***

  One of the ghosts was nice enough to let me stay in his tomb. Stefan offered to take me home with him, but I wouldn’t have any protection there. Cemeteries are between places and that makes it hard for Satan to find me when I’m in one. So Stefan brought me a pillow and a sleeping bag and I curled up with Mew-Mew on the floor of the tomb. Things always seem a little better when he’s purring beside me. I don’t know what I’d do without him.

  My mom wanted to get me a dog, a Rottweiler like the fucking Omen or a Doberman like The Hound of Dracula or some shit. I didn’t want a dog, I wanted a cat. I begged and begged until they finally gave in. They figured as long as it was a black cat it was okay. So I got a little black kitten when I was four. Even at that age, I realized I could hurt things without really meaning to, so I was extra careful with Mew-Mew to make sure he stayed safe.

  When I was ten, Mew-Mew got run over. A big blue SUV went roaring down the street by our house and hit him. I didn’t see it happen, but Mew-Mew showed it to me while he was laying there dying. The connection between us lets him show me things through his eyes. I ran out of my lessons and went straight to him. The SUV was just a speck at the far end of the road, but it was close enough for me. First I stopped it, then I tore it apart. I heard pieces of it hitting the road as I knelt by Mew-Mew.

  His guts were all sticking out. I could feel his pain and when I put my hands on him it hurt enough to make me cry. I didn’t want him to die; he was my best friend and it was all so fucking unfair. I took his pain away while he got weaker and weaker. My mom came out and stood over me, and it was just about the only compassionate thing she ever did—she told me she was sorry and I think she actually meant it.

  Mew-Mew closed his eyes and I felt his life slip away. He was too young, and I loved him too much, and I wasn’t going to let some asshole in an SUV take him away from me. I felt something rising out of him and grabbed it with my power. I pushed his soul back into his body. With a little gasp, he started breathing again. I looked at the damage to his body, and I knew he couldn’t stay like that.

  What’s going on? he asked.

  I’m not gonna let you die. I had to fix him. The pieces fit a certain way, I could see it in my mind and I felt a hum inside me as I pushed my powers to their limit. I knelt there in the middle of the road and I put my cat back together. In the background I heard my mom asking me what I was doing, but like most of my life, I ignored her. She wasn’t important, she never was. Right now Mew-Mew was everything and I had to soothe him as I made him whole again. I kept his pain away, but he told me it felt strange. Finally it was done and I opened my eyes to see my cat looking just as he did before he got run over.

  “How do you feel?” I asked him.

  He flicked his tail and blinked at me. I feel fine. He got up and stretched and my mom let out a shocked gasp.

  “What did you do?”

  “I brought him back,” I told her. I finally looked up at her, into her wide eyes. Behind her my tutor was standing with a hand to his mouth. Then I turned back to Mew-Mew and spent several minutes just petting him and holding him and telling him how much I loved him. I know it probably sounds strange to hear the Antichrist talking about love, but I do love Mew-Mew.

  After a while I picked him up and went down the road. I still had the driver to deal with. He was pacing next to his SUV, running a hand through his hair and talking on his cell phone. He had a trickle of blood running down the side of his face and he looked like a rich douche bag.

  Most of our neighbors were rich douche bags with big houses and big yards. I think my parents would’ve liked me to play with their kids because it would have looked good for me to be all social and shit, but they couldn’t take the risk. I mean, imagine me killing one of them with a thought, little Bobby splattered all over their manicured front lawn. One incident might have been explained away as a freak accident, an aneurysm or some shit, but if it happened again and again? I just didn’t have the impulse control to be able to play with other kids. In some ways I still don’t, but at least now you have to really fucking piss me off for me to crush your brain.

  “Hey,” I said to the douche.

  He gave me a look and did a double-take when he saw Mew-Mew.

  “You ran over my cat.”

  He tilted the phone away from his mouth but kept it against his ear. “She looks okay.” Mew-Mew looked up at him, giving him the same nasty stare I was.

  “He. And he’s only okay because I brought him back.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” He paused and said into the phone. “No, not you. Some kid is talking to me.”

  “You ran him over and you didn’t stop.”

  “Shit happens, kid.” And he turned away from me.

  So I tore him apart the same way I tore apart his SUV. He made a much bigger mess, and he screamed while there was enough of him left to scream. Blood and guts and bone splattered against the road and against his broken SUV. His phone clattered down amid the mess.

  My mom came running up. “Oh shit,” she said in a hushed voice. At the time I thought she was worried about cleaning up the mess before anyone saw it and started asking questions. Now I wonder if she was thinking about that mess being her if she didn’t have the magical protections on her. She’d be right, because I’ve tried.

  ***

  When we met back the next day, neither Elliot or Emily looked happy. “What happened?” I asked.

  Emily heaved a sigh. “Ra won’t let me borrow any of his spears. He says he doesn’t want to interfere in Norse business.”

  “Did you explain to him we’re trying to prevent the end of the world?” I clenched my teeth.

  “I did. I even cried and begged but he still said no.”

  “Great. Just fucking great.” I punched a rock.

  “But…,” she said.

  I looked at her, waiting for her to go on.

  “When I was leaving, Set said that if maybe I happened to sneak
a spear or two he might not notice if it got back before sunset. And then the Norse wouldn’t be able to say Ra was helping us because it’s not his fault if some half-mortal kids stole them without him knowing.”

  How very political. For once I appreciated the craftiness. “So he’s inviting us to steal them?”

  Emily nodded. “Yeah, I think so.”

  So, one problem down. I looked at Elliot. “So, what about you?”

  He looked even more upset than Emily had. “Apollo said no. I mean flat-out no, no hints that he might secretly want to help us or anything.”

  I sighed. “I guess we’ll just fucking have to steal one, with or without an invitation.”

  “Won’t he be upset when he finds out?” Elliot asked.

  “Yeah, probably, but we’ll worry about that later.”

  “How are we supposed to steal one of Apollo’s horses?” Colin asked.

  “I’m still working on that. We’ll figure something out. So, what did you find out?” I asked Stefan.

  “Thor said we’ve got a few days at least. The sun horse is limping and Sköll is catching up, but he’s not quite there yet. And get this, when the horses are resting, no one is bothering to check the horse out and treat him. It’s like they want the world to end or something.”

  “No, they don’t want it to end, they just think it’s inevitable, so they aren’t trying,” Colin said.

  “But it is inevitable,” he said. “Ragnarok is going to happen.”

  “Yeah, maybe so. But it doesn’t have to happen now.” I looked around at them. “It doesn’t have to be now,” I repeated, feeling fire inside me, both metaphorical and real. “Not on my watch. Not on our watch, right?”

  Stefan had a light in his eyes that told me he was on board. Colin was with me, too. Emily didn’t look so sure, but she’s the youngest of us so I give her some slack. Elliot looked like he wanted to hide. “We’re the sons and daughters of gods; we’re supposed to be heroes, right? Well, except for me, but fuck that. I don’t want to end the world. I want to save it.” I’d meant it yesterday when I first brought up the idea of stopping Ragnarok, but now it really sank in that we were going to try to fight off an immortal being and save the world. It wasn’t just an idea; it wasn’t just one of those things I said when I was pissed off about my lot in life. I really, honestly wanted to save the world.