A Reckoning so Sweet Read online

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’m tackling the Locust, the heat on my hands turning into a dark red fire. It singes the creature’s neck, and I jerk back as it catches fire, its tail the last thing to go. The girl’s body falls to the floor, her head hitting the marble tile with a loud crack. Blood comes from her mouth, escaping from her cracked skull and wounded torso. Her eyes remain open, motionless, forever staring.

  A wave of hopelessness surges through me, and I wonder: did they die because of us? Because we found them?

  The fires die and blackness once more swallows the world near me. I feel a warm hand on my shoulder, and Dagon whispers, “Come on. Let’s go.”

  I only nod—though in the darkness he can’t see it. He did warn me.

  I can’t save everyone.

  My arms find their way around his neck, and I bury my face in his chest, sighing as the familiar licks of fire envelope me in a fiery portal. The problem is that I want to save everyone. What good is it to survive in the apocalypse if the world that’s left is inhabited by a group of a dozen-odd people? Eventually there are bound to be problems. Who knows how long it’ll be until those sleeping will wake. Now that Dagon and I are officially against his father, those are problems we’ll have to face.

  If we survive.

  The fiery portal takes us to our makeshift home—a cave in the eternal flatlands that used to be America’s New England region. Underground, the blistering sun can’t reach them, and Demons and the other Hellions running amok (such as the Locusts that appear in the sudden nights) stay away. They don’t like being underground.

  I break from Dagon, walking past the floating orbs of fire lingering on the cave’s walls—another thing to be thankful to David for. Dagon goes to the small stream that my Warlock friend keeps purified, refilling our canteens. I pass my mom and Mike, who pick at the meat from our latest kill. A deer. Prey like that’s getting harder and harder to come by these days.

  The locket that Erin, Mike’s dead daughter, gave me rests on his chest. He hasn’t had his FBI badge in a while—he threw that sucker out to sea before the sun turned violent. His dirty sleeves are rolled up past his elbows, revealing his strong, hairy arms. I hit the nail on the head when I described him as a Wolverine lookalike. With the stubble and the dark, slightly-greying hair, not to mention the gruff and sometimes irritating personality—Mike’s a dead ringer for the Marvel character.

  My mom sits on a round rock, wearing sweats. A matching workout suit, actually. She looks nothing like the mother I grew up with, and when she talks, she doesn’t sound like her, either: “You have a little something on your cheek, Michael.” She licks her finger and wipes his cheek.

  Mike doesn’t swat her away. He rolls his eyes, muttering, “Evelyn, please.” The way he says her name now is a far cry from how he said it when they first met. When my dad was still alive.

  It’s almost too much for me to bear, but it’s been a long time. I’m not naïve. I’ll get over it. Maybe.

  I hold back my gagging reflex when my peripherals spot my mom setting her hand on Mike’s back, leaning her head against his shoulder. Despite the circumstances, they seem content. I head further into the cave.

  Our group started out with everyone who made it from the fight alive. In addition to us, forty people, many children, which became twenty when the hail and fire came down. Twenty turned into fifteen when a giant ball of gas fell from the sky. Our water was poisoned shortly after that. By the time we realized it, it was too late. We lost more when the floating balls at night disappeared, the sun lost its sepia-brown hue and became blistering and unbearable, when night and day meant nothing. The Locusts took half of the kids left on that first night. From what Dagon tells me, there’s still more to come.

  There’s always more.

  Only a few children remain, two middle-aged women seeking to take care of them as if they are their own. From the crying they do at night, I know they’re not. Everyone here, everyone left has lost someone. They’re not alone in that.

  Off to the side, I see a pale, thin figure hunched on the cave’s wall. Her body trembles, but it stops when she’s offered a chipped cup full of a dark red liquid. Nat’s nose wrinkles; she looks disgusted, but she takes the mug, whispering quietly, “Thank you, Penny.” The name still sounds odd with her accent.

  Penny sits beside her, gently tucking a stray flyaway behind Nat’s ear. “You’re welcome, babe.” She adds as Nat grimaces with her first sip, “There wasn’t much left from the deer, so I added some of mine.” As she talks, I see the bandage wrapped around her hand.

  Nat, one of the only three Vampires I’ve ever known to call herself a vegetarian blood-sucker, unhurriedly drinks the mixture. Human blood and animal blood can’t be that different, but to the undead Vampires, it is. They can live off animal blood, but they’re weaker. So weak that they’re no better than a dude who hits the gym every day or a marathon runner. Penny’s the only one offering to dilute her blood in the blood of the animals we catch; David wouldn’t allow anyone else to. Even after all this time, he’s not very fond of the undead.

  I head straight to David, plopping myself on the ground beside him with a sigh. I do my best not to think about the Locusts and the group of children that were slaughtered, but it’s not enough. I frown.

  “Where’d you go this time?” David asks, rubbing the point on his left ear. His brown hair sags over his eyes. The Warlock needs a haircut. We all do, really—and some new clothes. A shower would be nice, too. We all smell pretty rank right about now.

  “N.Y.C.,” I say quietly, picking up a rock, rubbing it on my palm.

  “And there was nothing?”

  “Night came,” I clarify, since we’re so far back in the cave, you can’t see out of it.

  “It’s getting more random with each day.”

  I look at him—and I mean really look at him. Keeping the fires lit constantly, changing rocks into water, keeping the water pure and non-acidic…it’s definitely taking a hard toll on him. Lines that were never there before dot his face. Giving him a friendly jostle, I ask, “Are those wrinkles?” I poke his temple, where a crow’s feet formation of wrinkles is starting to form.

  He smacks my hand away. “Don’t you dare…wait. You’re serious?” He frantically feels his face, as if the wrinkles are deep grooves in his skin rather than tiny lines. “I can’t be getting wrinkles. I’m a Warlock—I’m only twenty-eight years old!”

  “Three hundred and twenty-five now, right?” Deb says with a smile, a hand on her round belly as she waddles over to us. The girl has a few weeks left at the most. She sits on David’s other side, placing a hand on his knee.

  David flicks his head to her, quipping, “I don’t see how being truthful about my age helps anyone here.” He leans over to her, and they exchange a quick peck on the lips.

  Bleh. I narrow my gaze. Could anyone hold it back around here? “Get a room you two, or another cave. There are kids around.”

  “You know,” he tells her, completely unaware of my comment, “back in my reading days, when there was such a thing as books and a thing called the in-ter-net—” He says the word as if it’s a foreign idea. “—I read that sex can induce labor.”

  Deb giggles, and I let out a disgusted groan. A smile graces her freckled face when it turns into a wince. Her fingers move to her chest, where a leather strap sits beneath her shirt. I don’t have to see it to know what it is. A white feather I never want to see again.

  “Are you all right?” David asks quickly, the concern on his face touching and sickening. He might’ve been my only friend before the apocalypse, but I’ve never seen him in a serious relationship. Entertaining lovers from his distant past? Sure. But never the mushy-gushy, oh honey, let me get that. Let me hold the door for you. Do you need anything?

  It’s weird. Don’t get me wrong—I’m happy for them both, but it’s weird. Just like Eve and Mike. Weird, and a little bit vomit-inducing.

  “I’m fine,” she says after a wh
ile. Deb forces a smile, knowing all attention is on her now. “Really, I am. I think that was the baby’s way of telling me it isn’t ready to come out yet.” She avoids using she and he, because we don’t know what it’ll be. There’s a spell David could do, but he’s missing the ingredients…and we’d all rather focus on keeping us stocked with water.

  Not wanting to linger on the baby talk, I decide to change the subject as Dagon sits cross-legged near me. Neither Deb nor David stiffen; that habit fell away a long time ago. Dagon is, for all intents and purposes, one of us, even if his father is the evilest fruitcake around.

  “We need to do something,” I say. Dagon’s eyebrows perk up, and I quickly say, “Not that.” His expression falls. “I mean we need to figure out when the next Woe will hit. We need to be ready. I don’t want to lose anyone else.”

  “The deer is gone,” Dagon reminds me.

  “Okay, tomorrow we hunt, and then we figure something out.”

  David shakes his head. “Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do for months? You’ve been portaling all over the east coast looking for clues, for signs. Unless you’re too enraptured with each other’s company to focus—”

  “Like you should talk,” I shoot back with a smug look.

  Deb, wonderful Deb, even though she’s pregnant with a fatherless baby, even though we’ve all heard her and David getting to know each other in the most private of ways, blushes. The prophetic girl blushes. Will the wonders of the world ever cease?

  “Thank you for making my girlfriend embarrassed,” David deadpans. “That’s my job.” His eyes close. “Ack. That sounds so juvenile. Being twenty-four years old and all, I’m too old to have a girlfriend.”

  Deb ignores his ever-changing age and asks, “Then what does that make me?”

  “Are you secretly rich? You could be my sugar momma.”

  We all laugh at that one. Really, I’m glad David and Deb worked out. I’m glad he got over her Human blood. She is part Warlock, but only a smidgen. Most Warlocks, David always told me, are hoity-toity when it comes to bloodlines. So taboo…but not very. It’s kind of like how the older generation looks at childbirth before marriage versus how people my age do, or even interracial marriage if you want to compare even older folks. It happens; it shouldn’t be a big deal. Let people choose what they do and who they want to be with.

  I sneak a look at Dagon as he asks David what a sugar momma is.

  Well, some people have a choice. Others are stuck. Not that I’m complaining. Not anymore. Dagon is not at all who I expected him to be. I never dreamt that I’d still be with my friends after this long. When he surfaced on earth all those months ago, I thought that was it: the end of life as I knew it.

  It was the end, but it was the end for everybody, not the end I thought it would be.

  After a while of talking, I stand and head toward the particular spot in the cave I call home. I lay the bow and arrows on the floor, working to take off my boots. When I set the beat-up leather boots beside the bow, I notice something that wasn’t there a few seconds ago.

  A golden flower.

  The memories come back before I can stop them.

  I stood on a sand dune, staring at the beach. It wasn’t the same beach, but they all kind of look the same. The salt water shimmered under the sepia sun’s light, the heavy breeze blowing my hair. It wasn’t the same, but it brought back the feelings.

  In my hands, I clutched a worn-out teddy bear. It wore an ugly set of overalls and sneakers. At one time in its life, it was much-loved. I found it in the house we were staying in. It reminded me of her, of Josefina, the girl I failed miserably to protect.

  In the weeks that followed her murder, I’d slept with the bear, hugging it close, pretending it was her. Her wide, dark eyes, innocent and ignorant of the world’s cruelties, even though she saw some of it first-hand. Her love for Barbies, for making up stories as we played. Sweet and trusting, she probably saw no reason not to go off with the Angel.

  Images of wings bursting through her tiny chest jumped to the forefront of my head, and I bit back tears, pushing them away. I couldn’t keep thinking about it. I had to stop dreaming of her free-spirited laughter, of her wild curls and dark Hispanic complexion. I couldn’t linger on her last breath, the terror she must’ve felt, the pain as the wing tore through her. It was too much. I was wallowing in the past too much. There were still some alive. I had to see them through till the end.

  And that was why I came here, alone, to say goodbye.

  I forced my breath out slowly, evenly, seeking to stay calm, to not fall into despair for the millionth time. I knelt on the dune, digging a little seat for the bear. The dumb thing wasn’t even Josie’s. Leaving it here shouldn’t matter at all to me. But it did. I set the bear in the seat of sand, standing slowly, not tearing my watery gaze from it. I blinked, willing the tears away.

  I turned to walk back to the house, to the group. I told Dagon and everyone else that I needed some time alone. They all knew better than to argue otherwise. It was an argument no one would win.

  But I was not alone.

  I nearly rammed my face into ebony cleavage. I stumbled back.

  Wearing a black dress, looking more modest than the other two times I saw her, Aphrodite stood, clutching the thin, billowy shawl around her shoulders. Her hair framed her head in a black, curly halo, her dark eyes full of sadness. Still shoeless, as always, and not surprisingly, stunningly beautiful.

  It was in that moment that I compared her to Persephone, Dagon’s mother. One was a goddess in the traditional sense, one was not. One had black skin, the other white as porcelain. Both women were breathtaking and flawless. Of course men, even Fallen Seraphs, would see them and think mine. Archaic, sexist and wrong, but that never seemed to stop them.

  “Oh, honey,” Aphrodite whispered, swallowing me in a hug. So much for avoiding having breasts pressed against my face. “I’m so sorry.” She unhurriedly let me go, and I stared at her for a while, not knowing what to say.

  I didn’t have anything to say.

  Aphrodite touched my messy clump of hair, her nose wrinkling. She held back her comments about my smell—after all, in an apocalypse, deodorant was the last thing on your mind—and sighed a deep lungful of breath. “I don’t know how you mortals do it.”

  There wasn’t a single part of me that needed to ask her for clarification.

  “That little girl loved you as much as she loved her mother,” she continued, moving beside me, gazing over the dunes, her hands on her hips. “You were like the big sister she never had.”

  A sad, broken smile formed on my face, because I felt the same. I wasn’t a fan of children in general, but there was always something different about Josefina. She was never irritating, never bratty. Granted, I didn’t see her much since I was away at school, but seeing her on holidays when it was mandatory for me to return home was enough time for her to squirrel her way into my heart. And now she was gone.

  “There is nothing purer than a child’s love.” Aphrodite glanced at me. “They grow up to be cynical haters of love.” Though her tone was somewhat playful, I was feeling anything but sassy or sarcastic to play along.

  “I don’t hate love,” I whispered, staring at the stuffed bear. Sounds of laughter, images of Josie playing Barbies with the small collection of garden gnomes my mother had, popped into my head. I closed my eyes, turning away from the bear, away from Aphrodite, and I added, “It just hurts too much.” I walked away, unaware of her departure—and the small token she left near the bear—until I reached the street and turned around.

  A small, golden rose sat on the bear’s lap, tinting the old, ratty thing in a gloriously heart-wrenching yellow.

  I turn away from the golden rose. I haven’t seen Aphrodite in person since that day near the beach, months ago, but every now and then a rose would appear, practically dripping in gold, and I know she’s watching over me. Same with Athena’s boon—the shiny band, hugging my wrist tightly, adorned wi
th snakes. I’ve tried to take it off, throw it away, leave it with the gifted roses, but suddenly it would reappear on my arm, as if I never took it off in the first place. I don’t know what I did to earn such favor from them, but I suppose I can’t complain. They’ve helped me more than once, and it’s always good to have a few gods on your side.

  Not so good to go against one, though.

  Hades.

  Aries.

  My heart burns just thinking about them, what they did. All those lives, lost, because of revenge, justice twisted and deformed until it’s no longer recognizable. Lucifer, Satan, the Morningstar—whatever you want to call him—taking Persephone against her will, forcing her to bear a son, taking her soul to Hell, where it could never return to Hades or the Underworld, where all souls, good or bad, should end up after death. Not all souls do, though. Persephone’s didn’t. Mine won’t. Any other Human who’s unfortunate enough to sell their soul (or, like in my case, had it sold for them) won’t. I assume our souls belong in Hell with our masters.

  Of course, I didn’t know this before the Horsemen showed up, before the crazy cult sacrificed innocents to bring forth the apocalypse by following Deb’s prophetic drawings. At first, during the time, I thought their allegiance was to Lucifer, but now I know they belong to Hades. Hades is the one who commands the Four Horsemen, not Lucifer.

  I feel a presence beside me, and my mind snaps out of it. I turn away from the rose, smiling softly at Dagon. “I take it that we’re going hunting tomorrow.”

  Dagon reclines, laying on his back. Beneath him lies a ratty old comforter, one with wine-colored flowers and grey stripes. The dirty fabric is better than sleeping on rocks, but it doesn’t do much to cancel out the uncomfortableness of it.