Not My Apocalypse (18 page)

I shook my head. “No, I’m not gonna live on the streets. I’ll find something. The important thing is that it’s my choice. I’m going to figure out what to do, and I won’t be choosing out of fear. I won’t be running or hiding.” Just thinking about it felt so good.

“What about your father? Won’t he come for you again?”

“Yeah, but I know I can fight him off.” I patted Animus. “My powers are getting stronger every day.”

Joshua didn’t look convinced. “Before you go, I want to give you a blessing.”

“No. Sorry, but no. I don’t want anything from your dad. Elliot could’ve died up there, we all could have died up there, all because your dad couldn’t get off his ass and give us some actual help. No, he had to send a bunch of kids to do his dirty work.”

Joshua shook his head. “Not from him. From me, as your friend.”

“Oh,” I said, all deflated and shit. “If it’s from you, then I guess it’s okay.”

He came down the stairs and placed two fingers of his right hand on my forehead. “Go with my blessing, Alexander Holden.” It was that simple, but I felt the power of it, a glowy kind of warmth that spread over my body.

“Thanks,” I said. “I wish there was something I could give you.”

“Don’t worry about it.” He smiled. “Good luck, Alex.”

“Good luck to you, too.”

***

It was three days before Satan came looking for me, and I’d done a lot of thinking in that time. When he showed up in the hotel room I was staying in, I was ready for him. “Hello, Alex,” he said in a smooth voice. He probably used that voice when he was convincing people to sell their souls.

“Hi, Dad.” And yes, I was afraid. I wasn’t totally sure this plan would work, and if it didn’t, I’d have to fight him. I knew I could stand up to him, but if it came to a fight I wasn’t sure if I would be able to win.

“I’m going to be exceedingly generous to you and give you a choice. Your first choice is to come with me back to your mother’s house, take your punishment, and then obey
every fucking thing I tell you
.” His eyes blazed red, then died down. “Your other choice is to die, here and now, and I’ll find another way to bring about Armageddon.”

I made a show of thinking it over, letting my fear show for just a moment. “No. I choose option number three.”

“There is no option three—”

“Option three is you leave me the fuck alone.”

“I admit that I admire your arrogance—”

I was done chatting. Time to see if this worked. I’d had three days to think about what to do when my father showed up, and I decided a good old-fashioned exorcism was in order. The Bible or a cross was out of the question for me, but the real power was in the words. I held out my hand and said, “I cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ.”

Satan threw his head back and laughed. “That only works for true believers.”

Something about his reaction convinced me. This was going to work. “True believers? I fucking
know
the guy!” He’d put his blessing on me. “I cast you out in the name of Jesus Christ, who I personally fucking know and who gave me his blessing. I cast you out, out of this room, out of my fucking life.” He’d stopped laughing and now he was back to being angry. When I took a step toward him, he backed away. That’s right, he backed
away
from me. All my fear left and I smiled at him. “I cast you out; go back to Hell and
leave me the fuck alone!
”

He covered his face with his arms (the one I’d cut off looked just fine) and with a roar that shook the whole hotel, he disappeared. Nothing was left except the faint smell of smoke. “And don’t ever come back,” I muttered to the space where he’d been.

After a little while I had to sit down because everything sort of hit me. Mew-Mew came out from where he’d been hiding and hopped up on my lap.
Are you okay?

Yeah, I’m great.
The relief made me tremble.

Will he be back?

Probably not for a while. I don’t think he wants to get embarrassed again so soon.
I ran my hand along Mew-Mew’s soft fur.

So now what?

I don’t know. But I’ll figure something out. I always do.
For now I just wanted to sit and pet my purring cat and bask in this feeling. I was finally free.

And it felt fucking
fantastic.

SAINT OF SINNERS

The Second Book in the Alex Holden Trilogy

Coming in 2013

“Alex Holden, you just saved the world three times, defeated your father, and won your freedom, what do you want to do next?”

“I want to go to high school!”

Yeah, I’m weird. But my whole life I’ve wanted to be normal, and normal people go to high school.

I talked a clerk at the local government office to get a copy of my birth certificate sent to me so I could register for school, and I registered at one of the high schools in a mid-sized city in California. It was nice out there, far enough and different enough from the place where I’d grown up. I wanted a whole new life. I also got an apartment using the same Jedi mind tricks—I mean, demi-god powers—that I used to sign myself up for school. I paid for my apartment in cash because I can sweet talk ATMs. Yes, I know it’s stealing. No, I don’t care.

I learned some unpleasant things about apartment living, like some people blast music late at night. I asked them once, politely, to turn it down. They did, for about ten minutes. They’d had their warning. I disassembled their stereo with my powers. I didn’t disassemble them. See, I was learning this thing called restraint. I needed it, because school started soon.

Up until then I’d been taught at home by a string of tutors, most of which couldn’t keep up with me. I was honest about being home schooled when I registered for high school, so they gave me a bunch of aptitude tests. I got advance placement in English, History and Science, but was at grade level for math. I can explain the structure of the universe, but I suck at equations.

The subjects though, weren’t really important. If I just wanted to learn, I’d probably do better on my own. What I wanted to go to high school for was for the social aspect. I’d had almost no interaction with humans my own age. My friends were all demigods, animals and ghosts. I’d seen so many movies and TV shows with teens in high school, and I wanted that for myself.

So tomorrow I was going to step into Junior year having never gone to school with other kids. If I managed not to kill anyone or burn the school down the first week, I was going to count it as a success.

Mew-Mew, my cat and best friend, joined me on the couch as I was watching my other best friend, TV.
Are you sure you want to do this? You might end up hurting people.

“I know.” I sighed. “But this is my one chance to have a taste of a normal life, and I really fucking want it. I’ll do my best to stay in control.” I have this teeny tiny little temper problem and with my powers that means things break, or catch on fire, and sometimes people die. Not by accident, I mean I explode them very deliberately, and most of the time I’m not sorry about it.

Mew-Mew gave me a look.
You’re getting stronger every day.

“I know, but I have better control. I didn’t kill the neighbors.” Not yet, anyway, and I’d been living there for almost a month.

Just be careful Alex.
He curled up against my leg and closed his eyes.

“I will.” I was probably the only teenager afraid
for
the other kids in school.

***

I waited at the bus stop with my heart hammering. This was just so surreal. The bus showed up two minutes late and I got on, finding an empty seat in the back. I set my backpack next to me and looked out the window. A few stops later someone walked by and muttered, “Can I sit here?”

“Uh, sure.” I pulled my backpack onto my lap. The other guy sat down. We looked at each other for a moment and I wondered if he was going to introduce himself. After a few seconds of silence, we turned our heads and rode the rest of the way in silence. Was that awkward or normal?

We got to school and I pulled out my schedule. It’s not like I hadn’t read the thing fifty times since I got it a few weeks ago, but I just had to look at it again. Home room, English - Classic American Lit. It was supposed to be some kind of college prep class, so I picked it since it sounded like it might be challenging. I was probably going to be bored anyway since their definition of “classic” probably didn’t include Poe.

Maybe I’d get lucky and we’d get some Mark Twain. I’d probably have to read Catcher in the Rye. I never finished it after falling asleep somewhere in the middle of the book and taking that as a sign I was wasting my time.

I made my way through the halls and everyone else seemed to know where they were going. I suppose they did. Most of them had been there before. The kids wandering around looking lost were freshmen. And me.

I found my way to the home room and sat down with my backpack. They were going to assign lockers in home room. The bell rang and they took attendance. I raised my hand when they called my name. For a second I had this paranoid little worry that they’d see through all my tricks and start asking questions. But the teacher just moved on to the next name.

They assigned lockers and I went to put some of my stuff away with this weird giddy feeling. I had a locker. My very own locker. And I had a home room and a school and a schedule of classes. Just like a normal kid. But aside from the newness of it all, the morning was pretty much nothing. Teachers took attendance and passed out syllabi and made a half-assed attempt at a lesson. It was the first day of school, pretty much no one was paying any attention.

Oh, and they passed out a bunch of forms that my “parent” was supposed to sign, but I had that covered already. I was emancipated, which meant I was legally in charge of myself. I wondered if Ken and Mom would ever dare to show up and contradict my story. If they knew what was good for them, they’d stay away.

By the second class I was pretty fucking bored. Good thing I’d brought along a book to read. It was a book on the origins of the universe, so none of the teachers could accuse me of slacking. Turns out I could’ve brought anything and they wouldn’t have cared.

Then came lunch and I got to experience the awkwardness of high school head on. A tray full of cheap school food balanced in my hands, I stood looking out over the lunch room and realized I had to find a place to sit. Shit. I didn’t know anybody. Even the freshmen had tables to go to, with older friends, with people they’d gone to middle school with, or friends from their neighborhoods. I didn’t know a fucking soul here.

I honestly considered teleporting away to eat at home and then come back. But damn it, I wanted to have a normal life, and that meant I had to suffer through this like any other teenager. I found a half empty table and sat over on the far end. More people made their way into the lunch room and it got fuller and fuller, but people avoided sitting next to me. I didn’t know if it was some kind of jerk ass high school shunning thing or if they had some sense that I was something dangerous. Something not human.

My first day of high school, I ate lunch all alone. The rest of the day was just as boring.

When I got home, Mew-Mew greeted me at the door.
How was your first day?

Boring,
I told him.
I didn’t maim or kill anybody, so I’d call it a success.

The second day was much the same. On the third day I stood in the lunch room again, staring out at all the tables and all the little groups chatting away, laughing with each other and I thought,
fuck it. Why am I standing here like some unpopular loser?
I fucking saved the world three times and faced down the devil. I was going to sit where ever the fuck I wanted to.

I deliberately picked the table full of football players. Maybe I was testing myself to see if I could stay under control.

Nah, I was looking for trouble.

One guy leaned toward his friend to tell him something and it created a little gap on the other side of him, so I squeezed into it. Silence and stares went over the table like ripples in water. After a moment almost everyone at the table was staring at me.

I grinned and said, “Hi.” Yeah, this was much better. I didn’t care what they did to me. There was no way they could hurt me, but I could definitely hurt them. Confidence, baby.

“Who the fuck are you?” The biggest guy asked, sitting across from me.

“My name is Alex, nice to meet you.” I reached my hand across the table.

The jock stared at my hand, then up at me. “Who said you could sit there?”

“Nobody. I got tired of eating alone, so I decided to join you.” I kept smiling. One of the guys closest to me scooted a few inches away. I reminded myself that I had to be careful. If I started getting angry, I had to make sure my body wasn’t going to get hot. Burning a couple of jocks by accident wasn’t a good way to start my first year of high school.

“Find another table,
Alex.
This one is full,” another of them said.

I looked down the end I was sitting on. “If you guys scooted down a little that way, there’s plenty of room.”

They stared at me. “Seriously, what the fuck? Just leave,” the big guy said.

“Nah. I think I’ll stay here.” I picked up my chicken sandwich and took a bite. I looked across the table, daring them to try something.

One of the guys farther down asked, “Are you looking for a fight or something?”

I swallowed my bite before answering. “Nope. Like I said, I was tired of eating alone. You guys looked like you were having a good time, so I decided to join you. I’m new here, just transferred this year. No friends yet, but you guys look friendly enough.” I couldn’t help it, I gave them a very predatory grin and a few of them shifted uncomfortably.

The somewhat smaller guy studied me, more curiosity than hostility in his gaze. “You from a reform school or something?”

Ah, so they did sense I was dangerous. “Home schooled, actually.” I took another bite.