In the End Read online

  Dusk had fallen since he left, though he couldn't tell through the storm. Street lamps lit the falling drops silver, and, when each of them hit the pavement, the drops shattered into a million pieces like chips of diamond.

  A stranger, stranded under the narrow overhang of a building and dolefully wondering when the rain would stop, saw him first as only a hunched silhouette meandering along the sidewalk in the driving rain.

  “No, come on,” Lucien was saying to the half-drowned creature he held in his arms, smiling though his teeth chattered and his arms shivered, though his dark hair hung and curled into his eyes and trickled icy rainwater down the back of his neck. “Kitty, I'm not that wet, and whatever you think, I can't be wetter than you.” The cat wriggled, not quite trying to get away, but certainly protesting this bruising of his pride by the indignity of being carried and cooed at. “Who belongs to you, kitty?” An overcoated couple, scurrying past under a shabby umbrella, glanced at the Fallen, puzzled by this odd man. “I've always wanted a cat,” Lucien continued, oblivious, “ever since I saw them in Egypt a few thousand years ago when they sent me with Fallen Prince Sitri's entourage to fetch Prince Belial and the Prince Lightbringer back. They were there on vacation,” he explained to the cat, “or Prince Lightbringer was, and Prince Belial was along because Prince Lightbringer told him to. Anyway, they were sitting in the sunshine on the steps on a temple of Bastet when we found them, and I hadn't finished manifesting to this plane-- Hell on the nerves, let me tell you: It's worse than a gallon of coffee on an empty stomach. Anyway, the crowd of us were there, convincing the Lightbringer to come back to Dis, when one of the priestesses walked by with a basket of kittens.” The cat in his arms glanced up at him, and in the cat's eyes, Lucien saw the golden sun, glaring upon miles of sand that swept towards the temple. He saw the light glinting painfully off a wide, gold Egyptian collar that draped across Prince Lightbringer's chest and shoulders, and the Prince's dead-straight platinum hair spilling over sandstone steps. He saw the memories of how the silver eyes of the Adversary had bored into his heart, making him feel dizzy and lightheaded. He remembered the sizzling, scorching heat on his eyes, which had been so used to the dim, flickering light of Rielat, and he remembered a young lady, swathed in white, who couldn't see the crowd of Fallen on the steps of her temple, and who, standing a ways apart from the entourage, delighted over her basket of mewling, wriggling bits.

  The cat looked away, which broke the spell. The memory of brutal desert heat faded, and returning came the frigid line of rain dripping down Lucien's spine, returned was the thin, soaked shirt clinging to his shoulders, the gray sky pressing down on the world, the squelching shoes on his feet, the driving rain, and the curls sticking wetly to his cheek. He sniffled and missed the sun and the desert, then freed one hand from around the cat so he could rub at his pinking nose and uselessly flicked the hair from his eyes.

  “I think I'll call you 'Antichrist',” he said to the cat, as pleased with the name as any child would be. The cat had given up with his struggling and simply glowered, so Lucien carted him up to the apartment.

  Unbeknown to Lucien, the next morning was the beginning of the First Day.

  ***

  He awoke the next morning, warm and dry, to the first of several strange and scientifically improbable news reports.

  Residents of the Florida Keys, some of whom in their entire lives had never gone further north than the Mason-Dixon Line, had seen the Northern Lights without having to leave their own tropical front lawns.

  “Scientists are researching this phenomenon as we speak,” intoned the newscaster – who was not nearly as crush-worthy as the weatherperson – as Lucien looked on in disbelief. “As of yet, they are not sure of the case – possible explanations may include a shifting of the Earth's magnetic field.”

  The report continued with a few strained jokes from the newscasters and a geologist who, called in to consult, turned out to be less of an expert and more of a conspiracy theorist than the newscasters seemed entirely comfortable with.

  After the geologist had brought up the nationwide failure of compasses as his prime piece of evidence, Lucien said goodbye to Antichrist, ruffled his ears, and went out to see for himself.

  ***

  In a shop that sold devices of a nautical nature, including compasses, Lucien stared.

  They were all wrong. Every single one of them, from the heavy-duty, highly accurate compasses designed for large sailing vessels, to a few smaller, tourist-oriented numbers with tourist-oriented pictures of local attractions and landmarks and print along the bottom of trite, tourist-oriented expressions. And they were all wrong.

  What's more, none of them agreed on the wrongness. A few pointed west, a couple more danced between south and east, while most spun hazily this way and that, as if they'd just been shaken and hadn't reoriented themselves, and one or two stubbornly pointed towards Lucien, following him as he moved back and forth among the shelves.

  Someone wearing the store's uniform appeared, quite suddenly, at Lucien's elbow. “Weird, isn't it?” the young man said. His hair, Lucien noted with puzzlement, was unnaturally blond and spiky. Before the he had a chance to answer, the be-uniformed young man began talking once more, in a rambling, fast pace which was punctuated by regular pops as he snapped his gum. “The news said it was some sort of thing with the magnetic force of the earth and that's why the Northern Lights were all like, 'Woo, let's go to Florida!'” He paused just long enough to breathe and powered on. “Hey, did you ever think that the Northern Lights might be alien holographs or something? That would be so cool! But I guess we can't call them Northern Lights anymore because they aren't northern! Hey, do you want to buy a compass? They're acting funny.” He pointed.

  Lucien, vaguely intimidated by this torrent of words, shook his head. “I just wanted to see if it was true.”

  “Yeah, everyone's been coming in all morning.” The young man bobbled his head and snapped his gum especially loudly.

  Lucien nodded once. “Well, I certainly don't know why they're being so strange.”

  “Like, not even the science-type guys know what's up! Did you see that one guy this morning on the TV? The one who thought it might be terrorist aliens trying to – hey, you're going to buy one?” Lucien had picked up one of the cheap tourist compasses, one emblazoned with cheery rainbow letters.

  “I suppose,” he answered. “Good to keep an eye on these things.”

  ***

  He returned to the apartment, compass in one hand and the store's logo-emblazoned plastic bag crumpled in the other. “It's true,” he told Antichrist. “Look.” He knelt and placed the compass on the floor between them – one of the cheap touristy kind. The Fallen and the cat watched the needle swing lazily in a circle, then back the other way, every so often halting abruptly and shivering towards any direction that wasn't due north. Antichrist reached out one paw and touched it gently.

  “I wonder why too,” Lucien said. He picked up the compass, then the cat and walked around the apartment, noting the areas in which the needle reacted. Finally, he placed it on the windowsill and buried his nose in Antichrist's long, dusky fur. He thought, and when he was done thinking, he pondered.

  ***

  The Second of the Last Days was marked with an earthquake, and the ground spent the day gently vibrating, as if whatever force kept the earth still had been distracted. There was a strange resonance in the air, and all of Lucien's things rattled a little where they sat on their shelves. A wine glass, placed in the center of the coffee table, rang softly and with even consistency. Lucien shot it a worried look every few minutes throughout the day, sometimes stopping to chew his lip at it and frown. When finally he was about to go mad from the rattling, he neatly duct-taped the smaller things in place; the larger ones he simply took down onto the carpet. Antichrist sat curled on the back of the couch and glowered.

  “It's not my fault. Don't give me that look.”

  The cat flicked his left ear. The
power flickered a few times until six o'clock, when Lucien stepped out to find a copy of the evening news.

  “RED TIDE IN THE BAY,” proclaimed the headlines, and the pictures showed a fishing ship with orange-caked sides, clouds of crimson marbling the water, and graphs of the bloom's sudden surge; the fishing economy would be affected in the next few months.

  Such things weren't unheard of, but all the same, when Lucien looked at the pictures of the harbor... Blood, his mind insisted. Entire oceans of blood.

  He didn't have the foggiest idea.

  ***

  The next morning, the earth was still, the newspapers again showing the affliction of the harbor – a fresh slew of photos marked the advancement of the algae. Great patches of orange-red flecked and fingered their way across the water, clumping against the beaches and between the waves.

  There was a radio on near the news kiosk. The reporter was saying something about a surge in animal-related injuries in zoos and wildlife refuges around the country, a common occurrence before natural disasters. Something bigger, they suggested, might be on its way. Lucien noted this absently and glanced at a cat nearby on the sidewalk. The reporters briefly discussed the possibilities of evacuation in case of emergency.

  Lucien continued staring warily. The cat nonchalantly licked one paw. Lucien backed slowly away, folding his newspaper and tucking it under one arm.

  “At the Nevada State Hospital, ambulances have been rushing in victims of an unidentified hemorrhagic fever.” Temperatures of 104 degrees, they said, coughing up blood, chest pain, collapsing suddenly. Easily stabilized, though, and although many of them remained unconscious, the few who had woken up didn't remember anything about collapsing. Lucien lost the staring contest with the cat and went back upstairs.

  That night, or perhaps it was the wee hours of the next morning, he dreamed: of red light filling everything, of the world overcome by insects, and of shifting smoke-wraiths. When he woke – or when he thought he woke – he saw the room was indeed filled with red light that streamed in through the unblinded window, like moonlight, but as if the moon had been bled. He stumbled to the window, looked out, suspected that he was still dreaming; superimposed behind the moon was a great orb; although only a crescent of it was lit, it was so large Lucien could make out the entirety of its circle – Mars? Too close, but it had to be. It was the right color, and it dwarfed the waning crescent of the moon, also stained red.

  Lucien, now convinced that he still dreamed and beginning to suspect that he was missing something, wandered back to bed. The next morning, the sky was blue, the sun shone, there was no shadow of the great planet in the sky. The radio today was talking about a new species of insect that had just been found in South America – gold and silver, its head marked strangely like a human skull. Interesting, Lucien thought, but of no great importance.

  ***

  Miami – neck deep in snow. Denver – a category five hurricane. Phoenix – torrents of rain. Cairo, Egypt – hail.

  And just outside Lucien's window, sleet, for no reason whatsoever. He frowned.

  “You know, Rielat had storms too,” he murmured to the cat, “Not in the same places as the caves and lava pits and things, but there were places where it rained. No snow. I liked that about That Place, you know? That it didn't have snow. Definitely a point in its favor.”

  The cat, as cats do, stared at him with soulful yellow eyes.

  “Miami, though,” Lucien continued thoughtfully. “I've been there. Sweltering, horrible whenever the sun is out. Neck deep in snow, though? It's got to be the Apocalypse.”

  He snorted at his own joke, then stopped short.

  Earthquake. Strange insects. Unnatural planetary movements. Seas of blood. Disease, mayhem, the Northern Lights, the compasses...

  “Oh.” He closed his eyes. He should have seen it before.

  No more surveying excursions after this. No more cafés, no more amateur theatre, no more comfortable amenities of modern human life. No more free air. And no more light.

  No more light. Apprehension gripped him. He turned on his heel, slammed the apartment door as he left. He headed towards the roof, and he kept chanting in his head as he pounded up fifteen flights of stairs: No more light. He burst into the air and fell to his knees on the icy cold concrete, clutching his stomach and panting. He was drenched in moments. No more light.

  This couldn't happen. This couldn't be happening. He wouldn't go back to the lightless, airless, skyless confines of – That Place. He had to have light. He had to find a way to make it stop –

  He couldn't stop it. There was never a point at which he would have been able to avert the Apocalypse; even if he had, he still would have been alive the next time it came around. There was nothing, nothing he could do.

  ***

  Lucien sat on the floor in the exact middle of his apartment, talking to the cat, who reclined on the couch with half-closed eyes.

  “...And that's why the world's going to end, Antichrist.”

  Antichrist blinked slowly.

  “And I'm going to have to go back.” Lucien pulled out a bit of fluff from the carpet. “I never really liked it much,” he said quietly. “Weird, since I'm a Fallen and all, isn't it? I'm supposed to be evil. Kind of. ” Lucien huffed a soft laugh which wasn't amused at all. “I mean, it wasn't built to be liked. Eternity in the Lower Realm never sounded too appealing. And now, it's all going to be... over.”

  ***

  On the sixth day, the animals went mad. Bats and flocks of owls flew in broad daylight. Deer wandered into the city; dogs whined and slunk along, cowering against the walls of buildings or beneath anything they could fit under. The cats sat frozen, from the highest points they could find, staring balefully at the heavens in anticipation.

  Lucien found Antichrist on the window-seat. His fur stood stiff, tail bottlebrushed, eyes dilated, every line of him tense and watchful. Waiting. Lucien also stared up at the sky for a few moments, and fled into his bedroom.

  ***

  After rummaging around in several unmarked boxes stuffed under his bed and in the spacious closet, Lucien had found his weapons. He had a Stash, everything from a broadsword to a blowgun, but there was only one thing that would be any kind of useful to him, and he had two of this thing: The most prized among his collection was a pair of long, curved black daggers with the hilts wrapped in red leather and the sheaths made to match.

  Lucien sat tensely on the edge of his bed. He'd given up on reading or listening to the news. He knew what it would say now anyway – religious zealotry reaching a fever pitch all over the world; visions and visitations, perhaps; natural disaster and the death toll already rising – perhaps they'd write it off as the beginnings of a global Ice Age. Wrong.

  He waited.

  ***

  The early morning of the seventh day was much like any other morning. No one paid much mind to the low, dark clouds. They had other things to be worrying about.

  At ten, the drums of war began; long rolls of low noise. It would have passed as thunder to mortal ears.

  At eleven, Lucien drove out into the woods and found the clearing he'd surveyed just a few weeks before. That's what he'd been doing, he knew now – spying for Rielat, finding out by measurement where the enemy was going to strike, discovering where their attention was focused.

  He had driven out in a battered blue car that he never bothered to keep nice and parked under the eaves of the forest next to the clearing. He left the keys in the car, didn't lock it, and sat on the hood, humming while he waited, mostly to keep himself calm, sometimes breaking into soft-sung words, some song that tugged on the edges of his memory – probably a hymn, though he couldn't remember how it started or ended, just a few words here and there in the middle. It was easier to keep the panic down this way.

  At exactly twelve noon, the world broke. The sky ripped open above the forest-ringed field with a sound like tearing fabric and crashing sixteen-wheelers and cracking stone; the heavens tore apart,
past the clouds, past the blue of the sky, past galaxies and nebulae and the infinite dark between them, and with a final tear, allowed a blinding white light to stream through. Lucien stopped singing.

  He hopped off the hood of his car, unsheathed the knives at his belt, and abandoning his car, stalked into the forest for more cover. And watched.

  Moments later, the ground on the other side of the field rumbled and caved in to reveal another portal that dove deep into the earth, streaked with undiscovered metals, dark the whole way down but for a flicker of fire somewhere below.

  All across the world, pairs of these doorways were opening, celestial and infernal. The ground shook. The sky trembled. The thunder-rumbling of the war drums built to a crescendo, and with a crack and a roar, the dams of the Two Realms crashed down. Lucien felt the rushing energy brimming through the field and snaking into the forest, sinking into the earth and the trees and the air, and the hair stood up on his arms and the back of his neck. Ríel's energy mixed and swirled into that of Rielat – both were neutralized. The world strained at the seams to hold it all in, and trees and boulders were flung about like twigs and pebbles in a tempest.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Miracles and similar phenomena are caused by pockets of excess energy. Prayers, rituals, wishes: All of these the same. This energy is a fluid; the minds of humans like the vessels that it fills. When someone says a prayer, or makes a wish, they draw a small amount of the energy around into themselves, shaping it to their own wants, needs and beliefs. Humans, possessing unimaginably tiny capacity of mind, are naturally unable to draw on more than the slightest whispering smidgen of the power, and often it isn't enough to do more than influence the person's own subconscious – and then they solve their own problems, whether they know it or not.

  But it's enough. It's enough that it creates belief, and that's the main thing to remember. Belief is the strongest thing in the world; stronger, even, than the armies of the Two Realms.