The End of the World As I Know It (The Ghosts & Demons Series Book 2) Read online

  “The most powerful sounding chambers lie deep beneath graveyards,” Chumele said. “Since the battle with the demons and our many losses within the Keep, the sounding chamber is more powerful than it has been in a hundred years. It feeds off our tragedy.”

  We had lost many in the attack. Everyone remembered my induction into the Choir because the demons chose that moment to attack. I’d lost two singers I’d considered friends. If something more, something good, could be gained from their deaths, I was eager to exploit the advantage over our enemies.

  I tried to get more information from Chumele, but she just shook her head and told me to go ask my questions in the sounding chamber. “Rory will guide you. You’ll find the entrance to the tunnel behind the oldest suit of armor in the Blade Room.”

  “Who do I ask questions of, though?”

  Chumele patted me on the shoulder. “The Well of Sorrows, of course. If the subject of your query is connected to you personally, and if you ask the right question, the answer will be dredged up from the Mindfield.” She waved me away and went back to chanting protective spells over the entrance to the C&C.

  Lesson 93: In my experience, people involved on the magic end of the Choir’s business are always unnecessarily vague and mysterious. I think it’s in the Magicals’ nature to be annoying. Manny says it’s just that they reflect Nature.

  I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves. Then I started quizzing the Well of Sorrows about my boyfriend’s murder.

  Chapter 3

  Lesson 94: What you turn your thoughts to is what you manifest. That’s why every great invention begins with one obsessed person. Every terrible idea starts the same way.

  Lesson 94 sucks if you happen to be in a Sounding Chamber staring into the Well of Sorrows. Across the shimmering surface I saw the love of my life, Brad Evers, die again. I didn’t want to see that, so I closed my eyes. I listened to the pulse in my ears and waited for my heart to slow its slamming against my sternum.

  The right question is…what?

  I struggled with that for a while, mostly because I was crying about Brad. Even a glimpse of the murder scene set me off.

  Here’s the short story, minus the gory details. Through some magic detective work using the light cast from the lamp of Tighloon, I saw capital E Evil at work, killing my high school sweetheart. Skip ahead, skip ahead, skip ahead and bam, here I am in the Choir Invisible.

  If we used ranks like the military, I’m kind of a sergeant, I guess. Manhattan calls me a legacy kid when she’s annoyed and wants to needle me. Since Peter Smythe was one of the founders, my official rank as his child is Scion of the Choir. We’re supposed to be all about saving mankind, blah-de-blah, rah, rah, rah…the same speech I gave to the noobs. However, I wish my title wasn’t linked to the man who killed Brad. Sometimes I think my mission would be complete if I killed my father.

  Lesson 95: after you’ve done battle with demons and survived, you realize what you’re really capable of. My private mission is to avenge Brad’s death. Peter Smythe killed him so he has to die. I guess a lot of us want to murder our fathers, so most of you aren’t very shocked, right?

  Lesson 96: when you ruin your daughter’s life, you don’t get to be called Daddy anymore. I have no idea what turned Peter Smythe against the human race. Don’t really care, either. He must die. Okay? Just so we’re clear.

  Deep cleansing breath.

  I opened my eyes and stared into the Well of Sorrows. Its surface was shimmering gold again.

  The right question is…?

  “It’s not Peter Smythe, so who is buried in my father’s grave?”

  Peter Smythe’s face emerged from the well’s shimmering surface and stared at me. I shrieked, of course. You would, too.

  The shrieking went on for a while. When I was done with that and panting for air, he was still staring at me. It was a liquid representation of him in 3D, of course. Still, don’t laugh. It was freaky, especially when the face changed to a demon’s face with wide yellow eyes. Instead of eyebrows, it had a line of small, jagged horns along the ridge of his brow. Each came to a point, like filed teeth.

  “Where is Peter Smythe at this moment?”

  The Well showed nothing.

  I repeated the question.

  Still nothing.

  “Does that mean you don’t know or — ”

  The Well became a fountain. It was pretty for a moment. Then the wall of water reached out with a quick, hot hand and slapped me across the face so hard I fell to the ground.

  When I pulled myself to my feet, golden water ran down my body in thick rivulets, more viscous than water. My body shook with revulsion.

  The Well of Sorrows isn’t like a computer screen showing you a Google calendar of events or Tumblr photos documenting how you spent your summer holidays. It’s a living thing that apparently watches everything and records it. It’s a creature, like the NSA, but slightly less scary and powerful.

  I received a message before the creature unwrapped itself from my ankle and slithered back to its home in the well. The message was unspoken, more like an inkling of a coming storm from a sudden change in wind direction.

  “He’s not on Earth,” I said. “Peter Smythe’s beyond the veil. He’s in Ra, isn’t he?”

  The liquid retreated, back to the well. I got the distinct impression it was waiting to slap me again.

  “Can you show me where he is in Ra?”

  Nothing.

  I didn’t want to get another slap down, so I took the hint and didn’t ask again. Peter Smythe was apparently beyond the creature’s sight.

  “How about Ra? Can you show me what Ba’al’s kingdom looks like, past the bridge between dimensions?”

  Hell.

  I saw it briefly. You don’t have to look at Hell long to know what it is. You don’t want to look long.

  There are legions of demon soldiers driven mad with fury. It’s not all fire. I saw volcanos and molten lava, but endless fields of ice, too. What’s common among the demons is they all desperately want to escape their dimension. Our world is where the grass is greener.

  In terms the average human can relate to, if you’ve ever worked a customer complaints counter in a mall, Ra looks at least twice as bad as that.

  The Well of Sorrows showed me Ba’al’s forces gathering at a towering wall of ice. I saw a gate made of fire and bones. I saw circles of red demons, just like the soldiers who attacked the Keep and killed so many of the Choir.

  What I hadn’t seen was those of our number who had been dragged back through the rip in dimensions. I hadn’t known that some of the invasion force took some of our people back to their side of the bridge. I saw the demons feeding.

  You guessed it. More shrieking. I wasn’t wearing my katana. I didn’t even have my umbrella sword on me. (Warrior or not, they’re tiresome to carry around all the time and, until now, I’d felt relatively safe that far under the Keep.)

  When I got tired of screaming, I gasped for air. My father’s grave at the foot of the Keep’s wall by the church ruins held a demon. It was supposed to be Peter Smythe in that grave. It wasn’t, but I could set that right.

  A spell that conceals something is called a glamor. A glamor can make your crappy apartment look like a jewelry store. If done really well, it can even make a dumpy, hairy slob look like the male models in the Jockey underwear ads. In other words, it’s like beer goggles at the end of a long night in a sad bar.

  Victor Fuentes, head conductor of the Choir Invisible, says there are many dimensions. The dimension we’re supposed to move on to is commonly called Heaven. The land of our enemies, the Darkness Visible, might be our Hell. We’re unclear on the specifics, so no, I don’t know if you’ll ever see your dead pets again.

  Disney says all dogs go to Heaven. Let’s go with that. If you’re looking for certainty and reassurance, I don’t have any for you. Lesson 97: Certainty is for dimwits, anyway. Of that, I’m almost certain.

  I thought of Brad again and my
father’s face disappeared from the Well of Sorrows. It started up the slow-mo replay of my boyfriend’s murder again. I squeezed my eyes shut and forced myself to think of Brad when he wasn’t being brutally dismembered.

  “We had a lot of good times, too. Show me that.”

  The Well showed nothing.

  “Oh, I get it. It’s like Jeopardy. You’re Alex Trebek and I have to phrase my answer in the form of a question. When was I happiest with Brad Evers?”

  If you were expecting a pornographic scene…well, so was I. Instead, the Well showed me a memory immediately after a pornographic scene. It was me and Brad in the long grass, holding each other close.

  In the light of a full moon on a clear summer’s night, Brad’s deeply dimpled face was a lamp. The air was cool on our bare skin. We didn’t want to get dressed. Instead, we tried to do the impossible and hold each other closer.

  I giggled and his dimples got deeper when he smiled wider. “What would you say if I said we should get married when we graduate?”

  I stared at him for a while, smiling but suddenly serious. “Mama would kill me.”

  “But she wouldn’t really, would she?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “Mama would kill you.”

  “That’s why we should elope once we’re out of town, on the way to college. We don’t want the good townspeople of Medicament to hurt themselves jawing over us. We’ll elope quietly and we can tell them when we move in with each other.”

  “When will that be?” I asked.

  “As soon as possible. You can’t be this awesome and expect me to stay away, Tam. That’d be cruel, wouldn’t it? I know you can kick my ass with hapkido, but you don’t have it in you to be cruel.”

  Ha! Little did we know.

  I turned away from the Well of Sorrows. Brad was so wrong. I did have it in me to be cruel. I’d learned to fight from my martial arts teacher, Mr. Chang. I’d learned to be brutal when I was attacked in a mental health hospital that wasn’t any good for my mental health.

  The demons taught me to be cruel.

  No. That’s not right.

  We all have cruelty in us. I can’t blame the demons for that. They just brought it out in me when they attacked us and killed my brothers and sisters of the Choir. They killed my friends and I missed them.

  Lesson 98: When Evil takes away everything you prize and love and want, you can do anything. You’re most dangerous when there’s nothing left to lose. If that makes you Evil, too, so what? You don’t care anymore. Remember this one. It’s important later, too.

  I walked away from the Well of Sorrows. I had thought I would spend hours down there, sitting by the Well and quizzing it about which girls in high school didn’t really like me and who did what to whom. Instead, I had to get out of there. When I understood the horrors the Well of Sorrows could reveal, I never wanted to come back.

  Chumele, the Preceptor, had said, “The answer will be dredged up. It always is.” I should have known I should stay away. What else gets ‘dredged up’ besides ugly, bottom feeding fish, dirt and lost, bloated bodies?

  Tears cold on my cheeks, I thought of Brad’s sweet marriage proposal all the way back to sunlight. I wondered if I’d ever be allowed to forget the look in his eyes when I said yes.

  Lesson 99: Don’t be in a rush to peak too early. When you know you’ve had the best life can offer, it’s all a long, bad road to a dead end after that.

  I needed to forget my dead boyfriend. Okay, that wasn’t going to happen. At least I could try to ease him to the side of my memory enough that every inkling of Brad Evers didn’t feel like a dagger through the heart.

  I knew I should let that scar heal instead of picking at it. As Mama says, “Life is for the living.”

  Manhattan told me there was an easy solution to my grief. “It’s called the next boyfriend.”

  “I don’t think I’m ready to fall in love again. Last time I fell, it ended in a crash.”

  “Oh, Iowa. You’re adorable. You don’t have to love the next boy. When I went through my experimental phase with boys, I barely liked half of them.”

  “Which half of the boys did you like, upper or lower?”

  Manny cackled. “The top half never shut up and the bottom half is just ridiculous. I don’t get the attraction at all.”

  “I’m good with it.”

  Manhattan lowered her glasses to the end of her nose and gave me a wink and a leer. “Sadly,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  I pulled on my armor and made my way to the central courtyard to blow off some steam. After seeing the Well of Sorrows, I was a well of sorrow and needed some of my favorite exercise. It’s called swordplay because it’s play (right up until the moment it’s not and the blood starts flying.)

  I took the long way around the Keep so I could get to the central courtyard without going by the archers in training. Kevin Chang, my instructor in the art of war, did not approve of my many hours at sword practice. “You focus on your strengths too much, Iowa,” he said. “There is more to fighting than throws and chokes and swords. You’re fine with pistols and rifles and crossbows and pikes, but your accuracy with spears and the bow makes me sad. Spend more time there.”

  I didn’t think Mr. Chang was wrong, but I’m a duelist and a first person shooter kind of girl. Bows aren’t easy-as-a-camera, point-and-shoot. I prefer swinging a blade or aiming down a scope or a barrel. I’m comfortable with a katana in my hand and our umbrella swords are a solid second best.

  Okay, confession time: give me a sword and I know what I’m doing. I hate to appear stupid. Hand me a bow and I can look plenty stupid.

  Lesson 100: People who are afraid to look like beginners, stay beginners.

  Further complicating my feelings about archery, the lessons had recently gotten more demanding. Since the demon attack on the Keep that killed so many singers, Victor brought in Devin Anguloora, a new bow instructor from Samoa. Victor decided we needed to change our tactics so a new bow conductor was needed.

  Demons are merely annoyed with bullets unless each round is thrice blessed by celibate priests, priestesses and monks. Bigger chunks of metal and stone in the form of blades and arrowheads work better against them.

  The Choir’s archers had been used to standing still, firing slowly at far targets that also stood still. We lost too many archers in the attack because they fought the same way they trained.

  The Keep’s three courtyards were for archery, swords and sparring, and what Chumele called, “The Rituals and Rites.” The far courtyard mostly stood empty except for the ruins of the old church, the C&C below that and, of course, the graves of the Choir (including the one that was supposed to hold my father’s body.)

  The central courtyard is something of an obstacle course, filled with concentric circles of stone, concrete and dirt pads. Many of the surfaces are uneven and add a degree of difficulty to any sparring match or duel.

  The night Mr. Anguloora arrived, the archery courtyard was nothing more than a range with big targets lined up at the far end. Anguloora awoke every section of the Choir at three in the morning. Even Manny and I were called in from our apartment on Church Avenue.

  The big Samoan barked orders at us until he was hoarse and worked us all without a break. All practices were cancelled so every Choir section except the Magicals could contribute to the construction.

  After a week, we’d transformed the archery range into another obstacle course. Brass and oaken shields rose from the ground at random intervals. There were still targets, but none were larger than a demon’s head. Ditches had been dug. Dirt from the ditches was used for making hills. We took pillars from the church ruins to obscure some targets to cut our margin of error to the width of three arrowheads. We built fences to jump over and walls of wire to race under. We hung netting to climb over and through.

  During my initiation, Wilmington was one of my duels. Her sweet disposition belied her skills as a first rate sword singer.

  Tired and swe
aty with smudges of dirt across her freckled face, Wil asked Anguloora the question that was on all our minds. “So…like, what’s your deal, man?”

  The big Samoan glowered at her. Beneath the sleeves of tattoos, his forearm muscles bulged. He stalked over to a rack of compound bows that had been set to the side. The weapons were the latest tech: carbon fiber, scopes and steel rods to balance each bow. He kicked over the rack, scattering the bows to the ground. Then he spit on them.

  He swaggered back to our ranks and took his own bow from its place on his back. It was a simple wooden bow, thick and varnished to a sheen. Never breaking his gaze from Wil, Anguloora reached down and pulled four arrows from the dirt. He held them in his right hand.

  “Archers in battle do not all stand far back like snipers, taking their time. Demons run. They don’t give you time to knock your string slow.” Anguloora loaded an arrow and immediately fired it into the farthest oaken shield. In a motion so smooth and quick it was hard to follow, he fired two more arrows into the centers of the next two wooden shields.

  “When demons attacked the Keep, they flew and fell on your archers because your archers stood still.”

  Manhattan’s perfect lips twisted into an angry sneer. “They stood their ground —”

  “And died for it,” Anguloora said. “Sacrifice is overrated. Martyrdom is foolish if it’s unnecessary.”

  “They saved many of us that day,” I said.

  “Too many of them died in your stead,” the Samoan said. “You’ve been trained to stand and fire from a distance. That’s only one way to use the bow. Until now, all you’ve been doing is bowling. Archery is not bowling. Bowling is not life and death. Unlike bowling pins, demons move and attack and, when they break through again, they’re coming to kill you. When the demons come, you need to attack, to rush them, to retreat, to move. Warriors are dynamic, not static. Carry and load your arrows with the same hand with which you fire, as the Samurai did.”