How To Take Down A Cult At The End Of The World (Cozy Cult Cuties #2)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

“You wanna tell me exactly how your house blew up?” I ask and toe at a board that’s been burned to a crisp. It had to have been part of the door from the semi knob shaped hunk of metal that rolls out from under the blackened wood.

“Demons,” Charlie says, like that explains anything.

I put my hands on my hips and pray to whatever deity listening for serenity. “What?”

“A demon blew it up,” Charlie pauses and taps his chin as we survey the smoking ruins that used to be his perfectly respectable two bedroom house, “or mini demons? There were more than one but they weren’t that big.”

“Mini-demons? Like how mini?” I wonder if it’s like a miniature pig my Granny Jean used to carry around in her purse. It was loud for being so small. She called it her purse pig.

Charlie brings his hand up to his knees. “About yea tall.”

I nod. Bigger than a miniature big but smaller than a normal sized demon. “Okay, that’s pretty mini for doing all of this.”

“There was an army of them. I lost count of them. They were feral, Meadow.” Charlie clutches his games book to his chest. “If I hadn’t been working on my latest campaign they would have blown me and my book sky high.”

He’s not wrong. Sky high and in a million little pieces would track for the scene.

The house looks like a bomb went off, there isn’t a single part of it that’s still standing.

The chimney is half falling down and part of the roof is blasted straight over the fence and into the graveyard that butts up to Charlie’s blown up house.

The house was a really sweet spot with a porch and a white picket fence.

That picket fence has now been reduced to toothpicks and litters the ground that has been burned to a crisp.

The fire burnt a pathway straight through the graveyard.

Beyond the graveyard is the forest and a few trees are smoking.

I see a plume of dark smoke in the distance.

The mini demons that blew up Charlie’s house came from there.

Huh. Why would they come from the woods?

I lift a hand to shield my eyes against the midday sun to get a better look.

There’s nothing out there, or at least nothing that I’ve ever seen for myself.

There’s a town—I know that logically but my world has been nothing but Sweet Tooth my entire life.

It’s difficult to think about what’s really out there.

It’s been a month since the cult fell and my life suddenly became mine.

Freedom is sweet but it’s also daunting.

No one tells you what to do after the cult that raised you tries to sacrifice you on your wedding night to a demon god, gets decimated by your best friend who gets super powers and ends up marrying said demon, gets a whole gang of super-powered friends and and now you’re trying to help rebuild and maintain the infrastructure for the new cult your superhero bestie created to keep the kind of still brainwashed townspeople safe.

Okay, it’s not a cult, per se. I mean, I guess there isn’t a handbook for that sort of thing so it makes sense. Still, a little help would be nice.

“It’s called deprogramming,” Nina told me two weeks ago at dinner when I was struggling over frowning.

I scrubbed a hand over my mouth and slumped in my seat. “It feels wrong.” Every time I did it, I was…I got too anxious. My lips went up into a smile, not down. The whole thing just made me angrier about it all. “I feel like there’s two versions of me and they’re fighting about everything.”

Buffy squeezed my hand tight. “It’ll be like that for a little bit but one day your smile will be your own, Meadow. I swear it. You’re stronger than them.”

The ‘Them’ is the Founders. The elders of the Cult of Wrath. The ones that made our lives a lie.

I don’t know if Buffy is right. I don’t feel stronger than the men I listened to all my life.

I can feel their words rattling around in my brain, the shame and worry that kept me obedient creeps over my shoulders and pulls me down like a weighted vest. Some days are better than others though. Today’s one of those days.

I straighten my shoulders. “Does Buffy know yet?”

Charlie holds up his phone. “I sent her a photo but she hasn’t-” The screech of tires makes him shut up and a second later there’s the telltale sound of tires hitting a curb before the jeep comes to a stop.

I don’t have to look to know who it is. There’s only one person in Sweet Tooth that drives and parks like that.

“Buffy!” Charlie waves his arms over his head like she can’t see him or his blown up house.

“Are you shitting my dick, Charlie?! What happened to your house?”

“It’s not like I did it. You shit the mini demons’ dicks that did it! I’m innocent.”

Buffy makes a face as she rounds the car. “Mini demons? What?”

“They’re bigger than a mini pig,” I tell her, gesturing at my knee.

Buffy nods in understanding. “Ah, like Granny Jean’s purse pig.”

I snap my fingers. “Exactly.”

“I love the both of you but what the mulberries are you talking about? What’s a pig got to do with any of this? Are the demons pig demons now?” Charlie sounds bewildered. Understandable.

“Pig demons would be weird, so I hope not,” Buffy says before she lets out a whistle. “Wow, they really left nothing. How many demons did this?”

Charlie’s voice is barely above a shell-shocked whisper when he answers Buffy. “An army. It was an army of those mini pig demons.” I look over at him and don’t miss the dead-eyed look on his face as he stares out at the smoldering ruins that were his house. He’s seen some things after last night.

An army of mini demons sounds awful to me. I’d take Granny Jean’s loud purse pig any day. “They came from that way, but I don’t understand why. There’s nothing out there, right? It’s just woods?”

Buffy puts her hands on her hips and frowns.“Yeah, Sunday used to roam out that way. She says there’s a town,” Buffy says. “I’ve never been there but Wrath knows about it or at least I think he does. I can ask him. Sundays been off on a walk all morning.”

Sunday’s walks are more like boot camp training.

She gets up before sunrise and just starts walking.

She says it helps clear her mind but I don’t see how.

The one time I went with her, I gave up around mile fifteen.

I begged off and headed into town for a pastry while Sunday just kept going.

She likes to spend her time in the woods when she’s on her walks.

“Maybe Sunday’s seen something in the woods then? And what do you mean you think he knows about it?” I ask while I keep an eye on Charlie. He’s wandering through the wreckage now. I wave my arms at him. “Stay out of there! You’re going to get hurt.”

“I have nothing of value left to hurt, Meadow!” Charlie kicks at a board and immediately trips and lands on top of his games book he’s been clutching to his chest.

“Hells above.” I rub my temples. “He’s insane. He’s going to get himself hurt real bad one of these days.”

“Yeah,” Buffy nods and watches Charlie roll around on the ground where his living room used to be. “You’re right. He is going to get hurt.” She turns to look at me and I take a step back. I recognize that look on my best friend’s face. I know what she’s about to ask me.

I hold up a finger to stop her. “Don’t you even-”

“I need him to stay with you.”

“Come again? You want the insane gamemaster to stay with me?”

Buffy clasps her hands in front of her as she pleads. She gives me her best puppy dog eyed look and I hate that it starts working immediately.

“Please, Meadow. Please, please, please. We need someone to keep an eye on him while we sort, you know,” she waves a hand at the decimated house, “all of that out.”

“Why me?”

“He trusts you.”

It’s true. Charlie isn’t that trusting of people he doesn’t know, which tracks seeing as he knew our cult was a death cult before either of us figured it out.

“I don’t know…” I hesitate and bite my lip while I think about what it would be like to have Charlie staying with me. It’s not that I don’t like him. I love Charlie. He’s wonderful and kind, smart, even when he’s babbling about his games book stats to me like I’m any good at math.

“This is going to add plus 10 Int and oh my Wrath, we’re getting a faster cool down on Mana Rush! And it’s scaleable, Meadow! Do you know what I could do with that?”

I hadn’t known then and I still don’t know now.

I do know that I like Charlie though.

“Wrath and I would put him up but we have a full house right now.”

Sunday, Nina, and Elijah live with Buffy and Wrath.

It was a little bit of a bummer not being able to live with my best friend too at the makeshift headquarters of the new Sweet Tooth but I understand.

They’d been settled in by the time I’d come out of my cult coma and then there’d been no room for me besides the basement and that was a no go from me.

It all worked out, though. I’d gotten settled in a cute little house with a greenhouse out back.

It doesn’t get much better than that, and it was nice to have a little quiet after visiting Buffy.

Wrath’s Embrace was always bustling with activity, meetings and the like going on nearly every day.

It’s hard to think straight sometimes when it’s in full swing.

“I just don’t know what to do with him since we’re still trying to reorganize housing in town now that we gave all of the Founding Families and their supporters the ban hammer, you know?

I promise it won’t be for long. We’re cleaning out some of the houses on the east side of town and repairs should be done within the month. ”

I didn’t know they were repairing the houses on the east side. I’d been trying to pick up as many skills as I could to be useful in rebuilding Sweet Tooth. I’d even branched out from books to the internet, which really meant I was all in because damn was the internet terrifying.

Yes it was great for learning new things but it was almost too much information.

Too many voices shouting they were right and sending me down all kinds of rabbit holes of research that turned into me not realizing I’d lost a whole afternoon.

I preferred the library and had been spending afternoons there studying as much as I could.

I’d gotten pretty decent with plumbing in the month since Lethos had been obliterated and the Founding Families done away with.

Buffy and Wrath had let anyone that renounced O’Hare and Lethos stay.

Unsurprisingly, almost all of the Founding Families opted to leave Sweet Tooth.

I don’t know where the hell they went though, seeing as they had as much experience in the real world as I did.

They’d all gotten together, packed their things and then just left town, one by one. The cars had driven right on out of town and we hadn’t heard a single chirp from them since.

“The east side? I didn’t know you were repairing homes there.

” It feels weird. The new normal of not really knowing what my best friend is doing.

A month ago we used to tell each other everything down to what we were wearing so we could coordinate.

Now she was repairing houses on the east side town and I hadn’t even known.

“Really?” Buffy looks surprised. “Oh, I guess, well–we decided a few days ago at dinner. I thought I told you. Sorry,” she gives me an apologetic look and I know she feels bad.

When she says dinner she means at Wrath’s Embrace, her home where the whole gang would have been gathered for dinner.

“You know, this is really wonderful timing, Meadow. Can you come look at some of the pipes this week? We could use your help. Not even Wrath can figure out the system they set up in town but I know you can figure it out in no time,” Buffy finishes with a bright smile.

She’s a good friend. Trying to make sure that I feel included and wanted but still…

Sometimes it feels like Buffy lives in a different world, even though we’re living in the same town we’d grown up in.

Sweet Tooth is the only place I’d ever lived, my whole world.

Overnight it had changed and so had my best friend.

It wasn’t that my best friend didn’t include me, she did.

I was always there with a quick invite but it wasn’t the same as before when we were Blossoms. That was what I thought of as the Before Times, and in the Before Times my world was Buffy’s world.

Things are different now that she’s a superhero and I’m not.

In the distance, Charlie screams and there’s the clatter of rubble falling. Charlie isn’t a superhero either.

I sigh and close my eyes. “Okay, he can stay with me.”