Strange. Beautiful. Shocking. Surreal. APEX MAGAZINE is a digital dark science fiction and fantasy genre zine that features award-winning short fiction, essays, and interviews. Established in 2009, our fiction has won several Hugo and Nebula Awards. We publish every other month. Issue 129 contains the following short stories, essays, reviews, and interviews. EDITORIALEditorial by Jason Sizemore ORIGINAL FICTIONIt Happened in 'Loontown by Lavie TidharCity...

Tea's gift for death magic means that she is a bone witch, a title that makes her feared and ostracized by her community, but when an older bone witch trains her to become an asha--one who can wield elemental magic--Tea will have to overcome her obstacles and make a powerful choice in the face of danger as dark forces approach.

Macabre meetings, sinister excursions, and deadly relationships; uncanny encounters; a classic ghost story featuring an American god; a historical murderer revived in a frightening new iteration; innovative Lovecraftian turns; shadowy fairy tales and weird myths; strange children, the unexpected, the supernatural, the surreal, and the all-too real . . . tales of the dark. Such stories have always fascinated us, and modern authors carry on the disquieting...

It has been 4 years since the 1st crisis ripped the town of Bangseong from the Earth. Kyung Joon is a scout of the Church of the ever Loving Christ. Where he needed to identify monsters within the city and report them. Recently he has received a promotion and is asked to head to see the head Pastor Matthew Kim. What lies in store for him? Surely, it couldn't be something dangerous.

"Every Heart a Doorway racked up comparisons to C. S. Lewis and Lewis Carroll, and the Wayward Children series has delighted and mesmerized readers. This fourth entry tells the origin story of Lundy, a very serious young girl who would rather study and dream than become a respectable housewife and live up to the expectations of the world around her. As well she should. When she finds a doorway to a world founded on logic and reason, riddles and lies,...

The past is always present... On a brisk summer's night, in a state of mundanes, a peculiar train leaves the station, its heading, a hidden borough of magic—and magicks. Hampshire, New York—a borough divided into three counties, each controlled by a magical noble family—Mandrake (County of Merlin), Dimitri (County of Morgana), and Bane (County of The Fates). After a treacherous plot unfolds, Alfred Mandrake, Head of the Mandrake family—who...

Things are heating up. Not a day goes past without Casey fighting for her life. But it's only just the beginning. She's about to come to the attention of some of the vilest gods in town. Casey is thrown head-first into the fight. And the more she fights, the more she learns that not everything is as it seems....Tune in for the thrilling second installment in the action-packed God Given series. It is sure to please fans of Odette C. Bell's Trapped...

From Silvia Moreno-Garcia, the New York Times bestselling author of Mexican Gothic, comes Certain Dark Things, a pulse-pounding neo-noir that reimagines vampire lore.
Welcome to Mexico City, an oasis in a sea of vampires. Domingo, a lonely garbage-collecting street kid, is just trying to survive its heavily policed streets when a jaded vampire on the run swoops into his life. Atl, the descendant of Aztec blood drinkers,

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"There are ghost towns in the world--places where the humans were annihilated in retaliation for the slaughter of the shape-shifting Others. One of those places is Bennett, a town at the northern end of the Elder Hills--a town surrounded by the wild country. Now efforts are being made to resettle Bennett as a community where humans and Others live and work together. A young female police officer has been hired as the deputy to a Wolfgard sheriff....

Legendary warrior King Tavurek marshals his mercenary army to combat a mighty Volarian host led by a man known to history as the Spear-point. In the blood-bath that follows, there can be only one victor. The final battle between the city state of Kethia and the Volarian Empire, as told by Imperial Chronicler Lord Verniers, is an event shrouded in many secrets and, some say, wrought by servants of the Dark.