by J. C. Nelson
“We were wondering if you might be interested in helping us out.” Mikey knelt and tickled a poodle under the chin, ignoring the chunks of flesh it tore from him.
Beth bent over, petting her darlings, before she turned back to us. “And why would I do that? What could you possibly offer me?”
Air freshener, for certain. A supply of antibiotics, real silver jewelry instead of that cheap crap she favored. I could offer her a lot. But there was one thing, in particular, I knew she’d want. “First pick. Every year, first choice of the poodles. For as long as I work at the Agency.”
For the last couple of years, we’d had trouble disposing of even small groups of poodles. Sometimes things went according to plan, with only a few casualties before we could destroy them. Other times, our mercenaries would arrive to find only the remnants of her rampage.
“First call. They all belong to me.” Beth stepped up to Mikey and hummed.
“Plain of Agony in Middle Kingdom.” He kissed her, then rubbed his muzzle on her head. “I’ll bring the big dogs. You bring the small ones.”
“One condition.” I interrupted their cuddle time, earning growls from the entire room. “When the battle is over, you bug out. Don’t stick around.”
Beth shrugged. “It takes me hours to groom them for bed anyway.”
I couldn’t wait to get out of there. When we slogged our way back to the car, I figured it was time to reveal the last recruitment drive. “Next up, let’s hit Kingdom. We’ve got exactly one stop left, and then it’s time to rally the troops.”
On the way there, I tried repeatedly to contact Grimm, but I didn’t even get so much as a glimmer. By the time we pulled past the gates into High Kingdom, I halfway expected the raging fires and mass chaos in the streets.
Singing flower vendors fought with animal-companion shopkeepers, and ladies in ball dresses sported black eyes and bruises as they fought to the death over breakfast.
Mikey drove on the sidewalks as necessary, employing an “if they didn’t want to get run over, they would have moved” philosophy. He watched a mob chase a gingerbread man down the street and whistled. “The Agency hasn’t been able to move any groceries in for the last week. Even worse, no champagne for two and a half days.”
“Take me to the post office. And stay clear when we get there.”
Mikey whined. “I’m an eight-foot-tall nightmare wolf. You think you can do better than that?”
I laughed and stepped out of the car. “You aren’t bad for a wolf, but I’ve got you beat. In there, I’m a goddess.”
I threw open both doors to the Kingdom Post Office, and bellowed at the top of my lungs, “Gnomes, I command you to come forth. I am Marissa, Bringer of Death, and I demand your obedience.”
Drums burst into a beat, rumbling so loudly they shook me, echoing down the streets of Kingdom, until at last the rumble cut off, and a single purple gnome stepped out. He turned and knelt, showing my signature on his rear end. “What would you have of us?”
“I’m going to hunt giants. Monsters twenty times the size of a single gnome. Abominations made of flesh and magic, too foul for most spell casters to create. I ask for your aid.” I bowed to him, and Petri’s eyes grew wide. “In return, I will make sure that the office supplies are forever refilled. Each warrior will receive his own stapler and his body weight in staples. Two reams of paper to the gnome who fells one of these monsters, and a box of paper clips for every eye.”
A waterfall of tiny shouts accompanied the mass of gnomes who burst forth, waving letter openers and wearing baby-wipe loincloths.
Petri pounded his letter opener on the ground until the group fell silent. “It is our honor to serve.”
“Thank you. I have one more request. When the battle is done, you will disappear into the shadows and await the delivery of your spoils.”
“It will be our greatest priority to stamp out these monsters. To the mail trucks!” Petri shouted, and they rushed off. I dashed off the address, Plain of Agony, Middle Kingdom, and stuck it to the back of Petri along with a page of stamps. Behind me, Mikey stood, a look of absolute shock on his face.
I patted him on the arm as I got in the car. “Told you I was a goddess.”
Twenty-Seven
THE MOMENT WE turned off the road in Middle Kingdom, we arrived at the Plain of Agony. Lush green grass spread as far as the eye could see, split only by a sparkling stream where trout leaped.
Here and there, glowing groves of trees bore fruit day or night. Only a few pesky rabbits hopped to and fro, frolicking in the grass while they waited for a wyvern to devour them.
Oh, sure, at one point the Plain of Agony was a vast wasteland of mud. Back then, lost spirits roamed the cursed ground, tormented for eternity, while a river of boiling mud killed every living thing for miles.
If you give the lost souls a book of sudoku puzzles and get the battery manufacturing plant upstream to stop dumping raw acid into the water, you’ll be surprised how nice a place could turn in a few years. Of course, all the maps had “plain of agony,” and the locals all gave directions like “If you reach the plain of agony, you’ve gone too far.”
So the name stuck. A row of RVs stood along the edge of the plain. Around them, wolves stretched and scratched while they waited. Others chased rabbits who were definitely not equipped for what big teeth they had. A dozen yards away, a group of vampires munched on fresh apples of the non-exploding, put-you-into-a-coma type. Most fearsome, however, were the mass of white poodles, all laying like tiny sphinxes before their mistress.
I called the leaders together for a huddle and laid down my plan. “Kyra will have her army by now, but they have to march from the edge of the plain to here, then up to the castle, and out into High Kingdom. Our job is to make sure they don’t make it there.”
Svetlana spit out a peach pit and wiped the glistening juice from her lips. “And what will we be killing?”
“Abominations. Dead flesh reanimated and lashed together into something sort of like a giant. Driven by spells.” When I added the last part, she recoiled.
“Disgusting. We will tear them to pieces.”
I nodded. “Gnomes and poodles are good for removing flesh, which you’ll have to do. Take out the heart or off the head, either will kill these things. Hey, where are my gnomes?”
Beth jerked her thumb over her shoulder toward a pop-up tent, where a phalanx of gnomes mounted up on poodles. “Twice the tiny terror.”
I meant to point out that my plan involved the gnomes using mail trucks, but before I could speak, Svetlana held up her hand. She peered out across the plain, into the horizon. “They come.”
And they did.
A cloud of dust rose on the horizon, and it looked like a tidal wave of misshapen flesh, thundering along, straight toward us. The abominations sprinted like Olympic runners, each step covering twenty feet.
“Ready!” I summoned my thorn sword, wishing my gun packed larger bullets, and braced myself for the onslaught.
Closer and closer the wave came, their eyes bulging from their heads, running so wild they crashed into one another, only to rise and take off again. Twenty paces out the wolves ran to meet them. My wolves leaped onto the leaders, tore their stomachs open, and left them thrashing on the ground. My gnomish army swarmed out behind the wolves, covering the downed creatures.
I swung the blade up and leaped forward as the first one came at me—
And bounded clean over me. One by one, they thundered over us like a herd of gazelle, sprinting past us and plowing into buildings in Middle Kingdom. A few dozen thrashed on the ground before us, as wolves tore their hearts out and tossed them to waiting poodles.
“Do we chase?” Mikey roared, his hands covered in blood.
Like that was going to work. They moved so fast a chase was useless. “We’ll never catch them. I didn’t expect them to run away
from us.”
Svetlana shook her head. “Not us. They run as prey run, driven by fear.”
“Fear of what?” I spun from Middle Kingdom to look out across the plain, and I knew what would drive an abomination to terror.
Shapes the size of true giants lumbered across the plain. Each more than a hundred feet tall, each laced with bone and thorns. A body that size couldn’t have a single heart. It would have dozens, each of which had to be torn out to kill it.
Isolde had taken her lesser abominations and stitched them together into these, a nightmare’s nightmare. Where the flock before had run wild, these marched in rank, keeping time.
“We can’t fight them here—three steps and they’d pass into the populated parts of Middle Kingdom,” I shouted, hoping the others could hear me.
Mikey nodded, and the wolves took up a howling, followed by the poodles and the unearthly shriek of a thousand angry gnomes. He ran to me, hefted me onto his back like a backpack, and crouched.
Kingdom help me, I gave the order. “Charge!”
We fanned out across the plain, rushing forward so my hair flew out behind me. Mikey shifted, his feet gathering in leaps and bounds as he tore ahead, then he spun and rolled me into the grass as he leaped for the first one.
With hands the size of a pickup truck, it tried to grab him. Each finger was made of a body molded together, sewn into a misshapen digit. The problem with grabbing him was that Mikey moved way too fast. By the time its fists reached where Mikey had been, he was already climbing its rib cage like a ladder and burrowing into its chest.
The abomination stumbled and fell, raking fingers at its own chest, and that gave me the key. “Take out the feet. Drop them and then kill!” With that, I ran forward, slicing the big toe off of the one Mikey attacked, then following it up with a cut to the Achilles tendon.
Like a gore worm, Mikey erupted from its back, sliding down the spine. “There’s too many hearts. I can’t kill them all at once.”
I whistled, and waved for a pack of poodle riders. “Gnaw through to the hearts. Get a vampire to listen and tell you where they are.”
Around me giants fell, crippled, and yet the waves of monsters went on, farther than I could see. I grabbed Mikey by the fur and nearly lost my bowels for it as he spun, a look of feral rage on his face.
I shouted to be heard. “This isn’t going to work. We have to cut off the head.”
Mikey’s gaze locked on the head of the abomination, and he growled like a bulldozer.
“Not like that.” I pointed farther out to where two smaller abominations marched, and the diminutive human between them. “That’s Kyra. Get me to her. If I am in charge, I can command those monsters to hold still while we kill them.”
Mikey changed into a full wolf, and I slipped onto his back, clutching fur as he leaped onto a still-moving body. Three bounds later, he stopped a few yards from Beth. She focused on humming “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” on a bullhorn.
I shouted over her hum. “We’re going after Kyra.”
Svetlana stopped tearing flesh from an abomination to join us and nodded. “Bring the small ones, and let us make it so.”
With a pack of gnome cavalry, a handful of wolves, and a blond vampire, we set out to put an end to the assault. Moving among the creatures proved easier than I feared. While these were more intelligent, their ponderous size meant we’d passed under they before they could even begin to reach us.
And that was the key. These weren’t warriors. They were destruction machinery, built to tear down every building in High Kingdom and Low Kingdom. Grimm said the city was self-reinforcing, but that meant the destruction of a building in the city wouldn’t crush the corresponding one in the other layer of the city. The destruction of two of the three would resonate.
The Black Queen truly meant to wipe Kingdom clean, and most of the city as well.
I leaned forward to explain to Mikey right as a blast of orange spell power hit us. Mikey blew to the side like a puff of cotton. I flew headfirst for the ground, managing to hit shoulder first and roll like a rag doll. I struggled to my feet, and at last found Kyra.
She’d grown even more beautiful than before, her blond hair turning crystalline silver, her chin coming to a graceful point. And she fired spells from her hands like bullets. One caught a gnome and exploded him into a mist of blood and office supplies.
Then she turned her gaze to me. “Do you like my army? And my powers?” She raised her hands at me, and I tensed, knowing I couldn’t possibly dodge.
A burst of purple light blinded me for a moment . . . and that was all.
I opened my eyes to find my fingers still attached and my brain mostly functional. She unleashed her spells on me again and again, which made for a pretty light show, but a lousy weapon. I held up my wrist, showing the handmaiden’s mark. “Your powers don’t work on me. And I have an army of my own.”
Behind Kyra, a smaller abomination lumbered. One I recognized, somewhat. The fleshling Irina Mihail inhabited. She’d upgraded, sporting a set of teeth that no longer fit in the mouth, and a bone bra to hold the hideous flesh bags on her chest. “It is finally time for my wrath, Marissa.” Her teeth made the words nearly impossible to understand.
“No. The unworthy handmaiden is mine. Kill everyone with her.” Kyra spoke with authority, and Monster Irina turned away, heading for the grass where Mikey lay. Poodles covered him, their ears flattened back, their eyes wide, and a few yards away, Beth turned her megaphone on Irina.
“Down.” She hummed into the microphone, and only experience kept my knees from bending. Half a dozen poodles collapsed at her command, then leaped back up.
The Monster Irina, on the other hand, shook her head from side to side, like she’d had a short nap, and continued on.
And that was the point at which Kyra came for me. With a cry of rage, she charged, her thorn sword in hand. I already had mine, shaking it back and forth in an attempt to trigger the blade. No matter how I squeezed it, the thorns wouldn’t respond.
“Mikey!” I threw the handle toward him, and he caught it offhand. In his grip, the blade erupted, locking together into an ebony sword.
He glanced down at it and shook his head. “Ummm, thanks, but I’m fine.” Mikey lobbed it like a javelin toward me, coming distressingly close to my feet.
I seized the sword and turned to face Kyra, but as I raised it, the pain of Shigeru’s blows hit my shoulder. At least the memory of them did. Instead of swinging my blade up to meet her blow, I waited and sidestepped, letting her momentum carry her past.
She lunged back, slinging the blade in an arc, and this time, I ducked and moved behind her, my blade at the ready.
Like a river in motion, Kyra danced a ballet of blades, where each lunge flowed into the next and every swing set her up to strike again.
I couldn’t hope to match her skill, but the longer she attacked, the more natural my responses became. Step and turn, duck and push her away.
This was what Shigeru meant to teach me. Not how to strike a death blow. How to avoid one. How to bide my time, as the battle, if you could call it that, roved from side to side.
Because Kyra tired.
The thorn blade might have been magic, but that didn’t mean it weighed nothing. With every blow, she took longer to recover her balance. Each time, I stepped farther away, and she lost more momentum. One wild overhead swing sent her blade flying, and she scrambled after it, sure I was at her back.
I wasn’t. My momentary distraction turned into a full-blown horror, because when I looked up, Monster Irina held Beth by the neck in one fist, and Mikey by the head in the other. Poodles hung like chains from Irina’s flesh, gnawing without result on her armor-like skin.
She shook them. Whipping them back and forth like rag dolls. Beth’s arms jerked once, then went limp.
Mikey’s ears flattened b
ack, and the whining howl of grief that rose from his chest pierced the battle din. Foam dripped from his lips as he whipped his hind legs up, raking her tendons with his hind claws until she dropped him. Poodles ringed Irina, gnawing on the bone armor that covered her, but it was the eight-foot-tall Dire Wolf who spelled death.
If Kyra had managed to keep her mouth shut, I would have died right there.
Instead, her cry of rage gave me the one moment I needed to see the blade coming and spin to the side. And while I didn’t stab her, I did bring my own blade around, sliding it across her exposed calf muscles while she strained to stop her own momentum.
Kyra collapsed forward, her legs useless.
Mikey’s roar pulled my gaze to him. Locked in a death embrace with Irina, she squeezed his ribs between her hands, attempting to crush him. When she opened her mouth, he shoved his claw down her throat.
She bit the arm off cleanly.
Blood showered everything, spurting from Mikey’s shoulder, while she continued to crush him. And her face froze. Her eyes bulged, and her mouth fell open. The skin on her chest rippled and moved until a claw burst through it, the remains of her heart still dripping from it.
Mikey limped over and drew out his arm, pressing it together at the joint.
Kyra, on the other hand, made no effort to move. Not even when I rolled her over, her sword in my left hand, my own in her right. She looked up at me, blood spattering that crystalline hair, and wept. “Please. Don’t go after my son—”
“I won’t.” How could she think that? But putting myself in her position, if she had won, she wouldn’t stop with my death. “Yield.”
She nodded, and a flush of power swept over me, then drained as quickly as it came. My hands didn’t glow purple. My eyes didn’t see through lead. I held up my hand and commanded, “Lie down. Do not move.”
I hadn’t realized how far from the battlefront we’d become. While I waged my own private battle, the war machines had continued their march. At the far edge of the plain, their hazy forms kneeled, waiting for death.
