Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  She rolled her eyes, like normal people did if you asked them about the Easter Bunny. “Dad used to tell me he was under my bed, or in my closet, and if I got one more drink, he’d get me. He’s a myth.”

  “He is now.”

  Her eyes went wide as she worked out what I meant, and she reached up to rub a trace of bone dust from my forehead.

  “Calm,” I said, pushing us through the stage curtain. “Once Grimm’s cleared you, I’ll tell the whole story. Until then, relax. The Royal Boogeyman is now just a boogeyman.” My mind clicked on what she’d said before. “You left thugs here?”

  Ari nodded. It occurred to me right then how much I couldn’t see. How bright the lights were and how dark the theater was. But I’d seen the stage when I walked across it, empty.

  “Marissa,” said a female voice in the darkness.

  My stomach churned as I worked to place her location, but her accent told me who spoke. There was no point in pretending otherwise. “Queen Mihail.” I shoved Ari behind me and glanced to the sides.

  The sound of metal on metal that echoed through the empty room I recognized as a safety coming off.

  “Stay where you are, or I shoot your friend.”

  “You mean you shoot me.” If someone had to be shot, and it couldn’t be an intern, I wouldn’t let it be my best friend.

  “No,” said the queen. She moved as she spoke, coming closer until her face emerged from the darkness near the foot of the stage. “I shoot your friend. You, I have something special for.”

  I thought about the sirens outside. About the dozen police officers checking locked classroom after classroom. All I had to do was delay her. So I asked a question I already knew the answer to. “Why did you send the Gray Man after Ari?”

  “Don’t feign ignorance with me. My son was destroyed by your hand. Your friend there protected you long enough to allow you to throw the apple. Do you remember my promise to you?” She took one step up the stairs and the stage lights cast her face into shadows.

  I did. She’d promised me rewards not even Grimm could provide, and punishments not even he could protect me from. Then I remembered her other promise. That her generosity would fall on everyone who aided me, if I returned her son unharmed.

  And so would her wrath.

  “You should have left her out of this. Your problem was with me.” Queen Mihail wouldn’t leave anyone out. It wasn’t in her nature, but again, the point was wasting time. I’d stopped counting seconds and started worrying about who else she might have gone after.

  “I promised you wrath, Marissa. I always keep my promises. It took me years to find ways to get all of you, but I am patient.” What amazed me was how calm her tone was. She spoke the same way I talked about the news over breakfast. Calm, almost cordial. “Even your fairy friend had a weakness.”

  So that’s why Grimm wasn’t answering. The traditional way to attack a fairy was to break their original mirror. I’d also managed to do it once the hard way, but I destroyed the only weapon capable of killing a fairy in the process.

  “What did you do to him?”

  She took another step onto the stairs, rising from the shadows like a cobra. “Your boss? Or your man?”

  “You harm a single scale on Liam and I’ll make sure you have a family reunion.” I spoke before I thought—likely Liam would tear apart almost anything sent after him. If he had a chance. If he saw them coming.

  She nodded her head in agreement. “Oh, we already tried. It seems that we might have underestimated what exactly we were dealing with. Your man killed three of my best assassins before we even understood how. But don’t worry. I have a strike team of princes on a plane today to take care of him. A lone assassin is one thing. A prince in shining Kevlar is another thing entirely. In a week or so, when they arrive, they’ll finish the job.”

  “The vampires will have something to say about that when they wake up. They’ll lose everything but their lives. I mean, their deaths. They’ll lose everything if you actually hurt him. Call your strike team off.” Queen Mihail had always struck me as a businesswoman. Surely that would make sense to her.

  She took another step up, now fully on the stage. I wondered how many gunmen she had aiming at me, and whether or not I could shoot the queen before they shot me. Then I thought of Ari. They’d be certain to hit her, assuming there weren’t a couple already aiming at her as well.

  “Marissa, I wouldn’t call off those princes if I could. I take my promises very seriously. You poisoned my son with an apple, when I promised to reward you for his return.” She left out the part where the son had tried to kill me, and intended to rape Ari. Minor details, like that.

  “There are police already working their way through the building. You will be arrested and tried and will spend the rest of your life in a little cell with a big woman named Tiny. Let us go, we can work this out.”

  I could finally see her face in the stage light. She was truly insane. Her eyes were so wide, I could see edges of white around them, and her mouth held a smile that would have looked better on a wolf than a person. “Girl, I am a queen and can only be charged in the Court of Queens. The lawmen of this city will do nothing to me. Now, be a good girl and hold still. If you don’t, I’ll have one of my guards shoot you, then we do this.”

  She held up her hand, and in it she held an apple. A single, magical red apple with a candy shell. Don’t be fooled—the name might have been “Red Delicious,” but the spell wrapped up inside was absolute destruction. Like a hand grenade and a magic spell wrapped into one. Like the one I’d thrown at her son.

  “I’m so sorry,” said Ari, in my ear.

  The queen looked at the apple for a moment, then drew her hand back to throw. It would scatter most of me through the wall, and maybe kill Ari as well.

  “Not your fault. I’m the one who ticked her off.” If I had to die, I’d have preferred to be at home, surrounded by my friends and family. If I had a second choice, I guess on a stage in a college, blown to bits by an apple would have to do.

  “Not for that,” said Ari. “For this.”

  The queen finally threw it, and I tried in that moment to shoot the apple in midair. Then cold fire touched my shoulder. I slumped forward, rolling onto my back. I tried to move, but my hands and feet weighed more than lead. I could only watch as the apple arced cleanly through air where I had been, landing in Ari’s outstretched hand.

  “NO!” shouted the Queen.

  “Murrrfffl,” I said.

  The doors to the theater flew open as police rushed in. In that one moment, the queen leaped off the stage, into the darkness. I kept my eyes focused as best I could on Ari.

  She held the apple, keeping it floating an inch away. It would have killed me, but Ari had one thing going for her that I never would. The girl was a princess, and the normal rules never applied to her. Even through her spell, I recognized what Ari had done—she hit me with her alcohol spell. I would never have let her try to catch an apple.

  Ari began to glow with spell power as she worked to counter the apple, but it was designed to destroy magic. She wrapped it in a cocoon of light, weaving around her like a blanket, wrapping like a spectral mummy.

  In that moment I grasped what she was doing. She wasn’t trying to stop it. She was guiding its force away from me. Into her. That feeling of cold water when Ari worked magic, it became a torrent, then a river, then a hurricane of magic that spun through the room.

  I didn’t have Spirit Sight, but there was so much magic in one place even I could see the beams of light wrapping around her until she glowed like the sun. Then the apple began to crack. To explode, and release its deadly spell. I held my eyes open until an afterimage of Ari remained even with them closed. Or maybe she was so bright I could see her with my eyes shut.

  The sound when the apple exploded was a whoosh, like air being sucked in, then a thunderclap that left my ears ringing and a flash of light like a nuclear explosion, and a rain of sparks as the theater lights
exploded.

  In the darkness that followed I heard Ari hit the stage. Voices shouted, and flashlight beams stabbed the darkness. Then faces hovered over me, saying words I didn’t understand, and they carried me out to an ambulance. When I fought with them, and tried to get up, to go see what had happened to Ari, they stuck me with a needle, and I finally stopped fighting.

  * * *

  I’D WOKEN MORE times in hospital rooms than I could count. There was, as usual, a police detective waiting to talk to me. I gave him a story that matched what he wanted to hear. About how my friend wanted the lead in a musical, and I helped her practice. About how an enraged gunman had torn through the doors, shooting everywhere.

  The electrical explosion, that was his idea, one I didn’t bother correcting. And Ari, sure, she had been dieting, if that’s what he wanted me to say. As soon as he was gone, I slipped out of bed and went looking for her. I found her in a room on the eighth floor, hooked up to a bunch of machines. She didn’t look hurt. That is, I didn’t see any wounds or cuts on her.

  I took Ari’s hand and sat on the bed, trying not to break down in tears. Only the machines made any noise, the steady beep of the heart monitor, the hum of a blood pressure cuff. I would’ve asked why she did it, but I knew. I made fun of her constantly for being a princess. And a seal bearer. And being almost capable of real magic. This time, there was no denying what Ari accomplished. She’d captured an explosion designed to kill almost anything magical, and trusted in her own innate luck to save us both.

  Then the business part of me clicked in. I needed to figure out how far Queen Mihail’s madness extended, but I couldn’t leave Ari alone in the hospital. Mihail seemed the persistent type, and Ari was one wet pillow away from death if someone so decided.

  I picked up the phone and dialed a number. A contract agency Grimm used to hire help from time to time. When the svelte voice on the other end answered, I had my orders ready. “I need a bodyguard. Money is no object.” I gave them the hospital room number and sat down to wait.

  In the meantime, I tried to raise Grimm again, but I didn’t expect him to respond. The last time this happened, I’d panicked. This time around, I knew what to do if someone broke his mirror. Grimm was several thousand years old and had survived all comers. Ari was twenty years old and hadn’t managed to pass the driver’s exam.

  When the knock at the door came, I looked up and immediately panicked. I scrambled for something to throw, something to hit with, anything would do. Then I started thinking logically. In the doorway stood a short Japanese man with speckles of gray in his hair. I’d run into him in the past, and if he were truly here to kill me, there was nearly nothing I could do.

  “Shigeru.” I bowed to him, trying to show respect for Queen Mihail’s personal ninja.

  “Ms. Locks,” he said, returning the bow.

  “Leave Ari out of this, please.” His entire order based their lives on honor. At least, as much honor as one could have killing people for a living. I hoped he’d have the decency to keep whatever happened between him and me.

  Shigeru bowed slightly and offered me a business card, one that matched the mercenary’s guild I’d called.

  “I am no longer in the queen’s service. I accepted a personal protection contract. This is a happy coincidence.”

  Much as I wanted to believe that, coincidences in my life tended to range from unpleasant to downright horrific. I kept myself between Ari and Shigeru while I made a second call. “I’d like to verify you sent contractor 12827 in response to my call.”

  The phone hummed in my fingers, the unmistakable feeling of contact magic. Contact magic didn’t require line of sight, only a caster with enough skill and insanity to imbue a regular object with a sliver of the caster’s soul. If they had someone with that kind of power, from now on I’d make sure the mercenary guild’s bills always got paid up front.

  The writing on Shigeru’s business card faded, leaving only a silver surface. But instead of my reflection, it showed me Shigeru. First as a young man, with dark black hair and golden yellow skin. The image shifted, and Shigeru grew older. With each change, the image in the card matched the man before me more closely.

  The business card turned clear as glass, letting me look at Shigeru’s image imposed on top of his face. The slightest movement rippled the image until it refocused. I’d seen this once before, when Grimm suspected one of our applicants of using a glamour. For as long as it lasted, the window would reveal any disguise short of plastic surgery.

  At least, that’s what I expected. But the clear window shimmered, and my view through it grew fuzzier. Instead of showing me Shigeru’s wrinkled face, it showed an azure orb wrapped in golden knots that resembled a cross between Celtic knot work and prison tattoos. “What—” My voice caught in my throat as I identified a familiar pattern in the knots. I whispered into the phone, “You bound your contractor’s soul to his contracts?”

  “If you believe contractor 12827 has failed to fulfill any of his duties, I can promise you his death will be agonizing and inescapable. Your Agency’s business is far more valuable to us than the life of one employee, no matter how skilled.”

  I held my hand over the phone and hissed at Shigeru, “How do you sleep knowing that’s hanging over you?”

  His lips curled up in a smile. “I take my work seriously.”

  “I trust I’ve addressed your concerns?” The dispatcher’s smug tone told me it wasn’t really a question.

  “Trust but verify,” I said. “Thanks.” I ended the call and handed Shigeru his card back. I don’t mind saying the wave of relief almost collapsed me. I might have killed Rip Van Winkle, but he was used to having a magical advantage and was completely unprepared for someone who wasn’t rendered helpless by his effect. Shigeru, on the other hand, had served as the queen’s bodyguard for years and could have killed me with his pinky.

  “If anyone tries to hurt her, you have my permission to do anything it takes.”

  He nodded and walked over to the seat beside the bed. Then I headed back to my room, stealing a pair of scrubs on the way. They didn’t exactly fit, but I needed something to cover my rear long enough for a cab ride home. Then I signed out against medical advice, walked myself to a cab, and headed back to my apartment to rescue the Fairy Godfather. Again.

  Thirteen

  IF YOU ARE wondering how or why I can deal with these sorts of things and keep going, let’s just say this wasn’t the first time I’d signed out AMA, called myself a cab, and gone home after getting beaten to a pulp. Don’t get me wrong. I had plans for the queen and every intention of fulfilling them in what I hoped was a horribly painful manner, but I also had priorities.

  Ari was alive, if barely. Liam survived one attack, which meant the queen’s vengeance wasn’t impossible to thwart. Though I wanted more than anything to get on the next plane to Europe and ride to Liam’s rescue, I knew someone who could make thwarting a whole lot easier.

  So rather than chase my heart to Europe, I followed my head home. I stepped into my apartment and locked the door behind me. Then I headed to the bathroom and did the same. Safely barricaded in my bathroom, I opened my medicine cabinet and began to remove pill bottles until I could clearly see the back of it.

  Grimm’s original mirror had been hidden in Dwarf Town for decades, in a room that didn’t even connect to a house in the same part of the world. Once it was discovered there, I decided a more mundane hiding place made sense. So if I ever really wanted to talk to Grimm, all I had to do was go to the bathroom. It didn’t hurt that I’d had it encased in bulletproof glass and surrounded by a laminate titanium alloy laminate. If the building collapsed around my apartment, the bathroom mirror and its wall would be the only thing sticking up from the rubble.

  His mirror didn’t even have a scratch. I collected fleshing silver in case some managed to break it again. Under my sink I kept sixteen types of floor cleaner. I have no idea what Liam actually used to clean the floors, since every single bott
le actually held fleshing silver. Grimm stared out at me from his mirror, his face frozen in a look of surprise. Not fear, but definitely apprehension.

  Thing is, it shouldn’t have been possible to affect him at all.

  The mirror might be magic, but the real source of the power was Grimm himself. To hear him tell it, the mirror served to translate for him so that we could understand what he was actually saying. I tapped on the glass a couple of times. Might as well have been a framed print of the Fairy Godfather.

  From under my bed I pulled out my spare gun, then changed clothes and headed to the Agency. Queen Mihail had gone after me. She’d gotten to Grimm and nearly killed Ari. She had a team of princes on their way to take out Liam, and Kingdom only knew what she had done to the Agency.

  * * *

  THE AGENCY BUILDING looked like a bomb went off, people gathered around on the sidewalk, the usual “extreme biohazard” and “chemical disaster area” warnings posted on the doors. On second thought, the last time a bomb went off there, it didn’t look as bad. We shared the building with twenty, maybe thirty other companies. They had to wonder at times why their building had the most number of days without power, the most incidents of elevator outages, or wack-job terrorist attacks. I went in through the cargo entrance, where I confirmed that we were in full lockdown mode.

  “Bill? Big Billy, it’s Marissa,” I called into the empty cargo bay. Sure enough, a slot opened in one of the steel walls, and a rifle poked out. We got overrun once by some hired uglies, and ever since then, I’d drilled every last one of the staff on plans in case it happened again.

  “Ms. Locks? Hold yer hands up where I can see them.” I recognized Big Bill’s voice. Our union negotiator and professional cargo driver, Bill was cold under fire and willing to do anything to anyone if it paid a living wage.

  I held my hands up, knowing he was looking for the handmaiden’s mark. While there were lots of things that could shift to look like me, there wasn’t anything crazy enough to mimic that. In Kingdom, it was regarded like a swastika, upside-down cross, pentagram, and IRS logo all in one.