Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  “You’ll punish him?”

  “That’s not what I do. I’ll take him, like I should have sixteen years ago. Like I will everyone that dies in the apocalypse.”

  I got up and got a bowl of cereal. If I had to tolerate the ramblings of an entity beyond time and space, it might as well be with a full stomach. “Well, I hate to spoil your fun, but I have no intention of completing the apocalypse any sooner than necessary.”

  “I don’t desire for anyone to die. I don’t kill people. I’m there when their life ends, waiting. You think I want people to die. You think that I get upset when your Fairy Godfather resurrects someone.”

  At this I nearly spat out my cereal. Grimm never resurrected people.

  Death nodded. “I finally convinced him.”

  Again with the freaking mind reading. “Convinced him of what?”

  “It doesn’t change anything. You die now. You die in eighty years. I’ve seen stars born, Marissa. You could resurrect a thousand times and it would still be like today. Keeping someone alive doesn’t change anything, because for them, it’s just a phase. Your Fairy Godfather understands that better than most.” Death rose from his chair, and picked up the cereal box I’d knocked over.

  “You say that you aren’t her handmaiden. I’ll bet you a year off your life you’ll claim that title yourself. And when she finally comes, you’ll go to her willingly.”

  I almost threw up at the smug, calm attitude. I understood now why the other harbingers couldn’t stand him. “I’ll take your bet. And I’ll win.”

  He ran gnarled fingers across his temples, like he had a migraine the size and age of the universe, and shook his head. “No, Marissa. You won’t.”

  Twenty-Two

  I BLINKED, AND in that moment, he was gone. While I like to consider myself prepared for almost everything, being visited by the harbinger of death pushed the edges, even for me. I stayed up late reading, wondering what I’d do. When the alarm finally blared, it felt more like mercy than anything else.

  There’s a reason I don’t eat breakfast most mornings. I swung the fridge door open, and a gout of flame burst from the doorway. The interior of my fridge, where I’d meant to snag a hard-boiled egg, belched smoke and sulfur fumes.

  Malodin’s face took shape in the smoke, looking part hawk, part insect. “Handmaiden.”

  Demons in my fridge. That’s why I don’t eat breakfast. I reached through the smoke, disrupting his image, feeling around for the eggs. All I found were stalactites. “I summoned your harbingers.”

  The gleam in his eyes was like a child tearing open a kitten he found under the Christmas tree. “Now, I demand my first plague. Something horrible. Something to make the people of your city miserable. Make them flee, and lock their doors, afraid to step into the sun. You have until evening, handmaiden.”

  I slammed the door, opened it to slam it again, and found only the regular interior of my fridge, a yellow monster manufactured a few years before I was. Flies and maggots squirmed on every bit of food, and the interior smelled like I’d set off a stink bomb. Never eat breakfast. It might start the day off right, or open a portal straight to Inferno.

  When I got to work, I found Mikey down in the loading bay, sitting with our other cargo workers in a circle.

  Mikey stood and waved. “Hey, Ms. Locks. Just attending my support group.” He raised a beer to me.

  I preferred wine, and I also preferred not to drink until at least eight thirty. I climbed the stairs to the Agency and found Beth sitting outside our door. On either side, a poodle crouched, like tiny, evil Sphinxes.

  “Ms. Locks? Look what I can do!” She took out her kazoo and gave it a hum that made the lights flicker. In unison, the poodles rose, turned toward me, and bared red-stained fangs. Beth mumbled something that I think was “Sit.” The poodles advanced, growling with the voices of the damned.

  “What did you feed them? Did you let them eat someone?” I pulled the pistol from my purse. I could kill one, no problem. The other would take a bite or three out of me with those razor teeth.

  Beth hummed again, so strong the lights above us exploded.

  The poodles stopped, their hackles raised, their eyes glowing red in the shadows.

  “Down,” she said, and they circled back to her, tails wagging like nothing had happened. Sweat rolled down Beth’s face, and her hands trembled. “I think they ate the housecleaning service at the motel.”

  “What possessed you to take them home with you?” I opened the door to the Agency and watched with a mixture of fear and amazement as the hell spawn with white fur followed her in.

  “I’m getting it. I can do it, most of the time. I need to practice.” Beth led her tiny terrors back to the room I’d assigned her, hopefully to lock them in the cage.

  Rosa came in the front door.

  “Listen up.” I walked over to her, blocking her path to the front desk. “I need to do some research in Grimm’s library. You are going to handle the kobolds. You are going to give Payday George money to go away. If either of our enchanters steps out of line, you have my permission to shock them.” I stared at her, wishing for the world I had a rolled-up newspaper to swat her on the nose with.

  For a moment, I thought Rosa might take a swing at me. Then she lowered her gaze and stepped around me to the desk. I figured that I might not be a piper, but Rosa could at least show me the same amount of respect she did the plastic ferns.

  So I headed back to the library. It looked like a book closet, if one combined a library and a janitor’s supply room. One that stank of mildew and something unsavory, like a sack lunch left out in the sun for the last century. I stepped in, looking at the row of books that lined each side. With a click, I shut the door behind me, then turned off the light. When I turned it back on, the book closet was gone.

  I still can’t say exactly where Grimm’s library actually existed. Could’ve been another planet. The room was as wide as a cathedral, fancy arched ceilings disappearing into the darkness where a second and third level of books waited. Vast stained glass windows covered two ends, but I’d never seen a sunrise light them.

  I had come here once, in search of a gnomish cookbook Grimm had someone snag at a garage sale. It took me six days wandering through the stacks to find it. When I came back, Grimm was furious. Anger, or worry, I couldn’t quite tell.

  This time, I’d do things right. I stepped to the center counter and rang a copper bell. Above me, in the darkness, something began to move, to shuffle through stacks. The shelves trembled, and the candles guttered to and fro.

  I picked up a candle from the top of a stack, and lit it again. “I command you to show yourself, librarian.”

  In answer, the carpet rose in a bubble, like something swimming through it. Then the bubble raced toward me.

  I rolled out of the way, putting the candle out as I did, and behind me the floor splintered as something crawled up. Fluid dripped in wet splatters as it rose, and chitinous plates clattered. I relit my candle, ready for the image that waited.

  The librarian, a monstrous beetle creature, hulked before me. “What does it want?”

  “I’m looking for something, and you are going to find it for me.” I held the candle between us. In its bulbous eyes, the flame reflected back a thousand times.

  When it spoke, its jaws clicked together. “You cannot be my master.”

  “I own the Agency now. Grimm left everything to me.” I stepped forward, and it recoiled from the flame. “I’m looking for a history book. One on the Fairy Godfather himself.”

  The librarian hissed, and it shook its wings. Above me, the scratch of a thousand legs crawling made my skin itch. “You may not take it from here, pawn.”

  “I command you to bring me whatever history you have on the Fairy Godfather.”

  It took one giant step forward, and I retreated. Again and again, until I bumped into a table.

  “Stay. You cannot command me, but I will bring the book.” It receded into the darkne
ss. With each step, the drag of claws on wood sent shivers down my spine.

  At the table, a candelabra held a dozen more candles, and at the edge of their glow, hundreds, thousands more glittering eyes waited. A carpet of beetles covered the floor, waiting beyond the glow of the candles.

  Minutes passed, perhaps hours. I’d left my cell phone and my gun back in my office, so telling time was a best-guess kind of thing. The floorboards rattled as the librarian burrowed toward me. When it burst from the floor, it held in its claws a book with dark green binding.

  The librarian placed the book on the table before me, then caressed it with one antenna. “Mind the pages. Break a binding and my brood will repair it with your skin.”

  I forced myself to breath, then nearly gagged at the rotten stench that came from it. Only when it again slipped back into darkness could I sit. In the end, I put a candlestick on each end of the table and sat in the middle, listening to the scuttle of feet on damp wood.

  Then I began to read. When I finally found what I was looking for, I cursed into the darkness, a rant that echoed from the walls. At my disruption, the librarian trundled forward, daring approach the candles. “Shhhhhhhhhh. You must not wake the little ones.”

  Rage and frustration poured through me, anger and betrayal. “I need to take the book.”

  “Never.” The librarian shook its entire body. “It stays here, where the little ones can keep it safe.”

  I walked up to it, right into its shadow. “I have to take the book. I’m going to take it. My Agency. My library. My book, to do as I see fit.” A tear blurred one eye as I kept asking myself what else I didn’t know.

  “The book will not last without the little ones to care for it.”

  “Then punch some holes in a mayonnaise bottle and send a few home with me. I’m taking it.” I turned back and closed the book, holding it in front of me like a shield.

  Something like an earthquake rocked the library, and outside the stained glass windows, a gentle whoosh passed. Could Grimm’s library be underwater? I wasn’t going to stick my head out the door to find out. The librarian bent down, tapping my hair with antennae. It opened its jaws, and I tensed, ready to duck to the side and sprint along the tabletops to the tiny, single lightbulb that marked my return point.

  Something wet dropped from its jaws, splattering my hands. Then came the crawling.

  I screamed.

  Yeah, I did. I stepped away from the librarian, grabbed a candlestick, swinging it wildly.

  “Stop,” it hissed. “You must not harm them.”

  In flickering candlelight, I watched as worms the size and length of a bullet crawled off my hands, up the spine of the book, and down into the binding.

  “Return it to me, or I will send my brood to find you,” said the librarian.

  I clutched the book and ran for the lightbulb. When I pulled the chain, darkness enveloped me, and a million spawn chittered.

  I swung my hand out to fend them off, and brushed a book. I clicked on the overhead chain, relieved to be back in the book closet. Then the memory of what I read took over, and I sprinted to my office.

  “You bastard!” I screamed at Echo the moment he appeared on-screen. “You selfish bastard. Always talking about how careful I needed to be. About how proper I needed to be. About how we’d never even signed my contract.”

  Echo tilted his head. “Marissa, how may I help you?”

  “You said you’re a part of him. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “I’ll need a bit more context to try to answer. Can you help me understand what has upset you?” Echo folded his hands before him.

  I held up my hand, where the handmaiden’s mark lay traced. “This.” I held up the book. “And this. When was he going to tell me? Ever? Never? Let me guess. It wasn’t something he thought about while he recorded you.”

  Echo froze when he saw the book, and his eyes widened.

  As the minutes ticked by, I grew tired of waiting and reached for the Power button.

  “Let me explain what I can.”

  I tossed the briefcase on my desk and sat down. “When did he intend to tell me that the Black Queen was his daughter?”

  “I can’t say, Marissa, but in the instant in which I was diverted, I assure you he thought of her, and what happened.” Echo paused. “Almost as much as he thought of you. I know we regret that she has given you the mark.”

  “Regret. Do you have any idea how people in Kingdom look at me when they see this? Do you know what kind of stories they tell about her?” I balled a fist, fighting the urge to smash the screen.

  “Marissa, I assure you, there is no tale of his daughter the Fairy Godfather has not agonized over. There are few that are untrue. As for her mark, I know what it means to the women who bear it. I assure you, Fairy Godfather would have removed it were it in his power.”

  That led me to my other point. “His power. Did he ever intend to tell me about that? That he’d been constrained?”

  Echo scowled at me, his eyes narrowed. “You do not know what you are talking about, young lady.”

  “I know he got a princess pregnant. Had a daughter by her, Isolde. That name ring any bells? It took a prince to clean up his mess, and Kingdom only knows how many people died in the process.” The fear that swallowed me in the library gave way to pure, hot rage.

  “Fairy Godfather granted a wish to a princess, that much is true. She had served as his agent for so long, and he was not as familiar with the nature of women as he is now. So when she wished that he would love her, he was not prepared.”

  Grimm never granted wishes. Ever. I thought it was a decision, but now I knew better.

  “His daughter was the joy of his life for many years. Gifted with power beyond all others, a child born of two magics. His greatest joy and his greatest mistake.”

  I began to wonder. “What happened to her?”

  “When her mother died, Isolde became bitter and angry. She declared herself Queen of Thorns and never came to see Fairy Godfather again. She began to seek to conquer everything, and destroy everything she could not conquer.” Echo’s voice held a somber note.

  “So the other fairies, they constrained him? Because he had a child? Because of what she became?”

  Echo nodded. “Fairy Godfather always had an interest in the laws of magic, and how they could be bent and twisted. Dodged. After the destruction wrought by his daughter, he asked the other fairies to constrain him so that he might never endanger an entire realm again.”

  I thought of all the lewd remarks Grimm made when I first came to work. He’d made innuendos and references to how involved we could be. “He acted like a complete creep.”

  Echo tilted his head toward me. “You know if he wanted to, Fairy Godfather could have forced you to do anything.”

  It had all been an act, and one I understood now. Designed to make sure the women that worked for him never considered the Fairy Godfather as anything more than a boss to be escaped. “A demon told me Grimm is constrained right now.”

  At the word demon, Echo winced. “Tell me you didn’t get tricked into making a deal with them.”

  For a brief moment, I almost retreated to that young woman who just acted as his hands. “Did Grimm think about demons or celestial contracts?”

  Echo sighed. “I wish he had. I advise you to seek out legal advice.”

  “Already done. Now, about this constraint. How does it work?”

  “Think of it like a faucet. All fairies’ power flows through a central nexus, and at that point, it can be obstructed—” Echo’s eyes narrowed and he arched his eyebrows. “You must not go there, my dear.”

  He wasn’t fast enough by a long shot. “Why not?”

  Echo’s image began to flicker and distort. I wondered if I’d run the battery dry. After a moment, the flickering stopped. I swear, if it were possible for a recording to feel pain, that’s what I’d say it was. Sweat rolled down skin that didn’t exist.

  “Marissa, plea
se understand. Certain things, Fairy Godfather chose never to tell you. Those are choices for him. For me, they are the basic foundation of my existence. I cannot change them any more than I can change you. I can tell you that he feared for your safety. That is all I can tell you.”

  “You can tell me about Isolde, but not why he wouldn’t want me to go to the nexus?” I tapped the book nervously, then thought of the worms in the binding and took my hands off it.

  “You already know of his shame. I am not breaking any of his decisions by telling you something you already know.”

  “Why didn’t Grimm tell me any of this?” I hoped it wouldn’t cause Echo to fritz out again.

  Echo hung his head. “Even a fairy may do things they are ashamed of, or make mistakes they wish they could undo. Our memory is perfect. We will never forget decisions made, or their consequences. Until the day the Black Queen marked you, Fairy Godfather believed his daughter gone. I’m sorry, Marissa. The part of me that is him is deeply sorry.”

  I hit the Power button without waiting to hear more. Then I opened the book to read on. To confirm what Echo told me. To understand what he’d never told me about a subject he knew I cared about. Just as I found my place, a knock at the door drew my ire.

  “What?” I slammed the book closed, then winced as a squeal, of rage or of pain, came from it.

  My office door swung open, and in stepped Beth. Her makeup had runs in it from tears, and fresh gnaw marks covered her hands. “Ms. Locks, I’m so sorry. I was practicing, and when I looked up, everyone was gone.”

  I glanced at the clock. Eight forty-five in the evening. I had to remember never to go to Grimm’s library when my car was parked in a metered spot. I stood up and grabbed my purse, which weighed at least ten pounds more than it ought to. Inside, I found a black leather bag with a drawstring. A parchment fragment hung from the tie. “For summoning of plagues.”

  “Come on.” I took her hand and headed out of my office.