Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  “Not really. You couldn’t know unless you tried. Plus, not many people get to come in here. Well, at least not many get to leave. How do you like my office, Marissa? It’s not as large as yours, but when I need some privacy, it will do.”

  I stopped, hand on the knob to the door. From the tips of my toenails to the mole on the back of my head, every cell in my body simultaneously screamed to run. To fling the door open and take my chances in the halls of hell. I remembered why it was I came here in the first place, and forced my hand to let go.

  “Very nice. I figured at this point you’d be sprinting in the wrong direction for the elevator.” Nick still sat at his desk, mopping up spilled coffee.

  I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a seat in the Adversary’s office. “You’re in charge of Malodin, right?”

  “He’s my favorite boy, when he isn’t leading an insurrection.” Nick set up a photo, him and Malodin.

  “Very nice. Fishing?”

  “Ice-skating on a rink frozen from the blood of the damned. It’s how we celebrated his first contract.”

  “I want to make a deal with you. My soul, you end Malodin’s contract.” The moment I said the words, I wished I could take them back. A few weeks ago, I’d sworn I would never make a deal with a demon. Now I stood in the office of the Devil, offering the only thing you ever truly own.

  Nick looked up at me, his eyebrows arched. His lips drew back in a tight line, then he stood and walked around the desk. “I admire your courage. Anyone else tried that with me, I’d toss them into a river of fire for the first couple of eternities. Then, I’d do something nasty. You can’t buy your way out of this, Marissa, much as I’d like to let you.”

  “I thought you’d be out, I don’t know, making deals yourself.”

  Nick nodded. “Did that for a while, but people got the craziest ideas about what I wanted. Souls. Is that so hard to understand? Look at this.” He turned and pulled another jar from the shelf behind me. “This one dad gave me his daughter’s hands. What do I need a girl’s hands for?” He held the jar up.

  Inside, a pair of woman’s hands wiggled back and forth, tapping on the glass.

  “What do you do with them?”

  “When I’ve got nothing else to do, I take them out and have a thumb war. Idle hands really are the Devil’s plaything. Would you like one to take with you?”

  “I’m all good, thanks.”

  He took a card from his front pocket and handed it to me. Solid red, with gold writing. “It’s my work number at job number two. If you want to talk, I’ll be happy to. There aren’t many people who will willingly step into my office, or stay once they know who I am.”

  “You want the apocalypse.”

  Nick shrugged. “Now. Later. It’s all the same to me. I’m willing to let the boy take a swing at it. Shows he can think big. Maybe even deliver. That contract, it’s a work of art.”

  I shook his hand from me, ignoring the hurt expression on the prince of destruction’s face. “I’m not going to deliver it.”

  “I’m sure you’ll try your best. That’s got to count for something, right? Hey, don’t go out the main elevator.” Nick pointed to a blank wall, and as I watched, a door etched itself into the wall, breaking out the plaster as it grew like some sort of zit. “Belzior might not be too bright, but what he lacks in IQ, he makes up for in stubbornness. I can drop you off at my day job.”

  I mumbled a form of thanks most appropriate to not being damned and threw the door open. The wall seemed to grow outward, and for a brief moment I sang with panic as the doorway reached out to swallow me.

  Then I looked around at the long lines. The drone of constant complaint, and the antiseptic smell that somehow spoke of toilets and sweat.

  “Next,” called a clerk. I walked out of the Department of Licensing and headed back to the Agency.

  When I finally got there, the thought of a long afternoon spent reviewing expense reports seemed like a vacation. The moment I opened the door and saw feet in my office chair, I gave up the vacation dream. Wyatt waited for me in the office.

  He pushed the golden hair back out of his eyes and spoke softly, barely audible above the hum of the air conditioner. “I’ve made my decision.”

  Twenty-Five

  “I’M GOING TO help Arianna. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it’s so easy for emotions to cloud the better part of reason.”

  Wyatt folded his hands together as if pleased with his speech. I went to hug him, and he shied away.

  “If you don’t mind, Ms. Locks, I have an ‘issue’ with other people touching me. Too many germs.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer. “Would you like some?”

  Of course Ari wouldn’t choose a normal boy. A prince, of course, and an obsessive-compulsive one at that. Still, if he’d wake her from the coma, I’d buy the boy a truckload of bleach wipes and pay a crew to spray down the office.

  “I’ll get my keys; we’ll head right over.”

  “Ms. Locks, I’ve discussed this with my mum, and I believe there may be another issue.” Wyatt really needed to learn to speak up. “You see, I believe it is only love’s kiss that cancels out such comas. While I greatly enjoy Arianna’s company, and indeed, in time we may develop a true emotional bond, I simply can’t say that I love her yet.”

  I was about to drag Wyatt out the door, and then he has to go mentioning a detail like that. “You’re telling me you don’t love Ari?”

  Wyatt’s face clouded over. “I have deep respect, and I believe attraction, for Arianna. We share so many passions, it’s easy to see how we might be compatible. I truly wish I did love her, Ms. Locks. I would do almost anything for her, even hug her if necessary.”

  Grimm sent us out to help the national guard a few times, and I’d seen natural disasters with less disaster in them. Still, I wasn’t one for letting a little detail like love get in my way. I left Wyatt in my office and headed down the hall to Grimm’s office.

  There, black boxes covered an entire wall, each a safe deposit box. I counted up and over, found the one I wanted, and brought it back to my desk. Inside, a silver flask the size of a wine glass lay cradled in velvet. “You say you wish you loved Ari. I can fix that.”

  He looked at the potion, then up at me, and nodded. So I took my potion, I took Ari’s prince, and we headed over to her house.

  * * *

  OUTSIDE OF ARI’S apartment, I did my prep work. “You need to be aware of a few things. Ari’s landlord can be kind of grumpy. You get that way when you’ve been dead for a few years.”

  Wyatt nodded, simply accepting what I said. Didn’t matter what the boy ran into, nothing disturbed him.

  I knocked on the door, then used my key to open it. Inside, the house smelled like cookies. “Larry? Have you been baking?” I walked around the hall to the kitchen, where the lich floated, taking a sheet of cookies out without using pot holders. Having no flesh came in handy from time to time.

  “I brought Ari’s prince over to wake her up.”

  “It’s about time,” said Larry. “I wanted the house to smell nice for her.”

  “Ms. Locks, where is Arianna?” Wyatt did his best at not staring at the spectral figure baking cookies, though when Larry’s bones rubbed together he winced, like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard.

  “She’s downstairs in the basement, in the chest freezer.” I turned back to Larry. “I tried talking to an angel. You could’ve warned me.”

  “You wouldn’t have believed me.” Larry turned off the oven and shut the door.

  “Also took a trip to hell. Met the Adversary. Tried to sell him my soul in exchange for canceling the apocalypse.”

  If it weren’t for the fact that he only had eye sockets, I’d have sworn that his eyes got wider. “You shouldn’t mock the Devil. If you think things are bad now, they’ll only get worse.”

  About then, Wyatt started screaming. I know because I’d heard Ari scream, and she didn’t sound th
at hysterical. I ran to the basement, the black cloud of mist right behind me. A chest freezer stood with the lid open, a frozen corpse covered in frost inside.

  “The other freezer. The one that’s not working. Who is that?” I glanced over at Larry.

  “Mom.”

  I opened the lid to Ari’s casket appliance, and there she slept, a white fog layered over her. “Hold on. I have to tune the potion to her.” I unscrewed the top of the potion, and reached down into the chest freezer, letting an orange vapor leech from the bottle, into Ari’s nose. Then I took it out.

  “You drink this, you look at her. It’s tuned to her now, so even if you see Larry, you won’t be getting the hots for someone with an eating disorder.” I handed the potion to Wyatt, and he downed it with one gulp.

  I’d never actually watched a love potion take effect. When Wyatt opened his eyes, he looked dizzy, like he was about to collapse. He lurched to the side of the freezer and looked down at Ari. The orange vapor that covered him seemed to tint his very skin before subsiding into the shine that covered princes normally.

  “How do you feel?” I took his arm, hoping he wasn’t going to fall and chip a tooth.

  Wyatt looked over at me. “I don’t feel different at all.”

  “Then kiss her, and let’s see what happens.”

  While I waited, Wyatt tried and failed over and over to lean down into the chest freezer. At his height, he should’ve been able to reach, but the best he could do was reach her heel.

  After a while I got up, walked over, and grabbed Ari’s feet. Then I began to pull her up out of the freezer until I could grab her hand and flop her over my shoulder. I laid her down on the shag carpet and brushed her red hair out of her face. “Now?”

  I looked up at Wyatt. He’d pulled a pocket toothbrush from his jeans, and stood, working his teeth to a shine. Then he took out a mint breath strip, sucked on it, and knelt to wipe Ari’s lips clean. “I’m still conflicted over doing this without permission. Perhaps she’ll forgive me.” Then he kissed her.

  I’d felt magic when Ari cast spells. I’d felt it when her stepmother nearly barbecued me once. This was a whirlpool of magic that centered on the two of them. This was love magic, not the power of lips connecting, but of hearts. Grimm always swore that if he could harness it, he could remake the world. Then Ari’s hand twitched.

  My heart leaped within me, and I wasn’t the least bit ashamed of the tears in my eyes.

  Ari wrapped her hands around him and kissed him back, much to his surprise. I’d complain about the amount of time she held him, but I figured that after a coma the girl deserved a little slack. Ari deserved happiness, in my book.

  Since the first prince I set her up with tried to kill us both, I really hoped her second try would go better.

  “I knew you’d come for me.” Ari still strangled him like an octopus, and I think that Wyatt was enjoying it.

  She let go at last and they faced each other. Ari’s long hair obscured her face, but the smile on Wyatt’s face could’ve powered the city for a day. Then the smile failed. His jaw dropped open, his eyes went wide.

  Wyatt pushed her away and scrambled on his back, crawling, then leaping to his feet, a wild look of terror on him. As he rushed for the stairs, I tried to stop him, and got an elbow to the head as he flailed at me. The brief beat of feet on the stairs, the slamming of the front door, and silence fell over the house.

  Behind me Larry floated wordlessly.

  Ari turned and saw me for the first time. “What happened?” I used the same will that held me in the Devil’s office to remind myself of who Ari was. I walked toward her and reached out to touch her cheek.

  “I don’t know.” A lie, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  Ari’s face perked at my voice. “Marissa, is that you?” Her eyes were solid yellow, the pupil and iris gone, replaced with the diseased color that marked wielders of Wild Magic. Even Grimm couldn’t fix this.

  Ari was a witch.

  * * *

  WE SPENT THE first hour or so in the basement. Ari couldn’t climb the stairs and remained too proud to let me carry her on my back. She sat, probing her eyes over and over with her fingers.

  No tears. Witches don’t cry.

  “What do you remember?” We sat with our backs against the chest freezer, her hand in mine.

  “I remember the apple. Queen Mihail threw it at us.”

  At me. I knew better. If not for Ari’s intervention, I’d be so much applesauce on a college stage. “I’m so sorry. It’s my fault.”

  “I know.” Ari’s voice stuttered and caught. She had to be thinking about how people in Kingdom treated witches. Barely citizens, practically fair game. Life insurance companies actually had a code for “accidentally rolled down the stairs while tied up in a bag full of forks” just for witches. Witches routinely committed suicide by shooting themselves in the head three to four times, according to the police.

  “She got to Grimm too.” When I said it, Ari’s grip on me tightened until my bones ached. She’d been telling herself Grimm would help.

  She leaned her head over against my shoulder, those yellow eyes closed. “Wyatt—” A sob cut into her voice. “What happened?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  We both jumped as Larry slammed the freezer door shut. “I’ll make some tea.” He floated upward through the ceiling, leaving us alone.

  * * *

  “NOT A PRINCE.” Ari fixed me with a glare that was worlds more effective without her eyes. “I’d know a prince if I met one. I’ve kicked four of them in the crotch, sprayed three with pepper spray, and there’s one of them missing a finger from trying to push his way into the front door.”

  “He is. Son of the First Royal Family. Didn’t you take Kingdom history in school? The name Pendlebrook didn’t ring a bell? He thought I was an accountant, by the way.” For a moment, it reminded me of our normal morning bickering. The little exchanges we’d have before I sent her out to charm an ogre, or a banker.

  “The name on Wyatt’s papers is Ptengdlebhrookz. I guess the T, G, H, and Z are silent.” Ari scrunched up her nose, counting the letters, then trailed off. “I’m sorry for lying about everything. I just wanted someone who liked me for who I am, not what I am.” Her words pinned me to the chair as well as a broadsword would have. Ari had nothing to apologize for. Would never have anything to apologize for.

  Yeller came over and climbed up onto the couch, laying his head in her lap. His head alone weighed nearly thirty pounds. The couch groaned under his weight. Ari ran her fingers over his snout, rubbing that sore spot under his head where his slobber caught fire most days. “If Grimm’s gone, are we out of a job?”

  “Not exactly.” I waited a moment, trying to figure out how to explain this. “There’s still an Agency. My Agency, now. Grimm left it to me.”

  “Did you fire Rosa?”

  I could’ve hugged that girl. “It’d be like firing the toilets.”

  “I’m not sure I’m up to working right now.” Ari glanced around her apartment, though how she could see without eyes was really beginning to bother me.

  I gave her hand a squeeze. “It’s okay. You need to lay low. Queen Mihail tried to have you killed at the hospital. If it hadn’t been for my favorite wolf and my pet ninja, you’d be dead.”

  “You can’t stand wolves.”

  “Mikey’s growing on me. In a few decades I think he’ll be able to work with Liam.”

  Ari’s face fell, and she looked at Yeller. “You know who Mikey’s related to?” She caught the look of disgust on my face and gave an exasperated sigh. “Grimm didn’t tell you. He said he would handle it.”

  “He didn’t tell me a lot of things. When, not if, I manage to restore him, we’re going to have some question-and-answer sessions.” I thought about telling her about the Black Queen. About the apocalypse. The poor girl’d been through a lot though, and I figured she deserved some time to recoup. When you are ready, I could use your help
.”

  Ari’s fingers closed about mine. “Do I look like—” She choked. “Like the Isyle witch?”

  “No. She’s old. Wrinkly, reminds me of a talking raisin. You’re cute.”

  “Cute?” Ari looked at me, staring with blighted eyes. “Wyatt didn’t think so.”

  I stood up. “You leave him to me. In the meantime, stick close to home, in case Queen Mihail tries something stupider.”

  The doorbell rang, and Yeller let out a growl that shook the dishes.

  “Please,” said Larry, “no more.”

  “Marissa?” Ari arched her eyebrows at me. “What did you do?” She stared at the front door. “Why is there a line of encyclopedia salesmen at my door? Yeller, tell them no soliciting.” Yeller shook his hackles and faded into the shadows.

  “I’ll be in the kitchen. You could use some soup, Ari.” Larry drifted out, while screams of agony rose from the porch.

  I stood up and grabbed my purse. “I’ll handle Wyatt. I’ll explain about the door knockers. Give me some time.” I started to the door, then swung back and smothered her in a hug. “It’s going to be okay. I promise.” I didn’t normally make promises I couldn’t keep. Some promises, however, I’d do my damnedest to keep.

  Twenty-Six

  I DIDN’T EXPECT my cell phone to ring. I definitely didn’t expect to hear the voice of Death on the other end, but once I did, it brought a certain smile to my face. This contract game, I could play it all day.

  “Marissa, what do you think you’re doing?” asked Death. Muffled shouting made me smile, as one of the harbingers shouted threats.

  “Do you like your mounts? I trust you found them at the station?” Smile on your face, smile in your voice, the saying goes.

  “Horses, Marissa. We’re the horsemen of the apocalypse.” A tinge of frustration crept into Death’s voice.

  “That’s not what the contract says. Mounts are what I’m required to get you. You can mount a bicycle and ride it all the way to the city. I got you a nice road bike with a comfy seat and everything. Poor Famine, he’s going to have a long, hard trip.”