Armageddon Rules

by J. C. Nelson

  Beth watched as he swallowed the tail, slurping it down like a piece of spaghetti, then fainted.

  “I’m really sorry about the shirt. Give me a hand and I’ll buy you a scone. Or a dog biscuit.” I made myself look him in the eyes, and he rewarded me with a grin that made me glad I wasn’t a pig. So I took one foot and Mikey took the other and we dragged her down the hall to the shower.

  We didn’t always have showers. After I made partner, I had them installed. The number of times I’d come in covered in blood (my own or someone else’s) or crap (definitely someone else’s) made it necessity, not luxury. We dumped her in the shower, turned on the water, and let it run.

  When Beth woke up, it was clearly an “exactly where am I?” moment. She looked around at drenched rats and then to Mikey and me. “I had this dream. I dreamed you shot him.”

  Mikey winked at me, his lips pulled back in a grin. I took my gun out and shot him at point-blank, right in the stomach. Beth’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped over again.

  “Marissa!” yelled Grimm, reflecting from the chrome shower doors. “What in Kingdom is going on?”

  Mikey sat up and started laughing with me. “Grimms, you gotta see her face when Marissa does that. Priceless.”

  Grimm glowered at Mikey until he stopped laughing, though Mikey still chuckled under his breath. “That is enough. Marissa, act your age. Mikey, you are needed in cargo. Really, I don’t have employees. I have children. I should have opened a day care instead of an Agency.”

  A few minutes later, Beth roused again. Her clothes were completely soaked, and it was just as well that she sat up, since rats had clogged the drain and she was in mild danger of drowning. She looked at me, then the empty space on the bench next to me.

  “It was all a dream,” I said, getting a towel from the rack. “There’s soap in there, and shampoo. I’ll put your piercing box here, since I’m betting that you have more metal than a cyborg. When you’re done, grab a robe from the closet and I’ll take you to our wardrobe department.”

  Then I went down and got myself some coffee, because in most respects Tuesday is no better than Monday.

  * * *

  ARI CAME BACK with enough Chinese food for all of Chinatown. I’m not certain who she thought she was feeding, because one skinny girl couldn’t eat two pounds of chow mein and three large pizzas. On the other hand, all the rats needed to go to a diet support group. Ari came in with Mikey trailing, carrying the boxes.

  “Didn’t Grimm say they needed you in cargo?” I took a box from him.

  Ari blew hair out of her eyes. “I needed help carrying the food.” She sniffed for a moment and then looked at Mikey. “Do I smell gunpowder?”

  I pushed open the conference room door, where a washed, dressed, and much nicer-looking Beth sat, putting antibiotic ointment on her various piercing points. The organ box had several more pounds of “jewelry,” most of which resembled surgical implements.

  “What do you want now?” asked Beth, glaring at me. Then she smelled the food. I waited, blocking the doorway until I could see her mouth water.

  “I want to feed you, and maybe figure out where your talent lies.” I set my pizza in the middle of the table and smashed a rat with a xylophone. “It works like this. You pick up an instrument, you play a few tunes on it.”

  Beth ignored the chow mein, took a foot-long sub, and began to digest it the way a python swallows a rabbit—whole.

  “Slow down,” said Ari. “You’re going to make yourself sick.”

  Beth continued to swallow chunks of sub like she was trying out for an eating contest. “Mmmmffmmmammf mmmm.”

  I glanced at Ari. “Neither of us speak dwarf. Mikey, you speak dwarf?”

  Mikey dry swallowed a piece of sub. “I barely speak English.”

  “I said, ‘You shot him.’” Beth wiped her mouth with a napkin.

  I kept my poker face on. “Nope. I think you’re starting to hallucinate from silver poisoning. Or maybe that infection has gone to your brain.”

  Ari reached into her shopping bag. “I knew that was gunpowder. If you think it’s funny to play nasty jokes on customers, let’s try with my gun.”

  Mike scooted away. “No shooting me with that. Last time you did, I spent a week growing my leg back.”

  Ari shook her head and set down her bag, then brushed a rat off Beth’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry. Yes, Marissa has problems with wolves. Yes, Mikey’s a wolf. Now, when you’re done with your sandwich, we should start. You look like you might play the saxophone.”

  So I took my sandwich and left my understudy to do the hard work. Seniority had its privileges.

  Six

  WEDNESDAY SUCKED. I referred three cases to the police department, armed two people who wished to find missing keys with metal detectors, and personally dispatched the kobold soccer team before Ari even showed up. Even then, she wasn’t going to help around the office, not that day. I picked up Beth from the waiting room and headed straight to the back of the Agency to see Ari off.

  Wednesdays were Ari’s magic-training days, and she spent most of the day trapped in another dimension, in another universe. At least, that’s as close as I got to understanding Grimm’s explanation of where exactly it was. I didn’t go, because I’d visited once. I almost died there, and it killed my enthusiasm for a return tour.

  The only real advantage was that there, Ari could practice magic. That was, she could practice without killing everyone in the building (nearly happened three times), transforming every man for three blocks into a goat (twice), or giving everyone in a six-mile radius flatulence (I swear she did that on purpose).

  Grimm waited in the back room of the Agency, which housed a portal we used when no combination of frequent-flier miles could get us somewhere.

  Ari stood at the mirror, taking deep breaths to calm her nerves.

  “Young lady, I am ready when you are.” Grimm faded out of the mirror, clearing it for her use.

  “I’m not,” said Ari. “I’d rather go home and study for the civics exam.”

  When Ari first came to work for Grimm, she couldn’t wait to learn more magic. Then she learned how hard it was, and suddenly college seemed like a fantastic idea.

  Grimm spoke from a half-buried stainless steel oven. “I’m sorry, but you really don’t have a choice. You must continue to exercise Seal Magic or you will lose all the progress we have made. I promise I will have you home in time to study.”

  Ari should have learned Seal Magic from her mother, but her mother died of cancer before Ari even bonded with a seal, let alone had time to train. Grimm had taken over Ari’s education himself.

  I took her hand. “You want me to go with you? I’ll run grab a set of pom-poms from the morgue and be your personal cheerleader.” The closest I ever got to casting a spell was Liam saying that when I walked into a room, I made the other women disappear.

  “Marissa, I need you to run the Agency while I attend to Ari’s training,” said Grimm. He’d always offered to let me go before. Then again, it was my fault Ari had to go at all.

  “I’ll be fine.” From the tremble in her fingertips, I figured Ari spoke as much to herself as me. Normally, being a seal bearer took years of formal training, which began with touching a seal and ended with the right to access its full power. The seal changed its bearer, allowing them to unleash spells other casters could only dream of.

  “Arianna, I know you are afraid, but I must insist. Your healing is not complete until your training is complete.” Grimm faded from the mirror, leaving it open for Ari.

  I helped Ari learn magic on her own, casting spells she shouldn’t have been able to. It left her wounded, according to Grimm, by Wild Magic. Only witches used pure Wild Magic, magic unfiltered by seals and nearly limitless in power. Witches paid for it. The witch mark gave them Spirit Sight but took their eyes, removing the cornea and pupil so that anyone who saw a witch knew what they were.

  The way Grimm told it, with enough p
ractice and training, the damage to Ari’s soul from the Wild Magic would be healed. Ari would be a normal magic-wielding, seal-bearing princess and no longer at risk of losing her eyes to the witch mark. So she did have to go, and I would take care of things here.

  Ari touched the mirror, and the surface rippled like a pond. I began to shiver, remembering traveling through the mirror. How it felt like glass taffy, sticking to my skin as I sank into it. She stepped forward into the mirror, and it closed around her, wrapping and bubbling until it settled to absolute calm.

  Only the back room showed in the mirror. Ari was a million light-years away, maybe farther, in a realm where time had no meaning and distance did not exist. I forced my trembling hand to the glass, proving to myself that it was solid.

  Beth pointed to a trash can. “You look like you’re gonna puke. That was awesome.”

  “Only because you’ve never been through. Now tell me, what did Ari and you decide on for your instrument?”

  “We didn’t exactly find anything. But I hate the tuba.” That only proved that Beth wasn’t insane. So I walked her back to the conference room, filled with dozens of different types of instruments I was renting by the day, and got her back to trying. I left her in the room, where she continued her audio torture session.

  * * *

  BETH CAME TO my office late that afternoon, so excited she could barely hold still. “Miss Locks, you have to see what I can do.” I bristled at the “miss” but let it go, hoping for something great.

  I followed her into the conference room, where she picked up a saxophone and began to blow on it. What came out sounded like a camel being eaten by a pack of kindergartners, one bite at a time. As Beth played, the rats scampered to the far end of the room, where they huddled in a writhing mess.

  “See? I think it’s because of my power.” Beth held up the saxophone with pride.

  “Not so fast. I think it’s because they have ears. They’re disease-bearing pests, but they aren’t deaf.” I opened the door and a flood of rats rushed past my feet, eager to get out of earshot. “Follow me.” We went to the waiting room, where the usual throng of wishers waited. “Play.”

  She began, blasting out squeaky notes that didn’t resemble a tune as much as an audio-torture session. The rats began to flee, along with the customers. Honestly, I didn’t mind seeing either leave; we had plenty of business. When the lobby stood empty, I put a hand over the saxophone mouth. “That will do.”

  Beth held the saxophone in awe. “Is this my instrument?”

  “No. I could do that too if I played that badly. Come on, we’ve got fifty more to try.” The crowds in the waiting room had left so quickly they’d dropped magazines, at least one purse, and a plastic bag I’m nearly certain contained a kidney. I figured I’d put the kidney in the fridge; if nothing else Mikey could use it to make kidney bean soup.

  As I grabbed the bag, my hand brushed something plastic, a kid’s toy of some sort. A kazoo. A cheap, plastic, and wax paper kazoo. I picked it up and flicked it to Beth. “Consider this number fifty-one.”

  The rats began to return, chewing under the door and scampering from behind Rosa’s counter. As I opened the door, Beth put the kazoo in her mouth and blew on it. I made a mental note to teach her not to put things in her mouth without washing them first.

  “Hum,” I said. “It’s not a reed. You hum into it.”

  She began to hum “Happy Birthday” and then stopped and giggled like a six-year-old. I wasn’t paying attention to her though. I was watching the army of rats who stood in orderly ranks, staring at her in rapt attention.

  “Rosa, call the instrument rental place and have them pick up everything. Grimm’s not going to believe this.”

  Rosa did the politest thing she’d done all day. She ignored me. So I took my piper (well, sort of) and we went back to my office to have a chat.

  “Normally it’s something we can work with.” I sat at my desk, alternating picking at my cuticles with stabbing rats who came too close. “Normally it’s an instrument that magnifies your volume and projects your power out.”

  Beth began to hum “Auld Lang Syne,” and the rats got down off my desk. Fast learner, that one.

  “Do you know anything about poodles?”

  Beth hummed a “No,” causing a wave of rats to jump into the air.

  “Let’s do the litmus test.” I reached into my desk and took out pictures from a recent infestation. I found the one I wanted, a toy poodle. Big one, maybe two or three pounds, perched on the back of the man he’d killed, growling. “Cute or not?”

  Her lips curled upward in a smile, when what I really needed was a snarl. I put my head down on my desk. “Fairy Godfather will never let me live this down.” I shoved the picture toward her, but instead Beth took my hand.

  “You hypocrite. You lecture about me having tattoos, you’ve got a little ink yourself. Got a tramp stamp too?” She held on to my left hand as though she’d found the murder weapon in a Sherlock Holmes mystery. Beth wasn’t the first person to make that mistake. The morning I woke up and found the scars had turned inky black, I nearly had a breakdown.

  “That’s not a tattoo.” I pointed at the raised edges. Together, they formed a picture of a rose in a ring of woven thorns. “That’s a mark. The handmaiden’s mark.”

  “It looks a lot like a tattoo.”

  “It’s the symbol of the Black Queen. If and when you start having to deal with Kingdom folks, I wouldn’t mention her. She’s been dead for more than four hundred years, and folks are still terrified.” I leaned back in my chair, rubbing my fingers over the scars.

  Beth was no idiot. The look she gave me clearly said she was calling bull on my claim. “If she’s been dead that long, how’d you get her mark?”

  “Dead doesn’t mean gone. A few years ago I went through a mirror, picked a fight with a fairy, and killed her using the Black Queen’s own hand. That’s like killing a black hole with a garden rake, in case you are wondering.”

  I have to admit, the look of fear on Beth’s face made me quite pleased. I expected people to treat me with a little respect, and to accept that around here I knew what I was doing. If I hadn’t been a teenager so recently, I don’t think I could have stood being in the same room with one. “Any more questions?”

  She kept her eyes off me, but finally she spoke up. “What’s Kingdom?”

  I smiled, went to the door to grab my jacket, and opened my office door. “You look hungry. Grab that kazoo and let’s go get some lunch.”

  Beth stood, but to her credit, I could see the defiance still in her. She reminded me of myself in that way. “What is Kingdom?”

  I had to get her on board with helping me with this year’s Poodling. It wasn’t about the money, or the magic. It was about the fact that everything pointed to this being the worst year for poodles in a decade at least. I gestured to the door. “I think you need to see it for yourself.”

  Seven

  WE DROVE DOWN to the Gates of Kingdom, at the far edge of the city, and sat there, watching people turn up the Avenue. Beth was an East Side girl, according to her application.

  She watched the crowds move back and forth, humming on her kazoo to pass the time. “You want to tell me what we’re doing here?” Every time she hummed, the pigeons around us began Irish line dancing a version of Gutterdance.

  “You ever drive up that street?”

  She looked over at me. “I don’t have my license.”

  That wasn’t a bad thing in my book. “You’ll never be able to turn that corner again as a passenger unless the driver’s got magic too. If you pass through the gates and he doesn’t, you’ll hit the concrete at full speed.”

  The look she gave me said I was more than a little crazy. Given what she’d lived through since she first started attracting rats, it was likely she’d be spending money on therapy for the rest of her life.

  “Let’s go. We’re here to eat lunch, and we’re here to see Liam. I don’t actually care if we
eat lunch or not, but I’m not going to get to see him by sitting here.” I got out and walked to the corner of the Avenue. I couldn’t actually see the Gates of Kingdom, but I knew they were there.

  Beth came along behind me, still wondering what we were doing on the wrong end of the city, at a street corner that looked like every other. I pulled her toward me. “Each time I take a step, you do.” Again I got the “Holy crap she’s crazy” look. I got it a lot.

  One step forward down the Avenue. Nothing changed. I glanced over to Beth as the crowds shuffled past and gave her a smile. Crazy, said her face. Two steps in, nothing different, and she looked like she was deciding if I was off my meds or on too many. Three steps farther and the magic kicked in. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I got goose bumps all over my arms. The smug look ran off Beth’s face like a hot dog vendor slapped with a health inspection.

  “Get ready.” I took one more step, and as I did the crowd around me faded like ghosts while a new set emerged, becoming more solid. To the normal folks, I’d look like I stepped in front of someone, or someone pushed their way in front of me. I glanced around. “Beth? Beth Crowley, you there?”

  Her voice sounded like it came from a thousand yards away. “Marissa? I can’t see you.”

  “Don’t move at all!” I yelled. I shivered as I realized what had happened, fear, not excitement, this time. So you might have figured out that the Gates of Kingdom acted as a kind of exit or overpass for the Avenue. Folks with magic passed through them, and instead of walking down the Avenue they took the bridge to High Kingdom, which overlapped the city like a ghost dimension.

  Another possibility lurked here as well.

  An underpass of sorts, a tunnel a person could accidentally fall into if they had enough sorrow, despair, or evil to make the trip. The gates could take you to Low Kingdom, where trolls played “Bad Cop, Bad Cop” with unfortunate passersby, and the streetlamps were lit with pixies being burned to death.