Armageddon Rules (6 page)

“And if they survived?”

Liam put his hands on my cheeks so I would look at him. His eyes began to glow with fire, and when he spoke, the curse spoke as well, in a second voice. “Then I will unleash the fires of hell on them. Two weeks, M.”

“How are you going to keep Liam a dragon?”

Grimm nodded toward Liam, who leaned his head back like he was going to take a nap. “I’ve had Mr. Stone take a few naps in the Agency. When he’s asleep I can talk to the curse directly.”

Curses were like blessings—alive, and intelligent. From what I knew, this one had been ancient when the Romans were wearing diapers and Rome was a fishmonger’s hut on a hill. “So you asked it how you could keep it active? Why didn’t you ask how to get rid of it?”

“Really, my dear. It was the first thing we discussed, and I have to say the subject was poorly received. It would be simpler to make a list of people the curse did not threaten to disembowel, devour, or disembowel and then devour.”

“I get it. The big bad curse wants to eat me.”

Grimm raised his eyebrows. “No, my dear. You were to receive a burst of hellfire, blown directly into—”

“I get it. Didn’t want to negotiate.” I turned toward Grimm’s mirror and leaned forward. “Are you sure you can do this?”

He frowned and narrowed his eyes at me. “Of course I can.”

One look at the set of Liam’s jaw told me he’d already made up his mind. He had known about the offer. Two weeks of work for a thousand years’ worth of Glitter. I’d have to be crazy to tell him not to take it. That seemed okay to me, but I closed my eyes and wrapped my arms around him and held him for a while.

Five

WITH THREE DAYS until Liam’s flight to eastern Europe, I booked Liam’s tickets myself, first-class. Grimm had a tendency to try to ship his agents as cargo, to save a few bucks, but took one look at my face and chose to pick a fight with the kobolds instead. With the only thing I could do done, I resolved to bury myself in work rather than dread each hour.

In the meantime, I had a piper to deal with and a Poodling to get ready for. Ari had managed to listen to her alarm that day, and when I passed the rental truck in the Agency loading bay, my day started looking up. We met almost-Piper Beth at the elevator to avoid the usual round of hysteria and screaming.

The elevator door slid open and rats gushed out into the hall. Beth followed them, stumbling, nearly collapsing. Sweat beaded on her like she had a fever, and red splotches traveled out like spiderwebs from the skin under her nose ring. Ari took one arm, I took the other, and we headed down the hall, through the service entrance, and straight into a conference room.

Inside, a golden glow of reflected light lit the tables. Beth squinted and then, as her eyes adjusted, they grew wide. “Is this all for me?”

On the table sat a huge assortment of instruments. Coronets and trumpets, saxophones and recorders, and of course a few flutes in case she was an old-school piper. I gestured to the instruments. “You tell me. One of these is going to really light you up. You take piano lessons as a kid?”

She shook her head.

Ari handed her a flute. “How about this?”

Again, no. I patted the girl on the back, where her shoulder rings sported fiery red welts. “Ari, would you mind helping her check out a few of these while I grab something?” It wasn’t really a question, and even if Ari did mind, she could whine about it later.

I went to the kitchen and took an insulated box from the fridge. “Human organs,” read the label. I dumped the contents into the trash—the “use or freeze by” date passed the Friday before, so it wasn’t like anyone was going to eat them.

Box in hand, I marched back to the conference room and set it in front of Beth. “Every piercing, chain, and ring goes in the box, now.”

She snarled at me, showing enough teeth to make a wolf proud. “I have every right to look how I want.”

I’d been snarled at by things that would eat my organs without putting them in a lunch box first. “You have an infection. Probably subcutaneous, possibly staph. Chains, safety pins, and rings in the box, please. I don’t care if you make yourself into a human pot rack once we are done, but I’m not letting you die on my watch.” I tapped the box for emphasis. “Did you fill the prescription I got you?”

Her eyes said no, what little I could see of them under the half ton of makeup she was wearing. Ari stood up and started for the door. “I’ll be back. I’m going to head down to the pharmacy and pick it up. Are you hungry, Beth?”

It was only nine thirty in the morning, but the girl’s bony ribs gave me an answer before she could.

Ari looked over her shoulder. “Do you want Chinese? Pizza? Subs? What do you like to eat?”

Beth looked up, and her eyes brimmed with tears. “Food.” A rat nibbled at the chain that went from her nose to her left ear as she pulled it out. “I don’t understand why you want to change me.”

“If looking like a circus clown crossed with a heavy-metal drummer suits you, fine. Go to it. Just don’t die in my office, in my Agency.” I grabbed my purse and stood up.

“Do I have to leave?” Beth’s eyes widened, still brimming with tears.

I opened the door. “This room, yes. The Agency, no. Come on, we’re going to get you cleaned up and find some clothes that don’t look like rats gnawed on them.” I turned and acted on pure instinct, the only thing that saved me so many times.

I pulled the gun out of my purse without thinking and fired two bullets right into the chest of the young man in the hall. I followed them with another bullet through his left leg, and one in his right, then lined up to put one through his head.

He looked up at me and smiled, flecks of blood on his teeth. “Morning, Marissa.”

I think that’s about when Beth started screaming, and that brought Grimm. Well, that and the gunshots, though in this building, this office, neither were rare.

“Marissa, how many times have I told you
not to shoot the intern
?” Grimm yelled at me.

Beth grabbed a prepaid phone from one tattered pocket and attempted to dial 911. I took the phone from her and closed it. She went back to screaming.

The young man slowly stood up, leaving a smear of blood on the wall behind him. Then he walked into the room and began to cough until he spat something out in his hand—my spent bullet. “Nice blossom on this one. Think your rifling is getting worn though.”

I took the bullet from him. “Sorry, Mikey.” He was right. I’d make an appointment with my gunsmith. I went every few months. Think of it like a dental cleaning, only not as scary.

Grimm spoke from behind me. “That’s the fifth time, my dear. Even Mr. Stone has figured out that there’s no need to kill my employees. I expect this will be the last time. Correct?”

I nodded. “Got it. Sorry again, Mikey.”

Mikey bent over and pulled a bullet out of his leg and handed it to me, then repeated the process with the other leg.

“I am so calling the cops,” Beth said. “You shot him.”

Mikey tossed Beth a bullet, then lifted up his shirt to show smooth skin, with no trace of a gunshot wound. “And what are you going to tell them?”

I walked over to put a hand on her shoulder, but she flinched. Some people, you shoot even one person in front of them, and their entire opinion changes. I patted Mikey on the back. “Mikey here is different. Like you, in some ways. He’s a . . .” I tried to make my mouth say it, but all it did was make me want to shoot him again.

Mikey grinned at me, showing those pearly white teeth that grew back in every time I knocked them out. “Go on, say it and we’ll call it even.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Mikey’s a wolf.”

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Mikey smoothed out his T-shirt, ignoring the bloodstains.

I
never wanted Grimm to take a wolf as an intern. I might have mentioned that I killed the leader of the wolves. I might have mentioned that they’d made a few attempts on my life. At one point it was “Wake up and shoot the wolf outside the door. Make breakfast, shoot the wolf outside the door. Go to work, and shoot the wolf in the elevator, the two in the garage, and the one that shredded my backseat.” Old habits, like wolves, died hard.

“I’ll try not to do it again. Mikey, meet Beth. Beth’s going to be a piper.”

Mikey looked down at the cloud of rats and picked one up by the tail. “You mind?”

I shrugged. “Be my guest.”

He bit the rat in two and chewed thoughtfully. “Tastes like Dumpster. Much better than sewer rats. Those taste like ass.”

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.