Read Armageddon Rules Online

Authors: J. C. Nelson

Tags: #Fantasy, #Urban, #Fiction

Armageddon Rules (10 page)

BOOK: Armageddon Rules
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I stumbled and rolled out of the elevator, surrounded by a fog of smoke and the roar of flames. It was your typical dwarven forge. I’d spent a lot of time in Liam’s studio where he did his ironwork, so I knew the basics. Get things hot, use pure muscle to bend them. Pretty much the same approach men use for everything.

Clouds of coal smoke floated above me. Then the elevator rattled. It was near impossible for it to be back that fast. To move like that it must have plummeted at terminal velocity or faster. A trio of dwarves stumbled out, their hair twisted wildly, looking like they’d skydived down the chute.

“This is where Liam’s been coming?”

Magnus nodded. “Been working with us for a year. And all he wanted was a few trinkets.”

“How exactly did he pay you?” I didn’t keep secrets from Liam, and I was more than a little surprised he’d managed to keep this one from me. He wasn’t usually good at that sort of thing.

“Fool. Paid us in pure cubic zirconia and hellfire. Anyone can come up with diamonds or rubies. Zirconia, on the other hand is worth its weight in gold.”

Magnus walked over and took my hand. “Let me see that.”

I grudgingly removed the ring and handed it to him. He held it in the forge until the gold glowed. “We put your name and his inside the ring. That and the sculpting ain’t visible till it gets hot.” He removed the band from the fire and revealed the hidden script. Only dwarves had the skill to do that kind of writing. And the outside of the ring was no longer plain gold—it had a pattern on it, like scales. In fact, the whole ring looked changed. It was a dragon clasping the diamond in his mouth.

“That’s amazing. And if it weren’t for the third-degree burns it would take to see it, I’d admire it more often. Seriously, what is it with dwarves and engravings you can only see when you are being burned to death or baked in a casserole?”

Magnus snorted and dropped the glowing ring into his hand. Dwarves were flame resistant, sure, but this seemed extreme. Then he grabbed my hand and slipped the ring on. It was cool to the touch, despite the fact that I could still see the scales fading into the gold. “Put yer hand in the fire.”

I held my hand closer and closer to the fire, then passed my hand briefly over the flame. I felt a warm draft, but it didn’t even singe my sleeve. The next pass I reached into the flame. The flame flickered over me like warm running water.

“We didn’t need no hellfire fer the forging. But fer the enchantment, that took all he could give.”

I closed my hand into a fist, resolved that I would never take that ring off again willingly. Protection from hellfire. The ability to be close to him and not worry about whether a burp would leave me with blisters. An engagement ring. It was everything I could ask for.

My determination forged as firmly as the ring on my hand, I looked up at them. “Show me what’s wrong.”

The trio walked away, down paths through heaps of swords and armor, kicking aside a pile of what I’m dead certain were rubies. Magnus pointed down into a hole, a pit of darkness. “We were looking for more zirconia. Too many worthless diamonds, and stupid gold blocking our way. Then Yiffy gets the idea to dig
under
the blasted stuff.

“Wait.” That last phrase had triggered an image in my mind. A certain memory of a disaster from a few years ago. “Tell me you didn’t dig out of bounds. Tell me you didn’t dig beyond the surveyor’s limits.”

Three very small men all avoided looking at me.

“Did you dig into a freaking balrog? Again? I don’t care what I said, if you dug up a balrog, say so now so that I can go get the army. I know you all want magic solutions, but nothing says ‘You shall not pass’ like a howitzer.” I crossed my arms and tapped my foot while I waited.

“Ain’t no balrog,” said Magnus. “Truth be, I don’t know what it is.”

“Anything going to eat me or otherwise kill me if I go in there and take a look?” I watched their faces for signs of a lie. Dwarves aren’t known for being big on betrayal, but I’d rather catch Judas now than later.

“No, ma’am,” said Magnus.

So I took out my flashlight and headed into the tunnel. True to form, it went deeper and deeper, arcing down so steeply that at times I almost slipped. Also, because they’d dug it for themselves, I was reduced to crawling. I’d bill them for the dress slacks later.

Then the tunnel stopped up short. Dwarves leave smooth rock behind as they go, perfectly round with a nice rough patch underfoot to keep you from slipping, or to shred the knees in two-hundred-dollar dress slacks. The wall broke off into rough rock. I stepped in and one glance told me whatever the dwarves had tunneled into, it was old.

Old as in high-arched ceilings, tall enough that I could easily stand up. Old as in “not built by humans.” The floor underneath was carved rock, carved in a pattern like scales that I had seen before from a curse. As I stood there, the tunnel lit up.

In movies, the explorers always find lit torches. Torches require fuel, and they tend to dry out. The wall sconces held flames, but not torches. So this tunnel might be forgotten, but it wasn’t abandoned. The lighting still worked, coming on when needed.

A heavy oak door hung on iron hinges in the wall, with an intricate lock and cast metal handle in the shape of a gargoyle. It stood slightly open, and from behind it came a warm breeze with the scent of sulfur. I shone my light at the edge of the door and noticed a ring of white crystal just inside the room.

Definitely time to call for help.

I took my compact out of my purse and opened it. “Grimm? I could really use some of your expertise.”

He snapped into view, a smile on his face. “Liam’s flight left New York without incident a few minutes ago. Where exactly are you, my dear?”

I held up the compact and showed it around. “Dwarves found it by accident.”

“Do I need to call the army? I’d like to remind you that you are not a wizard. Being able to pull a card from a deck does not even qualify you as a magician, Marissa.”

I held the compact up to show him the door. “Not a balrog. Whatever it is, it’s old. You three, was that door open when you found it?” I spun to look at the dwarves, who’d followed me down. Again they studied their feet. “You
do not
open doors. Especially not ancient ones in collapsed tunnels where you aren’t supposed to be in the first place. Grimm, there’s like half a dozen workplace safety violations here, but I don’t see anything for me to do. Any idea what this place is?”

Grimm thought for a moment. “I think if there were anything hungry behind it, you would already be eaten. Open the door, but don’t go in. Let’s see what lies beyond.”

I swung the door open, and in response, the sconces in the room lit up, throwing orange light across it. From edge to edge, it had to be at least thirty yards across, and the walls were the same crystal that ringed the door. It glowed orange, pulsing with a light like lava. In the center of the room stood a huge table, tall enough that it would come to my chin, and off to the side was a circle of runes I recognized as a summoning circle.

The circle pulsed red and the occasional burst of flame ringed the edges. “They left it open,” said Grimm, almost to himself. “That explains the additional poodles. Marissa, shut the door.” I swung the door shut, and as I did a gust of wind and a foul odor of sulfur came gusting out, buffeting me. I threw myself against it.

“Who has the key?” said Grimm, yelling at the dwarves. Magnus rushed forward and handed me a cast-iron key, long and slender with a single tooth at the end of it. I thrust it into the lock and turned it. At that moment, claws scraped across the wood on the other side. I stood rooted to the spot as something snuffled on the other side, letting out bellows. A sour stench worked its way into my nose.

I yanked the key from the lock, backed away up the tunnel, then crawled as fast as I could through the darkness. At any moment, I expected I’d hear the screams of dwarves being taken by something, and then it would be after me. Back at the forge, I ran straight for the elevator, slipping in a pile of diamonds and getting quite a bruise from where I landed on a helmet.

It wasn’t until after the elevator ride, which seemed to go on for hours, that I finally stopped gasping and shaking. I considered myself good at my job. But part of being good at my job was understanding which battles I was able to fight and which ones were a job for hired spell slingers, priests, or lawyers.

In the closed-up jeweler’s shop, I stopped running and found a mirror where I could have a proper conversation with Grimm.

“What was that?” I still hadn’t caught my breath.

Grimm waited for me to stop panting, then spoke. “The room is most certainly a dealing room. Contracts, not cards. It’s like a visitor’s forum several hundred miles above the surface of Inferno, where someone foolish enough to make deals with demons could do so. Whoever last accessed the room left the summoning gate unlocked, and then our half-sized friends opened the door. Now that it’s shut, we shouldn’t have worse than normal poodle issues, though I’d prefer to close that portal.”

“So whatever that was could get out?”

“No, my dear. That’s Celestial Crystal forming the boundary. While I’m certain it would have been quite frightening, demons
cannot
cross into a realm unless called by one under contract. If you’d like to go back down there and open the door, I’ll have a word with it.” Grimm said it like I was going to the grocery store.

“That doesn’t sound like a good idea, Grimm.” I had this mortal fear of death that kept me from doing certain things.

Grimm shrugged. “All right then. I’ll send a team of clerks down to check it out later.”

“You mean clerics, right?” I looked over as the elevator began to rattle, signaling what I hoped was the arrival of my dwarven clients.

“Clerics are expensive. Clerks work for minimum wage and don’t have health benefits. It’s cheaper to hire a team of them than a single cleric.”

As the elevator opened and the dwarves came stumbling out, Grimm faded away. “Fairy Godfather will send a threat assessment team of experts soon. I’ll be keeping this,” I said, pocketing the key, “so that it doesn’t accidentally get opened. Again.”

The dwarves were careful not to meet my stare. When I finally left the jewelry shop above hell I drove back to the Agency and spent the rest of the day doing normal stuff, like torching the lost-and-found pile with a flamethrower.

Nine

AT FOUR O’CLOCK, I called everyone into my office. I liked to make assignments on Fridays so that when Monday morning came around, we could jump right into work. We didn’t work weekends anymore unless it was an emergency. Which it often was. I gathered Ari, myself, Rosa, and, against my better judgment, Mikey. Grimm kept telling me how important it was to include the intern.

I shuffled through the list of new clients, sorted out a few that looked important. “Ari, you’ll handle a grocery store on 11th. Based on the smell, it either has a yeti living in it or a pack of homeless people. Either way, going to be hard to reopen with them there.”

“One charm job, check.” Ari could soothe almost any sort of savage beast. Except dragons. That was my realm of expertise. She looked at me. “What exactly will you be doing?”

“I’m going back to school.” I waited for her dubious stare. Cheerful? Absolutely. Optimistic? Unfortunately, one thing Ari wasn’t was gullible. “I’m kidding. Grimm’s magic monitors detected a spike in a college theater dressing room. I’m guessing a minor hex put there by some understudy.”

Rosa whispered to Mikey more words than I’d seen her say in a month. He got that stupid grin like he’d eaten another ten pounds of bacon. “According to the monitors, it might be a magic mirror. At your college.”

Ari sat up straight. The blood drained from her face and her eyes went wide. “Grimm doesn’t do student consultations, and I’m certain he wasn’t checking in on me. M, you think there’s another fairy in town?”

I still remembered the last time a fairy came to town. They’re normally pretty territorial, but that didn’t stop Odette from offering me a few wishes. People always said, “Be careful what you wish for.” Odette, Fairy Godmother, wished for me, and gave me what I always wanted. The experience almost killed me.

“Grimm?” I waited for him to appear in the mirror. “Odds on it actually being a magic mirror at Ari’s college?”

Grimm looked at me like I’d asked him the odds on winning the lottery. “A billion to one. At least. Make that six billion. If you insist on my input, I’d suspect an acne-causing spell.”

I gave Ari my “what did I tell you” smile. “But, let’s say it was another fairy. This time around, I’d play nice. No throwing onyx at mirrors. No insults or Peter Pan references. I’d talk to them, turn down their offer of employment, and try to feel out what exactly they thought they were doing in Grimm’s town.”

“What about me?” Mikey would’ve wagged his tail if he had one at the moment. “I’m practically an agent. I could be both halves of a K-9 unit.”

“Mikey, if I promoted you twice you might be on the same level as the plants in the waiting room. Monday we’re getting a huge shipment of laxatives that need to get into Kingdom on time, or you’ll be making enemas for ogres for a week.”

BOOK: Armageddon Rules
10.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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