Armageddon Rules (13 page)

He popped into the passenger-side mirror. “Relax, Marissa. Healing magic is on Ari’s approved list. We’ll dial back her training exercises. Fantastic work, princess.” He faded away, leaving Ari with a grimace.

“Did it hurt to do that?”

She shook her head and threw up her hands in exasperation. “I can’t get him to stop calling me ‘princess.’”

“You have to be what you are,” I said.

“I could give you that hangover back, you know.” Ari couldn’t quite hide the smile at the edge of her lips.

“Mikey, drop me off at the college and take Ari on over to the supermarket. I’ll catch a cab back later.” Mikey started the car, but before he could pull out, Ari spoke.

“You shouldn’t be looking into mirrors. And I need to sweet-talk a professor about my lab assignments, M. You go kick out the bums, and I’ll look at all the mirrors on campus and call it done.”

I’d have argued with Ari, but honestly, even after her spell, I still felt woozy, weak, and dizzy. “Fine. The women’s dressing room in the second theater is probably hexed to Inferno and back. Do your squinty spirit-sight thing and then we’ll call in a shaman to dispel it. And stay away from the mirror. Just in case.” Then I put my head over on the seat and tried to sleep.

Eleven

I HAD MIKEY drop me off at a convenience store a couple of blocks away. Inside, I bought enough wipes and rubbing alcohol to make it look like I was only mildly crazy. After forty minutes of heavy scrubbing, I came out looking red and pink, with only traces of black.

Then I walked to the supermarket to see what I was up against. It was on the bottom floor of a redbrick building, apartments on top, and, underneath, what I guess was a Sell-A-Lot grocery store. Gray dust coated the windows so thickly I couldn’t see in.

Mikey had been kind enough to bring my nine millimeter from the Agency. I’d seen parents of missing children who weren’t as happy to see their kids returned as I was to have my gun back. For that matter, I’d seen parents who would’ve been happier if their kids stayed missing.

I checked the front doors, and sure enough, some moron left them unlocked. That was probably how the homeless people started sleeping there in the first place. I know, I’d told Ari it might be a yeti, but honestly, there was a better chance of me being the death goddess of a gnome cult than of there actually being a yeti. If it were, I’d back away, come back armed with a chain saw and a dog-grooming kit and take care of business.

Sell-A-Lot tried to combine small department store and small grocery store. Unlike the “medical supply/fast-food restaurant” places, it quickly went out of business. The “Final Sale” signs still in the window advertised blenders and toasters for ten bucks. I slipped the door open, listened for sounds of trouble, and walked inside.

The door locking behind me was the giveaway. Self-locking doors never do so with the monster on the other side, but for the moment I refused to panic. Don’t get me wrong. Panic is a perfectly good reaction when there’s nothing else useful to do, but I wasn’t certain of that yet.

The place looked wrong. Rows and rows of empty shelves, the occasional ancient cereal box. Then I realized what was bothering me: A thick layer of gray dust covered everything. There wasn’t a single mirror or reflective surface anywhere.

“Grimm?” I put my hand on my bracelet. “Grimm, you there?” Of course he wasn’t. There wasn’t going to be any calling for help.

Like the whisper of rat’s feet, a voice answered, from everywhere and nowhere, all at once. “Princess.”

And it ticked me off. It wasn’t that I was pretty sure this was an ambush. It also wasn’t that I was almost certainly locked in with something nasty. It was that once again some idiot had mistaken me for a princess.

“Princess,” said the voice again, coming louder.

I walked along the rows, careful to keep my back to a shelf, and my gun ready.

“I don’t know who you are, but you picked a really bad day to start a fight.” I hoped my voice didn’t waver. Truth is, there were lots of fights I’d won, but very few I won without getting hurt in the process.

“I am dust,” said the voice. I’d never really understood why they couldn’t ever have normal names. I found the place I was looking for, once part of home electronics. I chose it because it had a nice U-shaped inlet, perfect for backing up to. I backed myself up to the wall and waited.

“Princess,” it said again.

“Someone failed their vocabulary test. It’s going to be hard to have a conversation if that’s all you can say.” From the shadows all around me it laughed. “Blessing? Curse? I could use some help.” In answer the lights began to flicker and shake. My harakathin were coming, and no power on earth would persuade them to stop.

Lights flickered from the front of the store to the back, then back and forth, in mesmerizing patterns. With a crash, a shape punched up from the ground, and I shot at it twice. Then it sagged back down into the ground. With a sinking feeling it finally hit me: The thing that had risen was the dust itself, forming a blanket. No, a barrier.

I ran to where it had risen and tried to brush the dust away, but no matter how much I scraped, the layer never changed, sifting like water back onto the ground. I tried the same thing on the polished counter top, trying to get enough reflection to contact Grimm. He could at least call the cops.

“That won’t work, princess.” This time the voice came from a few feet away. I ran to the wall and backed up to it, gun out, ready. Three times more the ash erupted in explosions as my harakathin tried to break through.

Then the dust began to gather, running together into a mound, and the mound took form. A man rose from the pile, like he was climbing a staircase, until he stood a few feet away. “Do you know who I am, princess?”

And to my horror, I did. Kingdom may be what you think of when you think of fairy tales, but the folks in Kingdom have their own legends. Their own myths, and ghost stories, and boogeymen. The actual boogeymen were nice, assuming you didn’t get all violent with a flashlight. On the other hand, I knew exactly who I was looking at. Kingdom’s own boogeyman, the name royals threatened their kids with if they wouldn’t polish their crown. “You’re the Gray Man.”

He wore coveralls, like a farmer, with a plaid flannel shirt that I think was red where it wasn’t covered in dust. It covered him like he’d rolled in a fireplace, white ash over pale skin. He took a few steps toward me. “You know what I’m called, but not my name. I am Rip Van Winkle.” He held out his palm and blew at me, a cloud of white and gray that billowed out and enveloped me.

I clamped my hand over my mouth a second too late. Like a fist in my face, the cloud forced my jaws open. With each breath, I sucked in more and more of that infernal gray. It moved inside me like he’d shoved a hand down my throat and started tearing out my lungs. I collapsed on the floor, unable to breathe as he advanced.

Then he stood over me and took a small notebook from his coveralls. “I make an effort to keep track of who I dispose of. Princess, what is your title? Princess of Wind? Earth? I know you are special. She could have bought a dozen assassins for what she paid me.”

The dust in my throat let loose, and with a wheezing cough I choked it out, looking less like a person and more like Liam the one time he tried smoking a pipe. Van Winkle grabbed me by the shirt and slung me to my feet. “Now. What exactly is your title? Tell me and I’ll make it quick.”

I sagged against a shelf and knocked over a box of toasters. “Mfffammmmfammham,” I said. Again the magic drew back, allowing me to spit out another clump of dust.

“I’m sorry. I couldn’t quite make that out.”

“I said small kitchen appliances.”

“Sad.” He noted it in his book, clicked the pen, and put it away. “You royals have got to stop breeding so much.”

That is the point at which I clocked him with a blender. And again, and again until the pitcher smashed over his head. I’m no idiot. I hit him with every single thing I found on the shelves, up to and including a fondue set. Then I went for my gun.

When I turned, he was already on his feet. I shot him three times, dead center of the torso. Perfect for perforating intestines, severing arteries, and generally making it hard to breathe. And still he stood. He ran his hand along his stomach and picked something off. “Now, little lady, that’s not polite.”

“How in Kingdom did you . . . ?” I trailed off as he dropped a spent bullet to the ground.

The dust swirled around him, covering him and making him look almost muddy.

“I reckon you’ll find out soon enough, miss. See, from dust you came, and to dust you shall return. So when you’re dead, I’ll take your bones and grind them up and add them to my collection.”

I looked around at the layers that covered everything in the store. More dust than a single body could supply.

He watched my gaze with a toothless grin. “I been killing royalty for centuries.”

I ran.

Down the aisles, straight for the front of the store I ran, leaving a cloud of bone dust in my wake. A layer of dust so thick it looked like volcanic ash covered the front, jamming the door. I slammed into it, kicked at the glass, and hurled a stool from a checkout stand.

Over and over, mountains of ash burst up in the dust as my harakathin tried to break through, but the shield of bone held them away.

“Now, princess, that’s enough,” said Rip Van Winkle as he approached. “I hear the fairy’s been training you. Not half-bad job.” He limped toward me, dragging one foot.

“You have the wrong girl,” I said, looking for something to use against him. The dust grew thick in the air as I searched. At any moment he could bring it back to choke me to death.

“Nope. Heard that one a few times before.” He fished a knife from one pocket and clicked the blade open. He held one hand to his head where I’d hit him. Ash clumped on the wound, but sloughed away where the blood ran. “Normally, I’d make this easy on y’all. But seein’ as you want to play rough, I can do that too.”

I advanced on him, shoving my gun into a side pocket and trying to relax as I moved toward a legend’s legend and a nightmare’s nightmare. Grimm had other agents who were deadly in hand-to-hand combat before me. Some could move into a crowd of attackers and break and bend, and others used knives. I’d never been quite that type, but knife defense I’d had drilled into me for over eight years.

He nodded as I approached. “Good girl. Come here and die.”

I’m only five foot eight. He stood a good five inches taller than me, looking like a farmer dumped in bone-meal flour. That certainly explained the legends about him. How ashes fell like snow, and the ghost of the Gray Man came for you. How the only thing left would be a pile of meat and a pool of blood.

From my hands, which almost shook, to my shoulder muscles knotted like iron, it took all my training to keep my body under control. I’d get one shot at this, since I couldn’t defend against the dust thing. Oxygen was my weakness, along with most other creatures on the planet. So I went to him.

“Night-night, princess.” Rip Van Winkle flipped the knife over so that the simple lock blade pointed downward, and held out his arms like he wanted to give me a great big hug. One that would end with a knife blade driven into my spine.

I waited until the last possible moment, let those dusty white arms come within an inch of me, and as his muscles tensed for the strike I spun. Just like I’d trained. The blade came down like a streak of silver, and I let it.

I turned as it did, using my forearm to force his to the side. I didn’t try to stop the swing. He was too strong. I
changed
it. Enough to miss me. Then I grabbed his wrist and threw myself against him, driving the knife right into his thigh.

He fell backwards, a short cry of pain escaping him along with all the air in his lungs, and I didn’t give him a chance to get up. I’d learned a lot about fighting. One of the key rules was never fight fair. Always kick a man when he’s down. So I did, driving that knife farther into his leg and then stomping his head as he rolled, trying to keep his arms in front of him.

As I swung my foot at his temple the dust covering him bunched together, solidifying. I might as well have kicked a statue. Something cracked in my foot and I fell, pain like bursts of lightning up my leg. I rolled away from him as fast as I could, but he grabbed my leg with an iron grip, squeezing the foot I’d broken like a vice.

I screamed into the dust.

“Now you done made me angry.” He rose, a specter of gray and white, his face contorted with rage. Blood ran from his thigh, causing clumps of ash to thicken and drop from him. When Ari does magic, there’s this moment when you feel like you are standing in a stream with water running over your skin. Rip Van Winkle did the total opposite.

No, this was more like Rip Van Winkle set off a bomb targeting only magic. A fine layer of frost covered me as magic rushed away from him. I had no control over magic, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t sense it. Feel it. Every bit of light and warmth fled before him. The force pushed me like a blow, throwing me backwards. In the silence, my ears rang.