Armageddon Rules (21 page)

I put my head in my hands. “I don’t know. I’ve got a ninja, a wolf, and an acidic moat monster guarding her, but she’s not safe in the hospital. I’m going to build her a coffin and put her in a dungeon on life support. It’s supposed to be the traditional way to keep princesses safe. Know of any dungeons for rent?”

The lich rose from the recliner and walked to a door. At his hand, the door opened, leading down into a black well of darkness.

“Sorry, I value my soul.” Grimm’s contract didn’t cover the basement.

“Very funny,” said the lich on my phone. “I swear I will not harm you.”

“Look, you aren’t the first thing to try to trap me today. I already made one contract mistake. I’m not going to make another.” I reached into my jacket and pulled out the copy of the contract Malodin had left behind.

The lich drifted over and swiped the contract from me, then spent a minute studying it. The phone beeped again. “You are a damned idiot.”

“I know.”

“You signed a contract with a demon.”

“I know.”

The phone beeped once more, and I was afraid to look. “First, we take care of Ari. Follow me.”

I stood at the edge of the stairway. “I’m not sure this is a good idea.”

“If I kill you, the demons would take it out on me,” read my phone. So I put one hand on the stairway and followed an undead sorcerer down into the seat of his power.

I walked down into blackness like the depth of night. When my feet stumbled at the end of the stairway, I looked back at the distant patch of light. Then the door swung closed, burying me in darkness.

“Hello? Can’t see.”

A pull chain clinked, and a lamp blazed to life in the corner. Then another, and a click as the overhead lights came on. I stood in a basement bedroom. Green shag carpet from the sixties, with dark walnut paneling on the walls. In one corner sat a television the size of a cereal box, and in the other, a recliner.

“I thought this place would be . . . more impressive. Goth-y. Ritualistic.”

“Mama did not approve of me painting the walls black,” said the lich, speaking through the phone.

“You lived in your mother’s basement?” I tried to figure out if he was telling a lie. For regular people, I did pretty well. The lack of skin made it hard to read the lich. “Not that I have a problem with that. Plenty of men live under their mothers. That way, Mommy can take good care of them.”

“Very funny.”

“So why didn’t you remake it into a den of ritual magic when she passed on?” I sat on the edge of the recliner while the lich looked at a shelf of books.

“Mama didn’t die until six years after I did.”

I stood up and looked around. “So where’s the entrance to the dungeon?”

The lich looked at me and waited in silence.

“This?”

It nodded. “This is where I became undead. It’s where I bound my power. Without a contract, I can exercise the full limits of my power here. And I will, if anyone tries to harm Ari.”

At least we agreed on that. A pair of chest freezers lined one wall, with more than enough room for a coffin on top. “I tried to get a crystal case for Ari, but Celestial Crystal is expensive. I was thinking of going with something more basic. I have a life-support module from the dwarves that should turn anything from a cardboard box to a bulldozer into a safe place.”

The lich drifted over and with a wave of his hand threw a cloud of papers off the chest freezers.

“Yup, I was thinking about putting the coffin on those.”

He shook his skull. Then with a wave, one of the freezers opened. I came over and looked inside. It hadn’t run in ages. Wasn’t cold, and smelled like tuna and dirty laundry.

“No one will think to look in here,” said the lich. I took the life-support cube from my jacket pocket and looked at it. “This side toward casket,” read the writing on one side. I held it up to the side of the chest freezer, and it leaped from my hand, locking onto the outside. Then metal tentacles grew like vines from it into the chest freezer, and the freezer began to hum. The inside glowed with white light, and a faint scent of roses wafted out.

“Perfect.” I borrowed my phone to call the Agency, then Shigeru, and then Mikey. Once I’d given everyone orders, I went back upstairs to wait.

While I paced the floor, the lich continued to watch me. Everywhere I went, he watched. Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore. “Can I help you?”

“You stink. Like brimstone.”

“Can I help you with anything else?”

“Why did you sign a contract to end the world?” The lich floated a little closer.

With a sigh of exasperation, I flopped on the disgusting couch and began to explain. By the time I reached the contract, I swear the lich had a knowing grin. Technically, since he was a skeleton, all he ever did was grin, but I felt a smug grin from him.

“Seriously, you fell for that old trick?”

“You aren’t helping.”

“I’m not the one that agreed to unleash the demon apocalypse. You’re going to make Earth into the equivalent of New Jersey. Completely unlivable.” The lich brought out a few volumes of celestial law and flipped through the pages while he studied my contract.

“I didn’t agree, and I don’t want to do it. The way I understand it, so long as I fulfill the bare minimum in the contract, Malodin will wait. Every second I buy gives me time to find a way out.” I checked my phone, wondering how long it could take to cart a sleeping princess home from the hospital.

“Here’s the simple version. First, you have to unleash the harbingers of the apocalypse.”

“I must have missed that class in college. How do I do that?”

The lich handed me back my contract. “You’ll figure it out. And you can’t do it here. I’m not on good terms with one of them. Calling down three plagues, starting the apocalypse; it’s simple enough that even you should be capable of doing it.”

The doorbell rang, cutting off any hope I had of a retort, and I rushed to open it. Outside, Mikey stood, with Ari slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour.

“I said to bring her by aid car.”

“We had some trouble at the hospital. Got attacked while we were waiting to be discharged.” Mikey shouldered past me into the living room.

“Is she hurt?” I rushed over to examine Ari, who hung limp, wrapped in a sheet. The only thing I could tell would be injured was her pride—hospital gowns don’t really get the job done when it comes to covering one’s rear.

“Best I can tell, she’s fine. Then again, I was kinda occupied.”

I looked out at the street, where a two-door lowrider sat at an angle to the curb. “That’s not an Agency car.”

“Nah, some gangbangers dropping off a shooting victim volunteered to let me use it.”

I looked at the claw marks, noted the shattered glass, and decided that whatever else Mikey might be, he was a pretty good employee. “You did good. Help me get her downstairs. Got to grab some stuff first.” I ran up to Ari’s bedroom to get a pillow and a comforter, and then to ransack her kitchen cabinet.

Mikey followed me downstairs without a question, and it was about the time I got down there that I began to wonder where, exactly, our lich landlord was. I opened the chest freezer, arranged the comforter, and helped ease Ari down into it.

The gray life-support block continued to keep the temperature perfect, and as I arranged Ari’s hands, it began to spew a white mist that covered her. Then I took two boxes of baking soda and put them in the freezer with her. That way, she wouldn’t wake up smelling like roses or tuna. Assuming I could wake her at all.

Mikey, on the other hand, couldn’t take his eyes off the freezer. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m sure. You did good. Go home, get some rest. Tomorrow we’re going to figure out how to deal with the woman responsible.” I gave Mikey a pat on the back, and he nearly wagged the tail he didn’t have in response. He bounded out of the basement, and the front door slammed moments later.

“Exactly why were you hiding?” I said to the empty air.

My phone beeped, and I pulled it out. “I am shy.” I looked around the room and found the lich, hovering over his books, carefully reading.

“You’re an undead sorcerer.”

He did his best to shrug, causing his collarbones to creak as they bent. “With very poor social skills. The ritual requirements don’t leave much time for attending parties.”

“Thank you. I know how to wake up Ari. The only good thing to come out of that deal is that I know I need to find her boyfriend and get him to kiss her.”

The lich’s skull whipped 180 degrees, staring at me backwards. Then the lich rushed toward me like a cloud of bitterness. “Did the demon tell you that?”

I nodded.

“Demons never help. If he told you something, it’s because he either already made sure you can’t get it or—”

“He plans to,” I said, staring into the empty bone sockets.

“Anything you receive from one is cursed. Any information you get is wrong, or will lead to worse problems. Demons never help.”

I glanced at my watch. Night classes started twenty minutes ago. “Take care of Ari. They tried to get her at the hospital. Odds are they’ll try to get her here.”

A ripple of power crossed the room, sending the carpet rolling in waves. The lich glowed in a purple-and-green light. “I look forward to it.”

I sprinted up the stairs, out the door, and decided that I was temporarily color-blind in regard to lights. I made a single stop at the toy store and a dash into Mary’s Cathedral to commit yet another sin in a long list. Then I didn’t stop for lights or pedestrians until I squealed to a halt in the loading zone outside the college. I listened for a moment, hoping that what I heard was the sound of a power saw. I knew, however, it was screaming.

Eighteen

IF YOU WANT to find a demon, it’s simple enough. Find the people running away and swim upstream through the crowd, using fists and feet where necessary. In all my years of community college, the only time anything like this happened was when my lit class threw a surprise retirement party for our professor. He opened his presents to find a nest of live wasps, two angry skunks, and a pistol that was later tied to a double homicide. I learned never to pitch in for gifts.

The people gushing down the stairs quite clearly wanted to get away from something worse than a pop quiz, which meant I most likely wanted to be there. I charged through the crowd at full speed and into a lecture room.

In one corner, a cluster of students huddled, trying to work out what it was their brains were seeing, coming up with anything but a demon. Maybe a rock star or an NBA point guard with wings.

At the front of the pack, a lone priest stood in his black robe. Poor guy probably planned on getting his associate’s degree in business, or maybe his mechanic’s certification. Instead, he wound up working off the clock.

He held up a crucifix and a rosary, and chanted in Latin. Really poorly pronounced Latin, on account of his chattering teeth. In fact, I’m fairly sure what he said was “Our Father in Accident.” The demon seemed more amused than repelled. I understood. The phrase he wanted was
deliver us from evil
. What came out sounded like “deliver us from postmen.” Not that the Postal Service couldn’t be evil.

The demon lumbered forward and reached for the priest. That was my cue. I’d bought a high-power water gun and filled it with holy water on the way over. The holy water worked less like acid and more like a laser, slicing into the demon’s skin, tearing a hole straight through it so that its intestines spilled out, teeming with maggots. I gave it a few more squirts for good measure, then walked down to the front of the classroom.

“Wyatt? Is there a Wyatt here?”

From behind the podium, a timid voice came. “I’m not interested.”

I walked around it and grabbed the cowering young man by the nape of the neck, pulling him to his feet, and then dropped him like a hot coal. It wasn’t the waxy, almost white blond hair I was staring at, or the pale blue, almost gray eyes he kept tightly shut, peeking at me every now and then to see if I’d gone away. Why hadn’t Ari told me? Of all the things she should have brought up, you’d think it would be that one.

Magic ran from him like a river, the “shine” as it was called, and while Ari had a pretty good snowstorm of magic about her most days, he could certainly keep up. If it weren’t for the fact that most royalty were completely blind to the shine, I would have been ticked at Ari for leaving out that detail.

Wyatt did his best to cram himself back into the podium, all of his six feet, bean-pole-thin frame almost fitting.

“You’re not safe here.” I reached for him again, and he unfolded his legs in a halfhearted kick. “One way or another, you’re coming with me.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I pick up this week’s assignments. My study partner will need them.” He slunk to the teacher’s desk, which had a nasty spray of demon entrails across one corner, and took a copy of the course work.

“Ari isn’t coming back to class anytime soon.” When I said it, his eyes locked onto me, and his mouth turned down sharply.

“If you’ve done something to Arianna, you’ll regret it. I’ll write a letter to your employer.”