Armageddon Rules Read online

  SMALL, FURRY, AND DEADLY

  A poodle leaped from the darkness between two pallets. I rolled to the side, putting a bullet into it and ruining a leather recliner. Liam always wanted one of those. Another poodle snarled and yipped as it leaped for my ankle. I sidestepped and kicked as it landed, dodging razor-sharp teeth and snapping its spine.

  The crippled poodle shrieked in pain and feral rage, desperate to tear our throats out. Ari walked over and crushed its bouffant head under her heel. “I don’t get why these things are so dangerous.”

  Another bout of screaming killed my reply. I took off at a run toward the sound with Ari close behind. At the edge of the loading bay stood a fort of recliners, turned on their sides to make a wall. A few desperate workers were making a last stand inside, armed with broken recliner levers.

  A hedge’s worth of poodles ringed the fort, occasionally leaping at the edges. Then I realized that in the corner, a strike team of poodles had begun to gnaw their way through the back of a recliner.

  “There’re too many to take on. Get out of here,” I whispered to Ari. The thump of an approaching helicopter made the loading doors shake as Grimm’s mercenaries circled, but these folks wouldn’t last another two minutes.

  Every single poodle in the flock turned as one to look at us, growling like a hundred miniature wood chippers. I shuddered clean down to my toes and glanced back at Ari, who held a silver whistle in her lips. “What did you do?”

  She spat out the whistle. “Called for help.”

  I fired six rounds, killing a couple of poodles with each, while beside me Ari’s Desert Eagle roared, plowing through a row of them with every bullet, but still they came for us, a fluffy white cloud of doom.

  Ace Books by J. C. Nelson

  FREE AGENT

  ARMAGEDDON RULES

  Specials

  SOUL INK

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  ARMAGEDDON RULES

  An Ace Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2015 by Jason Nelson.

  Excerpt from Wish Bound by J. C. Nelson copyright © 2015 by Jason Nelson.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

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  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) LLC,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eBook ISBN: 978-0-698-14781-2

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Ace mass-market edition / March 2015

  Cover art by Tony Mauro.

  Cover design by Danielle Abbiate.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  For Abigail, who will one day make a wonderful lawyer

  Acknowledgments

  While the other pages of this book will be largely dedicated to the story (with a few exceptions for the title, dedication, and an about-the-author page people don’t generally read), this page is the space for me to thank the people who helped me shape this book.

  First off, to my friends at critiquecircle.com—Laurel, Leslie, John, Jim, and Andy—thank you as always. Your insights and gentle reminders helped me sharpen the story.

  My agent, Pam van Hylckama Vlieg, remains awesome. Not that there was ever any question as to that.

  Leis Pederson, my editor, gave me critical eyes and feedback where I needed them the most. As always, it’s a better story thanks to her.

  My family gave me patience when I spent long nights reading and writing, and early mornings editing. More than anything, their gift of time to pursue this story made this book a possibility.

  And, as always, thank you to the readers. What began with Free Agent continues now. My modern-day fairy tale . . .

  Contents

  Ace Books by J. C. Nelson

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Special Excerpt from Wish Bound

  About the Author

  One

  IN MY DEFENSE, I didn’t mean to start the apocalypse. It wasn’t just my personal aversion to oblivion; I had a clear financial motive: The end of the world is bad for business.

  Speaking of business, that Monday began the same way almost every Monday had for the past three weeks: with a plague. Last week it was frogs.

  I rolled into the office at about nine forty-five, and, as usual, the Agency was pure chaos. Rosa—our receptionist—was opening a fresh container of Taser darts and we’d only been open for forty-five minutes.

  “Miss Locks, you gotta help.” A man in an orange jumpsuit with “Corrections Department” stamped in block letters down the side grabbed my shoulder as I walked past, spinning me around. “I gotta get me a wish.”

  Strike one: escaping from a garbage-pickup crew. Strike two: putting grubby fingers on my brand-new top. Strike three: calling me “Miss” instead of “Ms.” Locks. Far as I was concerned, Miss Locks left the building the day I turned eighteen and hadn’t been seen around here since.

  “I’ll make a few calls.” To the police, if possible. To the morgue, if necessary.

  He nodded gratefully and sat down on a bench.

  I slipped through the “Staff Only” door, made it to the kitchen, and almost poured a cup of coffee before the screaming started. One should never face disaster without caffeine. So I got my coffee and headed back out to the lobby, strolling through the door to see exactly what we’d been struck with.

  Rats ran everywhere. They scrabble
d on the walls, gnawed on the furniture, and covered the floor like a shag carpet from 1973. In the middle of the lobby stood a teenage girl, six feet tall, rail thin with platinum blonde hair. Her clothes hung in tatters from bony white arms, and red blotches surrounded each of her many, many piercings. Her extravagant collection of tattoos spoke of poor impulse control and even worse decision-making skills. She looked up at me with baleful eyes. “Please. I need help.”

  I glanced around the room. The couple nearest the door held a cage with an amphibian I could only loosely call a frog. In the corner waited a group of kobolds. Roughly five feet tall, and with humanoid features except for their scaled skin and forked tongues, these Germanic lizard-men came every Monday to demand and be refused Grimm’s help in forming a professional soccer team. That left the homeless guy by the door, a man we called Payday George. He still hadn’t figured out this wasn’t a payday-loan joint, probably because most days I felt sorry for him and just gave him a twenty. I opened the staff door and waved to the girl. “Come on.”

  Rosa glowered at me, mumbling curses in Spanish. She hated when I picked clients, and if she had her way, we’d take them one at a time, from number one to number six hundred in exactly that order. Even if fifty-three was a starving fungal giant and sixty-two was a samurai with a serious shiitake addiction. To her credit, Rosa kept her mouth shut. One does not argue with the boss.

  We headed down the hall to a conference room, me, the girl, and enough rats to supply a hot dog factory running three shifts, seven days a week. I took a seat on one side of the table, she took a seat on the other, and the rats took seats everywhere. Flicking one off my knee, I began the interview. “So what exactly do you want me to do for you?”

  Tears smudged the sludge of makeup she wore, and she waved her arms around. “Duh. Isn’t it obvious?”

  Absolutely. Obvious that she needed help. Figuring out which kind first, that was the hard part. I walked over and ran my fingers through her tangled, crispy hair, took a good look at all sixteen rings in her ear and the tasteful depiction on her shoulder of what was either Bob Dylan in “Man in the Long Black Coat” or a velociraptor playing acoustic guitar. “We can help. First, let’s take out those piercings. I’ll get you some alcohol and a prescription for some antibiotics. Your hair is crunchy from whatever you used to bleach it, and the tattoos are going to take years to remove.”

  A rat jumped into my coffee and poked its head out. The girl stared as I fished it out by the tail, set it on the table, and handed it a sugar cube.

  “What about the rats?”

  I took another sip of coffee, which tasted Parisian with a hint of rat. “What about them?”

  “The only thing I need is for you to get rid of the rats.” She shivered.

  I pushed a box of tissues across to her. “What’s your name?”

  She scratched out a tissue and wiped her eyes. The tissue caught in her makeup and left shreds clinging to her cheeks. “Elizabeth. I like Beth.”

  I brushed the rats out of the way and sat down on the table, my mind already made up. “Well, Beth, I have good news and bad news. Good news is I can help with the hair, the piercings, and I’ve got a lady in my wardrobe department who can teach you how to use less than a pound of cosmetics a day. The bad news, I’m not going to do a thing about the rats.”

  She stared at me as her brain tried to process what I said. I leaned across and patted her hand. “You look hungry.” Truth was, she could have starred in one of those commercials for starving kids. I used to watch TV, and every once in a while I’d see commercials where you could mail order a kid for fifty dollars a month. Always wanted to try, but given my track record with pets, I’d signed an agreement with animal control saying that anything more than a goldfish required daily home visitation. Anyway, Beth reminded me of those kids.

  “I can’t eat. Every time I try to eat, the rats take it from me.”

  I should’ve asked about her credit. I should’ve asked Rosa if her application was complete, but one look at her said I’d found my charity case for the week. “I’m going to order a pizza or two. I’ll have one of my employees bring a barrel of garbage up from the Dumpster to distract your companions. I need you to sit tight for a bit, okay?”

  She nodded and put her head down on the table. Walking out the door, on the way to my office, I made a mental note to have the table cleaned, or burned, or both.

  * * *

  MY OFFICE, INCIDENTALLY, was almost the biggest in the Agency. That was only right, since for most things, most days, I was in charge. I was a partner, the junior partner, but definitely not a silent one. On my desk sat a vase with yellow flowers. Daffodils, my favorite. The attached card read, “La fille du majordome est mon amant. Love, Liam.” His attempts to learn French from the foreign film festival went about as well as my Spanish-by-mail lessons, because the butler’s daughter was not his lover. My dad was an accountant, and Liam and I didn’t even have a butler.

  I pulled a towel off the full-length mirror in the corner and made a call. “Grimm, how’s it going?”

  Grimm snapped into view in the mirror, looking more like an English butler than a sentient manifestation of magic. Grimm was the Fairy Godfather, founder of the Agency, once my boss, and sometimes my friend. He could grant wishes if he wanted to, but most people didn’t need wishes. They needed solutions to their problems.

  Just so we’re clear, I had no magic. I wasn’t a princess, witch, half blood, or anything like that. The only magic I could work was performed with bullets, bacon, or boobs. Anything that couldn’t be handled with the big three, I called in Grimm. I didn’t call often.

  He smiled, making the wrinkles in his face crease together. “Marissa, my dear, it is only Monday. Do you require my assistance already?” His voice always reminded me of some nature documentary narrator.

  I shook my head. “Nah. Nothing we can’t handle yet. Got a new piper though. She can’t be more than seventeen.”

  Grimm slid his glasses forward to look at me over the thick, black edges. “What, may I ask, is she piping?”

  I shrugged. “The usual for newbies.” New pipers, particularly girls, always started with brainless, easy-to-influence creatures like rats or teenage boys. “If we can get her trained, this year’s Poodling will go a lot easier.”

  He raised one eyebrow and pursed his lips. “And if you can’t, my dear?”

  Grimm had never appreciated my term for our yearly pest-control operations. Every year, like clockwork, infernal energy welled to the surface. Instead of manifesting as something reasonable, like a six-headed hydra or a flaming squid, it tended to take the form of small, white, dog-shaped creatures with a taste for murder. “If I can’t, she can supply Kingdom with organic, free-range rats. Can you tell me where Ari is?”

  Arianna, my right-hand woman, my best friend, my girl Friday, or at least girl Thursday. At her name, Grimm’s lips turned down. “I already checked. She slept through her alarm, missed her bus to the Agency, and failed her civics test. On top of Arianna’s Department of Licensing disaster, she’s planning to call in sick.”

  Ari had spent the last two years in college. Grimm and I had running bets on what she planned on majoring in. Grimm always said, “Do what you are best at.” From what I could tell, Ari was going to major in failing the driver’s license test. “She failed this weekend? Couldn’t you intervene?”

  “Marissa, I did intervene. She mistook the accelerator for the volume control and drove three blocks through the market at full speed. Again. It took every bit of magic I could pull off to make certain no one got more than a little run over.”

  “I’ll go fetch her.” Ari usually rose with the sun, and by now, she could have walked into the Agency. And Grimm hadn’t said she was sick. Only that she planned on calling in sick. The more I thought about it, the more I figured there had to be another reason. “Did she fail one of your magic tests too?”

  Grimm’s expression said it all. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, his fa
ce turned down. “Not exactly. She failed my pretest. I asked her to summon a dog with eyes the size of cup saucers. What she summoned hasn’t tread the earth since the Jurassic Period.”

  Grimm had spent the last few years training Ari in magic. He traded passing tests in college for new lessons on how not to kill herself with magic. I remained unconvinced it was a fair trade. Grimm said he was taking his time because he didn’t want her exposed to evil. If that were true, he wouldn’t have made her take calculus.

  I picked up my purse and took my jacket. “I’ll be back soon. The piper’s in 2A; I suggest nobody opens the door. The kobolds need to be turned down, Rosa will send away Payday George, and there’s a frog prince waiting in the lobby.”

  Grimm sighed and faded out of view. I wonder at times what he ever did without me.

  * * *

  ARI LIVED IN a brownstone about twenty minutes from the Agency. Technically she lived alone. I knocked, and she answered without bothering to check the peephole. Her yellow sundress with matching hat made her pale complexion look a lot better, and she kept her red hair pulled back so that it didn’t fall into her face.

  I pulled my nine millimeter from my purse and pointed it at her. “What have I told you about answering the door without looking first?”

  Ari ignored me and shuffled back inside. “I can see through the door, M, and Yeller would take care of anyone who bothered me.” At the sound of his name, a dog the size of a Shetland pony padded forward. Only Ari would keep a hellhound as a pet. He looked like Cujo crossed with an alligator and a zombie. None of those crosses improved his disposition.

  He stared at me, the gun in my hand, and began to growl, long and low. I put the gun away, since I’d grown somewhat attached to my hands. “Hey, Yeller. I have a poodle for you in the trunk of my car.” Yeller bared his teeth at me.

  Ari left the door open and walked down the hall. “Come on in, M. I’m making tea.”

  I hated Ari’s apartment. She lived there because it was the only thing she could afford. She could afford it because it was haunted, and I don’t mean “things that go bump in the night” haunted. I mean “things that devour your spirit.”