Armageddon Rules (29 page)

The demon’s eyes narrowed, obviously going through the same mechanics.

Nick flung himself in front of me, his scrawny arms outstretched. “Don’t you dare touch her. She’s here for an appointment with the Adversary.”

“What? I am?” I recovered my bearing and cursed my poor lying skills. “I mean, yes. That’s exactly what I’m here for. And you better not lay a claw on me, or the Adversary’s going to hear about it.” I put my hands on my hips and gave them the boss stare.

Belzior the Defiler began to hiss and shake, then roar with laughter, his fangs showing with each howl. Then he turned, and one claw on each of his companions, they walked away.

“That one doesn’t like me. We sort of have a history.” I’d encountered Belzior when he was still Haniel, Archangel of Grace. I hadn’t been able to stop his transformation, but I’d cost him his heavenly power.

“
Hate
would be the word you’re looking for. Oh, if I told you how many times Belzior has proclaimed his desire to slay you during company meetings, you’d build a hut out of Celestial Crystal and never leave. The other two, I think you might have shot them with holy water a week ago.” Nick flipped open the guest roster beside the door. “Let’s just pencil you in.”

“That’s got to be against the rules. Stop that.”

“It’s Inferno, Marissa. Following the rules would be a sin. Now, if anyone asks, you were here to see the Adversary by appointment.”

I patted him on the back. “You know, clerks will one day rule the world. But I’m getting out of here. Malodin, I’m not afraid of. I’m not going to pick a fight with the Devil.”

He gasped and looked up at me. “Your name is on the calendar. You have to keep the appointment, or he’ll be very angry. Besides, he’s been looking forward to meeting you.”

“How exactly do you know that? And how did you know my name?”

Nick pointed to the wall, where a poster hung. “This year’s apocalypse brought to you by:” read the title, and below it was a picture so ugly I swear it came from my driver’s license. “Marissa Locks,” said Nick, pointing to my name at the bottom. “You shouldn’t be so worried. The Adversary’s not in his office. You can claim you were here and he wasn’t.”

Disgusted, I ripped the rope out of the way and barged into Satan’s office.

I had a better office than Satan.

I’m guessing the double doors were actually so that the larger, more misshapen of Inferno’s citizens could get in. The inside, while large, was closer to one of our conference rooms. I glanced at the cluttered executive desk, the rack of old-style filing cabinets, and the complete lack of Malodin.

“You know, I was expecting some sort of throne room. Where’s Malodin?”

Nick walked up to the desk and picked up a mayonnaise jar. Inside, something distinctly insectoid crawled. “Told you he’s been in here since that stunt. Malodin’s on the Adversary’s naughty list. The Adversary spends most of his time out and about in Inferno. He’s a hands-on guy.” Nick shook the jar until shrieks of rage came from the trapped demon.

I walked over and snatched the jar from him. Sure enough, the tiny, walking-stick-like creature inside was my demonic captor. “I need to talk to you. I want out of our contract, and I’ll give you whatever you want.”

Malodin stopped skittering around in the jar to stare at me.

“What do you want? Surely there’s something you can accept in trade.”

Nick tugged at my arm. “Souls. A soul in the hand is worth seven billion in the apocalypse. Do you have any idea how many times we’ve almost brought the end days? Demons always take the sure thing.”

My heart sank as I considered it. My soul. The part of me that made me who and what I was. Versus the end of the world and the death of everyone I loved, and quite a few people I didn’t. When I spoke, my voice shook. “Malodin, will you take my soul in exchange?”

The glass muffled the squeaks till they sounded like the chittering of a rat.

“I’m sorry, you’ll need to speak up.”

Nick walked over and took the jar from me, unscrewed the lid, and dumped the demon out. In an explosion of purple smoke, Malodin rocketed to full size, standing a few heads taller than me.

“Only thing you have that I want is my apocalypse. Now, you owe me another plague.” Then he looked over at Nick. “None of you believed I could do it. I’ll show you all.”

Nick walked around and sat in the chair behind the desk, putting his feet up on it. “Get out of here.” I wasn’t sure if sitting behind the Devil’s desk was the ultimate sin or not, but it seemed like a phenomenally bad idea. Given that Nick just spilled a mug of stale coffee on the papers, I was going with bad idea.

Malodin bent over to whisper. “Straight out of the book. Misery. Suffering.” Then he shuffled out.

“What exactly are you doing?” I turned to the desk clerk once the door shut.

“This desk is so much nicer than the one out front. And this chair both leans back and supports my lumbar. I love it.” Nick began to spin the chair around, staring at the ceiling.

“We’ve got to get out of here. Well, I have to. You have a much smaller, but I’m sure quite functional, desk to get back to. This was a waste of time.”

“Not really. You couldn’t know unless you tried. Plus, not many people get to come in here. Well, at least not many get to leave. How do you like my office, Marissa? It’s not as large as yours, but when I need some privacy, it will do.”

I stopped, hand on the knob to the door. From the tips of my toenails to the mole on the back of my head, every cell in my body simultaneously screamed to run. To fling the door open and take my chances in the halls of hell. I remembered why it was I came here in the first place, and forced my hand to let go.

“Very nice. I figured at this point you’d be sprinting in the wrong direction for the elevator.” Nick still sat at his desk, mopping up spilled coffee.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to take a seat in the Adversary’s office. “You’re in charge of Malodin, right?”

“He’s my favorite boy, when he isn’t leading an insurrection.” Nick set up a photo, him and Malodin.

“Very nice. Fishing?”

“Ice-skating on a rink frozen from the blood of the damned. It’s how we celebrated his first contract.”

“I want to make a deal with you. My soul, you end Malodin’s contract.” The moment I said the words, I wished I could take them back. A few weeks ago, I’d sworn I would never make a deal with a demon. Now I stood in the office of the Devil, offering the only thing you ever truly own.

Nick looked up at me, his eyebrows arched. His lips drew back in a tight line, then he stood and walked around the desk. “I admire your courage. Anyone else tried that with me, I’d toss them into a river of fire for the first couple of eternities. Then, I’d do something nasty. You can’t buy your way out of this, Marissa, much as I’d like to let you.”

“I thought you’d be out, I don’t know, making deals yourself.”

Nick nodded. “Did that for a while, but people got the craziest ideas about what I wanted. Souls. Is that so hard to understand? Look at this.” He turned and pulled another jar from the shelf behind me. “This one dad gave me his daughter’s hands. What do I need a girl’s hands for?” He held the jar up.

Inside, a pair of woman’s hands wiggled back and forth, tapping on the glass.

“What do you do with them?”

“When I’ve got nothing else to do, I take them out and have a thumb war. Idle hands really are the Devil’s plaything. Would you like one to take with you?”

“I’m all good, thanks.”

He took a card from his front pocket and handed it to me. Solid red, with gold writing. “It’s my work number at job number two. If you want to talk, I’ll be happy to. There aren’t many people who will willingly step into my office, or stay once they know who I am.”

“You want the apocalypse.”

Nick shrugged. “Now. Later. It’s all the same to me. I’m willing to let the boy take a swing at it. Shows he can think big. Maybe even deliver. That contract, it’s a work of art.”

I shook his hand from me, ignoring the hurt expression on the prince of destruction’s face. “I’m not going to deliver it.”

“I’m sure you’ll try your best. That’s got to count for something, right? Hey, don’t go out the main elevator.” Nick pointed to a blank wall, and as I watched, a door etched itself into the wall, breaking out the plaster as it grew like some sort of zit. “Belzior might not be too bright, but what he lacks in IQ, he makes up for in stubbornness. I can drop you off at my day job.”

I mumbled a form of thanks most appropriate to not being damned and threw the door open. The wall seemed to grow outward, and for a brief moment I sang with panic as the doorway reached out to swallow me.

Then I looked around at the long lines. The drone of constant complaint, and the antiseptic smell that somehow spoke of toilets and sweat.

“Next,” called a clerk. I walked out of the Department of Licensing and headed back to the Agency.

When I finally got there, the thought of a long afternoon spent reviewing expense reports seemed like a vacation. The moment I opened the door and saw feet in my office chair, I gave up the vacation dream. Wyatt waited for me in the office.

He pushed the golden hair back out of his eyes and spoke softly, barely audible above the hum of the air conditioner. “I’ve made my decision.”

Twenty-Five

“I’M GOING TO help Arianna. I knew it was the right thing to do, but it’s so easy for emotions to cloud the better part of reason.”

Wyatt folded his hands together as if pleased with his speech. I went to hug him, and he shied away.

“If you don’t mind, Ms. Locks, I have an ‘issue’ with other people touching me. Too many germs.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a bottle of hand sanitizer. “Would you like some?”

Of course Ari wouldn’t choose a normal boy. A prince, of course, and an obsessive-compulsive one at that. Still, if he’d wake her from the coma, I’d buy the boy a truckload of bleach wipes and pay a crew to spray down the office.

“I’ll get my keys; we’ll head right over.”

“Ms. Locks, I’ve discussed this with my mum, and I believe there may be another issue.” Wyatt really needed to learn to speak up. “You see, I believe it is only love’s kiss that cancels out such comas. While I greatly enjoy Arianna’s company, and indeed, in time we may develop a true emotional bond, I simply can’t say that I love her yet.”

I was about to drag Wyatt out the door, and then he has to go mentioning a detail like that. “You’re telling me you don’t love Ari?”

Wyatt’s face clouded over. “I have deep respect, and I believe attraction, for Arianna. We share so many passions, it’s easy to see how we might be compatible. I truly wish I did love her, Ms. Locks. I would do almost anything for her, even hug her if necessary.”

Grimm sent us out to help the national guard a few times, and I’d seen natural disasters with less disaster in them. Still, I wasn’t one for letting a little detail like love get in my way. I left Wyatt in my office and headed down the hall to Grimm’s office.

There, black boxes covered an entire wall, each a safe deposit box. I counted up and over, found the one I wanted, and brought it back to my desk. Inside, a silver flask the size of a wine glass lay cradled in velvet. “You say you wish you loved Ari. I can fix that.”

He looked at the potion, then up at me, and nodded. So I took my potion, I took Ari’s prince, and we headed over to her house.

*   *   *

OUTSIDE OF ARI’S apartment, I did my prep work. “You need to be aware of a few things. Ari’s landlord can be kind of grumpy. You get that way when you’ve been dead for a few years.”

Wyatt nodded, simply accepting what I said. Didn’t matter what the boy ran into, nothing disturbed him.

I knocked on the door, then used my key to open it. Inside, the house smelled like cookies. “Larry? Have you been baking?” I walked around the hall to the kitchen, where the lich floated, taking a sheet of cookies out without using pot holders. Having no flesh came in handy from time to time.

“I brought Ari’s prince over to wake her up.”

“It’s about time,” said Larry. “I wanted the house to smell nice for her.”

“Ms. Locks, where is Arianna?” Wyatt did his best at not staring at the spectral figure baking cookies, though when Larry’s bones rubbed together he winced, like hearing fingernails on a chalkboard.

“She’s downstairs in the basement, in the chest freezer.” I turned back to Larry. “I tried talking to an angel. You could’ve warned me.”

“You wouldn’t have believed me.” Larry turned off the oven and shut the door.

“Also took a trip to hell. Met the Adversary. Tried to sell him my soul in exchange for canceling the apocalypse.”

If it weren’t for the fact that he only had eye sockets, I’d have sworn that his eyes got wider. “You shouldn’t mock the Devil. If you think things are bad now, they’ll only get worse.”

About then, Wyatt started screaming. I know because I’d heard Ari scream, and she didn’t sound that hysterical. I ran to the basement, the black cloud of mist right behind me. A chest freezer stood with the lid open, a frozen corpse covered in frost inside.