Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) (20 page)

I stood in the stairwell, planning my next move. Service entrance, secret entrance, or front lobby—no matter which way, I was likely to encounter hostile employees. One employee, in particular, was hostile before, during, and after I worked with her.

I reached for the stairwell door and it blew open, hitting me in the face.

“Hands up.” Rosa’s voice boomed in the stairwell.

I opened my eyes to find a shotgun pointed squarely at my head.

“ON YOUR KNEES
, hands in the air.” Rosa spoke without waiting for me, taking a step into the stairwell with me. The better to blow a hole straight through me.

“I need to speak to Fairy Godfather.” I forced my eyes to stay open, still seeing pixies from where my head had an unexpected meeting with the door.

She shook her head. “He isn’t answering us anymore.”

Those words hit me harder than any shotgun blast, ever. Not their content. Their length. Rosa avoided speaking in complete sentences where I was involved. Grunts and baleful stares were as much her native tongue as Spanish.

“He’s helping Arianna and Liam with a ritual. I need to find them. Please.”

Rosa hefted the shotgun, holding it with her off hand, since there was no way her wounds had healed. “This is all your fault. I told him, make the
girl
be a shopkeeper. Make the girl be some princess’s handmaiden. But does he listen to me? No. He says, ‘Rosa, be nice to the new girl. She’ll be my new agent.’ You never fooled me.” Rosa slipped the safety off, peering down the barrel at me.

I struggled to keep from lunging at her, held in place only by the knowledge that even in her stitched-up state, she could pull the trigger faster than I could grab her. “I’m sick of you blaming me for everything. I never did anything to you.”

“You brought another fairy down on us, and a crazy queen, and hordes of demons. The wheel of cheese had your name on it. You cause nothing but trouble.”

Now, the demons, I was guilty as charged. Tricked, but guilty. The crazy queen, sort of, but then again, the queen’s son had planned to toss Ari out a window after marrying her. The fairy was going to cause trouble to begin with, but the cheese, that was not my fault.

I gathered myself for a lunge, and nearly shrieked when the stairwell door pushed open.

Mikey poked his head in through the door, standing so tall he grazed the exit sign. “Everything okay in here?”

“This doesn’t concern you, Michael. Go back to cargo.” Rosa swung the shotgun around in his direction. “Go on.”

“Marissa, last time I checked, humans are lousy at regeneration.” Mikey looked over to me.

Rosa bumped him in the chest with the barrel. “Get out, Michael. This doesn’t concern you.”

The darkest part of me leaped to the fore, screaming to do what it did best. Watching her turn her beef with me on other people made me so angry the world went white. My upraised hands turned to fists, and my right hand closed around a familiar weight. The thorn sword handle, called by my anger.

“Rosa, I said you were fired.” I waited, and as she swung back to me, I summoned the blade, driving it through the middle of her shotgun like it was licorice.

Her gun roared and exploded in her hands, the shells disintegrating. I lunged to my feet, slamming her back into the wall, and bore down on the shoulder with stitches.

Rosa shrieked in pain and collapsed in front of me. She didn’t get up.

The sword in my hand called to me, for blood and vengeance. Revenge for every time she’d treated me like trash or ignored me. She’d given me more curses than an army of sailor witches, and more evil eyes than a convention of auditors with glasses.

The shadow me wanted to kill her. It was right, it whispered. She deserved it.

With that thought, the Black Queen’s words came back to me. How it would be easier and easier to kill. With a gasp, I threw the sword down the stairs, where it clattered against the metal.

Mikey sat down on the stairs, motioning for me to join him. “She really doesn’t like you.”

“I know, and as much as I want to repay her for treating me like crap, I don’t have time. I have to find Liam and Ari.”

“They left thirty minutes ago through the portal. They even brought that string bean of a boyfriend with them.” Mikey reached over and checked Rosa’s for a pulse. “Good news is, she’s too mean to die. Bad news is, she’ll still be as mean when she wakes up.”

“What were they going to do with Wyatt?”

“Heck if I know. Magic is a bunch of gibberish, but I’m guessing from the way he looked, he’s the sacrifice in the ritual to give her power.” Mikey caught the look of fear and shock on my face and shrugged. “Hey, it’s the best he could do. You know, he mentioned wanting to do his part, and the blood of a prince ought to do the trick. You know, Black Magic ain’t free.”

I stood, and stumbled down a couple of stairs. “Then I’m too late. Kyra is taking over an army of those abominations. Death told me I had to stop her, but I don’t have an army. I don’t even have an agency.”

Mikey nodded. “Isn’t everyone trying to rescue you? I mean, that’s the point of all this, right?”

“I’ve never really been the type to get rescued.” I let gravity lead me down the stairs. When I last looked back, Mikey was still sitting on the stairwell next to Rosa, lost in thought.

•   •   •

DESPITE GRIMM’S PREDICTIONS
, I made it back to my place without being mangled by anything or anyone. I’d formulated a new plan along the way. One that involved my taking a suitcase full of cash and purchasing shoulder-mounted rocket launchers, then surprising Ari and Liam. Nothing says I love you like rocket-propelled weapons.

In the empty apartment, I wallowed in tears and cereal while I made a few cell phone calls to my black-market arms suppliers. While I waited for back-alley deals to come together, I poured a bowl of cereal and drowned my loneliness with milk, sugar, and processed grain.

The knock at my door I dismissed as an errant Jehovah’s Witness, a Girl Scout selling cookies, or the fire department, here to tell me that once more, my building was on fire. I didn’t care. The problem was, whoever it was kept knocking.

And knocking.

“Go away.” I didn’t get up.

“Marissa, it’s me.” Mikey’s voice caught me off guard. The wolf had never come to my house. Not ever. The fact that I still shot him on occasion probably factored into it a little.

“Go away, Mikey.”

“I’ll let you shoot me. Open the door so I can come in and talk to you. I figure you shouldn’t be alone.” He resumed pounding, so hard it made the door flex with each blow.

“Not by the hair on my chinny chin chin.” I could make a pig of myself in private. I reached over to pour some more milk, aiming for that perfect cereal sugar sludge, when the door exploded.

I leaped to my feet, frantically searching for my gun. As the drywall dust settled, a hulking form, eight feet tall, black fur with a gray stripe down his back, emerged, tossing the doorknob to the side. “I’ll huff, Marissa, and puff, and kick the door in.” He spoke in his true voice, the guttural growl of a wolf.

“Go away,” I said. “You don’t want to be here. Probably not good for you.”

He changed, melting slowly back into Intern Mikey instead of Monster Nightmare Mikey. “Marissa, come on. I’m a wolf. You’re the pet of the most evil queen ever. We can totally hang out. Matter of fact, if that bitch shows her head, I’m likely—”

“Don’t.” The fear came for real, a sharp tingling cold that radiated from my spine. “Don’t say a thing. Today, Kyra will claim her army, receive who only knows what kind of powers, and kill most of Kingdom. I can’t stop her, but I’m getting ready to make a stand of my own. I’d rather you didn’t get killed.”

He grinned, his teeth still sharp. “I knew you cared about me. Sure, you’ve emptied more rounds into me than a target dummy, but you always keep your rifling nice and clean, and you use high-quality ammo. I’m hungry.”

Feed a wolf. Always feed a hungry wolf, to keep them from feeding themselves. “Cereal? I have—”

The look on his face said cereal wasn’t what he had in mind. He loped into the kitchen and threw open my fridge. “Sweet Kingdom, Marissa. You need to hit the grocery store. And the butcher.” He turned around and grabbed the other fridge door.

“Don’t mess with that.” I threw a spoon at him. “That’s from the Agency. Sent here as a warning.”

“You got free food? Sweet. You know, Fairy Godfather made me keep my lunches in my private fridge. I wasn’t allowed to go near this one.”

Most wolves considered hunks of rotten meat good dining material. Grimm’s arrangement for a private fridge for Mikey probably saved us a number of conflicts, and I’d personally ordered all the interns to stay away from the main one after altercations with the cheese claimed too many lives.

Mikey wrenched the door clean off. Now Grimm would make me pay for a new fridge. “Marissa.” The growl in his voice shook, as if he fought an internal battle.

“Don’t touch it. It might be the only thing worse than the Black Queen.”

Mikey reached inside and slid the wheel of cheese out, gingerly carrying it over to the table. “Where did you get this?” His fingers ended in long claws, and with each breath, ripples of fur grew out from his skin, then retracted in.

While he fixed his gaze on the cheese, I slid the chair back, forming a plan. Straight to the kitchen, out the window, jump. Three stories down to the Dumpster—I might survive. I glanced up at him one more time and found red eyes fixed on me.

“Don’t move, Marissa.” He reached out with one monstrous claw and put it on my shoulder. “Don’t run. Answer the question.”

I did my best to ignore the threat of disembowelment and poured a mountain of cereal into my bowl. “My first birthday after I came to work for Grimm, he threw a party. Only one he ever threw that didn’t end in a disaster. Next morning, we found it in the office fridge, with my name on the box. You don’t want to pick a fight with the cheese, Mikey. I’ve lost count of the number of people who died trying to remove it, or sample it.”

Mikey laughed, a guttural growl and howl combination. “Lupa’s Tears were not meant for humans.” He held up a claw and ran it along the top of the wheel, cutting into the rind. In response, a gash like an axe wound opened up across his head, gushing blood. Mikey licked the tip of his claw and shivered as the wounds closed. “It’s time I had a slice.”

Mikey rose and walked into the kitchen, going through my drawers. “Go on, ask.”

“No, thank you.” Ignorance really is bliss.

“Don’t want to know what you had in your fridge? Lupa’s Tears, Marissa. The holy grail for wolves. Made from the breast milk of Lupa herself, when she suckled the first wolves.” He drew out a serrated knife and walked over, twirling it.

“Why is it called her tears?”

“We wolves are born with full sets of teeth. If you had to breast-feed six of them, you’d cry too.” He slid out the chair, becoming more and more wolf with each moment. Then with a single, swift movement, he stabbed the cheese.

His eyeballs exploded, ruining my cereal.

Mikey waited until they took shape again, and cut. As the knife slid, bones crushed in his chest, and for a moment he turned blue, gasping for air. With a fork, he teased out a wedge onto the plate. “Care for a bite?”

I shook my head, as he spit out a tooth onto the plate.

“Your loss.” With that, he cut into the wedge, spraying blood out his back, and put the bite into his throat. The sounds, the carnage, the spray of flesh, all meant one thing. There was no way in hell I’d get my deposit back.

•   •   •

I CAN’T SAY
how long I hid under the table, while Mikey turned my apartment into a disgusting painting made from his own gore. While it might have been only minutes, I would have sworn it took hours. My cell phone rang exactly once, and Mikey threw it straight through the window. When his chair squealed, scraping back across the floor, I nearly screamed too.

Mikey threw the table off of me and roared, shaking the walls, and probably convincing the neighbors that Liam and I were fighting. I looked up and marveled. His fur, tinged with green, rippled with muscles. Mikey always had the bodybuilder figure, but that cheese gave him power like I’d never seen.

“Come.” He grabbed me by the shoulder, slicing through my blouse. “Forget whatever you had planned. It’s time to make things right, and get you an army of your own.”

GOING ANYWHERE WITH
a wolf is usually a bad idea. Going anywhere with a wolf who can’t control his own changing, even worse. To top things off, as we raced down the highway at more than a hundred miles per hour, I held a wheel of the most evil cheese on earth in my lap. From what I could tell, the cheese was one of the “Do unto others” variety, so I held it with utmost care.

We made exactly one stop, at a costume store, where Mikey fit right in, wearing what the owner said was the gnarliest wolf-man costume in history. And he was so right. Mikey repaid his compliment by actually paying for a costume instead of stealing it and daring the owner to shoot him.

While I belted myself in, Mikey tore open his bag. He slipped something out, a grin on his face so wide I could see every tooth in his mouth. Throwing open the driver’s-side door, he slid in and tossed the costume into my lap.

“Hell no. Inferno no. No. I’m not wearing it.” A “Little Red Riding Hood” costume sat in my lap, with crushed velvet hood and gold belt. “I made that mistake once.”

It took Grimm a few dozen pigs and several months to gloss over the fact that I paraded into a wolf town dressed as the queen of the wolf genocide. The real “Red” Riding Hood’s hood was white as snow, when she started her crusade. Every time she killed a wolf, she drenched her cloak in its blood.

Mikey didn’t take his eyes off the road. “Red took Lupa’s Tears from us. Stole the source of our power and reduced us to pathetic animals.”

“Alternate plan,” I said. “You want to be their leader, you take it back.” Mikey originally came to the Agency to kill me and bring back my heart. I hoped the wolves’ most beloved cultural treasure would do the trick as well.

He shook his head. “No. You’re a villain among my pack for daring dress like her on a negotiation run. Bring this back, and you’ll become something else. A legend.”

•   •   •

I EXPECTED THE
guards waiting off the interstate. They let us drive through a cattle gate once Mikey flashed his canines. I got no attention, since I guess we were “Wolf and guest.” Or snack. What I didn’t expect was row after row of RVs, vans, and the occasional tour bus. The fields surrounding the wolf village had become one vast parking lot, like Wolf-stock. Dark clouds hung overhead, spraying the occasional band of wind-whipped rain.

“Where did everyone come from? Are they all—”

“Wolves? Yeah. The family’s been gathering ever since the Black Queen came back. We bring in six tractor trailers full of pigs every day just to keep everyone fed.” Mikey waved to a scraggly wolf with patches of mange. “I went to high school with him. And that one over there, she was my first . . . friend.”

“You’re gathering. To fight her?”

Mikey pulled his lips back into a wide grin. “Come on, Marissa. How long have we known each other? Wolves aren’t exactly hero material.” He clicked a button, and the doors locked. “You’ll want to stay in the car until it’s time.” Hail plinked off the windshield as Mikey pulled to a stop.

The wolf village lay in a wide bowl of fields, a combination of old Amish and trailer park, wooden cabins and cinder-block barns. At least, it did the last time I was there. Now bonfires crackled around the edges, with furry figures gathered under pop-up awnings.

Mikey rolled down the window and stuck his head out, letting out a howl that would have made every vampire in Transylvania shiver. Wolves took up the cry, baying across the fields, howling until the noise split my ears. When the last plaintive cry died out, growling replaced it.

Mikey rolled up the window and looked over at me. “Get dressed. Whatever you do, don’t get out of the car until I give the signal.” He reached into the backseat and pulled out a wooden box. One he’d filched from my office. “Keep this handy.”

I opened it, taking out a silver dagger. The blade twisted from the hilt to the tip like a corkscrew. One of Evangeline’s knives, enchanted to stop wolves from regenerating. When I first joined the Agency, Evangeline showed me the ropes. She’d died fighting with the old Fenris, hell-bent on revenge. I kept her knives to remind me that retreat was always an option. Asking for help was always an option.

The silver blade in my hand reminded me of Evangeline. Foreign, frightening, and yet comforting. I nodded to Mikey, and he rolled the vehicle through the crowd, down toward the bonfire at the center. When we stopped, Mikey got out, changing as he did. From the tips of his toes to the alert ears on top of his head, he looked more like his grandfather than I could stomach.

Just looking at him, I couldn’t stop the memories of Evangeline fighting with Fenris. Her gift, her skill, made her move faster than any human had right to, and it hadn’t been enough. How could I hope to do any better?

A passel of wolves gathered around Mikey, though the tallest still stood a foot smaller than him. Their wagging tails and yipping barks made it clear they followed, and obeyed, his every word. When the same mangy wolf man Mikey waved to earlier pushed his way through, he brought a microphone.

Mikey tapped it, and the speakers amplified it like thunder. He growled, and the gathering fell silent, except for the patter of rain and distant thunder. “My family, I have returned. The Black Queen has come, calling us together.”

A chorus of howls answered, yipping that echoed across the hillside.

“But,” said Mikey, “we will not answer her call.” The yipping and howling died out, replaced with the odd growl.

“Last time, we wolves answered her call. We acted as her army. And when the blood was spilled, who died? Wolves. When she was gone, who was left to be hunted like stray cats? The wolves. This time, we will remember what she did.” Mikey’s fur stood up, spiky from the rain, and water dripped from his tail.

Through the crowds, another wolf came. He didn’t push so much as the wolves stampeded to get out of his way. Flashes of white fur among the bonfires were all I saw, until the crowd parted. He walked on four feet toward Mikey, then changed, shifting into a wolf man almost as large and wide. “I say we go to her now and take our rightful place.”

Mikey shook his head, flinging water everywhere. “She already has an army, one she created. One of abominations, spells stitched into bodies. She has no need of wolves. And wolves have no need of her.”

The white wolf drew himself up to full height, looking more like a polar bear than a wolf. “My great-great-great-grandfather was her commander in chief.”

“And following him led us to where we are today, Snowball. We’re weak. Mangy. Reduced to eating the young and helpless. Our greatest treasures were stolen while we warred on her behalf.” Mikey flexed one claw, showing off the green tint at the ends, an infectious disease that only the most powerful wolves carried. “But they are lost no longer.”

He flexed one tinged claw at me, and I scrambled to put on my hood. Part of me wanted to start the ignition and drive away, running over as many wolves as I could in the process. Mikey could easily be setting me up to die for the crimes of a woman long dead.

But I ran my fingers on the hilt of Evangeline’s knife. Would she still be alive, if she’d let me help, trusted me? I tied the hood beneath my chin, wrapped the cloak over Lupa’s Tears, and stepped out into the rainstorm.

Little Red Riding Hood, for the record, was an awful bitch, even by my standards. Killing people, sometimes that was necessary. I’d signed on Grimm’s behalf for government assassination contracts, and killed Rip Van Winkle myself. Those were cases where murderers made a mockery of the law and left a pile of bodies in their wake. I agonized over every one, even if it wasn’t my hand on the trigger. Red, on the other hand, took joy in the process. For her it went far beyond protection, beyond retribution, clear into genocide.

All eyes remained on me as I walked through the crowd. Whispers turned to growls, but the red hood all by itself repelled the wolves. And enraged them. The wind whipped my cape and drove rain into my eyes, leaving me almost blind as I struggled toward Mikey. The angry growls rose louder than the wind.

When I reached Mikey, he put one claw on my shoulder. “Four hundred years ago, Little Red Riding Hood stole our power and scattered our people. Four years ago, Marissa Locks killed my grandfather, the Fenris.”

My blood ran cold as the falling rain as I waited for his next sentence.

“My orders were to bring back her heart. And so I have.” He drew back my hood, revealing my face. “But I decide who I kill. I give the orders. I am the Fenris.”

Snowball raised a claw toward me, but Mikey stepped between us.

“Why would anyone follow you?” The white wolf’s ears flattened back on his head, and he bared his teeth. “You’ve grown softer than a vegetarian sausage.”

Mikey looked over his shoulder at me. It was time. I pulled back my cape, revealing the cheese. Though I’d watched Mikey slice a wedge from it earlier, the cheese had regenerated, becoming whole.

“You’ll follow me because I’ve made a deal with Red Riding Hood herself. The return of Lupa’s Tears, in return for our help.” Mikey took the platter from my hand, and held it high so that everyone could see. “I’ve already tasted of it. Follow me, and you can too.”

A mountain of white fur leaped upon him.

The cheese went flying back, striking me in the chest. I caught it at the last moment, cradling it from the ground. Before me, Mikey and Snowball rolled, savaging each other, tearing flesh and bone, spraying blood.

And by all bets, Mikey was losing. Though his wounds healed within moments, Snowball tore new ones, blind to his own injuries. It wasn’t that Mikey didn’t tear into him. It was just that he seemed about as well matched as me versus Shigeru in a sword fight.

With a heave of his feet, Mikey threw Snowball back and leaped to his feet, then pounced.

Snowball sidestepped his pounce and kicked Mikey right into the bonfire. Mikey’s fur caught fire and his skin crackled, but as he tried to leave, Snowball blocked him, knocking him back into the embers. Silver, like Evangeline’s daggers, was a great way to kill wolves. Fire was a close second.

Each time, Mikey took longer to rise, and less force to drive back. The stench of burning wolf meat filled the air. He looked through the fire to me, his eyes pleading for help against a monster I didn’t stand a chance against.

One last time, Mikey rose and crawled, unable to stand, trying to leave the flames. And Snowball waited, his lips bared. As Mikey reached the edge of the fire, Snowball drew back his foot, to kick him in the head.

Snowball never saw me coming. Never saw the silver dagger I drove through his spine and held there, one arm locked under his chin, the other gripping the dagger handle as I used my weight to work it back and forth.

Snowball spun, and stumbled back and forth, swiping at his own head with claws that could carve me like ham. Then one claw caught my fluttering cape, and he pulled on it, yanking me forward.

With my legs wrapped around him, I held on. Even as I choked and the world turned gray at the edges, I twisted the blade, driving it forward.

When he fell backwards, I didn’t have time, or the presence of mind, to let go. Beneath four hundred pounds of animal I lay pinned, until at last darkness took the pain from my lungs.