Wish Bound (A Grimm Agency Novel Book 3) (6 page)

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WAKING UP LEFT
me in a worse mood than ever. My first urge was to strangle the nearest gnome, but with my hands tied behind my back, I didn’t have a huge number of options.

“Put her in the pot,” said one gnome, dressed in a purple loincloth to match his purple hat. “Our goddess demands we make a broth of you, with mint, dill, and just a hint of cumin.”

The gnome before him held up his hands in a convulsion. “She don’t fit. I don’t know what she’s been eating, but our largest pot won’t hold her rear.”

“Get the saws,” they said in unison.

Now, their insults to my posterior I could deal with. Their glee at the thought of chopping me up, that I could get past. The thought of being boiled down as an offering to a grotesque misrepresentation of myself bugged me. “I demand a trial.”

The blank look adorning their faces told me trials weren’t common.

“I demand the right to defend myself in hand-to-hand combat.” If they wanted to go
Lord of the Flies
on me, I could spear a piggy or three.

The two looked at each other, a look of dread passing between them. “She challenges the chief.” The way they said it, I wondered if the bone saws might have been a more kind option.

“Yes, she does.” I assumed my normal boss tone. “Get him, let me face him in combat.”

They scampered away, disappearing into the flickering shadows. The drums grew faster, louder, like the pounding heart of a gnome caught in a crocodile stream. Then the chanting began, low and long. A figure emerged, a torch in one hand, a guitar-pick spear in the other.

“You will sacrifice to our god, or be sacrificed to our god.” The chief kneeled, pointing with his spear to the statue. His skin, covered in tattoos, shone blue in the torchlight.

“I have a strict policy against offering sacrifices to myself.” I wrenched a hand loose, picking half a dozen darts from my skin. “Also against being sacrificed to myself.”

With a cry of rage or excitement, the chief leaped toward me, swinging his torch so close it swept up against my cheek. Now, I made a point, usually, of being nice to the gnomes. But being speared at, darted, sacrificed, and nearly burned was more than I could take. I seized the torch by the burning end, letting the tar and oil drizzle, still flaming, onto my fingers. “That is enough.”

I think they expected me to burn.

They expected wrong. See, one of the main problems with being engaged to a half-dragon man was that even the slightest burp or cough could set the bed on fire. Once, Liam had a stomach bug and spent three days in a steel room waiting for the virus to burn itself out.

The gnome chieftain’s eyes grew round as the flame guttered out, and he knelt before me. “Forgive us, please. You didn’t come for so long we thought you abandoned us.”

His round eyes and the droopy hat triggered a memory. “Petri?”

“Chief Petri.” He scampered, hopping like a bird, closer and closer, until he stood in front of me. With a deft swipe, he sliced loose the bindings on my body. “Please don’t be angry.”

“Angry?” I punched at him, narrowly missing his head. “I’m furious. You trapped me in here. You shot me with . . . What exactly are these?” I threw one of them, nearly spearing him to the ground.

Petri looked over the darts, nodding. “Antibiotics, ketamine, and you won’t be catching rabies or feline distemper anytime soon. We’ve missed you so much.”

“What happened? The last time I saw you, you were racing monster trucks on the weekend. You were doing so fine.” I used Petri’s spear to cut loose the last of the vines and rose.

Petri hopped up onto my shoulder, dodging my attempts to grab him in a fist and strangle him until he popped like a tiny sausage in a pointy hat. “Racing got old. Then extreme sports, skydiving without a parachute, and gun-fighting got old. And one day, the shipment of staples didn’t arrive on time.”

Since Grimm handled all deliveries in Kingdom, I mentally made a note to blame Mikey for everything, which was almost always a good idea. “Staples?”

“So I killed Jakov and took his staples for my own. A few days later”—he swept his spear in a circle—“we found a new way of living. But you didn’t come to see us. So we carved a Marissa of our own.”

“You could have at least done a good job on the face. Can you get me Fairy Godfather’s package? I just want to go home. It’s been a bad day.” I stumbled through the jungle, ducking vines, back toward the service desk.

“It’s a perfect likeness. We made a deal with a demon for a copy of your driver’s license. Sent them my mother-in-law and cousin Karl. Stay here, I’ll get your package myself.” Petri slid down my arm and disappeared into the reeds.

In his absence, a crowd of amazed gnomes gathered around me. Some kneeled, some chanted, but one approached, bowing his head. “Would you be pleased if I cut the heart from an innocent victim and offered it to you?”

I shook my head. “Not really.”

His hat sagged; his shoulders slumped. “In that case, never mind.” He hurled the oozing leather bag in his hand to the floor, then slouched away, weeping.

After a few moments, a cadre of gnomes returned with a box on their shoulders, following Petri. “Faster! Bring Marissa the package or she will halt the rains for three years.” While I didn’t exactly know how I’d stop the rain, I had to admire his motivational skills.

Taking the box from their postage-stamp-sized hands, I swung it over my shoulder. “You’ve done well. I give your chief my favor.” Then I knelt beside Petri, whispering, “Which way is out? I have to get back to work.”

Petri whistled, a cutting sound that made me wince. White light stabbed my eyes as the jungle lit up, the remains of the post office’s ceiling lights giving it the flush of brilliant sun. “This way.” Petri pulled at my hand and dashed ahead. “Mind the crocodiles, step over the bear trap.” He swept back a blanket of vines, and there, in the earthen bank, I saw the form of a door.

“Bless us with your presence again, soon. Oh, and here.” Petri handed me a copy of my driver’s license. “Think of Karl every time you use it.” Petri pushed the door open, and I stepped out into the crowd, at the emergency exit in the KPS alley. I found a discarded bottle of champagne and rolled it until I got a reflection.

“Grimm?” With my hand on my bracelet, I called.

He snapped into view immediately, his power flooding out through the bracelet once more. “Trouble, my dear?”

“It’s the post office. Same as usual. I got the package.” I nodded to it, a tight leather bundle bound in black thread. “What’s in here?” I knew better than to open Grimm’s packages. We had an intern once who opened a package because he got curious about the noises inside of it. Every time I went in that storage room, I spotted another bit of intern stuck to the walls.

Grimm shook his head. “You can open the box when you’ve returned to the Agency. Not before.”

“Never been a big fan of surprises. Just tell me?”

“I’ve kept the contents safe for four hundred years, stored at the postal service, but the contents are now yours. It is your uniform, you might say. An outfit most appropriate for the handmaiden.” With those words, he dashed whatever hope I’d held that what happened earlier was all the result of a bad head injury.

I SAW ARI
the moment I opened the Agency door, and gave my best tryout for the Jets, nearly tackling her. I might not have knocked her down, but it would still get me on the team. Alternating between squeezing her until she coughed and wanting to wring her neck, I buried her in a hug. “What were you thinking? You could have been killed.” I pushed her back and looked her in the face.

Ari didn’t speak. She just looked at me with her witch eyes and trembled. Her voice, when it came, whispered like plastic bags in the autumn wind. “I was supposed to defeat her. I listened to the Fae Mother. She said I would be the last to challenge the Black Queen. She said I could save you.”

I wanted to shake Ari until those yellow eyes rolled back in her head. As Grimm pointed out, the Fae speech was almost as bad as Grimm’s native tongue. Let ten people listen to the same words, and they’d give you eleven different versions of the same thing.

“Come on. This is no place to talk.” I grabbed Ari by the arm, wanting to leave the crowded lobby for a place where every ear wasn’t latched on to our conversation. We almost made it, too, before the building’s emergency alarm went off, flashing red lights and a fire alarm siren that threatened to split my skull. For the second time in one day, we’d have to evacuate the building. Three more times, and we might match the record.

“Everyone out,” said Rosa, pointing to the door.

I left Ari to guard the door while I ushered whining people out into the hall and pointed to the stairs. “Stay away from the elevators.” When the last of them left, I pulled the stairwell door closed and sprinted back to the Agency.

Grimm waited in the lobby mirror. “Marissa, there’s no reason for the alarms to be going off. No cupcakes, no birthday candles of any sort.” The way Grimm’s jaw set and his eyebrows furrowed said the Fairy Godfather did not appreciate surprises. “Rosa, bring up the entrance cameras. Something tripped my short-term danger indicators.”

Rosa flipped a few switches, and the monitor that usually played Spanish soap operas all day switched to a split screen, showing every entrance to our building along with a Spanish soap opera.

“There.” I pointed to the corner. Against the throng of people surging out of the building, four figures threaded their way inward. Their leather cloaks, fur trimmings, and hoods gave away exactly what group had made a fatal decision to attack us. “Huntsmen.”

Kingdom’s bounty hunters, usually tasked with killing anything that wasn’t human and dared attract attention. Their repeating crossbows could pin a man to the concrete or, with a different arrow, punch his heart out through the back of his ribs.

“Picking a fight with Grimm on his turf is suicide.” Ari began to crackle as lightning jumped from hand to hand. Anytime Ari was upset or angry, you could power a small city with the sparks she gave off.

A wave of fear washed down my scalp like a blast of cold air. “They’re not heading into the Agency proper.” Grimm’s major mojo stopped at the boundaries. “They’re headed into cargo.”

“Mikey.” We spoke as one. Mikey, grandson of the greatest leader the wolves ever knew, survived a huntsman’s attack a few years earlier, and gave the huntsman an overbite that no amount of orthodontics could fix. I thought the other huntsmen had enough sense to let it go. The silver crossbows on their backs said I thought wrong.

“I’m going to go help Michael,” said Rosa. “He’s such a good boy.”

My jaw just about dropped. Rosa grabbed her sawed-off shotgun from behind the desk, loaded a couple of slugs, and limped slowly out the door.

I ran ahead, and Ari trailed me down the stairs, out the side door, and around toward the cargo bay. As I passed the entrance to our underground garage, something came flying out of the darkness, wrapping around my legs. I crashed to the concrete.

“The hunt is over.” From the shadows of the garage, a huntsman emerged, older, grayer than the one Mikey tore apart when they last attacked the Agency. Under the enchanted fur armor, he wore a leather vest decorated with animal teeth. In each hand, he twirled silver daggers sporting honed points on the guards.

He strode to the side of the parking garage entrance, staying just inside the shadows. With his attention focused on me, I don’t think he ever saw Ari’s attack coming.

She hit him with a blast of raw Seal Magic, not even bothering to twist it to an elemental form, throwing him back into the concrete wall. Then she switched her method of attack, drawing Wild Magic from the air around us.

The huntsman rose with a cough, shaking off her spell. The skins huntsmen wore shielded them from minor details like elemental spells or ordinary bullets, so when I pulled out my nine millimeter, he didn’t even flinch. I squeezed the trigger, and the bullet ricocheted off of the concrete garage roof above him.

I didn’t miss.

The ruined sprinkler over him exploded, gushing water like a fountain. It drenched him, soaking his alligator skin boots so that each step he took, he sloshed. The artificial downpour cascaded down into our garage. A little water wouldn’t hurt him any worse than my bullets, something I believe we both knew.

Ari, however, had a creative streak born from her lack of proper training. Huntsmen relied on their enchantments to stop elemental spells.

Those enchantments could stop a blast of pure fire, or a wind colder than the last ice age. They couldn’t do a damned thing about the fact that Ari didn’t cast a spell at him. She dropped the temperature to fifteen below.

If he’d had an ounce of sense, the huntsman would have held still. Instead, he fought to wrench a foot loose, teetered, and crashed into the ground, where his fur froze him to the wet concrete. He shrieked curses and struggled in vain to free himself while a snowstorm formed inside the parking garage, fueled by Ari’s spell.

“Nice touch.” I unwound the bolo he’d hit me with and rose, just in time to see Ari cast “Foot-to-Head,” a classic spell that worked wonders when one wore steel-toe boots. His furs didn’t protect against that either.

Ari hit him with another blast of cold to solidify the ice, then grabbed my hand. “I counted four on the camera. Can I borrow your keys?”

We ran to my car, where I tossed them across to Ari, got in, and then thanked Grimm for making certain I had passenger-side air bags as Ari started the engine and peeled out of the garage, rocketing up the ramp.

Ari, as we may have gone over, was unfortunately a princess. Natural luck, grace and charm that only got better as she aged, and everything from undead sorcerers to Inferno’s guardians loved her. The exchange principle, however, meant she gave up something.

Ari
never
drove. It wasn’t just the eleven times she failed the driving test. Or the three Agency convertibles she totaled without ever managing to leave the parking lot. Hell, the one time we were in a rowboat, I didn’t let her touch the oars because I hadn’t forgotten when the captain of the Ellis Island cruise let Ari steer. Hitting an iceberg in the Hudson River pretty much sealed the deal—the universe didn’t want Ari behind the wheel of anything larger than a model car.

The thing was, if you wanted someone run over, Ari was the go-to woman. As we exited, she swung the wheel so hard we fishtailed around the corner, then gained more speed in fifteen yards than I would in two blocks. As we approached the cargo bay at the back of the Agency building, she jumped the curb and aimed at the huntsmen standing at the loading dock.

Anyone else wouldn’t have been able to pull it off. Even my mentor, who taught me how to drive badly, couldn’t have timed it, but right as Ari reached the bay, the universe reached down to remind her to always take a cab. The passenger-side tires blew out, and we ran over a dolly left carelessly beside a truck.

I wasn’t the least bit surprised when our car rolled on its side, passing exactly between two parked delivery trucks, and flattened an extremely surprised huntsman before burying us in a box of champagne glasses destined for Kingdom.

I smashed my way out of the side window, lamenting yet another car relegated to the scrap heap, and whipped my head around as the telltale twang of a repeating crossbow echoed from our cargo bay. Ari lay slumped against the wheel, breathing, but unconscious. It figured, being a princess and all, that the worst she’d get out of this was a headache.

“Grimm, watch out for Ari.” He couldn’t answer without a reflection, but the pulse of his power through my bracelet meant he heard.

“Move.” Rosa’s voice startled me so badly I almost shot her. She had her gun leveled at my chest, that same look of lemons dipped in curdled milk, as always, plastered to her face.

I nodded to the door. “You want the left side, I’ll take right?”

“No. Stay away.” Rosa hobbled on over to the door, peeking inside. She took one half step in, and fired, paused, and fired again, before pivoting out. Then she put the gun up against the wall and pulled the trigger again, blowing a hole straight through the wall.

For the record, enchanted furs are also not terribly helpful against a shotgun slug to the face, which was what one of the huntsmen caught.

The other came rolling through the doorway, and only the slightest glimpse of silver gave me enough warning to throw myself to the floor. A dagger the length of my forearm stuck out of the concrete, and Rosa, she wasn’t nearly as fast or lucky.

She’d been pinned to the wall with a spent bolt on the outside of her shoulder. I couldn’t tell if it shattered the humerus or not, but based on the lack of gushing blood, it probably missed a major artery. Rosa’s shotgun, along with one of her thumbs, lay on the ground in a pool of her blood.

I didn’t give the huntsman the chance to finish what he started, squeezing off one shot after another. Problem was, I had the only weapon those bulletproof skins actually worked on. He came for me, pulling fresh knives from the bandoliers about his chest.

And something inside me seemed to scream, a part of me that I didn’t know was there. I’d felt something similar before, when my harakathin answered. I waited, hoping that one of them might have survived. Blessing or curse? I didn’t care. Either would do.

Come,
I willed them. What stepped out of the shadows in answer to my call, I’ll never be able to forget. A monster like some sick surgeon had grafted a dozen rotten bodies together, lashing muscle to muscle and bone to bone, without regard for or knowledge of anatomy.

It lurched forward, stumbling and crunching its own bones, gurgling like a fountain of blood ran somewhere deep inside. The eyes on all three of the heads were lit with golden light.

The huntsman took one look at it and decided that between the two of us, it was a lot scarier. He pulled his hood down over his face and began to fling knives, throwing them so hard they exploded out the other side of the creature.

I stood transfixed, trying to find a way to send the thing back to whatever gory realm it called home, but I didn’t understand how I’d brought it well enough to punch a return ticket. I glanced back to Rosa, who struggled to pull the bolt from her. As I did, the peephole in the veil drifted into view, and I saw the thing.

A mass of golden light, it shifted, forming a tight series of intricate patterns like Celtic knots. Rosa, too, stood out, her entire body wrapped in a cerulean aura, the same color as the huntsman and Ari. The monster stumbled a few steps closer, and half lunged, half collapsed, tearing at the huntsman with fingers and teeth.

He stopped screaming after what seemed like an eternity.

I can’t say the same for me, because as the abomination rose and came toward me bits of fur and a fresh set of arms waved from its torso. Closer and closer it came, and finally I found a way to run, sprinting toward the elevator.

Behind me, it grunted with several sets of lungs, and whistled as it sprinted after me, moving faster on broken limbs than I could run. At the back of the loading bay, I hefted a canister of propane for the cutting torch and threw it back at the thing.

The canister by itself did nothing.

The bullet I followed it up with, on the other hand, did, causing a fireball the size of a pickup truck to explode out. I instinctively ducked. I wasn’t faster than a fireball. I barely got my eyes shut before it hit, and if it weren’t for my engagement ring, I’d have lost my eyebrows, and possibly my eyes.

The body-blob squealed and whined, crackling in the fire, until at last the spell holding it together dissipated. Ignoring the burns on my face, I limped back to the storeroom. Mikey lay, locked in a death grip with a fifth huntsman, one I’d not seen on the monitor. The two wrestled back and forth, despite the fact that Mikey’s entrails decorated the room like confetti streamers.

Furs don’t protect against tire-irons-to-kidneys either, which I made sure to repeat until he stopped moving. After I helped drag Mikey’s intestines back so he could start healing, I broke the shaft off the bolt pinning Rosa and caught her as she collapsed.

“Unos Desalmado.”
She repeated it over and over, flinching away from me in fear, unwilling to even meet my eye.

Once, I’d been fooled by Rosa into repeating a lot of very unkind phrases that didn’t mean what she said at all. Over the years, my Internet Spanish classes had paid off, and I knew exactly what it was she meant. Soulless Ones.