“Has Sprig turned up yet?” Harley asked as the boys waited for Natalia on the sidewalk outside the comic shop.
Max shook his head. “No, and after everything that Ernie told us about Stephen, I’m starting to worry that someone out there is collecting faeries, too. What if she got caught?”
“I’m sure she’s fine,” Harley offered. “Besides, I’d rather face another werewolf than fight a shapeshifter like Sprig. She can take care of herself.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Hey, did you see this?” Ernie asked. He lifted his goggles to read a flier that had been posted in the front window. “Monti is going to host Round Table tournaments every Friday night. There’s going to be prizes for the winners and everything.”
“When do they start?” Harley asked, joining Ernie at the window.
“Next week,” Natalia said, as she walked up to join the boys. “Don’t you check your mail? Monti sent us the flier a few days ago.”
“There’s going to be a blind tournament, where we have to play with cards from unopened packs,” Max added. “The winner gets a whole case of the Darkling Scourge expansion pack that comes out next month. And look at this, Ernie, there’s going to be a tournament where you can only use gargoyles.”
“You can count me out!” Ernie stated. “I don’t care what you say about gargoyles protecting people. Once you’ve nearly been eaten by one, you’ll change your mind, too.”
The door to the Spider’s Web opened, and the Toad brothers bounded out carrying bulging bags of new comics.
“Don’t tell me you two collect comic books, too,” Natalia complained, rolling her eyes.
“Of course we do,” Todd said.
“What do you have in the bag?” Ernie asked, already peeking inside Todd’s.
“Just part of a little project that we’re working on,” Ross replied proudly. “Our goal is to own every appearance of Benjamin J. Grimm that’s ever been printed. I created an application for my DE Tablet that tracks all the details. I’ll get you a copy if you want to use it for your collection.”
“Who in the world is Benjamin Grimm?” asked Natalia.
Ross and Todd frowned in unison. “Is she kidding?”
“Unfortunately not,” Ernie said, clearly embarrassed by Natalia’s ignorance.
“They call him The Thing,” Ross explained, as though Natalia had come to Earth from another planet. “You know, the big guy that looks like he’s made out of orange rocks.”
“He sounds ridiculous,” Natalia groused.
“So are unicorns, but you don’t hear us making fun of your hobbies,” Ernie retorted.
“Anyway, you’re looking at the owners of seventeen percent of that legendary collection, my friends,” Todd said proudly.
“Seriously?” asked Ernie. “That’s supersonic!”
Todd turned to Natalia and smiled like a fox in a henhouse. “Any more fights with Erica Harkness?”
“It wasn’t a fight,” Natalia objected.
“What made you pick her, anyway?” Ross asked. “Was it strategic or something? You know, knock off the most popular girl so you can take her spot? That was pretty risky, but you sure have the whole school talking.”
“Yeah,” agreed Todd. “You aren’t the only one who wants to knock Erica off her high horse, but she has some powerful allies, too.”
“Look, we just wanted a place to sit down and she started treating us like we were pond scum. What was I supposed to do? Let her walk all over us just because…”
The Toad brothers didn’t bother to listen to the rest of her explanation. Instead, they turned around and rushed into a limousine that looked more like a hearse than anything else.
“Can you believe that?” she asked, turning back to the other Griffins. “The entire school thinks that I started a fight?”
“Well, you were yelling at each other,” Ernie pointed out.
“We were debating,” Natalia clarified.
“Whatever,” Harley said, as he walked through the front door.
Inside, the Spider’s Web overflowed with stacks of comic books, walls of action figures, and wrinkled T-shirts on display.
“Look who’s here,” Monti greeted the Griffins as he polished a glass counter that held boxes of Round Table cards and a knucklebone display just like Iver used to have. “I was starting to think you had forgotten about me.”
Montifer McGuiness’s spiked hair stood on end as he gazed through a pair of glasses that looked just like the horn-rimmed pair that Ernie used to wear before he was a changeling. The only difference was that Monti’s glasses had a strange armature with a crystal lens that was attached to the frame, allowing him to see in different spectrums.
“I kind of forgot my wallet,” Ernie said. “Can I pick up the comics from my box later this week?”
“No worries.” Monti handed him the comic books anyway. “Just pay me for them next week.”
“Thanks!”
“By the way, what’s this I hear about the Harvest Festival? Are they really going to host a party on campus for the students?”
“Don’t remind me,” Ernie complained.
There was no record of when the Harvest Festival officially began. The local museum had a picture of the mayor leading the parade in 1905, but it was much older than that. Avalon started as a farming community, and each year the entire town would gather to celebrate the bounty of the harvest. It began as a small picnic, but it wasn’t long before party organizers got involved, and the celebration became a spectacle of parades, music, dancing, funnel cakes, and caramel apples.
So when Baron Lundgren announced that Iron Bridge was going to host a mandatory celebration the same night as the festival, it came as no surprise that the Griffins were upset. It was the most spectacular night of the year, and they feared that they were going to be stuck at school drinking stale punch and eating dry cupcakes with those sprinkles that tasted more like paste than anything else.
“You know why Cain is doing it, don’t you?” Monti asked.
“To keep us safe, blah, blah, blah,” Ernie said, throwing his hands in the air. “I think Dean Nipkin is the one behind it. She loves to torture us.”
“They have a point,” Monti reminded them. “Don’t forget, Stephen is still missing. The THOR agents would have a difficult time tracking all of you at a block party. Keeping you isolated makes sense.”
“I guess,” Ernie lamented. “I’ll just have to bring my sketchbook so I have something to do.”
“That reminds me,” Monti said. “When am I going to get the first issue of The Amazing Adventures of Agent Thunderbolt?” Monti was referring to the comic book that Ernie was writing, drawing, inking, coloring, and lettering on his own.
Ernie sighed. “I was hoping to have it done for the Christmas rush, but I don’t know if I’m going to make it. I have the first issue written, but I haven’t started drawing it yet. Plus I need to find a way to add a Transmuter, but homework keeps getting in the way.”
Monti was a graduate of Stirling Academy, so he understood what Ernie was talking about. “Don’t worry, it’s only going to get worse.”
“Great,” Ernie moaned before disappearing to the back of the store. Harley and Natalia wandered off as well, leaving Max alone with Monti.
“You used to play Round Table, right?” Max asked.
“I was on the varsity team at Stirling, just like Iver and your grandfather. I wasn’t too bad, if I do say so myself. Why? Are you thinking about trying out for the team at Iron Bridge?”
“Actually,” Max began as he pulled out the mysterious deck of cards they’d found in the underground bunker, “I wanted to get your opinion about these.”
“Let me take a look.” Monti adjusted the armature on his glasses and thumbed through the stack several times.
“Where did you say you found these?”
“We’re not supposed to talk about it,” Max admitted after a long pause.
“I see,” Monti s
aid with a smile. He looked back at the clock. “I know it’s getting late, but if you have some time, I might have something that could help. We have to hurry, though. The Zephyr leaves for New Victoria in a few minutes, and it won’t wait.”
25
NEW VICTORIA
“New Victoria?”
“That’s where my workshop is,” Monti explained. “Just give me a minute to clean up.” With that, he tapped a sequence of numbers onto the screen of a small handheld device. A blue beam shot out of the ceiling and spread across the room. There was a puff of mist that smelled like lilacs, and then it was gone.
“It’s a dust atomizer and furniture polisher,” Monti explained.
“Where did you get it?” Harley asked with admiration as he rejoined the group.
“I built it.” Monti tapped another code, and armored shades dropped over the doors and windows. The lights dimmed, leaving the store bathed in the red glow of an exit sign.
“Pretty heavy protection for a comic-book shop.” Harley nodded appreciatively.
“After what happened at the Shoppe of Antiquities, you can’t be too careful.”
Twenty minutes later, the Zephyr dropped them off at the Farringdon Street platform in the heart of New Victoria. Monti led the Griffins through the empty underground and up the tiled steps to a busy street corner. Draft horses pulled massive carts laden with wares as elegant motor carriages and MERLIN Tech hovercycles zipped past strange steam-powered tricycles. Men and women strode down the wide sidewalks in top hats and bustled gowns. Others wore faded jeans and derbies. There were pixies that carried on conversations on windowsills, hobgoblin fishmongers, and just about every assortment of strangeness that Max could have imagined.
As they moved through a throng of charm peddlers, Monti pointed out a few landmark sites. The Griffins were too entranced by the city to pay much attention. Most of the people they passed seemed entirely uninterested in the Griffins, but Max still had the feeling that they were being watched.
“Welcome to the warehouse district,” Monti said as he turned down Walpole Road. The street looked like a nest of warehouses and factories. Men with thick arms sat on steel girders high in the air, eating their sandwiches as others unloaded copper cable from the back of a wagon.
“New Victoria isn’t so bad,” Ernie said as he watched an airship lift off with a load of goods.
“You haven’t been here after dark,” Monti retorted, stopping in front of a green door with a polished brass knob in the center. He pulled out a device that looked like a pocket watch and wound the stem. Suddenly a series of eight brass legs extruded from the casing until it sat in his hand like a mechanical spider. Natalia’s eyes shot wide as she thought about the scarab they had found in the tree house. She was about to say as much, when she caught Max shaking his head at her.
Like the beetle, Monti’s clockwork spider was elegantly designed. There was a series of floral designs that came together in the form of a magnificent ship that was etched on the back. The design was flawless, right down to the smallest coil and articulated joint.
“I made this, too,” Monti said. “If somebody other than me tries to use it, it’s programmed to inject a serum that will paralyze them until the authorities come.”
The strange mechanism crawled across his palm before leaping onto the wall. It skittered across the bricks until it landed on a brass plate with an indentation that was just about the size of its body. The spider lowered itself into the groove and spun in a combination of directions that was followed by a click. Then it hopped back into Monti’s hand and returned to its original form. “Wait until you see what I have inside.”
26
THE VAN WYCK GUIDE
Monti’s workshop was bigger than a warehouse. The monstrous structure was a symphony of steel and glass that stood over a floor of polished stone. There were hoists, cranes, metal tables, hissing machines, and an array of amazing contraptions in various stages of construction.
As the Griffins followed Monti across the floor, they had to duck away from flying sparks that shot out from mechanized welding machines.
“Is the whole place automated?” Harley asked.
“For the most part,” Monti responded, as they passed a beat-up automaton that was testing a rocket pack. “This is kind of like a jet pack, but it’s run by MERLIN Tech. The clockwork running the tests is one of my oldest models. They don’t make them like that anymore.”
“I can see why,” Ernie commented. “That thing is a hunk of junk.”
“I don’t know,” Monti said. “The pack he’s wearing has exploded three times this month, and he withstood each hit. That’s pretty impressive.”
Everywhere the Griffins looked, they could see other automatons working tirelessly under the flat glass roof.
“You make weapons here, too?” Ernie called as they neared a movable wall filled with dangerous-looking contraptions.
“Someone has to keep Logan and his THOR agents on the cutting edge if they’re going to take the fight to all the bogeymen that go bump in the night,” Monti noted proudly. He patted the stock of one of his rifles. “This is Logan’s MVX. It’s a pulse rifle, and he requested some upgrades.”
Monti motioned toward a palm-sized pistol with a filigreed barrel and an ivory handle. “This model is the Peapod 7000. It’s a concealable six-shot plasma pistol with a fairly big bang considering the size of the weapon.”
Monti went on, describing the rest of the weaponry with obvious pride.
“We’re also developing specialized armor and advanced field science over there,” he said, pointing to the far end of the workshop. “That’s where you’ll find the Magma Manacles, jump boots, and a few other toys.”
“What about this?” Harley asked, picking up a small device that looked like a remote control for a television.
“It’s a hologram projector,” Monti said. “I’m still beta testing, but we’ve had good results. Here, watch this.” He took the control and punched in a series of numbers. Suddenly a Tundra Troll appeared next to them. It was nearly twelve feet tall and covered in thick white fur. Horns jutted out from the sides of its head and tiny black eyes scanned the room as it growled.
Ernie ducked behind a table as Monti walked right up to the monster. He was laughing as his hand passed through the troll. “See,” he said, “it’s just a three-dimensional projection. I can only make it last for a few seconds, but we’re working on it. Not bad, huh?”
“This place is amazing,” Harley said, relaxing. “I’d give just about anything to work here.”
Monti shut the projector down. “I’ve been thinking about bringing you on as an apprentice this summer. Maybe we can work something out. I’ve got an airship I’m working on, and I could use the help.”
“What’s with the killer robot?” Ernie asked, as he gawked at a towering clockwork that looked an awful lot like the war machines from the schematics the Griffins had found in the bunker.
“That, my friend, is a Grimbot,” replied Monti. “In fact, it’s one of the few complete war machines that still exist.”
The tarnished clockwork was propped up like a museum piece in a glass case. Its general shape was humanoid, with armored shoulders, a Gatling gun instead of a forearm, and legs that were outfitted with propulsion units. Its face was narrow, and its eyes were nothing more than slits in the metal casing.
“Did it belong to the Clockwork King?” Ernie asked.
As soon as the words left Ernie’s mouth, Max wanted to throttle him. Logan had told them to be quiet about that stuff, and here Ernie was blabbing again.
“Now there’s a nickname I haven’t heard for a while,” Monti replied. “From what I hear, Von Strife didn’t care for it very much. He felt it was pejorative.”
“It means derogatory,” Natalia said, as she caught the confused look on Ernie’s face.
“Wait a minute,” Max said. “That’s the name on the statue with the missing head over at Iron Bridge.”
&
nbsp; Monti laughed. “They still haven’t fixed that? Well, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. He was a demanding teacher, which meant he wasn’t very popular with the students.”
“What did he teach?”
“Advanced MERLIN Tech,” Monti replied. “But after a few years he took a position leading a controversial research and development team for the Sciences Council. They designed advanced hybrid systems that combined traditional clockwork mechanics with molecular engineering and MERLIN Tech.”
“That sounds incredible,” Harley remarked.
“It was,” agreed Monti. “The Templar Grand Council asked Von Strife to use his findings to create advanced weapons systems like this Grimbot. The entire world was at war. Millions of people were dying, and the Templar wanted to send a message that decimation on that scale would not be tolerated.
“Von Strife understood that his machines would need to react to complex battle scenarios,” Monti continued. “So he perfected something called Systemwide Turing Intelligence.”
“You’re telling me that Grimbots could think on their own,” Harley said with stunned admiration.
“Exactly,” Monti replied. “The artificial intelligence he developed was so close to human consciousness that many people believed that the machines were capable of actual emotions. Some even conjectured that the clockworks were able to feel pain. An ethics committee was formed, and once the politicians got involved, the program ground to a halt. Then they shut it down.”
“What’s this?” Harley asked. He had found a manual on Monti’s desk that was faded and cracked. Inside was a series of schematics for all kinds of clockworks, from insects to war machines.
“Please be careful with that,” Monti pleaded. “It’s one of the last known collections of Von Strife’s work. I shouldn’t have left it sitting around.”
Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicles #1: The Brimstone Key Page 10