by Scott Mebus
Clarence leaped forward, scurrying toward the exit. Bridget lingered behind, dazed by all the rich stuff. Just one little piece of gold could put the Hennessy family on top! She reached out to grab a particularly shiny necklace lying by her feet. At the last minute she stopped herself. Her mom would wonder where Bridget found such expensive jewelry, and she didn’t want that. She walked on, trying to ignore the call of the gold in her head. Fritz yelled over to her.
“Bridget! I found the exit! Come on!”
She hurried to follow after him. Just before she left, a flash caught her eye. It was a small gold spoon. So tiny, hardly anything really. Who would miss it? But it could pay for so much. She’d tell her mom she found it in the park. Without stopping to think any further, she reached down and snatched it up.
“Bridget!”
She raced out of the treasure room, putting the spoon in her pocket. After a moment, some of the lighter golden items began to move gently as a breeze began to blow.
Bridget and Fritz found themselves in another tunnel. After a few moments of walking, Fritz put up his hand, coming to a stop. Bridget leaned over next to him.
“What is it?”
“There’s light up ahead. See?”
Sure enough, a soft yellow flicker crept in from around the corner. Bridget dropped her voice to a whisper.
“Do you think it’s them?”
“Better to be safe. Do you feel a breeze? We might be near the surface. Come on.”
They slowly made their way to the bend in the tunnel. Bridget and Fritz snuck a look around the corner.
A teenager with a scraggly beard dressed in old-fashioned clothes was sitting at a card table, muttering to himself. Beyond him lay an underground stream and a door. Fritz looked up at Bridget and mouthed something. Bridget answered him in confusion.
“Lug Buggy?”
Fritz’s eyes flashed impatiently as he whispered back.
“Plug Ugly. Gang member. Gator Rider, but where’s the gator?”
As if to answer him, a large, white-scaled reptile crawled into view. The teenager leaned over and scratched his eye ridges.
“I warned ’em. Can’t say I didn’t warn ’em, right, Hamish? And now he’s dead. Ah well, good riddance. Stupid boy.”
Bridget’s face drained of all color. Were they talking about Rory? Rory wasn’t dead! No! She stepped into the light before Fritz could stop her.
“Take it back!”
The boy leaped to his feet.
“Who are you? A little girl? What’s going on here? How did all these kids get down here?”
“He’s not dead! Take it back!”
She kept walking toward him, her cardboard sword held out before her. He took a step closer.
“What’s that in your hand? A dolly?”
He soon found out that it was, in fact, not a dolly. Bridget reached him and immediately hit him over the head with the cardboard sword. It left a small paper cut down the boy’s cheek. His hand flew up to his face.
“Son of a—That hurt! What’s wrong with you? Are you some kind of crazy girlie?”
“Take it back!”
She proceeded to whack him again, this time on the other side of his face. An identical paper cut appeared on the other cheek, making it look like he had quotation marks around his nose. He squealed again, backing up.
“What are you? A vengeful spirit come to punish me?”
She kicked him with her steel-toed boots. He screamed in pain.
“Ow! Stop it!”
And again. And again. She would not stop. The Plug Ugly backed up as she whacked him in the face and gave him nasty kicks to the legs. Fritz watched in amazement. It was like seeing a bear get whipped by a hamster.
“Ow! Stop that. I’m serious!”
Bridget never let up smacking and kicking. The teen kept backing up.
“Okay, you know what? I’m gonna take that thing away from you right nowaaaaggghhh!”
He grabbed the sword out of her hand right as he hit the edge of the underground river. The sword waved in the air as he fell backward. Splash. The water moved quickly along the stream. The Plug Ugly flailed about, trying to keep his place, but the flow of the current proved too strong. Finally it swept him and Buttkicker away, far into the distance, until even his shouts became echoes before fading entirely.
Bridget looked back at Fritz, her face drawn and frightened.
“It’s not true.”
“Watch out!”
The alligator, angry about this mistreatment of his master, rushed Bridget. She backed up in fright, until the door to the vault stopped her. She didn’t even have a sword to protect her anymore. Without thinking, she pulled out the spoon and held it in front of her, hoping the shiny surface would distract the beast.
“Stay back!”
The alligator snapped, and Bridget barely got her hand out of the way as the gator swallowed the spoon whole. The gator opened his mouth again, this time to rip Bridget in two.
“Bridget, look out!”
But the snap never came. The breeze she’d been feeling picked up, becoming a gale. The gator stopped in confusion.
“What’s going on?” Bridget gasped.
“I don’t know,” was all Fritz had for her.
A fog poured in from the tunnel. It swept by Bridget and surrounded the alligator, diving into his snout. The gator began to shudder, like he was suffering a violent seizure. His eyes rolled back as he gave one last huge shudder and fell still. The fog poured back out, seeping from the reptile’s eye sockets and nostrils. The beast’s mouth opened, and out flew the gold spoon. It soared through the air, held up by the fog as it headed back down the tunnel, toward the treasure room. The spoon disappeared around the corner, carried by the retreating wind, leaving Bridget, Fritz, Clarence, and a dead alligator behind.
After a moment, Fritz was finally able to speak.
“Where did you get that spoon?” he asked slowly.
“I picked it up from the treasure room.”
“I guess they don’t like it when you take things.”
“I guess not.”
“You are, without a doubt, the luckiest girl in the world. Do you know that?”
Bridget didn’t answer. She just hoped her luck held.
17
BEETLES AND BANK NOTES
The assassin warily approached First City Bank, looking in every direction for some sign of his quarry. It had taken him longer to arrive than he’d hoped, and now he feared that he was the last one to the party. With Hiram Greenbaum, God of Guilt, dead, the assassin no longer felt an ounce of remorse about disposing of the Light. Actually, he didn’t feel guilty about anything at all, not anymore. Entranced by this new feeling, he’d enjoyed running past the locked-up houses, the pale faces of various spirits and gods peeking out from behind the curtains. They were frightened, frightened of him, though they didn’t know it. Soon he’d be even more powerful and they’d truly have a reason to fear. The thought warmed his heart. But those happy daydreams had slowed him down, and now he was paying the price.
The idea to send little Sally after Fritz had paid off, but the information his rat spy had brought him meant nothing if he couldn’t catch up. He’d arrived at the bank—where he suspected they would try to gain entrance—and sure enough he saw signs of them on the ground. But where had they gone? How did they get in? Casting about for an answer, his eyes fell on a dark figure on one of the street corners. A living statue. Such creatures saw everything. He pulled out his knife, which despite its grim night’s work still shone clean in the moonlight. But then he stopped. He had no time to hide the body, and Tobias would not be happy if a dead statue was found near his bank. What to do—wait! She was pointing at something. Something in the center of the street behind the bank.
The assassin quickly searched the street at the other end of the living statue’s finger. Eventually, he stumbled upon a circle in the pavement. It must be some sort of trapdoor. But he had no idea how to open it. G
lancing at the sky, he could tell that the night was slipping through his fingers. Another task awaited him at dawn, so time was short. He had to choose.
Unsure, he pulled out a gold locket and ran his fingers lovingly over it. Such a small, trivial thing, and yet filled with so much power. When Kieft had told him the secret, he hadn’t believed it. At first he hadn’t known why Kieft had approached him at all, but certainly the powerful god knew him better than he knew himself. The promise of all that power—of finally pulling himself up to the level he’d always known he deserved—it overwhelmed him. All it took was one of these little lockets. And the only way to gain a locket was through murder. A small price to pay, in the end.
So he bowed before Kieft, like they all would soon, and later, when asked, he became his assassin. All for this lovely little trinket, and all the others like it. Kieft forbade him from wearing it, for now, since people would sense the changes it would bring. Be patient, he had said. The assassin had dutifully waited for this day to arrive, when he could finally reach out and take the prize, though he waited still to claim it as his own. Patience rewarded him every time. So he would be patient again.
He sent Sally ahead, to scout out the sewers for signs of their quarry. Then he fell back into the shadow of the building behind him to wait, his eyes always on the small circle in the pavement. If Tobias caught Rory, then his job would be done for him. If not, the boy would have to come back out the way he’d gone in. And then the assassin would be waiting, and this time his hand would be steady as he wielded the knife without a tinge of conscience.
Rory and his companions stood with their backs against the door and gazed around the room in which they now found themselves trapped. It was huge and white, with an impossibly tall ceiling. At the very top of the room was a large stained-glass window depicting a group of Indians meeting a couple of old-fashioned-looking men who were handing over jewelry and trinkets. Across the room, a small metal door stuck out as the only break in a long white wall that stretched on into the distance.
“What’s the danger this time?” Rory whispered.
“This one has been changed. They killed the guardian fifty years ago, so Tobias had to replace it.”
“With what? I don’t see anything.”
“Something is in here with us, I can feel it. Stay by the door. Just take a look around. Look closely. Something will jump out at you.”
Rory struggled to calm himself, forcing his breathing to slow. He could sense something in there, too, and it didn’t feel friendly. Trying to remain calm, Rory slowly scanned the huge white room. Hex nudged him.
“Try relaxing your eyes. There’s something here, so there has to be something to see.”
Rory did as asked. He forced his eyeballs to look at nothing, until everything in front of him doubled. As it was all just white, anyway, it didn’t really change much. Except now he could see something moving ever so slightly.
“Do you see that?”
Hex looked intently in the same direction.
“No. What is it?”
Rory kept his eyes defocused and tried to make it out. It looked like a long line, a string for a balloon or a piece of tinsel hanging from some far-off limb from a Christmas tree. He tried to point it out to Hex, who stared intently into the white.
“What’s it hanging from? Is it attached to anything?” Hex asked.
One end of the string went down toward the metal door. Following the other end led Rory upward, where it seemed to be hanging from the ceiling. Trying one last time, he relaxed his eyes again. And then it leaped out at him. He gasped, causing Hex to look up at the ceiling.
“What is it?”
“It’s on the ceiling.”
“Well, what does it look like?”
“Like a man-eating monster. A bug-shaped, man-eating monster.”
Hex peered up at the ceiling.
“I see it! It’s a giant snow beetle.”
Rory relaxed a little. A beetle didn’t sound too bad. Beetles climbed onto your finger and let you stroke their backs. Beetles weren’t scary. Of course, Hex wasn’t done yet.
“It’s a fire-breather. Territorial. Cooks them and eats them, I guess you’d say.”
Rory stopped relaxing in a hurry.
“A fire-breathing beetle?”
“They occupied these lands when everything lay frozen under a large glacier, thousands of years ago. They would burn their way into the ice to make their nests. The Munsees trapped a few of them long ago and used them to guard their sachem burial ground.”
Rory gazed up at the huge death beetle clinging to the ceiling far overhead.
“Are you guys invisible to it?” he asked. “Maybe you can make a break for it.”
“Nope. That sucker can see right through my little spell. It’s far older than my magic.”
“So we’re doomed.”
Hex patted his shoulder in reassurance.
“Don’t worry. It’s not a man-eater by nature. It attacks only because it’s tethered. The old Munsee shamans used to chain them somehow. Maybe if we release it, it’ll just fly away.”
“Release it? You want to let it go wild?”
Hex nodded briskly and then scratched his chin.
“Can you see where the other end of the line is attached?” Hex asked.
Rory focused on the metal door, trying to see where the line led. He could just make out something flapping at the base.
“It’s tied to some kind of paper.”
“Newspaper? Tissue paper?”
“Just a piece of white paper.”
“We need to find out what’s on that paper. Which means we need to get across this room somehow without getting burned and eaten.”
As he finished speaking, Hex’s eyes had come around to rest on Toy. Toy stared back up at him, his face shiny and blank.
“Toy. Toy, I need your help.”
Toy didn’t respond in any way. Hex knelt down next to him.
“Flavio made you flame-retardant. He told me. He hated it when kids would set his piñatas on fire. Don’t worry, I’ll make sure nothing happens to you. I swear it.”
Toy’s face didn’t change. Rory shifted uncomfortably.
“Hex, maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
Hex took Toy’s chin in his hand, putting his other hand kindly on his shoulder.
“Please, Toy.”
Toy slowly nodded. Hex bent over and kissed Toy on the top of his head. Toy accepted the kiss without moving. Hex stood up straight.
“When Toy gets the beetle’s attention, we need to run across the room as fast as we can. Toy, make sure to lead it to the other side, so it isn’t looking in our direction. Let’s hope this works. You ready, Rory?”
Rory nodded once.
“All right,” Hex said. “Here we go. Ready, Toy? Go!”
Toy darted out into the wide-open room. The beetle reacted with terrifying speed. It dropped down off of the ceiling, a huge white oval with big buzzing wings and long white legs that hung down ready to snatch its prey. It had been trapped in this room for far too long, and now someone would pay the price. Finally, its eyes picked up Toy and it opened its mouth wide. A long blast of fire shot out, ripping through the air toward tiny Toy. The flames engulfed him, burning the air around him for a moment.
Rory couldn’t see how anything could survive that blast. But after a moment, the flames died down and there Toy stood. His skin had blackened a bit, the paper bubbling in parts, but still whole. The beetle hung in the air, uncertain why its prey was still moving. Toy, having gotten its attention, ran toward the opposite end of the room. The beetle turned to follow him. Hex grabbed Rory’s arm.
“Okay. That’s our cue. Run!”
Hex took off. Rory hesitated a moment then ran after him. Hex never glanced over toward the hovering beetle, but Rory couldn’t look away. It chased Toy and let out another lick of flame. This time, Toy leaped to the side, and the flames missed him. He jumped again, narrowly escaping being im
paled by the beetle’s thrusting claw. The beetle had apparently decided that since fire wasn’t working, it was going to have to do this by hand. Toy moved from side to side, avoiding the striking claws while trying to keep the beetle’s attention away from the metal door.
Rory was so caught up watching the struggle that he tripped, landing hard on the ground.
“Get up! Quickly!” Hex hissed.
Rory pulled himself to his feet and in a blind panic scrambled the rest of the way. He ran right into Hex, who was kneeling beside the door. Rory’s shoulder brushed up against Hex’s face. As it came away, a large mud stain appeared on his shirt. Hex’s forehead had been wiped clean. Hex sighed.
“Well, there goes that spell. Where is this piece of paper?”
Rory pointed to the paper, and they both bent over to read it. It said BANK OF FIRST CITY in big letters, with the words CREDIT EXTENDED underneath. At the bottom was a number written in slightly smudged ink. It read $4.27. Hex grew excited.
“It’s a debt. Leave it to a banker…someone must have loaned this beetle to the bank for four dollars and twenty-seven cents. And judging by that number, it was a long time ago.”
“So what do we do?”
“He’s trapped by debt. Tobias is so cheap, he didn’t even pay up front. He owes this money. Maybe we can pay off the debt. Then we can do what we want with the beetle, and Tobias would owe us.”
Rory didn’t follow any of this. All he knew was that Toy was running out of time.
“So what do we do?”
“We buy the debt. Quick! Empty your pockets! Do you have any money?”
“What about you?”
“I don’t carry money. There are a lot of thieves in this city.”
Rory patted his pockets. In his front pants pocket he pulled out three wrinkled singles. From his other front pocket he pulled out three quarters and three nickels. His back pockets came up empty. Hex groaned.
“That’s not enough. Check your jacket!”
Rory searched through his jacket pockets, turning up a dime, a nickel, and finally a penny. Hex let out a long breath.
“That’s still not enough.”
“That’s all I have.”