The Grimm Chronicles, Vol. 2

by Ken Brosky

  “Get ready,” I said to Seth, who was crouched in the open doorway.

  The first one got within striking distance, and as he reached out with his arms I could see the ferocity in his dark blue eyes. He would kill me. This man, this fellow human being, would kill me simply to protect the gold promised to him by Agnim.

  I dodged right, whipping the leather strapper around the man’s arm, pulling him to the ground.

  “Now, Seth!”

  He fired his gun. A nail the size of my finger flew through the air so fast I didn’t even see it until it hit pierced the fabric of the man’s thick, magnificently tailored robe.

  Pinning him to the floor.

  The other two came at me at once. From behind them came the shouts of a dozen more, charging down the center aisle between the rows of seats. I used the momentum of the two men to pull them back, falling over and taking both with them.

  Whump! Whump! Whump! Whump!

  Two nails each pinned their robes to the floor. Seth gave a quick thumbs-up, then pointed over my shoulder.

  “I know!” I said, turning and climbing the stage before the next group of minions could reach me. They were swarming the stage now, and nearly all of them were wearing those terrifying steel claws.

  “You’re not playing by the rules!” I shouted, pressing my shoe on the head of one who’d managed to get one leg up on the stage. I pushed him onto his fellow minions. “You’re supposed to come at me one at a time, like in the movies!”

  “Kill her!” one of them shouted, his mouth frothing with saliva.

  Another had managed to climb halfway onto the stage, using his claws to dig into the old wooden floorboards. I grabbed another strapper from my bag, whipping his wrist and pulling him onto the stage. I then promptly tossed him off, stage-right.

  Whump! Whump!

  Two nails pinned his heavy robe to the ground.

  “Luckily you’re all mostly out of shape,” I added.

  “Get her friend!” someone shouted.

  “Shut the door, Seth!” I called out. We knew it would happen eventually. The plan was for him to shut the door and bar it shut with his ice scraper. No risks. He could open the door again once they turned their attention back to me.

  Instead of following the plan, he ran inside.

  “Seth!” I shouted, pushing another of the minions off the stage. “What are you doing, you big dummy?!”

  “I panicked!” he called back, running up the side aisle along the wall. A handful of minions followed him, splitting up so they could corner him before he crossed over to the center aisle.

  I grabbed another strapper, heart racing. They would kill him if they caught him. I couldn’t let that happen.

  “Seth!” I called out, pushing two more minions off the stage. “Jump the seats!”

  “What?! How?!”

  “Just stand on the backs of the seats and step on them like they’re stepping stones!”

  He crossed into one of the rows of old seats, followed quickly by the robed minions. Thankfully, none of them were in peak physical condition. In fact, most of them looked like they’d spent the last ten years sitting behind a desk. They were huffing and puffing; the murderous lust to protect their gold was their fuel now.

  More cornered Seth from the center aisle, sidling between the seats. Seth climbed onto one, then stepped over to the next. The minions, clearly not as agile or young as Seth, sidled their way back to the aisles to chase him down.

  I kicked three more off the stage. They were getting bolder, spreading out and making it difficult for me to keep them off. I used the strapper on another one, wrapping it around his wrist and taking him down just like I had Joey Harrington, tying a quick knot around his ankle. I rolled him onto his friends, momentarily incapacitating a half-dozen of them.

  This wouldn’t work for much longer. And Seth was stuck, jumping frantically from row to row. His assailants were already spreading out, closing in. I had to think fast. I looked around frantically …

  And quickly spotted my way out.

  “Perfect,” I said, running over to the red curtain hiding the movie screen. I grabbed it and pulled as hard as I could, feeling it give way somewhere above. One of the minions climbed the stage and I ran over still clutching the heavy curtain, pushing the minion off with my shoe.

  The curtain began falling. I guided it to the edge of the stage, blanketing the minions.

  There came a collective gasp from those not trapped under the heavy curtain. I looked out into the seats—the minions had stopped chasing Seth and were just standing there, staring at me. Seth jumped his way toward the stage, hopping over the first row of seats and then stopping.

  “Woah. Holy crap.”

  “The dragon! The dragon has finally awakened!” said one of the robed men, pointing with a shaky finger.

  I turned, feeling an icy chill creep down my spine. When I saw it standing there on the massive hay-covered platform, I nearly fainted.

  It wasn’t a dragon at all.

  It was a goose. A big, fat, golden goose.

  Chapter 14: Briar

  Dummling went and cut down the tree, and when it fell there was a goose sitting in the roots with feathers of pure gold. He lifted her up, and taking her with him, went to an inn where he thought he would stay the night. Now the host had three daughters, who saw the goose and were curious to know what such a wonderful bird might be, and would have liked to have one of its golden feathers.[viii]

  Meanwhile, back at the bat-cave …

  Huh! Well, not quite. But at the very moment our hero was on her way to the movie theater of magic happenings, yours truly was on the precipice of a downright terrifying discovery.

  “I don’t see what the point is,” Chase huffed, tossing aside another book. We were in the incapacitated fellow’s living room, combing through my research. “All these old writings won’t help Alice now. She’s out there and we’re here …”

  “Helpless?” I finished. “Ah, of course you feel that way. You’re quite smitten with her.”

  “Take that back!”

  I hopped back a step, ever the cautious one. That, and I now had a straight line to the kitchen, should a snacking break arise. “Easy now … perhaps a snack to settle your nerves …”

  Chase flipped through another book with all the temerity of a squirrel, sighing a great big teenager sigh.

  “Now, be careful with those,” I said. “All three of the books are very, very old. They were incredibly important in my research on this horrid group of ne’er-do-wells.”

  “So what do we need them for now?” Chase asked. “What are we looking for?”

  “We are checking and re-checking and re-re-checking our research, like good researchers do.” I grabbed one of the old books Chase had already flipped through. “Hmmmm,” I said, sipping my mug of hot cocoa. “Quite a few stains on this table. I hope your parents don’t notice.”

  “Dad won’t care,” Chase murmured, thumbing through the book. “Ma might, I guess. So do you poop or what?”

  My fur bristled. Positively stood on end. The very rudeness of the question! “That’s between me and the garden outside the house, dear sir.”

  He chuckled. “Now that my dad might have a problem with.”

  “Tell him he missed a few delicious tomatoes when last he harvested. If he’d simply got on his hands and knees, he might have seen them.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell him when he gets home tonight.”

  “And when are we expecting your parents?”

  “Tonight. Late. They have some card club. Geezers like playing cards.”

  I sat down on the couch, stretching out my legs. Hoo boy, I was a fan of that couch. Cushions that you could really sink into. My favorite. “Say, shouldn’t we have snacks while we’re waiting?”

  “Rabbit, how could you think of eating at a time like this?” the furless fellow exclaimed. “I mean, who knows what’s happening to Alice right now?”

  “If I had to gue
ss, she’s probably still in the car. It’s about a fifteen-minute drive from here to the theater.”

  He gave me a very animated expression of suspicion. “How do you know that?”

  “Because it’s my business to know. And besides, you have little to worry about. I’m a bit of a deus ex machina, if you haven’t noticed. The hero’s helper.”

  “But you’re here,” he said.

  “Oh. Right.”

  “Why are you here again?”

  “Er … to do research.” A clever lie, unfortunately. I’d promised Alice I would protect Chase, plain and simple. After all, we didn’t know what Agnim might try, and poor Alice was so worried about the young man. I hopped off the couch—with some hesitation. “You don’t mind if I make myself a sandwich, do you?”

  “No, go ahead,” he said, his face buried once again in the book.

  I meandered into the kitchen, opening the fridge and surveying the bounty.

  “There’s lettuce in the bottom drawer!” Chase called out.

  “Lettuce!” I scoffed haughtily, selecting a handful of deli meats and cheeses. “Turkey … ham … provolone … that’s a wonderful book you have there, by the way! From the late eighteen hundreds. Lots of information about the southern states after the Civil War was over.” I arranged the meats and cheeses on a piece of bread and took a bite. Absolutely scrumptious! “It’s amazing what you can learn …” I took another bite. “Laws and goings on, and so on and so forth. All that wonderful stuff. This really is a fantastic sandwich. What was I talking about again?”

  “Briar! Come here!”

  I gave my sandwich a sad look of longing, then hopped back into the living room. My heart sank when I saw Chase’s face. “What is it? Is someone at the door?”

  He held up the book. “Look. Look at this.”

  “What?” I asked, peering over his shoulder.

  “Here,” he said, pointing to a passage. The very same passage Alice and I had run through during our initial research. But I didn’t see anything out of the sort. “Wheel me into the hallway, where the lights are brighter.”

  I pulled him backward into the hallway.

  “Look close,” Chase said.

  “The Order of the Golden Dragon,” I read. It was a passage from an old newspaper account, one of the only ones I could find that mentioned the mysterious organization.

  “Read closer,” Chase urged, holding the book up.

  “The Order of the Golden Dragons.” I burped, nearly spewing half-eaten sandwich onto the poor fellow’s head. “Dragons! Plural! How, oh how did we miss it? More importantly, how many dragons are we talking about here?”

  “The type is so faded I almost missed it too.” He turned in his chair, nearly falling right out in his excitement. “Briar, we have to go to Alice. She’s walking into a trap!”

  I tittered, thinking. The boy was right. If there was more than one dragon, there was no telling what else we missed. Agnim had played a royal flush when we expected a full house.

  “Briar, come on!” Chase slammed the book shut. “We have to warn her. We have to help. I may not be able to do much, but you can.”

  “But how will we get there?”

  “I’ll drive.” He winced. “I mean I’ll steer, and you can push the gas and break pedal. Can you handle that?”

  A surge of energy ran down my legs. “Yes! Yes, I might could do that. But what will we do when we get there?”

  Chase’s fingers tapped nervously on his armrest. After a moment, he shook his head. “I don’t know. Damn it, I don’t know! I can’t do anything in this chair, Briar.”

  I looked around. There had to be an answer. I was Br’er Rabbit, after all. I always had something up my sleeve. But what?

  What?!

  “Ah-ha!” I exclaimed, spotting the open doorway at the end of the hall. Alice had told me all about that room and I hadn’t believed her. To think: a grown man obsessed with ancient toys! But there it was, just sitting in the corner begging to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world.

  A suit of armor. And a lance.

  I flashed Chase a devilish smile. “How’s about we play a little prank?”

  Chapter 15: Alice

  I watched as the goose preened her golden feathers, then laid another massive golden egg, which slid down a small wooden slide and landed beside the two others. The eggs were as big as me, and the goose was as big as a freaking draft horse.

  And all of Agnim’s minions had fallen on their knees, worshipping the dang thing.

  “This is … a strange turn of events,” Seth murmured.

  “Yup.” I knelt down, pulling the magic pen from my pocket. I drew a saber on the wooden panels, plucking it and watching it magically solidify in my hand.

  Seth walked around the bowing minions, giving one of them a gentle kick on the shoulder. He ignored Seth completely. “They’re worshipping the thing like it’s a freakin’ god or something!”

  “Yup.” I grabbed Seth’s hand and pulled him up onto the stage.

  He pointed his nail gun, firing a few nails into the robes of the nearest one. The others continued worshipping. “Man! They are totally obsessed.”

  “Yup.” I switched the saber to my right hand, turning to the goose.

  “Or maybe not …” Seth tapped me on the shoulder.

  I turned back. The minions were staring at me. All two dozen of them, including the ones still nailed to the floor.

  “I’m going to kill it,” I announced. “And then you’re all going to go home.”

  “Never!” one of them cried out. They began rushing the stage again, all at once. Before I could take two steps toward the goose, two of them already had half-crawled onto the stage.

  “Seth!” I said. “Help me!”

  We pushed them off, back onto the crowd. But four more took their place, using the steel claws to dig into the stage’s old floorboards, climbing onto it. They screamed, frothing at the mouth, wide bloodshot eyes glaring at me.

  Behind us, the goose let out a deafening “Honk!” Another giant golden egg rolled down the slide. For a moment—just long enough to take a deep breath—all of the eyes of the minions followed that golden egg. There was a terrifying lust in their bloodshot eyes … they wanted those golden eggs. As many as they could possibly take. I was willing to bet the minions would even kill each other for a chance to escape with just one of them.

  “We’re losing!” Seth said, using his black boot to push another one off. This one reached out with his claw, scraping Seth’s leg and tearing his jeans. He cried out.

  “Seth!” I grabbed him, pulling him back. He was right: two had already climbed the stage on the far end, hurrying toward us. Every instinct told me to use my sword.

  “Cut them down.” Agnim’s voice echoed in the massive theater. “Kill them or they will kill you.”

  “No,” I whispered. I reached out with my foot to push down another minion, then turned my attention to the two fast approaching me.

  They stopped. Both of them were old enough to be fathers. One was balding; the other had a thin beard and beady eyes. Human beings, ready to kill me. And for what? Gold.

  “You’re pathetic,” I told them.

  The one with the beard took an angry, thoughtless step forward, but the bald one held him back. They looked to the minions who were climbing the stage.

  “Too clever by half,” I murmured.

  “We’re gonna die,” Seth said, clutching his bleeding leg. “They’re gonna feed us to the goose.”

  I clutched my saber, pulling Seth behind me. The sharp steel of the saber blade hovered over the head of one of the minions climbing the stage. It was ready. I was ready. They would all die. Agnim had won. He’d forced my hand. I would kill them all, and then I would make Agnim pay.

  Suddenly, the emergency exit door opened, letting in a dull yellow light from the streetlamps in the alley. The minions stopped to look. I took the opportunity to kick two more off the stage, knowing full well who it was. Wh
o it had to be.

  Briar. My personal savior.

  But no … not Briar. As the figure stepped inside—rolled inside—I nearly fell off the stage myself.

  It was Chase. Chase, clad in armor from head to toe, clutching a lance with a boxing glove attached at the tip.

  Chase, wheeling around in his wheelchair as if by magic, like it was some industrial-age horse.

  “Oh what the heck!” Seth exclaimed. “These encounters always get totally weird.”

  “Chase!” I called out.

  The minions, not knowing what to make of it, simply stared in shock while Chase surged forward, lance held straight. He knocked them down one by one. More yet dove out of the way, landing amongst their pinned-down brethren.

  “Now, Seth!” I called out, grabbing another strapper from my bag and charging the two men on the stage. I heard his nail gun go off again and again and again as I dodged the bald man’s claws, locking his arm and throwing him off the stage. His bearded companion roared and swiped at me again and again. I dodged, dodged again, then felt the sharp claws scrape across my forearm. I ducked low, grabbing the bottom of his robe and pulling hard. He flipped back, landing on his butt.

  In front of the stage, Chase had completed his charge, turning in his chair and doing a wheelie as if his chair was a rearing horse. Behind him, Briar appeared, giving me a wink.

  “One more go!” Chase commanded in a very knightly sort of way. Briar pushed him forward, and this time he turned the lance sideways, aiming for the last remaining minions. A few ducked low, but the rest went down again. Two—the only younger men I’d noticed so far—closed in on him, disregarding their safety.

  “Chase!” I cried out.

  But the steel claws scraped harmlessly across the steel armor. Briar ducked low, wheeling the chair to the other side of the room.

  “Alice!” Seth shouted, pointing to the last of the stragglers. “I’m out!”

  I ran to my purse, grabbing three more strappers, then tossed the purse to Seth. “I packed extra nails. Make sure they’re all pinned down!”