Back | Next
Contents

CHAPTER TWO


This goblin had been on my head for the better part of two minutes, trying to pry open my visor so it could scoop out my eyeballs and puke in the bloody sockets. I know this because it kept telling me, in very specific detail, its plans for my bloody eye holes. Fortunately for me, and my eyes, the goblin was about as strong as it was smart, and it was very, very not smart.

“Give ’em to us!” it shrieked, banging on my helm with a rusty spoon, its claws scrabbling across my faceplate. I batted at it with my sword, but with each swing it slithered to the other side of my head and clung there, reedy breath hissing in my ear. “Give us your peepers!”

“We’ve discussed this! I will not be giving you my eyes!”

“Eye holes, then?” The goblin pressed its triangular face against the eye slit of my helm. Its breath smelled like rancid meat and boiled peanuts. “For puking?”

“None of this is up for negotiation!” I shouted, brushing at the foul beast with the edge of my shield. It scrambled out of the way, banging that cursed spoon off the shield’s metal rim as it retreated.

“You doing okay there, John?” Chesa called. She stood on top of the owl statue at the center of the fountain that used to be the help desk counter. She had her bow in hand and a pile of dead goblins bobbed in the bloody waters at her feet. “You’ve got a little something on your forehead. Looks like it’s trying to kill you.”

“I’m handling it!”

“Are you, though?”

“Yes! Yes I am!” I pointed the tip of my sword at my forehead and jabbed at the goblin, but each time I thrust, the beast cackled and swung to the side. “Will you hold still so I can kill you?”

“You stab you instead?” the goblin suggested.

Finally, I gave up on killing it with my sword, plunging the blade into the mossy carpet and reaching for the goblin with my bare hand. I wrapped my fingers around its scrawny, scaly back. It shrieked in distress and banged away on my gauntlet with its spoon. With some effort I was able to disentangle it from my helm. The scrawny beast wrapped thorn-tipped limbs around my arm, scraping at my wrist through the chain mail and generally making a nuisance of itself. When I tried to throw it to the ground, it clung to my hand like a sticky diaper. I shook it a couple times, but only succeeded in loosening my gauntlet. The goblin dropped its spoon and sunk needle-sharp teeth into the meat of my exposed thumb. I screamed, dropped my shield, and punched the creature with all my might. It flew across the room and landed with a thump on the rows and rows of books lining the wall.

“Good job, John! You’re doing great!” Chesa said, before sending an arrow whistling toward the goblin, pinning it to a moldering copy of Bullfinch’s Mythology. “Got that situation totally in hand.”

“You don’t have to be a jerk about it, Ches,” I said, collecting my weapons before stomping over to the twitching goblin and impaling it on my sword. I held it up to my face. The dead goblin looked like a cross between an oversized rat, an iguana, and a sock puppet that had been dipped in tar and fish scales. I grimaced at the smell wafting off its body. “I don’t know what I was expecting a goblin to look like, but this is way worse.”

“These are really closer to boggies than goblins, in the traditional sense,” Tembo said. I could just see his bald head over a row of bookcases. There was a flash of light that traveled from his hands down the aisle, then the sound of sizzling flesh and tiny, popping lungs. “Though when you burn them they smell more like kobolds, don’t they?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said, shaking the dead goblin off my sword. Pain shot through my hand. The quarter-sized bite mark on my wrist burned. “Man, I wish Matthew were here. This better not get infected.”

“That’s just a scratch, Sir John.” Gregory rounded the corner from the Mystery section. His armor gleamed in the flickering lights, though his sword was smeared in the blood of his foes. “Maybe you’ll get lucky and get a scar out of it. Women like scars.”

“Some scars,” Chesa clarified. “Honestly, I wouldn’t count on it improving your situation, John. It would take a lot of scars to make you attractive.”

“You do remember that we used to date, right? That I’m the one who dumped you?”

“Something I try to forget,” she said. “Every. Day.”

“It is good that Fate has bound the two of you together.” Tembo joined us at the information desk, smoke wafting off the tip of his staff. “Otherwise these missions would be downright dull.”

“Hmph,” Chesa and I said in unison. We glared at each other, to the great amusement of both Tembo and Gregory. “Hmph,” we repeated. I turned back to my gear, slinging my shield over my shoulder before digging out a kerchief to clean my sword.

The ground surrounding the fountain was covered in a carpet of dead goblins, and the bookstore was slowly melting back into the Mundane. I didn’t like to imagine what the staff would find when they showed up for work today. Rats, or whatever it was these things pretended to be when they were trying to pass in the real world. A pack of feral Chihuahuas, maybe. Either way, it wasn’t going to be our problem for much longer.

“Okay, folks. Let’s wrap this up.” No one had put me in charge, but no one had explicitly forbidden me from being in charge, and I was feeling pretty good today. “Tembo, we’re going to need to put all these bodies somewhere, without damaging the store. Gregory, see if you can do something about the smell. Sprinkle around some of that hair oil. And Chesa—”

“Don’t,” she said.

“Right. I was just going to say, you know, follow your true self. Express your intention. Whatever.” I rinsed my sword off in the rapidly shrinking pool. “Good job today, everyone. Really great—”

“Um. Guys?” Chesa was squinting over my shoulder in the direction of the front of the store. “Is everyone else seeing this?”

Sunbeams broke through the cluttered windows that lined the storefront, cutting through the dusty air like a light show. We’d done some damage to the bookstore in our fight with the goblins. Toppled shelves and avalanches of deteriorating paperbacks littered the aisles, while mounds of broken spines (book, not skeletal) rose to the ceiling. Frankly, I didn’t remember wrecking the store that badly. But that wasn’t what really caught my attention.

On one of those mounds of broken books stood a goblin. Unlike the lot we’d just massacred, this goblin was dressed in a neat vest, complete with tiny pocket watch. It was also wearing a bowler pressed low over its beady little eyes. The goblin slung a clockwork contraption over its shoulder and started messing with the buttons on the side.

“Huh,” I said. “That looks like . . . some kind of handgun?”

“Where does a goblin get a pistol?” Chesa asked.

“Hardly matters. Modern technology can’t hurt us while we’re in mythic mode. That thing’s as dangerous as a warm breeze.” I strolled toward the goblin. “Hey buddy, why don’t you put that thing down before you hurt yourself? We’ve got—”

There was a loud bang, followed by a heavy thud in my left shoulder. I looked down to see a puckered hole in my armor, quickly filling with blood. The pain followed a moment later. My shield hit the floor with a clang.

The goblin chittered joyfully and started working on the shoulder-mounted pistol, cycling the chamber and working a series of complicated levers with its feet. A thin trail of smoke rose lazily from the barrel. The sharp sound of the discharge rang in my ears.

Chesa ran to my side, putting herself in front of the rapidly reloading goblin. I tried to push her out of the way, but she kept pulling at my armor and yelling. My ears were ringing and the pain in my shoulder hammered through my skull. I realized I was waving my sword around, endangering both Chesa and Tembo, who was trying to get a look at the wound. With a great deal of effort, I sheathed the sword.

“I’m fine!” I yelled. “Do something about the gun!”

The goblin must have heard us, because it chittered loudly, then sighted down the barrel, aiming at me for a second shot. I shoved Chesa to the ground and lurched in front of the goblin, shielding her from the attack. Tembo was weaving a spell in the air, creating a shield of purple light.

Gregory’s zweihander went straight through the goblin and his infernal weapon, slicing through meat and bone and steel, to bury the blade three inches deep in moldering paperbacks. The pistol, which looked like a cross between a flintlock, a ray gun, and a portable vacuum cleaner, slid harmlessly down the mountain of books.

“Get off me,” Chesa grunted, pushing me aside. I had practically been lying on top of her, and in my armor, that’s a lot of weight. I rolled over onto one knee. She got up and dusted herself off, grimacing at the blood that had leaked out of me and onto her elvish battle dress. “That was hardly necessary.”

“I was trying to save your life,” I said. “You know, from the gun.”

“Whatever. I was fine. You’re the one who got shot.”

“Oh yeah,” I said, peering at the wound in my shoulder. I sat down abruptly. “Going to have to do something about that.”

Tembo knelt beside me, pulling off the pauldron and making low, comforting noises under his breath. He wasn’t a healer, but the big mage knew enough about human physiology to perform basic maintenance. In this case, that meant plugging the hole in my shoulder with a wad of cloth and patting me on the head.

“Barely grazed you,” he said. “Your armor will need some maintenance, but otherwise you’ll be fine.”

“All the blood . . .”

“The human body contains well over a gallon of blood. This is barely”—he glanced over my chest and the spray of crimson decorating Chesa’s corset—“eight tablespoons.”

“What I want to know is how a goblin got a gun,” Gregory said, prodding the overly complicated firearm with his toe. “And why it worked at all? Should have gone off like a wet paper bag, especially with Rast around.”

“I just want to be clear: I’m not getting any more sympathy for being shot?” I asked. “No warm embrace, no promises of vengeance sworn against my mortal enemies?”

“Nope,” Chesa answered.

“Doesn’t seem necessary,” Gregory said.

“You are better than that, Sir Rast,” Tembo said, patting my head a second time.

“Okay, fine.” I worked my way to my feet, flexing my arm back and forth, feeling the wound pull at the bandage. It hurt, but I’d live. “Then let’s bag that gun and drop a Tell on Esther. She should see this. In fact—”

An entire bookcase next to the entrance toppled over with a thunderous crash, spilling its contents in our direction and filling the air with dust. Gregory and I exchanged a meaningful glance, the kind of glance heroes give one another at critical moments. He swung his sword down from his shoulder, taking it in both hands with a look of unabashed zeal. I scooped up my shield, wincing in discomfort as I slung the enarme straps around my arm, then lowered my visor. My flourish was much less dramatic and flashy than Gregory and his two-handed sword. I really needed to come up with something a little more eye-catching. A battle cry, or something. Or I could—

“John! Stop daydreaming and get over there!” Chesa shouted.

“Right, right!” I mumbled, then hurried forward. Gregory formed up next to me, with Chesa covering the rear and Tembo at the center.

As the dust cleared, I saw a figure creeping away from the toppled shelves. I could just make out glowing green eyes the size of teacups, and a hooked nose like a raven. The figure skittered, insect-like, to the next stack over.

“Over there!” I shouted, pointing. Chesa drew and fired, sending an arrow whickering into the shadows. Something yelped, but when we rushed in that direction, there was no sign of a body.

“Musta nicked him,” Chesa said. “Flush him out, and I’ll skewer the bastard.”

“Whatever that was, it was no goblin.” I kicked aside a crumbling tower of hardcovers, clearing the way to the front door. “Maybe we pull out and call for assistance?”

“Let’s solve this. Now,” Gregory said. “Better to report our glory than request aid.”

“Better aid than a stretcher,” I muttered. But I pressed on toward the shadows in the corner where Chesa’s arrow had flown.

“There it is!” Chesa shouted. Her arrow thumped into a figure on the ground, but rather than drawing blood, the wound belched dark smoke. Billowing clouds of thick mist rolled out, quickly wrapping around us and cloaking the light.

“Close ranks! Back to back!” I shouted. Gregory growled, but took up position opposite me, with Chesa and Tembo between us. We whirled around, watching the roiling shadows. The sound of chittering feet and scything jaws echoed from the darkness. I braced for the inevitable attack.

A stroke of lightning flashed near the door, lingering silently before expanding into a circular portal, through which stepped three figures. The first two were a study in contrast. An impeccably dressed woman in riding pants and knee-high boots, with a long silk tie and shiny red vest under a black thigh-length duster, rested both hands on a long-barreled six-shooter cross-slung at her hip. Her right arm was made of brass and steel, the delicate engines of its workings fully exposed, like the inside of a clock. She wore her jet-black hair in a bun, held in place by wicked looking silver pins. She scanned the room, barely sparing a glance for the heavily armed and armored strangers directly in front of her.

Her companion was a large black man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a bar fight, and had gotten the worst of the exchange. He wore dull gray overalls over a bloodstained white shirt, the cuffs rolled up to bulky elbows, and a misshapen cap over his close-cropped hair. He cracked his knuckles, a sharp popping noise that was followed by the unexpected sound of a metallic sigh and the exhalation of steam from his elbows. Both of the new arrivals scanned the room, then parted to let the third figure step through the portal.

“I think that’s quite enough drama, my dear doctor.” The man’s voice was precise, with enunciation that crackled like breaking glass. He was dressed like a shopkeeper in a Wild West flick, except for the bright steel-and-brass contraption strapped to his back. The device had a pair of whirring antennae, like giant egg beaters, spinning dangerously close to the man’s head. Sparks of electricity danced between them. The man was thin and slightly awkward looking, with a head too large for his shoulders, and legs that made up too much of his frame. With a flick of his hand, the egg beaters cycled down and the lightning portal sizzled shut.

Immediately, the shadows dispersed. The plague doctor from the window display hobbled out from between the shelves, knobbly hands working the dials on a device that looked like a cross between a gramophone and a flamethrower. Fetid smoke boiled out of the object’s mouth, but as we watched it slowly retracted, as though the noxious cloud was a fishing line that could be hauled back inside. The doctor bowed to us briefly, before turning his full attention to the object in his hands.

Knight Watch formed into a skirmish line. I stood with my sword and shield up, left shoulder still throbbing from the gunshot wound as I squared off with the impeccably dressed woman. She looked at me and curled her lip in a sneer.

The man with the complicated backpack stepped forward, clasping his hands at his belt. He swept a calculating gaze over each of us in turn, lingering on Tembo, and then me.

“Well, that took long enough. You lot are bloody hard to find.” He brushed imaginary lint off his sleeves, then extended his hand in greeting. “You think it would be easier, what with the oppressive body odor and outlandish costumes. I take it you’re members of Knight Watch?” When we didn’t answer right away, he took a step forward, thrusting his hand in my face. “My name is Nikola Tesla. I’m in desperate need of your help.”

“Uh . . .” I looked at my compatriots. “We’re going to need to call someone.”


Back | Next
Framed