Belle’s Quest (Fairytale Bureau #3)

Chapter 12

12

As the carriage suddenly halted, I scrabbled to pull up my pants. Got my coochie hidden—but could do nothing about my burning face—as the door opened and Hannah stuck her head in.

“We’ve got a problem,” she announced.

“What kind?” asked Killian as he hopped out. Despite the urgency in Hannah’s tone, he still half turned to offer me a hand and a smile.

I tried to not quiver as I recalled what that mouth had done.

Rather than reply, Hannah pointed. Lying directly across the road, a shoe. A giant shoe straight from the Victorian era, the kind with a leather exterior, a high top, laces, a zipper down the side, and empty eyelets.

I only knew of one rhyme that might apply .

“There was an old woman who lived in a shoe,” I murmured.

“If that is the correct poem, then we should only be dealing with children and maybe their mother,” Killian replied.

Guess we’d soon find out, as Gerome stomped to the giant shoe and hunched down to grab hold of the heel. I would have been impressed if he’d managed to move it, but grunting and heaving with all his might did nothing but make him sweat.

Instead of helping him, Hannah had her gun out and a wary expression. “I think you should move away from there, Gerome.”

He glanced at her and might have grunted his usual reply if not for the arrow tipped with a suction cup that fired from an eyelet set higher up in the footwear. It stuck to his forehead and led to Gerome glaring upward.

“Stay here.” Hannah approached the shoe to join her grumpy partner just as the zipper on the side opened and out poured a horde of knee-high youngsters, hooting and hollering, firing more plastic arrows but also slinging marbles.

The poor Knights, they didn’t know how to react. On the one hand, they were being pelted, but on the other… these were children.

Even Killian appeared torn .

Me? I’d had my after-glow interrupted for this and was in no mood.

I planted my hands on my hips and in my best Hilda boss voice shouted, “Stop that at once.”

The children paused and eyed me.

“That is not appropriate behavior,” I chided. “Where’s your mother?”

A ginger-haired tyke with a gap-toothed smile grinned as he said, “We tied her up when she wouldn’t feed us.”

Oh.

Not how the nursery rhyme went, but I could see why they’d acted, seeing as how the verse had something about whipping the children soundly.

“While I’m sure she deserved it for sending you to bed without dinner and punished on top of it, that doesn’t mean you can accost people on the road.” I gave no quarter. They didn’t care.

“Says who?” huffed the ginger.

“Says me!” I snapped.

Their heads all cocked at the same time, in the same direction, and their expressions went glazed before they all nodded in synchronization and murmured, “Yes, papa curse.”

A chill went through me, especially since they started staring at me. Remember that blank spooky scare from Children of the Corn ? Even worse in person, especially since they leapt from the shoe and ran in my direction.

Bloody hell.

I would have bolted, but to where? Energetic children would easily catch me. So I braced myself, and they hit me in a swarm, tiny fists pummeling while they chanted, “Go away. Go away.”

It didn’t really hurt, but I was at a loss for what to do. I couldn’t exactly slap them off.

Killian looked confused as well until Gerome shouted, “Beware the sky.”

Now what?

A dark swarm approached, ravens, most likely, except for the much larger shape in their midst. A dragon. Probably the one that got away after the plane attack, back for round two.

The horses panicked and bolted, taking the carriage with them. The children fled next, screaming as they ran into their shoe house and tugged the zipper shut.

We had nowhere to hide.

But Killian didn’t let that daunt him. He stood in front of me, a sword out, his expression grim. That’s how I knew shit was serious.

Hannah hollered, “There’s too many for us to fight.”

The incoming flock was more than we’d dealt with in the training room at the manor, and I was hours from beast mode. Look at me being disappointed I couldn’t fur out at will.

How would we survive the coming battle? What would impede birds and a dragon?

The sunny sky made me wish for rain. And then I got the dumbest idea. “Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. Little Belle. Little Belle. Little Belle wants to play.”

“What are you doing?” huffed Killian.

“Something new.” That might not work, but I had to try. Since the sky remained blue, I went to my next song. “Rub-a-dub-dub, four people in a tub, and who do you think they’d be? A prince and his wife and two brave Knights, and all of them out to sea.”

The ground remained dry, not a tub in sight, and the flock neared.

I tried one last song. “It’s raining, it’s pouring, Killian was snoring. He jumped from bed and bumped his head and couldn’t get up in the morning.”

Still nothing and the horde now darkened the sky overhead.

Killian cleared his throat. “Let’s try one more. Together this time.” He linked his hand with mine and started singing, “I hear thunder.”

I knew this one and joined in .

“I hear thunder, I hear thunder.

Hark, don’t you? Hark, don’t you?

Pitter-patter raindrops,

Pitter-patter raindrops.

I’m wet through,

So are you.”

When we began to repeat the rhyme, to my surprise, Hannah joined in even as the cloud of wings began to drop, some of the birds arrowing for their dive. On the third verse, Gerome’s deep baritone blended, and I might have wondered if we were insane but for the rumble overhead.

The encroaching darkness no longer came just from the birds and the dragon. Clouds had suddenly rolled in, and they looked angry.

So we kept singing, singing as the thunder actually began to boom. With it, lightning flashed, and a bolt of it hit the dragon’s wing, sending it reeling. But the birds kept coming, the flutter of their wings almost drowning us out.

Until the rain came.

The downpour started hard and fast, a drenching torrent that sent the ravens scattering, Gerome too. He jogged off, spear in hand. Don’t ask me where he pulled it from. I might have wondered why until I saw the shape huddled atop the shoe, hissing, the glow in its mouth showing a fire building.

The dragon was no match for Gerome, who flung his spear. The dragon took it through the throat. When it toppled, Gerome was already in motion, ready to finish it off. As for the birds, the rain scattered them, leaving us soaked, unharmed, and stranded by the road.

Killian hugged me to his side. “Quick thinking. How did you know it would work?”

“I didn’t.” But I’d remembered something I’d read, an opinion piece that had ruminated about how the Grimm Effect used magic to shape and even create events to suit storylines. So who was to say humans couldn’t do the same? What if we could also wield that magic, in this case by using a rhyme to trigger it?

I’d thought the idea ridiculous when I read it, but with nothing to lose, for some reason, it popped into my head.

“I can’t believe I just sang a kid’s song instead of fighting,” Hannah grumbled. “That said, do you know one to bring back the horses?”

I shook my head, and she sighed. “Then I guess we’re walking.”

Turned out, we didn’t have to walk far. Just past the shoe, and over the hill, we found our carriage, the steeds grazing by the side of the road. In short order, we were off again and made it to a small hamlet, where a wad of cash bought us a Fiat.

If you’ve never seen one, it’s tight. As in Gerome drove with his knees to his chest, the backseat had me sitting sideways to give Killian more leg room, and each bump felt as if our asses slammed off the ground. But just after lunch, we made it to Ashbrittle. Too late, apparently.

Despair filled me as I looked around and whispered, “It’s gone.”

Only ashes and ruins remained, as the hamlet had burned to the ground.

So much for finding any clues. We’d come for nothing, but even worse, we’d failed before we’d even had a chance.