Belle’s Quest (Fairytale Bureau #3)

Chapter 13

13

We tumbled out of the tiny car and wandered amongst the ruins of Ashbrittle, the houses that once stood reduced to rubble with only sections of the stone walls standing. Other structures, which must have been wood framed, had even less. A set of concrete stairs that went nowhere. A fireplace that jutted from ashes.

“How did we not know this happened?” I murmured. A fire this big and devastating, taking out an entire hamlet, should have made the news.

“Do you really have to ask?” Hannah retorted.

Not really. The curse could seemingly do whatever it wanted.

“Guess we came here for nothing.” My shoulders slumped.

“Don’t give up so easily, wifey poo. ”

I glanced at Killian. “Now is not the time for optimism. There’s nothing left. No one to talk to. Nothing to search.”

“If that were true, then why did the curse try so hard to turn us away?”

I opened my mouth to reply, only I had no answer. He made a good point, though. “The fire is meant to deter, to keep people from looking for something still here,” I muttered. Something it didn’t want us to see. “Where do we start searching?”

As if my query conjured it, a mist moved in, thick and moist, reducing our visibility to only a few paces around.

“That’s a thick fog.” Killian grabbed my hand. “Let’s make sure we don’t lose each other.”

Good idea. Hannah and Gerome moved in close, weapons out and alert. This would be a good time for an ambush.

A slight breeze ruffled my hair and swirled the ash.

From the mist emerged creatures, the shapes recognizable—fox, chicken, wolf, bear, swan—all animals seen in the fairytales but with something odd about them. Their movements disjointed, their eyes a dull solid black.

It took Gerome muttering, “Those ain’t alive,” for me to exhale, “Zombies!”

“Not exactly.” Hannah darted with her sword and sliced through a swan, decapitating it. At its death, the creature exploded into a puff of ash.

“Golems,” I muttered. Creatures animated and shaped by magic. But how dangerous could these monsters of ash be? I got my answer a second later when a swan extended its neck to peck at Hannah’s sword. She grumbled as it tried to yank it from her grip.

“Stupid, not-real bird.” She gave it a boot before chopping its head. Poof. It exploded in a cloud of dust but that didn’t daunt the rest.

The battle began. Killian and I stood back-to-back, me with my dagger, him with his sword while Gerome and Hannah chose to dart in and hack at the ash menagerie. They dissolved quickly and easily. However, for each one they eradicated, another took its place. And another, the dust quickly reforming to strike again.

Stab, slash, poof.

Again.

And again.

It led to me huffing, “How long can we keep doing this?”

“As long as it takes.” Hannah’s grim reply.

“It’s trying to tire us out,” Killian’s prediction.

And once that happened, we’d be dead .

“We need to get back in the car and leave before we’re overrun,” I stated.

“Fuck giving up,” Hannah snarled, slashing a bear into dust.

“In that case, we need to move past them,” I replied as I stabbed, over and over, the sheep that came trotting for me.

“How do we choose a direction?” Killian stuck by my side.

“If we’re still looking for the source of the curse, then we need to push past the spot with the most golems in our path.”

“So straight ahead,” Killian murmured.

Where the ash golems clustered thickest, we formed a square, each of us a corner that stabbed anything that came close as we pushed our way deeper into the thick fog.

“Beware the ground,” Gerome suddenly shouted.

I halted in place and glanced over at the Knight. Gerome had sunk knee-deep in the ground, the pavement gone, transformed into a bog that sucked at the feet. Killian tugged me back a pace before it could grab hold of me too.

“Fucking hell,” Gerome cursed. He tossed his sword to the pavement and grabbed at the solid ground, but his fingers couldn’t get purchase, and he kept sinking.

Hannah slid a foot toward him while still slashing anything that came close. “Grab my leg as an anchor and pull yourself out,” she advised. Gerome hooked his hand around her ankle, and she braced before grunting and taking a step back.

Killian and I guarded their effort. A chicken, whose head I’d cut off, ran around for a moment before collapsing into dust.

“Something big is coming,” Killian warned.

And then the mist parted to reveal an ash dragon, or so I assumed by its dead gaze and gray pallor. It opened its mouth, and while I didn’t see the glow of fire, I still shouted, “It’s going to breathe.”

Gerome heaved himself free and rolled to his feet. He and Hannah dashed left, while Killian, grabbing hold of my arm, pulled me right.

The dragon blew. It exhaled ash that billowed and coated us, stinging my eyes and causing me to choke. We ran away from the noxious cloud, coughing and unseeing. My heart pounded at the effort, and when Killian halted, I bent over to hack up a lung.

The grit in my mouth left my tongue pasty, and I spat on the ground as I wheezed. “Did we lose it?”

“Yeah. But we also lost Hannah and Gerome.”

“That’s not good.” I straightened to look around, the area we found ourselves in still misty but not as thick, probably because of the trees. We’d stumbled into a forest.

“Think we can find them?” I asked.

“Not in this fog.” Killian didn’t sugarcoat. “However, I do see a path.” He pointed to a worn dirt rut that led through the woods. “It has to go somewhere.”

I opened my mouth to point out it went in the opposite direction we’d come from but instead said, “The golems didn’t follow us.”

Strange. Why would they have given up the chase?

As we walked, cautiously peering side to side, I couldn’t help but mutter, “If it’s trying to kill us, why send those ash golems?”

“I’m not sure I follow,” Killian replied.

It took me a second to orate what had been bugging me. “They were too easy to dispatch.”

“A good thing.”

“If the curse really wanted to remove us, why not send something more substantial? Harder to finish off?”

“You mean like that dragon and birds?”

“It already knows Gerome is a master dragon killer. And we could have taken shelter in the shoe from the birds.”

“I doubt those kids would have liked it.” He paused. “You are right, though. Why not send wolves? Or something equally dangerous? ”

“Because it wants us alive.”

“If that were true, then why the attack on the plane?”

I chewed my lower lip. “I don’t know. Just spit-balling because something doesn’t make sense. Why try so hard to get us to turn back, only to suddenly set us on a path?”

Killian halted to eye the rutted track then behind us, where the mist had crept in, obscuring the route back. “It’s herding us.”

Not the most auspicious announcement. “Do we keep going?”

“We came for answers,” his reply.

“We have no idea if following this path will lead us to them.”

“Do you see another choice?”

No. I didn’t.

Killian grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Whatever happens, we’ll be together.”

It reassured more than expected.

We continued on our way, treading softly in the quiet and dim forest. I kept angling my head left and right, convinced something watched. Followed. I waited for an ambush that didn’t happen.

Our sudden emergence into a sunny clearing jarred. I halted, as did Killian. We took in the quaint cottage with its picket fence and blooming garden. Vibrant and colorful after the gloom and gray of the forest.

My hair lifted, and my heart pounded. An almost electrical feeling emanated from the house and had me whispering, “I think we found it.”

No need to say what. This was it. The reason we’d come.

And it was inside the cottage.

“Ready?” I whispered.

“Always, dear wife.”

We entered the garden, the flagstone path swept clean. The chair outside the front door empty. The table by its side held a basket with knitting supplies, indicating someone lived here.

The door remained shut at our approach, the window in it providing no peek because of the floral curtain strung across.

I glanced at Killian and murmured, “Should we knock?”

“Is it locked?” he countered.

Before I could put my hand on the knob to check, the door opened.

In the doorway stood another golem, this one constructed of paper, a living papier-maché of a person lacking eyes with a rip above its chin for a mouth. Parts of it appeared scorched, as if someone had set it on fire. I could understand why, given its creep factor.

“You made it,” the figure stated, its voice a singular tone with no inflection.

“Made it where?” I asked.

“The place you’ve been looking for.” It stretched its paper mouth, causing parts of it to crack as it performed a parody of a smile.

“Who owns this house?”

“Someone you’ve met. But she’s tied up for the moment.”

“Why were we brought here?” Would this construct even know?

“Because it is time for the plan to evolve.”

“Evolve how?” Killian queried.

“Come inside if you want to find out.” It stood to the side and waited for us to enter.

I glanced at Killian, who shrugged.

He left it up to me. I’d not come this far to chicken out now.

As I entered, I couldn’t help but shiver and think we’d just walked into the belly of the beast.