Briar Blackwood's Grimmest of Fairytales Read online

  But then his laughter stopped, and a sickening silence overcame him. His face twisted into a look of terrible surprise as the enveloping light blazed, giving off an intense heat. The dwaref began melting like glops of molten steel into the book. Fused into the column of light and torn fragment by fragment, he shrieked until there was nothing left. The book then snapped shut.

  Ash picked the book up and clutched it to his chest with a twisted smile. “And they all lived happily ever after,” he said.

  Briar suddenly realized that Dax was recording with his cell phone and she didn’t want the—perhaps—one remaining lifeline to be taken away from them. So she stood in front of Dax, first snapping the phone away and shoving it into one of her boots before it was noticed.

  Then Ash rushed past them to the door, his cloak billowing behind as he ran. He turned one last time to face Briar, his hand in the air, ready to wave. Briar braced herself, thinking he was aiming a spell toward her.

  “Farewell, Briar of the Black Woods,” he said. “You shall be missed.” He gestured in the air and the door unlocked and opened.

  In stepped the Lady Orpion. “Well done, Ash,” she cooed. “You have your book.” But then she was fixed upon Briar. She stepped toward Briar and Dax, who backed away. “Now our little Tale may conclude, unbroken,” she said. Her eyes filled with the darkness of death.

  “Of course, My Lady,” Ash said. Then he made a quick hand gesture, and he disappeared in cloud of black smoke that floated out the door past Orpion.

  Briar held the sword with both hands and backed away. “Don’t come near,” she said. Dax grasped Leon tightly and ran for the other side of the room, hoping to find something to use as a weapon.

  Briar swung the sword in front of her to keep Orpion away. But with a simple finger flick, Orpion caused the sword to fly from her hands and skid over to the burning fireplace—too far for Briar to run, to turn her back on the Lady.

  Briar backed up until she bumped into one of the leather wingback chairs. Orpion sauntered toward Briar, holding up a glass vial full of blood, and then she swallowed its contents down. She passed by the immobilized Sherman and kicked his rigid body away as though it were a throw-pillow. “I told you long ago Herbclaw, that you and your pathetic dillywigs would never win.” She licked her bloodstained lips as though she were tasting honey. “And I hate to say ‘I told you so,’ but, well, here we are.” Then she smashed the empty vial in the fireplace. She raised her palms, and burning within them were small blue flames.

  Just then, the fireplace pivoted part way from the wall, and from a secret passage behind it came Valrune. “Briar!” he shouted, “The Lady Orpion and her troops—” He stopped short once he saw what was happening. Like a spark from a flint, Valrune instantly went into action. He scooped up his sword and inched toward Orpion. He brandished the sword easily, trained warrior that he was.

  “Get behind me,” he shouted to Briar and Dax.

  Orpion laughed. “Poor little Prince Valrune,” she said. “Or should I say King Valrune now? Did Daddy fall down and break his crown?”

  Valrune clenched his teeth, and inched closer to Orpion. “You’re a monster,” he said.

  “Not quite yet. But soon,” she smiled. Her eyes were wide with perverse delight, and she looked completely unhinged. Then she wildly flung one of her flames at Valrune. He lifted his sword and managed to block it. The flame pinged off the blade back toward her. She arose into the air, and the flame hissed below her feet. It slammed into the long table at the far side of the room, and it flared up into a rage of blue flame. Valrune looked at his sword and saw that the corrosive flame took a sizzling chunk from one side.

  “Every Tale must end, Valrune,” Orpion smiled.

  But now that Orpion was rising up toward the ceiling, Briar ran to secure Sherman’s safety. Dax ran with Leon and placed him beneath one of the wingback chairs. “Just stay low,” he said. Leon nodded and then Dax bolted back to help Briar do something to protect Sherman.

  Twirling high in the air and laughing at some joke that no one else heard, Orpion motioned to lob her second flame at Briar. But with her attention focused on her wicked task, she didn’t see Valrune who had positioned himself below her. He swung the still-broiling sword, and allowed it to fling into the air, and managed to take a slice from her cheek. She dropped suddenly to the floor along with the sword. She staggered back a few paces, and covered her black-blooded wound with a pale hand.

  She growled like an animal. With her full fury unleashed, she glared at Briar and Valrune with unstoppable hatred. She opened her mouth wide and swallowed down the second flame. A mass of thick black smoke and churning orange fire engulfed her and she shrieked within the inferno.

  To protect the petrified Sherman, Briar and Dax grabbed him, and between them they carried him through the opening behind the fireplace. The churning smoke and fire from Orpion’s spell dissipated, and where the Lady Orpion stood was now a black dragon, tall as a full-grown man, hissing with its reptilian head tossed back.

  Embers and smoke burst from its nostrils. It looked like the creature Gelid had attempted to become, but this one was fully formed. Its scales seemed thick and metallic. They shimmered blue-black in the firelight. It craned its long snake-like neck and snapped its narrow beaked mouth, as though the very air were an enemy.

  The creature arched its leathery black wings, translucent and red with veins and capillaries. It flapped, filling the great hall with its wingspan and gusts, while it ascended to the high ceiling. It bore its meaty claws and aimed them for Valrune. Briar and Dax shouted, “Run.” The creature dropped down with its full weight to crush and shred the prince with its powerful talons.

  Valrune dropped his sword and tipped an overstuffed wingback chair for cover. The dragon landed, full force, on the exposed back of the chair and ripped halfway though it with its sharp claws. But the talons got tripped up in the chair’s thick stuffing and it lost its balance. It fell to one side, and furiously beat its wings against the hard stone floor. The beast had lost control and slammed its head against the fireplace wall a stomach-churning screech. It let loose a furious cloud of red-yellow fire from its mouth that singed the stone walls.

  With the dragon down, Briar ran for Valrune’s sword, which lay only a few lengths away. But once she had it, she realized that it might not be able to pierce through the creature’s thick armor of scales. So she swung the blade and stabbed it through the dragon’s soft leathery wings, ripping a long gaping gash in one of them. The dragon let out a shivering nerve-splitting cry, and it hissed angrily. “That’s for my mother!” she shouted.

  With the dragon tangled and unable to fly, it was everyone’s chance to escape. Valrune crawled out from beneath the chair, picked up Leon and commanded Briar to run. But it seemed like she could not hear. Instead, she stood staring at the creature with an odd intensity in her eyes. With Briar not budging, Valrune shouted to Dax, “Hurry!” Dax had been standing mesmerized by the scene and Valrune’s shout shocked him into action. Valrune dashed with Leon to stash him behind the fireplace passage for safety and Dax slid in with him.

  Meanwhile the dragon splattered black blood everywhere in the room, especially as it tried to beat its sliced, fleshy wings. As Valrune hastened away with Leon, the dragon used the bony parts of its wings to right itself and brace against the wall while it ripped its claws from the chair’s innards.

  It stomped after Valrune with a leaden sound. And just as he slipped behind the fireplace passage, the dragon leaned onto the marble with its long neck. Briar heard the heavy grinding of stone upon stone. The dragon shoved the opening shut with its head, sealing it with a sound of finality and doom.

  The dragon hissed and turned its attention to Briar, who was left alone in the chamber. Briar held up the damaged sword, making quick warning stabs toward the fiend. Then she ran for the second leather wingback chair to get cover.

  The monster snapped its jaws and with them, it seized the sword in Briar’s hand a
nd yanked it away. The metal melted like a chocolate bar in its smoking mouth. The dragon grinned, exposing its pencil-long sharp teeth. Drips of molten steel fell from its jaws with fizzling metallic clanks to the floor.

  Briar ran to the chair and curled up in a ball on the seat. The dragon drew back the skin from its fangs with a long inhalation. Then screaming like nails on glass, it let go a tremendous stream of fire. It blew across the chair like an atomic bomb blast, completely incinerating all that it engulfed.

  When it passed, the chair collapsed in a heap of cinders and smoke. Briar sat amid the ruins, blinking, but unharmed.

  The dragon hissed in hysterical frustration. But Briar arose to her feet, and felt something release inside of her that felt just as ferocious and frightening as the black beast.

  Her hands suddenly glowed with blue flames. There was no use in fighting whatever it was that overcame her, she realized. She may not have been the girl from the Omens, and she may not have known what she was at all. But if she could withstand the flames of a dragon, she knew she was at least a creature with whom to be reckoned.

  Briar watched how Orpion had done it, and now it was her turn. She held her arms out like wings and she levitated into the air. Hovering midair, Briar swallowed one, then the other of her blue flames. She felt something molten and unforgiving arising in her stomach.

  The black beast hesitated and withdrew, looking for a place it might go. It began using its wings to beat at the swiveling fireplace, but it would not budge.

  Briar floated across the room, above the awful black monster. It barred its fangs and snapped its beak at her, but unable to fly, it found that Briar was out of reach. It stomped heavily toward the chamber door, which would be its only way of escape. Briar did nothing in response but stare with an awful, deadly fury. As terrible as it was, Briar realized how liberating it felt to finally allow whatever it was within her to run unbridled.

  Aerially, Briar followed the beast as it tried to escape. The creature wound its neck backward, ready to bite, when Briar doubled over and spewed out a stream of vomit onto the dragon’s face. The creature shrieked sharply, expecting it might burn, but then roared with defiant laughter when it did nothing at all.

  The dragon then turned to finish Briar off. It inhaled deeply, preparing to spew its flames. Then it savagely released its orange burst of crematory fire. At the same time, Briar opened her mouth. The burning logs in the fireplace guttered while Briar exhaled her own torrent of flames, blue and vibrant as the open sky. The two flame streams collided and exploded in the middle of the room with a heat that caused the stone walls to glow red.

  Orpion shut her putrid dragon-mouth, stunned.

  Briar landed on the ground and smiled at the dragon, with an awful, delicious smile. Thinking quick, she remembered that Dax had recorded Tarfeather engulfed by the dark magic of the book. She reached into her boot and fished out the device. She pressed “play” and pointed the screen toward the creature.

  Her guess about the recording was right. Instantly the phone took on an eerie glow and a radiated a beam of light that locked onto the dragon.

  The monster squinted, hissed, and stepped back a pace. Then Ash’s recorded voice said, “Just reward.” The dragon’s eyes opened wide and its long reptilian mouth hung dumbly. The beast was entranced.

  Then the phone’s emanating light formed into a glowing heat that enveloped the dragon’s body. Realizing it had been caught, it tried to flap and scrape away with its one good wing. Then it was pulled into the light bit by bit, bellowing and shaking in a fruitless effort to escape. Finally, the creature was sucked completely into the screen.

  Briar then dropped the phone and stomped on it with her heel, grinding it into the floor. It sparked and popped, and a slight whiff of bluish smoke floated up like a little electronic soul.

  “Taste that twenty-first-century magic, bitch!”

  Chapter 29

  Briar wasted no time brooding over the fate of the Lady Orpion. But it took a few minutes for her body to stop vibrating with power and adrenaline. Using the residual strength of her Dragon Powers, she grasped the mantle of the marble fireplace and pulled it until it swiveled open with a sound like a grinding millstone.

  Valrune, Dax and Leon all stood on the other side of the fireplace staring at her with wide eyes. They had been trying all this time to open the fireplace, but Orpion had closed it so soundly that the fireplace would not dislodge for them.

  Valrune broke their blinking silence. “Dame Titania—thank the Tales you’re all right,” he said. He rushed past the others and embraced Briar.

  Dax slipped past into the chamber and gazed around at the fire-singed walls and the char-heaps where furniture once stood. “Jeez, what the hell happened in here?”

  “Orpion—she’s gone now,” Briar said.

  “Gone, like, ‘catch you on the flipside’ gone? Or like—gone-gone?” Dax blinked.

  “Gone-gone,” Briar said. She didn’t sound proud of what she had done. It just was a matter of fact.

  “You stopped the Lady Orpion?” Valrune asked.

  “But—but how?” Dax asked.

  “I don’t know. But what’s most important now is that we get out of Murbra Faire.” Briar said.

  Valrune looked at Briar as though noticing her in a crowd for the first time. She understood. She felt like a stranger to herself right now.

  He paced back and forth with a hand to his mouth. “Dame Titania is right. The Lady’s wolfguard doesn’t yet know what has happened—nor do others of their kind,” he said. “But it won’t be long before this is discovered. No doubt her plans were known by many. And once she does not return to them, none of us will be safe.”

  Leon hopped up to Briar’s hand. “What about staying here in Westwolf until the worst of it has died down?”

  “Grab the fox,” Valrune said to Dax. And between them they carried the petrified Sherman down the long fireplace corridor. Briar slipped in behind the fireplace and used her strength to seal it shut. She scooped up Leon and carried him with her as she followed Valrune and Dax.

  “This is ridiculous,” Dax finally said. “How will we ever get out of here carrying Sherman like this?”

  “Come this way,” Valrune said. “There is more than one safe room in Westwolf. Let’s try the hidden stair along the south corridor. We can place Sherman safely there and come back for him once we’ve defeated Orpion’s guard.”

  “Someone’s been hitting the self-esteem curriculum a little too hard,” Dax said. “There’s only the three of us plus Leon, who’s busy sucking up bugs. And in case you haven’t guessed, I’m not exactly cut out for battles.”

  Valrune smiled. “We’re not alone. Before I found you here, I gave the signal to the dwarefs. They’ll be here by now. Come on, let’s get moving.”

  They started down the narrow stone tunnels and were soon covered in cobwebs. There were more of the small brick-sized window openings that allowed some waning daylight to into the tunnels. But it wasn’t long before the sun was completely set, and they found themselves in an unforgiving darkness.

  Abruptly, Briar’s hands took on the glow of her Dragon Powers. “Great. Now you light up—” Dax groused. Briar knew that the flames never appeared unless there was some danger nearby.

  “We must be near the main palace and Orpion’s guard,” Valrune said. Briar lifted one of her glowing hands and used it to light their way through the passages.

  They came to an intersection that Valrune recognized as the entrance to a secret stair leading to the high turret. He felt the wall for a moveable brick. He pressed in on it, and a narrow section of the wall swung inward.

  “The main palace is right over here,” he said. He nodded his head toward a longer tunnel that seemed to dead-end. “Leon and I will see if it is yet safe to leave.” He set Sherman down and took Leon from Briar.

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Leon complained. “Why do I have to go?”

  Valrune placed a hand on Dax’s s
houlder. “I am trusting you Bottom, to watch over Dame Titania and keep her safe.”

  Dax put his own hand on Valrune’s shoulder. “I can’t assure she won’t distribute any more bogus aliases. But I will do my best,” he said.

  “Take Sherman up to the turret as well,” Valrune instructed. “We will come back for you when it is safe.”

  Briar and Dax lifted Sherman and headed up a twisting set of squeaky wooden planks held up by metal brackets set in the turret wall. They had to exercise caution; the stairs were so narrow and steep that the two of them could no longer hold Sherman as they had before, beneath their arms. The narrowness of the stairs required that they stand him upright and lift him step by step. Briar’s hands still glowed, and that puzzled her. She assumed that they must have moved a safe distance from Orpion’s guard by now.

  At the top of the stairs, they came to a locked door. But Briar knew with a growing sense of certainty that it would easily open with her trinket key. She tried it in the door and the latch clinked open. “I’m telling you,” Dax said. “Once we get out of here, I don’t care where we go, so long as that key comes along.”

  She swung the door open and she felt her heart beat at in her throat. But nothing special was there. The room was yet another stone chamber, sparsely arranged with long stained glass windows. Briar raised her flame-glowing hands and looked around. Several items large enough to be furniture were stored beneath draping cloths. She and Dax propped Sherman against a wall, and Briar said they should look for candles and flints. Briar knew that if the royal family had used this for shelter during perilous times, they would have kept such provisions.

  Briar and Dax spread out and looked in the various corners of the room. Briar’s heart sank into her stomach and soon she could no longer tell if her body was moving. She felt dizzy and thought she might faint. She propped herself against one of the covered furniture pieces.

  She pulled the cloth away and discovered her basinet. Briar lost her ability to speak. They had found their way to the spinning wheel chamber she discovered long ago. She knew what was there just a few paces away. It was her prized possession, the thing she most desired in the whole world.