Fairest (26 page)

Mina came to room 413 and quietly opened the door slipping inside. The room was dark and the drapes closed with just a flicker of red and blue lights dancing on the ceiling. She couldn’t hear any music, which meant the impromptu concert was officially over. Walking over to the bed, Mina stumbled over something on the floor. She reached around in the near darkness to move the object, and her hand came in contact with a warm leg, and it was attached to a body.  Mina pulled her hand away quickly and looked up to see that Nan was still asleep and her heart monitor was still quietly beeping.

Slowly, she moved around the bed and reached for the light switch next to the hospital bed. Her hand shook with fear. Quickly, like pulling off a Band-aid, she flicked on the light and looked at the body on the floor. It was Dr. Martin. There was a large lump on the side of his head and blood on his forehead.

Mina reached down to touch Dr. Martin’s neck to feel for a pulse, and he moaned softly. He was still alive! A soft beeping sound came from across the room, and Mina looked to the corner to see a man sitting silently in a chair watching her.

He was dressed from head to toe in black with a long leather jacket that reached the floor. The man reached over and touched the alarm on his expensive watch, shutting it off. She looked at the clock in the room and back to the man in the chair. It was midnight. He slowly stood up and walked toward her, his hand reaching for a long wooden object leaning against the wall.

She shook her head in confusion. Not understanding and not believing who she saw. She recognized him. It didn’t make sense.

He clicked a button on the side of the wooden staff and a sword shot out. “You are just in time,” Karl spoke gruffly. “For the reaping!” He swung the sword at Mina’s head.

Mina fell backward, tripping once again over the prone form of Dr. Martin. Karl smiled cruelly and easily pushed the hospital bed with Nan on it out of the way, exposing a direct path to Mina. What could she do? He could, kill any of them at any moment. She could only do one thing. Stall.

“Why now? Why didn’t you kill me earlier when you had the chance? I mean, come on now, you had me and let me go. That doesn’t sound like you are a very good Reaper,” Mina taunted, forcing herself to sound braver than she was.

Karl stopped and bared his teeth angrily, and then he did something unexpected. He laughed. A deep menacing chuckle that only got louder and louder.

He stopped laughing and smiled at her. “It has been quite a few years since I killed my last Grimm, and truthfully, I wasn’t expecting to almost run one over.”

He moved to the left, and Mina mirrored his movements by moving to the right, keeping out of reach of the sword.

“Well, obviously, we are not all dead,” she taunted again, eyeing the blade.

“I had caught wind of a new one arising and was hunting the Grimm.” Karl eyed her up and down carefully. “I wasn’t expecting one so young.  For you to actually lie and tell me you were this girl,” he nodded to Nan sleeping in the bed, “was brilliant.”

“If I had known who you were, I would have instantly killed you in the woods instead of delaying my kill.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a black leather bound book. Mina stiffened when she saw it. It was the Grimoire, although it looked different since it had changed shape to accommodate its new master.

“That’s mine,” Mina demanded.

“Was yours.” Karl waved the book around. “It’s probably the only thing that saved you that night. I hadn’t planned on finding this. I didn’t recognize what I had, and when I finally figured out it was the fabled Grimoire and that you had lied about who you were, it was too late. Someone had alerted the rangers to where we were. So I took my prize and let you escape. But I knew that if I baited you, and killed this Nan Taylor, you would come to me.” He opened his hand in an inviting way and pointed to Mina. “And I was right: here you are.”

“So you are the one imprisoning the Fae in the book,” Mina accused.

Karl shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “They all had it coming. Actually, all of the Fae have it coming, including you.”

“What about Jared? What did you do to him?” Mina yelled.

Karl looked at her confused. “I didn’t capture a Jared. Well, not that I know of,” he laughed.

Her mouth pursed in thought. She was out of time. She heard a commotion in the hallway that was coming closer, and so did the Reaper. Karl yelled loudly and raised his sword high in the air when the door burst in and Nurse Diedre rushed in jumping directly into the path of the sword. She screamed and halfway changed shape midair right as the sword cut down onto her silver-scaled shoulder.  It imbedded deep into bone. Her scream dissolved into a roar of pain as she collapsed to the ground. The sword had broken in two; half stuck in the dragon Diedre, the other half held pathetically in a very nervous Reaper’s hand.

The old nurse, beaten and battered, pulled herself up and changed fully into her dragon form, backing the reaper into the corner. He tried to dive right, but she clawed at his jacket and ripped open the pocket containing the Grimoire.

Mina saw it fall out and skitter across the floor. She dove for it, but so did Karl. Right when he grabbed the Grimoire, Diedre bit down on his leg. He screamed and reached into his jacket for another of his reaping weapons--a wickedly curved blade which he stabbed into the dragon’s nose.

Mina didn’t look back; she didn’t have time. She fumbled and pulled Dr. Martin up to a standing position and rolled him onto the foot of Nan’s bed. He was barely on. She unplugged Nan from the machines and began to roll the hospital bed toward the opened door. Giving thanks, that the new hospital rooms were large enough to accommodate a moving bed and a large dragon.

She swung the bed into the hallway and looked back toward the door to see a large gust of flame erupt out of the room. She could hear the sound of fighting and smell the smoke of the dragon. Mina needed to get people out of the hospital and fast. On the wall was a red fire alarm, and she pulled it. Immediately, the alarm went off, and the few night staff that weren’t downstairs watching the police commotion outside began to evacuate the hospital rooms. Thankfully, Nan’s room was the only one occupied down her hallway. When a nurse began to run toward the room filled with fire, the dragon, and Reaper, Mina intercepted her.

“Hey! Don’t go down there, there’s a fire. I managed to get them out, but I need you to take them.”

The nurse, whose name tag read ‘Mandy’, looked down the hall to where Mina pointed.  Her eyes widened in fright and her training kicked in; she grabbed the bed and began to push toward the emergency exit. Mina could see patients that were strong enough to walk, being escorted toward the stairs. Others were lifted and carried.

Looking down the hall, Mina saw the nurse wave to a young man who did a fireman lift on the doctor and head down the stairs. Mandy scooped up Nan and carried her down herself. They were the last to exit the floor. Satisfied that they would be safe, Mina ran back toward the room.

The floor rumbled under her feet, and then a wall crashed outward as Diedre and Karl fell into the hallway. Karl stabbed the dragon again, but Diedre used her large claws to rake down his stomach. Unbelievably, he wasn’t sustaining as much damage as the dragon. The dragon bit his arm, and a loud metallic crunch was heard.

Mina grabbed a fire extinguisher from the wall and ran back into the burning room. She used the extinguisher to clear a path to look through the fiery rubble. Somewhere in this wreckage was the Grimoire. Smoke burned her eyes, and she dropped to the ground to stay below the rising smoke.

There it was. The Grimoire was in a pile of debris by the wall. She used the extinguisher on the wood that was burning right above the book, hoping it wouldn’t catch fire. She grabbed the book and hurriedly made her way out into the hall. She saw that the fire had now spread down to the other rooms and that Diedre and Karl were now fighting in the waiting room.

Mina held the Grimoire in her hands and could almost feel the book take an audible sigh. “You ready?” she asked the book.

“It’s about time,” Jared spoke loudly next to her. “I thought you were going to forget about me.”

She looked over her shoulder and saw Jared in head to toe black. “I should have abandoned you. You deserve it.” He was about to say something else when a painful roar filled the air.

Mina began running toward the sound and saw that the dragon had Karl’s blade embedded deep in her belly, but she had pinned him to the ground with her sheer weight. If she moved to remove the knife, Karl would escape. If she stayed where she was, slowly but surely the knife would bury deeper into her abdomen. The dragon roared in pain, and began to bite at the Reaper’s arms, making very little progress.

“Why isn’t he dying?” Mina cried out.

“The Reaper is an iron giant. Her dragon claws, teeth, and fire won’t be enough to kill him.”

“What can kill him?” Mina wailed.

“No one knows, but she will kill herself trying to protect us,” Jared said sadly. He looked upon the old dragon, and his eyes had a glassy look to them, like he was crying.

 “Do it!” the dragon roared out in a high gravelly voice. Mina looked over to Diedre whose mouth formed very distinct words. “Do it now! Use the book!” She commanded.

Karl began to panic when it heard the dragon speak and tried to fight. He bellowed and shifted into a man larger than an Ogre but with thinner arms and legs. His skin became translucent and silver. He yelled, screamed, and punched the dragon, trying to get away. The Reaper was fearful of being imprisoned in the book.

“Why is she doing this? Tell her to stop and move away.” Mina opened the book, but Jared shook his head.

“She won’t. He is too strong for either of us, and we can’t weaken him. If she released him, we would never catch him to entrap him in the book. It’s the only way.” Jared stared at the dragon regretfully and walked over to her. He touched the scales of her side, and Mina heard the dragon sigh with happiness.

“I won’t do it,” Mina decided, tears running down her cheeks, feeling intense loyalty to the dragon, who only moments ago she thought was the reaper. She had assumed the dragon was trying to hurt her, but in reality, she was trying to scare her away from the hospital. Now, she was protecting them.

Jared turned on her angrily. “You will. If you don’t, you dishonor her death and it will be for nothing.” He continued to rub the dragon’s scales and even went so far as to touch her bleeding silver snout.

Karl reached down and grabbed ahold of the handle of the jagged knife and began to push it further into the dragon. The dragon roared out in pain. Jared tried to grab the knife from Karl, but the dragon swung her wide head and knocked Jared across the room, out of the reach of the giant.

Mina screamed as he hit the wall, but he rolled quickly to his feet and he glared at her. “Do it now! Use the book and entrap them! She is dying.”

“I can’t!” Mina cried, tears falling freely.  She crumpled to the ground and watched the dragon and giant fight. Minutes ago, she had thought Diedre was her enemy.  Now she knew that wasn’t true. How could she possibly entrap the dragon for eternity in a book?

Jared kneeled down next to Mina and grasped her upper arms, looking deep into her eyes. His grey eyes were red with tears. He shook her firmly but gently. “Listen to me. She is dying; she knows it.  I know it.  The Reaper knows it. If you don’t entrap them now, then once she dies, the Reaper will be free and he will kill you.”

Dark smoke filled the hallways, and she could feel heat begin to warm her back. Jared shook her again. “If you don’t do it soon, we will all die anyway.”

Mina looked over at Diedre and saw that her movements were slower, her bite not as aggressive, as if she was fighting just to stay on the giant. The dragon’s deep blue eyes made contact with Mina’s, and she saw the dragon nod in agreement.

Mina reached for the book and opened it, surprised at how many pages were now filled with trapped Fae. She found a blank page and whispered to it. The book began to glow, and light sprang forth. She turned the book towards the dragon, and the giant began to panic. He roared, kicked, clawed, and fought.  The dragon watched the book expectantly, hopefully, lovingly.

The room began to spin, chairs flew, papers ruffled and both the dragon and giant began to slowly move toward the open pages. Diedre used her last ounce of strength to bite down hard on the iron giant as he fought against the pull of the book. A giant vortex formed out of the book, pulling them toward its pages. A chair entered the book, followed by a coffee table. The dragon and giant were much larger than a few pieces of furniture and so moved slower.