Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicles #1: The Brimstone Key (8 page)

Brooke shrugged. “I think his name was Strife, or something like that anyway. The teachers don’t like to talk about him for some reason.”

As they neared their homeroom, they found two instructors locked in a dispute. The tall one was none other than Dean Nipkin. Her bony finger was pointing in accusation at her colleague who, as Brooke informed them, was their homeroom teacher, Ms. Merical. The dean was clearly the aggressor, but Ms. Merical didn’t look like she was ready to back down.

The Griffins moved behind a statue to watch the argument from a safe distance. As they did, Max caught sight of a boy hiding behind Ms. Merical’s skirt.

“Hey, that’s Robert!” Ernie exclaimed in a hushed tone. “But what’s wrong with his legs?”

It looked like Robert’s shoes had somehow become a part of the floor. He was literally rooted to the spot.

“He must be a changeling, too.” Ernie smiled.

“…and I am telling you that boy cannot be allowed
into your class!” Dean Nipkin continued. “He’s not like the others, and you can’t treat him as such. There are rules here, Ms. Merical. Changelings belong under my supervision, and I would
appreciate
it if you could ensure that Robert Hernandez is escorted to Sendak Hall in due haste.”

Ms. Merical offered a cherubic smile. “Fortunately for Robert, his schedule dictates otherwise.” She held out Robert’s papers as incontrovertible evidence.

The dean snatched the schedule from Ms. Merical’s hand. After a moment of study, she stuffed it into her pocket. “I can assure you this was a mistake. At Iron Bridge, we don’t mix humans and changelings. Not anymore. There have been incidents,
Elaine
.”

Ernie’s mouth dropped open. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he whispered.

“I am well aware of our history,” Ms. Merical countered. “However, Robert’s schedule puts him under my care. Unless Baron Lundgren instructs otherwise, he is going to stay right here.”

At that moment, one of the instructors ran up to the dean and began whispering in her ear.

“What do you mean, one of the changelings disappeared? Is this some kind of practical joke?” she asked with fury. “Stephen was under constant supervision.
Your
supervision, I might add. How did this happen?”

The discomfited man wiped at his brow. “One minute he was in his room, the next he was gone. The guards never saw him leave.”

“What about the Quantum Cameras?”

“Nothing. I’ve scoured the video. Perhaps he portaled out?”

“Nonsense! All portals have been shut down on campus. You know that. There has to be another answer…” The dean’s veins flashed red against her temples. She turned to Ms. Merical. “It seems we have a runaway, Elaine. We’ll have to continue this discussion later.”

Robert flashed a relieved smile, but he didn’t budge.

“Happy hunting,” Ms. Merical offered cheerily as Dean Nipkin hurried down the hall. Then she turned to wink at Robert. “Why don’t you go ahead and take your seat?”

Robert’s shoes uprooted from the floor, and he bounded into homeroom.

“Welcome,” Ms. Merical said, turning to greet the approaching Griffins. “It’s quite an honor to have the Secret Order of the Grey Griffins and the fabulous Miss Lundgren in my classroom.”

“You know who we are?” Ernie asked, astonished.

“Of course, Agent Thunderbolt.”

Ernie blushed all the way to the tips of his ears.

“What happened with Robert?” Natalia ventured.

“Oh, just a little mix-up with his schedule, that’s all,” Ms. Merical explained.

“It doesn’t sound like Dean Nipkin cares for changelings very much.”

“I’m sure that’s not true,” Ms. Merical countered with
a cheerful expression. “She is one of the leading authorities on the subject of changelings. If she has a fault, it’s that she cares too much.”

Just then, a terrible crash shook the hall.

“There goes another ceiling!” Ms. Merical exclaimed as she ushered everyone into the safety of her classroom. “That makes three in the past week.”

The intercom system crackled to life, and the voice of Baron Lundgren’s secretary filled the halls:
“Due to unforeseen circumstances, class will be dismissed early today. All students are to make their way to the
Zephyr
depot in an orderly fashion.”

Ernie spent the rest of the day drawing up a roster of potential changeling recruits for his superhero team. Natalia decided to use the spare time to log in to the Templar Library with her remote-viewing card. She was hoping for a breakthrough in her investigation. There was plenty of information on Round Table cards and clockworks. In fact, if anything, there was too much. Despite reading everything from game strategy guides to manuals on clockwork protocol, she wasn’t finding any useful information. Meanwhile, Harley and Max waited for nightfall before heading over to the Shoppe of Antiquities.

“Maybe we shouldn’t do this,” Max whispered as they snuck down the alleyway behind the stores on Main Street. He wasn’t worried about getting caught. The sheriff was at the diner having a cup of coffee, and all his deputies had the night off. Max just didn’t want to face the fact that Iver was really gone. An empty store would only underscore that depressing fact.

When Max had heard that Iver was caught in the explosion on the island of Malta, he felt as though he had lost his grandfather all over again. And when Max found out that his own father was responsible for Iver’s death, his entire world fell apart.

“Look, I don’t mind going in by myself,” Harley assured Max. “I just want to take a quick look around. It’ll be five minutes, tops.”

Max shook his head. “If one of us goes, we both go.”

Harley reached up to unscrew the lightbulb hanging over the back door of Iver’s shop. Then he tested the knob, and the door creaked open.

“That was easy,” Harley said as Max pulled out a flashlight.

“It looks like somebody was already here,” Max remarked, sounding concerned.

Books and papers were scattered everywhere. Filing cabinets were half open, and picture frames lay broken on the ground. The haunting smell of Iver’s pipe tobacco still lingered in the room, but most of the knickknacks
had been packed away. All that remained were some shredded boxes and overturned cabinets.

“Wait a minute. Did you hear that?” Harley whispered, pointing up at the ceiling.

There was a soft scraping sound followed by a muffled thud. Max instinctively twisted the ring on his finger, and the enchanted metal flowed over his hand to form the
Codex
Gauntlet. The blue flicker of Skyfire lit on his fingertips, and he moved past the beware of dragons sign that still hung by the staircase.

The knotted door at the top of the steps was ajar, but they couldn’t see anything. The hall beyond was draped in shadow. Harley nudged the door open with his foot, and the boys prepared for an attack that never came. As they stepped into the hallway, the sound of a rapidly ticking clock filtered from a room down the hall.

“It sounds like that brass beetle,” Max whispered.

They traced the sound to a spare room in the back that had been ransacked like the shop below. Chairs were overturned and the contents of boxes were strewn everywhere.

Then Max saw it.

A mechanical creature no larger than a raccoon knelt on the table in the center of the room. It was methodically slashing its metal claws through one box after another, ignoring the boys entirely.

Max lifted his gauntlet and released a torrent of blue
flame. The Skyfire shot across the room, enveloping the machine in a nimbus of enchanted energy. The blast would have been enough to drop a Tanker Troll, but the machine wasn’t even fazed. Instead, it simply turned to Max and its eye flashed. Then it leaped through the windowpane in an explosion of glass.

It wasn’t long before the sheriff’s sirens were screaming down Main Street. Avalon didn’t have much in the way of crime, and those sirens were going to draw unwanted attention. Max and Harley were in no mood to stick around and answer questions. Besides, who was going to believe that a machine had broken into the Shoppe of Antiquities?

They raced down the stairs, out the back door, and down the alley to a comic-book shop called the Spider’s Web. Max was hoping the owner had stayed late. He was sure that Monti would let them hide out until everything died down. Harley pounded on the door, but
unfortunately nobody answered. So the boys hopped on their bikes and tore off down the alley just as an officer with a flashlight rounded the corner.

Max and Harley stuck to the back streets until they hit the long stretch of gravel road that led to the outskirts of town. Thankfully, the moonlight was blanketed by thick clouds; a few minutes later they were safely inside the barn loft behind Grandma Caliburn’s house.

“What was that thing?” asked Max. He was still breathing heavily as he peered through a window to make sure that they hadn’t been followed.

“I have no idea,” Harley admitted. “I’ve read a lot of stuff about robotics, and we’re supposed to be years away from anything that can move on its own like that. Someone must have been controlling it remotely. It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“So what was it doing in Iver’s shop?”

“The same thing we were,” Harley replied. “Looking for something that it didn’t find.”

Max sighed as he sat back. “Do you think our lives will ever be normal again? I mean, if I’d never found the
Codex
…”

“You were going to find it eventually, Max.”

“I don’t know,” Max said with a sigh. “Sometimes I feel like this is just a dream, and that I’ll wake up and everything will be the way it used to be. I mean, Iver is dead because I gave that stupid spear to my dad. I might
as well have killed him myself. After my grandpa died, Iver looked out for me like I was his grandson.”

“I know,” agreed Harley. “He did that for all of us.”

“Saturday mornings used to be my favorite time of the week,” Max lamented. “I couldn’t wait to go to his shop. And it wasn’t just about playing Round Table. I miss his stories—” Max paused as he reached back for memories. “Even when it seemed like the world was falling apart, as long as Iver was around, I felt like everything was going to be okay. I’m not so sure anymore.”

“Well, I miss those caramel rolls and the fresh-squeezed orange juice he would give us,” Harley said with a smile.

“And the smell of his pipe.”

“Don’t forget those plaid shirts and his suspenders.”

“And his laugh,” Max added. “I really miss his laugh.”

Harley frowned. “Your dad killed Iver. Period.”

“But—”

“Look, so you’ve messed up a few times… who hasn’t? You were trying to do the right thing. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”

Max regarded his friend closely. Harley had a rough life, but no matter what happened, he never complained. Max wished he could be like that, too.

“What about you?” Max asked. “Do you ever think about your dad?”

Harley shrugged as he chewed a piece of straw. “He’s never coming back, so what’s the point?”

“Did you know him?”

“I haven’t even seen a picture of him. I guess it used to bother me, but when your mom cries every time you mention someone, you learn to shut up.”

Max plucked a strand of straw from the bale behind him and twisted it around his finger. “I don’t know… maybe it would have been better if my dad had disappeared like yours did. But even after all he’s done, I still kind of miss him.”

“It’s because you have a heart. Look, you can try to be as tough as you want, but the reason the Griffins would follow you into a nest of dragons is because we know you’d do anything for us. That’s what makes a great leader.”

Max heard his grandmother’s voice from outside. “Logan just called,” she announced. “He said to get some sleep. You have a training session tomorrow morning before school.”

“What time?”

“Four
A.M.
”

Max sighed. “If mechanical monsters don’t kill us, it looks like Logan will.”

Logan had been taking the Grey Griffins on monster-hunting expeditions for nearly a year now. Any complaining was met with extended training, so the Griffins learned to take their lumps. On this particular morning, they were knee-deep in the chilling waters of a marsh in the Old Woods. The moon was still out, and they couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of them. Worse yet, Max felt his boots sinking into the silt. He tried not to think about what might be lurking beneath the surface.

Charles Butterman, a local farmer, had complained that something had been dragging his livestock into the marsh behind his barn. He thought it was just a black
bear, but Logan had a hunch. THOR scans reported the presence of a Swamp Fiend, and it was up to the Griffins to capture it before the monster did any more damage.

“What’s with all the textbooks?” complained Ernie as they trudged along. “I’m going to need a chiropractor after carrying them around.”

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” Natalia reminded him.

Overhead, Sprig buzzed along in the form of a large dragonfly. She joined the Griffins on their monster-hunting expeditions from time to time, mostly out of curiosity. She could become distracted easily and disappear. Today, Max had made her promise to stay close.

“If you’re my Bounder, I need to know I can count on you,” he had told her, to which her reply had been: “Max doesn’t need to hunt silly monsters. Max doesn’t need his silly friends. We will be his only friend, if Max wants.” Still, she had promised.

Natalia turned to Max as they sloshed along through the swamp. “Have you heard anything from Brooke about those cards?”

“Too much chatter,”
Logan said through the voice transmitter. The Griffins couldn’t see where he was, but he’d be there in case they got in over their heads.
“You’re nearing the target. Look lively.”