Grey Griffins: The Clockwork Chronicles #1: The Brimstone Key (24 page)

“It would be best if Throckmorton led the expedition,” Cain had explained. “It must be a small group. No soldiers. No one that would alarm Strange. Max and Agent Thunderbolt will go as well.”

Ernie had argued against the idea. For one, he and the gargoyle didn’t get along. For another thing, he was afraid of heights. The Baron was resolute, however. Apparently he believed that Ernie was actually the most important member of the team, though he refused to elaborate.

“Just be yourselves,” the Baron had instructed. “And, with luck, Obadiah may consider our plight.”

They traveled most of the way by portal, and soon the three of them stood on a mountainside as strong winds blew swirling clouds of snow into the sky. As a creature of living stone, Throckmorton was immune to the weather. Max and Ernie were a completely different story, though. Despite their identical white parkas, wool underwear, shell pants, and all the other layers that were making it hard for them to walk, the cold seemed to find a way inside. Both boys were also equipped with Rarified Air Respiratory Systems. They wore masks over their faces, with tubes that led to an oxygen chamber. Without these regulators, the lack of oxygen would kill them in a matter of minutes.

Throckmorton cut a path through the deep snow as he trudged ahead. Yet even with the aid of their trekking poles to help lift them out of the snow, Max and Ernie struggled. They traveled for hours before the gargoyle decided to take refuge under a massive overhang littered with icicles. It was time for the boys to eat. Throckmorton broke out a kerosene stove and boiled some snow in a pot. It wasn’t long before he had a stew with dried vegetables and meats boiling. Max and Ernie gladly accepted a bowl and sipped the warm broth, though they had to replace their regulators after every bite.

“Eat slowly,” the gargoyle warned. “Your body is still adjusting to the altitude, and your digestive tract may struggle.”

Ernie didn’t bother listening as he downed a second bowl, two chocolate bars, a bag of trail mix, and a stick of beef jerky. A few moments later, he clutched his stomach. “I’m going to vomit into my regulator,” he groaned.

The gargoyle melted more snow for drinking water. After the boys had their fill, it was time to ascend the face of the overhang. The climb was well over fifty feet from top to bottom, and Ernie was in no hurry to make it.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “Me and Max are just kids. We don’t even shave yet. So how come Cain sent us up here? If I was in charge, I would have sent a bunch of THOR agents.”

“Strange needs to see the faces of those who could
perish if he remains on the sidelines,” Throckmorton said evenly.

With that, the gargoyle tethered himself to a rope and sunk his claws into the wall, scaling the icy surface like a spider. Along the way, he pounded metal spikes into the compacted snow so that Max and Ernie had something to grasp as they climbed.

“You go first,” Max said after he helped tether the lead rope through carabineers on Ernie’s harness. Then he checked Ernie’s boot spikes. Losing traction would be dangerous. If the rope failed to hold, it could be deadly.

Ernie grabbed hold of the lead rope before sinking the spikes into the wall. Hand over hand, he pulled himself up, checking frequently to make sure the safety rope never broke free. Though he was relatively safe, the climb was still terrifying. Each step was slow and the wind threatened to tear him from the wall with each gust.

When he was about halfway up, a great rumble shook the mountainside. Ernie looked up to see a wall of ice and snow rolling toward him. With a cry, he flattened himself against the wall and closed his eyes, hoping he wouldn’t be torn away. The roar was tremendous, but thankfully it passed.

When Ernie dared to open his eyes, he found Throckmorton standing at the top with snow clinging to his shoulders. Then Ernie looked down and saw that Max had survived the avalanche as well.

“Come,” the gargoyle said after Max scaled the wall.
“Daylight is fading, and we don’t want to be caught out in the open once the sun goes down. The temperatures will freeze the blood in your veins.”

Without another word, he led them through deep snow as daylight gave way to dusk. The terrain was a monotonous blur of white. Max actually thought he was hallucinating when he caught sight of a series of stone pillars that lined the horizon.

“Do you see that?” he asked through the regulator.

“Yeah,” Ernie replied. “What are they?”

“Monuments to mark those who have fallen,” Throckmorton explained.

“This is a graveyard?” Ernie asked, as he imagined zombies wreathed in ice rising up from the snow.

“Yes,” the gargoyle responded. “But you needn’t fear, for the dead slumber in peace.”

The team continued until they came to the lip of a deep chasm that cut through a river of ice. As Max looked over the edge, he couldn’t see the bottom. On they trekked over a vast wasteland of ice and rock, taking few breaks. Then, with his fingers frozen and his nose feeling like a block of ice, Max found himself standing before two tattered flags that snapped in the mountain air.

“Welcome to the lair of Obadiah Strange,” Throckmorton called out over the howling wind.

“I don’t get it,” Harley said as Logan drove through the rain-slicked roads of Edinburgh. “If we’re in such a hurry to find the Bishop, then why didn’t we just take a portal?”

“Too risky,” the Scotsman replied. “Your friend Aidan can track our signatures.”

“Smoke
isn’t
my friend.”

“Either way, portals are his territory. The sky is mine, so we flew.”

“Wouldn’t a phone call have been easier?” asked Natalia.

Logan sighed as he pulled the car into Mason’s Close.
“You don’t
call
the Bishop. He monitors every airwave, every wire, and just about every thought. He knows what we need already. If he wanted to tell us, he’d have already told us.”

“So why bother coming in the first place?” she pressed.

“To give him another chance,” Logan replied tersely.

There were stories that the Bishop had once been human. Somewhere along the way, thanks to MERLIN Technology and dark sorcery, he’d managed to stretch his powers and his life across the centuries, at the expense of his humanity. He was now more monster than man, living in a shadowy world. The Bishop was like a spider, consuming when hungry and stealing body parts when his own limbs or organs began to wear out. He smelled bad. He looked even worse. Were it not for the fact that he seemed to know almost everything, even before it happened, he’d probably have been left alone to die. But knowledge is power. As long as the Bishop had it, kings and presidents would give him whatever he demanded in return for a secret or two. And it was no secret that the Bishop made them pay dearly.

“He won’t try to eat us, will he?” Natalia remembered Max’s warning.

Logan shook his head. “He doesn’t eat kids. Usually.” Logan smiled when Natalia squirmed. “Anyway, you aren’t coming in. Stay in the car and keep the doors locked—this place isn’t safe. The vehicle is protected
by the best security technology in the world. So unless a troll turns up, you should be able to sit back and watch a movie while I do the talking.”

“Where are we?” she asked.

“Mason’s Close,” Logan replied. The words sounded like a curse as they left his mouth.

“I mean, is it hidden from civilians, like New Victoria? Or is it just a part of Edinburgh?” Natalia asked.

“It’s a cesspool filled with thieves and murderers, so mind yourself and keep your window rolled up,” Logan said.

“Why can’t you just give me a straight answer?”

Logan sighed. “No. The close is not hidden from civilians, but that doesn’t mean the degenerates who call it home are all from this world.”

“If we’re going to be stuck in the car watching television, why did you even bring us?” Harley wanted to know. “I can handle myself.”

“There’s no doubt about it,” Logan replied. “But you’re here as my insurance policy, so I expect you to follow orders and stay put.”

Harley crossed his arms in frustration as Logan parked the car next to a curb, opened the door, and disappeared into a nearby warehouse.

“What does that mean?” Natalia asked. “Insurance for what?”

Harley shook his head as he flipped on the television. “I don’t want to know.”

Natalia slid away from the door as a dark figure stumbled up to peer through the mirrored window as if he could see right through. He paused and then reached a shaky hand toward the door handle. There was a blue flash outside the car, and the figure staggered backward in confusion. He scratched his head, looking up and down the street as if he suddenly didn’t know where he was. Mumbling to himself, he wandered away.

Logan had been gone more than twenty minutes, and even though Natalia decided to take notes in her
Book of Clues
, Harley was starting to get into the movie. Then the car’s engine shut off, and the television died.

“That can’t be good,” Natalia said, as she looked out the window.

Harley slid over the front seat and tried to turn the backup generator on. It refused to come to life.

“The streetlights are out, too,” Natalia noted. “The whole grid must be down.”

“The only thing I can think of that could do that is an EMP.”

“A what?” Natalia asked.

“An Electromagnetic Pulse,” Harley explained. “The military uses it to shut down power prior to an attack. Anything with an electrical circuit is fried.”

Natalia glanced down at her digital watch and sighed. “You might be right. My watch stopped.”

“But why would anybody use an EMP here?” Harley mused. Yet even as he did, he saw the door to the nearby
building explode outward. Logan jumped through, hitting the ground in a roll. His leather jacket was smoking. His face was dark with soot, and his fists were bleeding at the knuckles. With a grunt, Logan leaped over the hood of the car and slid across the hood before jumping inside. He pushed the keys into the ignition and turned.

“It’s dead,” Natalia warned. “Harley thinks we’ve been EMPed.”

The engine engaged immediately, but it didn’t sound right. Then Logan put it in gear and slammed his foot on the gas. The tires squealed as they raced the alley. The dashboard dials had changed. No longer reading miles per hour or how much gas was in the tank, the display was measuring spectral joules. Logan had switched the car from conventional power to MERLIN Tech!

“Seat belts on!” Logan ordered. “We’ve got company. That EMP was mine, but it won’t keep them down for long.”

“Keep who down?” Natalia shouted over the roar of the engine.

“The clockworks,” Logan responded.

As the words left his mouth, the biggest clockwork they’d ever seen blasted its way through the building Logan had left. The brick structure collapsed in a storm of dust and stone. The machine was even bigger than the Grimbots. It was constructed of brass and iron, and a cloud of steam poured out from its engines. The clockwork had a tiny head that was perched on top of a chest
that looked like an oversized potbelly stove. It tore down telephone poles and tossed Dumpsters with its four arms, as it raced after their car.

“What about the Bishop?” Harley asked.

“Gone,” Logan replied. “Kidnapped. Or dead. That
thing
and a few of its friends were waiting for us.”

“Where are the other machines?”

“Out of commission.”

“What is it?” Natalia wanted to know.

“Class Six Nemesis Clockwork,” Logan replied, swinging to the side as a Dumpster crashed down to the left of the car.

“How do you know it’s a Class Six?”

“If it had been anything less,” Logan replied, as he slid around a corner, “the EMP would have finished it off.”

The Nemesis rounded the same corner, picking up an abandoned pickup truck along the way and hurling it at their car. Logan hit the brakes and the truck flew harmlessly overhead.

“We won’t last in this maze,” the Scotsman muttered, as he hit the accelerator and turned down another alley.

The Nemesis smashed through the corner of a building, but the steel and bricks didn’t slow it down. Natalia gasped. Logan was barreling toward a dead end. At the last minute he hit the brakes. “Everybody out!” he ordered as a cloud of smoke rose from the tires.

Logan pushed the Griffins into a nearby building before racing back to the car and extracting a suitcase
from the trunk. Popping it open, he pulled out what Harley recognized as one of Monti’s Plasma Launchers. Logan loaded a glowing-blue canister into its breach and knelt on one knee. Shouldering the Plasma Launcher, he flipped down the targeting reticle and took aim at the approaching Nemesis.

He squeezed the trigger, and the missile shot out of the barrel in a blaze of blue fire, striking the Nemesis in the chest. It reeled backward from the impact, but there was no explosion. As Harley looked on, he could see a slimy gel splattered across the machine, which had frozen mid-stride. There was a creaking sound, like a windmill teetering in the wind, and then it crashed to the ground.

“Back inside!” Logan shouted. “Class Six clockworks have a nasty habit of getting back up.”

Sure enough, the three of them watched as the motor inside the Nemesis started to rev up. Then the lights behind its eyes flickered on. It was repairing itself.

“We don’t have long. Just stay close, and whatever you do, keep running.”

With that, Logan burst into the building, and the Griffins followed close behind. Moments later, the machine was fully operational. It plunged into the building, chasing its targets like a wrecking ball with feet.

Max couldn’t believe that such an immense structure could have been built in the middle of nowhere. It looked like a cross between a Tibetan temple and a Victorian mansion. High walls led to even higher gables. There were towering turrets with stained glass, balconies of polished iron, and so many lit windows that it almost seemed like a constellation of stars looking back at them.